Software > 3DS Max | Industry News | Software > Maya
3DS Max and Maya Indie licensing announced
Autodesk has announced 3DS Max and Maya Indie, a new licensing option for users earning under $100,000 per year. The initiative is currently only available in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK or the US, and according the website is for a limited time only.
Cmments by Chip Weatherman suggest the limited time disclaimer refers to the fact that this is a pilot programme to “determine how & where we expand it. Much like when the telecom companies offer a new channel in select areas to see how to roll it out, this is similar.”
The Indie versions of Max and Maya are fully featured with no restrictions on render size, file format, plugins etc. There is a limit of only one indie license per business in addition to the income cap mentioned above. Users should also be aware that the license will auto-renew at full price, but this can be avoided by disabling automatic renewal and resubscribing to the Indie license once it expires.
The price for Mac and Maya Indie is ~$250 USD per year, other places vary (in the UK for example it is ~£275). Find out more on the new product pages for 3DS Max Indie and Maya Indie.
“Users should also be aware that the license will auto-renew at full price”
Wow… this is a whole new level of greed, we will get people that can not afford our actual full price and put them in a situation that if they don’t actively avoid it will be upgrading to the full price with a year commitment silently with the price increase, no matter if those users can do that or not.
That together with the try of invalidating perpetual licenses should leave people clear that no one should use Autodesk software, no matter how good or bad it is, their lack of ethics and their continuous effort to leverage on people should be enough.
Now they have created an indie license as a desperate movement, but they had to put one of their absurd conditions as a trap for people.
Amazing…
P.S: for the ones that will start saying “you always criticize Autodesk … etc…”, I was reading this news with interest and curiosity, this could have benefited some persons, of course it’s a desperate movement to try and stop the users bleeding, but I would have not criticized this more than that “desperate movement” phrase, but that condition, that part… sorry, Autodesk is a really BAD company, is not the they don’t have ethics, it’s that they did not even try to hide they don’t have ethics, so they don’t even have shame.
I was really looking forward to this. But I agree that this hidden penalty is tricky.
I mean … a billion dollar company cannot make a renewal system on the indie price instead of making it go full retail price? Right.
Not disagreeing with your point but
It does say this below but does that mean you can only be indie for a year?
IN ORDER TO AVOID AN AUTOMATIC RENEWAL AT THE FULL SUBSCRIPTION PRICE OF 3DS MAX, YOU MUST TURN OFF THE AUTOMATIC RENEWAL ONCE YOU SUBSCRIBE TO 3DS MAX INDIE. IN ORDER TO TURN OFF THE AUTOMATIC RENEWAL SETTING
I think you just renew it again.
Of course, that depends on whether it’s available to renew.
And this kind of sneaky shit is probably why they cant /wont make it available in the EU. Because I dont think they are legally allowed to do that crap in the EU 😉
Nice move, the industry is being disrupted by Blender.
Now what happens to the other countries ?
How about those who need it the most, the third world ?
What happens to Freelancers with a perpetual license ?
Now the price is one thing but with Blender, C4D, Octane, Unreal, Unity, Houdini, Substance, Zbrush etc Autodesk better ups its game.
(A studio can install 1000 licenses of Blender, it is a no brainer).
Great times to be a geek ! 🙂
Regarding freelancers with perpetual licenses… remember Autodesk will deactivate the ability to activate the perpetual licenses unless you are paying them…
No one should trust Autodesk EVER
Another reason i gave Autodesk the finger. Autodesk is no better then a herion drug dealer. Thus why i went to blender. I want to save money as a freelance and put it towards stuff that will further help my needs like new hardware such as a new gpu and memory or better processor. Instead of blowing it on a crappy product that only gets updated with half ass updates. No thank you.
hmmm… sounds good in theory.
I think the price is good. I have a perpetual licence of Max and if the inde subscription is this price I would switch next time I had to renew. However I just know that a year or two down the line Autodesk will switch the inde licence off and I would be stuck with full pricing.
