To sum up my response to the whole, "Is Blender up to it?" question.. the answer is a resounding, "No."
3D Studio Max and Maya have millions of dollars of research and development invested in to them. Feedback from the game and film industry as to what to add and what to get rid of.. and extremely useful scripting languages (MAXscript and MEL respectively) that allows people/companies to cater the program to their specific needs. "Ok, we need to get Maya to do this specific task that it doesn't do right now." "Ok, we'll write a script to do this for us." Stuff like that is a life saver in production pipelines. Being able to modify the programs so heavily that it's not even recognizable as the out of the box software anymore is extremely useful.
It's been a long time since I've played around with Blender... but can it animate fluidly? Can it render using the latest and greatest renderers? (RenderMan, MentalRay, Maxwell, Brazil, VRay, etc) Can it do dynamics and simulations? Does it have complex textruing utilities and abilities? Can you set up complex rigging solutions with it? I'm guessing the answer is no to a lot of those questions. And even if it does do some of that in some fashion or another.. I guarantee that it's not nearly up to the quality the people using Max or Maya would expect.
Now, this acquisition doesn't mean the end to either program. Autodesk has stated that it's not going to interrupt the progress of either line. I know that's kind of a bullshit line most companies would give right after acquiring something... but Autodesk has done well in the past with not screwing things up. Look at Combustion for example.
If anything, I view this as a good thing. This coming from a former Max user who was converted years ago to Maya.. but I use both in my every day production pipeline.. I hope that everything will "stay the same" or "business as usual" or whatever Autodesk has said.
Personally.. I'd love for Max to start being geared more towards the game industry and Maya geared more towards the film industry. That's how it already is basically.. but Maya has been taking over a lot of ground in the game industry as of late.. and I can only thing of a few places that use Max for feature films. (not that it's not qualified to do so, just the flexibility of Maya is more of a selling point for effects studios)
But when will we actually see practical uses of this? 10 - 40 years like the article says is a pretty wide range to go by. Stuff like this makes me want the future here even faster!
A fractal based renderer (that's practical) that can be adapted for viewport previews. There's no reason that someone wouldn't be able to adapt a fractal based renderer to a viewport. The only problem is... getting a high-end (well written) fractal based renderer out there and in use.
Alias|Wavefront just changed the price down to $2,000 for Maya Complete... he might not have realized this; especially since he doesn't use Maya.
I'd say that with the substantial decrease in price for Maya, that could be the way of the future. But then again, I guess it all depends on who you work for.
I have been using Flash and Quicktime within Mozilla for a while now and I remember having to load IE to view some movies (either QT or Flash).. now I can view all of them within Mozilla.
Quicktime, Flash, and Windows Media
on
Mozilla 0.9.1 Out
·
· Score: 1
I've gotten those plugins to work in Mozilla on a 98se machine. Windows Media is kind of buggy.. but Flash and QT run flawlessly. I was wondering if anybody else has done this.. and if so.. does anyone have any idea when the afformentioned plugins will be officially released for NS6 so we can actually use them with Mozilla?
The point is is that it crashes for HIM. Who cares if the product runs perfect (which it obviously doesn't) for you? If it doesn't work for him then that's his reason for not using it. Personally, IE crashes on my system one out of every three times I use it. Sometimes taking out explorer.exe. The point is, just because it doesn't happen to you doesn't mean it doesn't happen to other people.
I use the Mozilla nightly builds and I am very happy with them. They crash a lot less than IE on MY MACHINE (read that again... on my machine.. I'm not talking yours or anyone elses) and it is faster on my machine (again, read previous statement.)
Almost every single nightly build has worked like it should have for me since I've started using them. I say almost because there were two builds (out of the 100 or so that I've downloaded) that haven't worked. So having 2% of the builds (that come with a warning that says it might not even load) not work on my machine is a fair trade off for me because I just download then next build (or revert to an older one. And by older I mean 12 or so hours earlier.). Oh well. Price we pay I guess.
Iowa is a great state to live in for job opportunities and raising families. We also have one of the lowest unemployment rates in all of the United States.
I too love my cable modem. Since there are only two other people on my node that have one, I get some blisteringly fast downloads.... I downloaded the Matrix in record time (3.2 hours for 1.34gb to be exact.)
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To sum up my response to the whole, "Is Blender up to it?" question.. the answer is a resounding, "No."
