Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Emilio Hernandez]

So we wrongly called it a rumor. It was a "pre-briefing"...

Now it makes sense all this "innovation" with booleans and non destructive
bevel super tools of the future


-- 
---
Emilio Hernández   VFX & 3D animation.

RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Matt Lind]

During our pre-briefing of the retirement announcement, Autodesk said in plain 
English they don't want that.

Matt





From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of skuby
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 2:05 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya 
or Max or any Suite.

21+ years of development experience you have and you don't even have the 
simplest faith in Autodesk that they can allow Soft and Maya to run on one 
single machine at the same time for crosswalk purposes but not allow them to 
run separately on two machines at the same time?  ok, sure

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[olivier jeannel]

/And yet, that burden of responsibility doesn't seem to have been 
reflected in the manner in which Softimage is currently being EOL'd. I 
can't think of a more brutal scenario - immediate cessation of 
development; no prior warning; no safe-harbour alternative option; no 
pre-planning or understanding of the essential migratable features in 
Softimage; no in-place transition training; no concept of recompense for 
your failure; and no willingness to negotiate or ameliorate the terms of 
the EOL in any substantial way. //


//Julian /

I think when we'll all work in the cloud, it'll be even more violent.
The future is bright and under control ...click.




Le 16/03/2014 09:47, Julian Johnson a écrit :

On 15/03/2014 17:44, Graham Bell wrote:
I¹ve absolutely no doubt, but in all the time I¹ve demoed Softimage, 
even

pre-AD, there was never anyone who didn¹t like the software, tech or
couldn¹t see the potential benefits. However despite this, it wasn¹t 
easy

for people to simply adopt.
We could easily lead the horse to water, but never make it drink.


Graham, as everyone at Autodesk seems convinced there is no market for 
Softimage what harm could there be in selling it? If the might of 
Autodesk's marketing resources had no impact then it stands to reason 
that no one else is going to be able to make a success of it. I mean 
you've tried your best, right? It's just not possible to market 
Softimage. Avid tried and failed, you tried and failed. It stands 
absolutely no chance of ever  becoming a competitor to Maya or Max as 
it's too hard to adopt. Why not, therefore, sell it on to an 
interested third party who could solely cater for the niche Softimage 
audience? Don't we all win that way? We have an interested 'owner' - 
you can focus your resources on Maya and Max and walk away with a lump 
sum for 'innovative' R&D and you still have no competition. You no 
longer have an alienated and hostile Softimage customer base.


Better still, as soon as Maya becomes a more attractive option we then 
have the choice to adopt or not. Given the myriad improvements listed 
by Chris that adoption in a few years time should be a no-brainer for 
us, shouldn't it?  We can once more re-enter the Autodesk fold 
willingly and migrate to the better product. If you, Chris and Maurice 
genuinely believe in 'new' Maya and Autodesk's own marketing abilities 
it should be relatively easy to sell it to Softimage customers in a 
few years time. I'm sure we're going to be blown away by the new 
innovations that Maurice talked about. With the current roadmap and 
user input Maya will undoubtedly be a better product than Softimage is 
now. I know you wouldn't be asking us to transition to an inferior 
product - that just wouldn't make business sense. No billion dollar 
business would treat their customers that way.


Fundamentally, it seems as though if the initial decision to buy XSI 
was motivated by a desire to move the product forward and market it in 
earnest (with a genuine business case that demonstrated either more 
sales or additional revenue - and why else would you have bought XSI?) 
then there has been a colossal failure in that business plan by 
Autodesk. The burden of that failure has been placed solely on the 
customers to whom, surely, Autodesk has some level of responsibility.


And yet, that burden of responsibility doesn't seem to have been 
reflected in the manner in which Softimage is currently being EOL'd. I 
can't think of a more brutal scenario - immediate cessation of 
development; no prior warning; no safe-harbour alternative option; no 
pre-planning or understanding of the essential migratable features in 
Softimage; no in-place transition training; no concept of recompense 
for your failure; and no willingness to negotiate or ameliorate the 
terms of the EOL in any substantial way.


Julian

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Alastair Hearsum]

We do TV commercials almost exclusively. No games no movies. We have the 
best tool in SI



Alastair Hearsum
Head of 3d
GLASSWORKS
33/34 Great Pulteney Street
London
W1F 9NP
+44 (0)20 7434 1182
glassworks.co.uk 
Glassworks Terms and Conditions of Sale can be found at glassworks.co.uk
(Company registered in England with number 04759979. Registered office 
25 Harley Street, London, W1G 9BR. VAT registration number: 86729)

Please consider the environment before you print this email.
DISCLAIMER: This e-mail and attachments are strictly privileged, private 
and confidential and are intended solely for the stated recipient(s). 
Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do 
not necessarily represent those of the Company. If you are not the 
intended recipient, be advised that you have received this e-mail in 
error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying 
of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If this transmission is received 
in error please kindly return it to the sender and delete this message 
from your system.

On 17/03/2014 15:20, Dan Yargici wrote:
Hi Chris, I've had to ignore the list for the last week for personal 
reasons, so apologies if this has been mentioned somewhere across the 
myriad threads...


I keep hearing yourself, Maurice, Graham, and everyone else from 
Autodesk who have stuck their heads above the parapet continuously 
mention movies and games, movies and games, movies and games (I've 
quoted the last paragraph from you mail below).  It's always been my 
impression that most of the people on the list, and users of Softimage 
in general, are working in *broadcast and commercials*.  Without 
wanting to step out of line, it seems to me to be the crux of your 
problem here and why you find yourselves having to swim so hard 
against this raging tide of discontent and abuse.


In terms of creating broadcast and commercial graphics with it's 
associated constraints and problems, I think I speak for a lot of 
people here in saying we feel we already have the tool that we want 
and need (minus the continued feature updates and bugfixes we were 
already expecting before you dropped the bomb on us).  Neither Maya or 
Max fit that bill as cleanly.


Much akin to Brad's reference to bullet-point driven decision making, 
I think you have a large chunk of users here representing a square-peg 
which feel you are relentlessly trying to bash them through a round hole.


Just an observation, and again, apologies if this has been mentioned 
previously, it's hard to keep track coming in cold after my break...


DAN.


On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 3:37 PM, Chris Vienneau 
mailto:chris.vienn...@autodesk.com>> wrote:


First and foremost everyone who works at Autodesk in the M&E
division including the people who used to work at Soft (there are
way more than have left) love the film and games industry and the
chance to be a part of it. The decision with Soft was a hard one
but we back it so we can focus on helping the ecosystem make
better movies and games. Innovation comes from the synergies of
all these products, platforms, hardware and your talent and
putting that on any one tool or company does not capture what is
still a vibrant passionate community. The business model right now
sucks and things need to change but there is still a bright future
ahead and many problems left to solve.



cv/

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Alastair Hearsum]

Julian

Great. Articulate

a


Alastair Hearsum
Head of 3d
GLASSWORKS
33/34 Great Pulteney Street
London
W1F 9NP
+44 (0)20 7434 1182
glassworks.co.uk 
Glassworks Terms and Conditions of Sale can be found at glassworks.co.uk
(Company registered in England with number 04759979. Registered office 
25 Harley Street, London, W1G 9BR. VAT registration number: 86729)

Please consider the environment before you print this email.
DISCLAIMER: This e-mail and attachments are strictly privileged, private 
and confidential and are intended solely for the stated recipient(s). 
Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do 
not necessarily represent those of the Company. If you are not the 
intended recipient, be advised that you have received this e-mail in 
error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying 
of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If this transmission is received 
in error please kindly return it to the sender and delete this message 
from your system.

On 16/03/2014 08:47, Julian Johnson wrote:

On 15/03/2014 17:44, Graham Bell wrote:
I¹ve absolutely no doubt, but in all the time I¹ve demoed Softimage, 
even

pre-AD, there was never anyone who didn¹t like the software, tech or
couldn¹t see the potential benefits. However despite this, it wasn¹t 
easy

for people to simply adopt.
We could easily lead the horse to water, but never make it drink.


Graham, as everyone at Autodesk seems convinced there is no market for 
Softimage what harm could there be in selling it? If the might of 
Autodesk's marketing resources had no impact then it stands to reason 
that no one else is going to be able to make a success of it. I mean 
you've tried your best, right? It's just not possible to market 
Softimage. Avid tried and failed, you tried and failed. It stands 
absolutely no chance of ever  becoming a competitor to Maya or Max as 
it's too hard to adopt. Why not, therefore, sell it on to an 
interested third party who could solely cater for the niche Softimage 
audience? Don't we all win that way? We have an interested 'owner' - 
you can focus your resources on Maya and Max and walk away with a lump 
sum for 'innovative' R&D and you still have no competition. You no 
longer have an alienated and hostile Softimage customer base.


Better still, as soon as Maya becomes a more attractive option we then 
have the choice to adopt or not. Given the myriad improvements listed 
by Chris that adoption in a few years time should be a no-brainer for 
us, shouldn't it?  We can once more re-enter the Autodesk fold 
willingly and migrate to the better product. If you, Chris and Maurice 
genuinely believe in 'new' Maya and Autodesk's own marketing abilities 
it should be relatively easy to sell it to Softimage customers in a 
few years time. I'm sure we're going to be blown away by the new 
innovations that Maurice talked about. With the current roadmap and 
user input Maya will undoubtedly be a better product than Softimage is 
now. I know you wouldn't be asking us to transition to an inferior 
product - that just wouldn't make business sense. No billion dollar 
business would treat their customers that way.


Fundamentally, it seems as though if the initial decision to buy XSI 
was motivated by a desire to move the product forward and market it in 
earnest (with a genuine business case that demonstrated either more 
sales or additional revenue - and why else would you have bought XSI?) 
then there has been a colossal failure in that business plan by 
Autodesk. The burden of that failure has been placed solely on the 
customers to whom, surely, Autodesk has some level of responsibility.


And yet, that burden of responsibility doesn't seem to have been 
reflected in the manner in which Softimage is currently being EOL'd. I 
can't think of a more brutal scenario - immediate cessation of 
development; no prior warning; no safe-harbour alternative option; no 
pre-planning or understanding of the essential migratable features in 
Softimage; no in-place transition training; no concept of recompense 
for your failure; and no willingness to negotiate or ameliorate the 
terms of the EOL in any substantial way.


Julian

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Stephen Davidson]

I am just a freelancer, but I have never worked on a "Movie" or a "Game" in
over 20 years.
Only Commercial, Corporate, and Broadcast (some Web videos as well)
A show of hands?


On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 11:20 AM, Dan Yargici  wrote:

> Hi Chris, I've had to ignore the list for the last week for personal
> reasons, so apologies if this has been mentioned somewhere across the
> myriad threads...
>
> I keep hearing yourself, Maurice, Graham, and everyone else from Autodesk
> who have stuck their heads above the parapet continuously mention movies
> and games, movies and games, movies and games (I've quoted the last
> paragraph from you mail below).  It's always been my impression that most
> of the people on the list, and users of Softimage in general, are working
> in *broadcast and commercials*.  Without wanting to step out of line, it
> seems to me to be the crux of your problem here and why you find yourselves
> having to swim so hard against this raging tide of discontent and abuse.
>
> In terms of creating broadcast and commercial graphics with it's
> associated constraints and problems, I think I speak for a lot of people
> here in saying we feel we already have the tool that we want and need
> (minus the continued feature updates and bugfixes we were already expecting
> before you dropped the bomb on us).  Neither Maya or Max fit that bill as
> cleanly.
>
> Much akin to Brad's reference to bullet-point driven decision making, I
> think you have a large chunk of users here representing a square-peg which
> feel you are relentlessly trying to bash them through a round hole.
>
> Just an observation, and again, apologies if this has been mentioned
> previously, it's hard to keep track coming in cold after my break...
>
> DAN.
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 3:37 PM, Chris Vienneau <
> chris.vienn...@autodesk.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>> First and foremost everyone who works at Autodesk in the M&E division
>> including the people who used to work at Soft (there are way more than have
>> left) love the film and games industry and the chance to be a part of it.
>> The decision with Soft was a hard one but we back it so we can focus on
>> helping the ecosystem make better movies and games. Innovation comes from
>> the synergies of all these products, platforms, hardware and your talent
>> and putting that on any one tool or company does not capture what is still
>> a vibrant passionate community. The business model right now sucks and
>> things need to change but there is still a bright future ahead and many
>> problems left to solve.
>>
>>
>>
>> cv/
>>
>>
>>


-- 

Best Regards,
*  Stephen P. Davidson*

*(954) 552-7956*sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com

*Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic*


 - Arthur C. Clarke

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Ed Manning]

Excellent point, Dan!

Maybe start a new thread with this topic?

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Dan Yargici]

Hi Chris, I've had to ignore the list for the last week for personal
reasons, so apologies if this has been mentioned somewhere across the
myriad threads...

I keep hearing yourself, Maurice, Graham, and everyone else from Autodesk
who have stuck their heads above the parapet continuously mention movies
and games, movies and games, movies and games (I've quoted the last
paragraph from you mail below).  It's always been my impression that most
of the people on the list, and users of Softimage in general, are working
in *broadcast and commercials*.  Without wanting to step out of line, it
seems to me to be the crux of your problem here and why you find yourselves
having to swim so hard against this raging tide of discontent and abuse.

In terms of creating broadcast and commercial graphics with it's associated
constraints and problems, I think I speak for a lot of people here in
saying we feel we already have the tool that we want and need (minus the
continued feature updates and bugfixes we were already expecting before you
dropped the bomb on us).  Neither Maya or Max fit that bill as cleanly.

Much akin to Brad's reference to bullet-point driven decision making, I
think you have a large chunk of users here representing a square-peg which
feel you are relentlessly trying to bash them through a round hole.

Just an observation, and again, apologies if this has been mentioned
previously, it's hard to keep track coming in cold after my break...

DAN.


On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 3:37 PM, Chris Vienneau  wrote:



> First and foremost everyone who works at Autodesk in the M&E division
> including the people who used to work at Soft (there are way more than have
> left) love the film and games industry and the chance to be a part of it.
> The decision with Soft was a hard one but we back it so we can focus on
> helping the ecosystem make better movies and games. Innovation comes from
> the synergies of all these products, platforms, hardware and your talent
> and putting that on any one tool or company does not capture what is still
> a vibrant passionate community. The business model right now sucks and
> things need to change but there is still a bright future ahead and many
> problems left to solve.
>
>
>
> cv/
>
>
>

RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Chris Vienneau]

great site


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Adam Sale 
[adamfs...@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2014 3:49 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya 
or Max or any Suite.

Chris, the possibilities when using ICE are so endless, that all nodes are fair 
game. Hard to narrow it down to just a few, especially with a lot of the heavy 
duty ICE users. Just have a look at the vast repository on 
rray.de<http://rray.de>

There are some very innovative ideas to be found there, it's also the way ICE 
communicates seamlessly with the rest of Softimage.



On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 6:17 PM, Nuno Conceicao 
mailto:nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Nope


On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 1:41 PM, Chris Vienneau 
mailto:chris.vienn...@autodesk.com>> wrote:
Do you guys think there is a top list of nodes in ICE and compounds you all use 
that cover 80% of what you do with the toolset?



thx.



cv/




From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>
 
[softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>]
 on behalf of Rob Chapman [tekano@gmail.com<mailto:tekano@gmail.com>]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 8:43 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya 
or Max or any Suite.

"We invite anyone here and many of you have taken up our offer to contribute 
and it is up to us to show that we are delivering over the next two years 
during the transition period. If we don't at the end than you will all have 
choices and plenty of time to evaluate your options."

what kind of choices? If you do not deliver to our criteriathen Softimage is 
not EOL or..  it is very unclear as to what our choices are exactly?

in 2016 will we be able to load ICE trees and compounds into Maya?





<>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Raffaele Fragapane]

I don't know if it's clear, but AD already reverted the decision of
timebombing licences tied to a suite, so you already get a perpetual
concurrent licence of Soft if you downgrade to Maya.

The problem, and something worth fighting for IMO, is expanding, since no
new seats will be available for purchase no matter what dark god you
sacrifice small animals to.

Asking AD for continued life support coupled with Soft bundled with
Maya/Max mutually exclusive tokens though would be useful and not
unreasonable.

They had that courtesy for quite a while with Toxic, which frankly speaking
was both a preannounced stillborn failure, and an absolute crock of shit.
Reserving at least the same degree of respect for something that was still
vital, adopted, at the foundation of many people's livelihood, not to
mention a piece of history instead of crap doesn't sound like too much to
ask.

If people stopped for a minute to spit and spout in the face of any AD
employee around and start asking for reasonable things we might actually
still get something out of this, much like the (truly retarded) time bomb
decision was reverted in 48h, something unprecedented for Autodesk.

I'm not suggesting people bend over and take up the rear entrance with a
smile on their face, but you can be a contrary arsehole and make sure we
all get nothing so your righteous sense of software justice is appeased, or
we can negotiate some minimal insurance for running and near future
projects while looking at other solutions.

P.S. with you I don't mean whoever e-mail will be before mine in this
thread, I mean in general terms.

Still "ducking" hating having to write to the list from a phone

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Martin]

Selling SI is something that has already been discussed thousands of times 
since the EOL announcement and it is clear that it will never going to happen. 
I guess if someone offer 10x what Autodesk paid may have a chance to but that 
will never happen so let's stop with that topic.

SI is never going to come back either so that's another battle we can't win. It 
doesn't make sense to keep these complaints.

We should focus in something Autodesk could agree so we can have a better 
transition, or just pick a non Autodesk route.

The FBX idea or SI license for a few years with some conditions like having 
Maya under sub doesn't sound like a bad deal for ADSK and for those who want to 
migrate to Maya or Max. Still I doubt they will agree but it sounds a little 
more realistic.

Keep returning to these complains or demands that obviously doesn't benefit 
ADSK at all like selling SI or resuscitate SI won't get us anywhere.

