Justin Hunt Posted April 8, 2008 Share Posted April 8, 2008 I have started to play around with Max2009 and liking it indeed I noticed that there isn't a RPC plugin shipped with the disks, so I hopped onto the archvision website to see if I could download it there. Horror of Horrors , it isnt free any more. What The???? does this mean I have to fork out more to use what I already own or am I not understanding something. Ontop of that I have to get a multuply user licence, more $$$$ Why did this change? jhv Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SandmanNinja Posted April 8, 2008 Share Posted April 8, 2008 [sort of on topic: what aspects of 2009 do you like better than 2008? Often used aspects? Lots of little things?] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kippu Posted April 8, 2008 Share Posted April 8, 2008 wow that is wierd ..!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted April 8, 2008 Author Share Posted April 8, 2008 Kippu - You should have seen the look on the IT guys face when I told him, not please at all. I suppose I need to drop them a call to get clarification SandmanNinja - Proxies are at the top of my list at the moment. I have spent most of today playing and I must say overall whilst not feature rich this latest release is good. If you are a mentalray user then a must have install. if you are a Vray user than there isn't much to make you switch. I am yet to try the new FBX revit to max workflow, just waiting for the latest revit to be rolled out in the office. I am not entirely sure if its a good move as it doesn't take advantage of the power of file linking dwg, which we use alot. Time will tell. Alot of the new features are gimmicks to me , especially the steering wheel, annoying to say the least. I do like the UI layout enhancements, its a small thing and long over due. Opening max2008 files has been stable. Even really complicated scenes. So far, other than the proxies there isn't any one thing that has stood out and made me go WOW, glad I'm upgrading. It is quite obvious that there has only been 6 months in development, but whats in there is working quite well. I am anticipating alot in the next max release to make up for the sparse feature list in this one. JHV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SandmanNinja Posted April 8, 2008 Share Posted April 8, 2008 [Thanks for the comments, Justin. I was mainly concerned with 2009 opening older versions of files. Really glad to hear MR now has proxies. Thanks again] Good luck with your RPC issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aaron-cds Posted April 8, 2008 Share Posted April 8, 2008 My guess is that Archvision is struggling to make more profit. Back in the days of scanline, their content was very popular. It was a quick way to get entourage in a scene without spending countless hours in photoshop. Now, with super realistic photo-realism, it's nearly impossible to get away with using RPC content without it standing out. The problem is that they didn't find a way to evolve. A year ago they launched a subscription service and now they're charging for the plug-in. A hundered dollars seems steep considering that it's probably just a few lines of code they need to write to make it work with 2009, but if that's what will keep them in business it's worth it. I still use my parking lot cars and other content when I need to give a client a "down & dirty" rendering. If Archvision goes out of business and there's no longer a plug-in, then we really won't be able to use the content we've paid for. So, I'm going to pay to play. I'm glad I only have one license to buy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted April 8, 2008 Share Posted April 8, 2008 My guess is that Archvision is struggling to make more profit. Back in the days of scanline, their content was very popular. It was a quick way to get entourage in a scene without spending countless hours in photoshop. Now, with super realistic photo-realism, it's nearly impossible to get away with using RPC content without it standing out. The problem is that they didn't find a way to evolve. A year ago they launched a subscription service and now they're charging for the plug-in. A hundered dollars seems steep considering that it's probably just a few lines of code they need to write to make it work with 2009, but if that's what will keep them in business it's worth it. I still use my parking lot cars and other content when I need to give a client a "down & dirty" rendering. If Archvision goes out of business and there's no longer a plug-in, then we really won't be able to use the content we've paid for. So, I'm going to pay to play. I'm glad I only have one license to buy. Their content is also a bit ubiquitous in a lot of arch firm renderings. When you see the same handful of people in renderings over and over it starts to become a put off. Justin... So, tell me more about the proxies. That is the feature I am very much looking forward to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dfife Posted April 8, 2008 Share Posted April 8, 2008 We’re glad you are using our RPC Content and we hope you continue using it. Yes, we’ve made a change to RPC Plug-in for 3ds Max 2009 – among other things it now includes the RPC Shadow-Plug-in. Customers may access the plug-in through RPC All Access (a free licensed RPC Plug-in for 3ds Max 2009 is available with any RPC All Access plan) or they may purchase it for a special existing customer rate ($49). Customers will receive an email detailing an option to purchase the plug-in for special existing customer rate. 3ds Max 2009 shipped with an RPC All Access CD 30d free trial to North America, Europe and Russia. If you didn't receive the CD please let me know dfife@archvision.com . Note: 3ds Max users who are using 3ds Max 2008 or lower are not impacted by this update. Thanks for your support. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianKitts Posted April 8, 2008 Share Posted April 8, 2008 So which part of the trial that comes with 2009 "expires"? If it's just your ability to get the "all access" content and not the plugin that expires could you just install the trial, let it expire and use your old content with the new plugin? