CGPress uses technology like cookies to analyse the number of visitors to our site and how it is navigated. We DO NOT sell or profit from your data beyond displaying inconspicuous adverts relevant to CG artists. It'd really help us out if you could accept the cookies, but of course we appreciate your choice not to share data.
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
I hope he starts using Houdini or another package with a permanent license available.
Cheers.
What? This is about TP and a great training DVD set he made for free and you go off on some random tangent yet again. You’d think you would finally be happy because the word FREE is attached to this since you complain about pricing ALL. THE. TIME.
Juang3d’s tangents are welcome on this site. We wish more artists were awake and conscious of the problem rental-only licensing brings. In fact, we’re considering giving him some kind of award.
He’s not complaining about pricing, he is complaining about licensing.
Like many previous articles, he’s also complaining about issues that are irrelevant to the article at hand. Here’s a free training dvd so let’s complain about licensing!
Short answer so you don’t have to read the long answer if you don’t want… it’s too long…
This is about TP training, and this can encourage pepople to use TP, so I want to be sure that those encouraged people are very well informed about the licensing scheme of this plugin wich is RENTING ONLY, so they can think twice, make their numbers and be conscius on where are they walking into instead of believing what the advertising says, not everything is about cool and shiny features…
That’s why I speak everywhere, so people that like this but don’t know exactly how this work can understand that this could be problematic, and that they are going to pay for a limited right on a limited time, so they understand they are RENTING the license, becuase the companies like to call it SUBSCRIPTION because it sounds better than RENTING, but it’s a RENTING.
Cheers.
@MaxUser25 Your opinion is welcome on this site, too. Different points of view will always be respected here.
@MaxUser25
And yet again you are free to ignore my comment 🙂
Anyways, each time I see something related to TP or Cebas I will continue with this, because It doesn’t matter how cool and great this product could be when the only licensing option it carries is the renting, and it’s worse when they want to call it “subscription” because the word “rent” does not sound good.
It’s worst when they try to tell you that it’s going to be better for the user when it’s going to be far worse for the user, they can change things, but until they change their mind I will be continously speaking out loud and saying what I think even with small comments.
It’s great that those DVD’s are free, but I want people to know that this great training is tied to a plugin that you CAN’T OWN, it’s just rented.
As CGP said (thanks for the support BTW), it’s not about pricing, I can think something is cheap or expensive, it will depend on my personal economic situation, but I never said that anything is expensive per se in this case, I said that they say it’s going to be cheaper, that it’s better, when in fact you are going to be paying a lot more for a lot less, and when I say a lot less I’m not speaking about features but about rights of use, and wait and see what happens when ALL autodesk goes on renting only, with their crazy pricing, ha! I’ll keep working with Autodesk with my permanent licenses until they decide to raise the “real subscription” price (no their new Desktop Subscription wich is not a subscription but a renting) out of their mind and then I’ll quit for sure, I’m already prepairing to abandon all renting only software to migrate towards Houdini, Modo, Blender and a bunch of packages, no matter it’s price, I’ll save to pay for them, I’ll talk with my bank, but I’ll own my licenses and I’ll own my work, I won’t be forced by anyone to pay them to access and modify my work, my work is mine, and my tools should be mine, at least I should have the option to own them.
So I hope you can still read the article without having my comment all over it, but if you can’t I’m sorry, but I wish this could help some people to avoid this kind of licensing and the software that forces you to pay them this way.
As I always say this is for RENTING ONLY licensing, there is nothing wrong in renting as an option, and once again it’s not about the price, it’s about the licensing scheme, forcing you to pay to be able to work is not good for you, no matter how much does it costs, you can make your own numbers, how much do you pay now, and how much are you going to pay later, and what will happen to you when the day when you don’t have moeny to pay in the middle of a project will reach you, can you tell me how are you going to finish your project? You don’t own anything so… you will be in a pretty bad situation because you’ve payed a lot for something but as soon as you stop paying you don’t have anything.
Why did the author made them free? just out of curiosity…
And BTW, why the TP “blackboxes” (I don’t remember the exact name) that the users make are being sold instead of “subscribed” as all the plugin? why they don’t like this model for their users but they like it for them?.
Just a bit of food for though.
You are welcome to enjoy the onversation or to ignore this message, as you please, and you are welcome to try to convince me or any other person that reads this that I’m wrong, and the renting only is the best licensing scheme for users, not just for the companies, but with numbers please, and thinking in the big picture, including all you need to work with TP wich is not a standalone piece of software, I think talking is good, no hard feelings 🙂
Cheers.
Best bundle training for TP now free. I bought the original one, amazing material from Joe and Goran, with pro tips and tricks, very happy that everyone can acces that for free.
