Vantage .......So how much is it going to be?

[glorybound]

Okay, please explain. I had V-Ray perpetual, was using Vantage for the first year free. When that free expired I was told that I had to go with a premium subscription to keep it, which I did. Are you telling me now that it has changed? This all happened literally a couple of months ago.

[philip kelly]

I have to agree.
I used Vray years ago, for about 6 years, then Corona and when Vantage started making strides I bought a licence for Vray again only to take advantage of the animation in Vantage, as it was so quick.
Then Vray pricing nearly doubled, and now I will have to pay extra for Vantage.

I could just buy Convertor Pro, use my Corona Licence and use the standalone Vantage?

Cut out Vray altogether......
I know Chaos have a 10 year plan, and have probably thought of this and the percentage of drop offs there will be, but I for one would love see the overall picture.

I get the feeling there is an even bigger shafting coming in the future............

Phil

[jshulters]

Well, I'm glad there is at least a spot here for us users to express our reactions to this move pulling Vantage from premium subscription. I'm glad others are sharing their stories, similar to mine. Here I was actually anticipating that Corona would get ADDED to the premium bundle after the acquisition, but I'm confident that won't happen at this point. Over the last year I've worked to switch my entire freelance workflow from standard vray to using Vantage for animation rendering...despite all the limitations and quirks, it's just so much faster for me to be able to deliver projects to my clients, with only a single workstation. I switched to subscription for the savings, as the only things I use are vray for max and vantage. I suppose I'll patiently await the pricing announcement for those 2 items, but I'm guessing that I'll finally stop procrastination and switch to using Unreal 5 for production...the writing's on the wall that everything's going that way anyway. I saw the moderator's comment that they have users bringing OBJs into Vantage and need a standalone purchase option...I can't believe that's more than a percent of a percent of their current Vantage users, plus it's no reason to not leave it included in premium. I've loved the whole Chaos team and their tools for so long now, it's a shame to see this bizarre move happen. Vray and Vantage are peanut butter and jelly (or chocolate, if you prefer), and it makes no sense to separate them, when something like Phoenix is way more of an "optional add-on" type software, yet still bundled (for now...I'm sure EmberGen is scaring them). Hopefully other users will continue to express their concerns here and that Chaos will continue to monitor and respond in these forums to keep their customers happy.

[bos]

"The monthly cost of an annual Chaos Vantage license will be $54.90 ($659/yr), €49.90, or £43.40. Pricing of V-Ray Premium and Enterprise will remain unchanged."

$659/yr for Vantage... are you serious??? Was not expecting this from Chaos. To use Vray + Vantage I will have to pay $1300/yr?!?! What a joke Chaos. This is completely taking advantage of your loyal clients that have supported the development of your product through subscriptions. Chaos just seeing $$$ and not remembering where they started. Very disappointing and I know I can't be the only one up in arms about this. The cost for Premium is not even changing with the removal of Vantage, I would love to see how many people adopt into this absurdity.

Half my team is using Blender and Cycles, I have defended using Max + Vray for the last two years, but the advances in Cycles speed and capabilities have been amazing. Vray can't even come close to the speed of Cycles in scene for scene rendering. It's a shame this is the direction Chaos is taking things, I have to seriously consider what my options are over the next year. Right now it looks like I will renew Vray cheapest option possible when my sub is up in July so I can close out my vray projects for the rest of the season and then begin to retool for Blender / Cycles over the winter or learn Unreal.

With the hoops I have to jump through to even get decent results from Vantage 1.8 VS Vray CPU BF+LC rendering I will not be jumping on the Vantage 2.0 train. Insanity.

[urbanite]

...and all because some users of Vantage that use OBJ or FBOX imports from applications where V-Ray isn't present... Bold move when it comes to price if this is true, but there is nothing anybody can do, forum is only to vent. They have all the numbers to support this decision, but I am curious of market reaction. Unreal will not be free forever too for that matter.

[russ_chadwick]

So for me, as a UK based SketchUp user it looks like it will be £520.80 + VAT for Vantage AS WELL AS £538.80 + VAT to be able to use it. Is that correct?

[philip kelly]

Way more than I expected.
Are you sure you have not been taken over by Autodesk....Thats the type of Shithousery they get up too.

[russ_chadwick]

just cancelled my auto-renew

[mindventures]

I must say it's actually the second time I'm very disappointed about changes in the pricing structure of Chaos products. First time was when the price of render nodes exploded. That kept me from upgrading from my perpertual vray 3 license for years. About 1 month ago I finally upgraded to vray 6 premium subscription with 10 render nodes package. I still think the price of the workstation license is not cheap, but I also think vray is a very good renderer and when I compare vray 3 to vray 6, it has gotten a lot faster and especially this I like very much, because I mainly do animation. Though I still think that the pricing for render nodes is way too high.
And soon they take Vantage away from the vtay premium subscription which is very very bad move. At the very least, the price for the Premium subscription should also be lowered. Why should I continue to pay the same price and get less for the same money? This is not logical at all!
Who guarantees me that I won't have to pay extra for Phoenixfd next year as well...? This all gives me a really bad feeling and I am starting to lose my trust in Chaos. I used to find this company very sympathetic and friendly, but now I have more angry feelings than positive ones.
I'm very disappointed about this announcement!

