Autodesk has announced that Stingray will no longer be sold as a separate product. From January 8, 2018, users will be unable to renew or purchase new licenses, though functionality will continue to be included in 3DS Max and Maya LT. Despite this assurance, Stingray’s future is uncertain. According to Autodesk’s FAQ on the subject “For now, Stingray will continue to be included with Maya LT but will no longer be developed”. Max Interactive will also continue to be included with 3DS Max, but it is not spelled out explicitly whether development will also cease.
Autodesk explains that the dominance of Unity and Unreal Engine is the reason for this decision, citing their recent partnership with Unity as an example of their new strategy for supporting real-time projects. In the FAQ they state that Unity and Unreal ” have built extensive content and resource ecosystems for developers to leverage. We feel we can better serve our customers by working more closely with Unity and Unreal Engine rather than trying to develop our own alternative”.
Find out more on the changes on the Autodesk Stingray FAQ.
My God, Autodesk is the shame of the industry. How many software packages did they let die already? I never used Stingray, but investing in autodesk software is an absolute joke.
WTF???!
Not exactly a shocking decision.|
When it first got announced people were asking why go into that market which already Unity/Unreal/Cryengine, especially when Autodesk are notorious for bailing on their own products.
I still remember people arguing that no… Stingray was not going to die becuase it were included as Max Interactive… and it´s completely safe to develop on it… yes… sure… go on, go on, now keep defending Autodesk and entering in their hostage trap, go on, go on… be happy with your rental…
I agree completely. If there is one thing you can trust, it is to distrust Autodesk.
Good decision.
Autodesk needs to focus on Unity/Unreal integration, not trying to compete with them.
Agreed. Stingray made no sense to me from the start. It was almost as if they felt a need to stake out some territory in the emerging vr and real-time viz market but failed to realize people would just prefer to use the tools game devs have used for years.
Hell yes that integration is so bad right now.
Hope they will focus on this more and get this working
Hahaha! Just LOL!
I predicted this death when it was launched. AD is weak.
Yes day one
The only surprise for me is Autodesk not killing Stingray sooner – why was anyone going to pay for an unknown engine as against the FREE, tried and trusted Unity and Unreal.
HAHAHAHA SOOO predictable day one this was obvious.
But the part that really pisses me off is that they bought out the developer of SKINFX plugins for MAX to force him to work on this crap, and max still doesn’t have a muscle system! Whoever calls these shots at autodesk is an imbecile who deserves to be slapped by the back side of my white glove.
He never worked on Stingray.
He says he did…
http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php?t-1270571.html
Problem is AD doesnt put any marketing effort in pretty much anything other than Autocad, look at the youtube Unity and Unreal channels, almost daily updates, tutorials, vlogs..etc. THAT.. is what keeps people coming back..
AD products page look like you’re purchasing a corporate spreadsheet app or something, bland, sterile, corporate.. Definitely does not look like you’re purchasing artist tools.. Remember the web pages for Maya and Softimage before AD acquisitions? I wanted to buy the apps before I even hit the feature’s page.
Agree.
Max\Maya marketing stuff looks really boring.
Pixologic and Allegorithmic is also good examples how artist tools need to be advertised.
I am shocked, shocked I tell you, to hear that Autodesk bought out a 3rd tier product (bitsquid), renamed it, “integrated” it into Max and then killed it off. Digging through the bargain bin and then slapping a coat of paint on something instead of spending time and money to develop a product seems to the best way to compete against established products.
Unreal Datasmith (in beta), Lumion, Twinmotion, Unity, Cryengine\Lumberyard seems like a good idea to make a penny-pinching effort in this space.
yep, was obvious,
now, one step closer to Maya and Mudbox EOL,
wanna bet on it?
+1 for Arnold
MAYA EOL is never gonna happen, can’t say the same for Arnold. there might have been a 3dsmax EOL but the archviz industry never switched to maya so max is probably save as well. Mudbox is most probably next.
Why not?
Tiny vfx market is not enough to feed resource hungry Maya.
You vfx guys think you are the king of the 3D. Funny.
I have to agree in that point, VFX is a small part of 3D Business, evenwhen is the most visible and the most fun to work on, it´s just a small portion, engineering, Viz and BIM viz is a much bigger part of the 3D world, less visible though.
I don’t think this was a wise decision. The problem of current Cryengine/Unreal/Unity/ is that they don’t have a modeling/texturing module. Can anyone explain to me why you still can’t do some fairly serious poly/subdiv in it? I’ve been predicting this for years that the game engine editors will become powerful modeling/animation software with insane stuff like Softimage’s ICE (blueprints in Unreal don’t cut it) was and then later also with sculpting somewhere almost on par with Zbrush. Or is it a problem of scale? Having so many features needs many programmers and that can ruin the whole software package with bugs?
Why do you need all-in-one package?
Standalone DCC apps is more universal and practical, you may know Maya/3ds Max and Substance Painter/MARI, for example, and be able to doing all modeling/texturing tasks for all modern game engines and even for films too.
Game engine needs to be game engine, not jack-of-all-trades.
I don’t think anything other than the most basic asset production belongs in a game engine. And like wise a game engine doesn’t belong with a package like max. Integration between the industry leaders in both tools should be as seamless as possible, and at least functional & reliable between everyone else.
Think you just described Blender there. Might want to look at some Eevee videos and Animation nodes. It also has very good game engine and inter op with Unity/UE is not an issue for bigger projects. Times are changing so change with times, don’t wait for a miracle from ADSK. The more seriously people take it, hopefully donate and support it, the better it gets. Their energy, brains and funds are focused on creating the best product that artists want, not catering for shareholders.
