you'll take my Softimage from me when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers!
lets face it, if the AD higher ups can't see that houdini is trousering them
in the vfx dept, and that their best hope for a procedural approach to vfx,
is to hit the ground running with ICE, then they deserve to be buried by the
competition
bring it on!
a
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Andy Nicholas
Sent: 25 July 2013 11:24
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Future of Naiad
> and you'd go to the board asking for the management who's pulling that
hat
> trick off to be replaced? :)
Haha! Brilliant :)
Reading Marc Stevens' response, I think there's an issue that Autodesk are
sticking their heads in the sand about. Software like Softimage, Maya, and
Max,
can't be casually assigned to cater to specific industries. It's like
putting a
square peg in a round hole. The software was never designed like that.
Artists
use tools based on personal preference and what they need at the time. It's
got
nothing to do with what industry AD marketing decide to assign it to.
IMHO that's why there's such a huge amount of confusion in the user base as
to
what's going on. That's why when Maya gets an awesome new tool for VFX work,
all
the Max and Soft users get pissed off. The reasons a company or individual
uses
a particular piece of software are endlessly complex but Autodesk are trying
to
force it.
Instead of dealing with the complex reality, it would seem they think they
can
just use a reductionist approach. I can think of lots of reasons why they're
doing this, but it doesn't make it the right thing to do. For them or us.
On 25 July 2013 at 10:29 Graham Bell <[email protected]> wrote:
Overnight, Frank Delise (used to head up Max, but now heads our Games
Solutions group, fyi, Marc Stevens heads up Film/TV), posted this to the
Max
underground site
Hi all, I wanted to add some color to some of the concerns here.
Yes, it was unfortunate that some of our max customer demos got canceled
last
minute. Siggraph was a bit different for us this year vs previous years.
As a
corp company, unfortunately we can't disclose the roadmap of our products
anytime we want like the good old days. Not by choice, but by revenue
accounting laws. Since our product ship dates are not aligned with
Siggraph,
this causes us to have limited news to share about our products.
This is why we have our own event, the Unfold event. This allows us to
share
the roadmap that is aligned with ship dates.
Then why did Maya show up with some cool stuff this year at Siggraph user
event and not max? It just so happens that the technology preview for Maya
was
ready for Siggraph, whereas the 3ds max work that we are doing is gearing
up
for a update soon and we will be discussing the details of that in the
near
future.The timing wasn't right for Siggraph. Again not always in our
control
on what trade show they line up to.
On the general direction of Maya vs Max, nothing has changed. Maya was
designed for entertainment customers whom need a platform to extend. Max
was
designed for the democratization of content creation for all markets. So
Maya
may be better for deep pipeline integration, Where Max is good for out of
the
box artist toolset for a broader markets.
It also means that the Maya team focuses all its energy on entertainment
features and the Max team divides its energy on a variation of markets,
from
design viz, VFX, Games, etc.. So naturally, if you are a VFX artist only,
you
may see more progress on the Maya front than you do on Max depending on
the
releases.
When I took over the product for the 2014 release, I made some significant
changes. I refocused a lot the energy on stability and performance. I also
put
a significant focus on "small annoying things". This resulted in some
significant performance and stability improvements and cleaned up some
workflows.
Did you get fluids :), No, not yet.. But it was the right thing to do for
Max's continued growth. Meanwhile, we still managed to get in some
impressive
features.
As a Maya user, you would have noticed the same thing for the past couple
of
years where Maya was pretty dry in the new feature department but had
significant scalability and API enhancements. Sometime it takes entire
teams
to make big shifts like that. So let the Maya team enjoy some new fun
features
:).
As for Max, we are hard at work on features that have been raised up from
our
customers. Some will be for entertainment, games and some will be for
design
viz.
For the Niad\Bifrost concern, Bifrost is being developed as an engine with
Maya as the first customer. We aren't disclosing many details at the
moment,
but it's being designed to be agnostic to any one specific tool.
I hope that clarifies a few things for everyone.
Frank DeLise -
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Rob Chapman
Sent: 25 July 2013 10:01
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Future of Naiad
this is a forum with Autodesk etiquette..? very broadly speaking.. :)
you
and me as well as countless others were on here long before it was AD who
owned the server where this mailing list lived, and hopefully many will
still
be on here when it changes hands yet again. its been utter lackluster so
far
from its current owners including the potential Naiad / bifrost debacle
therefore fingers crossed from me this earthquake happens sooner rather
than
later!
On 25 July 2013 10:35, Jordi Bares
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Given we are in an Autodesk forum and given the basic etiquette I will
only
say we are in a major tectonic shift and imho Autodesk need to show some
goods
yesterday.
Jordi Bares
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
On 25 Jul 2013, at 08:48, Eric Thivierge
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hah, if you can call it a presence at all...
On Jul 24, 2013 9:20 PM, "Raffaele Fragapane"
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I'm not quite sure I can fault them for not having their own floor space.
They were present at some partners', but Siggraph having shifted crowd and
attitude a fair bit I'm not sure they would have got a ton of mileage out
of
their own, not to mention their big news came out months ago with the 2014
releases, and if they have nothing for this quarter they can't basically
show
anything else.
I can see why a big user event and floor presence scattered at other
stands
would have been a better use of money for them.
On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 2:09 PM, Eric Thivierge
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Speculating from Siggraph not having attended the Autodesk user event
knowing
they would have nothing of interest to show me, it's apparent they will be
discontinuing all DCCs and focusing their efforts selling their new
product
Autodesk Blender.
