Mental Ray - Missing mia_material_x presets

[Anonymous]

Hi!

My problem:

I´ve installed mental ray (and yeah, it´s "loaded") but there are no presets for mia_materials.

Attribute Editor -> Presets -> mia_material_x# Should be the right tab. When i click on "Presets*" it only offers "Save mia_..." and "Edit Presets".

Searched online for hours without any success. Already reinstalled Maya and Mental Ray plugin.

My involved folders: 

- C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2016

- C:\Program Files\Autodesk\mentalrayForMaya2016

- C:\Users\Username\Documents\maya

All material scripts are in the "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\mentalrayForMaya2016\presets\attrPresets\mia_material_x" folder.

http://snag.gy/IFPEN.jpg

How can i import them? | Do i need to load another plugin? | Are there differnt versions of mental ray?

Any idea what may cause the problem?

Thanks for reading!

[damaggio]

Aware you up to date on SP 6 for Maya and also Sp 6 for mental?

[damaggio]

Are you up to date I meant.

[Anonymous]

Yea, everything is up to date. Downloaded yesterday Maya 2016 and Mental Ray (for Maya 2016). Installed via express installation (Maya + Plugin).
No other plugins except the addons coming with Maya.

Installed it on my old notebook the same way, works fine. Can´t figure out what the problem is.

[damaggio]

That's too bad, those presets are handy.

I'm sorry Davesee but  I don't know what else to recommend.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for trying anyway. I´ll try to clean up my pc and remove every single files for Autodesk and reinstall completly new. Maybe it works, maybe not. But yea.. those presets are awesome. ;3

[Anonymous]

Found the issue. Some features were linked to the false path in the registry.
Solved.

[Anonymous]

How you solved it? I have the same problem in mac 😞 

[Anonymous]

Hi guys, im having the same problem on maya 2017. How can i bring back my mental ray material presets?!!!!!

[Anonymous]

Im really desperated trying to figure this out. Mental Ray is the only render i like to use, and now has lost most of the utility for me. Cant we directly call the scripts within maya like the first user proposed???

[Anonymous]

Well, i gave up. Since nobody seem to know not even the slighty how could i fix this, and as always it seems these things only happen to me,  i guess my days with mental ray are gone. Thanks Nvidia, but your "free" mental ray is more bugged than anything else. Better to start using arnold or renderman that are far superior to mental ray, at least talking about stability. I knew there was a reason they will make it free lol.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

A reinstallation and a correct installation of SP2 helped me. Everything is working now. Sry for the late answer. Busy doing work ;3

[Anonymous]

I never got to be able to install SP2, ever in 5 years. Tried every workaround out there without success. In fact, in about 12 years, i had about 4 different window operating systems and i always had immense trouble installing the sps. I always reach a point where the update service will just not work. Every time, with every single windows os i had so far. lol. And in this case it was not an exception. So, reinstalling sp2 of course is not possible, i dont even have sp2 installed.

BUT. I dont need it. It turns out it fixed by itself. Dunno what i did, or what happened but everything is back to normal now. The only problem is, knowing that i was never going to use mental ray again i just got used to renderman and now im not going to go back to mental ray again ^^. But yeah, now i can save presets and i can see my presets where they should be. But its too late.. -_-

[Zeriel00]

@Anonymous

There's no Mental Ray in Maya 2017, is all Ogre Arnold now

[Anonymous]

Erm... Mental Ray have a free version for maya 2017. You can download it from the Nvidia homepage. Never liked Arnold, never will. And as much as i love mental ray (and also because its from nvidia and that is always good) i just cant use it anymore after i wasted almost 2 months learning renderman. Also i dont have a clue why i lost all my preset functions in maya 2017, and i dont want to risk it to happen again. So i will stick to renderman, that i know for sure i will not have those problems (since renderman uses a specific preset definition outside maya itself).

[Zeriel00]

Why don't you liked Arnold?

I haven't picked up a render yet since I'm still learning. I know Renderman is what Pixar uses and Mental Ray is from Nvidia and I don't like Nvidia very much because they have a lot of monopolistic practices with their video cards. What would you recommend as an easy to use render that works with Maya?

[Anonymous]

Arnold is a great render and it comes with Maya so you should not have any reasons to NOT use it.

My reasons for not using it are, that time ago i had really bad experiences dealing with reflections and refractions in Arnold. I did several test with Mental Ray, Renderman and Vray, and all of em threw better results dealing with reflections. At least that is what i noticed. And thats the reason i dont "like" Arnold. But if you are not too extrict about it, there is no reason for not using it.

But the main reason i dont use it is because i just love Renderman and it is the render im going to use at least as long as its free. Even if i dont know exactly how to use it in a lot of aspects, i like the results you get, the speed and the ipr workflow. Also i like the material preset editor, the light rig editor and a lot of stuff renderman have.

Nvidia have a lot of experience with 3d so thats the reason it is a good thing that they own mental ray now. And i will probably switch to it again once im pretty sure im not going to have another problem with the presets (using mental ray presets is one of the reasons i used it because it was fast to my workflow).

You could try Renderman. Its a bit tricky in the beginning, but as any other render, you will just need to learn a little how to use it and configure everything. Well it took me about 1 day to do so. At least the basics to render and get decent results with lights and materials. Its an amazing render and the best of all, ITS FREE. And its from Pixar. And i love pixar movies.. hahahaha (one of my fav movies of all times is Wall-E).

Options?? renders that are totally free (for NON commercial use), as far as i know, arnold, mental ray (but be aware that mental ray free version does not come with IPR), renderman and im not aware of others. Some renders like Vray, redshift, etc have versions that are free but come with some restrictions, and some of em important ones, so i would not call em "free".

[Zeriel00]

Thanks for all the info I'll definitely check Renderman out 🙂

[computergraphmuseum]

uninstall redshift render delete arnold and mental ray presets materials, i saw it after uninstalling redshift in maya, so be carefull after installing redshift.