Should we worry about Chos group Licence model being shift to rental?

[^Lele^]

I always believed Vlado was against the rental license model?

A question you should ask him.
But if the rental model is a choice, and not the only option, why would it be bad?

[Jeffrey]

Choice is good agree. But Vray for Unreal unfortunately doesn't have a perpetual license option.
Pretty much every software company is transitioning to the SAAS model. I expect Chaos Group will follow this path.
From their point of view it's very profitable and provides sustainable income. Customers can benefit from the rental model too. Unfortunately the high rental prices many companies charge for their services make it less appealing.

[^Lele^]

Choice is good agree. But Vray for Unreal unfortunately doesn't have a perpetual license option.
Pretty much every software company is transitioning to the SAAS model. I expect Chaos Group will follow this path.

No.
As i said, some of the ancillary projects, and project managers, have more choice in regard to the commercial side.
It says nothing at all of a general trajectory for the company as a whole.
Rather, if what is bothering you is the pricing, or licensing model, of V4U, make sure you write to the sales team and let them know (ideally, with actionable data, rather than outright ranting.)
What you think of as intent to make shedloads of money may simply have been insecurity on the product market traction (ie. let's see if anyone's moderately interested, and let's keep the entry point low.).
Hence the lack of a perpetual option, yet.

It's a convo best had with those people, however, in charge of the specific products (same goes for VRScans, where there isn't a perpetual option).

[jackieteh]

[QUOTE=glorybound;n1017134]

I just brought vray next few month ago, and all of my friend around laughing at me for doing that./QUOTE] Why, because of Corona?

yes, good guess

[^Lele^]

[QUOTE=jackieteh;n1017622]

yes, good guess

Besides the free slagging, are there any specific reasons that one could substantiate on this kind of disclaimer?
We were evaluating Corona well before a merger was on the cards, and besides *very* specific, artificial conditions, there really was never a performance difference worth worrying about (meaning: faster here, slower there, on an average scene, things would most of the time well even out. clock and sample counts in hand.).
Has anything changed of late which we missed?

[glorybound]

I would agree. I have tried it sevral times and I can’t see what all the fuss was about. I do see a lot of great images on-line and 9 out of 10 times is is a Corona render. 10 years ago I started using V-Ray because most of the great images were combing from V-Ray.

[prateekvishwa]

Its going to be even tough for sure! I am finding it difficult to match pricing with other freelancers here in India, mostly because they are working dirt cheap.. obviously because their only investment is in hardware...otherwise it is practically not feasible to work that low.. i can imagine how difficult it must be for freelancers in those countries where cost of living is much higher... i sometime feel i should join back to some company for fulltime job..

[jackieteh]

I would agree. I have tried it sevral times and I can’t see what all the fuss was about. I do see a lot of great images on-line and 9 out of 10 times is is a Corona render. 10 years ago I started using V-Ray because most of the great images were combing from V-Ray.

ya me too, i still vray fans

[jackieteh]

Its going to be even tough for sure! I am finding it difficult to match pricing with other freelancers here in India, mostly because they are working dirt cheap.. obviously because their only investment is in hardware...otherwise it is practically not feasible to work that low.. i can imagine how difficult it must be for freelancers in those countries where cost of living is much higher... i sometime feel i should join back to some company for fulltime job..

same here in malaysia, you can see in my status i am writing looking for job...but with age at 48, its hard to get a job here and there

[AC5L4T3R]

I would agree. I have tried it sevral times and I can’t see what all the fuss was about. I do see a lot of great images on-line and 9 out of 10 times is is a Corona render. 10 years ago I started using V-Ray because most of the great images were combing from V-Ray.

Corona IPR is much faster than Vray IPR and I'm extensively using both for Auto-Viz. Personally for me, the post production tools in the Frame Buffer make it a lot easier for me to visualise what I will do in post, which is a great thing to have. Sometimes I don't even bother opening Photoshop cause I've go the look I want right inside the Frame Buffer. The VFB is almost the same as it was 10 years ago.

I'm actually looking at moving away from CPU rendering as my 4790k vs my 1080ti doesn't hold a candle to it. I was playing around with Fstorm last night and although it's exceedingly fast, it does feel unpolished and a product of one single guy.. but at 240 euros a year it's impossible to say no to.

[notamondayfan]

I think the rental model isn't always a bad thing. The issue is when it becomes overly expensive and prices people (existing customers) out of the market.

Look at Autodesk. A licence use to cost £5000, then £500 a year (approx) on subscription. That was a big outlay for me when I started, but I always wanted to run a legit business, so I took the hit. At the moment Autodesks rental is around £200 per month. That's a lower cost to get up and running, but after 2 years you're out of pocket. For me Autodesk rental is too expensive, and the progress of development falls way short of what everyone expects.
With Autodesk, you're always tied into to paying. If you don't, you lose your permanent licence / no way to upgrade. Or you pay the rental. When you have little choice, it soon leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.

