Just speculation on my part, but I think the hiring of the Singapore team was made after the decision to send Softimage into maintenance mode. The Montreal and Singapore teams co-existed as a means to get the Singapore team up to speed with the nuances of the application as Softimage was built with a lot of legacy and technology which wasn't terribly common anymore. The couple of versions of extra dev was just the benefit of having the larger staff for a short period of time.
You can look at Softimage's market share any way you like, but it all comes back to they dropped the ball with 'Sumatra'. While there were many valiant attempts to get back in the game, once studios backed Maya with a two year head start, it was really difficult to get any penetration as pipelines and working relationships with outsourcing had already been firmly established. Typically companies on the block spend a lot of money to promote themselves very actively to be attractive to a buyer. Development of ICE and all the hype with it was largely a necessity and, quite frankly, a last ditch effort to get back into the game as they were otherwise on a slow ride into the sunset. ICE helped change that for a while, until Autodesk bought them. Softimage under Autodesk was, if you read the acquisition press release between the lines, to obtain the Softimage developers, not to obtain the product. Marc Petit was the former head of R+D at Softimage for project Sumatra, so there was some old connections there to make it happen, and Softimage stayed an active product as long as he was head of Autodesk Media and Entertainment, but when he stepped down a few years ago, new management came in and that's when the decision to terminate Softimage got traction. So here we are. Softimage had enough market share to remain viable, but not a whole lot of cushion above that. When I used to run Mantom in the early 2000's, my phone used to ring quite regularly for training requests and momentum was building. But after XSI v3.0 was shipped and the decision to raise it's price tag with it while Maya dropped their prices to half....literally overnight my phone stopped ringing. Regardless of what sales numbers employees would cite, the truth is finding work using Softimage was on a long slow decline for a very long time. I saw it first in the educational channel as my part time gigs would slowly dry up from declining enrollment, followed by declining opportunities for freelance work. Some would argue Autodesk killed Softimage with mis-handling of marketing. While it's true they did a poor job with the resources they had, reality is even if they had done it right, the product had limited life. Shotgun is a different beast entirely. that acquisition is post Marc Petit and therefore really shouldn't be compared to Softimage, Mudbox, or other earlier acquisitions in terms of management of the product. Marc Stevens is running that sector now, and from a distant vantage point where I sit, it appears things are going to be run in similar manner to when he was GM at Softimage/Avid. Lots of independent projects with each targeting specific needs in the industry. The pros are building relationships with customers, ability to cut a product cleanly from the nest if it doesn't work out, and products having the autonomy they need to be competitive in their respective markets. The cons are costs of buying products and lack of interoperability between them in seamless fashion, as well as the duplication of staff performing similar functions at the different companies. Reduction of staff and merging operations is only one recession away - it's like a pendulum. That said, I think Solid Angle will likely be run autonomously like Softimage|CAT or Face Robot. Products which hit specific needs and don't necessarily fold into the larger company portfolio seamlessly. Matt Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2016 11:04:44 +0200 From: Olivier Jeannel <facialdel...@gmail.com> Subject: Re: Autodesk acquires Solid Angle To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" Well, if you remember it was the same profile for Ice. They had that supa-crew of ice developpers that gave us 2 or 3 generations of true big ice improvements (crowd, ice modeling, Build array from set, etc..) Then there was that moment when they fired a big part of the crew, saying that "everything will be the same", "you don't have to worry" shit, and then turned off the light 2 years later. But that's just me beeing negative... On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 10:49 AM, Graham Bell <bell...@gmail.com> wrote: > We use Shotgun here and the general perception is that the development > pace has appeared to slow since the acquisition. There has been updates > and > some nice stuff, but at the same time larger chunks that seem to be still > pending. > > From a brand view AD might keep SA/Arnold separate in the same way Shotgun > is, but behind the scenes it might be different. > > Personally, I'm surprised it took them this long to get it announced. ;-) > > On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 11:15 PM Jason S <jasonsta...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> >> Indeed shotgun is one (of quite few out of -many-) packages that wasn't >> seriously compromised post acquisition, which is probably why shotgun is >> pasted all over Arnold press release, and I too wouldnt be surprised if >> it >> was one of those few, yet many would argue that shotgun barely >> (significantly) changed since it was purchased, and moslty relies on the >> fact that it's quite complete as it is (perhaps not unlike SI). >> >> But there remains a good chance (if not a probability) that efforts on >> Arnold would be mostly be around what the parent company is after, or >> what >> the buzzword of the day may be at a given time, in this case "cloud", and >> for the rest to be slowly moved to the back simply by not touching it, >> and >> thus becoming like the next MentalRay. >> >> In either case it could then be considered as "just" another casualty. >> >> >> On 04/18/16 18:55, Steven Caron wrote: >> >> I tried to touch on this with the last sentence in my reply. Their >> decision axe Softimage seemed irrational to us because we are emotional >> but >> if you reduce it to numbers, it made sense. It is a truth I don't like to >> admit but it is a fact that Maya and Max user numbers are just higher, so >> of course you axe Softimage and consolidate the dev teams. >> >> Others have touched on it, here and on the Arnold mailing lists... This >> case is different because they don't have 3 competing renderers now, they >> have at most two (ART in Max). Softimage wasn't a plugin for 7 different >> softwares, it wasn't 'agnostic' in the same way Arnold is. Since the >> Softimage purchase and axing, AD has bought Shotgun. This is an example >> of >> AD staying out of way and more value being brought to the product >> (additional access to RV). These are reasons why I think this case is >> going >> to be different. >> >> I am cautiously optimistic though, in 2 years or so we will see for >> certain. >> >> On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 3:29 PM, Artur W <artur.w...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Many AD corporate decisions seem irrational and strange to us. >>> Why should this case be any different? >>> >>> I truly wish everything would go as we wanted. Constant progress and >>> development of Arnold. ------ Softimage Mailing List. To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.
