Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Guess they are busy working ;). They sure sad lot with their new facebook cover photo. https://www.facebook.com/Polynoid On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 8:24 PM, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.frwrote: Where are Polynoids ? Possibly I missed their voice with all the traffic on the list these days They are with (Tim Borgmann, and Oscar Gonzalez Diez, and others) my mind master... Did they say something ? -- Ivan Vasiljevic - Lighting TD Founder, Digital Asset Tailors - reel:https://vimeo.com/72183649 web:www.ivasiljevic.com email: i...@digitalassettailors.com ivan_vasilje...@hotmail.com
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
http://www.woodblock.tv/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/PLND_FMX_2014_flyer_v002_900w.jpg That logo, for me it's the new black Softie flag ! Le 18/03/2014 10:38, Ivan Vasiljevic a écrit : Guess they are busy working ;). They sure sad lot with their new facebook cover photo. https://www.facebook.com/Polynoid On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 8:24 PM, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr mailto:olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: Where are Polynoids ? Possibly I missed their voice with all the traffic on the list these days They are with (Tim Borgmann, and Oscar Gonzalez Diez, and others) my mind master... Did they say something ? -- Ivan Vasiljevic - Lighting TD Founder, Digital Asset Tailors - reel: https://vimeo.com/72183649 web:www.ivasiljevic.com http://ivasiljevic.com email: i...@digitalassettailors.com mailto:i...@digitalassettailors.com ivan_vasilje...@hotmail.com mailto:ivan_vasilje...@hotmail.com
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Where are Polynoids ? Possibly I missed their voice with all the traffic on the list these days They are with (Tim Borgmann, and Oscar Gonzalez Diez, and others) my mind master... Did they say something ?
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
It would be great if some of the big asian accounts would chime in – supposedly that’s where all the seats are? If they set their mind to it – they could have an impact on the decision makers, more than anyone else. But perhaps they prefer to discuss things behind-closed-doors. From: Martin Contel Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2014 11:27 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Open letter to Autodesk Psyop maybe? I love their work too. And I don't want to tell you how many XSI seats we have at Square Enix: a lot! On Friday, March 14, 2014, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Indeed, I was also hoping for other key high profile post production facilities to be at the forefront together with Glassworks in an official way. Jordi Bares javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','jordiba...@gmail.com'); On 13 Mar 2014, at 17:42, Rob Wuijster r...@casema.nl wrote: Kudos for writing that letter Alastair! I hope there will be more noise on the web, so AD has to listen more carefully what is happening atm... Rob \/-\/\/On 13-3-2014 17:20, Alastair Hearsum wrote: Folks This letter precipitated a little bit of publicity http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/rip-softimage-reaction-autodesks-decision-kill-3d-software-31410967 Alastair Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d 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 10/03/2014 10:20, Alastair Hearsum wrote: Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk -- -- Martin Contel Square Enix (Visual Works)
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Exactly right Josh.
Jordi Bares
jordiba...@gmail.com
On 14 Mar 2014, at 04:57, joshxsi josh...@gmail.com wrote:
This is the Maya experience at its fullest, Oh you can't do it like that,
here's a script that solves the problem.
On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 2:59 PM, Siew Yi Liang soni...@gmail.com wrote:
Hello:
Just wanted to offer, since the attribute speadsheet doesn't cover all
parameters, only ones that are actually available via the channel box,
knowing some quick maya commands (setAtttr) will help massively here:
import pymel.core as pm
attr = raw_input('Enter attribute you want to set!')
val = raw_input('Enter value it needs to be set at!')
for i in pm.ls(sl=True):
pm.setAttr(i+'.'+attr, float(val) )
I have this saved out on my shelf, really handy for working with lights/bones
especially since they have so many parameters that can't be seen via the
channel box without exposing them manually.
HTH in some small way! :D
Yours sincerely,
Siew Yi Liang
On 3/13/2014 6:44 PM, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:
So far, there are stuffs we swear at alot (like the unability to change
attributes on multi selected objects at the same time) What you take as
normal day to day operations in Softimage then fall into Maya, you really
understand you will miss something everyday. haha And the list goes up.
But there are also nice stuffs we find out. Every packages got it's good and
bad things.
Just for the record, since it's not too far off topic, that to me is
symptomatic of another issue I see with people migrating.
The assumption that things can't be done when they are just done differently
(better or worse can be argued depending on case), and a resulting reduced
productivity coming from fighting a new platform instead of embracing it.
While I will be the first to tell you that embracing Maya will frequently
feel like hugging a giant llama turd, you won't get very far if you try and
steer it like you did Soft.
Where Soft has a greatly streamlined user experience relying on very few
contextual editors and many half-arsed ones that have been rotting on the
vines, Maya has a pleotra of dedicated workflows.
E.G.: If you want multi-edit you use the attribute spreadsheet. The
attribute editor and its constant autoswitching culling the channel box
coupled with its inability to contextualize is horrible, but on the other
hand where Soft's spreadsheet is barely a remnant of the SOFTIMAGE|3D days
the AttrSS is functional.
The notion that migrating from one software to another is just a matter of
finding the same levers that have been given different names is a horrible,
HORRIBLE populist notion in defense of the even more horrible argument of
old that Software doesn't matter.
Software does matter, and design philosophies differ massively. Don't try to
remap every little step of how you operate, it might be the path of least
resistance to learn a new software, but it will leave you crippled and slow.
Learn how the things differ fundamentally and use each one at their best.
RE: Open letter to Autodesk
Autodesk, you probably don't know me, beyond a yearly subscription payment, so allow me to tell you about myself. I started in the 3D industry in the 1990s, using Softimage 3D at a small games company, before that I'd been training myself on a 'demo' copy of 3DS on Dos. From day one using Softimage it was obvious the pedigree and artist driven interface was light-years ahead of anything else I'd seen. When i moved to the post industry in Soho a few years later, i made sure that, even though i was working in a Lightwave house, they got me a copy of Softimage. Against a backdrop of Lightwave evangelists, i consistently produced work faster, and more elegantly than my peers. (this is purely down to the software, not my abilities) For a few years i was a senior artist at the Hive, i was adrift in a sea of Maya users, but slowly convinced my peers that Softimage (and then XSI, as i was involved in the beta program) was the better package for quick turnaround commercial work. Gaining a regular stream of repeat clients, asking for me by name. Moving on i went to head up the 3D department at MillTV, producing work well above the level of the budget, for television documentaries and drama. I worked on the tests which would convince the BBC to bring Doctor Who back from the dead. My colleague and friend Dave Throssell, who again, you probably don't know, but who was responsible for the success of Mill3D and their many award winning commercials during the 1990s, all produced on Softimage, left the mill with me, and we started Fluid Pictures in 2006. The decision to use XSI as our primary application was a no-brainer, the end-to-end ability of this software, to let an artist hit the ground running, without fighting the interface, or having to be a programmer, allowed us to produce work far in excess of the quality that the shrinking budgets of television should have allowed. There is LITERALLY NO WAY we could have competed in our market, with a small team, using ANY other package. Over the years ICE has become one of the reasons i come to work in the morning! The challenges presented by our clients become a joy to solve when i know i can jump into ICE, and figure out some clever way to shave hours or even days off production time. For us as a company, there really is NO alternative package, nothing does everything that Softimage does, nothing comes close. And when i get stuck, i have the Softimage community. The mailing list has been my online home since 1999, and i count some of its members as dear friends, without whom, again, i would have struggled to compete in the market place. The members are always there with words of encouragement and advice (and no small amount of ribbing!) the atmosphere is one of enlightened, grown up camaraderie. A place where you can ask the simplest, or most complicated of questions, and someone will usually be there to help you out. Finally, i would like to posit a suggestion, that may be too late, but would impress upon you to consider; Softimage, with a little love, and a little investment, coupled with better marketing strategy, could well be your missing effects pipeline. Your Houdini. Is there a way for the developers, and the third party guys, to work together with you, to take Softimage forward, to bridge the gap until Bifrost is mature, and become your fx software? By all means keep it in the suites, concentrate mainly on bug fixes, but please, don't kill our baby! a Adrian Wyer Fluid Pictures 75-77 Margaret St. London W1W 8SY ++44(0) 207 580 0829 adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com blocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::mailto:adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com www.fluid-pictures.com blocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::http://www.fluid-pictures.com/ Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales. Company number:5657815 VAT number: 872 6893 71
a NEW open letter to Autodesk
at David Saber's suggestion, i'll start a new thread so it doesn't get lost in the noise; Autodesk, you probably don't know me, beyond a yearly subscription payment, so allow me to tell you about myself. I started in the 3D industry in the 1990s, using Softimage 3D at a small games company, before that I'd been training myself on a 'demo' copy of 3DS on Dos. From day one using Softimage it was obvious the pedigree and artist driven interface was light-years ahead of anything else I'd seen. When i moved to the post industry in Soho a few years later, i made sure that, even though i was working in a Lightwave house, they got me a copy of Softimage. Against a backdrop of Lightwave evangelists, i consistently produced work faster, and more elegantly than my peers. (this is purely down to the software, not my abilities) For a few years i was a senior artist at the Hive, i was adrift in a sea of Maya users, but slowly convinced my peers that Softimage (and then XSI, as i was involved in the beta program) was the better package for quick turnaround commercial work. Gaining a regular stream of repeat clients, asking for me by name. Moving on i went to head up the 3D department at MillTV, producing work well above the level of the budget, for television documentaries and drama. I worked on the tests which would convince the BBC to bring Doctor Who back from the dead. My colleague and friend Dave Throssell, who again, you probably don't know, but who was responsible for the success of Mill3D and their many award winning commercials during the 1990s, all produced on Softimage, left the mill with me, and we started Fluid Pictures in 2006. The decision to use XSI as our primary application was a no-brainer, the end-to-end ability of this software, to let an artist hit the ground running, without fighting the interface, or having to be a programmer, allowed us to produce work far in excess of the quality that the shrinking budgets of television should have allowed. There is LITERALLY NO WAY we could have competed in our market, with a small team, using ANY other package. Over the years ICE has become one of the reasons i come to work in the morning! The challenges presented by our clients become a joy to solve when i know i can jump into ICE, and figure out some clever way to shave hours or even days off production time. For us as a company, there really is NO alternative package, nothing does everything that Softimage does, nothing comes close. And when i get stuck, i have the Softimage community. The mailing list has been my online home since 1999, and i count some of its members as dear friends, without whom, again, i would have struggled to compete in the market place. The members are always there with words of encouragement and advice (and no small amount of ribbing!) the atmosphere is one of enlightened, grown up camaraderie. A place where you can ask the simplest, or most complicated of questions, and someone will usually be there to help you out. Finally, i would like to posit a suggestion, that may be too late, but would impress upon you to consider; Softimage, with a little love, and a little investment, coupled with better marketing strategy, could well be your missing effects pipeline. Your Houdini. Is there a way for the developers, and the third party guys, to work together with you, to take Softimage forward, to bridge the gap until Bifrost is mature, and become your fx software? By all means keep it in the suites, concentrate mainly on bug fixes, but please, don't kill our baby! a Adrian Wyer Fluid Pictures 75-77 Margaret St. London W1W 8SY ++44(0) 207 580 0829 blocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::mailto:adrian.wyer@fl uid-pictures.com adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com www.fluid-pictures.com blocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::http://www.fluid-pict ures.com/ Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales. Company number:5657815 VAT number: 872 6893 71
Re: a NEW open letter to Autodesk
Good stuff Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d GLASSWORKS 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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 14/03/2014 11:52, adrian wyer wrote: at David Saber's suggestion, i'll start a new thread so it doesn't get lost in the noise; Autodesk, you probably don't know me, beyond a yearly subscription payment, so allow me to tell you about myself. I started in the 3D industry in the 1990s, using Softimage 3D at a small games company, before that I'd been training myself on a 'demo' copy of 3DS on Dos. From day one using Softimage it was obvious the pedigree and artist driven interface was light-years ahead of anything else I'd seen. When i moved to the post industry in Soho a few years later, i made sure that, even though i was working in a Lightwave house, they got me a copy of Softimage. Against a backdrop of Lightwave evangelists, i consistently produced work faster, and more elegantly than my peers. (this is purely down to the software, not my abilities) For a few years i was a senior artist at the Hive, i was adrift in a sea of Maya users, but slowly convinced my peers that Softimage (and then XSI, as i was involved in the beta program) was the better package for quick turnaround commercial work. Gaining a regular stream of repeat clients, asking for me by name. Moving on i went to head up the 3D department at MillTV, producing work well above the level of the budget, for television documentaries and drama. I worked on the tests which would convince the BBC to bring Doctor Who back from the dead. My colleague and friend Dave Throssell, who again, you probably don't know, but who was responsible for the success of Mill3D and their many award winning commercials during the 1990s, all produced on Softimage, left the mill with me, and we started Fluid Pictures in 2006. The decision to use XSI as our primary application was a no-brainer, the end-to-end ability of this software, to let an artist hit the ground running, without fighting the interface, or having to be a programmer, allowed us to produce work far in excess of the quality that the shrinking budgets of television should have allowed. There is LITERALLY NO WAY we could have competed in our market, with a small team, using ANY other package. Over the years ICE has become one of the reasons i come to work in the morning! The challenges presented by our clients become a joy to solve when i know i can jump into ICE, and figure out some clever way to shave hours or even days off production time. For us as a company, there really is NO alternative package, nothing does everything that Softimage does, nothing comes close. And when i get stuck, i have the Softimage community. The mailing list has been my online home since 1999, and i count some of its members as dear friends, without whom, again, i would have struggled to compete in the market place. The members are always there with words of encouragement and advice (and no small amount of ribbing!) the atmosphere is one of enlightened, grown up camaraderie. A place where you can ask the simplest, or most complicated of questions, and someone will usually be there to help you out. Finally, i would like to posit a suggestion, that may be too late, but would impress upon you to consider; Softimage, with a little love, and a little investment, coupled with better marketing strategy, could well be your missing effects pipeline. Your Houdini. Is there a way for the developers, and the third party guys, to work together with you, to take Softimage forward, to bridge the gap until Bifrost is mature, and become your fx software? By all means keep it in the suites, concentrate mainly on bug fixes, but please, don't kill our baby! a Adrian Wyer Fluid Pictures 75-77 Margaret St. London W1W 8SY ++44(0) 207 580 0829 adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com blocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::mailto:adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com www.fluid-pictures.com
Re: a NEW open letter to Autodesk
really good one. just wondering does it ever gets to anyone that has really any decision power in AD what so ever? On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 1:33 PM, Alastair Hearsum hear...@glassworks.co.ukwrote: Good stuff Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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 14/03/2014 11:52, adrian wyer wrote: at David Saber's suggestion, i'll start a new thread so it doesn't get lost in the noise; Autodesk, you probably don't know me, beyond a yearly subscription payment, so allow me to tell you about myself. I started in the 3D industry in the 1990s, using Softimage 3D at a small games company, before that I'd been training myself on a 'demo' copy of 3DS on Dos. From day one using Softimage it was obvious the pedigree and artist driven interface was light-years ahead of anything else I'd seen. When i moved to the post industry in Soho a few years later, i made sure that, even though i was working in a Lightwave house, they got me a copy of Softimage. Against a backdrop of Lightwave evangelists, i consistently produced work faster, and more elegantly than my peers. (this is purely down to the software, not my abilities) For a few years i was a senior artist at the Hive, i was adrift in a seaof Maya users, but slowly convinced my peers that Softimage (and then XSI, as i was involved in the beta program) was the better package for quick turnaround commercial work. Gaining a regular stream of repeat clients, asking for me by name. Moving on i went to head up the 3D department at MillTV, producing work well above the level of the budget, for television documentaries and drama. I worked on the tests which would convince the BBC to bring Doctor Who back from the dead. My colleague and friend Dave Throssell, who again, you probably don't know, but who was responsible for the success of Mill3D and their many award winning commercials during the 1990s, all produced on Softimage, left the mill with me, and we started Fluid Pictures in 2006. The decision to use XSI as our primary application was a no-brainer, the end-to-end ability of this software, to let an artist hit the ground running, without fighting the interface, or having to be a programmer, allowed us to produce work far in excess of the quality that the shrinking budgets of television should have allowed. There is LITERALLY NO WAY we could have competed in our market, with a small team, using ANY other package. Over the years ICE has become one of the reasons i come to work in the morning! The challenges presented by our clients become a joy to solve when i know i can jump into ICE, and figure out some clever way to shave hours or even days off production time. For us as a company, there really is NO alternative package, nothing does everything that Softimage does, nothing comes close. And when i get stuck, i have the Softimage community. The mailing list has been my online home since 1999, and i count some of its members as dear friends, without whom, again, i would have struggled to compete in the market place. The members are always there with words of encouragement and advice (and no small amount of ribbing!) the atmosphere is one of enlightened, grown up camaraderie. A place where you can ask the simplest, or most complicated of questions, and someone will usually be there to help you out. Finally, i would like to posit a suggestion, that may be too late, but would impress upon you to consider; Softimage, with a little love, and a little investment, coupled with better marketing strategy, could well be your missing effects pipeline. Your Houdini. Is there a way for the developers, and the third party guys, to work together with you, to take Softimage forward, to bridge the gap until Bifrost is mature, and become your fx software? By all means keep it in the suites, concentrate mainly on bug fixes, but please, don't kill our baby! a Adrian Wyer Fluid Pictures 75-77
Re: a NEW open letter to Autodesk
great stuff. On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 12:38 PM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote: really good one. just wondering does it ever gets to anyone that has really any decision power in AD what so ever? On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 1:33 PM, Alastair Hearsum hear...@glassworks.co.uk wrote: Good stuff Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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 14/03/2014 11:52, adrian wyer wrote: at David Saber's suggestion, i'll start a new thread so it doesn't get lost in the noise; Autodesk, you probably don't know me, beyond a yearly subscription payment, so allow me to tell you about myself. I started in the 3D industry in the 1990s, using Softimage 3D at a small games company, before that I'd been training myself on a 'demo' copy of 3DS on Dos. From day one using Softimage it was obvious the pedigree and artist driven interface was light-years ahead of anything else I'd seen. When i moved to the post industry in Soho a few years later, i made sure that, even though i was working in a Lightwave house, they got me a copy of Softimage. Against a backdrop of Lightwave evangelists, i consistently produced work faster, and more elegantly than my peers. (this is purely down to the software, not my abilities) For a few years i was a senior artist at the Hive, i was adrift in a seaof Maya users, but slowly convinced my peers that Softimage (and then XSI, as i was involved in the beta program) was the better package for quick turnaround commercial work. Gaining a regular stream of repeat clients, asking for me by name. Moving on i went to head up the 3D department at MillTV, producing work well above the level of the budget, for television documentaries and drama. I worked on the tests which would convince the BBC to bring Doctor Who back from the dead. My colleague and friend Dave Throssell, who again, you probably don't know, but who was responsible for the success of Mill3D and their many award winning commercials during the 1990s, all produced on Softimage, left the mill with me, and we started Fluid Pictures in 2006. The decision to use XSI as our primary application was a no-brainer, the end-to-end ability of this software, to let an artist hit the ground running, without fighting the interface, or having to be a programmer, allowed us to produce work far in excess of the quality that the shrinking budgets of television should have allowed. There is LITERALLY NO WAY we could have competed in our market, with a small team, using ANY other package. Over the years ICE has become one of the reasons i come to work in the morning! The challenges presented by our clients become a joy to solve when i know i can jump into ICE, and figure out some clever way to shave hours or even days off production time. For us as a company, there really is NO alternative package, nothing does everything that Softimage does, nothing comes close. And when i get stuck, i have the Softimage community. The mailing list has been my online home since 1999, and i count some of its members as dear friends, without whom, again, i would have struggled to compete in the market place. The members are always there with words of encouragement and advice (and no small amount of ribbing!) the atmosphere is one of enlightened, grown up camaraderie. A place where you can ask the simplest, or most complicated of questions, and someone will usually be there to help you out. Finally, i would like to posit a suggestion, that may be too late, but would impress upon you to consider; Softimage, with a little love, and a little investment, coupled with better marketing strategy, could well be your missing effects pipeline. Your Houdini. Is there a way for the developers, and the third party guys, to work together with you, to take Softimage forward, to bridge the gap until Bifrost is mature, and become your fx software? By all means keep it in the suites,
