Vlad,

thanks for the link and the insight to what seems to be a reasonable Maya alternative. I'm definately going to look further into it as having just one 3d app under my belt could limit my options.

On another note, I got a reply from autodesk last night after voicing my concerns about what options were available to me if my university were to upgrade to 8.5.

A couple of quotes from the mail I recieved....

"There was no purchase protection offered for the 8.5 release, and typically such purchase protection are on licenses purchased within a 30 day period prior to first customer shipment of the new release."

There are going to be some upset customers, especially since 8.5 seemed to come from nowhere so they weren't given the option to wait a few weeks to upgrade or purchase for the first time.

And....

"The understanding that we have, based on what information is available to us, is that you can move files back and forth between versions. Feature sets, or activity requiring feature sets, that are available only in the higher version would not work on the older version."

If anyone has access to Maya 8 and 8.5 could you please try opening a scene file from the 8.5 in 8. The answer I was given seems a little vague as an 8.5 scene file could be created with the new feature sets or actions that require them embedded within.

I still don't know whether my university is going to be upgrading so perhaps I don't have anything to worry about but I can't help feeling a little on edge that I may have spent quite a lump of my annual budget on something that I will only be able to use at university for the first half of this year.

Cheers,

Mat.