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If, and it is an if, Autodesk acquire E-On what happens to the non-professional offerings? Goodbye Pioneer, Esprit, Pro and Complete?

You can bet that the first move will be to kill ALL non-pro versions (XSI Foundation has been immediately terminated) so, if you want to render external scenes, your last (reasonably priced) option would be Carrara Pro, or, maybe, Kerkythea.

I am quite doubtful about the possibility of our hobby remaining alive in the future; high end tools are every day becoming higher end and there are almost no alternatives on the low side, the thing that could save all of us (Blender) is in the hands of penguinbans (a word I coined, it is the merging of penguinistas and talibans...) who pride themselves at locking its functionalities within a deliberately user hostile interface.

Perhaps we all should start reading digital photography magazines (I have started doing so...).

Bye :sad:

GIMP 2.7.4, Inkscape 0.48, Genetica 3.6 Basic, FilterForge 3 Professional, Blender 2.61, SketchUp 8, PoserPro 2012, Vue 10 Infinite, World Machine 2.3, GeoControl 2