Ok so don't get too excited just yet.. Mental Ray will be free for single, in Maya rendering, similar to Arnold, but you will have to still pay for a "production render license" to batch. However,, that license cost $65/machine/year. So not too shabby.
Floating licenses are $295 or $995 for a 5-pack, while systems containing a professional NVIDIA GPU qualify for special pricing of $95 or $325 for a 5-pack. Customers who purchased mental ray standalone from Autodesk will have their subscriptions matched with NVIDIA licenses at no cost.
Also, the mental ray production render will be free for colleges and universities.
According to the blog, this will all go into affect November 30th
MRBLOG about Free MR
Nvidia Mental ray
