why yes i did, it was more of me asking why? as others have asked. kinda the same why have photoshop and illustrator when ya know damn well they could combine them. and actually i could not have written some of my words if i had not read previous posts.

Borislav Petrov 15 August 2008 01:54 PM

drp281 15 August 2008 01:17 PM

i think they should have just stuck with with 1 version like they did in the past

The latest numbers I heard at Siggraph speak otherwise.
The idea behind this rather strange decision went like this.
Imagine you work on 3D design or architectural visualization. You are the guy who uses the software, but not the guy who buys it. The decision maker is usually your boss who has zero idea about the 3D industry, but has the money. You go to him and say `Boss, we should use 3ds Max in our company`. Boss looks at you and says ``But I heard it was good only for games. Why should I pay for a game development product?”
With 3ds Max Design, this situation is different. Your boss looks at you and says “Ah, so this application was designed to do LEED certification and exchange data with Revit? Now this is something we really need!” He does not have to know what “binary compatible” means ;)

Granted, this is a total simplification, but it seems to reflect the ignorance of some people out there quite a bit. Design seems to be selling like hot buns and while we used to say “Max has 300K users”, the current expression appears to be “half a million”. I don’t have the exact numbers, but it is growing really fast since the “split”.

Hey Borislav - lets look at it from another point:  You say to the boss: “Ok lets do some advanced walkthrough with game attitude”. Boss says: why not?- it is a good idea. You: Err, hmm, boss -we need different license.... Boss: What the ... we bought one a few months ago!!!

Or my own example:
I usually use Max for anim and vis works. From time to time I am involved with my friends in some SDK projects. Autodesk says: hehe - no more… or of course you can pay more money for us.

And NO - I cannot understand Autodesk point. In normal situation the company should fight for the customers. Money is on second place. I feel that Autodesk’s greed will reach new level. For some it will be acceptable, for some will be not.
Why I have such bad opinion?
Because:
1. Annual updates (good for company’s money / little things for customers + little development time = more bugs every release)
2. Raising price for supscription
3. Subscription license limitation to 3 versions that was announced recently
4. Inexplicable differencies of Max license prices in Europe/USA
5. And now product split

Sorry about this but this is simply another reason not to go with Autodesk.
Best regards
Michal

Well big company with bad business goal = evil doers to the artist who just
lived on a passion to create and make a more beautiful tommorrow accessible
to our people and nations. What can we say ... bad business that’s all , I know that
more will switch out of max if the trend continues , who ever runs the business
developement must read this and think about the consequences.

A great timing for xsi or even blender to strike.

Studio Max 2009 x64
X5000 Chipset | Dual Core Intel 5140 | 4G RAM | Nvidia FX3450 | WindowsXP 64

I like the split. I always thought Viz was watered down, having used 3ds since R2 DOS, I couldn’t do wth out some of the basics that were left out. Now, I spent quite a few years as a developer for Autodesk, designing “modules” for civil, lanscape, irrigation, site planning. What was nice about that was customers could purchase the modules they needed and add menus to a solid engine, Autocad R12 back then. This was also an advantage back in the DOS days when 3ds ran as 4 seperate programs (modeling, animation, materials and rendering...I think). Of course you lost the work flow (very bad), but you didn’t have a bunch of plug-ins or routines you didn’t need running in the background. Character studiuo used to be a sepaerate plugin as well. I would love to see a solid core instead of 2 versions, with individual modules that can be purcheased and load\unloaded at will. So fo me doing arch visualztion with a hobby of charater animation, I could lauch from different icons, the version I need for what I am doing. Not just an cui, but reducing overhead in memory, processor, load times, etc.
But, as with AutoDesk having multiple versions for architects, the effcient way is not the profitable way..so until user is the priority over the shareholder, give me my MAX geared to what pays my bills (no need for SDK, 90% of IK, paint brush deformations, NURBS, FFD, and some other modifiers) just make the core solid!!!!! and long live the 3rd party developers!

Greecee Berger
Max 2011, 32 bit

Yeah I know Bobo’s point all to well but I take it this way the Autodesk Marketing division has abysmally failed to educate it’s buying base is now trying to “spin” a problem verse fix the problem, either that or they admitted their user base and buying base are two different things and gave up trying to market to both. I know from my perspective I know find it hard to ask my boss to renew a subscription in the video post world when he can see the product is not being designed for our field anymore, with the whole Max for Games and Design for visualization field. I don’t wana have to fight for my choice in software because Autodesk has dropped post production support and pretty much just said “Hey then you guys can switch to Maya we own them too”. Fact is er was...Max was great for Post production verse Maya and I like a lot of other people thought Autodesk buying Maya was not a big deal well for us since we run a split shop Maya for long character jobs, and Max for Motion Design and Compositing jobs we are now in the position where we need to start looking for other tools frankly. I have over the years been a big Max fan to Rabid fan of Max after these last few releases bungled or not I have to take the big unwanted decision to relearn a new piece of software and it won’t be Maya. I am not looking to get others to switch or have any agenda here I am just disappointed that really for all it’s gained Max has really for me just become over bloated and slow and has failed again and again to address what I use it for. I know from a business stand point post production for video must be small beans but I just feel I am losing out if I don’t switch to something going somewhere soon. Do you know what I mean. I don’t want to be in visualization or games so I don’t want my *gahk* software operating skills to pigeon hole me (a very good Max generalist) into career obsolescence. I want my art skills to be free of having to figure out how to do something on a very field oriented interface and just let me do what I know the shot needs. Autodesk I am sorry and I still love you just like windows but you have gone Vista on me....32 bits more of stuff I say meh about. Or maybe I am just having a bad day :(

As for the release date for Max 2009, it was mentioned that Autodesk wanted to align it’s release dates with it’s other products.
This should allow all the development teams to work more on the same schedule, look at how Adobe does it with it’s cluster of software,
all the suites are released at the same time (more or less).
EDIT: This post was started at the bottom of the last page, didn’t see there was a second page,
launched in from an email notice.

Max 2012
Windows 7 64 SP1