I'm just sitting here with a huge, stupid looking grin on my face.. The honors college here at ASU just got a $10 Million dollar grant a few weeks back.. the first thing they did was revamp the honors college computer lab: We got 10 new computers, 3 of which are SGI's, and all ten have MAYA!! I'm just living on cloud nine, here.. Not to mention that they're now offering Maya classes next semester (which I can't take then, but hopefully in the spring...) I can't wait for a chance to get my hands on that program.. it's now a pity I'm going home so soon.. =) (Can you tell I'm happy?) Rosh =)

Two words: Summer Session :-)

Nah.. I'm going home.. miss my friends and don't wanna take summer school.. besides, I've already got my plane tickets and everything.. but I'll actually have something to look forward to coming back for. =) Rosh

Two different words: I'm Jealous ;-)

It's pretty funny.. Because they're a school and teaching a maya class, Alias sold them 20 licenses for just $2000.. isn't that insane? =) Rosh

That's strange, actually, unless they're being subsidized for helping a school. Maya sells for what, 1500 or so per copy? So educational rates would usually be around 600-900. per pop. That's one HECK of a deal they got! Either that, or they are so disgustingly rich from the overpriced software that they can afford to, effectively, give it away ($100/license may actually be close to "cost", given what talented programmers can make, and the cost of documentation and such)

Yeah.. I think it's mostly good PR and also good advertising.. as students see how awesome Maya is, most of which, if they're taking the class, are going into that field, some might see their way into buying it for their own businesses later on.. =) It's actually pretty good business. =) Rosh

Oh, I'd kill to be able to use Maya, it's the only program I've ever seen that renders better than Bryce and Carrara

Maya is $15,000, not $1500, per copy.

Who writes and sells Maya? But with me, at 15 grand, it will have to stay a pipedream. What is in it for it to be so expen$$$$$$$$$$ive?

Damn' - I think I hate you Roshigoth :) I'd love to get my hands on Maya. Okay, so there's less of a learning curve and more of a learning Everest but still...... Anthony: Maya is top end, top end s/ware. There's basically very little it can't do - it's used for CGI heavy films. Paul

Maya is the only program I've ever seen that renders better than Bryce and Carrara. It was used for Stuart Little, among other things. But it only runs on win NT or win 2000, the replacement for nt. I don't know about the learning curve. Hell, I'm having a hard time learning 3DS because every tutorial out there assumes you already understand the UI. I'm still trying to learn the UI, and the manual ain't no help. I need 3DS for dummies. But I think Maya is such that you really need to have already mastered a couple of other professional modeling tools before you take a shot at it.

Yeah... I was talking to the professor who's gonna be teaching the class, and he says basically, with maya, you have to know where everything is to get the full use out of it.. most of the stuff's half-way hidden. As for what it's got, lets see: Absolutely AWESOME rendering, realistic hair that you can pretty much "paint" on (that also moves realistically when you move the object, etc), the ability to "paint" in 3d (ie, you make a 3d object, then you can just paint it in, and paint a few copies, and make it animate that easily...), collision detection, and so much more it's pretty much impossible to list everything.. I still have yet to get over there and start playing with it... Rosh

But still, please, who writes and distributes and sells Maya?

Maya is by Alias|Wavefront, pretty big names in the industry, the same Wavefront as in the .obj files in fact. By the way, that $15,000 is for the Maya Unlimited professional package, which includes fur and clothing plugins and other goodies. The basic Maya Complete package I think is "only" $7500, or maybe less, and they have a crossgrade discount for Max and Softimage users (iirc), and a big disount for students, but still not exactly Hobbyist pricing. I was going to check, but their web site, http://www.aliaswavefront.com/ seems to be down, or anyway, I get a DNS error. Regards- Lemurtek