Re: a NEW open letter to Autodesk
Love it Adrian. I think it would be great if all open letter writers also posted in the Autodesk Community alongside Alastairs, so they would pile up visually too, for all to see and not least, Autodesk decision makers. I have a sneaky feeling the decision makers do not heed all of the advice or take notice of all info from the AD representatives present here. Maybe forward all open letters to the main CG forums such as fxGuide and others, so they could create new noise on the topic. Morten Den 14. marts 2014 kl. 12:52 skrev adrian wyer adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com: at David Saber's suggestion, i'll start a new thread so it doesn't get lost in the noise; Autodesk, you probably don't know me, beyond a yearly subscription payment, so allow me to tell you about myself. I started in the 3D industry in the 1990s, using Softimage 3D at a small games company, before that I'd been training myself on a 'demo' copy of 3DS on Dos. From day one using Softimage it was obvious the pedigree and artist driven interface was light-years ahead of anything else I'd seen. When i moved to the post industry in Soho a few years later, i made sure that, even though i was working in a Lightwave house, they got me a copy of Softimage. Against a backdrop of Lightwave evangelists, i consistently produced work faster, and more elegantly than my peers. (this is purely down to the software, not my abilities) For a few years i was a senior artist at the Hive, i was adrift in a sea of Maya users, but slowly convinced my peers that Softimage (and then XSI, as i was involved in the beta program) was the better package for quick turnaround commercial work. Gaining a regular stream of repeat clients, asking for me by name. Moving on i went to head up the 3D department at MillTV, producing work well above the level of the budget, for television documentaries and drama. I worked on the tests which would convince the BBC to bring Doctor Who back from the dead. My colleague and friend Dave Throssell, who again, you probably don't know, but who was responsible for the success of Mill3D and their many award winning commercials during the 1990s, all produced on Softimage, left the mill with me, and we started Fluid Pictures in 2006. The decision to use XSI as our primary application was a no-brainer, the end-to-end ability of this software, to let an artist hit the ground running, without fighting the interface, or having to be a programmer, allowed us to produce work far in excess of the quality that the shrinking budgets of television should have allowed. There is LITERALLY NO WAY we could have competed in our market, with a small team, using ANY other package. Over the years ICE has become one of the reasons i come to work in the morning! The challenges presented by our clients become a joy to solve when i know i can jump into ICE, and figure out some clever way to shave hours or even days off production time. For us as a company, there really is NO alternative package, nothing does everything that Softimage does, nothing comes close. And when i get stuck, i have the Softimage community. The mailing list has been my online home since 1999, and i count some of its members as dear friends, without whom, again, i would have struggled to compete in the market place. The members are always there with words of encouragement and advice (and no small amount of ribbing!) the atmosphere is one of enlightened, grown up camaraderie. A place where you can ask the simplest, or most complicated of questions, and someone will usually be there to help you out. Finally, i would like to posit a suggestion, that may be too late, but would impress upon you to consider; Softimage, with a little love, and a little investment, coupled with better marketing strategy, could well be your missing effects pipeline. Your Houdini. Is there a way for the developers, and the third party guys, to work together with you, to take Softimage forward, to bridge the gap until Bifrost is mature, and become your fx software? By all means keep it in the suites, concentrate mainly on bug fixes, but please, don't kill our baby! a Adrian Wyer Fluid Pictures 75-77 Margaret St . London W1W 8SY ++44(0) 207 580 0829 adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com blocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::mailto:adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com www.fluid-pictures.com blocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::http://www.fluid-pictures.com/ Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales . Company number:5657815 VAT number: 872 6893 71
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Hi Jason, Right now, many people need to make measured decisions on how to conduct their business effectively in the short term, with plans to transition in the long term. I'm extremely upset that the weapon of choice that my friends used to make 98% Human is going to go away. And I know people have carved out whole careers using Softimage. If I had to solo a job with a quick turnaround like many freelancers, I would run with Softimage knowing the preproduction work could eventually be converted to final renders. Undoubtedly, it's a harsh blow to hear it's EOL. But you still have access to it now and it's still an amazing piece of kit. So that's not going anywhere. So take this as a little prod to go exploring other offerings and expanding your capabilities. If visual programming is your thing, take a look a Houdini. I think it's second to none regarding a visual programming environment. Plus, SideFX is a completely different experience than Autodesk and would love to hear your feedback. We went from an all-Maya studio here in LA to Maya/Houdini. And truth be told, it was the Houdini work that helped spurred on our growth here in LA. Had we adamantly stuck with Maya for everything, I'm not sure where we'd be today. We have to stop placing these mental blocks that prevents us from learning new things and enabling us to take on new challenges. What we quickly forget is what did you guys do prior to ICE? And what happened when it showed up in 2008? Everyone took a bit of time and learned it and some got very good at it. Why is looking at other offers any different? I'm not saying Oh well, might as well make the best of it. What I am saying is stay active in seeking out new solutions. And we need to take this a step further. What does the DCC of the future look like? Beautifully fast real-time viewports where I can hit play and frames get saved to disk? Real-time smoke and fluid sims where I don't have to guess and hope my values are good enough? Animation tools that are intuitive and don't require an army of TDs to wrangle? The CG community could really use the experience from Softimage and lead the way towards a better DCC. Just have to find a platform that won't get yanked out from under people this time. -Lu
Re: a NEW open letter to Autodesk
That's what i was thinking. I don't think everyone at AD is reading this. We need to create noise everywhere; that's the only way we could reach a lot of users. On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 8:04 AM, Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dkwrote: Love it Adrian. I think it would be great if all open letter writers also posted in the Autodesk Community alongside Alastairs, so they would pile up visually too, for all to see and not least, Autodesk decision makers. I have a sneaky feeling the decision makers do not heed all of the advice or take notice of all info from the AD representatives present here. Maybe forward all open letters to the main CG forums such as fxGuide and others, so they could create new noise on the topic. Morten Den 14. marts 2014 kl. 12:52 skrev adrian wyer adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com: at David Saber's suggestion, i'll start a new thread so it doesn't get lost in the noise; Autodesk, you probably don't know me, beyond a yearly subscription payment, so allow me to tell you about myself. I started in the 3D industry in the 1990s, using Softimage 3D at a small games company, before that I'd been training myself on a 'demo' copy of 3DS on Dos. From day one using Softimage it was obvious the pedigree and artist driven interface was light-years ahead of anything else I'd seen. When i moved to the post industry in Soho a few years later, i made sure that, even though i was working in a Lightwave house, they got me a copy of Softimage. Against a backdrop of Lightwave evangelists, i consistently produced work faster, and more elegantly than my peers. (this is purely down to the software, not my abilities) For a few years i was a senior artist at the Hive, i was adrift in a sea of Maya users, but slowly convinced my peers that Softimage (and then XSI, as i was involved in the beta program) was the better package for quick turnaround commercial work. Gaining a regular stream of repeat clients, asking for me by name. Moving on i went to head up the 3D department at MillTV, producing work well above the level of the budget, for television documentaries and drama. I worked on the tests which would convince the BBC to bring Doctor Who back from the dead. My colleague and friend Dave Throssell, who again, you probably don't know, but who was responsible for the success of Mill3D and their many award winning commercials during the 1990s, all produced on Softimage, left the mill with me, and we started Fluid Pictures in 2006. The decision to use XSI as our primary application was a no-brainer, the end-to-end ability of this software, to let an artist hit the ground running, without fighting the interface, or having to be a programmer, allowed us to produce work far in excess of the quality that the shrinking budgets of television should have allowed. There is LITERALLY NO WAY we could have competed in our market, with a small team, using ANY other package. Over the years ICE has become one of the reasons i come to work in the morning! The challenges presented by our clients become a joy to solve when i know i can jump into ICE, and figure out some clever way to shave hours or even days off production time. For us as a company, there really is NO alternative package, nothing does everything that Softimage does, nothing comes close. And when i get stuck, i have the Softimage community. The mailing list has been my online home since 1999, and i count some of its members as dear friends, without whom, again, i would have struggled to compete in the market place. The members are always there with words of encouragement and advice (and no small amount of ribbing!) the atmosphere is one of enlightened, grown up camaraderie. A place where you can ask the simplest, or most complicated of questions, and someone will usually be there to help you out. Finally, i would like to posit a suggestion, that may be too late, but would impress upon you to consider; Softimage, with a little love, and a little investment, coupled with better marketing strategy, could well be your missing effects pipeline. Your Houdini. Is there a way for the developers, and the third party guys, to work together with you, to take Softimage forward, to bridge the gap until Bifrost is mature, and become your fx software? By all means keep it in the suites, concentrate mainly on bug fixes, but please, don't kill our baby! a Adrian Wyer Fluid Pictures 75-77 Margaret St . London W1W 8SY ++44(0) 207 580 0829 adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com www.fluid-pictures.com Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales . Company number:5657815 VAT number: 872 6893 71
Re: a NEW open letter to Autodesk
+1 Cristiano Policarpo BaloOm Animation Studios www.baloom.co --- PoustEx - CG Animated Short Film www.poustex.com On Mar 14, 2014, at 8:52 AM, adrian wyer adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com wrote: at David Saber's suggestion, i'll start a new thread so it doesn't get lost in the noise; Autodesk, you probably don't know me, beyond a yearly subscription payment, so allow me to tell you about myself. I started in the 3D industry in the 1990s, using Softimage 3D at a small games company, before that I'd been training myself on a 'demo' copy of 3DS on Dos. From day one using Softimage it was obvious the pedigree and artist driven interface was light-years ahead of anything else I'd seen. When i moved to the post industry in Soho a few years later, i made sure that, even though i was working in a Lightwave house, they got me a copy of Softimage. Against a backdrop of Lightwave evangelists, i consistently produced work faster, and more elegantly than my peers. (this is purely down to the software, not my abilities) For a few years i was a senior artist at the Hive, i was adrift in a sea of Maya users, but slowly convinced my peers that Softimage (and then XSI, as i was involved in the beta program) was the better package for quick turnaround commercial work. Gaining a regular stream of repeat clients, asking for me by name. Moving on i went to head up the 3D department at MillTV, producing work well above the level of the budget, for television documentaries and drama. I worked on the tests which would convince the BBC to bring Doctor Who back from the dead. My colleague and friend Dave Throssell, who again, you probably don't know, but who was responsible for the success of Mill3D and their many award winning commercials during the 1990s, all produced on Softimage, left the mill with me, and we started Fluid Pictures in 2006. The decision to use XSI as our primary application was a no-brainer, the end-to-end ability of this software, to let an artist hit the ground running, without fighting the interface, or having to be a programmer, allowed us to produce work far in excess of the quality that the shrinking budgets of television should have allowed. There is LITERALLY NO WAY we could have competed in our market, with a small team, using ANY other package. Over the years ICE has become one of the reasons i come to work in the morning! The challenges presented by our clients become a joy to solve when i know i can jump into ICE, and figure out some clever way to shave hours or even days off production time. For us as a company, there really is NO alternative package, nothing does everything that Softimage does, nothing comes close. And when i get stuck, i have the Softimage community. The mailing list has been my online home since 1999, and i count some of its members as dear friends, without whom, again, i would have struggled to compete in the market place. The members are always there with words of encouragement and advice (and no small amount of ribbing!) the atmosphere is one of enlightened, grown up camaraderie. A place where you can ask the simplest, or most complicated of questions, and someone will usually be there to help you out. Finally, i would like to posit a suggestion, that may be too late, but would impress upon you to consider; Softimage, with a little love, and a little investment, coupled with better marketing strategy, could well be your missing effects pipeline. Your Houdini. Is there a way for the developers, and the third party guys, to work together with you, to take Softimage forward, to bridge the gap until Bifrost is mature, and become your fx software? By all means keep it in the suites, concentrate mainly on bug fixes, but please, don't kill our baby! a Adrian Wyer Fluid Pictures 75-77 Margaret St. London W1W 8SY ++44(0) 207 580 0829 adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com www.fluid-pictures.com Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales. Company number:5657815 VAT number: 872 6893 71
RE: Open letter to Autodesk
Hi Adrian, Thanks for taking the time to write. If you wish, I'd be more than willing to talk to you about this. My cellphone is 514 242 6549. Or if you like I could call you at a time of your convenience Tuesday. maurice Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of adrian wyer Sent: Friday, March 14, 2014 7:22 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: RE: Open letter to Autodesk Autodesk, you probably don't know me, beyond a yearly subscription payment, so allow me to tell you about myself. I started in the 3D industry in the 1990s, using Softimage 3D at a small games company, before that I'd been training myself on a 'demo' copy of 3DS on Dos. From day one using Softimage it was obvious the pedigree and artist driven interface was light-years ahead of anything else I'd seen. When i moved to the post industry in Soho a few years later, i made sure that, even though i was working in a Lightwave house, they got me a copy of Softimage. Against a backdrop of Lightwave evangelists, i consistently produced work faster, and more elegantly than my peers. (this is purely down to the software, not my abilities) For a few years i was a senior artist at the Hive, i was adrift in a sea of Maya users, but slowly convinced my peers that Softimage (and then XSI, as i was involved in the beta program) was the better package for quick turnaround commercial work. Gaining a regular stream of repeat clients, asking for me by name. Moving on i went to head up the 3D department at MillTV, producing work well above the level of the budget, for television documentaries and drama. I worked on the tests which would convince the BBC to bring Doctor Who back from the dead. My colleague and friend Dave Throssell, who again, you probably don't know, but who was responsible for the success of Mill3D and their many award winning commercials during the 1990s, all produced on Softimage, left the mill with me, and we started Fluid Pictures in 2006. The decision to use XSI as our primary application was a no-brainer, the end-to-end ability of this software, to let an artist hit the ground running, without fighting the interface, or having to be a programmer, allowed us to produce work far in excess of the quality that the shrinking budgets of television should have allowed. There is LITERALLY NO WAY we could have competed in our market, with a small team, using ANY other package. Over the years ICE has become one of the reasons i come to work in the morning! The challenges presented by our clients become a joy to solve when i know i can jump into ICE, and figure out some clever way to shave hours or even days off production time. For us as a company, there really is NO alternative package, nothing does everything that Softimage does, nothing comes close. And when i get stuck, i have the Softimage community. The mailing list has been my online home since 1999, and i count some of its members as dear friends, without whom, again, i would have struggled to compete in the market place. The members are always there with words of encouragement and advice (and no small amount of ribbing!) the atmosphere is one of enlightened, grown up camaraderie. A place where you can ask the simplest, or most complicated of questions, and someone will usually be there to help you out. Finally, i would like to posit a suggestion, that may be too late, but would impress upon you to consider; Softimage, with a little love, and a little investment, coupled with better marketing strategy, could well be your missing effects pipeline. Your Houdini. Is there a way for the developers, and the third party guys, to work together with you, to take Softimage forward, to bridge the gap until Bifrost is mature, and become your fx software? By all means keep it in the suites, concentrate mainly on bug fixes, but please, don't kill our baby! a Adrian Wyer Fluid Pictures 75-77 Margaret St. London W1W 8SY ++44(0) 207 580 0829 adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.comblocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::mailto:adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com www.fluid-pictures.comblocked::blocked::blocked::blocked::http://www.fluid-pictures.com/ Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales. Company number:5657815 VAT number: 872 6893 71 attachment: winmail.dat
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Indeed making a very-much utilized/useful software become unused (quite forcibly so, arbitrarily deciding for 1000's of people on a whim, because someone said so) can be reasonable grounds to start looking around. But is similarly very-much reasonable grounds to start asking some serious questions (!) such as; Are people's choices -so- insignificant in the eyes of those that decide for such measures? If otherwise existing solutions could actually fill the gap, there would not be such upheaval from the community, because realistically, in all apearances, there are quite prove-ably -no- such existing solutions. Virtually -all- users that use/used XSI, with many of which use other (more standard) packages (only because they are more standard) on a daily basis, .. see this as a definite and considerable regression. (notwithstanding many advantages of other solutions in more technical environments) And for the life of me, the complete disregard of what people have to say about it... despite 3000+ petitions, coutless personal stories, small big studio open letters super-reasonable and widely agreed-upon compromise propositions ... ... need I say more.. (I would rest my case on that very point) On 03/14/14 14:08, Meng-Yang Lu wrote: Hi Jason, Right now, many people need to make measured decisions on how to conduct their business effectively in the short term, with plans to transition in the long term. I'm extremely upset that the weapon of choice that my friends used to make 98% Human is going to go away. And I know people have carved out whole careers using Softimage. If I had to solo a job with a quick turnaround like many freelancers, I would run with Softimage knowing the preproduction work could eventually be converted to final renders. Undoubtedly, it's a harsh blow to hear it's EOL. But you still have access to it now and it's still an amazing piece of kit. So that's not going anywhere. So take this as a little prod to go exploring other offerings and expanding your capabilities. If visual programming is your thing, take a look a Houdini. I think it's second to none regarding a visual programming environment. Plus, SideFX is a completely different experience than Autodesk and would love to hear your feedback. We went from an all-Maya studio here in LA to Maya/Houdini. And truth be told, it was the Houdini work that helped spurred on our growth here in LA. Had we adamantly stuck with Maya for everything, I'm not sure where we'd be today. We have to stop placing these mental blocks that prevents us from learning new things and enabling us to take on new challenges. What we quickly forget is what did you guys do prior to ICE? And what happened when it showed up in 2008? Everyone took a bit of time and learned it and some got very good at it. Why is looking at other offers any different? I'm not saying Oh well, might as well make the best of it. What I am saying is stay active in seeking out new solutions. And we need to take this a step further. What does the DCC of the future look like? Beautifully fast real-time viewports where I can hit play and frames get saved to disk? Real-time smoke and fluid sims where I don't have to guess and hope my values are good enough? Animation tools that are intuitive and don't require an army of TDs to wrangle? The CG community could really use the experience from Softimage and lead the way towards a better DCC. Just have to find a platform that won't get yanked out from under people this time. -Lu
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Exactly. What Raff said. -M -- Martin Chatterjee [ Freelance Technical Director ] [ http://www.chatterjee.de ] [ https://vimeo.com/chatterjee ] On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 9:35 AM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: I would honestly think the opposite. As an individual if you don't already know several software you made a mistake, but you can fix it in relatively little time. As a company you're nowhere as agile, you aren't running around barefoot, you are steering a ship through considerable amounts of pipeline work even for a small place. The problem of important functionality in terms of productivity coming to miss affects both in more or less the same measure unless you were already considerably app agnostic, something most studios below the multi-hundred mark usually aren't quite so much (with rare exceptions).
