a few days ago I received an E-Mail from Chaosgroup, that I need to update my perpertual license of Vray 3.6 and all my rendernodes to vray next untill september 30, 2020, otherwise I would loose my right to upgrade to a later version. I own a vray 3.6 workstation and 15 rendernodes. Checking with the upgrade calculator, the upgrade would cost me 2.930 € for the workstation license and all my rendernodes, so alltogether I would pay 2.930 € plus tax for the upgrade. I think this is a lot of money, especially in the year of corona when a lot of my jobs were canceled and I guess this true for most 3D Artists. So I´m really thinking about buying into another renderer like corona. Don´t get me wrong, I really like vray and used it for many years, but I think this is really too expensive. If you moved the upgrade expire date to september 2021, I would think about upgrading, but this way I probably won´t.
I really understand your concerns about the upgrade cost. We would like to make it easier for our users to move to V-Ray Next and V-Ray 5, and this is why with the release of V-Ray 5 we’ll introduce our trade-in promo offer. With this offer, you will be able to replace your V-Ray 3 for 3ds Max perpetual licenses and V-Ray 3 Render Node licenses for V-Ray annual licenses, and will also get 20% discount on the annual license price for the first year.
In your specific case, if you take advantage of this promo offer, it would cost you €2,140 (excl. VAT) for the first year. So it would require less initial investment + would also provide you with access to both V-Ray Next and V-Ray 5 builds.
Access to the latest V-Ray technology really is a major benefit for you here, as V-Ray Next and V-Ray 5 include massive improvements and new features that you’ll be able to use for your projects.
You can learn check out the new features here.
Thanks for the info, Ivan, but I don’t think this will be an option for me. I already have a 3ds Max subscription for 1.600,- per year and from the second year on I would then pay 2.400,- for my one vray workstation license with 15 nodes, not to speak of an Adobe subscription, etc., etc…A lot of running costs for a 3D Artist/freelancer. Already it’s sometimes hard to communicate to my customers why the costs of 3d animations getting more and more expensive, because of steadily rising software costs and they are not always willing to pay that and then I am the one who earns less money. At least it would be fair to allow a longer time period for then not being able to upgrade my 3.6 licenses anymore, barely 4 months is way too short, especially in corona virus times and makes me a bit angry and frustrated…
Not too long ago, there was at least an option to upgrade a workstation license with 10 rendernode for a reduced price, then I would think about the upgrade…
Where has that option been gone by the way?
I totally understand the difficulties you’re going through and I will forward your feedback to our product and sales teams. We are constantly striving to offer products that better meet our customers’ needs and we take such feedback into consideration when forming future policies.
I’d like to specify that the upgrades from V-Ray 3 to V-Ray Next perpetual licenses will be possible until the release of V-Ray 5. It is the trade-in promo that will begin with the release of V-Ray 5 and continue until 30 September.
It is correct that we stopped offering bundles back in early 2019, however volume discounts for render node licenses have still been available by now.
In your specific case, you can still decrease your costs if you upgrade/trade-in only part of your render node licenses. In case you only sometimes need additional boost to your rendering power, you may consider taking advantage of our Chaos Cloud rendering solution for these cases.
I’m here to help if you need any additional information.
I received the same email from Chaos and when I tried to reply, the email address was not recognised and bounced back, so not too impressive. Instead I contacted my local reseller and they confirmed what has been discussed above. Don’t get me wrong, I am a great admirer of Chaos, having used VRay for the past 17 years, but a 20% one off discount for exchanging a Perpetual License for an annual one is rather insulting. As I’m still on VRay 3.7, I will probably keep my perpetual license for old/recurring projects, skip VRay Next and move up to VRay 5 with an annual license when it is released in the next month or so. Apparently Chaos’ intention is to increase the regularity of VRay releases, so an annual license will be more economical over time. As long as they don’t go down the Autodesk route of unneccessary version releases every year, which introduce few new features, but more bugs and outrageous price hikes…
This is unfair.
In the text you quoted he *clearly* uses the adverb “sometimes”.
No one is asking you to thrash your farm for our cloud.
However, if cost is really what you want to look at, then you should factor in the cost of hardware (with upgrades every so often.), the cost of electricity (for each render), the cost of general support (because things break), and the cost of licensing for each node (which is always easier to scale up, rather than down.).
Then the commercial proposition of a farm which is always at the bleeding edge of performance, which costs you only when you use it (regardless of local costs for electricity.), which is (nearly) always available, which has no licensing requirements to scale up or down doesn’t look so bad.
Each case differs, surely, but we didn’t come up with this stuff out of the blue, and much less so to try and collar our users: clients requested the options, we strived to provide them.
That´s right, through the years I invested in meanwhile 15 render PCs which sum up to quite a lot of money. I´m using these primarily on industrial animations with ultra high polygon count CAD data which the whole farm needs to be rendering on to meet the deadlines which can often be very tight. It gives me a bad feeling, when I think about updating only half of my rendernodes. It´s like, bevore the upgrade my whole renderfarm was rendering, after the upgrade only half of my farm is and I´m nonetheless spent quite some money.
