Set and load Renderer at Startup

Now and then Maya forgets to load “mental ray”. To avoid the hassle of having to manually load the plugin, I wrote a simple script that is executed by the userSetup.py (Maya searches and executes this file when Maya starts).

Step 1

First, create a userSetup.py file at following location:

• Windows: <drive>:\\Documents and Settings\\<username>\\My Documents\\maya\\<Version>\\scripts
• Mac OS X: ~/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/<version>/scripts
• Linux: ~/maya/<version>/scripts

Step 2

Copy and paste this script

  import maya.cmds as cmds
  def loadRenderPlugin(plugin = 'Mayatomr', name='mentalRay'):
  if not cmds.pluginInfo(plugin, q=True, loaded=True):
  cmds.loadPlugin(plugin)
  cmds.pluginInfo(plugin, edit=True, autoload=True)
  cmds.setAttr('defaultRenderGlobals.currentRenderer', name, type='string')
  print ('# Result: %s Plugin loaded #' % name)

Step 3

Now you have to add at the end of the file a line of code that loads the Render you are using. By default, Mental Ray will be loaded. However, you also can define a different function to load the renderer you are using like Arnold.

# Mental Ray

maya.utils.executeDeferred('loadRenderPlugin()')

# Solid Angle Arnold

maya.utils.executeDeferred('loadRenderPlugin("mtoa", "arnold")')