Stefan, there's a lot of
unemployed Soft guys down here in Paris, everybody has to move to London
to be able to use a skillset that is over 10 years worth for most of
them.
Most of Soft companies over here switched
( painfully for some of them ) to Maya because AD made Soft literally
disappear from their catalog.
Financial people usually don't have a clue and don't really care of
how advanced a software is compared to another.
What do you
think they tend to decide when it comes to licensing and
support renewal for an over 2k/seat software solution that is not even
mentioned by the res-sellers because they are heavily advised not to ?
Over here we don't have much of a choice anymore, we
have to go and find a job somewhere else or get used to workaround maya
all day long.
Some of us can do it because it pays the bills,
some others cannot. In any case, passion tends to vanish.
I've personally been around for way over a decade
now and I can tell there's always been some competition and
technological choice, except from the past 4 years.
We had
Explore vs Soft|3D, Explore vs Power Animator, Soft vs Maya, Max vs
Maya, XSI vs Maya, Maya&Max vs XSI.. and then the 2008 deal went
down.
The mainstream CG world got paralyzed since then and reached a
uniformity I still cannot imagine happening in the 2010's.
Even
Maya people are not happy with this situation, more and more of them
start thinking that ever since AD bought their main competitor, big DCCs
have reached a huge stagnation that benefits to no one, not even AD.
Please AD, bring Soft back to a decent and fair
exposure, at least closer to the one it deserves or sell it back if
you're embarrassed.
I'm sure there's a lot of interested and
rich people who would buy it, you'll make money out of your 2008 deal
and you'll make anger go down.
Everybody knows ICE integration in Maya would have
been done already if it was as easy as you guys thought when you closed
the deal with Avid.
Just get inspired by the concept, help
yourself with the code, hook it up to your weapon and get ours back to
light. Just get the party started again, I'm sure you'll feel unexpected
benefits.
Give back the choice of interaction model to people.
This is more the center of the debate than the actual technological
value.
Both packages have their strengths and weaknesses but
please let people choose, a lot of them are artists, not only
technicians.
Don't wait until someone comes up with a high
performance DCC-like suite made with Fabric Engine or whatever, because a
this point, more people than you expect will jump on it and the
downhill might be steep.
Maya might end up just as a keyframing tool that allows a producer
to line up 50 animators on the spot without any training costs. All the
TDs that have been building it's worth for years deserves better.
I don't know, it used to be
something those marketing/pr people stay up at night and come up with
those nifty slogans.
I can just say that Softimage
would probably replace 80% of the so called "pipeline tools" that are
created to work around the software. Just put any Maya artist infront of
a vanilla install of Maya and they will scream... :)
ICE would probably wipe out 90% of the in-house scripts that are
created. And instead they would have a better modal/nodal system to work
with.
But.... the main problem these days is
probably not the technology, it's finding the people who can do it. Not a
lot of Softimage artists that are highlevel TD's around. Most of them
are on this list, and they already have a job :)
regards
stefan andersson
"I don't want Softimage to
be a good companion to Maya&3dsmax, I want Softimage to kick their
ass and make all users leave their software and use Softimage instead!!"
This
is a perfectly valid point, however playing a neutral card for a moment
and to just throw something out there....how do we do that?
There
are plenty of Maya/Max based studios out there, skilled up, decent
pipeline with some tech & tools, and producing very good and capable
work for years, how would you get them to then rip all that up and go
with Softimage?
I'm not sure it's that easy, expanding the capability
of a pipeline by adding another solution/software is one thing, but a
complete replacement/retool of your core 3D app? That's a whole bigger
thing altogether.
G
From:
[email protected]
[
mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Leoung
O'Young
Sent: 10 September 2012 20:35
To:
[email protected]Subject: Re: In case you missed it..
Stefan,
I totally agreed with you rant....hopefully we are wrong
We are
sitting on the fence about upgrading our licenses, at this point we will
have to take a hard long look.
We have been with Softimage/XSI
since the early '90..
Leoung
On 9/10/2012 3:07 PM, Stefan
Andersson wrote:
Just to throw some more gasoline onto the fire.
So
the value to a 3dsmax/Maya user would be to use Softimage as a particle
plugin. Everything else their respective Software is good at.
I
know you don't agree with them Graham, and it's not you who "wrote/made"
this :) It's been said over and over again on this list, it doesn't
seem that Autodesk cares about Softimage.
And it's for that
reason alone that I don't recommend anyone (anymore) to buy or learn
Softimage. Autodesk representatives on this list is trying to assure us,
but apparently those people have absolutely NO contact with the
Marketing/PR people. It's not that we have been asking for much, but the
way they market Softimage and the way new users and studios look at
Softimage... well... you get my point.
I don't want Softimage to
be a good companion to Maya&3dsmax, I want Softimage to kick their
ass and make all users leave their software and use Softimage instead!!
But that is not in Autodesk view a good thing. And for this reason I
think Autodesk is really bad for Softimage.
Why is attitude and
"kick butt" mentality a bad thing? it's what keeps a lot of us going and
improving our-self. It's what makes us trying to reach for those extra
10% in a production.
Am I pissed at Autodesk? you bet you sweet
ass I am. I spent years behind Softimage and got companies to buy the
software that were Maya based, and really really tried to get it to
work...
With ICE I had big hopes. But... Autodesk had little
incentive to kick Maya/3dsmax out the window. They made Softimage into a
particle plugin.
So what happens now?
I know it's
pointless rant, and it just adds fuel to the fire. But it's difficult to
talk about something positive when it comes to Softimage. It's like
having a Formula One car, but you live in the country side and no one
understands why you have it.
Sorry for the rant everyone.
best
regards
Stefan
On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 4:36 PM, Graham Bell
<
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
Perhaps worth pointing out that this is a Entertainment
Creation 'Suites' magazine and of the course the two main flavours
(Ultimate aside) for the Suites are Maya and Max. And therefore the
three packages shown in the image are all including in the Maya/Max
Suites, hence the reason for trying to show their value to those
respective users.
From:
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
[
mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>]
On Behalf Of Paul Griswold
Sent: 10 September 2012 15:08
To:
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>Subject:
In case you missed it..
This is the kind of stuff that makes me
really dislike Autodesk:
http://yfrog.com/h0t6exxtjI'm glad to
know Softimage is a particle system that has single-step
interoperability with the apps in the "Areas of Excellence" (Max and
Maya).
-Paul
--
stefan andersson -
digital janitor -
http://sanders3d.wordpress.com
Stefan, I totally agreed with you
rant....hopefully
we are wrong
We are sitting on the fence about upgrading our licenses, at this
point we will have to take a hard long look.
We have been with Softimage/XSI since the early '90..
Leoung
On 9/10/2012 3:07 PM, Stefan Andersson wrote:
