This year at Autodesk I will lecture about blender because manubfusin users also use blender
Here is I think this is an excellent initiative.
Am mainly a mechanical Designer, and I’ve been using autocad since version 10 under MSDos, and it is inevitable to have to deal with AD today.
Yeah, the problem is not being a hater, the problem is feeding a beast that is eliminating a lot of workplaces, studios and jobs with it´s new hostage system of licensing, one can acknowledge it or not but in any case, if there were not good (better in fact) alternatives to Autodesk solution I would not have said anything, but the reality is that Autodesk solution is based on the cloud, while the alternatives I said are based on your computers, are faster than Autodesk and the results are FAR better than Autodesk solution results, ReCap is great if you use it with laser scanners, like the one they are trying to sell to me now, but for photogrammetry… Agisoft Photoscan or RealityCapture are far far better, and I tried Autodesk Recap, I owned a license and I used it…
Am I an Autodesk hater? well… after paying a lot of money to them they are trying to scam me… yes, you can qualify me as a hater, but not an “insult-nonsense-hater”, I´m a reasoned one, with a lot of objective reasons to dislike Autodesk and to try people to be out of it, Autodesk is behaving as a monopoly, is forcing people to enter in their hostage abusive game, and it does not deserve any publicity, not beucase they run a business, I´ve been a licensee of Autodesk and a Beta and Charter user for years, but because they decided to step into the path of abusing users, and I cannot stand it, and you shouldn´t because this problem will reach you.
There are realistic alternatives to Autodesk software, and many big companies are implementing them alreay, in the mechanical and CAD sector there are a few, like the ones from Bentley, but there are some more, and I know that because some clients are already making the shift outside Autodesk because their pricing policy is abusive and absurd, not just the price, but the policy… so… yes, you can qualify me as a bit of a hater of Autodesk…
Cheers!
EDIT:
and it is inevitable to have to deal with AD today.
That is what you would say about a monopoly BTW…
U think AutoCAD is alone with that? Welcome to modern reality. All commercial applications run either via subscription or with costly service plans.
I stressed free - yet you promote a product that is close to 15.000 Euro and PC only.
I am in academia and try to find cost effective to free software and I am sorry if you do not like that Autodesk does a lot for students
Plus having a pur web system that does not need a software to be installed makes IT more than happy
your first made your initial post a personal attack on me and not just purely about AD - you could have perfectly also added the other apps as an alternative since agisoft photoscan is only 60$ edu
secondly it does not matter what I teach since I teach process which is app independed
fusion is only one app among products from many makers I teach so I am hardly an AD fan.
maybe think about how you respond next time
It seems to me that you’re confusing the long-term market strategy, with philanthropy, AD as a function of an economic return.
AD Still increases year after year its monopoly in the CAD market and of VFX; and the only way to limit the damage is not endorse its monopoly by using other software.
I am actually not confusing anything - I am quite a realist which is why I do no fall into this AD bashing that is so popular among blender users. Blender will never defeat or replace Maya. But that doesn’t mean blender does not have its justification and place in the CG world.
Again I am in academia as well.
All other main commercial software companies charge you for their students software.
Do you get Photoshop Rhino SolidWorks and such for free?
Only because I use two products of them and have to teach AutoCAD does not mean I love everything about AD.
Do I wish there would be more alternatives? Yes of course but I rather focus positive energy on making art with tools I can get access to then wasting negative energy on old debates for the sake of having a debate.
Thats why we said bye bye to Adobe and went with Affinity instead.
Simply amazing!
So… let´s see.
I´m a recent Blender user, I own a studio since around 11 years, I´m a 3dsmax expert, a Maya expert, Unity developer, Unreal Engine developer, Animation director and a few more things that are not important here.
In addition to that I´ve been beta tester for Autodesk in hte max, maya and motionbuilder groups since the times of 3dsmax 2011 and I´ve owned my own licenses since the first time I started to work, I paid Autodesk tons of money.
That´s for a starters so I may present myself, now let´s analyze what you say:
Blender will never defeat or replace Maya
I heard that a lot, and a few years ago I would have gave you the reason, but right now this is simply not true, there are features here and there that are different in any package, max is not exactly the same as Maya that it´s not exactly the same as C4D that is not exactly the same as Blender, but Blender can face ANY full production by itself, and we migrated from Max/Maya to a full Blender pipeline and we don´t find any problem here, as always there are things taht we have to solve differently… but now come and tell me that everything in max and maya is great and works as expected, or that you don´t need any plugin to work…
Also I don´t understand why do you say “defeat” like if the were contenders, Autodesk will defeat itself with this practices, but I don´t see a war between max, maya or Blender, it is like seeing a war between two different scissors… unless you are a Fanboy Artist, in that situation is not about usefulness of the software but about emotions… and that´s a different story.
your first made your initial post a personal attack on me
Please can you reason that? I politely asked you to avoid promoting Autodesk and I gave my reasons to ask you that.
