This is long...TL;DR at the bottom So, I'm using mental ray because it came with Softimage, it is well established and adding 5 batch render node licenses was supposed to be cheap. 3rd party renders all seem to lack some feature and are as expensive as the 5 batch render node upgrade. Mental ray standalone is ~$850 a seat.
I have called several re-sellers, I have called Autodesk they didn't know anything and referred me to resellers. Resellers are a joke most of the time, no one knows anything in the complicated Autodesk world. I was even told I had to find a local reseller by another reseller...I emailed Autodesk...they just closed the question apparently. I didn't even get a response, just a request to review my CS experience. My history with Softimage: I started learning XSI/Softimage in college when it was AVID based...I bought a student license...then Autodesk bought it...then I couldn't get support for my dongle that would stop working randomly for my student edition to keep learning on it. I finally wanted to start using it for some vfx on online shorts so I went to upgrade...Nope...can't upgrade. I was still a student...and a reseller advised me to buy the current student package and upgrade...(prior to the free online stuff)...bought it...Nope Softimage didn't have an upgrade path like that anymore...even though it was on a catalog my re-seller had and said maya apparently did still have this path since you could buy it buy its self. Years later...I had saved enough to finally buy it outright...foolishly cashed in some investments. Bought it...and then found out I could get a discount and the ultimate bundle upgrade with motionbuilder, mudbox etc for "cheap"....credit card debit for a little while sure...~5 months later...they killed Softimage. Where I'm at now: So now I have a little money saved to buy a network upgrade for just Softimage: ~$920...but...I upgraded to Ultimate...so now I have to buy an upgrade for ALL of them to network not just Softimage: ~$1800. If I were a company and making money...that's not a terrible price. But, I'm paying more for software that is killed and couldn't possibly lead me to a new career in 3d... Reseller says that is still an option and checked with my serial. I don't need network upgrade for the full bundle...and I can't/won't afford that. I don't like maya and max now on the principle of the Autodesk buy out and kill process. I'm probably never going to do this as a job so it's hard to justify another 1800 for some project that will get posted online and lead to nothing, but the cost of renting server time for a small project was the same as just buying 5 nodes. How is it i paid around $200 for max(broken apart) in the bundle...but I get unlimited mental ray licenses...yet for Softimage at $2500 or whatever it was i get one node locked license... The reseller I talked with said I have unlimited render nodes for Max and Backburner for Mental Ray and to just use that. I don't know what shaders can/can't be used for the renders this way from softimage. I'm still green with all of this...but at this point at least I don't have to buy more from Autodesk. I wish companies ending their usage of Softimage could transfer a license with render nodes...but 2nd hand software is illegal because it's a license...even if the software is discontinued... TL;DR I've spent lots of money over the years trying to be a hobbyist...Can't upgrade a single product from the Ultimate bundle to network license. Reseller says use 3dsmax backburner for mental ray rendering of MI2 files. Resellers mostly don't know what is going on. Autodesk CS doesn't know what's going on. I should learn Blender. On Thu, Oct 23, 2014 at 7:15 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau <[email protected]> wrote: > Mental ray standalone from Autodesk has come with the Softimage > shaders for years. > It renders mi2 from Max, Maya, Softimage. There is only one kind of > mental ray standalone license. > The batch licenses you get with the app are to run xsibatch or > mayabatch, etc., it is not to run ray.exe > > On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 5:40 PM, Matt Lind <[email protected]> wrote: >> Mental ray is a separate product with its own file format. As long as there >> are no softimage specific dependencies (eg; shaders) in the .mi2 files you >> send to be rendered, you're not running afoul of any laws that I know of >> because at that point it's native mental ray data, not softimage data. >> Besides, I've never heard of this being a problem in a legal sense even if >> there were softimage dependencies (on the technical side It would be a >> different matter). >> >> Think of it this way, if you converted all your softimage scenes to .fbx >> file format, then imported those files to be rendered in max/maya using >> mental ray, would there be any legal problem? I think not. Converting to >> .mi2 for this purpose is no different. >> >> Matt >
