• Todd Eaton

  almost 2 years ago

  DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT UNLESS YOU WANT TO PAY ANNUALLY. Why doesn't the developer list this as an annual paid subscription? Because that's what it is. I've made dozens of purchases on this site and this is the first time I've ever felt morally compelled to write a negative review. So here goes... I bought K-Cycles 2021 at the end of August 2021 and the last version I'm able to download is from December 2021. I had less than 4 months before needing to pay to upgrade again. 4 months! No other addon I've purchased has done anything like this. And to mock me further the K-Cycles 2022 page says I've already purchased the product. Yes, an unsupported product named similarly but not the product. This developer is a doing some terrible, shady business practices. To put it in perspective, if you had bought the 2021 version in December 2021 you would have been able to download less than one month of updates before being hounded in email to pay to upgrade. No matter what the developer says to justify their greed it's just useless excuses. They can go pound sand.

• 

  Eric Klein

  almost 2 years ago

  1. It is not exactly a subscription since the K-Cycles 2021 product does not expire, is always available and support continues. The updates do stop at the end of the year.
  2. It clearly states that updates are until the end of year on your right where the product is selected by the price and also in the FAQ.
  3. I do not sell the product directly it goes through Blender Market unfortunately they don't have yearly subscription setup.
  4. I offer high discount towards the end of the year to compensate and switch to a new version a couple month before the end of the year.
  5. Creating custom builds for Windows and Linux adding new features and regular updates for the alpha/beta/release versions with customer support. Takes a lot work compare to a regular add-on. Just look at the new performance and features added in the last few months.
  6. Appreciate your previous support.
• Fran

  about 2 years ago

  I bought K-Cycles 2021 and now, if i want anything newer than 3.1 alpha i have to pay the best part of $40 again? No thanks. A 20% discount for previous version buyers? No thanks, a 70-80% i would think about it. Instead i will give Turbo Tools V2 a try. At $25 on Gumroad, i think it is a better proposition . It is an addon, so no need to have separate installations, or wait for the latest version to be ported. I do appreciate the efforts of the developer, and understand we all got bills to pay, but like Sam said, i do feel cheated out of $40. The product itself is not too bad, it crashed a number of times, but so does vanilla blender. Slightly faster and better denoiser but nothing to justify an annual subscription, which is what this is.

• 

  Eric Klein

  about 2 years ago

  K-Cycles has many advanced features that are not possible with an add-on for example real-time viewport, "Post FX", the very well receive "Ultra Lighting" , "Ultra Denoiser" is faster in native C++, better Cycles performance and other features.

  A custom build like K-Cycles takes a lot more effort and time to update, add new features, and build multiple blender versions for various OS that an regular python add-on.

  At this time I am offering 25% off + 20% discount that is almost half price from the regular price which is a great value.

  Can also use the denoiser/render preset add-on together with K-Cycles for maximum benefit.
• matas

  about 2 years ago

  This is not a regular add-on, instead, it is a custom and completely separate custom blender installation. Your previous Blender settings and your old add-ons will need to be reinstalled in the k-cycles instance.

  The performance increase was also not that noticeable and the viewport had strange artifacts during initial samples.

• 

  Eric Klein

  about 2 years ago

  The previous Blender system settings needing to be reset is rare, but it would only need to be done once. This can also happen to vanilla blender.

  Performance improvements could be configuration issue or hardware and scene depend.

  The Viewport mode is set for faster performance, but can be change easily by enabling "Extra Viewport Updates & Navigation" is slightly slower performance, but better navigation and cleaner initial samples.

  Installation manual has a complete troubleshooting section. I offer direct support for any issue that can happen and most cases are easily resolve and many are not K-Cycles issues.
• BVBY

  about 2 years ago

  king of renderer for Blenderrrrrrrr ! hopefully mo aggressive discounts to existing users