Frankly i find the absence of Autodesk at the Siggraph floor either
arrogant
or just plain stupid.
Very apparent from all the talks this year that no one is really taking
Maya
seriously for effects work aside from some bits of naiad. SideFx is taking
charge in a big way and have some big stuff coming not including Houdini
Engine.
Sincerely,
Your embedded Siggraph journalist
On Jul 24, 2013 8:03 PM, "Greg Punchatz"
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Ha! Good point on the flame .. I still maintain the emperor has no
clothes;)
I am a complete believer in atomic software. I think it would allow for
greater innovation in each key area. Zbrush proved that to me.
I am looking for someone to step up to the plate In the areas of rigging
and
animation. I'm hoping the guys over at fabric engine might do something
for us
in that regard. I know much higher frame rates are possible at this point
if
all a program had to do was to spend it cycles on those two areas, it is
absolutely ridiculous that people have to play blast there animations to
view
to see it at full frame rate IMO. There is no app that focuses squarely on
that subject right now. There are countless modeling, painting programs.
For myself and and Janimation I want us to move away from the single beast
program mentality. I plan to keep soft the glue that keeps it all together
for
now and the foreseeable near future..
Right now I'm really enjoying learning Mari, I bought that for home
because I
really don't see any other competition in that area. Because it squarely
focused on 3-D paint, it got so many things right. Granted it took till
2.0
before I thought it was good enough to jump on board. Now that I'm there I
could not be happier.
Clairese looks very interesting to me, it almost seems too good to be
true.
Arnold keeps me happy when I can use it, as we have a limited license pool
for
the time being.
I love Nuke as well, but I don't know it well enough for my taste yet.
Modo has me interested as well, curious how the foundry leverages its
render
engine. I tried it once and found clunky, but did not give it enough of a
chance.
I also want us to move to an Alembic pipeline ASAP ... That's the next big
thing that I need to get pushed thru at the office.
I'm just a bit grumpy on where we sit, I just wish things would've turned
out
differently. C'est la vie.
Sent from someone using his thumbs , Siri, and a healthy dose of dyslexia
...
On Jul 24, 2013, at 8:50 PM, Raffaele Fragapane
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
So they have a scarcely maintained aging PoS they are still managing to
sell
for gazillions as a high prestige product, and have insofar managed to
distract the audience from the fact the emperor is freeballing it, and
you'd
go to the board asking for the management who's pulling that hat trick off
to
be replaced? :)
They do feel increasingly dysfunctional in their communication and user
base
management, but so does nearly any large enough media oriented large house
these days. Only the Foundry seems to be closer in touch with the top
tiers of
the VFX industry.
It's very possible AD is simply more Adobe than Alias/Soft, and we just
can't
(nor should we be supposed to) be served by a company with that kind of
mentality.
All that said, Foundry is doing better than ok and they seem to care a lot
for
the VFX business at many levels, unlike AD as a larger entity (which you
have
to remember is NOT Soft or Alias), and pipelines are going atomic with OSS
glue, so the days of Maya/Soft/MAX not being required across the whole
pipe
are upon us already.
When you think about it already entire chunks of the pipe in the top end
reflect that, and a lot of that is trickling down to the middle, and will
soon
enough trickle further down again.
With Katana + PRMan + Alembic Surfacing and lighting is likely the next
bit
breaking off the AD continent, much like modelling did already with ZB +
Topogun.
If Fabric manages to wedge in with splice and slowly abstract things away
from
Maya and convert it from host to client of platform, that's another big
chunk
going.
There is less every day in an A to B scenario I open Soft or Maya for
really.
Whether that'll be viable for the small user, given the small user needs
the
whole stretch of software for himself and doesn't get to divide the
expense
across departments only needing parts of it like the bigger pipes do,
well,
that remains to be seen. The monopoly feels less and less like it's going
to
stay every day though.
If you're a small unit or work in a small shop, maybe it's time to stop
thinking like they want you to, that you NEED the all in one, and start
figuring out how you can re-engineer a staged process into your needs and
workflow.
I'm succeeding pretty well at home these days, better than I ever expected
to.
Even as an individual I'm finding the big-arse DCC apps are more and more
expensive OGL and graph eval hosts than anything else.
This was simply impossible five years ago, We could barely do it at the
300+
staff project scale, now... not so much.
On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 11:17 AM, Greg Punchatz
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Frankly M&E AD needs new TOP down leadership....
It's so beyond broken that no matter how hard the people below them try to
show them the light they refuse to look.
They still think Flame is still a valid product.. Single threaded piece
of
poo IMO. I am so surprised they can still sell the product at all,
especially
for the outrageous prices. There are just a lot of people who have not
realized yet that the emperor has no clothes.
And Maya is the future of 3d ... A code base nearing or past its 15 year
mark... Really?
Sorry but I am just not a happy AD customer.
Sent from my iPhone
On Jul 24, 2013, at 7:19 PM, Steven Caron
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
they, you, need a better PR department.
it is simple, don't give us reason to speculate so wildly.
*written with my thumbs
On Jul 24, 2013, at 5:00 PM, Graham Bell
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I'm saying nothing more, though if anyone wants to pvt me, then feel free.
--
Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it
and
let them flee like the dogs they are!
--
Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it
and
let them flee like the dogs they are!
-----
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