Coping with the "depression"

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Hirazi Blue
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Coping with the "depression"

Post by Hirazi Blue » 04 Apr 2014, 20:49

Moderator edit: I have split this thread somewhat arbitrarily from the Fighting the depression thread as it has become more and more a sort of "free-form" thread about coping than about the depression itself... - HB

I'm halfway through my Maya 2014 trial and I am still looking for something worth prolonging my subscription over. Plenty of reasons (unrelated to 3d) to be depressed about ATM, but this whole Maya situation definitively isn't helping... [/rant]
:-s
Stay safe, sane & healthy!

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myara
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Re: Fighting the depression

Post by myara » 04 Apr 2014, 21:17

If I were a hobbyist I'd probably wouldn't consider Maya or Max. I think learning Maya or Max to fight the depression will only add frustration. but I guess the migration offer may worth giving it a try.

I'm quite busy with my job right now and don't have time for depression, but the fact that I'm re-learning Zbrush and experimenting with 3DCoat keeps my mind busy and creative.

I don't know if this is too technical for this thread but trying to be creative in any way, 3D or 2D, digital or not, would be a good alternative to fight depression. After all that's why we all love to use Softimage.
M.Yara
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julius
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Re: Fighting the depression

Post by julius » 04 Apr 2014, 21:27

Go away from autodesk will help you a lot to fight the depression. It's my case.

lots of people say that there's no job with other softs, but if you guys all go to maya or max, things will never change.

some here are, or have key positions to influence the decision makers. Give a chance to other apps will be benific for all the CG industry cause of this new competition, and people will find non autodesk jobs at last.

I'm determined to participate to this turnaround by working with other app (modo is my choice if 801 release keep its promises), and hopefully creating employment in a near future.
I'm not afraid with the lack of modo specialists : any experienced user of any 3D app will be able to be productive in one or two weeks.
Almost any project is now doable with apps like Modo, houdini, lightwave or C4D as long as you make the effort to change some habits.
Give to these apps a new market share, and the dev and competition will speed up !

My best hope is that autodesk will do the same with 3dsmax... It would be the best chance ever for the CG industry.

So come on ! stop crying and don't let autodesk get the CG industry stuck in the mud !
Last edited by julius on 04 Apr 2014, 21:38, edited 1 time in total.

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Hirazi Blue
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Re: Fighting the depression

Post by Hirazi Blue » 04 Apr 2014, 21:34

@myara - You're probably right. I misjudged the problem to begin with. One highend DCC, I thought, couldn't - in principle - differ all that much from any other highend DCC. I was wrong! Man, was I wrong! While professionals will have no choice to switch to other software eventually, I am seriously considering finding myself a completely new hobby. Chalk up eight years of Softimage as the "Wonder Years" (including voice-over narration)? Sad fact remains, that to stay in "this business"/hobby, the Autodesk offer is the only one I am seriously able to consider (from a financial POV). Not many options there. And that doesn't help fighting the depression either...

Anyone still know what the "Wonder Years" were?
Stay safe, sane & healthy!

julius
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Re: Fighting the depression

Post by julius » 04 Apr 2014, 21:42

Why don't you try Blender ? Starting with it is a bit disapointing, but this soft is very capable, and I'm sure you won't regret your effort as it's dev is faster and faster these years.
aditionally, Blender is the only one autodesk won't be able to buy !

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Re: Fighting the depression

Post by luceric » 04 Apr 2014, 22:29

if you're interested in operatng in a user community as hobbyist, I think an opportunity where there was a void to fill like there was softimage is hard to find again. Modo/LW/Houdini/Blender have all their community forums. Max just got its shit together at maxunderground. There really isn't anything really solid for Maya; is there even a news site people can go to (like maxunderground), I don't think so. I don't know about Clarisse but it might have some of that "underdog" feel as Softimage but are there third parties for it or news that come from anyone other than the company? It's too early I guess.

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Re: Fighting the depression

Post by Hirazi Blue » 04 Apr 2014, 22:35

The lack of any good online communities to roam is a whole different part of the depression, it's true. But, after the si-community eventually ends, I had already waved "online life" more or less goodbye anyhow, as there will be no way to top the experience of this little community anyway (from my POV).

@julius: to me - after more than 10 years of trying - Blender isn't an option.
Stay safe, sane & healthy!

