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

[Zirnworks]

I am seeing an industry trend towards "indie pricing" or "freelancer pricing" perhaps accelerated by freelancer migration to open source/lower priced options. I am chipping in to request such a pricing model for V-Ray. Currently the monthly price of the plugin overshadows the monthly price of 3DS Max for indie users. (Especially the generalists like me who are already bearing the burden of multiple subscriptions.)

That said I am still happy with V-Ray 5 and would really like to stick with it for the long haul.

Thank you!

[legi008]

Autodesk has just extended their Indie Licence for 3Ds Max for more countries than before.

https://makeanything.autodesk.com/3dsmax-indie

Around 320€/year (With little variation depending on countries).
They are some limitations (project < 100k) but for freelancers it's very great news !

V-Ray 5 is now more expensive than 3Ds Max :/

[JezUK]

Autodesk has just extended their Indie Licence for 3Ds Max for more countries than before.

https://makeanything.autodesk.com/3dsmax-indie

Around 320€/year (With little variation depending on countries).
They are some limitations (project < 100k) but for freelancers it's very great news !

V-Ray 5 is now more expensive than 3Ds Max :/

Well that is good news and glad that Autodesk have clarified their position regarding renewals in their FAQs. I'm eligible and I'll definitely make this purchase at some point.

Now......Chaos come on..... you have to do something comparable..... "V-Ray for Indie Users"....

[dean_dmoo]

Autodesk has just extended their Indie Licence for 3Ds Max for more countries than before.

https://makeanything.autodesk.com/3dsmax-indie

Around 320€/year (With little variation depending on countries).
They are some limitations (project < 100k) but for freelancers it's very great news !

V-Ray 5 is now more expensive than 3Ds Max :/

Good news, but I really can't stand the 100k limit. 110K? Ok, pay x times as much thank you. Especially as there can quiet easily be big differences between regions and general cost of living.

[john_mackinnon]

wow, I am a small indie dev / student, I have long dreamed of getting vray perpetual licenses for my setup (I detest subscription models - Idid actually previously subscribe to vray next for 3dsmax and 3 render nodes... but cannot justify the constant outlay as a smaller concern, especially the exorbitant cost of render nodes.)

So, i cleared off a ccard for the purchase, bit the bullet & went to buy.

The payment gateway on the site failed multiple times and caused my ccard to block due to a fraud flag. (called the card company and apparently the wrong postcode is being presented by the online checkout company twopay - a NULL code or something, despite the correct address being input on payment - took over an hour to sort out and nearly got my card cancelled)

Then I came to the forum to find out if it was known about etc, and discovered this thread, and i'm so glad i did, and that my 3.5k payment (which i was absolutely stretching to afford especially in these covid lockdown times) failed.
Despite the technical brilliance of the software, the way perpetual license holders are being treated after purchase has sadly convinced me to go another route.

Seeing people being forced to pay twice to upgrade to a current version, being blocked from going to v5 and forced into a subscription model on nodes? no longer being allowed to sell on your licenses...?
Did someone in the business development team have a bet to try to make this as confusing, infuriating and non cost effective for your existing users as possible?

Its like you are quite happy punishing loyal customers who pay greater initial outlay, and as far as i can see literally makes zero long term business sense except that you want to squeeze as much cash out of your loyal users as they can bear because they are locked in with existing licenses.

I have seen this sort of behaviour in businesses before, fast expansion, steep costs increases, failure to care for long term customers,
& every single one of the companies has since folded.

If you treat your loyal customers as ATMs and try to ream them, they will go elsewhere.

You may make great software, but seeing how this is all setup, there's now no way i'm going to put myself back on this cash treadmill.

I think the vray renderer gets fantastic results, but so do others, for far less cost.

There's no way i'm re-subscribing, as subscription models make no sense to indie developers who maybe use the software a few times a year for projects and seeing how perpetual licenses are being treated, I wont be proceeding with my purchase of vray for max, phoenix fd, 3 sim licenses and 3 render nodes.

My advice, for what its worth.

If you are a perpetual license holder & don't upgrade for 1 version, there should be a 25% increase in your upgrade cost to the next version. skip 2 versions 35% increase etc. capped at a 50% increase to get current again if you are 4 versions or more behind.
If you buy any perpetual render nodes, and upgrade your workstation license, all rendernodes you own should be upgraded for free to the same version (up to 10 nodes per workstation license)
If you are an indie dev. there should be a <100k earning subscription - like the bundle that gives you 5 render nodes included.

I'm sure my thoughts aren't worth a great deal, and maybe don't reflect the greater user base, being that i'm small potatoes etc, but just thought i would share a previous customer, and now ex-customers perspective.
Good luck everyone and i hope chaos group sort something out for you all that's fair and decent.

[glorybound]

I think the vray renderer gets fantastic results, but so do others, for far less cost.

This statement is what I hear over and over. It's like Apple announcing something new when Android has had it years; I have always found that amusing. Like Apple's ecosystem, people are heavily invested in V-Ray, so moving to something else will be painful at first, but if you make people mad enough they'll chew off their own foot if needed.

[JezUK]

Daft question time;

I've just taken a quick look at other software, Corona for example, perpetual, you purchase the software, €449 and then you pay a reasonable subscription of just €99 a year to keep that perpetual current. Others operate the same (I think SketchUp, I know BricsCAD do it this way and I'm sure there are others).

Why can't V-Ray be like that too ? We've paid our upfront fee for our perpetual licence, (can't remember how much I paid but today's money is somewhere around £910) - why not then follow that up with just a reasonable annual subscription fee, say, £125 to keep that perpetual current ? Why must it be a big hit, 1.5 - 2 years ?