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Agree with Raff. As an individual you can even keep Softimage in your pipeline at some degree for years until you find something better to replace that old Softimage. You only have to train yourself and you can do it while you work with SI at some degree. Or even try different solutions until you find the best one. After all you only need to care about 1 person. As a company, you can't weak short-term solutions. You can't afford to risk the possibility of not having SI users or licenses available in the market when needed. The real problem with SI death, from a company pov (IMHO), is that you can't buy licenses anymore, so you can't increase or decrease your licenses and artists as needed. And that, plus the eventual and inevitable decrease of SI artists available is a deal breaker. Companies need to migrate their entire pipeline to something else as soon as possible. And that means re-train all your staff, increasing human error probability and decreasing exponentially efficiency. And most probably, you need look for a few Maya (or whatever you choose) specialists to help you in the process, specially if your company is almost entirely SI based. Martin
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Olivier also have a point, he's not freelancing for cg compagnies but he's directly working with agencies as a one man band. He's also the director of the movies he's working on. In his case having to move it's workflow to a less effective software is very risky and a massive loss of time and money . Le 13 mars 2014 10:53, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.com a écrit : Agree with Raff. As an individual you can even keep Softimage in your pipeline at some degree for years until you find something better to replace that old Softimage. You only have to train yourself and you can do it while you work with SI at some degree. Or even try different solutions until you find the best one. After all you only need to care about 1 person. As a company, you can't weak short-term solutions. You can't afford to risk the possibility of not having SI users or licenses available in the market when needed. The real problem with SI death, from a company pov (IMHO), is that you can't buy licenses anymore, so you can't increase or decrease your licenses and artists as needed. And that, plus the eventual and inevitable decrease of SI artists available is a deal breaker. Companies need to migrate their entire pipeline to something else as soon as possible. And that means re-train all your staff, increasing human error probability and decreasing exponentially efficiency. And most probably, you need look for a few Maya (or whatever you choose) specialists to help you in the process, specially if your company is almost entirely SI based. Martin
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Folks This letter precipitated a little bit of publicity http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/rip-softimage-reaction-autodesks-decision-kill-3d-software-31410967 Alastair Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d GLASSWORKS 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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 10/03/2014 10:20, Alastair Hearsum wrote: Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d GLASSWORKS 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Amazing! Thanks for sticking your neck out for this! On 13 March 2014 16:20, Alastair Hearsum hear...@glassworks.co.uk wrote: Folks This letter precipitated a little bit of publicity http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/rip-softimage-reaction-autodesks-decision-kill-3d-software-31410967 Alastair Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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 10/03/2014 10:20, Alastair Hearsum wrote: Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.glassworks.co.uk/ Glassworks Terms
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Great! Let's spread more! .:. Christian Lattuada On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 5:28 PM, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: Amazing! Thanks for sticking your neck out for this! On 13 March 2014 16:20, Alastair Hearsum hear...@glassworks.co.uk wrote: Folks This letter precipitated a little bit of publicity http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/rip-softimage-reaction-autodesks-decision-kill-3d-software-31410967 Alastair Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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 10/03/2014 10:20, Alastair Hearsum wrote: Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Kudos for writing that letter Alastair! I hope there will be more noise on the web, so AD has to listen more carefully what is happening atm... Rob \/-\/\/ On 13-3-2014 17:20, Alastair Hearsum wrote: Folks This letter precipitated a little bit of publicity http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/rip-softimage-reaction-autodesks-decision-kill-3d-software-31410967 Alastair Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d GLASSWORKS 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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 10/03/2014 10:20, Alastair Hearsum wrote: Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d GLASSWORKS 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Indeed, I was also hoping for other key high profile post production facilities to be at the forefront together with Glassworks in an official way. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 13 Mar 2014, at 17:42, Rob Wuijster r...@casema.nl wrote: Kudos for writing that letter Alastair! I hope there will be more noise on the web, so AD has to listen more carefully what is happening atm... Rob \/-\/\/ On 13-3-2014 17:20, Alastair Hearsum wrote: Folks This letter precipitated a little bit of publicity http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/rip-softimage-reaction-autodesks-decision-kill-3d-software-31410967 Alastair Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d 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 10/03/2014 10:20, Alastair Hearsum wrote: Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I’m a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven’t heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn’t consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I’m nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I’m talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year’s British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that’s been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Psyop maybe? I love their work too. And I don't want to tell you how many XSI seats we have at Square Enix: a lot! On Friday, March 14, 2014, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Indeed, I was also hoping for other key high profile post production facilities to be at the forefront together with Glassworks in an official way. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.comjavascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','jordiba...@gmail.com'); On 13 Mar 2014, at 17:42, Rob Wuijster r...@casema.nl wrote: Kudos for writing that letter Alastair! I hope there will be more noise on the web, so AD has to listen more carefully what is happening atm... Rob \/-\/\/ On 13-3-2014 17:20, Alastair Hearsum wrote: Folks This letter precipitated a little bit of publicity http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/rip-softimage-reaction-autodesks-decision-kill-3d-software-31410967 Alastair Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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 10/03/2014 10:20, Alastair Hearsum wrote: Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? *An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk * -- -- Martin Contel Square Enix (Visual Works)
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Yeah, what he said. Eric Thivierge http://www.ethivierge.com On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 8:23 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Let me clarify that I'm not saying you have it easy by any means, but as an individual you are in control of you own time, unconditionally. You don't NEED TO drop Soft right now (unless the job market withers instantly), you can keep doing business as usual as an individual for at least a few months, and go in crunch time to re-educate yourself freely in your spare time. That's by no means ideal, or even nice, but you can do it; you can turn on a dime. You decide to learn rigging in Maya? You can still model in Soft, you are a one man band pipe, that's a no brainer, and then you can double up your rigging effort to rig the thing in Soft for your client output, and try to replicate it in Maya at night. Unless you have, and need to, work for 16 hours a day you should have a pile of free time you wouldn't have been able to monetize otherwise that you now have to invest, even if against your will. As a company it's not that simple. You don't have such a commodity as non monetized time. Every single minute of your employees is paid for in one way or another. Money, TIL, or if you don't offer recompense for overtime much worse consequences. You do not have the same agility, simple as that, and while as an individual you are fully in control of your assets and Q/C is in built in the work itself, as a company those interim stage have considerable added cost and require refactoring. Now, again, please don't think I'm downplaying this. We all have hobbies, or families, or excees of work, or a mix of those, and it's a very, very real cost to sacrifice any of those for the sake of re qualifying yourself. If it's not an economic cost (no work excess you can sell), at the very least it's a considerable emotional and intellectual effort which is very likely to drain you, and sustained for too long will eventually affect the money earning hours of your day, and is therefore to be managed carefully. The only reason I'm continuing this debate isn't for the sake of argument, it's because I'm witnessing a lot of defeatism, and purely out of care for my peers and a community I've been part of for my entire adult life I'd like to see people shake free of it. Saying that changing application will demote you to junior for a while is non-sense. The distinction between a junior and a senior is NOT their software dexterity, if it was we'd look for app monkeys and would never re-train people across software. The distinction between a junior and a senior is experience, ingenuity matured into applicable skills, the ability to think logically and critically under pressure, the sum of all their projects giving them vision over the next. Nobody will take any of that away from you, don't let anything or anybody EVER convince you that you are the software you use. It has impact, considerable impact, but it only defines a very small part of your overall value.
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Words were said. Boom! -Lu On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 5:30 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.comwrote: Yeah, what he said. Eric Thivierge http://www.ethivierge.com On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 8:23 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Let me clarify that I'm not saying you have it easy by any means, but as an individual you are in control of you own time, unconditionally. You don't NEED TO drop Soft right now (unless the job market withers instantly), you can keep doing business as usual as an individual for at least a few months, and go in crunch time to re-educate yourself freely in your spare time. That's by no means ideal, or even nice, but you can do it; you can turn on a dime. You decide to learn rigging in Maya? You can still model in Soft, you are a one man band pipe, that's a no brainer, and then you can double up your rigging effort to rig the thing in Soft for your client output, and try to replicate it in Maya at night. Unless you have, and need to, work for 16 hours a day you should have a pile of free time you wouldn't have been able to monetize otherwise that you now have to invest, even if against your will. As a company it's not that simple. You don't have such a commodity as non monetized time. Every single minute of your employees is paid for in one way or another. Money, TIL, or if you don't offer recompense for overtime much worse consequences. You do not have the same agility, simple as that, and while as an individual you are fully in control of your assets and Q/C is in built in the work itself, as a company those interim stage have considerable added cost and require refactoring. Now, again, please don't think I'm downplaying this. We all have hobbies, or families, or excees of work, or a mix of those, and it's a very, very real cost to sacrifice any of those for the sake of re qualifying yourself. If it's not an economic cost (no work excess you can sell), at the very least it's a considerable emotional and intellectual effort which is very likely to drain you, and sustained for too long will eventually affect the money earning hours of your day, and is therefore to be managed carefully. The only reason I'm continuing this debate isn't for the sake of argument, it's because I'm witnessing a lot of defeatism, and purely out of care for my peers and a community I've been part of for my entire adult life I'd like to see people shake free of it. Saying that changing application will demote you to junior for a while is non-sense. The distinction between a junior and a senior is NOT their software dexterity, if it was we'd look for app monkeys and would never re-train people across software. The distinction between a junior and a senior is experience, ingenuity matured into applicable skills, the ability to think logically and critically under pressure, the sum of all their projects giving them vision over the next. Nobody will take any of that away from you, don't let anything or anybody EVER convince you that you are the software you use. It has impact, considerable impact, but it only defines a very small part of your overall value.
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
So far, there are stuffs we swear at alot (like the unability to change attributes on multi selected objects at the same time) What you take as normal day to day operations in Softimage then fall into Maya, you really understand you will miss something everyday. haha And the list goes up. But there are also nice stuffs we find out. Every packages got it's good and bad things. Just for the record, since it's not too far off topic, that to me is symptomatic of another issue I see with people migrating. The assumption that things can't be done when they are just done differently (better or worse can be argued depending on case), and a resulting reduced productivity coming from fighting a new platform instead of embracing it. While I will be the first to tell you that embracing Maya will frequently feel like hugging a giant llama turd, you won't get very far if you try and steer it like you did Soft. Where Soft has a greatly streamlined user experience relying on very few contextual editors and many half-arsed ones that have been rotting on the vines, Maya has a pleotra of dedicated workflows. E.G.: If you want multi-edit you use the attribute spreadsheet. The attribute editor and its constant autoswitching culling the channel box coupled with its inability to contextualize is horrible, but on the other hand where Soft's spreadsheet is barely a remnant of the SOFTIMAGE|3D days the AttrSS is functional. The notion that migrating from one software to another is just a matter of finding the same levers that have been given different names is a horrible, HORRIBLE populist notion in defense of the even more horrible argument of old that Software doesn't matter. Software does matter, and design philosophies differ massively. Don't try to remap every little step of how you operate, it might be the path of least resistance to learn a new software, but it will leave you crippled and slow. Learn how the things differ fundamentally and use each one at their best.
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
euh...Lu, it's different for everyone. Studios and/or individuals.It's all about how you feel and how much time you will be able to put into learning new stuffs to become productive as you are used to be.I dont see any "Boom!!" here. Raff is not bashing Olivier at all.He is right (as always). But i also understands Olivier's feeling and uncertainity. It's just normal to have fear of the unknown in our day to day life that puts the peanut butter on our tables.Is there a Uber/Ultimate solution to all of this for everyone's needs? Awnser is NO.What's your personnal plan Lu?sly Sylvain Lebeau // SHEDV-P/Visual effects supervisor1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025WWW.SHEDMTL.COMhttp://WWW.SHEDMTL.COMVFX Curriculum 03: Compositing Basicsmail to: s...@shedmtl.com On Mar 13, 2014, at 8:57 PM, Meng-Yang Lu ntmon...@gmail.com wrote:Words were said. Boom!-LuOn Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 5:30 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.com wrote: Yeah, what he said. Eric Thiviergehttp://www.ethivierge.com On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 8:23 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Let me clarify that I'm not saying you have it easy by any means, but as an individual you are in control of you own time, unconditionally.You don't NEED TO drop Soft right now (unless the job market withers instantly), you can keep doing business as usual as an individual for at least a few months, and go in crunch time to re-educate yourself freely in your spare time. That's by no means ideal, or even nice, but you can do it; you can turn on a dime. You decide to learn rigging in Maya? You can still model in Soft, you are a one man band pipe, that's a no brainer, and then you can double up your rigging effort to rig the thing in Soft for your client output, and try to replicate it in Maya at night. Unless you have, and need to, work for 16 hours a day you should have a pile of free time you wouldn't have been able to monetize otherwise that you now have to "invest", even if against your will. As a company it's not that simple. You don't have such a commodity as non monetized time. Every single minute of your employees is paid for in one way or another. Money, TIL, or if you don't offer recompense for overtime much worse consequences. You do not have the same agility, simple as that, and while as an individual you are fully in control of your assets and Q/C is in built in the work itself, as a company those interim stage have considerable added cost and require refactoring. Now, again, please don't think I'm downplaying this. We all have hobbies, or families, or excees of work, or a mix of those, and it's a very, very real cost to sacrifice any of those for the sake of re qualifying yourself. If it's not an economic cost (no work excess you can sell), at the very least it's a considerable emotional and intellectual effort which is very likely to drain you, and sustained for too long will eventually affect the money earning hours of your day, and is therefore to be managed carefully. The only reason I'm continuing this debate isn't for the sake of argument, it's because I'm witnessing a lot of defeatism, and purely out of care for my peers and a community I've been part of for my entire adult life I'd like to see people shake free of it. Saying that changing application will demote you to junior for a while is non-sense. The distinction between a junior and a senior is NOT their software dexterity, if it was we'd look for app monkeys and would never re-train people across software. The distinction between a junior and a senior is experience, ingenuity matured into applicable skills, the ability to think logically and critically under pressure, the sum of all their projects giving them vision over the next. Nobody will take any of that away from you, don't let anything or anybody EVER convince you that you are the software you use. It has impact, considerable impact, but it only defines a very small part of your overall value.
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
haha!!!a llama turd!!! pouhahahahahahahahahyes of course! But just for your record any third partys attributes dont show off in the attribute spreadsheet editor And the attributes i need to multi change are Arnold ones!! Opacity switch on or off per exemple... Dont worry, we already have a script for this now. I know about it and also about the channel box. Hopefully, we've found a way to publish Arnold properties in the Attribute spreadsheet editor. But it's not out of the box. It took us some time to make it happen.i am not trying to remap every single steps we did in Soft to maya Raff. i just say i miss some good old nice workflows in Soft. We are learning the proper way. In exemple: i did not remap my shortcuts to XSI ones..Of course softwares matters!!! ... But give me maya, modo, c4d, houdini, even blender and within a week or two, i will start showing you good results. Just like you said in your post to Olivier... We need to be as much software agnostic possible. And fortunatly, my team is so agressive on this part.. They dont fear anything!!lucky me!sly Sylvain Lebeau // SHEDV-P/Visual effects supervisor1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025WWW.SHEDMTL.COMhttp://WWW.SHEDMTL.COMVFX Curriculum 03: Compositing Basicsmail to: s...@shedmtl.com On Mar 13, 2014, at 9:44 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:"So far, there are stuffs we swear at alot (like the unability to change attributes on multi selected objects at the same time) What you take as normal day to day operations in Softimage then fall into Maya, you really understand you will miss something everyday. haha And the list goes up. But there are also nice stuffs we find out. Every packages got it's good and bad things." Just for the record, since it's not too far off topic, that to me is symptomatic of another issue I see with people migrating.The assumption that things can't be done when they are just done differently (better or worse can be argued depending on case), and a resulting reduced productivity coming from fighting a new platform instead of embracing it. While I will be the first to tell you that "embracing" Maya will frequently feel like hugging a giant llama turd, you won't get very far if you try and steer it like you did Soft. Where Soft has a greatly streamlined user experience relying on very few contextual editors and many half-arsed ones that have been rotting on the vines, Maya has a pleotra of dedicated workflows. E.G.: If you want multi-edit you use the attribute spreadsheet. The attribute editor and its constant autoswitching culling the channel box coupled with its inability to contextualize is horrible, but on the other hand where Soft's spreadsheet is barely a remnant of the SOFTIMAGE|3D days the AttrSS is functional. The notion that migrating from one software to another is just a matter of finding the same levers that have been given different names is a horrible, HORRIBLE populist notion in defense of the even more horrible argument of old that Software doesn't matter. Software does matter, and design philosophies differ massively. Don't try to remap every little step of how you operate, it might be the path of least resistance to learn a new software, but it will leave you crippled and slow. Learn how the things differ fundamentally and use each one at their best.
