Autodesk has disclosed more information on its upcoming game
development environment & engine that is based on the Bitsquid engine that the company acquired in 2014. Here are some of the details:
- Subscription fee of $30 / month (quarterly and yearly options
available) - Lua scripting and visual node based scripting
- Interoperability with other Autodesk software (Maya, Maya LT, 3DS Max)
- Integrated Autodesk tech (Beast, HumanIK, Scaleform, Navigation)
- Physically based shading and rendering
- Multiplatform deployment: IOS, Android, Windows 7 and 8, Oculus Rift DevKit 2, PlayStation 4 and XboxOne.
Stingray is scheduled to be released on August 19. Autodesk will also later offer Maya LT Desktop Subscription customers access to Stingray as part of their subscription (no mention of 3DS Max). Watch some demo videos on YouTube and find out more on the related press release and Stingray Engine’s website.
Very impressive tool.
Looking forward to use it.
See, THIS is why I don’t buy it when we hear things like “there’s a new view about Max at Autodesk”(well at least not when Autodesk M&E has something to do with it), another tool rolled out and ALL we hear about is how maya does this and maya does that from Autodesk Media & Entertainment division which apparently just doesn’t consider 3ds Max part of itself anymore which is just plain wrong; the only instance where we hear about Max is(as usual) when it comes to “Design Visualization”, NOTHING about game development for Max, these people are absolutely unbelievable…
None of that matters in the end though, because in the end why would I want to use “Autodesk’s Stingray” as a tool, while there exists amazing engines like Unreal Engine 4 that is the most powerful while being also open sourced and FREE to use, has an awesome community as well as companies like Microsoft and Nvidia behind it(and developing for it!), so while I can’t speak on behalf of others, I know I won’t give any of those up to use something that costs me money each month and more importantly, is under the umbrella of you Autodesk, at least not while I have a choice.
“Interoperability with other Autodesk software (Maya, Maya LT, 3DS Max)”
That line above was mentioned in the article on stingray so I am really confused why people are complaining about max being left out. It does say stingray works with max, maya, maya lt. Do any of you remember the maya lt of max called gmax? maybe if max users are so upset they could get AD to bring out a new version of gamx and just call it max lt.
hey holy poly, that comment about AD pushing max as a tool for arch viz is quite funny. as far as i know max was always pushed as a tool for arch viz. i know game studios use it but as far back as i can remember it was a tool for doing arch viz. I remember going to AD seminars back in early 2000 and max was the go to tool for arch viz, this was before maya was sold to AD.
Well … they say 3ds Max but the only video showing 3ds Max + Stingray is a arch-viz video.
They say HumanIK. Max doesn’t have HumanIK, only Maya. Does it support CAT or Biped? I couldn’t find that information.
So yeah … they are indeed sidelining Max on the game market.
“Interoperability with Autodesk Software
HumanIK is fully integrated with Autodesk® MotionBuilder®, Autodesk® Maya®, Autodesk® Maya LT™, and Autodesk® FBX® software, enabling game designers to design, setup, and debug their IK behavior, and helping to minimizing the gap between artists and programmers.”
“Interoperability with other Autodesk software (Maya, Maya LT, 3DS Max)”
Right, my bad, that definitely solves the whole issue, which apparently for you is whether the name “3DS Max” is used in the memo or not.
If you honestly don’t know where I’m coming from with this, then you haven’t been paying much attention to how the M&E has been marketing/focusing on it’s products these days, let me quickly brief you though just in case: VFX “product agnostic” technology rolls out->maya,maya,maya. Game Development technology rolls out->maya,maya,maya, and also Max!(imaging the Max part read by a very fast voice like those drug commercials, reading the side-effects).
But thankfully I shouldn’t be worried by the fact that nowhere in those demo videos, not even in the “Interoperability” one was a shred of 3ds Max to be seen, because the name 3DS Max is mentioned somewhere in that website.
