Rumors..........

[JohnVK]

Ah yes! Killing Autocad, now that would be end of Autodesk...

LOL! Yeah!


Lukx, since no official statement has been made by AD to imply they are stopping any kind of development on 3ds Max (on the contrary), there is no reason to assume they will. And really, they won't. Don't worry about it. In fact, over the last few years AD has tried very hard to reassure everyone with concerns with many statements that development will continue and even be intensified. Except of course, when they say so (Ken Pimentel has tried many many many many times), most won't believe them and rather deem them evil corporation out to mess with their customers

1. 3ds Max is heavily used in the games industry, which kind of requires animation tools to be present
2. Even if they gear 3ds Max towards the archviz industry, that is also pretty much an animation oriented industry.
3. 3ds Max is not only used for games or archviz. What about the tons of other animation oriented applications 3ds Max is used for/in, like vfx, product viz, advertisement, medical, industrial viz, music video, etc. etc. They are even packaging 3ds Max in suits pretty much geared towards those industries.
4. Even if 3ds Max would lose its animation features, I bet there would be several third party vendors willing and able to close the gap. You could for instance buy into a rigging solution like 3D-IO Bones Pro, which is really good for a lot of character based animation purposes. Or Puppet Shop! Hey now... didn't Kees Rijnen went to work for Autodesk? Yes he did. So what does that mean for future development, ey?


The way I see it is that 3ds Max is and will always be a really good and solid foundation for all kinds of CG related applications which can and should be extended with specialized tools to get the exact results one is looking for. Not one application in the World is able to fulfill all wishes of all their customers by default. I mean, I could definitely not do without my beloved VRay and Forest Pro! Both doing some pretty amazing things that were not available in 3ds Max before they came along!! Does that mean 3ds Max was bad before? No!
Seeing how 3ds Max has a theoretical user base of millions with a lot of very specialized shops amongst them, it is well-nigh impossible to satisfy everyone. So what I'm saying is that if you chose 3ds Max as your primary tool, one would need to extend the functionality of 3ds Max no matter what, even as it is right now. So even if they were to cut animation tools from 3ds Max we would still be able to bring it back by using plugins.

Look on the bright side: maybe they will cut the price of 3ds Max along with the animation tools? haha, neh, now I'm dreaming ... animation tools will stay forever.

[flino2004]

rumor or not....for a lot people here It sounds possible (myself included)....All the companies go thru the same pattern in different scales.... Expansion and contraction, They are in expansion mode for several years and in one point they should go in contraction mode, Simplifying what they have....merging products that are a like...Controlling the industry like they do, They can control the direction of where everything is going on.....It's taking some time, like Autocad users moving to Revit because the market is asking for that....or MAX users moving to MAYA because MAYA is moving faster(intentionally)....well, We will see what is going to happen in the next years.

Anyways, I feel trap inside Autodesk...even if I choose where to go, It seems like they put arrows everywhere showing me where I should go.

Fernando