Good point well put
I couldn't agree more On Friday, 7 March 2014, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Looking at things from another angle I am concerned with the whole decision because I don't understand it, abandoning Softimage seems such a bad decision... Can I ask you how many developers were working exclusively on the Softimage product? 6? 8? 12? Is that a crazy cost? let's face it, Autodesk is a huge corporation and we are talking about saving peanuts... Or am I dreaming here? Selling it would be a great option, and surely if the market share was so small would not have any impact whatsoever on your company. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com javascript:; -- Chris Marshall Mint Motion Limited 029 20 37 27 57 07730 533 115 www.mintmotion.co.uk
Re: Good point well put
it's a bad decision in the eyes of who? They didn't really buy softimage because they thought is a software they could improve any further, they were actually really buying US the users. Some people call it killing the competition, a chess move. If xsi only had 8-10 developers, than It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that they were obviously making money with it. Maybe not as much as a lot of us would like to believe, but still surely enough to keep it going. From a business point of view, they are thinking How can we make MORE money for less cost. How do we make our business more efficient on a long term plan? The answer is quite simple, you unify all your efforts into one money making machine that will eventually be Maya 2.0. It will look very similar to Maya if not identical otherwise they wouldn't have bothered transitioning us now. Some people say bad costumer service but I guess the mayority of their costumers are Maya so we were a small price to pay... They knew there was going to be a loss of costume, but in 5 years time that frequently asked question What 3D package should I learn? will be totally irrelevant. They are putting their money on that bright future. Anyone want to bet which Adsk 3d software will die next? No brainer. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Chris Marshall chrismarshal...@gmail.com wrote: I couldn't agree more On Friday, 7 March 2014, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.comjavascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','jordiba...@gmail.com'); wrote: Looking at things from another angle I am concerned with the whole decision because I don't understand it, abandoning Softimage seems such a bad decision... Can I ask you how many developers were working exclusively on the Softimage product? 6? 8? 12? Is that a crazy cost? let's face it, Autodesk is a huge corporation and we are talking about saving peanuts... Or am I dreaming here? Selling it would be a great option, and surely if the market share was so small would not have any impact whatsoever on your company. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com -- Chris Marshall Mint Motion Limited 029 20 37 27 57 07730 533 115 www.mintmotion.co.uk
Re: Good point well put
Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app… that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this implied direct relationship between pace of development and resources, it is so so obscene it is insulting to say that. By that rule all the software portfolio Autodesk manages hinders everything they do, let's face it, they have lots of products. If the case is pace of development just hire a few more good guys and make sure the effort does not go to waste by not promoting it well. The issue I have is that something does not add up… I still don't understand the decision and the more I think about it, the more suspicious it becomes.. .does not even seem a coordinated well put plan that is causing all this storm (all the handling has been awful and big companies tend to handle these things with utmost care as it casts a horrible light to the brand itself) Just look at how Apple handled Shake, they discontinued it but offer the possibility of buying the source code and carry on using it, it was bad but at least was a clean exit. Also helps that nuke was ready for prime time so felt like moving forward instead of moving back to the 80s with Maya. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 11:05, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: it's a bad decision in the eyes of who? They didn't really buy softimage because they thought is a software they could improve any further, they were actually really buying US the users. Some people call it killing the competition, a chess move. If xsi only had 8-10 developers, than It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that they were obviously making money with it. Maybe not as much as a lot of us would like to believe, but still surely enough to keep it going. From a business point of view, they are thinking How can we make MORE money for less cost. How do we make our business more efficient on a long term plan? The answer is quite simple, you unify all your efforts into one money making machine that will eventually be Maya 2.0. It will look very similar to Maya if not identical otherwise they wouldn't have bothered transitioning us now. Some people say bad costumer service but I guess the mayority of their costumers are Maya so we were a small price to pay... They knew there was going to be a loss of costume, but in 5 years time that frequently asked question What 3D package should I learn? will be totally irrelevant. They are putting their money on that bright future. Anyone want to bet which Adsk 3d software will die next? No brainer. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Chris Marshall chrismarshal...@gmail.com wrote: I couldn't agree more On Friday, 7 March 2014, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Looking at things from another angle I am concerned with the whole decision because I don't understand it, abandoning Softimage seems such a bad decision… Can I ask you how many developers were working exclusively on the Softimage product? 6? 8? 12? Is that a crazy cost? let's face it, Autodesk is a huge corporation and we are talking about saving peanuts... Or am I dreaming here? Selling it would be a great option, and surely if the market share was so small would not have any impact whatsoever on your company. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com -- Chris Marshall Mint Motion Limited 029 20 37 27 57 07730 533 115 www.mintmotion.co.uk
Re: Good point well put
I hope there is a company or someone else who can hire all SI developers and make another next generation 3D software. I remember when Lightwave shut down years ago, and they are back in industry and shows great stuff, and even Modo. I really hope there is a company or someone hires SI dev members... --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app... that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this implied direct relationship between pace of development and resources, it is so so obscene it is insulting to say that. By that rule all the software portfolio Autodesk manages hinders everything they do, let's face it, they have lots of products. If the case is pace of development just hire a few more good guys and make sure the effort does not go to waste by not promoting it well. The issue I have is that something does not add up... I still don't understand the decision and the more I think about it, the more suspicious it becomes.. .does not even seem a coordinated well put plan that is causing all this storm (all the handling has been awful and big companies tend to handle these things with utmost care as it casts a horrible light to the brand itself) Just look at how Apple handled Shake, they discontinued it but offer the possibility of buying the source code and carry on using it, it was bad but at least was a clean exit. Also helps that nuke was ready for prime time so felt like moving forward instead of moving back to the 80s with Maya. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 11:05, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: it's a bad decision in the eyes of who? They didn't really buy softimage because they thought is a software they could improve any further, they were actually really buying US the users. Some people call it killing the competition, a chess move. If xsi only had 8-10 developers, than It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that they were obviously making money with it. Maybe not as much as a lot of us would like to believe, but still surely enough to keep it going. From a business point of view, they are thinking How can we make MORE money for less cost. How do we make our business more efficient on a long term plan? The answer is quite simple, you unify all your efforts into one money making machine that will eventually be Maya 2.0. It will look very similar to Maya if not identical otherwise they wouldn't have bothered transitioning us now. Some people say bad costumer service but I guess the mayority of their costumers are Maya so we were a small price to pay... They knew there was going to be a loss of costume, but in 5 years time that frequently asked question What 3D package should I learn? will be totally irrelevant. They are putting their money on that bright future. Anyone want to bet which Adsk 3d software will die next? No brainer. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Chris Marshall chrismarshal...@gmail.com wrote: I couldn't agree more On Friday, 7 March 2014, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Looking at things from another angle I am concerned with the whole decision because I don't understand it, abandoning Softimage seems such a bad decision... Can I ask you how many developers were working exclusively on the Softimage product? 6? 8? 12? Is that a crazy cost? let's face it, Autodesk is a huge corporation and we are talking about saving peanuts... Or am I dreaming here? Selling it would be a great option, and surely if the market share was so small would not have any impact whatsoever on your company. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com -- Chris Marshall Mint Motion Limited 029 20 37 27 57 07730 533 115 www.mintmotion.co.uk
Re: Good point well put
I believe that is not feasible any more, the costs and intellectual property (patents) make it so so so so expensive and complicated that I believe we won't see a new package ever again unless it brings a totally totally new concept that avoids the whole patent issue. Let's face it, all the current manufacturers has been 20-30 years in this business, it is very unlikely to catch up without very deep pockets. Yes, Modo, Clarise and the new wave of web based tools may be the exception but have a look at their history, these are no newbies, these are the guys that build some of the second generation tools like Lightwave… This is the reason Softimage is even more valuable. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 11:53, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.com wrote: I hope there is a company or someone else who can hire all SI developers and make another next generation 3D software. I remember when Lightwave shut down years ago, and they are back in industry and shows great stuff, and even Modo. I really hope there is a company or someone hires SI dev members... --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app… that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this implied direct relationship between pace of development and resources, it is so so obscene it is insulting to say that. By that rule all the software portfolio Autodesk manages hinders everything they do, let's face it, they have lots of products. If the case is pace of development just hire a few more good guys and make sure the effort does not go to waste by not promoting it well. The issue I have is that something does not add up… I still don't understand the decision and the more I think about it, the more suspicious it becomes.. .does not even seem a coordinated well put plan that is causing all this storm (all the handling has been awful and big companies tend to handle these things with utmost care as it casts a horrible light to the brand itself) Just look at how Apple handled Shake, they discontinued it but offer the possibility of buying the source code and carry on using it, it was bad but at least was a clean exit. Also helps that nuke was ready for prime time so felt like moving forward instead of moving back to the 80s with Maya. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 11:05, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: it's a bad decision in the eyes of who? They didn't really buy softimage because they thought is a software they could improve any further, they were actually really buying US the users. Some people call it killing the competition, a chess move. If xsi only had 8-10 developers, than It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that they were obviously making money with it. Maybe not as much as a lot of us would like to believe, but still surely enough to keep it going. From a business point of view, they are thinking How can we make MORE money for less cost. How do we make our business more efficient on a long term plan? The answer is quite simple, you unify all your efforts into one money making machine that will eventually be Maya 2.0. It will look very similar to Maya if not identical otherwise they wouldn't have bothered transitioning us now. Some people say bad costumer service but I guess the mayority of their costumers are Maya so we were a small price to pay... They knew there was going to be a loss of costume, but in 5 years time that frequently asked question What 3D package should I learn? will be totally irrelevant. They are putting their money on that bright future. Anyone want to bet which Adsk 3d software will die next? No brainer. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Chris Marshall chrismarshal...@gmail.com wrote: I couldn't agree more On Friday, 7 March 2014, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Looking at things from another angle I am concerned with the whole decision because I don't understand it, abandoning Softimage seems such a bad decision… Can I ask you how many developers were working exclusively on the Softimage product? 6? 8? 12? Is that a crazy cost? let's face it, Autodesk is a huge corporation and we are talking about saving peanuts... Or am I dreaming here? Selling it would be a great option, and surely if the market share was so small would not have any impact whatsoever on your company. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com -- Chris Marshall Mint Motion Limited 029 20 37
Re: Good point well put
They have messed up really badly with us by the way the've handled this. But I don't really consider this a storm, a few guys ranting on a mailing list. CGsociety haven't even bothered to make this news. Why did they keep softimage for all this years? well simple, they were investing in a relationship with costumers. Now that the Foundry had started to gain ground it was time to act and think about this bright future. We are just too involved in the mess to see the whole picture. Think 5 years from now, all I can see is Maya. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.com wrote: I hope there is a company or someone else who can hire all SI developers and make another next generation 3D software. I remember when Lightwave shut down years ago, and they are back in industry and shows great stuff, and even Modo. I really hope there is a company or someone hires SI dev members... --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app... that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this implied direct relationship between pace of development and resources, it is so so obscene it is insulting to say that. By that rule all the software portfolio Autodesk manages hinders everything they do, let's face it, they have lots of products. If the case is pace of development just hire a few more good guys and make sure the effort does not go to waste by not promoting it well. The issue I have is that something does not add up... I still don't understand the decision and the more I think about it, the more suspicious it becomes.. .does not even seem a coordinated well put plan that is causing all this storm (all the handling has been awful and big companies tend to handle these things with utmost care as it casts a horrible light to the brand itself) Just look at how Apple handled Shake, they discontinued it but offer the possibility of buying the source code and carry on using it, it was bad but at least was a clean exit. Also helps that nuke was ready for prime time so felt like moving forward instead of moving back to the 80s with Maya. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 11:05, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: it's a bad decision in the eyes of who? They didn't really buy softimage because they thought is a software they could improve any further, they were actually really buying US the users. Some people call it killing the competition, a chess move. If xsi only had 8-10 developers, than It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that they were obviously making money with it. Maybe not as much as a lot of us would like to believe, but still surely enough to keep it going. From a business point of view, they are thinking How can we make MORE money for less cost. How do we make our business more efficient on a long term plan? The answer is quite simple, you unify all your efforts into one money making machine that will eventually be Maya 2.0. It will look very similar to Maya if not identical otherwise they wouldn't have bothered transitioning us now. Some people say bad costumer service but I guess the mayority of their costumers are Maya so we were a small price to pay... They knew there was going to be a loss of costume, but in 5 years time that frequently asked question What 3D package should I learn? will be totally irrelevant. They are putting their money on that bright future. Anyone want to bet which Adsk 3d software will die next? No brainer. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Chris Marshall chrismarshal...@gmail.com wrote: I couldn't agree more On Friday, 7 March 2014, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Looking at things from another angle I am concerned with the whole decision because I don't understand it, abandoning Softimage seems such a bad decision... Can I ask you how many developers were working exclusively on the Softimage product? 6? 8? 12? Is that a crazy cost? let's face it, Autodesk is a huge corporation and we are talking about saving peanuts... Or am I dreaming here? Selling it would be a great option, and surely if the market share was so