Btw, your 2nd paragraph, just simply not true, Max wasn’t always pushed for Arch-Viz, neither was/is it a “Arch-Viz” tool(it used to have an arch-viz flavor until a year ago)…
3ds Max has always been a “3D modeling, animation, and rendering” toolset, which could also be used in Arch-Viz as well as VFX alike, in other worlds an all around general purpose 3d/animations/fx tool, what Autodesk M&E is trying to push it towards(or should I say pull away from) today, is a different story.
This is what Autodesk think of Stingray and 3ds Max.
http://autodesklivedesign.com/
Finally a screenshot of 3ds Max UI. I wonder why!
You know what bothers me the most in this whole scenario? It’s not that they are advertising Max as a tool that can also do Arch-Viz, and can very nicely connect to Revit and many other design/viz tools(that’s great!), it’s that they are trying to hide the fact that 3ds Max can also be very easily and very successfully used in the Game Development space(for the latest example of that you don’t need to look any further that “Witcher 3”, easily the best game of this year), only to give their maya line of products more space, basically yet again(as always ever since they acquired maya), they are sacrificing 3ds Max’s capabilities so that maya and it’s product family can have more space and opportunities, and this is just plain wrong and immoral, and more importantly absolutely not fair to 3ds Max’s userbase which is one of the largest in the market.
I agree with everything you said here!
This like unity or Unreal Engine, right?
Will it even stand up to unity for example… hard to believe this tool will outperform the established ones…??
Why would you like to pay for something you already have for free in Unreal or Unity5 free?
Another only-subs product… another non sense for the user…
You don’t have cash-flow, you can’t work… great!!! and now that we recenlty survived to a reccession is the right time to do this… we’ve never been through any economic problems and cash problems, right?
Only-subs = drain the user, no leverages for the user
My opinion of course…
Cheers.
I don’t understand WHY AUTODESK SHOW US MAYA EVERY TIME?
Really? Guys REALLY??? You think all (or actually some)game studios use maya or maya LT?
P.S. Message to Autodesk – DON’T PUSH 3DS MAX INTO ARCHVIZ
Well, after all it´s Autodesk. We all know where this product will end.
A “tight integration” doens´t impress anyone. It´s not 1998 where you´d need
two different converters to get a mesh half decent into the quake engine for example.
The engine itself looks ok, but nothing special that the big players don´t have.
My prediction: A maximum of three years and this engine will be bundled with some supscription and the deveolpment outsourced to Asia.
Have to agree that you ADSK-guys are again sending the wrong message to your 3dsmax userbase.
Would it really hurt to give 3dsmax and Maya LT the same screen-time in the game development videos?
I know that both applications have the same workflow options + 3dsmax has the advantage of Revit interop.
But you know how freaking hyper-sensitive the 3dsmax community is at this subject.
They simply don’t care about the Max community anymore.
This product will die like those before it.
Edit, Cleaner, Combustion, Plasma, Gmax, Toxic/Composite, …..mudbox on its way.
when maya lt was first announced i wondered how long it would last because of what AD did with gmax.
Looks amazing, cant wait to try it out!
What do you think is so amazing?
What do you see here that you don’t have in Unity and Unreal?
Honest question, because your comment seems more driven by the announcement hypen than by a real knoledge of the real time engines market, no offense.
Cheers!
Off the top of my head Tight intergration Sharing shader between maya and max . Quick previews . For someone who into indie gaming pretty good deal Unity is Not Free it a 75 dollar a month + whatever the IOS mobile licensing fees cost. And far as it look it has a Blueprint like systems and Global illumination so it has the Graphical feature of both unity and unreal and Blueprint like programming . Think people are allowing Autodesk hate to cloud there vision , Unreal is pretty much autodesk bias already in work flow , It far from having huge support for other software packages . There no Native Unreal plugin for other software written by epic. Hopefully since it a gaming engine coming from a 3D software package will get thing like Alembic Support .
I don’t hate auto desk at all, I hate their new licensing policy, you may be right about the renting licensing unity price, but the thing is that if a company decides to make the investment and have one or two permanent licenses to of Unity they can, if you want to do the same with Stingray, you can’t, this pretty much forces you to keep paying them to be able to access your work.
