Charging for render nodes

[devin]

For those of you who think that the sole reason people chose Vray was quality your wrong, Maxwell can produce images of equal quality but their license policy stinks and so it's not going anywhere. Vray's appeal was speed, quality, support and unlimited render nodes. Congratulations guy's you've just given a lot of people the freedom to start looking at other engines that were once too expensive. This whole thing makes me ill.

[instinct]

For those of you who think that the sole reason people chose Vray was quality your wrong, Maxwell can produce images of equal quality but their license policy stinks and so it's not going anywhere. Vray's appeal was speed, quality, support and unlimited render nodes. Congratulations guy's you've just given a lot of people the freedom to start looking at other engines that were once too expensive. This whole thing makes me ill.

Well i for one can not speak for everyone using VRay, but i assure you that we did not choose VRay over Maxwell because Maxwell's license policy stinks. It might be your reason, but that does not necessarily mean it was everybody else's reason...

[Slazzo]

Not just maxwell, now Corona is gaining reputation among VRay(not only) users, people try it, and they love the results, so there is an alternative of VRay quality, speed and simplicity, of course it's not ready for VFX but hey, it's free for now and can compete with VRay already in some areas.

But in the same time, not many want to switch from VRay, it was with us for a very long period of time, and we are still proud of it and I guess we can pull some extra cents from our pocket to keep it alive.

[Donald2B]

For those of you who think that the sole reason people chose Vray was quality your wrong, Maxwell can produce images of equal quality but their license policy stinks and so it's not going anywhere. Vray's appeal was speed, quality, support and unlimited render nodes. Congratulations guy's you've just given a lot of people the freedom to start looking at other engines that were once too expensive. This whole thing makes me ill.

As instinct stated above, unlimited render nodes and license policy were not even on the radar when we evaluated render engines. Speed, support and quality, in that order, are VERY important factors for us. I know that I may be in the minority on this topic. I've done a full ROI (return on investment) breakdown for VRay, and all of our other software for that matter, and the new policy is a better value just due to speed improvements. Faster renders = less rendering time = less money spent on rendering animation = more money in our pocket.

[instinct]

We're not in VFX (well we are now, but its neither our main area nor where we are coming from), but corona is not ready for production in my eyes. It misses many of the features we need and rely on and is considered alpha by the developer. Also it is already announced that it will not stay free and noone knows how much it will be or if it will ever match our needs. That just does not hold up as an alternative just because it is free and fast for me.

Once again i am not trying to say this is true for everyone. In my calculation the upgrade for us will not be that much more expensive than 1.5 to 2 even tho licensing has changed a lot. I really embrace unified render licenses in addition.

I guess in the end i was just put off by the next post telling us that VRay will go down and everyone will now switch to "insert your second best renderer here"

Regards,
Thorsten

[Morbid Angel]

Can maxwell render in comparable speed to vray these days?

[vlado]

Not just maxwell, now Corona is gaining reputation among VRay(not only) users, people try it, and they love the results, so there is an alternative of VRay quality, speed and simplicity, of course it's not ready for VFX but hey, it's free for now and can compete with VRay already in some areas.

You can say the same for a lot of other render engines too - Octane, Arion, Redshift, Furryball, Thea, Indigo etc etc - they all do the basic job of rendering out a nice image just fine and they come at varying price points. Corona won't be free forever either, although it is reasonable to assume that it will be cheaper. That's fine too - everyone is free to put a price tag on their work, after all. Artists have a lot of choices these days, and no matter what we do there will always be cheaper alternatives that do specific tasks faster or easier. We still think that V-Ray has a reasonable price for the features it includes - it's a renderer that can be used efficiently in a wide variety of situations. Even if it may not be the fastest renderer to do a particular given task, it handles a lot of things pretty well.

Best regards,
Vlado

[vlado]

Congratulations guy's you've just given a lot of people the freedom to start looking at other engines that were once too expensive.

People have *always* been free to look at other render engines, and will continue to do that no matter what we do, even if we give away V-Ray for free.

