Once again folks miss the point with 3dsMax, if you want to model, texture, animate output to FPSC, then thats great use a cheaper program that does all that. The only reason Max became an industry standard for major games companies was because the designers they hired to model the media were trained in it, not because it was particularly suited, in fact it is no longer the software of choice for these guys you will find they now use Maya, yep...because the best designers are
trained in it.
Both these programs are primarily about creating CGI for film and tv, the render engine (plus the plug ins created such as VRay) the abilty to network (render farms) there are many, many more things involved in bloating the price of such software.
They have both nurbs and straight polygon modeling functionality. They have render chaining and broadcast quality output. They have motion inputs for capture quality animation.....need I go on? all things that take time learn (are disciplines in themselves) and are probably not something most users around here are ever going to use.
Also take a look at Photoshop your not going to get anything extra in there if all you want is to manipulate or create textures, its industry standard for the same reasons stated above in that the folk hired by companies want trained people, and guess what they trained in... also photoshop has automated actions that are used for batch processing large amounts of images (a must in industry) hence the higher price.
If you only want to model and animate you dont need Max many free and low price programs can do the same thing.
If you only want to create textures you dont need Photoshop many free and low cost programs can do the same job.
There is one more factor in the expense of all of Adobe's and Autodesk products, but especially Photoshop: the cost of trying to prevent software piracy. Unfortunately that cost gets passed onto the legit customers.
The problem is kids who think because something is labeled 'professional' means it will make it easier and better.
Quote: "firespots for your characters"
Firespots are not a feature of Max, they are simply a bone named 'firespot' any old bone in any old program will do. Not picking on you personally, just pointing that out.
I promise this is the last time I will go off on one of these rants, but I get tired of people recommending this program to beginners.
3dsMax is NOT the best software for FPSC.