Martin
Sent from my iPhone

> On 2014/03/16, at 17:47, Julian Johnson  wrote:
> 
>> On 15/03/2014 17:44, Graham Bell wrote:
>> I¹ve absolutely no doubt, but in all the time I¹ve demoed Softimage, even
>> pre-AD, there was never anyone who didn¹t like the software, tech or
>> couldn¹t see the potential benefits. However despite this, it wasn¹t easy
>> for people to simply adopt.
>> We could easily lead the horse to water, but never make it drink.
> 
> Graham, as everyone at Autodesk seems convinced there is no market for 
> Softimage what harm could there be in selling it? If the might of Autodesk's 
> marketing resources had no impact then it stands to reason that no one else 
> is going to be able to make a success of it. I mean you've tried your best, 
> right? It's just not possible to market Softimage. Avid tried and failed, you 
> tried and failed. It stands absolutely no chance of ever  becoming a 
> competitor to Maya or Max as it's too hard to adopt. Why not, therefore, sell 
> it on to an interested third party who could solely cater for the niche 
> Softimage audience? Don't we all win that way? We have an interested 'owner' 
> - you can focus your resources on Maya and Max and walk away with a lump sum 
> for 'innovative' R&D and you still have no competition. You no longer have an 
> alienated and hostile Softimage customer base.
> 
> Better still, as soon as Maya becomes a more attractive option we then have 
> the choice to adopt or not. Given the myriad improvements listed by Chris 
> that adoption in a few years time should be a no-brainer for us, shouldn't 
> it?  We can once more re-enter the Autodesk fold willingly and migrate to the 
> better product. If you, Chris and Maurice genuinely believe in 'new' Maya and 
> Autodesk's own marketing abilities it should be relatively easy to sell it to 
> Softimage customers in a few years time. I'm sure we're going to be blown 
> away by the new innovations that Maurice talked about. With the current 
> roadmap and user input Maya will undoubtedly be a better product than 
> Softimage is now. I know you wouldn't be asking us to transition to an 
> inferior product - that just wouldn't make business sense. No billion dollar 
> business would treat their customers that way.
> 
> Fundamentally, it seems as though if the initial decision to buy XSI was 
> motivated by a desire to move the product forward and market it in earnest 
> (with a genuine business case that demonstrated either more sales or 
> additional revenue - and why else would you have bought XSI?) then there has 
> been a colossal failure in that business plan by Autodesk. The burden of that 
> failure has been placed solely on the customers to whom, surely, Autodesk has 
> some level of responsibility.
> 
> And yet, that burden of responsibility doesn't seem to have been reflected in 
> the manner in which Softimage is currently being EOL'd. I can't think of a 
> more brutal scenario - immediate cessation of development; no prior warning; 
> no safe-harbour alternative option; no pre-planning or understanding of the 
> essential migratable features in Softimage; no in-place transition training; 
> no concept of recompense for your failure; and no willingness to negotiate or 
> ameliorate the terms of the EOL in any substantial way.
> 
> Julian

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Graham Bell]

Julian, I’m hardly the best person to answer that. Besides I think Maurice
may have already responded to suggestions of selling Softimage.
It might seem like simple and easy thing to do, but unfortunately things
don’t always work like that.



On 16/03/2014 08:47, "Julian Johnson"  wrote:

>On 15/03/2014 17:44, Graham Bell wrote:
>> I¹ve absolutely no doubt, but in all the time I¹ve demoed Softimage,
>>even
>> pre-AD, there was never anyone who didn¹t like the software, tech or
>> couldn¹t see the potential benefits. However despite this, it wasn¹t
>>easy
>> for people to simply adopt.
>> We could easily lead the horse to water, but never make it drink.
>
>Graham, as everyone at Autodesk seems convinced there is no market for
>Softimage what harm could there be in selling it? If the might of
>Autodesk's marketing resources had no impact then it stands to reason
>that no one else is going to be able to make a success of it. I mean
>you've tried your best, right? It's just not possible to market
>Softimage. Avid tried and failed, you tried and failed. It stands
>absolutely no chance of ever  becoming a competitor to Maya or Max as
>it's too hard to adopt. Why not, therefore, sell it on to an interested
>third party who could solely cater for the niche Softimage audience?
>Don't we all win that way? We have an interested 'owner' - you can focus
>your resources on Maya and Max and walk away with a lump sum for
>'innovative' R&D and you still have no competition. You no longer have
>an alienated and hostile Softimage customer base.
>
>Better still, as soon as Maya becomes a more attractive option we then
>have the choice to adopt or not. Given the myriad improvements listed by
>Chris that adoption in a few years time should be a no-brainer for us,
>shouldn't it?  We can once more re-enter the Autodesk fold willingly and
>migrate to the better product. If you, Chris and Maurice genuinely
>believe in 'new' Maya and Autodesk's own marketing abilities it should
>be relatively easy to sell it to Softimage customers in a few years
>time. I'm sure we're going to be blown away by the new innovations that
>Maurice talked about. With the current roadmap and user input Maya will
>undoubtedly be a better product than Softimage is now. I know you
>wouldn't be asking us to transition to an inferior product - that just
>wouldn't make business sense. No billion dollar business would treat
>their customers that way.
>
>Fundamentally, it seems as though if the initial decision to buy XSI was
>motivated by a desire to move the product forward and market it in
>earnest (with a genuine business case that demonstrated either more
>sales or additional revenue - and why else would you have bought XSI?)
>then there has been a colossal failure in that business plan by
>Autodesk. The burden of that failure has been placed solely on the
>customers to whom, surely, Autodesk has some level of responsibility.
>
>And yet, that burden of responsibility doesn't seem to have been
>reflected in the manner in which Softimage is currently being EOL'd. I
>can't think of a more brutal scenario - immediate cessation of
>development; no prior warning; no safe-harbour alternative option; no
>pre-planning or understanding of the essential migratable features in
>Softimage; no in-place transition training; no concept of recompense for
>your failure; and no willingness to negotiate or ameliorate the terms of
>the EOL in any substantial way.
>
>Julian

<>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Julian Johnson]

On 15/03/2014 17:44, Graham Bell wrote:

I¹ve absolutely no doubt, but in all the time I¹ve demoed Softimage, even
pre-AD, there was never anyone who didn¹t like the software, tech or
couldn¹t see the potential benefits. However despite this, it wasn¹t easy
for people to simply adopt.
We could easily lead the horse to water, but never make it drink.


Graham, as everyone at Autodesk seems convinced there is no market for 
Softimage what harm could there be in selling it? If the might of 
Autodesk's marketing resources had no impact then it stands to reason 
that no one else is going to be able to make a success of it. I mean 
you've tried your best, right? It's just not possible to market 
Softimage. Avid tried and failed, you tried and failed. It stands 
absolutely no chance of ever  becoming a competitor to Maya or Max as 
it's too hard to adopt. Why not, therefore, sell it on to an interested 
third party who could solely cater for the niche Softimage audience? 
Don't we all win that way? We have an interested 'owner' - you can focus 
your resources on Maya and Max and walk away with a lump sum for 
'innovative' R&D and you still have no competition. You no longer have 
an alienated and hostile Softimage customer base.


Better still, as soon as Maya becomes a more attractive option we then 
have the choice to adopt or not. Given the myriad improvements listed by 
Chris that adoption in a few years time should be a no-brainer for us, 
shouldn't it?  We can once more re-enter the Autodesk fold willingly and 
migrate to the better product. If you, Chris and Maurice genuinely 
believe in 'new' Maya and Autodesk's own marketing abilities it should 
be relatively easy to sell it to Softimage customers in a few years 
time. I'm sure we're going to be blown away by the new innovations that 
Maurice talked about. With the current roadmap and user input Maya will 
undoubtedly be a better product than Softimage is now. I know you 
wouldn't be asking us to transition to an inferior product - that just 
wouldn't make business sense. No billion dollar business would treat 
their customers that way.


Fundamentally, it seems as though if the initial decision to buy XSI was 
motivated by a desire to move the product forward and market it in 
earnest (with a genuine business case that demonstrated either more 
sales or additional revenue - and why else would you have bought XSI?) 
then there has been a colossal failure in that business plan by 
Autodesk. The burden of that failure has been placed solely on the 
customers to whom, surely, Autodesk has some level of responsibility.


And yet, that burden of responsibility doesn't seem to have been 
reflected in the manner in which Softimage is currently being EOL'd. I 
can't think of a more brutal scenario - immediate cessation of 
development; no prior warning; no safe-harbour alternative option; no 
pre-planning or understanding of the essential migratable features in 
Softimage; no in-place transition training; no concept of recompense for 
your failure; and no willingness to negotiate or ameliorate the terms of 
the EOL in any substantial way.


Julian

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Adam Sale]

Chris, the possibilities when using ICE are so endless, that all nodes are
fair game. Hard to narrow it down to just a few, especially with a lot of
the heavy duty ICE users. Just have a look at the vast repository on rray.de

There are some very innovative ideas to be found there, it's also the way
ICE communicates seamlessly with the rest of Softimage.



On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 6:17 PM, Nuno Conceicao  wrote:

> Nope
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 1:41 PM, Chris Vienneau <
> chris.vienn...@autodesk.com> wrote:
>
>> Do you guys think there is a top list of nodes in ICE and compounds you
>> all use that cover 80% of what you do with the toolset?
>>
>>
>>
>> thx.
>>
>>
>>
>> cv/
>>
>>
>>
>> 
>> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [
>> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Rob Chapman [
>> tekano@gmail.com]
>> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 8:43 AM
>> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
>> Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free
>> w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
>>
>> "We invite anyone here and many of you have taken up our offer to
>> contribute and it is up to us to show that we are delivering over the next
>> two years during the transition period. If we don't at the end than you
>> will all have choices and plenty of time to evaluate your options."
>>
>> what kind of choices? If you do not deliver to our criteriathen Softimage
>> is not EOL or..  it is very unclear as to what our choices are exactly?
>>
>> in 2016 will we be able to load ICE trees and compounds into Maya?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[skuby]

Well, seeing the responses from AD officials in this post, it looks like we
won't be getting even FBX/Mental Ray updates to extend Softimage's
retirement past 2016, it was only a defeatist's last wish anyways, but I
had to try.  I know Max, Maya and Softimage, I've spent some many dedicated
years in each of them.  The development of all 3 of them have sadly
stagnated under AD's roof (I'm not being rude, that's just an honest
observation from a user who doesn't run custom proprietary Pixar/ILM/Weta
versions of these software's, I run them out of the box, as is, with a few
preference changes and plug-ins and a few self-written scripts).

My plan is to keep using Softimage as is, and to learn Side Effect's
"Houdini" which I started yesterday (and it's quite promising so far) if
not to just have yet another tool in my bag of tricks.  Moving exclusively
back to Maya (or Max) as it sits now, would be a harsh downgrade.  I'm
excited (but honestly highly skeptical) to see what AD does with Maya and
their new refined focus development approach, -I'll be paying close
attention to Maya 2015 and Maya 2016 but as far as going back to Maya
exclusively, that doesn't make any good sense at this time.  My hopes are
high for the future and Maya will always and continue to be a useful tool
in my bag, but for it to return to number one spot again for me, it's just
a dream at this point as that isn't a realistic option at this time in
reality, now.

Max looks like it's next on the chopping block, although I think with Max
they will never officially say it is dead and just keep selling it to avoid
this sort of debacle but it's pretty clear Max will continue to be a second
class package.  If there is any package I will continue to leave on the
shelf, it will be Max, maybe that is paranoid but I think it's justifiably
paranoid and I really don't think I need to take anyone's word to the
contrary, considering how cheap words are in this business.

Anyways, best of luck to all of my fellow Softimage users out there.  I
hope you all find and come to the conclusions that are best for you,
individually, and have a great time forward.  I'm not going to keep posting
further, I've chosen my new path, wish me luck and I wish all the best of
luck back to you all and I wish the best of luck to Autodesk, in particular
to their continued development of Mudbox, Maya and Sketchbook in that
order.  -Cheers, respect and best regards to all.

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Steven Caron]

i worked next to him for 8 months recently, between gravity and him  
winning that oscar, using softimage in fact... he is talented and  
doesnt care which tool he is using.


but i get your point Lu...

*written with my thumbs

On Mar 15, 2014, at 2:50 PM, Meng-Yang Lu  wrote:


That guy that won the Oscar probably didn't have to do the work... :P

You know better than that Brad!!

-Lu


On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 2:30 PM, Bradley Gabe   
wrote:
heck a guy some of us used to work with every day back in the early  
XSI era just won an Oscar for best VFX!

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Nuno Conceicao]

Nope


On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 1:41 PM, Chris Vienneau  wrote:

> Do you guys think there is a top list of nodes in ICE and compounds you
> all use that cover 80% of what you do with the toolset?
>
>
>
> thx.
>
>
>
> cv/
>
>
>
> 
> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [
> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Rob Chapman [
> tekano@gmail.com]
> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 8:43 AM
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free
> w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
>
> "We invite anyone here and many of you have taken up our offer to
> contribute and it is up to us to show that we are delivering over the next
> two years during the transition period. If we don't at the end than you
> will all have choices and plenty of time to evaluate your options."
>
> what kind of choices? If you do not deliver to our criteriathen Softimage
> is not EOL or..  it is very unclear as to what our choices are exactly?
>
> in 2016 will we be able to load ICE trees and compounds into Maya?
>
>
>
>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Cristobal Infante]

insulting to say that the
film industry is mainly Maya?

All my friends that transfered to Maya did it because they wanted to work
in films that's a fact at least here in London. MPC, DNEG, Framestore,
Cinesite etc are all Maya. Nothing wrong with that by the way, but that's
just the way it is..



On Saturday, 15 March 2014, Eric Thivierge  wrote:

> I think it's kind of insulting to say that. It's not the software that
> makes people able to do that kind of work. It's their skills. It's just a
> fact that most film studios have had Maya as their backbone for so long
> that film is typically done with Maya. Then again, we do work at Hybride on
> films and we use Softimage... so does Animal Logic...
>
> 
> Eric Thivierge
> http://www.ethivierge.com
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 6:57 PM, Cristobal Infante 
> 
> > wrote:
>
>> Hi Brad,
>>
>> I guess you mean a lot of our xsi friends decided to go into film
>> industry and therefore had to switch to Maya.
>>
>> I am glad for them, they avoided the mess we are in but as I am sure you
>> know most of us work on commercials.
>>
>> This comes to mind :)
>>
>> it's an opportunity?
>> http://cgmemes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/it-opportunity.html?m=1
>>
>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Eric Thivierge]

I think it's kind of insulting to say that. It's not the software that
makes people able to do that kind of work. It's their skills. It's just a
fact that most film studios have had Maya as their backbone for so long
that film is typically done with Maya. Then again, we do work at Hybride on
films and we use Softimage... so does Animal Logic...


Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com


On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 6:57 PM, Cristobal Infante  wrote:

> Hi Brad,
>
> I guess you mean a lot of our xsi friends decided to go into film industry
> and therefore had to switch to Maya.
>
> I am glad for them, they avoided the mess we are in but as I am sure you
> know most of us work on commercials.
>
> This comes to mind :)
>
> it's an opportunity?
> http://cgmemes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/it-opportunity.html?m=1
>

Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Cristobal Infante]

Hi Brad,

I guess you mean a lot of our xsi friends decided to go into film industry
and therefore had to switch to Maya.

I am glad for them, they avoided the mess we are in but as I am sure you
know most of us work on commercials.

This comes to mind :)

it's an opportunity?
http://cgmemes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/it-opportunity.html?m=1


On Saturday, 15 March 2014, Meng-Yang Lu
>
wrote:

> That guy that won the Oscar probably didn't have to do the work... :P
>
> You know better than that Brad!!
>
> -Lu
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 2:30 PM, Bradley Gabe  wrote:
>
>> There is somewhat of a bright side folks, let's be realistic. Just about
>> every single hard core XSI user I'd known who fully committed to switching
>> over to Maya without looking back has gone on to do bigger and better
>> things in the industry. They work at places like Weta, ILM, Dreamworks,
>> Disney, heck a guy some of us used to work with every day back in the early
>> XSI era just won an Oscar for best VFX! Just drink the cool aid and go with
>> the flow, and better days await for you too. The last thing you want is for
>> Donald Sutherland to pick you out of a crowd, point at you, open his mouth
>> and shriek (it sucks, it happened to me back when I was at ILM).
>>
>> The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!... and spiders. Those
>> little bastards are evil!
>>
>>
>>
>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Michael Clarke]

Chris,

I think most here are actually desperate to hear about your plan — not 
objectives or goals, but the specifics and timing of a plan to move this thing 
forward.
You probably understand that the overwhelming feeling here is that we re being 
forced to take a giant step backward in many ways, and that we have no clear 
idea as to how many years it might take just to get back to our original point 
of departure. Adding capabilities to Maya is fine, but the greater concern here 
is building upon what Perry Harovas' letter aptly describes as an aging, 
inferior foundation. 

Anyway, more communication from Autodesk is needed right now. This is truly a 
disorienting moment, and I find it difficult to accept that AD would have made 
the EOL announcement without a coherent plan to communicate a vision to the 
Soft userbase, regardless of its size. 

Please. Tell us more.





On Mar 15, 2014, at 10:17 AM, Chris Vienneau  
wrote:

> Emilio there are people on this list and within the community that are 
> working with us right now and taking us up on our offer to hear more about 
> what we are doing? What do you have to lose to hear our plan?
> 
> 
> 
> cv/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
> [softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Emilio Hernandez 
> [emi...@e-roja.com]
> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:13 AM
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free 
> w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
> 
> 
> As I said in another post. Autodesk cut us our legs and now they are offering 
> us a wheelchair. And they are trying to convince us that the weelchair is 
> better than our legs by asking us how we want the wheelchair customized...   
> pfff.
> 
> Dont mean to be rude but... You can go back where you came from.  And you can 
> ride your wheelchair all the way back.
> 


Michael Clarke Design
Blue C Studios
713-927-9835

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Meng-Yang Lu]

That guy that won the Oscar probably didn't have to do the work... :P

You know better than that Brad!!

