Company Will Continue to Develop OptiX, Iray and the MDL
Nvidia last week discontinued sales of Mental Ray subscriptions, including plug-ins for Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max. The company said it will continue to support the software “for the foreseeable future.”
Existing users of Mental Ray with a valid subscription will be able to request a license extension to cover ongoing and upcoming projects, and existing licenses can still be managed through Nvidia’s licensing portal. Plug-in customers will get maintenance releases with bug fixes throughout 2018, the company said, while also promising that its obligations to software vendors including MatiCAD and ViSoft, which extend as far into the future as 2020, will be honored.
In an FAQ [PDF] posted to its website, Nvidia reiterated its focus on “GPU accelerated ray tracing technology,” including Nvidia’s OptiX real-time ray-tracer, the open Material Definition Language (MDL), Nvidia’s IndeX platform, and Nvidia’s Iray physically based renderer.
The writing had been on the wall for Mental Ray since Autodesk acquired Solid Angle and its Arnold rendering system in 2016, a move that, to some degree, sidelined Mental Ray from its software.
Regret your recent Mental Ray purchase? Check your receipt — the company said it will offer a refund only for licenses purchased within the last 30 days.
Nvidia Mental Ray: www.nvidia.com
