Arnold goes subscription

#1

https://www.solidangle.com/news/arnold-subscription-announcement/

#2

lol

wow what a “deal”

How many users/studios are they thinking they’ll attract with $600 per year --> for each render node??

#3

In a very near future, Autodesk will be the only competition sponsor, who has nothing to offer… except you can “borrow” some stuff from them, if you are that lucky :smiley:

Rental is a good thing, if it is an option!

#4

for 5 years renting Arnold you have to pay --> 3000
for 5 years Arnold perpetual + maintanence --> 2000
for 5 years Renderman --> 1295
for 5 years rent Vray rendernode --> 600

#5

I love arnold, but the pricing is just completely out of step with their competition, and unlike maya, they haven’t bought a monopoly. Its sad to see them destroying another great piece of software with the rental only model.

#6

think if you have to render thousand of frames they way to go is a small farm for testrenders and than jump to a cloud service like conductor or zync…

autodesk invested a lot of money there…
http://www.conductortech.com/

#7

Who is dropping their current render solution to switch over to Arnold? Anyone? If so, why?

I just don’t see how they can compete with that pricing. Just because Autodesk is offering a free local-render-only license of Arnold doesn’t mean people are going to discard established pipelines and pay more for what is, arguably, less. But who knows, maybe they’ve got some new features in the works that will shake up the industry…?

#8

It’s not like arnold’s previous perpetual pricing was that much better though

Wasn’t it something like $1300 per node and $500 to upgrade? With upgrades happening every year?

5 years of perpectual arnold would cost you $3300 - so subscription does end up being cheaper than perpetual until 10 years of use.

Arnold has never been competitive in price unless you had enough employees and big-budget projects to offset the extreme license and renderfarm costs Arnold has

#9

its 200 per year… and you are even in two years…

from the mailing list…

Year Old lic New lic Diff

1    1000        600          -400    
2    1200        1200             0    
3    1400        1800         400    
4    1600        2400         800    
5    1800        3000        1200    
6    2000        3600        1600    
7    2200        4200        2000    
8    2400        4800        2400    
9    2600        5400        2800    
10    2800      6000        3200
#10

Ah ok, I just checked my email quote from sept 2016 where they said it was $1220 for new license and $225 per upgrade/maintenance

They said they don’t offer bulk pricing discounts at that time until after 50 licenses are purchased

definitely not a tool for a small/mid sized shop

#11

Features.

The primary competition on the CPU front is Vray, and ChaosGroup is behind in their development for the two software apps I use - C4D & Houdini. The Vray IPR in C4D can’t really adjust materials on the fly, does not support render instances or light linking - and has stability issues. We don’t have VDB rendering, and can’t render changing-point-count meshes with motion blur. We don’t have a node-based material builder. Some of these are promised to be released this year, others are said to be troublesome in C4D (such as the moblur, even though other renderers do it). other things like node-based materials have been discussed for years, but never implemented. We have to wait on Chaos Group for big fixes, even though the primary developers of the bridge are a 3rd party (who have been quite helpful) - though the interaction between the two has always felt awkward.

On the other side of the fence - the Houdini bridge for Vray is completely free, which is makes me nervous rather than thankful. They were caught off guard when H16 was released (?!), and are still struggling to get a QT5 version that’s bug free. Last I checked, you can’t render particles natively (you have to copy geo to each point), and they don’t have any plans to support H’s built in render window (which every other 3rd party app does). The UI is clumsy, and requires you to use presets made by users just to have your shader properties laid out in tabs rather than a single long list of every button & slider for the whole darn shader.

By contrast, Arnold does all of this in both apps. It’s clean, it’s sleek, it’s well documented, and fully featured. It’s too pricey for me, and I’m frustrated by the autodesk purchase, but this is why some CPU users are attracted to it.

#12

That’s interesting. I heard the c4d verison of vray was behind the other versions, but I didn’t know in what ways. I thought it was just a delay of the latest release version. Kinda too bad render engines have to be the ones to create a node shader interface in c4d :frowning:

So then that begs the question, why would a max or maya user be interested in arnold. In regards to vray with max/maya, those aren’t issues

#13

It’s interesting, because I love just about every other aspect of the Vray integration besides the issues I’ve mentioned. Even though it doesn’t have nodal materials, I really like the mentality behind the current shader creation in the way that the different elements (diffuse, spec, luminosity etc) are stacked & layered (and the options that are given to do so). The other Vray implementations have different shader builder mentalities, and I feel the C4D implementation is much better. Adding in the nodal workflow would make it perfect. :slight_smile:

#14

A $65/month subscription. Oh, how very generous of them. Such altruism. :wink:

This general insistence on pushing subscriptions is frustrating.

If you’re a studio then you’re probably going to pay anyway. What you stand to gain is greater than what you lose. It’s the cost of doing business. If you’re a student, companies try to make provisions for you. After all, they have a workforce to cultivate and maintain. However, if you’re that in-between user then you’re going to face substantial issues.

