Overnight, Frank Delise (used to head up Max, but now heads our Games Solutions group, fyi, Marc Stevens heads up Film/TV), posted this to the Max underground site
Hi all, I wanted to add some color to some of the concerns here. Yes, it was unfortunate that some of our max customer demos got canceled last minute. Siggraph was a bit different for us this year vs previous years. As a corp company, unfortunately we can’t disclose the roadmap of our products anytime we want like the good old days. Not by choice, but by revenue accounting laws. Since our product ship dates are not aligned with Siggraph, this causes us to have limited news to share about our products. This is why we have our own event, the Unfold event. This allows us to share the roadmap that is aligned with ship dates. Then why did Maya show up with some cool stuff this year at Siggraph user event and not max? It just so happens that the technology preview for Maya was ready for Siggraph, whereas the 3ds max work that we are doing is gearing up for a update soon and we will be discussing the details of that in the near future.The timing wasn’t right for Siggraph. Again not always in our control on what trade show they line up to. On the general direction of Maya vs Max, nothing has changed. Maya was designed for entertainment customers whom need a platform to extend. Max was designed for the democratization of content creation for all markets. So Maya may be better for deep pipeline integration, Where Max is good for out of the box artist toolset for a broader markets. It also means that the Maya team focuses all its energy on entertainment features and the Max team divides its energy on a variation of markets, from design viz, VFX, Games, etc.. So naturally, if you are a VFX artist only, you may see more progress on the Maya front than you do on Max depending on the releases. When I took over the product for the 2014 release, I made some significant changes. I refocused a lot the energy on stability and performance. I also put a significant focus on “small annoying things”. This resulted in some significant performance and stability improvements and cleaned up some workflows. Did you get fluids :), No, not yet.. But it was the right thing to do for Max’s continued growth. Meanwhile, we still managed to get in some impressive features. As a Maya user, you would have noticed the same thing for the past couple of years where Maya was pretty dry in the new feature department but had significant scalability and API enhancements. Sometime it takes entire teams to make big shifts like that. So let the Maya team enjoy some new fun features :). As for Max, we are hard at work on features that have been raised up from our customers. Some will be for entertainment, games and some will be for design viz. For the Niad\Bifrost concern, Bifrost is being developed as an engine with Maya as the first customer. We aren’t disclosing many details at the moment, but it’s being designed to be agnostic to any one specific tool. I hope that clarifies a few things for everyone. Frank DeLise - From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Rob Chapman Sent: 25 July 2013 10:01 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Future of Naiad this is a forum with Autodesk etiquette..? very broadly speaking.. :) you and me as well as countless others were on here long before it was AD who owned the server where this mailing list lived, and hopefully many will still be on here when it changes hands yet again. its been utter lackluster so far from its current owners including the potential Naiad / bifrost debacle therefore fingers crossed from me this earthquake happens sooner rather than later! On 25 July 2013 10:35, Jordi Bares <jordiba...@gmail.com<mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com>> wrote: Given we are in an Autodesk forum and given the basic etiquette I will only say we are in a major tectonic shift and imho Autodesk need to show some goods yesterday. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com<mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com> On 25 Jul 2013, at 08:48, Eric Thivierge <ethivie...@gmail.com<mailto:ethivie...@gmail.com>> wrote: Hah, if you can call it a presence at all... On Jul 24, 2013 9:20 PM, "Raffaele Fragapane" <raffsxsil...@googlemail.com<mailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com>> wrote: I'm not quite sure I can fault them for not having their own floor space. They were present at some partners', but Siggraph having shifted crowd and attitude a fair bit I'm not sure they would have got a ton of mileage out of their own, not to mention their big news came out months ago with the 2014 releases, and if they have nothing for this quarter they can't basically show anything else. I can see why a big user event and floor presence scattered at other stands would have been a better use of money for them. On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 2:09 PM, Eric Thivierge <ethivie...@gmail.com<mailto:ethivie...@gmail.com>> wrote: Speculating from Siggraph not having attended the Autodesk user event knowing they would have nothing of interest to show me, it's apparent they will be discontinuing all DCCs and focusing their efforts selling their new product Autodesk Blender. Frankly i find the absence of Autodesk at the Siggraph floor either arrogant or just plain stupid. Very apparent from all the talks this year that no one is really taking Maya seriously for effects work aside from some bits of naiad. SideFx is taking charge in a big way and have some big stuff coming not including Houdini Engine. Sincerely, Your embedded Siggraph journalist On Jul 24, 2013 8:03 PM, "Greg Punchatz" <g...@janimation.com<mailto:g...