Why allow people to capitalize on those plugins? You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
On 5 March 2016 at 21:17, Nicolas Chaverou <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi there, > > Hope this will not be taken as a shameless plug, but i wanted to step in > this discussion. Before starting let me introduce myself: my name is > Nicolas, I'm one of Golaem founder and crowd lead dev there. We develop and > sell a crowd sim plugin for Maya (here's the link for people having never > heard about us: http://golaem.com and prices: > http://golaem.com/content/buy). > > First let me say that from my experience, nobody in the VFX software > industry (and I met a few) is capitalizing. Some are indeed healthy > companies but no one drives a Ferrari to go to work neither they live in > huge mansions. Us included. Vfx is a very competitive niche market and > crowd sim even more. Contrary to rendering engine companies which can sell > dozens of licenses to the same company, we (and plenty of others) usually > sell between 1 and a few seats. > > On the other side, we've been working for 6 years now on that product and > I'd say it has reached *industry standards* about three years ago. > Behind the software there are several *brilliant developers* passionated > about their job, not counting their hours and trying to make a living out > of their passion. > > Why so long? Well, developping an *industry standard* crowd sim software > requires you to deal with AI, behaviors, perception, animation, ground > detection, cloth sim, fur/hair sim, physics ragdoll sim, muscles, > blendshapes, character variation (geometry, writing shaders), having decent > performances (being able to sim thousands of characters real time), being > able to display dozen of thousands of characters on screen and being able > to render those dozen of thousands in a decent time on most industry > standard rendering engines (6 in our case). Not speaking about doing an > API, supporting productions and special feature requests (which is common > to all vfx software developpers). > Well a lot of different skills are involved... > I usually like to say that crowds are a pipeline in the pipeline :) > > So at the end, we have to do the maths if we'd like to be able to live out > of it. > > I truly believe our pricing is fair and is a good value: > - commercials / tv shows studios usually rent the software for a month or > more and charge it to the global project > - heavy film studios usually go permanent and charge it to the project as > well > - and people without commercial projects ? Well, they get a license for > free. > > This having been said I completely understand your point but there's a > good reason why there are so few crowd softwares out there. > It takes a lot of time, skills, lines of code (hundreds of thousands) to > achieve a competitive product. > > Hope it shone some lights. > Will be happy to answer any questions :) > > Best, > > > --- > [image: Nicolas Chaverou - Golaem Crowd Product Manager - Golaem SA] > > +33 (0)2 99 27 21 44 > http://www.golaem.com > > On Sat, Mar 5, 2016 at 9:56 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi folks, >> >> Wouldn't it be great to have a robust and reliable open source or >> reasonably priced plugin to do crowd generation/crowd simulation for Maya >> or other 3D software? >> >> Currently the existing software for crowd are in the thousands, some over >> $3,000 too and even hundreds of dollars for a few months' rental. >> >> Why allow people to capitalize on those plugins? >> >> Currently there is no reasonably priced crowd generation/crowd simulation >> plugin for Maya which can produce industry standard results. >> >> By reasonably priced I am setting the bar as high as $1,000 for a >> PERMANENT license, and there is no plugin that can do industry standard >> crowd simulation/crowd generation work that sells for at least $1,000 for a >> PERMANENT license. People should not have to pay more than this amount for >> a PERMANENT license for such a plugin and should not deserve to rent the >> plugin either. >> >> We cannot sit back and let plugins like these hold on to a high priced >> status in the market. As we know, Maya and Fusion for example were highly >> priced in their time previously, but now they have different cost >> structures. I can understand renting Maya as a subscription, but a crowd >> simulation/crowd generation plugin should not be rented. >> >> I am sure there are very brilliant programmers who can formulate a great >> solution for industry standard crowd software, and at the right price, I am >> also sure many will be interested in buying those. >> >> This expensive crowd plugin market needs a wake up call to reduce their >> license drastically. >> >> How can this project be started? >> >> Coders, programmers, developers how can we get an army of ten thousand >> people or 10,000 dogs running down a street interacting with each other and >> being animated etc.? >> >> I have faith in the brilliant developers out there and hope someone has >> heard or will hear this call and start work on a plugin that can change the >> industry's mindset where crowds are required in CGI! >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Python Programming for Autodesk Maya" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/python_inside_maya/d274a689-1f80-4bbf-92d2-d25c13673615%40googlegroups.com >> . >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Python Programming for Autodesk Maya" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/python_inside_maya/CAFS5DCa2NJttu%2B0jNhL7N%3DetOhjSt_%2BfggcL2Ga3ay5gmn4wdQ%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/python_inside_maya/CAFS5DCa2NJttu%2B0jNhL7N%3DetOhjSt_%2BfggcL2Ga3ay5gmn4wdQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- *Marcus Ottosson* [email protected] -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Python Programming for Autodesk Maya" group. 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