Upgrade costs for Vray 5 / increase in the last 6 years

[olly]

We have to have overhead, everyone does.

Absolutely. I am sure most of us here make money from CGIs.

What I am trying to say is that, as a CPU user, charging us for vray 5 makes the upgrade from 3 to Next really poor value.
Now we know Next is EOL, it was marginal gains from vray 3.7 at best.
Just in case I missed it, can anyone name a new feature, on par with Light Mix, that Next gave us?

[glorybound]

V-ray Next was about smarter, faster, and more powerful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHvY0lcI-Ns

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

i am struggling to understand how can someone say the VRAY5 release is a minor update to NEXT.
Were a small studio, roughly 300K dollars turnover and I dont find the pricing steep.
The new VFB2 by itself has already been a massive help, so did randomiser etc etc.
I expected the caustics, but i strongly believe this will come within 5s updates. sooner or later.

[glorybound]

I agree, awesome update! the materials and VFB are worth its weight in gold.

[olly]

Sorry, I don't think I have explained myself very well.

I am not saying that vray 5 is bad - it isn't it, it is awesome and it will change the way we work for sure.

The point I was trying to make is that as Vray 5 is a paid upgrade, Vray Next has not delivered great value for us.

I can assure, I am not trying to hurt anyone's feelings here - just saying how it is from our studios point of view.

[Joelaff]

Sorry, I don't think I have explained myself very well.

I am not saying that vray 5 is bad - it isn't it, it is awesome and it will change the way we work for sure.

The point I was trying to make is that as Vray 5 is a paid upgrade, Vray Next has not delivered great value for us.

I can assure, I am not trying to hurt anyone's feelings here - just saying how it is from our studios point of view.

I understand your point. We actually completely skipped Next. When it came out we were busy on a project and didn't want to upgrade. Then one project led to another for a couple years and there just wasn't a need.

We did make the jump to VRay 5. That is where the Autodesk-like policy (yes, the ARE the devil, and you should NOT do ANYTHING Autodesk does) of paying twice to upgrade (Pay to upgrade to Next then to VRay5 if you want to go from 3 to 5... I get it should be more than from 4, excuse me, Next, but it should not be double... I didn't get to USE Next so I shouldn't have to PAY for Next-- see?) rubbed me the wrong way entirely. Instead we bought new subscription licenses (which honestly I hate the entire idea of software "rental," but I understand it can help the developer to budget their resources for improvements.) Needless to say I expect constant updates just like Adobe does now that they went to subscription only. Of course they have a much bigger user base, but they also have MANY more products, which are VERY well supported and updated. Adobe is no Autodesk (here is one new feature for your $1000 maintenance). Adobe is something like $79 a year for EVERY product they make. Vray, for a renderer ONLY (plus nodes), not even a 3d app, is like $3-4k per year for us, huh?

Chaos is certainly still one of the most responsive companies. They are all listening to bug reports and feature requests. I will specifically give a shout out to the Phoenix and GPU folks for quickly responding to and fixing issues, as well as adding features. THANK YOU.

Whatever you do, Vlado, PLEASE don't sell out to some big conglomerate like Autodesk (ruins everything) or Amazon (kinda messed up ThinkBox who used to be on the ball), or even Adobe. This can *almost* justify the very high render node cost.

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

but expecting a smaller price to jump from 3 to 5 is not fair if you consider that a lot of users are regularly paying for upgrades to support Chaosgroup. At least this is the way i take it.
Comparing all the SW i buy every year, paying for Vray upgrade is by far the only one that actually makes sense.

rental helps you scale up and down along with the market, its not that bad if you look at it from a different perspective.

We have 4 licenses of Vray and if we need more, we will rent the next one we need.

[trick]

but expecting a smaller price to jump from 3 to 5 is not fair if you consider that a lot of users are regularly paying for upgrades to support Chaosgroup...