Looks like desperate death throes, but nobody cares. Nobody’s sold on this bs. I’ve already moved on and many more will once B3D 2.8 is finally out. Bye bye ADSK!
Blender 2.8 is already out. Cgpress seems to not have noticed it.
Heh, someone did thumbs down. But on main page really no any words about yesterday final release B3D 2.8
What about news itself – seems Autodesk feels bad. No any big changes in Max during lot years. I migrated fully to Blender couple years ago (Gamedev industry). Normal flight.
The Blender 2.8 release was posted here hours before you made this comment.
Do it man. I use to be a maya and max guy. now i don’t have to depend on autodesk. It has replace both for me. Plus im saving tons of money that i’ve been putting toward hardware like memory, gpus and such. It took me a couple of weeks to transition but for the most part it was easy. I run a blender transition group on facebook. Thus called blender transition group. Check it out.
Love the Autodesk fanboy that down voted lol.
That’s a good news if it get extended to all countries (I would definitely be interested) and if the price stay the same over the year!
Sure, the auto-renew full price thing is very bad, hope they’ll change that trap, makes no sense, they’ll just get unhappy indie customers this way.
Now I’m hoping and indie Nuke version.
indie nuke would be nice, but they will need some serious competition in their market first. maybe in a few years?
Maybe, but İ know a lot of indies who would be really interested in a nuke indie version, who are working in After Effects now
Isn’t Fusion basically an Indie Nuke?
Maybe but the problem is that when you need to share files with studios or collaborate with other people fusion is far less used than nuke.
That was teh same explanation for 3ds max in the past, while true it’s a bit absurd (specially in this case) because a comp software is far more simple to learn and use than a 3d package.
Also Fusion is way cheaper, not a problem for any studio to be able to acquire it.
On the other hand Nuke has more features than Fusion so… I don’t think it’s a matter of collaboration problems but more a matter of features inside Nuke, Fusion is not at the same level.
Keep in mind that while I recognise that and I say that, I don’t use Nuke and will probably never use Nuke, it’s way over priced and Foundry behaviour in respect of user harassment even when the users have a license is pretty bad, so I’ll always try to avoid anything coming from Foundry.
(Some people say that they invest more in lawyers than in development)
This is great News super happy about this!
It is a fair price, however caution with the full price trap.
Great news nah i don’t think so. I guess some freelancers love to blow their money and keep feeding a corporation with bad habits that only screw the artists in the long run.
$250 USD per year, in the UK it is ~£275
Why?!?
Because for Europeans everything from Autodesk has been always more expensive, EVERYTHING.
its not just autodesk , all of them do this. Apple I am looking at you.
Sorry, but it is not european, this is UK only, because the rest if Europe doesn’t eve get the indie. At least I haven’t seen RU anywhere….
We are not talking specifically about this, we are talking about princing policy from companies from the USA when they sell their digital goods in europe.
Ìn europe everything is more expensive because of EU taxes…
Is there a VAT and some tax that the UK charges when buying from an outside country? Autodesk would not absorb that into their cost. Looking at the full subscription price, it is the same way.
Another desperate attempt to get people off perpetual/maintenance contracts… trick customers into buying a cheap Indie version and then remove said Indie product (‘this was a pilot programme which did not work for us’).
Autodesk clearly have a very low opinion of their customers to think they can bait them like this after the last few years of short sighted profit grabbing. Can they not see the damage that they are doing to their own brand… brainless capitalism at work.
Exactly this
This is my concern too. I’d have been happy to drop £500 on indie Max + Maya but right now I’d rather not give them anything in case they pull the indie licensing next year.
Funny, our Studio switches to Blender today! The team is so happy to leave Autodesk back into dust. Never come back 🙂
Congrats guys! Blender have a shiny future.
I know some other studios doing the same 🙂
Pardon, what studio do you work for?
