Uninstalling Autodesk Genuine Service

ModBlue

For anyone who is having trouble uninstalling Autodesk Genuine Service, I found a Reddit post pretty helpful in removing it.

How do I remove Autodesk Genuine Service (WIN10)? : Autodesk (reddit.com)

What was Autodesk thinking, or were they thinking to begin with? Blocking the user from uninstalling this crap on their own PC? Not only is that stupid, but stuff like that is guaranteed to drive away users not bring more onboard. It also won't solve their piracy issue and instead will make users go to other software like Blender. I personally hate Autodesk with a passion nor have I ever liked any of their products. I only bothered to install Maya's trial for resume purposes but once that was up it was time to get rid of it. Having to go through hoops using other software to uninstall theirs just reminds me of why I never liked them to begin with.

Its really not hard to see why so many people go into Blender and other alternative software over Autodesk products.

Alex_J

i'd love to ditch big corporate software in favor of free open source blender, but i really feel stuck to maya namely for rigging and animation toolset. It's just hard to use a tool with less effieciency.

for modeling i doubt blender is inferior - maybe it is even better in some ways? But if it can't replace all the things I do in maya it's tough sell to me. I don't want to have to learn 3 new program to replace one.

ModBlue

For my workflow Blender is far more efficient than Maya. It also helps in my case that because I'm into creating characters my main tool is Zbrush and Blender compliments it perfectly, which I find to be better than Maya anyhow and particularly when it comes to modeling. In fact I find Maya to be unusable for modeling. The menu approach to modeling is too slow, clunky, crashes a lot and lacks too much in todays day and age (i.e. can't inset faces, loop cutting is limited/inflexible compared to Blender, lack of a modifier stack). Then there is Blender sculpting to top it off which just makes the workflow between Zbrush/Blender that much better with more sculpting options. On top of that I also started with Blender so there is a bit of bias haha.

On the note of rigging and animating I can't really comment as they're not my areas. I can vouch for Rigify though as a nice rigging option within Blender that gives you some pre-built armatures for people and animals. If you haven't checked into Rigify I think its worth a look. It may work for you or may not.

Fear not though. I think with the way things are going Autodesk will be out of the entertainment business as they're certainly not growing in that area. If anything their losing market revenge ever year as alternatives like Blender keep getting better and more startups build their pipeline off alternatives instead of Autodesk products. I think Autodesk will survive as a full-on CAD company because their grip is ironclad in that market, but as far as entertainment? Those days will be over with in what I predict will be a few years from now.

poopipe

I would love to bin the corporate stuff off, use linux daily and never have to deal with microsoft, autodesk and adobe again. 

Unfortunately, I don't think its going to be a viable option in my working life (what's left of it) and the reason for that is that open source software is built for the people writing it, not the people using it. 

Blender and Gimp have had over 20 years to get to a point where they're actually viable as professional tools and they haven't done it - not because the people developing it can't write decent code, but because they aren't obligated to add the features or offer the support that businesses want. 
Nobody is paying them to work on it, so there's no guarantee any work will get done. 

Neox

nobody is paying blender? the average user might not, but fortnite players are

and i would assume that is one of the reasons why you see it popping up left and right in all kinds of productions. maybe not as the final tool in the pipeline yet. but anything until rigging (for characters) or integrating in engine (for environment) is done in blender in many projects we are on. it is not this super odd rarity thing anymore.

is maya still the king of the show? sure, but from my limited view on the industry, 3dsmax has been overtaken by blender.

of course this is very anecdotal and to be taken with a fair bit of salt.

ModBlue

@poopipe

I see your point, but I think your underestimating the value in open-source, atleast in Blenders case.

Blender has changed a lot since 2.8 Its become a feature-rich and stable enough tool that its begun to see professional use. I don't think Blender is targeting companies, but rather companies are targeting it and apparently the majority of startups and other small companies are often picking Blender over Maya/Max. The cons of Blender is that you have to deal with some level of uncertainty due to open-source, but its largely mitigated because the product is so liked that other companies want to throw in their support to keep it going. The developers actually care about their product and in todays day and age with the internet, that dedication alone can help bring in money to keep things going.

While Autodesk might be legally obligated to provide support that businesses want, they aren't obligated to provide quality it seems because they don't have a good reputation for quality period whether its the companies or any of their products. They know they can get away with it because they have a monopoly, but that monopoly is slowly being eroded as Blender gets better and people choose to either rebuild their pipelines to go with Blender or just the majority of companies getting into 3D choosing to build up with Blender over Autodesk products. That means at some point revenue for Autodesk will dry up and they'll be forced to either drop the pricing for Maya/Max drastically or axe the programs and save money entirely.

As far as the "Nobody is paying them to work on it, so there's no guarantee any work will get done" view goes, a quote taken directly from their website on this subject,

Although industry recognition for Blender had grown over the decades, 2.8 marked the moment when it was widely accepted as a legitimate alternative to paid competitors. As well as using Blender in their own projects, some of the world’s largest and most recognized companies became regular contributors to the Blender Development Fund, ensuring that Blender can continue to innovate. 

As I recall some of those donors are big guys like Adobe. If the concern businesses have is whether or not there is enough money to keep Blenders development stable, there's plenty of it and there is motivation at that. If I were a small company looking to get started today, I would build up my pipeline around Blender too as it looks stable and has a better future ahead of it than Autodesk.

Polynaught

From my experience we single Maya licence takers never had any leverage on Autodesk. They built and fixed what they deemed marketable and asked for a lot of money in return. There was no guarantee that anything of the many bugs we encountered would get fixed in a timely manner.

I can have that with Open Source, too. So, currently doing a mixture of Blender and Maya. But in the long run: bye bye Autodesk.

Alex_J

@Polynaught

how much has blender replaced for you? What portions of maya do you still use?

Eric Chadwick

I’m seeing a lot of fanboyism in this thread, which unfortunately leads to strong opinions based on scant evidence.

The only thing I can recommend to combat this is to open your minds a bit and learn the tools yourself.

okidoki

Additionally.. anybody just open up some older version of any program.. and you will see.. the argument: "i don't want to re-learn" doesn't apply at all.. you did already all the time enhance your knowledge about any app over time.. and in my opinion from time to time it's quit usefull to see things from another point of view.. this may even help with the tools you are soo familiar with.. (..ohh it can do this too ???) 

( does someone have used 3D Studio.. before the addng of MAX (or any other name changes) .. on MS-DOS ??  i did come in contact with "Discreet 3dsmax 4" on win98 and NT3.51 for some short time for example  )

Neox

i am still using 3dsmax 2011, just saying

me learning a new max version is certainly less likely than learning a whole new software.

Eric Chadwick

I started on 3D Studio release 2 in DOS in 1991. We used r4 on the Blade Runner game, Zork Nemesis, many others. That was before they moved to Windows and started with Max.

okidoki

And i could have bet on this.. maybe i should have added : expect of course the all time masters on this forum ??