Maya fusion gone?

[jtk77]

don;t knwo if this is in the posts already and missed it .. but I just heard through some reliable sources that Maya fusion is dead . No more versions or support soon . ANyone else herad this ?

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[admin]

I haven't heard this, but I will look into it... I know some sources that should have the answer.

ps, man I was thinking about adding a spell check and today you are the reason . Please dont drink and type..

Will

[jtk77]

hahaha!!! thanks man . Yea I ehard this from my freind whos a re-seller like yesterday./

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[deke-kincaid]

Yes, this is true. We were evaluating different compositing solutions and called A/w for info on Maya fusion and were told that all A/w compositing solutions were in limbo land and fusion probably wouldn't be supported in the future. We then asked A/W what they would suggest and they said Shake. Which is nice because that's what some of us wanted to use in the first place, but we had to evaluate all other options first. Yay!

[ezra]

Just wondering why A/W didn

[jtk77]

I would image they will still ship lite Fusion . No need to do any upgrade to the lite . Its pretty much as complex as it needs to be for what its intended to do.

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[positron]

It seems that AW no longer wants to develop 2D tools, there design and entertainment tools are where the money is. They have been letting go of the 2d side for a while now, I am not sure if anyone remembers a little product called Sketch that
AW let die a slow and painful death. Then there was the decision to not port composer over to NT, and in a lazy decision they go with Fusion... bad move, composer had a very loyal following. Then there is that great little product called Zap!It which is nothing more than a software driven DDR, an awesome scalable little tool, simple and sweet..... well now it's dead as well, they have the code but for some strange reason they no longer want to sell it! even if customers ask they say no?
If I have a piece of software that requires no support and is nothing more than a playback engine why would I not sell it....
Face it boys they are putting all of there time and energy into Studio Tools and Maya.... Composer, Fusion, Zap!It are on the way out the door and instead of letting the market know and possibly piss off some users they would rather quietly
shuffle the 2d division under the carpet quietly.

That SGI Mgmt. is really starting to show....

[frogrobert]

Hello,

Sorry for the late response to this question, I am on an offsite conference and have limited access to email.

Maya Fusion 3.02 is currently available from our support centres. Customers on active support should contact their local A|W support team to inquire if this patch will resolve any current issues.

Let me reassure you, that Alias|Wavefront is strongly committed to supporting existing Maya Fusion customers – a commitment underscored by today’s release of Maya Fusion 3.0.2.

Additionally, we are in the process of finalising new plans regarding our compositing products and will be making some announcements very soon. Please continue to watch this space for upcoming news.

Hope this helps...

Shai Hinitz
Product Manager, Maya Imaging
Alias|wavefront, Toronto

[blk]

its true about zap it we have zap it here at school on the 02 but the liscence has r out and when we called alias/wavefront about updateing the lsicence they basically said No
no video output solution now ceot for our teacher to bring in his media 100 on his mac
thought the school is in the process of buying some stuff hopefully

[jtk77]

Thats crap about Zapit! they need to at lest give curent customers that have relied on it a perment License . Not sure how all that worked since I wasn''t there nor do i have Zap!it :
but : I know folks in a simialr boat when there lic ran out they called for a new one and they were left out with a perfectly fine litle peice of sotware that did what it was intended to do rendered useless by a thing as simple as a lic file runnig out .
Forget product support jsut give them a working lic file . is that hard , will ALias lose money if they do that?

Well , I guess from the post earlier Maya fusion 3 will be its last. No 4 .

They are commited to standing by exsisting Fusion customers , mm, just like they did for the ZAp it customers huh John?
Anyway , interesting things going on . Hope that means interesting things that are good .