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Hi Sylvain, I was just agreeing about Raff's eloquent emphasis on how experience is not directly linked to what software you use. Lack of foresight on a project can erode all the advantages gained by slick tools. The truth is that our industry is constantly changing with new innovations and it has always been my philosophy that we either adapt to the tools given to us and make the best of them, or gain the skills to develop new tools. This will continue as long as we have an industry, and we should by all means embrace it. I started using Maya since 3.0 and XSI in 4.0.1. And though I'm a huge fan of Softimage, it's contextual intelligence, and it's passionate community, I never really felt comfortable putting all my eggs in one basket. Today, I leverage Maya for nCloth and animation, XSI for the generalist tasks of modeling and ass-saving ability, and Houdini for FX. XSI was always my secret weapon though. We switch context all the time in 3D. Your viewport tools compared to your graph editor and then to ICE are all completely different. And then we probably go home and put in a couple hours of gaming, another interface to deal with. 3D to me it just like that. I'm constantly changing interfaces and workflows anyway. And I think of Maya, Softimage, and Houdini in that way. When it comes to managing projects, it's incredibly beneficial for a lead to grasp a broad understanding of not only the process, but the workflows and advantages that each package brings to the table. Here at the Mill LA, it's not unusual for us to mix Maya and Houdini. Most of the time, the pitches are done by one guy in Softimage, but I have to go in and figure out a way to replicate that process in Maya our Houdini because of talent availability and the need to scale. And you know what, our end product benefits from leveraging the best out of our tools and our people. The reality is that Softimage will be around for 2 more years. A lot can change. I remember when Shake was bought out and my favorite compositor of all time went away. Ask me to give up Nuke now for Shake. No way!! It took some time and the pains were real. But today, I'm a lot more efficient with Nuke than I ever was with Shake. And I hope one day, I'll be more proficient in another 3D app than I am with what I have now. Change is what makes our industry the exciting fun one that inspired us to join in this crazy party. I don't worry about the tools of the future because as long as you guys are still in the game, I believe we will find a way like we have been doing all those years the past. It's gonna take more than one silly company and one horrible decisions to put me out the pasture. And you guys with your wealth of talent and experience should feel the same. Sorry for being an absolute child on the internet. -Lu On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 6:48 PM, Sylvain Lebeau s...@shedmtl.com wrote: euh... Lu, it's different for everyone. Studios and/or individuals. It's all about how you feel and how much time you will be able to put into learning new stuffs to become productive as you are used to be. I dont see any Boom!! here. Raff is not bashing Olivier at all. He is right (as always). But i also understands Olivier's feeling and uncertainity. It's just normal to have fear of the unknown in our day to day life that puts the peanut butter on our tables. Is there a Uber/Ultimate solution to all of this for everyone's needs? Awnser is NO. What's your personnal plan Lu? sly *Sylvain Lebeau // SHED* V-P/Visual effects supervisor 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8 T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM http://www.shedmtl.com/ http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM http://www.shedmtl.com/ VFX Curriculum 03: Compositing Basics mail to: s...@shedmtl.com On Mar 13, 2014, at 8:57 PM, Meng-Yang Lu ntmon...@gmail.com wrote: Words were said. Boom! -Lu On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 5:30 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.comwrote: Yeah, what he said. Eric Thivierge http://www.ethivierge.com On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 8:23 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Let me clarify that I'm not saying you have it easy by any means, but as an individual you are in control of you own time, unconditionally. You don't NEED TO drop Soft right now (unless the job market withers instantly), you can keep doing business as usual as an individual for at least a few months, and go in crunch time to re-educate yourself freely in your spare time. That's by no means ideal, or even nice, but you can do it; you can turn on a dime. You decide to learn rigging in Maya? You can still model in Soft, you are a one man band pipe, that's a no brainer, and then you can double up your rigging effort to rig the thing in Soft for your client output, and try to replicate it in Maya at night. Unless you have, and need to, work for 16 hours a day you
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Hello:
Just wanted to offer, since the attribute speadsheet doesn't cover all
parameters, only ones that are actually available via the channel box,
knowing some quick maya commands (setAtttr) will help massively here:
import pymel.core as pm
attr = raw_input('Enter attribute you want to set!')
val = raw_input('Enter value it needs to be set at!')
for i in pm.ls(sl=True):
pm.setAttr(i+'.'+attr, float(val) )
I have this saved out on my shelf, really handy for working with
lights/bones especially since they have so many parameters that can't be
seen via the channel box without exposing them manually.
HTH in some small way! :D
Yours sincerely,
Siew Yi Liang
On 3/13/2014 6:44 PM, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:
So far, there are stuffs we swear at alot (like the unability to
change attributes on multi selected objects at the same time) What
you take as normal day to day operations in Softimage then fall into
Maya, you really understand you will miss something everyday. haha
And the list goes up. But there are also nice stuffs we find out.
Every packages got it's good and bad things.
Just for the record, since it's not too far off topic, that to me is
symptomatic of another issue I see with people migrating.
The assumption that things can't be done when they are just done
differently (better or worse can be argued depending on case), and a
resulting reduced productivity coming from fighting a new platform
instead of embracing it.
While I will be the first to tell you that embracing Maya will
frequently feel like hugging a giant llama turd, you won't get very
far if you try and steer it like you did Soft.
Where Soft has a greatly streamlined user experience relying on very
few contextual editors and many half-arsed ones that have been rotting
on the vines, Maya has a pleotra of dedicated workflows.
E.G.: If you want multi-edit you use the attribute spreadsheet. The
attribute editor and its constant autoswitching culling the channel
box coupled with its inability to contextualize is horrible, but on
the other hand where Soft's spreadsheet is barely a remnant of the
SOFTIMAGE|3D days the AttrSS is functional.
The notion that migrating from one software to another is just a
matter of finding the same levers that have been given different names
is a horrible, HORRIBLE populist notion in defense of the even more
horrible argument of old that Software doesn't matter.
Software does matter, and design philosophies differ massively. Don't
try to remap every little step of how you operate, it might be the
path of least resistance to learn a new software, but it will leave
you crippled and slow. Learn how the things differ fundamentally and
use each one at their best.
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Hi, While I think you brought a number of fair points, I don't think people sticking to soft is mostly about fanaticism or religous frevor. I too worked on Shake, and apprehending nuke was no problem. A better analogy for me would be moving from node based visual programming to scripting, on a somewhat less forgiving base when pushing the envelope. (not just concerning ICE but somehow everything, ) From what I gather while being as impartial as I can, if the end result is indeed a 25%-50% overall change in productivity for 5-7+ years, (based on much (non-selective) feedback from smaller shops/projects to date) while I'm sure many could deal with that, and that some might do better and others worse, it can definitely still ring as being quite something. And just going along with it while saying ; oh well.. that's just how it is.. might as well make the best of it! to me almost feels as if we were talking about purely consequential natural disaster recovery, and I personally have a hard time just swallowing that. On 03/13/14 22:59, Meng-Yang Lu wrote: Hi Sylvain, I was just agreeing about Raff's eloquent emphasis on how experience is not directly linked to what software you use. Lack of foresight on a project can erode all the advantages gained by slick tools. The truth is that our industry is constantly changing with new innovations and it has always been my philosophy that we either adapt to the tools given to us and make the best of them, or gain the skills to develop new tools. This will continue as long as we have an industry, and we should by all means embrace it. I started using Maya since 3.0 and XSI in 4.0.1. And though I'm a huge fan of Softimage, it's contextual intelligence, and it's passionate community, I never really felt comfortable putting all my eggs in one basket. Today, I leverage Maya for nCloth and animation, XSI for the generalist tasks of modeling and ass-saving ability, and Houdini for FX. XSI was always my secret weapon though. We switch context all the time in 3D. Your viewport tools compared to your graph editor and then to ICE are all completely different. And then we probably go home and put in a couple hours of gaming, another interface to deal with. 3D to me it just like that. I'm constantly changing interfaces and workflows anyway. And I think of Maya, Softimage, and Houdini in that way. When it comes to managing projects, it's incredibly beneficial for a lead to grasp a broad understanding of not only the process, but the workflows and advantages that each package brings to the table. Here at the Mill LA, it's not unusual for us to mix Maya and Houdini. Most of the time, the pitches are done by one guy in Softimage, but I have to go in and figure out a way to replicate that process in Maya our Houdini because of talent availability and the need to scale. And you know what, our end product benefits from leveraging the best out of our tools and our people. The reality is that Softimage will be around for 2 more years. A lot can change. I remember when Shake was bought out and my favorite compositor of all time went away. Ask me to give up Nuke now for Shake. No way!! It took some time and the pains were real. But today, I'm a lot more efficient with Nuke than I ever was with Shake. And I hope one day, I'll be more proficient in another 3D app than I am with what I have now. Change is what makes our industry the exciting fun one that inspired us to join in this crazy party. I don't worry about the tools of the future because as long as you guys are still in the game, I believe we will find a way like we have been doing all those years the past. It's gonna take more than one silly company and one horrible decisions to put me out the pasture. And you guys with your wealth of talent and experience should feel the same. Sorry for being an absolute child on the internet. -Lu
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
This is the Maya experience at its fullest, Oh you can't do it like that,
here's a script that solves the problem.
On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 2:59 PM, Siew Yi Liang soni...@gmail.com wrote:
Hello:
Just wanted to offer, since the attribute speadsheet doesn't cover all
parameters, only ones that are actually available via the channel box,
knowing some quick maya commands (setAtttr) will help massively here:
import pymel.core as pm
attr = raw_input('Enter attribute you want to set!')
val = raw_input('Enter value it needs to be set at!')
for i in pm.ls(sl=True):
pm.setAttr(i+'.'+attr, float(val) )
I have this saved out on my shelf, really handy for working with
lights/bones especially since they have so many parameters that can't be
seen via the channel box without exposing them manually.
HTH in some small way! :D
Yours sincerely,
Siew Yi Liang
On 3/13/2014 6:44 PM, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:
So far, there are stuffs we swear at alot (like the unability to
change attributes on multi selected objects at the same time) What you
take as normal day to day operations in Softimage then fall into Maya, you
really understand you will miss something everyday. haha And the list goes
up. But there are also nice stuffs we find out. Every packages got it's
good and bad things.
Just for the record, since it's not too far off topic, that to me is
symptomatic of another issue I see with people migrating.
The assumption that things can't be done when they are just done
differently (better or worse can be argued depending on case), and a
resulting reduced productivity coming from fighting a new platform instead
of embracing it.
While I will be the first to tell you that embracing Maya will
frequently feel like hugging a giant llama turd, you won't get very far if
you try and steer it like you did Soft.
Where Soft has a greatly streamlined user experience relying on very few
contextual editors and many half-arsed ones that have been rotting on the
vines, Maya has a pleotra of dedicated workflows.
E.G.: If you want multi-edit you use the attribute spreadsheet. The
attribute editor and its constant autoswitching culling the channel box
coupled with its inability to contextualize is horrible, but on the other
hand where Soft's spreadsheet is barely a remnant of the SOFTIMAGE|3D days
the AttrSS is functional.
The notion that migrating from one software to another is just a matter
of finding the same levers that have been given different names is a
horrible, HORRIBLE populist notion in defense of the even more horrible
argument of old that Software doesn't matter.
Software does matter, and design philosophies differ massively. Don't try
to remap every little step of how you operate, it might be the path of
least resistance to learn a new software, but it will leave you crippled
and slow. Learn how the things differ fundamentally and use each one at
their best.
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Hey Sylvain, I'd be curious what will come from that meeting. Please, if possible, let us know. I 'd be extremly curious to know also what will be Shed move (or stick). Best, Olivier Le 11/03/2014 03:43, Sylvain Lebeau a crit: Very nice letter Alastair! Hard to write down any other words depecting eveyone's feeling like you did! On my side, i got some ideas i want to share with Autodesk. I already have a beer booked with Maurice Patel next week (very very very nice guy btw). I just want to share ideas with him and also want to listen to what the reality is to try to understand it better. I dont have outmost expectations other then meet with him for a nice chat but never knows what can come out of it. Just like the petition. At SHED, we are not a big Softimage studio in terms of income for AD. We are only 15 in the 3D dept on subscription. But we are a good Autodesk customer more because of our Flame, Smokes and Lustre suites. I wish our voice can be listened too like big gals like Glasswork wich i have so much respect for. So i will do my best to speak for everyone else here. Softimage helped us to astound our clients over the years. It's workflow and intuintivity is second to none. I can say it because we are also playing with Maya nowadays to feel the water meh :-/ It took me 4 hours to figure out how to extrude Adobe illustrator's curves into a capped mesh text model. After 25 years of doing 3D since 3DS DOS V3, it's a bit humiliating. You need a simple line of script to make it happen. Tutorial here to anyone interested into it:http://vimeo.com/37108656 ;-P Nonetheless, our heart and soul at SHED will always be with Soft.. and foremost, with it's passionate sharefull users we all have the chance to meet just here, ...in this incredible list. Will do my best! sly Sylvain Lebeau // SHED V-P/Visual effects supervisor 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E TAGE MONTRAL (QUBEC) H3A 1P8 T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025WWW.SHEDMTL.COMhttp://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM VFX Curriculum 03: Compositing Basics mail to: s...@shedmtl.com On Mar 10, 2014, at 8:13 AM, Amaan Akram xsil...@warpedspace.org wrote: Alastair, brilliant letter. Here's hoping other studio executives will chime in.
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
yes you can Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d GLASSWORKS 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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 10/03/2014 21:31, Francisco Criado wrote: can we repost your text Alastair? F. 2014-03-10 18:27 GMT-03:00 Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com: Pubished!!! thanks Alastair, great work! http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Softimage-General/Open-letter-to-Autodesk/td-p/4874950 Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com On 10 Mar 2014, at 17:43, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com mailto:jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote: +1 On 03/10/14 6:29, Jordi Bares wrote: Spot on, it feels really well balanced, mature and fair, the feedback of a true professional. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Hey Alastair can I put your letter in my website besides the Truth about Autodesk and Softimage? Cheers! --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation. 2014-03-11 4:51 GMT-06:00 Alastair Hearsum hear...@glassworks.co.uk: yes you can Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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 10/03/2014 21:31, Francisco Criado wrote: can we repost your text Alastair? F. 2014-03-10 18:27 GMT-03:00 Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com: Pubished!!! thanks Alastair, great work! http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Softimage-General/Open-letter-to-Autodesk/td-p/4874950 Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 10 Mar 2014, at 17:43, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote: +1 On 03/10/14 6:29, Jordi Bares wrote: Spot on, it feels really well balanced, mature and fair, the feedback of a true professional. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
If more attention was paid to the application during its life, perhaps its death would not be upon us... Exactly!! David
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
yes Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d GLASSWORKS 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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 11/03/2014 11:00, Emilio Hernandez wrote: Hey Alastair can I put your letter in my website besides the Truth about Autodesk and Softimage? Cheers! --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation. 2014-03-11 4:51 GMT-06:00 Alastair Hearsum hear...@glassworks.co.uk mailto:hear...@glassworks.co.uk: yes you can Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d GLASSWORKS 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 tel:%2B44%20%280%2920%207434%201182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.glassworks.co.uk/ Glassworks Terms and Conditions of Sale can be found at glassworks.co.uk http://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 10/03/2014 21:31, Francisco Criado wrote: can we repost your text Alastair? F. 2014-03-10 18:27 GMT-03:00 Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com: Pubished!!! thanks Alastair, great work! http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Softimage-General/Open-letter-to-Autodesk/td-p/4874950 Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com On 10 Mar 2014, at 17:43, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com mailto:jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote: +1 On 03/10/14 6:29, Jordi Bares wrote: Spot on, it feels really well balanced, mature and fair, the feedback of a true professional. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Hey Alastair, where can I grab the last version? Cheers!
