For those really wondering Microsoft bought Softimage in 1994 from Daniel Langlois for $130 mil Then Avid bought Softimage in 1998 from Microsoft for $285 mil Finally Autodesk bought Softimage in 2008 from Avid for $35 mil (the 3D part only)
With that in mind. Microsoft primary goals where to bring the 3D platform to the windows world, they had a feeling this 3D thing was gonna be big and they wanted their share of the os platform. Also if they made the move smart by creating new toys such as DS that they could actually make a profit. With that said Microsoft never shipped Softimage XSI, AVID did. Goes to prove the point that Microsoft didn't really care about Softimage more than they cared about my above statement. Finally AVID, as many of you stated earlier in this thread and other thread, didn't have a freaking clue about 3D and what to do with it. They cared much more about DS than they cared about anything else. Trust me I was there when we created a suite in DS that was doing basic 3D. Such an interesting time. Of course that never saw the light of day. (thank to whatever gods out there). Autodesk, I believe, don't really care about which is which. They sell Maya more than any other 3D platform because it's where the money comes the most from and where they get the biggest marketing from (think all the making of out there, how many are max or Softimage compare to Maya?) Autodesk is following the simple marketing pattern of any products. Softimage, Max and Maya are simply smarties, m&m. Just like those product its supply and demands. And I believe Sylvain is absolutely right, as long as they're will be plenty of people spending their hard earned money (just like you Greg) I don't believe it'll ever be a waste. They'll keep supporting it even if it means to have a team of 15 peoples developing on it (@Greg, I didn't know you had that many fingers on your hands). Eventually even if all three products failed in some weird way because Houdini, Modo and Blender took over. Like many of you claimed in other thread it's only 3% of their profits. At this point guys as many of you know all these three apps have their pros and cons. I know for a fact that Maya is probably the only software out there used as a container for software/TD developing solutions for it. At one of the last company I worked for, I have it for a fact that at least 10 major facilities only use Maya as a Container to write their own tools and most often then none the users barely use the tools offered with Maya. They have a better pyQt options for creating meshes or for animating. Max, well I have to say, I have seen in the past 3 years folks that can use a 3D app like I've never seen anyone do. They were FAST and FURIOUS. Why? because of all those plugins built for the app. Were the results better or worst, nah it's all based on the user who creates the asset or the explosion. To be honest though I still hated my time with Max, but I can say with certainty that I understand why it's still so widely used, especially in the game industry. Softimage, oh dear Softimage 2.66 Creative environment. My first time ever on an IRIX system. That purple and gray modeling module that opened up for the first time on my screen. Wow I still remember that day. Really though, in the end Softimage is between Max and Maya. Although Stronger than Maya by miles. Softimage is still closed compare to Houdini or Maya. See how complexed it used to be to share between apps until Autodesk came into the picture. But they offer the best solutions on so many levels (animation, mixer, passes, ICE, arguably polygonal modeling...) and to this day I still always want to find in other apps the simple deform by curve that Softimage has since almost day one. I remember teaching this class of veterans and this young lady spent 15 min trying to explain to me that they had to write a basic form of curve deform in Maya. I couldn't get it because I couldn't believe Maya (oh the powerful and all mighty Maya) didn't have such a feature. She wanted to know if such incredible feature could be written for Softimage. After figuring out what she was talking about and showing her the tool and it's incredible features she still wanted to know if I could write a curve deform tool in Softimage... My point to all this, each app have their strengths and weaknesses. A Uber app, I don't believe in that, you loose too much by doing so, think about the development cycles (I've lived the dev cycle of an app written from ground up for 3D, it's not pretty), think about how many of us will simply walk next door and start using Modo and Houdini or even just plain blender (great app btw, not trying to sound condescending here). It doesn't make sense in any marketing point of view. The why I believe after 5 years we still haven't heard anything concrete about a Uber app. Ok plenty of rumors, but nothing real or solid. What make sense is history, Max was the first 3D app based on a previous 3D app (autocad and 3ds), Maya even if they had bullshit modeling, power animator as their foundation for animation when it first came out and to this day still the worst rendering engine. They came out first and marketing went NUTS giving it away to all the schools that were ready to listen and that were amazed by Bingo (who wasn't at the time). From there you built a user based bigger than anything else around and it cost them big. Look how many times they were floating around between buyers or different owners. But hey they still stand. Not so much because they are so good but rather because anyone that has over 10 years of experience is either a user of a dead software (Softimage creative environment) or Maya. And most companies out there have huge amount of money invested in Maya. Softimage in the other hand as far as history goes, Microsoft used it to bring 3D to the world of windows and held it back to inflate it's value along with a 2D options for editing/conforming. Hence the huge sales tag. When Softimage came out. The only real customer I saw where the Softimage ones that were still holding true to an amazing invention. Unfortunately at that point at least 1/3 of the old softies were gone already to a Maya ruled world. That's marketing for you. @Greg, no you didn't waste your money. As Sylvain stated, you're doing the right thing even though it doesn't feel that way. @the rest of this phenomenal list. Hang in there guys, it's hard I know but no matter what, even if support died tomorrow on Softimage, I have full confidence that most of you will hang to your copies as long as you can and that someone will most likely buy the code and keep it's life. I'd really hate to see the work of incredible talents go to nothingness and I truly believe that Softimage will keep strong. See what NAD is doing, not only are they one of the strongest school around in Canada. They're expending to other cities, continents around the world. And guess what they teach; primarily Softimage. If that doesn't say anything I don't know what else. When I hear that folks like Sylvain buy 5 more seats, I feel good about our future because I know that he's not the only one. Don't give up just yet. There is still fight in all of us obviously. Whether they mentioned us at Siggraph or not, really doesn't matter anyway. Frankly what's Siggraph for anymore. Students and folks like me looking for work? I was at Sig 1998 (my first one) and man has this thing gone down since then and even then folks were saying how it had come down from it's origins back in 1998, it is after all an ACM convention. And as much as Luc-Eric still speaks up, he believe as much as most of us do that Softimage isn't dead just yet. Nor will it really ever die. Daniel Langlois created an amazing world back then and it's up to us to keep it up by using it every day and empowering folks like Thiago and Marcos and others spending so much time and energy creating amazing tools/software/plugins working though Softimage and making it a much more powerful platform everyday. My rant for more than 2 cents. Good night folks. Ludo On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 11:20 PM, Sylvain Lebeau <[email protected]> wrote: > naaaann … > > SoftiMayaMudFBXmax > > *Sylvain Lebeau // SHED** > *V-P/Visual effects supervisor > 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8 > T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM <http://www.shedmtl.com/> < > http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM <http://www.shedmtl.com/>> > > On Wednesday, 31 July, 2013 at 12:06 AM, Emilio Hernandez wrote: > > Softimaya... > > > 2013/7/30 Ahmidou Lyazidi <[email protected]> > > Nah, maya FX! ;) > > ----------------------------------------------- > Ahmidou Lyazidi > Director | TD | CG artist > http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos > http://www.cappuccino-films.com > > > 2013/7/31 Raffaele Fragapane <[email protected]> > > You mean Bifrost? :p > > On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 1:56 PM, Sylvain Lebeau <[email protected]> wrote: > > fun facts folks….i admit…. > > how about what's comming up next?…. > > > > > > -- > > >
