Regarding being pushed toward suites. I´m a freelancer but have found less and less needs for a commercial license at home over the course of the last two, three years.
Owning one Maya lic and one Max/Soft lic, I would have expected to get a crossgrade offer for an "all inclusive suite" PremiumMegaAdvanced or whatever it´s called... That would make sense for me and may both protect my existing investments as well as offer a simplified licensing and subscription scheme as a bonus? I´d welcome that, but no info on that sofar. Cheers, tim P.S: The main reason I keep those commercial licenses is to be able to learn stuff like Motionbuilder or betatwiddle without having to resort to pesky cracks... On 04.05.2012 10:16, Fabian Schnuer Gohde wrote:
I'm a freelancer with a network lic and I've followed this thread. I've contacted my reseller and am awaiting reply what the total will be this year here (Norway). I think with last year's hike it came to almost the price of houdini escape, if it's gone up again I'm probably not able continuing with XSI since I have no interest or use for the other two dinosaurs in adsk's stable and I'm not having asdk strong-arm me into a suite that offers nothing I need. Modo looks nice, Blender is looking good these days and 1x Houdini Escape gives you unlimited Mantra render tokens also a Silo lic is like $150 and can be a modeler to use alongside Houdini (Houdini modeling sucks if you're not doing stair cases). So plenty of options. We'll see what the reseller has to say, until then I'll not lose sleep over this. -Fabian On 4 May 2012 00:48, Matt Morris <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I'm surprised there aren't more angry people out there, given this is a European issue. I suppose the larger companies will actually save money through getting the soft/maya suites and amalgamating their software licences, but the freelancers out there must be feeling the pinch? A lot of people just use company home licences I guess? I didn't know about modo's 50 render licences, it's definitely worth keeping an eye on, along with the alembic integration. On 2 May 2012 23:52, Sven Constable <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: hm, the render licencing is sweet. I have real problems rendering larger jobs with the mr/softimage licensing situation. Not because of mr itself, its renders everything I throw at it and fast enough. But the scalability with a renderfarm is a problem for me. Mentalray standalone is no option and 5 batchrender licences shipped with XSI is simply not enough. I will stay to softimage for a lot of reasons but,… the rendering side is awful. When I look over to the 3dsmax based studios I could cry. Did they still have unlimitedrenderlicenses™ for mentalray? Ah lucky guys, those cockroachers, ay!____ __ __ cheers,____ sven____ __ __ *From:*[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>] *On Behalf Of *Thomas Helzle *Sent:* Wednesday, May 02, 2012 23:51 *To:* [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> *Subject:* Re: uk subscription pricing____ __ __ I would subscribe to what Tim said.____ Some things are different (often in a good way, sometimes not), some things need a bit of refinement (601 is the first release with real CA tools), so it really depends on what you do if it could fit your bill.____ With me doing mainly illustrations and stills, there is little to complain about and I actually look forward to digging deeper into the CA tools - the available tools like full body IK and the posing system are pretty sweet IMO.____ As for the rendering, it replaces MR, Vray and some Schwarzeneggers quite nicely IMO. Together with Thea Render for unbiased, I'm all set when it comes to rendering.____ __ __ If you take the price of the package into the equation (that includes 50 render nodes), I don't see much else that can compete (other than Blender).____ But yes, it is NOT XSI, which in some areas I find pretty relaxing - many things in XSI are overkill for what I do and others are broken for so long, it's not even funny anymore.____ __ __ BTW. there is now a more complete SDK to go with the app. ____ I already wrote my first shader in one long 24 hour run of coding and GUI wrangling (XML based).____ __ __ I enjoy learning something new actually and my XSI 2012 will be good for some years as a companion app. 2013 contained nothing I want anyway.____ __ __ But I threw that into the discussion mainly since I don't see Autodesk making any sensible moves in this century and for some people, modo could be a way out of it's stifling embrace...____ __ __ Cheers,____ __ __ Tom____ On 2 May 2012 21:26, Tim Crowson <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:____ The deformation system in modo 601 is very powerful. The actual animation tools (animation editor) in 601 are not yet on par with what you get in something like Softimage, although they let you get the job done. The developers realize this. The alembic support is there, but is not ready for the riggors of a production pipeline. The developers are aware of this also. There are some stability issues with 601 (although SI 2012 has taken the gold medal in crashes for me lately), and Luxology is quite driven to get rid of those and make it very reliable. They're aware of the areas in which their software needs to grow, and are pretty passionate about getting it there. As for the renderer, it's hard to not gush a little. The thing is sweet. Smokes Mental Ray consistently. I'd sooner put it toe-to-toe with Arnold than anything else. That would be an interesting comparision. If Alembic support in 601 gets where it needs to be, I could see modo being used to render more productions. Modo 601 can do an awful lot that you might not expect. It has its own way of doing things (render passes are very different!). But is a very useful tool to have access to.