they never learn !!!

[LarsSonparsson]

I like Steam too, but in our office thats not good.
Our workstation are not connected to outside world for
security reasons, so we need to get license from our local network.

[jonahhawk]

Lars,

What role do you/your company play in Jade Warrior? Is there VRay in there?

[Shimakaze]

I was very skeptical to Steam when it first came out because of the whole "connecting to the internet to play" thing. But then they decided to make it work offline as well so now it's my preferred way to buy PC games. Access to them anywhere on anyones computer through a simple login, can play the games when not connected to the net, and no disks to keep track of.
I have only experienced one problem with Steam ever and that's when first installing AudioSurf and it didn't work. An hour later the game had been patched through Steam though and worked perfectly.

Jade Warrior sounds awesome. Chinese martial arts fantasy + Kalevala! How did they come up with that concept??

[LarsSonparsson]

Lars,

What role do you/your company play in Jade Warrior? Is there VRay in there?

I worked as VFX Supervisor in Jade Warrior. We had small team of experts and
some freelancers helping. Allmost everything is rendered with VRay . (about 200 fx-shots)
In some heavy scenes it saved the project, because other renderers
couldn't manage to even start to render.

-LarsSon

[QuakeMarine1]

what I guess
what developers like autodesk and vlado (?) think but never say is the following fact
if the appl. is un-crack-able no hobby 3d guy or 14yo testing and playing with the app.
in 10 years when the new worker generation comes up noone is skilled enough to handle vray 3.0 on 3dsmax2020 in production
it is better to have a low protection and hoping/assuming in the good willing of the guys onced the are proffesionals

what I see
from the guys I have to render are 5 of 10 using RCx or SPx with the "i loose all rendersettings when i open" version (why RCx if SP is free for download *wink *wink)
these 5 guys are one man 3dfighters doing small and "simple" jobs

[thablanch]

what I guess
what developers like autodesk and vlado (?) think but never say is the following fact
if the appl. is un-crack-able no hobby 3d guy or 14yo testing and playing with the app.
in 10 years when the new worker generation comes up noone is skilled enough to handle vray 3.0 on 3dsmax2020 in production
it is better to have a low protection and hoping/assuming in the good willing of the guys onced the are proffesionals

what I see
from the guys I have to render are 5 of 10 using RCx or SPx with the "i loose all rendersettings when i open" version (why RCx if SP is free for download *wink *wink)
these 5 guys are one man 3dfighters doing small and "simple" jobs

That is how Autodesk got there..., on the floppy, it was written, please do not copy.(wow, what a security feature..) Now it is the standard, cause a few yeaks ago, pepole were able to get it, they used and learn, and now to operate their compagnies, they have to buy it.
Mabee it did help Vray popularity to be so greatly "distributed" in the past, so pepole used, learn and like, and now, well to continue, they have to buy.

[Neilg]

I know that it's pretty strongly rumoured that Autocad was distributed around the campus of architecture/engineering based universities by autodesk.

3+ years later when these massive numbers of engineers and architects graduate, all they knew how to use was autocad, so everyone who hired them pretty much went and bought a copy.

[thablanch]

Nowdays, around here, AutoDesSys is really pushing on schools ( ans I'm stuck with theses after..), and, animation college students gets free copies of XSI while they are in school, and major discount copies when they graduate. It is not exactly the same thing as soft. piracy, but the goal is kind of the same, get people to use it..

[^Lele^]

I remember when I took the exam for the max 1 resale and support authorization.
I was IN the Autodesk building, exam finished, and I needed to ask a question to my examiner, at the time product manager of Max for Italy.
Being still in Uni at the time, i asked "what is the official approach towards students? 7.5 mil liras (roughly the price it is now) it's out of reach of any student."
And he looked at me with a surprised look:"what, can't you get hold of a cracked copy?".

[glorybound]

Craked copy

I have always wondered if developers allow cracked copies of software to get out so people would learn them and then buy them,

[^Lele^]

Well, of course it was back then.
Now they've found many a way to release at least parts of full apps for free, which is jolly good.