MAYA is too expensive

[LittleBlackRainCloud]

As a student aiming at computer game development degree at a local community college I don't see the incentive to purchase a 3500$ or monthly cost of 160$ a month as a doable, or even reasonable cost/benefit software program.

I am much more likely to try and cope wth much less functional and comprehensive programs as the cost is far beyond the range of a broke college student trying to etch out a living.

I honestly don't find paying the same amount for an excellent A to B car for  single piece of software as even fair market value. Likewise it is also triple the cost of my computer!!

6-months rent where I live in poverty as a student, for a single piece of software? Absurd frankly. Even the monopoly cable companies charge a third of the cost of this single program.

So honestly, what gives? 

This isn't even to mention the the partner programs such as Photoshop etc, are so much cheaper to produce graphic arts. At least their prices are only "robber-baron-esque" 

[rimcrazy]

Not at all.  What support are you not receiving?  If you are not getting the suppor you want or feel you deserve, get different software.  For reasons dealing with my customers, I currently have 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016 all running on my Windows workstation.  All work fine with the excepetion that 2016 has some of the ususal, first release issues.  I follow the forum, and get answers to 95% of my questions usually without even posting because someone else had the same problem.  I have also found that when I make a post, if I've not received an answer within a day or two I'm contacted directly from AD to see if my question was answered and if not what can they do to help.  I no longer pay for subscription support because I've found my needs are not immediate and I don't have to have 1 hour turnaorund on bugs.  If I did, I would pay for the additional support.  As it is my subscription basically keeps me up to date on the latest version, and because I've kept my subscription payments current with the old and the new plan, I can continue to get updates at a quite reasonal annual rate that is less than the current subscription price.  If you did not maintain your subscription and/or chose to not pay it, then I guess it sucks to be you. 

Again, what support are you not getting?  If you arn't happy, go get Houdini, go get Rhino, go get Lightwave, go get Modo, go get Cinema4D, go get Blender.  You have a lot of options. 

[jbbarnette427]

Why do you keep saying that there is no software support? Maya is very well supported! Hell they start trouble tickets for me sometimes without me even asking. If you are asking why you dont ahve support after the first year without paying for it well that is kinda answering your own question.

[jbbarnette427]

Houdini, go get Rhino, go get Lightwave, go get Modo, go get Cinema4D all have yearly maintenance programs just like Maya. But people just love to hate on AD like they are the great satan or something?

[rimcrazy]

If your point of contention is that you desire all previous or some undetermined number releases of Maya, must support all new releases of OS (Linux, OSX, Windows) and you are currently complaining that what you are paying on support is too much.... hold on to your back side, because you won't be able to afford at all what that would cost to keep a development team scrambling to maintain that kind of support.

There is not a single software product example I can think of where company does that.  I've been buying software for a LONG time.  In my previous life I was a semiconductor chip designer and manager.  In that game there are only 2 real software vendors that make the software you require, Synopsys and Cadence.  I managed and purchased packages from both of those companys.  A "typical" purchase at the time I left the industry, about 10 years ago, was worth about 2 - 5 million dollars.  Annual support was around 15% of the purchase price.  At THOSE rediculous prices..... we never got old packges updated to run on new versions of OS.  Never.

If that is what you are truly asking for.... well to my knowledge it simply does not exist.  AD, as well as other software vendors, make improvements to their products because, in most cases, their customers ask for it.  The first rule of product development is you fill a need.  AD does not call little me and ask me what I need in the next version of Maya but I will guarantee you they knock on Disney's door as well as Pixar, Dreamworks and a host of other studios.  Through the forum, the also do listen to little me in requests from users.  There is a lot in 2016 that came directly from those requests.  They cannot continue to create new products, fill new demands and needs of customers and at the same time drag along old versions of the product and band-aid them into new OS's.  It's just not going to happen.

[phoxoey]

My experience is I bought Maya 2013 in 2013, update to OS comes out in 2013. Maya batch render no longer works. No update. Buy 2014 if you want it to work. Sorry if that rubs me the wrong way. I know software, I write software for a living. You can't tell me they can't fix this one flaw in order to get some customers one more year out of their product for the price they charge.

[rimcrazy]

If you write software for a living, and you made a $3,000+ purchase of a package and did not plan or expect to pay for continued support to protect that invetment, and thought all was going to work forever, I would have to say that your expectations are highly unrealistic.

[Discussion_Admin]

Ok everyone this is getting a little off topic and more personal then it should.

I will remind everyone of the ground rules and ask that all play nice going forward or I will take additional moderation steps with this thread.

Thanks
Discussion_Admin

[dgorsman]

Admin, I'd say just lock it up now.  This horse is pretty well flogged.

[rimcrazy]

Ha! Love it. In the words of Bones.....

"He's dead Jim!"

[LittleBlackRainCloud]

this may be a dead thread, and I am frankly surprised someone necroed it. But then I'm kind of not really.
This issue to my understanding doesn't have a good solve, not an adequate one, but really just a reply.

