Alias Releases Maya PLE 6

Renderhead writes "Alias has released the free Personal Learning Edition of their Academy Award winning Maya software. This limited version of Maya Complete allows students, hobbyists, and professionals to learn and evaluate the $2,000(US) tool absolutely free. The catch: all rendered output will be imprinted with a 'Maya Personal Learning Edition' watermark. Although Maya version 6 has been out for some time now, the Personal Learning Edition was only available for version 5 until now."

Comments

But if your using Linux your outta luck

[Ryquir]

Available for Maya 6 on the Windows® 2000/XP Professional and Mac® OS X operating systems.

When last I contacted them they refused to believe you might want to learn their product on Linux and thus if you want Maya on Linux be prepared to shell out the $$...

Re:But if your using Linux your outta luck

[NanoGator]

"When last I contacted them they refused to believe you might want to learn their product on Linux and thus if you want Maya on Linux be prepared to shell out the $$..."

Refused to believe one would want to learn on Linux, or wasn't convinced enough people were running exclusively Linux for it to be cost effective to make PLE available?

I know it's fun to aim our pitchforks at people for not supporting Linux, but be realistic.

Re:But if your using Linux your outta luck

[NanoGator]

"The first point is that there is a lot of 3D done in maya under linux."

Sort of. It's used in studios a lot. That's not the same as saying that all those artists run Linux at home, which is coincidently where PLE would mostly be run.

" The other point is that maya ple is a response to max equivalent edition and not an effort to develop a new user base."

It's not to develop a new user base? Untrue. If you're an aspiring artist, you're not going to be able to drop thousands of dollars on something like Maya just to figure out if it's what you want to do. Your only practical resort is to use pirated versions of the software. The companies aren't big on this sort of thing, so they make the learning version to alleviate demand for their warez. It is very much a 'broaden user base' tool. It isn't very practical as much else considering the watermarking that is involved.

"Your point about cost is of course part of the situation but is not worth much if you don't put it in perspective with those 2 others."

No, sorry, you haven't defeated my point at all.

"So i guess you werent that realistic in your comment either."

Wrong. I'm very active in the 3D art community. There's been little to no mention of the lack of a Linux version of PLE. The simple reason is few people are even running Linux at home. There's barely any excitement over Lightwave getting ported to Linux. It falls under a 'would be nice' type of thing, but most of those people are thinking about render farm units that are $300 cheaper sans Windows. Don't need a PLE of either app for that.

Re:just download 3D Studio max 6.0

[danalien]

ye`... coz we lik' lootin', ay' Captin'?

Re:just download 3D Studio max 6.0

[NanoGator]

"download 3D Studio Max and get the keygen from astalivista.box.sk (search for 3D Studio Max). Done and done, with full character studio too."

That's kind of like learning Java so you can be a C programmer. There's some overlap, but if it's a career you're aiming for, it's not the most direct route.

Just as a side note, if ya go about it that way and join some of the common art forums like CGTalk, don't bring up piracy. They are overy sensitive to the topic despite the fact that nearly every 3D artist out there has a cracker to thank. Bringing up keygens in those places is like saying something nice about Microsoft here.

Re:yes yes, but to the important question allready

[NanoGator]

"Then Blender has to do, for 'US' ... I guess ...."

Blender != Maya. If you're just interested in tinkering with it, then that's a fine solution. If you're actually interested in developing a career, then you're far better off just dual booting into Windows and running Maya PLE. Frankly, the OS doesn't matter a whole hell of a lot when doing this stuff for a living. It's the wrong place to cross your arms and say "It's Linux or nothin!"

Maya 6 is a bit dissappointing

[quantax]

As a Maya user since version 3.5, the latest 6.0 release is dissappointing, mainly because it seems to be more of a PR release than a real finished release. If you are unaware, SGI recently sold AliasWavefront to a holding company who'll likely sell it to another company sometime in the future. Shortly after this holding company aquired AW, they released Maya 6.0 (previous version was 5.01) breaking their tradition of using the .5 release (in this case 5.5) for bug fixes & general feature additions.

Maya right now is in the position to either solidify their market hold (which is pretty good) or lose it to its competitors, 3D Studio Max and SoftImage XSI. As of right now there are many low level issues (not quite bugs) such as the export/import skin weighting being broken, a debatable method of storing vertice information which makes it difficult to correct these issues yourself, built in IK-FK blending is broken, and so on. In addition they changed the documentation around (like they do w/ every new release), only this time they altered it to the way it was catagorized during v4.0/4.5 which IMO (and to most people I've talked to) is inferior to the interface in 5.

