These prices are with all the upgrades im assuming. Yeah I forgot to mention XSI which is an incrediable program that I have never used but would love to (maybe when im making 5,000,000,000 a year i'll buy it). Renderman is way too over priced in my mind, though it is a awsome program, I don't think its worth 8000 (they should ower the price :D :D )

where did you guys hear that all the big ones only use Maya? Thats BS, Blizzard does use 3ds MAX and many other companies do as well. ILM uses pretty much everything. Jimmy Neutron was done entirely in Lightwave, and Toy Story was done in Alias(but that was waaaay back...now alias isnt so great anymore for the $70,000 price tag). And just go to softimage's web site, they have a ton of examples where their program has been used.

The reason they dont have crashes as much is b/c their systems are so much more stable (when properly configured). When I worked at my job at Johnson Controls the computers all cost around $9000. They dont pay all that extra cash for nothing(Although, when I worked there, everything was configured poorly, so most of the stability was wasted). Also, junk on the computers is regulated, so yeah, there is no Kazaa or any other type of destabilizing program.

Oh yeah, Maya Complete costs about $1500 and comes with all the features a one man animation team would need. However, if you want all the cool network licensing stuff and network rendering you need to get the Maya unlimited version at about $7000. However, you only need one of these if you want to do network rendering.

ILM uses their own suite of software...

many large places run on different platforms (many have upgraded to 64-bit by now) so they are much more stable than our feeble x86 processors!

*jeremy

this is my first year using 3ds max, and i;m not liking it too much... i've always been a C4D user, which may not be as powerful as max, but i've been able to model things way eaiser in it than in max... and i also have had 3ds max crash on me.... are we only restricted to use 3ds max?

They do? I dunno, but I've seen many different web sites brag about having ILM use their software. I specifically remember softimage having articles specifically about ILM and how softimage was integrated into their movies. ILM does develop their own software for their own in house needs, but I dont think they use only that stuff.

[edit]check it out: http://www.softimage.com/home/press/...18_ILM_XSI.htm