Autodesk Buy Up Maya

Maya now are owned by Autodesk.... They paid $182 million in cash to Alias.
Autodesk has 3D studio Max and Maya...

Maya exists for Solaris, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.
Autodesk only releases 3D Studio Max for Windows.

They will definitely control the 3D modeling software market.

in this year, first adobe and macromedia, now autodesk and Alias
what's next? Microsoft buys Sun? IBM buys everything?

source
http://forums.wincustomize.com/

Autodesk press releases
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/
Alias press releases
http://www.autodesk.com/company/newsroom/overview

Bothers me some, not much. I remember when 3D Studio under Kentix (yeah I butchered that spelling) released a version for Macintosh as well as Windows. Autodesk killed the Mac version. However, there are still several other programs on the market. We use Lightwave in our shop (video production mainly) for titles and 3D animation. Lightwave is still one of the most cost effective pro CGI applications whose internal rendering engine (while beginning to show its age) is still capable of rendering broadcast quality images. Most folks I know using Maya use a 3rd Party Rendering Engine. Mental Ray is the current favourite. Then you also have Softimage with XSI that is winning a lot of praise from the CG community. Don't count out Blender either. They've made up a lot of ground very quickly. Will probably be a couple steps behind the industry leaders, but can't beat the price or portablity. Something I question is whether we'll see a new Mac version of 3D studio with the move to Intel chips...

I use Maya alot, and I like autodesk so I think this conversion is a good one.

3Ds Max is the standard 3D modelling package , yet not the perfect one , So by first taking charge of 3Ds max ( autodesk 3ds max 8 ) insted of Discreet then this move , which will benfiet MAX alot .