Re: ...Luc-Eric's point that just bringing Maya up to Soft's level isn't exactly pushing the envelope" - Well you have to first prove you can handle the 50 lb. bicep curl before you can move up to the 60's.
While it's true a lot of shops are running Maya, they certainly aren't doing it without a lot of added cost from workarounds, custom survival tools, dedicated programmers, and overall hair-pulling. I worked for over a year with a fully loaded shop of Mayans and every day was a day of frustration, cussing, and chaos. That experience (I was there as a programmer) gave me plenty of time to contemplate a better 3D package. Maya is nothing but cobbled and hacked crap. Maya was initially popular over SI starting in 1998 only because it was much cheaper (1/10 of the SI price at the time) not because it was superior. Is Maya's target SI or Houdini? That's irrelevant to its present task... can it catch up to, or will it ever surpass either one? Not sure anymore if Softimage is an ever increasing target, but Houdini definitely is. Will AD pour thousands of hours and invest serious money into Maya to make all that happen? It's very clear AD is unpredictable. This is what happens when you try to convince everyone it's all ok and we're maintaining three products because we love you and we want you to have freedom of choice. Well fluffy marketing aside, AD can't effectively maintain three products that basically do the same thing. It was all poor strategy from the beginning. Daniel VFXM