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Good stuff Alastair, what also really fucks me off is that in the last 2 years with the takeover by Arnold as the primary render engine for most SI users it has opened up big time! In combination with the powerful ICE features of SI all of a sudden SI houses are producing work at a complexity and quality level that only feature companies we are able to achieve with them investing tons in RD...Also things like Alembic or OpenVDB now contribute to the amazing work coming out of SI... How can Autodesk get the timing so wrong? Just when everything was coming together that was missing in SI before...A great renderer, a great interchange format, a great procedural system at its core, plus awesome and experienced operators... We here at Sehsucht are only a small team of around 10 3d guys but expanding to twice that if needed easily, we pay shedloads of maintenance to Autodesk for SI and other AD products but now we will have to look for an exit strategy...The time and money we have invested in the last 4 years to build our custom pipeline around SI is not entirely wasted, but rest assured AD, the future for your products is not bright in our house... Daniel, Joint Head of 3D@Sehsucht Hamburg On 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum wrote: Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d GLASSWORKS 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Daniel My open letter has got a lot of attention. I would encourage you to do something similar with the company name behind you. It seems to get some results however small. At the risk of sounding patronising and contrary to my own behaviour on facebook in recent weeks, I'd say keep it calm and reasoned (everything you said was absolutely spot on but you did use the word fuck:-) ). Alastair Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d GLASSWORKS 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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 11/03/2014 14:42, Daniel Jahnel wrote: Good stuff Alastair, what also really fucks me off is that in the last 2 years with the takeover by Arnold as the primary render engine for most SI users it has opened up big time! In combination with the powerful ICE features of SI all of a sudden SI houses are producing work at a complexity and quality level that only feature companies we are able to achieve with them investing tons in RD...Also things like Alembic or OpenVDB now contribute to the amazing work coming out of SI... How can Autodesk get the timing so wrong? Just when everything was coming together that was missing in SI before...A great renderer, a great interchange format, a great procedural system at its core, plus awesome and experienced operators... We here at Sehsucht are only a small team of around 10 3d guys but expanding to twice that if needed easily, we pay shedloads of maintenance to Autodesk for SI and other AD products but now we will have to look for an exit strategy...The time and money we have invested in the last 4 years to build our custom pipeline around SI is not entirely wasted, but rest assured AD, the future for your products is not bright in our house... Daniel, Joint Head of 3D@Sehsucht Hamburg On 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum wrote: Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
+1 From: Alastair Hearsum Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2014 10:16 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Daniel My open letter has got a lot of attention. I would encourage you to do something similar with the company name behind you. It seems to get some results however small. At the risk of sounding patronising and contrary to my own behaviour on facebook in recent weeks, I'd say keep it calm and reasoned (everything you said was absolutely spot on but you did use the word fuck:-) ). Alastair 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 11/03/2014 14:42, Daniel Jahnel wrote: Good stuff Alastair, what also really fucks me off is that in the last 2 years with the takeover by Arnold as the primary render engine for most SI users it has opened up big time! In combination with the powerful ICE features of SI all of a sudden SI houses are producing work at a complexity and quality level that only feature companies we are able to achieve with them investing tons in RD...Also things like Alembic or OpenVDB now contribute to the amazing work coming out of SI... How can Autodesk get the timing so wrong? Just when everything was coming together that was missing in SI before...A great renderer, a great interchange format, a great procedural system at its core, plus awesome and experienced operators... We here at Sehsucht are only a small team of around 10 3d guys but expanding to twice that if needed easily, we pay shedloads of maintenance to Autodesk for SI and other AD products but now we will have to look for an exit strategy...The time and money we have invested in the last 4 years to build our custom pipeline around SI is not entirely wasted, but rest assured AD, the future for your products is not bright in our house... Daniel, Joint Head of 3D@Sehsucht Hamburg On 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum wrote: Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I’m a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven’t heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn’t consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I’m nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I’m talking about
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
At the risk of contradicting myself here, we are actually very calm here...The damage is done, Autodesk will have a very hard standpoint in the future development of the company...There are other solutions, not just buying into the next product may it be Autodesk, Foundry or Maxon, but rather thinking of a much longer term development of software in our field of work... Sorry I did use the f-word, people offended may rephrase it mentally to something more suitable...cant think of anything though at the moment:-) On 11/03/2014 16:15, Alastair Hearsum wrote: Daniel My open letter has got a lot of attention. I would encourage you to do something similar with the company name behind you. It seems to get some results however small. At the risk of sounding patronising and contrary to my own behaviour on facebook in recent weeks, I'd say keep it calm and reasoned (everything you said was absolutely spot on but you did use the word fuck:-) ). Alastair Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d GLASSWORKS 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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 11/03/2014 14:42, Daniel Jahnel wrote: Good stuff Alastair, what also really fucks me off is that in the last 2 years with the takeover by Arnold as the primary render engine for most SI users it has opened up big time! In combination with the powerful ICE features of SI all of a sudden SI houses are producing work at a complexity and quality level that only feature companies we are able to achieve with them investing tons in RD...Also things like Alembic or OpenVDB now contribute to the amazing work coming out of SI... How can Autodesk get the timing so wrong? Just when everything was coming together that was missing in SI before...A great renderer, a great interchange format, a great procedural system at its core, plus awesome and experienced operators... We here at Sehsucht are only a small team of around 10 3d guys but expanding to twice that if needed easily, we pay shedloads of maintenance to Autodesk for SI and other AD products but now we will have to look for an exit strategy...The time and money we have invested in the last 4 years to build our custom pipeline around SI is not entirely wasted, but rest assured AD, the future for your products is not bright in our house... Daniel, Joint Head of 3D@Sehsucht Hamburg On 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum wrote: Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Hi Alastair, Agreed. You did a fantastic job with your letter, and the more company owners, industry heads of departments and managers speaking out the better. As you say, they would generally feel like they have been given the cold shoulder by a supplier who then want's to sell you another product of theirs instead of the one you've already invested in. Maybe somewhere in AD's corporate brain, the words customer care might blink a light on somewhere. I would bet that the large Maya-centric companies that have been using soft on the side for it's ICE like capabilities won't be running to AD's products to fill the gap, they'll just beef up on Houdini. Although I deeply wish for it, I honestly don't think that they'll sell. It wouldn't take too much effort to increase market share if it was given the TLC it deserves and it would become direct competition once Maya and 3DS really start creaking with their old architecture. I guess a piece of software that affects so many people been simply killed by a company before? I guess it happens in big business sectors here and there. It stinks a bit of monopoly though, buying up top three products in a field and strategically killing off the last one through the door. In summary, bum, tits, poo! Adam. _ http://www.linkedin.com/in/adamseeleyuk https://vimeo.com/adamseeley From: Alastair Hearsum hear...@glassworks.co.uk To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Sent: Tuesday, 11 March 2014, 15:15 Subject: Re: Open letter to Autodesk Daniel My open letter has got a lot of attention. I would encourage you to do something similar with the company name behind you. It seems to get some results however small. At the risk of sounding patronising and contrary to my own behaviour on facebook in recent weeks, I'd say keep it calm and reasoned (everything you said was absolutely spot on but you did use the word fuck:-) ). Alastair Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182+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 11/03/2014 14:42, Daniel Jahnel wrote: Good stuff Alastair, what also really fucks me off is that in the last 2 years with the takeover by Arnold as the primary render engine for most SI users it has opened up big time! In combination with the powerful ICE features of SI all of a sudden SI houses are producing work at a complexity and quality level that only feature companies we are able to achieve with them investing tons in RD...Also things like Alembic or OpenVDB now contribute to the amazing work coming out of SI... How can Autodesk get the timing so wrong? Just when everything was coming together that was missing in SI before...A great renderer, a great interchange format, a great procedural system at its core, plus awesome and experienced operators... We here at Sehsucht are only a small team of around 10 3d guys but expanding to twice that if needed easily, we pay shedloads of maintenance to Autodesk for SI and other AD products but now we will have to look for an exit strategy...The time and money we have invested in the last 4 years to build our custom pipeline around SI is not entirely wasted, but rest assured AD, the future for your products is not bright in our house... Daniel, Joint Head of 3D@Sehsucht Hamburg On 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum wrote: Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I’m a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven’t heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Well written Alastair, thank you. Nic
just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
Hi, unfortunately my english is not good enough to express my feelings and thoughts about all this in a good and polite way and I think some mails like the open letter from Alastair or the mails from Greg, Peter, Jean, Sly, Daniel and so on express them much better than I could do. I'm just an artist, a simple freelancer, so my opinion will not be from interest for AD I'm sure. But nonetheless here are just some additional thoughts from my side: The main thing that surprises me about the decision from AD right now is that they make this step (stopping SI) even before they can offer any kind of alternative. A personal view from the artist point of view: A lot of my work is based on ICE and at the moment I'm simply not able to see a real alternative. Will I take a look at Houdini? Sure. Will I take a look at Modo? Sure. Blender? Sure. ... I will take a look at a lot of software within the next months, maybe years, to hopefully find something that will fit again like SI did until now. ICE gives me the ability to create things I would not be able to do before. I'm not a TD, I'm not able to write my own tools, I'm just a plain artist and so what ICE was a pure revolution for me and still is a joy to work with. As some of you maybe know I did some advertising material for the launch of XSI 7. Although I didn't use ICE for these images because of the fact that I didn't know ICE at all at this time I very quickly realised the enormous power of it. Today I would do it with ICE for sure and it would be much faster and more flexible and so I would have much more time to work on the design and content and would also get more sleep during production. As an artist you spend a lot of time in finding and learning the tools which maybe fit best to you or better said to your work. At a certain point you than hopefully reach a level with the tools where you can care more about design or creativity than about technical issues. But it's maybe a very long and hard way to get there and if you are there, if you can work with a tool without too much thinking about technical issues (some will be there always and you never stop learning for sure) you are very happy about this (at least I am). You are happy that you can focus on the creative side of the work and not only on solving technical problems. For sure you can learn a lot of things in another software rather fast since the concepts are similar, but to get at a point where you are really familar with a tool, where you really have a good feeling about what you can do and what you better avoid is a long way. Moving a spotlight around is one thing but finding the reason why your are getting unexpected results for example is often a complete different story. Who knows, maybe I will find a new tool which even fits better, maybe not, but just at the moment I feel like downgraded from a senior to a junior artist within some days. And what's even more important I'm afraid that I have to spend my time again on just solving technical issues instead on creating images. I simply feel like an artist who get told that there will be no canvas, brushes, oil colours any more soon and that I have to take a ball pen and some finger colours instead to do the work I did before. But that's just my personal point of view and it's for sure not from interest for AD. A more profesional view from the freelancer point of view and maybe a thought worth for AD: In my opinion the reason why SI does so well in particular in the advertising area is simply because it provides a solid toolset out of the box but even more important: it's flexible and fast. And that is was working in the advertising area is about. Flexibility and speed. You have a lot of different tasks, changes, corrections whatever to solve in sometimes extremly short timeframes. Often there is simply no time and also no budget for a big TD team which provides you the basic tools you need to do the work. It has to be right out of the box. And this is what AD does not offer with maya right at the moment. It's maybe a good tool for big pipelines/movie productions or whatever, it's maybe a good framework for custom tools, I don't know, but I doubt it is a good solution for doing quick and creative productions where you maybe have to rethink or rebuild a concept within an evening. Correct me if I'm wrong. Alone the passes and partions system from SI is pure gold in these kind of advertising productions. ICE is an option to create stuff where you normally would need a bigger TD team and the accordingly time for development. Or you can just use it to fix some smaller issues in the last moment on top of your operator stack. The overall workflow of SI simply fits in many areas of these kind of productions. So I'm really afraid for all these innovative and great shops which deliver outstanding work in short turnarounds and within a heavy competetion situation. During the
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
So much truth here. Yet AD only cares about numbers... What annoys me the most (amongst other things) is the way this all happened. It shows total ignorance towards (part of) their customers. and AD can try to explain whatever and however they want, but What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say. Juan On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 4:21 PM, Tim Borgmann i...@bt-3d.de wrote: Hi, unfortunately my english is not good enough to express my feelings and thoughts about all this in a good and polite way and I think some mails like the open letter from Alastair or the mails from Greg, Peter, Jean, Sly, Daniel and so on express them much better than I could do. I'm just an artist, a simple freelancer, so my opinion will not be from interest for AD I'm sure. But nonetheless here are just some additional thoughts from my side: The main thing that surprises me about the decision from AD right now is that they make this step (stopping SI) even before they can offer any kind of alternative. A personal view from the artist point of view: A lot of my work is based on ICE and at the moment I'm simply not able to see a real alternative. Will I take a look at Houdini? Sure. Will I take a look at Modo? Sure. Blender? Sure. ... I will take a look at a lot of software within the next months, maybe years, to hopefully find something that will fit again like SI did until now. ICE gives me the ability to create things I would not be able to do before. I'm not a TD, I'm not able to write my own tools, I'm just a plain artist and so what ICE was a pure revolution for me and still is a joy to work with. As some of you maybe know I did some advertising material for the launch of XSI 7. Although I didn't use ICE for these images because of the fact that I didn't know ICE at all at this time I very quickly realised the enormous power of it. Today I would do it with ICE for sure and it would be much faster and more flexible and so I would have much more time to work on the design and content and would also get more sleep during production. As an artist you spend a lot of time in finding and learning the tools which maybe fit best to you or better said to your work. At a certain point you than hopefully reach a level with the tools where you can care more about design or creativity than about technical issues. But it's maybe a very long and hard way to get there and if you are there, if you can work with a tool without too much thinking about technical issues (some will be there always and you never stop learning for sure) you are very happy about this (at least I am). You are happy that you can focus on the creative side of the work and not only on solving technical problems. For sure you can learn a lot of things in another software rather fast since the concepts are similar, but to get at a point where you are really familar with a tool, where you really have a good feeling about what you can do and what you better avoid is a long way. Moving a spotlight around is one thing but finding the reason why your are getting unexpected results for example is often a complete different story. Who knows, maybe I will find a new tool which even fits better, maybe not, but just at the moment I feel like downgraded from a senior to a junior artist within some days. And what's even more important I'm afraid that I have to spend my time again on just solving technical issues instead on creating images. I simply feel like an artist who get told that there will be no canvas, brushes, oil colours any more soon and that I have to take a ball pen and some finger colours instead to do the work I did before. But that's just my personal point of view and it's for sure not from interest for AD. A more profesional view from the freelancer point of view and maybe a thought worth for AD: In my opinion the reason why SI does so well in particular in the advertising area is simply because it provides a solid toolset out of the box but even more important: it's flexible and fast. And that is was working in the advertising area is about. Flexibility and speed. You have a lot of different tasks, changes, corrections whatever to solve in sometimes extremly short timeframes. Often there is simply no time and also no budget for a big TD team which provides you the basic tools you need to do the work. It has to be right out of the box. And this is what AD does not offer with maya right at the moment. It's maybe a good tool for big pipelines/movie productions or whatever, it's maybe a good framework for custom tools, I don't know, but I doubt it is a good solution for doing quick and creative productions where you maybe have to rethink or rebuild a concept within an evening. Correct me if I'm wrong. Alone the passes and partions system from SI is pure gold in these kind of advertising productions. ICE is an option to create stuff where you normally would need a bigger TD team
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
Hello again guys I am trying to put all this letters together and publish them. If you care to send me the letters will be easier to post, instead of browsing through this post. Tim I believe that we the freelancers can make a single one and start signing at the bottom so we will have a stronger voice, as we are all spread around the globe. Cheers! --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation.
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Extruding a curve in Maya requires scripting??? You have got to be kidding me. Morten Den 11. marts 2014 kl. 03:43 skrev Sylvain Lebeau s...@shedmtl.com: Very nice letter Alastair! Hard to write down any other words depecting eveyones feeling like you did! On my side, i got some ideas i want to share with Autodesk. I already have a beer booked with Maurice Patel next week (very very very nice guy btw). I just want to share ideas with him and also want to listen to what the reality is to try to understand it better. I dont have outmost expectations other then meet with him for a nice chat but never knows what can come out of it. Just like the petition. At SHED, we are not a big Softimage studio in terms of income for AD. We are only 15 in the 3D dept on subscription. But we are a good Autodesk customer more because of our Flame, Smokes and Lustre suites. I wish our voice can be listened too like big gals like Glasswork wich i have so much respect for. So i will do my best to speak for everyone else here. Softimage helped us to astound our clients over the years. Its workflow and intuintivity is second to none. I can say it because we are also playing with Maya nowadays to feel the water meh :-/ It took me 4 hours to figure out how to extrude Adobe illustrators curves into a capped mesh text model. After 25 years of doing 3D since 3DS DOS V3, its a bit humiliating. You need a simple line of script to make it happen. Tutorial here to anyone interested into it: http://vimeo.com/37108656 ;-P Nonetheless, our heart and soul at SHED will always be with Soft.. and foremost, with its passionate sharefull users we all have the chance to meet just here, ...in this incredible list. Will do my best! sly Sylvain Lebeau // SHED V-P/Visual effects supervisor 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E TAGE MONTRAL (QUBEC) H3A 1P8 T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM VFX Curriculum 03: Compositing Basics mail to: s...@shedmtl.com On Mar 10, 2014, at 8:13 AM, Amaan Akram xsil...@warpedspace.org wrote: Alastair, brilliant letter. Heres hoping other studio executives will chime in.
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
Count the small shops in on the freelancer one Emilio - just a suggestion. Morten Den 11. marts 2014 kl. 18:06 skrev Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com: Hello again guys I am trying to put all this letters together and publish them. If you care to send me the letters will be easier to post, instead of browsing through this post. Tim I believe that we the freelancers can make a single one and start signing at the bottom so we will have a stronger voice, as we are all spread around the globe. Cheers! --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation.
