Mudbox 2018.2 released with dynamic tessellation and new sculpt tools
Autodesk has announced a new update to Mudbox, the first to add significant new features in quite a while. Version 2018.2’s flagship feature is a new dynamic tesselation mode that is able to add additional polygons to the model interactively as you sculpt. This alleviates the need to start from a high-density base because the detail is added as and when it is needed.
3 new sculpt tools have also been added that enable the user to edit mesh resolution. The Remesh tool is used to increase or decrease the density of the mesh as you work based on the current zoom level – use it while zoomed out to reduce resolution and use it while zoomed in to increase resolution. The other two paint tools perform a single function each: the Refine tool is used to increase the resolution and the Reduce tool does the opposite.
Other improvements include a new custom setting for edge bleed enables a custom value for map extractions, Gamma Correct Blending options that is used when painting to blend colours before gamma correction alleviating situations where dark edges appear where colours intersect, plus improved support for HiDPI monitors and more than 60 fixes.
In a post last year, Senior Product Manager Jill Ramsay said upon release of the previous 2018.1 version ” I know things have been slow for the last couple of years (to put it mildly), and I understand your frustration, but we are getting back on track”. It is hoped by users that this release marks the new lease of life for Mudbox promised by Autodesk.
To find out more about this release, visit the Mudbox blog and read the changelog on the documentation site.
Very cool, well done !
I always loved Sculptris approach, and it is sad that Zbrush didn’t implement it.
10$ a month ? now that is interesting… Subscription is not a problem if done right, not like the huge amounts asked for 3dsMax or Maya…
I agree. If Max was around 50-75 a month I would pay that easily.
I always liked Mudbox more than ZBrush, specially because of the UI, so it’s nice to see some new development on it. I’m glad that Jill Ramsay is taking the lead (she was super nice during the days of the Softimage EOL).
Good to see Mudbox getting some love and 10€/month isn’t a bad thing either.
This line from the What’s New doc is interesting:
Why would that be?
You have to wonder how the programmers coded themselves into that corner.
Maybe they were thinking of charging a higher license fee for higher res displays…
LOL… well, I’ll tell you – we are using a manifest file to scale Mudbox – it works great in Mudbox, but for some reason turns our licensing software black. The real fix will come with our next Qt upgrade in a future release, but we figured it was worth getting this quick fix out to users in the meantime.
Maybe it’s that software is slowly becoming conscious now and it doesn’t approve of the rental licensing model 😀 Lol, joking aside, thanks for letting us know, great to see response from the devs here.
Now you’re talking!!! GJ!!
And the question is… why do you want to sculpt in Mudbox if you can do the same and much more in Blender… for free… even in the articles Mudbox is compared to Blender in features… it amazes me how people keep wanting to give money to Autodesk for nothing… at least for nothing new and really disruptive…
Do you even work professional or you just come here and talk nonsense?
Do you even know that many important and big studios use Mudbox and even 3D coat depending on the task? They won’t always use Zbrush for everything because software have an advantage over others, and it is how it fits their pipeline. Do you know about pipelines?
Someone who worked at Blizzard said he used mudbox in his career “quite alot” and while it is obvous that Zbrush will be better for most things and is used most, if Autodesk work to improve mudbox they will get more people to use it because it is has great stuff and features on it.
Seems like you are just a Blender fan with nothing relevant to add to any article, especially the ones behind “Autodesk” tag. Apparently you don’t have any real professional knowledge and only because you can make a cube and go around the not so great Blender UI/UX, you believe you know everything.
BTW, free doesn’t mean anything, if you want to make your career around free, you will not get too far in this industry. or why do you think big companies pay thousands of money in software when there are “free alternatives” around?
For individuals Mudbox is cheap, and I mean, a pizza is more expensive these days and you eat the pizza and is gone, Mudbox gives you a great software (that is starting to improve again) for many many days at low price with an easy to use UI, good features, and easy to use with other software.
You just have something against Autodesk, and you can’t even see the benefits of this type of tessellation that you obviously has not even used but you still call it “disruptive”. Maybe you should start ignoring anything that says Autodesk, so you stop spreading misinformation and move on with your life and the super cool free amazing Blender that “everyone should use because I think so, and because of free free free”.
