UPGRADE PRICE FOR PRO REASONABLE?

[tumulousnewt]

I love anime studio and yes it is supper cheap compared to other softwares toonboom, digi cell and has alot of friendly features etc.

My issue is the upgrade price if you are an existing owner of the profession suite you still get charge 150 dollars to upgrade yet if I had a debut version and upgraded it would cost the same.

Although the software I use is classed as proffesional I use it as a hobbyist and 150 dollars for new features is a big hit especially with the frequency of new versions.

So when is it a good time to upgrade, should you hold out? when should you stop, should their be a better upgrade price for professional owners I certainly think there should.

Apologises if already mentioned or in wrong category.

[oakesy]

BLACK friday normally as they knock off a fair chunk That what I did for 7 to 8. 9 I wanted the upgrade sooner

[Imago]

I love anime studio and yes it is supper cheap compared to other softwares toonboom, digi cell and has alot of friendly features etc.

My issue is the upgrade price if you are an existing owner of the profession suite you still get charge 150 dollars to upgrade yet if I had a debut version and upgraded it would cost the same.

Although the software I use is classed as proffesional I use it as a hobbyist and 150 dollars for new features is a big hit especially with the frequency of new versions.

So when is it a good time to upgrade, should you hold out? when should you stop, should their be a better upgrade price for professional owners I certainly think there should.

Apologises if already mentioned or in wrong category.

Man, if you can't afford it, don't buy it!
I skipped an update every time, from 5.2 to 7.2 and then from 7.2 to 9.1, without any problem.
And, if you need Anime Studio upgraded so bad, you can buy it "second hand" or wait for some special discount (I bought ASP7 in that way) or look for other offers, like discounts for schools (a friend of mine knows a teacher that helped him to buy ASP at 50% discount... Anger!).
We can't see many changes in the software interface, but everytime it is upgraded, the programmers rewrite the most of the code.
I think they deserve their wage...

[InfoCentral]

We can't see many changes in the software interface, but everytime it is upgraded, the programmers rewrite the most of the code.
I think they deserve their wage...

I think we deserve Python support like all their other software. One uniform language for all SM programs.

[DrGhaedi]

Version 9 is seems a bit more unstable than 8.2 BUT ... I'm running it on a 2011 Macbook Air, 4GB ram. I'm starting to think that my crashes are more of a result of running out of video memory than coding.

[Imago]

Don't upgrade! Version 9 is horribly unstable!

You don't updated to 9.1 yet?

[DrGhaedi]

Yes, but I'm still experiencing regular crashes. On average, if I work 15 minutes I'm guarenteed 1-3 crashes. And my Macbook is barely a year old.

[InfoCentral]

Yes, but I'm still experiencing regular crashes. On average, if I work 15 minutes I'm guarenteed 1-3 crashes. And my Macbook is barely a year old.

Yep, the reason why most of my friends have given up on Mac's and made the switch to the PC.

[madrobot]

I'm not upset about the upgrade price this particular time around. I missed the boat with the early bird discount, but I made that decision at the time, and got on board with 9.1pro a few days ago for $150 upgrade (I like that the version you buy is the latest, you don't need to buy 9 then chase 9.1.)

In my opinion, for what it's worth, the smart bones feature is a big enough deal to make the whole thing worthwhile. The rest is just icing on the cake. In the scheme of things I'd argue that a $150 software upgrade is pretty reasonable, and with the smart bone feature specifically leveraging character rigging and animation, it will save many hours of faffing about and pay for itself by saving me time and helping me to achieve results.

Which at the end of the day is all I really care about.
Looking back at the money I've spent on Anime Studio since As5pro (? I think?), often a personal licence and another one for work, I'm pretty satisfied. I've spent a lot more on software which I've used a lot less.

I'm not saying $150 is chump change. But I would argue that for the features it's no contest - when I could, I grabbed it. We could to-and-fro for 4 pages about other apps and their features and different workflows and pro vs hobbyist and FBF vs bones... But if you look at the prices, you are just about adding a zero when you talk about Toon Boom. Different app sure, a whole different ballgame, with some old school fbf workflow in its DNA - but when you look at ASPro9.1 and a $150 upgrade price tag? Come on.

[Imago]

I use ASP 9.1 everyday and I never experienced a crash!
The software runs very well and fast (WAY faster than ASP 7.1) and rendering are very good.
Maybe my PC configuration is good for it and some of your component are "wrong", if you get what i'm saying...

my Macbook is barely a year old.

Oh... Well... Uh... Simply trash it!

[DrGhaedi]

Thank you for your brilliant insight.

my Macbook is barely a year old.

Oh... Well... Uh... Simply trash it! [/quote]

[DrGhaedi]

Yes, but I'm still experiencing regular crashes. On average, if I work 15 minutes I'm guarenteed 1-3 crashes. And my Macbook is barely a year old.

Yep, the reason why most of my friends have given up on Mac's and made the switch to the PC.

Thanks for your response.
I have considered building a Windows machine from scratch to exclusively run PoserPro 2012 and CS6. To be fair, I've never run ASP9 on windows, so I cannot really comment on it. What are your specs?
My mac hardware at the moment is sparse, which may be responsible for some of my issues. However, I've met a few others the past several months with similar complaint, albeit not as severe, who were running very beefy hardware.
Any hardware suggestions?

I do not think that my having a Mac for AS is the real issue as I ran Pro 7 & 8 without any problems on an old 2007 Macbook for several years. Like anything else in life whether you use a Mac or a PC depends both on style as well as more pragmatic considerations.

[ulrik]

Yes, but I'm still experiencing regular crashes. On average, if I work 15 minutes I'm guarenteed 1-3 crashes. And my Macbook is barely a year old. I am extremely disappointed and am strongly considering Toon Boom as there doesn't seem to be any way of communicating with the development team. I use this program 12 hours per day. Wish they had a beta program.

This sounds bad indeed, I myself am also running AS Pro 9.1 on 2 mac computers, one iMac and on a macbook pro, I have had a few crashes and that has occured when experimenting with different scripts but else it is running great.
Do you run custom made scripts? I know some of the old scripts are not compatible with the the new version AS?
And if you have the latest macbook (discontinued 2011) you should be running with Intel Core 2 Duo and as I am aware of AS is compatible with that system.

[slowtiger]

The only time I experience crashes with AS is when I switch between project files which are very heavy with large imported images and videos. Other than that: none. Also I never experienced loss of files.

[oliver43]

I always lag on buying the upgrades... I upgraded to 8pro, thru smith micro for $150ish I think, then a week later amazon has 8pro (full version, not upgrade) for $99!! I sent smith micro an email "will you refund me 50 and meet the sale price?" They say no, but they will give %100 refund if I'm not happy...ok. Refund. Amazon. Hello 8pro for $99.

I tried to give SM the benefit of the doubt but now I think they are kind of dumb. They won't meet the price but they'll refund all my dough? You'de think they would rather refund a third rather than the full amount.

My advice... Wait as long as you can because the price only goes down... AS8 does what I need/know how to do, I'm probably not upgrading anymore unless it's like 29.99 for pro...