@janimation.com>> wrote: Ha! Good point on the flame .. I still maintain the emperor has no clothes;) I am a complete believer in atomic software. I think it would allow for greater innovation in each key area. Zbrush proved that to me. I am looking for someone to step up to the plate In the areas of rigging and animation. I'm hoping the guys over at fabric engine might do something for us in that regard. I know much higher frame rates are possible at this point if all a program had to do was to spend it cycles on those two areas, it is absolutely ridiculous that people have to play blast there animations to view to see it at full frame rate IMO. There is no app that focuses squarely on that subject right now. There are countless modeling, painting programs. For myself and and Janimation I want us to move away from the single beast program mentality. I plan to keep soft the glue that keeps it all together for now and the foreseeable near future.. Right now I'm really enjoying learning Mari, I bought that for home because I really don't see any other competition in that area. Because it squarely focused on 3-D paint, it got so many things right. Granted it took till 2.0 before I thought it was good enough to jump on board. Now that I'm there I could not be happier. Clairese looks very interesting to me, it almost seems too good to be true. Arnold keeps me happy when I can use it, as we have a limited license pool for the time being. I love Nuke as well, but I don't know it well enough for my taste yet. Modo has me interested as well, curious how the foundry leverages its render engine. I tried it once and found clunky, but did not give it enough of a chance. I also want us to move to an Alembic pipeline ASAP ... That's the next big thing that I need to get pushed thru at the office. I'm just a bit grumpy on where we sit, I just wish things would've turned out differently. C'est la vie. Sent from someone using his thumbs , Siri, and a healthy dose of dyslexia ... On Jul 24, 2013, at 8:50 PM, Raffaele Fragapane <raffsxsil...@googlemail.com<mailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com>> wrote: So they have a scarcely maintained aging PoS they are still managing to sell for gazillions as a high prestige product, and have insofar managed to distract the audience from the fact the emperor is freeballing it, and you'd go to the board asking for the management who's pulling that hat trick off to be replaced? :) They do feel increasingly dysfunctional in their communication and user base management, but so does nearly any large enough media oriented large house these days. Only the Foundry seems to be closer in touch with the top tiers of the VFX industry. It's very possible AD is simply more Adobe than Alias/Soft, and we just can't (nor should we be supposed to) be served by a company with that kind of mentality. All that said, Foundry is doing better than ok and they seem to care a lot for the VFX business at many levels, unlike AD as a larger entity (which you have to remember is NOT Soft or Alias), and pipelines are going atomic with OSS glue, so the days of Maya/Soft/MAX not being required across the whole pipe are upon us already. When you think about it already entire chunks of the pipe in the top end reflect that, and a lot of that is trickling down to the middle, and will soon enough trickle further down again. With Katana + PRMan + Alembic Surfacing and lighting is likely the next bit breaking off the AD continent, much like modelling did already with ZB + Topogun. If Fabric manages to wedge in with splice and slowly abstract things away from Maya and convert it from host to client of platform, that's another big chunk going. There is less every day in an A to B scenario I open Soft or Maya for really. Whether that'll be viable for the small user, given the small user needs the whole stretch of software for himself and doesn't get to divide the expense across departments only needing parts of it like the bigger pipes do, well, that remains to be seen. The monopoly feels less and less like it's going to stay every day though. If you're a small unit or work in a small shop, maybe it's time to stop thinking like they want you to, that you NEED the all in one, and start figuring out how you can re-engineer a staged process into your needs and workflow. I'm succeeding pretty well at home these days, better than I ever expected to. Even as an individual I'm finding the big-arse DCC apps are more and more expensive OGL and graph eval hosts than anything else. This was simply impossible five years ago, We could barely do it at the 300+ staff project scale, now... not so much. On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 11:17 AM, Greg Punchatz <g...@janimation.com<mailto:g...@janimation.com>> wrote: Frankly M&E AD needs new TOP down leadership.... It's so beyond broken that no matter how hard the people below them try to show them the light they refuse to look. They still think Flame is still a valid product.. Single threaded piece of poo IMO. I am so surprised they can still sell the product at all, especially for the outrageous prices. There are just a lot of people who have not realized yet that the emperor has no clothes. And Maya is the future of 3d ... A code base nearing or past its 15 year mark... Really? Sorry but I am just not a happy AD customer. Sent from my iPhone On Jul 24, 2013, at 7:19 PM, Steven Caron <car...@gmail.com<mailto:car...@gmail.com>> wrote: they, you, need a better PR department. it is simple, don't give us reason to speculate so wildly. *written with my thumbs On Jul 24, 2013, at 5:00 PM, Graham Bell <graham.b...@autodesk.com<mailto:graham.b...@autodesk.com>> wrote: I'm saying nothing more, though if anyone wants to pvt me, then feel free. -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are! -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
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