Futurism: Imagine the DCC industry in 3 years from now

General discussion about 3D DCC and other topics
Post Reply
Bullit
Moderator
Posts: 2621
Joined: 24 May 2012, 09:44

Futurism: Imagine the DCC industry in 3 years from now

Post by Bullit » 03 Apr 2014, 11:05

Speculate away. Hey it makes the " little gray cells" do some exercise.

- Autodesk will sell M&E division or will buy a game engine into it. 3Dsmax will survive on plugins, but game engine will be the next viz thing for Autodesk, Maya will loose even more of its appeal.

- Houdini, Modo will be much more complete but not quite there yet. The people in it are too closed in their own world.

- Cinema 4D will get more complete, but they will be in a plateau with lack of ideas where to go.

- Blender will shot in all directions, will be good enough for several stuff, but not outstanding in any.
Blender will be the tablet of 3D dcc, good enough and cheap. But game engines will start to undercut it also.

- Game engines would be employed for more and more content creation.

- Render engines will use GPU + CPU , Arnold will be the next Mentalray. Slow and feeling clunky.

- There still not be a complete replacement for ICE

- Some good work will still be done with Softimage.

- Zbrush will continue to be Zbrush, but others will reach nearer.

- Nextlimit will try to diversify after Autodesk Bifrost attack.

- Cloud will not take off except for accessory rendering, simulation.

In fact most people would hate to use traditional DCC content creation software like in past and will want automatic feedback in everything.


Now OS, OpenGL vs DX, OpenVDB, OpenSubD and others? Does it matter?

Will resellers still be important?

User avatar
Draise
Posts: 891
Joined: 09 Oct 2012, 20:48
Skype: ondraise
Location: Colombia

Re: Futurism: Imagine the DCC industry in 3 years from now

Post by Draise » 05 Apr 2014, 22:05

Curious thoughts.

I agree, SI will still be making some amazing products in that timeframe.

I also agree blender will also be handy in all aspects, but not great great at anything - the perfect generalist tool. ;)

Autodesk getting into a new game engine, or aquiring one.. I am not sure that will happen.

Using game engines for asset creation, I see huge potential in their nodal systems, in content creation that doesn't necessarily have to be done in traditional biased or even unbiased ways, but in GPU game engine systems. (Then again, I am not the best at knowing what I'm talking about!)

I see Cryengine or Unity or even Snowdrop, Dice or Unreal to become something of a standard.

Actually, I should look into that - what is their animation toolset like? Effects? Do they even model?

But yes, rendering will go more into GPU+CPU systems. In this regard I think Blender does have it fairly rounded in that area right out of the box.

Re-sellers.. not sure, never used them anyway - internet purchases and downloads have done me well..

User avatar
rray
Moderator
Posts: 1774
Joined: 26 Sep 2009, 15:51
Location: Bonn, Germany
Contact:

Re: Futurism: Imagine the DCC industry in 3 years from now

Post by rray » 05 Apr 2014, 23:23

My guess is a bit pessimistic.. nothing big will happen at all, at least in the next 3-5 years. There's some movement but not a lot of pressure.... developing such a thing as ICE probably needs heavy competition- I'm afraid dev on bifrost might be slowed down by execs at some point.

What I'm hoping will come (considering the constant rise of CPU/GPU power) is some simulation tools from start up companies, for example something for designing+simulating hair, similar to what Marvelous designer does for cloth.

Btw considering the "not enough pressure" argument... I was wondering would there even be ICE today if XSI had become #1 in 3d many years ago? #:-s
softimage resources section updated Jan 5th 2024

Pooby
Posts: 501
Joined: 27 Aug 2010, 22:25

Re: Futurism: Imagine the DCC industry in 3 years from now

Post by Pooby » 06 Apr 2014, 00:31

My serious prediction.

Fabric will, over the course of the next year, start to reveal its Visual Progamming.
Past and present ICE users, who now are working in other DCCs will have an opportunity to continue ICE like workflows within Maya etc.
This ICE-like tools development from fabric combined with healthy competition from Houdini (engine) and bifrost, will start to establish itself as a new way of bridging the gap between TD and artist in the wider cgi community, who probably have to date only seen ICE and Houdini as FX tools and currently have either no , or a hazy view on what ice does.