Maybe Ubisoft TV? or many others…
I see that Blender has made some good moves… I’ve never understood this, really. More and more students and people are willing to use their products, and yet the pricing is beyond impossible to pay (for individuals). Add on top of this the trap used to move people away from maintanance licenses, it’s beyond problematic for them.
Unless they find other options, this isn’t going to move anyone out their house. With studios massively moving to Blender, it seems that the end is near.
It’s almost comical how they managed to make their version of the established “100k indie licensing” confusing and not trustworthy. Not offering it everywhere, not committing to it (trial period to see if it works out… why?!), different pricing (approx. 225€ in the US and 300€ in the UK) and then this ridiculous auto-renew scheme that looks like a promise of making you regret it… I just don’t get it.
They had a chance to actually gain back some trust and they screwed it up, congratulations Autodesk, well done!
I was waiting for this for my freelance side gigs – years ago – before moving away from AD. It’s a good and needed move from them, but the terms are outright scummy.
Have that auto-renew scam off by default! It’s not a massive big deal, but they know some poor freelancer is going to forget. Then they pull the money from their card. Good luck getting the money back if that happens…
And one license per studio? Why?
I like the initiative, but make it simple. No geo restrictions, no price differentiating, no hidden terms, conditions or outright *traps* for the users. It’s not hard to get right. Your competitors are doing it already.
Two things that caught my attention here, the first is: “Limited time promotion” and the other: “Will be renewed at full price”… Which to me means, try to pull you in and then once you’re all in for your project, jack the prices back at full..
It’s almost a good deal but too many red flags for me to even risk it.
So am I understanding this correctly?
Indie license 1st year $250
Indie license 2nd year (auto renewal) $1545?
If so, how much is
Indie license 2nd year (manual renewal) $ ???
Indie license is limited to 1 year only?
Indie license is a limited pilot program from ADSK. Its future, beyond 1 year license, is uncertain.
Autodesk is like your ex trying to win you back. They must smoke pot too much if they really hope this move works out.
So how does this work if you work at a larger studio making over $100,000 but want to do separate work at home on the side? Because I can’t afford a full license but still like doodling around on personal projects at home.
My understanding from a similar question on the stack group at facebook is that as long as your salary is below 100k/year, you should qualify.
It says 100k from the design work you create. The reasonable conclusion should be it’s solely from the work you create with 3dsMax Indie/your freelance side-gig. Not including any separate salaries. That’s how SideFX operate. But then again, I wouldn’t trust that until AD specifically tell us.
Blender 2.8
Autodesk is surely feeling the substantial heat brought by Blender. This is a desperate move to stem the bleeding. For the last 5-10 years or so, it’s felt like there are 5 developers working on Max. What little progress is made is in the form of catch up and straight up stealing other peoples plugins and ideas. I wish they’d just get back to doing some real software innovation instead of relying on corporate, strong-arm gimmicks to keep revenue up. Gimmicks are a sure failure in the long run. Meanwhile, Blender is doing some amazing stuff. I’m going to be making another donation to the Blender foundation soon, even though I don’t use the software professionally. I like the fact that it’s open source and can never be bought by Autodesk. It puts the pressure on Autodesk to innovate because it’s tough to compete with free using gimmicks and BS. If you use Max or Maya, donating to Blender is probably the best thing you can do to improve your favorite software!
From Autodesk this is a curiously indecisive move, and with the auto-renewal issues it also feels rushed. This is pure conjecture, but its as if upper management have been caught napping and now they’re waking up to a pincer movement from Blender and the moves Adobe is making toward 3d.
Its obviously timed to take some of the wind out of Blender’s 2.8’s release, but if I’m being optimistic perhaps some in the upper echelons of Autodesk finally recognise the influence and value of freelance artists.
I can’t see this offer lasting though. For one thing, surely it complicates their established SaaS model and therefore increases their license compliance costs? So this move seems a bit odd when they said simplification was the motive for turning off activation support for perpetual licences.
Yes, but you forget that AD are liars, and will say anything, which is why their decisions don’t make sense to normal people.