All commercial applications run either via subscription
False… we can name a few that don´t run on RENTAL ONLY mode, please don´t call it subscription, because it´s a rent, don´t fall in Autodesk deception game…
As explained in many other places, a subscription gives you something to oiwn, if you stop paying that subscription you still keep what you paid for in the past, a rental is something you pay for tu use it while you are paying it, you don´t own anything as soon as you stop paying…
or with costly service plans.
While the first is false, this may be somewhat true, but the main difference here is what happens when you stop paying… with a mainteinance plan you may stop receiving updates, but you still keep the software you paid for, so if you don´t need any updated you won´t be forced to keep paying for nothing, if you run out of money, you won´t be forced to pay a third party to access your old files whenever you want, if you don´t have justified income to pay for a license to do some inhouse project you will be able to work on it because you won´t ne forced to pay anyone to use your software and access your files and art…
I stressed free - yet you promote a product that is close to 15.000 Euro and PC only.
You can stress whatever you want, but you are not explaining what this free means, there are substantial limitations to that “free”, like the pictures amount limitation and the absurd EULA you always accept with Autodesk…
BTW what 15.000 Euro software are you talking about?
I hope you don´t refer to Agisoft Photoscan or Reality Capture because then you will be missleading people on purpose:
Photoscan Pro: 3499$
Photoscan Standard: 179$ (limitations apply also)
Reality Capture Promo or Steam: 99$ / 3 months (while it´s rental, it can also be acquired as a permanent license, 2500 pictures per project and you have to be connected to the internet while exporting results)
RealityCapture CLI: 7500 EURO / 12 months (yeah, it´ss not cheap, it´s oriented towards a different market more related with professional survey in topography)
RealityCapture: 15000 EURO, Perpetual License + 1 year mainteinance (so efectively like two years of CLI) it´s a bit nonsense to acquire this unless you (or your company) are doing photogrammetry all day… but still you can acquire it… not only rent it.
BTW both softwares live and run solely in your computer, no cloud, no upload, no external storage, etc…
So suddenly your phrase about the 15000 EURO has no sense at all… so you can stress whatever you want, but please don´t misslead people on purpose.
secondly it does not matter what I teach since I teach process which is app independed
Why do you think I care about what you teach?
Do I wish there would be more alternatives? Yes of course but I rather focus positive energy on making art with tools I can get access to then wasting negative energy on old debates for the sake of having a debate.
Then you could name open sources solutions that are out there, perfect for studesnt if the can´t pay those 99/3 months, or of the simple donñt want to pay it, to name some:
http://imagine.enpc.fr/~moulonp/openMVG/
http://ccwu.me/vsfm/
And this one is commercial, I don´t know the cost, but is free to try without limitations it seems for an unlimited time:
So please, let me stress this petition to you and to anyone… don´t promote Autodesk, it´s activities and lack of ethics should hit them, and for that we have to be clear, rental only is an abuse to anyone, and if you want I can explain something more about this.
Cheers.
3rd time - I am in academia - projects that are Win only, need the terminal and such is not something that is ideal for beginner students.
It does not matter that you have 11 years of business experience.
Anyway the purpose of this thread was to present people who don’t want to buy or install software with a powerful and free system online that works incredibly well - particularly for students who I have ranging from sculpture to motion graphics to interior and industrial design with some that have 0 computer knowledge.
I share you frustration with AD and Adobe and their price policies. But they are not the only one. It is a market trend I see everywhere.
I simply however don’t care because I do not teach software I teach process. What they learn can be applied to any other package once they graduate.
I quite done believe that blender will replace maya at levels were maya or max are used for. Blender foundation does not even have the man power, researchers, and developers to do that. That there is a niece are were blender perfectly fits in - that is fully true.
thats why I use blender and not Modo or maya. Blender for my needs as the tools and sometimes better workflows.
Lets leave it at that.
Please, inform yourself (and this is not meant to be an attack, it’s just a plain petition) about the size of the development teams of max or maya… and you will see that they are equal or even smaller than the ones from the Blender Foundation.