Would you say it’s the best intro to TP? The place to start?
i think is a little advanced and technical for someone that wants to start.
Best for starters is hristos Dvds, and after this ones, Joes is getting really in to detail and advanced production techniques. Really worth it both of them.
I still reference it and Hristo’s dvd when I haven’t used a certain group of operators. I’m so happy it’s online and I don’t have to plug in a hard drive :).
This is great news! This training serires was unavailable for a long time. Glad to see it out again and free.
I learn a lot from this videos. Really help my cg fx
Shouts out to MaxUser25, Eloi, Guillermo and all, especially Goran, Rif and the whole CG Fluids community from you know when, and all the crews I’ve worked with. 😉
Goran Pavles deserves great credit for his work on this release and we thank him for his efforts, perseverance and deft skills in production.
We decided to release these for a few reasons, primarily to help the artists who spend time daily in TP, or for anyone who is interested in learning how TP works, a small fraction of what it can do, the pitfalls to watch out for, and how great it can be when wielded sanely 😉
VFX software is a work in progress and TP is no exception. Version 6 includes some great new features and I’m excited to push it to new highs.
These tutorials were also released because I believe the more people that learn and use it proficiently the more people we can hire and work with doing some incredible visual effects for film and beyond.
Another reason to release them is the fact that our sales had slowed dramatically (possibly because I left the “for sale” site down to give enough time to release them for free 😉 Also, there’s no doubt the pirated versions had an impact, but such is life. Darn pirates stealing my booty! 😉
Everyone knows software needs attention – things to fix, features to add, development platforms to update. Look at how many packages have maintenance and upgrade plans: Nuke, 3dsMax, Maya, Houdini, Adobe and beyond – a very long list.
Sure, I understand why people would want a buy-once and use-forever option. I even agree with it in a lot of cases. Just remember the old price for a new seat of TP was around ~$1800, and then upgrade prices for major new versions. @Juang3d, have you contacted Cebas to inquire about a one-time perpetual license?
The subscription model doesn’t work for everyone. In today’s world it’s nearly impossible to please everyone. And yes, caveat emptor!
I bought TP 1.0 and paid for every upgrade since. I’m also on subscription, at first begrudgingly, but after all the new features in TP 6 and looking at the road ahead, the subscription price seems more than reasonable. It helps I’m employed and work with an insanely great group of talented people – we have fun making VFX and solving things together, and TP is just one of the great tools we use daily.
Anyway, I digress. This post was supposed highlight that more training materials are now available so anyone can see how TP works and a small fraction of the ways it can be used.
Hope everyone finds these videos useful and continues to increase the quality of their work.
Also check out the great tutorials from Joe Gunn and Hristo Velev!
Cheers!
Joe
P.S Houdini is great, too! 😉
Thanks for answering Joe! 🙂
The thing is not about making everyone happy but about fairness, in fact it’s pretty easy and other companies did it very well like Allegorithmic or Render Legion with Corona.
The thing that you paid since v1 is great, you were supporting a great piece of software but what do you think about your loss of rigs over your license? If you, for any reason, stop paying your license, if you don’t have cash at any time to dedicate to it, you loose your license and your access to modify and work with your files.
This is because they have a RENTAL ONLY licensing scheme, so they own your work basically, to be able to modify YOUR work you have to pay them, is that simple, and there are other important things like they want to sell it as a subscription, not as a renting, because they don’t like the rent word, but it is in fact a rent, this could be great in some situations, but not in all situations.
Yes, we had a chat here in CGPress in another thread of comments where I asked them for a solution to this, not just me but many other people, well the first answer was that they were not renting, but selling a subscription, many of us disagree, they can call my car bicycle, but if it’s a car it’s a car, the final answer, making it short, was that they did not care at all, if I don’t like it I can go to other software, basically they don’t care.
The final piece of cake was when Dave from Maxplugins.de positioned himself in a very similar opinion stating similar opinions to mine (as many other people) and then they said that management was aware of it and they will see what they can do, sincerely I don’t care how they treat me as long as they start selling permanent licenses again (even in a rent-to-own model similar to Allegorithmic ) but it’s clear that they though I was no one so they did not have to care about my opinion and the opinion of a lot of other potential customers or actual customers that did not like the scheme.
I made there a few numbers and demonstrated how much the cost of tools is going to raise with a rent-only licensing model, but they did not answer to that.
If you want to check all the conversation is here, including the basic numbers I did:
https://cgpress.org/archives/thinkingparticles-6-2-brings-smoke-operators-and-atmospheric-rendering-effects.html
So again, congrats on the videos, thanks for making them free, but before people dives into TP they should know some things:
-There is no “training versions” if you are not an actual student in an academy
-The trial version don’t let you save anything
-If you want TP you have to subscribe for a full year, so if you just need it for a month, you still have to pay for it for a full year (so the main leverage they sell you, flexibility, is gone)
– if you stop paying you loose your license, so you can’t work anymore until you pay again
-basically they own rights over your work because to modify your old work you are forced to pay them, since you don’t own any license you are prohibited to modify your work unless you pay them again.