RE: Good point well put
I disagree 5 Years from now, Modo / Houdini / Fabric Engine will be the standard. I say this because they are agile, they listen to what their users want and they actively develop and have a coherent roadmap. With the rate that the industry is developing Maya will not be able to keep up. From: Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.com] Sent: 08 March 2014 02:05 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Good point well put They have messed up really badly with us by the way the've handled this. But I don't really consider this a storm, a few guys ranting on a mailing list. CGsociety haven't even bothered to make this news. Why did they keep softimage for all this years? well simple, they were investing in a relationship with costumers. Now that the Foundry had started to gain ground it was time to act and think about this bright future. We are just too involved in the mess to see the whole picture. Think 5 years from now, all I can see is Maya. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.commailto:danielki...@gmail.com wrote: I hope there is a company or someone else who can hire all SI developers and make another next generation 3D software. I remember when Lightwave shut down years ago, and they are back in industry and shows great stuff, and even Modo. I really hope there is a company or someone hires SI dev members... --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app… that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this implied direct relationship between pace of development and resources, it is so so obscene it is insulting to say that. By that rule all the software portfolio Autodesk manages hinders everything they do, let's face it, they have lots of products. If the case is pace of development just hire a few more good guys and make sure the effort does not go to waste by not promoting it well. The issue I have is that something does not add up… I still don't understand the decision and the more I think about it, the more suspicious it becomes.. .does not even seem a coordinated well put plan that is causing all this storm (all the handling has been awful and big companies tend to handle these things with utmost care as it casts a horrible light to the brand itself) Just look at how Apple handled Shake, they discontinued it but offer the possibility of buying the source code and carry on using it, it was bad but at least was a clean exit. Also helps that nuke was ready for prime time so felt like moving forward instead of moving back to the 80s with Maya. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 11:05, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: it's a bad decision in the eyes of who? They didn't really buy softimage because they thought is a software they could improve any further, they were actually really buying US the users. Some people call it killing the competition, a chess move. If xsi only had 8-10 developers, than It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that they were obviously making money with it. Maybe not as much as a lot of us would like to believe, but still surely enough to keep it going. From a business point of view, they are thinking How can we make MORE money for less cost. How do we make our business more efficient on a long term plan? The answer is quite simple, you unify all your efforts into one money making machine that will eventually be Maya 2.0. It will look very similar to Maya if not identical otherwise they wouldn't have bothered transitioning us now. Some people say bad costumer service but I guess the mayority of their costumers are Maya so we were a small price to pay... They knew there was going to be a loss of costume, but in 5 years time that frequently asked question What 3D package should I learn? will be totally irrelevant. They are putting their money on that bright future. Anyone want to bet which Adsk 3d software will die next? No brainer. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Chris Marshall chrismarshal...@gmail.com wrote: I couldn't agree more On Friday, 7 March 2014, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Looking at things from another angle I am concerned with the whole decision because I don't understand it, abandoning Softimage seems such a bad decision… Can I ask you how many developers were working exclusively on the Softimage product? 6? 8? 12? Is that a crazy cost? let's face it, Autodesk is a huge corporation and we are talking about saving peanuts... Or am I dreaming here? Selling it would
Re: Good point well put
Let me get this right... I want to learn 3D, and you are telling me I need to learn 3 packages instead of Maya? Gollum was made with Maya right? On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za wrote: I disagree 5 Years from now, Modo / Houdini / Fabric Engine will be the standard. I say this because they are agile, they listen to what their users want and they actively develop and have a coherent roadmap. With the rate that the industry is developing Maya will not be able to keep up. -- *From:* Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.comjavascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','cgc...@gmail.com'); ] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:05 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.comjavascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','softimage@listproc.autodesk.com'); *Subject:* Re: Good point well put They have messed up really badly with us by the way the've handled this. But I don't really consider this a storm, a few guys ranting on a mailing list. CGsociety haven't even bothered to make this news. Why did they keep softimage for all this years? well simple, they were investing in a relationship with costumers. Now that the Foundry had started to gain ground it was time to act and think about this bright future. We are just too involved in the mess to see the whole picture. Think 5 years from now, all I can see is Maya. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.com wrote: I hope there is a company or someone else who can hire all SI developers and make another next generation 3D software. I remember when Lightwave shut down years ago, and they are back in industry and shows great stuff, and even Modo. I really hope there is a company or someone hires SI dev members... --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app... that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this implied direct relationship between pace of development and resources, it is so so obscene it is insulting to say that. By that rule all the software portfolio Autodesk manages hinders everything they do, let's face it, they have lots of products. If the case is pace of development just hire a few more good guys and make sure the effort does not go to waste by not promoting it well. The issue I have is that something does not add up... I still don't understand the decision and the more I think about it, the more suspicious it becomes.. .does not even seem a coordinated well put plan that is causing all this storm (all the handling has been awful and big companies tend to handle these things with utmost care as it casts a horrible light to the brand itself) Just look at how Apple handled Shake, they discontinued it but offer the possibility of buying the source code and carry on using it, it was bad but at least was a clean exit. Also helps that nuke was ready for prime time so felt like moving forward instead of moving back to the 80s with Maya. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 11:05, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: it's a bad decision in the eyes of who? They didn't really buy softimage because they thought is a software they could improve any further, they were actually really buying US the users. Some people call it killing the competition, a chess move. If xsi only had 8-10 developers, than It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that they were obviously making money with it. Maybe not as much as a lot of us would like to believe, but still surely enough to keep it going. From a business point of view, they are thinking How can we make MORE money for less cost. How do we make our business more efficient on a long term plan? The answer is quite simple, you unify all your efforts into one money making machine that will eventually be Maya 2.0. It will look very similar to Maya if not identical otherwise they wouldn't have bothered transitioning us now. Some people say bad costumer service but I guess the mayority of their costumers are Maya so we were a small price to pay... They knew there was going to be a loss of costume, but in 5 years This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients
RE: Good point well put
Forgot to add the more important thing is that what AD didnt expect with this shitstorm is that all of the other communities are now talking, there are knowledge transfers and people are understanding that their perceptions of other packages may have been wrong. Things are moving a lot faster now as very skilled Softimage users are looking at other options. That leads to them writing tools etc that makes the other packages better and will pull more people away from AD. I think they now realise that pissing off these types of people is not a wise decision. From: Angus Davidson [angus.david...@wits.ac.za] Sent: 08 March 2014 02:14 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: RE: Good point well put I disagree 5 Years from now, Modo / Houdini / Fabric Engine will be the standard. I say this because they are agile, they listen to what their users want and they actively develop and have a coherent roadmap. With the rate that the industry is developing Maya will not be able to keep up. From: Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.com] Sent: 08 March 2014 02:05 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Good point well put They have messed up really badly with us by the way the've handled this. But I don't really consider this a storm, a few guys ranting on a mailing list. CGsociety haven't even bothered to make this news. Why did they keep softimage for all this years? well simple, they were investing in a relationship with costumers. Now that the Foundry had started to gain ground it was time to act and think about this bright future. We are just too involved in the mess to see the whole picture. Think 5 years from now, all I can see is Maya. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.commailto:danielki...@gmail.com wrote: I hope there is a company or someone else who can hire all SI developers and make another next generation 3D software. I remember when Lightwave shut down years ago, and they are back in industry and shows great stuff, and even Modo. I really hope there is a company or someone hires SI dev members... --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app… that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this implied direct relationship between pace of development and resources, it is so so obscene it is insulting to say that. By that rule all the software portfolio Autodesk manages hinders everything they do, let's face it, they have lots of products. If the case is pace of development just hire a few more good guys and make sure the effort does not go to waste by not promoting it well. The issue I have is that something does not add up… I still don't understand the decision and the more I think about it, the more suspicious it becomes.. .does not even seem a coordinated well put plan that is causing all this storm (all the handling has been awful and big companies tend to handle these things with utmost care as it casts a horrible light to the brand itself) Just look at how Apple handled Shake, they discontinued it but offer the possibility of buying the source code and carry on using it, it was bad but at least was a clean exit. Also helps that nuke was ready for prime time so felt like moving forward instead of moving back to the 80s with Maya. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 11:05, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: it's a bad decision in the eyes of who? They didn't really buy softimage because they thought is a software they could improve any further, they were actually really buying US the users. Some people call it killing the competition, a chess move. If xsi only had 8-10 developers, than It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that they were obviously making money with it. Maybe not as much as a lot of us would like to believe, but still surely enough to keep it going. From a business point of view, they are thinking How can we make MORE money for less cost. How do we make our business more efficient on a long term plan? The answer is quite simple, you unify all your efforts into one money making machine that will eventually be Maya 2.0. It will look very similar to Maya if not identical otherwise they wouldn't have bothered transitioning us now. Some people say bad costumer service but I guess the mayority of their costumers are Maya so we were a small price to pay... They knew there was going to be a loss of costume, but in 5 years time that frequently asked question What 3D
RE: Good point well put
And the Peta chimp was made in softimage. At the end of the day its the skill of the craftsman and not the package they use which defines how good it is. From: Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.com] Sent: 08 March 2014 02:19 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Good point well put Let me get this right... I want to learn 3D, and you are telling me I need to learn 3 packages instead of Maya? Gollum was made with Maya right? On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.zamailto:angus.david...@wits.ac.za wrote: I disagree 5 Years from now, Modo / Houdini / Fabric Engine will be the standard. I say this because they are agile, they listen to what their users want and they actively develop and have a coherent roadmap. With the rate that the industry is developing Maya will not be able to keep up. From: Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.comUrlBlockedError.aspx] Sent: 08 March 2014 02:05 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.comUrlBlockedError.aspx Subject: Re: Good point well put They have messed up really badly with us by the way the've handled this. But I don't really consider this a storm, a few guys ranting on a mailing list. CGsociety haven't even bothered to make this news. Why did they keep softimage for all this years? well simple, they were investing in a relationship with costumers. Now that the Foundry had started to gain ground it was time to act and think about this bright future. We are just too involved in the mess to see the whole picture. Think 5 years from now, all I can see is Maya. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.com wrote: I hope there is a company or someone else who can hire all SI developers and make another next generation 3D software. I remember when Lightwave shut down years ago, and they are back in industry and shows great stuff, and even Modo. I really hope there is a company or someone hires SI dev members... --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app… that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this implied direct relationship between pace of development and resources, it is so so obscene it is insulting to say that. By that rule all the software portfolio Autodesk manages hinders everything they do, let's face it, they have lots of products. If the case is pace of development just hire a few more good guys and make sure the effort does not go to waste by not promoting it well. The issue I have is that something does not add up… I still don't understand the decision and the more I think about it, the more suspicious it becomes.. .does not even seem a coordinated well put plan that is causing all this storm (all the handling has been awful and big companies tend to handle these things with utmost care as it casts a horrible light to the brand itself) Just look at how Apple handled Shake, they discontinued it but offer the possibility of buying the source code and carry on using it, it was bad but at least was a clean exit. Also helps that nuke was ready for prime time so felt like moving forward instead of moving back to the 80s with Maya. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 11:05, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: it's a bad decision in the eyes of who? They didn't really buy softimage because they thought is a software they could improve any further, they were actually really buying US the users. Some people call it killing the competition, a chess move. If xsi only had 8-10 developers, than It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that they were obviously making money with it. Maybe not as much as a lot of us would like to believe, but still surely enough to keep it going. From a business point of view, they are thinking How can we make MORE money for less cost. How do we make our business more efficient on a long term plan? The answer is quite simple, you unify all your efforts into one money making machine that will eventually be Maya 2.0. It will look very similar to Maya if not identical otherwise they wouldn't have bothered transitioning us now. Some people say bad costumer service but I guess the mayority of their costumers are Maya so we were a small price to pay... They knew there was going to be a loss of costume, but in 5 years This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You
