ThinkingParticles 6 is out

Expectable with Adesk’s move… who’d invest in a plugin for rental software?

Wow big release! Very impressive. Of course the pricing is quite a bit of a surprise.

I dislike the new licensing scheme, I think they should recover the permanent license and maintain it along the rent license.

They do this already with their Moskito render engine.

Cheers.

I really think there needs to be a safety net of a perpetual license.

I don’t do enough hardcore particle/simulation stuff to get involved in TP, but I would imagine in most of these cases an option to have perpetual + upgrades every 2 years would be acceptable to most users.

I see the pros and cons for the rental, but mainly the pros. Why? I’ve held back from getting Tp for the HUGE reason being it was a big hit financially off the bat. The rental price essentially negates the big upfront hit. The yearly price of the rental IS worth 2.5x years that equals the current purchasing price. Plus, I can effectively cancel my rental at any moment. Since I am not on consistent jobs that need it, it’s great I can stop the rental. Given Cebas’s progress on Tp, I trust them in their thorough development of the plugin whereas it’s tough to trust Autodesk (although max 2016 IS looking very cool so far – a really good release). So I for one WILL be looking into Tp now that it is more affordable.

The only con is I would expect what I purchase to be mine, but seeing as how the tide’s are slowly shifting in our industry it appears to be sink-or-swim. Adapt, or fall behind, but I can’t imagine Tp could have been very profitable for them not having a major release the past few years so I get this for a business reason as well.

I just wonder if we have a Tp Max file and our rental lapsed, can we still open the file and be able to at least view/render out Tp work, or will it be broken? I wouldn’t be shocked if we couldn’t, but it would great if we could Cebas. 😉 Like those plugins out there where you just need the license to do the creation/editing, but rendering can be done for free.

Now AUTODESK Max or Maya is a different beast since it’s not a plugin, but what drives the plugins. The main application. While plugins may cover certain areas, but aren’t always necessary, these main applications cover most of our needs so actually owning them is necessary. So that’s unfortunate they’ve let Adobe set this sad precedent that could lead to other forms of acquiring applications.

Houdini, is not the answer.

3d needs to be simple not complicated.

Sorry for the long post, but some things I just need to say 🙂
First of all: Mr. Jason, if what you’re saying was true, there would be no 3d at all, because when this industry was getting born there was no such thing as ‘easy’ – and if anyone’s thinking in terms of progress and skill evolution, than taking the easiest path should really be acompanioned with caution.
Second: Houdini is not complicated. It’s extemely unified, clear and logical to the bone.
Just because you need some knowledge to work efficiently, doesn’t mean it’s complicated. It only means you need more knowledge – that’s it. And I’m not talking about ‘higher maths’ because that’s what you get done by SideFX. I mean: understanding foundations of your domain as a FX TD. In return you get endless possibilities and tools you would not even dream about because as a 3dsMax user you never had a chance.
@MauricioPC: you forgot about one little thing. Everyone needs to finally render their FX. With every single Houdini licence you get unlimited Mantra nodes which can compete with Arnold and Renderman with ease.

To give you some background. I was a max user since always. I was a TP fan and user since version 3 and used it almost every day. I was faithfull follower to the B#$sh@t sold by autodesk every year ever since I heard about XBR. My patience just faded away about a year ago and I decided for a change.
I did my first commercial work with Houdini about 6 months ago. I’ve not seen 3ds max for 6 months now. No plugins. No data exchange. No more b#%ls$#t.
It was very hard after 15-or-so years with max. But I need to add one more thing to the equation: now I actually understand what it means to get a support from the company your’re paying for the maintenace. Every single question I asked was answered at most the second working day. This means your problems get actually solved DURING the project – not after a year or never.
You find your bugs fixed in the daily builds – and not when they finally decide to announce a service pack (or not).
I could go forever… like native and transparent multithreaded architecture. The best solvers on the market (maybe except cloth, for now)…

And getting back to the topic: could I at least see just one glass of water done with TP6 which does not look like realflow 2.0 …? Please. Is the rental pricing your biggest concern here? Because for me this upgrade is a joke. Probably, in just about a month, you’ll understand why.

Cheers.