What happens at the end of an annual license, if you dont renew?

[Neilg]

Yeah, sorry - I could've sworn it was longer than 2 years which next has been out for. That's pretty valid, it's a lot tighter a timeline than older versions.

as far as comparing a perpetual license to a year rental which has everything and then being annoyed at it only being a rental, idk man. Buy a perpetual license of it all instead? Of course the rental is cheaper. It's still not forced.

[Nicinus]

At the end of the day each and everyone has to do soul searching on how much they really spend in the end. I tend to upgrade directly as I always want the newest features and progress, so in my case a perpetual probably doesn't make so much sense. Vray is a bit different than 3ds Max and something like Revit in that so much is about workflow and optimization.

[JezUK]

It is kind of hard to ignore though. Vray Next came out May 2018, so it is more like 2 years between major releases. The thing is, if you upgrade your Next perpetual to Vray 5, you seem to pay $590, but for just another $100 you could then get Phoenix, VRScans and for example Vray for Unreal. This is a yearly subscription, but cost wise there is a lot of value in the collection if you have use for those tools.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing by any means, but the decision got harder as I'm reluctant to give up my perpetual but find the collection tempting

I'm in the same-ish boat as you - though in my case I've pretty much decided I'm going to stick with V-Ray Next (on Perpetual) as I'm stuck with 3DS Max 2020 as it is (as I stopped paying for future maintenance with that since 2019).

My plan is, when I feel it is hurting to not have the latest toys and tools, hopefully by then Autodesk will still have their Indie version of 3DS Max going so I'll then go for that and *also* get the V-Ray Collection.

That way I get to keep 3DS Max 2020 / V-Ray Next (both perpetual) installed as well as the latest Indie 3DS Max 202x along with V-Ray 5 et all (both subscription), all on the same machine.

My suggestion to you, is maybe not to give up that Perpetual copy of V-Ray so quickly/readily.

Just my 0.000002 cents.

[francomanko]

seems the whole thing is getting bogged down by some crazy marketing strategy. I mean if its $70 for a month /rendernode, but $167/ year...just odd.