Hi Thomas, Hi Stef
Ok, here are my 5 cents. First of all, you two seem to be nice, understanding and even intelligent people. So nothing against you nor against eovia.net. It's a fine thing for sure.
But in this forum are some people who are frankly pissed of with Eovia software, people who invested lots of money just to change then to other products. Me, for example, I started with Amapi Designer 7, it was the only affordable tool I found to solve a certain problem for a customer. Up to then I was certainly interested in 3D and always had thought, that this would be something I'd like to work with if I could spare the time. I didn't know anything about it. Because there was no renderer anymore, I bought Carrara Studio 3, just one day before the announcement of C4 (grr, but nobodys fault). And then I was hooked to 3d (and not just for a hobby, i use it for my work, too). I got Carrara 4 Pro, Amapi Pro (why? because the Designer was so buggy I couldn't really work with) and then Hexagon. So, I'm a good customer, too, I would say (I own some plugins, too). You see, I did trust in Eovia, I put money in this trust - and I still was learning and learnig. But the more complex my projects got, the more problems I had with the software. I even had to fight it. And in this fight I was not alone - all the problems are mentioned somewhere in this forum (I had some export problems with Amapi Pro, too. It works fine with Carrara but not always with something else, even the patched version). And then I learned something completely new and different: There is affordable software around which actually works with models a bit more complicated. Even exporting isn't a problem.
So I actually was pissed off (and keep beeing even if I had lots of patience), as there are several things about Eovia-Products I don't like:
1. Even patched there are buggy. Even Hexagon has still some bugs (and the way you have to confirm the numbers after putting them in is just plain nonsense). It could be a truly great software it it would be finetuned a bit. It was a good thing to make the update free, by the way.
2. The support doesn't work. One gets a solution only if one writes something about those problems in a forum for everyone to read (and not too friendly. There is only a reaction if there is serious damage to the Eovia-PR).
3. Some of the problems are not solved anyway. I don't buy C5 (I don't trust Eovia anymore), so I will never be able to export correctly to lwo, 3ds and so on (there are even some issues with obj) or to import those formats. As was mentioned in the chat at 3dps, those import & export problems are not considered an important issue for C4.
4. I got the impression the products are not finished when sold. Today, that's not unusual (but more for games than graphic software). I don't like this attitude but when Eovia works this way, it should produce patches fast and even faster - until at least that functions work
which are (or were) mentioned big-mouthed in the advertising on the eovia-web page (for example the export to and import from several formats). There should be updates for C4, Amapi Pro 7.5 and Hexagon until they work like promised.
And no, as a customer I shouldn't to do the beta-testing, shouldn't write problem reports and lose even more time than I did with doing models over and over again till I get what I need.
5. There was and probably is something wrong about the marketing (it's the theme of some older threads in here). I wouldn't buy C5 now (if I would anyway) as there is probably a big christmas sale planned.
See, it would have been much cheaper for me to stay with eovia-products instead investing anew in an other software solution. I did it, because I lost my trust in Eovia completely.
And, well, I'm one person, one of the customers, but what I wrote is certainly true for some others (and others who aren't even aware of this forum) and those are some of the reasons why the bilance sheet looks as it looks (and probably not as good as it could. I'm sure of that. I would bet on it).
I hope, you two understand now a little bit better, why some people get angry when problems arise with downloads. It's nothing against both of you, especially not against eovia.net. But you two probably can't change what bugs me and others.
With kind regards
DrZen
P.S.: And no, I don't even expect someone to read carefully what I wrote.