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.
