No I’m sorry this is purely a bait and switch and a cash grab. You guys keep promising updates and upcoming features to Vantage but then say the only way to keep using it is to buy a subscription. I buy a premium subscription, development significantly slows for vantage, and then I’m told it will no longer be included in the subscription I just paid for. That’s not right.
you say I’ll still have access to 1.8 but that’s going to be a dead product.
you use the excuse that customers may want to purchase a vantage only license and not the Vray suite if that’s the case then let them. Do you not do the same thing with Scans? Scans is included in the premium subscription AND it can also be purchased separately for $35 a month.
You are really making it hard for your customers to justify supporting your product with these kinds of business practices. Like others I’m running a business of my own and trying to stay competitive, but it seems like every 6 months there’s a new subscription I have to buy and another price increase. I can’t keep up with this.
I’m going to have to seriously consider if it will be worth it to renew my subscription when it expires.
It may be time to start learning Unreal and Blender at this point.
that would be very unfortunate, mildly spoken, if you really choose to make vantage a totally seperate subscription and not include it in the premium anymore. What’s the deal with having 2 options for purchasing?
I was really hoping for v2 to give me all the things I need for many use cases, cause I was really impressed with vantage. But I totally won’t purchase premium for 3 years now, only to having access to vantage, if I don’t know what to expect and how it really turns out for me in the end.
Then at least give us users more purchasing options, if this is really important. Like making custom packages. Instead of phoenix, or scans, I would rather opt for vantage.
$694.80 a year for a premium subscription is really steep, compared to other companies. The small one-man shop is paying less than half that for 3DS MAX. However, I guess it is in line with Adobe’s suite of products. Adobe isn’t a plug-in for another software; you can create using Adobe products, so it is a little different. Chaos’s stuff work inside of other software. IDK, $50 a month, to me and I would assume others, isn’t an awful lot of money, considering what you can create with it. Blender seems to be a suitable alternative for users who don’t have the cash flow for something like V-Ray, Vantage, Phoenix. Chaos will continue to raise prices until people stop paying. That is how it works.
Software as a Service will lead to this awkward situations.
Before it was developers selling licences to customers, now we are beta-testers and consumers. This and the chift of “identity” of the brand… chaos… really? How much did it costs to us?
I’ll not start the decade long request “Offer an option to buy CPU AND GPU, two different renders, on their own”
We shall see the price of a decade’s worth of developing an not production ready render needing a dedicated hardware.
Cheers
I’m in accord with the sentiments expressed here about the shift in subscription models. It’s become increasingly noticeable that the once standard practice of owning a perpetual license has shifted towards a more subscription-based model, making it feel somewhat akin to a recurring charge. This was not the case in the past, when we could access our projects indefinitely, even without an active subscription.
The emerging trend seems to be offering free assets or cloud services bundled with subscriptions, ostensibly to enhance the value proposition, but it also serves to keep users dependent on a particular platform. This can be inconvenient if you switch to another software and later need to access a previous project; without an active subscription, you’re out of luck. While this might be a niche scenario, it underscores how we, as creators who invest time and resources into these tools, can often feel the pinch of such models.
Initially, I had the impression that Vantage was a part of the pro subscription and would remain so. Having reviewed the correspondence from Chaos, I found no indication that its inclusion was limited to one year. I had adapted many of my workflows to incorporate it, particularly for real-time client interactions, but now it seems that Vantage is aligning more with the D5 render model (which realistically requires a paid subscription, coming in at £360 per annum).
To say this is disappointing would be an understatement.
.. Bobby P if he still reads my words despite my sometimes somewhat rude tone.. hum
2 years ago my team was able to render a bunch of 10 years old project for the most part it was pixel perfect(the math had to be perfect in post prod)
It’s not worth dedicating the whole pipeline nowadays. Eventhough they peppered it with “free assets”.
I have no problem that Chaos want to sell Vantage as a separate product (for those that can use it without Vray), but why can it not also be part of a package deal like it is today. Yes, it is expensive, but why not make a premium package including everything (or even a pick and choose model). Why do it have to be a separate product only? Like if we choose a full package we will get Vantage to a cheaper price than it will cost separately? I mean the price policy of Chaos is there doing and then we just have to choose if we are able to handle the price or we go for another render. Vray is good, but it is the package deal with Phoenix, Scans, Cosmos and Vantage that gives it a head start. If it gets to difficult, with all kind of confusion subscriptions solutions and no safe future promised we just go back to Arnold (I mean we can of course always go to Blender to get everything free) and use Unity /Unreal for the more quick solutions.
I am guessing that it the point. Still hope there will be some discount for active Vray users, especially in case where non users Vantage were brought to discussion but I would not bet any money on that. Anyway if the price is good I might add it to my vray6 with perpetual license.
Well played Chaos!!! Casino style, cold face poker game.
What an ugly trick on loyal customers for more than a decade :-/
Foul play is very politely said.
You can for sure keep your Vantage. Not laying my finger on it until you get your stuff together again.
So whats next? Phoenix? Incremental payments for every fix?
You have tricked us all to go from perpetual to subscription and now all of the sudden this?
I am out of words. Huge let down.
I sincerely hope people will not fall for this and show you this is not the right way to treat us.
Okay, please explain. I had V-Ray perpetual, was using Vantage for the first year free. When that free expired I was told that I had to go with a premium subscription to keep it, which I did. Are you telling me now that it has changed? This all happened literally a couple of months ago.
I have to agree.
I used Vray years ago, for about 6 years, then Corona and when Vantage started making strides I bought a licence for Vray again only to take advantage of the animation in Vantage, as it was so quick.