3D Studio Max and Maya have millions of dollars of research and development invested in to them. Feedback from the game and film industry as to what to add and what to get rid of.. and extremely useful scripting languages (MAXscript and MEL respectively) that allows people/companies to cater the program to their specific needs. "Ok, we need to get Maya to do this specific task that it doesn't do right now." "Ok, we'll write a script to do this for us." Stuff like that is a life saver in production pipelines. Being able to modify the programs so heavily that it's not even recognizable as the out of the box software anymore is extremely useful.
It's been a long time since I've played around with Blender... but can it animate fluidly? Can it render using the latest and greatest renderers? (RenderMan, MentalRay, Maxwell, Brazil, VRay, etc) Can it do dynamics and simulations? Does it have complex textruing utilities and abilities? Can you set up complex rigging solutions with it? I'm guessing the answer is no to a lot of those questions. And even if it does do some of that in some fashion or another.. I guarantee that it's not nearly up to the quality the people using Max or Maya would expect.
Now, this acquisition doesn't mean the end to either program. Autodesk has stated that it's not going to interrupt the progress of either line. I know that's kind of a bullshit line most companies would give right after acquiring something... but Autodesk has done well in the past with not screwing things up. Look at Combustion for example.
If anything, I view this as a good thing. This coming from a former Max user who was converted years ago to Maya.. but I use both in my every day production pipeline.. I hope that everything will "stay the same" or "business as usual" or whatever Autodesk has said.
Personally.. I'd love for Max to start being geared more towards the game industry and Maya geared more towards the film industry. That's how it already is basically.. but Maya has been taking over a lot of ground in the game industry as of late.. and I can only thing of a few places that use Max for feature films. (not that it's not qualified to do so, just the flexibility of Maya is more of a selling point for effects studios)
is only as strong as the weakest link.. which in most cases is the user.
But when will we actually see practical uses of this? 10 - 40 years like the article says is a pretty wide range to go by. Stuff like this makes me want the future here even faster!
And yes, I realize I'm sad. ;)
Maybe?
I know what you're talking about because it is kind of annoying if you're not used to it. I just double click, and then drag.
A fractal based renderer (that's practical) that can be adapted for viewport previews. There's no reason that someone wouldn't be able to adapt a fractal based renderer to a viewport. The only problem is... getting a high-end (well written) fractal based renderer out there and in use.
Alias|Wavefront just changed the price down to $2,000 for Maya Complete... he might not have realized this; especially since he doesn't use Maya.
I'd say that with the substantial decrease in price for Maya, that could be the way of the future. But then again, I guess it all depends on who you work for.
I've been using 1.1a since build ID 2002060808 (the 8th.)
I have been using Flash and Quicktime within Mozilla for a while now and I remember having to load IE to view some movies (either QT or Flash).. now I can view all of them within Mozilla.
I've gotten those plugins to work in Mozilla on a 98se machine. Windows Media is kind of buggy.. but Flash and QT run flawlessly. I was wondering if anybody else has done this.. and if so.. does anyone have any idea when the afformentioned plugins will be officially released for NS6 so we can actually use them with Mozilla?
The point is is that it crashes for HIM. Who cares if the product runs perfect (which it obviously doesn't) for you? If it doesn't work for him then that's his reason for not using it. Personally, IE crashes on my system one out of every three times I use it. Sometimes taking out explorer.exe. The point is, just because it doesn't happen to you doesn't mean it doesn't happen to other people.
I use the Mozilla nightly builds and I am very happy with them. They crash a lot less than IE on MY MACHINE (read that again... on my machine.. I'm not talking yours or anyone elses) and it is faster on my machine (again, read previous statement.)
Almost every single nightly build has worked like it should have for me since I've started using them. I say almost because there were two builds (out of the 100 or so that I've downloaded) that haven't worked. So having 2% of the builds (that come with a warning that says it might not even load) not work on my machine is a fair trade off for me because I just download then next build (or revert to an older one. And by older I mean 12 or so hours earlier.). Oh well. Price we pay I guess.
Who actually likes Corel Draw Suite (photopaint in particular)? I actually prefer it over Adobe.
I was referring to the first statement. Nothing against you. Sorry for the mis-communication.
Iowa is a great state to live in for job opportunities and raising families. We also have one of the lowest unemployment rates in all of the United States.
I too love my cable modem. Since there are only two other people on my node that have one, I get some blisteringly fast downloads.... I downloaded the Matrix in record time (3.2 hours for 1.34gb to be exact.)