Alias Wavefront has surprised the industry again by giving away the Mental Ray for Maya plug-in for free, writes Barbara Marshall
Alias Wavefront has surprised the industry again by giving away the Mental Ray for Maya plug-in for free, writes Barbara Marshall.

Worth £3,350, the rendering software from Mental Images is now being offered to all Maya customers, beginning with Maya 4.5, as a public beta download.

Maya product manager Shai Hinitz said: 'It is the natural evolution of our products, combining the best with the best. Our customers have been asking us to merge Maya's intuitive workflow and productive feature-set with the power and programmability of Mental Images' renderer.'

However, managing director Mike Stojda from rival Softimage questioned how successful sales had been given that they were now giving the product away.

The move comes six months after Alias slashed the price of Maya by up to 73 per cent in a bid to broaden its appeal ( Broadcast, 4.4.02).

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