The Future of NAIAD

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

What would I give to get to see the presentation ahhhh I'm so sad I could not be there

[Morbid Angel]

Lets face it guys, maya is a better software.......................................... .......

[Neilg]

^ I'd be open to learn maya if I had to for a job... but i dont have to, and there's no financial incentive for me to go near it

Frank deLise's comment suggests that it is being made for max, and a standalone version exists - they just prioritized maya.
I'm ok with this. My only issue was them buying a multi-platform standalone piece of software and making it maya only.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Lets face it guys, maya is a better software.......................................... .......

U better start runing Well Max users will get u

I took a job where I had to learn maya... I gotta say. If they did not pay me as much as they did I would not do it other ways. I'm glad I know how to use this nightmare program. But I'm looking forward to coming back to max more than ever before

[Morbid Angel]

U better start runing Well Max users will get u

I took a job where I had to learn maya... I gotta say. If they did not pay me as much as they did I would not do it other ways. I'm glad I know how to use this nightmare program. But I'm looking forward to coming back to max more than ever before

Hahahaha sorry I couldn't resist.

Maya is hard/difficult for max users, and vise-verse. But that's not what this thread is about. I just add some fuel to the fire.

[joconnell]

Is it a strategy to try and push max towards archi vis? Surely it's more cost effective for autodesk to have all their fx developers on one app and design folks on another?

[squintnic]

autodesk is such a scam of a company
lies, anti competitive behaviour, anti innovation, poor pricing, trapping existing customers
if i wasnt so reliant of 3dmax to make money id switch....

i really dont want to see max become a 'vis only' program. i do vis and iv never once used any of the so called vis features of max. they are all shit. i make pictures of buildings - i want the same cutting edge tools to make my jpgs and quicktimes as people using maya or whatever.

these frank and ken characters are inane sock puppets rolled out to repeat some financial byline under the guise of development or customer relations. the answers are always sorry we cant say anything or we fixed the isolate object problem isnt that great!

FAIL

[samuel_bubat]

afaik, Ken is no longer at Autodesk and Frank got another job within Autodesk (don´t quote me on that ).
Also they are looking for a new PM for 3dsmax.
http://careers.autodesk.com/ca/qu%C3...lications-jobs
The problem is, no one hears your screaming. As I have learned all the strategic decision that led us to where 3dsmax is now
are beeing made "upstairs". Obviously by people who have less idea about their industry than a fish about riding a bicycle.
And as long as the money comes in, they give a shit about our complaints.
So if you have strong arms, and are able to properly operate a baseball bat you really should apply for the open PM position

[Donald2B]

These threads always give me a chuckle. Having used both Maya and Max since their inception, it's pretty much the same story every year around Siggraph time. The rumor mills get churned into high gear and all the end users get all jacked up on energy drinks and the sky is falling talk starts.

I don't think that Autodesk could do anything right by the eyes of the community, even when they do things that people are screaming about. Users asked for a core rewrite for 3DS Max, they get it, and complain that there are growing pains. ;P

I will continue to support the products that I need and can rely on to do my job. These are just tools, and many of them do the exact same things, some better than others. At the end of the day, pick the tool you need and go create something awesome.

[joconnell]

They haven't done a core rewrite, they've done a rewrite of the viewports (I'm still on 2012 but I'm looking forward to that) which combined with the new stability is a really worthwhile update. The new 12 month release cycles really don't allow a huge amount of upgrading or innovation so a lot of the versions have offered very little. The majority of the updates are buy ins of plugins, which is fine in a lot of cases, but they're often left to stagnate after that. If you take particle flow as an example, it debuted in 3dsmax 5 and hasn't been touched since save for back door updates which oleg added via the box #1 update to try and improve it's core performance a little. The next innovation they've added is to simply buy in the two pf boxes and in the 2013 release, piss off a lot of people by removing the boxes from the market and forcing people who wanted box #3 to buy a suite with a lot of useless things just to get the functionality of something you could previously buy for $500. It's the same with Naiad, a very fast, simple and powerful program that worked with every program you wanted it to. Now it's being put inside a walled garden for no good reason - it's not as if being inside the core of maya is going to give it any performance advantages or interop that couldn't be handled by adding in extra channel info in it's sim files similar to what krakatoa does with prt. In many of the 3dsmax product sessions they've talked about wanting to drop a lot of the plugins as supporting them causes untold problems, editable mesh and poly being two of the culprits, but they mentioned that if you try to take something away from someone they'll scream blue murder. With max being quite spread out in terms of markets, it means there's a tonne of junk being dragged along with each release. This is pretty far from a core rewrite. What they've seemingly done with Naiad though is taken it away from it's users, lets see what happens at their unfold event.

