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Software > 3DS Max > Plugin News | Software

AWS Thinkbox products now free

Aug 03, 2022 by CGPress Staff
23 |
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AWS Thinkbox has announced that Deadline and its other plugins are now free.
This includes Deadline, Draft, Krakatoa, Frost, XMesh, Sequoia, and Stoke. Find out more on the AWS website  

Related News

  • Deadline now supports 10 workers in license free mode
  • Thinkbox to showcase Deadline 8 and Deadline On Demand
  • Deadline 6 launched
23 Comments
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William
2 years ago

This is interesting and a big one at that, ok you still need to sign up to AWS enter credit card and billing information, but no charges so long as you get these products only.

Deadline krakatoa and frost. Those three are quite worth it.

Wonder what happened for this to go free like that? Im not complaining though.

RRt
Reply to  William
2 years ago

I don’t know anything but IMHO they make it (deadline )fr ee and you will have the option to easily send your scene to the cloud to render with AWS machine. Maybe a new business model.

smbell
Reply to  RRt
2 years ago

That’s been part of Deadline for a few years now.

But yeah, their hope is more people will use that service. It is certainly convenient if you already have a deadline pipeline… I’d be willing to try it.

patfsih
Reply to  William
2 years ago

My inactive AWS account was hacked and Amazon wanted 60.000$ from me. Thanks, got my old credit card was expired already –> i will never sign in to AWS.

rs2minds
2 years ago

Interesting move, anyone knows if there is still active development happening? Their forum seems not very active…

Eloi
Reply to  rs2minds
2 years ago

For the last 5 years updates has been minor bug fixes. Still, they are all excellent products and totally worth it. now free, even more.

Jumanji
Reply to  rs2minds
2 years ago

Houdini 19 was released in October’21, and apparently deadline support for it came at the end of April’22.
I’d say that’s pretty dead.

Animatect
Reply to  Jumanji
2 years ago

I know it’s not the point but rolling your own support for a Houdini version is trivial, let me know if you need help with this and I’ll try to aide you.

Juang3d
2 years ago

Well the question is… Deadline is not a plugin for 3dsmax, it’s a software in itself… is it going to be free in general or just the implementation with Max?

In other words, is deadline now free to be used in LAN?

GustavBP
Reply to  Juang3d
2 years ago

The article has it wrong, at no point is it stated that it is 3ds Max only.

Juang3d
Reply to  GustavBP
2 years ago

Cool, thanks GustavBP 🙂

smbell
2 years ago

I downloaded my free license today… Totally worth it just to not have 150,000 lines a day of no license errors spamming my Linux repository server every day from the old “free” version.

Damm
2 years ago

Fingers crossed it doesn’t become a closed source abandonware.

Rhys
Reply to  Damm
2 years ago

This seems pretty likely unfortunately. The other products besides deadline have already been abandonware for many years now

slebed
2 years ago

I’m curious about Krakatoa. It’s been years since I’ve had need to use it. Has there been any interesting developments in the last few years? I wonder if the API accessed thru blender?

sgfx
Reply to  slebed
2 years ago

nope, blender can`t use this

Juang3d
Reply to  sgfx
2 years ago

Well… at some point a Krakatoa Standalone existed, so theoretically a connection could be made to work with this and Blender, since Krakatoa is a pretty capable (for it’s task) and at the same time a pretty simple render engine, a connection with Standalone would be fairly easy.

However I’m not sure if standalone still exists.

slebed
Reply to  Juang3d
2 years ago

I wonder if the stand alone is still kicking around. That would be pretty cool.

Juang3d
Reply to  slebed
2 years ago

Yes, that’s my thought too, but I’m afraid its not there, at least not in the AWS page, may be available upon request because it’s mentioned in the Krakatoa description.

If someone from thinkbox is reading this… please clarify 🙂

Dubtronics
Reply to  slebed
2 years ago

The development has stalled for a long time. They were barely keeping up with releasing new versions for the new versions of Max and Maya.

slebed
Reply to  Dubtronics
2 years ago

I imagine Krakatoa was feature complete. Other than keeping the code base current with the latest versions of max, I can’t think of any features I was missing back then.

Dubtronics
Reply to  slebed
2 years ago

There were some new features being added, I was in the beta for a bit. There was a Krakatoa atmospheric effect so you could render the particles with vray for example. It wasn’t as fast obviously but you could get reflections etc.

nomad
2 years ago

Hi,

What do we think of Krakatoa; is it worth learning? Although it still looks good, the software hasn’t been developed since 2017. If you’re not using Krakatoa, what are you using instead?

I am a 3ds max 2022 permanent license holder, so as a legacy user, is this keeping MAX 2022 relevant? Is the effort to learn it worth the payoff, or do you think its better to move to a different platform?

What are your opinions?

Also, where does one get access to training tutorials? Most of the stuff I found on youtube is ancient and incomplete.

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