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

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Heya

well my 5 cents on subject.(my opinion only)

80%+ Companies use legit software, no1 can afford pirate software because when you on the level u find issues, u have issues u need help from developers - u get it mostly and only with legit software.
99% companies dont care if u learn on legal/pirate software - they need skilled worker not a student
No one really cares about nice images that pirates produce, they cant be reliable and are done mostly for hobby, if it so happens that some one is climbing up the leader and getting more jobs he will buy legit software because pirate industry cant support the need.

I dont think that software companies should focus too much on security, do it within reason and margin that they doing it just don’t go crazy, it will be cracked - eventually it will be stolen it will be on black market. Look at Nuclear bombs, they on black market even tho people say they never would be. Everything has a price and can be accessed via back gate.

Pirate software is not just bad, it helps it's free marketing(ask urself how many times u look for some kind of program /script and u find that 1st result is pirate software u never hear from - its free marketing), it's accelerating companies that sells it too. Many start up plugins and software would not expand as quick as they did if they did not flood the internet with illegal copies and one or other moment.

I don’t really have personal opinion on the subject. I guess its because I come from different era, I started max when I was 14 and hey - back then there was no student edition, and being poor I could not afford that expensive software not to mention windows. Now I have 100% of my software legit and let me tell u that if I didn’t start from piracy I would never buy the box at the end. Maybe today is different, schools can offer software and help so most student should be able to just buy and learn. Then again - this sort of education is not available everywhere. Not every 25+30+ year old can afford expensive software too, if you on 1000£ salary, you spend 90% of that on food and house. U have maybe 100£ left on some pleasure and that will be gone within moments. Its thanks to pirate software those people have chance in today’s economy to make an extra penny and get out of the hole – which eventually would lead to them buying software (probably after 3-5 years or so).

I'd say to software companies do what you do and enjoy sun.

I'm not saying piracy is good but I'm not saying piracy is bad either – its grey area.

[stevesideas]

Steve oh you would be surprised what service some of those guys provide. The guy from China, Martin mentioned is doing big scale archvis for 500$ in 5 days and it's on very very very high level ! Believe me!

We don't know what type of software this guy is using though. He may be perfectly legit.

[pailhead]

Maybe this guy is a legit vray user but he thinks that we're all pomptious asses here on chaos group forums so he doesnt post

[instinct]

Price comparisons are always tough too. If you are comparing with china, the bigger difference is prolly that workforce is a lot cheaper, rather than buying VRay or not. esp. with VRay beeing on the cheap side of software tools! Sometimes other people are cheaper because they simply have a better toolset. With inhouse scripts, a dedicated well thought out pipeline etc. He might also go the "off cheap to get the foot into the door" route (which never works, but everyone does once or twice i guess heh).

I'm not saying all these people are legit, but you shouldn't put them into the warez drawer just because they are from china and offer cheaper prices.

Regards,
Thorsten

[plastic_]

I see a quite easy solution to avoid piracy, that's the cloud.
But there must be a definite advantage for the cloud to convert users. That would be, for example, crazy render power.
Right now I have a small farm with a bunch of computers. When I'm rendering a still, without optimizing it can quickly go up to hours for a single frame, when I'm using fun stuff, like Forest Pro grass, foliage.
Now if I would be able to dump my render farm for the cloud, and render the same thing in a few minutes, that would be really cool.
What would happen is that I'd go mad with the insane stuff, like using brute force unbiased rendering, proxies, displacement all over the place, that would lead to very high quality images which would be impossible to render locally, because it would take weeks for a single frame.
If there's potential to render super high quality images in the cloud then the expectations of clients would shift towards that level of quality and it would make everyone dependent to the cloud to stay competitive.
I believe cloud services are warez-proof, because it requires constant user authentication.
There is the issue of reliability (see Diablo III) but this should get better in the future.

[instinct]

I hate the cloud to put it simple. Just a few issues of the "public cloud" (SaaS) which is obviously what you are aiming at:

- Security (For us, this is a major issue. And this will stay that way)
- Reliability (We have enough issues with local networks. Long distance public networks will never be as fast or reliable or develop as fast. In addition this is another security risk due to involving another 3rd party (or multiple with unknown parties probably)
- Speed (If you go nuts with detail, sizes will explode...our scenes are to big to be even remotely feasible over 100mbit anyways, plus getting results back is as bad)
- Price. While a shared infrastructure is a lot more effecient and hence more cost effective i wonder if suppliers will forward that saving your way.

There's a lot more..just some rather common ones...and if we're talking the private cloud...can we take a step back, call it mainframe and thinkclients like we used to, and remember why we abandoned them?

While the mysterious cloud has its uses in many areas, but i don't see DCC on the level of Max or Maya as one of them.

Regards,
Thorsten

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Icant image transvering 5gb scene to cloud and trusting 3rd party CPU provider with NDA work.

[vlado]

Regarding the problem of transferring stuff to the cloud; one obvious method to solve it is to move *all* content creation to the cloud. So you won't have to transfer anything, as it will already be there. You won't really be modeling, texturing and so on on your local machine - you'll just be logging to a virtual desktop that actually runs on the cloud. (That's what the whole GPU virtualization thing is all about.)

Of course, I can see a whole lot of other problems with that approach

Additionally, data on the cloud is stored in a distributed manner - even if someone stole a few hard drives from the cloud storage, all they would see is bits and pieces of files. But then again, maybe someone working at Amazon could see everything...