However look at what Adobe have done. For £50 a month, you get access to their entire CC range. This is affordable, and great value, and you can see the actual progress they're making (rather than just changing icons and bolting on another renderer!).

What I've always liked about Vray the paths to upgrade when you want. You were never forced into a sale, and if you stopped on the previous version, you were never penalised.

[glorybound]

I pay quarterly for MAX and have been for years. Each quarter, without fail, my quarterly has gone up in price.

[hoppergrass]

[QUOTE=^Lele^;n1017705]

Besides the free slagging, are there any specific reasons that one could substantiate on this kind of disclaimer?
We were evaluating Corona well before a merger was on the cards, and besides *very* specific, artificial conditions, there really was never a performance difference worth worrying about (meaning: faster here, slower there, on an average scene, things would most of the time well even out. clock and sample counts in hand.).
Has anything changed of late which we missed?

Basically you are analogizing the wrong data

Personally (and I am sure for many others) its the user experience.

It felt easier to set up lighting and materials and tweak. Back when Corona started to make inroads Vray was still very "technical". The documentation and the billions of tutorials around focused so much on settings and samples that many got in the mindset that you had to tweak settings until the cows came home. Corona came along saying ," forget about settings, these will work, go ahead and play, work on your image instead" .

Thankfully Chaos eventually got that message and "simplified" the workflow and I believe that has been the biggest benefit to my work.

Unfortunately "feelings" and " impressions" cant easily be quantified into a data set to be analyzed and evaluated, as such often dismissed as nonsense. If you guys carried on working "User Experience" improvements it would not be a bad thing.

[^Lele^]

Basically you are analogizing the wrong data

Personally (and I am sure for many others) its the user experience.

It felt easier to set up lighting and materials and tweak. Back when Corona started to make inroads Vray was still very "technical". The documentation and the billions of tutorials around focused so much on settings and samples that many got in the mindset that you had to tweak settings until the cows came home. Corona came along saying ," forget about settings, these will work, go ahead and play, work on your image instead" .

Thankfully Chaos eventually got that message and "simplified" the workflow and I believe that has been the biggest benefit to my work.

Unfortunately "feelings" and " impressions" cant easily be quantified into a data set to be analyzed and evaluated, as such often dismissed as nonsense. If you guys carried on working "User Experience" improvements it would not be a bad thing.

Corona IPR is much faster than Vray IPR and I'm extensively using both for Auto-Viz. Personally for me, the post production tools in the Frame Buffer make it a lot easier for me to visualise what I will do in post, which is a great thing to have. Sometimes I don't even bother opening Photoshop cause I've go the look I want right inside the Frame Buffer. The VFB is almost the same as it was 10 years ago.

I'm actually looking at moving away from CPU rendering as my 4790k vs my 1080ti doesn't hold a candle to it. I was playing around with Fstorm last night and although it's exceedingly fast, it does feel unpolished and a product of one single guy.. but at 240 euros a year it's impossible to say no to.

I'm not sure i am analogizing the wrong data: IPR speed and UX are good on some tasks, but they won't get images converged sooner, and not everyone can call it done when a single frame has been produced, and fewer still are the ones calling a job "Final" by themselves.
Convergence speed is as important, for example, as overall flexibility (read: shader types, extended support for plugins, geometry types, image formats and so on), to the things you mentioned above, for those which require higher throughput, and need to achieve it in a more structured manner (read: renderfarm, proper post, and so on).
Part of what i mentioned earlier as being six of one and half a dozen of the other, or "evening out".
Mind you, i'm not stating UX and ultimate performance are mutually exclusive, but some choices will favour one at the expense of the other, often enough (f.e. choice of sampler, complexity/depth of an acceleration structure, and so on.).

Nor we ever discounted the feedback gotten from users as "nonsense": on the contrary we cherish and treasure that which is given, and all the more so when it's done in a structured and well-argumented way.
If we dig a bit, at times, often is to make sure we understand it well, and find ways to make it actionable upon.

but at 240 euros a year it's impossible to say no to.

But wait, wasn't the lack of ownership a problem in itself?
Or was it only an issue because of the amounts to be spent?

[hoppergrass]

thats just it, you are looking at it from a technical point of view. Yes all those thing you mention are important and Technically Vray is fantastic, I am agreeing with you, BUT the UX needs some attention.

A while ago I listened to a fantastic podcast (unfortunately it was a Modo modcast with Brad Peebler that is no longer available) about UX and software design. The basic take away I got from it was "you know you have a good UI when it is invisible to the UX". Vray has a long way to go before the UI is invisible.