Chaos Group has released V-Ray 3.0 beta and applications for testing are now open to all existing license owners. The new release promises significant improvements including:
- Faster ray tracing
- A new user interface with toggleable basic, expert and advanced modes
- A new progressive production renderer based on V-Ray RT path tracing technology
- New quick settings and production presets
- Support for VRmats to allow materials to be transferred between different applications
- New skin, raytraced SSS shaders and support for OSL
- Improved rendering performance for hair
- Support for Alembic caches
- Deep Data and OpenEXR 2.0 support
- Render mask feature to create render regions of any shape
- Support for render elements if V-Ray RT
- Automatically collect scene data for distributed rendering
You can watch videos, find out more about these new features and sign up for the beta on V-Ray 3.0’s new microsite www.v-ray.com.
They will also change the pricing, from 3.0 on you will have to pay for every rendernode instead of having unlimited render licenses with one working license. I bet a lot of users will not be happy about it.
1-4 Licenses 350$ per node
5-9 Licenses 280$ per node
10-19 Licenses 250$ per node
20-29 Licenses 240$ per node
30+ Licenses 210$ per node
http://www.chaosgroup.com/en/2/vray3_beta.html#tab3
Overpriced.
No free render nodes.
Ouch! I can hear my boss blowing his top already! Looking at their website it sounds like each interactive license will come with 3 render nodes. Too bad they aren’t at least going to include 10 like Maya does for 2.x.
Near the bottom of the page they also show the following upgrade pricing from Vray 2.x…
V-Ray 3.0 for 3ds Max User + 11 V-Ray Render Nodes 3.0 – $980
Doing the math of this vs. the upgrade with the default 3 render nodes @ $420, it ends up costing only $80 per render node if you get them during the upgrade purchase.
Well at least those render nodes aren’t restriced to the package you use vray with. So if you have vray for maya and max you can use the render nodes for both.
That’s seems to be good for Maxwell Render. And Maxwell have been improving a lot.
Modo has unlimited render nodes but offcourse not the same features yet, though a very complete renderer.
Great additions/enhancements in this renderer. Node Licensing sucks, but hey they gotta make a buck.
I’m Very dissipated with Chaos Group and unethical of them for doing such a thing to their loyal clients. I feel like I got stab in the back with a hot knife. Just when everybody is using VRay as their primary rendering engine they turn around and do this. Not cool and unfair. Shame on you and shame on me for using you rendering engine! It’s going to cost me over $2000.00 dollar money that I don’t have.
Shame on you again!
Before jumping to conclusions about how much it’s going to cost you, it might be worth to contact us and see what you can actually get.
Best regards,
Vlado
An amazing product from amazing company! Grateful, simply because the 3d landscape would not be the same without them! I’m personally very impressed with the features (hope to see RT evolve even more); however will agree that the render node price is a bit of a painful pill to swallow, especially for so many smaller shops and individuals. Personally been in a position where deadlines were just so unforgiving that had to install vray on every single (and slow) pc in the office (programmers, 2d artists). I’m sure I am not alone. This is an example how little resource people often have. With such a license you’d assume one would need a powerful PC – all of it becomes a very expensive investment for any individual or a small company.
People already mentioned the value MODO offers(unlimited rendering). And if we’re looking at render engines like octane, it really delivers for stills for amazing price/speed and quality; there are others… – point being that there are certain market niches that could be alienated by such high prices.
This is just my personal opinion. It’s an amazing software, incredible flexible, robust, fast and high quality.
My biggest wish comes true with the new Image Sampler 🙂 also the improved ray tracing sounds very cool.
I have to say that we no problem with the new license policy. vray is at the end of the 3d pipeline be always so great and stable, all is working and vray has a great support, so if they need the changes to keep this way on features and support it is absolutly normaly.
thanks vlado and the whole team for your great work and keep on rocking!
cant wait for final 3.0 release!
bye,
jens
Agreeing with Jens there. Especially since there are a plethora of options, discounts and bundles to help most types of setups. The cost seems crazy if you only look at price per new rendernode license. Make sure you read all the bundle and upgrade options and mail sales with your specific requirements. It is definitely not a reason to dissipate 😉
Regards,
Thorsten
To me this looks ok too. People should be thankful for the long time of free rendernodes.
But watching from outside my impression is that chaos has a little bit too many employees in the meantime. One can guess how costly that is. But for sure they know themselves how many people they need.
It is true that there are other solutions that are less expensive or even free and which serve a particular market very well – and that’s great; it’s good to have options. Each software vendor is free to determine how much their work costs, same as artists or studios or anybody really. We’ve done our numbers and this is what came out, simple as that. We realize that it’s a big move away from unlimited free rendering (and for me in particular it’s painful to see that move being done), but I guess it was bound to happen at some point.
Best regards,
Vlado
It is so sad to charge for each render node. THIS was the big Advantage for me, and it was the policy of 3dsmax plugins for years. Now the 3dsmax steps are so small from Version to Version that it doesn´t matter if you have a subbscription or not. I could live with that. but chaos Group destroys one of the last Advantages of 3dsmax with that new Price. From now on I have to look more closely to other possible render Tools. I wish they would just increase the work licence Price and Keep the render nodes free. Sad day 🙁
I can only be grateful to Chaos Group and Vlado for this product, and while the pricing may not be as enticing as the previous versions the fact of the matter is that we are getting a performance gain of almost 2x in many cases along with all sorts of new features, it would be unfair to focus only on the down side, after all you get what you pay for.
