I'm angry as every Softimage user but maybe I can help to tamper your anger down. My english is not so good to express my intentions in depth but maybe it comes through somehow.
CG and 3D animation in general is not different from other businesses. It's all about perception. If a company produces clothes, they will not succeed by using the newest machines to make the cloth. In fact they can produce on old machines and child labour to produce a Levi's jeans. The market will see it as high quality because of the name and the output they will create with any machinery they use. Clients usually have no clue about 3D-Animation software in depth'and they really don't care most of the times. I had conversations with clients and they asked about the software I use. I told them I was using XSI (that was a few years ago when we used that term). They didn't had any idea what 'that XSI software' was all about and they seemed sceptical. Then I told them, it's 'Softimage'. They instantly changed their minds, recogniced the name and they were happy. :) Of course that will not work forever. What I really want to say is, that words do the damage to us. Words like 'EOL'. It's a killer! Its like telling someone he has bad breath. We were able to produce top notch 3D-animation four weeks ago. Now someone says a software is EOL and that should be the reason no one can produce anything with it? Lots of small studios, solo freelancers and even medium sized companys producing their animations with software from several years ago. It's a misconception, that we desperatly *need* every new fancy feature and the newest version of a software. Surely it's different for the big companies, but they have their own inhouse tools anyway. In fact even having those inhouse tools like Vodoo (and that seems to be something that AD will not remotly be able to develop in the next 10 years), it doesn't prevent them from going bankrupt. Of course they're other reasons for the VFX business situation in the US than that, but using newest software didn't help them. Somehow I think we are more concerned about a software than the actual work. Do you need Bifröst do be in the business? Do you really need an edge-loop-fancy-magnet function to do 3D-animation? There are so many workarounds, especially in Softimage so that we are not have to rely on a specific software or version. At least not for the next five years and thats a long time. sven From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of David Gallagher Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 8:11 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Digital Golem : Brillant and beautiful Our pipeline is Softimage->Arnold->Nuke and despite all the turmoil I can tell you I have no intention whatsoever to change that in the near future. It works, it works well, and nothing else right now can touch it. So Autodesk can shove their innovation right back up their collective arse and choke on it -- as far as Im concerned theyve just killed a member of my family. Exactly right. Trying to keep my anger tamped down. Cheers, Jean-Louis On 19 Mar 2014, at 04:39, Tenshi Sama <[email protected]> wrote: Nice! All in Softimage? On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 8:18 PM, Francisco Criado <[email protected]> wrote: Excelent work, so nice! On Tuesday, March 18, 2014, olivier jeannel <[email protected]> wrote: https://vimeo.com/groups/ice/videos/89426397 Kudos to Digital Golem !
