reddit rumor

[SreckoM]

BTW did anyone saw this gossip, friend told to a friend?

http://www.reddit.com/r/vfx/comments/z8 ... 0smax_and/

[iamVFX]

I wasn't one of them but I heard from a friend who went.
From what I heard...

[luceric]

gotta love the broken telephone game

[Hirazi Blue]

Yeah and Autodesk should really stop spreading these silly rumors...

Before you ask: yes, this is merely meant as a joke!

[Bellsey]

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.ph ... stcount=55

[Letterbox]

You have to wonder how many autodeskers when they hear this, feel their whole body slumping as they look down into their morning coffee, and say that wonder American phrase... "And the hits just keep on coming."

[Tekano]

Hey people on the board from Autodesk

safe? ,imho a load of nonsense. Oh, whats that you say - Toxic is safe as well... aaaah I see now what your definition of 'Safe' represents.

A disgruntled Softimage user

[iamVFX]

"We will not concentrate our force on one package, but we can try to barely support three of them and sell more"

Carl Bass, 2012

Toxic is safe as well...

For ages

[luceric]

this started from autodesk asking for feedback about making skyline (a future game animation tool) only for Maya. in the reddit post, you can see the last step of the broken telephone game, where it goes from "no development on animation tools" to "max is no longer going to be developed". crazy stuff. let's just rejoice they forgot to add Softimage to the title - although someone has done that on twitter

[Tekano]

what I find hilarous is AD being offended. like butter would not melt in its mouth

heres a rather pertinant post I tend to agree with from vfxperson as an explanation to the corporate bullshit they just heard

This is slippery corporate-speak for 'we will continue to milk all you suckers for subscription for as long as we can'. By denying the rumor that the products are being killed off, they are avoiding responding to the real questions around stopping development of features, off-shoring entire development teams, firing critical product managers etc
"Max has hundreds of thousands of users and 3dsmax Design is now part of most every Autodesk design suite and there you are talking millions of users. Max has a more challenging role because it literally plays in 5-6 industries but a good balance, some XBR, and a focus on stability and performance is a good recipe to follow."
This means: we aren't developing Max features for entertainment.
"When your product is used on Metal Gear Solid (still one of my favourite games) and you put out stuff like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5IV...e=youtu.be&hd=1) or the final fantasy games and trailers there is no questioning that product can still deliver world class results."
What does that actually say? Development has been moved wholesale to Singapore. Product management is being handled by the Maya product manager. There are no developers on Softimage today that were involved in development prior to last year.
"This leads me to my next point. Autodesk is not a person and people posting Autodesk did this or said this on this board is surreal for us and it alienates the community from the company. Next time just say "Hey people on the board from Autodesk" or HPOTBFA for short and ask us any question you want."
Excuse me while I vomit in my mouth.
Don't be relieved they aren't killing your product, they shouldn't be doing that anyway. Question the lack of communication regarding the original rumor that OP mentioned - no more games features for Max.
If our pipeline wasn't dependent on Maya, we'd ditch it. We were using Softimage but the last few releases have been really underwhelming. Naiad getting acquired is a nightmare. Houdini is pretty much our only hope for escaping one day - that or C4D continuing to step up their game.
AD just don't get it.

[Letterbox]

3dsMax Rumours – Response

Hi All

I wanted to share a statement from Autodesk’s Chris Vienneau, the Director of Product Management for the Media & Entertainment products.
...

This leads me to my next point. Autodesk is not a person and people posting Autodesk did this or said this on this board is surreal for us and it alienates the community from the company. Next time just say "Hey people on the board from Autodesk" or HPOTBFA for short and ask us any question you want. Sometimes we take the responses private and when we can we respond publicly. Many of us have been in the industry or worked in it for over 20 years (god I am getting old) and we listen here or at Siggraph or on customer visits and we go back and we all work to make you guys happy and help you make the awesome stuff you do every day. Making it seem like old white guys in robes are pulling the strings actually takes away from this forum as it is a place where the top companies and artists get to talk like we were at the pub or waiting for a render.

CV/ “

I feel INSULTED just reading this, and so should YOU.


a) Clearly the person who writes this does NOT understand what a Corporation is, NOR what the responsibilities of its representatives are.

or

b) They do understand, but they assume you don't, and therefore treat you like an idiot.


Clearly the person has NO understanding that Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Forums etc are the medium of THIS generation.

I suggest either get used to it and learn how to cope, if you cant - maybe a retirement home is where you need to be.


And they really wonder why 'the hits just keep on coming.'

[gaboraa]

b) They do understand, but they assume you don't, and therefore treat you like an idiot.
'

Exactly, it seems like that person was talking to his buddies in a pub with a little bit of intoxicated mind...

[Paulrus]

Regardless of what any manager says, they're not privy to anything more than what upper management tells them. I have worked for an extremely large corporation that gobbled up many small companies, so I've experienced this kind of stuff first-hand.

I have been in meetings where the president of our division swore that we'd be fine, the financial down-turn would not affect us, etc. Then a couple of months later we had a round of layoffs. A few months later EVERYONE was being let go.

I don't think for one second anyone at any middle-management level has been told anything more or less than what's necessary. That doesn't mean the rumor is true or false. It just means unless you see an official announcement to shareholders that describe specifically what they're going to be doing, it's all a lot of talk.

-Paul

[bottleofram]

When i saw the thread on CGTalk the other day i thought it was funny. Wanted to crack a joke about non-autodesk shills being hard at work and people giving reddit too much credit...

But than again, apart from the obvious click-bait title, this rumor just says something we already suspected. Max (and i suppose other products) will not try and compete with Maya in feature film and games department. You can extrapolate from this it will rather focus its resources elsewhere. Its easy for AD representatives to debunk an obvious falsehood of max being EOL-ed, because this product line is very popular and covers multiple industries. You can slash its development costs by two thirds and still sell for another decade or so.

So its all just old speculation being reinforced, bit by bit, every year.

[Letterbox]

Of course it was funny, but they clearly don't know how to manage social media sites.

What isn't funny is this person is has no clue, and is a 'Director', makes you wonder do they just hand out those titles like toilet paper?

Really Mr Bass should start pulling everyone's internet access there, until they can prove themselves worthy of it, because that'd save the crap that's being dished out.

[luceric]

I feel INSULTED just reading this, and so should YOU.


a) Clearly the person who writes this does NOT understand what a Corporation is, NOR what the responsibilities of its representatives are.

or

b) They do understand, but they assume you don't, and therefore treat you like an idiot.

Chris Vienneau was responding to a thread on a private mailing list that you do not see, from David Stripinis who works with James Cameron on Avatar and whom we've known for a long time. The goal of that mailing list is to talk frankly between professionals and we should know each other by name there. And not have trolls that try to depersonalize everything down to "corporations" and "shareholders". That's just childish and misinformed.

Chris is directly in the loop of top-level decisions making at Autodesk, talks to everyone in the industry from Autodesk's Carl Bass to James Cameron and the CTOs of the VFX houses. He's not just just some corporate cheerleader or random middle manager.

Personally what I find insulting is when I read people lecturing again that they have greater insight into Autodesk than anyone else, when really they don't know anything about its inner working and any of the people working there. I've known Marc Petit for 14 years and speak with him regularly! Autodesk is one of the few tech companies in the world that has one of its developer in the CEO seat (Carl Bass was programmer on AutoCAD) and it runs in a way that is a lot more human than "let's blindly maximize shareholder value".