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Strategies & Market Trends : The New Economy and its Winners
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To: Bill Harmond who wrote (57088)5/23/2014 9:17:23 PM
From: Doren  Read Replies (1) of 57684
 
That's pretty interesting. I had fairly extensive experience with 3D software in college. I used Softimage which is the equivalent to Maya. Maya was the preferred off the shelf high end software at the time because of its usability, but was able to charge more. Softimage donated its software. Softimage was bought out by Microsoft, not known for their usabilty. Autodesk bought it and is canning it.

Autodesk's flagship was 3ds Max (or equivalent with a slightly different name), a very capable 3D modeler, but not as high end as Maya which is also a very good animator.

3ds Max is Windows only. Maya runs on Window, OXS and Linux.

I was also fairly facile with form-Z which was a very user friendly modeler, with some animation capacity.

All of them are pretty dang difficult to learn, particularly if you are making complex shapes. So usability is going to be key if 3-D printers move into the mainstream.

My guess is that is Autodesk's goal. To develop easier to use software and take over that market. If they control a free OS with a proprietary format for the models, they will have a lot of power to sell their software to computer owners.

There will probably be converters for other formats but its pretty difficult to make converters work correctly. Weird things happen like Klein Bottles... the 3D equivalent of two Möbius strips joined together.

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I love to show kids what happens when you cut a Möbius strip in half length wise with scissors. Even better when you cut it in thirds length wise. Even adults freak out.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Möbius_strip


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle
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