Both Unity and Unreal have free tiers, but from the site it looks like Stingray is $30/m
I suppose the seamless integration pitch is an appealing angle, but I'm surprised for a new engine there wouldn't be at least a time-limited free tier.
I wish them the best of luck - and I love some of Autodesk's tools - but I don't immediately see why I'd choose this over Unity or Unreal.
I hope they integrate the renderer into Motionbuilder, though. In 2015, the quality of render it's possible to pull from that tool is just embarassing.
I agree! I was gobsmacked by Unreal this weekend between Rocket League and Warframe. Beautiful 60fps games running on last generation budget hardware. Unreal is doing something great (as are the wonderful devs building on top of it) and I wouldn't want to compete!
From watching the video the two main points seem to be the seamless integration between other Autodesk tools and this one and how you don't need to be a big programmer. Maybe also the live preview.
(I don't know if this is the case with Unity etc. as I am not a game developer).
I'm having a hard time seeing the market for this. Most indies aren't using Maya or 3DStudio Max because the price is too high. Modo and blender are much more popular in my experience. Then shops big enough to afford them tend to have a custom workflow built in already.
My source: Could be completely wrong and is based purely on personal data. I help run a local indie game development meetup and have been involved with 3 others and only a few people were using Maya or 3DStudio Max. Mostly because of pricing. However of those working with 3D assets the majority of them are working with Blender or Modo with Unity and Unreal as the primary engines. One or two scenekit/source sdk/cryengine people thrown in there.
> I'm having a hard time seeing the market for this. Most indies aren't using Maya or 3DStudio Max because the price is too high
Then it's not aimed at indies, obviously; Unity and in recent days the Unreal engine offer fairer prices for them. The bigger game companies probably won't have an issue with using this product though - if it manages to impress them, that is, compared to the established game engines which have years, sometimes decades of development behind them already.
> Most indies aren't using Maya or 3DStudio Max because the price is too high.
Unless you define indies strictly as amateur/hobbyist I seriously doubt this. All the 3d guys i know (freelancers, small interactive studios, independent developers etc. - none affiliated to a mayor publisher) use Maya or 3D Studio Max.
It's the same as with the Adobe Suite or MS Office - once you consider labor costs, licenses become a second thought if you use something professionally and earn money doing it.
That being said, I don't really see this having a big market either, nobody seems to have any major issues integrating with unity or unreal for now.
I haven't paid much attention to Maya since Autodesk bought it, but people seemed pretty excited when the price dropped from $7,000 to $2,000. If the other comment about pricing is accurate, it sounds like Stingray is effectively bundled with Maya LT at no extra charge.
Yeah it hasn't gone down much since. The absolute cheapest price is a $1,470 annual subscription. A perpetual license will cost you $3,675.
I wish we had competition in that space. Maybe if Maya hadn't have sold out, we'd have something like the current price war between Unity and Unreal, which is great for games and game developers.
> Modo and blender are much more popular in my experience.
I don't know anyone who uses Modo for animation (its animation tools are very opinionated/idiosyncratic in their approach) and Blender doesn't have much uptake outside of hobbyists. When it comes to rigging and animation, Maya still reigns supreme, crusty though it may be. For hard surface modeling, Modo is the best in class and it just got better with built-in Mesh Fusion in 901, but many people raised on Max and Maya stick to what they know. For organic modeling, ZBrush for sculpting and retopo is the standard, usually with a traditional modeling package in the loop.
Think of this as less of a "game development engine" and more of an "interactive experience engine". Things like physics modeling and input control are useful in far more than just entertainment products.
I get the feeling this is less targeted at game developers than the people who use Autodesk products for things other than games, who might benefit from a game-like interface.
Modo's price increased recently when The Foundry took over. Lightwave is now a better option, although they both have strengths and weaknesses.
Game designers use a range of tools, so it's a hard sell to convince people to stick with one suite. But it is Autodesk, they play hard.
iClone is starting to get seriously interesting for the Indy scene. It's not a modeller, but it's no longer a toy. Their marketing department overdoes the "50% off for one week only" thing, which put me off initially, but the application is good. The direct puppet feature is cool. The holy grail might be lip syncing, and is getting better but nobody has an easy solution for that yet. iClone's focus is low-poly so works well with export to Unreal (in theory, I haven't done it yet).
In UnrealEngine scene everyone is on Maya: hobbyists are on student versions, studios have proper licenses.
