autodesk has taken their moneygrabbing to a whole new level!

[beestee]

Out of curiosity to all of those who are considering moving away from Max..

Let's pretend you actually have time to learn, for example, Modo well enough to use it in the near future, how would you go about converting your model libraries to Modo format? I really doubt many people have all their thousands of models readily in .obj format. Would you just plain out ditch your Forest Packs, Multiscatters (yes I'm sure other packages have theis own scatter tools but are they as sophisticated as these plugins?), Railclones, Mighty Tiles and such and cross your fingers hoping there are tools readily available to substitute all of these? how about floor generators and multitexture maps?

As I said, just curious because to me this sounds like a very tedious task.

Sometimes it is best to start from scratch with newfound knowledge. Certainly ones library would improve because of it.

I go through my model and material libraries somewhat regularly and rebuild or update items that are tired anyways. Sometimes it is even necessary when updating from one release of Max to the next. Over the course of the last two releases I have been phasing out many of our third party plugins that we used to rely heavily upon.

Where I work we utilize Revit and AutoCAD pretty extensively as well and I do not see us dropping Max anytime soon since it comes with the other two in the Design Suite.

[simmsimaging]

Out of curiosity to all of those who are considering moving away from Max..

Let's pretend you actually have time to learn, for example, Modo well enough to use it in the near future, how would you go about converting your model libraries to Modo format? I really doubt many people have all their thousands of models readily in .obj format. Would you just plain out ditch your Forest Packs, Multiscatters (yes I'm sure other packages have theis own scatter tools but are they as sophisticated as these plugins?), Railclones, Mighty Tiles and such and cross your fingers hoping there are tools readily available to substitute all of these? how about floor generators and multitexture maps?

As I said, just curious because to me this sounds like a very tedious task.

That's true - but working all the time to make money to pay for crappy updates is also a very tedious task, so you just pick your poison in that case

I would certainly miss some of the plugins, but having been caught more than once with plugins that don't get updated or die on the vine etc, I am much more wary of adding 3rd party plugins to the pipeline anyway. Sometimes it's just better to do it the hard way and be sure it's future-proof and less buggy, but for sure I'd miss some of those tools if they were not available.

Anyway, your point is valid and is the reason why I haven't made the switch yet - but decisions like this one from AD start to make it less less of a clear decision. At some point not far away it will likely no longer be worth my while to stay.


/b

[MoonDoggie]

For me Houdini is total overkill for archviz work, and its impressive toolset doesn't correspond to the arsenal we need in archviz. I'm sad when saying this, because Houdini is wonderful : its power and depth are vertiginous. Maybe you won't switch, but definitely give it a try to understand how far other 3d packages are lagging behind in many areas.

Good comment, because of this I'll give it a try as well. Briefly.

[deflix]

Autodesk pioneered the exploitation and devolution of 3d technology as a business practice. They started this when they bought 3dstudio from kinetix, and lightscape from Prof Greenberg (the inventor of 3d visulisation and interestingly an architect!). They are wan**ers of the highest order, gleaning the industry for great ideas, buying or stealing them and then milking as much as they can through an aggressive marketing machine . Most newcomers to the industry only have an inkling of this history, as Autodesk spend most of their time and money ensuring it is invisible.

For those that are interested see this article~: https://design.osu.edu/carlson/histo...rnell-awb.html