In addition to selling mental ray 3.2 integrated in 3ds max 6, Discreet will now offer a standalone version of the high-quality rendering solution. mental ray 3.2 can be deployed in multi-workstation and render farm configurations enabling greater return-on-investment and productivity gains for the world's largest community of 3D animators in film, games and design visualization.
The current 3ds max 6 software release, shipping since October 2003, includes an integrated license of mental ray-enabling artists to render on a two processor workstation. Today's announcement offers design and animation studios additional mental ray rendering licenses for 3ds max for use in render farm configurations with pricing of up to 25% less than comparable 3D software solutions that offer the mental ray option.
"By offering mental ray as a standalone product in addition to the integrated version in 3ds max 6, customers can significantly reduce the time required to render scenes for interactive tuning as well as set up very high throughput small or large scale render farms," said Rolf Herken, president and director of R&D for mental images. "We already know of 3ds max users who want to buy hundreds of licenses for mental ray 3.2 directly from Discreet."
Available through the Discreet Sales and Reseller channel, the new mental ray pricing is $1,500 (single license); $10,000 (10-license pack); and $1,000 for each license above the mental ray 10-license pack. All licenses are available in floating license configurations. For complete pricing and upgrade information, contact a Discreet Sales representative at 1-800-869-3504.
Discreet's (www.discreet.com) award-winning solutions are designed for digital media creation, management and delivery-across all disciplines from film and television visual effects, color grading and editing to animation, game development and design visualization. Discreet is based in Montreal, Quebec and is a division of Autodesk Inc, a leading design and digital media creation, management and distribution company.
mental images (www.mentalimages.com), founded in 1986, is the recognized international leader in providing rendering software to the entertainment, computer-aided design, scientific visualization, architecture, and other industries that require sophisticated images. The main product of the company is the high performance, photorealistic rendering software mental ray, which is capable of running on a wide variety of platforms ranging from networks of workstations to parallel supercomputers, producing images of unsurpassed realism. Leading cinematographers use mental ray to generate images of unsurpassed realism in visual effects and with films that are produced entirely using digital techniques. mental ray was initially released in 1989 and has been used in the production of more than 130 major motion pictures. mental images GmbH is a privately held company based in Berlin, Germany, with a subsidiary in San Francisco, California.
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Animation World Network
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