Hi all.
I just got this email this morning:
But the part that got me curious was these two parts:
All I’m saying is “Hmmmmmm”
autodesk is taking over the world, not exactly a good thing, their prices are usually impossible to afford by humble mortals
Because I love Autodesk, -1 for you dude
Because I love having everything from one place, -1 for you dude
Because they don’t update Mudbox for Mac +1 for you, dude
Because they don’t update Motionbuilder for Mac +1 for you, dude
Because they own both Max and Maya and do not even attempt to give Mac users a way to convert from Max, +1 for you dude
Monopolies suck - and Autodesk is on its way to creating one. I’m not happy about this … I kind of liked Evolver but I don’t see myself using Autodesk products (that would make me guilty of supporting a monopoly).
What would happend if they take over Blender.
3dsmax gets worse on every update imo! But it’s kind of a standard, so people keeps using it to work with! Dont know about maya, but I guess since autodesk bought it, it haven’t improved a lot
I’m entertaining the idea of switching to Modo + Messiah or something like that
I hope autodesk never buys zbrush! EVER!
Anybody ever tried to contact Autodesk support? I spent 20 minutes on hold, 10 minutes trying to get them to pull up my account since thats pretty much all this lady does at her job, pull up accounts and fwd calls and all they said was I didnt qualify for personal support - I had to use the email method. Yay.
After a week of support emails that take almost two days to get an answer back and them telling me to do crap that I’ve already done (and specified that I’ve already done in my emails) they finally tell me to just delete an ini file and let max regenerate it. That worked.
On the other hand the software I use at work called PDMS from Aveva - I call them up, get an answer in two rings and am talking to a professional that knows the software inside out. Done in 5 minutes.
Actually I haven’t seen such horrible support from any company besides Autodesk. Even other big international companies.
i just hope that Autodesk never eats Zbrush and C4D !!
and i Totally agree with jashan.
Forget about Zbrush or C4D!
I actually had this “funny feeling” that Autodesk is getting ready to BUY OUT UNITY for the past few days…
If you look at all of Autodesk’s acquisition and development in the past few years, it looks like they are increasing their presence to get into game development middleware market. From lighting to AI to visiblity to motion middlewares…what they are missing in all these tool chains is an multi-platform 3D game engine! And Unity is a perfect fit and looks very likely to be their acquisition target. I wouldn’t be surprise in a year or two Unity to become part of Autodesk to be honest.
I don’t that that Unity Technologies is for sale. Autodesk might want to buy Unity but that doesn’t mean they can.
Maybe it wasn’t before they took VC…
Now they have significant VC Autodesk can just make a crazy offer to them depending of course how much of Unity they own… That’s pretty much how Alias ended up in Autodesk’s hands… I don’t doubt for a second the acquisition of Beast was to get leverage…
I like the free autodesk sculpting 3D app like sculptris on the ipad. It’s actually fun to use.
Well the Godfather of AD will take a trip to Copenhagen then and make an offer they can’t decline 
kabab is right. Unity is pretty “vulnerable” right now. Now that they have venture capitalists on their back, after receiving $12 million investment just 1 month ago from WestSummit Capital and iGlobe Partners, these guys WANTS TO SEE THEIR INVESTMENT PAY OFF !! So its only a matter of time before Unity are acquired by Autodesk.
Looking at Autodesk’s acquisition history -
Revit, got bought out for $133 million in cash.
Alias, got bought out for $197 million.
Softimage, bought for $35 million
NavisWorks, got bought out for 26 million (real time visualization primarily for the infrastructural/architectural industry similar to Unity)
Opticore AB, got bought out for ??? million (Opticore AB, based in Gothenburg, Sweden.Opticore is specialized in real time visualization primarily for the carmakers industry - similar to Unity).
Skymatter, bought for ?? million (Mudbox maker)
Kynogon, bought for ?? million (Kynapse artificial intelligence middleware)
Illuminate Labs, bought for ?? million (Beast lighting middleware)
Scaleform, bought for ?? million (UI middleware)
So, the “lows” are around $25 million, and the highs are around $200 million
I mean, think about it, if Autodesk offers Unity $200 million to buy them out (BBBIIIIIIG PAY DAY FOR INVESTORS!), do you think they would refuse? I think not !
This scenario would make a good movie, i could imagine tom cruise as autodesk’s top manager, or even the Bawss ??
It’s reality as soon as VC gets involved it’s not longer a bunch switched on guys commando coding in the garage now the suits are involved and it’s all about ROI…
I think that 12 million is the 2nd round they have taken… It actually worries me they need VC for a meager 12 million it says to me they have very slim margins given the amount of licenses they sell.
