Otoy makes OctaneRender 1.2 free to students
Otoy has made OctaneRender, its unbiased GPU-based rendering software, available to students for free. The deal also includes the 3ds Max and Blender plugins, with the Maya plugin coming “shortly”.
In practice, the deal also extends to teachers, or indeed anyone else who works at a school or college, since all you need to do to download the software is to register an account with a suitable email address.
We can’t vouch for the rest of the world, but both .edu and .ac.uk addresses work fine.
The only limitation is that you’re restricted to OctaneRender 1.2 – but since it was released under a year ago, you won’t be too far out of date.