When I first read about this news I was excited. I thought finally an intelligent move by Adesk. Unfortunately they managed to screw it up again by wanting to play tricks on people. Clearly they don’t give a f*ck about customers.
I have to continue my plan to switch to a complete non-adesk pipeline.
Users had long asked for Indie-versions, but obviously it took some time until Autodesk realized that their plan to “own the whole industry” (by buying/destroying competitors) had failed. And now, guess they realize Blender’s potential.
I remember I’ve posted years ago that the Indies of today are the big players of tomorrow. But in the 1 single survey that I got from Autodesk during 19 years of being a user/customer, they also included the ‘Fu’k you, Indie’ when they aborted the survey by stating that they are only interested in opinions from companies with more than 5 licenses. Ok, I moved on, accepting that my Indie-life doesn’t matter to them.
But I’ve not forgotten how they recommeded Combustion, because the tool was what I needed and it would have a bright future. I paid the 1200,- … and a year later Combustion was EOLed.
I remember that Mudbox had a great future, according to their marketing-guys. I paid the 1000,- just to see it’s development stopping, and now I’m left with Mudbox that is still buggy on 16/32 bit colors and feature-wise at it’s point of 10 years ago.
And I remember the Stingray-engine where Autodesk failed to establish it on the market, but then gave it away for free (at least as part of 3dsMax). Great, I trusted them and learned to use the engine, just for fun and just – to hear that development on Stingray will be stopped, which is more or less EOL. Wasted time, learning it (and it’s a great engine, btw.).
I stop here, because this list could go on, like with their latest move that I of course retain full usage rights for my perpetual licenses – but that Autodesk will simply block be from using it in the future, in case I have to repair or upgrade my PC.
My personal bottom line is: I took enough FU’s from them, I don’t trust Autodesk anymore. They are big enough to not care about users, mighty enough to not fear long and expensive legal disputes and they always saw and see users as cows to milk, not as part of their business.
And now Indie-versions…maybe (not in my country atm). Autodesk can promise and swear what they want, my trust in them is at zero. Even lower than zero, where I believe the next FU is just around the corner.
And even if they would guarantee in written form that the Indie versions are here to stay – I dont# trust them. Even if they guarantee that the pricing will not be pushed upwards just for the satisfaction of shareholder demands – I don’t trust them. Hell: even if they would offer the Indie-versions for free, I would continue moving to Blender (and no, I don’t get paid to say this^^, Blender is just 100% covering my feature-needs and many of them already better than 3dsMax (texture painting, cam-tracking, compositing, sculpting, volumetrics, hair/fur, cloth). Sure, there will be tiny things where Max is leading, but it’s never black-or-white, and on the bigger picture, my future is not to go with any Autodesk-product, they had their chance(s), botched them, good bye.
Everyone who thinks this is some sort of trap is wrong.
Look…Autodesk don’t have a great track record when it comes to looking after their customers. But I honestly think this is a good move which should be applauded. There will obviously be voices within Autodesk who were dead against this and I imagine that’s why they are piloting it to see if it’s popular and successful. If it is, I’m sure they’ll roll it out to other countries. Everything about the way this has been done suggests they are dipping their toe in the water to see what it’s like, before making any big announcements and setting up the infrastructure to support a new licensing model.
At the very least this is a chance to rent Maya for a year for about a fifth of the usual price. If successful it puts great tools in the hands of people who could otherwise not afford them.
The trap is not the actual indie license, is that if you don’t cancel auto-renew you will be automatically renewed to the normal license, if you could afford or want the normal license, why are you on indie license?
Also just one license per studio/person, this is to keep users needing max or maya to work because they don’t know other thing so they ask studios to work with max/maya, they are loosing single users and freelancers at a very high pace and studios realized that they can work with Blender (and in a much better and clean way, and with more control over the software) and are now also looking for Blender artists, not just max/maya artists.
This is a desperate move with a trap inside.