Yes… I own a studio…
Answering to the rest of your comment, I perfectly understand the power of Zbrush or 3D Coat, but Mudbox? as it is today? it´s barely a joke for sculpting, it´s a great tool for hand texture painting, but for sculpt… it has nothing to do against Blender, 3d Coat or Zbrush, it even lacks any kind of UV Creation tools.
Blender UI? I bet you did not tested it in a real project to see if you can understand it… in fact the majority of the people that critiques it never really tried it, the other majority of people that did it ended really loving it… it´s just different, and IMHO (and it´s a personal one, not an objective one) it is a far Better UI/UX than Max, Maya, C4D or Houdini, but that is related to personal taste.
Do I have something against Autodesk? Yeah! I always said it… but I´m not going to start with the speech again 🙂
Now going back on track… Mudbox against Blender in sculpt has nothing to do… Zbrush? better than both, 3D Coat, probably better than both.
Cheers.
We use mudbox quite a lot at ILM, as much if not more than zbrush. The fact that works in linux, we can connect it to maya, and you can throw MANY million polygons on a single object beats zbrush any time for many of the tasks we do here. ( blender is a nice little tool but its sculpting capabilities are far behind when it comes to dealing with tens of millions of polygons )
Because competition is healthy.
Blender is great but not everybody likes it.
Some people prefer Zbrush, some Mudbox, some Blender, some 3dcoat, some sculptris…
People are not dumb, they do what they want.
Im sure a lot of people left Mudbox for Zbrush… thats autodesk’s fault. Now we’ll see what they do.
I myself like mudbox’s painting better than zbrush, and substance doesn’t click with me… so I’m glad they’re back.
I agree with that, but I think paying for something that is worse in general than all the other packages out there… ALL of them, not just Blender… would you use Lightwave?
Of course people are not Dumb, but a lot of times people is driven by marketing, and the problem is not that they are dumb or not, the problem is that they trust in that marketing and they don´t know alternatives that are far better… and suddenly trust also in opinions of people that wihtout deeply knowing a software start throgwing s**t over it, so people, sometimes, make decissions based on wrong assumptions, a bit of discussion on this matter may make people to, at least, rethink things and review their belivings.
In the end I agree with you with the fact that competition is healthy.
Cheers.
I’ll also add, if you come from Maya or 3DS max, Mudbox has basically zero learning curve, everything is where it should be interface wise. And, if anyone complains about $10 a month, you should seriously consider another hobby\career… Remember when Softimage, Alias software was in the $100k range per license? I think we have it pretty damn good these days 🙂
I never complained about the price, I complained about the software itself, do you understand that whenever you want to open a file created with mudbox (.mud) you will be forced to pay to Autodesk, right? no matter how much time has passed since you did it, and no matter if you work on this or not… as always, the problem is not the price tag… and there are better alternatives out there.
Cheers!
I can answer this in a few very simple words – because Blender’s UI sucks *very* much.
I was able to use Mudbox immediately (took a few minutes to learn where all the tools were) but I couldn’t win against Blender’s totally confusing UI and workflow after having tried 10 times in the last 10 years even after hours of trying hard. I won’t try again. And it’s not only me.
Also, because I’m happy with Mudbox, much more now knowing it’s getting dev time.
I already answered this here in a previous post… the only people that says Blender UI sucks are the ones that never really tried to learn Blender and it´s way of work.
Cheers!
BTW I don´t hear the reason “ZBrush UI sucks very much”… do you want to use that reason with Zbrush too? do you think Zbrush UI/UX is good?… Zbrush is used because people put an effort because they´ve been told to… Blender? Do an effort and put it really to the test in a real project with real deadlines and real targets, and of course don´t try to convert it into max or maya changing things like the RMB selection mode to LMB selection mode… that is nonsense, use Blender as it has been designed, and use it deeply… maybe after that any of you can start thinking about it in a more objective way and not just repeat what you´ve been told or what you´ve been reading all over the place in Autodesk domains… industry standard? what a joke…
juang, dont fight with your blender, its getting more and more popular, fan boy like you just disgust us about blender. free is not the point, if ppl prefer mudbox thats it, its democraty. lol
think a future where blender is the leader… you want the 3D world turning around a free software? think about it. if you have your studio then you dont care because you use the software you want. show us your website to show the power of blender sculpting!
I´ve been called a Max fanboy, a Maya fanboy, and a lot of other things “fanboy”.
The fact is that I propoes and defend the things I belive in, and right now, as of today, I really belive in Blender, specially if we compare it to our today´s matter… Mudbox.