Btw autodesk pretty much bought opticore to get a bigger foot hold into mainly Ford and a few other car companies, I had a tinny bit of involvement in that 
They will buy entire companies and technologies just as a means of have a way in to strategic clients e.g. E.A.
i paid 70$ for each character i exported. Doh.
Yeh totally. I thought the same when I first heard that news. “Gee, that $12 million seems kinda low”. It made me thinks it might drive down the company evaluation if outside company wants to acquire Unity.
And I really hope Unity won’t accept anything less than $200 million!! (personally I think UT will probably accept something like $60-80 million).
What worries me is what happen after Unity is acquired by Autodesk. First thing that will happen is Unity will become a yearly update cycle - eg. Autodesk Unity v2011, Autodesk Unity v2012, Autodesk Unity v2013… which will make it extremely costly for us Independent developers who have to shell out update on a yearly basis.
Secondly, Autodesk will force all buyers to pay extra $1000 for their “Autodesk subscription advantage” - just to get update and support !!
And lastly, because of the tight yearly cycle, Unity’s quality will go down considerably. Almost all the products acquired by Autodesk ended up being incremental improvement selling as new features in yearly release - development teams rarely get the time to implement new technologies or make fundamental changes to the software because of the yearly deadline, and comprehensive product testing also suffers considerably. Basically the development teams have less than 6 months to develop, while the other 6 months are for testing.
You guys are scaring me 
I dont want my favorite piece of software to Join the Adobe of the 3d World.
I can’t believe someone actually still considers Messsiah an option!
Hell, on a Mac Messiah isn’t even able to read the directory structure on your system unless you pull out and re-insert the dongle AFTER starting up the software! Their support sucks. I had to send 3 emails (initially, before the rest…) to get a refund and their replies come in the form of auto generated replies that say: “If you still struggle send us an email with the subject line ‘I know it’s not your fault, but please help me with…’”…and after I did what they demanded, including writing a report on what errors I got (shit, that report took me nearly 3 hours to write with all the problems I experienced) they simply ignored me from there on and i still didn’t get my refund. I told them straight that I bought their full license for $40 and I feel cheated because the software is 100% unusable for me.
So this is the difference between the $3000 Maya and the $1200 Messiah: One works and makes my workflow super fast and has more features than what I am even aware of… the other one can’t even open up a file without me having to manually eject and re-insert a USB dongle??? What’s up with that???
So that is the mystery for me… why anyone on a Mac would want to use that worthless piece of $1200 software…
It is software like that that makes me root for Autodesk: “Woo-hoo! Go, guys go!”
But then you get Solo… which costs virtual nothing and apparently (going on heresay on this) it is quite good…
I’d say if Maya is not an option and you don’t feel up to the challenge of Blender’s learning curve then the next best alternative is Solo, not crap.
Edit:
P.s. After I wrote this I sent them yet another email to the email address they provided only to get an automated reply listing problem after problem after problem and I thought I’d share with you the part that p*sses me off so much. After days of trying to figure out how to make Messiah work, I found that their installation instructions is bogus, their solutions to the ‘common problems’ don’t work, that some random guy on a forum found the answer (and this is just the registration process so far!) then when the program finally starts, it runs within Crossover and has no included help files as the Help option in the menu points to a site called readingisfun and the credits speak of mandatory car washes for the creators of the program.
Most annoyingly, though, is that you have to have your USB dongle with license file plugged in when you start the app but once it starts, you can browse your computer’s hard drive but all folders are empty. To fix this, you have to physically eject the USB dongle and re-insert it back into the USB port in order for Messiah to be able to read the files on your hard drive. Now, before I figured this out, I sent them mails and got this automated reply (filled with incorrect troubleshooting info) that instructs me to follow all the (erroneous) steps before mailing them on another email address with the subject line:
And to make matters even worse, after I spent 3 days trying to figure out how to ACTUALLY register the product and another 2 days trying to figure out how to get the file system to work, I said “Enough!” I don’t want this. I asked them for a refund, sent multiple emails, answered questions, wrote them up, as per their request, a list of problems I had… Spent around 10 hours in compiling emails for them to get my refund and then they simply stopped mailing me back and decided to keep my money anyways. First off, I consider that stealing my money by selling me software that doesn’t work and not giving me a refund, but then, today, when I got their auto reply, I notice that they didn’t even pay attention to what I told them and they are still sending out the automated message that DOES NOT solve the issues! They are still sending out bogus ‘help’ to people who wasted their money on this cr*p.
So I ask you, with software like that selling for $1200 but permanently being on sale (like for $200 today and $40 when I bought it), is it really a bad thing for Autodesk to rule the 3D world? I think not!