I think we as artist should fight agains a RENTAL ONLY licensing scheme, we should communicate that this is bad for everyone, no matter how good is for ourselves right now, this is bad for all the creators community, this is going to chain you to them, to force you to pay for your work no matter how old is it, and if you are in an economic struggle, well, you are out of luck, or you pay or you don’t work, that’s it, and if they decide to raise the price… You are out of luck too, or you pay something that maybe you can’t pay,or you don’t work.
We should think not just in us, but also in others that may be in a hard situation, others that maybe can to the effort to pay in one year 2500€ for a permanent license, but that gain just what they need to live so they can’t be paying month after month, people that can have a bad moment without any cash, and in that situation they won’t be able to work unless they own their tools, people that may be us at some time, we have to make software companies that RENTAL ONLY licenses are bad for us in the short and medium therm, but they are going to be bad for them in the medium and long run.
It’s our responsibility to avoid other artists to fall in the wrong impression they try to sell us that it’s good and beautiful and you pay less… when in reality you are going to be paying a lot more in the long run, and you are loosing A LOT of rights and benefits you have when you have your permanent license.
Let’s not think just in us and today, let’s think in others and tomorrow.
Cheers.
Just to support Juang3D claims … I’m from Brazil. In the last two years, our currency lost a LOT of power. Now … for $ 1,00 I need R$ 4,00.
If I had bought TP when the Dollar was 1 to 2 Reais, that would almost be the same as what I would need to spend now for renting just one year.
Of course, if I needed to buy Houdini today, I would be in deeper trouble. But the fact remains … if the economy gets worse and I own a license, I can just skip upgrades until things improve and continue using software. With renting … well, or I’ll start loosing money or I’ll just stop working.
Disclamer: I’m a student only, but I would be growing through this if I were a freelance or company owner.
In fact you won’t be in such trouble since apart from the own licensing scheme, they have their Indie licensing scheme wich is renting also, and you have to pay the sum of 199$ for a full year of houdini in the case you have a business that makes less than 100K$, in case you do more than 100k$ you are in a situation where you can acquire the permanent license, but in case you make less than that, you may pay 199$ for the indie license, the key thing here is that they let you pick wich one of the two is the one that better fits your situation.
Cheers!
And that’s why I’m learning Houdini. 🙂
They do not give choice because you can not buy Indie. They “force” you to rental. What’s different?
As I said this is not about price but about licensing options.
They do not force you to go rental, you are able to acquire a permanent license of Houdini at any time, it’s more expensive? Yes it is, but that would be my problem to pay it and to arrange the money to pay it, but the fact is that I can acquire Houdini with a permanent license whenever I want.
Now they also give a renting option, which is great, and it’s specially directed towards indie users which usually don’t win so much money to acquire the permanent license.
But the option is there! You can make an effort and acquire the permanent license at any time!
I don’t have a problem with renting as an option, I have a problem with RENTAL-ONLY, and I always say it, the problematic thing is the rental-ONLY.
Cheers.
BTW Houdini Indie and the full version are the same software, but indie has some limitation… Is there ANY version of TP you can acquire permanently?
As I said, you can not buy Indie. NO CHOICE!
Your choice is rental at $100/year or $4,495(or $6,995 if you want floating lic) + @2,495/year!
Such a great choice!
Also it seems everybody assumes that you are eligible to use Indie. But, read EULA carefully.
“aggregate gross revenues from all sources less than US$100,000”
It means you should make less than $100,000 BEFORE max and any expenses.
Unless you work alone at home, Indie is pretty much useless.
Also “Houdini Indie cannot be used in the same pipeline as commercial versions of Houdini”. That means you can not freelance for almost ANY Houdini studios.
If you make more than 100k$/year you can afford the 2500$/year, it’s not cheap for sure, but what happens if I decide to upgrade after three years? Nothing!I can do it because if I don’t want to upgrade every year I don’t need to pay them to work! What about keeping my license, can I? YES! It’s mine, my work is mine.
Houdini has never been cheap, and now that I’m on Indie I’m understanding why is it so awesome, because YES I can use it because I do less than 100K$/year of revenue, not benefit, you don’t have to read the EULA to know that they say revenue, not benefit, and I’m leveraging it for sure, for my projects and for my personal learning because I CAN LEARN WITH IT OR WITH THE APPRENTICE FREE VERSION, I CAN SAVE SCENES and even use them commercially (this last with Indie).
