I think they can’t kill Max the same way they are in the process of killing Soft, but moving forward, especially for film, games, TV/commercials, they will be pushing Maya above all else, at least that's how I am interpreting the writing on the wall.
I already know Maya, and Max for that matter, and I know full well Maya is not an out of the box replacement for Softimage as it sits today, hopefully that will change in time and I’m all for that. But facing reality, I’m not going to spend effort today, customizing Maya shortcuts and shelves for a great modeling and UV workflow only to have to suffer with a 14+ year old and sub-par Hypershade environment, not to mention inferior rigging/animation tools, no good default UI/Hotkey considerations, and an all new ICE clone that will remain a work in progress for a year or more to come at best. In the future, when more has changed, yeah no problem I’ll put in that effort, but right now? The mental strain involved with downgrading and re-learning combined is too much to accept. What does make sense to me right now, is to keep using Softimage, and put that sort of above described effort into learning Houdini, if not just for the procedural modeling capabilities and ICE capability as a full package and not just as a plug-in. I suspect when Maya finally updates it’s 14+ year old Hypershade interface and refines it’s UI a bit, that it wouldn’t take me more than a dedicated month to dive back in, customize my workspace and be back on track in using it fulltime but it isn’t time for that right now, it’s not there yet, so why bother? I’m all for a one Maya to rule them all mentality, but it’s no where near ready, when it is, I’ll happily join in. In the meantime, the Houdini guys are also listening to the input of experienced Softimage users and have created a special section on their forum for us, and I’m taking full advantage. I’ve got a lot of time to kill and Softimage isn’t dead just yet, on the contrary, it works so good that's why you rarely saw me posting before these announcements, because it just works and a quick search of the listproc and manual answers my rare questions without ever having to actually ask and the rest is intuitive. Also funny, I was aprox 5 months away from upgrading one of my Softimage seats (probably just a new full purchase seat rather than a complicated upgrade), well that ain’t happening. That money will go to Houdini and then later, when it’s the right time, towards an upgraded Maya license (if all goes well). I have my fingers crossed but my confidence is low and I’m not going to hold my breathe. On a side note, I understand why Autodesk primarily caters to the needs of large studios, with custom pipe-lines above all else. However, if they put just a little effort and a better/separate pricing scheme into play for freelance and smaller studios, they would be leaving a lot less money on the table. There is already precedence in the software space for separate pricing schemes for the same software with the same features just different prices depending on the size of the company. They are not taking advantage of this, which looks like tossing money out the window to me, but what do I know. How many smaller users can keep up to date with $1,000 to $2,000+ per year in maintenance/upgrade fees for each seat paying time and time again for nearly an identical toolset to what they already own only with a few new features and bug fixes? Skip too many upgrades and you have to buy all the tools you already own over again. It doesn’t need to be that way.