Then Vray pricing nearly doubled, and now I will have to pay extra for Vantage.
I could just buy Convertor Pro, use my Corona Licence and use the standalone Vantage?
Cut out Vray altogether…
I know Chaos have a 10 year plan, and have probably thought of this and the percentage of drop offs there will be, but I for one would love see the overall picture.
I get the feeling there is an even bigger shafting coming in the future…
Well, I’m glad there is at least a spot here for us users to express our reactions to this move pulling Vantage from premium subscription. I’m glad others are sharing their stories, similar to mine. Here I was actually anticipating that Corona would get ADDED to the premium bundle after the acquisition, but I’m confident that won’t happen at this point. Over the last year I’ve worked to switch my entire freelance workflow from standard vray to using Vantage for animation rendering…despite all the limitations and quirks, it’s just so much faster for me to be able to deliver projects to my clients, with only a single workstation. I switched to subscription for the savings, as the only things I use are vray for max and vantage. I suppose I’ll patiently await the pricing announcement for those 2 items, but I’m guessing that I’ll finally stop procrastination and switch to using Unreal 5 for production…the writing’s on the wall that everything’s going that way anyway. I saw the moderator’s comment that they have users bringing OBJs into Vantage and need a standalone purchase option…I can’t believe that’s more than a percent of a percent of their current Vantage users, plus it’s no reason to not leave it included in premium. I’ve loved the whole Chaos team and their tools for so long now, it’s a shame to see this bizarre move happen. Vray and Vantage are peanut butter and jelly (or chocolate, if you prefer), and it makes no sense to separate them, when something like Phoenix is way more of an “optional add-on” type software, yet still bundled (for now…I’m sure EmberGen is scaring them). Hopefully other users will continue to express their concerns here and that Chaos will continue to monitor and respond in these forums to keep their customers happy.
“The monthly cost of an annual Chaos Vantage license will be $54.90 ($659/yr), €49.90, or £43.40. Pricing of V-Ray Premium and Enterprise will remain unchanged.”
$659/yr for Vantage… are you serious??? Was not expecting this from Chaos. To use Vray + Vantage I will have to pay $1300/yr!!! What a joke Chaos. This is completely taking advantage of your loyal clients that have supported the development of your product through subscriptions. Chaos just seeing $$$ and not remembering where they started. Very disappointing and I know I can’t be the only one up in arms about this. The cost for Premium is not even changing with the removal of Vantage, I would love to see how many people adopt into this absurdity.
Half my team is using Blender and Cycles, I have defended using Max + Vray for the last two years, but the advances in Cycles speed and capabilities have been amazing. Vray can’t even come close to the speed of Cycles in scene for scene rendering. It’s a shame this is the direction Chaos is taking things, I have to seriously consider what my options are over the next year. Right now it looks like I will renew Vray cheapest option possible when my sub is up in July so I can close out my vray projects for the rest of the season and then begin to retool for Blender / Cycles over the winter or learn Unreal.
With the hoops I have to jump through to even get decent results from Vantage 1.8 VS Vray CPU BF+LC rendering I will not be jumping on the Vantage 2.0 train. Insanity.
…and all because some users of Vantage that use OBJ or FBOX imports from applications where V-Ray isn’t present… Bold move when it comes to price if this is true, but there is nothing anybody can do, forum is only to vent. They have all the numbers to support this decision, but I am curious of market reaction. Unreal will not be free forever too for that matter.
So for me, as a UK based SketchUp user it looks like it will be £520.80 + VAT for Vantage AS WELL AS £538.80 + VAT to be able to use it. Is that correct?
I must say it’s actually the second time I’m very disappointed about changes in the pricing structure of Chaos products. First time was when the price of render nodes exploded. That kept me from upgrading from my perpertual vray 3 license for years. About 1 month ago I finally upgraded to vray 6 premium subscription with 10 render nodes package. I still think the price of the workstation license is not cheap, but I also think vray is a very good renderer and when I compare vray 3 to vray 6, it has gotten a lot faster and especially this I like very much, because I mainly do animation. Though I still think that the pricing for render nodes is way too high.
And soon they take Vantage away from the vtay premium subscription which is very very bad move. At the very least, the price for the Premium subscription should also be lowered. Why should I continue to pay the same price and get less for the same money? This is not logical at all!
Who guarantees me that I won’t have to pay extra for Phoenixfd next year as well…? This all gives me a really bad feeling and I am starting to lose my trust in Chaos. I used to find this company very sympathetic and friendly, but now I have more angry feelings than positive ones.
I’m very disappointed about this announcement!
Right, so let me get this straight. Vantage, a software that has been included in the subscription for Vray up until this point, is now being split off into its own entity. This is allegedly being done to allow people to essentially pick and choose what they want, instead of having to invest in the full suite. Generally, sounds good. So then, one would expect pricing to reflect that right? Now were hearing that the price of the Vray subscription is staying the same, and the price of Vantage itself is going to now be nearly as much as the package it spun off of? That doesn’t add up.
I would honestly have more respect for the move if the justifications Chaos gave weren’t an outright and blindingly obvious lie. Just own it man. Just say “hey we are doing this because we want more money”. Don’t try to wrap this in an excuse of giving users freedom, because this is exactly the opposite. This is a blatant cash grab, so just admit it.
And to think I was actually excited about what Vantage could do. Now its a worse version of Unreal Engine with a insatiable hunger for Vram with some slight workflow improvements for an exorbitantly higher price. Nice job Chaos. Do better.
Bold move when it comes to price if this is true, but there is nothing anybody can do, forum is only to vent. They have all the numbers to support this decision, but I am curious of market reaction. Unreal will not be free forever too for that matter.