As a freelancer I only represent a single seat that’s not current nor under
maintenance, but for an initiative like this, where an investment would equal
tangible results – I’d gladly put in my share - as well as doing the rounds of
my clients to suggest they do the same.
That was my motivation for stopping maintenance in the first place – not the
amount of money, but the believe that most of it did not feed back into the
software, and not into tools I really needed.
Without knowing anything of these things, my hunch is that a crowd funded
entity to develop Softimage integrated tools based on Fabric – could have a
more significant impact than what we’ve seen the past few years in regular
updates.
Any tools to keep up with emerging standards – as alembic, EXR 2.0, openVDB,
ptex,openSubdiv... - scene assembly tools, a revamped hair system, instancing
on steroids, vegetation, ecosystem, destruction, fluids and pyro tools. All of
these right in the interface, doing the heavy lifting externally and with tight
integration into rendering – That’s where I would like to see things go. One
can dream right?
Viewport cubes, integrated chat tools, camera sequencers, on the cloud
invoicing per mouseclick – those are things I can do without.
From: Jean-Louis Billard
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 7:11 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Digital Golem : Brillant and beautiful
Hi Vincent,
I’m glad someone’s picked up on this.
I’m dead serious about it - I am willing to put my money where my mouth is, but
of course strength will be in numbers, and I too am curious to know how many
people/seats would be ready to invest.
I have 8 Softimage seats here at Digital Golem. I’ll gladly put their yearly
maintenance into something more worthwhile.
Fabric Engine would be the safest bet, since it seems to offer future
portability.
Needs to be discussed but I’d be curious to hear other voices.
Cheers,
Jean-Louis
On 20 Mar 2014, at 18:57, Vincent Fortin <vfor...@gmail.com> wrote:
Cool work!
I'd like to comment on Jean-Louis' idea...
There clearly are benefits for studios to keep Softimage in their tool box a
few more years, as expressed by many users here.
And I hope to see it happen instead of watching this community burst.
But for those willing to go that route, collaboration must play its part in
order to
- stop the whining.
- gather numbers: how many active seats? Can we borrow/buy licenses from
other studios? Share assets.
- define what's needed to keep SI up-to-date in the market as long as
possible.
- and like Jean-Louis suggests, gather money and put developers under
contract.
I have no idea if 750,000$/year is possible (i doubt) but I'd put it all in
the hands of Fabric Engine.
They represent your best way to extend the functionality of your beloved
software as well as make your investment fructify beyond Softimage's real
lifespan. Because it will become obsolete one day or the other.
If Fabric Engine are interested in the amount brought to the table, then you
can figure-out a plan that will be beneficial to both parties for the upcoming
years. Imagine hiring someone like Eric Mootz full time to develop both FE and
SI.
But in order for this to work properly, people will need to organize even if
this means adopting some minimally legal convention, obviously depending how
far you want the collaboration to go.
This tightly knit community has always played a major role in the success of
Softimage and the studios exploiting it. For me, the only way for those studios
to continue to excel (read survive) despite the circumstances is to build
stronger links between each other and make clever moves.
my 0.02c
On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 7:57 PM, Jean-Louis Billard <jean-lo...@photon3.com>
wrote:
Hi Peter,
No - subscription hasn’t gotten us much in the past few years.
I would, however, be happy to put the subscription money into funding a dev
team, as was suggested in another thread.
For the sake of argument: if there were just the equivalent of 1000
Softimage licenses worldwide for which individuals or companies were prepared,
like me, to pay their subscription money to keep developing Softimage
addons/tools/plugins, you would have (assuming $750/year/seat) $750000/year,
which is 7 or 8 full time developers + administrative costs.
Makes you think…
Jean-Louis
On 20 Mar 2014, at 00:18, pete...@skynet.be wrote:
It’s a good lesson for the future – if paying subscription does not
guarantee the survival and future of a software - do you really want to pay
subscription?