Actually I really hope Epic creates a modelling tool. They currently use Maya in-house and it's awfully clunky: a competitor moving in to their space might hopefully spawn the intention to do the same to Autodesk.
It's probably a case of "innovator's dilemma' but I don't understand why all company making 3D software for industry haven't try to enter this market twenty years ago (maybe they is too much technical difference that I'm not aware of). It's seems too late now, they haven't a huge technical advantage any more. But competition is always good, so good luck to them !
Companies start orbiting the same market as Autodesk and Autodesk acquires them. That's been their strategy for 25 years starting with Generic CADD. #DStudio and Maya were acquisitions Autodesk didn't kill off.
The only notable exception is Sketchup. Google bought it instead, just as it went from MVP to software product line. Conveniently for Autodesk, Google pulled the critical feature out of the entry version after a year or two (DXF/DWG support), let development on the professional version languish, and eventually ejected it as a drifting hulk after Revit gained enough traction for institutions to start requiring it as a delivery format for construction designs despite Revit's file format being closed proprietary.
Attempting to register for access takes you to a form that requires you to have an "Autodesk ID" without any obvious way to obtain one - it does say that existing Gameware customers can get access. Thus continues the very trend that makes me dislike Autodesk: a highly corporate, private, limited-access, secretive suite of tools that are only available to a closed club of very high paying, deeply invested customers who are locked in to a pipeline comprised of only Autodesk tools. It just feels so proprietary and exclusionary. I still remember my parallel port dongle for 3D Studio Max back when I was locked into that tool set and the many times I had to fight to make it work to earn the privilege of using tools I had already paid thousands of dollars for.
Pretty much this; it's like they've got 90% sales and marketing and business people running the show and the software devs are just sticking around because Stockholm Syndrome.
Actually, I took a tour of their SF office (across from the Ferry building) and it seems like a really cool place to work. If anyone gets the chance, I'd check out the little museum they have there which is open to the public. I had always just associated Autodesk with the old 2D AutoCAD software, but they're actually doing really interesting research at the company. I was really impressed. One example I saw was simulations relating to self-assembling machines/structures. And their engineering and industrial design influences make it a nice art/science mixture.
Although not necessarily intended for kids, it's a place I would have loved to visit as a 8+ year old kid.
Yes, I've no doubt that I could dig just a little deeper and get access. I didn't claim it was prohibitively difficult to eventually get setup or that I couldn't do it; I'm objecting to the need to "get an autodesk id" in the first place and the entire culture that is wrapped around that need.
Agree, it should be easier. After registering, think it's possible to sign-in to most of the adsk systems via either the email/passwd or adsk-id/passwd combination.
Googling "Autodesk ID" and the first link is titled: "Creating an Autodesk Account - Autodesk Knowledge Network". Sure - they could have linked to it, but how do you reach the conclusion that this is part of some exclusionary club?
What? For what it is, Autodesk is probably one of the most liberal and open companies I've ever had the pleasure of interacting with!
They give away all of their software for students (without a crazy verification system!). Obviously they can only do so much, but I've always felt that they've done a lot to make their stuff accessible.
Yes, I can't count the number of times I've watched indie game devs pretend to be students in order to get access to some Autodesk tools. Having to go through that charade compared with most much more open software (either truly open, or simply affordable so the charade isn't needed), is what I dislike.
I don't expect any company to be obligated to act as a charity or to offer its products for free. I also don't expect anything from Autodesk. I dislike their proprietary approach to things, which is fine because there are lots of other choices. For many, it's worth it. I'm just expressing my own distaste in their approach.
I like how they talk about "changing the way games are made", then go on to describe exactly the process that Unity and Unreal provide. So actually just playing catch-up to the "way games are made."
People are wondering what the advantage of this is. It's worth noting that Autodesk have not updated their Scaleform plugin to work with Unity 5. I was pretty annoyed, and it seems like this could be the reason why.
Unity's UI got better recently (in 4.6+), but Scaleform is still leaps-and-bounds above almost anything on the market.
That, combined with Autodesk Navigation - another very powerful tool they previously charged a lot of money for (pricing for that was even on-demand only), means there's genuine reason to consider this.
The obvious downsides are the lack of free access/assets that you get with Unity, that Unity/Unreal have huge communities and years of YouTube tutorials. But that might come in time.
