BACKSTORY A couple of months ago, I had to renew my license for Maya and had to face the disappointing realization that as a freelance Surfacing and Lighting artist, I'd have to fork over a whopping 185.00 a month simply so that I could render . As you could imagine, that didn't sit well with me and after re-evaluating my finances, I decided that I wasn't going to renew my maya license, until I was sure it was something that I absolutely needed, The following month, I tried out Maya LT , a cheaper , stripped down version of maya that cost a much more agreeable fee of 35.00 a month, but only 10 days in to using it, I realized that Maya LT was useless for my needs. I learned that I couldn't render ( there was no render buffer), I couldn't use plug ins or scripts or 3rd party plugins like v-ray to make up for the lack of a render view port . I had access to the hyper-shade, but without a renderer or the ability to plug in my own rendering engine, I realized I cou...