3DS Max 2016 Extension 2 released
Dec 01, 2015 by CGP Staff
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A new extension for 3DS Max 2016 has been released that brings many improvements to Max Creation Graph, simulation data import, and more.
- Max Creation Graph enhancements – create, manipulate and use shapes and splines with new nodes. Import bitmaps and simulation data like CSV or Open VDB files. Bitmap handling and meshing also got a boost in functionality. You can now easily add buttons to your MCG tools via the signal parameter, or color pickers via the new color parameter.
- Simple Simulation Data Import – import and animate accurate simulation data, and visualize how it changes over time with Max lighting and rendering. The new tools can be used to animate simulation data in CFD, CSV, or OpenVDB formats. Apply render styles, CFD velocity fields, and animate airflow splines to make your data come to life while at the same time harnessing the capabilities of 3DS Max for realistic or artistic presentations.
- Text & Shape Map – Creating text or shapes as a map in your material is simple with the new Text and Shape map. Users can now create decals and text-based graphics using still or animated 2D objects. Elements can remain interactive and linked to the original objects: font changes, content revisions, and shape updates will be reflected automatically with this new functionality.
- Text Tool improvements – font names are now displayed in the font type, making it faster to find fonts when using Text Tool to apply textures, animations and effects to text. Generating geometry automatically disables when separating by character, word, line, or paragraph to eliminate duplicate geometry. Selecting animated tracks is now easier with offset controllers.
- Texture Object Mask – easily and accurately create, place and animate multiple materials, and use any shape to control the application of materials to an object
- One-Click Print Studio access – launch Autodesk Print Studio and export 3DS Max files for 3D printing in one click
Source: Autodesk
This is all sad news, not becuase I may like or dislike the new features, but because we are being forced to abandon Autodesk tools, soon enough we will be migrating out of Autodesk (Max and Maya), towards Houdini, Modo, Blender or any other package that may cover our needs and is not rental only, we already started the migration, it will be a painful and slow process, but they don’t give us any other option, we are not able to afford any rental only cost…
… a shame…
I know you have a serious issue with the rental model but I doubt if paying the costs of disconnecting from a mayor part of the whole CG ecosystem, I guess Autodesk and Adobe for starters, is going to save you money in the end.
I understand what you say Jonathan, the problem here is the one described by Nossgrr, it’s not just about saving money, is that it’s too risky for us to continue with the trust in Autodesk, check what happened with Adobe and it’s pricing rise for CC for teams, we cannot risk our business to something like that, specially when Autodesk prices are so so off, more than 200€/month + VAT for just 1 3ds max seat? we don’t want/can’t afford that, they think their software is made of gold, and they have all the right to think that, it just does not fit into our business model.
We will maintain our permanent licenses as long as Autodesk don’t go crazy on subs pricing, in fact, we don’t know what is going to be the subs pricing the next year, is going to be our current price or will it be doubled? (wich is approx the cost of the rental)
I can’t leave my business future in the hands of Autodesk, I need something I can own, something I can control, our business is 3d software centric, we cannot afford to loose control over it, and Autodesk software is nothing that we can control anymore I’m afraid, I hope they change their minds and return to sell licenses along renting them.
Cheers!
Let’s keep to the facts here, Adobe didn’t raise the price out of the blue, like i said previously it was simply the end of the introductory discount price for team users. Everybody who went rental knew this:
“From now until November 27, 2015, enjoy a special introductory price of Creative Cloud for Teams for just $49.99. After that date, the price will increase to $69.99. Tools include Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier Pro, Muse and Edge. Get access to a library of tutorials to help you get started.”
quote Nossgrr: “They have the ability to shut you out of your software at a whim (or a bug). Also, let’s say you’re in the middle of a big project with a tight budget, all of a sudden AD decides to change their pricing model or hike prices.. You’re toast. Too scary to even risk.”
Yes, making important business decisions solely based on some imaginary nightmare scenario is not scary at all!
Look, I’m not a big rental fan either but the predicted apocalypse simply isn’t happening. Max has great development momentum, Adobe isn’t resting either, Corona is kicking ass, etc! All the thing’s I’m renting are doing just fine.
Ok, info acknowledge regarding the Adobe thing, you are right 🙂
But that does not change the fact that they can change the price at any time and you won’t have any option besides accept it.
