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from the You-Can-(Not)-Buy-Expensive-Software dept.
Khara and Anime/CG production company "Project Studio Q, Inc." are preparing to switch their primary 3D CG tools to Blender. Blender will be used for some parts of "EVANGELION:3.0+1.0" they are currently working on.
Khara has been using Autodesk "3ds Max" as their primary tool so far. "EVANGELION:3.0+1.0" production is mainly done with 3ds Max. They are now starting to switch from 3ds Max to Blender. Usually the reason being "due to differences such as quality and functionalities", but Khara's reason is different.
Hiroyasu Kobayashi, General Manager of Digital Dpt. and Director of the Board of Khara and President of Studio Q, and Daisuke Onitsuka, CGI Director of Digital Dpt. of Khara and General Manager of Production Dpt. of Studio Q, told about their situation.
[Onitsuka] "We need cooperative work with friend companies for our production. However, many of those companies are small or middle-sized, so if we stick to 3ds Max it will cause higher management costs. ... While we still have the challenge whether a new partner company can use Blender or not, but at least, cost-wise is much simpler, so we are proposing them to use Blender as we use it."
[...] [Takumi] Shigyo: "We are getting more artists that started by using Blender in Studio Q. We are also seeing more high quality works by Blender users from high school students in Award:Q. I expect these new generations to be the majority working at studios in the future."
https://www.blender.org/user-stories/japanese-anime-studio-khara-moving-to-blender/
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Saturday August 17 2019, @09:46PM (4 children)
See Autodesk? Gotta get them addicted while young.
And maybe being less greedy after will help too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Sunday August 18 2019, @01:50AM
I doubt they'll learn. Autodesk used to have a thriving 3rd party developer community until they deliberately annexed all the IP, and left the developers out in the cold. Not many people have forgotten that, so why would any community form around them again?
Whereas Blender is open source, and the community around it is thriving apparently. So much so, that a major studio is dumping a huge vendor just to be able to attract young talent and smaller organizations that can't afford Autodesk, but know how to use Blender.
Autodesk, and companies like it (Adobe), better see the writing on the wall. The older workforce is retiring, the younger workforce doesn't use them, and companies are starting to drop them.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Zoot on Sunday August 18 2019, @02:24AM (2 children)
Autodesk just introduced Indie licensing for Max and Maya. You can get the complete full version of either for $250/year.
This is an experimental thing for them and there's the risk they won't continue with this offer in the future, but I think that statement is more because this is a super scary move by their marketing department and they want an out if they don't like how it goes. With Houdini Indie at $200/yr (for two years at a time), Blender 2.80 for free, the new Cinema 4D full pro sub for $720/year etc. I think it's quite likely they will continue to offer this or something similar.
So far this seems to be getting fairly well-received, and I 've seen quite a few people say they're going to consider going back to the Autodesk tools rather than moving completely to Blender.
Blender 2.80, however, is a great package now and there's nothing like frolicking naked through the house installing a new Blender version on every computer knowing it's impossible to violate the licesnse and there's not DRM at all (Blender even has a pledge that it will never "phone home" for any reason).
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Sunday August 18 2019, @09:19AM
Can that studio's subcontractors be really considered indie? If so then pretty much all companies can just outsource their major works to subcontractors just to use indie rates. Anyway, that's economy for you. It requires no effort for autodesk to let you copy the software so real market price of allowing the act of copying is 0$ and thus market forces are going to push sticker price to this value.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Sunday August 18 2019, @09:40PM
The problem with special offers is that they can easily go away at any time and then all of your existing work becomes a hostage.
Cue: Darth Vader "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further".