Petition to keep perpetual licensing at Autodesk
polycounter lvl 12
Long-time users of Autodesk software have started a thread on Autodesk's
forum, protesting the price raise of the maintenance plans and asking
the company to keep the perpetual/maintenance licensing option. Many
high profile 3D artists are participating, including some who have been
using 3D Studio since version 1.
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/moving-to-subscription/keep-perpetual-maintenance-licensing/td-p/6970221/highlight/false
As I found this message on CGPress, I immediately went there. A lot of people saying what really made them angry over the years and find it's climax in the business plan change. Same did I.
And there is an Avaaz campaign against this:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Autodesk_Change_their_business_plan/
Sign this guys.
The increasing prices are just killing freelancers business.
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/moving-to-subscription/keep-perpetual-maintenance-licensing/td-p/6970221/highlight/false
As I found this message on CGPress, I immediately went there. A lot of people saying what really made them angry over the years and find it's climax in the business plan change. Same did I.
And there is an Avaaz campaign against this:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Autodesk_Change_their_business_plan/
Sign this guys.
The increasing prices are just killing freelancers business.
Replies
Say you're paying $1,500 for rent + utilities, $200 on groceries, $400 on transportation and $250 on Autodesk subscription.
That amounts to $28k a year. And that doesn't include any other subscription services. For some Junior roles, that kind of cost already devours your paycheck.
I switched and wouldn't want to go back even autodesk match the price.
The way to make this effective is to ditch max from production.
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Autodesk_Change_their_business_plan/
Whatever impact this will have, it is important to radically show what will happen, if they don't change their mind.
Specially as max users we were treated like a stepchild in past.
With 2018 there will be no production renderer included anymore.
Updates have been .... what updates compared to other packages, specially compared to free blender?
I started with max 5I upgraded to Entertainment, later to Ultimate and now everything changes into ultimate crazy costs I simply can't justify anymore.
This is a ridiculous behaviour of a software monster that hasn't realised that reality is changing into opposite.
Look at game engines, look at Blackmagic and fusion.
The increasing amount of users defines if a package is worth something for investors and stock market.
Autodesk products will be less worth in near future, I am sure.
Ironically the biggest reason I keep being a Max user is the neat amount of 3rd party tools the program has and I've grown accostumed to and that it's used in the industry, because the only real thing I've got from 2017 is a shitload of bugs for the UV mapping system and the most stupid crashes from time to time. But yeah I doubt they will be changing ways soon, if ever, even if the petition gets a lot of support.
Their prices are so stupid that I can't help repeating them in my head everytime Max crashes. I would really love to see them crushed by another developer with a bit more of respect for the people that have to buy their products.
Kick autodesk where it hurts, otherwise they wont get the message.
hashtag 2008-max best max.
they don't just make up prices out of nowhere to exploit you. demand is a factor. it's the only thing you have any control over!
if you're not willing to abandon max or maya for any price... don't be surprised when you have to pay any price...
remember boys: blender is free, modo is cheap
Plus, there really needs to be some competition in the market place. That cant happen if we keep relying on Autodesk.
http://www.autodesk.ca/en/store/products/maya?licenseType=desktopSub&term=1month&support=basic&mktvar004=ilt_wwm_amer_us_nc__topseller6_maya___
It is pricy.
Look at Adobe, most only know the basics of Photoshop; yet it's a complex software with many techniques, same with the rest of Adobe family software.
Anymore expensive and I'll just go back to painting 2D and have it look 3D. Maybe it will bring back traditional animation.
Indie is also on the table. $299 perpetual or as low as $9 a month for rental.
Wouldnt be surprised if they respond to this shift with a better/new deal. A lot seems to be changing right now with Modo, new website, new forum...ect Its worth paying attention to Modo right now to see where things go, especially in light of this Autodesk shift.
Really want to put autodesk in their place though, just wish I could get Modo with maya as base but still get all the awesome stuff it does have.
Coming from Maya, I felt, at least as far as modeling goes, at home with Modo. Just had to switch the navigation to Maya style (Its in the Modo options) and turn off the trackball rotation. With the game tools layout they include, you can pretty much stay in one streamlined layout and not have to switch around for various functionality. Alternatively, with the full version this particular UI plugin (Zen UI) fixed a lot of the visual annoyances that one might find after coming from Maya.
Pretty much most of the current updates helped everything feel familiar enough to be comfortable to former Maya users. The adoption rate should be pretty quick once the shader tree is figured out.
The other option is Blender with the Maya/Max keymap choices.
We've had several teams of Tech Artists and Tech Anims develop tools for YEARS on Autodesk products. Literally Tens of Thousands of hours spent on export tools, and pipeline scripts, anim tools, kits, rendering, flagging, etc, etc, etc.
Heck, our entire TressFX pipeline was made by a managed team of several Graphics Programmers, and Tech Artists spanning over 2 years with heavy iteration and testing, and time spent with the engineers from Nvidia.
This is just for the implementation of the 3DS Max tools. Recreating them in another software would be no small feat and no small expense.
Those completed tools do lose their value to you if you switch away from Max. But keep in mind that the upkeep of those tools is whatever the subscription cost for the base program is. This brings us back to marks' point, a lower upkeep cost will pay off long-run. That's true, but it's also true that cost of developing new tools for the new base program could be very high short-run.
