Archive notice: This article was originally published on November 18, 2016. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
There is no resolution limit, and the Mental Ray plug-in is also backwards-compatible with older Maya versions. It is also possible to export .mi files that can be fed into the production pipeline.
A Mental Ray licence is then only required for the actual production; a licence costs 295 US dollars per year, while anyone using a system with an Nvidia Professional GPU receives the licence for 95 US dollars per year.
Since February, Nvidia has continued to improve Mental Ray; additions include final-frame rendering in the interactive Maya viewport, progressive rendering, MDL material support, and a new global illumination function (GI-Next). Nvidia will also include the new features in Maya 2016 and 2017 as well as in 3ds Max 2017.
Anyone who would like a free Mental Ray plug-in for Maya can register with Nvidia here.
