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don't know if Sidefx will consider that.
Anyway I think SideFX is by far the fairest company in 3d business. Apprentice and HD are just fantastic offers to non professional animators.
At work I use Maya, mainly to render Stills built in Rhino.
At home I wanted start playing around with animation tools etc. just that the Maya PLE is not usable with all these horrible watermarks. XSI doesn't offer any PLE anymore. The competitors only 30 days trials. So I dived into Houdini, and I just love it.

To your fear of seeing sideFx disappearing: Maya, the former king of the hill, is suffering of the horrible management at autodesk (they also kill studioTools).
Horrible licensing system, updates only to premium members etc…
This allows the competitors to catch up: I would like to mention houdini and Lightwave. Great progresses in both apps. houdini's new interface is just awesome. We also see new competitors rising: Modo, Silo etc
So I think that at the moment SideFX future looks great!

I don't worry about blender. I use it since my days at university, when it disappeared for some month. But good products will survive and blender's comeback is amazing. It does almost everything the big players can do. It uses python since its beginning and language becomes standard in 3d so we will see fantastic developments from this side!

rofthorax
BTW, if this text comes down.. Note I've got a copy going up with a video taken on screen from point blank, up on youtube at “rofthorax”. I have 60 subscribers and 200,000 views, 175 videos, believe me, you don't want to take this down. Let's say instead, I'll hold back on this.. Hmmm I'm not doing anything wrong Youtube will see that..

Why would we take down your text? You are offering suggestions for pricing and productization. It is always helpful to hear what different people think.

rofthorax
5. basic features, just enough to be productive but nothing wizzo like cloth, hair, etc.. Like it is now with Houdini HD Apprentice..

Houdini Apprentice HD has ALL the features in Houdini Master - even cloth and hair. It includes much more than basic features in order to give artists working on independent projects access to all of our features.

Finding the right pricing model is always a challenge. It is important to keep prices at a point where it is affordable while maintaining a revenue stream that supports a strong R&D for future development of the software. We feel that we have the right balance at the moment but will certainly take all ideas into consideration for down the line.

Robert

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It's good to see folks that are this passionate about 3D software….and crack. jk

I could imagine a “first license is cheaper” solution.

Let's say a studio has to buy 20 seats: We assume they know what they do and within one or two productions they earned the money back.

The problem is the one man freelancer. For him, especially in the beginning of a career, 8000$ for Master plus 5000$ for a workstation, screen and printer… are a huge investment. It might be cool to offer a “welcome pro” license, that costs noticeable less than a full license. He is allowed to use it commercially but it uses the NC file format, so that he can't use this copy within Houdini Master.
Once the business works and he can afford an employee he has to buy a regular version. The same if he wants to buy an update…

might be tricky to control this system…(who guarantees that he doesn't buy the second license in the name of employee?) but it could be a solution

Thanks for all the good ideas. Interesting to hear everyone's ideas.

Another option for a new customer is to utilize our rental licenses. Use Houdini Apprentice to develop your skills, then when you have a commercial job lined up, rent the software for a month or two.

As explained on our price sheet, some of your rental costs can even be applied to the purchase of a license once the job is finished and you've collected your fee from your client:

http://www.sidefx.com/images/stories/products/pricing/houdini_pricechart.pdf [sidefx.com]

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learn the art of being concise & I will read your posts.

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well, you do have a few points, but your verbosity and tangential anecdotes cloud them.
sidefx did have what you describe, Houdini Select, at aroung 1000$. They replaced it with apprentice HD for the learning market and Escape gained even more features.

For what you get Escape is quite reasonably priced, especially compared to autodesk software.

for the budget projects that you describe, your only real choice is blender and the like.

and in 1995, sgi's were way more expensive than you describe, try 40k for an indigo2

also, with software obsolescence, would you really need to be able to fire up kinemation today? (god what a miserable workflow they made you do with TAV) I know for a fact that I will not care at all if I cannot run Houdini 9 on my 4096 processor system in 2018

MD

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dude.. you are out of touch with reality.

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I don't see anything about Houdini being exclusively for the entertainment industry…
SESI talk about the entertainment industry because that's what 99% of Houdini users are doing…
if you want to use Houdini for something else…go for it…
but if you make MONEY - you have to pay more for the license…

I don't know why this is such an issue for people…

just because there are ‘free’ applications out there DOES NOT mean that you are entitled to a ‘better’ price or less restrictive terms for Houdini…

this is by far the worst thing about the internet - this total delusion that things are, and should be, free….

SESI's Apprentice and Apprentice HD programs are BY FAR the best in the industry (as is their support)…if you want more, just ask - they will listen…but an attitude of expectation and entitlement is simply unreasonable….