Autodesk going rental only in 2 years.
rental only for new users
but what about existing users/studios?
they’ll have to have a cut off point i guess
certainly not looking forward to rental…UK is $600 more expensive for rental than USA for same app such as Maya for rental…same app…same language…$600 more per year excluding VAT?..
not a nice way to treat your customers.
Been with them since 1999…so maybe time to move on.
so basically after the 2016 version of its apps are released it will be rental only. i guess we all saw the writing on the wall, oh well.
“The number of customers that are one to five releases back on our software stays relatively consistent year after year after year,” he said. “They are real customers
. They just happen to purchase from us perpetual licenses on an infrequent basis because they can. This isn’t really good for our ecosystem [because] we would like to see everybody on our most current release. We think that’s good for customers.”
so basically we know whats good for you, just upgrade already. don’t wanna upgrade eh, we got just the thing for you 
curious what the backlash will be from this, if there is any. maybe folks will just drop in line and do what most people did when adobe went straight rental.
Autodesk can crawl development as well. Depends on how you look at it, you can rent the software for half a year, keep the current version for the other half, wait until next year pay for six months, and so on and so forth, over the course of five years you’ll only have paid out roughly $2500, less then the cost of the software if you bought it full, it keeps Autodesk competitive because no longer are you selling $4K software.
AdobeCC you only get one major update a year, nothing more besides bug fixes for the rest of the year, over the course of two years you only have paid roughly $250.00 compared to $600 for the full version after two years. It does make you have to stay on the edge of what is going on, if you imagine three years not on cloud software and well you might as well throw in the towel. I know for PsCC they change little things, if your on version six of Ps, you’d be surprised on some things that are now gone.
Autodesk shares jumped, with this news as well as many users wanted rental software from what Autodesk quoted.
You all knew it was coming just don’t expect development to change more or less it will remain the same a new update a year with patches or a patch within the year. This isn’t just Maya, it’s AutoCAD etc and there is no alternative to CAD software besides AutoCAD that is Autodesk love child and primary income.
[QUOTE]This isn’t just Maya, it’s AutoCAD etc and there is no alternative to CAD software besides AutoCAD that is Autodesk love child and primary income.[QUOTE]
based on the article its everything AD
When Adobe did same, everybody who I know stay in CS6. Autodesk want same thing? I used Maya and Softimage in last 8 years with Subscription. When Autodesk killed Softimage I tried Blender and I was surprised how great it is. I canceled subscription and use only Blender. Blender`s user base will grow faster with this subscription, thanks Autodesk :bowdown:
I always thought that Dassault systems which is as big as Autodesk makes CAD software too. Guess I was wrong.
If Autodesk does this, then there is always perfectly workable alternatives like C4D.
With a handful of plugins it can do just about everything Maya/Max can do, so nobody has to be forced to stay with Autodesk’s crappy new scheme.
- Artsyboy
Look at Microsoft - they have heaps of perpetual AND subscription licensing options to cater for everyone from Professionals to students, to large families, to users in developing countries. It’s great! Choice!!
Adobe and Autodesk are truly despicable. There is no reason for these 2 behemoth software companies to mandate subscription software as the only option, actually there is only 1 - profit…and control.
I’m flabbergasted Adobe have been doing so well with CC. I check their share price every couple of weeks hoping it has dived! I honestly thought there would have been a larger backlash than this, especially after the multiple times CC servers went down for over 24 hours and users could not authenticate to actually use ‘their’ software.
I guess we will have to wait for Adobe to suddenly double their price, fail to release any updates for a few years and charge on a ‘per layer basis’ to use Photoshop’s layers!
To re-iterate - There is nothing wrong with Creative Cloud subscriptions - it is a fantastic deal for many…the only issue is that Adobe (and now Autodesk) are forcing this as the only option for no reason other than to generate profit. When will people realise this is a really bad deal in the mid to long-term? :banghead:
Yeah… im just hoping SideFX will “improve” the CA tools so they become a bit more familiar, Houdini is really powerful and I have friends already falling in love with it, but even they say that right now its not a replacement for Maya or Soft for the CA side of things, especially for Animators.
Im betting Modo and Houdini will get, just hope is sooner than later
The scary possibility is - if Adobe and Autodesk’s subscription-only plans are very successful, SideFX, the foundry and the industry are likely to follow suit.
