Maya LT to be sold on Steam.

http://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/18/858669

First it was Modo, now its Maya. There has been talk of Blender targeting this particular market and pipeline, but I have no idea where that is or if its still on their radar.

Today Autodesk announced that Maya LT 2015 is coming to Steam, Valve’s popular entertainment platform. Maya LT brings its powerful animation and modeling feature set to Steam’s active community of over 65 million gamers, developers and artists to help them create 3D game assets to personalize their games and bring them into popular Steam titles like “Defense of the Ancients 2” (DoTA 2) or to create assets for use in their own games.

“The Valve community is unique, because it includes a very engaged mix of both gamers and developers working together to mod titles and generate content. We hope Maya LT will further that creative spirit and help a Steam user of any skill level to create high quality 3D game assets,” said Frank Delise, director, games solution, Autodesk. “We’re engaging with the community on day one by participating in forums, answering questions and offering custom tutorial content for DoTA 2 fans. We can’t wait to try new things with the community and see how they push Maya LT to its limit and beyond.”

A unique solution for professionals and hobbyists alike, Maya LT boasts a targeted feature set developed from the ground up for the indie game industry, like powerful modeling tools to help create and alter 3D assets of any size and a simplified workflow with the Unity 3D Engine. When purchased on Steam, developers will have access to a full commercial Maya LT license, allowing assets created in the tool to also be exported for use in any game on PC, console and mobile.

An online entertainment platform, Steam hosts over 2000 games in all genres. Users can not only instantly download and play games, but also create and share content through the Steam Workshop.

Available April 22, 2014, Maya LT term licenses will be available monthly for $50 USD and will be available in select countries. To learn more or purchase the product on Steam, visit: http://store.steampowered.com/app/243580 .

To check out all the custom DoTA 2 content and Maya LT 101 tutorials, visit the Autodesk Steam community hub: http://steamcommunity.com/app/243580/ .

With the abundance of tools that Autodesk can port to Maya LT, what can the Blender foundation possibly do to take away marketshare and keep them from dominating?

The split normal shading that’s already in and the Cycles baking also set for 2.71 is a good start for such an initiative on our side, but Autodesk can just port 5 more tools over for every one developed in Blender and it will become a waste of time to try to get most of the professional crowd there (outside of those who honestly want to use free tools if possible).

Add in the idea of Autodesk making .fbx completely incompatible with the GPL and the only remaining outcome is to just make a Blender for Blender users while trying to make it for welcome for those professionals who want to give it a try (because the professional market would be mostly out of reach no matter how hard we try, the only way otherwise is a full blown revolution that creates a new order for a Vfx and game industries).

Man what’s up with all the negativity?

Maya LT is not really attractive to indie developers for a couple of reasons. Even the full Maya suite has drawbacks compared to Blender. Especially the modeling.
And I know some XSI user who migrate to Blender now, because they’re sick of AD’s policy.
The whole Steam deal isn’t even something special. IT’s exactly the same regular price. Looks more like a desperate move from AD to not lose market share to Blender and Modo.

I can’t talk about animation and VFX, but more and more professional game artists actually recognize Blender as viable alternative to the Autodesk prison. And Blender is already incredible successful in the indie market.

Also, what is “Blender for Blender users”? There is a wide range of Blender users.

It’s the line Ton uses to reject input that points out users of other applications find Blender incredibly difficult to grasp and it would be easier for 99% of trained 3D artists if Feature X is made more in line with standards that have evolved amongst the commercial applications (the majority of which from before Blender was open-sourced).

It is used, generally, when there is frustration at Blender leadership for rejecting moves that could make Blender more popular (usually with the implication that people are doing due to “unique snowflake” syndrome).

NICE, I might jump into this*
it is kinda ironic that Autodesk is the one starting with burying the “give me four digits of $/€ for one tool” idea.

well I bet other tools from the competition Modo, C4d and so on will now get a lot cheaper too
or they take away their limitations in their steam version (jup Modo steam edition I´m looking at you)

*if the subscription goes up or there are any limitations in this Maya version I will of course ditch the bullet and use Blender and will support the development fund.