• benjamin phillips

  about 2 years ago

  I used to skip this sort of product, here in Blender Market. More fool me. Whilst, I have yet to really harness this product fully...I have noticed viewport rendering has massively improved. It was a real @#$% trying to set-up scenes and shots using native Blender, I suppose you would call it? I suspect general render times have improved too. It's hard to tell, because Blender render times have been improving incrementally over both NVIDIA studio drivers releases and Blender versions. These days, I can have a high light bounce count, 32 Max, with 1000 samples and 4k dci resolution and still render out my character animations at a frame a minute. I need to explore more of the features of this product admittedly. I must admit that I do all my compositing and FXs in Hitfilm pro, with final animation strips put together in Vegas Pro. I have given this addon 5 stars, at this stage primarily because of the viewport render speed, and the possible few seconds it shaves off overall render times. This is a serious product though, with obviously great support. I come from a music and composition background originally, so I know it takes time to learn a new 'instrument' this version, for me is a new instrument and so I know I will need to give it time to really get to know the product and so the full 5 stars without a more intimate understanding of said product. PS, maybe after reading an above review and their complaint about purchasing the upgrade - perhaps make the upgrade half price, unless it already is? Thanks. Ben www.1331.space

• Samuel Mulick

  about 2 years ago

  Impressed with the speed and the multitude of settings that can be adjusted. The denoiser is excellent too. It really does help get those renders out more quickly. I must say though, I am disappointed that past customers need to pay to move to the new 2022 version. I understand that this software takes a lot of upkeep by the developer, but in a climate where nearly every other main Blendermarket product offers free upgrades for life, I feel a little like I've been cheated. Especially since it isn't expressly stated on the product page (at least that I am aware of) that there is only a year worth of upgrades. In my case, and I know not everyone is in the same boat, I would have been happier paying more upfront and getting updates as long as the developer continues to work on the product, than paying for each successive upgrade.

• 

  Eric Klein

  about 2 years ago

  The product page on the right where the product item is selected states "Includes stable release, beta and the alpha Blender updates for all of 2022"
  In addition the FAQ states "Regular K-Cycles RTX updates for Blender stable release and alpha version through the end of 2022".

  K-Cycles is custom build not an addon. I believe K-Cycles is the only custom build in Blender Market. It requires a lot more work to update and developed with different builds for every blender version and platform plus the addition of new features.

  Their is upgrade discount for previous K-Cycles users.
• Staffan Millqvist

  about 2 years ago

  It really speeds up the viewport, and also quality of renders. The effects are very nice too. Before updates were regular, but now there hasn't been an update for over a month. I really hope the project isn't dying like so many other Blender add-ons. It would be nice if it got into the main fork of Blender though. I think it has a place there.

• 

  Eric Klein

  about 2 years ago

  K-Cycles project is quite active. The new updates are up now. This update took a little longer due the heavy development of the just release new major feature "Ultra Lighting". The updates should go back to normal of every 2-4 weeks.
• Enigmaw Studios

  about 2 years ago

  I've been using K-Cycles for nearly a year now (maybe longer). It is an amazing addon. The experimental features are great and very glad he added animation Denoising, as the flicker in low light settings was driving me bonkers. I will say that I too am experiencing crashes, it is NOT a memory issue on my computer. I am loaded with memory (RAM and VRAM to spare for my neighbors). What I do believe the issue to be is running it on the unstable versions of blender. 3.0 works great. 3.1 is finicky, especially with some addons like Human generator. So that leads me to ask, when is the 3.1 stable coming out. Very eager to nab it up. And anyone reading this who needs to decide, buy this right away, you'll be very glad you did. Speeds up renders with better quality somehow, and has some great extra features like bloom, and chromatic aberration, and now mist (which blender always had but he's made it very easy to apply and adjust from your main view port

• Riccardo Fasoli

  about 2 years ago

  Awesome tool!

• Michael

  about 2 years ago

  I'll give this a 4 star rating because while it does do as advertised, I am having trouble with one particular interior scene where K-cycles will crash after starting to render one tile while in regular blender it renders the whole scene fine. I even turned gpu boost to non. Optimized the scene the best I could by reducing subdivisions and vertices where I can but it still crashes. Also, do you have a discord or a better place to report problems?
  My specs (in case it matters)
  RTX 2070
  Ryzen 5 3600
  32GB ram
  SSD

• 

  Eric Klein

  about 2 years ago

  Scenes crashing while rendering can have a number of causes like e.g. configuration, settings, or memory issue. I have an install guide with a troubleshooting section. The best is to contact me through blender market "Ask a Question" share the problem scene and will investigate to find a resolution.

• Displaying ratings 21-30 of 89 in total

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