mental ray! has been used for years by high-end production software for the game and motion picture industry. For years it has been the default render engine for Softimage XSI and in relatively recent years an integrated option in Autodesk products 3DS Max/Viz and Maya. With the aid of the CG community it is hoped that a large repository of Mental Ray materials and shaders will be accumulated.

The site was started for the sole purpose of creating a material/shader repository to support users of mental ray by Russell Thomas CEO of 3DAllusions LLC with the help of Jeff Patton of JeffPatton.net. Based on the open source GNU/GPL License content management system (CMS) Joomla's brand new next generation system, and integrated with a modified repository component by Black Sheep Research. The creators saw the great value that similar sites for alternate render engines provided and wanted to support their render engine of choice by creating a similar resource and supporting the community.

Thinking of Sharing your mental ray materials? Think Mr Materials!