Powerful stuff Perry. If there's one thing this debacle has proved,
it's that this community is really is as strong and passionate as I've
always perceived it to be.
On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 4:13 PM, Perry Harovas <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear Mr. Bass
My name is Perry Harovas.
You don't know me, but I am a 10 year Softimage user.
10 years is actually a small amount of time when compared to my
peers who having been using Softimage for up to 20 years.
I am writing to you because I cannot be silent on this.
I have been in this business for 25 years. I started out using
Lightwave in Video Toaster V1 on an Amiga computer.
I then moved on to Alias PowerAnimator and took the new abilities
of that software (over Lightwave) into
feature films out of a small studio in (of all places) Newark, NJ.
I was an Alpha tester of Maya, before it was even announced publicly.
I put up with no docs, breaking code, a renderer that was written
only months earlier and barely worked, changing workflows, etc.
I learned everything I could about the software, and eventually
co-authored the first book about Maya, "Mastering Maya Complete 2".
I was the loudest, most exuberant fan of Maya on the face of the
planet. I couldn't get enough. I worked myself into bouts of
sleeplessness
in an effort to know more about this seemingly magical application
that would allow me to create anything I could dream of.
Except, in reality, the word 'dream' is appropriate, because as I
took on larger projects and tried to do more work with it, I found
one of the largest obstacles
with Maya was (and is) that it needs a support team behind it to
code tools into either working together, or sometimes, working at all.
A good example of this is when I was directing two 30 minute CG
children's shows with me and my small crew of 4 other people.
We had 6 months to create 60 minutes of animation, including
building the characters, rigging them, animating them, texturing,
lighting, etc.
An insane task given the budget, crew size and amount of
animation. But we plunged head on into doing it.
Then, after many, many minutes of animation had been done, we
found that our characters were coming
into our scenes with no animation except their mouth lip sync.
Where had all the animation we did gone?
Our one technical guy on staff looked into it and happened to find
that the animation curves were still there,
but had detached themselves from the character rig (his skeleton,
if you will).
Fortunately, he was able to code up a way to automatically
reconnect the animation curves to the rig, saving months of work.
We then realized we were not going to be the only people to have
this issue. We spoke with Support, and they acknowledged this was
a known issue.
We even offered to give them our script to help others who were
having similar issues. They refused to let us help.
We then started experiencing render problems, referencing issues,
and a list of other things
so long that I can't remember it now.
Needless to say, it was frustrating, it prevented the quality from
being consistent, and endangered our whole company.
We soldiered on, finishing the two shows on schedule, barely, and
vowing to NEVER use Maya again.
We eventually decided on Softimage|XSI. Sure it was rough
re-learning a new application, but it was rewarding in that it
worked, didn't fail us,
and didn't need a dedicated team to produce work that was better
than what we could produce in Maya. This was astonishing to me!
Thoughts of "Why did we not do this earlier?" ran through my head.
The power in one application seemed to be nearly limitless.
Limitless, that is, until I started Alpha testing Moondust, which
eventually became ICE.
This was an area I knew nothing about, coding, and suddenly I was
doing things that I could not believe.
I created a way to have fur just appear on the silhouette of my
cartoon dog, in literally 20 minutes of "fiddling around" with ICE.
Even with the lack of documentation at that point, with the alpha,
and then beta, status of the software, it was the most powerful
tool I had ever used.
Bar none. No doubt, No hyperbole.
I could not believe what I could now do, just ME, not a team of
people. Imagine what a team of people could do?
Well, there is no need to imagine, we have many examples to point
to from just the last few years:
-'The Lego Movie'
-The Mill's '98% Human' ad
-The Embassy's 'Science Project' commercial
-'Iron Man'
-'Pacific Rim'
-'Now You See Me'
-Subaru 'Car Parts' ad
These are just off the top of my head.
This software, the one your company just retired (also known as
EOL, or End Of Life) is Softimage.
You remember Softimage, don't you? You bought it from Avid in
2008. I wouldn't blame you for not remembering,
it never showed up on your home page, it was barely promoted, and
it was something that you had to hunt for in Siggraph demos.
Softimage, the software that gave rise to dinosaurs in 'Jurassic
Park' (in a previous, less powerful, incarnation of the software).
Softimage, the software that gave the world 'Terminator 2'',
'Death Becomes Her', 'Babe, 'Casper', 'Jumanji', 'Mars Attacks'
and just too many others to list.
Softimage, the software that invented Inverse Kinematics.
Softimage, the software that Animal Logic used to create the
number one movie in America at the time Autodesk made this
announcement.
Of course, I could go on. But I am sure you get the point.
This is the software that your company just killed.
That really is the only word for it, KILLED.
Killed, because it is now seen by many as obsolete even though, as
you hopefully know, it is the newest of the 3 DCC apps your
company owns and far from obsolete.
It is now perceived that way because of this action.
I have been in visual effects and animation production my entire
career, and a few years ago I also started teaching.
In 2007, I moved myself and my family from the East Coast of the
USA to Illinois.
While there, I helped start a new college in Chicago called
'Flashpoint, The Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences',
which was renamed to 'Tribeca | Flashpoint Academy' when Robert De
Niro's Tribeca,
purchased 50% of the school. I was the Chair of the Visual Effects
and Animation Department.
