Guy Rabiller <mailto:[email protected]>
Monday, September 10, 2012 9:34 PM
> 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.
That, I think, will never happen, because AD did not buy Softimage for
XSI but for the patents Softimage had over its technologies. Reselling
Softimage would mean reselling the patents as well, and that is
precisely what they want to avoid. Buying as much patents as possible
is the only way to really shadow competitors.
> Don't wait until someone comes up with a high performance DCC-like
suite made with ../..
That's why I keep on saying the 'true' solution will have to come up
from the Open Source community. This is the only valid path. But it
will take some time.
Cheers,
Guy.
--
guy rabiller | raa.tel | radfac founder/ceo
tel: 0977 195 006 | mob: 0675 183 146 | fax: 0972 288 293
Halim Negadi <mailto:[email protected]>
Monday, September 10, 2012 8:56 PM
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.
Stefan Andersson <mailto:[email protected]>
Monday, September 10, 2012 4:15 PM
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
--
stefan andersson - digital janitor - http://sanders3d.wordpress.com
Graham Bell <mailto:[email protected]>
Monday, September 10, 2012 3:55 PM
"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/h0t6exxtj
I'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
Leoung O'Young <mailto:[email protected]>
Monday, September 10, 2012 3:34 PM
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:
