what the heck is going on with HASH

#161

I have read through the replies about the Hash’s bussiness policies and program stability and I have one question to ask, How is this helping anyone. Hash doesn’t care as much as they should and we can only hope that they will soon but until then we can’t do anything about it other than make them aware of what we as users want them to add or things to make A:M better.

So why don’t those that have the resorces to make a poll, make one. Make a poll that addresses the issues that the majority of A:M users find when working with A:M and I’m even sure that someone will post it on the list for you if your not on it anymore. This might get Hash thinking if enough people are backing it.

#162

But I think some of the consensus is fatigue over being treated indecently by the people at Hash when we do (as I have done) contact them through “proper channels” in order to report a bug, etc…

I think I knew this awhile ago, as I stopped upgrading with 8.5p and had it in the back of my mind to switch packages eventually here.

Until I hear and see definitive evidence AM has taken a quantum leap forward, no more $$ to Martin. They need to get to work.:wip:

#163

I use A:M. I love A:M. It’s not perfect but what 3D software is? Version 10 is getting very stable and the guys at Hash have always been receptive to my feature requests and bug reports when submitted via the proper channels.

The recent blood-letting on the email list is because of people who ignored the explicite rules they agreed to when subscribing. The list is not the place for bug reports, feature requests or bitching in general. Take that stuff to a public forum. The Animation: Master list is NOT a public forum. It is a service provided and maintained by Hash and they have every right to moderate its traffic as they see fit. They make the rules clear. People are given warning before being banned. This sort of shit-storm happens about once every 18 months, then it blows over and everybody forgets about it and gets back to work.

There are still plenty of big brains left on the list, such as the guys from Anzovin Studios and the Eggington Productions, but you only here from them when they have something useful to say. Would that other list members displayed the same discrimination.

#164

What the heck is the point of a forum for a program if nobody mentions bugs, problems, and feature requests? Isn’t that a good way for the company to keep in touch with the users? Otherwise the place just turns into a sterilized, useless, lifeless parody of itself. If that’s what they want, something’s wrong in the first place.

#165

Victor, your information is not entirely correct. Wegg, a.k.a. William Eggington, for example, is “listening” to the list, but can’t talk to it. Steve has squelched him for conjuring one “shitstorm” too many.

As to making polls and such, that’ll never work. The creator of such a poll would be biased one way or the other, and the result of it would be skewered. Not skewed, skewered. Don’t believe statistics you haven’t forged yourself.

I feel, that at this point, the only real way of making Hash pay attention to its customers again - to make them reevaluate their position - would be through massive amounts of negative publicity via word of mouth, because word-of-mouth is the way they advertise.

As long as the company stays profitable, they won’t care to listen to existing customers, because they will lure more newbies at the next Siggraph. From that, it follows, that hurting their profits is one way to help make Hash Animation Master a better product. If the existing customers will start a fuss big enough to hurt SALES then Hash might wake up and be a cool company once again by focusing on stability and polishing the existant non-existant features. Like dynamics. I mean… you know what I mean.

So, I’m just doing what I can to make the world a better place. In my own screwed up way (but hey, THEY started it!)…

#166

Hello Victor!

Great to hear from you and since I started this on the list I thought I should reply to your post!

You are right when you say that the list belong to Hash, I said so myself in my post to the list.

You are also right about AM v10 being more stable the some of the previous versions.

You are a great animator and I respect you for that, but, you may have a good relationship with Hash peoples, but for most peoples it is not so. Hash is very particular on who they respond or not, the fact that they respond well to your request is mainly due to the fact that they gain much by your work as they started to listen and finally respond to mine after I started making some good tutorials for them. But for the regular users there is no communication.

As for the brains on the list, well, it is true that there are still some of them on it, but, last I heard, Anzovin studio started to use Lightwave as a render engine, importing animations made with AM and Eggignton stopped using AM quite a bit ago. Rumors have it that even Momentum is leaning toward Maya. If you look at the number of great artists that used to be on that list, you will see that very few remains, actually, very few still uses AM anymore!

Again, I am not saying that AM is not a good 3D application. My main beef is the time I spent learning it, the amount of time I was told that things would be fixed and finally, many years later, I find myself relearning 3D and buying other software because AM just cannot cope with the reality of today’s 3D world. All the peoples out there, who will spend a year, two or even three years learning AM hoping to become more then hobbyist will get cheated, because most of them will end up giving up 3D.

#167

Originally posted by vnavone
There are still plenty of big brains left on the list, such as the guys from Anzovin Studios and the Eggington Productions, but you only here from them when they have something useful to say. Would that other list members displayed the same discrimination.