If it was that simple, a new license would have to be a lot more expensive each release. With all software updates it is not easy to satisfy all users, so I think it is normal to skip a release; since you won't be using the new features you could be missing other features for a long time, but therefore I don't think it is normal to think you have to pay for an upgrade you did not use; a penalty for skipping a release is OK, but paying full price (twice!) is plain ridiculous and makes me think there are other reasons like forcing people into subscription or eventually dumping perpetual releases. As it is now I will fully skip complete releases if they do not meet my expectations and just buy a new license if needed. I even think it is forcing me to look at other software and take more time to look at it's value...something that has never come to my mind in all the years using VRay. As an allround freelancer using a lot of different softwares, I had a lot of perpetual licenses which cost me a lot of money yearly with all upgrades and maintainance; by rethinking all the stuff I really needed most, I now have set up all my licenses in a way I save 50-60% on cost. But since this is the new way of doing business (and seeing that this latest upgrade policy is announced at the end of a world crisis with a very small time frame, supporting software companies out of loyalty is certainly not a part of that!), this is the way I should adapt.

[francomanko]

I even think it is forcing me to look at other software and take more time to look at it's value...something that has never come to my mind in all the years using VRay.

Yeah, sadly i agree with this...Purely from a user perspective, I don't want to use another renderer but feeling pretty disappointed about the way things seem to be heading, pricing wise, so unfortunately I feel i might have to. Seems like, from the posts that have been made there just isn't enough differentiating between freelancers and companies....so for the sake of sounding like a broken record, indie pricing please

[Joelaff]

Just an aside on licensing in general...

E-On Software, makers of Vue, actually have an interesting licensing policy. You pay $75 a month, period. You can turn it off for 9 months, and then pay for one month to use it, and then turn it back off. For software you might only use a few times a year (like Vue in our case where it is good from some mountain sculpting, but we would want to render things in Max/VRay) this is a really great way to price software rental. I don't know how there render licensing works. I don't use it for rendering.

I guess this comes down to the Toll Road analogy. Pay for what you use. This is the idea behind cloud rendering. But I abhor cloud rendering of any sort because I don't want my creativity to be hampered by doing fewer renders and lowering quality settings because I have to pay for EVERY render. In some respects we already do (amortized cost of render nodes, and electricity of course), but with your local farm you don't have to think "Should I do another test render and pay $15 (or whatever), or is this good enough?" I hate the phrase "Good Enough," and my clients love that about me.

[trick]

...the way things seem to be heading, pricing wise,...

It's not so much the pricing. It's more that I am not comfortable anymore with the way things go: when I am told that USB-dongles are becoming way too expensive to maintain in times the company is growing, I wonder what they have been thinking in times when the company still was small. This "credibility" makes me feel that development will suffer from growth too as I have seen with lots of the bigger companies losinga big part their earnings into keeping all the other balls in the air....unitl the revelation that joining a bigger company brings relief in that regard. The fastest innovators are the ones closest to their users resulting in structures that FIRSTLY depend on worklow, not cashflow (Blender, Epic).

[roboxx]

.......and I dont find the pricing steep.
The new VFB2 by itself has already been a massive help, so did randomiser etc etc.

Well, i totally disagree with you at this point. Please take a look at my initial post #1 and see the price trend in the last 10 years in conjunction with the shorter release cycles.
To make it clear, here are again my upgrade costs for my vray license in the past
1 Workstation + 10 Rendernodes
Vray 3 | 2014 = 958 $
Vray 4 | 2018 = 1690 $ ( +75 % )
Vray 5 | 2020 = 2310 $ ( +37 % ) ( 600 $ WS upgrade + 1710 $ for 10 RN)

So the trend is undeniable and obviously for me and there is still the uncertainty what comes in the future ? 2022 the next upgrade for the same price of 2310 $ or will it be 3000 $ and above ?
The whole thing wouldn`t be as dramatic, if the rendernodes wouldn`t be so extremly overpriced, 600 $ for the WS-upgrade for approximately 2 years of usage before the next release sounds absolutely fair to me...thats 25 $ / month.
But 1710 $ for 10 rendernodes....that`s just not appropriate. Chaos.....why do you charge for the rendernodes at all, what is it all about ?