The other thing is that those nightmare scenarios are just nightmare scenarios with rental only software, but not with owned software.
In more than one time I’ve been in a situation where I have to delay the payment of my max subscription for several months, this made Autodesk charge me 100€ more but I was able to keep working because I owned my license, in the current situation we can do nothing at all, no money-no job.
It’s not a a nightmare situation it’s a pretty common one, running out of cash flow from time to time is very plausible, all companies have that situation, the worst ones delay the payment for their workers, now if they have to keep paying autodesk to have the workers working, who do you think whose payment will be delayed more? Autodesk or the workers?
Anyways, what I said is that we’ve started the migration process, it will take time, but I want to get out of Autodesk software without loosing my abilities to work, without loosing quality or services to my clients, I have full control over my pipeline so if I can work out a solid migration towards other packages I will be able to abandon it, unless they change their minds and leave both options, even limited to a number of seats per company,this way small companies with medium/small budgets can rest sure, while big companies will have to enter into this rental only game, which on the other hand they love because it allow them to have a better money management.
There are tons of solutions, it’s just they don’t want them, they think subscription will give them more money because they are king of the hill, and that is true, but for how long? I don’t know, but I hope that it does not last too much unless they revert things.
We cannot afford that risk and that cost increase no matter how you look at it, maybe you can, we don’t.
Cheers.
Hi Jonathan,
I’ll tell you what happened in our IT department, our datacenter (server farm) is currently 100% vSphere based (VMWare), a few years back vmware decided to change their licensing policies. Ended up costing us four times as much per server we needed to add for a new project..
Not imaginary at all, these things happen.
here’s the breakdown,
This is a substantial change in licensing terms. The current, version 4 licensing strongly encourages “scale-up”—buying systems with few sockets and lots of memory and running lots of virtual machines on them—rather than “scale out”—buying a larger number of servers each with much less RAM. That’s because adding physical memory was “free,” at least until you hit 256 GB, but adding sockets (or new servers), however, cost money. The result is enterprises using VMware on (typically) two-socket servers and hundreds of gigabytes of RAM.
That scale-up model, so encouraged by the old licensing scheme, is now penalized. A two-socket, six-core per socket, 256GB machine used to require two Enterprise licenses. Now, on account of all that RAM, it’ll require eight Enterprise licenses. Problem is, the price of those licenses is the same as it was before; $2,875 for Enterprise, $3,495 for Enterprise Plus. The Standard license has even gone up, from $795 to $995. vSphere 5 will need four times as many licenses, and hence cost four times the price of version 4. That’s a bitter pill to swallow.
It’s not all about saving money, think about it..
They have the ability to shut you out of your software at a whim (or a bug).
Also, let’s say you’re in the middle of a big project with a tight budget, all of a sudden AD decides to change their pricing model or hike prices.. You’re toast. Too scary to even risk.
We’re moving away from all lease only options.
Great extension again! Especially the texture object mask feature saves a lot of time and hassle 🙂
As I see it – Max 2017 will only have new features to its MCG engine. Autodesk and Eddie perlberg may think that MCG is awesome but for the small studios MCG means almost nothing. We need real tools implemented and not another IDE inside Max.
Not a single feature in the new extension is nearly usable for most of us and what the hell is CFD ?????
I work in a small studio and I will be using every single one of these new features. Using MCG to create custom tools for specific purposes not only fills the dev cycle gap, but greatly improves your ability to do what you need when you want. Learn it, you will find it useful. “What the hell is CFD?”. Really? If you ever want fluid dynamics in max, they have just implemented the first step. The other additions such as the Text Map and Texture Object Mask greatly improve workflows for animation/rendering.
MCG means nothing to small studios? and why don’t u just point out the tools and features you need instead of ranting? instead of complaining that new features are useless to you, why don’t you point out what features you are looking for?
Yeah AD doesn’t seem to get it. Maya could really use MCG for the average motion graphics and game vfx user etc, and max needs new tools to make life easier with the many everyday tasks in specially archviz and other productions. Not plugins 2.0 autodesk style where they again let everyone else throw shit at it. 2017 will just be an update with an app store :p why the hell is populate still a half arsed attempt?? Most promising tool added in years and yet again left with just the bare minimum of features making it totally useless in 95% of cases. /rant
MCG would have been good if it was like Softimage ICE.
