First you beat us up and now you try to convince us that is was for our
own good and that you are actually really nice people... ?
Cancer research. really? You are pulling this card here and now? I'm
speechless.
Chris
On 15/03/14 14:37, Chris Vienneau wrote:
Hi guys,
Your math is a little off as the number is 600 m in R&D and 1 billion in sales and
administrative. The administrative covers everything from all the people that support the
developers to the building and computers. Autodesk spends more on R&D than Adobe or
Apple. Our CEO Carl Bass uses the products and tells about what he doesn't like all the
time. Again you can check him making stuff here:
http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/maker-king . We have a huge research group that
drives its own agenda (http://www.autodeskresearch.com/) and our doing lots of
labs/research projects here ( labs.autodesk.com) . Our research into multi-touch, reality
capture and 3D printing is industry leading and we have been involved in projects like
molecular maya working with MIT on cancer research
(http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/10/features/biology-is-the-new-software ).
Autodesk's executives (check their bio) including Marc Stevens who ran softimage and runs
the film/tv group are all engineers and this is a technology driven company. I know it
sucks that no one from Autodesk in M&E has said this to this community but I like
working for Autodesk and believe that this is a good company.
For Maya 2015 we will show off the redesigned from the ground up fluid flip method from Dr.
Robert Bridson , a new voxel based skinning method that was a siggraph paper , continued
improvements on the hair and cloth simulation of Nucleus from Dr. Jos Stam. Most of the
innovation in this industry comes from the top studios and the work that comes out of
production. The snow in Frozen was amazing but a lot of work.
(http://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/publications)
If<http://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/publications)%20If> you take the innovation
that has really driven the industry forward in the last five years the origins are all on
production. With tech like Alembic, openvdb, Ptex, UV-tiling, opensubdiv, open color IO, Open
EXR, etc.... there are smart people in studios like Sebastian Sylwain (ex-weta), Bill Polson
(Pixar), Lincoln Wallen (DreamWorks), Rob Bredow (Sony), Dan Candela (Walt Disney animation),
and Hilmar Koch (ILM) that make great code and open source to the benefit of the community.
Then there are tons of contributors like Autodesk and the Foundry who do things like porting,
standards and bug fixing so this all works together. Even the applications that are young and
fast moving like Mari (weta) and Arnold (Sony) are from production and still take their main
direction from production just like Maya. All of the applications from Soft with Jurassic to
Maya with Dinosaurs got their footing with production work. The fact that Toy Story was all
built on in house hardware and 20 years later you have amazing movies like Despicable Me and
Lego movie made with mostly off the shelf tools is amazing. Go back and look at the tools you
think are innovating and see how many of their "innovations" are based off Siggraph
papers or are inspired by tools written in production. I for one have no problem giving credit
where credit is due and most anything in Maya that is good has come from being built in
partnership with customers.
This industry is lucky to have organizations like Siggraph and FMX that foster
and promote innovation and we love that more and more of the base platform is
community based. We have led the VES effort to standard Linux libraries for all
the vendors (Foundry, SideFX, Autodesk) and get to work in organizations like
open GL building out the next gen drivers and MPAA (setting the new ACES
standard for replacing Cineon) all building up the base upon which the industry
sits. We get to package up technology like Xgen and bring it to the larger
market and all vendors get to put in Alembic to share data and open color I/O
to set color within a facility.
This movement has allowed medium sized companies to do shots that were once
only possible by a few shops and more importantly this has allowed stories to
be told in countries that have never before had a voice. There is no one tool
to rule them all and Max vs Maya vs Soft vs Houdini vs Modo vs Zbrush vs fabric
does not foster innovation. Raf said it well when he described the Lego as all
of those tools plus internal tools plus really smart people plus an amazing
story made what we all enjoyed so much.
First and foremost everyone who works at Autodesk in the M&E division including
the people who used to work at Soft (there are way more than have left) love the
film and games industry and the chance to be a part of it. The decision with Soft
was a hard one but we back it so we can focus on helping the ecosystem make better
movies and games. Innovation comes from the synergies of all these products,
platforms, hardware and your talent and putting that on any one tool or company
does not capture what is still a vibrant passionate community. The business model
right now sucks and things need to change but there is still a bright future ahead
and many problems left to solve.
cv/