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Re: Fighting the depression

Post by Bullit » 05 Apr 2014, 06:49

Blender is changing. I didn't like it 2 or 3 years ago either but it is much better.

pcd
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Re: Fighting the depression

Post by pcd » 05 Apr 2014, 07:58

I need to say that i'm shocked by this attitude: we can't do anything, we need to move to Maya! What???? Never-ever-ever again with autodesk. And to reply to autodicks employers around here. In 2008 i was at a presentation in Europe; my main goal was to get on track with Softimage as it was announced to be on the features presentation, and to explain me how to better understand it and work with it. Also since i was shortlisted on the guest list i wanted to get a hefty discount for the product as announced. Once the event started, Maya presentation went first, then Max but not XSI! They apologized and told us that they don't have any Softimage guy, it's a small thing with him, 'but this is not an issue, it's not like it's doing anything other then Maya'. 'If you want animation, go Maya'. This was in 2008, and i was like wtf? I want to buy Softimage, not freaking Maya. Then i was presented with a 30% discount for Maya; i said i need Softimage. Answer was, 'sure, but if you get Softimage we don't don't give you any discount'!!!! It's not your software? How can you tell me not to buy it? I mean the room was full of buyers!!!!!! So shut the fuck up with all this 'we tried'. You tried shit, you tried nothing. Right from the start you tried to kill the software - all potential Softimage buyers where give like 30% discount if they will go Maya. Oh, and by the way, the new 'wonderful' X-gen shit in Maya is nothing more then just a single node from Houdini witch is called Copy SOP(surface operator). So since this winter i started to learn Houdini. It's hard, but i will never-ever go autodesk in my life. Modo or Houdini are my best bets right now. Since i do heavy character animation, right now Modo is a no go - it does not have animation layers, or NLA. This leaves me only with Houdini, since no way in hell i will touch that piece of shit called Maya. They started a thread for SI users, and one guy reported a bug. They fixed the bug in 24 hours!!!!! The thread is full of SI users, so go ahead and join there guys if you did not done it already. Let's try to improve a bit Houdini, to make it more artist friendly. This is the only message autodicks will get: NO MORE MONEY FOR YOU. Sorry for this much swear, but i am so sick of this bastards, i can't even get a new seat of Softimage! They now tell us 'we going to leave you the licenses indefinitely'. Really, who the fuck is going to believe you? Once we started to buy Maya, we can kiss goodbye our license. I can put my neck on this, but once they trick users to move to Maya, they will shut down all the licenses. If you will be able to use Softimage after 2016-2017 i will shot myself in a foot. Who the hell will believe this liars anymore? Last year they told us that 'we don't have any plans on killing Softimage; the future is bright'. If you guys ever believe this liars again, then you deserve what will come upon you. Don't you see what they are doing here? They try to trick us: 'don't worry, you will use Softimage alongside with Maya'. Really? Then why the fuck i can't purchase new seats? The real trick is to make us by that piece of shit software and then they have us by the balls. Well not me. Fuck you to all autodick employers around here, you won't see shit from me again you fucking liars. Rant over.

julius
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Re: Fighting the depression

Post by julius » 05 Apr 2014, 18:08

Thanks pcd, seeing people go to max or maya depress me much more than the end of softimage...

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Hirazi Blue
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Re: Fighting the depression

Post by Hirazi Blue » 05 Apr 2014, 18:55

Anti-Autodesk sentiments are more than understandable. We all have them and for most of us they predate the "retirement" of Softimage quite a bit. Personally, I don't "like" what Autodesk did to Softimage and what Autodesk does to innovation in general. But the general mood, where anything's better than an Autodesk product is naïve.
Everybody has his/her own set of priorities when choosing a replacement for Softimage and some companies do give the impression they are willing to listen to Softimage users. But in the end these products probably will not change one bit to actually accommodate the Softimage user base. You've got to judge them on their current features, not on their promises. And if something's missing now, chances are good, it will never materialize.
Not wanting to spend one more dime on Autodesk is a more than valid position (one I sincerely wish I could afford), thinking that adopting non-Autodesk software will mean smooth sailing from now on, however, with a company that truly listens to its customers and software that in the end will turn out just like Softimage, is a recipe for yet another disaster, I'm afraid...

but thanks, this does help fight off my own depression a bit...
:p
Stay safe, sane & healthy!

