Sumatra... I think it ended up about halfway there. A big step forward, more modern than others - yet not fully realized, not really there yet, not revolutionary enough.
Some new workflows are definitely there – taken for granted until the plug got pulled, and now it’s painfully clear just how unique some of it is – but the new didn’t make the old irrelevant. And it was too little too late to win over the industry. If you look at that marketing blurp, it’s easy to recognize what functionality was being described (or evoked), and it’s kind of faithful, but there was also a lot of wishful thinking. Too bad the others don’t seem to really be considering this direction, these paradigms – so now we’ll never see that vision realized. We got a glimpse of a shiny new future, and now have to get back to a grey present, that’s progressed over the past decade – but also leaves a lot to be desired. From: Matt Lind Sent: Friday, May 09, 2014 11:12 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Sumatra....are we there yet? Everybody liked Sumatra, but somebody else already owned the rights to the name and wouldn’t give it up. There’s a lot of backstory to what eventually became “XSI” – most of it face palm embarrassing. Anyway, what I wanted to focus on here was the ‘vision’ of Sumatra. Focus of 3D products has traditionally been on specific features or specific technologies to induce sales. While all claim to have dynamic workflows and break through new barriers, there has been one constant – working together has been largely ignored. People still fight with getting data to/from application A to product X and many applications’ own tools often don’t talk to each other enough. Sumatra is first vision to address how people should work, and really hasn’t been addressed much since then. It’s been a forgotten aspect of production by all the vendors. So what I question here is – is this particular vision still relevant? Did XSI realize this vision? Is this an opportunity for a developer to put workgroups back into the focus and truly revolutionize production? With arrival of cloud computing, I don’t think this is a far fetched idea. Whatcha think? Matt
