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Alias|Wavefront Releases Free Version of Maya

Posted by pudge on from the free-as-in-you-can-afford-it dept.

Gribflex writes "There's good news today for those of us who are heavy into 3D modelling and animation. Alias|Wavefront has released a free version of their popular software Maya. That's right, free." Maya Personal Learning Edition, for Windows and Mac OS X, offers unrestricted access to the features of Maya, but displays a watermark on images, uses a special non-commercial file format, and plug-ins are not supported.

1 of 32 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Free Version? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    It's basically like free heroin. They're pushing it as a way for students to be exposed to Maya (free of charge) and get ramped up on it....and of course not being able to work without it. They want to expose people to Maya. It's definitely more complex than a drawing app, so a demo of a product like this is mighty helpful. This is all with the hope of increasing sales down the road obviously. It's also a counter to Discreet's gMAX offering.

    The Maya PLE is a crippled Maya Complete setup. The file format is proprietary to this version, most plug-ins won't work (some web export stuff *may* work), and of course the watermark is there in rendered images.

    I don't think it's a bad idea, but they have an uphill battle increasing sales. For one thing, it's hard to find a discounted price (Maya Complete is usually $6,500). For another, the Mac version is pretty much a revision behind their other platform offerings (v3.51 for the Mac, v4 for Win2k/WinNT/Linux; v3.51 is an enhanced v3). They also have next to no free plug-ins for the Mac version (commercial version), yet they have dozens for the WinNT/Win2k version. Why even bother with the Mac version, really?

    (Getting off-topic) I wanted to buy Maya Complete for game development, but held off at the last minute. I found that between Cinema4D/BodyPaint and LightWave, I have a slew of tools and plug-ins at a lower cost. (Getting more off-topic) IMHO, if you want to work with video production (any CG work), Maya is a good bet. If you're looking for good renderings and/or game work, LightWave and C4D are a better route. This is assuming you want to stay on the Mac...