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
+1 Straight from the heart. Applicable to the freelancer, and the (very) small teams trying to be competitive in advertising. Rob \/-\/\/ On 11-3-2014 17:21, Tim Borgmann wrote: Hi, unfortunately my english is not good enough to express my feelings and thoughts about all this in a good and polite way and I think some mails like the open letter from Alastair or the mails from Greg, Peter, Jean, Sly, Daniel and so on express them much better than I could do. I'm just an artist, a simple freelancer, so my opinion will not be from interest for AD I'm sure. But nonetheless here are just some additional thoughts from my side: The main thing that surprises me about the decision from AD right now is that they make this step (stopping SI) even before they can offer any kind of alternative. A personal view from the artist point of view: A lot of my work is based on ICE and at the moment I'm simply not able to see a real alternative. Will I take a look at Houdini? Sure. Will I take a look at Modo? Sure. Blender? Sure. ... I will take a look at a lot of software within the next months, maybe years, to hopefully find something that will fit again like SI did until now. ICE gives me the ability to create things I would not be able to do before. I'm not a TD, I'm not able to write my own tools, I'm just a plain artist and so what ICE was a pure revolution for me and still is a joy to work with. As some of you maybe know I did some advertising material for the launch of XSI 7. Although I didn't use ICE for these images because of the fact that I didn't know ICE at all at this time I very quickly realised the enormous power of it. Today I would do it with ICE for sure and it would be much faster and more flexible and so I would have much more time to work on the design and content and would also get more sleep during production. As an artist you spend a lot of time in finding and learning the tools which maybe fit best to you or better said to your work. At a certain point you than hopefully reach a level with the tools where you can care more about design or creativity than about technical issues. But it's maybe a very long and hard way to get there and if you are there, if you can work with a tool without too much thinking about technical issues (some will be there always and you never stop learning for sure) you are very happy about this (at least I am). You are happy that you can focus on the creative side of the work and not only on solving technical problems. For sure you can learn a lot of things in another software rather fast since the concepts are similar, but to get at a point where you are really familar with a tool, where you really have a good feeling about what you can do and what you better avoid is a long way. Moving a spotlight around is one thing but finding the reason why your are getting unexpected results for example is often a complete different story. Who knows, maybe I will find a new tool which even fits better, maybe not, but just at the moment I feel like downgraded from a senior to a junior artist within some days. And what's even more important I'm afraid that I have to spend my time again on just solving technical issues instead on creating images. I simply feel like an artist who get told that there will be no canvas, brushes, oil colours any more soon and that I have to take a ball pen and some finger colours instead to do the work I did before. But that's just my personal point of view and it's for sure not from interest for AD. A more profesional view from the freelancer point of view and maybe a thought worth for AD: In my opinion the reason why SI does so well in particular in the advertising area is simply because it provides a solid toolset out of the box but even more important: it's flexible and fast. And that is was working in the advertising area is about. Flexibility and speed. You have a lot of different tasks, changes, corrections whatever to solve in sometimes extremly short timeframes. Often there is simply no time and also no budget for a big TD team which provides you the basic tools you need to do the work. It has to be right out of the box. And this is what AD does not offer with maya right at the moment. It's maybe a good tool for big pipelines/movie productions or whatever, it's maybe a good framework for custom tools, I don't know, but I doubt it is a good solution for doing quick and creative productions where you maybe have to rethink or rebuild a concept within an evening. Correct me if I'm wrong. Alone the passes and partions system from SI is pure gold in these kind of advertising productions. ICE is an option to create stuff where you normally would need a bigger TD team and the accordingly time for development. Or you can just use it to fix some smaller issues in the last moment on top of your operator stack. The overall workflow of SI simply
RE: Open letter to Autodesk
A curve can be extruded to a surface in one click. My guess is that they might have needed to preprocess the AI curve to make it useful, or the extrusion was needed as a poly mesh, which in that case would have required the resulting surface to be converted. -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Morten Bartholdy Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2014 1:10 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Open letter to Autodesk Extruding a curve in Maya requires scripting??? You have got to be kidding me. Morten Den 11. marts 2014 kl. 03:43 skrev Sylvain Lebeau s...@shedmtl.commailto:s...@shedmtl.com: Very nice letter Alastair! Hard to write down any other words depecting eveyone's feeling like you did! On my side, i got some ideas i want to share with Autodesk. I already have a beer booked with Maurice Patel next week (very very very nice guy btw). I just want to share ideas with him and also want to listen to what the reality is to try to understand it better. I dont have outmost expectations other then meet with him for a nice chat but never knows what can come out of it. Just like the petition. At SHED, we are not a big Softimage studio in terms of income for AD. We are only 15 in the 3D dept on subscription. But we are a good Autodesk customer more because of our Flame, Smokes and Lustre suites. I wish our voice can be listened too like big gals like Glasswork wich i have so much respect for. So i will do my best to speak for everyone else here. Softimage helped us to astound our clients over the years. It's workflow and intuintivity is second to none. I can say it because we are also playing with Maya nowadays to feel the water meh :-/ It took me 4 hours to figure out how to extrude Adobe illustrator's curves into a capped mesh text model. After 25 years of doing 3D since 3DS DOS V3, it's a bit humiliating. You need a simple line of script to make it happen. Tutorial here to anyone interested into it: http://vimeo.com/37108656 ;-P Nonetheless, our heart and soul at SHED will always be with Soft.. and foremost, with it's passionate sharefull users we all have the chance to meet just here, ...in this incredible list. Will do my best! sly Sylvain Lebeau // SHED V-P/Visual effects supervisor 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8 T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM http://www.shedmtl.com/ http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM http://www.shedmtl.com/ [cid:image001.png@01CF3D2C.5D6291B0] VFX Curriculum 03: Compositing Basics mail to: s...@shedmtl.commailto:s...@shedmtl.com On Mar 10, 2014, at 8:13 AM, Amaan Akram xsil...@warpedspace.orgmailto:xsil...@warpedspace.org wrote: Alastair, brilliant letter. Here's hoping other studio executives will chime in. inline: image001.png
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
Tim Borgmann schreef op 11-3-2014 17:21: unfortunately my english is not good enough to express my feelings and thoughts about all this You could've easily left out the remark about your English. Nothing wrong with that. It's a very impressive statement! -- Leendert A. Hartog – Softimage hobbyist AKA Hirazi Blue – Administrator @, NOT the owner of si-community.com
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
So true, so true. I'd like to eco how amazing softimage is for individual freelancers and small shops, especially since it's been backed by the talented td and programmers here and online. I'll add that softimage will continue to be my tool of choice for years to come. This makes it easier for me at least as I'm often creating assets that can be ported to maya or elsewhere or contracted on a start to render job. On 3/11/2014 11:21 AM, Tim Borgmann wrote: Hi, unfortunately my english is not good enough to express my feelings and thoughts about all this in a good and polite way and I think some mails like the open letter from Alastair or the mails from Greg, Peter, Jean, Sly, Daniel and so on express them much better than I could do. I'm just an artist, a simple freelancer, so my opinion will not be from interest for AD I'm sure. But nonetheless here are just some additional thoughts from my side: The main thing that surprises me about the decision from AD right now is that they make this step (stopping SI) even before they can offer any kind of alternative. A personal view from the artist point of view: A lot of my work is based on ICE and at the moment I'm simply not able to see a real alternative. Will I take a look at Houdini? Sure. Will I take a look at Modo? Sure. Blender? Sure. ... I will take a look at a lot of software within the next months, maybe years, to hopefully find something that will fit again like SI did until now. ICE gives me the ability to create things I would not be able to do before. I'm not a TD, I'm not able to write my own tools, I'm just a plain artist and so what ICE was a pure revolution for me and still is a joy to work with. As some of you maybe know I did some advertising material for the launch of XSI 7. Although I didn't use ICE for these images because of the fact that I didn't know ICE at all at this time I very quickly realised the enormous power of it. Today I would do it with ICE for sure and it would be much faster and more flexible and so I would have much more time to work on the design and content and would also get more sleep during production. As an artist you spend a lot of time in finding and learning the tools which maybe fit best to you or better said to your work. At a certain point you than hopefully reach a level with the tools where you can care more about design or creativity than about technical issues. But it's maybe a very long and hard way to get there and if you are there, if you can work with a tool without too much thinking about technical issues (some will be there always and you never stop learning for sure) you are very happy about this (at least I am). You are happy that you can focus on the creative side of the work and not only on solving technical problems. For sure you can learn a lot of things in another software rather fast since the concepts are similar, but to get at a point where you are really familar with a tool, where you really have a good feeling about what you can do and what you better avoid is a long way. Moving a spotlight around is one thing but finding the reason why your are getting unexpected results for example is often a complete different story. Who knows, maybe I will find a new tool which even fits better, maybe not, but just at the moment I feel like downgraded from a senior to a junior artist within some days. And what's even more important I'm afraid that I have to spend my time again on just solving technical issues instead on creating images. I simply feel like an artist who get told that there will be no canvas, brushes, oil colours any more soon and that I have to take a ball pen and some finger colours instead to do the work I did before. But that's just my personal point of view and it's for sure not from interest for AD. A more profesional view from the freelancer point of view and maybe a thought worth for AD: In my opinion the reason why SI does so well in particular in the advertising area is simply because it provides a solid toolset out of the box but even more important: it's flexible and fast. And that is was working in the advertising area is about. Flexibility and speed. You have a lot of different tasks, changes, corrections whatever to solve in sometimes extremly short timeframes. Often there is simply no time and also no budget for a big TD team which provides you the basic tools you need to do the work. It has to be right out of the box. And this is what AD does not offer with maya right at the moment. It's maybe a good tool for big pipelines/movie productions or whatever, it's maybe a good framework for custom tools, I don't know, but I doubt it is a good solution for doing quick and creative productions where you maybe have to rethink or rebuild a concept within an evening. Correct me if I'm wrong. Alone the passes and partions system from SI is pure gold in these kind of advertising productions. ICE is
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
Hey fellows I will take Tim's letter as a template for the freelancers and small studios 2-5 people. Sounds reasonable? Of course if Tim agrees. Cheers! --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation. 2014-03-11 12:03 GMT-06:00 Rares Halmagean ra...@rarebrush.com: So true, so true. I'd like to eco how amazing softimage is for individual freelancers and small shops, especially since it's been backed by the talented td and programmers here and online. I'll add that softimage will continue to be my tool of choice for years to come. This makes it easier for me at least as I'm often creating assets that can be ported to maya or elsewhere or contracted on a start to render job. On 3/11/2014 11:21 AM, Tim Borgmann wrote: Hi, unfortunately my english is not good enough to express my feelings and thoughts about all this in a good and polite way and I think some mails like the open letter from Alastair or the mails from Greg, Peter, Jean, Sly, Daniel and so on express them much better than I could do. I'm just an artist, a simple freelancer, so my opinion will not be from interest for AD I'm sure. But nonetheless here are just some additional thoughts from my side: The main thing that surprises me about the decision from AD right now is that they make this step (stopping SI) even before they can offer any kind of alternative. A personal view from the artist point of view: A lot of my work is based on ICE and at the moment I'm simply not able to see a real alternative. Will I take a look at Houdini? Sure. Will I take a look at Modo? Sure. Blender? Sure. ... I will take a look at a lot of software within the next months, maybe years, to hopefully find something that will fit again like SI did until now. ICE gives me the ability to create things I would not be able to do before. I'm not a TD, I'm not able to write my own tools, I'm just a plain artist and so what ICE was a pure revolution for me and still is a joy to work with. As some of you maybe know I did some advertising material for the launch of XSI 7. Although I didn't use ICE for these images because of the fact that I didn't know ICE at all at this time I very quickly realised the enormous power of it. Today I would do it with ICE for sure and it would be much faster and more flexible and so I would have much more time to work on the design and content and would also get more sleep during production. As an artist you spend a lot of time in finding and learning the tools which maybe fit best to you or better said to your work. At a certain point you than hopefully reach a level with the tools where you can care more about design or creativity than about technical issues. But it's maybe a very long and hard way to get there and if you are there, if you can work with a tool without too much thinking about technical issues (some will be there always and you never stop learning for sure) you are very happy about this (at least I am). You are happy that you can focus on the creative side of the work and not only on solving technical problems. For sure you can learn a lot of things in another software rather fast since the concepts are similar, but to get at a point where you are really familar with a tool, where you really have a good feeling about what you can do and what you better avoid is a long way. Moving a spotlight around is one thing but finding the reason why your are getting unexpected results for example is often a complete different story. Who knows, maybe I will find a new tool which even fits better, maybe not, but just at the moment I feel like downgraded from a senior to a junior artist within some days. And what's even more important I'm afraid that I have to spend my time again on just solving technical issues instead on creating images. I simply feel like an artist who get told that there will be no canvas, brushes, oil colours any more soon and that I have to take a ball pen and some finger colours instead to do the work I did before. But that's just my personal point of view and it's for sure not from interest for AD. A more profesional view from the freelancer point of view and maybe a thought worth for AD: In my opinion the reason why SI does so well in particular in the advertising area is simply because it provides a solid toolset out of the box but even more important: it's flexible and fast. And that is was working in the advertising area is about. Flexibility and speed. You have a lot of different tasks, changes, corrections whatever to solve in sometimes extremly short timeframes. Often there is simply no time and also no budget for a big TD team which provides you the basic tools you need to do the work. It has to be right out of the box. And this is what AD does not offer with maya right at the moment. It's maybe a good tool for big pipelines/movie productions or whatever, it's maybe a good
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
Count on me. .:. Christian Lattuada On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 7:58 PM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Hey fellows I will take Tim's letter as a template for the freelancers and small studios 2-5 people. Sounds reasonable? Of course if Tim agrees. Cheers! --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation. 2014-03-11 12:03 GMT-06:00 Rares Halmagean ra...@rarebrush.com: So true, so true. I'd like to eco how amazing softimage is for individual freelancers and small shops, especially since it's been backed by the talented td and programmers here and online. I'll add that softimage will continue to be my tool of choice for years to come. This makes it easier for me at least as I'm often creating assets that can be ported to maya or elsewhere or contracted on a start to render job. On 3/11/2014 11:21 AM, Tim Borgmann wrote: Hi, unfortunately my english is not good enough to express my feelings and thoughts about all this in a good and polite way and I think some mails like the open letter from Alastair or the mails from Greg, Peter, Jean, Sly, Daniel and so on express them much better than I could do. I'm just an artist, a simple freelancer, so my opinion will not be from interest for AD I'm sure. But nonetheless here are just some additional thoughts from my side: The main thing that surprises me about the decision from AD right now is that they make this step (stopping SI) even before they can offer any kind of alternative. A personal view from the artist point of view: A lot of my work is based on ICE and at the moment I'm simply not able to see a real alternative. Will I take a look at Houdini? Sure. Will I take a look at Modo? Sure. Blender? Sure. ... I will take a look at a lot of software within the next months, maybe years, to hopefully find something that will fit again like SI did until now. ICE gives me the ability to create things I would not be able to do before. I'm not a TD, I'm not able to write my own tools, I'm just a plain artist and so what ICE was a pure revolution for me and still is a joy to work with. As some of you maybe know I did some advertising material for the launch of XSI 7. Although I didn't use ICE for these images because of the fact that I didn't know ICE at all at this time I very quickly realised the enormous power of it. Today I would do it with ICE for sure and it would be much faster and more flexible and so I would have much more time to work on the design and content and would also get more sleep during production. As an artist you spend a lot of time in finding and learning the tools which maybe fit best to you or better said to your work. At a certain point you than hopefully reach a level with the tools where you can care more about design or creativity than about technical issues. But it's maybe a very long and hard way to get there and if you are there, if you can work with a tool without too much thinking about technical issues (some will be there always and you never stop learning for sure) you are very happy about this (at least I am). You are happy that you can focus on the creative side of the work and not only on solving technical problems. For sure you can learn a lot of things in another software rather fast since the concepts are similar, but to get at a point where you are really familar with a tool, where you really have a good feeling about what you can do and what you better avoid is a long way. Moving a spotlight around is one thing but finding the reason why your are getting unexpected results for example is often a complete different story. Who knows, maybe I will find a new tool which even fits better, maybe not, but just at the moment I feel like downgraded from a senior to a junior artist within some days. And what's even more important I'm afraid that I have to spend my time again on just solving technical issues instead on creating images. I simply feel like an artist who get told that there will be no canvas, brushes, oil colours any more soon and that I have to take a ball pen and some finger colours instead to do the work I did before. But that's just my personal point of view and it's for sure not from interest for AD. A more profesional view from the freelancer point of view and maybe a thought worth for AD: In my opinion the reason why SI does so well in particular in the advertising area is simply because it provides a solid toolset out of the box but even more important: it's flexible and fast. And that is was working in the advertising area is about. Flexibility and speed. You have a lot of different tasks, changes, corrections whatever to solve in sometimes extremly short timeframes. Often there is simply no time and also no budget for a big TD team which provides you the basic tools you need to do the work. It has to be right out of the box. And this is what AD does
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
To contribute to the small studio idea, this is a revised version that I have been trying to post lately, you can use this to how you wish. Maybe I am a nobody, but really I don’t get their marketing strategy and would like them to consider Softimage as an asset still. To keep maintaining Softimage to their own benefit and to everyone else’s benefit. I started SI not 3 years ago as an intern. I had to work with two other generalists, one on Maya and the other in Si. In under 3 months, I learnt from zero SI to enough knowledge to produce double the quota of my Maya partner (year experience in Maya). The factors could depend on the artist, but then again SI is a great animation and render and compositing package, quick to learn and flexible right out of the box. Softimage is a good contender in this industry, as it is a complete package (from 3D to composting) with a streamlined workflow, and ability to build tools without programming and scripts (ICE). Learning more about Maya, I do believe Maya is a great product. Don't get me wrong, but reading more on this list is starting to make me doubt the pipeline workflow, with future issues that could set us back and keep us at similar costs and incapability with our competition in this growing market here in Colombia. Due to our nature of being an aspiring VFX and animation industry for the Latin population (a huge market) here from Colombia, South America; the alternative software to Softimage, for cost sake and functionality, is Blender. This little rebel of an idea promotes innovation and flexibility. People are working on Ice like nodal flexibility and incorporation, it has sculpting like Mudbox, compositing nodes as powerful as SI's and almost as capable as Nukes, video editing (in a 3D package?!), and tools that come standard to Maya, Max, and SI. Yes, it's not there yet, but its future is by the users for the users. It's open, and developing fast. Each release has hundreds, yes hundreds, of bug fixes and cool new features. Not to mention it runs a gpu+cpu hybrid render engine already included from the get go. And it has the flexibility for developers to grow it, an open SDK and sourcecode. This is very attractive here. And free, and hopefully always free. Being in South America, our production budget is not capable of what Autodesk offers as a pipeline at most times, especially at startup; and I have to say that here, piracy is prevalent in this industry for nearly this entire continent for such reason. Not till the emerging studios and talent become successful can they afford to purchase legal seats from Autodesk with a Maya or Max based pipeline (programmers, scripters, 3rd party plugins, compositing and FX software sold separately, etc). As a startup, our product turnover and profits are small, every peso counts. Spending thousands of dollars that squashes our currency on what Autodesk or any other software package is offering sometimes is not viable if we wish to grow or re-invest in more staff and better products; as we can only, more often than not, only cover costs with Autodesk current marketing model and their most popular toolset and expensive pipeline (which also involve competing software). Softimage is an answer to this expensive pipeline, thus freeing our limited resources to invest in Autodesk and more seats, more staff, bigger studios, better products. But now it is not an option. This situation brings most of Colombia and universities here to start working with Blender as THE alternative. It is a reality that open source software is competition to anything Autodesk offers; and even if it wasn't, it would be pirated due to the economy of the industry here and the high cost of a multi-software pipeline. Yes, Autodesk has the prestige here, yes those who are successful will buy what they offer.. But it's losing traction; even as corruption is challenged and more and more studios require legal software to be granted a sale. But being new studios in a growing industry, it simply can't afford Autodesk with the industries current low turnover in Latin America (for lack of cred), especially for a difficult 3D pipeline with costly maintenance, need for development, 3rd party plugins, difficult rigid render pipeline workflow, multiple software licenses from different providers, etc; that is not what is needed in a competitive pace within the industry, one that SI could offer as a solution. To confront legality and cost to efficiency, Softimage was a strong contender – now it is the competition: Blender – or other software that offer similar solutions. I had plans to grow my studio here in Colombia and by now we have produced double the quantity with competing if not superior quality with teams the fraction the size of any other studio in this country (which runs on mostly Max or Maya). This could be thanks to SI. This year we are landing a national
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
+1! .. and I would also vouch to remove the bits about being just a freelancer, as Tim is arguably FAR from being just that :) (still salivating at the XSI7 Splash Screen) AND.. http://vimeo.com/81081389 :) On 03/11/14 13:35, Leendert A. Hartog wrote: Tim Borgmann schreef op 11-3-2014 17:21: unfortunately my english is not good enough to express my feelings and thoughts about all this You could've easily left out the remark about your English. Nothing wrong with that. It's a very impressive statement!
