Autodesk retires Softimage

[Maximus]

I suppose we should wait and see what version 1 of Bifrost can offer before completely ignoring Maya. I'm just not that hopeful

Haven't Autodesk normally posted up a few 'sneak peeks' of upcoming versions by now? Strange we've seen nothing yet!

They already stated and showed what Bifrost is. At the moment is just a fluid sim, its gonna take "god knows" how many years to become what ICE was, and frankly i doubt AD will be able to create something like ICE or better. They dont give a fuck about products, just money. They dont develop, they buy and patch on top of existing software. So they have 0 clue about clean workflow, artists interface, architecture. They are assemblers.

So just forget it, you can mark my words.

[Bullit]

That is my look to it, no ICE for foreseeable future.

They are into fluid. This first version they even have to add spray to the thing, which is unbelievable.

Then they will get into viscosity. So put that into Maya 2017 - so year 2016 when they start "finish" the fluid part. Maya 2018 to add the last parts and that is assuming things go well.
At that time many things in industry/market/world could have changed and Bifrost could end just there.

So the ideas that Bifrost will be anything other than fluids are very premature.

[azurecgi]

When you look at the 'new' features of Maya 2015 you can see just how slow Autodesk development is

There is no way they are going to have Maya ready to replace Softimage in 5 years, and yet they are killing it in 2!

I'd better get back to my Houdini tutorials! ;)

[XYZ]

The AD acquisition was one of the saddest day of my life. I knew AD will disappoint because I wasted two years without result learning max before i felt in love with SI which i use since version 4.
you know what I'm doing guys right now?? I'm downloading blender and reading how to become a blender developer.

[Pooby]

http://www.stefandidak.com/2014/03/auto ... -3d-world/

[talent103]

WOW! That was well said.

[Hirazi Blue]

Stefan Didak raises some valid points in his blog post, but his conclusion is dangerously naive, I’m afraid. Autodesk has become the unstoppable force it currently appears to be, because the industry as a whole enabled it to grow and grow over all these years. And much of the interesting stuff happening "outside" of Autodesk would probably have never happened without the incentive to "stick it to" Autodesk.
You can’t even really blame Autodesk for being governed by greed, as each and every company in this business is governed by it to some extent. It’s called capitalism.
And should Autodesk actually collapse all of a sudden, this would probably mean a disaster for the industry, one it might as well not even truly survive. In the end, however, an existing and/or new company would step up to do exactly what Autodesk is doing now and the industry would probably allow it to grow in much the same manner.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree with a lot of the analysis and have my fair share of dark thoughts when thinking of Autodesk, I just don’t think “wishing Autodesk away” will help anyone. Asking why it had the chance to become what it ultimately became, might be more helpful to this industry in the long run.

[Bullit]

The problem is that are very few quality developers and at same capable of building a viable company for the necessary period of more than a decade to establish it.

In short no ones want/can build a mainstream application anymore and that is the big problem we have.

Also it seems there isn't critical mass to develop programs of this capability except in the pair US/Canada and Germany.



And Capitalism is not greed. You can be what you want in Capitalism. Even less i think that Softimage was stopped because of greed.

[angus_davidson]

And Capitalism is not greed. You can be what you want in Capitalism. Even less i think that Softimage was stopped because of greed.

Softimage was stopped because of incompetent management. It was sidelined, under resourced and definitely under exposed.

[Bullit]

Agree. Softimage is/was peanuts for Autodesk.
Unfortunately some organizations can just think one thing at time. Softimage appears to have been a strange soul in an autodesk body that never warmed to it.

I don't know the struggle that was inside to make the decision to buy it. But it is clear that the marketing and various parts of the organisation never had coeherent speech to push for it.

I think in big organisation for things to work , where that are strong competition there is need of a coeherent speech/vision to justify to someone inside investing their time supporting some product.
I am afraid that the Softimage case was never fully made inside whole Autodesk. Specially the publicity/marketing department.

[McNistor]

[...]You can’t even really blame Autodesk for being governed by greed, as each and every company in this business is governed by it to some extent. It’s called capitalism.[...]

This very often made mistake should be addressed with a simple note: greed is human nature, not capitalism. Capitalism is essentially free market which allows or even empowers that human nature to manifest.
This somewhat small difference makes a big difference regarding how people continue to perceive capitalism which is often seen in an unwarranted negative light because of that.

[Hirazi Blue]

I never claimed capitalism to be greed or vice versa. What I said was that certain companies are governed by greed and what I meant to add was that the fact that companies like that can thrive is a result of how capitalism works.
;)

Lets not derail this thread with too much political/economical remarks any further (and that's also a "note to self")...

[McNistor]

Ah I see, I misunderstood then, my bad.
Indeed, capitalism allows for this situation to occur. But if capitalism works as intended - a real free market, without gov. cronyism and corruption - then this situation is the result of the people choices, to go with Adsk.
The way I see it, the only way to fix this is the proverbial "wallet voting".

I agree. I'll stop with the OT now.

[angus_davidson]

on the retirement part of the thread

http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/autodesk ... e-31411069

[McNistor]

They acquired Softimage because they wanted the devs they say, in order to help developing the next-gen tech. and then they go patching up Maya, a 20 yrs Frankenstein.
Kudos!
I personally think that whoever is thinking that maybe Adsk will innovate and bring Maya or any other of their s/w to a stage where you'd be wowed, is extremely naive. Fool me once, shame on you ... comes to mind.

[bb3d]

Yes, and the reason to retire Softimage and not the other packages was because of the much larger user base, but they never tried to increase Softimage's user base and therefore it's a very lame excuse.
They already have the "next-gen tech", all they had to do was to bring over the few cool Maya features like PaintFX, FluidFX to Softimage, promote it accordingly and the user base would have increased. Now they are presenting "next-gen" features for Maya which are available in Softimage since 3-4 years. It's really frustrating how stupid they are.

Most of what Stefan Didak wrote in his blog expresses my own feelings about Autodesk. Maybe he should visit their HQ?