3D Studio Maya over the horizon.

Always wondered which one would either disappear or get bought up firt since the rumolurs has been going on since around 1999.

http://features.cgsociety.org/story.php?story_id=3166

Yeah man ... this is like Coke buying Pepsi!

It's great 'cause now I can say "Max owns Maya" and I won't be wrong, and since I hate Maya that's perfect.

Well, now Maya will cost $3,000 as well?

I don't know anything about the size of 3DS/Maya market.

But there must be some whopping numbers involved if Autodesk can spend 182 MILLION bucks.

Floyd: You know every movie that had special effects in it? You know all those games out now? Chances are the majority (by a large amount) use assets made in 3D Studio Max or Maya.

What I would love to come out of this is Maya's interface with 3D Studio Max's plugin support.

Adobe Flash...Adobe Dreamweaver....sigh.

What Noel said.

Pleaseee - no Maya Interface for Max - pleaseee!

Eh?

What're the camera controls in Max? It's been so long, I forget. Isn't it like Alt+LMB to tumble, MMB to pan, and Z to zoom?

Ctrl+R to tumble (toggle), MMB to pan, mouse wheel to zoom.

I quite like the sound of Cokesi.

@Noel: Thanks. And what are the hotkeys for the transform tools (move/rotate/scale)?

max had sold over 250,000 licences by around 2001. And Autodesk also own Autocad which is another piece of popular expensive software.

heh. I deals with Autodesk and Autocad. The prices behind the scenes are quite depressing.....

(seeing someone pay £70 for MSN Messenger makes up for it though....)

Sigh....

No, now Max will cost $7500.


Monopolies will kill us all...

I hate the interface on all 3D editors, so I couldn't give a rat's bottom who owns who.

I've used Maya and it really is overcomplicated bollocks. Trying to model and render a simple scene with caustics is a farcical exercise.

Much like Photoshop, it's probably a great program if you've known all the keyboard shortcuts for at least 5 years.

vinylpusher: Have you tried wings3D? ;)

Well...considering the price of both, it's not the kind of software you would buy and then not bother learning. If you're spending thousands of dollars on it, you must have decided you're going to use it for something important (or just be filthy rich).

If they're going to merge the tools of Max and Maya (3D Studio Maya), I hope they do it by creating an entierely new 3D software from the ground up. The basic ideas, structure and design of both are so different, that merging them would be a mess. Of course, while they're doing that XSI would grab the chance to become the leading 3D app...and we're back full circle.

ragtag: I get the impression that the people buying it would be companies, not individuals. I can just imagine a forming company having their beancounters and 3D artists round a table.

beany: "Why can't you use Blender?"

3dguy: "Err..."

I wouldn't be too sure on that (OK perhaps not blender but something like XSI, Mojo or some other with an acceptable price for power rate) ... It seems like a trend that especially smaller companies that do not have "biggies" behind them start buying specialized software like a very good modeller that is simple to learn (because Max / Maya Pros can't be payed as they are hard to master) and a powerfull renderer that creates the needed results.

There are enough superb modellers in the acceptable range to make sure that Max etc won't become too expensive or just die if they do so.

Max isn't what makes autodesk all the money though. It's their cad and engineering tools. Not that over 250,000 copies of max sold is a small ammount, but its a small piece of the cake.

Yeah, buying alias was mostly a prestige move. Maya won an Oscar, after all.

Interestingly enough my experience has been somewhat the opposite. It becomes kind of prestige to be running the same software as the big boys, so the beancounters go for Maya and Pixar RenderMan, even when there might be cheaper alternatives that would get the job done. :)

Or if you go to a client and you use something other than Max/Maya, they get nervous and/or assume something's wrong with you.

I put a brief history of the top 3D apps in the tools section.

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=52671

It's quite interesing and explains about Mayas marketing strategy that put it in the front of the publics awareness.