So, still no slave licences..

[preciousillusion]

...slave license sub for around the same price...

-Isn't that just a regular license?
-No! Because we don't call it a regular license.

[preciousillusion]

“Otoy has provided us with some sentences filled with letters that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike an answer.”

How about actually answering the questions of your customers instead of posting a vague statement that basically repeats the last vague statement?

Subscription? No thanks:

Otoy’s track record of releasing updates when they say they're going to release updates is the sort of thing that anyone with at least a tenuous grasp of reality would recognize as demanding quick and firm remediation.

How does that matter here you might think?
Well, if V4 suffers the same release meltdown as V3, anyone on subscription would have paid double when it's finally released.
How’s the Maya plugin coming along by the way?

Most of us doesn't seem to want subscriptions, maybe because it's exclusively beneficial for Otoy and adds absolutely nothing for the customer. Well, except a higher price.

Three years ago I purchased 3 x standalone + C4D licenses that with upgrades to V2 and V3 has costed me €1476
If the subscriptions were available back then and I had gone with that it had set me back almost €700 more. And when V4 arrives that amount will probably be well over 1K.

By the time someone introduces subscriptions, the regular price is of course going to be jacked up to push people to subscriptions.
Is that the reason you've increased prices more than 220% in less than three years?

[jwiede]

Most of us doesn't seem to want subscriptions, maybe because it's exclusively beneficial for Otoy and adds absolutely nothing for the customer. Well, except a higher price.

QFA.

Otoy's ability to deliver Octane releases isn't remotely near reliable enough, nor is Octane at the proper stage in product life-cycle, to offer adequate value for customers paying on subscription (iow, paying for use). Subscription primarily offers value for well-established, highly customer-centric vendors with mature products, whose development runs like clockwork, and who are far enough along the feature fulfillment curve that the instability caused by further ongoing development is predictably, tractably low.

That the V3 release chaos occurred is ample demonstration that Octane isn't mature enough as a product to move to a subscription-centric licensing model. That Octane customers today still do not have everything promised for V3 further demonstrates that Octane's development isn't nearly stable and reliable enough to sustain a subscription-centric licensing model.

Permanent license customers "give Otoy time" because we're not paying for it -- subscription customers won't be nearly as lenient.

[renderingz]

My bets are on redshift releasing their c4d plugin before we get 3.1. Can't wait for some more competition.

[preciousillusion]

My bets are on redshift releasing their c4d plugin before we get 3.1. Can't wait for some more competition.

Redshift might even get released before Otoy gives us any answers..

[itsallgoode9]

My bets are on redshift releasing their c4d plugin before we get 3.1. Can't wait for some more competition.

at least you have a 3.somthing update. We still have no V3 and not even a pascal compatible v2

[Goldorak]

We've always planned to support both subscription and 'boxed' options for Octane 3, the former helping budget or EDU users move from earlier student licences, and then also covering use cases where subs. make sense for pro/enterprise users as an alternative to boxed licences.

As far as permanent slave licenses at a discount, we are in agreement that a render slave should not cost the OR customer the same as a non-slave box used for the live viewport/host app. We feel that is partially addressed as described below, but open to improvements:

Today, if you buy Octane node(SE) licenses in 3-10 packs, you already get a discount for extra node licenses. Note that there is space for another option - ie. 2 GPU node bundles. We are exploring a dual (or +1 sidegrade) node license in the 3.0.x cycle (before 3.1). We are reviewing the pricing discount we can offer for this specific option (both for existing 3.x and new users).

We plan to change the name from SE to something that better reflects you are paying for the core render engine (vs. the SE app) on your render machine. We have not made a distinction between buying a slave vs. a non-slave license for the core (SE) render engine, because in both cases you are paying for the host computer to tap it's GPUs for Octane's core renderer and connect this to a host application. Almost all customers use Octane day-to-day within an integrated DCC plug-in, effectively making OR licenses already cheaper on machines used only as slaves without any plug-ins, on top of the bundle discount mentioned above.

That being said, we want to serve customers' needs as effectively as we can. Subscriptions and the current pricing for node bundles are not the final word on this matter. The +1 sidegrade system for existing users, or dual node bundle - assuming all you need is a single slave machine - is the next best place we could explore doing a bundled discount. It would be helpful to know what number of nodes users on this thread realistically plan to use as slaves. In other words, assuming 2, 3,5 10 node bundle discount, which grouping is most important to you?

Thanks for the feedback.

[rappet]

Maybe a poll can be started and number of future planned or wished nodes are to be selected?
My personal wish would be 1 master with 3 slaves.. Is that 3 or 4 nodes?

Cheers,

[Lewis]

For me, probably extra 2-3 nodes It really depends on render-slave pricing (which we still have no clue what could be after all those months and months of asking/waiting ?).
If is expensive (like now, when it's too expensive to buy standalone license just for network rendering 'coz i never use standalone without plugin anyway) then i'll try to squeeze as much as possible GPUs in single Case,
But If is affordable then i might go along with only 2 GPUs in each extra node/network machines which i have around but didn't buy extra licenses 'coz i can't squeeze more than 2 GPUs in those cases/MBs since they weren't bought with GPU rendering in mind (regular i7 CPU render slaves) and don't have lot of PCI-E full size slots or they have too small case too weak PSU for anything above 2 GPUs.

Thanks

[Goldorak]

Maybe a poll can be started and number of future planned or wished nodes are to be selected?
My personal wish would be 1 master with 3 slaves.. Is that 3 or 4 nodes?

Cheers,

That would be 4 nodes. And yes a poll might be helpful as a high level overview of what users on this thread are looking for. Besides node count preferences, we also would like to better understand how users intend to effectively spread their GPUs across nodes - i.e. a dedicated render slave box or a free workstation with additional GPUs?

I will also review this thread with the team this week and discuss some other options we can potentially consider.