Anyway, this is one of the things that keeps that subscription cost up. If it would cost you too much to recreate your toolkit in a new program, that implicitly means you're willing to pay what Autodesk is asking. There would ultimately be some asking price at which you would just make new tools.
This might seem intuitive, but it isn't how prices are set.
https://www.amazon.com/Man-Economy-State-Market-Scholars/dp/1933550279
of course a lot of other small things that messed it up a bit for me as well, I think depending how your workflow looked in previous softwares it will be hard or easy to adjust, in my case it seemed to be a bit harder, and in this case It would be better to just lose 300$ to get my speed up again.
re: subscriptions costs; it's a danger of one company having too much influence. The first rule of business is not to provide the best service, but to provide the only service. They can do whatever they like as long as you put up with it. It's a bad situation for individual artists though, who might be forced to use max/maya because the studio's they want to work at require those products due to their custom tools / pipeline. Bit of a dependency cycle there...
They're awful.
There's some explanation in the Blender Mega Thread here on Polycount that explains how to quickly set up Maya-style camera controls, whereas the keymaps try (unsuccessfully) to to transport the entire Maya keymap into Blender.
I don't know of a similar guide for the Max controls, but if anyone needs help setting that up just PM me. I switched from Max a few years ago, and I don't mind helping someone else do it.
Not to take anything away from Modo, because I like Modo and think it's a great option for a lot of people.
i switched last year, it's certainly good to not be reliant on autodesk anymore. always hated the max/maya preference-split in studios anyway. would have never signed on for a place that enforces maya, what a way to ruin your workday!
at any rate i predict this petition will be a fruitless effort - companies never learn until the bottom line gets hit by which it'll be too late. better jump if you can, for modelers that's doable since there's not much of a pipeline in the first place to having to rely on for this job.
Sorry, haha, couldn't resist. Couldn't read, either. Paragraphs please!
That said, for people used to scripting small tools to help their workflow it can be quite painful. The documentation for scripting is not nearly as straight forward and robust as MEL/Maxscript (decent video tutorials are basically non-existent too), plus some basic features like garbage collection simply can't be done through python scripting (there's a button on the UI for it, but its not directly accessible to script). The source code is of course available, but most artists probably wouldn't want to take the time to delve into that.
Why are so many game companies, big and small, paying Autodesk a ridiculous amount of money over time when they basically have this free alternative that's as strong as Max or Maya. Maybe I'm wrong, but to me it seems like all they would have to lose is a couple of months to learn it and make it the main pipeline software for the studio. After that, it would all just pay off in the long run.
If enough people and companies would switch, things that are now either unknown or more difficult in Blender, like scripting, would probably become a lot more streamlined and better understood. Are companies now so irrevocably tied to tools and scripts they wrote in-house for Max/Maya that they just can't justify moving to Blender? I don't get it...
This goes further than just features. When purchasing a license from Autodesk one is also getting official support. Now of course there is a growing sentiment that this is all a bit of a joke or even a scam (knowing that ones license comes with "support" doesn't help much when the latest, buggiest Max or Maya crashes 5 times a day and causes one to lose work), but that's the reality of it from a purchasing and budgeting standpoint.
Switching to Blender means switching to a fresh solution which is very similar feature wise at least as far as art content creation is concerned, but that also means that the studio is 100% on its own regarding tech support. Very doable for small studios with a small scope, but not an easy decision to make for a bigger structure.
But again, the irony is that the big programs coming with "support" end up being more buggy than the one that doesn't. Very ironic but that's the state of things at the moment.
Even the mere fact of using Blender in a studio environment can cause problems with IT. "Hey, can I use my favorite free and open source software to get work done better and faster ?" Some IT departments might be totally fine with that, but some would stay on the side of caution and at the very least would require some evaluation time to assess the risk and stability. For instance if tomorrow a online virus uses Blender as a backdoor, the IT manager's head would be on the line because there is no provided support from the (non-existent) vendor.
This too is very ironic because Blender is very clean, does not require an online connection for authorisation, and doesn't rely on any bullshit always-on "application manager". But still, some requirements come with the territory of working in a corporate environment, and AD is very aware that it is their strength.
Interesting point about potential viruses through Blender as a backdoor. I can now understand why some IT departments are so restrictive. Still, I feel like any company that would want to make a change could get serious and make Blender work for them quite well. Ok, so Blender has no support and official vendor. Does that impede a company's IT department from becoming stellar at knowing how to prevent or fix any software or security issues? If anything, I feel like having complete autonomy over the program would allow a company to be more resourceful with Blender at all levels.
Also don't get me wrong, I am not saying that there are currently any viruses targeting Blender, or that it is even technically possible, that's just an example, I have no idea. I am just saying that from an IT/project management standpoint, relying on a tech solution with no guaranteed support can be against company policy hence not possible at all - regardless of how good the program is.
As for having complete autonomy : this is where the human element comes in really. Some chains of commands might have people calling the shots that are more willing to take the risk (and spend the necessary evaluation and training time on it) than others. For instance in a small to medium indie studio you are likely to deal with deciders who are themselves technically-minded, hence willing to take such a bet. Whereas people in charge of a more traditional (bigger) structure would not consider this risk to be worth it. Again this all boils down to the way different businesses operate.