Apply the material to all the objects in the scene.  This shouldn't be too tough; just hit Ctrl + A and then apply the material by clicking the "apply material to selection” button in the editor.

Add a skylight via the lights menu.  Default values are fine here.


Hit F10 and go to the "indirect Illumination” tab.  In order to use the skylight with mental ray you have to enable "final gather”.  Do this, and for test renders also check the "preview” box.  This will take much faster samples but you'll notice lower quality. 

Disable the preview for a final render.




And go ahead and render your toaster.  Here's mine!

For further modeling after you've gotten this far, add some other modifier like Bend, Twist, Stretch, Melt, or whatever after your Turbo-Smooth modifier!  Have fun with it!!


And there you have it.  We've modeled a toaster using many of the techniques available to us for inorganic modeling in 3dsMax.  We used a lot of connecting and chamfering, plus cutting, planar modeling, and even mental ray rendering options.

Thanks for reading, and happy modeling!

Your friend,

--Guy BlueSummers