-Lu


On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 2:30 PM, Bradley Gabe  wrote:

> There is somewhat of a bright side folks, let's be realistic. Just about
> every single hard core XSI user I'd known who fully committed to switching
> over to Maya without looking back has gone on to do bigger and better
> things in the industry. They work at places like Weta, ILM, Dreamworks,
> Disney, heck a guy some of us used to work with every day back in the early
> XSI era just won an Oscar for best VFX! Just drink the cool aid and go with
> the flow, and better days await for you too. The last thing you want is for
> Donald Sutherland to pick you out of a crowd, point at you, open his mouth
> and shriek (it sucks, it happened to me back when I was at ILM).
>
> The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!... and spiders. Those
> little bastards are evil!
>
>
>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Bradley Gabe]

There is somewhat of a bright side folks, let's be realistic. Just about
every single hard core XSI user I'd known who fully committed to switching
over to Maya without looking back has gone on to do bigger and better
things in the industry. They work at places like Weta, ILM, Dreamworks,
Disney, heck a guy some of us used to work with every day back in the early
XSI era just won an Oscar for best VFX! Just drink the cool aid and go with
the flow, and better days await for you too. The last thing you want is for
Donald Sutherland to pick you out of a crowd, point at you, open his mouth
and shriek (it sucks, it happened to me back when I was at ILM).

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!... and spiders. Those little
bastards are evil!

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Cristobal Infante]

To be honest, we knew this was going to happen since the day Autodesk
bought softimage. Today, six years after
the acquisition is when we should be seeing a rejuvenated softimage, but
there was never long term plan for soft.

I understand the numbers between soft/Maya/max were not even
close. We are by far the least used 3D
app, and we know that. But it
hurts being treated like a number. There are actual people behind this, and
if a company can't see that then it just becomes a
machine.

The future was never bright.. At least admit that so we can finally draw a
line under it..


On Saturday, 15 March 2014, Bk  wrote:

> Thats the pipeline talking. Which demonstrates how disrupting it is to
> introduce something new.
> Now imagine if, not only do you have to introduce something new, but your
> whole foundation has to fundamentally change.
> This is what's being forced upon us. (I know you know this, and this isn't
> aimed at you. It's me throwing this out into the ether)
>
> It's the bullying I can't stomach. The whole time-limit aspect, that
> undermines every sound and though out comment from AD representatives. It's
> so transparent that they are using their practical monopoly to leverage and
> force people to their ideal future. One where you toe the AD line and trust
> them, insensitive to the fact they have given us every reason not to.
>
> On 15 Mar 2014, at 17:44, Graham Bell >
> wrote:
>
> > I¹ve absolutely no doubt, but in all the time I¹ve demoed Softimage, even
> > pre-AD, there was never anyone who didn¹t like the software, tech or
> > couldn¹t see the potential benefits. However despite this, it wasn¹t easy
> > for people to simply adopt.
> > We could easily lead the horse to water, but never make it drink.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On 15/03/2014 17:34, "Christoph Muetze" >
> wrote:
> >
> >> Not preaching a religion here... In the 15+ years i've been using
> >> Softimage products i've "converted" more hardcore Max and Maya users by
> >> just outrunning them time and time again than i can count. Admittedly
> >> realtime graphics is a very special field of profession and also very
> >> rare outside of the gaming industry so it's kinda easy to become a user
> >> of a tool that was just not designed to deliver here... and those users
> >> are more likely to learn a new app if its vastly superior...which
> >> Softimage (still) is.
> >>
> >> Chris
> >>
> >> On 15/03/14 18:15, Graham Bell wrote:
> >>> Interestingly, you could flip that around and apply that to a Maya/Max
> >>> guy/studio talking about Softimage. In fact more often than not, they
> >>> did.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> From: Christoph Muetze  c...@glarestudios.de >>
> >>> Reply-To:
> >>> "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com  softimage@listproc.autodesk.com >"
> >>>
> >>>  softimage@listproc.autodesk.com >>
> >>> Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 18:04:56 +0100
> >>> To:
> >>> "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com  softimage@listproc.autodesk.com >"
> >>>
> >>>  softimage@listproc.autodesk.com >>
> >>> Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage
> >>> free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
> >>>
> >>> On 15/03/14 17:24, Greg Punchatz wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I want to use the best out of the box 3d DCC app in the world, if one
> >>> day that is Maya, I am all aboard.  Right now it is not, its kinda just
> >>> a fact.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> I'm so with you on this..
> >>>
> >>> We did take Autodesks offer a while back and upgraded two of our groups
> >>> seats to the Maya Entertainment Creative Suit. Mainly for Mudbox, but
> >>> also to have a deep look at Maya.
> >>>
> >>> Fast forward 1 year and i'm more than convinced that Maya doesn't offer
> >>> what i need on a day to day basis.
> >>>
> >>> It's not only that there are many things not available in Maya but also
> >>> that the tools that are available take more time away from me than
> their
> >>> Softimage counterparts. And in the field that i work in with its super
> >>> tight deadlines (where you have days, sometimes only hours to deliver)
> >>> every click counts.
> >>>
> >>> If anyone can beat me with another tool i will instantly drop
> >>> Softimage. But this hasn't happened so far and i highly doubt it will
> >>> happen in the next 2 years with someone using Maya.
> >>>
> >>> Chris
> >>
> >
> > 
>
>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Bk]

Thats the pipeline talking. Which demonstrates how disrupting it is to 
introduce something new.
Now imagine if, not only do you have to introduce something new, but your whole 
foundation has to fundamentally change.
This is what's being forced upon us. (I know you know this, and this isn't 
aimed at you. It's me throwing this out into the ether)

It's the bullying I can't stomach. The whole time-limit aspect, that undermines 
every sound and though out comment from AD representatives. It's so transparent 
that they are using their practical monopoly to leverage and force people to 
their ideal future. One where you toe the AD line and trust them, insensitive 
to the fact they have given us every reason not to.

On 15 Mar 2014, at 17:44, Graham Bell  wrote:

> I¹ve absolutely no doubt, but in all the time I¹ve demoed Softimage, even
> pre-AD, there was never anyone who didn¹t like the software, tech or
> couldn¹t see the potential benefits. However despite this, it wasn¹t easy
> for people to simply adopt.
> We could easily lead the horse to water, but never make it drink.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 15/03/2014 17:34, "Christoph Muetze"  wrote:
> 
>> Not preaching a religion here... In the 15+ years i've been using
>> Softimage products i've "converted" more hardcore Max and Maya users by
>> just outrunning them time and time again than i can count. Admittedly
>> realtime graphics is a very special field of profession and also very
>> rare outside of the gaming industry so it's kinda easy to become a user
>> of a tool that was just not designed to deliver here... and those users
>> are more likely to learn a new app if its vastly superior...which
>> Softimage (still) is.
>> 
>> Chris
>> 
>> On 15/03/14 18:15, Graham Bell wrote:
>>> Interestingly, you could flip that around and apply that to a Maya/Max
>>> guy/studio talking about Softimage. In fact more often than not, they
>>> did.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> From: Christoph Muetze mailto:c...@glarestudios.de>>
>>> Reply-To: 
>>> "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>"
>>> 
>>> mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>>
>>> Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 18:04:56 +0100
>>> To: 
>>> "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>"
>>> 
>>> mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>>
>>> Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage
>>> free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
>>> 
>>> On 15/03/14 17:24, Greg Punchatz wrote:
>>> 
>>> I want to use the best out of the box 3d DCC app in the world, if one
>>> day that is Maya, I am all aboard.  Right now it is not, its kinda just
>>> a fact.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I'm so with you on this..
>>> 
>>> We did take Autodesks offer a while back and upgraded two of our groups
>>> seats to the Maya Entertainment Creative Suit. Mainly for Mudbox, but
>>> also to have a deep look at Maya.
>>> 
>>> Fast forward 1 year and i'm more than convinced that Maya doesn't offer
>>> what i need on a day to day basis.
>>> 
>>> It's not only that there are many things not available in Maya but also
>>> that the tools that are available take more time away from me than their
>>> Softimage counterparts. And in the field that i work in with its super
>>> tight deadlines (where you have days, sometimes only hours to deliver)
>>> every click counts.
>>> 
>>> If anyone can beat me with another tool i will instantly drop
>>> Softimage. But this hasn't happened so far and i highly doubt it will
>>> happen in the next 2 years with someone using Maya.
>>> 
>>> Chris
>> 
> 
> 

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Christoph Muetze]

I feel your pain, i really do..

I never had problems with Softimage in this regard, but we faced similar 
roadblocks 10 years ago when we spoke with huge Studios trying to sell 
them our realtime procedural content creation solution... Everyone was 
amazed and loved the outcome. Unfortunately the tool was too different 
and alienated all the resident artists, so we didn't come far with it 
with - just a few hardcore users out there. But unlike Autodesk we made 
everything open source when we stopped its production ;)


Chris

On 15/03/14 18:44, Graham Bell wrote:

I¹ve absolutely no doubt, but in all the time I¹ve demoed Softimage, even
pre-AD, there was never anyone who didn¹t like the software, tech or
couldn¹t see the potential benefits. However despite this, it wasn¹t easy
for people to simply adopt.
We could easily lead the horse to water, but never make it drink.
  




On 15/03/2014 17:34, "Christoph Muetze"  wrote:


Not preaching a religion here... In the 15+ years i've been using
Softimage products i've "converted" more hardcore Max and Maya users by
just outrunning them time and time again than i can count. Admittedly
realtime graphics is a very special field of profession and also very
rare outside of the gaming industry so it's kinda easy to become a user
of a tool that was just not designed to deliver here... and those users
are more likely to learn a new app if its vastly superior...which
Softimage (still) is.

Chris

On 15/03/14 18:15, Graham Bell wrote:

Interestingly, you could flip that around and apply that to a Maya/Max
guy/studio talking about Softimage. In fact more often than not, they
did.


From: Christoph Muetze mailto:c...@glarestudios.de>>
Reply-To:
"softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>"

mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 18:04:56 +0100
To:
"softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>"

mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>>
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage
free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

On 15/03/14 17:24, Greg Punchatz wrote:

I want to use the best out of the box 3d DCC app in the world, if one
day that is Maya, I am all aboard.  Right now it is not, its kinda just
a fact.


I'm so with you on this..

We did take Autodesks offer a while back and upgraded two of our groups
seats to the Maya Entertainment Creative Suit. Mainly for Mudbox, but
also to have a deep look at Maya.

Fast forward 1 year and i'm more than convinced that Maya doesn't offer
what i need on a day to day basis.

It's not only that there are many things not available in Maya but also
that the tools that are available take more time away from me than their
Softimage counterparts. And in the field that i work in with its super
tight deadlines (where you have days, sometimes only hours to deliver)
every click counts.

If anyone can beat me with another tool i will instantly drop
Softimage. But this hasn't happened so far and i highly doubt it will
happen in the next 2 years with someone using Maya.

Chris



--
---
Christoph Mütze / Mansteinstr. 18 / 20253 Hamburg / Germany
http://www.glarestudios.de
Phone: +49 40 18050886 / Mobile: +49 163-7261877
http://www.twitter.com/chris_muetze
c...@glarestudios.de

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Graham Bell]

I¹ve absolutely no doubt, but in all the time I¹ve demoed Softimage, even
pre-AD, there was never anyone who didn¹t like the software, tech or
couldn¹t see the potential benefits. However despite this, it wasn¹t easy
for people to simply adopt.
We could easily lead the horse to water, but never make it drink.
 



On 15/03/2014 17:34, "Christoph Muetze"  wrote:

>Not preaching a religion here... In the 15+ years i've been using
>Softimage products i've "converted" more hardcore Max and Maya users by
>just outrunning them time and time again than i can count. Admittedly
>realtime graphics is a very special field of profession and also very
>rare outside of the gaming industry so it's kinda easy to become a user
>of a tool that was just not designed to deliver here... and those users
>are more likely to learn a new app if its vastly superior...which
>Softimage (still) is.
>
>Chris
>
>On 15/03/14 18:15, Graham Bell wrote:
>> Interestingly, you could flip that around and apply that to a Maya/Max
>>guy/studio talking about Softimage. In fact more often than not, they
>>did.
>>
>>
>> From: Christoph Muetze mailto:c...@glarestudios.de>>
>> Reply-To: 
>>"softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>"
>> 
>>mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>>
>> Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 18:04:56 +0100
>> To: 
>>"softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>"
>> 
>>mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>>
>> Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage
>>free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
>>
>> On 15/03/14 17:24, Greg Punchatz wrote:
>>
>> I want to use the best out of the box 3d DCC app in the world, if one
>>day that is Maya, I am all aboard.  Right now it is not, its kinda just
>>a fact.
>>
>>
>> I'm so with you on this..
>>
>> We did take Autodesks offer a while back and upgraded two of our groups
>>seats to the Maya Entertainment Creative Suit. Mainly for Mudbox, but
>>also to have a deep look at Maya.
>>
>> Fast forward 1 year and i'm more than convinced that Maya doesn't offer
>>what i need on a day to day basis.
>>
>> It's not only that there are many things not available in Maya but also
>>that the tools that are available take more time away from me than their
>>Softimage counterparts. And in the field that i work in with its super
>>tight deadlines (where you have days, sometimes only hours to deliver)
>>every click counts.
>>
>> If anyone can beat me with another tool i will instantly drop
>>Softimage. But this hasn't happened so far and i highly doubt it will
>>happen in the next 2 years with someone using Maya.
>>
>> Chris
>

<>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Christoph Muetze]

Not preaching a religion here... In the 15+ years i've been using 
Softimage products i've "converted" more hardcore Max and Maya users by 
just outrunning them time and time again than i can count. Admittedly 
realtime graphics is a very special field of profession and also very 
rare outside of the gaming industry so it's kinda easy to become a user 
of a tool that was just not designed to deliver here... and those users 
are more likely to learn a new app if its vastly superior...which 
Softimage (still) is.


Chris

On 15/03/14 18:15, Graham Bell wrote:

Interestingly, you could flip that around and apply that to a Maya/Max 
guy/studio talking about Softimage. In fact more often than not, they did.


From: Christoph Muetze mailto:c...@glarestudios.de>>
Reply-To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>" 
mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 18:04:56 +0100
To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>" 
mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>>
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya 
or Max or any Suite.

On 15/03/14 17:24, Greg Punchatz wrote:

I want to use the best out of the box 3d DCC app in the world, if one day that 
is Maya, I am all aboard.  Right now it is not, its kinda just a fact.


I'm so with you on this..

We did take Autodesks offer a while back and upgraded two of our groups seats 
to the Maya Entertainment Creative Suit. Mainly for Mudbox, but also to have a 
deep look at Maya.

Fast forward 1 year and i'm more than convinced that Maya doesn't offer what i 
need on a day to day basis.

It's not only that there are many things not available in Maya but also that 
the tools that are available take more time away from me than their Softimage 
counterparts. And in the field that i work in with its super tight deadlines 
(where you have days, sometimes only hours to deliver) every click counts.

If anyone can beat me with another tool i will instantly drop Softimage. But 
this hasn't happened so far and i highly doubt it will happen in the next 2 
years with someone using Maya.

Chris

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite

[Petr Zloty]

Chris:
I'm looking forward for this transition training videos. I cannot find any
high quality level training (except few ones from Gnomon) that could speed
up transition of senior XSI user to senior Maya user.
Please be sure to show us in that upcoming trainings how to do stuff in
Maya we are used to do in XSI, in same time or faster in Maya. And show us
please also something we cannot do in XSI.
Will there be any sneak peek of that mentioned features in Maya? Or they
are far away from publishing?

It's quite disappointing that those videos aren't already published, It's
almost 10 days when EOL was announced and probably much more than when it
was planned and it looks like you started with this transition training
idea just now. Please don't take it offensive.

Will there be recording of the live Q&A webinar that was planned for the
monday (for viewing later on the web)?
Thank you very much, P.Z.


2014-03-15 17:37 GMT+01:00 Emilio Hernandez :

> Chris again. Thank you for helping in the transition and you are trying to
> do your job.  But you are still not listening to us. You just want to drag
> us. I have been working in Maya for three years from now for some
> particular projects that I needed to deliver in Maya.
>
> Maya again is no option for us.  If you had not kill Softimage there will
> be no transition at all. Still even that you killed Softimage, Maya today
> is not an option for us.
>
> We don't have the resources nor the time to work in Maya, even if we have
> the same level of skill to use Maya as we have in Softimage.
>
> Simple by digging into the connections of the nodes in Maya in the node
> editor, is a mayhem!  The channel/layer editor is another mayhem.  The way
> you work with objects and the selections in Maya are terrible. Rigging is a
> nightmare. Managing the blendshapes is really annoying.
>
> Doing math and expressions in Maya sucks. Your utility nodes have no
> coherence at all.  The inputs and outputs are presented in one way at the
> node editor and in another way in your connection editor.
>
> Just to address a few.
>
> Maya slows my workflow by twice the time at least to achieve the final
> result.
>
> I am working in a rig that if I had done it in Softimage I would have it
> finished by now. But Maya's workflow takes me triple the time.
>
> Believe me that if I had built the rig as fast in Maya as I do it in
> Softimage. Not because I do not know Maya. But because that is the way Maya
> works, we will be not having tgis transition conversation.
>
> Expect not a transition but a flee from Autodesk to other solutions.
>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite

[Jason S]

Hello Chris,  I think you got spot-on what (or types of things) everyone 
wanted to know,

and goes a long way at inspiring confidence in what lies ahead,
and everything genuinely sounds quite amazing to say the least!

And to top it all, pretty-much adresses the main points that were 
commonly to be expected in a truer "Softimaya".


   - Simpler UI

   - Smoother Workflow

   - More versatile Modeling

   - History stack

   - All with great performance.

And while (quite understandably) without going into details,
it definitely gave a broad idea of what is in the works.

(If you see me coming with a "but", well you would be right ;-)

BUT!..

.. what seems to be /wrong /in this situation, is the /forcing/ of 
people in directions

which really is what seems to be the crux of the issue people are having.

Many of SI's main advantages have been part of it almost since it's launch,
and are still today what enables average non-rocket scientist artists to do
what would otherwise be far more difficult, complicated, long, or 
basically impossible,

and similarly has been known to expand the reach of actual rocket scientist.

And from that time there were a number of other solutions out to match it's
straightforward access to complexity, all with varying results.

So what I'm getting at is, if some, all, or most of these truly great 
plans were to come to pass,
people would -naturally- gravitate towards it, as people aren't asking 
for an SI clone,

but in the end .. to be able to churn out as much work out of it,
and/or at the same (or higher) level, without all the excessive overhead
that usually comes with doing such high-end stuff.

So the point of my message is, or if one single thing were to come across,
it would be ... for goodness sakes... LET PEOPLE CHOOSE..  (!)