And besides, this probably(and hopefully) means that there’s going to be an even faster development cycle and a more active development team than before, which can benefit us all in the end, there’s always two sides to a coin.
As Vlado said above and I agree, as artists / developers we get to specify what we should be paid for our work. I respect Chaos on this and I’m sure their number crunching makes sense for them as a company.
That said, I own a personal license at home (maya) and not having even a few free nodes is a mistake (unless I’m misunderstanding?)
At the bare minimum I would suggest 3-5 render nodes as part I a user license for the enthusiast market. I use vray professionally and generally have access to use it daily. However I like to maintain my vray for keeping my skills sharp and doing personal projects. Offering 3-5 nodes would still satisfy most personal users, but be limiting enough to still make serious $$$ from the big fish.
If I have to pay for render licenses to use on my other machines, I’ll definitely look into other renderers for my personal/experimental work.
Is there an upgrade charge to 3.0 or do we need to buy the entire version?
I think it is fair to see a charge for render nodes but not as high as they are asking for.
Is there no compromise?
Can the bean counters be persuaded to change the structure so it is not such a big hit for smaller houses like ours?
David
To Jens Hedrich
I’m just disappointed on how things are conducted here.Yes two side of the coin. Some of you don’t mind paying the price you must have money to spend. Pay for my VRay license!!. You must have small rendering nodes or you’re an employee of some company, you’re doing freelance or you have a stolen VRay license.
I running a small studio with 3 employees plus me 4 license of VRay and 15 rendering nodes. I pay employee’s tax do you know what that is? I also pay unemployment tax. I pay rent for the studio. I pay insurance. My list will go on and on. And every month is a struggle. So before you say I don’t mind paying that price, think about other people. Two side of the coin.
The price is not fair at all. Upgrade and get 1 rendering node this is the first time I’ve ever heard of this. What can you do with one Node?
We should get 3 or 5 node with a VRay license.
Now I know why last month or two months ago, I got a survey from Chaos Group asking how many VRay licenses I had and how many rendering node I had. It’s all coming together.
Yes, IT DOES matter, if you have a farm with around 100 render nodes and decided to buy vray BECAUSE it was free for Rendering in the past ! Now after setting up your Pipeline with Artist and everything they came and want extra Money. So many Studios close these days, one reason is that they get not enough Money anymore to pay everything. BAD timing for Chaosgroup to make this decision right now, when R&H and many more have to Close the doors
Wow, what a shame. Only 1 license, so independent artists have to buy another one for their laptop… And 1.5 owners upgrading save 50€ instead of buying the new version, that’s generous. This surely shows Chaos Group is interested in big business only, not small enthusiasts that made them visible to a broader base, wrote tutorials and really cared.
Seems there a lot of paradigms shifts in the 3d world, making it only possible to use new versions of certain software if you rent, pay more or are happy with almost no development… So there is not just an economic crisis, but also one infused by software companies that will hurt a lot of smaller studios and independent artists…
V-Ray licenses have always been floating and there are many users that are using their licenses in the office and at home. Further on, the dongle is very easy to take with you anywhere. There is nothing at all different here than the current V-Ray version.
Further on, with the new pricing, a V-Ray copy can end up being cheaper for individual artists.
Best regards,
Vlado
I think this year will see the beginnings of a huge uptake of Modo. I have just purchased it and I think my max days are slowly on their way out. Far too much Maya/Big pipeline love for my liking.
Well, I’ve e-mailed them to see what I would be likely to pay.
Although to be honest, I run V-Ray at home with a maximum of 3-4 machines – I think if you got up to 5 free render licenses, there’d be a lot less complaining.
But as has been said, they’ve done their numbers and at least we do see some good value for our money compared to, say, Autodesk.
That all said, I long for the day we have something like the Crytek cinema engine.
I have to wonder if the end of unlimited Vray rendering in Max will be another nail in the coffin when it comes to the use of 3ds for serious vfx work. I know for a fact it has played a big factor in the decision of more than a few studios to use Max over Maya for lighting and rendering. I don’t blame Chaos for doing what they need to do from a business standpoint, but the timing couldn’t be worse for the Max vfx community with things already on such shaky ground.
to Mitch:
absolute right. This WAS a big reason for choosing 3dsmax over Maya. Vray 2.0 was no big deal at this time, you could see with this old release how they spend money into porting vray to Maya, and selling Vray 2 with no big new Features, opcacity Rendering was still slow, the same with particles. Sometimes I wish companys would spend money improving their existing product instead of making it run on every platform. For them it is good to have more customers, for Artist it is bad because developing goes not into your platform during that time. I sadly remember the good old days.
@jup
I don’t blame Vlado or Chaos Group. It’s an exciting and fulfilling feeling to grow your business. Any project begins with true passion and if the door is open to growing, doing business and offering more services is the only direction to take if you really want to grow. At one point when the market gets saturated with enough Vray seats and sales slow down. That’s were innovation will take its place again. At this point I’m sure Chaos Group are working or brainstorming on something other than a software renderer. PDPlayer became a great product. I’m definitely curious what the future holds for Chaos Group. At this point let them do business…I’m sure they’ve got a ton of overhead and nice new offices to pay for. 🙂
Or in the process of making their own 3d application?
😉