Pricing on Flame, Flint, Inferno, Fire, and Flare

[Anonymous]

Hey, everybody, brand new here, but I know I am probably going to ask a really annoying question…

I am writing an article and kind of breaking down what all the Autodesk products are, among other compositing and VFX products, and as you might know, Autodesk’s price points are not readily available on the website.

I have gathered that Flame is around $250,000 and Inferno around $500,000 (correct me if I am wrong) but I can’t find pricing for Flint, Flare, and Fire anywhere… (I really have scoured Google…)

I am not in the market for these systems, but trying to put together this article to educate those that can’t search forums on what these systems do and all the details I can distinguishing them all.

I figured that you lot would be the ones to ask
Thanks for you help!
Topher

[Sergio Villa Kramsky]

Smoke Advanced (Formerly Smoke 2K) about 60K$ the software.
You need to add the hdw and their subscription package.

Fire does not sell anymore.

Flare (Flame without desktop, no vtr capture and no vtr archiving ) about 40K$ for the software.
You need to source your own hdw and you need to need to already be an owner of a Flame or Inferno license current on subscription. You can not buy it seperatly.

Flint (should be around 85K$ to 90K$ for the software) if not a bit more.

Flame and Inferno pricing seems accurate, except that the inferno product use to sell more in Japan than in the rest of the world.

Don’t quote me on those numbers, but they should not be too far from the truth.

Krawken

[Anonymous]

Hey man…I’ve always liked your site. Though I hope sometime in the future you’ll add fxguide.com and fxphd.com in your links section. 🙂

I suggest you call your local Autodesk sales agent and ask them directly. That being said, I doubt you’ll get an accurate quote without being a serious buyer.

Why? Prices vary considerably between facilities, worldwide regions, and more. The reason you can’t find prices online is that that Autodesk doesn’t publish prices and it does fluctuate overtime. Another big reason that any information you post won’t be accurate is that sales regions are divided around the world and country and vary considerably.

I did include some pricing recently here on fxguide:

http://www.fxguide.com/qt/1803/smoke-on-mac-part-1-overview

I trust if you use any of the information you get here, you’ll credit us in the article as follows:

(courtesy of fxguide.com, copyright 2010: http://www.fxguide.com/qt/1803/smoke-on-mac-part-1-overview )

[Shannon Gans]

@Krawken 29751 wrote:

Smoke Advanced (Formerly Smoke 2K) about 60K$ the software.
You need to add the hdw and their subscription package.

Fire does not sell anymore.

Flare (Flame without desktop, no vtr capture and no vtr archiving ) about 40K$ for the software.
You need to source your own hdw and you need to need to already be an owner of a Flame or Inferno license current on subscription. You can not buy it seperatly.

Flint (should be around 85K$ to 90K$ for the software) if not a bit more.

Flame and Inferno pricing seems accurate, except that the inferno product use to sell more in Japan than in the rest of the world.

Don’t quote me on those numbers, but they should not be too far from the truth.

Krawken

The inferno sold in Japan is a full 19″ rack with burn render nodes, backburner queue manager, KVM keyboard mouse monitor, Z800, IB switch and cards in all nodes, storage. All topped off with an branded door. Well that is what is was several years ago hence the higher price talked about.

The Inferno sold in USA/Europe is the same hardware as Flame, but the software has additional features, and sells for slightly more than Flame.
Check with the autodesk website for the differences.

Smoke is also available on Mac as a software only product, but does not have all of the features smoke advanced has.

[pixelmonk]

Chris, are you sure it has extra features? I thought it was now the same tool-set as Flame.

Paul

[Shekhar Rathore]

From what I understand, the software feature set is identical. They phrase a couple of things slightly differently in the feature list on the Autodesk website, but under the hood in the US, I believe they are the same.

for example:
FLAME:
Integrated 3D character generator for help in advanced text creation.

INFERNO:
Integrated 3D character generator for advanced text creation.

😉

[Ron Dohanetz]

Flame and Inferno are identical apart from the price. As pointed out correctly, they sell to the Inferno to the Japanese because there is a percieved kudos in the product. You are essentially paying a premium for the splash screen. :rolleyes:

I’m not even sure you can by Inferno in the west anymore, but I’m sure I’ll be corrected….

[Anonymous]

Last time I heard pricing was
Inferno €300k
Flame €250k
Flint €150k

But as John said prices vary a lot depending on clients and regions. I’m also guessing Nuke’s massive distribution should be rocking the very foundations of Autodesk packages… therefore Smoke for the Mac………

[Anonymous]

@cragno 29763 wrote:

I’m also guessing Nuke’s massive distribution should be rocking the very foundations of Autodesk packages… therefore Smoke for the Mac………

Autodesk and Foundry are competing in very different markets. I’d love to see you design and implement a show open or conform a spot in Nuke.

[Anonymous]

Sorry to disagree, but besides the technical advantages of one and the other, Nuke and other compositing packages have reduced dramatically the gap between affordable compositing applications and Autodesk’s compositing and finishing applications.
Not everyone can afford more than one (if lucky enough) of these extreme-high-cost packages. And on the day-to-day work applications like Nuke or Fusion can fill in for the comp part being as powerfull (and sometimes more) as Flame…
Where I work we have one Flint to conform the commercial or sequence and do most of our comps in Nuke.

[Ramazan]

smoke on the mac…competeing with nuke? can’t see it, seeing as it doesnt have batch, its out there to compete with final cut.

I’m loving nuke more and more but if you are in a busy broadcast place, one conform workstation probably wont be enough to support many clients coming and going.

[Anonymous]

We are managing ok with one conforming workstation. What I mean with the Autodesk products and Nuke is basically that now a days you arenot confine to a $250k workstation to do your comping and VFX. Computers rising technology, + cheaper Disk Array systems, + That power of packages like Nuke or Fusion, closed the Gap.
10 years ago Flame looked like the only option for comp and finishing, but not anymore…
When mentioned Smoke, I was mainly taclking about the price dropdown and the platform change. I wasn’t comparing it with Nuke. But if you take one Smoke for Mac and add a Nuke, you cannot be too far away from a Flame for the tenth of the cost….

[Saran Sirikasamsap]

am curious..does nuke playback 2k / 4k realtime with a resize to an HD broadcast monitor ? and if so what kinda RAID + video card does it need ?

[Ramazan]

To be honest there not much wrong with nuke with premier so why get the smoke on mac? For me the beauty of flame is a unified environment where all you have to think about is the project you are on, it’s liberating for the artist. And yes I use desktop software extensively, but it never feels as free creatively as flames workflow. Whether this is worth the money depends on what the clients think, and half the time it’s actually the specific artist they want to use. The other thing is on the main flame artists are supervisors and have a full understanding of the whole workflow. As an example at my last place of work they are trying to recruit compositors and everyone of the candidates who are non flame have no clue about conforming, editing, mastering, formats, shoot supervision, cost implications, etc. They are very much pieces in the pipeline as compositors whereas flame artists are a mini pipeline themselves.

Of course there are exceptions, and over time it could all change.

[filip]

I agree with you. The level of experience that you find between Flame artist is hard to find in desktop compositors. But many Flame artist are switching to Nuke.
I’ve been working in Flame for more than 12 years and now I find myself working in Nuke pretty often. I have access to both softwares but every time I have to comp CG elements I use Nuke. The channels workflow for the CG passes is way superior in Nuke.
Is kind of absurd, Autodesk owns all the majors 3D packages and the integration with them is better in Nuke than in Flame. Nuke is really a 2 1/2 D tool.
I love Flame and I hoping for a big upgrade that changes the game not those little new features that we get every year.

[Author]

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