Looking at the new features in Vray 5

new VfB: i will barely use the layering option in the framebuffer. At the end i will have to hand out eventually my client the full project backup anyway, nearly all of them expecting Photoshop or After Effects files, not a vray frame buffer compositing.
light Mix: might be a nice feature for Archviz, i personally won`t propably use it much in my daily work, but i might be wrong
material manager: there is already a pretty good library with 1000+ materials and custom presets out for several years from Siger for a 180 € one time fee
texture randomization: Thomas Suurland Multitexture plugin is out for ages, and it s free with similar features
new sun and sky model: isn`t a new sky and sun announced almost every new vray release ?

what else:

Coat & sheen layer: might be usefull, will have to take a deeper look
stochastic tiling: if it`s really working, this is a must have for me
extended vray dirt: sounds ok, but already possible with dirt / imperfections textures
initial out-of-core: could be handy, but the speed disadvantages will propably make it a worst-case-scenario
native ACESCG support: will have to take a closer look at it
blue-noise sampling: have no opinion on this so far
light path expression: same as above

So looking at it in total, you might call it a full upgrade, but for me atm not being worth to invest 2310 $ for it.

I would be very happy if some responsible of the Chaos Staff could comment on the mentioned objections and worries in this thread and the future costs in particular. Also some sort of explanation for charging for the rendernodes and their level in general is of a big interest at least for me as a freelancer.

[legi008]

I'm hearing the same discussions in my entourage about the render node price.
One of the companies i work for would love to go from V-Ray 3 to 5 but can not due to the cost of the renders node. We all agree that workstation licenses are at a fair price but it would cost them about 8000€ just for render nodes, which is a lot for their infrastructure comparing the employees number and marging cost.

[JD3D_CGI]

Render node prices have gone out of control.

[Nicinus]

I definitely had a mental block about subscriptions as well, I wanted to own my own stuff, and if I five years down the line have no income I can still create with my purchased and paid for tools.

The problem is that five years down the line it probably won't be compatible with OS, drivers, other tools, etc anyway. I know there are people out there still using 3ds Max 2014, but in the case of Vray there really is significant regular progress.There are only two ways companies can grow their revenue, either they find more costumers or they sell their existing ones more stuff. Subscription models is an interesting way to reach more users and make sure they upgrade regularly and I think it works with for example Adobe, as I still feel they innovate and are decently aggressive. I think it could work for Chaos too. I'm pretty sure they held back both the new VFB and the material library to justify a new version of Vray, and if we all were on subscription we would hopefully see less of this behavior. They can just release it when ready as they don't need these artificial revenue events. Their incentive to innovate would be to hold competition at bay, which is the way it should be. The key thing though is that we all need to feel these monthly subscription fees are reasonably low, whereas vendors wants to keep them high and and counteract by bundling together all they have to get us to pay as high monthly as possible. I would personally rather cherry pick two-three tools of Adobe and pay $25 a month instead of $50, and I would rather pick 2-3 tools from Chaos and pay less than the whole Vray Collection, which is filled with stuff I don't need. However, the tools I do would like to have, end up quite a bit lower than getting them separately, and having all of them could be convenient I guess. It's a bit like Coca-Cola, one bottle is $4 but five is $10. They want $10 bucks from us, and don't really care how much they give us as long as they get their $10. I get it, they make us an offer we can't refuse, and many of us take it. Fair enough in my book.

Where I don't feel it works is with Autodesk. This feels like a greedy conglomerate that is more interested in adding new products than developing the ones they have. They are also very expensive for smaller companies, and although they as a business can charge whatever they want, it's a sad example of where a monopoly is seriously frustrating for the market place. Perhaps not so much for the pricing as the minuscule development. Luckily 3ds Max is starting to see real competition and the Indie program is wonderful for smaller studios, and so is the injection of new people. No such luck with Revit unfortunately, which has close to zero progress between yearly versions and cost $300 a month. They already have almost all CAD users so faster development won't add any revenue, only cost. I can't say it's shameful, because it's a obviously a company that has to be profitable with responsibilities to its shareholders, but it is shameful.

Oops, this became a bit of a rant. Too much time on my hands today I guess.