Re: Good point well put
Adding to my point, 3D is already a difficult skill to learn, you probably know this better than many of us. If somebody learns Maya from scratch none of this will matter since they won't know any better.. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za wrote: Forgot to add the more important thing is that what AD didnt expect with this shitstorm is that all of the other communities are now talking, there are knowledge transfers and people are understanding that their perceptions of other packages may have been wrong. Things are moving a lot faster now as very skilled Softimage users are looking at other options. That leads to them writing tools etc that makes the other packages better and will pull more people away from AD. I think they now realise that pissing off these types of people is not a wise decision. -- *From:* Angus Davidson [angus.david...@wits.ac.zajavascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','angus.david...@wits.ac.za'); ] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:14 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.comjavascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','softimage@listproc.autodesk.com'); *Subject:* RE: Good point well put I disagree 5 Years from now, Modo / Houdini / Fabric Engine will be the standard. I say this because they are agile, they listen to what their users want and they actively develop and have a coherent roadmap. With the rate that the industry is developing Maya will not be able to keep up. -- *From:* Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.com] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:05 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Good point well put They have messed up really badly with us by the way the've handled this. But I don't really consider this a storm, a few guys ranting on a mailing list. CGsociety haven't even bothered to make this news. Why did they keep softimage for all this years? well simple, they were investing in a relationship with costumers. Now that the Foundry had started to gain ground it was time to act and think about this bright future. We are just too involved in the mess to see the whole picture. Think 5 years from now, all I can see is Maya. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.com wrote: I hope there is a company or someone else who can hire all SI developers and make another next generation 3D software. I remember when Lightwave shut down years ago, and they are back in industry and shows great stuff, and even Modo. I really hope there is a company or someone hires SI dev members... --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app... that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this implied direct relationship between pace of development and resources, it is so so obscene it is insulting to say that. By that rule all the software portfolio Autodesk manages hinders everything they do, let's face it, they have lots of products. If the case is pace of development just hire a few more good guys and make sure the effort does not go to waste by not promoting it well. The issue I have is that something does not add up... I still don't understand the decision and the more I think about it, the more suspicious it becomes.. .does not even seem a coordinated well put plan that is causing all this storm (all the handling has been awful and big companies tend to handle these things with utmost care as it casts a horrible light to the brand itself) Just look at how Apple handled Shake, they discontinued it but offer the possibility of buying the source code and carry on using it, it was bad but at least was a clean exit. Also helps that nuke was ready for prime time so felt like moving forward instead of moving back to the 80s with Maya. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 11:05, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: it's a bad decision in the eyes of who? They didn't really buy softimage because they thought is a software they could improve any further, they were actually really buying US the users. Some peopl This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content
Re: Good point well put
Cristobal, anyone that tell's you that he knows 100% of any 3d software he is plain lying. Same goes with multiple software as well. So yes if you are in industry you will keep learning different packages, unless you have your own shop, stick to what you choose as client doesn't care what tools you use. Unless someone kills your software completely ;) But back to your question, you really think it is that much harder to learn 3 different packages, for modeling, texturing, animation that are separated or learning all of that in single package? Especially if every single one of those specialized are totally focused at making life easier at specific task? To me it seems that near is end of 1 application to rule them all... even if AD is trying to push that mentality... On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 1:26 PM, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: Adding to my point, 3D is already a difficult skill to learn, you probably know this better than many of us. If somebody learns Maya from scratch none of this will matter since they won't know any better.. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za wrote: Forgot to add the more important thing is that what AD didnt expect with this shitstorm is that all of the other communities are now talking, there are knowledge transfers and people are understanding that their perceptions of other packages may have been wrong. Things are moving a lot faster now as very skilled Softimage users are looking at other options. That leads to them writing tools etc that makes the other packages better and will pull more people away from AD. I think they now realise that pissing off these types of people is not a wise decision. -- *From:* Angus Davidson [angus.david...@wits.ac.za] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:14 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Good point well put I disagree 5 Years from now, Modo / Houdini / Fabric Engine will be the standard. I say this because they are agile, they listen to what their users want and they actively develop and have a coherent roadmap. With the rate that the industry is developing Maya will not be able to keep up. -- *From:* Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.com] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:05 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Good point well put They have messed up really badly with us by the way the've handled this. But I don't really consider this a storm, a few guys ranting on a mailing list. CGsociety haven't even bothered to make this news. Why did they keep softimage for all this years? well simple, they were investing in a relationship with costumers. Now that the Foundry had started to gain ground it was time to act and think about this bright future. We are just too involved in the mess to see the whole picture. Think 5 years from now, all I can see is Maya. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.com wrote: I hope there is a company or someone else who can hire all SI developers and make another next generation 3D software. I remember when Lightwave shut down years ago, and they are back in industry and shows great stuff, and even Modo. I really hope there is a company or someone hires SI dev members... --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.comwrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app... that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this implied direct relationship between pace of development and resources, it is so so obscene it is insulting to say that. By that rule all the software portfolio Autodesk manages hinders everything they do, let's face it, they have lots of products. If the case is pace of development just hire a few more good guys and make sure the effort does not go to waste by not promoting it well. The issue I have is that something does not add up... I still don't understand the decision and the more I think about it, the more suspicious it becomes.. .does not even seem a coordinated well put plan that is causing all this storm (all the handling has been awful and big companies tend to handle these things with utmost care as it casts a horrible light to the brand itself) Just look at how Apple handled Shake, they discontinued it but offer the possibility of buying the source code and carry on using it, it was bad but at least was a clean exit. Also helps that nuke was ready for prime time so felt like moving forward instead of moving back to the 80s with Maya. Jordi Bares
Re: Good point well put
..my point, exactly. On 08/03/14 13:20, Angus Davidson wrote: Forgot to add the more important thing is that what AD didnt expect with this shitstorm is that all of the other communities are now talking, there are knowledge transfers and people are understanding that their perceptions of other packages may have been wrong. Things are moving a lot faster now as very skilled Softimage users are looking at other options. That leads to them writing tools etc that makes the other packages better and will pull more people away from AD. I think they now realise that pissing off these types of people is not a wise decision. *From:* Angus Davidson [angus.david...@wits.ac.za] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:14 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Good point well put I disagree 5 Years from now, Modo / Houdini / Fabric Engine will be the standard. I say this because they are agile, they listen to what their users want and they actively develop and have a coherent roadmap. With the rate that the industry is developing Maya will not be able to keep up. *From:* Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.com] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:05 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Good point well put They have messed up really badly with us by the way the've handled this. But I don't really consider this a storm, a few guys ranting on a mailing list. CGsociety haven't even bothered to make this news. Why did they keep softimage for all this years? well simple, they were investing in a relationship with costumers. Now that the Foundry had started to gain ground it was time to act and think about this bright future. We are just too involved in the mess to see the whole picture. Think 5 years from now, all I can see is Maya. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.com mailto:danielki...@gmail.com wrote: I hope there is a company or someone else who can hire all SI developers and make another next generation 3D software. I remember when Lightwave shut down years ago, and they are back in industry and shows great stuff, and even Modo. I really hope there is a company or someone hires SI dev members... --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app… that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this implied direct relationship between pace of development and resources, it is so so obscene it is insulting to say that. By that rule all the software portfolio Autodesk manages hinders everything they do, let's face it, they have lots of products. If the case is pace of development just hire a few more good guys and make sure the effort does not go to waste by not promoting it well. The issue I have is that something does not add up… I still don't understand the decision and the more I think about it, the more suspicious it becomes.. .does not even seem a coordinated well put plan that is causing all this storm (all the handling has been awful and big companies tend to handle these things with utmost care as it casts a horrible light to the brand itself) Just look at how Apple handled Shake, they discontinued it but offer the possibility of buying the source code and carry on using it, it was bad but at least was a clean exit. Also helps that nuke was ready for prime time so felt like moving forward instead of moving back to the 80s with Maya. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 11:05, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: it's a bad decision in the eyes of who? They didn't really buy softimage because they thought is a software they could improve any further, they were actually really buying US the users. Some people call it killing the competition, a chess move. If xsi only had 8-10 developers, than It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that they were obviously making money with it. Maybe not as much as a lot of us would like to believe, but still surely enough to keep it going. From a business point of view, they are thinking How can we make MORE money for less cost. How do we make our
Re: Good point well put
Pretty much nothing of any value is done with Maya in its own, either custom tools, 3rd party tools, 3rd party rendering, fx, uv unwrapping, sculpting... Specially Gollum. Jb Sent from my iPhone On 8 Mar 2014, at 12:19, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: Let me get this right... I want to learn 3D, and you are telling me I need to learn 3 packages instead of Maya? Gollum was made with Maya right? On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za wrote: I disagree 5 Years from now, Modo / Houdini / Fabric Engine will be the standard. I say this because they are agile, they listen to what their users want and they actively develop and have a coherent roadmap. With the rate that the industry is developing Maya will not be able to keep up. From: Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.com] Sent: 08 March 2014 02:05 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Good point well put They have messed up really badly with us by the way the've handled this. But I don't really consider this a storm, a few guys ranting on a mailing list. CGsociety haven't even bothered to make this news. Why did they keep softimage for all this years? well simple, they were investing in a relationship with costumers. Now that the Foundry had started to gain ground it was time to act and think about this bright future. We are just too involved in the mess to see the whole picture. Think 5 years from now, all I can see is Maya. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.com wrote: I hope there is a company or someone else who can hire all SI developers and make another next generation 3D software. I remember when Lightwave shut down years ago, and they are back in industry and shows great stuff, and even Modo. I really hope there is a company or someone hires SI dev members... --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app… that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this implied direct relationship between pace of development and resources, it is so so obscene it is insulting to say that. By that rule all the software portfolio Autodesk manages hinders everything they do, let's face it, they have lots of products. If the case is pace of development just hire a few more good guys and make sure the effort does not go to waste by not promoting it well. The issue I have is that something does not add up… I still don't understand the decision and the more I think about it, the more suspicious it becomes.. .does not even seem a coordinated well put plan that is causing all this storm (all the handling has been awful and big companies tend to handle these things with utmost care as it casts a horrible light to the brand itself) Just look at how Apple handled Shake, they discontinued it but offer the possibility of buying the source code and carry on using it, it was bad but at least was a clean exit. Also helps that nuke was ready for prime time so felt like moving forward instead of moving back to the 80s with Maya. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 11:05, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: it's a bad decision in the eyes of who? They didn't really buy softimage because they thought is a software they could improve any further, they were actually really buying US the users. Some people call it killing the competition, a chess move. If xsi only had 8-10 developers, than It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that they were obviously making money with it. Maybe not as much as a lot of us would like to believe, but still surely enough to keep it going. From a business point of view, they are thinking How can we make MORE money for less cost. How do we make our business more efficient on a long term plan? The answer is quite simple, you unify all your efforts into one money making machine that will eventually be Maya 2.0. It will look very similar to Maya if not identical otherwise they wouldn't have bothered transitioning us now. Some people say bad costumer service but I guess the mayority of their costumers are Maya so we were a small price to pay... They knew there was going to be a loss of costume, but in 5 years This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication
