Was thinking the same. Didn't they rewrite the core since five years at least? Giving the very low price tag of Lightwave (last time I checked it was couple hundred bucks) and the tiny user base which is probably 50% hobbyists, I find it hard to believe they will get the money to finish that task.
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Olivier Jeannel Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2017 5:55 PM To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list Subject: Re: Getting close to a 3 year old EOL annyversary Ligjtwave returns ? Seriously ? 2017-03-01 16:44 GMT+01:00 Jonathan Moore <[email protected]>: I think disrupters still exist in the marketplace. You just have to look at the success of Allegorithmic. They've built tools for the major gaming studios by leveraging the consumer marketplace as their largest profit centre. Their $20 a month offer has well in excess of 100k subscribers and this in turn has given them the funds to rapidly develop their product portfolio. Substance Painter has seriously eaten into Mari's base, and that's without UDIM capabilities. The smart thing about the Substance business model is that it's managed to permeate into all the 3d sub-sectors - it's integrated in VFX, media, architectural & design product offerings as well as it's core gaming sector ones. And this may sound crazy, but I wouldn't write Lightwave off either. They're just about to launch their long awaited rewrite 'Lightwave Next' offer and there's a legion of ex Lightwave customers in Modo-land looking for an excuse to jump back in 'all is forgiven' style. If Lightwave deliver with a rewritten core that takes advantage a parallel processing world and maintain a price point around the $1k mark they might have something to build on. 10 years ago I don't think that anybody would have predicted that SideFX would be a leading games pipeline DCC tool in 2017, and would be pursuing a more generalist non VFX customer with a focus on direct modelling, rigging and animation. The great thing about this industry is it's constant ability to challenge convention. On 1 March 2017 at 15:13, Matt Lind <[email protected]> wrote: Likewise, if you had asked me back in 1997 if Maya would still be around and the dominant player in 2017, I would have said no, and also,"god I hope not" (come to think of it, that may have actually happened). Anyway, it's 2017 and here we are. What's more realistic these days is the ol' Indiana Jones swap out the gold monkey head for a bag of sand trick. Instead of introducing new products built from scratch, we're seeing incremental updates that shift an existing product over to whatever it was supposed to be. It takes more energy and time to do that, but it's a safer bet in the business space. There's more to new product than the technology - there's also sales concerns. You have to create a brand, educate the consumer, develop sales channels, etc... Even if the product is done right, there's no guarantee it will sell as we've seen with Softimage, Nichimen, Matador, and other quality products. What I would like to see more of is improvement in the individual user experience to be able to run with a creative idea and be able to bring it to fruition uninhibited. It seems like that aspect of user workflow has been lost. While today's software is vastly improved, more scalable, customizable, team oriented, etc...there are so many extra layers just to get started that I found it a big turn off to do personal work anymore. While recently going through some old stuff, I came across my first demo reel which I created using Softimage Creative Environment 2.62 in the early 90s. As I watched it I remembered the effort it took back then and started to think about how much time it would take to do that same project today. While the rendering would absolutely be faster (practically real time), the manually labor intensive operations such as setting key frames really haven't changed. In other words, the project would take about the same amount of time. Frankly, while I've had ideas I've wanted to pursue, the thought of using current tools became a deterrent as they don't feel natural. Today's tools are not inspiring as they require a certain controlled mindset just to be able to function in un-intuitive ways, and that mindset is in conflict with being creative where ideas just need to flow. I would like to see another Daniel Langlois type where inspiration to create drives the improvement of the tools, not engineering bravado. Matt Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2017 14:19:24 +0000 From: Andy Nicholas <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Getting close to a 3 year old EOL annyversary >the risk vs. reward proposition doesn't seem to be attracting enough new >players to the market. True for the moment, but things don't stand still. Do you think people will still be using Maya in 20 years time? (god I hope not!) Technology, hardware, and client's needs all change faster than we realise. So I have a more optimistic outlook, I think it's just a matter of time before someone somewhere comes up with something new that does it in a different way, or maybe just in a better way. ------ Softimage Mailing List. To unsubscribe, send a mail to [email protected] with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm. ------ Softimage Mailing List. To unsubscribe, send a mail to [email protected] with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.
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