Perhaps the claims about performance and ease are exaggerated, but maybe they're not. I've worked with Unity for a while, and it certainly isn't perfect. There are some clunky, unintuitive things going on. Don't get me wrong, Unity is a fantastic tool, and our company wouldn't be what it is today without it, but this atleast warrants a look at, for me :)
Great marketing. Now how do I get it? Where is the big shiny buy/try or download link? I thought maybe the marketplace? Nope. Then I tried going to autodesk.com and I scrolled to the footer and went to the store. I did a search: http://www.autodesk.com/store/search?q=stingray
Yeah, that surprised me too, considering that Unreal Engine is free (until you ship) including source code, which is hosted on github (behind a free registration).
Two: Why would we want a engine with Maya or 3DStudioMax interoperability? Most indie developers would not be able to afford Autodesk products because they are so pricey. The only people I know who use Autodesk in the gaming industry are those who make AAA games. If you want to contact the least common denominator, then you need to make some changes to the way you do things.
Thanks but no thanks Autodesk. Why do I feel like Autodesk is starting to take it's cues from Oracle?
I've been working on a side project in Unreal Engine 4, which is amazing, but you'll notice that the majority of Epic devs work in Maya. Autodesk realized there was opportunity to make some money, and finally released Maya LT subscription for devs, but there are still a ton of import/export and other pipeline issues. I mean Autodesk owns the FBX format but can't get a good pipeline mechanism going for it? Now that I see this, it totally makes sense. They saw what the Epic guys were doing, probably even trolled their codebase for ideas, said "Hey, we can do the same thing but make it proprietary and cost a shit ton, just like all our other stuff, and make tons of bank! All we have to do is make sure our tools work with our tools best and everything else is subpar, and it will force devs who want those features into our camp!" Look at the damn interface, it looks almost identical in layout to UE4!
On a similar note, as a sysadmin with Autocad users, and the most recent quote I got for a single new sub license was $4k+, I am now investigating migrating to open source solutions that can perform everything we need without being licensed into the ground. Not every company has $20k just sitting around for license upgrades...
Edit: I understand my tone is negative, but in this case I think it's warranted. I would appreciate discussion instead of just a downvote please. I also took out the needlessly negative last paragraph.
I wish them the best of luck but without a majot title tied to shipping with this I'm dubious.
Without a clear vision of features needed feature creep can really set in. Also different engines are built for different needs and a catchall engine ends up being not too great at anything.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadhttp://bitsquid.blogspot.co.uk/
I wish them the best of luck - and I love some of Autodesk's tools - but I don't immediately see why I'd choose this over Unity or Unreal.
I hope they integrate the renderer into Motionbuilder, though. In 2015, the quality of render it's possible to pull from that tool is just embarassing.
(I don't know if this is the case with Unity etc. as I am not a game developer).
My source: Could be completely wrong and is based purely on personal data. I help run a local indie game development meetup and have been involved with 3 others and only a few people were using Maya or 3DStudio Max. Mostly because of pricing. However of those working with 3D assets the majority of them are working with Blender or Modo with Unity and Unreal as the primary engines. One or two scenekit/source sdk/cryengine people thrown in there.
Then it's not aimed at indies, obviously; Unity and in recent days the Unreal engine offer fairer prices for them. The bigger game companies probably won't have an issue with using this product though - if it manages to impress them, that is, compared to the established game engines which have years, sometimes decades of development behind them already.
Unless you define indies strictly as amateur/hobbyist I seriously doubt this. All the 3d guys i know (freelancers, small interactive studios, independent developers etc. - none affiliated to a mayor publisher) use Maya or 3D Studio Max.
It's the same as with the Adobe Suite or MS Office - once you consider labor costs, licenses become a second thought if you use something professionally and earn money doing it.
That being said, I don't really see this having a big market either, nobody seems to have any major issues integrating with unity or unreal for now.
Yeah it hasn't gone down much since. The absolute cheapest price is a $1,470 annual subscription. A perpetual license will cost you $3,675.
I wish we had competition in that space. Maybe if Maya hadn't have sold out, we'd have something like the current price war between Unity and Unreal, which is great for games and game developers.
I don't know anyone who uses Modo for animation (its animation tools are very opinionated/idiosyncratic in their approach) and Blender doesn't have much uptake outside of hobbyists. When it comes to rigging and animation, Maya still reigns supreme, crusty though it may be. For hard surface modeling, Modo is the best in class and it just got better with built-in Mesh Fusion in 901, but many people raised on Max and Maya stick to what they know. For organic modeling, ZBrush for sculpting and retopo is the standard, usually with a traditional modeling package in the loop.
