Hi Peter
Very well put. Absolutely spot on.
For me as an animation orientated generalist it is a great package which
allows a host of low level built-in tools to be used together to create
something that , as you put it, is greater than the some of the parts; a
greatly underestimated aspect of the software. The other greatly
underestimated aspect is the interface and general interaction, and I
know I'm preaching to the converted here, but it really is great.
ICE has never been my personal area of expertise but it is for a few of
the guys here and they do amazing stuff with it. I think it is a little
more than the icing on the cake and its been pressed into service in all
manner of ways here.
I agree, there is no obvious candidate screaming "use-me". There is a
vacuum here for something "next generation". I used the example of Henry
and Flame in my open letter as a situation where it was plain that Flame
really was the next big step forward. Our CEO Hector Macleod was an
early adopter back in the early 90s when he setup and ran Click3x in New
York with a Flame. I don't see an equivalent 3d package today. Houdini
and Modo have their advocates and we hear words of intent about making
these better in the areas that they are deficient. We also hear about
bifrost but to hijack your analogy i would say this would be the icing
on Maya's slightly stale cake. We need a new cake baked with fresh
ingredients.
I would personally like a longer period of transition.
Alastair
Alastair Hearsum
Head of 3d
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On 11/03/2014 11:46, pete...@skynet.be wrote:
Hi Greg,
this is pretty much along the lines of what I’ve been thinking.
Retiring Softimage as announced is way too abrupt and disruptive.
While not a big success in the market place, it has it’s place, is
very much alive and in good shape.
Yes, we would all love to see some huge development and commercial
efforts put into Softimage to make it ready to take on another decade
and really compete in the market place, but that’s not going to
happen, and we can hardly expect this from Autodesk – I think most of
us have accepted that.
But keeping the software on life support as it has for the past few
years should be an acceptable compromise.
It has more than 2 years of life left, and should be perfectly usable
until a next generation offering comes along.
Migrating to other current software, from Autodesk or the competition
just doesn’t appeal. If it did, we’d be there already. We are not
blind fools who don’t know any better.
As a freelancer I have been in a wide variety of productions, of all
sizes, in several countries, in several industries. I’ve seen many
multi software productions, and have personally touched upon Maya,
Lightwave and Modo in production, each on more than one occasion, and
have furthermore been confronted with Max in production repeatedly.
Coming from Poweranimator in the past, I really wanted to like Maya,
and I have looked into it several times over the past 15 years. And I
know I disliked XSI in the very beginning.
But there is no helping it - it truly is a next generation software,
built up from a fresh start and carefully thought out and groomed into
an efficient, elegant, usable whole that is much more than the sum of
it’s parts.
I’ll abandon it for a better offering, but Maya, as popular and widely
spread and industry standard as it is, is not it.
No amount of AD representatives saying it is superior is going to make
it so. No amount of copying tools from Softimage into Maya is going to
turn this around. It has mostly become a platform to run proprietary
tools on, just as Max is a platform for running 3rd party tools. If
that’s not what you are looking for, then it’s not your solution. (and
Modo and Houdini are better suited alternatives)
That is the situation most remaining Softimage users are confronted
with I think. They have deliberately chosen Softimage as their
homebase, against all odds, mostly because out of the box it just
works and fills most of their needs. It is friendly to artists as well
as the more technically savvy – it adapts itself well to any industry,
any scale of production, from a single individual to triple digit
seats and anywhere in between – and can be used without the need for
custom development, while allowing for it where desired.
ICE was just the icing on the cake to put it in this unique position
in the industry but it is by no means the only worthwhile bit -
something that seems to elude Autodesk if their presentation of things
is to be judged. Softimage is perhaps not the absolute best in any
discipline when compared to all other (specialized) software out there
– but is comfortably above average in every discipline and thus
uniquely equipped for multidisciplinary productions.
No other software out there offers a comparable experience. This is
why there is this loyal user base – despite the slowing pace of
development, a bleak outlook, a total lack of marketing and commercial
efforts and a constant push and pull from the competition.
