Serious question. Autodesk has gone on at some length about serving their M&E customers better, not dispersing their resources on multiple applications, etc. We have now heard, especially here on the Softimage list, but also in other forums, from several companies and scores of individual users who are unhappy about this, and who feel that their work and their income will suffer as a result. Many of us have had private conversations with people who are unhappy about it, some of whom speak with the weight (if not the official voice) of sizable studios behind them. Many of those studios are mostly built around Maya pipelines, but use Softimage as well.
So far as I can tell, not ONE Autodesk customer, *even those who primarily use Maya and already use Houdini*, believes that they will not be hurt by this. I haven't heard anyone say, "thank God -- at last I can save a fortune by not deploying Softimage." For any shop that does transition from Softimage, the very best-case possible scenario is simply that costs stay about the same -- after all, they will have just as many, if not more seats to provision. But no one seems to even think the best-case scenario is plausible. Every single company that uses Softimage, uses it for some good reason. After all, since it's not the "market leader," there HAS to be some special advantage to using it, otherwise we wouldn't go to the extra trouble of using it, integrating it, and staffing projects for it (and that last one can be a LOT of extra trouble). Whether you believe that reason is workflow efficiency, ICE, flexibility, the in-built compositor, Arnold integration,or the available talent in your area (most likely a combination of the above), if you have been using Softimage, you have generally had to make a conscious choice to do so. That choice is sometimes invisible to outsiders in the case of Soft-only or Soft-centric shops, but it is obvious in the case of large Maya-centric shops that nevertheless adopt Softimage for some projects. So, given all that extra effort and inconvenience (#sarcasm), where are the people who are relieved that it's over? It seems, there aren't any. I would be very interested to read official statements from any Autodesk customers who feel that they will benefit from this decision. Yes, in the long run, many will, since they will transition to Houdini, Modo, or some yet-to-be tool, but I'm talking about anyone who thinks that they will make more money, or have an easier time of the next 2 years. In fact, I would be interested in reading anything from anyone *at Autodesk* explaining how this decision benefits ANY of Autodesk's customers. Does it help Maya-only shops because now they have a more-level playing field? Does it help multi-app shops because now they'll be single-app shops using the best-in-breed? Certainly can't both be true. And if either one of those statements is true, then there will be some Autodesk customers with even more questions than we have now. As far as I can tell, even Maya-only customers do not feel that, say, the move of the dev team to Maya, does anything beyond slightly improve what has been an unacceptable stagnation in Maya development. So if there is anyone reading this far who can make a positive case for killing Softimage, please do so. And if you can't, and you're in a position of any responsibility at an Autodesk customer company that feels it's been negatively impacted in any way, please consider having your company make a calm, rational, public or private statement to Autodesk detailing that negative impact. Thanks Ed Manning