Without real time it is a big problem for those that are starting with math stuff.
Right now it is a niche thing that doesn’t matter much.
And a bit like ICE it fails at language conceptualization. So that is not even an improvement.
I make also mine Juang words about renting. Note i have no problems with renting it certainly helps some people, even i can see it could help me in some circumstances what i criticize is the lack of option.
MCG is a year old baby.
How old ICE was when it was released? 3 year old?
I can not understand why not updating in realtime is that big of problem?
When you are working on graph, it is broken gaph anyway.
As soon as you have valid graph, all you need is CTRL+E.
Great work IMHO. Keep up the great work guys!
For me text & shape map is a good update but I think this update is ansuitable update for design and motion graphic users.
I’m been waiting for Ptex and CAT update since about 3 years ago … 🙁
and we will pay 7000$ (+VAT) for this …?
EDDIE PELBERG OR SOMEONE ELSE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! STOP ADD NOT USELESS MENU INTO MENUS!
“Texture Object Mask – easily and accurately create, place and animate multiple materials, and use any shape to control the application of materials to an object”
wait…could it be?…finally chameleon is back!?
Not as great as it might seem. A sphere, box, or plane, that’s all you can use right now. You can’t use any shape (object) as listed above. Pretty limited.
Seriously… you can use only few shapes… you have to be kidding 😀 (!?).
MCG has had a good momentum so far, and in this release as well there seems to be more focus on improving it and opening it up to more workflows and internal tools than anything else, which is great, even if I may not be using it now it’s good to know that I have the option to expand Max’s toolset relatively easily.
The thing that has me wondering though(and one that I don’t know much about, because it hasn’t been much talked about)is the underlying performance of these tools compared to other tool authoring systems out there, and whether it’s efficient to implement large pipelines and/or native features in it, I really like to know more about the underlying tech behind it, for example how does the underlying tech compare to ICE or similar tools in Houdini, I also like to know if the overall performance of MCG is the subject of ongoing improvements like the feature list has been.
And as for future developments, beside a modern/fast/lightweight UI that I think should be their #1 priority(because honestly it’s an embarrassment at it’s current state), they should also look at what things have made the biggest impact on Max in all these years and make them even better, they probably are doing that with MCG which directly plays to the strength of Max’s procedural/modifier based workflow, but then there is PFlow which can use a lot of renovation considering the new innovations in the recent years, and it’s one of those things that everyone from fx, motion graphics, arch-viz and even modeling can benefit from.
Also Abanegan pointed out CAT, CAT was a 1000$ toolset developed by the makers of XSI and ICE!… and it’s been gathering dust in Max’s shelf for years instead of being continuously improved upon which considering it’s strong foundation could make it one of THE best general purpose character animation toolset on the market, right inside of 3ds Max, maybe it’s about time to stop neglecting these great tools that we already have right inside Max.
Well said, couldn’t agree more!
They seriously need to do something about Pflow.
Not only they need to make it faster but also, as I was suggesting on the X-particles post, add some tools which would allow even the non techy guy to create more intricate setups out of the box, without having to deal with data operators.
I’ve been able to prep some more interesting animations with ICE (me, the least of the techy guy in the world) than with Pflow. Compounds made my life so much easier.
“And as for future developments, beside a modern/fast/lightweight UI that I think should be their #1 priority(because honestly it’s an embarrassment at it’s current state), they should also look at what things have made the biggest impact on Max in all these years and make them even better, they probably are doing that with MCG which directly plays to the strength of Max’s procedural/modifier based workflow, but then there is PFlow which can use a lot of renovation considering the new innovations in the recent years, and it’s one of those things that everyone from fx, motion graphics, arch-viz and even modeling can benefit from.”
I have the same problem with rental ! I will NOT rent any software from Autodesk. They destroyed so many tools in the past: Combustion, Edit, Softimage, Toxik and much more. Just imagine they decide to kill 3dsmax and just do not offer a rent anymore in favour of maya ? With my desktop license I still can use it as long as I need it, I can use it 10 years from now if I want. I can open my old files and backups.
But when Autodesk is killing software in the future, it means YOUR main software tool stop working from one day to the next (next quarter or year, when your lic file is not valid anymore) on our own computer !!!!!
Do you really think I am crazy to rent this system ?