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Re: Fighting the depression

Post by luceric » 05 Apr 2014, 20:17

pcd wrote:I need to say that i'm shocked by this attitude: we can't do anything, we need to move to Maya! What???? Never-ever-ever again with autodesk. And to reply to autodicks employers around here. In 2008 i was at a presentation in Europe; my main goal was to get on track with Softimage as it was announced to be on the features presentation, and to explain me how to better understand it and work with it. Also since i was shortlisted on the guest list i wanted to get a hefty discount for the product as announced. Once the event started, Maya presentation went first, then Max but not XSI! They apologized and told us that they don't have any Softimage guy, it's a small thing with him, 'but this is not an issue, it's not like it's doing anything other then Maya'. 'If you want animation, go Maya'. This was in 2008, and i was like wtf?
In 2008, Autodesk owned Softimage only for 43 days. Autodesk only got 3 demo artists from Avid to cover the entire planet (basically one per continent!). That's all we had. I'm not surprised they didn't haveone handy in Max/Maya events, even in the year that followed.
pcd wrote: Oh, and by the way, the new 'wonderful' X-gen shit in Maya is nothing more then just a single node from Houdini witch is called Copy SOP(surface operator)
XGen is a render-time instancer (by Disney, no less, who would know if they could have used Houdini instead). It's my understanding Copy SOP is copying geometry in the DCC, not at render time, but feel free to correct me.

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Re: Fighting the depression

Post by Bellsey » 06 Apr 2014, 00:33

@pcd - it's clear you had a bad experience and I'm sorry to hear that. There perhaps isn't much that I can say to defend it, but I can perhaps offer some context from our side. If you still want to call BS at us after that, then that's fair enough.

You don't say the country you're in, or who hosted the event (Adsk themselves or a channel partner), other than Europe, so in that case when it comes to a Softimage demo guy, that would be me. Luc-Eric is right, there wasn't many Soft AE's globally and I was the only one in EMEA at the time of acquisition and have remained the only one to date. Therefore, its fair to say, with EMEA being a pretty big territory, I'm somewhat stretched.

You don't say the time of the event, so again it's hard to elaborate without any details. But again Luc-Eric is right, if you include just 2008, Autodesk had ownership for a relatively short period of time because the acquisition happened in the last couple of months of the year. Very few people actually knew that the acquisition was happening so it was a shock to people in Softimage, Autodesk, and the related sales channel. Certainly for those last few weeks of 2008, it was simply a case of business as usual, on both sides.
Literally days after the announcement, I did a couple of events (in Spain and/or Italy I think) without technically knowing whether I was still going to have a job. And of course many people had questions, but I had no additional information for them. It's perhaps no surprise that things weren't entirely clear whilst transition plans were put in place and people carried on as usual.

When it comes to licenses and usage, myself and others have said many times that the licenses you buy are perpetual, and can be used indefinitely. You're calling Autodesk out on that and that's your prerogative, but I know people who are still running other EoL software such as Combustion and ImageModeller, so I see no reason why that wouldn't be the case with Softimage. When we get past April 30th 2016 though, I'd appreciate it if you didn't shoot yourself in the foot.

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Re: Fighting the depression

Post by FXDude » 06 Apr 2014, 05:22

Bellsey wrote: Luc-Eric is right, there wasn't many Soft AE's globally and I was the only one in EMEA at the time of acquisition and have remained the only one to date. Therefore, its fair to say, with EMEA being a pretty big territory, I'm somewhat stretched.

You don't say the time of the event, so again it's hard to elaborate without any details. But again Luc-Eric is right, if you include just 2008, Autodesk had ownership for a relatively short period of time because the acquisition happened in the last couple of months of the year.
So Maybe it -was- that there there was no demo artist that they could find in Europe ( big continent )
or that they couldn't otherwise fly anyone over. ( or perhaps would rather not spend anything doing that )
Maybe who knows...

But it's just hard to not just put that in the same bucket as other ( mostly bogus ) explanations justifying not only *not promoting* it,
but consistently *demoting* it throughout the years.
Bellsey wrote: When it comes to licenses and usage, myself and others have said many times that the licenses you buy are perpetual, and can be used indefinitely. You're calling Autodesk out on that and that's your prerogative, but I know people who are still running other EoL software such as Combustion and ImageModeller, so I see no reason why that wouldn't be the case with Softimage. When we get past April 30th 2016 though, I'd appreciate it if you didn't shoot yourself in the foot.
Hum..

Image Modeler was & is -still- included in bundles,
and Combustion was -still- offered as a product til 2011 ( ~3-4 years later ) to the very wide public,

-Any- of which were *persistently requested* as compromises for SI, but nooooo ;)

SI at first was literally killed in the purest sense of the word ( preventing ALL & ANY use )
( which was really pretty incredibly bold in itself )
then with a few subsequent relaxations.
( with the last relaxation of the ability to continue on subs WITH SI After 2016, not being officially announced, or terms readjusted )

So even if they are now perpetual, or even WITH those relaxations,
it's pretty hard to not qualify that as a still fairly complete ( & unwarrented ) *Killing*.

