Moho Forum

High end software with a high end pricetag often has features which are not visible in the output. A customer who pays big bucks for a program, especially with many licences or a "software care contract" (which basically means that you don't own the program, you just rent it for some time) expects something like this:
1. Reliability. The software has to be bug-free and crash-proof. There even might be a contract which guarantees the help of a technician within 12 hrs after failure notice.
2. Data security. The software needs to be able to restore data and to backup data. Further it should have some kind of version control, especially if many people work with the same files.
3. Workflow. Version control and file locking are useful in a production pipeline with several people involved. File dependancies can speed up processes drastically (an example would be a colour model file wich affects all files which are linked to it - and any change is reflected in all linked files immediately). Batch processing of some kind is always useful.
4. Expandability. Defined and documented interfaces make it easy to expand the software's capabilities, if desired.

Maya and the other big guys need to be worried

I remember seeing these sort of comments on the Animation Master forum years ago, and the Cinema4D forum, and the Lightwave forum. They all have "pretty much" the same functionality as the high-end apps, yet none of them have usurped the big boys.

In the interest of fair argument, Alias nearly went bust and was bought up cheap, and also the price of the high-end software has plummeted, so market forces are a big factor.

But my point is that there's a cutting edge of technology, which the big boys are always going to be on, and there's always going to be rich customers ready to pay for it. Free and cheap software is on the trailing edge, getting the long tail of customers, always playing catch up. It's not bad, and it may have more users, but it's not going to become the cutting edge, because by its very nature it has to follow.

Still, Rhoel, it will be interesting to see the results of your trials, if you don't mind sharing.

bigkahuna wrote:If you haven't tried Silo, you should give it a go. Silo 2 will be available for UB, but the beta is Windows only. I used Silo 1.2 under windows and really liked it's fast, clean workflow. It costs a lot less than Modo, but is also a very good modeler. Modo has more features and an awesome renderer, but I'm still trying to figure it out.

I've heard great things about Silo, but I wasn't aware there was a Mac port of the software out. I'll have to check it out before committing to Modo.

The400th wrote:

Still, Rhoel, it will be interesting to see the results of your trials, if you don't mind sharing.

Just coming to the last ten days of the AS-5 trials. Should be able to have that up on the server in about a fortnight. Should be about three minutes long - and be warned, it's one of my scripts so its a little quirky. Its a short done in HD. Render times are .............. wow!.

As for Blender, hang around, considering the learning curve, having something presentable might be ready in say, 6 months .

Rhoel.