The problem with making a decision to jump to other software based on a theoretical future is that you are putting yourself through the motions of what you would have to do anyways IF that “doomsday” scenario does come about…and in effect limiting your potential by locking yourself down to a different set of constraints based on current technology rather than what may be available in the future IF that happens.
Granted good things can come from drastic change and it shouldn’t be discouraged…but be certain that you are making an improvement on your situation.
Ben the thing is that if the worst scenario happens you are dead or in a very hard situation, but if you start the migration process right away, with the current owned licenses, you have some time to do a smooth transition and go outside Autodesk software, and of course you are controlling your risk, meanwhile if you don’t do this, you will loose control of everything and you are at their will, meaning that if they want to do a crazy price raise, they can, and if you don’t agree with them… well… you can stop working, that’s it, because or you pay to work, or you don’t work, there is nothing more…
Also, it’s not an uncommon situation when companies don’t have cashflow to pay right away, so… what can you do in that scenario? stop working until some client pays you for a job you can’t complete?…
To be dead in the water in this situation would simply be revealing an unwillingness to adapt. There are already a number of legal cheap/open source solutions to anyone finding themselves in that situation. If anyone was up against a deadline in this situation, it is highly likely that there is already some cash flow.
Contracts should include the software fees, in fact, it should be dead simple to calculate, justify, and negotiate this cost into contracts with the rental-only schemes.
The sad thing is:
if many people like me do not rent because of all the disadvantages we have, the profit of the 3dsmax group will go down.
The the Business people of Autodesk will say: see, nobody is interested in 3dsmax anymore, let´s kill it.
They will never reflect that THEY destroyed the community with wrong decisions.
this is exactly how it will go down.
tying ones livelihood to autodesk profit-only based policies is suicidal.
some useful, some not sure. as long as they keep them coming then its a good thing.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad update, but I am quite worried about bloating of 3ds Max. I have never ever heard of anyone ever having to get CFD of CSV data inside of Max… I mean WTF is that? There are lots of things that have been added into Max past years that I am pretty confident nearly no one will use, such as A360 cloud rendering, QuickSilver renderer, etc… Things like these, that have been added just because managers said “we need 35% more interoperability this year” will just remain there, bloating the Max core, even if no one uses them, because you can not just remove feature you advertised as new and shiny few years ago, as it would make managers feel silly. So while lots of great new features, such as these new maps make it inside of 3ds Max, also a lot of bloatware makes it there, and it will remain there rotting, never used, for versions to come. And every new Max version will indeed be “biggest max ever” eating over 10GB of hard drive space and taking over a minute to launch, even on SSD drive 🙁
fascinating the amount of whining for a good looking sub update.
obviously the team is hard at work which is most anyone can ask for.
i for one am well into the process of moving away from max, and could not be happier.
while i find interesting the direction it has taken, max is not the hub of my studio anymore. infact i use it only as a swiss army knife of sorts (only because of the amount of plugins i have) for various non essential duties.
it is still a buggy, bloated, and outdated looking package, but most of all the amount of “not giving a f” autodesk have shown towards its userbase over the years was the final nail in the coffin.
i will ride out the max thing as far as it goes but never again will i buy or should i say rent anything from the company again. bet on it.
much respect to the new dev team. they seem a dedicated bunch.
rants aside:
anyone knows if the numerable ui bugs or the memory leak had been fixed?
The Memory leaking bug is definitely fixed
Don’t know which UI bug you specifically mean. It’s been some time since a came over the disappearing toolbar icons bug, but i’m not sure wether this comes from the update or me installing a fresh nvidia driver
thanks. enhanced menu for one but lately discovered a complete glitchout when changing the grid colour in the colour tab of the ui customization.
seems quite a few fixes in the sp2 though.
Yea, the new 3dsmax developer team is great, for sure. But it do not matter when the business people are bad. I wish the developer team would split off the company and build up a crowd funded successor of 3dsmax, WITH BUY LICENSES !!!!
I would support them, I would even pay more just to own my license.
Agree on this last one, the dev team is great, they are putting a lot of effort in each new release, it’s a pity
And agree about the crowdfunding idea, but there is still a way to do this and it’s supporting Blender, I already do it, and you can even fund a full specific project if you can, I wish my studio has enough money to dedicate a few thousands euros to this, I would hire a pair of devs just to make blender evolve faster and better, some day I wish I will be able to do that…
Cheers!
