Hey all - i’m the founder/CEO of Thinkbox and i wanted to share some thoughts since we haven’t publicly released any pricing information regarding Krakatoa on Cinema4D. Please remember that you are under NDA< and as things sometimes change, i want to feel comfortable sharing things with you without concern that it will get released globally. Think of yourselves as not just testers, but as an advance guidance committee to give us feedback!!
Currently Krakatoa SR is $500 per node [floating]. Krakatoa is a very faster particle renderer, and even huge, massive facilities doing work on features like Avengers/Thor 2 etc generally don’t need hundreds of licenses. Another fun fact - krakatoa can render faster than particle data can get created or copied to the network - we’ve saturated local FUSIONIO cards which are hundreds of gigabytes/terabytes of local storage that can be read at 800+ GigaBYTES per second with our renders. it’s essentially a firehose.
The plan for Krakatoa Cinema4d Workstation is to charge essentially $100 for the bridge/connection to C4D. If you have CINEMA4D and KRAKATOA SR already, we will let you upgrade your SR license to a C4D license for $100. If you don’t have Krakatoa SR, then it will be $595 for the Krakatoa C4D workstation plugin. As a comparison, Krakatoa MX and MY [Max/Maya] are $1000. Currently we do NOT have Magma in C4D
Finally, we dont’ have network rendering functional. however this will be added over the course of the Beta. Network rendering will work with a Krakatoa SR rendering license, and of course with an unused Krakatoa C4D Workstation license.
We don’t have a lot of experience with TeamRender or NetRender [i hope i’m getting those correct] as of course we sell Deadline, but I hope you are willing to work with us so that our tools work on both Deadline and the native network rendering platforms. We’ll do our best to make you guys happy!
The pricing sounds great to me and is also in a similar range like the competition – for C4D at the moment the most used solution for creating similar tasks is TurbulenceFD and that sells around a similar price (400€).
Really hope you can make it work with TeamRender, since this is the new thing for Cinema and gives the whole rendering a quite different approach. It still has to prove itself in everyday business though…
Thanks for the info Chris. You don’t have to sell us on Krakatoa, we know how awesome it is!
We have perviously purchased a Max license of Krakatoa and the $1000 price tag was more than fair, knowing you are looking at a lower price point for C4D is encouraging. Do you think there will be a cross-platform license transfer to C4D?
TeamRender even in its infant stage has been a huge benefit to our pipeline, allowing artists the farm’s capability within the Picture viewer. Whatever the outcome of network rendering with Krakatoa, we’ll have an open mind.
We have perviously purchased a Max license of Krakatoa and the $1000 price tag was more than fair, knowing you are looking at a lower price point for C4D is encouraging. Do you think there will be a cross-platform license transfer to C4D? <<
it’s hard for us to move a workstation license…at least i havent thought of a reasonable way to make it work. if you have render licenses [now SR] we are happy to upgrade them as i noted, however. that being said, once we get network rendering working, all workstation licenses should [i say should, because it’s an oversight if they dont] contribute as render licenses…so all is not lost.
we are starting the price lower because we dont have Magma in there [yet?] and depending on requests will push on that. I presume price would increase to match once that was there - otoh, once you buy and presuming you stay on support, all upgrades are always included.
bottom line - there has been HUGE interested in Krakatoa C4D, and if a decent percentage of testers and tweeters actually buy the product then you can bet we’ll look at doing more for C4D ASAP!! we’ve got Frost, XMesh, Stoke, Magma for Krakatoa etc…
Okay, my wo cents/pennies/euros. I’m a sort of a semi-professional hobbyist (some paid work from time to time) and $595 (£364) is right at the top end of what I can afford for such a niche app. But having thought about it, I reckon that’s not bad (do I assume that for that price, I get Krakatoa SR for C4D plus the bridge?)
I would say that if it was $500/£300, I think it would be much more of a no-brainer for more C4D users. How about doing one lower-priced version that doesn’t have network rendering for casual users, and a more expensive version with network rendering for studios/pros?
I also think you and the X-Particles (and maybe TurbulenceFD, Navié) guys should offer some bundle deals!
just a question about currently non-supportet particle generators like navie effex: will the new KC4D-license file also work for the “old” krakatoa sr-renderer?
for example effex has its own krakatoa bridge working with krakatoa sr. would be bad if we change/upgrade our serials to the official bridge and couldn´t render the effex-scenes anymore.
I agree with Weezer. A cheaper version can attract buyers like small studios and freelancers, especially if there is the possibility of a further upgrade to the TeamRender license.
this is tough because the system is based on the krakatoa SR [standalone renderer] which is designed to network render. what we are trying to offer is the ability to upgrade from that $500 license from any platform [max, maya, linux etc] to a C4D connection for essentially $100 more. if you dont have krakatoa, this will be $600.
for Max, Maya - the Workstation version [the one that connects to max/maya] is $1000 and is not crossgrade or upgradeable. the renderer licenses work with all versions for network rendering.
i realise it may seem expensive to some of you, but it’s already steeply discounted and we’ve attempted to make it more flexible for early adopters, so i’m not sure creating another version makes sense…
then you can bet we’ll look at doing more for C4D ASAP!! we’ve got Frost, XMesh, Stoke, Magma for Krakatoa etc…