Re: Good point well put
I must clarify I was referring to students and young people getting into 3D. I have no problem learning other software out there, I do it all the time. Let's not forget that once they have full control of the universities and training institutions it will just be a one way road. They were already 90% there, but when I heard that the Bournemouth MA will probably go Maya is when the news really hit me. I studied there and still think softimage was the best choice for a 1 year course. We can of course try to change the course on our side by creating Modo/Houdini pipelines but the roots and new blood will be mostly Maya... On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Christoph Muetze c...@glarestudios.de wrote: ..my point, exactly. On 08/03/14 13:20, Angus Davidson wrote: Forgot to add the more important thing is that what AD didnt expect with this shitstorm is that all of the other communities are now talking, there are knowledge transfers and people are understanding that their perceptions of other packages may have been wrong. Things are moving a lot faster now as very skilled Softimage users are looking at other options. That leads to them writing tools etc that makes the other packages better and will pull more people away from AD. I think they now realise that pissing off these types of people is not a wise decision. *From:* Angus Davidson [angus.david...@wits.ac.za] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:14 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Good point well put I disagree 5 Years from now, Modo / Houdini / Fabric Engine will be the standard. I say this because they are agile, they listen to what their users want and they actively develop and have a coherent roadmap. With the rate that the industry is developing Maya will not be able to keep up. *From:* Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.com] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:05 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Good point well put They have messed up really badly with us by the way the've handled this. But I don't really consider this a storm, a few guys ranting on a mailing list. CGsociety haven't even bothered to make this news. Why did they keep softimage for all this years? well simple, they were investing in a relationship with costumers. Now that the Foundry had started to gain ground it was time to act and think about this bright future. We are just too involved in the mess to see the whole picture. Think 5 years from now, all I can see is Maya. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.com mailto: danielki...@gmail.com wrote: I hope there is a company or someone else who can hire all SI developers and make another next generation 3D software. I remember when Lightwave shut down years ago, and they are back in industry and shows great stuff, and even Modo. I really hope there is a company or someone hires SI dev members... --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app... that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this implied direct relationship between pace of development and resources, it is so so obscene it is insulting to say that. By that rule all the software portfolio Autodesk manages hinders everything they do, let's face it, they have lots of products. If the case is pace of development just hire a few more good guys and make sure the effort does not go to waste by not promoting it well. The issue I have is that something does not add up... I still don't understand the decision and the more I think about it, the more suspicious it becomes.. .does not even seem a coordinated well put plan that is causing all this storm (all the handling has been awful and big companies tend to handle these things with utmost care as it casts a horrible light to the brand itself) Just look at how Apple handled Shake, they discontinued it but offer the possibility of buying the source code and carry on using it, it was bad but at least was a clean exit. Also helps that nuke was ready for prime time so felt like moving forward instead of moving back to the 80s with Maya. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com
Re: Good point well put
Jordi the Gollum example was just a simplification of how people trying to get into 3d think. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: I must clarify I was referring to students and young people getting into 3D. I have no problem learning other software out there, I do it all the time. Let's not forget that once they have full control of the universities and training institutions it will just be a one way road. They were already 90% there, but when I heard that the Bournemouth MA will probably go Maya is when the news really hit me. I studied there and still think softimage was the best choice for a 1 year course. We can of course try to change the course on our side by creating Modo/Houdini pipelines but the roots and new blood will be mostly Maya... On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Christoph Muetze c...@glarestudios.de wrote: ..my point, exactly. On 08/03/14 13:20, Angus Davidson wrote: Forgot to add the more important thing is that what AD didnt expect with this shitstorm is that all of the other communities are now talking, there are knowledge transfers and people are understanding that their perceptions of other packages may have been wrong. Things are moving a lot faster now as very skilled Softimage users are looking at other options. That leads to them writing tools etc that makes the other packages better and will pull more people away from AD. I think they now realise that pissing off these types of people is not a wise decision. *From:* Angus Davidson [angus.david...@wits.ac.za] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:14 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Good point well put I disagree 5 Years from now, Modo / Houdini / Fabric Engine will be the standard. I say this because they are agile, they listen to what their users want and they actively develop and have a coherent roadmap. With the rate that the industry is developing Maya will not be able to keep up. *From:* Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.com] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:05 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Good point well put They have messed up really badly with us by the way the've handled this. But I don't really consider this a storm, a few guys ranting on a mailing list. CGsociety haven't even bothered to make this news. Why did they keep softimage for all this years? well simple, they were investing in a relationship with costumers. Now that the Foundry had started to gain ground it was time to act and think about this bright future. We are just too involved in the mess to see the whole picture. Think 5 years from now, all I can see is Maya. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.com mailto: danielki...@gmail.com wrote: I hope there is a company or someone else who can hire all SI developers and make another next generation 3D software. I remember when Lightwave shut down years ago, and they are back in industry and shows great stuff, and even Modo. I really hope there is a company or someone hires SI dev members... --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app... that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this implied direct relationship between pace of development and resources, it is so so obscene it is insulting to say that. By that rule all the software portfolio Autodesk manages hinders everything they do, let's face it, they have lots of products. If the case is pace of development just hire a few more good guys and make sure the effort does not go to waste by not promoting it well. The issue I have is that something does not add up... I still don't understand the decision and the more I think about it, the more suspicious it becomes.. .does not even seem a coordinated well put plan that is causing all this storm (all the handling has been awful and big companies tend to handle these things with utmost care as it casts a horrible light to the brand itself) Just look at how Apple handled Shake, they discontinued it but offer the possibility of buying the source code and carry on using it, it was bad but at least was a clean exit. Also helps
Re: Good point well put
Ooppss though it was serious.. it is not the first time you know… Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 13:05, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: Jordi the Gollum example was just a simplification of how people trying to get into 3d think. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: I must clarify I was referring to students and young people getting into 3D. I have no problem learning other software out there, I do it all the time. Let's not forget that once they have full control of the universities and training institutions it will just be a one way road. They were already 90% there, but when I heard that the Bournemouth MA will probably go Maya is when the news really hit me. I studied there and still think softimage was the best choice for a 1 year course. We can of course try to change the course on our side by creating Modo/Houdini pipelines but the roots and new blood will be mostly Maya... On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Christoph Muetze c...@glarestudios.de wrote: ..my point, exactly. On 08/03/14 13:20, Angus Davidson wrote: Forgot to add the more important thing is that what AD didnt expect with this shitstorm is that all of the other communities are now talking, there are knowledge transfers and people are understanding that their perceptions of other packages may have been wrong. Things are moving a lot faster now as very skilled Softimage users are looking at other options. That leads to them writing tools etc that makes the other packages better and will pull more people away from AD. I think they now realise that pissing off these types of people is not a wise decision. *From:* Angus Davidson [angus.david...@wits.ac.za] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:14 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Good point well put I disagree 5 Years from now, Modo / Houdini / Fabric Engine will be the standard. I say this because they are agile, they listen to what their users want and they actively develop and have a coherent roadmap. With the rate that the industry is developing Maya will not be able to keep up. *From:* Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.com] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:05 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Good point well put They have messed up really badly with us by the way the've handled this. But I don't really consider this a storm, a few guys ranting on a mailing list. CGsociety haven't even bothered to make this news. Why did they keep softimage for all this years? well simple, they were investing in a relationship with costumers. Now that the Foundry had started to gain ground it was time to act and think about this bright future. We are just too involved in the mess to see the whole picture. Think 5 years from now, all I can see is Maya. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.com mailto:danielki...@gmail.com wrote: I hope there is a company or someone else who can hire all SI developers and make another next generation 3D software. I remember when Lightwave shut down years ago, and they are back in industry and shows great stuff, and even Modo. I really hope there is a company or someone hires SI dev members... --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app… that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this implied direct relationship between pace of development and resources, it is so so obscene it is insulting to say that. By that rule all the software portfolio Autodesk manages hinders everything they do, let's face it, they have lots of products. If the case is pace of development just hire a few more good guys and make sure the effort does not go to waste by not promoting it well. The issue I have is that something does not add up… I still don't understand the decision and the more I think about it, the more suspicious it becomes.. .does not even seem a coordinated well put plan that is causing all this storm (all the handling has been awful and big companies tend to handle these things with utmost care as it casts a horrible light to the brand
Re: Good point well put
King Kong as well right? ;) On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Ooppss though it was serious.. it is not the first time you know... Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.comjavascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','jordiba...@gmail.com'); On 8 Mar 2014, at 13:05, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: Jordi the Gollum example was just a simplification of how people trying to get into 3d think. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: I must clarify I was referring to students and young people getting into 3D. I have no problem learning other software out there, I do it all the time. Let's not forget that once they have full control of the universities and training institutions it will just be a one way road. They were already 90% there, but when I heard that the Bournemouth MA will probably go Maya is when the news really hit me. I studied there and still think softimage was the best choice for a 1 year course. We can of course try to change the course on our side by creating Modo/Houdini pipelines but the roots and new blood will be mostly Maya... On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Christoph Muetze c...@glarestudios.de wrote: ..my point, exactly. On 08/03/14 13:20, Angus Davidson wrote: Forgot to add the more important thing is that what AD didnt expect with this shitstorm is that all of the other communities are now talking, there are knowledge transfers and people are understanding that their perceptions of other packages may have been wrong. Things are moving a lot faster now as very skilled Softimage users are looking at other options. That leads to them writing tools etc that makes the other packages better and will pull more people away from AD. I think they now realise that pissing off these types of people is not a wise decision. *From:* Angus Davidson [angus.david...@wits.ac.za] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:14 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Good point well put I disagree 5 Years from now, Modo / Houdini / Fabric Engine will be the standard. I say this because they are agile, they listen to what their users want and they actively develop and have a coherent roadmap. With the rate that the industry is developing Maya will not be able to keep up. *From:* Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.com] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:05 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Good point well put They have messed up really badly with us by the way the've handled this. But I don't really consider this a storm, a few guys ranting on a mailing list. CGsociety haven't even bothered to make this news. Why did they keep softimage for all this years? well simple, they were investing in a relationship with costumers. Now that the Foundry had started to gain ground it was time to act and think about this bright future. We are just too involved in the mess to see the whole picture. Think 5 years from now, all I can see is Maya. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.com mailto: danielki...@gmail.com wrote: I hope there is a company or someone else who can hire all SI developers and make another next generation 3D software. I remember when Lightwave shut down years ago, and they are back in industry and shows great stuff, and even Modo. I really hope there is a company or someone hires SI dev members... --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app... that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this impli
Re: Good point well put
