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> Forum Home > Support > Smedge is now expensive

	Sun, 15/Oct/2017 4:08 PM
Michael 26 Posts	the primary reason we've been a loyal Smedge customer all these years was the non-subscription low-pricing combined with the simple UI. I'm confused if we can still purchase perpetual licenses or not or if we get a discount for existing licenses. The old purchasing page is still there, but it's unclear if we can actually keep purchasing perpetual licenses and continue getting a discount since the new page takes you to the subscription-oriented licensing. If we have no choice but to purchase subscription-oriented licenses, I'm not sure we can stay with smedge since the pricing is similar to competitors that appear to offer more features for similar subscription prices Edited by author on Sun, 15/Oct/2017 5:42 PM
	Mon, 16/Oct/2017 2:34 AM
Robin 1138 Posts	The perpetual licenses are still available and the price has not changed. You can access your existing licenses, purchase more, renew your support, as usual, through your uberware.net home portal: https://www.uberware.net/home.php The licenses systems are all inter-compatible. The idea is not that you are forced to go to only a subscription model, but rather, that customers that prefer a less expensive short-term solution have options available. The short term licenses can also help out customers with perpetual licenses for cases where they need to have a short term "burst" in capacity, say renting some machines for a job. If the job is just a week or two, you can buy points for those machines to render with. If you have the nodes 2 months, you can buy them for just 2 months, and they will be added to your total number of machines available during that 2 months, and will automatically go back to your same number of perpetual licenses as before. Most of the new license purchase features are not yet automated, but the old website is still there and you should be able to access it to renew your support as normal. Soon the new system and old will be integrated into the updated website interface, giving you all the same access with the improved experience. Finally, I have updated the new pricing page to include the perpetual pricing more clearly. I hope this helps clarify things. Please let me know if you have any questions, and please let me know if there are any specific features you feel are missing from Smedge that you would like to see. Thanks, -robin Edited by author on Mon, 16/Oct/2017 2:35 AM
	Mon, 16/Oct/2017 9:09 AM
Michael 26 Posts	Thanks, that makes sense. I was worried for a bit as we're planning on doubling our licenses in the very near future. A feature I'd really like to see is a quick ability to auto-slice an image. Right now you have to do it manually by entering in the Left, Right, Top, Bottom values. You also have to manually create a subfolder for each region so frames are not overwriting each other since they will have the same name. It would be nice if you could just say "16" and it would slice the image up into 16 images, put them in their own auto-created subfolder. If they could be auto-reassembled into a final image, that would be fantastic, though it's something we could easily script too with something like ImageMagick. Perhaps for auto-slicing, there could be a couple options like horizontal strips, vertical strips, or rectangle/square/block slices? thanks
	Mon, 16/Oct/2017 3:38 PM
Robin 1138 Posts	Getting the image size is an issue, but can be simplified if you create your job from inside the app itself. However, the name issue should be much simpler to fix if you use the variable substitution system as part of your image filename. Something like: .../path/to/files/Filename_$(SubRange.Start.Pad:5).png This will use the "unit" number for the work as part of the filename, so all files can go into a single folder. For your split frame renders, are you using Maya or a different application as the renderer? I can look into adding or modifying the submit scripts to support this functionality. Thanks, -robin
	Tue, 17/Oct/2017 9:50 PM
Michael 26 Posts	I'll look into that. Yes we're using Maya. I don't mind entering the frame resolution. I just don't like having to carefully enter in Left, Right, Top, Bottom and hope I didn't get anything wrong, because chances are it's one of those moments where speed and reliability matter. Also not sure if anyone noticed, but the "top" and "Bottom" in smedge are opposite from the maya command-line documentation. I always have to look it up and make sure I enter them in reversed

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