Question regarding Arnold 5.0

[Anonymous]

I can not find an answer on this anywhere really.  So if I have 3ds Max 2018 with Arnold 5 do I still need to purchase Arnold from their company?  We didn't have to with I-Ray or Mental Ray even though we do now but since you took those away do we now have to pay for Arnold for to actually work completely.  Everything I have read seems to point in the direction of having to actually purchase the software that this is really only a taste of the product and really only a plugin from what I can tell.  Can you someone confirm this for me please.

[Anonymous]

The days of free Network-Rendering are over. You have to pay for additional rendernodes and this is true for pretty much all 3rd party-renderers available.

[Anonymous]

Ok so let me reply in a way that doesn't sounds like an ****. So first there is nothing free about the actual $1000 price tag that comes with just about all the autodesk products and if you as a business are going to pay that every year you expect a finished product. Since the majority of renderers run you anywhere from 325 up to 900. These are additional cost for those of us who intend on owning a business. So if you went to purchase the Corvette Stingray and you go to pick it up and they tell you it will be an additional large amount of money on top of the large price for the engine you would be pissed off. So my question has nothing do with "free" because those of who will eventually pay the large price (which is far from free) expect at least one renderer that is complete, so that we can at least start producing a product. Now if the idea is to eventually offer the product completely for free that is one thing but it's not. So when you start your comment with "free network rendering is over". Those of us who intend on using the software legally actually pay for it, it's not free.

[Anonymous]

I will try to answer this while ignoring your aggressive tone towards me:

I can understand that you are upset that after years of being able to render with Mental Ray through backburner without additional cost, you have to pay for every single node.Yes, you can indeed argue that for price of the host application you should get unlimited rendernodes for a production-proven renderer.The thing is, that for every other 3rd party renderer you have to pay per node, so in this context rendering with MentalRay was indeed 'free'.

So now you have to pay for additional nodes, so 'free network rendering for 3dsmax' is indeed over.

[Anonymous]

So my tone comes from your reply and how you answered it. Now as far as your response. I did not anywhere in my reply suggest or state that "every node or 3d party renderer should be free". What I said and will say again because you completely ignored, didnt read or understand what I wrote. What I said, was you should at least be able to get one renderer that is fully functioning that can produce at least sellable items with. From there you can purchase the more high end products like every other piece of software out there and as they have done in the past. It would be like purchasing a computer that cost a grand and not including a cpu.
Now let's go back to my attitude, people get angry when they look at product details that are either inconsistent or confusing for example:
When you say you have added a new renderer but it doesn't include shaders, doesn't render background. Then you haven't added a new renderer you have added a plugin to a renderer. Huge difference. That is the answer I got from those at Arnold today when I called them after your rather irritating answer. So I asked a very simple question do I or don't I have to buy Arnold because I didn't understand if I did or didn't because on your site you say you included a renderer on theirs they say it is a plugin to the renderer. So you didn't replace a renderer you got rid of two full service renderers and added a basic plugin to a renderer. That's the answer you avoided in every possible way of saying. Your original answer comes off like a pouty child, "well God we can't give ever renderer away for free." Which causes the response you get now.
Now ART is cool and has potential but it is not to the level of Mental Ray or IRay but it could. It also appears in your new feature list you did nothing to improve it. So you don't want people to have an attitude tell them what it ACTUALLY is on the content page. You don't want people to have an attitude don't give snarky answers and then get offended when they blast you and follow it up with yet another snarky answer about making everything free. I realize just like everything in life better quality means higher price which is fine but you should be at least able to make something on the edge of cartoon and photorealistic for the amount of money being charged.
Now my background I used to work as a software developer and you want to know why I quit because of people just like you. Because instead of answering like this "Sir, I am sorry for the confusion that you are having. No we no longer offer a full service photorealistic renderer at this time but we are always working with companies to improve our product and give you best product we can. I will gladly pass along your frustration."
Thank you for using our product.


That is how you answer a customer. So don't bother replying because I think you are pretty much a dickhead but I will be contacting management with a copy of this entire conversation because you don't have the ability to do the job you are being asked to do.

[Anonymous]

I`m not a representative of Autodesk nor do i work for them. This is a peer-to-peer forum with some involvement from Autodesk through product support specialists.

[Discussion_Admin]

.

Please keep in mind these are professional forums and as such deserve a professional decorum when participating.

All Autodesk employees participating in the forums can be identified by the origami A beside their name as in my profile.

A reminder of our existing ground rules.

Thanks
Discussion_Admin

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous and welcome to the community,

You can still render locally all you want.  If you need to use a render farm, for Arnold (and just about all other renderers) you need to buy another license.  Some do render licenses, some require full licenses.  But you can still work locally and render 100+ frames on 1 machine without paying more with Arnold. 

Mental Ray was also a plugin, it was just well integrated.  Autodesk paid a licensing fee to integrate Mental Ray.  When Autodesk bought SolidAngle they did so with much more in mind than 3ds Max.  Arnold is getting integrated into all kinds of other products from AutoCAD to others.  So it made sense for Autodesk to buy it because Mental Ray is not available for some of the other packages and they can manage a unified approach over multiple product lines.  

You can't really license one render engine and own another that compete in the same space and properly service both of them.  So here we are.  That being said, everything in Max is a plugin for the most part.  Max was originally marketed as a 3D Operating System and the plugins really enhance it and they always have.  Mental Ray is/was a plugin, Vray is a plugin, Forest Pack is a plugin.  Arnold is a plugin too, of course.  

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

 Hi @Alfred.DeFlaminis

Thank you very much for the response.  So to be clear I can do full renders as long as I don't try to use a render farm correct?  Also, is this cpu or gpu based rendering or can you do both?

Thanks,

Kevin

[Alfred.DeFlaminis · Accepted solution]

Hello @Anonymous,

You can't use Net Rendering without additional licenses with Arnold, but you can render locally.  If you own 5 copies of Max, you could start the job on each of those machines locally/manually and set machine 1 to do frames 1-100, machine 2 on 101-200, etc.  So you don't get the ease of the network rendering/backburner, but you could use each machine to render a part of the animations by hand.  Currently Arnold only supports the CPU, but iRay I believe does GPU or CPU and also can render locally without extra licenses.  (Heck, Vray too come to think of it.)  

So if you don't mind using the sneakernet to queue up jobs manually, you could do things that way.  Does that help?  Please let me know if you have any questions.

If any of the posts above were helpful to get you to an answer, please click "Accept as Solution" on those posts and thanks so much for doing that!

Best Regards,