#Cheaper 3D Studio, R2
8 messages in this thread
No matter how you slice it, $3000 is a lot of money for any piece of
software. But I can't/won't disagree with you that it's not worth it. It's
just that I don't have $3000 to spend these days after the usual bills
(rent, car, etc.). I really wish I could get the program cheaper since I'd
just be using it for fun. I mean, you can get some pretty fancy C/C++
compilers, with assembler, debugger, profiling tools, class libraries and
browsers, etc. (better than some of the UNIX stuff I use) for $139 or
less…
As far as proving my student status, to go from $3000->$800, I could
probably just enroll in a Community College class on Computer Graphics
around here (maybe $50/semester from a so-so college, or around $250 a
quarter for a good one). Plus I do actually take professional classes from
time to time in the evenings out of interest (by day I'm a Software
Engineer).
Thanks for all the feedback!! You're pretty lucky that you get to play
with 3DS. 🙂
-Tom
Tom,
Actually, the educational price of 3D Studio is only $595, but you
do have to be a fully matriculated student (full-time, probably 12-16
units).
Kevin Krell – Computer Support Associates
Bummer. Fortunately I can:
1) Borrow a friend who's a student full-time. 2) Lie, cheat, or steal.
#1 is probably preferable. 🙂
-Tom
Tom:
Both #1 and #2 are hard. 3DSr2 is hardware locked.
Evan
What do you mean by 'hardware locked'? What I meant by borrowing a friend
(or my sister, for that matter), was to have them purchase it for me, then
send it to me for my use. If it requires a key disk, or a key on the
serial port, etc., I wouldn't see how that would make a difference since
it'd only be on use on my machine for my own personal enjoyment.
-Tom
P.S. Apparently Autodesk (and this is not intended to be a flame) only
wants true "professionals" to use this program. Would the world be worse
off if normal people could afford to use the program too?
Tom:
Generally, when people talk about "borrowing" software, they mean making a
copy. I just wanted to warn you that 3DS has a hardware lock, which fits
on the parallel port. No offense wasn intended.
Autodesk has always sold expensive professional software. 3DS, in
particular, needs about $20,000 worth of hardware to run at its peak. It's
not particularly cheap to buy the harware *or* software.
Evan
No offense was taken- I was just confused by your reply, that's all. In
fact, you've been very helpful with information, so if I haven't thanked
you before, let me take this moment to thank you now! 🙂
I think my wording of my original message was faulty. My exact words were:
"1) Borrow a friend who's a student full time". What I intended it to mean
was literally to use my friend to make the purchase on my behalf to save
the $$$, not "borrow FROM a friend". Sorry for the confusion there.
The parallel port solution, IMO, is perhaps the best solution to the copy
protection problem. Since I don't pirate software, I actually don't
believe much in copy protection, but I know some people do. (If I were a SW
pirate, I never would have bothered coming to this forum to see what my
options were vs. spending $3000 for 3DS- instead I'd be searching for a
pirate's BBS- and I do know a few- to D/L the already cracked version for
free + LD phone charges 🙂 ). Piracy is a long time and overly discussed
issue, so I don't want to get into it, though. 🙂
I would hope you could get decent performance from 3DS with around 8-16 Mb
of RAM and a 486/25 (and plenty of IDE hard drive space). (I actually have
a 386/40, but may upgrade my motherboard soon- 486/33 MB's are around $600
in this area.) Does 3DS support the Sierra RAMDAC hicolor (15-bit color)
chip? In addition, I presume it can render 24 bit images on HW that can't
display 24 bit color.
Thanks again, -Tom
P.S. It's so difficult and expensive to have fun these days. 🙂
Tom:
A 486/33 with 16MB will be just fine. Eventually, you'll want to pop for
more RAM, but 16MB is OK for a long time. There are 3DS drivers from
Panacea and Vibrant which support the Sierra HC. I personally render 24 bit
TGAs to file, then use VPIC to view them on my HC board. Be sure to buy a
CD ROM drive.
Evan
BTW – your student version of 3DS won't be upgradable to the next version
unless you pay the full price difference from retail. Just thought you
ought to know.