-_- This is worth 5,000$? (Max 2009, on Vista)

General Forums Off-topic Chat
#1

So I’ve recently begun classes in 3DS Max . . . and Wow. . .its a good program. . .but there’s SOOOOOO many bugs! Unless this is a “my computer only” kind of thing, I’m beginning to get VERY frustrated with 3DS Max and thinking of just going back to Blender. Some of the things I’m encountering is:

  • Flickering Objects on view screen
  • Right click does not show Tools sometimes
  • Boolean doesn’t work sometimes
  • Moving around the scene and Zooming DOES not work unless I pivot first
  • Switching views causes the current “view” to go to a completely random area in space
  • Current view will “jump” to perspective view when I add objects sometimes
  • And many othersI submitted this to an actual 3DS Max forum just so you all don’t think I’m in the wrong spot :eyebrowlift: I just wanted to put it here as well, since I know a few of you use Max as well.

(this is 2009, on a Vista BTW With BRAND new Drivers, and Open GL display. . .still doesnt fix all of em)

#2

Well, I heard 3DS Max was just over $3,500, buy apparently that changed. I hear that 3DS Max is one of the worst 3D programs (in it’s price range). Even $1,000 is a lot for any sort of computer program, in my opinion. I hear it’s interface is horrible, and it’s very diffucult to use, and it’s learn curve is very steep. I hear it makes simple things so complex. Just hope you get to use Maya!

#3

Humm… you are right. For $5k, surely one does deserve fewers errors in the compilation. I suppose the program is worth $1.00 and the rest of $4,999.00 is taxes and suposedly suport.

#4

I wonder how many bugs are fixed by Autodesk with each release (like the LOADS of bugs in Blender being fixed every few days)

I think Maya’s much better for the money then Max is, don’t quite get why because it’s also an Autodesk program. Plus 3DS Max doesn’t have the 3D curser that we have come to know and love in Blender.

#5

Well the ‘market’ has decided that 3DS Max is worth $5000 :wink:

Plenty of people swear by it. I’m not one of them.

#6

Funny that they haven’t done anything about those problems. They were there 5 years ago when I was using max. Especially the crashing part. The big reason why I stick to blender is loading time and practically no crashing going on.

#7

i was a 3ds max user before i switched to blender… i haven’t done many cool things with it, but i can tell you that 3dsmax is powerful and full of features but the UI is so inefficient to get anything done…

in blender the mouse is always on the model and you have almost all the tools you need in your other hand (on the keyboard)… in 3dsmax you have to go to that right pane to extrude, move object center, bevel, subdivide…etc… this makes it hard and time-consuming to get anything done imo… but this might’ve changed, because the last 3dsmax i used was 3.0… there have been maybe 9 major releases after that one

#8

You can do those with hotkeys too… ^^
Either you overhaul the complete hotkeyset, or you press CTRL+ALT+RMMB+C then twice P and holt the powerbutton for 3 seconds then rotate your officechair and you quickly center your view…

And 3DS max is quite a bit from 5000USD. Its 3495 USD atm. If you live in the states. I wouldn´t complain, over here in europe i have to pay 3900 euro which is 5702 USD… i contacted Autodesk about 2 years ago, why i should have to pay 32% more than US citizen and if i can order in the states because i had no access to a licenced version anymore and wanted to buy my own private version, beeing independent from any employers licences.
Well, Autodesk, germany, swizz, austria and UK as well as the US HQ was not able to tell me why it is that expensive (i assume a pro swimmer crosses the atlantic once a month with a single copy and they have to pay him)
And i could order in the states, but i would have to re-license it always for the country you use it in, which would have been more expensive than buy it here… oh and they wanted to sell me a mainainance contract too…
So i said to a gentle f*** y** to Autodesk, i don´t need software from a company with that kind of policy and put all my focus on blender.
Bottomline, if it would help/quicken blender development i wouldn´t hesitate to buy it for 1000USD because its peanuts if you use such an software commercially. As for now, i simply donate once in a while and buy all the stuff from the blenderstore.

#9

I didn’t have much of trouble with 3dsmax, it worked well enough. It was good for us, but constant updating was too much for our budget when looking the benefits the updates gave. The last version of 3dsmax in our office was 6 and I think if we wanted to upgrade, we would have to pay full price now.

We found Blender quite a while ago already but made the switch when 242 came out… never looked back. Well, actually, I missed Particle Flow a lot, but the new system in 246 was a big improvement.

I think next softwares that will have the same fate in our office are Adobe’s. Especially if they continue their ridiculous US / EU price discrepancies.

#10

I saw a tutorial for 3DSMax just to see what it looked liked, to me it looks like it should be running on windows 95, its ugly. But I did like the particle system it had, I wouldn’t mind something like that in blender.

Even $1,000 is a lot for any sort of computer program, in my opinion.

I think the same thing, but people just charge insane amounts of money for software, its like a car service and the $800 part. I did work experience for a insurance company earlier this year, one of the jobs I did was to make a database for asbestos claims and a VBA script so that claims could be entered and edited, the editing done by a search function. I did this in a day and it wasn’t until I finished that they told me they went to a company about a month earlier and got a quote for, they said it would cost $50,000.

#11

That’s the problem with kids today. You practically did that job for free, while you could have made that money for yourself.

#12

I got $250 bucks :o

#13

Well. It wasn’t always an Autodesk program :wink:

Honesty is a problem? lol wut

#14

But what, Autodesk bought Alias long enough ago to do a few Maya releases themselves?

You’d think they’d take notes from Maya’s code and use them to repair the weaknesses of Max by the time of 2 or more releases.

#15

1000 dollars can actually be very cheap all things considered. If a 1k investment in software lets you get, say, a 20k job done quicker by X amount of time versus using a less capable software package you are actually making quite a bit of money rather than losing it.

Time is money :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Briggs

#16

grr…vista. Note the burning avatar. /\

#17

My guess would be the people developing Maya are not the same people developing Max. They probably even kept a lot of the old developers. That and the code from Maya and Max is probably so radically different that it’d require a significant effort to make one more like the other :eyebrowlift:

#18

Max used to be by Kinetix, I think them wrote the most of it.
Cumbersome to use yes, i have never done a custom set up for
keys or learned the default ones. But there really must be several ways
to make things work quickly in production. Its kinda worth the money
because of the popularity of file format, at least it would be for me
cannot invest so much though. Damn slow program to use unless
you learn some good ways to interact with the software…

#19

I wonder how many bugs are fixed by Autodesk with each release (like the LOADS of bugs in Blender being fixed every few days)

This is a good point.

I was a Max user for 8 years. Now i use Blender and i thank all developers for it. Everyday. :wink: