I think what Mario meant to say was not to discourage anyone or to say that no matter what we'll do, it's useless. It's all a matter how it will be affecting us. Small shops and one-man-shows like me will be not very affected at all, actually. I can say for sure, I will continue using softimage after 2016 and much longer. Someone here talked about using Softimage 7.01 in actual production. If I take this to a level of version-upgrade from 2011 to 2015 ,I think about the new features that came since then: ICE-Modeling, Lagoa, CrowdFX, Polygonizer and many improvements and bugfixes. For me it's a huge step forward. Upgraading from 2011 to 2015 is a nice thing for me. And even some of you will surely not taking THIS as an advantage: Softimage2015 will come with mentalray3.12 and that means GPU accellerated GI! I will have access to the new MILA-shaders and many more things in mental ray since version 2011.
What makes me and us so sad, is the hard cut of the emotional connection to Softimage. But that connection is not dropped. It will remain and many of us will continue to use Softimage. May it in actual production or for keeping legacy stuff. Sven From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Emilio Hernandez Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2014 9:16 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Keep up the noise... (but don't be a dick) Well Mario, without any disrespect to your decision. Move on. We are holding here and we will. You have already made up your mind. So many of we. And it is really getting to start annoying that each time we are trying to put something. A guy with "Move on" pop in. I think that by at this time and specially with Autodesk's yesterday announcment that we can use Softimage perpetually. Many have alraeady made up their minds. So move on man! But please stop jumping in and say it is "useless". Cheers and I wish you the best in your decisions. ------------------------------------------------------- Emilio Hernández VFX & 3D animation. 2014-03-08 14:09 GMT-06:00 Mario Reitbauer <[email protected]>: Mirko you are actually right. I guess it hits me harder then a lot of others beeing a TD (and Animator). But I know allready that I need to do the transtion within the next years and that I need to start yesterday. Just want to share my sight of view that its time to move on, even if they keep SI up. Nontheless, the longer SI is out there the easier it makes us the transition I guess. 2014-03-08 21:01 GMT+01:00 Mirko Jankovic <[email protected]>: Mario, I guess that most affected are specialized guys like you, like my friend Alessio.. TDs and similar with skills that are pretty focused to Softimage alone. Let's face it, to learn to animate, light, render... in Maya coming from Softimage, doesn't take much. Rigging is a bit different set of shoes. Also small shops, generalist pretty much anyone that is kinda self sustained is still not that affected as client doesn't ask what tool is used but just interested in final result. Also most of "small" guys are not even using like half of SI's power so even couple years without upgrades, unless some big bugs are there, is not a problem. But bigger shops will move from SI, with that also shortage of jobs for Softimage specialists. Once 3rd party developers start developing that is beginning of the real end. Truth is 3rd party guys put Softimage on steroids and developed for SI more than AD did and would do in the next 5 years at least. So it is easier to understand pessimism coming from couple of your posts. But there is still a lot of time even for you and similar cases to adapt, if needed well learn new tools and toys. There are a lot of shops that will still stay with Softimage for years to come so it is not like you will right away be left on dry, right?? On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 8:54 PM, Mario Reitbauer <[email protected]> wrote: I would love to do that but as mentioned in another post. Now as we have seen what happend to SI (and might happen again if they keep it up) which company is going to stick to SI ? I mean were are we guys gonna find jobs with SI ? Don't you think the harm is allready done ? 2014-03-08 20:30 GMT+01:00 Eric Turman <[email protected]>: Nicely put Greg, I have to add that I'm very weary of the "its just a tool" excuse. Sticks and rocks put together are tools too but they can not achieve the same quality in the brief period that a laser CNC machine can...and they are both "just tools." Softimage is an amazing a force multiplier that allows much smaller teams to accomplish tasks well beyond much larger teams using other tools. It is a very myopic move for Autodesk to stifle innovation. -=Eric Turman On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 12:20 PM, Greg Punchatz <[email protected]> wrote: Keep up the noise people!! Change has already happened.... keep up the pressure folks. Write to your congressman..Ermm, I mean this guy... [email protected] Please PLEASE... don't name call... but for god's sake let him know why this is a BIG MISTAKE for his company and yours! It's worse for them than it is for us, for them to kill soft..it simply makes no short or long term sense. They are doing nothing but alienating users, not just on the Softimage side---as I have not met a single Maya or Max user that actually likes the company called Autodesk. Let him know that there is a market for Soft..and the ONLY reason they are not making a killing on it is that they won't invest and market it...that's it...otherwise it would have been gaining and growing the user-base like mad. It also gives AD a safety net... Maya is busting at the seams... they are now having to make programs that run outside of Maya to do a tenth of what ICE does...Biofrost... Bio-hazard is more like it from the word on the street. If it falls apart, and AD falls on its face, as it has many times with attempted "rewrite" (Toxic any one?..remember that was supposed to turn into the 3d app too..lol, how quickly people forget ADs blunders. How many millions were wasted on that dev...vs what it costs to buy and maintain soft???). Soft is the only recently rewritten core...major overhaul was done for ice.. major) What Autodesk needs is a Walt Disney, a John Lassiter or dare I say a Willy Wonka? It needs a visionary leader that has been in the trenches of all aspects of 3d and compositing. Who understands the needs of the big and small shops alike... One who knows the future is not in a code base which is more than 24 years old. One that understands that if the customer is happy, the stock holders will be happy. The person should not be driven by board meetings, but rather exciting the entire 3d user base instead of alienating them. One who understands that what makes a great development team is great and transparent interaction with its beta testers.. One who is not afraid to let one product outshine the rest on its own merits...(like the Whiskey Tree elysium demo that was axed at siggraph last year since it outshone the Disney technology AD licensed.) One that understands there should be a production team at AD using their products to produce short films, so they have a freaking clue what the real world needs...this is how both softimage and alias used to do it...before they were bought by companies that simply don't understand how creativity works... One that the user aspires to be like......because that person "makes the cool stuff" AD you are making creative software...AD needs to foster a creative culture...period. IF AD thinks you have, I can assure you that you have not... your results speak for themselves. Don't kill Soft, prop it up and keep it viable...and MARKET IT! It can already do so much your other two 3d apps can't... Do the same with the rest... keep them alive..until AD delivers a new modern app that we will all be happy to move to. -- -=T=-
