Software Shenanigans

[El Burritoh]

Our studio uses Softimage XSI as its workhorse. We recently upgraded to 2011, and have not been entirely impressed with the value of the product. We're not entirely sure the upgrade was worth the price we paid for it. In theory it should be, by virtue of the enhancements and new functionality. But in practice, new features are buggy and come with all kinds of extra headaches. And some things which were solid as a rock for the past 3 years are now broken.

We're still productive with it, but have had a hard time getting support beyond the usual "is-your-computer-plugged-in-properly" crap.

My question is this... is the same thing happening in the Max and Maya world? Are the recent changes to Maya and Max worth it, or even properly functional? Are you guys having as much trouble with your software as we're having with ours?

I feel like AD is stringing along the XSI community and not properly encouraging its development, despite their claims that they have valuable revenue stream from XSI studios and are committed to helping the software grow. I just hope that things are better in the Max and Maya world.

[Tomaya]

I agree Tim , it's the same for max and maya , no big revolutions and some new bugs . For me the big trouble is maya 2011 (max is full of bugs too... ...as always) : the hotbox is slow now , i've to wait one sec to get it ( i'm back on 2009 .The best one ) , it's not acceptable . Maybe i'm wrong , but autodesk is too big now .
The big news are in the plugins : Krakatoa , FumeFx v2 (awsome) , thinking particles v4 (2012...) , RealFlow v5 ....
Autodesk , you're too big ...... ....tooooo much fat :D

[MikeANash]

I actually found max2011 much better, rarely crashes with me. I still get mental ray freezing up after a while tho.

I would have to say Zbrush is the worst for new releases. 3.5 has that lazy brush crash, what really ruins the whole program.

[jack_sparow]

We have some issue with maya too, maya 2011 works properly only on windows seven, stuff like fluids cache are not working at all with xp or vista. that's bad. the interface is slow, some old tools disappeared like multilister. I noticed lot of bugs, but the software is pretty stable so for my needs working exclusively with renderman and beta testing some upcoming rms 3 stuff I have to say this is a maya version, like always buggy maya.

I hope autodesk will do a real beta testing period next time with 2012, they released all 2011 product sooner without testing it sufficently, that's not good for production, artists and studios.

I definitely don't like the autodesk policy for cg software. that's the wrong way.
They don't care about customers, dealing with pixar support I can tell you this is the opposite, they are listening customers and build their product in our way.
Autodesk just want the money and do what they want to devellop or release.
that's so sad. and shame on Autodesk for this.

[ianucci]

Autodesk could do worse things than just trawl through all the user suggestions over the years and dedicate a release to bugfixes and workflow enhancements.

[tonytrout]

Im still using Maya 2010 because Im getting more familiar with it, and also because I cant be bothered downloading again the 2011 hotfix on my slowish connection as it doesnt seem to have much more than Im already using. I have 3 emails from AD to remember to renew my subscription in the last week, the most I have ever heard from them :rofl: Im beginning to wonder if I shouldnt divert that to saving for Renderman Studio 4.

But bugs, mostly not many and I never know if I crash it somehow myself anyway. It seems with most software I use that over a period of time you learn what not to do so you avoid a problem

[jclepev]

Maya 2011 in linux is the best of all versions that i've used before, as a modeler it was a headache to model something, just switching viewport or hotbox never work as expected, but the same program in windows is terrible i feel that is way too slow (compared to 2009)
There are just a few examples of software that worth the money of a license PLUS maintenance