Pixel Fondue's Greg Leuenberger rants on Autodesk's unfair business practices

Autodesk segment stats at

.

My biggest fear is that the Foundry becomes more like Autodesk. Autodesk is just asking for their individual users (not studios) to jump ship. Thankfully Blender makes a great fallback application.

They’re definitely becoming more like Autodesk. The only thing keeping them in check is the fact that they don’t have as much leverage as Autodesk does. Autodesk’s software is industry standard, with many studios deeply invested with custom pipeline and tool development.
MODO really isn’t.

With the products where The Foundry is setting the industry standard (NUKE, MARI - with the latter currently being contested by Substance) you can see them charge their customers quite outrageously already.

The industry needs an open alternative now more than ever.

In anycase, one can’t help but hope Lightwave makes a comeback with LW Next, at the very least they are still privately owned. Open alternatives are nice as an option, but rarely do the end up being the ideal option… or at least it depends on the licensing.

Why do studios insist on using Maya if it’s supposedly so unfriendly

I mean
artists cant have THAT little of a say

Studios insist on Maya because it’s still the best all-round package, it’s the easiest and friendliest to develop for, and most studios have years if not decades of custom development and proprietary pipeline tools invested in the Maya ecosystem.

For character rigging and animation there’s still no other package that can hold a candle to Maya.

With regards to privately owned alternatives, I have little expectation that Lightwave will make a big comeback but I am betting on Houdini - a powerful and consistently improving alternative to Maya that is already industry standard in key areas, and privately owned by a company with fair business practices.

Between Blender and Houdini, an open and a privately owned solution, there’s better potential to begin transitioning away from Maya than ever.

A few months ago, Autodesk maintenance and subscription screwed me over for the last time, trying to download older content that was purchased outright was a nightmare because it fell off their officially supported list, each year they drop software versions from 4 years ago. My account no longer shows those products as downloadable even though they are still very powerful. Max Design 2011 for example.

After a good few hours of support ping pong, our original re-seller, which still existed thankfully, managed to talk to Autodesk on our behalf and got some download links that are not publicly shown (they still keep the software around!). I finally got the software installed but then could not find the patches (I needed one specifically). More faffing and phone calls later I just gave up. Autodesk then called me back and said I would need a current subscription for them to let me download the patch. O.o WHAT! I just want to open an old job FFS.

The subscription model or pay to play model is not for me. I like to own software and then master it. Not have it auto-upgraded for me to find it doesn’t like old scripts or plugins and has a new UI.

Anyway, I picked up Blender and did the next two client jobs using it. It was a steep learning curve to switch from Max to Blender but after 3 or 4 days I was steaming along. I finished two jobs to deadline (worked 16 to 18 hour days for a whole month) and to my surprise, found the experience fun. Blender did an amazing job and is now my 3D app of choice.

welp I’m not entirely sure what “maintenance” is for(Maintenance for >SOFT<ware) so clearly this something I shouldn’t talk about

So I’ll just voice my complaints about how I didn’t find this channel earlier

Well I doubt they will do it in the next 3 years, The smartest move they currently can do is to wait and see how well this thing will work out, and offer an alternative.

:smiley: http://www.autodesk.co.uk/maintenance-plan

They now just have subscriptions plans I think. Previously you bought the software outright then optionally pay for maintenance which among other bits gave you a free upgrade for a year. Just checked, now you just hire the software for £228 month (was £300 a month in Jan) which for an Indy artist is quite steep if this has been your software for years previously.

It’s hard to get information on this (as it’s dealt with on an individual basis), but it was my impression that Autodesk can just refuse to activate your permanent licenses if you don’t have maintenance or purchase an update, should you need to re-install on a different machine.

The subscription model or pay to play model is not for me. I like to own software and then master it.

This whole idea of software “ownership” is misleading, pretty much every license agreement is just a permission to use software under various provisions. If you owned the software, that would (among other things) mean you are entitled to resell it. Many (if not most) licenses prohibit this.

There have been cases (in the EU particularly) where courts decided that such prohibitions aren’t valid in some cases, but if you need to consult a lawyer to make sure your software is properly licensed, it’s probably easier and cheaper to just license directly.

