To make a scene render faster, do any of the following:
Use average BSP (mental ray for Maya) settings
When mental ray for Maya raytraces, it calculates the effects using an average of the depth and the average of the leaf size settings of the BSP.
To speed up subsequent renderings, you can render instead with the average settings (instead of your initial settings).
Find the averages in
Maya's Output Window after you render
the scene the first time (with Verbosity Level set
to Progress Messages or above
in
Render > Render Current Frame > and
Render > Batch Render >
), then
change the settings in the Memory and Performance section.