After Student License ends, what then?

TheOneTrueLegit

I have been thinking come September am going to be in my final year, not soon after that my 3ds max license will dry up.
where do i go from there,
what did you do?

Do I go and buy a license,
or do I go and take a stab at free stuff like blender.

What paths did you take to the "industry".

DireWolf

MAX offers $123 or so monthly subscription.

Anyway I'd say go with Blender. When you get hired into 3DS MAX based studio, you should be able to recall all your MAX muscle memory in a week.

blankslatejoe

Modo Indie and Maya LT both have cheap subscription options on Steam too that can be useful. Maya in particular and is not a bad program to at least become familiar with when applying to studios(for the most part if a studio doesn't use Max, it uses Maya). Also Sculptris is free (for practicing your sculpting ability), and there are plenty of engines you can tinker with for free as well (UE4, Unity, Source, etc). There have never been more options for the post-grad/indie/hobbyist than there are these days. Goodluck!

Lt_Commander

The fact that max doesn't have some paired down license has always frustrated me. It's a shame max and Maya re both owned by the same company, Autodesk has dictated Maya as the ordained indie/low cost option, regardless if you used the max student license and really learned to love its workflow. If they were from separate companies, you know that max would have an "LT" edition, and I, like many, would be happy to put down ~$20 a month for it.

Dashiva

I'd give Blender a try. You already have the Max skills, so learning a new 3D package will give you a reason to reconsider your workflow and perhaps learn some new tricks. Plus you have the added benefit of not being beholden to the Autodesk monopoly and knowing a package that can be a stand in for Max/Maya/ZBrush/Modo [with varying degrees of success, of course].

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?306867-BMax-Tools-or-how-I-left-3ds-Max-)

is a set of tools that Max users seem to like, and there is also a Max keymap included in default Blender installs.

Mr.Moose

Well.. The 3ds max and maya student licenses just require an e-mail..No verification of enrollment and such.. so -technically- you can just grab another license.

(Though I personally use Blender, and agree with Direwolf. Blender even has max/maya setups you can use so its a little more familiar)

Deathstick

TheOneTrueLegit wrote: »

I have been thinking come September am going to be in my final year, not soon after that my 3ds max license will dry up.
where do i go from there,
what did you do?

Do I go and buy a license,
or do I go and take a stab at free stuff like blender.

What paths did you take to the "industry".

I'm pretty sure if you download the latest version of the student edition and install/activate it you'll get another 3 years. Happened to me when I had installed the student edition of 2014 over 2012 in my last year.

TheOneTrueLegit

Dashiva wrote: »

I'd give Blender a try. You already have the Max skills, so learning a new 3D package will give you a reason to reconsider your workflow and perhaps learn some new tricks. Plus you have the added benefit of not being beholden to the Autodesk monopoly and knowing a package that can be a stand in for Max/Maya/ZBrush/Modo [with varying degrees of success, of course].

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?306867-BMax-Tools-or-how-I-left-3ds-Max-)

is a set of tools that Max users seem to like, and there is also a Max keymap included in default Blender installs.

Thank you for the source, I'll give blender a try and see how I go, BMax tools looks interesting, am going to get familiar with the basic layout before I try the BMax tools

Once again Thank you.

mats effect

Pretty sure if say you are using Max 2014 or something and go back to the site to get 2016 or whatever version is new it gives you a new licence for the new software that's another 3 years.

Blond

Dude, just update to the new version and you will get another 3 year license.

I still have my Maya 2014 whith two years to go and once it'll expire, I'll go with 2016, wait another 3 year..move on to another 3 year student license package.

RaptorCWS

Blond wrote: »

Dude, just update to the new version and you will get another 3 year license.

I still have my Maya 2014 whith two years to go and once it'll expire, I'll go with 2016, wait another 3 year..move on to another 3 year student license package.

and even if for some reason it says no your 3 years are up use a different email address. it asks for school website not email.