Yes, if only the A:M users would just conform and tip-toe around the mailing list so that Hash fanatics like Victor (part of a minority, btw) could read the list without getting traumatized. You guys are always going on about how Hash is soooo kind to provide us with this special “service”, and we shouldn’t say anything to upset them. Well, guess who pays for that service? The same users who were booted from the list, that’s who. Hash has no respect for the established A:M community, so I have no respect for Hash.

#168

Slandering Hash isn’t going to make them change. It’ll just hurt their bussiness and might even force them to be cheaper with programming. It’ll just make things worse.

#169

Okay, first of all, there is no slander on this thread, as far as I know.

Slander is a tort (a ‘civil crime’) because it is a lie. The absolute defense against a slander action is the truth. If you say the truth, and nothing but the truth, God doesn’t need to help you. You’re all set.

There is no slander in truth.

And the truth is, AM has crashed on me more than all other software I’ve ever used, put together. If that hurts the sales for Hash Inc, I don’t care.

If that makes them think and start to act upon that, I’ll be happy.

If that makes an amateur realize he’s getting a short end of the deal, and it makes him think, and in the end, he doesn’t fall for the con that has become the motto of Hash Inc., I’ll be okay with that.

“The software that even an artist can afford” has long since become the software only an amateur can afford to play with. Serious people move on to serious software, they hardly have the time for this.

P.S. Victor, I have a lot of respect for you and your work. A lot of us do. What you managed to do with AM is amazing. You’ve worked with AM, and you’ve worked against it to fulfill your American dream. And I hold a lot of respect for that.You are an inspiration to us all. You work at Pixar now. But you don’t use AM at work, and there is a reason for that. And that, really, is my point.

#170

What other application has had to have a user write a program like PRJSaver just because the software has a horribly nasy habit of crashing and occasionally corrupting your project? I can think of only one…

(PRJSaver saves a new numbered copy of your file every time you tap the save button, very handy I use it for everything now)

I’ve been reading this thread while modeling and AM just crashed while importing a texture…4 times in a row.

Good thing I got my xmas bonus last week… Just ordered lightwave.

Now If you’ll excuse me I’ve got some uninstalling to do.

-Drakk

#171

Originally posted by Hookflash
Yes, if only the A:M users would just conform and tip-toe around the mailing list so that Hash fanatics like Victor (part of a minority, btw) could read the list without getting traumatized. You guys are always going on about how Hash is soooo kind to provide us with this special “service”, and we shouldn’t say anything to upset them. Well, guess who pays for that service? The same users who were booted from the list, that’s who. Hash has no respect for the established A:M community, so I have no respect for Hash.

When you signed up to the Hash list you entered in to an agreement. The only people who get booted from the list are those that violate that agreement. You did not pay to join the list you paid to use the software. It has nothing to do with conforming and everything to do with living up to what you agreed to. No offense but if you can’t live up to your part of the bargain, what does that make you?

That being said, I think their should be a place that AM users can go for bugs and new features that is outside of the standard list. I still think that place should be here on CG-Talk.

#172

i just upgraded to version 10, and i got the same ‘manual’ when i upgraded to version 9! it wasn’t all that good then, its even less useful now.

the list is about the only real support anyone is ever likely to get with the program! i guess that’s another reason that the list should be a complete resouce, and not just hash’s marketing tool.

i agree that anyone who bitches on the animaster list should expect to get booted. but i look at it more as civil disobedience. the last desperate act of someone trying to be heard.

anyone not willing to defend their life’s work in public might not be so sure of it’s worth.

-jon

#173

Originally posted by Natess44
Slandering Hash isn’t going to make them change. It’ll just hurt their bussiness and might even force them to be cheaper with programming. It’ll just make things worse.

I don’t care if it changes them or not. It would however though be nice to keep other people from buying thier software. They ripped me off. I bought AM99 and that peice of garbage didn’t stay open more than 30 some odd minutes. I tried everything tech support told me too, except of course buying a new comp which is just ridiculous. I can’t in good consience sit by quietly while somone considers buying AM.

#174

Originally posted by My Fault
When you signed up to the Hash list you entered in to an agreement.

What are you saying? Is their reaction to my violation of the agreement appropriate? Simply terminating my customer service (they won’t even respond to my emails now), with a trite nasty email, is ok?

#175

Try Cinema4D. It is arguably the most stable 3D app ever built, has an easy to use interface, a nice and fast renderer, and Soft IK (which is admitedly slow, but otherwise gets nice result).