I get the feeling this is less targeted at game developers than the people who use Autodesk products for things other than games, who might benefit from a game-like interface.
Game designers use a range of tools, so it's a hard sell to convince people to stick with one suite. But it is Autodesk, they play hard.
iClone is starting to get seriously interesting for the Indy scene. It's not a modeller, but it's no longer a toy. Their marketing department overdoes the "50% off for one week only" thing, which put me off initially, but the application is good. The direct puppet feature is cool. The holy grail might be lip syncing, and is getting better but nobody has an easy solution for that yet. iClone's focus is low-poly so works well with export to Unreal (in theory, I haven't done it yet).
Actually I really hope Epic creates a modelling tool. They currently use Maya in-house and it's awfully clunky: a competitor moving in to their space might hopefully spawn the intention to do the same to Autodesk.
The only notable exception is Sketchup. Google bought it instead, just as it went from MVP to software product line. Conveniently for Autodesk, Google pulled the critical feature out of the entry version after a year or two (DXF/DWG support), let development on the professional version languish, and eventually ejected it as a drifting hulk after Revit gained enough traction for institutions to start requiring it as a delivery format for construction designs despite Revit's file format being closed proprietary.
Yuck.
Although not necessarily intended for kids, it's a place I would have loved to visit as a 8+ year old kid.
They give away all of their software for students (without a crazy verification system!). Obviously they can only do so much, but I've always felt that they've done a lot to make their stuff accessible.
I don't expect any company to be obligated to act as a charity or to offer its products for free. I also don't expect anything from Autodesk. I dislike their proprietary approach to things, which is fine because there are lots of other choices. For many, it's worth it. I'm just expressing my own distaste in their approach.
Unity's UI got better recently (in 4.6+), but Scaleform is still leaps-and-bounds above almost anything on the market.
That, combined with Autodesk Navigation - another very powerful tool they previously charged a lot of money for (pricing for that was even on-demand only), means there's genuine reason to consider this.
The obvious downsides are the lack of free access/assets that you get with Unity, that Unity/Unreal have huge communities and years of YouTube tutorials. But that might come in time.
Perhaps the claims about performance and ease are exaggerated, but maybe they're not. I've worked with Unity for a while, and it certainly isn't perfect. There are some clunky, unintuitive things going on. Don't get me wrong, Unity is a fantastic tool, and our company wouldn't be what it is today without it, but this atleast warrants a look at, for me :)
The upper funnel is serious broken here.
"Stingray will be available for purchase on August 19."
> AND C++ SOURCE CODE, AVAILABLE FOR AN EXTRA FEE
not a good idea to get developers.
Two: Why would we want a engine with Maya or 3DStudioMax interoperability? Most indie developers would not be able to afford Autodesk products because they are so pricey. The only people I know who use Autodesk in the gaming industry are those who make AAA games. If you want to contact the least common denominator, then you need to make some changes to the way you do things.
Please note the bad collision detection at 0:51 when the player walks through the cube, right as the speaker says that.
Lol.
I've been working on a side project in Unreal Engine 4, which is amazing, but you'll notice that the majority of Epic devs work in Maya. Autodesk realized there was opportunity to make some money, and finally released Maya LT subscription for devs, but there are still a ton of import/export and other pipeline issues. I mean Autodesk owns the FBX format but can't get a good pipeline mechanism going for it? Now that I see this, it totally makes sense. They saw what the Epic guys were doing, probably even trolled their codebase for ideas, said "Hey, we can do the same thing but make it proprietary and cost a shit ton, just like all our other stuff, and make tons of bank! All we have to do is make sure our tools work with our tools best and everything else is subpar, and it will force devs who want those features into our camp!" Look at the damn interface, it looks almost identical in layout to UE4!
On a similar note, as a sysadmin with Autocad users, and the most recent quote I got for a single new sub license was $4k+, I am now investigating migrating to open source solutions that can perform everything we need without being licensed into the ground. Not every company has $20k just sitting around for license upgrades...
Edit: I understand my tone is negative, but in this case I think it's warranted. I would appreciate discussion instead of just a downvote please. I also took out the needlessly negative last paragraph.
Without a clear vision of features needed feature creep can really set in. Also different engines are built for different needs and a catchall engine ends up being not too great at anything.