I know that some of you are waiting for a long time for this, so :
I’m proud to announce the release of my new online tool to convert Cubemaps to panorama tours : www.vrto.me
It works great with V-Ray, Corona, Octane, FStorm and other renderers that support cubemaps.
Christopher Nichols from CG Labs has been kind enough to create a tutorial showing how it works :
I’ve seen that this morning on CGPress - looks amazing !! bravo !
Only pricing seems a bit exaggerated, really … I think you should think again about your pricing policy, but that’s just my opinion. I’ll give a try for sure, but I’ll stick to KRPano for a while I guess
I agree that pricing and the credits system could be a bit more refined or maybe an in between 10 and 50 credit pack added. But then again, for the amount of automation this tool provides, it’s a pretty good value for your dollar. I do like the fact that once you unlock, you have to use credits to update it. It really forces people to think twice about those “oh I forget to tell you to change this” comments.
The problem is that it will take a lot of experimentation and some portfolio building before I could start charging efficiently for this I feel, so it will have a significant upstart cost. Perhaps offer a 10 pack free when you sign up? If it is good you will recoup this cost many times with repeat customers. If I understand it correct, having a space with hotspots for five rooms would mean a cost of 250 Euros?
I’ve build VRto.me with full features available for any user, for free.
This means that any user can create as much projects as he want and upload and convert as many cubemaps as he want, create hotspots and share the projects.
IE : You could work for 2 months on a project and make 10 revisions every day and still view and share your work in progress to your client for free.
The only limitation is the waterwark.
If you had a space with 5 rooms (cubemaps) this means you will need 5 credits to unlock the project. I’d think that if that was the case, the user would buy a 299€ to get 10 credits. It’s only 50€ more but you have double credits, so you will have 5 to use on any other project, without time limitation. This means you will have unlocked that project for 150€. If you think this is a workflow that works well for you and your client like it, the 50 credit bundle offers a even bigger discount so convert a cubemap will cost as low as 20€.
I don’t think that a 10 pack for free when signing up is a good idea, this might lead to users creating mutiple accounts only to enjoy the free credits and I’ll have to put measures and checks in place to avoid abuse. Being able to work and progress through the project without any limitation (beside the watermark) and only pay when you want to unlock is for me the best scenario for the end user. At least, that’s how I would have wanted to have the service working if I was a freelancer or company that would use the service.
Didn’t see the part with the watermark, that helps depending how intrusive that watermark is. I couldn’t find any examples of this, nor any mention of it on the site?
Still think the price is a bit steep for my case but I guess it’s the same for all software, for a freelancer 3ds Max is a notable cost but for a big firm peanuts. Didn’t quite get how a 10 credits for 300 Euros could end up being 20 per credit?
If people have to sign up with their credit cards you would probably eliminate people creating multiple accounts, so still think that could be an idea, but again that depends on how intrusive that watermark is.
Sorry Stan, while I understand your arguments, I still think it’s way too pricey or simply that the way credits are handled aren’t realistic. I’ll give you a simple example: let’s say I need to calculate hires panos with a renderfarm, that would cost less than converting the rendered cubemap using VRTo.me, though a whole different uphill investment … I’m not saying your system is bad, not all, to be honest it seems pretty neat - I’m just one of those thinking your pricing is outdated, from my point of view. That’s a pity.
I guess that’s an option you’ve thought about: what about a monthly subscription, you can stop anytime ? various subscriptions with various conversion options, that could be adapted to everyone’s needs ? just an idea though, it’s your business after all
The price tag was a hard one me, and it still is.
I understand your arguments.
Although I know the whole industry goes with a subscription base model, I didn’t though it would be the best scenario for the user. But I’m happy to introduce that option and have two models, maybe that would be better for the user, be able to choose between normal pay upfront and subscription model.
Just a thought :
What happens if the user un-subscribe? Should I kill all the links? Meaning that the 15 clients that have their tour embedded on their site will be unavailable?
Should I keep the links but just not the ability to convert the tour without watermark?
If I do subscriptions with different steps would subscription A give you 2 conversion, subscription B 5 and C 10? So you would be able to do 2-5 or 10 every month, what happens if you need to do 15 or 7, will you jump around through subscriptions? or not be able to convert them at all? Or add a unlimited subscription who would be expensive?