Max is being very heavily penalized if you're a vfx type operator and for no good reason really! The only thing that makes sense is that autodesk want to define one for film, one for design so that they can team all their fx engineers in one product rather than watering the two down. I'll continue to use max as it's a host for fume, thinking particles and vray as it's what I need and I can rely on it to do my job. Having to buy and learn maya just so I can use naiad is a load of shit though. In terms of that I reckon they're pushing more people towards houdini - partially out of respect for their users and partially because the price is pretty good if you compare the cost to buying TP, Fume, Krakatoa and Naiad.

[wxyz]

Frank was their last hope...

[Donald2B]

@joconnell: You are absolutely right about the core rewrite, hence my smiley face. I also agree about the standalone program vs "walled garden" approach.

I'm loving Max 2014! I don't seem to have the annoying problems that others seem to be experiencing. Maybe dependent on the type of work being done? What's great is that there is a pretty wide usage with 3DS Max and I am only exposed to one small segment, for the time being.

So is there any ONE package that is clearly way beyond the others? ie. stability, feature sets, etc.

I know that I am asking this in a Max forum.

[joconnell]

I'd say it's tough to work in any shareholder driven company these days. Hollywood's been taken over by a load of financiers too and it's really pushing down the quality of scripts in an attempt to get the best return on investment possible and not the best film possible. There's some good folks in the development team though, Neil Hazzard and Zap are pushing things in the right direction.

[samuel_bubat]

Well, looking at the maxunderground post i would think this is a bit.. very much more.. than the usual rant after a new release.
In this post Tom Hudson (one of the original creators of 3dsmax)
suggests to form a group of programmers similar to the old Yost group. I have very little hope that this is going
to happen. But none the less it should be supported. Give your votes here.. even if 3dsmax works fine for the kind of work you´re into.
http://3dsmaxfeedback.autodesk.com/f...ent-leadership

3dsmax is not beeing killed by autodesk in a way like pointing a gun at it.. it´s more a slow starving to death wich goes on for years now.
The people who are really in charge at autodesk probabely don´t even realize this. It´s time to wake them up !

[super gnu]

wow thats a hell of a discussion thread... if only it would actually get us anywhere. unfortunately i think autodesk know exactly what they are doing.. sad truth (imho) is that autodesk just has to sit on its hands, and the vast majority of companies using max will naturally and gradually switch over to maya, where there are lots of new artists available (since adsk are pushing it hard for education, and discouraging max)

it is what they obviously want, and whatever existing individual artists (with lots of time invested in max) may feel, its also the obvious choice for companies investing in new software.

ironically i do mainly arch vis, which is the one area they are promoting max for, but i started doing 3d as a hobby a good 20 years ago, and it certainly wasnt the architecture that got me excited! i want a 3d package not an architectural one. i want to be able to create worlds, not apartments.


we must also consider the continued push for higher quality / more advanced work in the arch.vis scene. the larger animation jobs i work on must be as close to avatar as is possible to keep clients with big ideas happy. the gap between high end arch vis and vfx work is getting smaller,.. what to do when we reach the crossover point and find we have to switch to another package cos max isnt general enough any more...?

i guess i know the answer, but i dont like it.


lets face it, autodesk bought up all the serious competition, and quite clearly will benefit most from killing off most of those aquisitions.