Hi everyone – after taking a look at the business model for Creation, and getting feedback from various customers, we are making some changes to the business model for Creation. We are reducing the price for the Creation framework, and introducing separate Creation Module products that we will offer in the future. We wanted to explain the logic behind this change, as we think it offers some significant benefits over the current ‘$3k for everything’ license that we have been proposing.

Problems with the old model:

• Customers find the $3k price point very high for simple tools like asset viewers and other widgets. It means that everyone wants to see significant value before they can justify purchasing Creation – yet we started the company so that we could cover both large and small problems.
• This in turn means that we have to keep adding functionality to create sufficient value to justify the purchase – this has meant that we are getting further away from offering a framework and heading towards to the monolithic DCC applications that we never intended to replicate.
• Bundling crowds, muscles, vegetation systems etc within the framework is not efficient – in many cases this functionality just gets ignored.
• Customers want to use Creation for non-interactive/headless scenarios, but cannot justify paying thousands for these licenses. It’s very difficult to do create a split between interactive and non-interactive licenses with Creation – the things that make the framework powerful, also make it difficult to create arbitrary separations like this.
• 3^rd party developers are unable to build and sell simple, useful tools with Creation because of the price point. Part of our plan has always been to support and develop a strong 3rd party developer ecosystem, but the business model has made that impossible.

Our solution:

• Release the core framework without all of the high-end application samples – so muscles, crowds, vegetation etc are removed.
• Release this functionality as standalone modules that are more complete products, and charge for them separately.

Benefits:

• Studios can start using Creation for simple tools with a low cost of entry – $250 per license, per year
• Development of the core Creation framework will be faster, with a focus on performance and flexibility
• We can put more work into various modules, as we can get a clear return on investment by selling them to customers that need the functionality
• 3^rd party developers can sell standalone applications and modules at a much lower cost

What is/isn’t in the basic Creation framework?

• Muscles, SSR, Crowds, Hair, Vegetation will all be removed from the Creation framework and offered as modules (over time)
• Generically useful functionality will always be in the core product – so real-time rendering, file extensions, DCC integration, UI functionality, Creation Core Execution Engine, debug tools etc etc. Everything you’d need if you decided you wanted to build your own modules

Creation:

Annual rental: $250 per year, per node – a node can run anywhere (artist machine, render node etc)

Purchase: $750 purchase + $100 annual subs

We will still offer the two free licenses of Creation!

Volume discounts/Site licensing: contact us

Modules: We will announce module pricing as we release them.

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