As has been mentioned, Softimage studios and productions often punch
well above their weight – and the software allows productions to grow,
from small to large scale, from startup to established studio, as well
as evolve into new directions when the opportunity or need arises. It
gives the company and individual an edge to fend in a difficult
marketplace – and taking that tool away is pretty much a frontal
assault to those who have made their livelihood around it.
So, Autodesk have decided to kick the ant’s nest, hoping the ants
would swarm to this piece of candy Maya they are holding up.
It’s kind of obvious: taking away Softimage developers, putting them
on Bifrost, presenting it as a mix of Naiad and ICE, and then retiring
ICE (because in AD marketing speak that’s all Softimage is) in order
to pave the way for Bifrost’s release – offering a free (duh) path to
Maya. I’m sure there will be fancy powerpoint graphs of Softimage
users flocking to Bifrost/Maya, which the board and stockholders will
adore.
Well, I guess some ants will stay put while others flock to Maya,
Houdini and Modo in equal parts and the rest will scatter elsewhere.
Surely, a more graceful solution exists – one where the larger part of
the ant colony migrates to a new anthill when it’s ready for moving
in. But that requires a little more forward thinking.
If Autodesk bought Softimage to get a hold of it’s userbase, then
surely it’s premature to disrupt it now – rather than migrate it to
something that is actually appealing.
Peter Boeykens
freelance
*From:* Greg Punchatz <mailto:g...@janimation.com>
*Sent:* Tuesday, March 11, 2014 3:49 AM
*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
*Subject:* A more graceful retirement - my counter offer
Hello Autodesk,
My name is Greg Punchatz , Senior Creative Director at Janimation. I
have a proposal, or call it a counter offer on the proper way to
retire Softimage.
First off, if you don't know who I am, I feel like I have been part of
the Softimage team since the beginning of Sumatra testing. I spent
countless hours creating content on my own time and letting Softimage
use my personal work as the sample scenes that make up a good deal of
the Softimage library. Because of this relationship I have many, many
very dear friends from all eras of Softimage. From the very top to the
bottom of Softimage, I was always welcomed as one of the family.
Our company, Janimation, was instrumental in helping promote XSI from
its earliest days from being its first customer demo at the XSI launch
party. To its final days giving Avid and Autodesk permission to use
our work for promoting Softimage launches. We did this because we
truly believe it is the best software on the planet for what we do....
and that's commercial work. Softimage is lighter on its feet out of
the box for the kind of work the post production world is doing today
in commercials. I don't know a single CG supervisor that knows each
package equally that would rather take a commercial through a single
package other than XSI.
That being said, I believe Autodesk needs to be working on a
completely new 3d software package. I would hope that is the plan. I
also understand that if you are working towards moving us all to one
package, Softimage by market share alone is the logical one to first
retire as it creates the least income.
So if it's time has truly come (even though I believe it is the most
complete out-of-the-box 3-D solution you provide currently) I think
there is a more elegant... let's say, a kinder gentler way for
Softimage to be put into retirement. You can continue to benefit from
our subscription support while we have enough time to move our
existing pipeline to somthing else.
Please consider keepinng the current small development team you
already have for FOUR more years.
With a single focus on these three things: opening up the SDK,
working with 3rd party folk,
and fixing long outstanding low-level requests.
It's nothing but a win-win situation, you still get our money, and we
get to evalute Maya along the way. It's going to take a lot more than
two years for a lot of us to be able to make a tranistion completely.
I'm not sure if Autodesk realizes this, but while the team in
Singapore was not making giant leaps technologically, they were on
their way to leaving Softimage in a much better state. They need a bit
more time than you are giving them.
At the end of the four years, we can at least consider staying in the
Autodesk family because they listened to the users....gave us pleanty
of heads up of its EOL, and did thier darndest to make sure the last
version of softimage is the best version ever...XSI deserves
that....we deserve that ... and quite frankly I deserve that.
Sincerely
Greg Punchatz
Senior Creative Director at Janimation ...
