Works now, thanks to you!
I think the problem is that unlike the readme says maya doesn't look in the library first. I disregarded the guys advice not to mess with the files in the actual maya package. And after I replaced the original maya.rayrc with yours and copied the assets in the actual maya folder it worked!

thanks again, so what was it you did to the maya.rayrc, I saw you added quite a lot of stuff, so I assume you know your stuff.

still adding shaders that way is a bit inconvenient especially for the not that experienced user. Maybe something they can think about for maya 2009

cheers