A bit offtopic:.how about the situation with pirated soft versions around that time? Even softimage was mainly in SGI area that time, I remember cracked versions of softimage later on NT. Where there piracy in the earlier years? In softimage-SGI or pre-internet times? I know about pirated copies in other businessin the late 80s but just wondering how this was with softimage back then...
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Raffaele Fragapane Sent: Sunday, August 04, 2013 3:06 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: OT: Yost Group - related to the Naiad/SIGGRAPH discussion I remember the same outrage, it was in some magazines and some BBs, but win 95 was Summer 95, and MAX 1 was announced, not even released I believe, at SIGGRAPH 95. Max 1.1 was what, a full year later? And it was 1.2 that was really the big swing shot. 3DS R4 was the pre-win95 one (a release I remember for inverse kinematics and people clamouring now 3ds4dos was as good as Softimage|3D for animation :) ). I also have vague memories of people saying 1.0 cracked run on 95, while the non cracked version didn't, and people being able to tell the pirate-y kids apart by when they were saying they were running it on 95. Didn't even try MAX back then, I think I tried it at v2, and then again at v4, but it was never for me. Regardless, release time could not have been more than a month or two apart from win 95 either way :) Then you also have all the rumors of 95SP1 breaking the cracks and surprisingly the following minor release of MAX being crackable on SP1 again, and everybody using it as proof that the whole cracked MAX scene was secretly run from inside Kinetix as a promotional move. Whether there's ever been any truth to it, I have absolutely not the faintest clue. Ahhh, good times... well, no, not really :p On Sun, Aug 4, 2013 at 9:10 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau <[email protected]> wrote: Max 1.0 was released before Windows 95.. I remember the user base rage a couple of years earlier when they announced they would be developing the next gen software exclusivly for NT, though now I cannot figure out where I would have known about that; perhaps usenet or bbs. On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 5:45 PM, Raffaele Fragapane <[email protected]> wrote: > Actually Max ran on windows 95 and then 98 as well though it wasn't meant to > I guess, unlike a lot of other software at the time, which was a huge part > of why it was popular (alongside the whole piracy thing). > For that alone it was for quite a while relegated as a toy app in people's > minds. That and the fact it WAS the crashiest DCC app ever to disgrace the > hard drives of a million users. > > The hardware was not a problem for anybody that I remember of, it wasn't > that bad actually. I remember those days extremely well as they more or less > line up with when I was starting to make a living (and was considering > buying MAX actually, ended up buying LW). > I don't remember the HW being a problem at all, if anything MAX was more > forgiving than a lot of other apps especially on the video card front. > > As for Stefan's post I posted it because of its existence, because of the > fact people like him are coming out of the woodwork has some (not a lot > maybe) significance. Not because he's right across the line :) > > His representation of MAX heroically democratizing 3D Software alone is > completely rose tinted and forgetful in example. MAX came in trying to > shoulder Lightwave away in that sector, which had already been doing the > good work of democratizing since Amiga days. > 3DS for dos was possibly more significant in those regards. > > > On Sun, Aug 4, 2013 at 3:10 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau <[email protected]> > wrote: >> Max 1 and 2 must have been a pretty tough time, given that it's a new >> app that didn't work with any of the DOS plug-ins, and .. was written >> for Windows NT, which nobody wanted to use or had the hardware for. (8 >> megs of RAM, are you crazy?) This was a time when people were still a >> couple years away from giving up hacking their config.sys and >> autoexec.bat to tweak the 640k DOS memory. Of course XSI had it owns >> OS choice issues and is still trailing the old SI|3D in animation >> performance as well. Still, being the vastly popular plug-in platform >> that it is, Max is the app we all wish we could have made. -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
