The mental ray renderer is the default renderer for the entire scene. You can also choose to activate it for specific passes. The mental ray renderer options are set globally for the scene and any new render pass you create will inherit these global settings. However, if needed, you can choose to override some of the global settings or create a complete set of local mental ray renderer options for each of your passes. See Setting Global or Local Render Options.
For interactive preview renders, the render region has its own set of mental ray renderer options. See Setting Render Region Options.
Some of the features controlled by the mental ray renderer are covered in this section (see "Topics"). Details about other, more complex mental ray features are described in their own sections throughout the documentation. For your convenience they are also listed below with references to where they are discussed (see "Related Topics"). You can always find descriptions for all of the mental ray renderer options in the mental ray Render Options Property Editor [Properties Reference].