I should clarify we one three Masters courses. Only one uses Softimage (MA3D). The other two (MA digital Effects and MSc) use Houdini - hence the potential transition is made a lot easier... Sofronis Efstathiou Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Competition and Festival Director Computer Animation Academic Group National Centre for Computer Animation Email: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0) 1202 965805 Profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sofronisefstathiou Student Work: http://www.youtube.com/NCCA3DAnimation http://www.youtube.com/NCCADigitalFX http://www.youtube.com/NCCAAnimation http://ncca.bournemouth.ac.uk/ http://www.bfxfestival.com/ Awarded for world-class computer animation teaching with wide scientific and creative applications On 08/03/2014 13:15, Sofronis Efstathiou sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk wrote: Hey Cristobal, You know we love Softimage. Most students when they join the course complain that we should be teaching Maya. Then students work with Softimage and understand why we teach it. However, over the past 5 years (a little after you left) our pipeline is less dependent on a single application zBrush, Mari, Maxwell, V-Ray and Nuke form a critical part of the students work. Softimage continues to be used as the main animation, rigging, lighting tool as well shot assembly and rendering. To be fair we haven't decided on Maya yet in fact its likely to be a Houdini pipe within 2 years, with Maya as the rigging/animation app until Houdini implements many of the changes we have been discussing. As one of the few accredited Houdini training centres across the globe, we are talking soon to SideFX about their roadmap so we can plan for the future. This will effectively mean no Masters courses at the NCCA will run Autodesk products. Our Undergraduate uses Maya and Houdini as its main 3D applications. However, in previous reviews we have found the software used on the MA will eventually transition onto the BA (our staff each across both pathways). Its very likely that in 4-5years we could see very little AD products being used here. Which is a shame, as our graduates for the past 23 years have formed the backbone of the VFX and animation industry here in the UK. Cheers Sofronis Efstathiou Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Competition and Festival Director Computer Animation Academic Group National Centre for Computer Animation Email: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.ukmailto:sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0) 1202 965805 Profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sofronisefstathiou Student Work: http://www.youtube.com/NCCA3DAnimation http://www.youtube.com/NCCADigitalFX http://www.youtube.com/NCCAAnimation [cid:C68FD57D-D2DC-46C5-ABF9-714CD513676D]http://ncca.bournemouth.ac.uk/ [cid:57BEF9EA-B3AC-48DD-991E-4260D153BC5E] http://www.bfxfestival.com/ [cid:A49964BD-EA5F-4093-A952-82BE2FC37C4B] Awarded for world-class computer animation teaching with wide scientific and creative applications From: Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.commailto:cgc...@gmail.com Reply-To: Autodesk softimage softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Date: Saturday, 8 March 2014 13:01 To: Autodesk softimage softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Good point well put I must clarify I was referring to students and young people getting into 3D. I have no problem learning other software out there, I do it all the time. Let's not forget that once they have full control of the universities and training institutions it will just be a one way road. They were already 90% there, but when I heard that the Bournemouth MA will probably go Maya is when the news really hit me. I studied there and still think softimage was the best choice for a 1 year course. We can of course try to change the course on our side by creating Modo/Houdini pipelines but the roots and new blood will be mostly Maya... On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Christoph Muetze c...@glarestudios.demailto:c...@glarestudios.de wrote: ..my point, exactly. On 08/03/14 13:20, Angus Davidson wrote: Forgot to add the more important thing is that what AD didnt expect with this shitstorm is that all of the other communities are now talking, there are knowledge transfers and people are understanding that their perceptions of other packages may have been wrong. Things are moving a lot faster now as very skilled Softimage users are looking at other options. That leads to them writing tools etc that makes the other packages better and will pull more people away from AD. I think they now realise that pissing off these types of people is not a wise decision. *From:* Angus Davidson [angus.david...@wits.ac.za] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:14 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Good point well put I disagree 5 Years from now, Modo / Houdini / Fabric Engine will be the standard
Re: Good point well put
If anyone was interested, we are thinking of doing a Softimage to Houdini workshop for 3 days in late September, as part of the BFX Festival here in Bournemouth. Phil Spicer would be happy to run one. Might even try and wrangle Jordi into it if he was available ;0) Cheers Sofronis Efstathiou Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Competition and Festival Director Computer Animation Academic Group National Centre for Computer Animation Email: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0) 1202 965805 Profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sofronisefstathiou Student Work: http://www.youtube.com/NCCA3DAnimation http://www.youtube.com/NCCADigitalFX http://www.youtube.com/NCCAAnimation http://ncca.bournemouth.ac.uk/ http://www.bfxfestival.com/ Awarded for world-class computer animation teaching with wide scientific and creative applications On 08/03/2014 13:15, Sofronis Efstathiou sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk wrote: Hey Cristobal, You know we love Softimage. Most students when they join the course complain that we should be teaching Maya. Then students work with Softimage and understand why we teach it. However, over the past 5 years (a little after you left) our pipeline is less dependent on a single application zBrush, Mari, Maxwell, V-Ray and Nuke form a critical part of the students work. Softimage continues to be used as the main animation, rigging, lighting tool as well shot assembly and rendering. To be fair we haven't decided on Maya yet in fact its likely to be a Houdini pipe within 2 years, with Maya as the rigging/animation app until Houdini implements many of the changes we have been discussing. As one of the few accredited Houdini training centres across the globe, we are talking soon to SideFX about their roadmap so we can plan for the future. This will effectively mean no Masters courses at the NCCA will run Autodesk products. Our Undergraduate uses Maya and Houdini as its main 3D applications. However, in previous reviews we have found the software used on the MA will eventually transition onto the BA (our staff each across both pathways). Its very likely that in 4-5years we could see very little AD products being used here. Which is a shame, as our graduates for the past 23 years have formed the backbone of the VFX and animation industry here in the UK. Cheers Sofronis Efstathiou Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Competition and Festival Director Computer Animation Academic Group National Centre for Computer Animation Email: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.ukmailto:sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0) 1202 965805 Profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sofronisefstathiou Student Work: http://www.youtube.com/NCCA3DAnimation http://www.youtube.com/NCCADigitalFX http://www.youtube.com/NCCAAnimation [cid:C68FD57D-D2DC-46C5-ABF9-714CD513676D]http://ncca.bournemouth.ac.uk/ [cid:57BEF9EA-B3AC-48DD-991E-4260D153BC5E] http://www.bfxfestival.com/ [cid:A49964BD-EA5F-4093-A952-82BE2FC37C4B] Awarded for world-class computer animation teaching with wide scientific and creative applications From: Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.commailto:cgc...@gmail.com Reply-To: Autodesk softimage softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Date: Saturday, 8 March 2014 13:01 To: Autodesk softimage softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Good point well put I must clarify I was referring to students and young people getting into 3D. I have no problem learning other software out there, I do it all the time. Let's not forget that once they have full control of the universities and training institutions it will just be a one way road. They were already 90% there, but when I heard that the Bournemouth MA will probably go Maya is when the news really hit me. I studied there and still think softimage was the best choice for a 1 year course. We can of course try to change the course on our side by creating Modo/Houdini pipelines but the roots and new blood will be mostly Maya... On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Christoph Muetze c...@glarestudios.demailto:c...@glarestudios.de wrote: ..my point, exactly. On 08/03/14 13:20, Angus Davidson wrote: Forgot to add the more important thing is that what AD didnt expect with this shitstorm is that all of the other communities are now talking, there are knowledge transfers and people are understanding that their perceptions of other packages may have been wrong. Things are moving a lot faster now as very skilled Softimage users are looking at other options. That leads to them writing tools etc that makes the other packages better and will pull more people away from AD. I think they now realise that pissing off these types of people is not a wise decision. *From:* Angus Davidson [angus.david...@wits.ac.za] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:14 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Good point well put I
Re: Good point well put
Count on me. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 13:24, Sofronis Efstathiou sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk wrote: If anyone was interested, we are thinking of doing a Softimage to Houdini workshop for 3 days in late September, as part of the BFX Festival here in Bournemouth. Phil Spicer would be happy to run one. Might even try and wrangle Jordi into it if he was available ;0) Cheers Sofronis Efstathiou Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Competition and Festival Director Computer Animation Academic Group National Centre for Computer Animation Email: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0) 1202 965805 Profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sofronisefstathiou Student Work: http://www.youtube.com/NCCA3DAnimation http://www.youtube.com/NCCADigitalFX http://www.youtube.com/NCCAAnimation http://ncca.bournemouth.ac.uk/ http://www.bfxfestival.com/ Awarded for world-class computer animation teaching with wide scientific and creative applications On 08/03/2014 13:15, Sofronis Efstathiou sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk wrote: Hey Cristobal, You know we love Softimage. Most students when they join the course complain that we should be teaching Maya. Then students work with Softimage and understand why we teach it. However, over the past 5 years (a little after you left) our pipeline is less dependent on a single application zBrush, Mari, Maxwell, V-Ray and Nuke form a critical part of the students work. Softimage continues to be used as the main animation, rigging, lighting tool as well shot assembly and rendering. To be fair we haven't decided on Maya yet in fact its likely to be a Houdini pipe within 2 years, with Maya as the rigging/animation app until Houdini implements many of the changes we have been discussing. As one of the few accredited Houdini training centres across the globe, we are talking soon to SideFX about their roadmap so we can plan for the future. This will effectively mean no Masters courses at the NCCA will run Autodesk products. Our Undergraduate uses Maya and Houdini as its main 3D applications. However, in previous reviews we have found the software used on the MA will eventually transition onto the BA (our staff each across both pathways). Its very likely that in 4-5years we could see very little AD products being used here. Which is a shame, as our graduates for the past 23 years have formed the backbone of the VFX and animation industry here in the UK. Cheers Sofronis Efstathiou Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Competition and Festival Director Computer Animation Academic Group National Centre for Computer Animation Email: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.ukmailto:sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0) 1202 965805 Profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sofronisefstathiou Student Work: http://www.youtube.com/NCCA3DAnimation http://www.youtube.com/NCCADigitalFX http://www.youtube.com/NCCAAnimation [cid:C68FD57D-D2DC-46C5-ABF9-714CD513676D]http://ncca.bournemouth.ac.uk/ [cid:57BEF9EA-B3AC-48DD-991E-4260D153BC5E] http://www.bfxfestival.com/ [cid:A49964BD-EA5F-4093-A952-82BE2FC37C4B] Awarded for world-class computer animation teaching with wide scientific and creative applications From: Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.commailto:cgc...@gmail.com Reply-To: Autodesk softimage softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Date: Saturday, 8 March 2014 13:01 To: Autodesk softimage softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Good point well put I must clarify I was referring to students and young people getting into 3D. I have no problem learning other software out there, I do it all the time. Let's not forget that once they have full control of the universities and training institutions it will just be a one way road. They were already 90% there, but when I heard that the Bournemouth MA will probably go Maya is when the news really hit me. I studied there and still think softimage was the best choice for a 1 year course. We can of course try to change the course on our side by creating Modo/Houdini pipelines but the roots and new blood will be mostly Maya... On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Christoph Muetze c...@glarestudios.demailto:c...@glarestudios.de wrote: ..my point, exactly. On 08/03/14 13:20, Angus Davidson wrote: Forgot to add the more important thing is that what AD didnt expect with this shitstorm is that all of the other communities are now talking, there are knowledge transfers and people are understanding that their perceptions of other packages may have been wrong. Things are moving a lot faster now as very skilled Softimage users are looking at other options. That leads to them writing tools etc that makes the other packages better and will pull more people away from AD. I think they now realise that pissing off these types
Re: Good point well put
On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 6:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app... that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. That's not quite right. That may be the number of people who interact with the community, but it certainly isn't the number of people necessary to develop and keep competitive Softimage, an app that's 12 millions lines of code. It's just OK to keep it on life support and make one or two feature a year. True for small apps like 3DCoat, but not for this one, not at this age. At Avid, we had those kinds of numbers ..*just in consulting* We had a lot more developers than that at the end at Avid, and that was after rounds and rounds of layoffs. We were down to one or zero person per area, not really able to anything but fixes and small features. You can keep that kind of app on life support/maintenance with a staff of 8-12, and that's totally true. But that's not the real problem. Look at what happens when you try to do a new project with a handful of clever developers, the High Quality Viewport + Crowds in Softimage 2013. First, it's hit and miss whether it'll be any good; in this case, miss in the case of the viewport. Secondly, it's soaked up all the resources so you don't have anything else for the rest of the user base. A small of people can create a develop a new app and continue to maintain it, they are doing it all the time. A small group of developer will make a small app, and this app will probably be a lot more focused. This is not what we ended up with. Softimage is a gorgeous app, beautifully designed. But all is not well. The code base will be due for a large rewrite in a few years, like the QT port and viewport 2.0 in Maya. There are glass ceillings in playback performance/scalability that we've never been able to fix even after years of people looking at that. Mental Ray is about to fall into oblivion and if that needs to be pulled out of XSI, lots of stuff is going to go with it. Lots of fundamental things in XSI like scene file and scripting are based on Windows API that have been deprecated for a decade. There are new ideas and things coming up like OpenSubDiv, out-of-core-processing for FX, etc. You can also fetch one of those multi-volume mails from Matt about everything that's wrong in the product for his game artists. The animation toolset hasn't been updated since the shape manager. ICE Kine doesn't scale enough to replace it/ There is tons of work to do, even after 14 years.
