Arnold is here

[TheBadger]

http://wdev1.solidangle.com

[Walli]

they offer daily licencses, thats pretty cool!

[Kadri]

Too expensive for most single users, not surprised although .

[Tangled-Universe]

Well, isn't Arnold just cool?

$1000 is a stiff price, but it's a top of the bill renderer.
Big studios chose Arnold over their sometimes proprietary render pipelines or proven commercial product methods.
It says a lot about Arnold.
In that regard, it's probably worth every penny.

[TheBadger]

Edited) Hmmm, Nevermind

The Arnold for Maya plug-in is provided free of charge. Arnold permanent licenses cost €1000 each

So does that mean I can use it like a learning addition or how does this work, need to look at this closely now!

[TheBadger]

* Educational licenses are only available to institutions for training and instruction and for no other purpose. At the moment we do not sell individual licenses to students.

Confusing what their offering in a maya plugin thats "free of charge" 

[Oshyan]

*All* their app-specific plugins are "free of charge" *for licensed users*. It's pretty clearly laid out on their licensing page actually. They have a free 15 day trial, fully functional with no watermark, after that it has a watermark but remains functional.

- Oshyan

[TheBadger]

OK, so now a daily license makes sense! Use it, learn it, and when your ready, pay for only what you will render final.

License per day
EUR    € 6.50
GBP    £ 5.00
USD    $ 8.50

An interesting way to do things. Don't know that I have seen this in a 3D soft before. Also, since my copy of Maya is a student edition, I don't have to worry about  spending money on something I don't fully have rights to but I can still learn it. I would definitely buy a package first, before thinking about Arnold or Vray of course. but this makes things much more friendly to my situation.

Yes indeed, Walli, pretty cool. Took me a min to see why they would do that. I guess it makes perfect sense now though. Rather clever way to deal with a lot of issues actually. Will people risk installing a hack, or will they pay 8 bucks when they actually need to render clean?

Sorry Oshyan, only had a second at a time to read through it. Yes, it is clear now.

I looked at vRay prices too. The number I saw was around 1,200 dollars making Arnold pretty competitive. And they did a pretty good job of their pre release marketing. They already have great word of mouth.

Kadri, is right though, this stuff is not cheap for part timers, students and hobbyists. But as Martin said, its nothing for a studio. Wish I was rich.

[Oshyan]

I think you're mistaken. The daily license is probably more for ramping up for final shot rendering on large farms which would otherwise be more capacity than needed for e.g. shot development and test renders, rather than for educational purposes or smaller users. I concluded this because there is a fairly large minimum on the daily licensing purchases. "There is a minimum order value for rentals of €350." from this page: https://www.solidangle.com/arnold/pricing/

- Oshyan

[TheBadger]

Crap. I think your right. also there is this

For permanent license sales there is a minimum order of 5. We will soon lift this restriction.

[Kadri]

Feels a little like the 90'ties when we looked at the Indigo's from SGI and Softimage etc. with envy with their absurd high prices.
When i saw one Indigo that was not used for rendering in a TV Station it was like an insult.
It is not so bad now of course but when is see such prices like this or Autodesks products...hmm...

[Bjur]

To be honest, they didn't reinvented the wheel or did they!?

[Oshyan]

I've yet to see good side-by-side benchmarks done, but I haven't looked since the final/public version came out. I think that's what will really pique my interest. So far I've heard lots of great things from people who should really know what they're talking about, but then people say lots of great things about Vray and it's been with us for years now. Whether Arnold is truly a "must use" option is an open question for me. Off to look for Arnold vs. Vray...

- Oshyan

[Bjur]

http://max-depth.com/?p=105

And also: This test is for what important and related?

Whats about this one?:

http://www.guerillarender.com/

[Oshyan]

Yeah, I just checked out the particle one. It's an important test, but not IMO a very general one. It seems rather too specific. I'd like to see some real-world type scenes, at least 1 complex indoor and 1 complex outdoor option.

There are really tons of renderers out there. I came across this one just now while looking for Vray/Arnold benchmarks: http://furryball.aaa-studio.eu/aboutFurryBall/compare.html

- Oshyan