The rent model could be great in some cases, but there are other cases where it is pretty bad, and when you just have that rent model you are sold to them, that is what I don’t like at all, and in the long term a permanent Unity license + iOS + Android is A LOT more cheaper than the stingray cost, is not just about monetary cost, but future proofing and securing your work, making your tools secure so if you have monetary problems to be sure you will be able to keep working.
Again, please for a small studio, can someone tell me how much is going to cost 3dsMax, Maya(we need both), Adobe, Stingray, different plugins and any other package you may need, the monthly cost per person and the monthly cost per studio (think about 5 people in the studio)… Do you think that is affordable for small studios?
Cheers.
Don’t see how that much more cheaper reality with your Unity calculation your leaving out the Application . Unless your maschoist and love blender you’ll be paying for something like MODO with cost 1499 or Cinema 4D 3000 dollar for the studio edition or Lightwave Newtek which is alot of cheaper , if your arguing owning Maya and max is more expensive yeah that true , but not cheaper than MAYA LT INDIE . if you need all of them yeah you’ll end up paying more .
Not sure of the exact cost off the top of my head though .
Very similar to the Unity. Not to compare with Unreal Engine development
@Brandon
The system does not let me to answer directly over your answer, I don’t know why.
The thing is that when you pay for something you are doing an investment, think in a situation where you have a company with 4 persons, you have to pay salary and everything, now think that you don’t just do videogames, but you do rendering work (animation adn stills) app work(2d classic apps) you do real time work (not games, but other real time for more serious things) and finally videogame work.
Maya LT is nothing for you if you do all that.
Now think that you are passing through an economic struggle, make your calculations, you have to pay for max/maya,sting ray, adobe, and let’s add other rental only packages you may need like TP for example, and you have to multiply that cost by 4, now think that in your econmic situation you know you are going to be below minimum around 4 months, becasue productions problems or whatever, each user license costs a big part of the salary of your employees, now think that the first thing you have to pay is the salary, BUT if you don’t pay the licenses you won’t be able to keep working, and this is going to last for months, how would you do this?
Will you hurt your employees and reduce their salary?
Will you stop working?
The bank is not an option (it’s been not an option in the recent economic situation for several years)
If you OWN at least one licenses, you don’t have to pay for that, you just reorganize your licenses, divide the work and keep working, under a harder situation, but if you don’t have the money to pay the monthly bill (absurdly high monthly bill) you are out of business because you don’t own anything!
My problem is that if I don’t own at the very list ONE permanent license of the software I cannot be sure about my future-proof security, I’m sold to the ONLY rental company.
I think a lot of people don’t see the problem with this because they don’t own their own companies, they work for other people, but if you have to run your company and you have to maintain your team, and you work on a project basis, I mean, you don’t work in a project for over a year or two, but you work in small fast projects of two or three months, each project being different, the rental only situation is a big NONO situation, and it’s a situation where the only winner is Autodesk, but it’s not a real winner because they are really hurting their customers REALLY hurting their customers, the ones who gave them the money to evolve and now are stabbed up to the bone.
So there is a phrase in spanish that says “Cria cuevos y te sacaran los ojos”, and that is what we’ve done, we “Raised crows” and now they are “extracting our eyes for their own good”
The main reason why I don’t like stingray, is not within the engine, I don’t even look at the features, why? it’s not a good licensing model for the users at all, RENTAL ONLY = BIG NONO i won’t be tired of saying so.
Cheers.
Maya LT users will get this for free, bundled with their subscription. 3ds Max users will need to cash out $360/year to use it. Nice going Autodesk. It shows how you want Max to still succeed on the game market. 🙂
“*Interoperability between Stingray and 3ds Max is available to customers with active Maintenance Subscription or Desktop Subscriptions for 3ds Max and an active Desktop Subscription for Stingray. Licenses of 3ds Max and Stingray must be purchased separately.”
http://www.autodesk.com/products/stingray/buy