Let's just say it was a lucky coincidence because it was also needed for another project/client.
The tool SDK is something that is mainly interesting to 3rd party devs and larger studios because it has a higher barrier to entry (C++ plugin) and although we had talked about it for a long time it never quite made the cut because of this. As a software developer I will tell you that almost anything is possible if you are willing to commit the time & money. (and I'm sure it is the same in the production world) However, the architecture makes a big difference so with right architecture feature X might be 10 or 100 times easier to do in one product vs another. So architecture makes a big difference and does decide to a large extend how the software will evolve. Multi-platform support is a good example. When XSI was developed Softimage was owned by Microsoft so the dev team made a decision to build directly on the Windows APIs. Therefore porting to a new platform would obviously incur a higher cost for Softimage. Maya on the other hand was designed to be multi-platform so the team invested in isolating the UI layer. This required more initial architecture investment but made it easier to port the product. I think both companies made the right call given their circumstances. At Alias we seriously considered taking a Mainwin-like approach (there were a few companies offering cross-platform windows API support at the time) since it was clear that Microsoft was going to be the dominant computing platform and supporting multiple platforms had an ongoing development cost. So having a higher cost means you need to have a stronger business case before you invest the extra effort in porting the product to a new platform. -- Brent -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Eugen Sares Sent: 29 January 2013 12:05 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: softimage and it's binary format Yeah, let's hear that story! =} One basic question, for the spirit: would you say that "anything is possible", or are there things (on the known wishlist) that probably will never get fixed, simply because it would mean too many changes of the "core architecture"? Like no surgery on the open heart? Or is there still enough room for any kind of improvement (counting out starting "from scratch")? The difference between being unwilling or unable... Looking at 3ds max, you get the impression that this is the reason for it's more or less stalled development. Hopeless kludge beyond repair... Am 29.01.2013 11:13, schrieb Brent McPherson: > There is no central priority list from which we pull projects. As devs we > obviously have our own ideas what should be done but there are many other > business interests and opinions that go into deciding what gets done each > release. You just hope that as a team you are striking the right overall > balance for each release. > > I know in the in the past we visited a number of you guys with our $100 test > where we give you 100 virtual dollars to spend on features and you tell us > what you would spend it on. It is fun because depending on who is in the room > you can get wildly different opinions and the final result usually ends up > looking quite different than what it was at the beginning of the test. I'm > sure those of you who have participated can confirm that it is a harder > exercise than you might have initially expected. ;-) > > In the case of the tool SDK I think you would be surprised to know the > history of that project and how it got developed... ;-) > -- > Brent > > > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Eugen Sares > Sent: 29 January 2013 8:45 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: softimage and it's binary format > > Am 29.01.2013 08:57, schrieb jo benayoun: > .. and these projects often die often because argument like this, > which IMHO is a false dichotomy around core development vs the very > nebulous "more SDK access". It ignores the fact that core development > is done in a fraction of the time and benefit everyone plus the long > term viability of the product, and don't necessarily exclude SDK > support. > > > It sounds to me to be always the same arguments at the end (front-end tools > vs SDK extensibility). > We are already capable of writing a custom exporter but suffer from > inaccessible stuff. Why would I like the team > to provide me an ascii file format while opening more the SDK would allow me > to write my own + bring many other benefits in different areas other than IE? > Following this idea, why did you guys exposed the ToolSDK and not just > provided user-friendly tools once a year (...)? > Considering the time it takes also to get updates or maintenance done on some > parts of the software, I wouldn't like depending on the softimage > team to see what I am looking for implemented. > --jon > > > Front-end-tools and SDK access shouldn't be mutually exclusive by all means. > The dev team is under time/budget restrictions, which is the main reason an > SDK exists. Otherwise we would would just need to snap our fingers and the > next needed tool would pop up with the next release. > What remains nebulous, for the usual stupid NDA reasons (investment fraud), > is the internal priority list. If we knew what to expect, there wouldn't be > double-tracking, and everybody would win. But sadly, this seems not to be > realistic with a closed source application. The usual dilemma.
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