"It'll be fine for a few years..."
That's my point exactly, Steve. We're not talking in terms of weeks or
months, but in years. There's a lot of life in Softimage still, and
based on the events of the last few years, that life is not contingent
solely upon AD's actions. Softimage is an extensible tool that will
allow it to be viable for, as you said, a few more years. I don't think
that's denial though. If anything it's an acknowledgment.
I totally agree with what Sylvain said as well. Move things
intelligently and not all at once. With the life left in Softimage, we
should all have plenty of time to figure out our transitions.
-Tim
On 2/27/2014 10:26 PM, Steve Parish wrote:
I see that everyone is at different stages at the moment,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model#Stages
Refusing to accept the fact is still stage 1! Its pretty obvious that
one has to adapt or die. Who knows any compositors who will only work
in Shake? It'll be fine for a few years but as soon as Arnold isnt
being released for Soft (for example) you'll have to make a decision
as to whether you want to stay in older versions or use the new
technologies.
The advice that Sylvain gave in another thread was pretty wise, change
one department at a time. Rendering and lighting is a good start
particularly if its an Arnold pipeline.
I'm obviously crushed, but the writing has been on the wall for a long
time. What's sad is that this kind of feels like the end of the road
for the generalist. What could be achieved with a small crack team of
XSI generalists now literally requires twice as many specialists with
TD's supporting the scripts to make it all work. In terms of switching
to non-Autodesk software, looking around the city at the available
jobs, thats not really an option.
I know I'm going to be the guy that moans how "easy this would be in
Soft..."
Good luck!
Steve P
On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 10:35 PM, Francisco Criado
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
clap clap clap clap! best words so far by now...
the day i'll see a better 3d software than softimage, i'll do the
move, meanwhile and after 15 years it gave me all the tools that i
need to make my work and have fun while i do it, with the price
that i'm almost out of the local market that look for 3d mayans.
Hoping to see again in the job boards studios looking for
softimage artists...
those are my 2 cents.
F.
On Thursday, February 27, 2014, Tim Crowson
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I still see no reason to jump ship at all. Unless they Soft
devs working on Maya introduce not only ICE to Maya, but some
amazing improvement that only exists in Maya, maybe. But I'll
wager that ICE is not the only reason people have built
pipelines around Softimage. People seem to think that if you
axe the product now, it ceases to function. "We're going to
stop making hammers now, so whatever hammers you bought from
us will no longer work."
But when AD purchased XSI, they purchased a mature toolset
that has stood the test of time and has gone largely untouched
since the acquisition! When someone tells me that AD will
'cease upgrades' for Softimage, I think to myself 'haven't
they been doing that for some time now?' The core toolset for
which we (Magnetic) use Softimage is intact and reliable as
ever. We don't rely on ICE to the degree some of you do, but
we do rely on the following:
- the modeling toolset
- passes/partitions/overrides
- referenced models
- operator stacks
- animation toolset
- API and customizability
- raw performance and stability
- the flippin component tweak tool
- etc...
And if I understand correctly (I wasn't into XSI at the time
of the acquisition), these are feature sets that AD didn't
contribute, and have barely touched. So in my view, they've
already been 'not upgrading' Softimage for years.
More tragically though, the ceasing of development on
Softimage would trigger a slow death of 3rd party development
for it, especially if people get all gloomy and doomy and jump
ship. All the 3rd party effort that has been poured into
Softimage tools over the last few years has been amazing (!),
and has done far more to enhance my productivity than anything
AD ever did (apart from, admittedly, improving the underlying
platform for ICE-based solutions). Redshift comes out of
nowhere like a champ, revolutionzing our renders. Eric Mootz,
year after year, provides bridges for people get the power of
ICE without needing the underlying technical know-how (as do
many others!). Jeremie Passerin and Miquel Campos give us
rigging tools. Eric and Chris give us a jump on characters
with Species. Ben and Helge deliver the most robust,
feature-friendly alembic implementation available to the
public. rray.de/xsi <http://rray.de/xsi> is rife with
contributions that are functional improvements to the system
and provide real solutions to real problems. If Softimage
ceases to be officially developed/supported , these 3rd party
powerhouses will eventually stop as well. And that's when
we'll see the death of Softimage. And that day will suck. So
I'm more than happy to prolong this as much as possible by
supporting our 3rd party friends (and I wish I could buy more
of their licenses myself) who have been doing more to
strengthen and improve Softimage than AD has in years, because
I think that's what will keep the product alive as a viable
solution for VFX.
*Tim Crowson
*/Lead CG Artist/
*Magnetic Dreams, Inc.
*2525 Lebanon Pike, Bldg C, Suite 101, Nashville, TN 37214
*Ph* 615.885.6801 <tel:615.885.6801> | *Fax* 615.889.4768
<tel:615.889.4768> | www.magneticdreams.com
<http://www.magneticdreams.com>
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