DT Interviews Autodesk About Phasing Out Perpetual Licenses

[Tejal Bernardo]

I can't imagine paying that Price for the creation of an aiport in the year coming, it's serious really, trying to learn 3ds max, mental ray, animations etc. with the time and money inverted to see autocad playing in this way. I will never be "pro" an I never will be a pilot. It's something to think about. I think that these companies became too big as another software companies.

 

[n4gix]

I could see this happening with game SDK's; the developer could provide their own "distro" of Blender with all of the tools needed to export to that specific game. They could even charge money for it packed with other SDK tools if need be.

The folks at SCS* are trying now to do precisely this, although they are not planning to charge anything for their SDK tools. For the past many years their development pipeline for prefab assets (roads, scenery, terrain, etc.) has been created using ZModeler**. Unfortunately, Oleg has, since updating to version 3.x, shifted his business plan to an "annual license" paradigm, which essentially places it out of reach for the legions of 'freeware developers' who have been largely responsible for the phenomenal success of SCS's games.

In addition, SCS themselves have been limited by having to keep their forward development tied to whatever ZModeler can accomplish, rather than being able to adjust their export tools to fit their goals. As an interesting twist, the first such "tools" for Blender came from the freeware developers. SCS was so impressed that they actually hired several of the people who were principles in the "Blender Toolkit" program to work full-time at their Praha offices to continue development of the tools for their in-house pipeline, as well as to produce an "official" Blender SDK for SCS products!

* http://www.scssoft.com/eurotrucksimulator2.php
** http://www.zmodeler3.com/

 

[Heretic]

It's surprising to me that companies have not begun to modify Blender's source code and release it like any other "distro" of open-source software. We saw this happen with Linux and its enterprise variants, so why not with Blender? A company could take the code, polish it up a bit, add some special functionality that sets it apart from the others, and voila. I could see this happening with game SDK's; the developer could provide their own "distro" of Blender with all of the tools needed to export to that specific game. They could even charge money for it packed with other SDK tools if need be.

BlenderMAX (Blender with a Max-alike UI) with full fledged support could indeed become a thing and ease the transition.

I think the reason that hasn't happened is because Blender is distributed under a GNU license, which means it must be provided free of charge. Big companies (or any, for that matter) haven't given much attention to it for this reason.

I'm not much into licensing (usually tl;dr), but Blender is licensed under the GNU GPL, which means that you can basically do whatever you want with it. If you decide to sell BlenderMAX with a full-on 24/7 support, there's nothing that can you as long as you don't copyright the source code. This means in turn that anyone crafty enough can compile BlenderMAX on his/her own, but as with some payware add-ons for MSFS, you'd require a valid purchase receipt to enjoy manufacturer support.
Support is the main reason why Linux also comes in "enterprise" editions for money. You assemble a tightly controlled package, have the vendor stay up-to-date on it and able to support any inquiry and that's about it. The folks running the free Linux distributions can't rely on phone hotlines or e-mails, but in turn have a whole array of other people able to help out via the internet. So far, there's no issue with Arch or Ubuntu that I couldn't solve with a bit of googling.

If I had to start a business, I'd go for a Linux-based IT infrastructure. An army of Linux nerds is still a lot cheaper than any licensing fees for Mircosoft, lol.

The folks at SCS* are trying now to do precisely this, although they are not planning to charge anything for their SDK tools. For the past many years their development pipeline for prefab assets (roads, scenery, terrain, etc.) has been created using ZModeler**. Unfortunately, Oleg has, since updating to version 3.x, shifted his business plan to an "annual license" paradigm, which essentially places it out of reach for the legions of 'freeware developers' who have been largely responsible for the phenomenal success of SCS's games.

In addition, SCS themselves have been limited by having to keep their forward development tied to whatever ZModeler can accomplish, rather than being able to adjust their export tools to fit their goals. As an interesting twist, the first such "tools" for Blender came from the freeware developers. SCS was so impressed that they actually hired several of the people who were principles in the "Blender Toolkit" program to work full-time at their Praha offices to continue development of the tools for their in-house pipeline, as well as to produce an "official" Blender SDK for SCS products!

* http://www.scssoft.com/eurotrucksimulator2.php
** http://www.zmodeler3.com/

Wow, ZModeler is still a thing?
I remember trying to do an UH-60 in it back in my GTA3 days and failed horribly.