Not have it auto-upgraded for me to find it doesn’t like old scripts or plugins and has a new UI.

That’s an orthogonal issue. Subscriptions may offer older versions as well, for Autodesk it’s at least three versions back.

I have a serial, key etc for Max Design 2011 which was purchased outright, not as a plan. If they suddenly disable it when I reinstall (which I did fine today) I would be rather peeved. What they said I could not have is the Subscription Pack for Max 2011 which included the Substance material shader. They said I would need an active subscription now for that to be available. Even though I had a paid subscription at the time they released it back in 2011. Finding that out much later down the road was not great and out of principle I switched software.

Sorry, yes, when I say I like to own software, I meant as an indefinite licence.

I assume you re-installed on the same machine? In that case, it wouldn’t necessarily need a license re-activation/migration (unless you changed the hardware significantly).

Nope, this is a new machine. It does not require migration because it uses key/serial, name on install. I have never had to “migrate” a license, activation just works. VRay on the other hand requires a new license key creating and sending, then installing which is more along the lines you are thinking?

Fair enough, I’m not actually familiar with how these things are handled these days, I only remember hearing “bad” things in the past.

EU law states that if you pay for a permanent license, you can also sell it. See Microsoft.
EU law even goes so far that if you bought a permanent license and the company doesn’t give you the possibility to activate your license (because its an old product) you can circumvent copy-protection, IF there is no other way.
I would not hesitate ONE second.

that mega rant video, just made me happier to be using blender and not swapped over to anything else.

IMO blender has thrived on these immense talented and unique people, like brecht, campbell, sergey. that can code, and create and insane tool which there are not many of them around.

and in the future, if more and more of us are on the blender cloud subscription
https://store.blender.org/product/membership/
(which IMO should really push for, hey not all this content, you help the foundation hire more people!)

more of these insanely talented people will come out of the wood work, through projects like Google Summer of Code.

but the next wave, might as well be all this ex-pats, leaving whatever suit they’re under now. and join blender instead.

I mean in the end, there’s tons and tons and tons of talented artists and coders out there, paying subscriptions for apps they have no way to actually affect the development of. they are paying money, and HOPING that the next features will be something that helps them out in the day-to-day work. or that next killer feature that opens up new avenues.

and if they realize with all the in-house projects, proprietary tools they all made, if they pool together with blender for instance, and help make a platform that actually works for everyone! in their day-to-day. and up to their own made industry standard.

that would be a huge shift. and a huge benefit for them, and blender and it’s user base.

Many businesses are tightening their grip on the little guy in many ways, employee or customer.

I’ve been reading through the Autodesk Area forums as well as many others on the net and I was really taken back by the level of anger out there now. I don’t think I remember seeing so much upset, even after Softimage was culled. I’m not sure now that this will go away or calm down anytime soon.

I would just like to see more competition in the market. The competition to Autodesk products is marginal at best. Even considering Blender, LightWave, Modo and Houdini.

In an ironic twist of fate, I see Blender as something that has both forced the hand in a bad and good way in the market. More indie products have come into existence, I think, directly as an answer to Blender.

And I see the Autodesk move as an attempt to more or less force the issue. It is a move that helped to stabilize and even increase their stock position in a market that is threatening to encroach on the users who might be attracted to “ease of access” selling point of subscription.

You look at what they did with Maya LT, and what the Foundry is doing with Modo Indie, it is clear to see that these are a response to this indie market where ease of access on a budget is key.

Blender had this all along and was quietly thriving on this market and was there to embrace it as indie development and a whole lot of other industry uses flourished in the last 8 years or more.

The execs and marketing gurus at AD are no dummies. They had to do something in my opinion… :slight_smile:

I enjoy the software I have available on the cheep now like Maya LT and Mudbox on subscription. It is a better place for me than it was 5 years ago. So I am taking advantage.

I think we are headed in the right direction. But more competition is needed. I think the market is there for the taking if someone wanted to actually create something to make competition.

How do we take Blender to the next level?

Well, seems they are working on it. But to put a real dent in the market and fully force the hand for AD to lower prices and knock off this “force people to subscribe” business model it is going to take 100x the resources and efforts thus far.