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
Good to hear you on the subject. I had the same exact feeling with the brush example ... That's incredible how people you never heard about can hurt you. I hate accountants. Le 11/03/2014 17:21, Tim Borgmann a écrit : Hi, unfortunately my english is not good enough to express my feelings and thoughts about all this in a good and polite way and I think some mails like the open letter from Alastair or the mails from Greg, Peter, Jean, Sly, Daniel and so on express them much better than I could do. I'm just an artist, a simple freelancer, so my opinion will not be from interest for AD I'm sure. But nonetheless here are just some additional thoughts from my side: The main thing that surprises me about the decision from AD right now is that they make this step (stopping SI) even before they can offer any kind of alternative. A personal view from the artist point of view: A lot of my work is based on ICE and at the moment I'm simply not able to see a real alternative. Will I take a look at Houdini? Sure. Will I take a look at Modo? Sure. Blender? Sure. ... I will take a look at a lot of software within the next months, maybe years, to hopefully find something that will fit again like SI did until now. ICE gives me the ability to create things I would not be able to do before. I'm not a TD, I'm not able to write my own tools, I'm just a plain artist and so what ICE was a pure revolution for me and still is a joy to work with. As some of you maybe know I did some advertising material for the launch of XSI 7. Although I didn't use ICE for these images because of the fact that I didn't know ICE at all at this time I very quickly realised the enormous power of it. Today I would do it with ICE for sure and it would be much faster and more flexible and so I would have much more time to work on the design and content and would also get more sleep during production. As an artist you spend a lot of time in finding and learning the tools which maybe fit best to you or better said to your work. At a certain point you than hopefully reach a level with the tools where you can care more about design or creativity than about technical issues. But it's maybe a very long and hard way to get there and if you are there, if you can work with a tool without too much thinking about technical issues (some will be there always and you never stop learning for sure) you are very happy about this (at least I am). You are happy that you can focus on the creative side of the work and not only on solving technical problems. For sure you can learn a lot of things in another software rather fast since the concepts are similar, but to get at a point where you are really familar with a tool, where you really have a good feeling about what you can do and what you better avoid is a long way. Moving a spotlight around is one thing but finding the reason why your are getting unexpected results for example is often a complete different story. Who knows, maybe I will find a new tool which even fits better, maybe not, but just at the moment I feel like downgraded from a senior to a junior artist within some days. And what's even more important I'm afraid that I have to spend my time again on just solving technical issues instead on creating images. I simply feel like an artist who get told that there will be no canvas, brushes, oil colours any more soon and that I have to take a ball pen and some finger colours instead to do the work I did before. But that's just my personal point of view and it's for sure not from interest for AD. A more profesional view from the freelancer point of view and maybe a thought worth for AD: In my opinion the reason why SI does so well in particular in the advertising area is simply because it provides a solid toolset out of the box but even more important: it's flexible and fast. And that is was working in the advertising area is about. Flexibility and speed. You have a lot of different tasks, changes, corrections whatever to solve in sometimes extremly short timeframes. Often there is simply no time and also no budget for a big TD team which provides you the basic tools you need to do the work. It has to be right out of the box. And this is what AD does not offer with maya right at the moment. It's maybe a good tool for big pipelines/movie productions or whatever, it's maybe a good framework for custom tools, I don't know, but I doubt it is a good solution for doing quick and creative productions where you maybe have to rethink or rebuild a concept within an evening. Correct me if I'm wrong. Alone the passes and partions system from SI is pure gold in these kind of advertising productions. ICE is an option to create stuff where you normally would need a bigger TD team and the accordingly time for development. Or you can just use it to fix some smaller issues in the last moment on top of your operator stack. The overall workflow of SI
RE: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
I am sorry to add more to the list on this topic, but i wanted to share my thoughts with you all, from a different post i wrote on a different list. From different post: .. Like every job, it's all about the best talent and the best tools. I have been extremely lucky to have some of the best crew, but i have to say, the best tools make a huge difference in the process obviously. Softimage is a great all rounder, and we could NOT have done PETA without Softimage, in the time we have, if not at all. All the sim work, including hair, has been done in ICE, all done from scratch in few weeks. It's a great all rounder software, and ICE is the most powerful piece of kit i have seen in years. Visual programming is the future of our industry, and other industries too (gaming, interactive,...) I don't want to go off topic and reiterate what everyone has been expressing in the last week with great passion, but AD, shutting down Softimage, is probably one of the worst decision they made. The only advanced and forward thinking package they have and they shut it down in the most disrespectful way, it really hurts their reputation and not just in the Softimage community, but across the whole VFX industry. I wish AD had a better vision of the future of the overall CG industries, and would come up with a total new way of producing images, and more appropriate to new workflows and hardware, and they would transition not only Soft users but Max and Maya users too, to this new platform. I think Fabric Engine is what AD should have done, 5 years ago, and i am glad the guys at FE are generating competition, as competition create better products in general. I love what they are doing and i cannot wait to see the next few releases. They do have a great vision and understanding of where we all need to go. But to answer your question, currently, we use mainly: Zbrush for modeling, Mari for texturing, Maya/Softimage for animation, Softimage/Houdini for FX, and Maya/Softimage for rendering(AD please fix the render layers in Maya), Nuke for compositing and Softimage(and sometime C4D) for design/pitch work. But software are here to support the artists. Productivity and Creativity are key. So whatever software it is to answer these 2 questions, that what we will use. .. And after 15 years in CG, using a little bit Lightwave, 3Dsmax and Maya i still think Softimage is still the best. Anyway, thanks everyone for your passion ! Softimage, and the years of development and hard work from great engineers and great users deserve this fight, and i hope AD is listening and will act and deliver soon. Vince Baertsoen Head of CG T +1 212 337 3210 [http://www.themill.com/logos/MillLogo.png] The Mill 451 Broadway, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10013 themill.com | http://www.themill.com/ themillblog.com | http://www.themillblog.com/ @millchannel | https://twitter.com/millchannel facebook.com/millchannelhttp://www.facebook.com/millchannel From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Jason S [jasonsta...@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2014 4:41 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk +1! .. and I would also vouch to remove the bits about being just a freelancer, as Tim is arguably FAR from being just that :) (still salivating at the XSI7 Splash Screen) AND.. http://vimeo.com/81081389 :) On 03/11/14 13:35, Leendert A. Hartog wrote: Tim Borgmann schreef op 11-3-2014 17:21: unfortunately my english is not good enough to express my feelings and thoughts about all this You could've easily left out the remark about your English. Nothing wrong with that. It's a very impressive statement!
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
Tim in my eyes you are one of the true artists of 3-D, I find you work consistently inspirational. Thanks for lending your voice to our cause. Sent from my iPhone On Mar 11, 2014, at 11:21 AM, Tim Borgmann i...@bt-3d.de wrote: Hi, unfortunately my english is not good enough to express my feelings and thoughts about all this in a good and polite way and I think some mails like the open letter from Alastair or the mails from Greg, Peter, Jean, Sly, Daniel and so on express them much better than I could do. I'm just an artist, a simple freelancer, so my opinion will not be from interest for AD I'm sure. But nonetheless here are just some additional thoughts from my side: The main thing that surprises me about the decision from AD right now is that they make this step (stopping SI) even before they can offer any kind of alternative. A personal view from the artist point of view: A lot of my work is based on ICE and at the moment I'm simply not able to see a real alternative. Will I take a look at Houdini? Sure. Will I take a look at Modo? Sure. Blender? Sure. ... I will take a look at a lot of software within the next months, maybe years, to hopefully find something that will fit again like SI did until now. ICE gives me the ability to create things I would not be able to do before. I'm not a TD, I'm not able to write my own tools, I'm just a plain artist and so what ICE was a pure revolution for me and still is a joy to work with. As some of you maybe know I did some advertising material for the launch of XSI 7. Although I didn't use ICE for these images because of the fact that I didn't know ICE at all at this time I very quickly realised the enormous power of it. Today I would do it with ICE for sure and it would be much faster and more flexible and so I would have much more time to work on the design and content and would also get more sleep during production. As an artist you spend a lot of time in finding and learning the tools which maybe fit best to you or better said to your work. At a certain point you than hopefully reach a level with the tools where you can care more about design or creativity than about technical issues. But it's maybe a very long and hard way to get there and if you are there, if you can work with a tool without too much thinking about technical issues (some will be there always and you never stop learning for sure) you are very happy about this (at least I am). You are happy that you can focus on the creative side of the work and not only on solving technical problems. For sure you can learn a lot of things in another software rather fast since the concepts are similar, but to get at a point where you are really familar with a tool, where you really have a good feeling about what you can do and what you better avoid is a long way. Moving a spotlight around is one thing but finding the reason why your are getting unexpected results for example is often a complete different story. Who knows, maybe I will find a new tool which even fits better, maybe not, but just at the moment I feel like downgraded from a senior to a junior artist within some days. And what's even more important I'm afraid that I have to spend my time again on just solving technical issues instead on creating images. I simply feel like an artist who get told that there will be no canvas, brushes, oil colours any more soon and that I have to take a ball pen and some finger colours instead to do the work I did before. But that's just my personal point of view and it's for sure not from interest for AD. A more profesional view from the freelancer point of view and maybe a thought worth for AD: In my opinion the reason why SI does so well in particular in the advertising area is simply because it provides a solid toolset out of the box but even more important: it's flexible and fast. And that is was working in the advertising area is about. Flexibility and speed. You have a lot of different tasks, changes, corrections whatever to solve in sometimes extremly short timeframes. Often there is simply no time and also no budget for a big TD team which provides you the basic tools you need to do the work. It has to be right out of the box. And this is what AD does not offer with maya right at the moment. It's maybe a good tool for big pipelines/movie productions or whatever, it's maybe a good framework for custom tools, I don't know, but I doubt it is a good solution for doing quick and creative productions where you maybe have to rethink or rebuild a concept within an evening. Correct me if I'm wrong. Alone the passes and partions system from SI is pure gold in these kind of advertising productions. ICE is an option to create stuff where you normally would need a bigger TD team and the accordingly time for development. Or you can just use it to fix some smaller issues in
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
There seems to be this mis-conception that benefits to small freelancers are irrelevant to larger teams working on longer schedules and bigger volumes. Of course the priorities of a place doing feature animation differ from those of one producing MMOs, to those of a high end TVC boutique like the Mill, to those of the individual hopping between 5 members rock-bands doing 30 seconds skits. That said, there are good reasons, and considerable advantages, that are shared across fields. If you look at something like brick-blur in the LEGO movie (objects becoming a streak made of bricks representing large, real world volume pixel equivalents past a certain velocity threshold) of course we could have done it in another app. Parts of it towards the very end of it in fact are in-house. But you know what? In the end it's practically a full rendering engine that includes sampling options, bias adjustment and all, and it was all done in ICE until the brick replacement and injection stage that represents maybe 20% of the final effect. Could I have done it in Maya? Yeah, I could, but for the same amount of time I would have had a polished but really slow solution that would have had mandatory flipbooks, instead of a 60fps brixel rendering engine running in the viewport for animators to tweak in real time with controls indistinguishable from the rig's own controls. Could I have got it to run to 60fps in Maya? Again, probably yes, but I would have had to manually and painfully write, tweak and debug some fairly involved thread management, instead of being able to simply re-commit an ICE graph that transparently updated for animators, and focus instead on the creative challenges of nailing the effect. In the end ICE was preferred to both Houdini and custom solutions that we had plenty knowledge and fire power to deal with had the need arisen. These things add up, and they add up to the reason why Softimage has survived in the rare film shop so long despite the added challenges of adopting a non mainstream software. I've seen people genuinely surprised when they learnt that all the animals in Life of Pi were handled by three riggers and one supervisor. Normally that quality and amount of work would require more than double that crew if you look at most credit rolls. Well, Walking with dinosaurs was done with an average staff of 3.5 riggers and one supervisor for its duration, and it had close to 20 unique species and dozens and dozens of rigs once variations and ages are considered, with 10 unique hero characters, and that's for a department that also took care of a lot of conceptual work, creative iterations, simulations, and was later migrated to take care of character FX. I think by the end of the project the whole rigging department hadn't made it to the 100 hours of overtime mark, and that's several people over two years. What do those have in common? Neither used Maya for rigging (Pi was Voodoo, not Soft, just in case people don't know) :p Had we used Maya several hundred hours worth of RnD and asset triage would have been added to the bid, and the team would have probably have had to be close to twice the size.
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
Twice the team, twice the Maya seats. $! Gustavo E Boehs Dpto. de Expressão Gráfica | Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina | http://www.gustavoeb.com.br/ 2014-03-11 19:22 GMT-03:00 Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com: There seems to be this mis-conception that benefits to small freelancers are irrelevant to larger teams working on longer schedules and bigger volumes. Of course the priorities of a place doing feature animation differ from those of one producing MMOs, to those of a high end TVC boutique like the Mill, to those of the individual hopping between 5 members rock-bands doing 30 seconds skits. That said, there are good reasons, and considerable advantages, that are shared across fields. If you look at something like brick-blur in the LEGO movie (objects becoming a streak made of bricks representing large, real world volume pixel equivalents past a certain velocity threshold) of course we could have done it in another app. Parts of it towards the very end of it in fact are in-house. But you know what? In the end it's practically a full rendering engine that includes sampling options, bias adjustment and all, and it was all done in ICE until the brick replacement and injection stage that represents maybe 20% of the final effect. Could I have done it in Maya? Yeah, I could, but for the same amount of time I would have had a polished but really slow solution that would have had mandatory flipbooks, instead of a 60fps brixel rendering engine running in the viewport for animators to tweak in real time with controls indistinguishable from the rig's own controls. Could I have got it to run to 60fps in Maya? Again, probably yes, but I would have had to manually and painfully write, tweak and debug some fairly involved thread management, instead of being able to simply re-commit an ICE graph that transparently updated for animators, and focus instead on the creative challenges of nailing the effect. In the end ICE was preferred to both Houdini and custom solutions that we had plenty knowledge and fire power to deal with had the need arisen. These things add up, and they add up to the reason why Softimage has survived in the rare film shop so long despite the added challenges of adopting a non mainstream software. I've seen people genuinely surprised when they learnt that all the animals in Life of Pi were handled by three riggers and one supervisor. Normally that quality and amount of work would require more than double that crew if you look at most credit rolls. Well, Walking with dinosaurs was done with an average staff of 3.5 riggers and one supervisor for its duration, and it had close to 20 unique species and dozens and dozens of rigs once variations and ages are considered, with 10 unique hero characters, and that's for a department that also took care of a lot of conceptual work, creative iterations, simulations, and was later migrated to take care of character FX. I think by the end of the project the whole rigging department hadn't made it to the 100 hours of overtime mark, and that's several people over two years. What do those have in common? Neither used Maya for rigging (Pi was Voodoo, not Soft, just in case people don't know) :p Had we used Maya several hundred hours worth of RnD and asset triage would have been added to the bid, and the team would have probably have had to be close to twice the size.
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
Hello Vince. Thx a lot for jumping in to explain why you chose Softimage as part of your arsenal to such a wonderful piece. And how wrong is Autodesk to end Softimage in such way when they have no substitute for it in the tools they are offering. --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation. 2014-03-11 16:22 GMT-06:00 Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com: There seems to be this mis-conception that benefits to small freelancers are irrelevant to larger teams working on longer schedules and bigger volumes. Of course the priorities of a place doing feature animation differ from those of one producing MMOs, to those of a high end TVC boutique like the Mill, to those of the individual hopping between 5 members rock-bands doing 30 seconds skits. That said, there are good reasons, and considerable advantages, that are shared across fields. If you look at something like brick-blur in the LEGO movie (objects becoming a streak made of bricks representing large, real world volume pixel equivalents past a certain velocity threshold) of course we could have done it in another app. Parts of it towards the very end of it in fact are in-house. But you know what? In the end it's practically a full rendering engine that includes sampling options, bias adjustment and all, and it was all done in ICE until the brick replacement and injection stage that represents maybe 20% of the final effect. Could I have done it in Maya? Yeah, I could, but for the same amount of time I would have had a polished but really slow solution that would have had mandatory flipbooks, instead of a 60fps brixel rendering engine running in the viewport for animators to tweak in real time with controls indistinguishable from the rig's own controls. Could I have got it to run to 60fps in Maya? Again, probably yes, but I would have had to manually and painfully write, tweak and debug some fairly involved thread management, instead of being able to simply re-commit an ICE graph that transparently updated for animators, and focus instead on the creative challenges of nailing the effect. In the end ICE was preferred to both Houdini and custom solutions that we had plenty knowledge and fire power to deal with had the need arisen. These things add up, and they add up to the reason why Softimage has survived in the rare film shop so long despite the added challenges of adopting a non mainstream software. I've seen people genuinely surprised when they learnt that all the animals in Life of Pi were handled by three riggers and one supervisor. Normally that quality and amount of work would require more than double that crew if you look at most credit rolls. Well, Walking with dinosaurs was done with an average staff of 3.5 riggers and one supervisor for its duration, and it had close to 20 unique species and dozens and dozens of rigs once variations and ages are considered, with 10 unique hero characters, and that's for a department that also took care of a lot of conceptual work, creative iterations, simulations, and was later migrated to take care of character FX. I think by the end of the project the whole rigging department hadn't made it to the 100 hours of overtime mark, and that's several people over two years. What do those have in common? Neither used Maya for rigging (Pi was Voodoo, not Soft, just in case people don't know) :p Had we used Maya several hundred hours worth of RnD and asset triage would have been added to the bid, and the team would have probably have had to be close to twice the size.
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
As Raffaele said, it is a matter of workflow, time, and money balance. For small studios and single freelancers, what is left? Enter the spiral of have to modify their small and efficient pipelines to add more resources to it? Specially in a market that instead of being able to raise your wages due to inflation, etc, etc. Day after day the budgets are lower and with tighter schedules? But you need to deliver the same quality as that of a big studio. You cannot tell your client Oh you know. Autodesk killed the software I was using, so I now need instead of 3 days, 5 days and I will need to charge an extra 20% from the last project... or Well I can do it in the same 3 days but I will need to hire an additional guy, so it is going to cost you at least 50% more than the last time... --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation.
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
lol that was not Tim, that was a design company called ME from london I believe - unless Tim worked there of course! http://mecompany.com/about/ On 11 March 2014 23:16, Artur Woźniak artur.w...@gmail.com wrote: Tim, I got hooked to XSI, after seeing this: http://typotrope.com/?p=300
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
Hey, I never said it was. This was just my point of entry. Artur I should be clearer. 2014-03-12 0:24 GMT+01:00 Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com: lol that was not Tim, that was a design company called ME from london I believe - unless Tim worked there of course! http://mecompany.com/about/ On 11 March 2014 23:16, Artur Woźniak artur.w...@gmail.com wrote: Tim, I got hooked to XSI, after seeing this: http://typotrope.com/?p=300
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
Still, it has something of Tim's art in it. I guess. Artur 2014-03-12 0:28 GMT+01:00 Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com: yes sorry I just reread carefully and you definitely did not say it was. must read slower. my mistake! :) On 11 March 2014 23:26, Artur Woźniak artur.w...@gmail.com wrote: Hey, I never said it was. This was just my point of entry. Artur I should be clearer. 2014-03-12 0:24 GMT+01:00 Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com: lol that was not Tim, that was a design company called ME from london I believe - unless Tim worked there of course! http://mecompany.com/about/ On 11 March 2014 23:16, Artur Woźniak artur.w...@gmail.com wrote: Tim, I got hooked to XSI, after seeing this: http://typotrope.com/?p=300
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
yes sorry I just reread carefully and you definitely did not say it was. must read slower. my mistake! :) On 11 March 2014 23:26, Artur Woźniak artur.w...@gmail.com wrote: Hey, I never said it was. This was just my point of entry. Artur I should be clearer. 2014-03-12 0:24 GMT+01:00 Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com: lol that was not Tim, that was a design company called ME from london I believe - unless Tim worked there of course! http://mecompany.com/about/ On 11 March 2014 23:16, Artur Woźniak artur.w...@gmail.com wrote: Tim, I got hooked to XSI, after seeing this: http://typotrope.com/?p=300
Re: just my 2 cents [Re:] Open letter to Autodesk
Tim, You're hardly just a freelancer. I believe you're inspiration and XSI guru. Well, to me at least. Every time, I wanted to show someone what ice is I directed them to your page as the first example. I got hooked to XSI, after seeing this: http://typotrope.com/?p=300 A box I know, weird. I even reproduced it for myself. That in itself got me to convert from 3ds ever since then. What a journey. Thank you Tim for sharing your view and story. We need, studios and personalities such as yourself to speak out loud. Artur 2014-03-11 23:32 GMT+01:00 Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com: Hello Vince. Thx a lot for jumping in to explain why you chose Softimage as part of your arsenal to such a wonderful piece. And how wrong is Autodesk to end Softimage in such way when they have no substitute for it in the tools they are offering. --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation. 2014-03-11 16:22 GMT-06:00 Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com : There seems to be this mis-conception that benefits to small freelancers are irrelevant to larger teams working on longer schedules and bigger volumes. Of course the priorities of a place doing feature animation differ from those of one producing MMOs, to those of a high end TVC boutique like the Mill, to those of the individual hopping between 5 members rock-bands doing 30 seconds skits. That said, there are good reasons, and considerable advantages, that are shared across fields. If you look at something like brick-blur in the LEGO movie (objects becoming a streak made of bricks representing large, real world volume pixel equivalents past a certain velocity threshold) of course we could have done it in another app. Parts of it towards the very end of it in fact are in-house. But you know what? In the end it's practically a full rendering engine that includes sampling options, bias adjustment and all, and it was all done in ICE until the brick replacement and injection stage that represents maybe 20% of the final effect. Could I have done it in Maya? Yeah, I could, but for the same amount of time I would have had a polished but really slow solution that would have had mandatory flipbooks, instead of a 60fps brixel rendering engine running in the viewport for animators to tweak in real time with controls indistinguishable from the rig's own controls. Could I have got it to run to 60fps in Maya? Again, probably yes, but I would have had to manually and painfully write, tweak and debug some fairly involved thread management, instead of being able to simply re-commit an ICE graph that transparently updated for animators, and focus instead on the creative challenges of nailing the effect. In the end ICE was preferred to both Houdini and custom solutions that we had plenty knowledge and fire power to deal with had the need arisen. These things add up, and they add up to the reason why Softimage has survived in the rare film shop so long despite the added challenges of adopting a non mainstream software. I've seen people genuinely surprised when they learnt that all the animals in Life of Pi were handled by three riggers and one supervisor. Normally that quality and amount of work would require more than double that crew if you look at most credit rolls. Well, Walking with dinosaurs was done with an average staff of 3.5 riggers and one supervisor for its duration, and it had close to 20 unique species and dozens and dozens of rigs once variations and ages are considered, with 10 unique hero characters, and that's for a department that also took care of a lot of conceptual work, creative iterations, simulations, and was later migrated to take care of character FX. I think by the end of the project the whole rigging department hadn't made it to the 100 hours of overtime mark, and that's several people over two years. What do those have in common? Neither used Maya for rigging (Pi was Voodoo, not Soft, just in case people don't know) :p Had we used Maya several hundred hours worth of RnD and asset triage would have been added to the bid, and the team would have probably have had to be close to twice the size.