Regarding this:
“At the very least this is a chance to rent Maya for a year for about a fifth of the usual price. If successful it puts great tools in the hands of people who could otherwise not afford them.”
BTW there is not a single tool inside max/maya that a user cannot have out of Max / Maya and Autodesk in general, in fact there are waaaaay more tools inside Blender, and if you need something like the new Bifrost thing but better, and you can own an indie license… well… you have Houdini, so that phrase, with the tools that we have at hand as of today in all the 3D industry, is not correctly representing the status quo.
Anyone can access practically ANY tool outside of Autodesk, and anyone will be better doing so (not just Blender of course, try C4D for example)
if you have too pay a monthly fee access your files it is a trap isn’t it?
Yes, this trap is a trap inside a trap system
Well, someone on the Modo forums subscribed and cancelled the auto-renew instantly after doing so. SO as long as you remember it’s all good. 🙂
Yes, it’s the “as long as you remember”
Remember that this is aimed to people that don’t have too much money, maybe students that are starting their freelance careers, people that may or may not be aware about this, and in the end some people may forget to deactivate it, and that is something that should not be activated by default.
As always it’s not a matter of the thing itself, it’s a matter of the lack of ethics of Autodesk, the impossibility to trust that company.
Yeah, I still feel this is a sh*t move on their part. But … if your company or you as a freelancer can gain (for a year at least) some advantage on using Maya or Max, I would say do it. It’s a competitive market and both software do have some nice features.
If they *really* wanted to show they’d changed, then they’d restore perpetuals and upgrades.
They haven’t.
too late, autodesk bum bashed me over a barrel once too often with 20% desktop subs year on year…i moved to blender,…then the we won’t let you move your old licence…. and now an indie option BUT with a financial TRAP on renewal…. how dare they!
How you liking blender?
At least it’s a step in the right direction; something that should have been done a long time ago.
Autodesk is failing incredibly hard with updating 3DS Max compared to almost every other software. They are gonna have to do something fast, there’s very little reason to keep using it apart from familiarity & some cool plugins that have been developed for it by other companies….
To be honest it’s amazing that 3DS is still usable as they have done barely anything to truly improve since 2010. I think it shows how good 3DS was on conception and back in the day compared to other software.
“I think it shows how good 3DS was on conception and back in the day compared to other software.”
I’ve always said this, 3ds is and has always been the tool for the individual and small ambitious teams. Biped nothing like it exists in any software to this date that does what it did since 1990’s. Show me any rig that switches between IK and FK without manual toggles! (Unless maybe you hired an ILM TD). How about CAT with its procedural multilegged walking system auto detecting uneven terrain. A dozen plugins to cover most requirements of VFX at affordable prices for any working freelancer.
It is lacking behind the shit that Autodesk crippled it with, such as no muscle system, no upgrades on these amazing character tools since 10 years no upgrades on cloth since 15 years!
With all this massive beating and Max still goes strong and puts up a fight.
Try Blender
İ would have buy it right now if it was available in Europe!
Do not be fooled ADSK is indie only for two years to withdraw perpetual licenses at that time! They count on silencing with this deceptive, inefficient marketing !.
I’m curious if Maya Indie is available for Linux. Autodesk has a very shady policy about Maya for Linux. So far the standard version has only been available as a multi-user (floating, studio, whatever you want to call it) license that is much more expensive than the regular license.
Autodesk is de facto making Maya for Linux available to large studios only, ignoring completely the fact that more and more freelancers and small studios are adopting Linux these days. What is even more absurd is their response to their Linux freelancers when they encourage them to either buy a multi-user license or use Maya in a virtual machine. Of course, not many people are happy to buy the subscription for a costly application and run it in a virtual machine when a native Linux version exists…
That being said, since this Autodesk Linux policy, I highly doubt Maya Indie is available for Linux, however, if anyone knows more about this I would be curious to learn more.
Agree. I’ve used Maya on all platforms and Linux version is the best. If indie Linux version is available, I’ll get the subscription.