Welcome! Yes, this is a pretty enthusiastic group, and we look forward to the fruit of your efforts.
The tone of this list is sometimes pretty light, but in general you have a lot of very smart, talented folks many who have decades of production experience with SoftImage and other tools. Having visited other 3D forums in the past, you don't get a lot of nonsense here. Feel free to pick people's brains, I learn something new constantly on this list just by passively reading it. Eric On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 6:14 AM, Chun-Pong Yu <[email protected]>wrote: > Luc-Eric's comments are a good segway for me to introduce some members of > the new team and what they're working on. We've been lurking on the list > so far, and have been amazed by the passion of most in the community for > Softimage and will support it as best as we can. Now that Luc-Eric, > Guillaume LaForge, Guillaume Laferriere, etc. have moved to the Maya team, > we'll be participating more actively especially when there're technical > issues reported. > > We're all based in Singapore btw (so the comments on durians were apt) > where the cost of labour isn't that much different from Montreal and > certainly much higher (3x?) than in China. And there're more people in the > team than there were in Montreal two years ago. Moreover, folks like JF, > Francis, David, Manny, Graham, etc. are still around (the first 3 are in > fact still developing enhancements and bug fixes for customers). Hence > Autodesk is still investing in the Softimage since guess what? Soft still > makes money for the company. > > It's true that the team doesn't know the code as well as Luc-Eric and team > but that's not to say that we're newbies to software development, 3D > graphics, simulations, rendering, etc. either. Sure, we don't have the > 10-15 year histories with Soft that the "old" team had, but we're happy to > say that they're still around (even many from the acquisition who > eventually moved to other Autodesk teams) and still helping out when > there's a need. But that should go down as we become more familiar with > the code. > > So here goes: > > Hsiao Ming Chia - Core, Ref Models. From NVIDIA, worked on games > middleware and runtime engines for 8 yrs. > Yury Khmel - Core, ICE, FaceRobot. 12+ years, last 5 as an architect in > games development. > John Tensuan - Rendering, Data Management. Last in Ubisoft doing > rendering and engine systems. > Ho Chung Nguyen - ICE, Simulation. Wrote core libraries for math, physics > simulation, rendering while at LucasArts. > Joany Yang - UI, SDK. Mainly engaged in UI projects using COM, MFC, C++, > etc while at another team at Autodesk. > > Me? I just manage the team so am the "overhead" :-) > > If you're ever in Singapore, we'd love to meet you. > > Regards, > Chun Pong > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto: > [email protected]] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau > Sent: Wednesday, 18 April, 2012 10:38 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Softimage development > > On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 3:26 AM, Mirko Jankovic < > [email protected]> wrote: > > It is a bit bad that even after so many concerns displayed from > > customer about Softimage and AD's plans for it, that not a single > > official line of word was put out. > > Is it so hard to let people know what is going on and where does it > > all lead? > > Actually, you're getting a lot of official information right here in this > thread. > > None of us moving to the new Maya FX Montreal team, which is led by me, > are really doing it to quit Softimage, it's just a natural evolution of > thing. As written previously, this was planned and we've been hiring and > training a whole lot of new group of great people to work on Softimage. > > So what does that mean? Well first it means that Autodesk is committed to > continuing the development of Softimage - otherwise we wouldn't be spending > so much effort building a new team. We worked a lot on this! > I interviewed every single one of these guys - and some we rejected. > The new guys have backgrounds in game production, real time shader, > physics, etc. They're bring new ideas and skills. > > And it also means that Autodesk is renewing its effort on the Maya FX's > toolset, which is not super interesting to you guys obviously, but is that > a thing that makes sense. > > It's hard to leave Softimage, but it's also hard to not get excited with > the new projects. We're going to Digital Domain and ILM this week with > Duncan. New experiences! If we can just stop hitting the S key to orbit > the camera, everything will be fine. > -- Freelance 3D and VFX animator