Why do I have to justify myself?
Do you want proof of Blender sculpt power? Go to the Yan Sculpts channel, he is a Zbrush artist, character designer / modeler, that decided to ditch Zbrush in general to work with Blender, you have tons of people that switched to Blender from other packages, that is not to say that Blender is capable of EVERYTHING, but for sure it is capablo of everything Max/Mudbox can do and nearly everything of what Maya can do.
Here you have some links:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfjswDVU0XHyBN7UFG0Mi5Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pt6UalI6pc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN0zPOpADL4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-ML2-qywh4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH0b2Uexb6Y
You want my website? Go to Bone-Studio.com , you may like our work or not… in the end I don´t care, but since you need me to justify myself I´ll do so… I have no problem with that.
you want Blender tutorials? go to youtube.com/bonestudio there you will get tutorials in english, and some tutorials in the form of live streaming in spanish with the lead animator of Pendulo Studios.
Again, people like you believe in what marketing says, and belive in all that “industry standard” thing, but you don´t do any kind of real research by your selves, of course you could do it and decide you don´t like it, and that would be cool because we could start a real conversation with facts about usage, things that are better or that are worse and why… but in general, people tend to believe in marketing and others that are good artists but never tried Blender and they think they can say things like “Blender is crap” and do you know why they say that? because they heard from others that were in the same situation, like you.
Is not a fanboy thing, it´s a facts thing, Mudbox tools are worse than Blender tools, that is a fact, and that is what I´m saying here, you cna find something that you like more in Mudbox, of course, but my message is not to Autodesk fanboys, like I could say about you or others that always jump to defend Autodesk, a company that not only fired a lot of researchers but that think that small studios and users are not important at all… and you still defend them… it´s a joke, my message is for new people that come here, see some Autodesk marketing telling the new features of mudbox or max, or whatever and they start believing on them, but when they read this the begin to doubt and I already know A LOT of people that told me that they started to research and think a bit different thanks to all this conversations we have here, so man… I won´t stop.
Finally, free is not important for a studio, I always said it, the thing here is to avoid people starting to deliver money to Autodesk, they can keep their money and use it for something better… like save up for Zbrush and OWN a Zbrush license, they don´t have to use Blender.
But of course, if someone still wants to pay to Autodesk to use Mudbox, go ahead, but with all the information to make a choice, knowing facts about all this, not just because some marketing says “HEY LOOK WE´VE ADDED SOMETHING AWESOME AND INCREDIBLE THAT IS COMPLETELY NEW AND INCREDIBLE AND AWESOME AND NO ONE ELSE HAVE IT AND YOU WILL WORK A LOT FASTER AND YOU WILL BE THE MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE if you pay us for your life… and not really the master of the universe, but I won´t tell you that, and not really new, but I won´t tell you that and…etc… ”
Cheers!
Why do i always get the feeling that this isn
t about software and features anymore.Whenever i read such a....passionate posting like this(espcially constantly using the phrase:'this is a fact,this is a fact!!!) i rather seems to me like 'They hurt me, and now i want to hurt them back!' Well, guess thats only human.Are you saying that when I say “this is a fact” it’s not a fact? Or do you try to remove value from facts?
Autodesk did not hurt me but their new licensing scheme hurt a lot of people, I’ve been working tightly with Autodesk and the Max and Maya team for years, I knew about all this before some of you, and I kept working to try to avoid some of the damage, but Autodesk is not user needs driven, it’s driven by a lot of different things that don’t include real user needs.
Why do I have the feeling of a lot of people trying to defend Autodesk against the argumentation against their licensing scheme and their marketing?
Cheers!
I didn`t said they hurt you. I said it comes across like that.These crusades of you and similar on other forums against the evil empire.Like a lost love that dissapointed you once and now you want punish her/him.
Can´t you imagine that there are people that want to void other people the mistake of working under an “only rental” license scheme?
There may be people that want to do that and don´t see a problem, but at least they should know a pair of things:
1.- There are better alternatives out there.
2.- Itá not cheaper than before, in fact it is way more expensive.
3.- You don´t now anything, not just that you don´t own the software but also you don´t own your work, because each time you may want to access or recover something you will have to keep paying Autodesk, no matter the situation you are in.