And then MANY of us will migrate to… Blender.
Definitely will NOT rent. Subscription is okay as an OPTION, but not “forced.”
They are successful because theres no options… and no Blender is not an option yet… might be for smaller places but its not for bigger places.
Blender was tried where im working right now and they abandon the idea… just the money saved in Maya licenses would be huge, but license money is not everything, training someone for a new tool takes time and that time costs a lot of money. You dont need to train basically anyone to Animate in Maya, theres thousands of already trained people that are so used to it they just use it without thinking and they can start up and running on first day (as expected).
But yes, everything nowadays is Rented… it seems owning is becoming a thing of the past…
Christoffer are you motivating your choice on True test and Trial ?
Because Houdini has a huge potential as a rigging/animation tool.
While you automate your rig in Maya with Pymel/MEL/Python you often ended with script that go around 10.000 code to automate the generation of a full rig. If you want API access better use cmds and pymel also.
Other point is that if you are entering the A-Level rigging area in Maya chance are that you’re gonna have to rock the C++ API to generate complex custom deformers.
In Houdini you don’t have page and page of code to achieve this, you have a tree, and in this tree you have by default a very low level access to nearly all possible operation without the hastle to dive in C++ HDK. You can build rig in houdini as good as in Maya.
The big problems imo is that Maya has far better UI for highly interactive operation , and animate in Maya is definitly the best user experience you can have if your riggers know their stuff …
But Houdini has potential, as a rigging tool it kickass, as a tool for animators there is big potential , but it lack some UI sugar compare to maya i agree. SESI has hire a lot of XSI developers and i really hope they will find a way to add the UI sugar for modeling/animation operation without betraying the core philosophy of H.
PS : sorry to be out of topic …
What about them?
They’ve already said that they’ll no longer offer upgrades after May 2015, it’s subs, rental or buy a new seat. They’ve just taken the option to buy a new seat away.
This is just them closing the circle of sh*tness.
I had considered jumping back on in 2016/2017, but I don’t want to encourage this sort of regressive behaviour.
My gut feeling is you’ll see a burst of something in 2016 then Max and the rest will stagnate again - why improve if you’re locking people in?
Apart from Autodesk holding the userbase to ransom, the main issue I see are devs who release free or low-cost plugins/scripts to plug gaps in functionality.
If they don’t want to fall in with this rental model, then watch Max struggle to bail out the leaky boat, as they release new versions but don’t have the support to maintain existing plugins or scripts.
I feel sorry for the Max team, they’re putting all the effort in but getting hamstrung by the people at the top.
There certainly are ‘alternative options’ in the market, like Cinema4D for example.
I know that for some stupid reason people think ‘C4D is for motion-graphics only’, but with the new fluids simulation (Navie Effex plugin), the integration of Houdini Engine, the new bridge to Arnold render, powerful plugins like DEM Earth and other big changes (like built-in camera tracking/match-moving in R16), Cinema4D is becoming a more powerful all-purpose 3D tool every day, especially for VFX-like uses.
There is even a recent thread in the C4D subforum where a plugin developer is asking whether people would pay for Nvidia Flex to be integrated tightly into Cinema4D as a plugin.
So yes, there are options ‘other than Autodesk’, ‘Modo’ or ‘Blender’. You just have to look around a bit and be open minded.
Now lets hope that Maxon don’t jump on the ‘subscriptions bandwagon’ and make C4D a subscription based product, too…
I hope that doesn’t happen, but Maxon generally are not as evil as Autodesk when it comes to treating their customers right.
- Artsyboy
It’s a scam but because Maya is the industry leader it might work. Every year they’ve put a shiny new splash screen on with a few basic tweaks and charge money for a new version - in a similar way to the way Adobe did with Photoshop. What do general users need from a new version? If they froze development who would care? It’s the same app it was 5 years ago with a few minor tweaks. It’s more interesting to watch how plugin renderers are developing.
They just want to make more money and prevent people from owning software. As I did with Adobe Photoshop and After Effects I plan to buy the last available version and leave it at that. I can’t see a downside for me - these are mature products. I don’t care about tiny tweaks and I don’t feel it’s worth paying to keep their shareholders happy.
Screw 'em!