 

[UnitedExpress4180]

Ah, I wasn't aware of that. I don't generally read those things in detail so I assumed it was the same deal as with Linux distros.

Either way, if someone re-skinned Blender's UI to be like Max's interface, they would be hailed as a god by the 3D community (or at least by me. I don't have the time or motivation to learn a completely new interface to do stuff i already know how to do)! I wonder how difficult that would be to do...

 

[Dutcheeseblend]

Maybe this thread helps out concerning 'BlenderMAX'? http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?186905-3dsmax-hotkey-preset-for-Blender/page3

 

[Heretic]

Either way, if someone re-skinned Blender's UI to be like Max's interface, they would be hailed as a god by the 3D community (or at least by me. I don't have the time or motivation to learn a completely new interface to do stuff i already know how to do)! I wonder how difficult that would be to do...

Ah yes, the good old "I am unhappy and hate you, but too lazy and scared to get a divorce" issue. My excuse is that I still have unfinished stuff in Max.

Maybe this thread helps out concerning 'BlenderMAX'? http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?186905-3dsmax-hotkey-preset-for-Blender/page3

...assuming that you make good use of the hotkeys in Max at all.

I already managed to model and render a teacup in Blender. After 400 more online tutorials (another reason why Blender is awesome), I think I should have Blender under control.

 

[lionheart]

I already managed to model and render a teacup in Blender. After 400 more online tutorials (another reason why Blender is awesome), I think I should have Blender under control.

Heretic

LOLOL... 400 more. eeks!

I remember the days of learning Gmax. Man.... Once I learned that Move, Rotate, and Scale were there, then learned about Mapping in it, I was good to go. Slowly learned all the tools from there on in. We didnt really have YouTube back then for tutorials.

I have really grown to appreciate 3DS Max. I am just sorry to see it going into an even more expensive route. That is a HURRENDOUS amount of money. How can kids and young people and retired people afford it. There will need to be a good replacement. It will probably be something like Blender. LightWave 3D which is big in the car industry is only $1K. If only it had exporter's for FS. It is similar to the older version Blender UI though. Not as user friendly as Max/Gmax by way of console controls, but once you learn it, I imagine that disappears.

 

[Heretic]

LOLOL... 400 more. eeks!

I was exaggerating a bit. Or maybe not. But since everyone is in the same boat when it comes to Blender, there's an abundance of tutorials and ways to get help.

How can kids and young people and retired people afford it.

Why should they?
Students are taken care of by their university or college if they need Autodesk product training for their profession. Kids and retired people either pirate it or ignore it altogether and use Blender from day one.

LightWave 3D which is big in the car industry is only $1K.

Ah, minority tools that are cheap but hard to find employment with...

 

[hairyspin]

I've seen some very impressive results from Blender recently so it does now seem a reasonable option for those who don't have a heavyweight modelling & rendering package yet, but want to get into rendering for their models. And I'll be very careful to look after my permanent Max licence!

To Autodesk there's only one response to the subscription-only plan: phbbttttt!

 

[ozzman1997]

Pardon me if I'm wrong, but doesn't MCX have the ability to automatically parse animations and AttachPoints from object names? I believe that is how modelers exported from Blender before those ingenious Blender2FSX scripts were released to do this directly. If that's true, couldn't it read object names exported from other 3D packages as well?

Maya, or specifically Maya LT, could be a useful alternative for those that don't want to spend a TON on a 3D program that they will probably only use 10-20% of, but still want to have the comfort of a pro tech support team from a reputable company. I do know that Maya LT is targeted toward "Indie-game" artists, so it almost seems like Autodesk is pulling another Gmax here...But this time around, it must be a lot more powerful.

 

[lionheart]

Maya, or specifically Maya LT, could be a useful alternative for those that don't want to spend a TON on a 3D program that they will probably only use 10-20% of,

Ozzman

Ozz,

Maya is owned by the same group as Max. Max and Maya are one now.

How can kids and young people and retired people afford it.
Why should they?
Students are taken care of by their university or college if they need Autodesk product training for their profession. Kids and retired people either pirate it or ignore it altogether and use Blender from day one.

Heretic

Heretic,

Not that it matters, but us folks in America where everything is now too expensive to own, we do not have Universities and government paying for education. And retired people would love to do some model making, but again, how with a small pension.

That alone, right there, is a massive market. They could be using another Gmax, which I guess will be Blender.