4.- The danger is ENOURMUS because if you enter in a cash flow problem for two months you won´t be able to keep working
5.- No matter if the new features matter to you or not, no matter if the add new features or not, no matter if those new features are just aesthetics for marketing, you will have to keep paying for the rest of your professional life, no way to punish the developer if they decíde to do silly things with the software
6.- you are forced to upgrade, you can just use the last 3 versions, for example, you cannot use max 2010, that would be piracy, there is no legal way to do that… no matter if you paid for it.
And a ton of things more that a lot of people are willing to ignore, but hey, at least those persons should be well informed, if they decide to keep working with Autodesk after those points and everything that is on the net, it´s their decission,but he Autodesk marketing machine is big and if we don´t inform to the disinformation from Autodesk, then a lot more people will fall in the trap.
I want people to be informed, it is not a crusade, it´s a matter of ethics and information.
Cheers!
I understand that at some point you(your)studio decided to switch to non-Autodesk products because you don
t agree with their current buisness politics.Now you are visiting Autodesk product related sites to make sure that your decision was the right one. Because if others agree with you, you can feel better about that you made the correct desicion. I understand that, but please dont tell here that this is to inform or educate the ‘dumb’ masses that still use ADSK products.They can form their own opinion, don`t you think?First of all, I have relation with this site since AGES and this is not anymore an Autodesk related site, it´s a ch industry site, is Modo from Autodesk? Is After Effects from Autodesk?
Second, the adjective of “Dumb” has been used by you, not by me, I already explained this, you agree? Great, you don´t? Great too, now, is not about being right, it´s about having all the facts, why do you visit different sites? To be informed. What is the problem with big corporations? That you can inform about something but with the time that information gets lost unless people still keep informing about it, and that is because of their marketing power, wich can be good or bad, but they have this power.
Is not about experts taking decisions, it is about new users taking decisions for their future, current users can use this information or not, but I’m general they are well informed, new users? They are driven by marketing power in the beginning, and using and learning a software like any 3d package is a big investment that more or less will tie you to it up to some point, why do you think student versions are free? So, they are not so well informed, and this can help out many people to make this decision with more information and…yes… facts, like it or not.
And in general, people can form their own opinion if they have all the facts, do you think averyone will make the effort to investigate EULAS, agreements and condition? To red everything said by every CEO? Usually people search for small and fast information, bits of info, and if this bits don´t exist people assume they have all the facts, so my effort (and other) of keeping those facts alive may help out some people, in fact I know for a fact that it already did.
Now… why do you have such a big interest in defending Autodesk?
In fact… thinking about your type of reaction, it seems that what happens is exactly what you described, except it is not happening to me but to you, maybe you don’t like to see reasons and facts about how bad is staying with Autodesk software, and since you stay with it your reaction to this kind of facts is denial, and that is probably the reason because you are reflecting that behavior on me.
Cheers!
I can
t remember defending Autodesk and their politics.But unlike you im not as emotional invested to something composed from 0 and 1 and the associated company. It`s just that i see your and similar behaviour on forums and i was curious about the reasons.So basically you are seeing of yourself as a kind of Robin Hood, riding through the forest of EULAs and agreements fighting the evil sheriff of St. Rafael and freeing the ignorant?
Also if you hire someone for your studio, are Blender skills mandatory for getting the job?
Would you hire a student that used MAYA for learning animation on the free student version and train him/her on Blender?
Nope, knowing Blender is not mandatory, we train anyone that comes to work with us, this means we assume some loose in productivity, but after the first or second week working with Blender everyone is happy and fast again, belive it or not, Blender is based in logic and it’s UI and UX is pretty good, but very different to max/Maya.
Again, you are the only one calling people “ignorant” and nope, I’m not a Robin Hood, why informing and making statements that are objective and true against Autodesk is being Robin Hood or anything like that?
I explained my reasons dozens of times, you can think about me as you want.
I’m glad that you seem to not defend Autodesk policies, but you are not clear about your position, do you use rented software? Do you agree with this policies? What do you think about the fact that you have to pay Autodesk to access your work? What do you think about loosing the access to the main software you need for work if you have a cash flow problem? And in some cases, what do you think about the mandatory policy to rent the software for a full year with no option to rent just for a month?
