um, as far as renderers go, Discreet own mental ray I think. Or at least they were the people licencing it out these past 3 years.
"own mental ray"??? you sure about that? and they were bundling it for the last three years??? news to me. [EDIT: http://www.avvideo.com/2003/07_jul/news/mentalray0729.htm ]
And Max 8 is a complete rewrite and well under way for a 2005/6 release.
last to the party. assuming it releases 2005/06 and not later. and of course there will be the growing pains. can they survive that with all the price wars?
THe higher prices have allways been there in Europe...
not what i said. their prices are higher in the EU beyond what other company's add to their prices. they add a greater percentage to the US base price than others. and we're talking regular licenses, not educational versions which have the least profit margin.
3dsmax has a pretty good UI that's easy to use and plugins use the standard UI formats, certainly no harder than Maya.
again, you didn't read my comments accurately. most UI's are migrating to similarity (i've even heard Max and LW are already starting to look like Maya and SoftImage, tho i don't know). and unless you use both Max and Maya, you aren't really qualified to say "certainly no harder than Maya". my source uses both apps and gave me the info on the differing plug-ins for Max being an issue sometimes; and Maya is most often hyped for MEL which is arguably the best part of the package, so your comment falls a little flat to me.
XSI is by far the youngest and has had the best opportunity to learn from seeing what the older apps do.
huh? SoftImage set the standard for interfaces a very long time ago. back when movie studios made models in PowerAnimator and actually animated in SoftImage. XSI is just another generation in an evolution of consistently excellent software. i'd venture they've been the UI leader most - if not all - the way.
Max is used more and more in Visual effects, more so than Lightwave by some margin these days.
this is based on what source? please don't say "Discreet".
Max still dominates the games industry
but appears to have lost some share to Maya and now losing to SoftImage. it's never good to lose market share.
and a large portin of Cad visualization, as most people prefer max to VIZ.
most of the visualization I see using Max is done by people using a legit CAD package (Rhino, AutoCAD, etc) and a pirated copy of Max (which doesn't help the company make money). Rhino is really taking off in China based on my design friends over there, and they almost always render using pirated copies of Max. with Brazil for Rhino, Max goes away entirely (tho again, it won't matter since they pirated it).
Max has also brken into the web based 3d in a big way, and has outsole all the other 3D apps ar least 5-1.
interesting statistic. i follow web 3d closely. i've not seen that. source please?
Lightwave has the smallest userbase, and if anyone is going it will be them
i agree LW is in danger, but their pricing - based on the research i did - was more flexible. a number of resellers were running specials when i looked around that brought them down sometimes below $1000. i've not seen anything similar with Max.
and the LW community is "deeper" than Max's in some ways; more dedicated imo. i remember using Videoscape3D - the predecessor to LW back 1989 or so. pretty sure even VideoToaster w/ LW predates Max (by about a year). but while Max was almost immediately pirated, NewTek was building a community of followers. first with the Amiga crowd and then later on the PC. and LW also has a Mac-based community. Max doesn't. when the Amiga was in danger, it was the LW users supporting it to the end (and beyond!). i just don't think the Max community has that kind of loyalty. i get the impression the Max crowd is really the crowd that pirated Max, learned to use it, found a job doing Max, and doesn't know any other app. the one's i've seen go to another app start off kicking and screaming, and then say they like it better than Max (not always, but usually). that's not loyalty, that's fear.