The plugin has now reached 1.0 status – previously, it was available, but feature-incomplete – and has now been included with the 3ds Max install for the first time. However, one change that wasn’t announced at the time is the update to MAXtoA, the 3ds Max integration plugin for Arnold. MAXtoA integration plugin now includes Arnold 5 At the time, users welcomed Arnold’s feature set, but criticised the loss of unlimited network rendering. You can read more about Autodesk’s switch from mental ray to Arnold in our original story.

Nvidia will continue to provide mental ray for 3ds Max as a third-party plugin, including a free licence with similar restrictions to the free version of Arnold bundled with 3ds Max. The bundled version can be used to render from a single machine via the viewport, but output generated in other ways is watermarked, so for command-line or network rendering, you need extra commercial licences. The biggest change in 3ds Max 2018 is the one we knew about in advance: that Autodesk has switched from bundling Nvidia’s mental ray renderer with the software to Solid Angle’s Arnold, which it acquired in 2016. The update replaces mental ray with Arnold 5 as 3ds Max’s de facto third-party render engine, introduces new options for editing motion paths, and overhauls the user interface and Max Creation Graph. Contact Escape Technology to find out more or to get your licenses.Autodesk has released 3ds Max 2018, the latest update to its 3D modelling and animation software. Local licenses of Mental Ray for 3ds Max 2018 are £235/year or £800 for a pack of five licenses. Enabling full GPU rendering has unleashed a more powerful tool into the hands of creatives and includes full support of Mental Ray shaders, motion blur, depth of field, and particles. The release adds new features from Mental Ray 3.14 standalone edition, including GI Next - NVIDIA’s GPU-enabled global illumination system. NVIDIA’s move allows some peace of mind for long term Max / Mental Ray artists.”

“Sometimes the desire isn’t there because people are passionate about products they have used for so long. “It's always difficult moving to new workflows and new software,” comments Mark Cass, managing director of Escape Technology. Purchasing a license of Mental Ray will also unlock the Iray mode, giving both plugins in one single product. The new release delivers this functionality back into the hands of users. However, while the standalone version is free to download users will need to purchase commercial licenses in order to render out sequences on single or networked machines.įollowing Autodesk’s decision to replace Mental Ray with Arnold as its bundled renderer legacy scenes were no longer compatible with out of the box 3ds Max. Promising full backwards compatibility the plugin restores users’ ability to work with legacy scenes and render across networked farms.

Mental ray 3ds max 2018