And again, please give me reasons why Maya (wich is not maya in big studios because it’s thrown away and completely customized) or Max(wich is not used in it’s vanilla fashion anymore, Max without plugins is nothing) cannot be replaced with Blender, because so far I obnly hear opinions without reasoning or feelings from the people who says that, but I’m not just seeing this the other way around, I already did it, and as I said there is nothing that can prevent any studio to replace Max or Maya with Blender, nothing at all, in fact Blender has so many things that are far better than Maya or Max that when people start to know it they are amazed, for example, some of the max freelancers we used to work with, I teached them Blender to work with us, and now they don’t want to come back to Max, I’m working a medium/big video game sized studio (wich I can’t name due to NDA) to migrate their piepline to Blender and abandon Autodesk, so again, please tell me what are the reasons because Max or Maya can’t be replaced becasue so far I just heared opinions but not real facts that can’t be solved with very few effort.
The reality about the trend is that there is no trend, I mean, Adobe and Autodesk + Thinking Particles can’t be called a trend, rental has been present since always in various software, the new thing here is that they removed the option to OWN the software, and that is the problem, a lot of companies are going rental, but not rental only, you can see that trend as a fact, Allegorithmic, Maxon, SideFX, Unity (even when I don’t like their model you can still own the package and you can even make a one time payment and own it), Corona, etc…
Rental is not bad per se, what is bad is the lack of options because then the user is a hostage that has to pay the mother-company each time there is a need to access a file, and that is bad, also if you cna’t pay for two months, there you have two months that you can’t work… very very dangerous for a small / medium studio.
Now regarding the terminal… not every open source software I said to you uses the terminal, and not a single commercial one, so again or you don’t know what you are talking about or you want to misslead people, I’m sorry but I can’t think any other option because I gave you the links and you could have seen everything by yourself.
Now regarding your opinion about the recap quality, well… this is a matter of opinion, and you can think the results are good, in my opinion the results are very crappy unless you use their laser scan, but that laser scan costs tons of money so…
And finally regarding the type of students you are talking about the ones who “who don’t want to buy or install software” and “that have 0 computer knowledge”… then I don’t understand why are you posting this here… I doubt you can find a lot of people here that fits in that description.
Again, the main thing is is to try to explain people why studying and working with Autodesk software is a bad choice, the higher costs will reduce the salaries, a lot of small studios will have to close doors (even when they don’t know that yet) some medium studios will have to fire people and ask their remaining artist to work more for less because suddenly 1 job place will cost more than twice in the past and suddenly that cost stops being an investment and start being plain monthly cost, so less money, less persons, worst quality and higher costs.
You may teach processes, and that is good, then teach also some business ethics attached with the process you teach, I’ve been also a teacher for several years and that was also a part of my classes, no matter the subject of the class, and right now Autodesk don’t have any ethics, and is a responsability of all of us to feel it.
And to answer a question you may be constructing in your head (or not, I don’t know) NO, i’m not a reactionary person or an activist in any way, I’m a business man doing some business maths, if general business don’t go well, it won’t go well for me, and it won’t go well for the people I care, both personally and profesionally speaking, and it won’t go well for my clients either… this is an ecosystem, and Autodesk is killing that ecosystem.
Cheers.
Again I do not dispute that AD has a lot of market power as does Adobe. I think you do not find any quote from me anywhere where I state the opposite. And they are not the only once that switched mainly to rental.
However again 4th time I am in academia. I do not care what app I use. I teach process. Blender forum is wrong? Yes? Odd! Students go to here as well as hobby users - which is why I posted this hear.
And ReCap is one solid well working tool among many different software we use in our department.
You are in game design as you state - I am not. Consider that maybe - because that influences a lot of software decissions. Your story does not really at all in anyway apply to my area.
The reason why I also use Blender in my class room is not because it is opensource - but because it is a pretty well design software that works incredibly stable and is pretty feature rich! Being cross platform obviously is also a great plus.
I tested as stated many of the openSource projects. Some are only for Win - I have a mix of MacOS Win and even Linux users. And to be honest none of the 4 options operated well - actually all 4 failed or crashed. In a class room where IT locks the computers and you have students that range from good to no computer skills a solution like ReCap that just works is simply more ideal.
I might explore Regard3D more as it is cross platform and seems promising - but without any of those packages running well there is little chance that students will use them.
ReCap 360 is incredible easy to use, you upload the images hit process and wait - DONE. I would not call a 4 million polygon model bad. Blender already chokes on some of the scans I did and the level of details ReCap produces are more than sufficient to use as a reverse engineer target for product design.
So can we know keep this thread focused on photogrammetry for once and keep that company bashing outside this thread?
If you have great advice for other opensource 3D photogrammetry please add it. That will be more useful than this A vs B stuff.