Cheers
LOL I was searching for a comment from this guy. xD
I’ll be here… LOL
the only reason mudbox is so cheap is because it has been stagnating so long and has lost its foothold in the market. im sure you some will gladly jump on it, having learnt nothing from the atrocious moves by adsk. this is like a drug pusher giving you a freebie and then ramping up the price once you are addicted. atleast they are blatant about it, so you have no one to blame but yourself once they start squeezing you.
You make good points, it is true that Autodesk fucked up many times, but you know now with the subscription things are clear, if they don’t deliver you leave, it’s as simple as that.
For example I stopped my 3dsMax maintenance, and I don’t subscribe, so they loose.
I still use my CS4 suite and haven’t given a dime to Adobe since 2010.
It works, I’m productive, I’m happy.
Now as an adult, I believe that some people do good things at Autodesk, Fusion 360 is really interesting. They’re saying that Mudbox gets some new love, cool, why not, teams change and directions too.
I own Mudbox, but if for 10$/month they keep adding cool features, we’ll see. Now they need to deliver…
ps : Juang3D I support Blender, and I bought the rocket thingy, but I’m not seeing any development on the sculpting side of things, at least Mudbox has autoretopo, not blender, it is super useful (3d coat and zbrush too).
in case of mudbox, subscription is indeed not that problematic, since its not a vital part of the pipeline with better alternatives out there. however its a matter of principle to me. adsk have shown their disdain for the consumers and i will be damned if i give them a single dime. its irrational to hate a company, i realize that, but i truly despise them – not the indivduals ofcourse but this unsustainable behemoth that is cancer on the industry. otoh, since i have ditched them, my productivity has exploded with the houdini and c4d combo so i suppose i am also grateful for the push. i just cant wait for the next quarterlies to see their inflated stock drop again and watch the flop around like a fish on dry land.
Hello Alberto, there is an open source remesher called “Instant Meshes” and an Blender add on to use it inside Blender.
You can find the links in this thread:
https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?387378-WIP-InstantMesher-automated-export-and-import-for-Instant-Meshes-(Windows-Linux)
Haven´t ever tried it cause I´m on ZBrush, but maybe it´s helpfull to others.
Best regards
RoH
I tried it, it´s not too good, may be a bit better than the native remesher inside not too much, there are some cool things flying around for auto-retopo, I´ll ty to inform CGPress about it when something goes out to the light! 🙂
Cheers!
It´s a good direction, but quite late, so they will be need a really clear roadmap to bring back the lost users. I started modelling in Mudbox, the “feel” still is better than Zbrush, but the tools are quite old right now and they need to update the app in a serious way. Imho, a more modern UI, outilner and layer system, more verstaile and able to grow, better tools for sculpting, really lacking here, redo texturing part with PBR capabilities
I meant they should focus in modernize the app not trying to be the best.
im sure everyone will have different priorities what features are needed. honestly though the way let both the software the community atrophy is nothing short of disgrace.
“but hey baby im back and you can have me for only 10$”
i suppose i will be that anti autodesk evangelist no matter what, so colour me biased, but tying your livelihood to adsk whims is crazy imo, as any softimage user will tell you. i was a max user and having seen my package of choice limp year after year, have finally gotten first hand info that they are fitting it into a more archviz niche, so if you have been using it for vfx or such tough luck. the lady on the phone told me to buy(rent) maya for that stuff. i laughed.
“And the question is… why do you want to sculpt in Mudbox if you can do the same and much more in Blender… for free… even in the articles Mudbox is compared to Blender in features… it amazes me how people keep wanting to give money to Autodesk for nothing… at least for nothing new and really disruptive…”
@juang3d
why don’t u stay in the blender sites….
i can’t believe how much useless words you spew here….
this place needs moderators, you’ve been talking about blender in these autodesk topics for at least a year here now.
He needs to watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RQ7lxph72I
So basically, big studios don’t use Blender. Big studios still use Mudbox and for certain tasks it’s faster than Maya. Coming from two ModelerTDs from MPC/Framestore.
They even talk well about Blender, but the scope of the work is different. Hopefully he can agree with that.
Yeah… they say no major studio will be using Blender… but they just justify this because the same reason as always, integration and existing tools, I already know some studios using Blender, did you know The Man in the High Castle? Everything Blender.
Also they demonstrate that they don´t know Blender at all, they say another reason, your hard time to find artists… I already answered that,, and people from PepeschoolLand exit from school with preparation in Blender and Maya, so… not too hard, at least here 😛
Give time to time, but again, the same as always, they reason the thing like “it´s just not used commercially”… that is plainly false, but is based on not knowing who is using Blender, and the most important part, How many small studios are using Blender?