[ryan_kennedy]

Right, so let me get this straight. Vantage, a software that has been included in the subscription for Vray up until this point, is now being split off into its own entity. This is allegedly being done to allow people to essentially pick and choose what they want, instead of having to invest in the full suite. Generally, sounds good. So then, one would expect pricing to reflect that right? Now were hearing that the price of the Vray subscription is staying the same, and the price of Vantage itself is going to now be nearly as much as the package it spun off of? That doesn't add up.

I would honestly have more respect for the move if the justifications Chaos gave weren't an outright and blindingly obvious lie. Just own it man. Just say "hey we are doing this because we want more money". Don't try to wrap this in an excuse of giving users freedom, because this is exactly the opposite. This is a blatant cash grab, so just admit it.

And to think I was actually excited about what Vantage could do. Now its a worse version of Unreal Engine with a insatiable hunger for Vram with some slight workflow improvements for an exorbitantly higher price. Nice job Chaos. Do better.

[inkettle]

Why not allow users to purchase Vantage as a standalone version but at the same time keep it as a part of Premium Package?
Or even better, allow to customise what does your premium package consist of?
Personally I would love to swap Phoenix License for Vantage in my Corona Premium.

The resoning behnind this indeed does not add up. Also... Vantage is going to be the most expensive soft in its range (among Unreal, Twinmotion, D5 and Enscape).

[glorybound]

It is called flip flopping and is dirty politics, or an even better analogy, bait and switch. I left my perpetual license because I lost the use of the free Vantage. I was told to pay more for the Premium membership, by Chaos sales, and get Vantage included, which I did. Now I am paying more for V-Ray and losing the reason I upgraded. How does this make any sense? I am not sure what is going on there at Chaos, but you had a cult following, which I am afraid is being tarnished. I imagine you are relying on losing many followers, but compensating for it by making a profit from the remaining ones. You calculated this well, starting from the purchase of Corona, I also imagine.

[alen_agic]

Sorry, but I can't see how they can justify this pricing I mean 50eur per month? THAT IS CRAZY! Double price of Corona render, 30% expensive then Corona Premium package, and almost on par with Vray. Whoever put these prices down, deserves a reward!
Too many issues, missing a lot of important features, and very slow development. Sorry again but I can't call this piece of software production-ready rendering option for people that doing high-end projects. This is INSANE! Honestly best what I would give per month for this would be max. 20eur/month.
I don't know what the 2.0 version update will give, but it's better to be a hell of an update for users that will still use it so they can feel less bad.

[bos]

Phillip Miller We would like to hear the explanation for the pricing. Is Vantage 2.0 suppose to bring over Enscape people because it cheaper than Enscape? Is winning over Enscape users at the cost of losing Vray users worth the justification? Why else would they price it like they have? Or have you not been made aware of this either? $30M+ yearly revenue not enough?

Even Autodesk created a indy license because they were aware of how many freelancers they would lose to blender if they kept a $3000/yr sub. With Max + Vray + all the other subs for plugins to do Archvis your looking at $5000/yr min sub costs. Small studios with 3-5 members are looking at probably $30K+/yr in sub costs. After buying CG Architect from Jeff you got the community all on board that you were here to support artists... It hard enough struggle as it is to just make a living being an artist. At the end of the day we just want to make amazing images, but there are so many other options to do that without cutting into our livelihood.

[alen_agic]

Phillip Miller We would like to hear the explanation for the pricing. Is Vantage 2.0 suppose to bring over Enscape people because it cheaper than Enscape? Is winning over Enscape users at the cost of losing Vray users worth the justification? Why else would they price it like they have? Or have you not been made aware of this either? $30M+ yearly revenue not enough?

Even Autodesk created an indy license because they were aware of how many freelancers they would lose to blender if they kept a $3000/yr sub. With Max + Vray + all the other subs for plugins to do Archvis your looking at $5000/yr min sub costs. Small studios with 3-5 members are looking at probably $30K+/yr in sub costs. After buying CG Architect from Jeff you got the community all on board that you were here to support artists... It hard enough struggle as it is to just make a living being an artist. At the end of the day we just want to make amazing images, but there are so many other options to do that without cutting into our livelihood.

Right, but I can't see any good explanation to justify these prices. Even if Vantage currently has all the missing features from Vray, better optimization, etc.. I don't know how they wanted to be almost on par with VRAY price and double expensive than Corona, that is INSANE. For Archviz users Vantage is useless without Corona or Vray, for Archviz it's more like an extension to Vray/Corona and a plugin for 3dsmax. And it shouldn't be presented as a stand-alone render engine cuz is not.

This is a bad price and the worst timing they have chosen. If they started charging for Vantage let's say 20e/month while they put out all necessary updates to be close to what Vray offer, and later once they reach that goal it can be priced up, people would accept that more easily.