If you're a Softimage user, and plan to stick to it, which in many cases is a perfectly viable strategy, go for it. Tag along. However, if you're a TD and your livelyhood depends on hired work, I very strongly recommend you amend mistakes you might have made in not diversifying before, and start working on something that has a chance to net you work past the next few months.
It's easy for people who benefit from TDs' work to push for a "keep Soft alive" movement, but to those whose livelihood depends on providing others with tools and support, I suggest they don't make the mistake of letting their emotions have the best of them leading them to beating a dead horse until inevitable unemployment. If you want to flip the finger at Autodesk in the process take your skills to Fabric, or Houdini, and requalify yourself. It doesn't take that long for a proper TD to learn a new platform, days to weeks at most with proper drive and dedication. If you want to reduce risk and face a ripe, if a bit overcrowded, market right away, take your efforts to Maya. But for the sake of people's livelihood, don't waste your time developing free tools for deadware when you could be making an indirect, or even direct, profit out of that time. If you want to spend time catering to something dead learn Sanskrit. On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 2:24 PM, Emilio Hernandez <emi...@e-roja.com> wrote: > Not really Raffaele. > > There are a lot of us that switching to other tool will mean loss of time > and be less competitive by using other software. Specially Maya. And that > in my particular case I can hold up at Softimage as long as there is an OS > that runs it. > > How far can you improve your workflow with other DCC tools compared to > Softimage, if Softimage is still the best tool there, even if it is dead? > > How much development are you expecting of Maya to behave the way Softimage > does. > > A fresh toolset will make a "dead" software even more efficient. So there > is a market IMHO that will get this tools. > > The problem with Combustion is not that it was dumped or stopped running, > It still runs very good. The problem was the lack of plugins that will > actually will make me work faster. > > That is why I turned into other comp apps. Not because it is out of date > or useless now. > > Just a thought. > > Cheers! > > ------------------------------------------------------- > Emilio Hernández VFX & 3D animation. > > > 2014-03-05 21:18 GMT-06:00 Raffaele Fragapane <raffsxsil...@googlemail.com > >: > > Can I humbly suggest TDs spend their time more productively instead, for >> both themselves and the community, and start looking at other vendors? >> >> We can wish upon a star all we want, but, as hurtful as it might be, Soft >> is dead and will not be brought back to life. You can tazer the corpse >> until it spasms, but it won't be life. >> >> What you COULD do, however, for the sake of the same people that made >> Soft what you loved as a software and as a community, is make good use of >> your time to diversify your skills and give support to platforms such as >> Fabric. >> >> Hopefully I won't get flamed or misunderstood for this, but honestly, >> there'd be no worse thing to see than seeing people doing further damage to >> themselves by clinging to a corpse after the damage done to the app and its >> history. >> Look at LW to see the depth of sadness this can get to. I'd rather the >> people I've come to know and respect on this list don't devolve into what's >> left of its userbase. >> >> You also get to make more of a difference for the future of industry and >> vendors if you spend your time on a project that has a chance to live, and >> you get to learn a lot of things that Soft is entirely too far behind on >> for you to properly learn on. >> >> Sorry, might sound cold, but it's a helluva lot more practical. >> >> >> On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 2:05 PM, Alok Gandhi <alok.gandhi2...@gmail.com>wrote: >> >>> Hey Guys, >>> >>> Calling out all the Soft Tool developers/ TDs out there. I know there >>> are lots of awesome out there for Soft but let's create more tools for the >>> community. >>> >>> >>> I am willing to devote my time to develop more tools and will ask the >>> same of other developers. >>> >>> If anyone has a request / idea for a Tool from Soft that they need, >>> please post it here. >>> >>> Developers please feel free to take on this projects. >>> >>> If anyone likes this idea and can quickly setup a web page (like redmine >>> ticket system), it will be great. >>> >>> Cheers ! >>> >> >> >> >> -- >> 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!