This doesn't mean Maya is bad but youd think that the company would fix these issues which have existed since (in many cases) since the first version. While I think the ocean generator is awesome, the new hardware rendering tools very useful, as well as the inclusion of the built-in Mental Ray render engine, and so on, a higher priority should be attached to these baseline issues which affect Maya often on the lowest level. I hope Maya 6.5 offers some solutions to these issues and we don't get another PR release. If AW does this again for a v7 release, I think they can expect to start losing users as these are the most basic of issues.

BAH!

[escher]

I can't stand to use Maya PLE because that watermark also appears in the smooth-shaded window as well! Annoying as hell to work with.

If the watermark was just on rendered output then I'd be fine with it but having it right in the perspective window? Hate it. Won't use it.

Blender

[craigmarshall]

For those of us that can't afford to buy Maya (and no time to try), what does Maya do that Blender doesn't?

Re:Blender

[black mariah]

Practically everything. Far better modeling, texturing, and animation tools. Import/export without the use of incredibly cumbersome scripts. No reliance upon scripts to do simple as fuck tasks (see aforementioned import/export). Hair, GOOD particles, excellent physics... there's a LOT. Anyone that tries to tell you Blender is even in the same league as Maya has never used Maya or any other high-end 3d app. Period. Blender is total shit compared to those programs.

Re:Blender

[zarthrag]

Being an industry standard for the most part helps. But I think the fact that it's a several thousand dollar piece of software helps.

But seriously, Maya is much more widely known than Blender. More importanly, It has a VERY large market share and a community to go with it. Head over to 3DBuzz and check out all of the FREE training videos you can get, which I watch religously. (Then look for the blender section.) Living out in the middle of nowhere, I can't get easy access to blender training materials terribly easy, or Maya either, for that matter. Being in a 5 person development studio doesn't give me time to learn 5 envrionments - I'm just a programmer! (Albeit a programmer who isn't afraid to trace..err...draw sometimes.)

As it was said earlier, if you're serious about 3D you have to go with at least one big name renderer sometime - especially in a career.

Development machines?

[bobthemuse]

Does this mean that a graphics/animation shop can run this for free on all their development machines, then just have a single server dedicated to the final rendering?

I wonder if this is why the watermark is in some of the work windows, it make it too annoying to do this?

Re:Development machines?

[Quarters]

MayaPLE (at least v5) can not read files created with Maya (V5 or earlier). I would assume that this still the case in 6 and that Maya can not read PLE files. Additionally, there are probably restrictions in the EULA to prevent you from using PLE for commercial purposes.

Discreet did the same sort of thing with GMax. The binary files created with GMax are not understood by Max and GMax can not load .MAX files. They restricted MaxScript in GMax to prevent the user from creating disk files and prohibit GMax from running plugins that are not digitally signed by Discreet.

Re:yes yes, but to the important question allready

[Anonymous Coward]

Arguably, it depends on *what* you want to learn.

If you're new to 3D, then Maya PLE is actually a horrible choice. Nothing will turn you off faster than not being able to produce something you can use. You need the rewards of getting your first render and showing it off, using it for wallpaper, etc. when learning.

Maya PLE is really for *learning Maya* - not learning 3D. Once you know that 3D is for you, and you know what modeling/rendering are and the different types - then PLE is good for learning how things are done specifically in Maya so that you can have skills on the software you'll likely use in your career.

--

However if someone hasn't ever done 3D and wants to learn it from the ground up, then starting with Blender isn't a bad thing as they're not out a bundle of cash if things don't work out, and while they learn, they can actually use the product to produce things.

(I find it's often easiest to learn when I have to actually produce output I need)

Re:just download 3D Studio max 6.0

[black mariah]

They're sick of hearing about it, that's why. You used to have thirty fucking posts a day from dipshits too fucking stupid to use Google looking for warez. It gets old, FAST. Nobody, even those within the industry, gives a shit about people using warez. No matter how much discreet and Alias might talk about piracy, it's all bullshit. They both sell a product that starts in the mid four-digit category. They know that people who buy their software will buy it, whatever the cost. One reason Gmax and PLE were created to defray some of the piracy, and they've been successful at that to some extent.