licence fees...

[circus]

Can anyone tell me why vray does not charge for standalone rendernode licences, when both Brazil and Mental Ray do? Are they not in direct competition?

I have a small renderfarm and to licence each machine with Brazil/MR would cost a fortune, but with VRay it would cost nothing... Just doesnt seem to make sense...

[cocolas]

well....would you want them to??......maybe they can make up a "special" pricing package just for you... :P ...hehe (j/k)


paul.

[cpnichols]

It does seem odd... but they are not the only ones that offer free network nodes. Lightwave, 3D Studio, Final Render, etc...

Keep in mind that they have chosen this price structure carefully. A big market for them is architecture, and if they had to charge for rendernodes, they would loose a lot of those clients that is their bread and butter.

When Maya dropped its price to $2k, does it it mean that their make crappier software, and that it is "worse" then 3d studio?

Splutterfish is based in Venice California, and Chaos Software is based in Sofia Bulgaria... who do you think has higher overhead?

[crazy homeless guy]

free render nodes weighed heavily in our decision to choose vray over some of the other render engines.

[cocolas]

Splutterfish is based in Venice California, and Chaos Software is based in Sofia Bulgaria... who do you think has higher overhead?

yeah, Chris's right......plus it seems that Splutterfish is targeting more of the animation studios that do have more budget for things like Brazil, but most importantly they have medium to large renderfarms at their disposal, so Splutterfish would shot themselfs in the foot if they didn't charge per render node...and a studio could use BR over a 1000 rendernods freely....whereas most arch firms have much smaller renderfarms, if any...often times it's just the artist's workstations overnight.....and since that's their primary market (Chaos's) then it would make sense to be more flexable/cheaper costs for those clients.....
and as pointed, their overhead is probably lower then a typical US developer.

paul.

PS: when we were testing BR/vray FR the free nodes were a major factor in our decision to do with vray, since we do have medium render farm, but were not inclined to spend as much for something like Brazil.....

[circus]

It does seem odd... but they are not the only ones that offer free network nodes. Lightwave, 3D Studio, Final Render, etc..

yeah but these are animation/modeling packages, not rendering plugins...

Its interesting to note that vray seems just as capable when used in an animation studio (ie animal logic) as Brazil, yet when you factor in nodes it would be a tenth (or less) of the cost...

So in a world where 90% of the time cost is the deciding factor how do they compete?? what makes Brazil worth the extra cost??

Just trying to make sense of all this as I have to make a decision in the next 3-4 weeks...

Im not sure if overheads would really be a factor... price is usually set by the market, not what the production costs are...

[jedisalf]

Re: licence fees...

Can anyone tell me why vray does not charge for standalone rendernode licences, when both Brazil and Mental Ray do? Are they not in direct competition?

You already answered yourself with the question...."theyre in direct competion", the one that makes the best offer will sell more.

[percydaman]

not to mention, architects are notoriously cheap...

[jedisalf]

not to mention, architects are notoriously cheap...

ouch....that hurts....

[Adam H. Stewart]

Just a thought

Just a thought but I know that alot of the interest in Brazil has come from Maya people. There is a Maya animator over here where I work and when I was making the decision to go for V-Ray he had only heard of Renderman and Brazil. Now this might be a bit on the risky side but alot of the allure that Maya has comes from the high cost $$$$$.
Alot of people think the more expensive the better the software, it keeps things exclusive, this is definetly a sense I get from my time working in the film industry where people only know the capabilities of the most expensive software. If it is cheaper they assume that the product and results are cheaper.
Brazil has been used quite alot by studio's that animate in Maya and render in Max (this being said I know that Blur also uses Brazil). If you are an effects house working with Maya, you are dropping big money on your primary licenses so anything that is too cheap would be viewed with suspicion. I would even venture to suggest that if Brazil dropped the node cost it would hurt their allure.
Personally I think the ability to net-render should be given at birth (I have never done a single Mental Ray rendering because of this), you shouldn't ever have to pay for it, if V-ray changed this policy (as it appears that Final Render might do ) then it's whole customer base would change.
The difference in cost really confused me when I was making the big V-ray Brazil bake off decision but in the end I let the quality of the work speak for itself

[cpnichols]

It does seem odd... but they are not the only ones that offer free network nodes. Lightwave, 3D Studio, Final Render, etc..

yeah but these are animation/modeling packages, not rendering plugins...

Its interesting to note that vray seems just as capable when used in an animation studio (ie animal logic) as Brazil, yet when you factor in nodes it would be a tenth (or less) of the cost...

So in a world where 90% of the time cost is the deciding factor how do they compete?? what makes Brazil worth the extra cost??

Just trying to make sense of all this as I have to make a decision in the next 3-4 weeks...

Im not sure if overheads would really be a factor... price is usually set by the market, not what the production costs are...

Well the biggest cost to a company is really labor. If software cost was the real issue, people would be dropping renderman like a toilet seat.

I think it is pretty staight forward if you think about in terms of how things were going in 2002. Brazil and Vray had to set their pricepoint. What the Brzail guys did was to "see the future" and see that they were going to compete with mentalRay and prman. They set a network node price that was low enough to not scare ALL the max users away, but still would give them a nice profit when selling to larger studios down the line.

The vray guys may not have wanted to take any risks and set their price based on what max users were used to... free rendering nodes.

This was back in 2002. A lot has changed since then, but one thing they can't do is change their pricepoint. They would loose to many customers, especially existing customers.

At this point Brazil and especially Vray is WAY more powerful then their pricepoint. That is becuase they have gown SO much since 2002 but their price has not.

hopefully this answers your doubts....

[dellis]

render nodes aren't completely free...well unlimited render nodes anyway. I can't remember how many you get but i remember something around ten per licence.

[egz]

Dellis: That's DR licences. You get 10 DR nodes. Backburner nodes are unlimited.