[Hervé]

well you're right... at $99 (notice it is £ on their site.. ) that could maybe comes in handy... but at £490 (around $670... ermmm.. hehe

[ivox3]

US Economic Report: 522,000 Private Sector Jobs Lost In January - 02/05/09

Economic Report:

All throughout the month of January we were bombarded with news of mass layoffs, but now what was the end total? According to the employment report from ADP, the private sector let go of 522,000 jobs in January with the service sector leading the total with 279,000 jobs lost. Small businesses, or those with fewer than 50 workers, were hit hard letting go of 175,000 employees. Mid-size businesses employing between 50 and 499 employees lost 255,000 employees. The national unemployment rate is expected to jump to 8 percent.

Businesses have to develop drastically new paradigms, ..rapidly, if they want to do better than scrape the bottom or shut the doors. I'm astonished how slowly people are reacting to what is such an obvious and epic shift. Applying what worked a minute ago ----WILL NOT WORK NOW. Betting on things to resume to normal any time soon will be a fatal mistake.

[Hervé]

..... well...nuf said...

[RonB]

I wrote to them essentially listing some points from the thread. I also asked them if they were nuts? I'll post the reply if I get one.

[Hervé]

.... I also asked them if they were nuts?

ah ah... good one Ron !

[simmsimaging]

Totally agree. The top end price is simply too high for a plug in like this, but even the lower end prices put me off. Building artificial levels of a product by hobbling core funtionality is b@#$%t. I'm okay with paying extra for a broader feature set, but it's a pisser in principle to have to pay extra just for the basics.

They are building their pricing on the Bunkspeed model - which is far wise IMO.

b

[RonB]

Some parts of the reply from HDRlightstudio to my email:

The problem here is that this tool has not really been developed for Pro 3D artists like yourself with loads of skill, talent and proper full blown 3D
software.

We come from the 'design industry' and there are new renderers that totally rely on HDR images for design visualization. You can't make lights in them at all. All lighting and reflections comes from a single lat-long HDR. One example of this type of new renderer is Bunkspeed HyperShot.

Because you can't make lights, you are stuck with using a few HDRs they give you. So we created our software for these people to let them light their scenes properly like in a photo studio.

We didn't expect to sell lots of copies because it's for this smaller set of
users. But the problem is that many more people, like you, are interested in what we have done, coming from all corners of the 3D world.

For a Pro user like yourself I understand your frustration. But until we
have enough sales to help us survive in our new venture, we can't change the price hoping that the 'whole' 3D community will find it useful too.

We are nice people.

[simmsimaging]

Wow - nice people maybe, but not super sharp

If they have interest from that many parties then it's time to respond to the market and make the money they want/need through accurate pricing and tapping into the larger volume sales.

Like I thought: Bunkspeed pricing model, and same short sightedness IMO.

b

[RonB]

simmsimaging - Agreed.

Take a look at the "Is it Maxwell or Not" post...

My comment there applies to this thread too:

We will be seeing more and more of these "assign materials and lighting from a pre-defined library of shaders and lighting", and hit the Render Button type programs. I am not saying that is bad...neither was Etch-A-Sketch...but the fact is there is a "sameness" to all the renders. It's unavoidable as the end result is created from a small list of common denominators. Have a look at Bunk Speed Hypershot for instance. It was designed around the same operating model...limited to the shaders and methods they supply.

Not saying the HDRI images produced by this program will be the same but that the "Push a button" model the program is built around is not to my taste.

I am becoming more and more an enthusiast of the open source scene. Especially when I see people out there offering programs like this for outrageous amounts of money. But that's a subject for another post.

[simmsimaging]

Couldn't find that post - have a link?

I have no real issue with push button solutions - I'd love one for most of my problems . My issue is with pricing them too high. For some people these things are a godsend, and for most of us they are just toys. Unfortunately they get priced for the first group.

I think they either need to have the range their price commands, and thus customization will be key, or price them like a toy.

To some extent this is a problem where the company is driven by marketing people and not users/programmers.

Remind me somtime to tell the iPod story from my experience with Bunkspeed
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[RonB]

simmsimaging - http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... hp?t=30777

What's the iPod story?

[simmsimaging]

Thanks Ron - looks interesting, and it's the way things are going. It's just a first step though - once we get past the limited materials etc. it is the future of rendering I think.

The ipod story:

I was looking into Hypershot for a while and was getting a ton of pressure to buy it from the marketing guys. I said that I found it far too limited to justify a 10K price tag, but would be interested for sure if they could either drop the price, or increase the capabilities. The sales guy gave me this big story about how you can't have everything in one package and said that the head guy at Bunkspeed liked to use the analogy of an ipod: ipods are great tools, but if you are an audiophile you still needed to have your big home stereo system. He said you need to think of Hypershot as being like your ipod.

I thought about that for about 1/2 a second and said that he might want to rethink his examples, because my ipod was not the one that cost me 10 grand.

I'm pretty sure that was the last time I talked to that guy, and I'm equally willing to bet they found a better analogy from then on

b

[RonB]

10 Grand??!! Holy Crap! I had no idea it was that expensive...I take it that is for the Pro version...That's ridiculous!

[simmsimaging]

Yep - although it may be less expensive now, I don't know, but at that time that was the range.

It's pretty crazy, but if you run a high volume studio that just does cars or things made of very shiny plastic/metal then it could be all you need, and it is a *very* fast workflow.

Even at 10K I was tempted by it - very nice to see exactly what you are getting as you work.

b

[Bubbaloo]

I made the mistake of contacting them about it too... I get constant emails now from them. They are very aggressive salesmen. It's like a car dealership...