Wishlist - longer trial period for 3DS MAx
 

The FIRST competition lasts a couple months, but the trial period for 3DS Max is only 30 days. It sure would be great if Autodesk/Discreet could extend that to 60 or 90 days. We have a few students on our team & it's awkward for them to be using different versions.

that would be something to take up w/ autodesk not cheif delphi........

There are several free open-source pieces of software that might suit your needs... I know plenty of people with 3ds max who use wings to model for example... and then blender is just awesome... anyways, a short list:

Modelling:
http://www.wings3d.com/

All-in-one:
http://www.blender3d.org (or http://www.blender.org/)

Render (renderman):
http://www.aqsis.com/

Raytracers:
http://www.povray.org/
http://yafray.org/

Sound editing:
http://ardour.sourceforge.net/ (linux only)
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Image editing:
http://www.gimp.org/

Video editing:
http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net/ (windows only)
http://kino.schirmacher.de/ (linux only)
http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3 (linux only)
http://cinepaint.sourceforge.net/ (touch-up)

Anyways, that's enough free open-source software to do every part of your project without ever dealing with trial periods. There's plenty more in each topic, but those are the best ones that I've personally worked with (bar yafray, kino and aqsis as I've always used other tools, though might be using aqsis soon). Enjoy.

You're right, but I've never gotten a response to any emails I've sent to autodesk.

I want to see how the rest of you feel (an hope someone from Autodesk might browse this forum every now & then).

I imagine some might be cracking & copying the software - something I definately don't want to do.

Well, I think I've explained my feelings on the matter pretty well... but I'll reiterate!

Pay up for crappy software that you can't modify or run on the OS of your choice (except Maya, it runs on several, needs to... linux and IRIX are the main things used in high-level industry these days), nor can you have your programmer modify it for you.

Or you can download good quality Open-Source software. I think breaking copyright is wrong, though I think that Lawrence Lessig is right in the fact that the current laws are absurd, that doesn't mean we should just ignore it however, especially when there's such good alternatives available.

As for autodesk, I'm highly critical that they'll care in the least, but good luck.

In my experience, GoldWave is more powerful, though the liscence isn't free (you can still use it for however long you want).
http://www.goldwave.com/

http://www.coala.uniovi.es/~jandro/noname/
Yafray
http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3
Cinelerra
Buy the full 3ds max edu. if you must use it.
Also check out full older versions of 3d programs included w/ magazines.
3DWorld inc/ Cinema 4d CE in issue 43 (it can export to 3ds)
The only restriction is the render output size of the images to be just below the PAL (standard : 720x576) and NTSC (standard : 720x486) formats.
So no hi-res :(
Houdini Apprentice has a VERY small watermark that you can just crop out when you are done...
Out of all of those i would pick the houdini apprentice-
http://www.sidefx.com/products/apprentice/index.html
Of course if you do plan on buying houdini master it will cost 17,000
Houdini Select is only 1,299

Have you tried ardour post-1.0?

It makes audacity look really simplistic.

One improvement i would certainly like to see is NO MORE BUGS in 3DS Max. Last year when i used Max + Character Studio, the thing crashed on me more than a Windows 95 installation (lol ok bad joke). I was using brand new machines, no funky kazaa or whatnot and still i got so many crashes, quits, and errors.

Lest we forget the fact that you can't save Vertex assignments while using the Physique modifier. And also the fact that grouped items would become corrupted.......

Did you ever see the Discreet support site for Max? It's listed with so many witchdoctor solutions to their bugs (Install Microsoft Hotfix 824146 to prevent .max file corruptions caused by Windows Update???).

Honestly i hope 3dsmax6 is actually stable, and i also hope comes out before the competition. I don't want to have to put up with their lack of debuggers again.

I just don't understand most of the animator's opinions against using something that doesn't have problems every three seconds... why not try something new and better?

I've tried Blender back in the day, and it wasn't exactly up to par with 3DS, plus it had numerous bugs of its own. I hear they have a new version and im going to check it out, does it have a decent amount of features as compared to max?

Audacity is cool, not as good as Cool Edit Pro, but sure beats Windows Recorder lol.

Tim, when you registered for these forums, you agreed to the following: I'd suggest you edit your post so that you don't tell people how to bypass the time controls, and don't offer the crack.

Ie, we can't mention here that our computers date doesn't have to be accurate?

That seems a little... strict.

I understand that you are worried about legal issues, but I do not believe you have any legal obligation to prevent someone from posting such simple advice. Offering such advice isn't illegal to my knowledge. (Yet.)

What's next? Someone yelling at us because we flew in a plane and changed the timezone on a laptop to reflect the time at our location? This is absurd.

(Disclaimer: I do not recommend that anyone break a licensing agreement, in fact, I think that people who do so are stupid and idoitic and should spend their time supporting projects with good licenses that have better products anyways. This actually kinda pisses me off... but censoring information is also very wrong. Also, include the standard lines about how what I say does not reflect the opinions of my team nor any organization working with me or it.)

Blender back in the day is a completely different subject. It is open-source now and development is happening on it with great speed. The game engine is under going some changes and hasn't been around since 2.25 and won't be available for a bit due to licensing issues with the solid library, but other than that, it is very functional and now includes even a sound editor inside it. (as if text editors, video editors, image editors and texture editors weren't enough side tools...) Yes, definatly worth a look. Perhaps by the time the kickoff comes about 2.3 will be out, the plans for that look really nice, the GUI is going to be updated while keeping the strengths of blender.

As for more features, (other than the editors), yes. It has plenty, if any of you think maxscript is kinda cool, then you should try blender's python scripting. Very powerful language, very powerful scripting, very powerful period. Look at the MakeHuman project (under the python modules section) if you want to see some of what can be done. Then there's the realtime capabilities of blender, the web-plugins (not deved at the moment, but still around), the game-engine (in regression until solid gets back, just stick with 2.25) and a few others. Then the rendering times, well... let's just say from my experience they are much faster. Network rendering is also available with a fairly simple solution for that (just a python script I think acutally...) though there's another network renderer built in. Hmmm, lesse, more features, ah yes, a monkey as a primitive, a very nice UI once you get used to it, 3ds's sliding bars of buttons represent the evil of about the top 6 UI flaws ever... And yeah, there's some more cool features I forgot about... neat improved metaballs, and a few more things.

(this picture made with blender is kinda pretty if you want to see what it can do in skilled hands: http://www.blender3d.org/_gfx/galler...io_2000_12.jpg)

As for Audacity, yes, it's a nice little app, as I've said before though, if you want something to compare to Cool edit pro et. al. you need to take a look at Ardour.

Re: Wishlist - longer trial period for 3DS MAx
 

Just Authorize it.

It's free, and you don't have to worry about a trial-version.

And it's legal......goto Help, and there should be an option to authorize 3dsmax. I've it on my comp. for over 3 months since installation (I Authorized it, like as if I had a choice though).

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.