Please don’t derail the talk here into talking about Unity, there is a thread for it and Errvald and many others can have fun showing their skills to defend Unity like they want there. Here we want to discuss Stingary and its threat for the gaming industry and game engines for the reasons I mentioned eariler. The game engine will be shown on Wednesday, then we will compare it existing engines.
Please be civil everyone and not derail the thread! There’s a thread for Unity already; I suggest you post your thoughts there. Thanks!
Thank you very much for highlighting that! It would be a pity if this turns into fanatics’ war ! 
Pretty sure Autodesk is aiming for serious money here.
There will be no reason at all for the average person to pay huge prices or any price for autodesk stingray when UE4 and UT5 is FREE.
Autodesk limits you to student use only, you cannot actually sell your game commercially without paying them money upfront.
Stringray is most likely designed for big companies etc
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Yes, that is what I am referring to, big companies may directly invest into getting Stingray and they may get great deals from Autodesk since they use Maya/3DSMax etc …
In a sadistic selfish initiative Autodesk may start to prevent importing FBX models from their tools to any other game engine and forces you to use their game engine. I know this won’t happen any time soon, but the idea that a modeling and animation software maker company creates their own game engine aasks many questions. I really don’t know what Autodesk has in mind !
You might want to merge this with:
https://.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?50862-Autodesk-acquires-Bitsquid-to-create-their-own-game-engine
Autodesk must be very ****** off 'cause nobody has accepted their buyout offers.
I would never support Autodesk, they are absolutely ridiculous in their draconian measures.
When I emailed them once and I asked if I could use a student version of MAYA, and when time to release my game if I could simply apply for a subscription or buy their product they told me flat out NO. So it means I would have to redo the entire models etc in the new paid for version and the student version would be of no use. I assume they can check some meta files to know which is which.
In the end I settled for Blender 3D and UE4 through Git Hub and now its free.
I told autodesk to **** off. Where do they even expect students and solo devs to get $5000 from? and why would anyone pay them when you could simply use blender 3D and UE4, back then you only had to pay $20 for UE4 anyways.
Oh really? I didn’t know that. So if you used student version for for models then you wanted to release tour game and to get full paid version, they prevented you from using the models you did with student version? WTH? So they are wicked people making student version useless and forcing you to do everything using the paid version and making models doesn’t get done in one day or one month so you need multiple subscriptions till you finish your game. This is really sucks. At least Epic, even before going free, you can cancel your subscription or when it ends you can still work with UE4, and when you want to ship your game you had to get another one time sbscription to just ship it without crippling you. Now UE4 is free. Epic are reall the smartest and kindest devs on earth. Here is a sugesstion for Epic 5 I mentioned it in the OP). Please make your in-engine modeler and animation tool and be independent from other tools then you will really crush them all ! 
Bitsquid had some impressive features. Stingray will probably be targeting areas like pre-vis heavily. The feature parity with Unreal should be high. One to watch for sure.
So instead of learning 3dsMax and Mudbox, I should opt in for Maya LT? Is it like, all in one?
I do not trust Autodesk for 1 second.
They do not give a **** about the indie community, solo devs etc. They are a huge money making business who cares solely for the purpose of MONEY.
EPIC actually cares about the Indie scene, sure it is possibly that because of Unity that EPIC gave away UE4 for free. But the bottom line is Epic cared enough to do it, I emailed Autodesk once and asked if I could use their student versions of their software to create work that would be used in final release of a game for commercial use and that I would be more than willing to pay for a subscription or even buy their product if my game actually makes the money to cover it. They said flat out NO
I said ok how about I make a game in student Maya, and then when time to release it I buy the full version of Maya? they also said no they say I will have to redo everything from scratch with the paid for Maya.
They have an incredibly nasty draconian policy where they dump their load of feces on faces of any dev who isn’t rich. I was actually going to just use their software and not even care since they would never be able to determine or even find my game among the millions out there. But in the end I was so ****** by them I went with Blender 3D because I saw EPIC was supporting Blender.
I would never give their company a cent or support them in anyway. They also seem to forget not everybody is from a first world country and hence not everybody can afford these stupid prices but almost everyone is more than willing to give back and pay for whatever they want if their product is actually a success.
Its only because of EPIC that everybody suddenly wants to join out the indie scene and pretend like they actually care. Even Unity free edition looked like a joke and was highly unlikely that anybody was going to release a final and full game with that. It looked like a PS2 game from 2001 if you tried to create a game in Unity 4 Free.
pre-vis ? What is that ?
Sorry I should have been more clear, appears to lack a hyphen as well.
I figure they might have more emphasis on plug & play assets for this sort of movie pre-production and such things.
I **** you not my good sir.
I told the woman who was the rep that I am not exactly from a first world country. Sure the Caribbean isn’t as badly off as places like Africa and India, we are not remotely close to as badly off as those folks but we still are considered poor. $700 US is actually about $4500 of my money.
I explained to this woman that I cannot for any reason afford their product right now but I am willing to pay for it at a later date after I have saved up the money.
I asked that I be allowed to use the student version of MAYA LT, and when I publish my game and I get some income from it I will pay for the software. She said no so I said ok how about I use the student version of MAYA LT, and when I am ready to release my game I pay you the full asking price of $700 US for the full MAYA LT product?
She said NO you are not allowed to do that and furthermore all work done in the student version cannot be transferred or reused in anyway within the paid for product. You would have to start over from scratch.
I responded to her in my native 3rd world language. I said **** off and go screw yourself, you don’t want my money then I will use blender 3D or find another company who is willing to work with me within my budget and my economy. Its a good thing for Blender.
I think it would be cool if EPIC released a 3D modeling software like Blender, I wonder why EPIC has never released one though?
^ this is an interesting topic. From the stories I have heard, there are lots of companies some very large who uses cracked torrented MAYA and 3DS MAX etc.
Due to the enormous cost of Autodesk’s products very few people can afford it. I am not sure how they are going to know that people used a student version to create their work. How can they possibly know this? after it has been placed into a game?
It also seems odd that we have never heard of a case where Autodesk actually sued someone for using a student version of MAYA to build a game. I have never heard of such a case hmm.
But then look how easy a student copy is to obtain? whats stopping anyone from using it? I am willing to bet 70% of games on google store for android is either made with a pirated autodesk modeler or a student copy
As an animation studio we may consider Stringray just to speed up our rendering 
There are quite a few stylized projects we render using Hardware 2.0 and the speed benefit is unmatched. Majority of looks will be handled in post anyway.
Autodesk first problem is in marketing department. You can’t target indie devs with 1k euro license for Maya RT + upgrade every year. Simple as that.
lolz, all we need now is a frostbite release.