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> 3ds Max is an excellent tool and one of the industry standards, but in some cases it causes a “lack of artists” due to its high costs. A liberal non-commerci

> 3ds Max is an excellent tool and one of the industry standards, but in some cases it causes a “lack of artists” due to its high costs. A liberal non-commercial offering from Autodesk would at least help. Houdini realized this. Unity and Unreal are both essentially free to learners and hobbyists. You need a pool of talent. And it needs continually refreshing.

asutekku 7y ago
A “public secret” is that autodesk pretty much gives free non-commercial student licenses to anyone, no relation to an actual education institution needed. Advertising it better would definitely help them I think:
- viraptor 7y ago
  It's this actually a student license in their terms? If it is, then there's no difference (legally) to getting a pirated version if you're not a student. (Checked - it is for students/educators)
- duxup 7y ago
  Lots of places offer student licenses, but any barrier is indistinguishable from the company telling you they don't want you to have it. The other frustrating thing is student licenses usually require some affiliation with a formal school as if that is the only way folks in the world are learning.
- Jonnax 7y ago
  If you can't sell the art you make with an design application, you would be a fool to invest time in learning it using a student license. Unless you thought it'd get you a job.
  - dylan604 7y ago
    Sell your first commissioned piece of art, use that money to buy the license, (re-render if necessary for higher output), have no money from first sale, continue using that version to create more art.
    - danShumway 7y ago
      Quick look at Autodesk's website lists Maya as costing $1,500 per year. Depending on what your commissions cost, that might not be trivial -- especially since you can't build up to that. You can't do 5 small commissions over the course of two months, you need that money up-front. Plus, you're betting on your commission rate being steady. If your commission rate drops off with Blender, no big deal. If it drops off with Maya, you have to make a decision now about whether it's worth it to renew your subscription, or whether you should drop Maya and start over learning a brand new program. If you value your time at $20 an hour, you could spend 75 additional hours learning to get good at Blender instead of Maya, and you would still break even. And then every year after that for the rest of your career you'd get to save $1500. Take that extra money and put it into buying a better desktop computer, or into upgrading your GPU, or into getting a good drawing tablet, or into buying professional textures, all of which will probably have a much bigger impact on your productivity than Maya will.
- pfranz 7y ago
  Really? For like a decade they had a PLE (similar to Houdini's Apprentice). As a tech guy in vfx it was awesome that I could fire up a new version at home so I could quickly see if they fixed some long-standing bug or evaluate a new feature. They stopped 3-4 years ago. I remember schools still paying for their educational edition (10-20 years ago) and haven't heard of a free offering--only the discounted LT version. I've only seen the 30-day demo, which I avoid using in case I need it in the future.
nineteen999 7y ago
I think the two subreddits (/r/Maya and /r/blender) for those products really illustrate the point further. Blender usage exploded around 2.6 with the first UI revamp, and it seems to have swelled even more as 2.8 approached.
- realusername 7y ago
  2.8 is packing so much good stuff and new features it does not even feel the same software anymore, they made some amazing work.
- ioquatix 7y ago
  20k vs 140k, respectively. That's impressive.
- CodeCube 7y ago
  I keep hearing that blender's UI is no longer the domain of dark wizards ... between the cost of the paid products, and the funky UI of older versions of blender, I could never quite get into 3d modeling and design. Maybe it's time to revisit?
  - sprafa 7y ago
    Absolutely. I just tried it recently after years of shunning it for its UI and it looks and feels fantastically better. It should’ve been like this ages ago but there you go, they’ve finally changed it.
  - nineteen999 7y ago
    I don't mean to sound mean here - 3D art is like any other disicpline here. No software package is going to make good art easy to achieve. Just like any form of programming, making sure that the mesh is rigged correctly, and looks aethetically pleasing, and animates well, takes a lot of hard work. No amount of UI revamps are going to compensate for those who want to do 3D art, but refuse to do the hard yards to make things look good.
    - 7y ago
void_nill 7y ago
> Unity and Unreal Unity and Unreal are Game Engines, not 3D Software. Yes, It's possible to use U and U for 3D modelling, but nobody with a chopchop brain do it. If you work with U and U you create the model in Blender/What ever and import it to the engines for the programming backend.
- baud147258 7y ago
  I think that's not the point the parent is making: his point is that the difficulty of finding people able to use it (because of the cost of the software) could be solved by either offering a free option, with the example of Unity and Unreal, which both have a free option, so you find a lot of people who have used them.
- andybak 7y ago
  I know exactly what they are. But my point is still valid across related disciplines.
ethelward 7y ago
> A liberal non-commercial offering from Autodesk would at least help Granted, my 3D experience is limited to making some custom planes for Flight Simulator 10 years ago; but is that not what Gmax is/was?
mschuster91 7y ago
Adobe, back a decade ago, was quite liberal on that front - the stuff was easily crack-able, keygens whever one would look. As a result, whenever I ask colleagues with Photoshop skills how they acquired them, the answer always is "with 14 and a Photoshop crack". Clever move to not stand in the way of cracks for amateurs too much until they introduced an affordable (!) subscription.
- sprafa 7y ago
  This is still reasonably true for Adobe and C4D (Maxon in particular seem to do virtually nothing to stop piracy)

