Re: A more graceful retirement - my counter offer

[phil harbath]

I'll keep it super short.  the troubling thing here is that Softimage does 
many things that are just plain superior to Maya (Rigging, Weighting, Mixer, 
Shape Manager,  Ice, athough that one is a big "if" as from what I 
understand,  Bifrost is supposed to be the next big thing (but how long to 
get there?)).  Now Autodesk wants us to trash those pluses because they 
either believe Maya is far superior in those areas, or just don't care 
because deep down it is about money (it makes more sense financially to 
manage one hugely popular program).
But here's the deal, unless Autodesk is willing to improve those areas 
needed for Softimage users to feel they are making a lateral move, we are 
just screwed.  Let's pretend that they do improve those areas how long would 
that take (and that is a he big fat "if"), 5 years, more.  This more than 
any reason is why I think Mr Punchatz's proposal makes sense,  it is going 
to take time for Autodesk to make Maya, the best of both worlds program. 
But frankly,  I really don't think Autodesk is interested in bring anything 
other than ICE to Maya,  and you know what,  it probably will be superior 
one day (when?),  but those other areas will still be inferior,  and really 
why should you care, you have the users(Maya), there's little incentive to 
appease this small user base.