mental ray for Maya textures

Map a texture to your object to determine the appearance of its surface, or use a texture as a background or reflection map. You can choose between a procedural texture or a file texture.

File textures

File textures are bitmaps scanned from photographs, taken with a digital camera, or painted in a 2D or 3D paint package that you bring into Maya to use as a bitmap. File textures filter better than most procedural textures and can result in better image quality.

NoteYou can render an entire branch of a shading network to use the illumination, shadow, shading, and textures as a file texture (texture map) for the following reasons:

To reduce rendering time of particularly complex networks or if mental ray's high-profile global illumination features are involved.
To obtain lighting effects that would be difficult to achieve in other ways.

For more information see Baking illumination and color.

HDR images as file textures (mental ray for Maya)

mental ray for Maya supports High-Dynamic Range (HDR) images as file textures.

For more information about HDR images, see High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI).