Hi Chris,
Couldn't have phrased it better than Angus.
+1
Cheers, Martin
--
Martin Chatterjee
[ Freelance Technical Director ]
[ http://www.chatterjee.de ]
[ https://vimeo.com/chatterjee ]
On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 3:01 PM, Angus Davidson
<angus.david...@wits.ac.za>wrote:
> Hi Chris
>
> I can understand all of the business reasons for the EOL of Softimage.
>
> With one caveat
>
> I do however believe it was actively accelerated by the resellers who
> pushed Maya to everyone. I have detailed on so-community how you virtually
> had to threaten them to get them to sell Softimage.
>
> The damage being done however. Softimage was always going to bow out.
> That surprisingly I don't have an issue with. All things have their lifesapn
>
> What I do have an issue with was how it was Managed
>
> SEC rules not withstanding Autodesk was woefully unprepared for the
> implementation of this decision.
>
> There was no understanding that on the commercial side 2 years was
> really not enough time to migrate pipelines and retrain people. (Thank
> fully now somewhat addressed)
>
> There was no understanding just how badly this would affect the
> education sector. This has caused serious havoc which hasn't been addressed
> at all.
>
> There was no plan announced with the eol as to what measures would be
> put in place to help people through the transition.
>
> You were trying to replace a proven tool (ICE) with on that is only in
> the first stages of its release. (softimage should have only been EOL after
> Bifrost internals are opened up)
>
> When we queried things at the announcement we got very little feedback
> at all. It was only once the Anger became very visible that things started
> changing and to me that is unacceptable.
>
> There should also be no reason why you can't EOL Softimage in the same
> way that you are currently doing with toxic. At least that would go some
> way to repair the damage that your decisions have made.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Angus (Educator)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Chris Vienneau <chris.vienn...@autodesk.com>
> Reply-To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" <
> softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
> Date: Tuesday 25 March 2014 at 3:35 PM
> To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" <softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
> Subject: Spam:RE: An Open Letter to Carl Bass
>
> doh first sentence mistake "Bought by Microsoft"
> ------------------------------
> *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [
> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Chris Vienneau [
> chris.vienn...@autodesk.com]
> *Sent:* Tuesday, March 25, 2014 9:34 AM
> *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> *Subject:* RE: An Open Letter to Carl Bass
>
> HI Emilio,
>
>
>
> I think that now you have heard from Carl I think I will weigh in here and
> what I am writing comes from having been in and around softimage for twenty
> years as I grew up in Montreal and came onto the tech scene around 1993
> when Softimage was on fire and right before it got bought by Autodesk.
> There is no doubt that Softimage starting in 1986 had the early lead in
> animation software and when I started at Discreet Logic even had a claim on
> Flame code with Eddie. Microsoft was a crazy rising star at that point and
> bought them up as all entertainment tools were sold on big ass SGI systems
> which almost killed me once or twice. They wanted to have a team to build
> out pro tools on windows at all costs. That was when Sumatra (1996) was
> started and many of the early decisions made then to highly leverage
> windows only tech was one of the biggest handicaps that this new code base
> developed around when Maya developed from an IRIX base. Maya started to
> appear in the late 90s and started to gain a lot of traction as people did
> not see the movement they wanted and many were scared by the windows
> direction. Given that 80% of work in film revolves around 20-30 companies
> that were around back then it is pretty easy to see how losing many of
> those customers back then can have a big impact now as the hundreds of
> companies that make up the film/vfx world mostly spawned from people coming
> from those original seed fx companies. And yes people built their own tools
> on top of Maya but back in 1998-1999 there were not that many tools period
> in either Sumatra or Maya except that Maya had a great API to build tools
> upon so it started to take off.
>
>
>
> As the transition to Avid happened the product and team were focused on
> the Digital Studio and more television workflows. They wanted to have a
> full suite around the media composer with DS and Soft being the poster
> children for a full post production workflow. Avid like many of us got hit
> really hard in the 2001 crash and if you want to read a great article on
> what happens when companies don't constantly re-invent themselves this is
> it: http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml . While 3dsmax continued
> down the path of being 3500$ and building a monster library of plugins Maya
> and Softimage fought customer by customer from 2002 to 2006. Maya was
> bought and sold three times and Avid starved out the softimage team while
> they were in a fight for their life. There have been other posts on other
> forums but Sumatra simply took too long to go from demo to product and many
> customers got tired of waiting. I was working on Combustion back in
> 2002-2004 and we saw Maya take off in many markets and many people switch
> away from Softimage. The numbers don't lie. In 2000 Softimage 3D had a
> bigger market share than 3dsmax and Maya in entertainment.