I just hear a lot of people saying that they hate subscription because it’s better if you want to use the product for x months, but in the long run you’ll loose.
I don’t know, It just make more sense to know upfront what your budget will be and get it accordingly to your client, and if you don’t use the service for 6 months, then you don’t pay, but I’ll definitely think about a subscription base model.
Can I ask what you guys would think the service should be priced at? Both for a new subscription model and for upfront payments?
We just finished a project that included a panotour with 40 panos.
This was running for months, so there were lots of meetings between designer and their clients showing the pano etc. So it would have needed to to be “final” everytime. If I understand the pricing this would have cost a grand every update?
Additionally, I wouldnt want this hosted on any website other than our own.
I think there should be the option just to have the conversion/creation done for you that I can then download and host on another website potentially.
Maybe provide an offline version, a standalone app, for one off purchase, no hosting.
Tricky one.
Personally not a fan of any “credit” based payment model.
Big items for us would be to have the ability to create/link a custom URL to the tour. Most of our clients would want this tour to live within their site and would immediately reject any notion of a non-branded URL. I fully support the idea of having access to the created web files to do with as we please, even if that means a bit more cost for us.
It is a good point about if you are on a subscription based service and you cancel. In reality, your projects should go away as well and that doesn’t work well for most of us. We would have to roll the subscription cost to the client so they can keep their content online when we as visualizers have ceased working on the project. That puts us in the middle man position.
Outside of the problems with piracy, this may be a good reason to give the option to release this as a stand alone (if all possible) app with a subscription cost. If I cancel my Adobe subscription, I don’t lose all of my files I created. I just lose Photoshop and the ability to edit them.
There is no real easy answer for this but I do appreciate you taking the time to hear everyone’s concerns.
@ AlexP :
I understand that a grand would be a lot of money for every revision, but at the same, you are most certainly charging something to your client to get 40 panos “Final” every time. Can’t that be added to the costs?
If you’re not a “credit” based person, I guess you would be more a subscription based person. Would those 40 conversions happen with luck every month or would it be possible to have a revision happening on the 3th and another one on the 28th in this case you would need 80 conversion in a month. With 80 conversions, we can fairly imagine you would need to get to the unlimited subscription. What would you think is fair to get a unlimited subscription plan?
I’m just guessing you would have that for few months, but not every month in a year, so would you switch subscription plan every month depending on your needs?
@ VelvetElvis :
Rolling the subscription to the client would be tricky I conceive, that’s why I though that a credit base would work better. Every time a client comes to you and ask for 360 panos, I would think you would just add the costs of vrto.me on top of your current price. That way, no surprises for you or the client, it just works and no worries about files getting deleted/disconnected or anything.
I understand your point for owning the source files and be able to host them anywhere you want, just wanted to point out two things :
1) you can embed as you please the url that is hosted from vrto.me into any web page, so for the end user, it wont be visible that it’s hosted on vrto.me
@ AlexP & VelvetElvis :
2) If solution 1 is not good enough, you can always contact me directly and I’ll be able to re-process the files and provide you the source files. This would be fully branded free and completely customizable to your needs. It wont be with vrto.me’s fees as it will be a personalized job though.
That’s what Peter Guthrie did for his 70 Vestry project, and we pushed the customization by having a map of the apartment and mapspots etc.
I would be glad if one of you could let me know what a fair price would be for either a subscription or a credit base, something where you would be happy to use the tool on a daily base.
I would suggest to consider making something as a stand alone tool. It would be helpful and sell well I think. If the price is reasonable, i wouldn’t worry about piracy, people would just buy it in a bit!
Otherwise, you really should consider another option to create tours not hosted in your website. It is not about linking or embed url, very often architects have confidential work that just cant be around in the internet! Big studios don’t care much about the price as would be worried about privacy, don’t forget to consider that!
I second that. I create interior design panos and like to use a stereo output, but often the work is under NDA or the client like to show the panos on expositions, where the pano should run on an offline computer. UI and workflow of the tool is great and I would buy it as stand alone tool.
Any update Stanley?
Our company is working with a big tech company client. In a free talk, I mentioned them this tool, they were interested but the first thing they said was: Can it run in our servers?
They wanted to host the website in their servers! Concerned about security, privacy and leaking info…
