Autodesk Maintenance prices to increase

Bullit · Post by **Bullit** » 09 Mar 2017, 22:29

MauricioPC wrote:Hey Mathaeus,

So you are quite happy with Maya LT.

So far for me is Houdini (because I really like Houdini) and I'm still deciding on a modeling package. Maybe Maya LT might be a good idea for VR? I played with Hololens for the first time this weekend and I loved it!

Mauricio maybe you can try another Blender fork with a less unfriendly interface

http://www.bforartists.de/

MauricioPC · Post by **MauricioPC** » 10 Mar 2017, 10:44

Hey Bullit!

Yeah, I've checked this out. By the way, an german artist created a server for Blender for 3ds Max users and there's some talk there, etc. If you want, I can invite you.

I'm following two tutorials, one from Andrew Price (Blender Guru), which is free on youtube and another one, also free, from Masterxeon101. Both are good in their own way, while Andrew Price waste a lot of time making jokes, the project is simple, so it's going. The one from Masterxeon101 is more like "shut-the-f*ck-up-and-learn-this-shit" type of thing, which is fun since I'm having some laughs.

Andrew Price - Blender Guru
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... HGfkCmMJ0P

Masterxeon101
https://gumroad.com/l/blendingawaythepain

His work is actually quite interesting on the hard surface side:
https://www.artstation.com/artist/jerryperkins1447

And last but not least, there's this short overview of Blender from Mantissa which helped a lot and made play with Blender easier. He switched from 3ds Max to Blender 2 years ago and haven't looked back.
https://www.themantissa.net/portfolio/

All this to say that after seeing Mantissa video and starting the Blender Guru and Masterxeon101 trainings, I don't find Blender all that weird anymore. There's still some UX usability practices that are indeed weird, but I've just come to accept it, just like Zbrush.

Bullit · Post by **Bullit** » 10 Mar 2017, 18:20

Nice that you are trying it.

brudney · Post by **brudney** » 15 Mar 2017, 09:44

A nice discussion on the subject (42:20):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN4GASc ... e&t=42m20s

Mathaeus · Post by **Mathaeus** » 15 Mar 2017, 10:33

MauricioPC wrote:Maybe Maya LT might be a good idea for VR? I played with Hololens for the first time this weekend and I loved it!

Just a bit more about that, firstly I completely agree with Bullit, you should try Blender. All that new modeling stuff in Maya, imho it worth for organic, irregular surfaces, let's say if you want avoid a long forth-back procedures like creating base mesh in Maya, sculpting in ZBrush an re topology back in Maya. In so many cases, no need for that.

When it comes to man made stuff, someone suddenly discovers how hard is to do even basic stuff, like extrusion of one profile along multiple curves (and of course, to keep connections alive). New extrude from polygon is tied to polygons. In case of symmetrical modeling or multiple extrusions at once, it creates just one curve for all (quite funny, btw). Old nurbs extrusion insists of having the first curve point somewhere in bounding box of profile, and... it is slapping you by tons of irrelevant nodes, that only gets broken sooner or later. Paint Effects throws it's own set of can / can not do. You could script the procedure, but then it's not really alive.

Long story short, while Blender is in many ways not so strong as Maya, once when it comes to modeling, Blender is well rounded app, Maya is simply not.

That's somehow typical, let's say you want to ABCDE, app like Blender, Max or SI will give you some rounded result, AB, ABC, ABCD or all. Maya.... it's always A and C but not B, or D and E in case if you're not using B after A, so on.
Maya is still nice and really hard to avoid since SI EOL, if you're playback-ing the characters all the time. And that's all, plus a few still strong solvers like nCloth and Naiad. For any other purpose, don't see literally any reason why not to choose something else.

P.S. noticed on AD forums, when someone is asking for something about hard surface modeling in Maya, they likes to recommend Fusion 360 - which is nice app, but this probably tells, that hard surface, mechanical, anything precise, does not belongs to Maya anymore, by 'vision' of owner.

Daniel Brassard · Post by **Daniel Brassard** » 15 Mar 2017, 13:43

@brudney

Thanks for the video link. The Podcast speakers have summarised the issue very well: the condescending offer add no real value to maintenance/subscription users, it will cost more over time, you will loose your perpetual license for a trade-in rental which will stop if you no longer pay for it (i.e. its not a rent to own kind of trade-in), you will have to pay to use your tools without warranty that the tools will be up to par (no warranty of fitness or value added in the future) and the letter is insulting to long term valued customers.

AD did that to ALL their loyal valued customers, and they are pissed. Will this translate to a loss of business? Hard to tell: do you have alternatives you can move to? How long will it take for you to switch to an alternative? How costly will it be in effort, time and cost?

Time will tell....

My counter offer to AD:

* Give me a rent to own kind of a deal, where if I stop paying I can continue to use the version I have in perpetuity understanding that I lose any future updates and support,
* Offer service packs to correct your bugs for free to all users (not just the paying ones). Service Packs (correcting your mistakes) are NOT updates (enhancements and new functionalities), and
* A warranty that, what I am renting, will be reasonably bug free (i.e. I am expecting some bugs but the program is still functional and bugs will be corrected via service packs).

Then I'll think twice about your "deal".

Bullit · Post by **Bullit** » 15 Mar 2017, 17:26

Mathaeus wrote:
MauricioPC wrote:Maybe Maya LT might be a good idea for VR? I played with Hololens for the first time this weekend and I loved it!
Just a bit more about that, firstly I completely agree with Bullit, you should try Blender. All that new modeling stuff in Maya, imho it worth for organic, irregular surfaces, let's say if you want avoid a long forth-back procedures like creating base mesh in Maya, sculpting in ZBrush an re topology back in Maya. In so many cases, no need for that.