Are you lost when it comes to figuring out how to use mental ray® materials?
Here are a few tips to help get you started.

Download this Autodesk® 3ds Max® 8 starter file here. In order to use mental ray materials you must have changed your render engine to mental ray in the render pulldown. Otherwise the necessary shaders will not appear in your material editor. I've also included some extra mental ray shaders. Download them here. Place the .mi files in the mental ray autoload include folder (C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3dsMax8\mentalray\shaders_autoload\include) and the .dll file in the shaders folder (C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3dsMax8\mentalray\shaders_autoload).

In an empty slot in the material editor, click on the standard button and select mental ray as the type of material. Select the empty slot next to surface in the material shaders roll-down. For this example, we’ll select ward shader. In the parameters for this shader, select the diffuse slot and in the color selector give it a blue color. In the glossy slot, select the color selector and drop down the value to .2. You’ll notice the material now has a glossy specularity. Apply this material to the cylinder. You’ll notice the object color turns to gray in the viewport. This is normal behavior when using mental ray materials.

In an empty sample material slot in the material editor, create a new mental ray material. In the material shader slot, select lambert. Select the diffuse slot and assign a color in the color selector. Assign this material to the walls.

Create another new mental ray material in an empty slot. This time assign a glossy_reflection shader to the material slot. Keep the default parameters and assign this material to the floor.

Create a new mental ray material in an empty slot and assign the texture_uv shader to the material shader slot. In the parameters for the shader, click on the texture slot and browse for a texture in your map library. I applied a brick texture. Apply this to the box. Make sure you place a uvw modifier on your box to map the texture correctly. In the bump shader slot, select a bump_basis_texture shader and apply the same brick map. Apply this material to the box.

Create a new mental ray material in an empty slot and assign the depth_fade_tint shader. This shader applies color based on parameters of distance along the z-axis. In the near slot apply the summed_noise_color shader. Use the following parameters to get the results shown: -.04, .41, .46, 3, .5, 1.6, 2. You should experiment with the settings on this. You can achieve some pretty cool results. Assign this material to the sphere.

Create a new mental ray material in an empty slot and assign the glass (lume) shader to the material shader. Keep the default parameters and assign this material to the glass cylinder. Right-click on the cylinder object and select properties. In the mental ray tab, select generate caustics. Then back in the material editor, select the photon slot and apply the photon basic (base) shader. If you leave this step out, you’ll receive an error when rendering regarding photons.

Create a new mental ray material in an empty slot and assign the glass (lume) shader to the material shader. In the volume slot, apply a submerge (lume) shader. Select the photon slot and apply the photon basic (base) shader. We’ll apply this to the cylinder object inside the glass to represent water. Right-click on the water object and click on properties. In the mental ray tab, select generate caustics.

You can play with the different parameters in each of the materials to see the different results each will create. As in using regular 3dsmax materials, this is just the tip of the iceberg in creating mental ray materials. See if you can find all of the other places besides the material editor in 3ds Max where you can apply mental ray shaders.