I think Allegorithmic is heading the right direction with it´s Rent-To-Own System (Substance Live). When you reach the full price via rental, you own the software at the current state – that´s fair.
Here is a poll in the official 3dsmax feedback system for something like that:
http://3dsmaxfeedback.autodesk.com/forums/80695-general-feature-requests/suggestions/10808325-rent-to-own-licensing
About the update: nothing for my needs.
The feature i´m missing the most is a working und functional render-/passes-/scenemaganement-system. Autodesks answer was “State Sets”. I wonder if they ever tried to use it in a real production. Even the camera sequencer is based on them and buggy as hell. The best solution for that on the market was softimage – so they had the knowledge and the technology inhouse, but integrated a not working and, in my opinion and compared to SI, bad system – applause!
thinking autodesk would adopt such system is monumentally naive and goes against the whole purpose of the rental system they have in mind.
autodesk does not care about you owning the product. why should they. they care about controlling the market and the share price. as any company of that size really…
I bought my license in a german speaking country and i recieved a letter from the german reseller telling me that there is a problem with my subscription (that i cancelled in 2012) and that i will be considered as a illegal user of 3dsmax 2012 if i continue working with it and legal matters can processed against me and that they only want to help me solve the problem.
i made them very very clear that i will never ever invest in a autodesk product again and that what they borders on insolence and is probably not legal anyway.
did anyone else receive such a letter?
Nope, but anyways, if you have your invoice, you have full right to work with your software, no matter if you have subs or don’t I think.
Cheers.
Was it really the reseller, not Autodesk Germany ?
If it was the reseller it sounds more like a shady practice of the reseller in question. If the letter is really from the reseller and you got a legal perpetual license, i would directly contact Autodesk (not Autodesk Germany though) at that matter and report the reseller name. Resellers depend strongly on customer satisfaction and how this is reported to Autodesk. So get in contact with Autodesk ( not the german division though at best) and report the reseller.
The german Autodesk division is notorious itself for sending out letters with borderline attitude against customers. I once got a letter that i have to report them the number of licenses i use. My reseller hinted me, not answering the letter would spike suspicion.
Overall i consider this being an insanely customer hostile business practice.
it’s a legit autodesk letter, not even a reseller, remembered it wrong.
here is a copy. i blurred out the name since i don’t want to start a witch hunt and everyone that is addressed probably got it. and not that hard to find out who wrote it anyway 😉
http://pasteboard.co/2DBBBO4U.jpg
I still think it’s just scare tactics but i’m not the one that could afford a lawyer. since i’m not even using my personal license anymore i’m personally not concerned.
my main reason to post this is to demonstrate the behavior of autodesk and why people should switch to other software. imo it’s not even a money question. good luck to people that sign up into the subscriptions under the new AGB. they will probably be milked to the last penny and it will have splendid time once you discontinue your subscription :-#.
Hi Nick,
I think you misunderstood it.
They just mention that you or someone in your company is using an older version that is only allowed with active maintenance subscription.
The active maintenance subscription allows using the last three versions before your latest perpetual version you got from your active maintenance subscription.
If your subscription runs out and you don’t renew it, you are just allowed to use the latest one you got in the last maintenance period.
If your latest one is 2015 and you have active maintenance subscription, you are allowed to use 2012, 2013, 2014.
If your maintenance run out without renewing, you are just allowed to use version 2015 and have to deinstall 2012, 2013 and 2014.
No,,, I am not from AD,,, just another customer under subscription.
Hope this helps to clearify.
Cheers,
Can
I had a similar letter – it really pissed me off, vague threats of legal action.
Autodesk laziness. Pitch a benefit as something most other companies allow anyway.
i don’t use my own old license so they don’t know anything about what i do, anyway does this make it better or worse?
is my car illegal once a new car model is out on the marked? is my tv illegal to use once the new model is out? it does not make sense. it’s just autodesk trying to use their muscle, but can hardly be argued on a reasonable level. or how about we now have to buy samsung subscription yearly to use the tv. it’s ridiculous (but it will probably come to this some day)
and it’s not even that it’s about how the letter is written and how they threat me as a customer of their product. i actually seriously considered buying a new license once 2016 kicked off very promising and should apparently be the last perpetual license. but no, not anymore as much as i like to work in 3dsmax.
