As suspected, after the announcement of the subscription plan for Maya LT, Autodesk revealed that its products and suites will become available under a rental license as well as a purchased perpetual license.
Not only are the plans available for Autodesk Media and Entertainment's packages like its Design and Creation Suites (opens in new tab), Autodesk 3ds Max (opens in new tab), Autodesk Maya (opens in new tab), and the new Autodesk Maya LT (opens in new tab), but are also available for its CAD and Engineering products such as Revit (opens in new tab), AutoCAD (opens in new tab) and Inventor (opens in new tab).
"Our customers wanted more choices and flexibility in how they access our portfolio of design, engineering and entertainment creation tools. We expect rental plans to be attractive across all the industries we serve, especially for freelancers, startups or businesses that are project-based in nature," said Andrew Anagnost, senior vice president of Industry Strategy and Marketing at Autodesk. "This model allows customers to compete with the highest quality, industry leading software, while using only what they need when they need it."
Design projects and even studios are becoming more and more project-based with more and more of the people working on them on a freelance or contract basis instead of as employees of the studio. Having affordable subscription rental plans for the tools that artists and designers need should go a long way towards facilitating their being able to have the tools necessary to do their work. The rental service includes the same level of support received by subscription customers, meaning that the rental customer doesn't need to worry about having an old unsupported version of the software or file format incompatibilities induced by using different versions of the software -- which can always be a headache when working with a lot of freelancers. The rental service also includes access so some Autodesk 360 (opens in new tab) services and basic support.
Availability
The option to purchase a monthly, quarterly or annual rental plan will be available starting now. New rental plans apply to products including Autodesk AutoCAD Design Suite (opens in new tab), Autodesk AutoCAD Inventor LT Suite (opens in new tab), Autodesk AutoCAD Revit LT Suite (opens in new tab), Autodesk Building Design Suite (opens in new tab), Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suite (opens in new tab), Autodesk Factory Design Suite (opens in new tab), Autodesk Infrastructure Design Suite (opens in new tab), Autodesk Plant Design Suite (opens in new tab), Autodesk Product Design Suite (opens in new tab), Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3ds Max, and Autodesk Maya LT. Availability varies by country. For more information, visit http://www.autodesk.com/pay-as-you-go (opens in new tab) .