____ *Tim Crowson */Lead CG Artist/____ ____ *Magnetic Dreams Animation Studio, Inc. *2525 Lebanon Pike, Building C. Nashville, TN 37214 *Ph* 615.885.6801 <tel:615.885.6801> | *Fax* 615.889.4768 <tel:615.889.4768> | www.magneticdreams.com <http://www.magneticdreams.com> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>____ On 5/2/2012 1:38 PM, phil harbath wrote: ____ do you have any thoughts on the character animation tools, they don't seem to be "there" yet, however, I haven't had the opportunity to use it yet.____ ----- Original Message ----- ____ *From:*Thomas Helzle <mailto:[email protected]> ____ *To:*[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ____ *Sent:*Wednesday, May 02, 2012 4:36 AM____ *Subject:*Re: uk subscription pricing____ __ __ Have a look at modo 601. ____ Depending on what you do, it might be a nice alternative (it is for me, I'm no longer on subscription as well - partly because of the price increase).____ __ __ You can import ICE particles via realflow .bin and alembic is built in (didn't test that one really though).____ The renderer is brilliant, and while the layer based approach has some cons compared to nodes, it also has some things that are impossible to do in MRay out of the box like instancing of materials and textures. ____ I already start to really dig it and would prefer it over MR in most cases. For me, the alternative would have been to buy Vray for XSI.____ __ __ Modo is actively developed in all areas (SP1 came out yesterday) and the community is very open and welcoming.____ The main thing I miss is the modifier stack for modelling, but I still have XSI 2012 if I should need it badly.____ With all the things that may be missing, you also get a load of nice and well though out things not available in XSI to this date: you even have a color palette (yay ;-) ), great tools for measuring and exact work, it comes with a nice library of USABLE presets, and it's way more tailored to the small shop or freelancer without a herd of TDs. ____ I bought it while the crossgrade offer was still on, so it was way cheaper than another year of subscription for XSI would have been.____ __ __ Overall, 601 is the first version of modo that I personally would call pretty "feature complete" as a package...____ __ __ The demoversion is said to be out end of this or beginning of next week.____ __ __ May be an alternative for you, may be not.____ __ __ For me it is pretty much the only alternative, since Lightwave still has a way to go (although v11 is pretty good) and Cinema doesn't agree with me...____ I keep a very open eye on Blender though.____ __ __ http://www.luxology.com/____ __ __ Otherwise I think Raffaele nailed it. And I'm not interested in making Shareholders happy if they don't make me happy in return ;-)____ __ __ Cheers,____ __ __ Tom____ __ __ ____ That's because they want you to buy the suites, instead of being on one of the smaller products. That way they can make "new seat" money, look good in front of the board of directors, and present figures that (artificially so) suggest their market isn't completely stagnant and deadlocked.____ The joys of being out in the stock market and having to grow in revenue and potential revenue every quarter, or suffer an onslaught of sales and stock depreciation.____ On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 11:01 PM, Daniel Sweeney <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:____ yeh I have not renewed my subs either because of this as i cannot justify the increase. ____ ____ bit of a joke. a friend said its pretty much the same price for the bottom subs of the creation suite.____ ____ Daniel Sweeney 3D Generalist *Mobile:*+44 (0)7743429771 <tel:%2B44%20%280%297743429771> *Email:*[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> <http://northforge.co.uk/>____ __ __ On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Matt Morris <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:____ I remember bringing this up a while back, talking about the lack of a silver subscription and an imminent uk price jump. I believe Maurice replied to say they were looking into it. However, since then it appears its been basically shelved because softimage customers are mostly on subscription and it could mean a revenue drop.____ ____ So that leaves UK customers with a 70% price increase from last year's subscription. 70%!!! That's a huge amount, and will directly lead to me cancelling my second licence (which was only used periodically) and thinking hard about renewing the other. Given that commercials have had budgets slashed I just can't justify spending that much on a yearly basis. Its a shocking decision. Way to go Autodesk.____ ____ ____ ____ -- www.matinai.com <http://www.matinai.com>____ ____ -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!____ __ __ __ __ -- ____ ____ __ __ ____ __ __ -- www.matinai.com <http://www.matinai.com>