As people would CHOOSE to go with the simpler yet more enabling solution
if that would indeed turn out to be the case.

Which would of course imply to..  yes..  LET SOFTIMAGE LIVE (!)  (for 
/-goodness- /sakes... )

.. and may the (actual) "best"  (in their respective contexts)
take-over */naturally /*(right) ,
as opposed to /*forcibly*/
(very-much /wrong /in all accounts, or pretty-much at any way to look at 
it)


(only *if* people were actually a factor in, indeed, otherwise mostly 
money-driven corporate decision-making)

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Graham Bell]

Interestingly, you could flip that around and apply that to a Maya/Max 
guy/studio talking about Softimage. In fact more often than not, they did.


From: Christoph Muetze mailto:c...@glarestudios.de>>
Reply-To: 
"softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>" 
mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 18:04:56 +0100
To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>" 
mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>>
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya 
or Max or any Suite.

On 15/03/14 17:24, Greg Punchatz wrote:

I want to use the best out of the box 3d DCC app in the world, if one day that 
is Maya, I am all aboard.  Right now it is not, its kinda just a fact.


I'm so with you on this..

We did take Autodesks offer a while back and upgraded two of our groups seats 
to the Maya Entertainment Creative Suit. Mainly for Mudbox, but also to have a 
deep look at Maya.

Fast forward 1 year and i'm more than convinced that Maya doesn't offer what i 
need on a day to day basis.

It's not only that there are many things not available in Maya but also that 
the tools that are available take more time away from me than their Softimage 
counterparts. And in the field that i work in with its super tight deadlines 
(where you have days, sometimes only hours to deliver) every click counts.

If anyone can beat me with another tool i will instantly drop Softimage. But 
this hasn't happened so far and i highly doubt it will happen in the next 2 
years with someone using Maya.

Chris
<>

RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Angus Davidson]

Hi Chris

Part of the problem is the users have been begging to be heard for years now. 
Even if it was under NDA. Unfortunately the very few times that happened it was 
only for a very small amount of people at specific events (that 99% of your 
user base couldn't go to)  I have asked to be put under NDA  so I could find 
out what went on many times only to be told its limited to only the attendees. 
Whats happening now is very much reactionary to try and keep people within the 
AD fold. Its very plain that currently the majority of people who have voiced 
their opinion have come down to this. Use SI for as long as possible while 
finding a non AD alternative/s to switch to in the future. Which I am fairly 
sure was very far from AD's original thinking.

The 2013 and 2014 subscription releases were massive proof that AD was 
incredibly out of touch with everyone except a few studios in the far east. The 
major release for 2014 (ie the Camera sequencer ) wasn't even done with 
subscription money. It was paid for via your consultancy arm. This went a long 
way to explain why it was pretty much useless to everyone else. So people were 
already pissed off because their subscription money was giving a tiny ROI 
compared to Maya.

Because of this when it was announced it generated a lot of anger. People are 
still very angry, and while I don't necessarily agree with people telling you 
personally  to bugger off I can understand why they say that. Because of the 
way this was done it directly affects peoples livelihood. There will be 
companies that will close and a lot of freelancers that will loose jobs because 
they will not be allowed to use a tool of their choice.  With the best of 
intentions Maya is no where near as optimal as SI for the solo artist / small 
studio. You have had nearly a months worth of the worlds best artists telling 
you exactly that (years if you guys were listening on si-community). There is 
just no way that they can do the same work in the same time using Maya. That 
directly screws the bottom line. time = money. Going around a month or so 
telling your bigger clients what was happening was not nearly enough time and 
woefully inadequate..

For education it is a much bigger problem. While the commercial guys can go on 
using SI till you pry it from their cold dead fingers we cant. The day you 
announced it EOL we are no longer able to offer it as an option. No student in 
their right mind is ever going to play to learn EOL software. The irony is we 
have just last year gotten to the point of entering into international 
festivals (and being accepted and doing well) I can tell you that for a fact 
that would have been impossible using Maya. Because we will have to switch back 
to Maya (because of industry reasons) we will have lost all of that momentum.

We dont use ICE in our course due to time constraints but it very obvious to 
anyone in touch with the industry that Maya is a long way off providing a 
replacement for it. I am not against AD having fewer dcc apps. In fact if you 
go through my postings on si-community you will see I have called for AD moving 
to only one cross platform application. Until you do that you will always be 
out innovated no matter what technologies you put in. Mayas biggest problem is 
its a mass of really great tech with very little workflow benefit to show for 
it. The major problem is that SI EOL while inevitable (which I am sure to catch 
some flak for) was announced before Maya was in anyway able to replace it. 
Which brings me to my last point.

Maya should not have been the replacement to begin with. Take a step back and 
see that  trying to replace one 20+ year old software with another 20+ year old 
software  is a plan which will ultimately fail. No matter what great innovation 
you cram into Maya its base nuts and bolts has a limit. If your not working on 
a next Gen framework as of now you are in serious trouble. I have only heard of 
one commercial place locally looking at Maya as a replacement (our hand is 
somewhat forced in education for now) for SI. Everyone else is looking at apps 
like Houdini as they can see it as a long term investment. Autodesk has not 
only  opened the door to Alternatives with their handling of this whole thing 
they have practically invited them in. These are companies which are not bound 
by the same rules that you are. They are agile, they can tell people whats 
coming (and invite public opinion) and most importantly they actively engage 
with their communities. All of which you are unable to be.

I wish you the best of luck trying to integrate SI into Maya. Personally I 
think its a very bad idea. The last thing Maya needs is more workflow options.

Kind regards

Angus



From: Chris Vienneau [chris.vienn...@autodesk.com]
Sent: 15 March 2014 05:17 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage fr

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Christoph Muetze]

On 15/03/14 17:24, Greg Punchatz wrote:


I want to use the best out of the box 3d DCC app in the world, if one 
day that is Maya, I am all aboard.  Right now it is not, its kinda 
just a fact.



I'm so with you on this..

We did take Autodesks offer a while back and upgraded two of our groups 
seats to the Maya Entertainment Creative Suit. Mainly for Mudbox, but 
also to have a deep look at Maya.


Fast forward 1 year and i'm more than convinced that Maya doesn't offer 
what i need on a day to day basis.


It's not only that there are many things not available in Maya but also 
that the tools that are available take more time away from me than their 
Softimage counterparts. And in the field that i work in with its super 
tight deadlines (where you have days, sometimes only hours to deliver) 
every click counts.


If anyone can beat me with another tool i will instantly drop Softimage. 
But this hasn't happened so far and i highly doubt it will happen in the 
next 2 years with someone using Maya.


Chris

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Toonafish]

ally smart people plus an amazing story made 
what we all enjoyed so much.


First and foremost everyone who works at Autodesk in the M&E division 
including the people who used to work at Soft (there are way more than 
have left) love the film and games industry and the chance to be a 
part of it. The decision with Soft was a hard one but we back it so we 
can focus on helping the ecosystem make better movies and games. 
Innovation comes from the synergies of all these products, platforms, 
hardware and your talent and putting that on any one tool or company 
does not capture what is still a vibrant passionate community. The 
business model right now sucks and things need to change but there is 
still a bright future ahead and many problems left to solve.


cv/


*From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Toonafish 
[ron...@toonafish.nl]

*Sent:* Saturday, March 15, 2014 7:39 AM
*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
*Subject:* Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage 
free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.


Sales revenue was 2.31 Billion in 2013, and gross income 2.07 Billion.

The "funny" thing is that while I read on the list the reason for 
shutting SI down is that they believe they can focus more on 
innovation this way.


But AD spent only 600 million of that money on R&D, and 2.83 Billion 
on "sales and administration".  They spend way more money on selling 
the idea they are innovative, then they spend on actually trying to 
innovate. And when you consider how little innovation they have been 
able to squeeze out of a budget that is still humongous to smaller, 
much more innovative shops, it's simply embarrassing.


http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/adsk/financials#

You can sell customers, or sheep as they are called in some business 
models, heaps of crap as long as you spend enough dough on convincing 
them it really doesn't stink, it's the sweet smell of innovation.


I suspect the peeps that pull the strings at AD really couldn't care 
less about clients or innovation as long as this attitude brings in 
higher profits. They wouldn't smell innovation even if it sat on their 
face. Softimage with ICE is one of the most innovative DCC packages 
they have on their hands, and even though they seem to understand that 
you need to spend at least some money to sell innovation, they 
couldn't be bothered to lift a single finger to sell SI.


but I'm rambling on..

-Ronald

On 3/15/2014 9:46, Matt Lind wrote:
I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  What you have to 
understand is Autodesk doesn't want customers running concurrent 
sessions off a single license as in a Maya/Max and a Softimage 
session running in parallel.  that would effectively allow double the 
users to work while paying only half the price.  eg; if a customer 
has 50 licenses it would allow 50 maya + 50 softimage users to run 
concurrently, but pay for only 50 licenses.  Some studios are ethical 
and wouldn't do something like that, but as someone mentioned just 
the other day, other studios in lesser affluent places might not be 
so ethical.  Even if Softimage were included for free, it still 
consumes some amount of resources to ensure it still installs and 
runs as advertised.


I agree in principle Autodesk should continue Softimage until one of 
their other products can replace the functionality.  If anything, 
that's the ball that was dropped in this whole debacle.  Of all 
companies on the planet, you'd think the one with all the accumulated 
experience of all the products that went through this process in the 
1990's would know better and be more prepared than anyone else.  But 
what's done is done.


The problem with the theory of disgruntled users leaving and hurting 
Autodesk is that the Softimage user base isn't large enough to really 
be missed on Autodesk's bottom line.  think about it.  Only 8% of 
Autodesk's revenue comes from media and entertainment.  Of that 8%, 
about 5% of it is from Softimage (0.4% total) - and that might be a 
generous number.  For every $100 Autodesk earns in revenue, 40 cents 
comes from Softimage.  Take out expenses and you're looking at much 
less.


I don't remember the actual number, but I thought somebody recently 
reported Autodesk earned $392 million last year.  So, let's run that 
through the calculator:


   $392,000,000 USD * 0.004 = $1,568,000 Softimage gross revenue

I don't know what 10 developers in Singapore get paid, so I'll use 
conservative values based on USA rates:


   10 * $100,000 = $1,000,000

subtract expenses from revenue:

   $1,568,000 - $1,000,000 = $568,000

I don't know what marketing of Softimage costs, but I'm willing 
to bet $568,000 USD doesn't g

RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite

[Emilio Hernandez]

Chris again. Thank you for helping in the transition and you are trying to
do your job.  But you are still not listening to us. You just want to drag
us. I have been working in Maya for three years from now for some
particular projects that I needed to deliver in Maya.

Maya again is no option for us.  If you had not kill Softimage there will
be no transition at all. Still even that you killed Softimage, Maya today
is not an option for us.

We don't have the resources nor the time to work in Maya, even if we have
the same level of skill to use Maya as we have in Softimage.

Simple by digging into the connections of the nodes in Maya in the node
editor, is a mayhem!  The channel/layer editor is another mayhem.  The way
you work with objects and the selections in Maya are terrible. Rigging is a
nightmare. Managing the blendshapes is really annoying.

Doing math and expressions in Maya sucks. Your utility nodes have no
coherence at all.  The inputs and outputs are presented in one way at the
node editor and in another way in your connection editor.

Just to address a few.

Maya slows my workflow by twice the time at least to achieve the final
result.

I am working in a rig that if I had done it in Softimage I would have it
finished by now. But Maya's workflow takes me triple the time.

Believe me that if I had built the rig as fast in Maya as I do it in
Softimage. Not because I do not know Maya. But because that is the way Maya
works, we will be not having tgis transition conversation.

Expect not a transition but a flee from Autodesk to other solutions.

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Rob Wuijster]

Hi Chris,

What AD doesn't seem/want to understand is that it took away the tool we 
make money with, to provide for ourself and our families.

And 'suck it up and change to Maya/Max' is basically the answer we got.

The question here is, can we retrain ourself? It will differ from person 
to person, and range of tools used on a daily basis. But in the end, sure.
But at what costs? We have spent a lot of money year after year on 
licenses, on training, on tools. Lots of hours spent learning the tool 
and honing your skills. Often after work hours. It will take a long time 
to get comfortable to that same level, and that means less income.


This retraining will probably be somewhat less evasive for smaller 
teams, but the bigger companies face a whole different ballgame here.
Pipelines have to be restructured, tools have to be rewritten, staff has 
to be retrained.


But, with the forced transition to Maya or Max, we cannot expect our 
clients to understand the price or timetable suddenly goes up because we 
cannot do the job as we normally could. Especially with tools like ICE, 
which have become an vital tool for all production for most of us.
Or have the same timetables and hire in extra staff, because the tools 
we have to use aren't as fast or good as we're used to.


As you said that the end results are the same, but the route taken is 
different. We SI users still know and feel that Maya or Max aren't the 
proper road taken for that result. We strongly feel that both Maya or 
Max cannot do what SI can do in our situation. There's ton's of movies 
and commercials out there that prove that. On budgets that would be 
impossible to do in another app/pipeline.


You've read the letters from some very well known and respected names in 
the business. The damage AD is doing here is not just to the SI 
community, but far beyond that and it's not really sinking in at AD HQ 
I'm afraid.


You and Maurice are probably very nice people when met in person, but 
don't expect any understanding from us after years of 'The future for 
Softimage is bright' despite all the emails that say otherwise.


If Maya 2015 turns out to be the overruling app for us all, I will 
congratulate you guys.

But until than Hell is still a hot place, and pigs cannot fly..


Rob

\/-\/\/

On 15-3-2014 16:46, Chris Vienneau wrote:

We agree. That is why you need to see the plan on how we change how you get the 
end result. Otherwise this is probably a really lame thread to follow for the 
group as we talk over each other and it much less entertaining than the Chris 
is a lying piece of crap diatribe. Let's get on the same page and if you want 
to say after that Autodesk has its head up its ass then fine but if we agree 
that Maya, Houdini, 3dsmax, and Softimage can all produce amazing results 
albeit a different way then we are close. There is real value in the way 
Softimage does certain things we want to put in Maya.



cv/








From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Emilio Hernandez 
[emi...@e-roja.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:28 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya 
or Max or any Suite.


Chris first bring back Softimage and then show us what you have to offer in 
Maya that will allow us to evaluate if what you are doing is good enough to 
replace Softimage.

But at this moment. Maya is still a long way behind Softimage.  I am not 
speaking of the ending result.  I am talking about how you get to that final 
result.

El mar 15, 2014 4:18 PM, "Chris Vienneau" 
mailto:chris.vienn...@autodesk.com>> escribió:
Emilio there are people on this list and within the community that are working 
with us right now and taking us up on our offer to hear more about what we are 
doing? What do you have to lose to hear our plan?



cv/




From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com> 
[softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>] 
on behalf of Emilio Hernandez [emi...@e-roja.com<mailto:emi...@e-roja.com>]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:13 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya 
or Max or any Suite.


As I said in another post. Autodesk cut us our legs and now they are offering 
us a wheelchair. And they are trying to convince us that the weelchair is 
better than our legs by asking us how we want the wheelchair customized...   
pfff.

Dont mean to be rude but... You can go back where you came from.  And you can 
ride your wheelchair all the way back.


-
No virus found i

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Greg Punchatz]

Chris,

 I am all ears, we are very interested in talking (as you know you were
supposed to call or visit me a while back ; )

 Emilio, please don't be rude... while I think Chris's company and perhaps
his are views and perception are misinformed and or misguided,   they are
not evil people. Name calling will get us no where... in fact it just puts
the nail in the coffin faster..

Pointing out facts are fine. Pointing ongoing issues with AD and its
culture and results is awesome. Pointing out that Maya is in fact broken in
so many ways is just what we need tooMayans are used to working around
these issues they don't even realize they are an issue. Pointing out how
broken the communication is with the beta teams is awesome.

Pointing out things like the Xgen demo vs what the guys at Whiskey Tree can
do with ICE is more than fair. Just because it's from Disney does not mean
that its good... Xgen at Sig was just one of the worst product demos I have
ever seen The hair part was nifty, but when they used it for placing
tree's I just about busted a gut laughing at the inadequacies of the
implementation or core tech. Pointing out that AD hid the Whiskey Tree demo
because they knew it made the new micky mouse tech in Maya look useless is
important to do because it shows that AD does in fact  stifle innovation if
it is not aligned with the "Big Plan".

I just want to continue the discussion on how best to retire softimage or
better yet put soft into semi retirement for just a tad longer so we
can see if ADs plans (whatever they are) pan out. Keep it on standby in
case the plans you currently have go the way of Toxic...

I want to use the best out of the box 3d DCC app in the world, if one day
that is Maya, I am all aboard.  Right now it is not, its kinda just a fact.






On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 10:46 AM, Chris Vienneau <
chris.vienn...@autodesk.com> wrote:

> We agree. That is why you need to see the plan on how we change how you
> get the end result. Otherwise this is probably a really lame thread to
> follow for the group as we talk over each other and it much less
> entertaining than the Chris is a lying piece of crap diatribe. Let's get on
> the same page and if you want to say after that Autodesk has its head up
> its ass then fine but if we agree that Maya, Houdini, 3dsmax, and Softimage
> can all produce amazing results albeit a different way then we are close.
> There is real value in the way Softimage does certain things we want to put
> in Maya.
>
>
>
> cv/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 
> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [
> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Emilio Hernandez [
> emi...@e-roja.com]
> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:28 AM
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free
> w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
>
>
> Chris first bring back Softimage and then show us what you have to offer
> in Maya that will allow us to evaluate if what you are doing is good enough
> to replace Softimage.
>
> But at this moment. Maya is still a long way behind Softimage.  I am not
> speaking of the ending result.  I am talking about how you get to that
> final result.
>
> El mar 15, 2014 4:18 PM, "Chris Vienneau"  <mailto:chris.vienn...@autodesk.com>> escribió:
> Emilio there are people on this list and within the community that are
> working with us right now and taking us up on our offer to hear more about
> what we are doing? What do you have to lose to hear our plan?
>
>
>
> cv/
>
>
>
> 
> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com> [
> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>] on behalf of Emilio Hernandez [
> emi...@e-roja.com<mailto:emi...@e-roja.com>]
> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:13 AM
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> >
> Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free
> w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
>
>
> As I said in another post. Autodesk cut us our legs and now they are
> offering us a wheelchair. And they are trying to convince us that the
> weelchair is better than our legs by asking us how we want the wheelchair
> customized...   pfff.
>
> Dont mean to be rude but... You can go back where you came from.  And you
> can ride your wheelchair all the way back.
>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite

[John Clausing]

Gosh, I hope you're sincere.

