I am in the lighting industry and have been using Mental Ray for the Lighting Analysis element. Since NVIDA is no longer producing Mental Ray I am now considering using V-Ray Next for its analysis.
My questions is if i buy the Perpetual License vs an Annual License, what does that entail? Does the perpetual come with perpetual upgrades?
Hello,
Both the Annual and Perpetual licenses come with updates for the current major version of V-Ray (e.g. if you have a V-Ray Next license you can use it with any version of V-Ray 4.XX), but an upgrade is still needed on a new major release.
Thank you for the response.
How often is there a “Major Version” update? I’m leaning toward purchasing the Perpetual. Is that the more cost effective route?
There are no set release dates for this. As a reference, V-Ray 3 for 3ds Max was released in February 2014 and V-Ray Next for 3ds Max was released in May 2018.
You’re going to get a hell of a lot of value and improvements for your single license purchase judging by the big things chaos have added in since 2006 
Thanks for the info. I am excited to start using V-Ray. I’ve been using Mental Ray and have been trying to get my work to switch over to V-ray and now that they have the Lighting Analysis they are giving me the go ahead. :mrgreen:
Well, a perpetual license will have a higher entry level than a rental, but then is followed by a no-thoughts season lasting a few years and “service packs”.
Rental could be useful to do a one-off job, to raise the number of render nodes for a short period, and so on, but on the long run is bound to cost one more.
Think of it as a “season pass”, versus a “pay per view”.
There is the very important catch, here, of perpetual getting a discount on major version upgrade, thereby extending the “season pass” for another period at a fraction of the cost.
If I purchase V-Ray and change machines, Is it transferable? We use multiple seats for 3ds Max. Is there a network license that will allow me to use V-Ray on our other seats of 3ds Max?