Edit; hm the honey pot won´t work on me. its still kind of expensive -.-

I tend to use the tools I bought much longer than 15 months. I also say no to subscriptions.

you can get a normal Licence of that stripped down Maya for $754.00

$50 a month is the point of contention for me. Free vs $50 a month, hmmmm. If we’re talking about game content, and not an animated movie pipeline, then spending that money (plus the game engine subscription) doesn’t work for me. Plus, if you cancel your subscription, Maya is disabled, so once you lock yourself in to that, you’re stuck.

At last check, the situation can be summed up thusly:

  • There is some interest in having Blender on Steam
  • No one knows all of the implications of what being on Steam might mean in terms of userbase, maintenance work, and GPL compliance
  • And the biggest one: There needs to be a person dedicated to maintaining Blender on Steam… but there’s not a clear understanding of how much work is involved… probably more work than an unpaid volunteer can offer. However, Blender isn’t Valve’s, so they don’t want to do it. And the Blender Foundation can’t afford to fund a maintainer (arguably, that money would be better spent on development).
  • Therefore we are caught in limbo until there’s either a trusted volunteer with enough available time or some funding is provided with an earmark for maintaining the Steam delivery… and even then there’s still a lot of unknowns

Videos can be found here. One of the things that made Steam Modo look like a joke was export: Maya LT exports in FBX (and apparently also OBJ) models up to 64K faces in one shot and can export larger models in blocks.

For 754$, it is a real contender (apart from Shade and Carrara, it is the only serious general purpose program below 1000$); ADSK Maya everywhere strategy is becoming more and more clear (the vultures are circling 3DStudio at a lower altitude :evilgrin:).

well the less software we have to learn, the easier it gets to compete :stuck_out_tongue:

That at least. If they kill 3ds max, there will be a reckoning. It will completely alienate their clients.

So what’s the catch with Maya 2015 LT, besides $50 per month fee and only being available on Steam ?

I do, as I released a game on Steam that is powered by GPL engine.

Not hard. I authored windows and linux builds on Windows, and OSX too (but OSX should be authored on OSX, it’s just cleaner that way)

The documentation is public, just register on Steamworks portal and read it :slight_smile: (whoever feels like putting Blender on Steam)

One gotcha is that Blender Foundation has to sign up with Valve. Then BF can dedicate rights to maintainers to build and prop builds to Steam.

It all comes down to what BF wants. If they want better product supported by community, then taking advantage of curated Workshop is important. It would allow people to make quality assets/training materials and sell it through the Workshop.

There is no need going to Steam if BF isn’t going to nurture the community and build sane service around Blender.

Can they really sell pay-to-play software/games on Steam for monthly fees? I thought the point of the Steam library was to buy a product and have it available everywhere you go. How would it even work to have a product in your library that you need to continuously pay to use, Steam doesn’t even support automatic payments?

For Steam it’s probably just the same as a subscription based MMO game.

Hah, they probably use Steam`s region locking too so if you tend to travel, be prepared to have your access to software locked depending on your location.

Except those don’t exist on Steam (as far as my knowledge goes). Steam does allow microtransactions in-game but it does not allow you to pay for the same thing twice. Once you have bought something it’s there in your library. Autodesk would have to authorize their own client to be launched when you press the Maya LT button where you have to log in to your ADesk account and from there it decides whether you have access to the software or not.

As someone pointed out on another forum you will probably get to buy the one-time fee edition on Steam though.

Examples:

Final Fantasy XIV - It seems Square handles montly fee.
Darkfall - And it seems Steam handles this one, interesting.

So what’s the catch with Maya 2015 LT (monthly fees aside) ?

That is interesting indeed, I had no idea that Steam offered support for that.

So… does this mean we have our volunteer? :wink:

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya-lt/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Autodesk-Maya-LT-FAQ.html

Basically all rendering, vfx/simulating and scripting features removed. Also caped to 25000 polygon export to fbx.