At SIGGRAPH2010, Autodesk was advertising a collection of new ROI studies done by Pfeiffer Consulting, showing the vast impact newer versions of 3dsMax and Maya have had on their users.  One frequent argument from managers and people not intimately familiar with the products is what changed between 3dsMax 2009 and 2008 that justifies the expense?  It’s still a modeling, animation, and rendering package, so what justifies the outlay of cash?

The new reports attempt to answer this by analyzing the impressive improved performance offered in the newer versions of the Autodesk products, and benchmarks several frequently used features.  They present the results like so, showing the improvement between 3dsMax 2008 and 3dsMax 2011.

After analyzing several aspects of the software, focusing heavily on Autodesk’s admitted “big improvements” like the new shader manager, the Quadrify functions, and improved rigging tools, they then take the several areas they benchmarked and calculate how many times a day this happens in an animators life, and how much time is saved over the course of a day, week, and year.  Then, for the most substantial impact to the bean counters who are typically reponsible for signing off on the purchases, they look at the amount of money you “save” over the course of a year by upgrading.  The results:

  • At $100/hr, an animator could “lose” almost $16,000/year in 3dsMax 2008
  • At $100/hr, an animator could “lose” almost $20,000/year in Maya 8.5

The studies are well done, and contain a wealth of information about the improvements Autodesk has made in the last several years, both through routine optimization of the code and the new “Project Excalibur” initiative they’ve been working on.

“Our customers are constantly balancing creativity and innovation with the need to meet tight production deadlines and budgets,” said Stig Gruman, Autodesk vice president, digital entertainment. “As a result, Autodesk has focused on developing both innovative creative tools as well as on under-the-hood architectural changes to improve the performance of Maya and 3ds Max. The cumulative impact of the improvements assessed in the Pfeiffer studies on modern production pipelines is significant. The Pfeiffer studies help illustrate how productivity gains in everyday operations can lead to savings of thousands of dollars per year.”

Personally, I think information like this is invaluable for not just Autodesk products, but all graphic design products.  As these products continue their annual release cycle they risk running into situations similar to Microsoft’s Office suite where users (and professionals) simply stop upgrading since there is no perceivable reason to.  Photoshop CS5 still touches up photos, just like CS2, so why upgrade?  For most consumers, it doesn’t matter, but for professionals these numbers are critical, justifying not only why they should upgrade but quantifying the benefits of such.

However, I do take some issue with why they chose to benchmark their new products (2011) against such old versions.  Why not compare 3dsMax2011 against 2010, instead of the 3-year old 2008?  Why not compare Maya 2011 against 2010, instead of the 2007 version.  Of course this makes for the most impressive results in the ROI study, but is anyone out there in the professional space still using Maya 8.5?

You can read a full press release about the ROI studies here, or read the individual reports:

If you have a question or concern about the study, post in the comments!

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