Well, you can investigate and discover some studios, some movies that used blender as part of their pipeline, etc… but in the past, really in the past, Max was never to be used in movies, and one day, Lost in Space” used Max and things started to change, things are not written in stone…
Cheers!
BTW… do you think in Pixa or in Dreamworks, or in any other major studio the animation is done in Maya????
Blue Sky and Illumination do their animation in Maya. They are some of the biggest animation studios in the world.
Sorry for the late reply.
Yes, those two use Maya, like Sony Animation, but do you think they really use “maya”?
Nope… Maya is the base, but all the tools and pipelines are propietary, everything is developed OVER maya, but it´s not maya.
Do you think people in those studios don´t need training? They receive training… they have some leverage knowing Maya? well… some, they know how to move keys and were is the curve editor… in the case they use the Maya curve editor… but do you think this is something hard to learn in ANY software? No…
Now… coming back to Pixar or Dreamworks… do we have to discard Pixar or Dreamworks because they don´t use Maya? Is their software crap? Come on… all the “industry standard” talk, and all the “if you learn this you won´t work there…” talk is not true… the only thing the studios seek is the quality of your work, they don´t care were did you do the work, and it has been that way since ages now, in the past it was more important because things were more “manual” or complicated, but today?
Do you think that because an awesome animator animates in Cinema4D he/she won´t work in a big studio with other tool?
Or that reasoning is magically only aplicable to Blender?
Also… are you sure there are no studios (I´m not talking about BIG studios, they are elephants, they change things slowly IF they change, that is why Pixar or Dreamworks work with their own propetary software), I´ll repeat, are you sure there are no studios working with Blender?
And BTW, the big majority of people that works in the industry DON´T work on big studios, and the industry is not just the animation and vfx industry… there is a lot of 3d production outside those two rather small niches.
Cheers!
That’s kind of the point. Maya maintains “industry standard” status by being versatile and almost infinitely customizable, allowing studios and companies to make the program that they need.
So yeah, they’re using Maya, and in the exact way they were meant to.
Maya still hard-dominates both the film and game industries.
And don’t know where you got your information from, but Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks all use Maya along with many inhouse tools. We even had one of the Disney animators in our Maya courses at Gnomon, transitioning from 2D animation to 3D. Was one of the animators that worked on Tarzan and told us a bit about how Disney operates these days.
The more you know.
They use maya for some things, like modeling, but they also have artists that use Blender in the modeling department, and C4D, and Modo, and Zbrush, many other tools.
For animation… nope… they don´t use Maya, in Pixar they use Presto, wich is a custom tool for example, I never mentioned Disney BTW, but just because I don´t have direct information, and even in the case of Sony Animation, were they use Maya, the Maya they use are nothing similar to the Maya you use, practically every part of Maya is replaced by custom tools, and some training is required for any artist that enters there because they need animators, not maya technicians, that is why if you are a lightwave animator that does a magnificient animation you will be hired even if you don´t like or use maya at all… how many 3dsmax artists are being hired as maya artists??????
[SARCASM]
But hey… learn maya is the industry standard and you won´t be hired if you don´t know maya because maya is sooo different in everything… modeling is different, shading is different, animation is different, right? innovative and completely different form other softwares and their vanilla tools are so splendid and innovative, Maya is filled with awesome tools that works out of the box and you don´t need a single plugin to animate, right? because what is that thing named “yeti”? Why do you need it? You already have XGen and Nhair… and Xgen is a Disney tool, it should work flawlessly… right?
[/SARCASM] # I have to note it just in case 🙂
That “industry standard” thing is just a fallacy to make you “feel important because you are using the same tools as Disney and because of that they will hire you because you use the same tools…”, yeah, right, because what they want is that you know Maya… and the first thing the people of human resources look is the CV where you say “Maya – Expert level, Spanish – medium level”, your animation quality is not important… and what a coincidence, Autodesk is the one that gets benefits from that fallacy and from schools teaching just autodesk software wich is free for students… until they want to do something with it… then you can “rent” the software, great…
For shading they use their own pipeline, Maya is just a base, and it could be max, C4D or Blender, it does not matter, everything is in house.
