Buying 3ds Max through a student discount store

Ro-Sham-Bo

Ok so im about to graduate from college in a few weeks and was thinking about purchasing 3ds max 2010 for a student discount website such as http://www.academicsuperstore.com/products/239377/3ds+max/986841#show_eligibility_details Now i was wondering if the licensing on these programs is full and would allow me to do freelance work with them. It doesn't really state anywhere that it is a restricted copy and was just wondering if anyone has ever purchased their software through this site or another one, and if you had any restrictions in the licensing. Thanks

killingpeople

that is a massive discount. what kind of discount does a game studio get on their purchase, if any? a studio could save a decent chunk of money finagling this discount in their favor.

Ark

Student versions are for non-commercial use only. If you wanna go freelance, best break out the credit card for a commercial version.

Ben Apuna

I used to see a academic Max license conversion to professional Max license on those type of sites. It was quite a good deal too if I remember correctly something like, ~$300 for the student license and ~$1500 for the conversion. That's like half off a pro license straight from Autodesk. You might want to look into it.

Ghostscape

I had a couple of student versions of 3ds Max (6 and 7, I think?) and the books are huge.

student licenses are for noncommercial work. While you could buy a student license and do freelancing with it, that is no more legal than if you just pirated the whole thing. Back when I was looking into it the conversions were about $1500 like Ben said.

Unless you are planning on holding on to one version for a while, it might be cheaper to do their subscription system, where you pay X per yer but get all their updates, etc. I want to say that it runs $1,000 a seat or something, but considering the price of the full software it probably works out cheaper.

|Buddy|

Be sure you're not buying through one of those websites that offer cheapo software thats not really legit. Student/Educational version does not allow for freelance, its like that since dinosaurs and will until rupture

Seaseme

how would they know?

Ghostscape

Seaseme wrote: »

how would they know?

How would they know if you pirated it and used that in freelance work instead?

They have a registration database. If they had reason to suspect that Joe's Freelance Graphics was using an illegal version, and checked their database and found that Joe's Freelance Graphics didn't have a licensed copy, they could investigate further.

renderhjs

I know some freelancers who let anti- piracy agencies check on people who make offers that are dumping the general market price in the assumption that that person then usually uses pirated software because otherwise he would not be able to deliver it that cheap.
Its not so nice but those guys hate people that destroy the market and so it happens every now and then.

Its all a sad situation because Autodesk does not target people like you with their prices, ads ... And definitely its way to expensive for someone like you who just finished with his study and wants to enter the market.
Working for a company on the other hand might give you a good start so that you can buy your own copy some day and in between use the license at the company.

btw. if I am not mistaken you can use the trial for commercial work, now you just have to find out of to squeeze that trial period, the most bold way would be to install it on several computers at a time.

CrazyButcher

autodesk officially allows legit upgrade from student version to commercial version at reduced cost ( I think 1000€ or 1000$ dont remember exactly)... It obviously works only once. (saw if for Maya and 3dsmax)

so its not into the multithousand value anymore for starters.

Jeremy Lindstrom

Yeah your 'student' version technically expires when you are no longer in school as well. I know my Modo student license was timed.