That created a real problem for Mental Ray users, since the Maya 2017 update also broke compatibility with previous versions of the renderer.

Previously installed free with Maya, it was made an optional installation in Maya 2016, and dropped entirely in favour of Arnold in Maya 2017, following Autodesk’s purchase of Solid Angle. Once many Maya users’ de facto renderer, Mental Ray has faced increasing competition in recent years. The news was announced at Autodesk University 2016. To render animations, or render over a network, users will need commercial licences of the software, for which Nvidia has an interesting pricing scheme that favours users of its professional GPUs. Nvidia is to make Mental Ray for Maya, the new plugin version of its production renderer, available for free on its release on 30 November – at least for viewport and single-frame rendering. Nvidia has just announced that the upcoming plugin version of Mental Ray for Maya will be free for viewport and single-frame rendering. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.An image rendered in Mental Ray by Amaru Zeas. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

Install arnold for maya 2016