>
>
>
> By the time Autodesk acquired Maya in 2006, Avid was in the middle of its
> financial troubles having spent a lot of money to buy tons of companies and
> having a real hard time getting back to growth. Softimage was losing out
> in schools by that point and when Autodesk acquired Maya and got access to
> the global network of sales people places like India and east asia began to
> really solidify around Maya. Softimage always suffered at Avid because it
> was a broadcast company that did not really know what to do with this small
> independent minded group. So Softimage got the freedom to be themselves but
> they suffered when it came to resources. Autodesk is primarily driven by
> resellers and has been that way since 1978 when the founders started
> letting the first users of AutoCAD sell to their friends. Autodesk invests
> a huge amount in emerging markets and education. As work started to get
> outsourced to India and China there was a network of 3dsmax and Maya users
> waiting and that really was the biggest boom in the last few years for
> things like episodic animation, vfx (starting with rotoscoping), and games
> asset production.
>
>
>
> The product manager that was around for driving the ICE direction was my
> ex-boss and a very smart guy. Let's not mince words when this was an
> attempt to leap frog Houdini, 3dsmax and Maya as Softimage was not growing
> and losing money at Avid. ICE started as a particle project and then
> morphed into a more general framework. No one here at Autodesk is arguing
> you can't do amazing things with ICE and I think we have made it clear we
> are working on how that can complement Maya but you can't argue that it
> failed to convert enough Houdini, 3dsmax, and Maya users to Softimage to
> stop the decline of the revenue. This was despite every major FX house
> having the opportunity to try it and evaluate it. It was just not enough to
> switch from the tool base they had built in the early 2000s and it was just
> easier to find talent and new users from schools.
>
>
>
> So as we get to the acquisition by Autodesk the big damage to what was
> once a strong market share in film and games had already been done and the
> key engines needed to grow products which is a strong channel and education
> market had been also severely compromised. The Softimage team had done an
> amazing job given how little they were funded by Avid. I can tell you that
> Marc Petit ran 3dsmax, Softimage, and Maya with no master plan to merge
> them and there was a full team on XSI for the first few years of
> the acquisition with Chinny at the PM helm. We included it in the education
> suite giving it access to way more schools and for the first time it was
> available in many places where previously Avid did not have the reach or
> choose not to invest. We were very excited by the prospect of sharing
> technology and best practices with the soft team as they were the bitter
> enemy during the dcc wars. It was like getting to see the inside of a
> Russian sub as the Captain of a British sub and seeing how things had
> evolved over time.
>
>
>
> Soon after the acquisition we started investing in a new core that we
> hoped would power all three apps which became skyline and eventually
> bifrost. There are inherent limitations to ICE in terms of scalability that
> are linked with the host application (XSI) and we wanted to have something
> more portable that could be re-used in games as well. We also needed a core
> for all the cloud requirements we had coming down the pipe and we will get
> more into that in a second. So we had a good sized softimage team and an
> investment that matched the revenue so yes were profitable but the dev team
> was able to do new features and maintain the core. Soft settled into a
> niche with games in Japan and post vfx for television/advertising.
>
>
>
> When the recession hit in 2009, it was another shock to the system and we
> like everyone else in the industry laid off people and tightened our belts.
> When the economy recovered things were not the same in our industry. From
> 2010-2012 the VFX industry in the US collapsed and advertising started to
> get split between tv and online. The industry lost so many good small
> boutique companies in that run and many people moved onto other
> industries like mobile gaming instead of staying around and re-starting
> like they had in the past. The closure of Modus FX (a great FX house in
> Montreal) and even Rhythm and Hues show that there is a big problem in this
> industry and both of those companies made 1-2 mistakes in how they handled
> their cash flow and were gone in a heart beat. If you don't think that the
> Foundry and Houdini were not affected both have made big pushes into the
> game market recently. So the niche base of Soft was hit pretty hard by
> this trend and that would have happened had it been on its own, with a new
> mystery owner or with Avid. This trend resulted in the large companies
> getting bigger and the middle thinning out both in film and games and those
> disappearing soft seats did not resurface but went to Maya or Houdini.
>
>
>
> As things settled down in the last year or so it was clear that we needed
> to accelerate our plans for Bifrost and that as Maya and 3dsmax were
> growing Soft continued to shrink. We moved the development to Singapore and
> they are a great team capable of delivering cool features. So we made the
> decision late last year to move forward with the EOL plans of Softimage to
> focus and we are here. You can say it was foolish for Autodesk to think
> they could run three products that once competed but to put the blame for
> the current situation on our shoulders ignores the decisions made by Avid
> and Microsoft. A product needs a lot more than just technology to succeed
> and you can argue all that you want about which DCC is better but Soft did
> not have the ecosystem around it to be successful in the key years around
> 2000 when this industry was really wide open and shifting rapidly and
> Sumatra/XSI was just too late to the party. So no there is no conspiracy
> about trying to hold back softimage. XSI is a known entity and if people
> wanted to switch to it they would have already. If you visit the 3dsmax
> customers they like their mountain of plugins and if you visit Maya
> customers they like being able to customize the application. You are seeing
> Houdini has a loyal fan base. Just like with religion one person does not
> love god more or less because of their religion.
>
>
>
> Before we get to the two year limit and the cloud I will take a break.
> This is my interpretation of what happened based on my relationships with
> the softimage team that came from being in Montreal and the subsequent
> involvement since the acquisition. Before we get into the why can't we just
> maintain Soft I want to see if others share my view or have another opinion.
>
>
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> cv/
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