Future Content

[nehumanuscrede]

I haven't been utilizing KS for very long, but I have quite a bit of experience with other rendering systems ( Brazil, Mental Ray, V-Ray ). 

Big Wish
Would like to see a slider added to the floor reflections to enable a falloff so you can dial in the level of reflectivity instead of all or nothing.  Can do the same for shadows I suppose. 

Small Wish
Would LOVE to have the ability to license KS on two systems simultaneously.  Pain in the a$$ to bounce the license back and forth between my home workstation and my mobile one.  I've come across more than one person where installing on a single system only is a deal breaker for them.  With the exception of dongle locked systems ( I loathe dongles. Is why I went with KS Pro vs VRay 2.0 ) most other high end software allows at least two installations concurrently because they know folks will use it on their primary workstation and their mobile one when necessary.

[guest84672]

You already have the option to put in a ground plane and add a ground plane material. With this material you can add textures, and control the reflectivity.

You can easily move your license back and forth. That system is very robust.

The fundamental difference between KeyShot and other systems is that "it does something" even when you are not in front of it. SolidWorks, Rhino, Photoshop - you name it - only do "something" when you actually interact with the program.

So if we allowed activation on 2 systems simultaneously then users had 2 installation that they could use simultaneously.

Hope this makes sense.

[Speedster]

So if we allowed activation on 2 systems simultaneously then users had 2 installation that they could use simultaneously.

So couldn't your server just allow one at a time, like so many other apps?
Bill G

[guest84672]

Yes, that's what I said. You can deactivate on one machine, and activate on another. Similar to how you can do it with SW for example.

[nehumanuscrede]

Thomasteger:  I did figure out the reflectivity issue by using my own materials   Thanks. 


I think what Speedster meant is similar to how Rhino works.  Rhino will allow you to install and license on multiple machines, but the software periodically checks the local network to ensure only one copy is running at any given time.   If it spots another copy running, it won't allow you to use the second one. ( Assuming a single user license )

The only concerns we users have is looking down the road a bit.  In the event your licensing servers ever cease to be ( or support for version X is discontinued ) then we have no recourse in moving the software license in the event we upgrade hardware. 

All online licensing systems come with this potential issue, but it becomes even more-so a stress point when talking about software at this price level. 

[guest84672]

In this case it would be a floating license. We have that.

[andy.engelkemier]

floating licenses don't really work well for remote users, at least none that I've seen so far.
I pretty much hate any licensing that hinders me from doing something in any way. Licensing shouldn't get in the way. The dongle method isn't So bad because I can just grab my license, and run. However, I've had that crash things too. I did that with Vray for a while, but it would crash if Max was still open sometimes. It's not supposed to even try and access the license unless you're rendering. But if you leave the material window open, it sometimes would request the license that wasn't in the machine. For some reason, I'd come back the next day and the file had crashed. I'd normally close that, it doesn't Sound like a big deal, but some files take a few minutes to open.

I'd love to play with keyshot a bit at home over the weekends so I can learn some new tricks on how to work around crashing/not working items. But not enough to want to figure out the licensing.

Also, how do you handle a failed deactivation? For instance, I deactivate a license from work, use it at home, then the home computer fails to deactivate (or I just plain forget). Would we be stuck waiting for a response from you guys to fix that? If that's the case, that'd be enough for me to never do it. I'm not taking responsibility for a day or two of lost work. I'd just play with 3dsMax instead (which Does allow you to use 2 copies at once and just takes the customer's word that they aren't using them both simultaneously for work purposes and doesn't care if they are both in use so long as one is only for personal use....and they are said by many to be an evil company...just putting that out there)

I understand where Keyshot is coming from though. They try and charge you for rendering threads. If you can use it at home, you could be rendering at work (where they feel they could have sold you on some extra rendering threads) and be working on tomorrows rendering while you're home. Where in reality it's more cost effective for you to purchase a new machine that's faster than your current machine, in most cases, to make up for that loss. We've had that discussion Many times. "Should we get more threads to render faster?" "wait....how much would a new machine cost? That would make video rendering, Rhino, and photoshop faster too right?" So we end up on that path instead.
The extra nodes makes sense if you're rendering constantly. We've just never been able to justify it. But we've also never experienced the speed. So maybe we don't know what we're missing?

Anyway, I see where both sides are coming from.