Rumor on Reddit: Autodesk is no longer going to develop 3dsmax and Motion Builder
polycounter lvl 7
This is a rumor but apparently Autodesk may stop developing Max and Motion Builder.
I'm interested in seeing where this is going but maybe it's about time that I dust off Maya.
I'm interested in seeing where this is going but maybe it's about time that I dust off Maya.
Replies
So even if it's a rumor it changes how I feel about this, of course not developing the animation side will be bad for the ones that uses it and for studios that might need to by one more program because of it, but it does not change a lot for me personally, I would love to get rid of that timeline in max
I'd love to see a unification of tools between the two, but outright dropping support of features on one or the other doesnt seem rite
Motion Builder has a very rigid structure built in, followed by a nightmare license system, we had our copies of MoB give out for no reason, had to resort to using stuff like Deep Freeze on a partition driver to make ends meet.
Max isn't grand at animation, all the improvements that it has are thanks to CAT and peeps like Monster and their Scripts/Plugs, not because it natively good.
It seems like most of this stuff will be pushed towards Maya, and Max itself is going to be more of a modeling tool at this point.
This however raises some question based upon this RUMOR;
1- Has this got to do anything with the recent layoffs?
2- Max actually became worse sine 2009, picked up the pall in 2011, but dropped it again in 2012+, and this is the modeling side of things on a daily basis, how can they right now justify the price tag for only a 'modeling' tool which sub-performs it's earlier version or even Blender?
3- AD doesn't know what they're doing, do they?
4- Killing a program outright is never a good idea, especially for something like Max that has many users.
Again, a rumor, but holy cow is it's a fun one to indulge in.
https://twitter.com/polycount/status/240925351730102272
on one hand i'm happy since i'm a maya user (both cause getting the features from motion builder would be nice, and because 'my tool is better than your tool'), but on the other hand this is autodesk, so perhaps they're not trying to combine their tools but specialize them. I could imagine them pushing max as a dedicated modelling solution and maya as a dedicated animation solution.
this would probably just piss off autodesk's userbase so i think it's at least plausible.
At least with fizzy drinks and other products, the companies hide behind sub-company names, AD doesn't even do that.
Drag this text into your max toolbar and click the button that it makes to make that junk disappear, click it again to make it reappear.
Personally I dock the Graphite modeling tools at the bottom and toggle all that stuff off, I replace the Graphite Toggle button with this script
macroScript ToggleRibbon category:" VigTools" toolTip:"Toggle Ribbon/AnimBar" icon:#("ribbon",1) (-- Toggles on and off the bottom toolbar fn togglebotoff = ( trackbar.visible = false timeSlider.setVisible (false) --statusPanel.visible = false MaxRibbon.SetRibbonDockState #bottomDock MaxRibbon.ShowRibbon true ) fn toggleboton = ( trackbar.visible = true timeSlider.setVisible (true) statusPanel.visible = true MaxRibbon.ShowRibbon false ) if trackbar.visible == false then ( toggleboton() ) else ( togglebotoff() ) )http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=7406885&postcount=55
/Thread?
If they include some biped like features in Maya I'm sold for animation. I think it's time animators moved beyond IK/FK snap/blending nonsense... and I wouldn't be shocked if they rolled the rest of motion builder into Maya like they did HumanIK, which I hope they make much more stable and easier to use.
jesus this forever
Time to stop using Cinema 4d and start using Maya:0!
They both need to be re-written from scratch, they are both old and bloated.
Throw the puppy in from your avatar and you've got a DEAL :thumbup:
For anyone who didn't read Brygelsmack's post, this is the response to it.
i.e. people had major issues with Maya so it needed a lot of love for the past few years. There are no major areas of anxiety for Max so they're focusing more on the Archivis fixes people want (and possibly hence the splitting up of Max into two versions in 2013 - the media and architect versions.)
It sounds like it's all misunderstanding. Read the full post and it seems pretty clear and not at all backtracking or smoke blowing.
But if Maya's focus is going to be animation, hard to say if the modeling side will stagnate enirely.
I model using maya...It simple and i like it,you say i am bit old school here..
XSI, now max... yay, thanks autodesk, really, thanks...
That being said, looks like they have no plans on discontinuing Max indeed, even so the old product would still be around until someone else stepped up and replaced them
It's too bad the rumor escalated. He didn't actually address the original reddit rumor.
He didn't confirm/deny Motion Builder reaching EoL. And he didn't confirm/deny 3ds Max animation being stagnated. I've been animating in 3ds Max since 1998, and just started using Motion Builder last year. So yeah, it sucks not knowing.
So there you have it, we're good.
http://gfxspeak.com/2012/08/17/autodesk-developing-virtual-production-with-james-cameron-and-weta-digital/
wouldn't want to do that, especially after all you've achieved by not having an affordable non-commercial license. Well unless you drop 18k on school first.
How many of those millions of users have legit licenses?
I already posted this on the previous page, but it seems like most people ignored it. >.<
The Relax tool in UV editor on 2013 crashes Max for me more than half the time. It's been a real hoot. I miss 2012. And 2012 isn't even over yet.
My plan was to skip 11/12 and just jump to 13 at this point. Any other quirks you notice? Also do the ribbons still cause crashing (ribbons are the like File and Edit menus in the upper left). 2010 likes to crash when you go to export or look at Summary Info etc.. every once in awhile.
I hope that if they do stop doing Max that they kind of clean one of them up so it works nicely that perhaps I can use until Pixologic takes over completely or something else steps in. I don't even know
you dont need to be a student at a school to get the non-commercial student versions of autodesk products, ya know.
I was amazed this sparked such a thread at polycount. shouldn't we be above stupid rumor mongering?
Shieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet. True. Either way I need to stop using Cinema if I want to have a job :0
Thanks for the tip though. I never really pay attention to the updates, but I should.
I have a really hard time imagining the core poly modeling workflow in Maya stagnating much more than it already has.
It's fucking 2012. If you don't even have a shift-drag open edge extrude or equivalent, you're flat-out not trying.
Probably because it is true.
Once programs send information back and forth to one another seamlessly (Mud Walker) and navigation is consistent from one to another (example: implementation of maya's navigation into 3ds max 2013)... They will probably start selling all of their packages as modular packages. So if all you need to do is model, then you buy the sculpting and poly modeling package. If you also need animation then you buy the animation package which would seamlessly plug into the pipeline of the modeling packages. It simplifies their development on all packages and would make studio pipelines more consistent and in theory smoother (once every program exports to the other with no problem.)
Still a long ways to go before implementing this... but... it would be ideal.
Maybe i misunderstand what you are saying, but Frank ( Delise ) is now PM for 3ds Max. He was on the Maya team and even seduced Kees Rijnen, a well known Max wizard ( www.lumonix.net ) to do Maya DX11 coding work for Autodesk. Now Frank Delise is PM for 3ds Max. This i is a great thing and i tend to call it something like "The return of the king" ;-)
Hoping that Kees gets shifted to 3ds Max work too for Autodesk. He's shader tool ( Shader FX ) would be a great standard asset for Max, but needs some overhaul for Nitrous AFAIK