Please let us know where we can find such "transition vids".

Sent from my iPhone

> On Mar 15, 2014, at 12:02 PM, Chris Vienneau  
> wrote:
> 
> Agreed. I am running the transition training program and we need more ideas 
> on how to help seasoned Soft users get trained up on Maya whether that be 
> online or live training. Any thoughts are welcome.
> 
> 
> 
> cv/
> 
> 
> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
> [softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Francisco Criado 
> [malcriad...@gmail.com]
> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:43 AM
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free 
> w/Maya or Max or any Suite
> 
> Agree with you Mirko.
> 
> 
> 2014-03-15 12:38 GMT-03:00 Mirko Jankovic 
> mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com>>:
> Problem is it is not just it sucks ok get over it and move on, it is a life 
> changer for a lot of seasoned Softimage veterans out there that are 
> effectively reduced back to Maya junior, 2 and more decades of experience 
> stripped away.
> That is something that no invention can replace.
> Using software is not just fancy new tool inside it but years of experience 
> and creative thinking and problem solving and after that much time you think 
> like a software and becomes to understand it.
> Now you are in whole new river trying t o find your way. No fancy tool can 
> help there but another 10-20 years of experience.
> 
> 
> On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 4:15 PM, Emilio Hernandez 
> mailto:emi...@e-roja.com>> wrote:
> 
> Well innovating Maya is not such a difficult task...
> 
> 
> 

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Emilio Hernandez]

I will add to Francisco.

All I have seen is that you are adding tools for Maya. Not really improving
the workflow.  Starting with the UI.

RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite

[Chris Vienneau]

Agreed. I am running the transition training program and we need more ideas on 
how to help seasoned Soft users get trained up on Maya whether that be online 
or live training. Any thoughts are welcome.



cv/


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Francisco Criado 
[malcriad...@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:43 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya 
or Max or any Suite

Agree with you Mirko.


2014-03-15 12:38 GMT-03:00 Mirko Jankovic 
mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com>>:
Problem is it is not just it sucks ok get over it and move on, it is a life 
changer for a lot of seasoned Softimage veterans out there that are effectively 
reduced back to Maya junior, 2 and more decades of experience stripped away.
That is something that no invention can replace.
Using software is not just fancy new tool inside it but years of experience and 
creative thinking and problem solving and after that much time you think like a 
software and becomes to understand it.
Now you are in whole new river trying t o find your way. No fancy tool can help 
there but another 10-20 years of experience.


On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 4:15 PM, Emilio Hernandez 
mailto:emi...@e-roja.com>> wrote:

Well innovating Maya is not such a difficult task...


<>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite

[Alen]

Nicely said, Mirko

A

On 15.3.2014. 16:38, Mirko Jankovic wrote:
Problem is it is not just it sucks ok get over it and move on, it is a 
life changer for a lot of seasoned Softimage veterans out there that 
are effectively reduced back to Maya junior, 2 and more decades of 
experience stripped away.

That is something that no invention can replace.
Using software is not just fancy new tool inside it but years of 
experience and creative thinking and problem solving and after that 
much time you think like a software and becomes to understand it.
Now you are in whole new river trying t o find your way. No fancy tool 
can help there but another 10-20 years of experience.



On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 4:15 PM, Emilio Hernandez > wrote:


Well innovating Maya is not such a difficult task...

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Francisco Criado]

Chris, nobody here on this list is saying you are that, its not you, is
Autodesk, the company we complain. And again, suppose someone comes and
guts your workflow in pieces and then says "look we want the best for you,
so why don´t you tell me what you need", well we need that exactly way of
working you just have taken away. Still don´t understand why is so
difficult.
If you want to have ice on Maya, first you should have to port a lot of
"tools", (workflow i prefer to name it) that Softimage has, and i´m no
programmer but think i have enough capacity to see Maya is not implemented
for 3d in the way Softimage has.

F.



2014-03-15 12:46 GMT-03:00 Chris Vienneau :

> We agree. That is why you need to see the plan on how we change how you
> get the end result. Otherwise this is probably a really lame thread to
> follow for the group as we talk over each other and it much less
> entertaining than the Chris is a lying piece of crap diatribe. Let's get on
> the same page and if you want to say after that Autodesk has its head up
> its ass then fine but if we agree that Maya, Houdini, 3dsmax, and Softimage
> can all produce amazing results albeit a different way then we are close.
> There is real value in the way Softimage does certain things we want to put
> in Maya.
>
>
>
> cv/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 
> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [
> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Emilio Hernandez [
> emi...@e-roja.com]
> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:28 AM
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free
> w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
>
>
> Chris first bring back Softimage and then show us what you have to offer
> in Maya that will allow us to evaluate if what you are doing is good enough
> to replace Softimage.
>
> But at this moment. Maya is still a long way behind Softimage.  I am not
> speaking of the ending result.  I am talking about how you get to that
> final result.
>
> El mar 15, 2014 4:18 PM, "Chris Vienneau"  <mailto:chris.vienn...@autodesk.com>> escribió:
> Emilio there are people on this list and within the community that are
> working with us right now and taking us up on our offer to hear more about
> what we are doing? What do you have to lose to hear our plan?
>
>
>
> cv/
>
>
>
> 
> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com> [
> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>] on behalf of Emilio Hernandez [
> emi...@e-roja.com<mailto:emi...@e-roja.com>]
> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:13 AM
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> >
> Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free
> w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
>
>
> As I said in another post. Autodesk cut us our legs and now they are
> offering us a wheelchair. And they are trying to convince us that the
> weelchair is better than our legs by asking us how we want the wheelchair
> customized...   pfff.
>
> Dont mean to be rude but... You can go back where you came from.  And you
> can ride your wheelchair all the way back.
>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[John Clausing]

Chris,

I admire you for having the courage to come on this list and tell us your side.

But let's be clear, you don't get to be frustrated, angry, or abusive. You need 
to win us over, you have let us down, pure and simple. You have to convince us 
that there is a good reason to use your product, period.

With respect, you need to SELL us on maya as a replacement for soft. You need 
to tell us what we do when we don't have ICE. You need to put up with our 
frustration at losing our tools because it is not and won't be "just use Maya, 
they do the same thing". They don't, and you have put us in a situation with 
our clients that is untenable at least in the short term, so sell us and in the 
meantime, deal with the consequences of YOUR actions in as patient a way as you 
can.

I look forward to hearing from you, how I replace my tool in concrete ways.

John

Sent from my iPhone

> On Mar 15, 2014, at 11:46 AM, Chris Vienneau  
> wrote:
> 
> We agree. That is why you need to see the plan on how we change how you get 
> the end result. Otherwise this is probably a really lame thread to follow for 
> the group as we talk over each other and it much less entertaining than the 
> Chris is a lying piece of crap diatribe. Let's get on the same page and if 
> you want to say after that Autodesk has its head up its ass then fine but if 
> we agree that Maya, Houdini, 3dsmax, and Softimage can all produce amazing 
> results albeit a different way then we are close. There is real value in the 
> way Softimage does certain things we want to put in Maya.
> 
> 
> 
> cv/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
> [softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Emilio Hernandez 
> [emi...@e-roja.com]
> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:28 AM
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free 
> w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
> 
> 
> Chris first bring back Softimage and then show us what you have to offer in 
> Maya that will allow us to evaluate if what you are doing is good enough to 
> replace Softimage.
> 
> But at this moment. Maya is still a long way behind Softimage.  I am not 
> speaking of the ending result.  I am talking about how you get to that final 
> result.
> 
> El mar 15, 2014 4:18 PM, "Chris Vienneau" 
> mailto:chris.vienn...@autodesk.com>> escribió:
> Emilio there are people on this list and within the community that are 
> working with us right now and taking us up on our offer to hear more about 
> what we are doing? What do you have to lose to hear our plan?
> 
> 
> 
> cv/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: 
> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>
>  
> [softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>]
>  on behalf of Emilio Hernandez [emi...@e-roja.com<mailto:emi...@e-roja.com>]
> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:13 AM
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
> Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free 
> w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
> 
> 
> As I said in another post. Autodesk cut us our legs and now they are offering 
> us a wheelchair. And they are trying to convince us that the weelchair is 
> better than our legs by asking us how we want the wheelchair customized...   
> pfff.
> 
> Dont mean to be rude but... You can go back where you came from.  And you can 
> ride your wheelchair all the way back.
> 

RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Chris Vienneau]

We agree. That is why you need to see the plan on how we change how you get the 
end result. Otherwise this is probably a really lame thread to follow for the 
group as we talk over each other and it much less entertaining than the Chris 
is a lying piece of crap diatribe. Let's get on the same page and if you want 
to say after that Autodesk has its head up its ass then fine but if we agree 
that Maya, Houdini, 3dsmax, and Softimage can all produce amazing results 
albeit a different way then we are close. There is real value in the way 
Softimage does certain things we want to put in Maya.



cv/








From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Emilio Hernandez 
[emi...@e-roja.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:28 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya 
or Max or any Suite.


Chris first bring back Softimage and then show us what you have to offer in 
Maya that will allow us to evaluate if what you are doing is good enough to 
replace Softimage.

But at this moment. Maya is still a long way behind Softimage.  I am not 
speaking of the ending result.  I am talking about how you get to that final 
result.

El mar 15, 2014 4:18 PM, "Chris Vienneau" 
mailto:chris.vienn...@autodesk.com>> escribió:
Emilio there are people on this list and within the community that are working 
with us right now and taking us up on our offer to hear more about what we are 
doing? What do you have to lose to hear our plan?



cv/




From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>
 
[softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>]
 on behalf of Emilio Hernandez [emi...@e-roja.com<mailto:emi...@e-roja.com>]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:13 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya 
or Max or any Suite.


As I said in another post. Autodesk cut us our legs and now they are offering 
us a wheelchair. And they are trying to convince us that the weelchair is 
better than our legs by asking us how we want the wheelchair customized...   
pfff.

Dont mean to be rude but... You can go back where you came from.  And you can 
ride your wheelchair all the way back.
<>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite

[Francisco Criado]

Agree with you Mirko.


2014-03-15 12:38 GMT-03:00 Mirko Jankovic :

> Problem is it is not just it sucks ok get over it and move on, it is a
> life changer for a lot of seasoned Softimage veterans out there that are
> effectively reduced back to Maya junior, 2 and more decades of experience
> stripped away.
> That is something that no invention can replace.
> Using software is not just fancy new tool inside it but years of
> experience and creative thinking and problem solving and after that much
> time you think like a software and becomes to understand it.
> Now you are in whole new river trying t o find your way. No fancy tool can
> help there but another 10-20 years of experience.
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 4:15 PM, Emilio Hernandez wrote:
>
>> Well innovating Maya is not such a difficult task...
>>
>
>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite

[Mirko Jankovic]

Problem is it is not just it sucks ok get over it and move on, it is a life
changer for a lot of seasoned Softimage veterans out there that are
effectively reduced back to Maya junior, 2 and more decades of experience
stripped away.
That is something that no invention can replace.
Using software is not just fancy new tool inside it but years of experience
and creative thinking and problem solving and after that much time you
think like a software and becomes to understand it.
Now you are in whole new river trying t o find your way. No fancy tool can
help there but another 10-20 years of experience.


On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 4:15 PM, Emilio Hernandez  wrote:

> Well innovating Maya is not such a difficult task...
>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Martin]

Improving Maya to make it better than any DCC available is a good thing, and I 
sincerely hope you success.
The problem is that you killed Softimage just too soon. Now as how it is, Maya 
isn't better than SI and I seriously doubt that it will be in 2 years, or 3 or 
4. Even without having ICE in the comparison.

Martin
Sent from my iPhone

> On 2014/03/16, at 0:17, Chris Vienneau  wrote:
> 
> Emilio there are people on this list and within the community that are 
> working with us right now and taking us up on our offer to hear more about 
> what we are doing? What do you have to lose to hear our plan?
> 
> 
> 
> cv/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
> [softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Emilio Hernandez 
> [emi...@e-roja.com]
> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:13 AM
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free 
> w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
> 
> 
> As I said in another post. Autodesk cut us our legs and now they are offering 
> us a wheelchair. And they are trying to convince us that the weelchair is 
> better than our legs by asking us how we want the wheelchair customized...   
> pfff.
> 
> Dont mean to be rude but... You can go back where you came from.  And you can 
> ride your wheelchair all the way back.
> 

RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Emilio Hernandez]

By the way just being curious...

During the time you made the decision of killing Softimage. Did you
evaluate that maybe the one that you should have killed instead was Maya to
dedicate your innovative effort to Softimage?

Or that never happened?

RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Emilio Hernandez]

Chris first bring back Softimage and then show us what you have to offer in
Maya that will allow us to evaluate if what you are doing is good enough to
replace Softimage.

But at this moment. Maya is still a long way behind Softimage.  I am not
speaking of the ending result.  I am talking about how you get to that
final result.
El mar 15, 2014 4:18 PM, "Chris Vienneau" 
escribió:

> Emilio there are people on this list and within the community that are
> working with us right now and taking us up on our offer to hear more about
> what we are doing? What do you have to lose to hear our plan?
>
>
>
> cv/
>
>
>
> 
> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [
> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Emilio Hernandez [
> emi...@e-roja.com]
> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:13 AM
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free
> w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
>
>
> As I said in another post. Autodesk cut us our legs and now they are
> offering us a wheelchair. And they are trying to convince us that the
> weelchair is better than our legs by asking us how we want the wheelchair
> customized...   pfff.
>
> Dont mean to be rude but... You can go back where you came from.  And you
> can ride your wheelchair all the way back.
>

RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Chris Vienneau]

Emilio there are people on this list and within the community that are working 
with us right now and taking us up on our offer to hear more about what we are 
doing? What do you have to lose to hear our plan?



cv/




From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Emilio Hernandez 
[emi...@e-roja.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:13 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya 
or Max or any Suite.


As I said in another post. Autodesk cut us our legs and now they are offering 
us a wheelchair. And they are trying to convince us that the weelchair is 
better than our legs by asking us how we want the wheelchair customized...   
pfff.

Dont mean to be rude but... You can go back where you came from.  And you can 
ride your wheelchair all the way back.
<>

RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite

[Emilio Hernandez]

Well innovating Maya is not such a difficult task...

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Emilio Hernandez]

As I said in another post. Autodesk cut us our legs and now they are
offering us a wheelchair. And they are trying to convince us that the
weelchair is better than our legs by asking us how we want the wheelchair
customized...   pfff.

Dont mean to be rude but... You can go back where you came from.  And you
can ride your wheelchair all the way back.

RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Tim Marinov]

ryone who works at Autodesk in the M&E division
> including the people who used to work at Soft (there are way more than have
> left) love the film and games industry and the chance to be a part of it.
> The decision with Soft was a hard one but we back it so we can focus on
> helping the ecosystem make better movies and games. Innovation comes from
> the synergies of all these products, platforms, hardware and your talent
> and putting that on any one tool or company does not capture what is still
> a vibrant passionate community. The business model right now sucks and
> things need to change but there is still a bright future ahead and many
> problems left to solve.
>
>
>
> cv/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 
> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [
> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Toonafish [
> ron...@toonafish.nl]
> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 7:39 AM
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free
> w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
>
> Sales revenue was 2.31 Billion in 2013, and gross income 2.07 Billion.
>
> The "funny" thing is that while I read on the list the reason for shutting
> SI down is that they believe they can focus more on innovation this way.
>
> But AD spent only 600 million of that money on R&D,  and 2.83 Billion on
> "sales and administration".  They spend way more money on selling the idea
> they are innovative, then they spend on actually trying to innovate. And
> when you consider how little innovation they have been able to squeeze out
> of a budget that is still humongous to smaller, much more innovative shops,
> it's simply embarrassing.
>
> http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/adsk/financials#
>
> You can sell customers, or sheep as they are called in some business
> models, heaps of crap as long as you spend enough dough on convincing them
> it really doesn't stink, it's the sweet smell of innovation.
>
> I suspect the peeps that pull the strings at AD really couldn't care less
> about clients or innovation as long as this attitude brings in higher
> profits. They wouldn't smell innovation even if it sat on their face.
> Softimage with ICE is one of the most innovative DCC packages they have on
> their hands, and even though they seem to understand that you need to spend
> at least some money to sell innovation, they couldn't be bothered to lift a
> single finger to sell SI.
>
> but I'm rambling on..
>
> -Ronald
>
> On 3/15/2014 9:46, Matt Lind wrote:
> I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  What you have to
> understand is Autodesk doesn't want customers running concurrent sessions
> off a single license as in a Maya/Max and a Softimage session running in
> parallel.  that would effectively allow double the users to work while
> paying only half the price.  eg; if a customer has 50 licenses it would
> allow 50 maya + 50 softimage users to run concurrently, but pay for only 50
> licenses.  Some studios are ethical and wouldn't do something like that,
> but as someone mentioned just the other day, other studios in lesser
> affluent places might not be so ethical.  Even if Softimage were included
> for free, it still consumes some amount of resources to ensure it still
> installs and runs as advertised.
>
> I agree in principle Autodesk should continue Softimage until one of their
> other products can replace the functionality.  If anything, that's the ball
> that was dropped in this whole debacle.  Of all companies on the planet,
> you'd think the one with all the accumulated experience of all the products
> that went through this process in the 1990's would know better and be more
> prepared than anyone else.  But what's done is done.
>
> The problem with the theory of disgruntled users leaving and hurting
> Autodesk is that the Softimage user base isn't large enough to really be
> missed on Autodesk's bottom line.  think about it.  Only 8% of Autodesk's
> revenue comes from media and entertainment.  Of that 8%, about 5% of it is
> from Softimage (0.4% total) - and that might be a generous number.  For
> every $100 Autodesk earns in revenue, 40 cents comes from Softimage.  Take
> out expenses and you're looking at much less.
>
> I don't remember the actual number, but I thought somebody recently
> reported Autodesk earned $392 million last year.  So, let's run that
> through the calculator:
>
>$392,000,000 USD * 0.004 = $1,568,000 Softimage gross revenue
>
> I don't know what 10 developers in Singap

RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite

[Chris Vienneau]

The topic was innovation and research. So no I was not trying to pull a cancer 
card but yes I was very proud to have helped out on that project. We are not 
trying to down play the fact that this decision sucks for many people on this 
list. 

cv/


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Christoph Muetze 
[c...@glarestudios.de]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 10:24 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya 
or Max or any Suite

First you beat us up and now you try to convince us that is was for our
own good and that you are actually really nice people... ?

