Hi Jason You can no longer purchase either Composite (Toxik) or Combustion from Autodesk as products. Toxik is available if you buy Maya or 3ds Max. Softimage will be available too but under slightly different conditions: prior version usage. The software industry is full of companies buying tech and discontinuing tech. It is not unique to Autodesk and it is not unique to large companies and it is particularly prevalent in the entertainment industry. Maurice
Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Jason S Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 9:58 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass Maybe.. but the point is they are still availble, and you can still buy Combustion 2008 today. Saying like "We had no other choice but to not make it available anymore" can indeed stretch credulity. >From Wiki.. Some of Autodesk's "retired" products are listed here: · Lightscape 3.2 Was the worlds only radiosity rendering package at the time (1991) developed from work done by Donald Greenberg at the Cornell University<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_University> Department of Computer Graphics. The problem with this part of Autodesk's history is that it was a time of discovery in computer graphics, and Cornell was one of the birthplaces for the technology. In this sense Lightscape was more than just another product, it was an essential part of the development of rendering technology generally, and part of its evolution. Additionally the software came from a university research department and represented the start of a development cycle that users the world over were watching closely. Regardless, Autodesk purchased rights to the software and promptly discontinued its sale. A very primitive version of the radiosity renderer was incorporated into the companies 3d Studio Max product, whilst existing Lightscape customers and the product were simply dropped. The most likely reason for this was that Lightscape offered a number of features that were simply too ahead of its time and therefore did not offer the optimum economic return for the company.
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