Modo and other DCCs will realise that to keep up with the others, they need to get on the case with integrations of these visual programming environments to be competitive.

The cgi media will start to cover this emerging trend. More and more people/studios will become aware and want to start learning how to leverage these visual programming environments to develop tools and effects previously out of their reach. And the power and ability of Fabric, especially will go way past what ICE can do.

I would bet that the concept behind ICE, rather than being dead, is going to explode on to the scene soon. I am fully confident a phoenix will rise from its 'ashes'. One that will be at the center of CGI creation in the near future.

Fabric users will also start to deliver and share tools and modules that will begin to replace the dependencies on their dccs own components starting with rigging and fast deformation. Gradually, the dependency on the host app will become the bottleneck and I can easily see a possible future when fabric is all you need to complete a job.

Also, on a side note some Studios will leverage Fabrics fast CPU/GPU processing and realtime renderer ( or by piping it into other game engines) to develop virtual realtime production tools as sections of the industry begin to shift from a traditional post production workflow to live (realtime) productions based around performance capture.

I feel rather than just being at the end of something. We are also at the start of something new and exciting.

Bullit
Moderator
Posts: 2621
Joined: 24 May 2012, 09:44

Re: Futurism: Imagine the DCC industry in 3 years from now

Post by Bullit » 06 Apr 2014, 10:16

rray
I share your pessimism, that is why i put Softimage still going on.


Pooby
i don't think ICE like can be widespread with current median knowledge of artists. That is the first thing that Softimage managers while they were in Avid failed to understand.
Unless they wanted something for TD's but then i don't understand why they cry because people didn't flock to them.

angus_davidson
Posts: 583
Joined: 20 Dec 2012, 05:13
Skype: ithacapellin

Re: Futurism: Imagine the DCC industry in 3 years from now

Post by angus_davidson » 06 Apr 2014, 12:52

Firstly despite AD's attempt to remove it SI will still be around and doing great things.

Pipelines will move away from Maya to a Houdini / FE platform. AD will become less of an industry standard in the M&E spaces because they just cant understand the time=money equation and keep on adding technology at the expense of workflow.

All renderers will be GPU accelerated. Arnold will be forced join this trend to combat Redshift decimating its market share.

As the hardships in the industry bite blender will gain more market share as more folks are unable to afford the cost of licences.

Modo will be come stronger as more 3rd party developers understand what nexus is and migrate there from Maya and Softimage. FE will integrate into nexus as well.

Sidefx will gobble up silo to help boost its lacking modeling capabilities.

Voxels will replace polygons going forward (5-10 years time)
--
Technomancer at Digital Arts
Wits University

Pooby
Posts: 501
Joined: 27 Aug 2010, 22:25

Re: Futurism: Imagine the DCC industry in 3 years from now

Post by Pooby » 06 Apr 2014, 13:40

Bullit wrote:rray
I share your pessimism, that is why i put Softimage still going on.


Pooby
i don't think ICE like can be widespread with current median knowledge of artists. That is the first thing that Softimage managers while they were in Avid failed to understand.
Unless they wanted something for TD's but then i don't understand why they cry because people didn't flock to them.
I think ICE did spectacularly well within SI user base , being consistently the most talked about feature. Look at the Vimeo ICE channel. Thousands of videos. How many on other areas of softimage?
ICE didn't however attract Maya users, which is little surprise as It could have only been useful in a limited way such as simming and exporting particles, which isn't what ICE is really about.
The fact it didn't Have enough pull to migrate people over to softimage isn't surprising even if it weren't for the complete lack of marketing, as people don't want to change DCCs.
However, I think a similar system available to Maya users that can do more than ICEcan do within that package will also have great success .
Time will tell, but this is what I fully believe.
I am not saying that every Maya user will want to use it. However, I think the success will be comparitive to the SI equivalent, and that scaled up would be huge.