asutekku 7y ago

A “public secret” is that autodesk pretty much gives free non-commercial student licenses to anyone, no relation to an actual education institution needed. Advertising it better would definitely help them I think:

viraptor 7y ago
It's this actually a student license in their terms? If it is, then there's no difference (legally) to getting a pirated version if you're not a student. (Checked - it is for students/educators)
duxup 7y ago
Lots of places offer student licenses, but any barrier is indistinguishable from the company telling you they don't want you to have it. The other frustrating thing is student licenses usually require some affiliation with a formal school as if that is the only way folks in the world are learning.
Jonnax 7y ago
If you can't sell the art you make with an design application, you would be a fool to invest time in learning it using a student license. Unless you thought it'd get you a job.
- dylan604 7y ago
  Sell your first commissioned piece of art, use that money to buy the license, (re-render if necessary for higher output), have no money from first sale, continue using that version to create more art.
  - danShumway 7y ago
    Quick look at Autodesk's website lists Maya as costing $1,500 per year. Depending on what your commissions cost, that might not be trivial -- especially since you can't build up to that. You can't do 5 small commissions over the course of two months, you need that money up-front. Plus, you're betting on your commission rate being steady. If your commission rate drops off with Blender, no big deal. If it drops off with Maya, you have to make a decision now about whether it's worth it to renew your subscription, or whether you should drop Maya and start over learning a brand new program. If you value your time at $20 an hour, you could spend 75 additional hours learning to get good at Blender instead of Maya, and you would still break even. And then every year after that for the rest of your career you'd get to save $1500. Take that extra money and put it into buying a better desktop computer, or into upgrading your GPU, or into getting a good drawing tablet, or into buying professional textures, all of which will probably have a much bigger impact on your productivity than Maya will.
pfranz 7y ago
Really? For like a decade they had a PLE (similar to Houdini's Apprentice). As a tech guy in vfx it was awesome that I could fire up a new version at home so I could quickly see if they fixed some long-standing bug or evaluate a new feature. They stopped 3-4 years ago. I remember schools still paying for their educational edition (10-20 years ago) and haven't heard of a free offering--only the discounted LT version. I've only seen the 30-day demo, which I avoid using in case I need it in the future.

nineteen999 7y ago

I think the two subreddits (/r/Maya and /r/blender) for those products really illustrate the point further. Blender usage exploded around 2.6 with the first UI revamp, and it seems to have swelled even more as 2.8 approached.

realusername 7y ago
2.8 is packing so much good stuff and new features it does not even feel the same software anymore, they made some amazing work.
ioquatix 7y ago
20k vs 140k, respectively. That's impressive.
CodeCube 7y ago
I keep hearing that blender's UI is no longer the domain of dark wizards ... between the cost of the paid products, and the funky UI of older versions of blender, I could never quite get into 3d modeling and design. Maybe it's time to revisit?
- sprafa 7y ago
  Absolutely. I just tried it recently after years of shunning it for its UI and it looks and feels fantastically better. It should’ve been like this ages ago but there you go, they’ve finally changed it.
- nineteen999 7y ago
  I don't mean to sound mean here - 3D art is like any other disicpline here. No software package is going to make good art easy to achieve. Just like any form of programming, making sure that the mesh is rigged correctly, and looks aethetically pleasing, and animates well, takes a lot of hard work. No amount of UI revamps are going to compensate for those who want to do 3D art, but refuse to do the hard yards to make things look good.
  - 7y ago

void_nill 7y ago

> Unity and Unreal Unity and Unreal are Game Engines, not 3D Software. Yes, It's possible to use U and U for 3D modelling, but nobody with a chopchop brain do it. If you work with U and U you create the model in Blender/What ever and import it to the engines for the programming backend.

baud147258 7y ago
I think that's not the point the parent is making: his point is that the difficulty of finding people able to use it (because of the cost of the software) could be solved by either offering a free option, with the example of Unity and Unreal, which both have a free option, so you find a lot of people who have used them.
andybak 7y ago
I know exactly what they are. But my point is still valid across related disciplines.

ethelward 7y ago

> A liberal non-commercial offering from Autodesk would at least help Granted, my 3D experience is limited to making some custom planes for Flight Simulator 10 years ago; but is that not what Gmax is/was?

mschuster91 7y ago

Adobe, back a decade ago, was quite liberal on that front - the stuff was easily crack-able, keygens whever one would look. As a result, whenever I ask colleagues with Photoshop skills how they acquired them, the answer always is "with 14 and a Photoshop crack". Clever move to not stand in the way of cracks for amateurs too much until they introduced an affordable (!) subscription.

sprafa 7y ago
This is still reasonably true for Adobe and C4D (Maxon in particular seem to do virtually nothing to stop piracy)