Marc Petit joins Exocortex

[McNistor]

Why did they buy Softimage in the first place and not immediately bury it is still a mystery to me.

Why would they do that with lots of people already paying (and willing to do so for a long time) for XSI licenses and subs? You see, they spend peanuts with Softimage and the money they get from XSI clients will be poured into Maya/Max/water-coolers.
Not much money coming in from XSI users you say (I already hear luceric saying how impressed he was when he saw the user base of Max/Maya)? Well, nothing has been done to improve that but Atsdk is happy to have those users buy Maya so that they can fire the last staff mending Softimage.

[Nick3d]

Soft right now is treated like a plugin because of ICE, but ( correct me if I'm wrong ) something similar to ICE is in development for Maya as well? so why bother with SI?
I understand the "no internal competition", but jeez, at least make some improvement on something!

A lot of people here are complaining about the SI upgrading policy ( I wonder why... ) and since the 2014 upgrade was a...well...bugfix? crowd? camera sequencer? I don't think that SI would grow its costumer base and for sure less and less people will keep going with the yearly upgrades

I ( and I think many others ) wont be surprised if they will shut down for good SI, or just get the ICE toolset and make it a standalone which will work together with 3ds/Maya and all the other AD 3d softwares
At this point I hope that they would sell Softimage, but I don't think its going to happen

[McNistor]

@Nick3d I don't think ICE is something you can take out like Houdini engine (but I might be wrong)

And speaking of Houdini... I've played with it last few weeks and it looks less and less weird. Weird, isn't it?

[Hirazi Blue]

Now would be a good time to jump in and claim we're "incorrigible"...

[Eugen]

Incorrigible... I would call it resilient!

But yes, we are running in circles. That's what can happen to people if you leave them in the dark... same discussion every half a year.

For the records: you cannot rip ICE out of Softimage. It's more or less hard-wired to it's architecture. But you can get inspired from it and rebuild it, if you have the know-how, which of course is inside AD now.

(tweaking rendersettings gives you time to hang out in places like this... ; )

[McNistor]

Now would be a good time to jump in and claim we're "incorrigible"...

Yeah it was high time the moment Atdsk bought XSI and if they kill it, I'd have to be brain-dead to go to another Atdsk product as I have the luxury to work with whatever app I want.

I'd be wary of dealing with other companies that exhibit this complete lack of passion for what they do. There are a few people at Atdsk that probably have a passion for the software but it's way too diluted and all it remains is the palpable greed. Perhaps the natural course of a company when it becomes an international monopolist juggernaut, but that doesn't mean we have to like it or accept it.
A much better experience in dealing with small-medium companies that care about their customers and their s/w as much as they care about the money.

[angus_davidson]

@Nick3d I don't think ICE is something you can take out like Houdini engine (but I might be wrong)

And speaking of Houdini... I've played with it last few weeks and it looks less and less weird. Weird, isn't it?

Thats a whole lotta weird, in a very weird week

[McNistor]

yeah man, I know, its... weird.

[Eugen]

I'd be wary of dealing with other companies that exhibit this complete lack of passion for what they do. There are a few people at Atdsk that probably have a passion for the software but it's way too diluted and all it remains is the palpable greed. Perhaps the natural course of a company when it becomes an international monopolist juggernaut, but that doesn't mean we have to like it or accept it.
A much better experience in dealing with small-medium companies that care about their customers and their s/w as much as they care about the money.

Agreed. Sadly, one cannot come to another conclusion. Not even AD themselves care to deny it.
This company might be even a somewhat comfortable refuge for it's employees, but I suspect you need to put your idealism into the umbrella stand walking in there. Wait, there even might be idealistic characters working there DESPITE such an atmosphere, and thanks heaven there still are, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was much frustration as well - which of course the usual corporate image propaganda will keep undisclosed.

And the next fool who says there's so much negativity among Softimage users gets it where it hurts...
That being said, back to work. Nothing new to learn here.

Moderator edit: corrected the quote, you wrongly attributed it to me- HB

[McNistor]

That being said, back to work. Nothing new to learn here.

Agreed. And amen!

[MauricioPC]

Okay ... I guess you guys are right. But just as a little fuel ... last two blog posts of Cory.

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/cory/par ... 4-for-maya

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/cory/get ... ionbuilder


Apparently nothing happens in Softimage land.

I must admit I've been studying the M-sucker ... oh boy, what to do.

[Bellsey]

I'm not going to answer Eugen's question, and I think an analogy from Pvt Joker at 0:18 to might explain why...

[Eugen]

; }
Exactly... I don't answer catch questions myself...

[angus_davidson]

Unfortunately it shouldn't have to be Graham (no disrespect meant) that answers those questions. Its not part of what he is supposed to do, Our product manager should be do that.

[Eugen]

Not an easy man to meet...

[Hirazi Blue]

Well, contacting him certainly isn't the problem (his email address has been posted on this community and on his Area blog). The only time I tried I at least got a prompt response. Not the kind of response I had hoped for at the time, but friendly and prompt. Considering some other employees of Autodesk have never even bothered to respond to my occasional mails at all, I count this as a "small victory" and as a definite "plus" for mr. Mogk.
Carry on... ;)