The existence of indie license is nice, but it hardly solves the problem. Not all inide software is made equal. Some is more robust than others with the worst being little more powerful than pricey shareware. Try building a quality portfolio with software that’s missing essential functionality. It’s not always easy or possible.

For now, subscriptions aren’t the only game in town. What happens if they are or at least represent the majority of the available options? If you’re a 22 year old trying to make ends meet on what little you earn waiting tables then your path is pretty narrow. How do you make your dream a reality in that case? Similarly, if you’re 42 and looking to make a change in career, but have a mountain of recurring bills, the situation looks grim.

You work to make your life more comfortable. If you’re ultimately working just to pay your subscriptions then it’s a self-serving cycle. You need the software to earn a living. You need to earn living to pay for the software. If, being an average working class Joe or Jane, you can’t afford all of these subscriptions then you’re right well screwed.

Anybody who’s ever tried or bought the Maya or MODO indie knows exactly why that isn’t exactly an option either. The speed at which you hit a functional and practical wall is astounding, especially if interoprability is a concern.

Your biggest fear is that everything goes subscription-based, right? Think bigger though. It gets worse than that. How long until ADSK and other developers are no longer happy with the profit earning potential of that model? How long until they figure out that, for the “greater good,” they can go back to a tiered model? IOW, how long until we’re back to contending with Complete and Ultimate versions? Worse than that, however, how long until somebody in that brain trust figures out that they can milk you a’la carte - charging you per feature? Don’t think that it can happen? Greed knows no bounds. Just wait.

I’m concerned because, tbh, this milking of the cash cow might not affect students and studios so much, but it greatly impacts those of lesser means. Companies like ADSK and Adobe have adopted a subscription only policy. Companies like Foundry are reevaluating their handling of (or stance on) indie versions.

Blender and its ilk are viable enough alternatives for now. What happens when they’re not? Subscription model as the norm prices out the impoverished, working class, and older artists. Though unintentional, it is darn near discriminatory. If you’re not a student or studio with deep pockets, well, you matter less. If you don’t believe that’s true then I implore you to read through some of the ADSK forum postings.

People address this pricing issue to routinely be faced with the answer, to paraphrase, “Why don’t you find a class to take at your local university so that you qualify for an edu license?” That’s not an answer, especially not if you work a 40-50 hour week and are just looking for an affordable way either do what you love or change to a career that you don’t hate.

Arnold’s move to subscription is a symptom of a larger problem with wider ranging ramifications. Nobody’s asking for Maya, Arnold, Photoshop, or whatever to suddenly become freeware. That’s unreasonable and unrealistic. It’s just, at some point, you’re going to find yourself paying more for subscriptions than you do your rent or food. With perpetual licensing becoming a dying breed, that’s not a place you want to be in if you’re too old or too poor.

If you don’t think that either of these issues are real then you (general you) need to pay a little more attention. We see how the industry often treats its older creators and values that young blood or those, like studios, with the massive buying power. I’m just saying… $65 here. $50 there. $200 over there. It eventually adds up. This, imo, is a massive implication in the existence of competing edu and sub only models. No in-between leaves out a LOT of potential artists across a very wide spectrum.

(Indie versions, as I said above, are often beyond lacking thus making them non-options for a lot of users, especially with the non-commercial restrictions.)

For now, we’ve still got Blender, Cycles, etc and so forth. For now.

Anyway… Sorry for beating on this old drum. Subscription talk always gets me pissy. :slight_smile:

#15

Don’t render. Just do artworks without rendering, seriously.
Playblasts, preview anims with great texture work and basic
shading works just fine and may look self-sufficient.

No need to sadomasochistically run for to over-blown consumer appetites, they are
crazy by themselves.

#16

Another great move by Autodick. :applause:

How long until they ask you send them naked pictures of yourself having fun with your girlfriend before you get to rent some of their software? :beer:

#17

Hilarious comedy there. Playblasts as final works? You mean we’ve all been doing it wrong the entire time? :wink:

No, that’s not an option for most applications. I work at print quality, photorealism, and high-resolutions. None of these elements of my work are possible with viewports. Even Unreal and Cryengine can’t do it yet, and content creation apps are years behind their tech.

#18

I’m almost surprised that nobody has mentioned mental ray here. Not even anyone from Nvidia. We haven’t really seen much work on it in recent years but it’s still viable and valid, especially given Arnold’s ridiculous pricing. It’s what I use 90% of the time, even now.

From the mental ray/Nvidia site:

FULL PRODUCTION

Obtain a license to enable sequence rendering within Maya and production rendering on the network or in batch on any machine.

$295/year per machine
$995/year for 5 machines

Special pricing for systems with an NVIDIA Professional GPU (Quadro or Tesla)

$95/year per machine
$325/year for 5 machines

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia-mental-ray-products.html

#19

I remember when companies tried to build trust instead of pushing users into monetary dependencies. Maybe I’m old fashioned :rolleyes:

#20

$295 per year per node for MR?
That’s another ridiculous joke.