Best regards,
Vlado

[prateekvishwa]

I am from India.. I dont know about other countries but in India-

- Not necessary all companies here are using pirated software, they may not be using 100% legitimate software but atleast some of them are legal i.e in a company from 10, 6 legal vray license 4 student lic.. etc

- I think it is freelancers who are using more pirated stuff than companies & they working for too less price. I had recently worked for a local project here in Mumbai where my billing to the client was of $30k when i discussed this with one of 3d guy in US he was not ready to believe that in India clients can pay this much. He said inspite being in US, he has not worked on any such prj since long. I personally feel local clients can pay me much more than outsourcing because all clients overseas expecting to get their work done in peanuts

- I personally feel even software companies support piracy.. pirates doing free marketing. Suppose V-ray pirated copy in not available pirates will look for alternatives say they found some W-ray on warez and they will start exploring and who know W-ray will start giving similar or even better result than Vray.. who will be in loss? ( PLEASE NOTE I AM NOT SAYING CHAOS GROUP DO THIS.. it is just an example)

- As a solution.. i dont think doing anything in codes can stop piracy.. it is software companies with help of local government can curb down this problem. Like recovery agents why cant some local agencies be hired to crackdown piracy?? i know it is not easy, for costing part i dont mind paying little extra for the software but with the condition that this software in not available on any of those warez sites... One more thing in this regards- It is not only India or any other eastern country.. piracy is in every part of world. As an example, i did a small product viz for a client from NY, after working with him he became friendly and while discussing stress and workload in our individual field he gave me a link to download pirated copy of "TTC-Stress and Your Body" series.. if pirated copy of such videos are used it is hard for me to believe companies in western countries are 100% legitimate in viz industry

- For Evermotion, I hardly see any visualization these days where their models are not used. Specially for interiors& foliage.. but for most of the work in different forums, i have noticed.. render minus evermotion = shitty work. somehow i feel a real artist with good skills can outdo all such warez users.. I consider artist like Bertrand my ideal..his image speaks a lot about his skills & i hardly see him using any of such libraries.. IMO, improving your skills to that level & market your self is the solution to get more work. But i agree if these guys can control their product piracy & restrict their forum like chaos will definitely help this industry coming up again.

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

As Lukx said, i ve received an offer some time ago from a guy from Hong Kong

i am really tempted to show you all what i ve received....but in case this guys company is completely legit ....IT SEEMS IT IS..... i would be breaking the laws and i dont want to do this.

I cant imagine a company doing projects in such scales for those types of budgets while being so quick....how do they pull it off?
I think they re using vray and its a BIG shame this guy is not posting here because i would like to know how hes doing this. Does he have 8 hands nad 4 heads? Or does he live in a shifted reality where day has 72 hours? Or perhaps he has a lot of workers who are willing to work for 1 dollar per hour....who knows...big mystery to me ))

Anyway, without making any allegations....from what i ve seen, hes doing pretty amazing work and seems to provide excelent service. His site is:

http://www.muzermedia.com/

I am really tempted to give him a project...actually i would have quite a few for him (within his price range) if i was 100% sure hes got legit SW and that hes not exploiting his workers...

[lukx]

haha Martin dropped the bomb now let's see what will happen

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

i wish i could post the pricing also ))

[instinct]

So what do you expect from posting that? Basically you're saying the folks there use pirated software without any hint whatsoever, besides they are seemingly cheaper than you are. Now what should the readers of this post do? I for one know nothing about costs in Hong Kong. Neither cost of living, salaries, software and hardware prices or anything. So even IF you posted the pricing i still would not be able to tell anything from it.

One thing to keep in mind with software is that costs are going down if you are not upgrading every year. With VRay (which is cheap to start with) you could literally use it for YEARS without ever paying a cent and still be up to date. For max, you could easily stay on 2008 and and save a lot of money for upgrades etc.

Regards,
Thorsten

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

Come on Thorsten.... Where in my previous post do you read i accused the guy from using pirated software. I DID NOT!!!
I only expressed that it surprises me that it is possible to have such prices and delivery times. May of those things you can see on his website the guys delivers for prices between 200 -500 bucks. Thats amazing pricing when you consider the complexity if the works.

I have no idea about your portfolio structure Thorsten, but there are loads of people outthere who had to give up their jobs because of things described in this thread. It just not fair and it has nothing to do with competition. Gladly we moved our portfolio so we mostly do 90% of the stuff other than archviz. However i wish we did 90% of archviz because its my favourite field of CG and i would like to improve a lot more. BUT i dont have time for it beacause i have to do things that feed the company. We are fine and working away, have loads of work, provide very good service........i sometimes wish just wish the structure of works was better.

I will really think twice next time i start or join similar thread.

Appologies for this one.

Best Regards

[Neilg]

Come on Thorsten.... Where in my previous post do you read i accused the guy from using pirated software. I DID NOT!!!

It's quite heavily implied.

I am really tempted to give him a project...actually i would ..... if i was 100% sure hes got legit SW...

I reckon with hugely out of date software, good libraries, no amendments and quick photoshop thats possible. His images arent that good, so if everything from the lighting to materials was re-used between jobs you could cut your working time right down. It'd be an absolute sweatshop of a working environment though, with no creativity whatsoever. Maybe that's the only way these guys can compete with service and get a solid foothold in the industry, and they're just doing whatever they can.

If you're threatened by that kind of work you need to change the way you work, they shouldn't be getting anywhere near stepping on your toes. The cg industry moves quickly and always has done.