From: Szabolcs Matefy [szabol...@crytek.com] My little story with 3d apps.. I, as many of my colleagues, started with 3D Studio R4 (the DOS version, with VESA drivers, etc).
I will be honest I started in R4 as well ;) I thought Max Peaked with the Dos version and pretty much went down from there. ;) So, I’ll dedicate my free time to be an expert in Maya, and then if I’m in somewhere, I can spread the Word….:) Maya has a lot of great tech in it. Its major problem is the workflow in maya is so open as to be non existant and the interface and interaction model is just horrible. That will change however with folks like Luceric hopefully bringing some much needed sanity to the Maya UI. We teach Softimage for our 3D course because we believe its the best for students to learn in. However we can only do that while there are local studios who make use of it . With the relative success of Zambezia and Khumba we(as in the South African Animation community) have now got the attention of people with access to the required finances to really make our industry grow. Unfortunately the downside of this is more and more of the available work is for people with Maya skills. Each year we re-evaluate which software to teach, and each year its becomming harder and harder to stay with Softimage. Because of the insane cost of 3d apps when you buy them in Rands its very rare to find a freelancer who has their own legal copy of Softimage here. (my legal copy of Softimage Commercial is 7.5) You then tend to have to work in what program your employer has available and that is 90% of the time Maya. Its a major score if they have the full suite and you can choose Softimage. I am quite happy to use Softimage for as long as possible, however they need to significantly change the pricing structure. You cant ask similar prices for software when one has 150 devs on it and the other only has 10. Thats insane. If they dropped Softimages price to something that reflects how much work they put into it they would get so many more seats. Unfortunately that will never happen and the softimage Users will continually have to pay an order of magnitude more for the same amount of dev work. While in academia we dont pay for our licences it has a big bearing on when our students leave. Traditionally about 50% of them will be placed the rest of them will be freelance or start their own business. Virtually all of the free lance work is Maya based and when people have a choice of buying Maya or Soft (as most cant afford the suites) they will tend to overwhelmingly choose Maya as the value for money is just so much better. The problem is people need to eat, look after familes etc. They will go to where the opportunities are. Szabolcs story is been echoed here as well time and again. Far more so then say 3 years ago. <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="width:100%;"> <tr> <td align="left" style="text-align:justify;"><font face="arial,sans-serif" size="1" color="#999999"><span style="font-size:11px;">This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary. </span></font></td> </tr> </table>