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aaron-cds Posted April 8, 2008 Share Posted April 8, 2008 Customers may access the plug-in through RPC All Access (a free licensed RPC Plug-in for 3ds Max 2009 is available with any RPC All Access plan) or they may purchase it for a special existing customer rate ($49). Customers will receive an email detailing an option to purchase the plug-in for special existing customer rate. Thank you, that's good to know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dfife Posted April 8, 2008 Share Posted April 8, 2008 Hi Brian, Both the RPC Content and the included software (Composer, Viewport (beta), and RPC Plug-in for 3ds Max 2009) in RPC All Access are licensed. At the end of the free 30d trial, you would need to either purchase an RPC All Access plan to retain full functionality. Of course, if you just need the plug-in you can opt to purchase it as a stand alone product. You can try it here for free: http://commerce.vismasters.com/platform/rpc/static/subscriptions/trial/ Please let me know if you have any other questions. Dee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted April 9, 2008 Author Share Posted April 9, 2008 I am a little annoyed by this development, straight off we need 5 licenses. How does this impact on network rendering? I have access to 30 machines, Do it need a licence for each of these? What about RPC's in Revit? What about content I have created, how can I uses these? Mostly we use them for the parking lot cars and trees and bushes. I am tired of the people. We have spent quite alot of time developing workflows to get RPCs to work nicely with mentalray. I was talking with IT yesterday, they are annoyed that its yet another subscription fee to fork out. Considering the 100+ seats of Acad, Revit, 5 seats of Max, let alone all the other software we use. This is an expence we dont really need or want. Luckly now that mentalray has proxies its not the end of the world not using RPC's anymore. crazy homeless guy - The proxies are great, very similar to Vrays in workflow and benifits. Added bonus is they are material independant, so you are able to apply different materials to instances. Did a test yesterday. On my 32bit machine I was able to render off 300 intansted tree with a total of 8.1million pollies. With FG. Before I was only able to getto 3 million. With a 64bit machine I could go much higher. jhv Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dfife Posted April 9, 2008 Share Posted April 9, 2008 Hi Justin, A few answers to the questions you posted… This Plug-in change is specific to 3ds Max 2009. You only need one license to render – you can send a network render job to as many render nodes as you choose. Autodesk’s Revit is an RPC enabled product – the Plug-in is built in so you can use RPCs there without any additional cost issues. You can contact support directly at 859.252.3118 ext. 103 with additional technical questions or email support@archvision.com. Thanks, Dee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SandmanNinja Posted April 9, 2008 Share Posted April 9, 2008 I wonder - has anyone considered just doing some character modeling and making their own collection of 3D characters with various different clothing? Suits, jeans, skirts, etc... Heck, Poser should be able to export the appropriate type of characters (dang! I said the "P" word). http://www.turbosquid.com (shudder) has lots of cars, and a decent modeler should be able to turn out a photorealistic car in a weekend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted April 9, 2008 Author Share Posted April 9, 2008 Thanks for the clarification Dee, I suppose I have to get over the pain of forking out more $$ for a pluging I have been using free for years. Annoying yes but we all gotta make money hey jhv Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charter Posted May 29, 2008 Share Posted May 29, 2008 Looks like i will have to revert back to Viz 2008 if i need to use any of my RPC content......... and they call this progress!! Just another way to shaft the end user who has already paid for the content once already....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogue3d Posted March 2, 2009 Share Posted March 2, 2009 :mad:this is pathetic, we were not getting it for free. we PAID for the collections. So now that we upgraded to max 2009 we can no longer render any model that was done in the past. can we get our money back for the collections we bought throughout the years, since we can no longer use them? I'm done with RPC you guys are shooting yourself in the foot considering the content never was all that great to begin with no way I'm paying a cent to use what I already bought. good luck with that business model. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted March 2, 2009 Share Posted March 2, 2009 The best place to use RPC content is in Photoshop, not Max. Get the Photoshop plug-in from there website. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogue3d Posted March 2, 2009 Share Posted March 2, 2009 The best place to use RPC content is in Photoshop, not Max. Get the Photoshop plug-in from there website. I have the plugin and going forward that's fine, but my issue is that existing scenes are going to be a headache when re-rendered. especially since we are in the middle of a large project, going to loose time redoing stuff that's already been done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted March 4, 2009 Share Posted March 4, 2009 When I found out a few months ago that you had to pay for the RPC license I decided it wasn't worth it any longer. We've paid thousands of dollars over the years for the content and the plug-in was always free, charging for it now is a kick in the teeth. Add to that the fact that they don't seem to work very well with Vray, you can't create proxies out of them, and they don't react to GI and they are really useless for anything but the most simple visualizations. My library of AXYZ is much more versatile than my RPC's ever were, they take up less memory, and render faster so in my opinion Archvision is on it's way out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted March 4, 2009 Share Posted March 4, 2009 ....for the RPC content I use in Photoshop, I have created sprite files for. This way, I simply open a PSD file, and drag and drop the content into my image. The Photoshop plug-in take about a minute or two to load everytime I launch. I don't have that kind of time. I am probably violating RPC license agreement by using them in this fashion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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