Cost of being a AE Plugin Author?

[Sam_Hodge_from_Kognat]

Hi I am considering porting my OpenFX Plugin Rotobot to After Effects.

What will be the total cost per annum to be a plugin developer?

The Foundry have given me free Nuke licenses as a developer, chances are I could ask the same from Autodesk Flame, DaVinci Blackmagic Fusion etc etc.

It there any discount I can get as a small business?

It is not a huge cost, but I don't know if I am going to sell zero licenses of ten thousand per annum.

I am not trying to be rude just looking at the business decision of developing for Adobe.

Sam

Feel free to check my stuff out:

[deleted by mod]

[Sam_Hodge_from_Kognat]

I am experiencing and interesting sense of customer service, I called to discuss my options as far as pricing goes.

They said they would transfer my call I have been on hold for 30 minutes so far.

[Sam_Hodge_from_Kognat]

I got transferred to the technical team and I spoke to Akanshi who transferred me to her supervisor.

Her offering was to look at a web page of the developers agreement.

[Sam_Hodge_from_Kognat]

This gives a rough idea of what the plugin does.

[Sam_Hodge_from_Kognat]

I spoke to Param her supervisor and he suggested I call a Californian number.

So I will see where that ends up

Sam

[Sam_Hodge_from_Kognat]

OK here is the more up to date model with GPU acceleration, all of my video is on my website so I have had to upload to vimeo to post on this forum

[Sam_Hodge_from_Kognat]

This clip shows GPU accelerated performance on a Mac using Da Vinci Resolve as an OpenFX host, the performance is between 8 fold and forty fold faster than CPU only but relies on CUDA acceleration.

sam

[Rajashree Bhattacharya]

Hi,

I am looping in an expert to reply as soon as they're back in the office. Please excuse the delay, as it's after hours.

Thank you!

Rajashree

[Sam_Hodge_from_Kognat]

Rather than giving me the extension and contact details of the relevant person I was given the corporate switchboard number

So I will have to wait until I am awake during US Pacific Time 8am until 6pm and go through the phone trap again.

All while paying international rates.

It would be lovely if Adobe could support its smaller developers.

sam

[Rameez_Khan]

Hi Sam,

Technical support agents generally don't know the answer to such questions, simply because it's not in their domain. Let me loop in someone from the After Effects team to help you better.

Regards,

Rameez

[Sam_Hodge_from_Kognat]

I find it odd that you have redacted the URL to Kognat’s website.

i had one click through from the Adobe forums.

To be honest if someone searches for Rotobot or Kognat the URL will prevent itself.

I guess the forums belong to Adobe so it is your rules

sam

[Sam_Hodge_from_Kognat]

I called the San Jose office twice, after not understanding the question “Howcanidirectyourcall?”   Having asked the man who never gave his name to repeat himself twice. I said “I would like to speak with someone about a Development license for Adobe After Effects?” The line dropped. When I called back, I went around in a loop three times with the Cisco auto audio menu then the line dropped.

[Sam_Hodge_from_Kognat]

Even though it is 1:37 pm in San Jose, the phones are set to night switching

I am fairly numerate 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday includes these hours.

[Sam_Hodge_from_Kognat]

I have made contact with the ANZ Managing Director via LinkedIn, Suzanne Steele, hopefully she can direct me to the right person to speak to.

I am really surprised with all the layers of employees that nobody can answer a simple enquiry.

Sam

[James Whiffin]

Hi Sam

Did you have any luck getting a developers license? I contacted adobe staff regarding this a while back but unfortunately didn't hear back.

[Sam_Hodge_from_Kognat]

No didn’t hear a thing the silence is deafening

[Sam_Hodge_from_Kognat]

I have had almost nine thousand views of this post on LinkedIn Sam Hodge on LinkedIn: "Do I know anyone from Adobe, that can help me out, I am having a hell of a t...

[Guest]

In my opinion, the post on LinkedIn answer your basic question regarding the cost already: the AE SDK is free to download and use, and you don't have to apply or pay a free to be an AE plugin developer.

If you want a free Adobe cloud subscription, that's a different thing, and I am not sure if Adobe will hand these out at all. I assume most of us here are on the regular Adobe cloud subscription service anyway already, or use an older version (pre-cloud) for developing and testing.

Maybe applying for the Adobe Pre-Release program will get you what you want, but as far as I remember, that also required a regular cloud subscription.

[Sam_Hodge_from_Kognat]

I am not particularly interested in using Adobe products, only developing for them. But it would be nice if Adobe staff could just tell me that developers are expected to pay for their own test licenses, then I can commit funds to this as a cost of releasing Rotobot on AE. Now I am left in limbo not knowing or not sure of what information  to believe.

[Guest]

I expect you'll have to wait some more time in limbo then

[Sam_Hodge_from_Kognat]

It might just be easier to walk away and not develop for Adobe products

[mathewt18006894]

I think you'll find it almost impossible to find someone to help you. Adobe are very rigid in their ways, maybe you could kickstart development on kickstarter or indiegogo? I'd contribute some coin, as, I'm sure would many others, and that might in someway get you a sponsor from someone at Adobe too?