Good news if you are an educational institution or attending one. Redshift announced that they will be providing free educational cloud-based licenses for full-time universities and colleges.
This will certainly make Redshift more accessible for 3D courses around the world. There is no mention of student availability or student driven pricing for the GPU renderer.
The free educational institutional licenses are cloud licenses that will end up being served from a number of servers around the world — so cloud licenses will require a reliable internet connection. There are plans for a paid option for institutions without a reliable internet connection or for ones who simply prefer to manage the licenses in-house. The paid option will cost $120 per computer per year, with a 10-license minimum purchase requirement.
One thing to note is that the Redshift educational licenses are provided “as-is” and without support.
The Redshift team is planning to start deployment of cloud licenses around July 2017. If your institution is interested in acquiring free educational licenses for the next academic year, please send us an email to info@redshift3d.com with the subject line “Free educational licenses”.