Open letter to Autodesk
Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d GLASSWORKS 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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.
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
At last ! the voice of the big guys ! Thank you ! thank you ! Le 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum a écrit : Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d GLASSWORKS 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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.
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Nice one. Tanks for this as most of us are too small to be heard. I wish other companies would follow. Artur 2014-03-10 11:20 GMT+01:00 Alastair Hearsum hear...@glassworks.co.uk: Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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.
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Spot on, it feels really well balanced, mature and fair, the feedback of a true professional. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 10 Mar 2014, at 10:20, Alastair Hearsum hear...@glassworks.co.uk wrote: Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I’m a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven’t heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn’t consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I’m nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I’m talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year’s British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that’s been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you’ve done it. What’s next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that’s about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks. -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d 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
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Alastair, let me know when you publish this, i would like to forward it to several places, Glassworks is a very recognized studio and your voice should be heard everywhere. thanks in advance. F. On Monday, March 10, 2014, Alastair Hearsum hear...@glassworks.co.uk wrote: Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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.
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Great letter, Alastair, sounds very nicely pitched to me. On 10 March 2014 10:26, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: At last ! the voice of the big guys ! Thank you ! thank you ! Le 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum a écrit : Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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.
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Standing ovation!!!
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Made my day really, voice from masters in the field. thanks and if there is web page to be shared relinked and reposts please let us know will gladly point to it. On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 11:30 AM, patrick nethercoat patr...@brandtanim.co.uk wrote: Great letter, Alastair, sounds very nicely pitched to me. On 10 March 2014 10:26, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: At last ! the voice of the big guys ! Thank you ! thank you ! Le 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum a écrit : Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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.
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Very nice~ Glassworks rock! --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 11:36 PM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote: Made my day really, voice from masters in the field. thanks and if there is web page to be shared relinked and reposts please let us know will gladly point to it. On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 11:30 AM, patrick nethercoat patr...@brandtanim.co.uk wrote: Great letter, Alastair, sounds very nicely pitched to me. On 10 March 2014 10:26, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: At last ! the voice of the big guys ! Thank you ! thank you ! Le 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum a écrit : Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Great words Alastair. Sums it up really well in my opinion. DAN
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Just a small remark to get it right and avoid that discussion. Under So the last two sentences: Autodesk have adjusted this so we can both switch to 3ds or maya and still continue to use softimage as long as we want. So that point is not valid anymore. Let me know when you publish it. I will be happy to re-publish it in all my channels. /michael johansson 2014-03-10 11:30 GMT+01:00 patrick nethercoat patr...@brandtanim.co.uk: Great letter, Alastair, sounds very nicely pitched to me. On 10 March 2014 10:26, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: At last ! the voice of the big guys ! Thank you ! thank you ! Le 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum a écrit : Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Yes they switched that but still doesn't change the fact that they are discontinuing best software for that line of the work. What SI enable to be done in commercial work where deadlines are axe over head non stop.. nothing else can do that. On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 11:43 AM, michael johansson mich...@lowend.sewrote: Just a small remark to get it right and avoid that discussion. Under So the last two sentences: Autodesk have adjusted this so we can both switch to 3ds or maya and still continue to use softimage as long as we want. So that point is not valid anymore. Let me know when you publish it. I will be happy to re-publish it in all my channels. /michael johansson 2014-03-10 11:30 GMT+01:00 patrick nethercoat patr...@brandtanim.co.uk: Great letter, Alastair, sounds very nicely pitched to me. On 10 March 2014 10:26, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: At last ! the voice of the big guys ! Thank you ! thank you ! Le 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum a écrit : Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Brilliant letter, only your age surprised me a bit... ;) Alastair Hearsum schreef op 10-3-2014 11:20: *nearly 150 years old now* -- Leendert A. Hartog -- Softimage hobbyist AKA Hirazi Blue -- Administrator @, NOT the owner of si-community.com
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
great words. This is the type of letter AD should be getting. Would be great to see more of this coming. From the right people - like you guys. J On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 10:43 AM, michael johansson mich...@lowend.sewrote: Just a small remark to get it right and avoid that discussion. Under So the last two sentences: Autodesk have adjusted this so we can both switch to 3ds or maya and still continue to use softimage as long as we want. So that point is not valid anymore. Let me know when you publish it. I will be happy to re-publish it in all my channels. /michael johansson 2014-03-10 11:30 GMT+01:00 patrick nethercoat patr...@brandtanim.co.uk: Great letter, Alastair, sounds very nicely pitched to me. On 10 March 2014 10:26, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: At last ! the voice of the big guys ! Thank you ! thank you ! Le 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum a écrit : Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Hi Alistair, well wrote, I agree with what is said and admit its hard not to go emotional with the expletives from the way this is conducted by Adsk. for further dissemination go online to cg pro , cg talk , but also written press like film and advertising press like televisual, Creative Review, 3d world. Glassworks surely has some friends in the Advertising press. I would get this in the hands of as much press as possible to make it heard. and very happy to see others not taking this bad decision lying down On 10 March 2014 10:52, Jacob Gonzalez jacobgo...@gmail.com wrote: great words. This is the type of letter AD should be getting. Would be great to see more of this coming. From the right people - like you guys. J On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 10:43 AM, michael johansson mich...@lowend.sewrote: Just a small remark to get it right and avoid that discussion. Under So the last two sentences: Autodesk have adjusted this so we can both switch to 3ds or maya and still continue to use softimage as long as we want. So that point is not valid anymore. Let me know when you publish it. I will be happy to re-publish it in all my channels. /michael johansson 2014-03-10 11:30 GMT+01:00 patrick nethercoat patr...@brandtanim.co.uk: Great letter, Alastair, sounds very nicely pitched to me. On 10 March 2014 10:26, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: At last ! the voice of the big guys ! Thank you ! thank you ! Le 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum a écrit : Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I’m a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven’t heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn’t consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I’m nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I’m talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year’s British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that’s been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you’ve done it. What’s next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that’s about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Agreed - very good letter. Just have someone proofread it for grammar, spelling, etc. I assume you're not 150 years old. Also, in Gmail the format was weird. The first character of each paragraph was alone, then the paragraph started 2 lines below that. I am working with a semi-famous director friend of mine to get some contacts in the press that work outside of VFX/3D to see if we can get some publicity with the outside world on this story. I really think anyone involved in production that has Autodesk software needs to be aware of how this all went down so they can reevaluate whether or not ADSK is the type of company they want to be in bed with. I understand that business is business, but the other side of that phrase is - the customer is always right. -Paul ᐧ On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 6:50 AM, Leendert A. Hartog hirazib...@live.nlwrote: Brilliant letter, only your age surprised me a bit... ;) Alastair Hearsum schreef op 10-3-2014 11:20: *nearly 150 years old now* -- Leendert A. Hartog – Softimage hobbyist AKA Hirazi Blue – Administrator @, NOT the owner of si-community.com
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Well written and says what we all feel. On 10 March 2014 10:59, Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com wrote: Hi Alistair, well wrote, I agree with what is said and admit its hard not to go emotional with the expletives from the way this is conducted by Adsk. for further dissemination go online to cg pro , cg talk , but also written press like film and advertising press like televisual, Creative Review, 3d world. Glassworks surely has some friends in the Advertising press. I would get this in the hands of as much press as possible to make it heard. and very happy to see others not taking this bad decision lying down On 10 March 2014 10:52, Jacob Gonzalez jacobgo...@gmail.com wrote: great words. This is the type of letter AD should be getting. Would be great to see more of this coming. From the right people - like you guys. J On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 10:43 AM, michael johansson mich...@lowend.sewrote: Just a small remark to get it right and avoid that discussion. Under So the last two sentences: Autodesk have adjusted this so we can both switch to 3ds or maya and still continue to use softimage as long as we want. So that point is not valid anymore. Let me know when you publish it. I will be happy to re-publish it in all my channels. /michael johansson 2014-03-10 11:30 GMT+01:00 patrick nethercoat patr...@brandtanim.co.uk : Great letter, Alastair, sounds very nicely pitched to me. On 10 March 2014 10:26, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.frwrote: At last ! the voice of the big guys ! Thank you ! thank you ! Le 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum a écrit : Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
You just made my day! I wonder why we haven't heard more from other places like yours, like Passion Pictures for example (of BBC's London Olympics 2012 fame). Having met Mario Ucci in fall 2013 I know how unhappy they are with the current situation too. Mario, where are you? What about Blur? It's hard to imagine a Tim Miller staying passive on this. great words. This is the type of letter AD should be getting. Would be great to see more of this coming. From the right people - like you guys. J On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 10:43 AM, michael johansson mich...@lowend.sewrote: Just a small remark to get it right and avoid that discussion. Under So the last two sentences: Autodesk have adjusted this so we can both switch to 3ds or maya and still continue to use softimage as long as we want. So that point is not valid anymore. Let me know when you publish it. I will be happy to re-publish it in all my channels. /michael johansson 2014-03-10 11:30 GMT+01:00 patrick nethercoat patr...@brandtanim.co.uk: Great letter, Alastair, sounds very nicely pitched to me. On 10 March 2014 10:26, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: At last ! the voice of the big guys ! Thank you ! thank you ! Le 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum a écrit : Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Nerd corps is also SI based as I'm aware? I'm guessing that bigger places got their offer to upgrade licences and pet talk before... but still Transfer for free to Maya doesn''t mean a thing when you will transfer all your senior stuff back to juniors with Maya as well... On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 12:10 PM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.comwrote: You just made my day! I wonder why we haven't heard more from other places like yours, like Passion Pictures for example (of BBC's London Olympics 2012 fame). Having met Mario Ucci in fall 2013 I know how unhappy they are with the current situation too. Mario, where are you? What about Blur? It's hard to imagine a Tim Miller staying passive on this. great words. This is the type of letter AD should be getting. Would be great to see more of this coming. From the right people - like you guys. J On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 10:43 AM, michael johansson mich...@lowend.se wrote: Just a small remark to get it right and avoid that discussion. Under So the last two sentences: Autodesk have adjusted this so we can both switch to 3ds or maya and still continue to use softimage as long as we want. So that point is not valid anymore. Let me know when you publish it. I will be happy to re-publish it in all my channels. /michael johansson 2014-03-10 11:30 GMT+01:00 patrick nethercoat patr...@brandtanim.co.uk : Great letter, Alastair, sounds very nicely pitched to me. On 10 March 2014 10:26, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: At last ! the voice of the big guys ! Thank you ! thank you ! Le 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum a écrit : Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Agree, agree. I missed a lot of mails, but did Tim Borgmaan joined the happy conversation ? And Polynoid ? And Guillaume ? Le 10/03/2014 12:10, Stefan Kubicek a écrit : You just made my day! I wonder why we haven't heard more from other places like yours, like Passion Pictures for example (of BBC's London Olympics 2012 fame). Having met Mario Ucci in fall 2013 I know how unhappy they are with the current situation too. Mario, where are you? What about Blur? It's hard to imagine a Tim Miller staying passive on this. great words. This is the type of letter AD should be getting. Would be great to see more of this coming. From the right people - like you guys. J On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 10:43 AM, michael johansson mich...@lowend.sewrote: Just a small remark to get it right and avoid that discussion. Under So the last two sentences: Autodesk have adjusted this so we can both switch to 3ds or maya and still continue to use softimage as long as we want. So that point is not valid anymore. Let me know when you publish it. I will be happy to re-publish it in all my channels. /michael johansson 2014-03-10 11:30 GMT+01:00 patrick nethercoat patr...@brandtanim.co.uk: Great letter, Alastair, sounds very nicely pitched to me. On 10 March 2014 10:26, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: At last ! the voice of the big guys ! Thank you ! thank you ! Le 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum a écrit : Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
100% agree! Cheers Tim Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks.* -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d GLASSWORKS 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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.
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
There's a company in Iceland also using many Soft seats because all work could be done in Soft, compositing etc. On 10 March 2014 11:17, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: Nerd corps is also SI based as I'm aware? I'm guessing that bigger places got their offer to upgrade licences and pet talk before... but still Transfer for free to Maya doesn''t mean a thing when you will transfer all your senior stuff back to juniors with Maya as well... On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 12:10 PM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.comwrote: You just made my day! I wonder why we haven't heard more from other places like yours, like Passion Pictures for example (of BBC's London Olympics 2012 fame). Having met Mario Ucci in fall 2013 I know how unhappy they are with the current situation too. Mario, where are you? What about Blur? It's hard to imagine a Tim Miller staying passive on this. great words. This is the type of letter AD should be getting. Would be great to see more of this coming. From the right people - like you guys. J On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 10:43 AM, michael johansson mich...@lowend.se wrote: Just a small remark to get it right and avoid that discussion. Under So the last two sentences: Autodesk have adjusted this so we can both switch to 3ds or maya and still continue to use softimage as long as we want. So that point is not valid anymore. Let me know when you publish it. I will be happy to re-publish it in all my channels. /michael johansson 2014-03-10 11:30 GMT+01:00 patrick nethercoat patr...@brandtanim.co.uk : Great letter, Alastair, sounds very nicely pitched to me. On 10 March 2014 10:26, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: At last ! the voice of the big guys ! Thank you ! thank you ! Le 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum a écrit : Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? * An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
A great, well balanced letter and I’m sure most Softimage users would agree. From: Alastair Hearsum Sent: Monday, March 10, 2014 10:20 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Open letter to Autodesk Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I’m a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven’t heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn’t consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I’m nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I’m talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year’s British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that’s been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you’ve done it. What’s next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that’s about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks. -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d 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.
RE: Open letter to Autodesk
Great stuff Sofronis Efstathiou Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Competition and Festival Director Computer Animation Academic Group National Centre for Computer Animation From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Alastair Hearsum Sent: 10 March 2014 10:20 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Open letter to Autodesk Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks. -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [http://old.glassworks.co.uk/images/Logo_UK.jpg] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.ukhttp://www.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. [http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/Images/QueensAwardLogo.jpg] BU is a Disability Two Ticks Employer and has signed up
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
THIS IS IT! This speaks for me too! .:. Christian Lattuada On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 12:25 PM, Sofronis Efstathiou sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk wrote: Great stuff Sofronis Efstathiou Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Competition and Festival Director Computer Animation Academic Group *National Centre for Computer Animation* *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Alastair Hearsum *Sent:* 10 March 2014 10:20 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Open letter to Autodesk Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year's British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks. -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
*trim*
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Great, thanks for stepping up! The irony is - Softimage's death is the best publicity it ever got from Autodesk... -- Originalnachricht -- Von: Alastair Hearsum hear...@glassworks.co.uk An: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Gesendet: 10.03.2014 11:20:09 Betreff: Open letter to Autodesk Folks Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I’m a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven’t heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn’t consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I’m nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I’m talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year’s British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that’s been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you’ve done it. What’s next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that’s about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks. -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d 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. --- Diese E-Mail ist frei von Viren und Malware, denn der avast! Antivirus Schutz ist aktiv. http://www.avast.com
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Thank you for posting this - my sentiments exactly Alastair - very well put. Softimage is the very reason why we can handle complex stuff with a very small crew. With Maya on the horizon we will be less effective and have to hire more freelance TD's to get the same things done = less money earned. Morten Bartholdy VFX Supervisor Gimmickvfx.com Den 10. marts 2014 kl. 11:20 skrev Alastair Hearsum hear...@glassworks.co.uk: Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but reasonable. I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front? An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair Hearsum. I’m a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you haven’t heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has been creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around the world, for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use Softimage. Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us saddened, disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons; that you have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in its prime but also that you didn’t consult with us about this assassination or discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea what the future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other Autodesk products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry and Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years competing well with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The Mill. One of the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep talent of our crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I’m nearly 150 years old now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I know what I’m talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50 split of Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for the work that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials) did their work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners in the 3d animation category at this year’s British Television Advertising Craft awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major work that’s been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But Maya is used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage remains pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE environment is innovative and empowering. So you’ve done it. What’s next? Like I said we have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear rumours about bi-frost and that’s about it. From what I understand from various sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and full ice functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to discontinue using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just about what software is best for our future but also about what sort of software supply company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top of my list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair Hearsum Glassworks. -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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.
Re: Open letter to Autodesk
Eugen Sares schreef op 10-3-2014 12:30: The irony is - Softimage's death is the best publicity it ever got from Autodesk... QFA -- Leendert A. Hartog – Softimage hobbyist AKA Hirazi Blue – Administrator @, NOT the owner of si-community.com
