Don’t beat around the bush… tell us how you really feel.
1 Like
What would you list as your top 3 favorite things that Flare does better than Nuke Indie?
I honestly had never heard of a Nuke Indie.
1 Like
I am happy to see some discussion here.
Nuke Indie is good as long as:
A: Output resolution isn’t issue.
B: Phyton limitation isn’t issue. For example Das grain has helper made for Indie version, but some other handy tools can be limited or unfunctional.
C: Forced upgrade between small upgrades. For example you are using 15.1v4 because it works fine, but Foundry forces to upgrade 15.1v5 or newer version after some time even newer ones might not work as good for you.
Really appreciate if you can share your favorite Flame batch features compared to Nuke or if you don’t have any Nuke experience, then without comparing to Nuke at all 
Well, as far as I’m aware (and If I’m wrong anyone can correct me please), Flare is mostly the same as Flame without the timeline. What I really hate about Nuke Indie, is that only freelancers can use it, so if you are working in a studio or post house, you can’t open a Nuke indie script, and same otherwise, so it becomes a huge pain to share scripts and projects.
The whole point of Nuke Indie is to provide a professional tool for freelancers who may not have a job pipeline that supports the full version of Nuke in the earlier part of their career. And the limitations are designed exactly so studios don’t go cheap, fill a room with junior Nuke Indie users doing some pre-work and then importing that into the main project, thus circumventing using the full price version of Nuke.
Nuke Indie is meant for freelancers who may otherwise work in Fusion or After Effects to have access to the Nuke toolset and learn Nuke while working smaller jobs in the freelance market. And once they move up, they can work at a studio that has full licenses, or they can afford their own. It works perfectly well. In that market you don’t need renders > UHD, and while python may be interesting, it’s not required to do your job, because you’re not part of a big pipeline.
It would be a fair argument why the full versions of Nuke and Flame cost $6K/yr in subscription fees. But that’s a separate discussion. These prices are calibrated for the professional market. They may not be your first tool in your career, depending on your path. Further development of these apps takes a lot of resources and requires appropriate revenue streams.
The whole world got bent out of shape by BMD essentially giving pro software away for free, and some other open source projects like Blender. While this may be appealing for some folks, because you know free and freemium is the standard of this new economy, where we pay with our privacy and data access instead of cash. It does not put the industry on a sustainable path. We do need healthy app vendors employing enough engineers to build all those tools so we can continue to have them available, and for innovation to be driven by the fact that multiple vendors compete in the market.
You can work for a studio, or you can have your own client list and charge industry standard rates, and then paying for a Flame or Nuke license is just a business expense that is part of what you do. It is not the end of the world.
And I say that someone who runs a small post shop (2 people), and I pay for my full Nuke and my full Flame license among other software. And it is just a business expense. There was a time where I couldn’t afford them, and I had to use other tools to learn and build my business. And I understood that in due time, if I worked hard, I would get to the point where I can work with these tools and own the licenses.
Playground rules.
2 Likes
Flame actually has a better solution - you can get access to full unrestricted version with tokens. That allows freelancers to use the app on as need basis and pay as you go.
As discussed in another thread, there’s a need for a learning edition so you don’t burn through tokens while learning.
And token pricing should be recalibrated to be more considerate of part time users rather than spot licenses for studios. But that’s a smaller problem to solve.
1 Like
I’m kind of lasy to participate in these debates LOL, but considering this is getting really interesting and I think this is may be very positive healthy I’ll try it out. Also english is not my first language, so I’m sorry if my words seem all over the place.
I think your point of view is really solid and valid, very interesting perspective.
Let me try to clear out a bit of what I think is the big issue, and the reason I don’t like Nuke Indie. And also bring just a different perspective.
I completely understand how The Foundry protects the product for being used in studios pipelines. But as a freelancer sometimes you deliver a shot or several shots, and the client requests changes after a long period and for whatever reason the artist using an Nuke Indie may not be available, and then it becomes a real problem. I faced this not too long ago and not for the first time. I had to redo a lot of work, because of it, and there is no workaround.
I won’t actually get to deep into pricing perspectives because I live in Brazil where the currency is near 6 to 1, which means that a $ 630 (US pricing) in Brazil is R$ 2.665 (exactly the value right now). There are friends of mine that don’t have house rent this expensive, and I’m not exaggerating at all.
Not sure I made any sense, but I just wanted to share my thoughts.
1 Like
Thanks for the additional perspective. And you’re doing fine, English isn’t the first language of quite a few folks here, myself included.
The scenario you describe with the client wanting changes some time after, and the original freelance artist not being available - that’s not a tool problem.
When a client chooses to work with freelance artists, they get a discounted price. It may be 30-50% less than what they would have paid a big studio for the same work. When they make that choice they accept a few trade-offs:
Apart from the experience level (and some freelancers have the same or even more experience that studio artists - some used to work for studios, and are now doing their own), there are some business considerations:
A freelancer is a single person, with that come risks. The freelancer may be out of business, may no longer be alive. Or he may be committed to another job. For whatever reason, as a business the freelancer has no backup or redundancy.
A freelancer also has inherent calendar limitations. If a deadline changes, or it turns out the project scope is much bigger than anticipated, but the deadline remains, there is no spare capacity to have two or more people work on the job. Some of these risks may also lead to the job not being completed the first go around.
A freelancer may not have as good an infrastructure or workflow discipline. No guarantee that the original project was backed up, or licenses required for the project may have expired. All kinds of scenarios.
And more of this. In the US we sometimes call that the ‘Bus Test’. Would your project get completed if the artists gets hit by a bus? In many cases the answer is no.
In short, the client optimized price and accepted certain risks. Now if they client later-on needs a change and the freelancer they worked with is not able to do that, this 100% on the client. They saved money and accepted that risk. The client then has to pay another artist to redo the work at full rate.
So this is not an issue with Nuke Indie. And it’s not your problem. It’s an opportunity for you to do business with the client now and get paid your normal rate. Or at least it should be that way.
In the current market in the US, with many more artists being freelance I actually see that as an opportunity - for groups of freelancers (or better individual artists) to get together and form virtual studios. These can provide clients with an in-between value product. It is still maybe at a 20% discount to the studio, but now includes redundancy, spare capacity, improved workflows, and possibly even some other infrastructure. But not a nice office to go to, or a fancy name they can say ‘our VFX was done by XZY’ which everyone is impressed with.
Regarding pricing of tools in international markets - that is a real issue, and that falls on Autodesk, Foundry and others, to make sure that to the extend possible tools are priced based on local market rates, not the US market.
3 Likes
What you are saying actually makes a lot of sense, I gotta say I loved the “Bus test” concept.
I couldn’t agree more regarding pricing, In fact I think only Adobe adapts prices locally.