However, users will only get viewport rendering and final-frame rendering of still images for free. Other features singled out by Nvidia include “final-frame rendering in the interactive Maya viewport”, progressive rendering, MDL material support and GI-next, its GPU-accelerated global illumination system.Īnd, of course, the blog post emphasises that the new plugin won’t cost anything. Nvidia’s blog post announcing the release date for the new plugin looks to have been written with those users in mind, emphasising that it will be backwards-compatible with scenes from previous versions of Maya.

Instead, Autodesk advised Mental Ray users that they would require Nvidia’s new plugin version of the renderer – which, at the time of Maya’s 2017 release in August, was still in beta. 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.

An image rendered in Mental Ray by Amaru Zeas.

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