Today we are happy to announce that our NVIDIA mental ray® Standalone software is now directly available from us at NVIDIA. mental ray Standalone is a command line software necessary for large distributed rendering processes typically on render farms. With a purchase from NVIDIA you receive the current and previous versions of mental ray. This includes immediate access to a private forum with direct support from our development teams. Upgrades of the initial license purchase includes one year of maintenance as well.
Prices start at $695 per license and discounts for large quantities are given. For full details of the pricing and product information visit mental ray Standalone webpage
Inside mental ray 
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Indeed, a good move to free mr from autodesk midlle man, but selling one license at 695 when we used to get 5 for about the same price is not a smart move if you want to increase or at least keep market share.
We do offer discounts for larger quantities. The minimum purchase is 10 licenses, btw, at a price that should be attractive also to those who used to purchase mental ray Standalone from Autodesk. Our offering is primarily targeted at render farm users. If you are working in a small shop then Maya’s built-in batch rendering using embedded mental ray might be sufficient.