I wrote the entire curriculum in my department. The software world
was 100% open to me, I could use anything I felt would be appropriate.
I chose to use Softimage, not Maya, as the main application to
teach the students.
I took on what I called an agnostic approach to teaching 3D
software, in that students would learn the best tool for the job,
and hopefully not be as software biased as my generation was/is.
The reason for this, as I told them, was because you never know when
your software will just vanish, the company will kill it, or go
out of business.
Wow, I wish I wasn't right about that one...
Knowing how to use many applications, how to be aware of what was
going on behind the
curtain of the software, was (and is) far more important and
helped prevent being unable to work due to not
having skills in one application, especially if that application
was discontinued.
Well, now because of the actions that your company took on March
4, 2014, that has happened, and I am in exactly that position.
I can continue to use Softimage for a couple of years, but as you
no doubt understand,
the stigma associated with using EOL Software (never mind teaching
it) is too great to bear.
The driver support would quickly become a problem, the renderer
support would be an major issue, and before too long,
it will become impossible to use Softimage in production.
So your company has now given me, all of us Softimage users, a
choice. We can use 3DS Max or we can use Maya.
Well, I chose not to learn 3DS Max as it relied too heavily on
plugins, and Maya, well, you now know how that played itself out
for me...
I will make a choice, but it will be to not use Autodesk products
anymore.
I am choosing to learn an entirely new 3D DCC application, and I
can assure you it will not be an Autodesk product.
I could easily go back to using Maya, especially with my history
with the software. I choose not to.
See? A choice.
Even if I thought Maya was a great base of code on which to build
the future DCC application that will rule the world (and I
certainly do not),
I wouldn't use Maya based upon principal alone. Maya is not a
great base to build upon, because as you are well aware, it is
more than 17 years old and
wasn't written when multi-core processors were even a dream in the
labs of chip makers. It is really like tearing down the 5 story
building, in favor of making
a 10 story building on the foundation of a 17 year old house that
has been patched together with one new idea after another. The
foundation is showing its age,
the wood is starting to rot, and yet the plan is to build on top
of this base. That is what I believe you are doing with your
company's plans to build upon Maya.
A company that does this to their loyal customers, in my opinion,
is a company that does not have the best interests of those
customers at heart.
A company that does, what your company did in less than 6 years
(killing a product) is a company that should not have made the
purchase of
that product in the first place.
Was it not obvious, when Autodesk evaluated the purchase of
Softimage, that having three DCC apps was not a good financial
decision?
Was it not obvious that this fairly small market segment could not
sustain development on these three apps?
If it wasn't obvious, then perhaps there is more wrong with
Autodesk than anyone realized.
Unless, there was another reason to buy Softimage, but that would
be pure speculation...
So, what now?
I now teach at another well respected institution, and continue to
work in the industry very actively.
Will I still teach Maya? Yes. It is part of the curriculum, and
will help these students get jobs in the industry.
However, I will be teaching another product as well, again, to
prevent what has happened to me and my peers from happening
to these students that are just starting out on this career path.
Mr. Bass, I have seen interviews with you. I believe you are a
kind person. You certainly seem to be in love with this business.
I hate the decisions that your company made, that you approved,
but I don't personally hold any hatred for you.
I just wanted you to know that there are many, many artists out
there that just want to continue to use the application that we
chose to use.
We had a choice, and Softimage was what we chose to use. Taking
away that option, your company has now asked us to chose software
that we could have chosen before, and did not. This isn't a
choice, this is a hijacking.
I cannot speak for others, but, as you may now know, the overall
sentiment of Softimage users is to chose NOT to use Autodesk
products anymore.
I can only believe this wasn't what Autodesk, or you, wanted. We
are a very passionate bunch, who now are passionately opposed to
using Autodesk
products. Again, I can't speak for all of us, but the forums on
your competitions' websites are filled with users looking to switch.
The most asked question on these forums seems to be something
like: "How do I do this thing I used to do in Softimage, in your app?"
That should tell you something Mr Bass. The users of Softimage
just want to keep using Softimage, its workflow, its amazing
tools, and not be burdened by the archaic workflow
of your other two DCC apps. They want to do amazing work. They
want to be able to feed their families and to keep their employees.
They are so hungry for this, they are looking for this workflow in
the welcoming arms of your competitors.
The amount of money this may end up costing Autodesk in the not
too distant future will most likely dwarf the amount of money it
would have taken to just keep Softimage going.
I didn't go to business school, but even I can see this isn't a
great way to run a business.
So, after this long email (that I actually edited believe it or
not). where do I stand?
Well, I want to ask you to reconsider your company's decision.
This cannot be an easy matter, and I am sure I don't know all the
legal and financial problems this may create.
But in a naive, passionate, and yes, tearful, way, I want to ask you:
Please bring back Softimage.
Please keep this software we all love going.
Please just keep it alive in the most basic way.
Keep fixing bugs, keep updating the support for graphics drivers,
keep updating the SDK to allow the large
community of developers to continue to enhance it.
Please do this for us, the people who put their faith, their
financial dependence, in the software
that your company owns.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Perry Harovas