It´s totaly clear to me that upgrading 15 rendernodes will not be cheap, but mainly 2 points annoy me as already stated above, but again to bring it to the point:
Firstly, that I loose the right to upgrade my nodes after September 30
Secondly, that the option to Upgrade 1 Workstation License with 10 nodes at a reduced prize has been removed, which, if I remember right, was always an option in past years.
And, when I´m thinking about that upgrading to vray5 probably will cost about the same amount of money again, puuuh…
I know, I could overcome this by renting vray, but I can´t help myself, I never liked the idea of renting software and I hated it when autodesk was going that direction. Monthly running costs are the killer for most freelancers, because you have to pay steadily, even in periods when money is tight.
I wish there was a vray indie license for freelancers with an yearly income under 100 K like sidefx is doing, especially for the rendernodes, because the prize of the vray workstation license is in deed very fair! But dreaming should be allowed…
Just like mindventure I also never liked the subscription options, that’s why I was really hoping that chaosgroup would make at least some minor incentive for a way to upgrade from 3 to 5 (they used to do it in the past), but it’s clear that they prefer to sell the subscription and not the perpetual licences and it’s ofcourse their right, the only thing I felt not so great about is that they are closing the way to upgrade from 3 really soon, (within about 2 weeks) and this reminded me a bit of the treatment from autodesk I get with my perpetual license I guess vray is not becoming the most attractive choice for freelancers, but I still think that corona is less of a renderer, hehe
So i think the best option for vray3 users is to just trade in Your perpetual license and move to subscription (until the end of september)
Decision is made, I´ll migrate over to corona and probably by subscription. This is more than half of the price compared to vray. I´ll pay 75,- € per month for a workstation license with 15 rendernodes, I can live with that. Vray would be about 200,- € per month in my case.
I´m using the vray gpu renderer very rarely anyway and I´m paying always for one half of vray that I practicly don´t use.
So, I think corona is my best option and migrating over doesn´t seem to be that hard. I´m gonna miss vray, which I like a lot, but this is getting way too expensive for me, sometimes you have to change things.
First of all thank you all for the honest feedback and for your support for V-Ray. It looks like most of you are long term users - we really appreciate your commitment and your investment in V-Ray over the years. The points you bring up make a lot of sense. We continuously consider these points and other trade-offs internally. Freelancers are the group that has driven V-Ray forward both with product feedback and adoption across industries for the last 15+ years so we are very sensitive to the needs of this particular user group.
Of course on the other hand there are the developments in the whole ecosystem - increased competition in rendering, the massive adoption of subscription model by all major DCC vendors, the consolidation we see in the last few years (big DCC companies acquiring smaller rendering focused companies). We’ve done our best to stay competitive and adapt in this environment. This includes accelerating development/release cycle with the corresponding increases in R&D. Also the evolving offerings you mentioned (render node packs, upgrade policies, etc). We made a commitment to never go “route of unnecessary version releases every year”. We also decided to avoid at all costs forcing our customers to change their preferred purchase method by discontinuing perpetual licenses.
Our approach has been focused on trying to provide better value and encouraging people to switch gradually to recurring subscriptions this way. And switching is the only sustainable way forward given the industry dynamics… Frankly, this has not been an easy task and has sometimes come at a significant cost on the business side - both in terms of profitability and creating sometimes confusing and complex offerings (just look at the pricing section on our product pages on the website - you almost need a manual to understand it)…
As the release of V5 approaches we remain committed to offer options to our perpetual customers who are not ready to switch to recurring. Based on your feedback we will consider two specific items and will adopt them if possible:
1.Offering a new opportunity to upgrade a perpetual license from v3 - > v5. We would have to price this somewhere between a standard upgrade and a new perpetual license to keep the overall value incentives consistent.
2.Extend the period for trade-in of a v3 perpetual license to annual beyond Sept 30. This, I believe, makes a lot of sense, especially given the unique coronavirus situation.
I can’t promise we will do these definitely but we’ll do our best to accommodate to the degree possible after we sync and get feedback from our partners and resellers across the world.
So i think the best option for vray3 users is to just trade in Your perpetual license and move to subscription (until the end of september)
I strongly believe this indeed the best value for most customers and I hope you will find such investment to be worthwhile over the coming years.
Thanks for that Miro. We use several render engines, mostly Corona at the moment which is why I haven’t upgraded to Next. The cost of upgrading a v3 license to 5 is the same as buying a new perputual license. As we’re not using VRay a lot there isn’t any point in upgrading them, which is a pity as if we don’t have vray licenses we’re less likely to use it. I’m not sure if I’m wording this correctly but what I’m trying to say is that the pricing structure at the moment make it so that there is no reason for casual users to upgrade to v5.
I guess vray is not becoming the most attractive choice for freelancers, but I still think that corona is less of a renderer, hehe