Watched the whole thing... taking emotions out of it... for the moment. This is what I could gather about ADs plans..
Max is dead too... at least for MandE.... focus on the "one" was repeated many times. To be honest, that's what they should do.. focus on one. I think they chose the wrong "one" from a tech standpoint... but made the right choice based freaking out the least amount of people. Maya Modeling -improvements look like a big step in the right direction, love the view port speed... alembic gpu caches.. etc... Bifrost- does indeed look like a tool that could be useful and easy for me to use ... but it does not look to be flexible in any way, or even have a glimmer of the promise ICE 1.0 had. Here is the interesting thing, I seem to be their target audience. I want artist centric tools, as I just am not a programmer and I just noodle around with ICE. I use compounds and plugins from folks like Mootz. I can do basic stuff..but I could never roll my own fluid sim. I don't really script, and that is something that kept me from going maya a long time ago... You had to script everything as it was incomplete out of the box. Yet even as an "artist first" kinda guy, I saw ICE as a development platform for tech people to build the tools that I need faster than you could before. So I supported its development over an "artistically friendly workflow " as a base for eventually making the ICE based plug ins I use today. That's what I don't see in the glimpse into ADs future we were given today. A better environment for the tool makers to thrive as well as the artist. However while I do want artist centric tools, I don't need this. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VQxu0jhRbqU/TcSf-REO-BI/AAAAAAAAAA0/gC4JkR2v-6A/s1600/paperclip.jpg Project H needs to keep picture of this guy tacked to the wall, to prevent the Dumbifcation of Maya vs the Humanization of Maya. BIG DIFFERENCE. If I don't win the lotto this week and I buy controlling shares in ME or softimage out rightly, I suppose I will hard look at my options on the table and It would be silly to not consider using Maya as part of our future. We have to make our characters move, and I have yet to see a another toolset other than XSI and Maya that were up to the task. Everything else could be done elsewhere, and we most likely will take a forked approach, just to not put all our eggs in one basket ever again. Only time will tell. Am I mad as hell...yes, but I refuse to let my anger get in the way of me or my companies success. I am here to make cool stuff... I wish I could keep doing it in soft forever but it does not look like its in the cards. We will use soft for a while, but cant sit still forever. To quote the great American poet "*You've got to roll with the punches to get to what's real*. " -David Lee Roth Greg
