Isotropix Clarisse iFX - short-time sale

[Hirazi Blue]

For a short time Isotropix is holding a sale on Clarisse iFX:

“Since last year, we received tons of emails from both frustrated small studios and freelancers who couldn't afford our software. This was really frustrating for us too, and we are more than happy to bring them the Clarisse iFX Anniversary Pack”, said Houman Assadian. Starting from 07/22/2013 to 07/31/2013, Isotropix introduces the “Anniversary Pack”, a time-limited offer that includes 1 license of Clarisse iFX plus 5 licenses of CNODE at $1,499$/EUR 1299. This offer includes full maintenance subscription and is limited to 1 purchase per customer. With this special pack, customers save more than $6,400/EUR 5400 on normal pricing.

(Quoted from here - my highlight)

And what you’d get is the new version: Clarisse iFX 1.5:

Clarisse iFX 1.5 brings an all-new hair and fur engine, increases photo-realistic rendering quality with new physical shaders, 3D depth of field and enhanced 3D motion blur. It also displays increased performances and quite a few new scene assembly features allowing users to automatize the generation of ready-to-render scenes based on their assets. Users can now also easily integrate Clarisse to asset managers, render farm controllers and use Python scripting to customize it to their needs.

[jamination]

I would love to hear someone's impression who has used this program (especially someone coming from max,maya or soft). I would like to invest in it, but I get this feeling they won't last, their marketing seems pretty much non-existent.

[Paulrus]

I played around with it a while back. My impression was, it's more of a 3D matte "painting" & compositing package that also renders than anything else. It certainly got me a little ticked off because Softimage already has all the tools to do something similar, but nobody has bothered to update & better integrate the FXTree.

Clarisse certainly has some very cool concepts with how it works. It's basically object-oriented scene creation. You can set up an object or a shot and then pre-compose it and then instance it. Nothing is pre-rendered. But IIRC these pre-composed elements are basically flat cards in 3D space that manage to still be affected by your lighting, DOF, etc.

At their normal pricing, I wouldn't take the chance. If they kept this anniversary pricing around and made it permanent, I think they'd see more people adopting it.

Just my .02 cents.

-Paul

[Hirazi Blue]

Isotropix seems to have killed most of its initial momentum when they announced the price of the product. At this current "Anniversary Pack" price it would have had a lot larger user base by now, at the full price they're charging normally they make Clarisse iFX into a promise I do not see it fulfill.

3 cents (keep the change). ;)

[luceric]

apparently, they're working with big studios like ilm, I'm not worried for them. it's just version 1.x

[Falam]

I was going to buy it a few months ago, well before I saw the price, that is This price is better but, could be a little more better, just a little.