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[blk]

well it just really screws us because right now technically the school has no way to get animations to tape it sucks
have to go through a media 100 my teacher brings in

plus when we emailed A/W and asked them why we couldnt get a liscence we just got ignored and they never sent us anything like they just forgot we existed and its not like its been long that the liscence has been up just ran out on January 25th

[kiwi]

Hi Johnny -

I understand your point, but to be fair, people did have a couple of years to plan for this -the company has publicly been saying that Zapit! was being discontinued -and that no further product development would be done-

And why would a company no longer support outdated software tools after they were retired?

We'll, my guess is .....so they can focus internal efferts on:
-innovation (can we all just agree that A|W simply rocks here)
-better trained, more focussed tech. support people(couldn't you use this?)
-to better support all of the other compositing environments that you, I, he, she and they use everyday -to whom zapit! is (practically) worthless.

-And do they think that this will force people to upgrade their old (however useful) tools? I guess yes.

Do they care that this will piss (some) people off? my guess is yes here also.

Can ANY software company please ALL thier users, ALL the time? I've never heard of one.

change is painful. (and unfortunatley, sometimes it's costly too)

KIWI

[jtk77]

I jsut don;t get why they wouldn;t at least , support or not, give a school a perment License of it. An unsupposrted License on a tool that really didn;t require any support anyway ( damn thing did what it was supposed to do without any other tools loaded into it )

But I am very interesrted to see what ALias is coming up with ,. recently they seem to have been adding and changing a serious number of their partners . AS I said before Siggraph 2001 looks like it will be an interesting show. Which is good , becosue alst years wasn't all that eventful except for Bourbon Street.
I also find it VERY interesting that when you call alias they are unofficaily hinting that you check out SHAKE.

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[blk]

well thats great when its a company that your dealing with but when you have a school were teachers change where the people who buy the software change and everything else weve gone through 3 heads of the department since ive been here
so no one who is in the authority to buy and order liscences now knew about ZapIt! being dropped

i dont see why they just cant give us 1 final liscence

something as a school we can use till the school approves the money for an nt solution to dump animations to tape

like i said before since we can use the ZapIt! anymore were stuck with have our teacher bring in his G3 and his media 100 and dumping to tape that way

[geoffcrowther]

thx shai.

[ezra]

http://www.eyeonline.com/press/mfusion\_qa.html

so what now?

Can

[jtk77]

why should it make maya less pricey ? If anything FusionLitew is considered a free bonus , not part of the price ... not sure what you ment , that Maya fusionLIte is gone that maya should cost less? that was a rudementary program anyway. Like an advertisment for Fusion Full.
Iif anything this opens up Maya to be used with a wide vareity of software.. hopefull better AE intergration , and Discreet intergration would be great.
This si more than likly a direct result of Maya 's current push into the market of Linux and Mac os .. since Fusion nor composer are avalable for those formats, nor would the code transfer be economical.

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[ezra]

because of the hardware/software rendering thing. If some things can only be done in hardware rendering then i need some program that at least lets me combine the hardware rendered part with the other part so i get a complete image. So i think that some program that makes this possible has to be bundled with a 3d software that uses this kind of rendering. Then they can keep the high price, although i still think, regardless of how good and fantastic Maya is, it is much to overpriced compared to other 3D programs. Especially for small companies or freelancers.

have a nice day
mulder

PS: please, no software war

[jtk77]

Good point, but just to let you know.. Maya is not for samll companies and freelancers. COmapines can and do make a ton of money of their software , only fair that aliuas gets a VERY small % of what the potential earnings will be.

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[ezra]

Good point too, but Max and Lightwave are also used very much by big companies - and small ones too.
And just another thought that comes into my mind: why is Alias giving away Maya for such extremly low eductional prices (compared to its retail price) for students.
Not everybody wants or can work in big studios. But when you spent years of learning Maya cheaply as a student you nearly have no other choice than later buying the overpriced Maya for earning Money (unless you want to spend another huge amount of time to learn some other software).
If only Complete was really complete...
Unlimited for the price of Complete, that would IMHO be a reasonable price.

have a nice day

mulder