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A “public secret” is that autodesk pretty much gives free non-commercial student licenses to anyone, no relation to an actual education institution needed. Adve

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.

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.