NVIDIA has released mental ray for Maya for the first time as their own plug-in.

You can find out more about it here.

The plug-in is free to use for non-commercial or commercial work with batch render licenses for $295 a year subscription. The subscription works well for users wanting consistent updates with new features and fixes, even upgrades to new releases within the same subscription year!

Before users of mental ray in Maya had to wait for Maya service packs for fixes and entirely new versions of Maya for new features but with the subscription model, users can get continuous updates and fixes.

Read all about this arrangement on the official NVIDIA ARC forum.

Bug reports, feature suggestions, and more can be made directly to NVIDIA’s forum.

And since we no longer have to wait a year at a time for new features, there’s much more to do on Elemental Ray!

-Paul