Cancer research. really? You are pulling this card here and now? I'm
speechless.

Chris

On 15/03/14 14:37, Chris Vienneau wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
>
>
> Your math is a little off as the number is 600 m in R&D and 1 billion in 
> sales and administrative. The administrative covers everything from all the 
> people that support the developers to the building and computers. Autodesk 
> spends more on R&D than Adobe or Apple. Our CEO Carl Bass uses the products 
> and tells about what he doesn't like all the time. Again you can check him 
> making stuff here: http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/maker-king . We 
> have a huge research group that drives its own agenda 
> (http://www.autodeskresearch.com/) and our doing lots of labs/research 
> projects here ( labs.autodesk.com) . Our research into multi-touch, reality 
> capture and 3D printing is industry leading and we have been involved in 
> projects like molecular maya working with MIT on cancer research 
> (http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/10/features/biology-is-the-new-software
>  ). Autodesk's executives (check their bio) including Marc Stevens who ran 
> softimage and runs the film/tv group are all engineers and this is a 
> technology driven company. I know it sucks that no one from Autodesk in M&E 
> has said this to this community but I like working for Autodesk and believe 
> that this is a good company.
>
>
>
> For Maya 2015 we will show off the redesigned from the ground up fluid flip 
> method from Dr. Robert Bridson , a new voxel based skinning method that was a 
> siggraph paper , continued improvements on the hair and cloth simulation of 
> Nucleus from Dr. Jos Stam. Most of the innovation in this industry comes from 
> the top studios and the work that comes out of production. The snow in Frozen 
> was amazing but a lot of work. 
> (http://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/publications) 
> If<http://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/publications)%20If> you take the 
> innovation that has really driven the industry forward in the last five years 
> the origins are all on production. With tech like Alembic, openvdb, Ptex, 
> UV-tiling, opensubdiv, open color IO, Open EXR, etc there are smart 
> people in studios like Sebastian Sylwain (ex-weta), Bill Polson (Pixar), 
> Lincoln Wallen (DreamWorks), Rob Bredow (Sony), Dan Candela (Walt Disney 
> animation), and Hilmar Koch (ILM) that make great code and open source to the 
> benefit of the community. Then there are tons of contributors like Autodesk 
> and the Foundry who do things like porting, standards and bug fixing so this 
> all works together. Even the applications that are young and fast moving like 
> Mari (weta)  and Arnold (Sony) are from production and still take their main 
> direction from production just like Maya. All of the applications from Soft 
> with Jurassic to Maya with Dinosaurs got their footing with production work. 
> The fact that Toy Story was all built on in house hardware and 20 years later 
> you have amazing movies like Despicable Me and Lego movie made with mostly 
> off the shelf tools is amazing. Go back and look at the tools you think are 
> innovating and see how many of their "innovations" are based off Siggraph 
> papers or are inspired by tools written in production. I for one have no 
> problem giving credit where credit is due and most anything in Maya that is 
> good has come from being built in partnership with customers.
>
>
>
> This industry is lucky to have organizations like Siggraph and FMX that 
> foster and promote innovation and we love that more and more of the base 
> platform is community based. We have led the VES effort to standard Linux 
> libraries for all the vendors (Foundry, SideFX, Autodesk) and get to work in 
> organizations like open GL building out the next gen drivers and MPAA 
> (setting the new ACES standard for replacing Cineon) all building up the base 
> upon which the industry sits. We get to package up technology like Xgen and 
> bring it to the 

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Emilio Hernandez]

Yes take the name Softimage out and name it Maya reloaded if you want.
Personally I don't want a Softimage Maya fembot.

It turns out that now they are listening after they realized that most of
us will stay in a zombie software or are evaluating other company's options
but none of the Autodesk "solutions".

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Francisco Criado]

Sorry, don' t want to be rude here, but what i am seeing in this thread and
others, is Softimage users helping develop Maya for the Company that ruin
Softimage. They kill the software and then come to us to ask what parts of
your ripped software would you like to have on the software we want to
market?
Don't you have r&d? don't you have a mayan user database? ask them, not us.
If you come to us is that you are approving soft is better software and now
you need to begin to strip it.
Don't come to me with a phrase like "we want to hear what tools want the
softimage artist needs to migrate to maya".
The Softimage artist needs Softimage, period, the best 3d tool you had as a
product and decided to remove from market.
Again, sorry if it sounds rude.

F.



On Saturday, March 15, 2014, Chris Vienneau 
wrote:

> Do you guys think there is a top list of nodes in ICE and compounds you
> all use that cover 80% of what you do with the toolset?
>
>
>
> thx.
>
>
>
> cv/
>
>
>
> 
> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com  [
> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com ] on behalf of Rob
> Chapman [tekano@gmail.com ]
> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 8:43 AM
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com 
> Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free
> w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
>
> "We invite anyone here and many of you have taken up our offer to
> contribute and it is up to us to show that we are delivering over the next
> two years during the transition period. If we don't at the end than you
> will all have choices and plenty of time to evaluate your options."
>
> what kind of choices? If you do not deliver to our criteriathen Softimage
> is not EOL or..  it is very unclear as to what our choices are exactly?
>
> in 2016 will we be able to load ICE trees and compounds into Maya?
>
>
>
>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite

[Christoph Muetze]

First you beat us up and now you try to convince us that is was for our 
own good and that you are actually really nice people... ?


Cancer research. really? You are pulling this card here and now? I'm 
speechless.


Chris

On 15/03/14 14:37, Chris Vienneau wrote:

Hi guys,



Your math is a little off as the number is 600 m in R&D and 1 billion in sales and 
administrative. The administrative covers everything from all the people that support the 
developers to the building and computers. Autodesk spends more on R&D than Adobe or 
Apple. Our CEO Carl Bass uses the products and tells about what he doesn't like all the 
time. Again you can check him making stuff here: 
http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/maker-king . We have a huge research group that 
drives its own agenda (http://www.autodeskresearch.com/) and our doing lots of 
labs/research projects here ( labs.autodesk.com) . Our research into multi-touch, reality 
capture and 3D printing is industry leading and we have been involved in projects like 
molecular maya working with MIT on cancer research 
(http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/10/features/biology-is-the-new-software ). 
Autodesk's executives (check their bio) including Marc Stevens who ran softimage and runs 
the film/tv group are all engineers and this is a technology driven company. I know it 
sucks that no one from Autodesk in M&E has said this to this community but I like 
working for Autodesk and believe that this is a good company.



For Maya 2015 we will show off the redesigned from the ground up fluid flip method from Dr. 
Robert Bridson , a new voxel based skinning method that was a siggraph paper , continued 
improvements on the hair and cloth simulation of Nucleus from Dr. Jos Stam. Most of the 
innovation in this industry comes from the top studios and the work that comes out of 
production. The snow in Frozen was amazing but a lot of work. 
(http://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/publications) 
If you take the innovation 
that has really driven the industry forward in the last five years the origins are all on 
production. With tech like Alembic, openvdb, Ptex, UV-tiling, opensubdiv, open color IO, Open 
EXR, etc there are smart people in studios like Sebastian Sylwain (ex-weta), Bill Polson 
(Pixar), Lincoln Wallen (DreamWorks), Rob Bredow (Sony), Dan Candela (Walt Disney animation), 
and Hilmar Koch (ILM) that make great code and open source to the benefit of the community. 
Then there are tons of contributors like Autodesk and the Foundry who do things like porting, 
standards and bug fixing so this all works together. Even the applications that are young and 
fast moving like Mari (weta)  and Arnold (Sony) are from production and still take their main 
direction from production just like Maya. All of the applications from Soft with Jurassic to 
Maya with Dinosaurs got their footing with production work. The fact that Toy Story was all 
built on in house hardware and 20 years later you have amazing movies like Despicable Me and 
Lego movie made with mostly off the shelf tools is amazing. Go back and look at the tools you 
think are innovating and see how many of their "innovations" are based off Siggraph 
papers or are inspired by tools written in production. I for one have no problem giving credit 
where credit is due and most anything in Maya that is good has come from being built in 
partnership with customers.



This industry is lucky to have organizations like Siggraph and FMX that foster 
and promote innovation and we love that more and more of the base platform is 
community based. We have led the VES effort to standard Linux libraries for all 
the vendors (Foundry, SideFX, Autodesk) and get to work in organizations like 
open GL building out the next gen drivers and MPAA (setting the new ACES 
standard for replacing Cineon) all building up the base upon which the industry 
sits. We get to package up technology like Xgen and bring it to the larger 
market and all vendors get to put in Alembic to share data and open color I/O 
to set color within a facility.



This movement has allowed medium sized companies to do shots that were once 
only possible by a few shops and more importantly this has allowed stories to 
be told in countries that have never before had a voice. There is no one tool 
to rule them all and Max vs Maya vs Soft vs Houdini vs Modo vs Zbrush vs fabric 
does not foster innovation. Raf said it well when he described the Lego as all 
of those tools plus internal tools plus really smart people plus an amazing 
story made what we all enjoyed so much.



First and foremost everyone who works at Autodesk in the M&E division including 
the people who used to work at Soft (there are way more than have left) love the 
film and games industry and the chance to be a part of it. The decision with Soft 
was a hard one but we back it so we can focus on helping the ecosystem make b

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Mirko Jankovic]

e all enjoyed so much.
>
>
>
> First and foremost everyone who works at Autodesk in the M&E division
> including the people who used to work at Soft (there are way more than have
> left) love the film and games industry and the chance to be a part of it.
> The decision with Soft was a hard one but we back it so we can focus on
> helping the ecosystem make better movies and games. Innovation comes from
> the synergies of all these products, platforms, hardware and your talent
> and putting that on any one tool or company does not capture what is still
> a vibrant passionate community. The business model right now sucks and
> things need to change but there is still a bright future ahead and many
> problems left to solve.
>
>
>
> cv/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 
> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [
> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Toonafish [
> ron...@toonafish.nl]
> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 7:39 AM
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free
> w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
>
> Sales revenue was 2.31 Billion in 2013, and gross income 2.07 Billion.
>
> The "funny" thing is that while I read on the list the reason for shutting
> SI down is that they believe they can focus more on innovation this way.
>
> But AD spent only 600 million of that money on R&D,  and 2.83 Billion on
> "sales and administration".  They spend way more money on selling the idea
> they are innovative, then they spend on actually trying to innovate. And
> when you consider how little innovation they have been able to squeeze out
> of a budget that is still humongous to smaller, much more innovative shops,
> it's simply embarrassing.
>
> http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/adsk/financials#
>
> You can sell customers, or sheep as they are called in some business
> models, heaps of crap as long as you spend enough dough on convincing them
> it really doesn't stink, it's the sweet smell of innovation.
>
> I suspect the peeps that pull the strings at AD really couldn't care less
> about clients or innovation as long as this attitude brings in higher
> profits. They wouldn't smell innovation even if it sat on their face.
> Softimage with ICE is one of the most innovative DCC packages they have on
> their hands, and even though they seem to understand that you need to spend
> at least some money to sell innovation, they couldn't be bothered to lift a
> single finger to sell SI.
>
> but I'm rambling on..
>
> -Ronald
>
> On 3/15/2014 9:46, Matt Lind wrote:
> I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  What you have to
> understand is Autodesk doesn't want customers running concurrent sessions
> off a single license as in a Maya/Max and a Softimage session running in
> parallel.  that would effectively allow double the users to work while
> paying only half the price.  eg; if a customer has 50 licenses it would
> allow 50 maya + 50 softimage users to run concurrently, but pay for only 50
> licenses.  Some studios are ethical and wouldn't do something like that,
> but as someone mentioned just the other day, other studios in lesser
> affluent places might not be so ethical.  Even if Softimage were included
> for free, it still consumes some amount of resources to ensure it still
> installs and runs as advertised.
>
> I agree in principle Autodesk should continue Softimage until one of their
> other products can replace the functionality.  If anything, that's the ball
> that was dropped in this whole debacle.  Of all companies on the planet,
> you'd think the one with all the accumulated experience of all the products
> that went through this process in the 1990's would know better and be more
> prepared than anyone else.  But what's done is done.
>
> The problem with the theory of disgruntled users leaving and hurting
> Autodesk is that the Softimage user base isn't large enough to really be
> missed on Autodesk's bottom line.  think about it.  Only 8% of Autodesk's
> revenue comes from media and entertainment.  Of that 8%, about 5% of it is
> from Softimage (0.4% total) - and that might be a generous number.  For
> every $100 Autodesk earns in revenue, 40 cents comes from Softimage.  Take
> out expenses and you're looking at much less.
>
> I don't remember the actual number, but I thought somebody recently
> reported Autodesk earned $392 million last year.  So, let's run that
> through the calculator:
>
>$392,000,000 USD * 0.004 = $1,568,000 Softimage gross

RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Chris Vienneau]

Do you guys think there is a top list of nodes in ICE and compounds you all use 
that cover 80% of what you do with the toolset?



thx.



cv/




From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Rob Chapman 
[tekano@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 8:43 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya 
or Max or any Suite.

"We invite anyone here and many of you have taken up our offer to contribute 
and it is up to us to show that we are delivering over the next two years 
during the transition period. If we don't at the end than you will all have 
choices and plenty of time to evaluate your options."

what kind of choices? If you do not deliver to our criteriathen Softimage is 
not EOL or..  it is very unclear as to what our choices are exactly?

in 2016 will we be able to load ICE trees and compounds into Maya?



<>

RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Chris Vienneau]

e 
community. The business model right now sucks and things need to change but 
there is still a bright future ahead and many problems left to solve.



cv/
















From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Toonafish 
[ron...@toonafish.nl]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 7:39 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya 
or Max or any Suite.

Sales revenue was 2.31 Billion in 2013, and gross income 2.07 Billion.

The "funny" thing is that while I read on the list the reason for shutting SI 
down is that they believe they can focus more on innovation this way.

But AD spent only 600 million of that money on R&D,  and 2.83 Billion on "sales 
and administration".  They spend way more money on selling the idea they are 
innovative, then they spend on actually trying to innovate. And when you 
consider how little innovation they have been able to squeeze out of a budget 
that is still humongous to smaller, much more innovative shops, it's simply 
embarrassing.

http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/adsk/financials#

You can sell customers, or sheep as they are called in some business models, 
heaps of crap as long as you spend enough dough on convincing them it really 
doesn't stink, it's the sweet smell of innovation.

I suspect the peeps that pull the strings at AD really couldn't care less about 
clients or innovation as long as this attitude brings in higher profits. They 
wouldn't smell innovation even if it sat on their face. Softimage with ICE is 
one of the most innovative DCC packages they have on their hands, and even 
though they seem to understand that you need to spend at least some money to 
sell innovation, they couldn't be bothered to lift a single finger to sell SI.

but I'm rambling on..

-Ronald

On 3/15/2014 9:46, Matt Lind wrote:
I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  What you have to understand 
is Autodesk doesn't want customers running concurrent sessions off a single 
license as in a Maya/Max and a Softimage session running in parallel.  that 
would effectively allow double the users to work while paying only half the 
price.  eg; if a customer has 50 licenses it would allow 50 maya + 50 softimage 
users to run concurrently, but pay for only 50 licenses.  Some studios are 
ethical and wouldn't do something like that, but as someone mentioned just the 
other day, other studios in lesser affluent places might not be so ethical.  
Even if Softimage were included for free, it still consumes some amount of 
resources to ensure it still installs and runs as advertised.

I agree in principle Autodesk should continue Softimage until one of their 
other products can replace the functionality.  If anything, that's the ball 
that was dropped in this whole debacle.  Of all companies on the planet, you'd 
think the one with all the accumulated experience of all the products that went 
through this process in the 1990's would know better and be more prepared than 
anyone else.  But what's done is done.

The problem with the theory of disgruntled users leaving and hurting Autodesk 
is that the Softimage user base isn't large enough to really be missed on 
Autodesk's bottom line.  think about it.  Only 8% of Autodesk's revenue comes 
from media and entertainment.  Of that 8%, about 5% of it is from Softimage 
(0.4% total) - and that might be a generous number.  For every $100 Autodesk 
earns in revenue, 40 cents comes from Softimage.  Take out expenses and you're 
looking at much less.

I don't remember the actual number, but I thought somebody recently reported 
Autodesk earned $392 million last year.  So, let's run that through the 
calculator:

   $392,000,000 USD * 0.004 = $1,568,000 Softimage gross revenue

I don't know what 10 developers in Singapore get paid, so I'll use conservative 
values based on USA rates:

   10 * $100,000 = $1,000,000

subtract expenses from revenue:

   $1,568,000 - $1,000,000 = $568,000

I don't know what marketing of Softimage costs, but I'm willing to bet $568,000 
USD doesn't go very far for a product that needs a lot of attention to survive. 
 Even if tripled, that's still lean.  See the problem?

One item of note that probably hasn't been brought up in discussion yet is that 
Softimage has been included in the Max and Maya suites the past few years, so 
some sales of Max and Maya may actually be Softimage sales in a certain light - 
I know of at least one studio where that is the case.  In that scenario 
Softimage is getting the short end of the stick when it comes to accounting.

I mourn the loss of Softimage as much as anybody having dedicated 21+ years of 
my life to it both as professional user and former owner of a Soft

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Rob Chapman]

"We invite anyone here and many of you have taken up our offer to
contribute and it is up to us to show that we are delivering over the next
two years during the transition period. If we don't at the end than you
will all have choices and plenty of time to evaluate your options."

what kind of choices? If you do not deliver to our criteriathen Softimage
is not EOL or..  it is very unclear as to what our choices are exactly?

in 2016 will we be able to load ICE trees and compounds into Maya?