The answer being that Maya is not a tool for anyone to start their career from, but rather look elsewhere kiddo and dem's the breaks. It was the answer I in part expected but hoped was not true, which is there isn't a financial option outside of poor monetary decision making since afterall, this industry *entertainment* is so brutal.

I do find it a bit sillyfrankly since the rest of the industry aimed at virtual entertainment has all decided to work toward creating an open source market and creating avenues for a future piece of that pie but it seems Autodesk is comfortable on its semi-monopoly pre-milenium business haunches for the now. Fine. I can accept that, I don't expect hand outs, but I certainly can't help autodesk either as unlike them I have no choice in the matter of finances.

And Again fine, there are alternatives~ thankfully, ones that mcater to a growing and progressive market. It's just rather frustrating from my end to be trained on industry standard software such as Maya only to find out it is inaccessable to me simply because of the extreme pricing.

while my patronage or even a thousand other interested developers may not be a concern here and now for Autodesk in the least, word of mouth is what has put Autodesk where it is and by word of mouth it will survive this industry and I see no incentive to be loyal or anything more than "fair" about their interest in the next genration or developers of which I am a part of.

So, just sayin' Gluck. If I happen to chance a winfall and it's great enough to not only afford me living and transportation and THEN have enough to consider throwing money at the problem of inaccessibility of 3D assets I will, otherwise my hands are tied.

Now as to the other complaint mentioned here of customer service I cannot attest this way or that way since as a student looking toward the future I am still yet divorced from any necessity to problem solvew beyond homework needs. what I can say is thi from my year of experience going from knowing nothing to undertsanding 90% of the functions of Maya I can say the information is extremely difficult to find solves for even for basic functionality without  half a degree in net surfing / troubleshooting.

while I've gotten the handg of it and I am rather brilliant, problem solving outside of paying someone to teach you is full of pitfalls and massive time suckage in the dozens of hours department. It needs an overhaul, even just the basic information, because when I can get better explainations of how the various softwares and functions work from random you tube vids the

answer is self evident since even basic functionality isn't well communicated / addressed by autodesk.

I hardly expect Autodesk to be a master of all things, but if they do in fact make in the hundreds of millions yearly ~ this is just plain sloppy, however, no sloppier than what I have seen from Adobe as well. Photoshop is nearly as inaccessible, I simply have no clue how a business can ride 30 years without a comprehensive overhaul of their software by giving it a roadmap that makes a lick of sense.

The divide here though is pragmatic, photoshop is affordable, blender is affordable, Unity is affordable, SDK is affordable, programming tools are affordable, business software is affordable, liscencing is affordable, electricity and hardware are also affordable..

Maya is not.

 

[nayankshitiz]

I think we don't require that much money in classes get teacher from a book
I am a poor family background one
Maybe I having a very good PC and its performance because my aim from 6th class was to be an animater
May be I didn't know it all going to be very difficult with just book and having my dad spend no money on soft
So we have to use freeware one(got less feature)or the cracked ones(these never give online performance)
So here you can decide what to take
Sorry about wrighting about the cracked one in this site

Do whatever you want in what you got

"Don't think that I should be having a million dollar snack when you got a apple"
"Do whatever in what you got"
I waited for 3 years to get Maya
To get a good internet connection
Till then at least I read book and did animation in pivot and flash Cs3(as old as you heard)
Stop crying man
Crying that is its expensive will not make its cost less rather waste your time

[rionprovus]

You offered some pompous rant about its value, he just said before your rant he uses it at university.  and yyet you chose to condescend. I don;t know how you got to the recognition in this community you have, but I am certain that your behavior here IS NOT how.   And your comment proved you didn't listen to him.  so regardless of  the fact you were rude to him and by proxy myself and thousands of others like us whom I am sure you have deterred, you should remove your comment.  I told you not the moderators because obviously they don't seem to care you drive people ton pirate when you behave the way you did.

So if they don't like MY post they can consider THAT little nugget. This isn't reddit.  Judge less, empathize more,, or be humiliated by truth.

And since you couldnt be botherd to notice he made no mention of LT and YOU didn't either you like he and I and many many others might not even have known about it since it isnt even on the flippin products page when you filter by GAMING.   HOWE AUTODESK??? HOW?  Because if it is discontinued, his concern, my concern, and AUTODESKS money you seem to defend so quickly all REQUIRE A VALID RESPONSE.  Yours however, will forever remain, useless.

[rionprovus]

you should not ask this. the fact that it exists is enough to do your own research. one was a need for information the other seems like you are not aware of the stigma it presents. before you get offended at this, you should see my reply, to mr.dogmatic up there. and my reply to steve.

[rionprovus]

Cheers well done and thank you. 


This should have been pinned by moderators and locked the thread.

[rionprovus]

from this community especially.

[konradHC2JT]

Blender!

[sod_mission_0x]

You will be paying for Maya your entire work life if you use it. Every year. That’s just amounts to a huge revenue stream for Autodeak and does nothing for you except add a lifetime subscription fee.

But not while Blender is there.