 

[ozzman1997]

Ozz,

Maya is owned by the same group as Max. Max and Maya are one now.

I realize that...But since Maya LT only costs $30 per month, a year's total of subscription payments would be less than half the price of the original product. At least that's a better value than Max's subscription program offers.

In reality though, Blender just seems more practical for most applications. I was just throwing LT out there.

 

[Dutcheeseblend]

Pardon me if I'm wrong, but doesn't MCX have the ability to automatically parse animations and AttachPoints from object names? I believe that is how modelers exported from Blender before those ingenious Blender2FSX scripts were released to do this directly. If that's true, couldn't it read object names exported from other 3D packages as well?

This is true Ozz! I just needed to name my still prop VT_prop0_still, export to .x via the default .x exporter in Blender, and MCX parsed it correctly. Did really work!
But I don't know if other software has .x export capability? Yet, choose Blender

 

[Tejal Bernardo]

I will take a look to Blender, in my crazy days I had Gmax, Sketchup and max installed in the Pc, so Blender could be there perfectly.
Gmax is a good tool for fsx but we must think it is left as is forever ,never will be implemented, and is just a step to get Max afterwards. so no thanks. only time will tell.

 

[Heretic]

Not that it matters, but us folks in America where everything is now too expensive to own, we do not have Universities and government paying for education. And retired people would love to do some model making, but again, how with a small pension.

What are universities blowing those horrendous tuitition fees on then? Golden faucets?
I very much doubt that retirees have an honest interest in a 3d modeling package worth several thousand $ if they've never used one before.

That alone, right there, is a massive market. They could be using another Gmax, which I guess will be Blender.

It's not a market if there's no money to be made.

GMax perfectly demonstrates that a modeling tool for the masses should never be proprietary software. It has been a zombie (alive but dead) since Autodesk pulled the plug on it and was never more than a demo version of 3ds Max. (It did have its use and high time and certainly had its use though.)

 

[UnitedExpress4180]

What are universities blowing those horrendous tuitition fees on then? Golden faucets?

Prepare yourself, I go on a bit of a rant here, so pull up a chair 'cause it's gonna be long...
I actually did a report on this very thing last year. It turns out that the majority of the tuition is actually being funneled into football programs and new construction to attract additional students every year, and at some universities, a lot of it is even just going to raises and bonuses for administration. For example, I went to CSU last year. The president (and most of the upper administrators) there is getting 10 to 20% raises every year. EVERY YEAR. Last year he made $400,000 just on his salary (plus a massive year-end bonus), this year he still got a huge raise on top of that. Then there was the school's football coach. He's getting over $2 MILLION a year. For coaching football. And they announced they wanted to build a giant $400 million football stadium on-campus, which meant spending money to bulldoze a huge swathe of the already limited housing and even more limited parking, but then they had the nerve to announce a 20% tuition hike to do it. To put that into perspective, the tuition was already $23,000 a year, and had been increasing 9% annually for the last decade. And for that money, all we got were run-down 50-year-old dorms, slow, unreliable internet, and professors getting cuts to their already laughable pay. When they did this, I swear they nearly started a riot. But...anyway, yeah, some of the universities here are basically acting like for-profit businesses, and they're making disgusting amounts of money.

*Rant-mode disengaged*

Anyway, as for this situation, I think that we still will need some tools native to Blender or some other program for P3D/FSX development at some point. While I think MCX can bridge the gap between FSX and Blender in the interim, the problem is that some of the features in the SDK that we can use in Max are either inaccessible (directly) in MCX or are more time-consuming to use. Not that this is a deal-breaker, but it would nevertheless be nice to have some native SDK integration in whichever software package ends up becoming the norm.

 

[Dutcheeseblend]

Prepare yourself, I go on a bit of a rant here, so pull up a chair 'cause it's gonna be long...
I actually did a report on this very thing last year. It turns out that the majority of the tuition is actually being funneled into football programs and new construction to attract additional students every year, and at some universities, a lot of it is even just going to raises and bonuses for administration. For example, I went to CSU last year. The president (and most of the upper administrators) there is getting 10 to 20% raises every year. EVERY YEAR. Last year he made $400,000 just on his salary (plus a massive year-end bonus), this year he still got a huge raise on top of that. Then there was the school's football coach. He's getting over $2 MILLION a year. For coaching football. And they announced they wanted to build a giant $400 million football stadium on-campus, which meant spending money to bulldoze a huge swathe of the already limited housing and even more limited parking, but then they had the nerve to announce a 20% tuition hike to do it. To put that into perspective, the tuition was already $23,000 a year, and had been increasing 9% annually for the last decade. And for that money, all we got were run-down 50-year-old dorms, slow, unreliable internet, and professors getting cuts to their already laughable pay. When they did this, I swear they nearly started a riot. But...anyway, yeah, some of the universities here are basically acting like for-profit businesses, and they're making disgusting amounts of money.

