Hi all, I’d like to chime in if I may.
I run a very small company in Brussels called Digital Golem that’s been around for almost 8 years, and our pipeline is essentially Softimage->Arnold->Nuke, with a bit of ZBrush thrown in for good measure. One of the biggest reasons we are able to be competitive in this tough market is thanks to Softimage being a fully rounded and mature package offering a complete toolset for our needs. I started using SI3D 20 years ago, (working mostly in London, as well as being a Softimage certified trainer) and the same artist-friendly philosophy that was the driving force behind the development of SI3D was equally apparent in the next-gen XSI, and then some. I have yet to see another 3D package offer so much of a toolset in such an efficient way. I can honestly say that I would *never* have ventured into setting up a company (with all the blood, sweat & tears involved) were it not for Softimage. So the issue I’m confronted with now is that as a small company I have absolutely no other viable option that will not involve large sums of cash to be spent in re-tooling and re-pipelining, or a serious drop in efficiency, and quality, while we re-train. Also I cannot afford to employ an R&D team just to make things work. It is an extremely demoralising situation. Now, no one here is under the illusion that Softimage hasn’t got its share of problems, and as Luc-Eric explained, there are issues right at the core of Softimage that will be close to impossible to resolve and will become showstoppers in future development. So ultimately we *will* need something new, but right now nothing comes close to replacing Softimage, and if something does turn up in 2 years time, we would need another 12-24 months for the transition. SO, all this to say that I strongly support Greg’s suggestion to give Softimage another 4 years of life, and to add my voice to the many that are hoping to sway Autodesk into finding a better solution. Cheers, Jean-Louis Jean-Louis Billard Digital Golem BE: +32 (0) 484 263 563 UK: +44 (0) 7973 660 119 [email protected] http://www.digitalgolem.com/ 53 Rue Gustave Huberti 1030 Brussels On 11 Mar 2014, at 03:49, Greg Punchatz <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello Autodesk, > > My name is Greg Punchatz , Senior Creative Director at Janimation. I have a > proposal, or call it a counter offer on the proper way to retire Softimage. > > First off, if you don't know who I am, I feel like I have been part of the > Softimage team since the beginning of Sumatra testing. I spent countless > hours creating content on my own time and letting Softimage use my personal > work as the sample scenes that make up a good deal of the Softimage library. > Because of this relationship I have many, many very dear friends from all > eras of Softimage. From the very top to the bottom of Softimage, I was always > welcomed as one of the family. > Our company, Janimation, was instrumental in helping promote XSI from its > earliest days from being its first customer demo at the XSI launch party. To > its final days giving Avid and Autodesk permission to use our work for > promoting Softimage launches. We did this because we truly believe it is the > best software on the planet for what we do.... and that's commercial work. > Softimage is lighter on its feet out of the box for the kind of work the post > production world is doing today in commercials. I don't know a single CG > supervisor that knows each package equally that would rather take a > commercial through a single package other than XSI. > > That being said, I believe Autodesk needs to be working on a completely new > 3d software package. I would hope that is the plan. I also understand that if > you are working towards moving us all to one package, Softimage by market > share alone is the logical one to first retire as it creates the least > income. > > So if it's time has truly come (even though I believe it is the most complete > out-of-the-box 3-D solution you provide currently) I think there is a more > elegant... let's say, a kinder gentler way for Softimage to be put into > retirement. You can continue to benefit from our subscription support while > we have enough time to move our existing pipeline to somthing else. > > Please consider keepinng the current small development team you already have > for FOUR more years. > > With a single focus on these three things: opening up the SDK, > > working with 3rd party folk, > > and fixing long outstanding low-level requests. > > It's nothing but a win-win situation, you still get our money, and we get to > evalute Maya along the way. It's going to take a lot more than two years for > a lot of us to be able to make a tranistion completely. > > I'm not sure if Autodesk realizes this, but while the team in Singapore was > not making giant leaps technologically, they were on their way to leaving > Softimage in a much better state. They need a bit more time than you are > giving them. > > At the end of the four years, we can at least consider staying in the > Autodesk family because they listened to the users....gave us pleanty of > heads up of its EOL, and did thier darndest to make sure the last version of > softimage is the best version ever...XSI deserves that....we deserve that ... > and quite frankly I deserve that. > > Sincerely > > Greg Punchatz > > Senior Creative Director at Janimation ... >
