Render Tools is a freeware script for Maya aimed at simplifying and speeding up the Mental Ray rendering workflow from its creator Mariano Antico. Render Tools for Maya will allow you to create, manage and edit render layers easily as well as turn on and off render stats conveniently. Check out the info for Render Tools for Maya here, and download here.

Render Tools tutorial 1 – create render layers from Mariano Antico on Vimeo.

Render Tools tutorial 2 – render layer manager from Mariano Antico on Vimeo.

This script was designed to simplify the making and manipulation of the renders layers, it only works with Mental ray as render engine. For this reason, as soon as this script is loaded, it automatically verifies if mental ray is loaded and assigns it as renderer.
I created it to work faster, after dealing with a lot of people who can´t follow a workflow. It also has some other tools that are useful in every day work as a generalist. It´s currently on trial period , and it is the first script I developed, so it may need some modifications.