@LeslieDeanBrown Here’s what the FAQ said about why development was stopped:
Autodesk has developed products that include these underlying technologies and provide
similar capabilities. Autodesk is simplifying our portfolio and centralizing development
efforts to better serve our customers.
In other words, the plugins brought in relatively little money, they weren’t seen as strategic, and the functionality is available in other Autodesk products. Autodesk in general is trying to reduce the number of products it is producing, in order to focus more development effort on the main products. Also, Rhino is developing SubD tools.
I certainly don’t have anything against McNeel or Rhino users, it was just hard to justify further development given all those things.
I think this is a perfectly valid reason. Thanks for chiming in Tom.
I’d go even further: I think Fusion 360 could be a really good complement product to Rhino. You can have a parametric solution that’s easy to use (once you get familiar with its interface and UI approach) and that’s really affordable. The toolset is limited compared to Solidworks but evolving quickly. I was a non-believer in F360 for the longest time, they product was very very rough and totally amateur, but they have done enough work to make me change my mind, or at least open to try it for a while. It does many things that Rhino just doesn’t. And as I mention earlier (in this or other threads) it’s limited in surfacing in a way that you will still want to use Rhino for the tough surfacing jobs.
I just wished Autodesk leveraged this opportunity to bring in more customers from this side by:
Offering a more direct way to go back and forth between Rhino <> Fusion360.
Let me use OpenSubD smoothing in SubD models (faster more reliable), instead of just T-spline smoothing.
One more thing: I run a business here, there’s only loyalty to my family and my friends, including some of them in the McNeel team. But loyalty to a piece of software? that’s the most irrational and self-limiting thing I have heard all year here. Go out there and make cool shit, with anything and everything. Life’s too short and this is just software. Have fun and keep an open mind.
I’m just being completely honest. And let’s face it, it is partly a money move (which is fine, that’s how businesses operate).
T-splines is great but I am still really just getting started with rhino. I don’t want to learn yet another piece of software.
I am on an educational licence at the moment. What happens to that? When is the last chance to buy a full version of t-splines 3.4 or 4.0, or is it already too late? I was seriously looking at getting t-splines, but I can’t afford it right now.
I think the existing users just want to know that it is going to keep working with Rhino 5 for several more years. Why does autodesk have to stop selling it? FAir enough you don’t want to continue developing it. But why can’t you just continue to sell it with the proviso that it will only ever work with Rhino5?
Just to confirm, rhinorudi was correct, the last day was 7 Jan 2017.
That’s a valid question, with pros and cons on each side. I can’t comment on the reasoning of everyone involved in the decision, but even just selling a product without any updates incurs cost - support, attention, time, and so forth. Also, if Autodesk continued to sell the product without any updates on an outdated version of Rhino, there would be the opposite argument: if Autodesk is selling it and making money from it, they should at least support it and develop it. There’s not a perfect solution.
Whilst I agree with the sentiment, my experience is slightly different. Yes, loyalty to software just for the sake of it would be ridiculous. However, when you buy professional software you enter into a (hopefully) long term relationship with the developer - that’s how I see it anyway. You invest financially, but more importantly you invest a great deal of time in learning how to use the software. That investment engenders a sense of loyalty, but I do agree that it has limits.
bad example of loyalty: I know plenty of people that are barely employable because they invested too heavily in Alias (or any other dying product) and they refused change.
There’s a fine balance between long term strategy and feeling limited by external limitations such as a job, a place or a piece of software. Especially when those external limitations are things you can change. That’s my only point. Obviously I also agree on long-term relationships, that’s why I’m frequently here for 17 years now.
I still question that it is wise to try to invest into a long-term relationship with a plugin maker, their business models have proven multiple times that they do not scale or work for the long haul. At least in the Rhino ecosystem. I cannot think of a single exception to this rule, except for some rendering products. But that’s because they reverse the plugin model. They are a fantastic rendering and they are the rendering platform, and all the various modelers (like Rhino, Solidworks, Modo, etc) work with it.
Yes, I think we are in agreement. I guess the crux of the issue is how much of a tolerance to accepting limitations you have: I’ll always try to give the developer a chance to make the improvements I need. If they can’t do it, do it badly or take too long, that’s the point I jump ship. But it takes a lot for me to do it these days - done it too many times in the past.
I haven’t been using Rhino as long as you so the issues with plug-ins are relatively new to me. The T-Splines EOL was a nasty surprise and I agree that getting reliant on any plug-in leaves you rather exposed. This is the fly in the ointment of the Rhino ecosystem, I hope McNeel can do something to address it.
I have come late to this discussion but I wanted to echo some of the comments made earlier in this thread by Joe Meiser and hopefully help the Rhino team to understand the role t-splines can play in production. Personally I’d hate to lose t-splines functionality within the Rhino environment.
I use t-splines and rhino daily in my workplace to bridge between fabrication and scanning (Various), engineering (Solidworks) and previsualization (Maya). It has been indispensable as a tool to retopologise from scan data, reconcile sub’d geometry from maya against incoming files from Solidworks and model complicated organic forms quickly and most importantly to accurate dimension, to be passed back to Maya (unfortunately Maya sorely lacks the accurate dimensioning available in t-splines/Rhino). I also use t-splines in conjunction with grasshopper, Point Set Deviation and to export mesh/poly geometry into Solidworks via T-Splines NURBS conversion functionality.
I have tried several other software offerings but nothing comes close to t-splines/Rhino’s abilities and think it will be nigh impossible to replace it at this stage.
Professionally I have seen many software packages thrown under the bus over the years (Softimage and Shake spring to mind) that did a great job – it’s a shame to lose yet another one.
This is a very expensive workaround, but Gemvision Matrix (Jewelry plugin/skin for Rhino) is still shipping with T-Splines. Not sure what that future looks like, but it is another avenue for exploration.
I got the lastest downloads of both VSR and T-Splines so should have things covered at least in R5 for a while. Got a call from a salesman at AutoDesk yesterday begging me to let him setup an online tutorial with one of their people for Fusion 360. Told him it was worth a look, we’ll see!
Pitty about the 7k pricetag… kicking myself for not shelling out for t-splines when I had a chance…
I appreciate that fusion can do it, but its just another software to add to my already diverse (read: overcomplicated) toolset…
Re. Matrix and T-Splines…Stuller website now has a banner indicating Clayoo is now available for Matrix…this could possibly indicate the end of their T-Splines integration as well…
I have followed this T-Splines chat for a bit and find that if the final release of V6 were to include similar features, especially those that reduce the number of control points, it would be a boon to yacht and ship design. I followed a link to the use of T-Splines, ORCA and Rhino authored by a Dutch naval arch that was most impressive, especially when viewing the remarkably few control points used to create a bulb bow ship hull that included a bulbous propeller addition as well. Whatever the case may be, I’m totally devoted to Rhino as I have been using it since its initial free download back in the days when I was still a young man! Cheers, Rob
Rob, Too bad you are just now discovering the Dutch lofting thing. I was blown away by it when it first came out and I ended up doing a version for round bilge sailboat hulls as well as one with at hard chine for planing hulls. This uses simple Rhino history and is really useful. I later used the same method within Grasshopper to do the same thing.
No, wrong tutorial. I don’t recall the exact name of the author; he’s a Dutch NA. The video begins showing a bulb bow ship hull with a single screw prop bulb as well. The entire video focuses on the use of T-Splines, Rhino and ORCA. This is the link: http://blog.rhino3d.com/2010/11/ship-hull-design-training-with-t.html
