vray 3.6 upgrade to next

[mindventures]

Decision is made, I´ll migrate over to corona and probably by subscription. This is more than half of the price compared to vray. I´ll pay 75,- € per month for a workstation license with 15 rendernodes, I can live with that. Vray would be about 200,- € per month in my case.
I´m using the vray gpu renderer very rarely anyway and I´m paying always for one half of vray that I practicly don´t use.
So, I think corona is my best option and migrating over doesn´t seem to be that hard. I´m gonna miss vray, which I like a lot, but this is getting way too expensive for me, sometimes you have to change things.

[eligiusz]

Brave decision, im a little hesitant to shift to corona, but its easier for me because i only have 3 render nodes.

[Miroslav Stoichev]

Hey guys!

First of all thank you all for the honest feedback and for your support for V-Ray. It looks like most of you are long term users - we really appreciate your commitment and your investment in V-Ray over the years. The points you bring up make a lot of sense. We continuously consider these points and other trade-offs internally. Freelancers are the group that has driven V-Ray forward both with product feedback and adoption across industries for the last 15+ years so we are very sensitive to the needs of this particular user group.

Of course on the other hand there are the developments in the whole ecosystem - increased competition in rendering, the massive adoption of subscription model by all major DCC vendors, the consolidation we see in the last few years (big DCC companies acquiring smaller rendering focused companies). We’ve done our best to stay competitive and adapt in this environment. This includes accelerating development/release cycle with the corresponding increases in R&D. Also the evolving offerings you mentioned (render node packs, upgrade policies, etc). We made a commitment to never go “route of unnecessary version releases every year”. We also decided to avoid at all costs forcing our customers to change their preferred purchase method by discontinuing perpetual licenses.

Our approach has been focused on trying to provide better value and encouraging people to switch gradually to recurring subscriptions this way. And switching is the only sustainable way forward given the industry dynamics... Frankly, this has not been an easy task and has sometimes come at a significant cost on the business side - both in terms of profitability and creating sometimes confusing and complex offerings (just look at the pricing section on our product pages on the website - you almost need a manual to understand it)…


As the release of V5 approaches we remain committed to offer options to our perpetual customers who are not ready to switch to recurring. Based on your feedback we will consider two specific items and will adopt them if possible:

1.Offering a new opportunity to upgrade a perpetual license from v3 - > v5. We would have to price this somewhere between a standard upgrade and a new perpetual license to keep the overall value incentives consistent.

2.Extend the period for trade-in of a v3 perpetual license to annual beyond Sept 30. This, I believe, makes a lot of sense, especially given the unique coronavirus situation.

I can’t promise we will do these definitely but we’ll do our best to accommodate to the degree possible after we sync and get feedback from our partners and resellers across the world.


So i think the best option for vray3 users is to just trade in Your perpetual license and move to subscription (until the end of september)


I strongly believe this indeed the best value for most customers and I hope you will find such investment to be worthwhile over the coming years.

[J_man]

Hello,

Thanks for that Miro. We use several render engines, mostly Corona at the moment which is why I haven't upgraded to Next. The cost of upgrading a v3 license to 5 is the same as buying a new perputual license. As we're not using VRay a lot there isn't any point in upgrading them, which is a pity as if we don't have vray licenses we're less likely to use it. I'm not sure if I'm wording this correctly but what I'm trying to say is that the pricing structure at the moment make it so that there is no reason for casual users to upgrade to v5.


Best,

Josh.

[eligiusz]

Thanks for the info, much appreciated.

[mindventures]

Thanks for the information, Miro!

[trick]

For all perpetual VRay 3 users that are short of cash : if one first needs to upgrade to Next at regular prices, and then to v5 at current prices, why not skip the upgrade, keep your current v3 license and just buy a new v5 (or later) license when you really need it? You can do the same with MAX: keep using the latest perpetual version possible until your work or hardware requires any new version. then subscribe and update plugins if needed. I have used some Max/VRay combo's for 5 years, so this may save you a lot of cash. And I still have to see the first person that can render better images with Next compared to v3: faster of course...but not better!

On the other hand: if you have the cash just upgrade. You pay for what you get and pricing in the past does not justify VRay's value. And if you don't need all the features, Corona might be an option.

(Hmmm. did not see the last 6 posts on the 2nd page...so I may be repeating someone )

[trick]

...there is no reason for casual users to upgrade to v5...

