Hi Christopher,
cice blog post. I can't entirely agree on the allround software inevitably being shut down sooner or later because it's hard to maintain part though.
I too feel like it's worth investing into proprietary software to minimize the risk of exposure to third party technology, but there are so many people
that do not write code, hence their own tools, either because they can't for time or monetary reasons, or simply because they don't know how to.
These are mainly the single user shows and small shops. They deserve a cost-effective solution to their production problems too, and that is usually catered for by big, all-in-one CG applications like Max, Maya, Softimage, C4D. Yes, there are special-purpose applications like Marvelous Designer, RealFlow, SpeedTree,etc, but they cover rarely-encountered niche cases, compared to the vast amount of other stuff that is produced everywhere every day. Imagine you'd have to use one app for modeling, another for animation, another for simulation, one for hair & fur, etc..on a daily basis and concurrently. And each one had a different interface and required a different way of thinking.
If you were working in a department and working with one of those, that would be a different thing, but constantly jumping between those apps, and having to transfer data between them, would soon drive you crazy. It's for this reason everybody I have ever met in this industry was searching for the one tool to rule them all. Even Lightwave, that consists of only two parts (modeler and layout), can drive you nuts.
Modern software is modular, I think it's well possible to maintain and improve it, even change the paradigms it's built on, it just needs a bit of forward thinking and the will to do it. I remember stories about whole parts of Soft having been rewritten when the old one turned out to be insufficiently designed (the animation mixer in particular), I'm not sure in how far this is really true, or if it was only marketing blurb.
What I can imagine is a Fabric-based host application which others can interface with to form a consistent application as demand arises,
the hard part will be to draw the line between Fabric Engine, this base application (done by somebody else?), and the actual modules, yet done by others, and agreeing on a standard that those developers are willing to agree on and don't feel hindered by, as it's frequently the case with complex APIs that are lacking the one but crucial feature X for which you have to wait a full year until the next release to have it implemented after kindly asking the developers several times. I'm not saying it's not doable, just not entirely easy. I'm not saying small standalone apps are not desirable either, I just think they make more sense for special purposes rather than for standard stuff, unless the standard stuff they do is done in a true, outstandingly nice new way.
Your 2 cents will worth a few bitcoins quickly Christopher. I'm in.On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 9:34 PM, Christopher Crouzet <[email protected]> wrote:
My 2 cents on this: http://christophercrouzet.com/blog/post/2014/03/07/Softimage-Has-Been-Killed%2C-the-Future-of-CG-Softwares-Is-Now-in-TD-s-Hands
I'm looking forward to the future, how about you?--
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Stefan Kubicek
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keyvis digital imagery
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A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at [email protected]
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Stefan Kubicek
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keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at [email protected]
-- This email and its attachments are --
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