Soulburnscripts

[glorybound]

Neil Blevins has announced that he will discontinue the development and maintenance of the popular collection of tools Soulburnscripts after the release of Max 2022.

Neil has made no secret of the fact that he is “100% against rental only software”, so his decision following Autodesk’s recent announcement that it is to end perpetual licensing should not come as a surprise.

The scripts will remain available, with one final update in April 2021 to add compatibility with 3dsmax 2022. And as scripts aren’t like plugins that require compiling after ever SDK break, it is reasonable to assume that they will work for some time to come. Neil has said that if anyone wishes to modify the script pack to be compatible with later versions, they are free to do so as long as they continue to be distributed free of charge.

Read more about Neil’s decision on his blog including a separate article about rental only licensing.

The CGPress team would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank Neil Blevins for his hard work and dedication in maintaining this excellent resource including the many articles on CG education he has published over a nearly 20 year period.

[glorybound]

This is how you exit the maintenance of a script or plugin gracefully and respectfully. This is a great loss!

[andybot_cg]

Very Same! I'm glad many people are refusing to get on board the subscription dead-end. I do feel bad for artists starting out who don't have the option to lock in to a purchased piece of software that was available 8-10 years ago.

"I will say that my last copy of Photoshop was CS6, since they also moved over to rental only, and here I am 8 years later still using CS6, the latest version of the software has almost no features I would need to do my artwork. So I am hoping to have a similar experience with 3dsmax."

[glorybound]

I don't mind paying for Photoshop, I mean, it is only $19 a month. Microsoft cost me $9 a month. MAX costs $150 a month and although I make money using it, I also lose money with lost time due to crashes. New people should just go the Blender route.

[urbanite]

I like to have an options and no to rentals only. Still on cs5 and I do not see even the reason to upgrade to cs6 which I apparently still could. It not about the money, it is about the trust and in business it means a lot to me. I know, I am old school.

[Jeffrey]

3dsmax is still relevant because of its ecosystem. Autodesk should be thankful for that. Once more plugin developers focus their efforts to other apps (Blender) things might go bad for 3dsmax fast.
It would be nice if Chaos Group allocated more of its resources to the Blender plugin.

[rikou]

3dsmax is still relevant because of its ecosystem. Autodesk should be thankful for that. Once more plugin developers focus their efforts to other apps (Blender) things might go bad for 3dsmax fast.
It would be nice if Chaos Group allocated more of its resources to the Blender plugin.

Oh yes ! it would be awesome !!! a lot of people would be so grateful ! Blender/Vray is the future for a lot of us !

[Ihno]

Once more plugin developers focus their efforts to other apps (Blender) things might go bad for 3dsmax fast.

That's the biggest weakness of open source software.
It won't happen I think.
Since, all you put into blender has to be open source because of the GNU license.
Vray was able to get around that by writing an open source scene exporter. The render itself happens in the standalone version of vray and outside of blender. So they don't have to expose all their secrets to the world.
I suppose other plugin devs can't do that.
Itoo f.e probably couldn't do the calculation outside of blender.
I wouldn't count on commercial plugin devs to chime in. Maybe the blender team itself will close those gaps.

[rikou]

Agree with you but we're just talking about Vray....
It is not a question of transposing all plugins from 3ds max to Blender ! worst idea !!
There are many (sometimes better) solutions in Blender

What a lot of people want is that they can use Vray with Blender with the same performance as Vray with max
Now the question is: can we hope for it ?...

[Jeffrey]

That's the biggest weakness of open source software.
It won't happen I think.
Since, all you punt into blender has to be open source because of the GNU license.
Vray was able to get around that by writing an open source scene exporter. The render itself happens in the standalone version of vray and outside of blender. So they don't have to expose all their secrets to the world.
I suppose other plugin devs can't do that.
Itoo f.e probably couldn't do the calculation outside of blender.
I wouldn't count on commercial plugin devs to chime in. Maybe the blender team itself will close those gaps.

I agree the GNU license imposes a limitation for commercial plugin developers.
However at least rendering solutions like Vray can be integrated in Blender while respecting the GNU license.

The Blender Development Fund receives a nice 90K monthly contribution currently. The core team is doing some nice stuff with it.
My only concern is that Blender is very much focused on character animation. A lot of their resources go into that.
Hopefully they find a way to balance their development efforts and focus a bit more on archviz. This is a huge market Blender is still missing out on.

[glorybound]

Autodesk will find a way to kill Blender, or any other software if it touches its bottom line. Remember, when AD won the court case about reselling wrapped software we were all stunned.

[Oleg_Budeanu]

Autodesk will find a way to kill Blender, or any other software if it touches its bottom line. Remember, when AD won the court case about reselling wrapped software we were all stunned.

Well, a couple of year ago that would work. Now Autodesk will have huge problems, if he will ever try. Blender community is very strong and united.

[glorybound]

So was the Corona community .

[Franx]

How can you buy something that's not for sale...?

[glorybound]

How can you buy something that's not for sale...?

Yeah, I don't know anything about this area, but if there is a way, they'll find it. Do you think AD will sit back and watch their monopoly fall apart?