[Unknown Target]

Here we go:

http://www.cgchannel.com/news/shownews.jsp?newsID=2026

[YodaSean]

Can it be used to make files for use in games, or is it like the gmax thing?

[Taristin]

Is maya any good? I know _very_ little about it...

[Bobboau]

SWEET
this is what they make big budget movies with
a license generaly costs like $20,000 or something absurd like that

[Knight Templar]

Yay!

[Stealth]

yeah i've heard it's an extremely awesome program, extremely professional, and you can get a very well paying job just knowing your way around it

[Liberator]

I beleive that while Maya PLE can open standard Maya files, it only saves in a proprietary format that other programs cannot open, even full-version Maya.  It is designed to introduce users to Maya and pave the way for single seat license purchases with cost "only" $1900 us IIRC.

[Descenterace]

My Computer Science course teaches the use of Maya.  I could get a head start...

And if it saves files AT ALL, I can write a converter that'll turn them into 3DS Max text files.

Damn, I love this ResNet connection.  T3 speeds for £50 a year, straight off the University's own fibre-optic connection.

Current speed downloading Maya: 155kb/s.  That's actually quite slow compared to the 535kb/s I normally get.

[Solatar]

So his is a full version of Maya? Bu you can't sell anything? Pardon my ignorance, but for $1900 less what do you lose?

EDIT: Downloading.

[TheCelestialOne]

Ok, now THIS is awesome. I'm not a real 3D moddeling/rendering kinda person but this really motivates me to learn it!

*downloads*

Ow and HA! @ all win9x/ME users! You can't use it! *evil laugh*

[Setekh]

Good move by Alias. Not that this changes anything I do.

[Fineus]

Likewise, but I'm all for the releasing of such powerful software to the net at large - it ups the chance of some prodigous types getting hold of it and doing some cool stuff in the future.

[Bobboau]

everything has a huge freking ugly watermark on it

[TheCelestialOne]

Originally posted by Bobboau
everything has a huge freking ugly watermark on it

If this is true its going right into the trash...

[Ulundel]

Somehow I knew there was a catch...

[karajorma]

How big is the watermark? What's to stop you from making it so that the image is all in the top corner and then cropping it out?

[Nico]

I suspect it also has a limited render resolution?

[karajorma]

640x480 I believe but I've seen renders smaller than that

[Woolie Wool]

Originally posted by Bobboau
everything has a huge freking ugly watermark on it

I do not download things that put watermarks on my renders.

[Liberator]

I forgot about the Watermark.  As I said, while Maya PLE is nearly a full version of Maya 5, it is a marketing tool/teaching tool for Alias|Wavefront to get more users to fork nearly 2000 bones for the full version 1 Seat license, and that's all it is.  It will be useful for model making, but it does have that nasty watermark.