Prices are coming down because it's a nearly fixed-size market. If you price yourself too high, you won't get a cut of the pie.
There's also a shift in moving towards real time renderers and away from software renderers. Real time isn't quite ready for full prime time for film/video, but it is proving capable for many scenarios. This is probably the main instigator of price reductions from the likes of Renderman as the writing is on the wall how much longer it will remain relevant in the general consumer space outside of large film productions that have established pipelines around it. In general, industry is producing more real time applications instead of linear format. Expect to see less need for 3rd party renderers in general, and more demand for real time engines and editing environments. Matt -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Stefan Kubicek Sent: Friday, May 30, 2014 9:18 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Renderman price restructuring This was my impression too, when it comes for ootb shaders Arnold leaves a lot to be desired. I'd even go as far as saying that is more so with Arnold than with any other third party renderer I've used so far - if it wasn't for third party shaders generously made available you wouldn't get too far with it. It's been interesting to see entry price levels coming so much down in recent years. Vray used to be the cheapest, production-ready renderer one could buy 12 years ago (and you got unlimited render nodes per license), today, like Arnold, it's amongst the more expensive ones, with Redshift and even PRMan being more affordable, let alone 3Delight, which was always zero $ for the the first license (and supports practically any shader in Softimage). In any way, I never expected to see complex, "niche" software products to come down in price that much. Just cut throat competition, or is there really so much money to be made that it still pays off to sell so cheap? At least I think the price cut and free for non-com use of PRMan is an attempt to keep what's left of their market share, they must have lost a lot of ground to Arnold in recent years. Arnold you get > While I’m still on honeymoon with Arnold I have to say that its ‘out > of the box’ shaders leave quite some room for improvement. > > Examples: > > Standard shader: lacks a second specular layer (quite the standard > these days), back facing is not textureable Fur shader: you only get > 'Kajija-Kay’ (very old school) shading, no indirect specular, no > translucency, no glints Single scatter SSS is only a function in the > API and currently does not implement indirect lighting. > > While some of these deficits can be solved in the render tree, others > are simply not accessible without coding them yourself or relying on > community generosity. Which has been the situation for the past four > years. > > That being said, Anders Langlands is now working at Solid Angle as a > shader developer. He has previously shared shaders that address a lot > of the above and beyond. I see a bright future ;-) > > Happy Rendering, > > Andy > > On May 30, 2014, at 14:19, Marc-Andre Carbonneau > <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Ya...what they don't tell you is the hidden cost of programmers you >> have to pay to get it working afterwards... >> >> Viva Arnold! >> >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: [email protected] >> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of >> Leendert A. Hartog >> Sent: 30 mai 2014 07:41 >> To: [email protected] >> Subject: Renderman price restructuring >> >> Some industry nice that might interest some of you (I hope): >> "Pixar has announced a radical price restructuring of its RenderMan >> 3D and animation technology. With the upcoming version, the software >> will be free to non-commercial customers, and will cost $495 for >> individual licenses" >> Quoted from here: http://waa.ai/4jn8 >> >> Or better yet: go to the appropriate page on the Renderman website >> directly http://tinyurl.com/nkbmw8u >> >> crossposted from the si-community, BTW >> >> Greetz >> Leendert >> >> -- >> >> Leendert A. Hartog AKA Hirazi Blue >> Administrator NOT the owner of si-community.com >> >> > -- ------------------------------------------- Stefan Kubicek ------------------------------------------- keyvis digital imagery Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3 A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien Phone: +43/699/12614231 www.keyvis.at [email protected] -- This email and its attachments are -- --confidential and for the recipient only--
