ok glad you are still
there Luc-Eric!...
just took the time to delve donw the thread... dam it must be hard for
you!!
i wish you the best!
sly
Friday, August
31, 2012 3:16 PM It's terribly sad to see a
few of my colleagues go this week. Stephen
had worked for many years
at Softimage an SDK documentation writer and
had ended up in support
following cuts at Avid. Manny continues to
handle Softimage support
and Chris continues to take an active role in
the community. Many
of us oldies are also around to help. The new
Softimage dev team was
not affected by the cuts and they continue to
be hard at work on the
next release.
thanks,
Luc-Eric
Friday, August
31, 2012 2:23 PM Sad news indeed!
Switching
to alternative software is easier said than done.
There are
alternatives that adequately (if not better) address
specific areas
of development.
Areas such as Modeling, FX, Rendering and now
Lighting with the
release of Katana could be handled quite well.
There
is however one remaining hole that has yet to be filled by
another
developer, and that's character setup and animation.
Running
proprietary software comes with its own complications and
requires a
great deal of resources that are not available to many
studios.
So
at the end of the day the choices are rather limited and another
competitor
comes along with a commercial package that can be used to
replace
the big 3 in the area of character setup and animation I
believe
Autodesk will keep their customers.
Friday, August
31, 2012 1:26 PM
Well, we could always organise a
ProjectX like party at AD building...
That would be ...something.
Sorry can't be more constructive...
Le 31/08/2012 18:40, Stefan Andersson a écrit :
Friday, August
31, 2012 12:40 PM +10000 to what you said. On
Friday, August 31, 2012, Guy Rabiller wrote: -- stefan
andersson - digital janitor - http://sanders3d.wordpress.com
Friday, August
31, 2012 12:31 PM
When Autodesk bought Softimage, I said it was the end of XSI.
Nobody wanted to believe me at that time, peoples were reassured
with
wonderfull statements saying on the contrary "with the dev and financial
power of Autodesk" glorious days are ahead..
Well.. I hope now these peoples realize XSI *is* indead dead.
Autodesk bought Softimage for technologies and patents to be reused
in
other products, nothing more.
I think it's now time for the 3d industry to boycott Autodesk. But
who
has really the balls to do that ?
Lately, we saw more and more open source libraries developped and
released by major companies. I think it's a sign.
There is a non-said/secret wish more and more obvious for the rise
of an
alternative solution, an open source and free solution, a weapon against
beeing held hostage by companies who don't give a f..k about their
clients, only their wallet.
There are some very interresting initiatives, openexr, ptex,
opensubdiv,
the applessed renderer, the fabric engine, etc.. among a lot of others.
I believe in this approach: companies, freelancers, working on
'blocks'
of features that could be assembled together to produce the weapon in
question.
It's a non-sense now to start a company to create a new 'ultimate'
3d
software. What makes sense is if each company, individual, creates a
'block' of something, depending on their level of expertise. Then those
blocks can be assembled together either by a community, a company, an
individual. The result would suits each one of them.
And these weapons must be open source and free.
These would be the only weapon powerfull enough against softwares
and
jobs killer companies like Autodesk.
So rather than to complain against Autodesk, who has actualy the
guts to
do something about it ?
- Stop using Autodesk products ? (I did)
- Work on alternative solutions ? (I do)
- Contribute to existing projects ? (I'm trying)
- Create your on 'block' ? (I'm trying)
No ? Then stop complaining, you have no power to change the
situation
with words only. Companies like Autodesk do not care about your words.
At all.
Cheers,
Guy.
--
guy rabiller | raa.tel | radfac founder/ceo
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