Re: Good point well put
There is ton and ton to do in Maya as well. Not to mention Max. But instead Softimage is dead. On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 2:29 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.comwrote: On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 6:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app... that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. That's not quite right. That may be the number of people who interact with the community, but it certainly isn't the number of people necessary to develop and keep competitive Softimage, an app that's 12 millions lines of code. It's just OK to keep it on life support and make one or two feature a year. True for small apps like 3DCoat, but not for this one, not at this age. At Avid, we had those kinds of numbers ..*just in consulting* We had a lot more developers than that at the end at Avid, and that was after rounds and rounds of layoffs. We were down to one or zero person per area, not really able to anything but fixes and small features. You can keep that kind of app on life support/maintenance with a staff of 8-12, and that's totally true. But that's not the real problem. Look at what happens when you try to do a new project with a handful of clever developers, the High Quality Viewport + Crowds in Softimage 2013. First, it's hit and miss whether it'll be any good; in this case, miss in the case of the viewport. Secondly, it's soaked up all the resources so you don't have anything else for the rest of the user base. A small of people can create a develop a new app and continue to maintain it, they are doing it all the time. A small group of developer will make a small app, and this app will probably be a lot more focused. This is not what we ended up with. Softimage is a gorgeous app, beautifully designed. But all is not well. The code base will be due for a large rewrite in a few years, like the QT port and viewport 2.0 in Maya. There are glass ceillings in playback performance/scalability that we've never been able to fix even after years of people looking at that. Mental Ray is about to fall into oblivion and if that needs to be pulled out of XSI, lots of stuff is going to go with it. Lots of fundamental things in XSI like scene file and scripting are based on Windows API that have been deprecated for a decade. There are new ideas and things coming up like OpenSubDiv, out-of-core-processing for FX, etc. You can also fetch one of those multi-volume mails from Matt about everything that's wrong in the product for his game artists. The animation toolset hasn't been updated since the shape manager. ICE Kine doesn't scale enough to replace it/ There is tons of work to do, even after 14 years.
Re: Good point well put
You could do Gollum with SI and ice though. ( I work with Gollum so I should know) I'm not saying that it would be recreating tissue, but It's totally possible to make a gollum with no visual difference. Once you have almost total manipulation control over vectors then you can do pretty much anything you can think of. On 8 Mar 2014, at 13:05, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: Jordi the Gollum example was just a simplification of how people trying to get into 3d think. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: I must clarify I was referring to students and young people getting into 3D. I have no problem learning other software out there, I do it all the time. Let's not forget that once they have full control of the universities and training institutions it will just be a one way road. They were already 90% there, but when I heard that the Bournemouth MA will probably go Maya is when the news really hit me. I studied there and still think softimage was the best choice for a 1 year course. We can of course try to change the course on our side by creating Modo/Houdini pipelines but the roots and new blood will be mostly Maya... On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Christoph Muetze c...@glarestudios.de wrote: ..my point, exactly. On 08/03/14 13:20, Angus Davidson wrote: Forgot to add the more important thing is that what AD didnt expect with this shitstorm is that all of the other communities are now talking, there are knowledge transfers and people are understanding that their perceptions of other packages may have been wrong. Things are moving a lot faster now as very skilled Softimage users are looking at other options. That leads to them writing tools etc that makes the other packages better and will pull more people away from AD. I think they now realise that pissing off these types of people is not a wise decision. *From:* Angus Davidson [angus.david...@wits.ac.za] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:14 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Good point well put I disagree 5 Years from now, Modo / Houdini / Fabric Engine will be the standard. I say this because they are agile, they listen to what their users want and they actively develop and have a coherent roadmap. With the rate that the industry is developing Maya will not be able to keep up. *From:* Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.com] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:05 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Good point well put They have messed up really badly with us by the way the've handled this. But I don't really consider this a storm, a few guys ranting on a mailing list. CGsociety haven't even bothered to make this news. Why did they keep softimage for all this years? well simple, they were investing in a relationship with costumers. Now that the Foundry had started to gain ground it was time to act and think about this bright future. We are just too involved in the mess to see the whole picture. Think 5 years from now, all I can see is Maya. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.com mailto:danielki...@gmail.com wrote: I hope there is a company or someone else who can hire all SI developers and make another next generation 3D software. I remember when Lightwave shut down years ago, and they are back in industry and shows great stuff, and even Modo. I really hope there is a company or someone hires SI dev members... --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app… that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this implied direct relationship between pace of development and resources, it is so so obscene it is insulting to say that. By that rule all the software portfolio Autodesk manages hinders everything they do, let's face it, they have lots of products. If the case is pace of development just hire a few more good guys and make sure the effort does not go to waste by not promoting it well. The issue I have is that something does not add up… I still don't understand the decision and the more I think about it, the more suspicious it becomes.. .does not even seem
Re: Good point well put
Nobody said its perfect, I am fully aware Softimage needs some truly major work done to keep it well into the 21st century, like Max and Maya and every other app, agreed. Regarding the number, you know we users are in the dark, everybody avoids answering that but from what I heard (and may be wrong) the development team never has been big, it is a different thing all the support, QA, documentation, etc… that is the bulk of the company. Regarding the point I was trying to make, are you saying the cost of development of Softimage was costlier than the PR, advertising, support, documentation, etc..? Its very sad LucEric… very very sad. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 13:29, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 6:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app... that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. That's not quite right. That may be the number of people who interact with the community, but it certainly isn't the number of people necessary to develop and keep competitive Softimage, an app that's 12 millions lines of code. It's just OK to keep it on life support and make one or two feature a year. True for small apps like 3DCoat, but not for this one, not at this age. At Avid, we had those kinds of numbers ..*just in consulting* We had a lot more developers than that at the end at Avid, and that was after rounds and rounds of layoffs. We were down to one or zero person per area, not really able to anything but fixes and small features. You can keep that kind of app on life support/maintenance with a staff of 8-12, and that's totally true. But that's not the real problem. Look at what happens when you try to do a new project with a handful of clever developers, the High Quality Viewport + Crowds in Softimage 2013. First, it's hit and miss whether it'll be any good; in this case, miss in the case of the viewport. Secondly, it's soaked up all the resources so you don't have anything else for the rest of the user base. A small of people can create a develop a new app and continue to maintain it, they are doing it all the time. A small group of developer will make a small app, and this app will probably be a lot more focused. This is not what we ended up with. Softimage is a gorgeous app, beautifully designed. But all is not well. The code base will be due for a large rewrite in a few years, like the QT port and viewport 2.0 in Maya. There are glass ceillings in playback performance/scalability that we've never been able to fix even after years of people looking at that. Mental Ray is about to fall into oblivion and if that needs to be pulled out of XSI, lots of stuff is going to go with it. Lots of fundamental things in XSI like scene file and scripting are based on Windows API that have been deprecated for a decade. There are new ideas and things coming up like OpenSubDiv, out-of-core-processing for FX, etc. You can also fetch one of those multi-volume mails from Matt about everything that's wrong in the product for his game artists. The animation toolset hasn't been updated since the shape manager. ICE Kine doesn't scale enough to replace it/ There is tons of work to do, even after 14 years.
Re: Good point well put
Hi Saf, I know you guys love Softimage, we all do! otherwise we wouldn't be here right ;). Softimage was with a doubt was the best choice for a 1 year course where you are meant to learn everything from scratch and produce a short film at the end. Most of us picked up the software very quickly and learned the principles of computer animation which is the important skill. From the people I've kept in touch from the course I would say 70% moved to Maya to work in the film/game industry so transferring those skills wasn't such a big deal for them since the key concepts were already there. I am very glad to hear you guys have a strong relationship with Sidefx and are planning of reinforce that. It's important to have convergence between the studios and the Universities pumping new blood. Interesting to hear that the MSC is all houdini now, in my times it was mainly Maya. By the way you are teaching all those apps to your new students? I feel cheated!!! ;) On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Sofronis Efstathiou sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk wrote: I should clarify we one three Masters courses. Only one uses Softimage (MA3D). The other two (MA digital Effects and MSc) use Houdini - hence the potential transition is made a lot easier... Sofronis Efstathiou Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Competition and Festival Director Computer Animation Academic Group National Centre for Computer Animation Email: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0) 1202 965805 Profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sofronisefstathiou Student Work: http://www.youtube.com/NCCA3DAnimation http://www.youtube.com/NCCADigitalFX http://www.youtube.com/NCCAAnimation http://ncca.bournemouth.ac.uk/ http://www.bfxfestival.com/ Awarded for world-class computer animation teaching with wide scientific and creative applications On 08/03/2014 13:15, Sofronis Efstathiou sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk wrote: Hey Cristobal, You know we love Softimage. Most students when they join the course complain that we should be teaching Maya. Then students work with Softimage and understand why we teach it. However, over the past 5 years (a little after you left) our pipeline is less dependent on a single application zBrush, Mari, Maxwell, V-Ray and Nuke form a critical part of the students work. Softimage continues to be used as the main animation, rigging, lighting tool as well shot assembly and rendering. To be fair we haven't decided on Maya yet in fact its likely to be a Houdini pipe within 2 years, with Maya as the rigging/animation app until Houdini implements many of the changes we have been discussing. As one of the few accredited Houdini training centres across the globe, we are talking soon to SideFX about their roadmap so we can plan for the future. This will effectively mean no Masters courses at the NCCA will run Autodesk products. Our Undergraduate uses Maya and Houdini as its main 3D applications. However, in previous reviews we have found the software used on the MA will eventually transition onto the BA (our staff each across both pathways). Its very likely that in 4-5years we could see very little AD products being used here. Which is a shame, as our graduates for the past 23 years have formed the backbone of the VFX and animation industry here in the UK. Cheers Sofronis Efstathiou Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Competition and Festival Director Computer Animation Academic Group National Centre for Computer Animation Email: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.ukmailto:sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0) 1202 965805 Profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sofronisefstathiou Student Work: http://www.youtube.com/NCCA3DAnimation http://www.youtube.com/NCCADigitalFX http://www.youtube.com/NCCAAnimation [cid:C68FD57D-D2DC-46C5-ABF9-714CD513676D]http://ncca.bournemouth.ac.uk/ [cid:57BEF9EA-B3AC-48DD-991E-4260D153BC5E] http://www.bfxfestival.com/ [cid:A49964BD-EA5F-4093-A952-82BE2FC37C4B] Awarded for world-class computer animation teaching with wide scientific and creative applications From: Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.commailto:cgc...@gmail.com Reply-To: Autodesk softimage softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Date: Saturday, 8 March 2014 13:01 To: Autodesk softimage softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Good point well put I must clarify I was referring to students and young people getting into 3D. I have no problem learning other software out there, I do it all the time. Let's not forget that once they have full control of the universities and training institutions it will just be a one way road. They were already 90% there, but when I heard that the Bournemouth MA will probably go Maya is when the news really hit me. I studied there and still think softimage was the best choice for a 1 year course. We can of course try
Re: Good point well put
What does Gollum think about all this by the way? unhappy his precious is gone I am sure ;) On 8 March 2014 13:55, Bk p...@bustykelp.com wrote: You could do Gollum with SI and ice though. ( I work with Gollum so I should know) I'm not saying that it would be recreating tissue, but It's totally possible to make a gollum with no visual difference. Once you have almost total manipulation control over vectors then you can do pretty much anything you can think of. On 8 Mar 2014, at 13:05, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: Jordi the Gollum example was just a simplification of how people trying to get into 3d think. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: I must clarify I was referring to students and young people getting into 3D. I have no problem learning other software out there, I do it all the time. Let's not forget that once they have full control of the universities and training institutions it will just be a one way road. They were already 90% there, but when I heard that the Bournemouth MA will probably go Maya is when the news really hit me. I studied there and still think softimage was the best choice for a 1 year course. We can of course try to change the course on our side by creating Modo/Houdini pipelines but the roots and new blood will be mostly Maya... On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Christoph Muetze c...@glarestudios.de wrote: ..my point, exactly. On 08/03/14 13:20, Angus Davidson wrote: Forgot to add the more important thing is that what AD didnt expect with this shitstorm is that all of the other communities are now talking, there are knowledge transfers and people are understanding that their perceptions of other packages may have been wrong. Things are moving a lot faster now as very skilled Softimage users are looking at other options. That leads to them writing tools etc that makes the other packages better and will pull more people away from AD. I think they now realise that pissing off these types of people is not a wise decision. *From:* Angus Davidson [angus.david...@wits.ac.za] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:14 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Good point well put I disagree 5 Years from now, Modo / Houdini / Fabric Engine will be the standard. I say this because they are agile, they listen to what their users want and they actively develop and have a coherent roadmap. With the rate that the industry is developing Maya will not be able to keep up. *From:* Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.com] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:05 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Good point well put They have messed up really badly with us by the way the've handled this. But I don't really consider this a storm, a few guys ranting on a mailing list. CGsociety haven't even bothered to make this news. Why did they keep softimage for all this years? well simple, they were investing in a relationship with costumers. Now that the Foundry had started to gain ground it was time to act and think about this bright future. We are just too involved in the mess to see the whole picture. Think 5 years from now, all I can see is Maya. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.com mailto: danielki...@gmail.com wrote: I hope there is a company or someone else who can hire all SI developers and make another next generation 3D software. I remember when Lightwave shut down years ago, and they are back in industry and shows great stuff, and even Modo. I really hope there is a company or someone hires SI dev members... --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app... that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this implied direct relationship between pace of development and resources, it is so so obscene it is insulting to say that. By that rule all the software portfolio Autodesk manages hinders everything they do, let's face it, they have lots of products. If the case is pace of development just hire a few more good guys and make sure the effort does not go to waste by not promoting it well. The issue I have is that something does not add up... I still don't understand the decision
Re: Good point well put
On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 8:55 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Nobody said its perfect, I am fully aware Softimage needs some truly major work done to keep it well into the 21st century, like Max and Maya and every other app, agreed. Regarding the number, you know we users are in the dark, everybody avoids answering that but from what I heard (and may be wrong) the development team never has been big, it is a different thing all the support, QA, documentation, etc... that is the bulk of the company. Regarding the point I was trying to make, are you saying the cost of development of Softimage was costlier than the PR, advertising, support, documentation, etc..? Its very sad LucEric... very very sad. It's terribly sad indeed. Many of us worked many years 6 and 7 days a week on this thing. We poured our hearts into it. If you agree that there is still tons of work needed to do - millions of RD, imho, plus a lot of risks of failure - to make that app modern in 5 years, then it doesn't matter if a few people can keep that app going in the short term, it's the longer term that's the problem. One shouldn't be asking marketing and the resellers sell a 3500$ app, plus 850$-1100$ a year in sub, if they don't have a 5 year plan and don't plan to have the investment to back it up. You cannot have schools continue to teach this app as if it's an equally safe choice for the future. So you shouldn't be inviting new clients only to have them end up in forum reading about dissatisfaction, lack of development, fear of the future. So Autodesk announced last week that their plans and investments are on Maya and Max. It's terrible news for Softimage, but at least the cards are on the table and people have time to adapt.
