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Earlier this year, Autodesk gave the middle and high school students, currently in school in the US, their software suite as part of President... AutoDesk to Offer Software to Schools Free of Charge

Earlier this year, Autodesk gave the middle and high school students, currently in school in the US, their software suite as part of President Obama’s ConnectEd project.  In an interesting turn of events this week, Autodesk has also made a stack of other tools free to educators and students, including the popular 3D modelling software packages 3ds Max and Maya, also AutoCAD and Fusion 360 as well. The company has said this will give 680 million students the ability to tap it into its application, both in classrooms at school and int he comfort of their own homes. Autodesk are not just proving the software and leaving the users high and dry. No, they are also providing project ideas and teaching resources as well.

Particular, secondary school students have access to a wide selection of the company’s tools (across both desktop and mobile) at no charge at all. If you would like to find out what’s available to you, whether you are a student or an educator, just head on over to the company’s site.

Autodesk CEO Carl Bass said in a statement, ”By providing free professional design tools to students, faculty members and academic institutions around the world, we’re helping get industry ready for the next phase,”

This is a smart move from Autodesk as the next generation of designers and 3D modellers will be already trained to use their software by the time they enter the working world. Who knows what this will do for the industry as a whole? Many of the company’s tools are already widespread in both professional game development and educational environments. This endeavour is now part of a global extension of a U.S. program that Autodesk began to undertake earlier in 2014 and now covers students in the Asia Pacific and European areas.

[Image via 3dprint]

SOURCE: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/231408/Autodesk_makes_game_dev_tools_free_to_schools_students_worldwide.php