Maya LT

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

I think trying to take the game sector away from the max community isn't a smart move. It just looks as aimless as anything AD did since they acquired maya.
It also never made sense to acquire 3 (three!) rival apllications in the first place without having a plan what to do with it.

But anyway I only try to see what's behind the things. I don't mind people being happy about Maya LT.

I don't have AD numbers, but from my experience, In Japan, Max is probably the weakest of the 3 in the japanese gaming industry, Softimage still has some popularity with Capcom, Platinum Games, and some others, but Maya is the king. I don't know if there is any school teaching Softimage or Max here, but I haven't heard of any.
And afaik, Maya is the most popular in the Movie industry also. So, the truth is, Maya is the most popular application, the one that has more users, more students, and more companies using it.
So, is the best move to push your strongest application Or should they try to sell more SI and Max licenses? I don't know, but with MayaLT it looks clearer what path AD has taken.

I don't think AD didn't have a plan.

There are two options:
Either you try to dictate what products people buy or
You make products that people actually want.

AD has decided to go for the first option. That is the plan. They even decided to make users not to use some of ADs own software.
Until today, this strategy wasn't successfull. Otherwise they would sell more SI and max licenses, and there was no need for subscription or renting models. There is a reason why only maya is teached in schools, and that is because AD wanted it that way, not the customers.

But anyway, I didn't want to start a discussion about that, I only wanted to know what the sales proposal is.

PS: this was last year: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-0 ... uring-plan

[Rez007]

You can render in Maya LT -- with OpenGL or DirectX, which is pretty high quality compared to what you're used to in Softimage,, where you would never think of doing that stuff (see dx11 tesselation in maya on youtube. Rendering cinematics with a offline renderer is not something that is very common in mobile (specially due to size constraints), or even in general (game engine rendered cinematics has become more common to keep the same look). If you're indeed going to spend cycles on offline rendering, imho you're investing quite a bit more than the normal small team or one man band Maya LT is meant for. You or the people you have hired to do that already own a full copy of a DCC.

This is Maya DX11 viewport:

The MayaLT viewport looks great, no issues there and I wish that was in Softimage. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I think it greatly depends on the game you are trying to make. You are correct though, we have a ton of content in our game Blaster X HD - 400+ levels, rendered out to .pngs with layers. It is definitely new territory for mobile games and I don't think anyone else is doing that. I have Softimage, so it is best for me just to stick with paying Subs because it has everything I need to make any type of game I can.

The point I was getting to, is that if I wanted to make a rendered Intro or a fancy still image for my game, I cannot in MayaLT, which then would force me to look into a different product to meet those needs. There is a difference when you make a game for a cell phone or for a tablet. Tablet games are starting to push the boundaries of becoming really good - visually, and people are used to having larger game files in accordance to that, to an extent, space is not that big of an issue as it is on a cell phone. To me scripts usually make things easier or are for a quicker work-around, but the majority can still be done brute-force. If I want to render, then I virtually can't - that is breaking me away from MayaLT. Where I can still work without scripts, but I can't without the even possibility of a renderer.

I am speaking from a 2-man Indie Team as well. I am your target market and this is the reason I would not invest in MayaLT at this point. I am not against MayaLT, I think it is good, but there is a huge piece missing for me. I will not be the only Indie who feels this way either.

Just my opinion as I think hearing your target market's viewpoints will help AD better shape the product. TIGsource.com, in their forums, has a vast array of Indie Devs as well. That might be a good spot to get some additional feedback.

[bottleofram]

And prevent anyone who's new to 3d try anything else than maya.

Isn't that obvious? That's how business work.

Well known also goes for max. Will there be max LT?

I wouldn't expect a Max or SI LT. It doesn't make sense to develope and support 2 rival applications of your flag ship.

I think trying to take the game sector away from the max community isn't a smart move. It just looks as aimless as anything AD did since they acquired maya.
It also never made sense to acquire 3 (three!) rival apllications in the first place without having a plan what to do with it.

But anyway I only try to see what's behind the things. I don't mind people being happy about Maya LT.

A rare occasion, but i think they are actually honest about their reasoning here. Maya is the only one out of three to be completely multiplatform and thus best suited for the given market. Mobile game devs are all over the place...