They always have a demo of the latest release.

http://www.maxon.net/index_e.html

#176

Originally posted by walasek
[B]I have ported the code back to AM8.5 so hopefully it will work there. The URL to the new OBJ importer/exporter is http://12.213.91.41/AM/OBJ.hie

I can’t test with 8.5 very well, but it seems to work. If you find problems with it, let me know and I will see what I can do about testing it further. Same things as the 9.5 and 10.0 version except that this version:

  1. Does not have an initial status percent bar (after it tells you how many verticies/etc, then you will see it)
  2. Does not shorten the names of exported map files
  3. Does not have the Licensing protection

Enjoy…

P.s. I much prefer the new 9.5/10.0 SDK over the old one…

Arthur Walasek
Email: awalasek@attbi.com [/B]

Thanks! Although I’m not totally sure it will work with my 8.5, since I stopped at 8.5m (or was it L). I’ve used the 3ds export and then tried a 3ds to obj converter. Seems to work ok, but no texturing etc… I’ll let you know if I have any problems with it. I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to use A:M any time soon though, but I downloaded it just in case.

Anyhow, I stopped upgrading A:M around the first year they started the subscription thing. I had been using AM since the last month or so of v3, so I was able to get version 4 for a great price, free. Still, that was great of Hash and all, but I’ve noticed a change in the past few years which didn’t really sit well with me.

As time passed, I realised the bugs I wished were gone would go away eventually, but would then be replaced by more bugs because of a different feature list (or the software was re-written) . I wasn’t going keep paying every year to get features fixed that were already promised, or even dropped all together in a later patch. Version 10 sounded promising, but it doesn’t look like anything has changed. I’ve been so much happier using and learning LW, ‘nowadays’. Even though the animation capabilities aren’t as powerful as A:M’s, all the other things it can do has really impressed me.

I’ve been on the list since, oh, probably 93. I think this is where my train stops. Though, it is fun to see what goes on in the list at times.

Man, this almost like a family reunion…
:wavey: even though some of AM’s earlier users might not remember me, I was more of a lurker at that time.

MonkeyFarm… Wow, I haven’t heard of/from you in years… You’re work with the flocking was inspiring, I think I even emailed you something about it. You’re other stuff was great as well.

Mando’s alien image is still imprinted in my brain for some reason. Velcommeee … to haassshhhh, what’d ya think I was gonna do?.. heh.

Man, those were the good ol’ days, when we all thought things were just gonna sky rocket for A:M.

:wavey: Mike, Ed, egg guys, dfaris, GCCharb, and all others I might have missed in the thread…

-“Manimate”

#177

I just had to say that i’ve been using AM since V5, it was somewhat crashy then - but it was very easy to avoid the crashes. I currently have V9, but prefer to use V8.0 simply cuz i haven’t gotten used to the new interface. As for crashing - i honestly can’t remember what the last time was it crashed. And i’ve used it for up to 15 hours at a time - when i was completing my contest entery for last months image contest (1st place). It works fine on WINXP. I’m not saying that others haven’t had trouble, but i am an example where AM is extrememly stable – as stable as my other programs which i tend to use for extedned periods of time (including Flash, Corel PhotoPaint, Cubase.)

  • Vuk
#178

I think a lot of us, myself included, knew our comments would get us the boot. I was totaly aware of that and included words to that affect in the post. For me it was a parting shot.
I am primarily a modeler so I don’t really push every segment of the program. I also, or because of that, never had big concerns with stability. I never went past v 8.5 though.
What did it for me was that unprovoked post by Steve titled “Martins definative reasons why splines are superior” or some such crap.
It was crammed full of disinformation. The modeler included in AM blows like an assistant crack ho. Having now used many other modelers, it is one of the worst I’ve come across. I’m not going to go through every lack of feature, tool etc.
I just wish I had seen something like this on the list when I first started using AM, It might have sent me looking for alternatives earlier on.
I feel as though I wasted a years time. All the while thinking I was doing something improperly. I said as much in my final post to the list.
In the past I have said that I would buy a copy of AM again if and when they make some of these changes. But really I don’t think that will ever happen and no longer care.
Now when I sit down in front of the box, I’m stoked with what I’ll acomplish. I used to dread starting up AM, what with all the compromises and work arounds I’d be facing. Not to mention The endless “Finding patches/Aligning normals” eating up my time.
No checks for spelling or syntax errors were used in the writing of this shit.

#179

I got my copy of A:M (98 I think it was) largely because of some of the great models in the gallery and on the Hash site. I particularly liked the Tyson head for example. I stopped using the software because a project that I had spent several weeks on crashed and got corrupted. I couldn’t get to any of it again. Crashing is one thing but crashing plus corrupted files is another. It takes long enough to learn 3D without having to deal with hassle like that. I did get a helpful response from the employee at Hash but I couldn’t fix the problem. After that I moved on to Lightwave and have not looked back. In retrospect I wasted the 200 dollars spent on A:M.

Alex Rooth

#180

I have A:M 9.5, it seems to crash more in XP. Dynamics crash it a lot. I wish I knew the super secret to keeping it crash free :eek: