angus_davidson wrote:I suspect its a little bit of too little too late. Yes you can now do funky subset of Ice'ish stuff inside of Max, however if it came down to a choice between MGC and Fabric Canvas, Sorry but Fabric wins. If they had set it up similar to Bifrost which is only really called by the Host applcation, it could have been a lot closer.
Well I don't see any competition, here. For long time, Max itself is enough huge, to do not need to compete against anything. After all, they were able to successfully ignore a much more important things than set of plugins (platform, whatever, don't know, honestly to say), you mentioned. Arnold renderer for example. On flip side, Max seems to be a leading 'exporter' of plugin technology.
First of all, I see the MCG thing as an great confirmation of 'our' concepts. Really welcome confirmation, as EOL of SI, as event negative 'by self', is able put the idea of visual programming inside 3d app into negative, too. At some point, people will forget why SI stopped, but they'll remember the related ICE thing, which also was 'unhappy, don't remember why'. Damage could affect the other small players, too.
Second, for decades, production of Max plugins is successfully dispersed all around world, to authors who never ever been members of development team. Some of them have even a little or zero of production experience. I'd say, a mix of good SDK and huge community is the key. In any case, force which can't be underestimated. Also, probably the most democratic environment for talents, contrary to our picture of Max's owner.
Personally I'll stay with Houdini, Maya LT should come this summer, Blender here and there. It's affordable combo, also I'd believe Houdini, as a 'actual master' in this case, should be even more valued, once such player as Max become a member of team.
But, I'd be mad if I wouldn't take some time in learning MCG. These systems are similar, it seems to be much easier to learn the difference, than getting the skills in 'direct' animation and modeling.
Very very welcome addition to Max, in any case.