Now… there is one thing true… a shift from a software to another in a big company is something that would cost MILLIONS, and it´s not a move that management will do in the near time, but rest assure that things are moving up there, why are all the big studios investing in Blender development through ASIFA-HOLLYWOOD? Oh yes… they do that just because they like to support open source software… they are soooo kind and generous, they don´t expect anything in return… they jsut throw money at blender to watch it grow like a small plant…
http://www.asifa-hollywood.org/
https://twitter.com/tonroosendaal/status/1004772125138407426?lang=es
And no… Maya is not as customizable as you think, the API is just that, an API, and there are things that cannot be done with that API, why do you think Pixar has their own preview tool with their own real time engine?
why didn´t they use Maya if it´s that great and customizable?
Why cannot they optimize or change it?
And that API limitation is a problem because then if you need access to the source code of the software you have to pay A LOT of money to Autodesk, wich is what they do in some cases, they have custom built versions of Maya with some fixes that could be great for you, but you will never see because they are paid by the studios for the studios, you know… the leverage of paying a lot of money.
[SARCASM]
But of course… I cannot see what could be the benefit of having a software that you can freely and completely modify up to the bones, were you have the tool and the source code basically for 0€ forever… what can be the benefit for a sutdio with dozens of developers, right?
[/SARCASM]
Maya or max are just plugin platforms nowadays (they were awesome in the past, when they were fighting for the interest of users in acquiring the upgrade instead of just waiting as a landlord for the rent), they are not innovative anymore, yes, they include Bifrost now… ok, a FLIP fluid simulator that is half baked, I KNOW that Bifrost has a great future… if they let it grow and invest on it, but rest assured that at some point they will cease development and it will stay as it will be at that point, no more evolution, they don´t need to.
Did you notice the layoffs in Autodesk of the latest years? Did you notice wich departments were hit? In some cases some department named R&D… what can that be? Rest assured that they will keep people in Revit (a horrible software with a horrible performance that creates horrible geometry, but holds and manages a lot of that in a horrible way, but it became the industry standard because you know… architects used to use Autocad, a software that has not seen any innovation since ages, but they were able to “enforce” revit in the industry, and now is the great “industry standard” )But does Autodeskl has a big team in max or Maya? well, it could be interesting if someone from Autodesk could give us the exact team size working exclusively for Max, note the word exclusively, because the Bifrost team is not part of the Max team.
But they cannot do that… they have to keep silence because the thousands of millions they receive from max are not spent in Max, right? How many people do you need to implement some improvements in the splines?
Well I´ll tell you how many programmers do you need to implement some splines improvements in Blender, just 1, newbie programmer, paid by the Google Summer Of Code along 3 months, so you are telling me that giving the 3dsmax users some new spline tools, that everyone loved, has the value users are paying for max every month????? Ok…
If someone wants to be cheated, there is nothing that can be done to avoid it, that´s for sure.
People can keep going with the “industry standard” discourse and just hang in there, at some point you will be unable to have any Autodesk software in your computer, you will have to pay the rent to access a remote desktop were you will be able to use Maya, and I hope you still will be happy with it, especially when you become a user so dependent on autodesk that you cannot refuse their prices when they manipulate them to their liking, like uprising the Maya monthly cost to 500$, is it ok for you? Because I used to pay 400€/year for the Max subscription back in the days when I purchased my first pack of Max licenses… (Max 9, Max 2008) now more or less that is what you have to pay monthly to use max as a rented software, and iiñ s not even yours… COOL!
I´m amazed on how emotions and the confort zone can blind people into keeping their behaviours even when those behaviours are so obviously abussive against them.
Now you have here some reading for the summer 🙂
You can see Maya here of course:
https://vimeo.com/283773316
(Spoiler: no you don´t)
Cheers!
Why should I be moderated?
Did I disrespected someone? Did I say something to molest someone?
The fact that you don´t like my opinion is not a reason to say that, I hope you are in favour of freedom of speech, and this is freedom of speech.
I don´t spew, I talk with respect, always, and I´ll always do that, but of course I answer anyone that answers me, I´m not going to hush because you feel bad about my opinions.
I go also to Blender sites, but I´ve been here since the beginning of MaxUndergroud, if you know what it is, and this is not an Autodesk branded site, like some of you seem to interpret.
This site already has moderators, and they are pretty good at it, they respect freedom and everyone’s opinions.
Mudbox is dead (AD let it die years ago when decided to focus on Maya),
don’t waste resources on it