The NOT SELLING IT part being the most damaging, and the most completely unnecessary part.

Affecting schools the most, but pretty much anyone who would otherwise be planning to do things with it in its frozen
( yet still kick-ass ) state.
( 'kick-ass':: see softimage.tv, but mostly referring to what everyone that know SI, that have also worked with other solutions for years including Maya , knows about SI)

It could very much have been (& can still be) entirely possible to continue to sell it.. ( or include it )
saying that logistics would be too complicated or would otherwise not be profitable,
is just more to put in that same bucket which is has already been full since the shufflings.
( bucket filled by a few really bent on actively backing the actions of the company they work for, whatever those actions may be )

( [-( :-w )

pcd
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Re: Fighting the depression

Post by pcd » 06 Apr 2014, 07:41

Well, autodesk guys are alive and well. Let's answer them, starting with Belsey. It was the presentation witch took place in Holland at the end of 2008, in Amsterdam. Funny thing how autodesk offered discounts for max and maya but not for Softimage. Somehow you missed the biggest part from the entire story; autodesk offered us Softimage users maya instead of Softimage right after they've purchased the software. And don't be afraid, i'm not going to shoot myself in a foot, i already budgeted Houdini for my business so i don't give a shit about autodesk anymore. To Luceric, it does not matter what the hell the Xgen is, it's copied from Houdini. It even gives you the same hints when you try to write some expression. I don't have anything to do with a single node, and if my view is not too much distorted, in Houdini i have access at the lowest level, with visual programming. So i can not only use my nodes, build expressions on top of them, but i can also build my own tools. The worst part with maya is, that it's just another feature added to an old crap software witch has so much obsolete shit in it, that i would not touch it in a million years. So now you try to add procedural nodes to maya, but without the ability to go low level(like ICE or VEX) to edit the underlying nodes. Who the hell do you think you are going to cheat with that shit??? Do you think your users are so stupid that they don't know what low level access is? Well, not us SI users. So again a bad decision on top of an old crap. You guys had the perfect low level access software, with visual programming, artist friendly, but you just killed it. So why the hell i would buy ONE feature when i can buy a feature builder to build myself as many features as i want? Glad you both showed up here so folks can see that autodesk is interested in one thing only: move to maya shit. Well from one soft user: go to hell autodesk i will not give you one penny never-ever again. If there is one thing i can't stand is being lied in the face. When the community asked, autodesk said: 'the future of Softimage is bright, we don't have any plans to kill it'. So if anyone around here believe the bullshit is being told, AGAIN, than it deserve to be lied. Not me so stay the hell out of me and have the decency to shut up for at least few months.
Last edited by pcd on 06 Apr 2014, 07:57, edited 1 time in total.

pcd
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Re: Fighting the depression

Post by pcd » 06 Apr 2014, 07:49

Hirazi Blue wrote:Anti-Autodesk sentiments are more than understandable. We all have them and for most of us they predate the "retirement" of Softimage quite a bit. Personally, I don't "like" what Autodesk did to Softimage and what Autodesk does to innovation in general. But the general mood, where anything's better than an Autodesk product is naïve.
Everybody has his/her own set of priorities when choosing a replacement for Softimage and some companies do give the impression they are willing to listen to Softimage users. But in the end these products probably will not change one bit to actually accommodate the Softimage user base. You've got to judge them on their current features, not on their promises. And if something's missing now, chances are good, it will never materialize.
Not wanting to spend one more dime on Autodesk is a more than valid position (one I sincerely wish I could afford), thinking that adopting non-Autodesk software will mean smooth sailing from now on, however, with a company that truly listens to its customers and software that in the end will turn out just like Softimage, is a recipe for yet another disaster, I'm afraid...

but thanks, this does help fight off my own depression a bit...
:p

Looks like autodesk have done much worse than i think, if you now can't believe one top company plans... So far the SideFX guys have done a huge rebuilding of they software. If you go trough they last 3 releases you will see that; this was one of my main selling points. Second they are known in the industry to have the best client support(they did changed the bug submitted by that SI dude in ONE day). And last but not list the software as it is today is vastly superior to anything autodesk has. I am not going to put my neck for any company, but i think that after i spend so much time and effort with autodesk just to be slapped in the face i need a change. I am not the advocate for any company, i am just saying this: go Modo, go Houdini, go Cinema 4d, go anywhere BUT NO MORE AUTODESK. Do this industry a favor and let's put our client portfolio into other boat. Mark my words, this is our best chance to go off autodesk, and to change something. No way in hell i go autodesk anymore.

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