Maxon 820

[Garoa Wolff]

Mostof the features here are nice quality of life additions and maxon really is trying to become the next foundry with an overprices pricing scheme on all their software packages compared to the competition out there.

My issue is the 1 Activation, and uncertain amount of updates for what is essentially full price again. To make it worth our while, we would need at least 3 years of updates at no additional cost. Having to manually activate and deactivate every time I want to use zBrush in my down time on my Surface at my day job just sounds exhausting. And quite frankly a bit petty.

For a hobby user, who is not currently making money using zBrush, the future is definitely uncertain. I would happily pay $100-$200 US per year for updates. More than that, especially the $660 Perpetual upgrade cost is just not in the cards.

Cinema 4D is integrated into After Effects and Cinema 4D Lite is included for full functionality. It's not shareware, malware, bloatware, nor adware. And it's definitely not Maxon taking over your computer. It's a fully functional version licensed for use with After Effects. It's well documented in the user manual, including instructions on how to remove it if you'd like to do so (of course, you're limiting what AE can do if you uninstall it).

You cannot assume that your users will consult an Adobe user manual on this if programs with no recognizable relation to Adobe appear among the newly installed programs - and not every Adobe Cloud customer primarily uses After Effects, relevant here, and is already informed about the context.

Personally I think it is well established within the software industry to include a warning on installation about 3rd party software and give users an opt in/out during installation. At least, that's what reputable firms do.

I also find it highly odd that organisations with a near monopoly in software need to have unpaid users who are not employed by said firm to provide support on their software and yet defend their actions with a somewhat militant perspective rather than said firm aknowledging and dealing with the cause for complaint.

Your response handily evades the question of whether this is potentially adding a backdoor for the users computer to be pooled into a server farm. Is it, or is it not allowing my machine to be pooled hardware without my explicit consent to do so?

Seeing as Microsoft see it fit to make my machine part of a distribution network for their software updates, it seems entirely possible that Adobe may be trying to do the same thing, and given the legal and financial implications of the installation of 3rd party software the lack of notification could give rise to serious legal issues.

As the managing director of my organisation I dont have time to read the user manual for every piece of software that I use, and I find a condescending response to people effectively saying that they are incompetent because of having real security and performance concerns is not helpful and honestly why are you bothering other than to feather your own ego?

Nope not when I have never used the software or know IF I'm even going to use it. Last thing I need is an application from Adobe installing undisclosed software that is not Adobe's. If you read the user manuals for sofware you are not using then you have more time than I. Congrats.

For what it's worth, junior IT staff working in video and audio post would be expected to know how to configure After Effects, including the 3D integration. Specific settings might be on-the-job learning, but certainly not what's what.

So I'll take that as a no.

For what it's worth its standard practice in an IT department to install "unknown" software for testing and evaluation in a test enviroment. Again, just never have thought I have to treat Adobe as "unknown".

Let's head off another surprise here: After Effects, Cinema 4D, Premiere Pro, Media Encoder, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Animate, etc do not run well on virtual machines. They need to be tested on real hardware. The common practice in broadcast is to thoroughly test a workststion (or any candidates for use as a workstation) before rolling out updates and/or new software. The same goes for academic lab environments.

and did you install a product you don't use??, really if you're a motion graphic designer you will thank adobe for this integration and the ability to use the C4D files inside AE, and as Warren says, you can simply uninstall the C4D light if you don't need it. finally, if you want you can ask adobe to make installing the C4d light optional, post your idea here

Right on, Warren. You provided excellent service and tried your best to explain basic concepts and procedures to extremely ignorant individuals that can't seem to grasp the simplest of ideas. It was painful reading through the thread, but it was very helpful nonetheless. Thank you for your time and dedication.

It's probably a frustrating thread because of a choice by yourselves very early on to criticise people for installing software before reading the whole user manual cover to cover as if we are being handed out this great tool by the kind hearted charity of the saint of adobes goodwill and we're too much of a bunch of feckless dossers to appreciate it.

Martin was absolutely right in saying we shouldn't be expected to read the entire user manual for every piece of software before installation, which is absurd, I was right in saying it is standard practice to include a warning in the installer, and yes it is a legitimate legal/security concern because various legislations might force companies in certain sectors to vet maxon prior to installation.

So all in all, your repeated assertions that we are somhow morons for not gleefully lapping up your schtick and comparing us to the office intern in an attempt to belittle people just underlines why I am going to f&ck adobe right off and go to some of their competitors who likely can afford to actually pay for some genial customer support staff and whose manuals I will probably choose not to read, as is my perogative.

Greetings,

I scripted Maxon for our lab environment earlier this year. I modified their provided script to decrypt the user and password from an included hash so it wasn't stored in plain text. The command is the same otherwise. What is the issue you are running into? Only suggestion I would have is to make sure the script has execute permissions for the user logging into the machine.

Our launch agent

Question about Maxon, is it true or not that the only way to download / install Maxon apps or plugins (Red Giant Trapcode) in this case, is to use the Maxon App, and have every user dowload / install the app (themselves) with account creds? If so, Yikes! Has anyone tried doing a Composer snapshot and just grabbing the delta and Create Package in Composer?

Hi macguitarman,

Most if not all of Maxon can be automated with some setup. I do not have the end user (students in our case) install anything. For our lab spaces we have automated the following apps / plugins.

Thank you so much, and the prompt reply. Yes, the classic copy an installer to tmp directory and invoke a script... This method looks to alleviate any need to have the Maxon.app installed or used, and having to have that app log in and using a hash password, but, thank you for the code on how to encrypt and decrypt a password, very helpful.

As for uninstaller, I don't know. We usually wipe and provision at the start of each semester. we've never had to uninstall maxon or adobe mid semester. You could try looking in the application folder to see if it has an uninstall script inside of the app (they were nice enough to have install scripts), but it's not knowledge I currently have.

If you deploy a script from jamf, you can include one of the required strings as a parameter so you don't have everything inside of the script. Not perfect either way, but it does help my piece of mind to at least not have the passwords storred in plain text as Maxon suggests.

@lhays2, thank you so much, much appreciated. I am trying to to get a launchagent package (in Composer), and for some reason the the plist will not load, no I idea why, permissions are good, etc. I can load it on the test Mac from the command line, but not with a post install script in Composer...Might you be able to point me in the direction with what you are doing with launchctl in your script. Thank you again, and btw, the decrypt code is working great... PS, I thought the script has to be local on the Mac in order to load in launchctl, so I am not sure how the parameters would work... Thanks again for the time, much obliged.

@macguitarman

I didn't realize you could @ someone on here. Neat!

I do not load the LanchAgent via a script I reboot the machine and let it handle the process. There's also a post install script located at /Library/Application Support/Red Giant/Services/fuse-mac-createuser-postflight.sh. that I upload to JAMF and deploy on our machines. I run it right after the base Maxon app. It creates a service to help run the applications. Because of that service and the launch Agent I find it better to do all of the app, and script installs, then reboot the machine so everything can come up naturally.

As for why the PKG isn't running the script I would assume the package isn't signed. a unsigned PKG will not run any scripts. you can sign with either an Apple developer ID or using the internal JAMF CA. -articles/page/Creating_a_Signing_Certificate_Using_Jamf_Pros...

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