You can only legally authorize however many copies they send, his point is there is not enough copies to go around for all the animators.

Went i meant i used Blender back in the day, i meant like 2 or so years ago, it was open source by then i think, like version 1.5 or something.

I took a look at the newest one, and the GUI still boggles my mind lol, but yeah it seems pretty functional. I just hope that you can now animate bone systems lol, because when i tried it you could only animate using FK with mesh objects. Is blender capable of making sliding and rotating joints? And is it also capable of handling character crowds? Because if it were, then yeah i'd jump away from Max in a gippy lol.

Also, any idea why the installation for Max is around 2 gigs, while blender is only a couple of mb?

Very true, and multi-user lisences are very expensive :( :( Discreet & FIRST should send us at least 3 Authorization Codes to be realistic.

No, blender did not become Open-source until post 2.25. It was bought out around the turn of the year by the open-source community from NaN technologies.

Yes, you can use IK bones, post 2.0 is a lot more featureful than 1.5... that's ancient history now. That is very back in the day as far as I'm concerned... heh. Crowds of characters are easy... especially if you want to use the make human project because then you can just create a human model in about, eh... 5 minutes or so.

So looks like it's time for you to jump away from Max. :)

Sounds great to me :D. Im gonna go make something on it now.

On which OS would Blender run faster on, Linux or Winxp? Does it also have a Skin/Physique modifier/mesh deformation thing?

I dunno, I use it on linux... not sure which would be faster. I'm inclinded to say linux because of the fact that I think the kernel is better and all... whatever, don't think it matters too much. Just as long as it's got good OpenGL support for your video card.

Not sure about the physique modifiers... but it has deformations. Anyways, PM me with how it all turns out, I'm interested now.

having an inacurate clock is not illegal (in itself) but giving advice to change the clock to circumvent copy protection is. What is worse, and that you didn't address, is that he offered a crack to anyone who wanted it.

Providing knowledge of ways to circumvent copy protection is illegal by the DMCA. Whether that law is constitutional or enforceable is a debate for lawyers, but it is the law, and should be followed. It is certainly the perogative of ChiefDelphi (a private team) to enforce anything that they want.

This type of activity was specifically disallowed during registration, so it shouldn't be any suprise that isn't allowed.

I agree that Chief Delphi as a private entity has full control over their forums and we should all respect that. This is not something I'm debating. I also agree that the offer of "the code you need" is blatent and I'd rather not see these boards become grounds for warez swapping anymore then you do.

I'm simply surprised at Chief Delphi's policies on the matter. As for the speech possibly being a violation of the DMCA, I believe this to be blatently false.

Section 1201, paragraph b, subsection 2 does not seem to prohibit sharing of information of such technologies, in fact, if it did it would have sever wide-ranging effects upon security research. (Some of my research as well actually... although most of it falls under the expections in paragraphs D, G and J):

Section 1201, paragraph c, subsection 4 explictly states:

Not to mention the fact that it likely falls under the exceptions stated in paragraphs D, G, or J. Thankfully, I doubt the DMCA, from my readings anyways, has gone so far as to make the mention that you can change the time on your computer and the protection systems are too dumb to know about it illegal.

The complete text for your perusal is located here: http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/hr2281_dm...pl105-304.html

I'd love to hear any alternate conclused drawn from this text on this issue. It would make for another good story of things the DMCA is restricting that it shouldn't.

Know any good programs that can import .max files into Blender?

.max is the scene file and can't really be imported... but the models can all be imported if you export them out at .3ds first.

This should import them: http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~mein/bl...hon/3dsformat/

Thanks man

If you really want to have fun (mainly if you are only a programmer with knowledge of some language besides PBASIC), you can write your own converter.

When there's already one out there it seems kinda pointless, if you want to program, pick up the blender source from CVS and write a patch to do something neat.