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Mirko Jankovic]

Maya. If you think of all the work that went into the work you see above
> the team is making this a top priority now that we have a modern base layer
> of UI, data, evaluation, and viewport on which to work. Maya sucks at
> lighting and rendering compared to Soft and we need to fix that along with
> a bunch of other things. If you want to hedge your bets than sign up for
> the roadmap or continue to write in here. Maya's modeling community have
> been working with us for two years to bring it up to speed with
> applications like modo and we have monthly drops and a tight community that
> keeps us honest. The videos in two days will be testament to that.
>
>
>
> As for the whole NDA thing I am not going to apologize that is how we have
> to do business as that is how Adobe, Apple, and anyone else who is a public
> company has to operate. If you want to see what happens when you don't work
> that way look at what happened to Avid. (
> http://www.forbes.com/sites/bobbyowsinski/2014/02/27/major-changes-around-the-corner-for-music-as-avid-delists/)
> They played fast and loose with promises and they couldn't be honest with
> the people who invested in them. I am so tired of the whole public evil
> corporation thing as investors are people like you and me who just want to
> retire one day. Investment companies just keep these companies honest and
> the laws put in place prevent disasters like what happened with Enron where
> people were stealing money and getting away with it. We need to be
> responsible. There are no investors making calls at Autodesk. Everyone in
> this industry from the Foundry (google Caryle Group) to Fabric (Marc Petit
> big investor) have people that fund them and expect a return for their
> investment. Considering we have spoken with 60% of the user base already
> and plan on hitting 80% under NDA by Siggraph I think we are getting the
> best of both worlds. You as the user are informed about what we intend to
> do and we are not breaking any laws.
>
>
>
> There are developers on soft right now and we will keep them there for two
> years. The list of things we can do to help the transition is in their
> hands and we will see what we can do. Just a reminder there is the
> softimage webinar tomorrow online.
>
>
>
> thx.
>
>
>
> cv/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 
> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [
> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Mirko Jankovic [
> mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com]
> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 4:26 AM
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free
> w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
>
> All that "we are fully developing Maya so it will be great just you see"is
> pure PR crap.
> >From couple sides is heard that bifrost which is one big argument on
> their side is still too young to be usable. It is not even full grown fluid
> simulation and to replace ICE it will take years.. even after, by AD's
> plan, SI is long gone they will still be not near the level of ICE.  Not to
> mention all other aspects of Maya workflow which are S wrong that won/t
> get to table at all for years to come.
>
> If they are so confident in Maya development they should let people see it
> for them self and move by own choice.
> But having whole road map so closed and under all NDAs is selling a cat in
> the bag. You have no idea where is Maya going at all what is planned and
> WHEN it will be available.
> That is big pile of crap if you have to plan transition.
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 8:56 AM, skuby  sku...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> The above has a severe typo:  Should read:   With that, I don't think
> Autodesk will want to encourage new users to Softimage, so not selling new
> licenses directly makes sense for them, when they want to be
> selling/promoting Maya and presumably Max licenses.
>
> sorry, my error
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 2:52 PM, skuby  sku...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> """"Martin furik...@gmail.com<mailto:furik...@gmail.com>
>
>
>
> [https://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif]
>
> [https://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif]
> [https://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif]
>
>
> With SI retired you can't buy licenses for SI anymore, it doesn't come
> with Max or Maya, you can only use the licenses you have right now. You
> should add "keep selling SI licenses" to your idea.
>
> Martin
> Sent from my iPhone""""""""""""""
>
> Thing is, Softimage IS now depreciated, like it or not,

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Martin]

AFAIK that's how the suites worked. You can use all apps in your PC with a 
single license and as soon as you run any of the apps you'll be using the 
license and won't be able to use any other app on any other PC.

I think that is quite reasonable. Make it subscription only, or time limited 
maybe I don't know, but that would save a lot of current Softimage projects 
that may need much more than 2 years to migrate and may need to increase their 
seats meanwhile.

I also don't have faith in Autodesk doing this (or anything at all to help us), 
but IMHO it's a reasonable solution.

Martin
Sent from my iPhone

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Toonafish]

Sales revenue was 2.31 Billion in 2013, and gross income 2.07 Billion.

The "funny" thing is that while I read on the list the reason for 
shutting SI down is that they believe they can focus more on innovation 
this way.


But AD spent only 600 million of that money on R&D,  and 2.83 Billion on 
"sales and administration".  They spend way more money on selling the 
idea they are innovative, then they spend on actually trying to 
innovate. And when you consider how little innovation they have been 
able to squeeze out of a budget that is still humongous to smaller, much 
more innovative shops, it's simply embarrassing.


http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/adsk/financials#

You can sell customers, or sheep as they are called in some business 
models, heaps of crap as long as you spend enough dough on convincing 
them it really doesn't stink, it's the sweet smell of innovation.


I suspect the peeps that pull the strings at AD really couldn't care 
less about clients or innovation as long as this attitude brings in 
higher profits. They wouldn't smell innovation even if it sat on their 
face. Softimage with ICE is one of the most innovative DCC packages they 
have on their hands, and even though they seem to understand that you 
need to spend at least some money to sell innovation, they couldn't be 
bothered to lift a single finger to sell SI.


but I'm rambling on..

-Ronald

On 3/15/2014 9:46, Matt Lind wrote:
I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What you have to 
understand is Autodesk doesn't want customers running concurrent 
sessions off a single license as in a Maya/Max and a Softimage session 
running in parallel.  that would effectively allow double the users to 
work while paying only half the price.  eg; if a customer has 50 
licenses it would allow 50 maya + 50 softimage users to run 
concurrently, but pay for only 50 licenses.  Some studios are ethical 
and wouldn't do something like that, but as someone mentioned just the 
other day, other studios in lesser affluent places might not be so 
ethical.  Even if Softimage were included for free, it still consumes 
some amount of resources to ensure it still installs and runs as 
advertised.


I agree in principle Autodesk should continue Softimage until one of 
their other products can replace the functionality.  If anything, 
that's the ball that was dropped in this whole debacle.  Of all 
companies on the planet, you'd think the one with all the accumulated 
experience of all the products that went through this process in the 
1990's would know better and be more prepared than anyone else.  But 
what's done is done.


The problem with the theory of disgruntled users leaving and hurting 
Autodesk is that the Softimage user base isn't large enough to really 
be missed on Autodesk's bottom line.  think about it.  Only 8% of 
Autodesk's revenue comes from media and entertainment.  Of that 8%, 
about 5% of it is from Softimage (0.4% total) - and that might be a 
generous number.  For every $100 Autodesk earns in revenue, 40 cents 
comes from Softimage. Take out expenses and you're looking at much less.


I don't remember the actual number, but I thought somebody recently 
reported Autodesk earned $392 million last year.  So, let's run that 
through the calculator:


   $392,000,000 USD * 0.004 = $1,568,000 Softimage gross revenue

I don't know what 10 developers in Singapore get paid, so I'll use 
conservative values based on USA rates:


   10 * $100,000 = $1,000,000

subtract expenses from revenue:

   $1,568,000 - $1,000,000 = $568,000

I don't know what marketing of Softimage costs, but I'm willing to bet 
$568,000 USD doesn't go very far for a product that needs a lot of 
attention to survive.  Even if tripled, that's still lean.  See the 
problem?


One item of note that probably hasn't been brought up in discussion 
yet is that Softimage has been included in the Max and Maya suites the 
past few years, so some sales of Max and Maya may actually be 
Softimage sales in a certain light - I know of at least one studio 
where that is the case.  In that scenario Softimage is getting the 
short end of the stick when it comes to accounting.


I mourn the loss of Softimage as much as anybody having dedicated 21+ 
years of my life to it both as professional user and former owner of a 
Softimage certified training center. Sometimes life sucks.


Matt




--
Ronald van Vemden
---
3D Graphics & Animation
Cyberfish Laboratories | www.cyberfish.nl
Toonafish | www.toonafish.nl
tel. +31(0)20 5289291
fax  +31(0)20 5289292
email: ron...@toonafish.nl

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[skuby]

gt;>>> working in many industries which won't be served by mental ray and FBX
>>>>> updates.  My studio is a prime example (games).
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> 2) The SDK is not open enough for plugin developers to do what you
>>>>> suggest.  Many of the 3rd party efforts to date usually required some
>>>>> amount of help from the Softimage developers to make possible.  Softimage
>>>>> tended to implement new features, then expand the SDK to support those new
>>>>> features. For 3rd party development, you need the SDK expanded ahead
>>>>> of the features.  In other words, while the SDK is mature, it's also not
>>>>> expanded too far outside of what you can already do out of the box.  New
>>>>> plugin efforts would largely amount to using existing levers and switches
>>>>> instead of making new levers and switches like you and everybody else 
>>>>> would
>>>>> like.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> There's still plenty of tools that can be written, but probably not
>>>>> anything earth shattering as the SDK is single threaded and some of the
>>>>> components it leans on are getting long in the tooth too as Luc-Eric has
>>>>> recently mentioned.  Basically, Softimage is that car that still performs
>>>>> really great, but has high mileage and about to enter that period where
>>>>> major parts will need repairing/replacing making it a very expensive
>>>>> upkeep.  Since the driver hasn't seen that breakage firsthand yet, he's
>>>>> under the impression there isn't a problem and the car can drive on
>>>>> indefinitely into the sunset.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Autodesk was at our site just as the press release was officially
>>>>> hitting the wire.  While no specifics were mentioned by Autodesk or our
>>>>> reseller in our offices, my personal poking, prodding and reading between
>>>>> the lines lead me to believe a lot of work (refactoring) has gone into 
>>>>> Maya
>>>>> the past few years to accommodate some of this burden in migration, but
>>>>> some (much) work still has to come.  I think we'll see parts of that work
>>>>> in Maya 2015 and probably explains why the Softimage Montreal team has 
>>>>> been
>>>>> busy for the past 2 years on Maya instead of Softimage.  I have no idea if
>>>>> there's any truth to this, but it's what I've come to believe based on the
>>>>> sparse bits and pieces I could put together, and witnessing how such
>>>>> migrations were handled in the past.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I'll share the rest of my thoughts from 21+ years of Softimage
>>>>> experience in another thread at another time.  Right now I'm neck deep in
>>>>> getting the project out the door Ben Houston so kindly posted the other 
>>>>> day.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Matt
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
>>>>> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *skuby
>>>>> *Sent:* Friday, March 14, 2014 8:38 PM
>>>>> *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
>>>>> *Subject:* Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage
>>>>> free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Softimage is ready out of the box now with no new features added.  Why
>>>>> not, leave it as is, but continue to support new Mental Ray and FBX 
>>>>> updates
>>>>> so that it still continues to fit nicely into any pipeline and leave
>>>>> continued development past 2016 at those simple two things.  Leave the 
>>>>> rest
>>>>> up to plug-in developers and forever-more include Softimage as a free
>>>>> throw-in with any Maya or Max or Suite purchase or rental, so there will 
>>>>> be
>>>>> many ways to own it or rent it while exclusively promoting your other
>>>>> packages.  The other great thing, since it can only now come with Max/Maya
>>>>> or a Suite, is that Soft users are never a financial burden to their
>>>>> employers since it will always be a free seat with any existing Max/Maya
>>>>> licence.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> This could be a very easy, welcomed add-on to the existing Softimage
>>>>> retirement announcement.  Please please, consider this as an option
>>>>> Autodesk and please, everyone, support and promote this idea to Autodesk, 
>>>>> I
>>>>> think it's our best bet and we might actually be able to get this.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> -regards
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[skubyd]

ther words, 
while the SDK is mature, it’s also not expanded too far outside of what you can 
already do out of the box.  New plugin efforts would largely amount to using 
existing levers and switches instead of making new levers and switches like you 
and everybody else would like.  

 

There’s still plenty of tools that can be written, but probably not anything 
earth shattering as the SDK is single threaded and some of the components it 
leans on are getting long in the tooth too as Luc-Eric has recently mentioned.  
Basically, Softimage is that car that still performs really great, but has high 
mileage and about to enter that period where major parts will need 
repairing/replacing making it a very expensive upkeep.  Since the driver hasn’t 
seen that breakage firsthand yet, he’s under the impression there isn’t a 
problem and the car can drive on indefinitely into the sunset.

 

Autodesk was at our site just as the press release was officially hitting the 
wire.  While no specifics were mentioned by Autodesk or our reseller in our 
offices, my personal poking, prodding and reading between the lines lead me to 
believe a lot of work (refactoring) has gone into Maya the past few years to 
accommodate some of this burden in migration, but some (much) work still has to 
come.  I think we’ll see parts of that work in Maya 2015 and probably explains 
why the Softimage Montreal team has been busy for the past 2 years on Maya 
instead of Softimage.  I have no idea if there’s any truth to this, but it’s 
what I’ve come to believe based on the sparse bits and pieces I could put 
together, and witnessing how such migrations were handled in the past.

 

I’ll share the rest of my thoughts from 21+ years of Softimage experience in 
another thread at another time.  Right now I’m neck deep in getting the project 
out the door Ben Houston so kindly posted the other day.

 

 

 

Matt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of skuby
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2014 8:38 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or 
Max or any Suite.


 


Softimage is ready out of the box now with no new features added.  Why not, 
leave it as is, but continue to support new Mental Ray and FBX updates so that 
it still continues to fit nicely into any pipeline and leave continued 
development past 2016 at those simple two things.  Leave the rest up to plug-in 
developers and forever-more include Softimage as a free throw-in with any Maya 
or Max or Suite purchase or rental, so there will be many ways to own it or 
rent it while exclusively promoting your other packages.  The other great 
thing, since it can only now come with Max/Maya or a Suite, is that Soft users 
are never a financial burden to their employers since it will always be a free 
seat with any existing Max/Maya licence.


 


This could be a very easy, welcomed add-on to the existing Softimage retirement 
announcement.  Please please, consider this as an option Autodesk and please, 
everyone, support and promote this idea to Autodesk, I think it's our best bet 
and we might actually be able to get this.


 


-regards

Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Matt Lind]

I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  What you have to understand 
is Autodesk doesn't want customers running concurrent sessions off a single 
license as in a Maya/Max and a Softimage session running in parallel.  that 
would effectively allow double the users to work while paying only half the 
price.  eg; if a customer has 50 licenses it would allow 50 maya + 50 softimage 
users to run concurrently, but pay for only 50 licenses.  Some studios are 
ethical and wouldn't do something like that, but as someone mentioned just the 
other day, other studios in lesser affluent places might not be so ethical.  
Even if Softimage were included for free, it still consumes some amount of 
resources to ensure it still installs and runs as advertised.
 
I agree in principle Autodesk should continue Softimage until one of their 
other products can replace the functionality.  If anything, that's the ball 
that was dropped in this whole debacle.  Of all companies on the planet, you'd 
think the one with all the accumulated experience of all the products that went 
through this process in the 1990's would know better and be more prepared than 
anyone else.  But what's done is done.

The problem with the theory of disgruntled users leaving and hurting Autodesk 
is that the Softimage user base isn't large enough to really be missed on 
Autodesk's bottom line.  think about it.  Only 8% of Autodesk's revenue comes 
from media and entertainment.  Of that 8%, about 5% of it is from Softimage 
(0.4% total) - and that might be a generous number.  For every $100 Autodesk 
earns in revenue, 40 cents comes from Softimage.  Take out expenses and you're 
looking at much less.  

I don't remember the actual number, but I thought somebody recently reported 
Autodesk earned $392 million last year.  So, let's run that through the 
calculator:

   $392,000,000 USD * 0.004 = $1,568,000 Softimage gross revenue

I don't know what 10 developers in Singapore get paid, so I'll use conservative 
values based on USA rates:
 
   10 * $100,000 = $1,000,000
 
subtract expenses from revenue:
 
   $1,568,000 - $1,000,000 = $568,000

 I don't know what marketing of Softimage costs, but I'm willing to bet 
$568,000 USD doesn't go very far for a product that needs a lot of attention to 
survive.  Even if tripled, that's still lean.  See the problem?

One item of note that probably hasn't been brought up in discussion yet is that 
Softimage has been included in the Max and Maya suites the past few years, so 
some sales of Max and Maya may actually be Softimage sales in a certain light - 
I know of at least one studio where that is the case.  In that scenario 
Softimage is getting the short end of the stick when it comes to accounting.

I mourn the loss of Softimage as much as anybody having dedicated 21+ years of 
my life to it both as professional user and former owner of a Softimage 
certified training center.  Sometimes life sucks.
 