People stuck in the old ways of thinking clearly don’t understand what it means to have all of what you need for realtime (and non-realtime) under one hood without the need for lengthy data transfer between softwares. The thing is we already know what workflow works – what are the best and efficient modeling tools and etc. We can start building on this knowledge – we’re not doing anything new, just gluing good pieces together. The Blender thing sure is a sign of that. But just wait when the Dreams for Playstation 4 is released… it’s basically a complete game engine with a sculpting module + even music module. (hyperbole warning) Put 3dsmax/Zbrush + Unreal engine blueprints + Fruity loops together and you have Dreams. Some amazing things will come of it. Trust me.. this is the future it will happen.
The real shame is that I was developing software that would apply Autodesk Animator Pro textures to Stingray assets, render them in Lightscape in passes instantly piped to Combustion.
(full disclosure: I owned all of those)
Well played Jim, well played! 😉 We relied on Combustion for years, was ahead of it’s time in many ways… I have a faint memory of Adsk Animator Pro as well.
First mistake with Stingray was making it as a Maya LT accessory,
being Maya a minority software doesn’t have sense to market another product to a minority of a minority.
They didn’t want to add C#, they went for LUA, another mistake,
it didn’t have the speed of development and flexibility of Unity,
and it didn’t have the visual quality and the amazing tools of Unreal.
Community is also Huge in Unity and Unreal.
Hopefully they’ll get rid of more garbage like Maya, Maya LT, Mudbox, etc…
and focus on their primary software to improve them.
A bit strong calling Maya garbage (although I haven’t used it for 5 years) but I totally agree with the idea of ADesk focusing on core apps.
look at autodesk annual report,
look at number of companies using Maya,
look at Maya licenses numbers,
yes,
Maya is a minority in the 3D field,
and I’ve worked with Maya too therefore I know first hand how bad (and garbage) it is,
and likely will end up like Stingray or Softimage,
focusing Stingray around Maya’s workflow was part of its failure (too bad they didn’t see it)
can you share the link of the annual report please? i have found a pdf of 200 page but can find the details about maya or max in it.
http://www.annualreports.com/Company/autodesk-inc
Can you provide links to those numbers and reports please?
I´m really curious about it.
Cheers!
I’m really tired of doing this…
Here we go:
– Autodesk annual reports:
http://www.annualreports.com/HostedData/AnnualReportArchive/a/NASDAQ_ADSK_2015.pdf
http://www.annualreports.com/HostedData/AnnualReportArchive/a/NASDAQ_ADSK_2014.pdf
shows ” The decrease in Animation
revenue was primarily due to a 9% decrease in revenue from our flagship product, Maya” page 138, ” The decrease in Animation
revenue was primarily due to a 9% decrease in revenue from our flagship product, Maya” page 117
– Companies using
MAX: 12880 https://discovery.hgdata.com/product/autodesk-3ds-max
MAYA: 3682 https://discovery.hgdata.com/product/autodesk-maya
more sources: https://idatalabs.com/tech/products/autodesk-maya https://idatalabs.com/tech/products/autodesk-3ds-max
– number of active licenses
14k Maya licenses world-wide if you extrapolate percentage from the autodesk revenue:
https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Ton/Autodesk_report
Max has more than 1 Million active licenses, source? Autodesk, Chip Weatherman posted the 1 million figure and allow Beta users to tell on forums if we have to.
Ken Pimentel also talked about the 1 million figure some years ago.
I’ve been following the news about Autodesk cutting jobs for many years,
haven’t you notice that Maya workforce is less than half of what use to be in Alias times?
Why do you think Alias was in bankruptcy? because they had an amazing product, industry standard, that everyone was buying? or because they failed?
Another funny story is how Maya screw up a billion $ franchise,
Mass Effect Andromeda
https://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mass-effect-andromedas-troubled-five-1795886428
“Three people who worked on the game point to one critical moment early in pre-production, when BioWare decided to switch animation programs from 3D Studio Max to Maya, as a move that cost technical animators a great deal of work.””Later, some of Andromeda’s animators wound up using 3DS Max for a large chunk of their work anyway.”
Don’t be tired Xerges, this kind of informatoin needs to be revealed once in a while so people confronts reality, wich not what Autodesk marketing is selling.
Thanks for this!
The 1 million active license number is just marketing garbage unless Autodesk or whomever also defines what an active license is. These license numbers will include collection\suite licenses that never use Max but get counted since that license is technically active or installed. An active or installed license does not equal an active user of a particular application.
And that is a really interesting evaluation of the BioWare situation where it is stated in the article that Autodesk was the driving force behind the Max to Maya switch. It seems more likely that switching DCCs and game engines (from Unreal to Frostbite) combined with extremely bad management on BioWare’s end is a more realistic explanation.
Active users would be even more if you count all pirates.
@Maxer
Certainly they use the same methodology for enumerating pirates and users. If you’re even in the same general area as an install of Max you get counted. The potential user base or pirates is in the billions, billions I say!
Very informative Xerges.
If you can’t buy them, join them?? 😛 lol
….and then liquify them!
Thinking about it we had a load of in-house Mel/python scripts and UV tools which were invaluable for us day to day. Maya was more suited to mid-large studios with some decent code and tech art support.. so I guess that still holds today.
AD is really doing its best to become EA of 3d.
RIP MentalRay RIP Stingray
They must really like fat corporate ass. They should rename their institution Autocrats or Autocrap or maybe Autodicks.