And the fact that you cannot freelance for anyone, well I usually do full projects, don’t freelance, but you can always export things in different caches like Alembic, PRT and I think even OpenVDB (I’m not sure about this last one in Indie), which is what the studios usually need, not the Houdini file itself, and if the studio needs you to use a full license, they can give one to you renting it… Because the renting option is there, IT’S AN OPTION!
Again, can you purchase ANY TP license for you to keep and work?…
Cheers.
It is $4,495 + 2,495/year! NOT 2,495/year.
You can use TP for 10 years with that amount money without ANY upfront cost.
If you use Indie, you can work for any studio who uses non-Indie. Abc, PRT does not matter. You can not mix. Period.
Again, Houdini Indie is “RENTAL ONLY”. If you are truly againt rental only, you must have the same problem with Houdini Indie.
How about Houdini Engine? That’s also RENTAL ONLY.
Why don;t you go every single website that has Houdini news and screaming about their RENTAL ONLY product?
Thanks for the reply Joe. Joe Scarr is the man!
@Juang3d – I agree to you in most of what you say even if it’s a bit annoying that you write the same statement over and over again in every single thread you find that has the word cebas or tP in it. Besides, this thread is about that Joe Scarr are releasing a free DVD about tP, not about tP licenses.
Cebas might be here and read, but I guess it would be better to e-mail them directly for a proper conversation. Cebas isn’t hard to deal with at all. Maybe in the future they will add different kind of options for licenses, but right now, they only have rental/subscription so companies and private persons who want to use it must accept that the license is set the way they are right now, or not use tP at all.
I’m not aiming Cebas, they made it very clear, they don’t care about me or other potential customers that would like to acquire a permanent lincense and don’t want to enter into a rental model.
I’m aiming people that may look at this and may say “hey, I’m gonna spend my time in learning this” and after a while they realize that the licensing is pretty unfair with them, do you know that a lot of people still don’t realize that in the moment they stop paying they can’t modify their work further and they lost their license? This is even aimed to people that at first think “hey this will benefit me..” And they don’t realize the trap they are falling in, specially when all autodesk goes RENTAL-ONLY, we have to fight for our rights and for the fairness in this business, if we don’t do that developers are going to drain us.
So I’m sorry if it’s a bit annoying, I know it can be, but my first post was just a line, I continued because I had an answer, and after that Joe answered too, and after that Maxuser too, and I feel responsible to explain and defend my posture, I already explained it in the upper posts 🙂
I don’t want to sound rude (really) but my posting is in the comments section, everyone can access the article without reading me, I promise that if I don’t receive an answer defending the RENTAL-ONLY licensing scheme I won’t write more than one or two lines to explain the situation 🙂 but if someone want to defend it (everyone is in it’s own right to state his opinion) I will have to explain it further, like the case of Maxuser trying to compare the renting-only scheme with the SideFX scheme for Houdini Indie/FX.
Cheers!
Yes, Im sorry but I found you a little annoying.
Even I totally understand your frustration about rental-only software, I found this a little “trolling”. You can not enter on every post where has close to no connection with rental stuff and trying to convert it in what you convert this post.
Your vision is also really limited. You dont like rental? perfect, but this is a DVD tutorial. You move to houdini? Perfect, because you can watch this DVD for free that is fantastic and still learn a LOT from them to apply it to any software. There is a lot of mathematics theory on it that is really useful for TP for max, but you can apply it in TP for Cinema, Houdini or whatever. So again, thanks a lot for release this for free, a lot of people will enjoy it using rental licenses or permanent ones.
Ok guys, made your point, no trolling, it’s not my intention, I’ll keep posting what rental-only means in a pair of phrases because I still think people should know what this means, but I won’t answer to anyone, so that part it’s up to you, one post from me from now on as much, maybe no post at all, but I make no promises about this last.
Cheers!
Trust me when I say “we know your views….WE ALL KNOW your views.” It’s been over a year of you posting the exact same thing. Please move on. We don’t need to know your every plans of moving onto another software or what’s better in your eyes. It’s been a year…have you moved onto another software? ..actually scratch that. I don’t care. This isn’t facebook. Joe released a dvd that helped a lot of us really get into this software. Joe has been a huge source of knowledge for me personally. Please go to Houdini and troll the odforce.net They’ll love you.
I already made an answer to this, don’t like it, don’t read it, you are in all your right.
Thanks for the support CGP.
Cheers.
Actually, many other artists have expressed serious concerns about the rental-only model after Juang3d’s comments. He should be commended.
You know what they say squeaky wheel gets the oil. We know cebas people read this site, maybe an article about subscription model would be appropriate at this point.I think Juan3D has raised awareness on the issue but maybe a little tact is required sometimes.