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I know you have no control over policy at Autodesk. But I do find myself wanting to vent a bit at this new plan.
I have been a RealViz user of this product for more than six years. When Autodesk bought out RealViz I was not informed of the change of ownership at all. And since then I have attempted to find out who to contact, etc. concerning my licenses for this program but until now to no avail (the general Autodesk web site has been an information designer’s nightmare to search). I even tried to find out about upgrade policies with the help of one Autodesk staffer who happened to be doing software demos during one of the Autodesk road shows this past spring. As it turned out, he had no knowledge that ImageModeler was even an Autodesk product. No wonder I never heard back from him. Then I was especially worried about what had happened to VTour HDR as well as ImageModeler since I have licenses for both. As I said, I heard nothing back.
With regard to this I hear that the policy to stop issuing ImageModeler as a stand-alone product comes from Autodesk’s records showing only 100 registered users of the product. Well, might I propose that there are probably quite a large number of orphaned users like myself that apparently Autodesk never bothered to contact.
Now it appears that in order to be “current” with my licenses, I need to shell out $500 for a product that I will probably not be able to upgrade further. That is, unless I fork over monies for Maya AND a subscription! Now if this isn’t extortion, I don’t know what you call it. Buy Maya 2010 and a subscription! No cross-grade pricing. No special offer. Nothing! It’s all about a friendly as a mugging if you’re dependent upon your one little piece of software!
Why would anyone want to do business with this company? There seems to be no appreciation for its customers or, even less so, the poor souls who find themselves to be so through no fault of their own.
Doug Thompson
Author: designerdoug
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