I lost my mental ray??!!
 

Mental Ray is no longer a choice for me in my render globals. I have no idea what I did... how do I get my mental back?:(

sincerly-
the confused renderer

I found my mental ray! *whew*

somehow I unloaded the plugin :-O

That happens fairly frequently on both the PC and Mac platforms. I believe it may have something to do with Maya/Mental Ray crashing during a render.

For anyone who doesn't know, just go to your plugin manager ( Window/Settings&Prefs/Plugin Manager ) and check the Loaded and Auto Loade boxes beside Mayatomr.dll

what threw me off was the name of the pluggy -Mayatomr.dll I was looking for something that actually said "mentalray".

silly me :-O