"Vray registered legal users list" AKA "Lets make life harder for warez monkeys"

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

Hi Chaos team and all the legal and devoted users of Vray,

I ve had a very in depth browse of the Evermotion site today and I ve been very surprised by the rise of quality of the eastern 3D guys (Vietnam, China, India etc.)
Not only they go below the standard working fees but they heavily use the illegal software and post on Evermotion with no shame whatsoever.

Would it be possible to have an updated customers list available for all the registered vray users so we can uncover who is cheating and whos not?

For example in this case (please note that i am not saying this guy is an illegal vray user)

http://www.evermotion.org/vbulletin/...ad.php?t=92116

inspired by Bertrand Benoit, this guys final work is very well carried out (with DOF).
He doesnt state hes done it in vray, but i have a great feeling it is.
I would like to know if he is legal vray user or not.
Why is he not on this forum posting when he can clearly speak english???
If he is legal owner of the soft, then i deeply apologize of course for taking him as an example!

I woudl also like to know why Evermotion is undirectly supporting piracy by publishing works done with pirated software.
I want to put those pirate guys to shame....publicly
I want to make their lives on those forums harder somehow.

Is there anyone willing to join me?
Come on guys those people are stealing our jobs!
Their quality has gone up by miles!

Best Regards and please forgive me if anyone gets insulted by reading this

[lukx]

I'm all with you on this one! Why those guys don't post here !? BECAUSE they don't have legal copies of vray that's why !
Evermotion is really staring to kill us all who worked our ass off for years to get somewhere and now guys just download tutorial, some sample scene and pop from nowhere one by one !

[plastic_]

Focus on your own work instead of trying to hunt down warez users. This is a battle you cannot win.

Even if you got a list of Vray customers (there's no way Chaos would give out confidential information like that), then what?

[tricky]

I don't think there is really much that can be done about warez. Even if new versions of vray came with some really hardcore anti-warez features, there are still all the older versions kicking around out there, and lets face it, even with a very old version of vray, you can produce pretty stunning renders.

I think you just need to make sure that you promte your professionality (is that a word???) in all your marketing and quotes that you prepare for clients or potential clients.

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

I kinda expected such replies ))

surely becoming better and improving your skill is important above all
BUT
in these days when client are pushing you almost to the costs level leaving you almost no margin on your works.... its hard NOT to get angry there is so many people outthere getting away with using pirated soft while publishing their stuff on such forums
Most of them are making pretty good money and still dont buy the soft!!

Thank god we made a good move from having our portfolio strictly archviz.

[glorybound]

Part of me thinks software developers support piracy, on some level, because it get's their software out there. Years ago, I started seeing some nice work on forums (Evermotion), found out that the software was V-Ray, and bought it. If these guys are learning it, to get their foot in the door, I understand. I don't condone it, but I understand it. Now, having said that, better artist have access to better tools. An example, although lame, is I see landscape trucks driving around all the time. I can cut grass, but I don't have the tools. You start by using your parents lawn mower, you eventually buy your own, and keep moving up. Some guys are steeling expensive equipment, that they didn't earn, to take work away from the ones that earned it. I know; I'm waffling!

[samuel_bubat]

I´d like to see softlocks like in Vray 1.09 coming back. "Yo dude.. my animations is flickering what am I doing wrong ?"

[plastic_]

I´d like to see softlocks like in Vray 1.09 coming back. "Yo dude.. my animations is flickering what am I doing wrong ?"

Problem is that the animation is also easily flickering with the legit verision

[glorybound]

I have seen threads where people post screen shots, of the V-Ray dialog, and it's obviously a cracked version. I wonder if software is like retail. The ones who pay, are paying for the ones who don't, too.

[tricky]

The Evermotion website is atrocious anyway.

[Morbid Angel]

without getting into politics, to me this does not look like vray. More like fry...

[MoonDoggie]

I appreciate the gusto Martin. I'm conflicted as I understand the comments regarding an un-winnable fight.

Let's think about one route where Chaos Group makes an list available on their site a list of registered users -Companies or persons. This would allow companies who want to hire a 3d artist to check the site for a legal user. The problem is, our clients don't care what software we use. I can tell them I use V-Ray but it doesn't matter to them, so why would they check? It sounds like it'd have to be industry-wide of all 3d software, adobe, and all renderers to make anyone care.

Now, the pro is you can spin this for your personal/company marketing. If Chaos Group published the list, we, in marketing ourselves, can point to the list and say "That's me, a fully legal user", and can say to our client that we're glad they care about software piracy and honest work, this works for them too.

I don't have any solutions just more questions.

[glorybound]

I still think software company's could prevent piracy, if they wanted to. Software piracy has been around as long as software, and I have never seen a real effort to stop it. I betcha, if you stopped piracy, sales of software would go down.

[MoonDoggie]

I disagree. Software companies cannot prevent piracy. They can make it difficult or use security by obfuscation to make life for disassemblers harder, but in the end. There's still a

asm:
call regScheme
cmp eax
jz 00401BE9

Somewhere in those op codes of the executable that can be changed to negate it. I really like what some game companies are doing to thwart piracy. They make the game randomly unplayable/buggy. This is bad publicity for them when people start complaining the game is buggy or screen turns black, but it's actually an anti-piracy built in.

Anti-piracy is not an option worth pursuing for me. Some meaningful measures should be taken of course by all software companies, but at the end of the day, I still think educating our clients about the problems we face trying to explain why someone somewhere else can charge 1/8th of what we're asking is more valuable. When you get someone else to care about an issue too, they will in turn educate others, which will further your cause.

[pailhead]

I´d like to see softlocks like in Vray 1.09 coming back. "Yo dude.. my animations is flickering what am I doing wrong ?"

You just run it through backburner and problem solved.... there is no way to protect anything. Sooner or later, all of us will be looking into a new career.