Maybe bad form considering the host of this list...but I agree. Maya cannot do all the things you've asked. Even with the promises to bring it up to speed, what governing factor (now that we've aired all the dirty laundry about M&E percentages) will hold them to their promise? Money? Nope. Their word? Comedy gold.
I'm trying to be realistic as possible here. We need to find a partnership where our tools and focus is a MAJORITY of the developer's market, not a tiny fraction. How else can you enforce that they have our best interest at hand? And I'm not just talking about just Softimage. I'm talking about everything from here on out and into the future. I think we need to find a stronger foundation to build our future partnerships. It has never been they give and we take. It has always, for as long as I've been a part of this industry, a collaborative effort to create the tools that we feed ourselves and our families with. It doesn't matter if you're Maya, XSI, Max, or Houdini. The feedback, the time spent mucking around to figure it all out, the development of cool tools from talented developers, all of that is valuable. Where do you want to invest that effort?? I only see two options here for our future's sake. Somehow, bring Softimage back. Or invest the effort we're about to embark on with another entity. If you want to get back at ADSK for what they've done, then simply build a better product elsewhere. What better people than the ones here on the list with your wealth of experience to guide an energetic development team to get this done? It's going to take 5 years at least to get Softimage back to where it is today IF all the promises are kept. What can WE do in that time? What's is there left to lose? There's an opportunity here to evaluate the current and future needs of CG, and tackle those problems without all the legacy garbage that robs us of performance and effort. We have a new perspective of hardware technology that weren't even on the radar 10 years ago. Why not aim our roadmap towards THAT future? Does this sound absolutely crazy? Probably. But you know what else is crazy? Killing the best software on the market and telling us it for our own good. Time to make a choice... -Lu On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 6:30 PM, David Saber <davidsa...@sfr.fr> wrote: > I read all these threads and the general feeling I get is: people are > accepting what's happening... But didn't we accept too much since 2008? > > AD acquisition, AD not promoting Softimage, AD kicking Softimage's > original developers: for all these slaps, we grumbled then we accepted. Now > AD kills Softimage: we grumble then we accept! We're even helping AD to > improve Maya! > > The last request to AD from our community is to keep Softimage half alive > with some small fixes from time to time. I have a question for those who > requested it: if AD grants you that, and if Softimage becomes a stagnant > living dead app, will you be happy? Will you thank AD for that? > > Now AD says with some workflow ideas from Softimage, the future of Maya is > bright (click). Do you buy it? Can they do it? A true nonlinear workflow? A > modern GUI where everything is drag and droppable? A render region? An > explorer so complete? A true animation mixer? > > If Ad asks you to leave your young beautiful wife, and choose your fat > ugly mother in law instead, would you accept? > > Why not keeping Softimage's development instead! It already has a solid > ground for improvements. When V7 came out and ICE was making a lot of buzz, > who in this community would have thought our software of choice (and us) > would head for this situation? It's like XSI was an orphan child, adopted > by some cold, silent parents, who do not understand his talent or even his > culture. They see no use for him so they kill him. > > Enough! Screw the fifth stage of grief! Acceptance? What AD is doing is > NOT acceptable. Everyone should go back to stage 2: RAGE. I'd just like to > see more fighting spirit here. Something should be possible to stop this > madness and to bring XSI back to the time it was dazzling everyone. The > open letters and Pooby's project are great initiatives. These days I'm > contacting all my friends to ask them to sign the petition. Perhaps I'm > unrealistic, but I can't let XSI die without a fight. > > David >