RE: Good point well put
Thats exactly why we used it as well. Our Animation course is only a year and you can get so much more done in SI then Maya From: Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.com] Sent: 08 March 2014 03:55 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Good point well put Hi Saf, I know you guys love Softimage, we all do! otherwise we wouldn't be here right ;). Softimage was with a doubt was the best choice for a 1 year course where you are meant to learn everything from scratch and produce a short film at the end. Most of us picked up the software very quickly and learned the principles of computer animation which is the important skill. table width=100% border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 style=width:100%; tr td align=left style=text-align:justify;font face=arial,sans-serif size=1 color=#99span style=font-size:11px;This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary. /span/font/td /tr /table
RE: Good point well put
Agreed. Softimage allowed us to teach in a single year what the BA courses (using Maya) covered in 3 years...and then some more. Softimage was an excellent artist tool...and since 80% of our Masters students had never used 3D software before (they were painters, illustrators etc) - they were able to transition very quickly into a technical artist or technical director role. It's a great product Sofronis Efstathiou Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Festival Director Computer Animation Academic Group National Centre for Computer Animation Email: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0) 1202 965805 Profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sofronisefstathiou Student Work: http://www.youtube.com/NCCA3DAnimation http://www.youtube.com/NCCADigitalFX http://www.youtube.com/NCCAAnimation -Original Message- From: Angus Davidson [angus.david...@wits.ac.za] Received: Saturday, 08 Mar 2014, 3:31PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com [softimage@listproc.autodesk.com] Subject: RE: Good point well put Thats exactly why we used it as well. Our Animation course is only a year and you can get so much more done in SI then Maya From: Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.com] Sent: 08 March 2014 03:55 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Good point well put Hi Saf, I know you guys love Softimage, we all do! otherwise we wouldn't be here right ;). Softimage was with a doubt was the best choice for a 1 year course where you are meant to learn everything from scratch and produce a short film at the end. Most of us picked up the software very quickly and learned the principles of computer animation which is the important skill. This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary. [http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/Images/QueensAwardLogo.jpg] BU is a Disability Two Ticks Employer and has signed up to the Mindful Employer charter. Information about the accessibility of University buildings can be found on the BU DisabledGo webpageshttp://www.disabledgo.com/en/org/bournemouth-university This email is intended only for the person to whom it is addressed and may contain confidential information. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this email, which must not be copied, distributed or disclosed to any other person. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Bournemouth University or its subsidiary companies. Nor can any contract be formed on behalf of the University or its subsidiary companies via email. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
Re: Good point well put
Godzilla was done by Softimage, right? ;) Godzilla was my all time favorite rig, though. It was ground breaking. On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 8:15 AM, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: King Kong as well right? ;) On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Ooppss though it was serious.. it is not the first time you know... Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 13:05, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: Jordi the Gollum example was just a simplification of how people trying to get into 3d think. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: I must clarify I was referring to students and young people getting into 3D. I have no problem learning other software out there, I do it all the time. Let's not forget that once they have full control of the universities and training institutions it will just be a one way road. They were already 90% there, but when I heard that the Bournemouth MA will probably go Maya is when the news really hit me. I studied there and still think softimage was the best choice for a 1 year course. We can of course try to change the course on our side by creating Modo/Houdini pipelines but the roots and new blood will be mostly Maya... On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Christoph Muetze c...@glarestudios.de wrote: ..my point, exactly. On 08/03/14 13:20, Angus Davidson wrote: Forgot to add the more important thing is that what AD didnt expect with this shitstorm is that all of the other communities are now talking, there are knowledge transfers and people are understanding that their perceptions of other packages may have been wrong. Things are moving a lot faster now as very skilled Softimage users are looking at other options. That leads to them writing tools etc that makes the other packages better and will pull more people away from AD. I think they now realise that pissing off these types of people is not a wise decision. *From:* Angus Davidson [angus.david...@wits.ac.za] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:14 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Good point well put I disagree 5 Years from now, Modo / Houdini / Fabric Engine will be the standard. I say this because they are agile, they listen to what their users want and they actively develop and have a coherent roadmap. With the rate that the industry is developing Maya will not be able to keep up. *From:* Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.com] *Sent:* 08 March 2014 02:05 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Good point well put They have messed up really badly with us by the way the've handled this. But I don't really consider this a storm, a few guys ranting on a mailing list. CGsociety haven't even bothered to make this news. Why did they keep softimage for all this years? well simple, they were investing in a relationship with costumers. Now that the Foundry had started to gain ground it was time to act and think about this bright future. We are just too involved in the mess to see the whole picture. Think 5 years from now, all I can see is Maya. On Saturday, 8 March 2014, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.com mailto: danielki...@gmail.com wrote: I hope there is a company or someone else who can hire all SI developers and make another next generation 3D software. I remember when Lightwave shut down years ago, and they are back in industry and shows great stuff, and even Modo. I really hope there is a company or someone hires SI dev members... --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app... that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. Regarding this impli -- Best Regards, * Stephen P. Davidson* *(954) 552-7956*sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com *Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic* - Arthur C. Clarke http://www.3danimationmagic.com
Re[2]: Good point well put
One cardinal mistake back then was keeping so many aspects of the development in house. Once a critical mass was reached, the burden became too big. An open SDK concept would have been needed - platform like. Unlocking as many doors as possible, let 3rd parties do the extensions. A question, Luc-Eric (no sarcasm, just interest!): Why was there even any abstraction layer (the SDK) introduced in the first place? Why not allow 3rd parties to hook in 'first-class'? -- Originalnachricht -- Von: Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com An: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Gesendet: 08.03.2014 14:29:09 Betreff: Re: Good point well put On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 6:43 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Softimage, like SideEffect, 3DSMax and the rest are small teams of very clever developers, 8-12 is the normal number of developers for any app... that is a very small cost compared with the cost of advertising and PR, believe me. That's not quite right. That may be the number of people who interact with the community, but it certainly isn't the number of people necessary to develop and keep competitive Softimage, an app that's 12 millions lines of code. It's just OK to keep it on life support and make one or two feature a year. True for small apps like 3DCoat, but not for this one, not at this age. At Avid, we had those kinds of numbers ..*just in consulting* We had a lot more developers than that at the end at Avid, and that was after rounds and rounds of layoffs. We were down to one or zero person per area, not really able to anything but fixes and small features. You can keep that kind of app on life support/maintenance with a staff of 8-12, and that's totally true. But that's not the real problem. Look at what happens when you try to do a new project with a handful of clever developers, the High Quality Viewport + Crowds in Softimage 2013. First, it's hit and miss whether it'll be any good; in this case, miss in the case of the viewport. Secondly, it's soaked up all the resources so you don't have anything else for the rest of the user base. A small of people can create a develop a new app and continue to maintain it, they are doing it all the time. A small group of developer will make a small app, and this app will probably be a lot more focused. This is not what we ended up with. Softimage is a gorgeous app, beautifully designed. But all is not well. The code base will be due for a large rewrite in a few years, like the QT port and viewport 2.0 in Maya. There are glass ceillings in playback performance/scalability that we've never been able to fix even after years of people looking at that. Mental Ray is about to fall into oblivion and if that needs to be pulled out of XSI, lots of stuff is going to go with it. Lots of fundamental things in XSI like scene file and scripting are based on Windows API that have been deprecated for a decade. There are new ideas and things coming up like OpenSubDiv, out-of-core-processing for FX, etc. You can also fetch one of those multi-volume mails from Matt about everything that's wrong in the product for his game artists. The animation toolset hasn't been updated since the shape manager. ICE Kine doesn't scale enough to replace it/ There is tons of work to do, even after 14 years. --- Diese E-Mail ist frei von Viren und Malware, denn der avast! Antivirus Schutz ist aktiv. http://www.avast.com
Re: Good point well put
I agree 100% on one thing, if you are not willing to invest money to maintain the application it is the only honest thing to do. The problem I have is how is it possible there is no will to put the necessary work and money to make it happen? How is it possible someone pays $35M to buy a company and its product line and then bury it while still warm. Furthermore, the economic model that was sung to all of us countless time that has been working for years on other industries like the automotive where the Volkswagen group owns Volkswagen, Audi, Seat, Skoda and others and allows them to develop one engine for all the cars yet compete in the market while offering a distinctive experience (hello Softiamge) is actually very sensible too in this case. I don't need to tell you that many of the tools you are building for one app will end up on the others and a chunk of the cost will be saved. All in all the other thing I don't get is the associated risk, when you own the market is pretty much risk free! is like producing films and owning the distribution channel, it is impossible not to make money if you play it half well. The most amazing thing is that Softimage was a competitor during the last 5 years we would have been in a extremely different situation competing one to one with Maya for the top end of the professional market instead of being buried. Sorry to be a pest but this is an extreme situation for many. thanks a lot though for your the dialog without corporate BS, I really appreciate that Luc-Eric Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 15:08, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 8:55 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Nobody said its perfect, I am fully aware Softimage needs some truly major work done to keep it well into the 21st century, like Max and Maya and every other app, agreed. Regarding the number, you know we users are in the dark, everybody avoids answering that but from what I heard (and may be wrong) the development team never has been big, it is a different thing all the support, QA, documentation, etc... that is the bulk of the company. Regarding the point I was trying to make, are you saying the cost of development of Softimage was costlier than the PR, advertising, support, documentation, etc..? Its very sad LucEric... very very sad. It's terribly sad indeed. Many of us worked many years 6 and 7 days a week on this thing. We poured our hearts into it. If you agree that there is still tons of work needed to do - millions of RD, imho, plus a lot of risks of failure - to make that app modern in 5 years, then it doesn't matter if a few people can keep that app going in the short term, it's the longer term that's the problem. One shouldn't be asking marketing and the resellers sell a 3500$ app, plus 850$-1100$ a year in sub, if they don't have a 5 year plan and don't plan to have the investment to back it up. You cannot have schools continue to teach this app as if it's an equally safe choice for the future. So you shouldn't be inviting new clients only to have them end up in forum reading about dissatisfaction, lack of development, fear of the future. So Autodesk announced last week that their plans and investments are on Maya and Max. It's terrible news for Softimage, but at least the cards are on the table and people have time to adapt.