Best regards,
Vlado

[vlado]

current release works fine for me and, more importantly, for my customers.

V-Ray 2.x is a good renderer after all. In fact, V-Ray 1.5 still works fine for a lot of people.

With my pipeline, 3.0 is SLOWER to achieve the same quality so why would I want to pay to go backwards?

I wouldn't really judge by the early betas - we put them out first and foremost to find problems and fix bugs (and there are problems and bugs of course). Still, I would be interested to look at any cases where 3.0 is slower and you can contact me at vlado@chaosgroup.com to see what can be done about that - if you wish, of course.

I am on 2.30 and max 2013 all legit, I am presuming that this will not be defunct 6 months after they release 3.0?

Of course it will not be defunct; you can continue using your 2.x licenses without upgrading for as long as you want and we will continue supporting V-Ray 2.x until V-Ray 4.0 comes out a few years down the road.

Also there is a very simple fact here. The price of our business to going up, Adobe CC, Subscriptions from Adodesk, and now Vray. The price of running the business is beginning to run high.

This is unfortunately true for any business, including ours. We have our expenses, same as you do. If it was up to me, I'd give V-Ray away for free, but things don't work that way. It was a very difficult decision for us to make, as we could anticipate the reaction from our users, but we feel it was a necessary step if we want V-Ray to be around and to continue to serve you well. Finally, the price for the upgrade might not necessarily be higher, depending on your particular situation. It would be best to send us an email to sales.software@chaosgroup.com and see how much it will actually cost you to upgrade.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Morne]

Hopefully we'll finally get some material library included then with 3.0?!?

[vlado]

Hopefully we'll finally get some material library included then with 3.0?!?

Yes, you will - it's being prepared for the web site right now.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Morne]

WOW cool!!!

Hopefully emphasis on "INCLUDED", not "optional extra with extra cost"

[alainfx]

For those of you who think that the sole reason people chose Vray was quality your wrong, Maxwell can produce images of equal quality but their license policy stinks and so it's not going anywhere. Vray's appeal was speed, quality, support and unlimited render nodes. Congratulations guy's you've just given a lot of people the freedom to start looking at other engines that were once too expensive. This whole thing makes me ill.

I think the best answer was given by Vlado, last week :

The rendering business has changed a lot in the past few years. You are looking at it from your side of the fence, but we have our own viewpoint. Somebody mentioned there are a lot of other, cheaper and free alternatives - that's fine and good and artists as a whole have taken advantage of that. But, at the same time, our workload has not decreased - on the contrary, people expect us to support more and more advanced features that require ever more time and effort to implement. We had to make choices and we did. I can assure you the change in the licensing policy was a very tough decision for us to make, knowing full well the reaction that it will get.

Best regards,
Vlado

[JabbaTheNut]

I think the best answer was given by Vlado, last week :

I would agree that Chaos Group needs to adjust its pricing as market/internal conditions change (I fully support this). However, I take issue with the way they implemented it. Because this is a paradigm shift in the way they price their render nodes (not just an upgrade from 2.0 to 3.0), they should give more consideration to their existing customers. I would suggest that all new customers pay according to the new policy. Existing customers (those who purchased prior to the announcement) should be given a few free render nodes with the understanding that the next upgrade (i.e., 3.0 to 4.0) will entail per render node cost for everyone. This would smooth over the transition for existing customers while enabling Chaos Group to implement the new cost paradigm.

The way they did this was as though they metaphorically flipped the middle finger to their existing customers (the reason they have grown to the point of needing to raise prices). Not good, and somewhat disrespectful, if you ask me.

[Neilg]

The way they did this was as though they metaphorically flipped the middle finger to their existing customers (the reason they have grown to the point of needing to raise prices). Not good, and somewhat disrespectful, if you ask me.

No they didnt. They're not forcing you to upgrade. You've been using vray for a while, and it was cheaper - now the new version is slightly more expensive. There's no middle finger, they're simply moving somewhere else and asking if you'd like to join them.