In the past I also had more render engines, just because each one had it's strengths and flaws which each made them useful for different jobs. At that time pricing and availability of perpetual licenses was acceptable for freelance use. The same for the base software (Max, Maya, LightWave, FormZ). This would be impossible these days, even with subscription. It would be a very complex job activating and deactivating all these subscriptions just to save cost...just as software companies have a VERY hard time setting up pricing schemes for subscription and perpetual licensing models. We ALL need to stay competitive and everybody using the SAME software is not the way to go: then the mass output will be predicable and it will be easier for competitors to offer cheap ONE-button solutions that make us more and more redundant. It will be interesting to see where this evolution is leading. VrayX for Tesla maybe?

[maxwood]

Thanks for the info, Miro.

I too am in the same boat as a freelancer with 3.6 licence. I don't get much chance to use V-Ray at home as I'm often working in studios (using V-Ray anyway) so it's not cost effective for me to upgrade to Next to then upgrade to 5. I'm not really interested in a subscription service unless it's at a reduced cost like Corona.

If it's any help.. I think part of the reason for me not upgrading to Next in the first place was because I have a workstation + 5 node licence, the cost was too expensive to upgrade, nearly as much as I paid for the new licence in the first place. That wasn't Chaos Groups fault, I got the original licence at a discount, and the new pricing was made worse by the weakened value of the pound. Then the problem became that I didn't want to upgrade just my workstation and then have a huge cost to upgrade 5 nodes at a later date even though I very rarely use them. I realise that I can't have it both ways, I'll figure out what to do in the future if my needs change.

The way the 3D industry is changing at the moment, I'm not sure I would want to tie myself to a Max-only licence of anything, I'm constantly wondering if I should make the jump to Maya or even Houdini, and something like Redshift is pretty good for people who use multiple software.

Personally, I think your pricing section is great, it's obviously very different from something like Corona but I think you understand each customer is different and the pricing options reflect that.

I have a lot of respect for Chaos Group, you guys have always listened to feedback, I will still be an advocate of V-Ray and often a daily user of it when working in studios anyway - regardless of whether I personally have a licence anymore

Cheers

[Miroslav Stoichev]

Hey! Wanted to share a quick update on the items I told you we will consider:

1.Offering a new opportunity to upgrade a perpetual license from v3 - > v5. We would have to price this somewhere between a standard upgrade and a new perpetual license to keep the overall value incentives consistent.

Unfortunately we couldn’t reach an agreement on this one. While there are definitely positives, the overwhelming feedback from our partners and sales teams was that this would create more negatives in the long run. So the decision is to stick with our current approach and offer only one version upgrade.

2.Extend the period for trade-in of a v3 perpetual license to annual beyond Sept 30. This, I believe, makes a lot of sense, especially given the unique coronavirus situation.

This we will do. While we won’t announce immediately (to avoid confusion with changing deadlines) we plan to extend this deadline as September approaches. I hope we can actually keep this option open indefinitely, as there would be many potential v3 customers who can take advantage of this offer over time.


Maxwood, I think you are absolutely right when you say:

The way the 3D industry is changing at the moment, I'm not sure I would want to tie myself to a Max-only licence of anything, I'm constantly wondering if I should make the jump to Maya or even Houdini

We’ve noticed this and other smilar trends over time and we have worked to adapt and provide new options to our users. I can’t share the details just yet but literally in the next 2-3 days we are releasing something major in this direction. So keep an eye on our website this week


Cheers!

Miro

[eligiusz]

Thanks for the info , just one question, is the upgrade for perpetual licences from 3.6 to vray next still available or its been closed ?

[Miroslav Stoichev]

It is closed but we are allowing exceptions (need to contact our sales team or a reseller) this week for people who did not manage to complete their upgrades prior to the release. Cheers!

[francomanko]

just to clarify this is just referring to 3dsmax yeah?

[Miroslav Stoichev]

Yes. Render nodes v3 can still be upgraded to Next until Sept 30. Also the rest of V-Ray for ... products (except 3dsmax) are still on version NEXT so the upgrades there will continue until we release v5 for each of the platforms.

[bibi5000]

I checked in my account Page: Upgrading my perpetual 10 Vray 3 render nodes to Vray Next costs 2023 Euros and then to Vray 5 additional 2261 Euros, that adds up to 4284 Euros. Buying 10 brandnew Vray 5 perpetual render licenses costs 3593,80 Euros. Hmmm. Did I miss something?