Really? I always thought the USA were the top in technology/science, thus in education. At Delft University, Aerospace Engineering, EVERY student got a license (via VPN, allright) for CATIA. Yes, CATIA. Maple as well, and an extensive list of other software (like SolidWorks, Matlab, etc..)

Anyway, as for this situation, I think that we still will need some tools native to Blender or some other program for P3D/FSX development at some point. While I think MCX can bridge the gap between FSX and Blender in the interim, the problem is that some of the features in the SDK that we can use in Max are either inaccessible (directly) in MCX or are more time-consuming to use. Not that this is a deal-breaker, but it would nevertheless be nice to have some native SDK integration in whichever software package ends up becoming the norm.

I don't really understand what you mean here. We've got a toolset, similar to the ACES toolset for Gmax, that exports a .mdl from Blender. Need more?

 

[ozzman1997]

Prepare yourself, I go on a bit of a rant here, so pull up a chair 'cause it's gonna be long...
I actually did a report on this very thing last year. It turns out that the majority of the tuition is actually being funneled into football programs and new construction to attract additional students every year, and at some universities, a lot of it is even just going to raises and bonuses for administration. For example, I went to CSU last year. The president (and most of the upper administrators) there is getting 10 to 20% raises every year. EVERY YEAR. Last year he made $400,000 just on his salary (plus a massive year-end bonus), this year he still got a huge raise on top of that. Then there was the school's football coach. He's getting over $2 MILLION a year. For coaching football. And they announced they wanted to build a giant $400 million football stadium on-campus, which meant spending money to bulldoze a huge swathe of the already limited housing and even more limited parking, but then they had the nerve to announce a 20% tuition hike to do it. To put that into perspective, the tuition was already $23,000 a year, and had been increasing 9% annually for the last decade. And for that money, all we got were run-down 50-year-old dorms, slow, unreliable internet, and professors getting cuts to their already laughable pay. When they did this, I swear they nearly started a riot. But...anyway, yeah, some of the universities here are basically acting like for-profit businesses, and they're making disgusting amounts of money.

*Rant-mode disengaged*

Anyway, as for this situation, I think that we still will need some tools native to Blender or some other program for P3D/FSX development at some point. While I think MCX can bridge the gap between FSX and Blender in the interim, the problem is that some of the features in the SDK that we can use in Max are either inaccessible (directly) in MCX or are more time-consuming to use. Not that this is a deal-breaker, but it would nevertheless be nice to have some native SDK integration in whichever software package ends up becoming the norm.

Yep, education is outrageous here in the U.S. of A. It's too bad we can't take a hint from Germany, because all of their universities are tuition-free. I honestly believe that moving to Germany and buying a decent house would cost less than attending a lot of universities around here...But that's just me.

 

[UnitedExpress4180]

Really? I always thought the USA were the top in technology/science, thus in education. At Delft University, Aerospace Engineering, EVERY student got a license (via VPN, allright) for CATIA. Yes, CATIA. Maple as well, and an extensive list of other software (like SolidWorks, Matlab, etc..)



I don't really understand what you mean here. We've got a toolset, similar to the ACES toolset for Gmax, that exports a .mdl from Blender. Need more?

Well, to be fair I could be wrong about missing features. It's more likely I'm just still such a noob at this that I don't know what I don't know .

At our schools we do get access to a lot of software, though most universities are still making massive profits nevertheless (CSU made at least $300 million in profits last year). I since switched to a different school where the pricing is actually reasonable and the students aren't walking dollar signs. Hopefully the bigger schools will eventualy take notice that they're losing students/customers.

 

[Dutcheeseblend]

Interesting! In the Netherlands, we pay around €2K tuition a year (for bachelors). Students receive a monthly fee from the government, based on the student parents' income. That could be around max €300 for those who still live with their parents, and more for students who hire a room.

@UnitedExpress4180: I see, indeed there are still some features missing. But say 95% is available in the toolset.