Hi Chaos team and all the legal and devoted users of Vray,
I ve had a very in depth browse of the Evermotion site today and I ve been very surprised by the rise of quality of the eastern 3D guys (Vietnam, China, India etc.)
Not only they go below the standard working fees but they heavily use the illegal software and post on Evermotion with no shame whatsoever.
Would it be possible to have an updated customers list available for all the registered vray users so we can uncover who is cheating and whos not?
For example in this case (please note that i am not saying this guy is an illegal vray user)
inspired by Bertrand Benoit, this guys final work is very well carried out (with DOF).
He doesnt state hes done it in vray, but i have a great feeling it is.
I would like to know if he is legal vray user or not.
Why is he not on this forum posting when he can clearly speak english???
If he is legal owner of the soft, then i deeply apologize of course for taking him as an example!
I woudl also like to know why Evermotion is undirectly supporting piracy by publishing works done with pirated software.
I want to put those pirate guys to shame…publicly
I want to make their lives on those forums harder somehow.
Is there anyone willing to join me?
Come on guys those people are stealing our jobs!
Their quality has gone up by miles!
Best Regards and please forgive me if anyone gets insulted by reading this
I’m all with you on this one! Why those guys don’t post here !? BECAUSE they don’t have legal copies of vray that’s why !
Evermotion is really staring to kill us all who worked our ass off for years to get somewhere and now guys just download tutorial, some sample scene and pop from nowhere one by one !
I don’t think there is really much that can be done about warez. Even if new versions of vray came with some really hardcore anti-warez features, there are still all the older versions kicking around out there, and lets face it, even with a very old version of vray, you can produce pretty stunning renders.
I think you just need to make sure that you promte your professionality (is that a word???) in all your marketing and quotes that you prepare for clients or potential clients.
surely becoming better and improving your skill is important above all
BUT
in these days when client are pushing you almost to the costs level leaving you almost no margin on your works… its hard NOT to get angry there is so many people outthere getting away with using pirated soft while publishing their stuff on such forums
Most of them are making pretty good money and still dont buy the soft!!
Thank god we made a good move from having our portfolio strictly archviz.
Part of me thinks software developers support piracy, on some level, because it get’s their software out there. Years ago, I started seeing some nice work on forums (Evermotion), found out that the software was V-Ray, and bought it. If these guys are learning it, to get their foot in the door, I understand. I don’t condone it, but I understand it. Now, having said that, better artist have access to better tools. An example, although lame, is I see landscape trucks driving around all the time. I can cut grass, but I don’t have the tools. You start by using your parents lawn mower, you eventually buy your own, and keep moving up. Some guys are steeling expensive equipment, that they didn’t earn, to take work away from the ones that earned it. I know; I’m waffling!
I have seen threads where people post screen shots, of the V-Ray dialog, and it’s obviously a cracked version. I wonder if software is like retail. The ones who pay, are paying for the ones who don’t, too.
I appreciate the gusto Martin. I’m conflicted as I understand the comments regarding an un-winnable fight.
Let’s think about one route where Chaos Group makes an list available on their site a list of registered users -Companies or persons. This would allow companies who want to hire a 3d artist to check the site for a legal user. The problem is, our clients don’t care what software we use. I can tell them I use V-Ray but it doesn’t matter to them, so why would they check? It sounds like it’d have to be industry-wide of all 3d software, adobe, and all renderers to make anyone care.
Now, the pro is you can spin this for your personal/company marketing. If Chaos Group published the list, we, in marketing ourselves, can point to the list and say “That’s me, a fully legal user”, and can say to our client that we’re glad they care about software piracy and honest work, this works for them too.
I still think software company’s could prevent piracy, if they wanted to. Software piracy has been around as long as software, and I have never seen a real effort to stop it. I betcha, if you stopped piracy, sales of software would go down.
I disagree. Software companies cannot prevent piracy. They can make it difficult or use security by obfuscation to make life for disassemblers harder, but in the end. There’s still a
asm:
call regScheme
cmp eax
jz 00401BE9
Somewhere in those op codes of the executable that can be changed to negate it. I really like what some game companies are doing to thwart piracy. They make the game randomly unplayable/buggy. This is bad publicity for them when people start complaining the game is buggy or screen turns black, but it’s actually an anti-piracy built in.
Anti-piracy is not an option worth pursuing for me. Some meaningful measures should be taken of course by all software companies, but at the end of the day, I still think educating our clients about the problems we face trying to explain why someone somewhere else can charge 1/8th of what we’re asking is more valuable. When you get someone else to care about an issue too, they will in turn educate others, which will further your cause.
You just run it through backburner and problem solved… there is no way to protect anything. Sooner or later, all of us will be looking into a new career.
I’ve thought a lot about this as well. Given that I’m not a software developer I assume there are many factors that I am totally unaware of, but I think spending a lot of money and time on anti-piracy is probably a lost cause. If the software is desirable it will turn up in a torrent sooner or later.
My suggestion would be to consider selling Vray for a lot less money, so *some* pirates would turn over, and charge a membership for access to the support and forums. For me, that has been just as important as the software. Probably wouldn’t fly with the user base though
we’ll all be running software through the cloud, you watch and see. The 3DS max server will talk to the V-Ray server…
I’m sure the pirates think they are doing a good thing; steal from the rich and give to the poor, just like Robin Hood. 3DS MAX cost $3,495.00, which is more then some people make in a year. Some people go to school, learn on the school’s computer to get their foot in the door, but school has become astronomically expensive. In the illegal users heads they steal the software, learn how to use it to get their foot in the door, and the boss will buy a legal seat of the software when they get hired.
Recent innovations (over the past 5-7 years) in creating mostly functional “non-commercial” software is doing good things in this regard for the up side. Also educational licenses are affordable as well, these are good steps in the right direction.
Bobby:
you can buys MAX for 3.500? Lucky you! Our prices here are 4.700!!! Hows thats sound? :))))
We have two licences for which were paying subscription which is not cheap either considering the updates are so crap
I am not bothered if someone uses pirated soft to learn and once he starts making money, he buys it…Thats fine with me. People have to start somehow.
The problem really is that once those people find out, they can get away with it easily, they dont bother their soft is stolen.
There are no means to hunt those people down probably…
Here in Czech be have BSA. They can only come to check your soft upon being alleged by someone together with some proves. They cant do just random checks. So the process of uncovering the dodgy freelancers is very slow (if any).
Load of people here work in a way that they have a small office with PC and Blender on it to show to authorities they use lagal stuf, but at home, they have a beast with VRAY, MAX, SOFTIMAGE, MAYA, ZBRUSH, MUDBOX, NUKE, OCTANE, MARI etc…
Erm…and you find that a BAD thing? Wait till a freelancer (that is angry for whatever reason), or a competitor (for “business” reasons) sends these guys over costing you a lot of money and time…to prove that you are not guilty…Microsoft has a weirdo part in their EULAs that allows this. Which leads to our IT spending a lot of time proving we are legit instead of maintaining our infrastructure…thank you, but no thank you.
This goes along with the way DVDs and BluRays are set up nowadays. Shitloads of warnings and anti-piracy ads, followed by non-skippable trailers sometimes. I payed Money to see the film. I don’t need to watch your ads, nor do i need to be threatened by a stupid FBI warning. And then these hassles are removed for the people pirating the movie. Thank you again, but no thank you again.
If the anti-piracy measures do nothing but hassle the legit customers, than they serve no purpose, hurt your case and cost a lot of money.