User avatar
Hirazi Blue
Administrator
Posts: 5107
Joined: 04 Jun 2009, 12:15

Re: Futurism: Imagine the DCC industry in 3 years from now

Post by Hirazi Blue » 06 Apr 2014, 20:55

Well, three years would seem like an awefully short timespan. I do not expect much to change. There will undoubtedly be a lot of "feature bluster", but most (if not everything) will stay the same. Fabric will probably gain a bigger footprint, but one should not expect miracles from them. In the end everybody will still hate Autodesk and Autodesk will still rule, despite everyone's misgivings.
Maybe Ton Roosendaal finally realizes he's Dutch, historically well-known for trade and commerce, and starts to charge money for Blender under something like the canceled "Blender License" after all. Now that's a development I'd love to watch (from a safe distance).
:-
Stay safe, sane & healthy!

Bullit
Moderator
Posts: 2621
Joined: 24 May 2012, 09:44

Re: Futurism: Imagine the DCC industry in 3 years from now

Post by Bullit » 06 Apr 2014, 21:49

I agree it can be big pooby.
Voxels will replace polygons going forward (5-10 years time)
This is also the kind of stuff i like to see in a thread like this. Technological trends.

The current underline structure is:

OS: Windows, Linux, Mac, Web based applications(so technically no OS)
Viewport: DX or OpenGL

Only change i can see above is Android(a fork of Unix) getting also in it. Anything to expect in viewport tech?

In hardware i expect that memory integration of CPU+GPU will drive rendering engines with obvious advantages
Who will get the better GPU+CPU integration will start with big advantage. So i think in rendering there is an open field.

Alembic, OpenVDB, OpenSubD will be the standards?

Voxels? So this put 3DCoat with potential to be bought?

angus_davidson
Posts: 583
Joined: 20 Dec 2012, 05:13
Skype: ithacapellin

Re: Futurism: Imagine the DCC industry in 3 years from now

Post by angus_davidson » 06 Apr 2014, 23:36

Bullit wrote:I agree it can be big pooby.
Voxels will replace polygons going forward (5-10 years time)
while I think 3d coat is very under rated I am talking about thing like

https://volumerics.com/en-us/vota

Personally I think the cloud is going to crash and burn in the DCC space. There are a lot of countries that are struggling to use web based tech at the current HD resolution. 4K and Ultra4K are just a a bridge to far for networks outside of the far east. That and its only going to take take one content leak via a hacked cloud platform and its dead in the water for anything involving movie vfx.

OpenGL will stage a comeback as both OSX and Linux take a larger slice of the M&E pie. Was interesting to see Presto running on OSX using OpenGL. OpenGL will overtake DX as the default view port which will allow all OS to have equality in the view port.

Someone will release a decent Wine config for Softimage so as it ages it will run well in OSX ;)
--
Technomancer at Digital Arts
Wits University

User avatar
Mathaeus
Posts: 1778
Joined: 08 Jun 2009, 21:11
Location: Zagreb, Croatia
Contact:

Re: Futurism: Imagine the DCC industry in 3 years from now

Post by Mathaeus » 07 Apr 2014, 00:07

I'll become an Emperor of Autodesk and all related software. As first decision, I'll put the all irrational numbers into retirement. No more that boring 3.141592653589793238462643383279 thing, it will go to nice rounded 3. Special team of developers will put this into reality. Developers will work directly with binary numbers, having a keyboards with only two keys: zero and one. Next decision will be retirement of ray tracing, but I'm still not sure about that. Bellsey will be my minister of foreign affairs. We'll be neighboring only with Blender empire, they will be showing to us, their amazing project of mono color interface - that is, Blender will evolve in just only one dark gray table.

Ok now a bit less stupid, everything will be pretty much the same, nobody will like AD, but no one developer will show any real effort to compete.

User avatar
Draise
Posts: 891
Joined: 09 Oct 2012, 20:48
Skype: ondraise
Location: Colombia

Re: Futurism: Imagine the DCC industry in 3 years from now

Post by Draise » 07 Apr 2014, 19:46

Wow, Vota looks great!

Yeah, I think voxels may become something of a future standard in 3D work eventually.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 30 guests