i had a similar discussion with the foundry a while back when they raised prices for nuke and it was just too much for me to update the subscription and unfortunately had to drop it. when i contacted them they told me some investor just gave them 1 million for mari development so they have to rise prices to get the investment back. i made a similar argument as above. if there is a new yogurt flavor available in my supermarked will all the other products be more expensive? once you break it down to something simple like this there is not much to argue.
i wonder if this business model really works for big studios with a lot of subscriptions. i’m involved in two startup companies in asia at the moment and no matter how i shuffle the money around i can’t figure out how to make it work over a time 5 to 10+ years. please enlighten me. i have literally no leverage to convince for example chinese investors in buying into subscription based software solutions. they just go like what i have to pay every year. find another way.
since maybe it is just my little freelance world where this business model does not work.
For me it is more logical with the maintenance subscription for perpetual licenses as follows…
You bought a Mustang with maintenance subscription,,, you will get and own every newest Mustang with newest added features and have to give back the old one, because you don’t own the old one anymore.
No company would allow you to upgrade for few bucks to the new car, TV or what else with a maintenance subscription and allow you to own the older ones, if you want to drive the newest Mustang or watch on the newest TV or whatever.
Also the same for software you pay for upgrades,,, you loose your right to use/own the old ones, because you upgraded to the newest one for fewer bucks,,, just read the eulas carefully and you will see.
Otherwise you had the possibility to upgrade to the newest one and sell your older versions to get the newest one for free and the company would close its doors in shortest time.
Autodesk allows us to drive the last three older Mustangs in addition to the new one while we are on maintenance subscription.
If you decide to cancel your maintenance subscription, it’s you choice and their right to say give back the older Mustangs, because you have the newest one for what you paid for,,, and that’s definitely much more cheaper than a paid upgrade.
Or do you really think Ford would give you the older Mustangs as a donation or gift, while you have already the newest one for small bucks?
I own AD ECS Ultimate Network perpetual with a maintenance subscription and it saved me many bucks and I had not to pay for every upgrade in the past and I had/have the luxury to use the last three older ones in addition to my latest one I am owning.
And I will stay as long as possible with that,,, until AD decides to kill that maintenance subscription or am not able to efford it anymore.
In that case I have to deinstall (give back) the older ones and work with (drive) my latest package as long as possible and make a switch to another software (car) that fits to my needs and my budget.
I hate this renting only model too and would rather switch to another software instead of beeing forced into renting model.
And to the licensing letters…
May be the issue is that while you are registered as maintenance customer, you get a license file with the integration of the last versions you are allowed to use.
After cancelling the maintenance they are still in the license file, but you are not allowed to use them anymore.
And if Autodesk makes a check of its user base data, your licenses appear there with that license file and gaves alarm, because you have no maintenance anymore.
Just a thought.
Cheers,
Can
i think in the best case scenario where you don’t have to care about money because whatever you do with the software makes enough anyway it’s probably all good.
the problem remains if you don’t want to update. the newest file i got from people i work with is 3dsmax 2014 i know a lot of people that still work with 2012 or even older. not everyone needs the new features ergo does not want to spend money. i can see from a shareholder point of view that sucks and they try to force as many people into a subscription based system where it is very hard to drop out of.
i just don’t get it. i have a very hard time defending autodesks way of doing things or admitting they are right in what they do. because on several other software or plugins i own namely vray, ephere etc. i am happy to give them money. every update is worth every penny. i don’t see them trying to force users into strange subscription system. all they do is an amazing job in bringing artists great tools and are very responsive to problems no matter how small they may be. autodesk on the other hand sends me letters telling written by a robot telling me i might have a problem. seriously? 🙂
anyway i rest my case. 3dsmax is just one autodesk branch anyway and autodesk has enough money to employee the smartest finance people, so i guess they are smarter then me and will make autodesk a lot of money. just not mine.
The buy and own system is so bad that it made Autodesk into a multi-billion dollar company.
If they were renting all this time, they could have been a trillion dollar company.
Show me the money!!!
i wish Autodesk they spent time on cat there so more they could have done to it.
i hope SideFX takes the idea of a cat like tool for Houdini
Anyway heres my version of max 2017 (no rental version) 3dsMax 2015, exocrate alembic plugin, Houdini indie and max engine, all rendered in mantra
later autodesk.. nice while it lasted
I got one of those letters too…
What is the letter purpose? To renew a subscription that you bought in the past but did not renew?