Re: Good point well put
The all in one mentality is pervasive at ADSK. Just look at how they took the Mudbox Softimage forums and jammed them into the one-size-fits-all disaster known as The Area. ᐧ On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 12:36 PM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: I agree 100% on one thing, if you are not willing to invest money to maintain the application it is the only honest thing to do. The problem I have is how is it possible there is no will to put the necessary work and money to make it happen? How is it possible someone pays $35M to buy a company and its product line and then bury it while still warm. Furthermore, the economic model that was sung to all of us countless time that has been working for years on other industries like the automotive where the Volkswagen group owns Volkswagen, Audi, Seat, Skoda and others and allows them to develop one engine for all the cars yet compete in the market while offering a distinctive experience (hello Softiamge) is actually very sensible too in this case. I don't need to tell you that many of the tools you are building for one app will end up on the others and a chunk of the cost will be saved. All in all the other thing I don't get is the associated risk, when you own the market is pretty much risk free! is like producing films and owning the distribution channel, it is impossible not to make money if you play it half well. The most amazing thing is that Softimage was a competitor during the last 5 years we would have been in a extremely different situation competing one to one with Maya for the top end of the professional market instead of being buried. Sorry to be a pest but this is an extreme situation for many. thanks a lot though for your the dialog without corporate BS, I really appreciate that Luc-Eric Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 15:08, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 8:55 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: Nobody said its perfect, I am fully aware Softimage needs some truly major work done to keep it well into the 21st century, like Max and Maya and every other app, agreed. Regarding the number, you know we users are in the dark, everybody avoids answering that but from what I heard (and may be wrong) the development team never has been big, it is a different thing all the support, QA, documentation, etc... that is the bulk of the company. Regarding the point I was trying to make, are you saying the cost of development of Softimage was costlier than the PR, advertising, support, documentation, etc..? Its very sad LucEric... very very sad. It's terribly sad indeed. Many of us worked many years 6 and 7 days a week on this thing. We poured our hearts into it. If you agree that there is still tons of work needed to do - millions of RD, imho, plus a lot of risks of failure - to make that app modern in 5 years, then it doesn't matter if a few people can keep that app going in the short term, it's the longer term that's the problem. One shouldn't be asking marketing and the resellers sell a 3500$ app, plus 850$-1100$ a year in sub, if they don't have a 5 year plan and don't plan to have the investment to back it up. You cannot have schools continue to teach this app as if it's an equally safe choice for the future. So you shouldn't be inviting new clients only to have them end up in forum reading about dissatisfaction, lack of development, fear of the future. So Autodesk announced last week that their plans and investments are on Maya and Max. It's terrible news for Softimage, but at least the cards are on the table and people have time to adapt.
Re: Good point well put
Apart that most of all of the missing features mentionned (see below) have been requested for Maya, basically since they were introduced in XSI.. .. the efforts to reproduce *some* aspects of SI have either been faint reproductions (for the larger part) or (to be fair) sometimes reaching more or less the same level. Animation Mixer ; (not bad) RenderLayers (Passes) ; (iirgh) NodeEditor (not bad.. while still necessary to go back forth with (quite bad) Hypershade connection editor ), Nex, (TweakTool) (not bad.. with many selection issues) Shape System ; (iirgh) Attribute Transfer (Gator) ; (iirgh) OperatorStack ; (iirgh) Proxies (Referencing); (iirgh) ( many others..) Perhaps BiFrost will be part of the least bad reproductions.. or perhaps not.. who knows.. ..but fact remains that ... it only keeps trying to reproduce.. most of all.. the most crucial aspects are things that can't really be bullet-pointed, to which you can *clearly feel* when you consistently/repeatedly go hey! that worked! done! (doing it in SI after struggling to solve those very things in other apps) this while despite Maya having definite advantages on some levels (object count/poly count), .. **crunching trough regular everyday tasks is more or less /1.5 to 2x times faster /** all due to those nebulous software subtleties. And *that* is what is *highly unlikely* to change until Maya would basically be re-invented (moving away from it's 1995 code base.) So even *if* a few (at best) of the following points were somehow implemented, there would still be the (most important) je ne sait quoi missing, which allows for *rapid production*, and the VERY HIGH likelihood of having elaborate setups/processes work, without loads of custom stuff, great resource/time intensive interventions or splintering headaches. __ Jeremie Passerin - Gator - ICE : Especially to create custom deformers - Proper weights painting tools - Weights Editor ! - The Operator Stack, reorder, delete operator... - Being able to change modeling whith Envelope, Shapes already applied to the mesh - Blend shape workflow __ Emilio Hernandez 1. A new and coherent interface. 2. The same selection object component behavior. 3. That if you select an item it will stay selected until you deselected. 4. An M tool 5. The same shape system of Softimage. 6. Stacks 7. Ability to have the same Softimage keyboard shortcuts layout. 8. Hide all the connections in the Channels/Layers Editor 9. Redisgn the graph editor behavior. 10. Ability to lock the propoerties of the object you are editing no matter what other object you selected. 11. Active mouse over window 12. Render region 13. Pass phylosofphy as the one in Softimage 14. If you make a connection, ability to write expressions there instead of build an intrincated node laberynth. 15. Object to have only one node, not the object and shape node. 16. Ability to use any object to envelope 17. Implicit objects 18. Operators Ability to change the same parameters in a multi selection objects Independency of child parameters from parent objects. LIke for example if you want to hide the parent and leave the child visible, and not spread all of this throught the hierarchy. __ Adam Sale; -Proper branch node tree selection -Massive update to painting tools for weighting -Updated shape management system -Renderpasses that arent flaky -Tweak tool workflow -Render regions -Update to uvs -Nla op stack -ICE ___ Eric Turman *Workgroups (Maya's plugin manager..ugh what a mess) *GATOR (I've had Maya users nearly go into a seizure of disbelief when I've shown them GATOR in the past) *Stacks: Model, Shape, Animate, Secondary shape etc (so useful to be able to partition operations for freezing etc.) *non-destructive adaption of modeling work through shapes weights etc. (when a client wans a changeman this has been a lifesaver in Soft all these years) *non-layer approach to dealing with hierarchical inheritance of visibility etc (hide parent in Maya, the whole branch get hidden...wait, whut? dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb...yes I know layers...not clean when temporarily hiding things while working) *Delta referencing with internal and external aspects (the ability to spit aspects of internal and external referencing is amazingly powerful) *Constraint Comp (Maya, why you hide your offset after initial constraint?!?!) *Neutral pose (I know that I'm going to get some flak for this one and that buffer nulls...erm locators...work but Neutral pose when used correctly is wonderful) *Proxy Parameters (so nice for the animators not to have to hunt and peck like on Maya rigs) *Pass partition (instead of the ridiculous render layers) I know that I'm missing a bunch, but that's a quick fire off the top of my head. I am not looking forward to using it again. I spent 5 years trying to
Re: Re[2]: Good point well put
On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 12:05 PM, Eugen Sares sof...@mail.sprit.org wrote: One cardinal mistake back then was keeping so many aspects of the development in house. Once a critical mass was reached, the burden became too big. An open SDK concept would have been needed - platform like. Unlocking as many doors as possible, let 3rd parties do the extensions. A question, Luc-Eric (no sarcasm, just interest!): Why was there even any abstraction layer (the SDK) introduced in the first place? Why not allow 3rd parties to hook in 'first-class'? In my personal opinion, we just didn't have the right people, and nobody was thinking in those terms. The SDK was tacked-on and limited in Softimage|3D as well (devkit, then saaphire, then GDK). We added scripting in the design of XSI only in 1998, after Maya was released. Even if we remove Maya from the picture, in 1997 it was already clear that 3dsmax had a winner with its SDK-oriented design and third party support. We had the right people when it came to keying, animation mixing, rendering, general workflows. In the team's defense, though, developing Twister and then killing that off made everyone waste a lot of time they might have used for other things. There seemed to have been the magical belief that using the microsoft APIs would give some extensibility for free.
Re[4]: Good point well put
Thanks for the insight! Unlucky... well, those were other days... For scripting, I somewhat understand the 'tacking-on', but why layering the C++ API, too (after it became clear that it was needed), since XSI was C++ anyway? As we know, it's still unfinished until this day in many areas. Was this for reasons of scaling down complexity for 3rd parties, or to protect intellectual property (not having to disclose too many parts of the source code)? -- Originalnachricht -- Von: Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com An: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Gesendet: 08.03.2014 19:25:36 Betreff: Re: Re[2]: Good point well put On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 12:05 PM, Eugen Sares sof...@mail.sprit.org wrote: One cardinal mistake back then was keeping so many aspects of the development in house. Once a critical mass was reached, the burden became too big. An open SDK concept would have been needed - platform like. Unlocking as many doors as possible, let 3rd parties do the extensions. A question, Luc-Eric (no sarcasm, just interest!): Why was there even any abstraction layer (the SDK) introduced in the first place? Why not allow 3rd parties to hook in 'first-class'? In my personal opinion, we just didn't have the right people, and nobody was thinking in those terms. The SDK was tacked-on and limited in Softimage|3D as well (devkit, then saaphire, then GDK). We added scripting in the design of XSI only in 1998, after Maya was released. Even if we remove Maya from the picture, in 1997 it was already clear that 3dsmax had a winner with its SDK-oriented design and third party support. We had the right people when it came to keying, animation mixing, rendering, general workflows. In the team's defense, though, developing Twister and then killing that off made everyone waste a lot of time they might have used for other things. There seemed to have been the magical belief that using the microsoft APIs would give some extensibility for free. --- Diese E-Mail ist frei von Viren und Malware, denn der avast! Antivirus Schutz ist aktiv. http://www.avast.com
Re: Good point well put
Clearly there were some design flaws and whatever happened that caused the huge delay (microsoft COM ??? or the whole Twister issue) you arrived late to the party with a half baked cake. You should be super proud of what you achieved, amongst others XSI has been pivotal in the construction of companies like The Mill 3D department and the torrent of awards on the 10 year period has been a clear testimony of both talent and toolset, I can tell you that. thanks for the insight. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Mar 2014, at 18:25, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 12:05 PM, Eugen Sares sof...@mail.sprit.org wrote: One cardinal mistake back then was keeping so many aspects of the development in house. Once a critical mass was reached, the burden became too big. An open SDK concept would have been needed - platform like. Unlocking as many doors as possible, let 3rd parties do the extensions. A question, Luc-Eric (no sarcasm, just interest!): Why was there even any abstraction layer (the SDK) introduced in the first place? Why not allow 3rd parties to hook in 'first-class'? In my personal opinion, we just didn't have the right people, and nobody was thinking in those terms. The SDK was tacked-on and limited in Softimage|3D as well (devkit, then saaphire, then GDK). We added scripting in the design of XSI only in 1998, after Maya was released. Even if we remove Maya from the picture, in 1997 it was already clear that 3dsmax had a winner with its SDK-oriented design and third party support. We had the right people when it came to keying, animation mixing, rendering, general workflows. In the team's defense, though, developing Twister and then killing that off made everyone waste a lot of time they might have used for other things. There seemed to have been the magical belief that using the microsoft APIs would give some extensibility for free.
