Why dont we all join together and tell Autodesk..

[deflix]

to start being decent and put some work into the products they sell so that development actually occurs in a progressive manner and in the interests of genuine improvements based on customer feedback and the legacy of the code they have bought from so many skilled individuals over the years -- rather then continuing on this futile, profit-orientated bullshit crusade at the detriment of all things good and proper! Consider the dissaperance of Lightscape, and the flagrant disregard for Dr Greenbergs genius creation in subsequent versions of MAX and its worthless Gi - think about Autocad; an emblem of crap software (and their first core product!!), buldging at the seams like a bloated greedy whale about to implode on itself like a house of conflicting cards. Think about 3dstudio and the endless versions strung out into space reaching from earth to the sun, and think about the the countless millions of hours of pain and stress induced in the users over the years - a figure far greater then there are atoms in the universe! I would love to see Autodesk turn around one day and say 'hell, weve made so much money now we've decided to start putting some real work into what we do for a change; we've decided to give something back!. Max will at last be stable, and direct 3d wont crash every 10 minutes without warning. we've also decided to offer a free support service for all our paying customers, that so fairly reflects the complexity and instability of our software. we will now only release new versions when they actually work rather then fleecing people over and over with non-backwards compatible derivatives of the same thing. Hell we'll even make spline booleans work because after almost two decades of development this should function properly. And for good measure we'll say thankyou to the people who have made our success story possible; you the users out there, (many trained on pirate software) and now working in the countless offices around the world, our paying
customers!'

....rant over

[DrJan]

Amen...
Especially about the Spline Boolean part. I tried using that just now and it just wouldn't work. With two simple RECTANGLES!!!

[RErender]

Heh, good stuff, they should also add the ability to save as max 5, save as max 6, save as max 8 etc., would it really kill them if people on older versions could actually work back and forth with the newer versions?

[pskdude]

ummm

here ya go, forward it !

Fari.Banimahd@autodesk.com

[Dschaga]

I don't get your point!

3dsmax is stable at 500-600usd/euro per year for 2-3 new features, some more bugs, a nicer UI, the ability to not exchange files with older maxversions and so on... we all know this and we all pay the subscription without the hope anymore that anything will be better with the next version.

We all know how Autodesk earn money and we all know how autodesk disallow to sell a license to other ppl. A spammail to someone, who will change his addy in a week or so, will not change the way things works at autodesk.

The Problem is that most uf us don't care about how much money a license cost: once you have payed 5000euro you only have to pay 600euro/year and get your new version.
Most of us don't care if the name of the new version is max9 sp3 or max 2008, but all of us know that any new version is not worth the subscription price.

well... quiting subscription could be a solution: if 1000 users just drop subscription within one day or week, things could change at autodesk... it worth a lost of 600.000 euro/usd for Autodesk.

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

cannot agree more deflix!!!!

myself, i do not pay the subscription, am not gonna support "pirates" such as autodesk, as what they do with all the subscription money is a day time robbery!!!

sticking with max 9 until it is supported by vray....its got enough functions for what i do anyway

[Morbid Angel]

All I will say is this:
An alternative to a combustable engine has been discovered many years ago, there are many forms of a more environment friendly engines then a gasoline based.
However the oil companies have their teeth sunken so deep in the whole thing, that they will never allow such engines to emmerge on the market.
Same thing applies here.

[thablanch]

I do not quite agree with Morbid. In the actual situation, we do have the choice to go for something else. There is enough other software out there, most of the time wayyyy cheaper.. So yes Autodesk is, well, everything Deflix says, but there is other software if we really want to change our pipeline. Not taking Autodesk defense here, but there is 2 side to this.

[rmejia]

Maybe Autodesk could also port all their programs to Mac OS X and Linux too.

[posterus]

this has topic has been discussed alot at our studio. i agree with just about everything in deflix's rant. we canceled our subscription after max 9 and currently have no plans to upgrade...whats the point of upgrading at this point?
autodesk is getting to big. it seems they're much more interested in pleasing their shareholders then their customers. i was really annoyed when i met with one of their field engineers awhile back and asked him the common problems with back burner aren't being addressed. he told me it was because back burner isn't a revenue generator and theres no incentive to fix it...BS. the incentive is i need it, i paid for it, and it should work.
they just seem so out of touch with their customers. a company that big should have a staff of their software engineers working in the area forums, answering questions and taking suggestions. vlado finds the time to answer alot of our questions personally. it would be great if autodesk did something along those lines.

-joe

[SnipeyX]

asked him the common problems with back burner aren't being addressed. he told me it was because back burner isn't a revenue generator and theres no incentive to fix it...

I've heard the same thing from various sources as well, quite frustrating.

[Morbid Angel]

actually as far as I know you dont pay for backburner, it comes a part of a packedge. Moreover, max users should be happy and not complain.
Here is why:
Max costs about 3,500 usd (not sure of the actual price), it comes with backburner, a very important tool, which works for the most part. It comes with free mental ray, and free network rendering with mr. Custom mr shaders and other extentions such as reactor, cloth, hair etc... This all for 3,500.
Now lets look at maya counter part. For 7,000 (approximate) you get maya unlimited, which does not come with any form of backburner or other net work render manager, it has a some what flacky hair system, a better improved cloth in recent versions, no reactor or a like engine and mental ray is NOT free for network rendering, adding a tonn of $ for the render slaves. Their answer, if you want a good network manager pay for it extra, like muster, or deadline.
However having said that, I do agree that autodesk is not focused on customer satisfaction as much as they are focused on profit and they target the options that will attract more users overlooking the most obvious ones.
And I agree there is no point to upgrade from 9, the only major improvement in recent max versions is viewport speeds, and mental ray.

[Dschaga]

usd and euro are not the same , but when you say you pay only 3500, then you also have to say that you maybe pay 3500usd for max4 in 2001 and then you have payed subscription from 2001 to 2008 which is at least 6-7 times the subscription fee, which is about 500-800 usd (depending where you come from) ..so this software cost you at least 3500 + 7x500 = 7000 usd ..that's at least 3500usd subscription.

Canceling subscription wouldn't be a problem if your software is upgradable, but max4 was only 3 years upgradable and then it became a software without any value!
At least here we have to say that Autodesk abuse its market position to force users to subscribe!

[JonAngelo]

Vote with your coin

Around now iam soooo ready to switch to an non autodesk product. Most likely XSI or Houdini. Mind you i've been with 3ds for a long while, switched from real3d (amiga) to 3ds v2 (dos).

/Jon

[deflix]

price is not the only fruit...

Pricing is geared to extract as much as possible (a standard corporate approach), but this is only part of the gripe. For the most part my rant is about the way MAX and other Autodesk products have evolved (or not) as the case may be. We certainly should not 'just be happyand not moan', as we are the instruments of Autodesks success - the realtionship is symbiotic. Back in the day when CAD was being born the approach to development was based on providing an ever increasing level of power, usability and benefit to the user. Nowadays it seems perfectly acceptable to approach development as a carefully controlled money-making machine with blatant tactics like no backward compatibility forcing users to upgrade, whilst other relatively benign problems (like spline booleans) remain unsolved. To me this is unacceptable, and just because MAYA (another Autodesk product) is more expensive doesnt make it right. Maya is more money simply because Autodesk realise that people that work in film and tv will pay more for their software then people working in the construction industry. There comes a time after years of silent acceptance that it is worth, if anything, speaking out about some of this.