They presumably suspect that companies might be doubling up on licenses by using old versions of Max and current versions at the same time with different users.
Still, even if you are an individual you can’t (or shouldn’t run) legacy versions or run a version on a laptop as well as the main workstation unless you’re on sub.
You can swap licenses between machines via Autodesk’s servers anyway, so that last one just seems to be being unnecessarily tight about it.
I am always surprised how a company can work so much AGAINST the loyal customers. I have to run a business, too. I have to make them happy to stay in Business.
Do Autodesk really think they do not have to care about customers ? Is that the Business model of Autodesk ?
Agree
I’m guessing they’re saving some headline grabbers for the new year.
As a side-note, Jan.M – great suggestion on Rent to Own, I was thinking along similar lines so just added my votes. I suspect we’re being hopelessly optimistic though!
@Nick You may be overestimating adesk’s finance executives. They are well known for more than a few blunders in the past. How many excellent products has the company acquired and discontinued so far? What is happening to Mudbox these days?
My prediction – which I pray is wrong- is that the next Max will
1) NOT have fluids….again
2) Instead of fluids, which are at the TOP of the list of requests, they will brag about adding some large number of middle to bottom of the list features instead, once again ignoring the top
3) a huge onslaught of great to meh MCG toys, since as with nearly every other significant add to Max, they will get tunnel vision for a few months, then completely abandon MCG when they see a new shiny thing
My prediction is:(i will NOT be wrong….)
1) Have no Fluids: People will complain, because it`s the most important things EVER and Adsk is just not listening to them and it`s the worst release of all time anyways.
2) Have fluids: People will complain because fluids can`t interact with rigid bodys or something.
2)Have fluids and can collide with RB: People will complain because it can`t collide and tear cloth objects.
3)Have fluids that can interact with ANYTHING in 3dsmax, is fast as hell to solve and doesn`t use any RAM at all: People will complain what took them so long to develop, that it is a long overdue feature anyway and other applications have them since years.And better tools for character animation would be waaayyyy more important.
So since they will bitch,whine and complain anyway, so why add fluids at all?
Sure you forget to add – “why to live if you’ll anyway die someday”
Yep. As Always. Toys, glint buttons and much more PR.
…and don`t forget the pseudo sarcastic one-liners without any substance from the community. They are always the highlight of any new release.
@Meli: I see your point(which is a very funny/sad/true point) and I raise you mine, If they genuinely attempt to implement Bifrost in it’s whole in Max instead of doing a half-baked replacement just to shut people up and say here we did fluids, I assure you not a person would complain about it…
As for seeing that in 2017, I highly doubt it and I would understand it IF they at least do something about the UI which is understandably a big undertaking and hence there wouldn’t be much time for fluids, and that in itself is IF they have done a true overhaul and not just changing the visuals, which for me is much less of an issue than the ancient technology behind Max’s UI…
What features Autodesk put in 3ds max is I feel is largely up to them. Can’t make everyone happy. I don’t agree with a lot of their choices in features but others aren’t bad. With the exception of fluids (though PhoenixFD is looking to really starting to shape up) and some other great tools there, Max with a couple of plugins is fantastic. What I don’t get is how people can defend the rental only model. Do they think they are immune to economical ups and downs? If things were to go bad for me, in the past I knew I’d always at least have the latest version of Max I upgraded to. Sure, I couldn’t afford to upgrade, but I could still do work and keep doing in-house projects with the tools I had to get work with minimal monthly cost. With this model, if I can’t afford it I’m screwed out of my software.
There’s no investment on my part in this scenario, each month I would only pay for the next month. If/when 3ds max dies out, I have no idea what Autodesk will do. Perhaps they will let us buy out the last version so we can own it but we have no guarantee of that. This whole rental situation is scary and is not good for customers. I’ve not yet seen a good argument how it’s good for customers other than that the cost of entry is lower.
But this is happening whether we like it or not it seems, so we just have to making the best decisions we can. I personally hope plugin manufacturers keep supporting 2014 for a long time as I don’t intend to get on the rental model.
It’s just annoying to have fluids at the top of the request list and have them flip us the bird every year. Why have the damned list if you’re only going to do 50 minor easy adds and ignore the big ones?