For one, it's more digestible (think of eating an elephant whole, no - just take one bite at a time ).

That way, users can keep paying that annual subscription, £125, and they can decide if/when to install their new software as and when they feel it safe ?

Currently, if you don't want to install a version, and skip it, you either get punished with a big hit down the road, or a double hit (especially if you just happen to upgrade 2 weeks before an new version is about to be released).

Whereas if you pay a modest yearly subscription service annual fee, to me, it just seems / feels more palatable and also more flexible.

Just my 0.00000000002 cents idea.

[francomanko]

Feels like the business model has changed, in the wrong direction unfortunately.

[glorybound]

I’m old school. I upgraded every year, because their was enough innovation to due so. I can honestly say, I could be still be running MAX 2014 and not know much of a difference over MAX 2021. To me, buying or copying a plugin or script I already have isn’t innovation. The idea was that the upgrade cost kept you from having to buy the software for full price when you were ready. Now, with these subscriptions, there isn’t a reason to innovate. Remembering back, most people upgraded every other year or when they could prove to their boss that it was worth the upgrade.

[rikou]

this economic system is not attractive to many of us. Max is so old in his core that he will always be lagging behind ... Anything dependent on max has to follow that old Juggernaut ... I always have this sense of lagging innovation! IMHO This is where we are.
Do not be mistaken ! I liked max but it is too heavy, too old and too expensive for us to continue our journey together .... I'm afraid that also takes me away from vray, to my great regret...

[kosso_olli]

For now, we will refrain from installing 5. Which is a shame, because the upgrade is good and has a nice feature set, but the cost for upgrading our rendernodes are too high. Why are people with a big render farm forced to pay such a high amount?
Sure, development costs quite some money, and I see the price for the GUI as reasonable. But render nodes are too expensive, even as bulk price.

[legi008]

I'm agree with statement of Koss_olli.
I don't have a problem with the price of the GUI licence or the upgrade price for V-Ray 5. I think it's fair and it's ok to pay for around 7 years of upgrade (From V3 to v5). I just can't find right to pay nearly 10K € to upgrade our render farm that we have built over the years knowing it would'nt cost us an arm to upgrade it. It just do not seems right to me. A lot of company in the CG industry offer free license just for rendering (Adobe After effects, iToo Forest Pack, iToo Railclone, FumeFx, MultiScatter, Ornatrix, ...Even 3Ds Max & Maya are free for render only) or if they charge, it's really low (like 20 or 40$ a year: Deadline, Corona, Fstorm).

[glorybound]

Some of us older users remember when V-Ray nodes came in packs of I think 5 free ones. I had a farm with 5 computers and once they started charging for nodes, I had to make a call to invest in a machine with as many cores as I could. My 72 core machine was faster and easier to manage than my 5 computer farm. I would too be upset if I still had that farm, went from free to thousands, with nothing gained.

I am going through a dashcam scenario where I paid for the best camera money can buy with the promise of $10 a month for LTE, after the first year, or being able to use it only over WIFI. Three months ago they demanded a $20 a month fee and they bricked the camera, which meant they pulled WIFI. I can't imagine anyone, other than the stakeholders, seeing this as wrong. I guess it is capitalism at its best.

[john_mackinnon]

Some of us older users remember when V-Ray nodes came in packs of I think 5 free ones.

yeah, didnt v2.4 come with 999 render nodes free on 3dsmax? or does my version addled brain remember incorrectly?

[Joelaff]

Some of us older users remember when V-Ray nodes came in packs of I think 5 free ones. I had a farm with 5 computers and once they started charging for nodes, I had to make a call to invest in a machine with as many cores as I could. My 72 core machine was faster and easier to manage than my 5 computer farm. I would too be upset if I still had that farm, went from free to thousands, with nothing gained.

I am going through a dashcam scenario where I paid for the best camera money can buy with the promise of $10 a month for LTE, after the first year, or being able to use it only over WIFI. Three months ago they demanded a $20 a month fee and they bricked the camera, which meant they pulled WIFI. I can't imagine anyone, other than the stakeholders, seeing this as wrong. I guess it is capitalism at its best.

I could never work without a farm. Our workstations have tons of cores, but we still need a farm because rendering on the workstation slows the machine down too much.

Part of this is VRay, a lot is Windows thread management. Back in XP64bit (yes, Lightwave was 64 bit right after XP was 64bit around 1999) the process priority worked the way I liked it. I higher priority thread would completely starve a lower priority thread. This is the way a workstation is supposed to work. It's the whole idea behind pre-emptive multitasking. I could render in the background and play Quake 3 in the foreground without even knowing I was rendering. (Sure Q3A is not as resource intensive as new games, but at the time when it came out it was pretty high end).

Starting in Windows 7 MS changed something and priorities became much less useful. For a server it makes sense not to starve background threads, for a workstation it is pretty stupid. Now, VRay keeps re-adjusting the processor affinity constantly (better than VRay3, but still does it).

But, yes, the render node costs are what is killing us as well. Workstation pricing is good and correct.

I am not a fan of indie licenses because why should I pay 10x more than somebody else for the exact same product? Should people be penalized for success due to talent, or experience (or even whom they know)? I don't think so. Basically, Indie pricing means the "pro" version is overpriced and "pros" are buying licenses for "Indie" users. This is worse since many Indie users are actually professionals who just either don't exceed the cutoff (or lie). Educational licenses, which are forbidden from being used for commercial purposes are a good thing, though.