Matt
 
  

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Mirko Jankovic]

ll have FBX handy and a TD can
>>> easily work with that).  Keeping up to date Mental Ray, allows existing
>>> pipe-lines that go in the other direction, or use Softimage entirely, able
>>> to keep up and extend the transition period beyond 2016.  Now, remember,
>>> all the while anyone primarily using Softimage with these Crosswalk/Mental
>>> Ray add-ons, are also going to have full up to date copies of at least one
>>> of the  2 non-depreciated softwares that AD wants to continue  and actively
>>> promote at this time, which is only going to increase AD's revenue by
>>> ensuring many Japanese/Vancouver studios and others stay in the Autodesk
>>> family, and that alone will likely provide more than enough revenue that
>>> would potentially be lost (even if only in small amounts) to the obvious
>>> hoard of disgruntled orphans.
>>>
>>> I don't want to make this too long, but I had hoped by now, AD would
>>> have already merged the 3 major userbases (I expect with a Maya base above
>>> all else because big studios have a lot invested in existing pipelines with
>>> it and that just makes financial sense) .  I think the above will really
>>> help with that transition, and they can promote in the future a refined
>>> Maya with a well needed updated hypershade (Softimage's render tree kills
>>> the current, dated, hypershade without question usability wise) and with a
>>> much needed update to the interaction model/keyboard shortcut/user
>>> interface that Softimage has over every other package out there, out of the
>>> box as a default.  When you tack on the upcoming ICE replacement, and the
>>> best is done not to alienate hurt Softimage users, I think many if not most
>>> will naturally migrate to a well refined Maya without much cajoling with
>>> the above mentioned treats and perhaps some love given to the
>>> animation/keying/rigging/weighting systems.
>>>
>>> Anyways, that's my peace, I put it out there with the best of
>>> intentions.  Mudbox is one of my favorites, I started with Max, moved onto
>>> Maya and ended up with Softimage.  And in the current forms I have to wait
>>> for the future to move on from Softimage, because nothing, inside or
>>> outside of the AD family is going to replace it today, and I want that
>>> extended for as long as possible as Maya is refined into the obvious
>>> front-runner than merges the 3 bases.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Matt Lind wrote:
>>>
>>>> Short version:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 1) Softimage supports more than just film/video.  There are people
>>>> working in many industries which won't be served by mental ray and FBX
>>>> updates.  My studio is a prime example (games).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 2) The SDK is not open enough for plugin developers to do what you
>>>> suggest.  Many of the 3rd party efforts to date usually required some
>>>> amount of help from the Softimage developers to make possible.  Softimage
>>>> tended to implement new features, then expand the SDK to support those new
>>>> features. For 3rd party development, you need the SDK expanded ahead
>>>> of the features.  In other words, while the SDK is mature, it's also not
>>>> expanded too far outside of what you can already do out of the box.  New
>>>> plugin efforts would largely amount to using existing levers and switches
>>>> instead of making new levers and switches like you and everybody else would
>>>> like.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> There's still plenty of tools that can be written, but probably not
>>>> anything earth shattering as the SDK is single threaded and some of the
>>>> components it leans on are getting long in the tooth too as Luc-Eric has
>>>> recently mentioned.  Basically, Softimage is that car that still performs
>>>> really great, but has high mileage and about to enter that period where
>>>> major parts will need repairing/replacing making it a very expensive
>>>> upkeep.  Since the driver hasn't seen that breakage firsthand yet, he's
>>>> under the impression there isn't a problem and the car can drive on
>>>> indefinitely into the sunset.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Autodesk was at our site just as the press release was officially
>>>> hitting th

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Martin]

/Vancouver studios and others stay in the Autodesk 
>>> family, and that alone will likely provide more than enough revenue that 
>>> would potentially be lost (even if only in small amounts) to the obvious 
>>> hoard of disgruntled orphans.
>>> 
>>> I don't want to make this too long, but I had hoped by now, AD would have 
>>> already merged the 3 major userbases (I expect with a Maya base above all 
>>> else because big studios have a lot invested in existing pipelines with it 
>>> and that just makes financial sense) .  I think the above will really help 
>>> with that transition, and they can promote in the future a refined Maya 
>>> with a well needed updated hypershade (Softimage's render tree kills the 
>>> current, dated, hypershade without question usability wise) and with a much 
>>> needed update to the interaction model/keyboard shortcut/user interface 
>>> that Softimage has over every other package out there, out of the box as a 
>>> default.  When you tack on the upcoming ICE replacement, and the best is 
>>> done not to alienate hurt Softimage users, I think many if not most will 
>>> naturally migrate to a well refined Maya without much cajoling with the 
>>> above mentioned treats and perhaps some love given to the 
>>> animation/keying/rigging/weighting systems.
>>> 
>>> Anyways, that's my peace, I put it out there with the best of intentions.  
>>> Mudbox is one of my favorites, I started with Max, moved onto Maya and 
>>> ended up with Softimage.  And in the current forms I have to wait for the 
>>> future to move on from Softimage, because nothing, inside or outside of the 
>>> AD family is going to replace it today, and I want that extended for as 
>>> long as possible as Maya is refined into the obvious front-runner than 
>>> merges the 3 bases.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Matt Lind  
>>>> wrote:
>>>> Short version:
>>>> 
>>>>  
>>>> 
>>>> 1) Softimage supports more than just film/video.  There are people working 
>>>> in many industries which won’t be served by mental ray and FBX updates.  
>>>> My studio is a prime example (games).
>>>> 
>>>>  
>>>> 
>>>> 2) The SDK is not open enough for plugin developers to do what you 
>>>> suggest.  Many of the 3rd party efforts to date usually required some 
>>>> amount of help from the Softimage developers to make possible.  Softimage 
>>>> tended to implement new features, then expand the SDK to support those new 
>>>> features. For 3rd party development, you need the SDK expanded ahead of 
>>>> the features.  In other words, while the SDK is mature, it’s also not 
>>>> expanded too far outside of what you can already do out of the box.  New 
>>>> plugin efforts would largely amount to using existing levers and switches 
>>>> instead of making new levers and switches like you and everybody else 
>>>> would like. 
>>>> 
>>>>  
>>>> 
>>>> There’s still plenty of tools that can be written, but probably not 
>>>> anything earth shattering as the SDK is single threaded and some of the 
>>>> components it leans on are getting long in the tooth too as Luc-Eric has 
>>>> recently mentioned.  Basically, Softimage is that car that still performs 
>>>> really great, but has high mileage and about to enter that period where 
>>>> major parts will need repairing/replacing making it a very expensive 
>>>> upkeep.  Since the driver hasn’t seen that breakage firsthand yet, he’s 
>>>> under the impression there isn’t a problem and the car can drive on 
>>>> indefinitely into the sunset.
>>>> 
>>>>  
>>>> 
>>>> Autodesk was at our site just as the press release was officially hitting 
>>>> the wire.  While no specifics were mentioned by Autodesk or our reseller 
>>>> in our offices, my personal poking, prodding and reading between the lines 
>>>> lead me to believe a lot of work (refactoring) has gone into Maya the past 
>>>> few years to accommodate some of this burden in migration, but some (much) 
>>>> work still has to come.  I think we’ll see parts of that work in Maya 2015 
>>>> and probably explains why the Softimage Montreal team has been busy for 
>>>> the past 2 years on Maya instead of Softimage.  I have no idea if there’s 
>>>>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[skuby]

akes financial sense) .  I think the above will really help
>> with that transition, and they can promote in the future a refined Maya
>> with a well needed updated hypershade (Softimage's render tree kills the
>> current, dated, hypershade without question usability wise) and with a much
>> needed update to the interaction model/keyboard shortcut/user interface
>> that Softimage has over every other package out there, out of the box as a
>> default.  When you tack on the upcoming ICE replacement, and the best is
>> done not to alienate hurt Softimage users, I think many if not most will
>> naturally migrate to a well refined Maya without much cajoling with the
>> above mentioned treats and perhaps some love given to the
>> animation/keying/rigging/weighting systems.
>>
>> Anyways, that's my peace, I put it out there with the best of intentions.
>>  Mudbox is one of my favorites, I started with Max, moved onto Maya and
>> ended up with Softimage.  And in the current forms I have to wait for the
>> future to move on from Softimage, because nothing, inside or outside of the
>> AD family is going to replace it today, and I want that extended for as
>> long as possible as Maya is refined into the obvious front-runner than
>> merges the 3 bases.
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Matt Lind wrote:
>>
>>> Short version:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 1) Softimage supports more than just film/video.  There are people
>>> working in many industries which won't be served by mental ray and FBX
>>> updates.  My studio is a prime example (games).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 2) The SDK is not open enough for plugin developers to do what you
>>> suggest.  Many of the 3rd party efforts to date usually required some
>>> amount of help from the Softimage developers to make possible.  Softimage
>>> tended to implement new features, then expand the SDK to support those new
>>> features. For 3rd party development, you need the SDK expanded ahead of
>>> the features.  In other words, while the SDK is mature, it's also not
>>> expanded too far outside of what you can already do out of the box.  New
>>> plugin efforts would largely amount to using existing levers and switches
>>> instead of making new levers and switches like you and everybody else would
>>> like.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> There's still plenty of tools that can be written, but probably not
>>> anything earth shattering as the SDK is single threaded and some of the
>>> components it leans on are getting long in the tooth too as Luc-Eric has
>>> recently mentioned.  Basically, Softimage is that car that still performs
>>> really great, but has high mileage and about to enter that period where
>>> major parts will need repairing/replacing making it a very expensive
>>> upkeep.  Since the driver hasn't seen that breakage firsthand yet, he's
>>> under the impression there isn't a problem and the car can drive on
>>> indefinitely into the sunset.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Autodesk was at our site just as the press release was officially
>>> hitting the wire.  While no specifics were mentioned by Autodesk or our
>>> reseller in our offices, my personal poking, prodding and reading between
>>> the lines lead me to believe a lot of work (refactoring) has gone into Maya
>>> the past few years to accommodate some of this burden in migration, but
>>> some (much) work still has to come.  I think we'll see parts of that work
>>> in Maya 2015 and probably explains why the Softimage Montreal team has been
>>> busy for the past 2 years on Maya instead of Softimage.  I have no idea if
>>> there's any truth to this, but it's what I've come to believe based on the
>>> sparse bits and pieces I could put together, and witnessing how such
>>> migrations were handled in the past.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I'll share the rest of my thoughts from 21+ years of Softimage
>>> experience in another thread at another time.  Right now I'm neck deep in
>>> getting the project out the door Ben Houston so kindly posted the other day.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Matt
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* softimage-b

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[skuby]

aya without much cajoling with the
> above mentioned treats and perhaps some love given to the
> animation/keying/rigging/weighting systems.
>
> Anyways, that's my peace, I put it out there with the best of intentions.
>  Mudbox is one of my favorites, I started with Max, moved onto Maya and
> ended up with Softimage.  And in the current forms I have to wait for the
> future to move on from Softimage, because nothing, inside or outside of the
> AD family is going to replace it today, and I want that extended for as
> long as possible as Maya is refined into the obvious front-runner than
> merges the 3 bases.
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Matt Lind wrote:
>
>> Short version:
>>
>>
>>
>> 1) Softimage supports more than just film/video.  There are people
>> working in many industries which won't be served by mental ray and FBX
>> updates.  My studio is a prime example (games).
>>
>>
>>
>> 2) The SDK is not open enough for plugin developers to do what you
>> suggest.  Many of the 3rd party efforts to date usually required some
>> amount of help from the Softimage developers to make possible.  Softimage
>> tended to implement new features, then expand the SDK to support those new
>> features. For 3rd party development, you need the SDK expanded ahead of
>> the features.  In other words, while the SDK is mature, it's also not
>> expanded too far outside of what you can already do out of the box.  New
>> plugin efforts would largely amount to using existing levers and switches
>> instead of making new levers and switches like you and everybody else would
>> like.
>>
>>
>>
>> There's still plenty of tools that can be written, but probably not
>> anything earth shattering as the SDK is single threaded and some of the
>> components it leans on are getting long in the tooth too as Luc-Eric has
>> recently mentioned.  Basically, Softimage is that car that still performs
>> really great, but has high mileage and about to enter that period where
>> major parts will need repairing/replacing making it a very expensive
>> upkeep.  Since the driver hasn't seen that breakage firsthand yet, he's
>> under the impression there isn't a problem and the car can drive on
>> indefinitely into the sunset.
>>
>>
>>
>> Autodesk was at our site just as the press release was officially hitting
>> the wire.  While no specifics were mentioned by Autodesk or our reseller in
>> our offices, my personal poking, prodding and reading between the lines
>> lead me to believe a lot of work (refactoring) has gone into Maya the past
>> few years to accommodate some of this burden in migration, but some (much)
>> work still has to come.  I think we'll see parts of that work in Maya 2015
>> and probably explains why the Softimage Montreal team has been busy for the
>> past 2 years on Maya instead of Softimage.  I have no idea if there's any
>> truth to this, but it's what I've come to believe based on the sparse bits
>> and pieces I could put together, and witnessing how such migrations were
>> handled in the past.
>>
>>
>>
>> I'll share the rest of my thoughts from 21+ years of Softimage experience
>> in another thread at another time.  Right now I'm neck deep in getting the
>> project out the door Ben Houston so kindly posted the other day.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Matt
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
>> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *skuby
>> *Sent:* Friday, March 14, 2014 8:38 PM
>> *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
>> *Subject:* Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free
>> w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
>>
>>
>>
>> Softimage is ready out of the box now with no new features added.  Why
>> not, leave it as is, but continue to support new Mental Ray and FBX updates
>> so that it still continues to fit nicely into any pipeline and leave
>> continued development past 2016 at those simple two things.  Leave the rest
>> up to plug-in developers and forever-more include Softimage as a free
>> throw-in with any Maya or Max or Suite purchase or rental, so there will be
>> many ways to own it or rent it while exclusively promoting your other
>> packages.  The other great thing, since it can only now come with Max/Maya
>> or a Suite, is that Soft users are never a financial burden to their
>> employers since it will always be a free seat with any existing Max/Maya
>> licence.
>>
>>
>>
>> This could be a very easy, welcomed add-on to the existing Softimage
>> retirement announcement.  Please please, consider this as an option
>> Autodesk and please, everyone, support and promote this idea to Autodesk, I
>> think it's our best bet and we might actually be able to get this.
>>
>>
>>
>> -regards
>>
>
>

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[skuby]

 impression there isn't a problem and the car can drive on
> indefinitely into the sunset.
>
>
>
> Autodesk was at our site just as the press release was officially hitting
> the wire.  While no specifics were mentioned by Autodesk or our reseller in
> our offices, my personal poking, prodding and reading between the lines
> lead me to believe a lot of work (refactoring) has gone into Maya the past
> few years to accommodate some of this burden in migration, but some (much)
> work still has to come.  I think we'll see parts of that work in Maya 2015
> and probably explains why the Softimage Montreal team has been busy for the
> past 2 years on Maya instead of Softimage.  I have no idea if there's any
> truth to this, but it's what I've come to believe based on the sparse bits
> and pieces I could put together, and witnessing how such migrations were
> handled in the past.
>
>
>
> I'll share the rest of my thoughts from 21+ years of Softimage experience
> in another thread at another time.  Right now I'm neck deep in getting the
> project out the door Ben Houston so kindly posted the other day.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Matt
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *skuby
> *Sent:* Friday, March 14, 2014 8:38 PM
> *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> *Subject:* Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free
> w/Maya or Max or any Suite.
>
>
>
> Softimage is ready out of the box now with no new features added.  Why
> not, leave it as is, but continue to support new Mental Ray and FBX updates
> so that it still continues to fit nicely into any pipeline and leave
> continued development past 2016 at those simple two things.  Leave the rest
> up to plug-in developers and forever-more include Softimage as a free
> throw-in with any Maya or Max or Suite purchase or rental, so there will be
> many ways to own it or rent it while exclusively promoting your other
> packages.  The other great thing, since it can only now come with Max/Maya
> or a Suite, is that Soft users are never a financial burden to their
> employers since it will always be a free seat with any existing Max/Maya
> licence.
>
>
>
> This could be a very easy, welcomed add-on to the existing Softimage
> retirement announcement.  Please please, consider this as an option
> Autodesk and please, everyone, support and promote this idea to Autodesk, I
> think it's our best bet and we might actually be able to get this.
>
>
>
> -regards
>

RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Matt Lind]

Short version:

1) Softimage supports more than just film/video.  There are people working in 
many industries which won't be served by mental ray and FBX updates.  My studio 
is a prime example (games).

2) The SDK is not open enough for plugin developers to do what you suggest.  
Many of the 3rd party efforts to date usually required some amount of help from 
the Softimage developers to make possible.  Softimage tended to implement new 
features, then expand the SDK to support those new features. For 3rd party 
development, you need the SDK expanded ahead of the features.  In other words, 
while the SDK is mature, it's also not expanded too far outside of what you can 
already do out of the box.  New plugin efforts would largely amount to using 
existing levers and switches instead of making new levers and switches like you 
and everybody else would like.

There's still plenty of tools that can be written, but probably not anything 
earth shattering as the SDK is single threaded and some of the components it 
leans on are getting long in the tooth too as Luc-Eric has recently mentioned.  
Basically, Softimage is that car that still performs really great, but has high 
mileage and about to enter that period where major parts will need 
repairing/replacing making it a very expensive upkeep.  Since the driver hasn't 
seen that breakage firsthand yet, he's under the impression there isn't a 
problem and the car can drive on indefinitely into the sunset.

Autodesk was at our site just as the press release was officially hitting the 
wire.  While no specifics were mentioned by Autodesk or our reseller in our 
offices, my personal poking, prodding and reading between the lines lead me to 
believe a lot of work (refactoring) has gone into Maya the past few years to 
accommodate some of this burden in migration, but some (much) work still has to 
come.  I think we'll see parts of that work in Maya 2015 and probably explains 
why the Softimage Montreal team has been busy for the past 2 years on Maya 
instead of Softimage.  I have no idea if there's any truth to this, but it's 
what I've come to believe based on the sparse bits and pieces I could put 
together, and witnessing how such migrations were handled in the past.

I'll share the rest of my thoughts from 21+ years of Softimage experience in 
another thread at another time.  Right now I'm neck deep in getting the project 
out the door Ben Houston so kindly posted the other day.



Matt








From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of skuby
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2014 8:38 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or 
Max or any Suite.

Softimage is ready out of the box now with no new features added.  Why not, 
leave it as is, but continue to support new Mental Ray and FBX updates so that 
it still continues to fit nicely into any pipeline and leave continued 
development past 2016 at those simple two things.  Leave the rest up to plug-in 
developers and forever-more include Softimage as a free throw-in with any Maya 
or Max or Suite purchase or rental, so there will be many ways to own it or 
rent it while exclusively promoting your other packages.  The other great 
thing, since it can only now come with Max/Maya or a Suite, is that Soft users 
are never a financial burden to their employers since it will always be a free 
seat with any existing Max/Maya licence.

This could be a very easy, welcomed add-on to the existing Softimage retirement 
announcement.  Please please, consider this as an option Autodesk and please, 
everyone, support and promote this idea to Autodesk, I think it's our best bet 
and we might actually be able to get this.

-regards

Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[skuby]

Softimage is ready out of the box now with no new features added.  Why not,
leave it as is, but continue to support new Mental Ray and FBX updates so
that it still continues to fit nicely into any pipeline and leave continued
development past 2016 at those simple two things.  Leave the rest up to
plug-in developers and forever-more include Softimage as a free throw-in
with any Maya or Max or Suite purchase or rental, so there will be many
ways to own it or rent it while exclusively promoting your other packages.
 The other great thing, since it can only now come with Max/Maya or a
Suite, is that Soft users are never a financial burden to their employers
since it will always be a free seat with any existing Max/Maya licence.

This could be a very easy, welcomed add-on to the existing Softimage
retirement announcement.  Please please, consider this as an option
Autodesk and please, everyone, support and promote this idea to Autodesk, I
think it's our best bet and we might actually be able to get this.

-regards