Another 3dsmax sneak peak

[Letterbox]

don't get me wrong, it would be best today if Softimage had been made cross-platform originally. I'm just saying, it's not realistic to talk about a core rewrite. Every product in the market has things it could have done differently. We have to appreciate Softimage for what it does great and go ahead and produce great content with it. This product is forward-looking enough in its design that it will continue to be relevant for artists for a long time.

While I wouldn't disagree with it's capable of producing great content. Which I believe, in part, is because of the inclusion of many excellent external ice tools in such examples.

I can't really be sold that it's "forward-looking enough for a long time", without certain functionality clearly being implemented by Autodesk itself.

One such example is that for a long time there has only been dx9 support. Considering what you say its use in games companies. The way ports are done it's understandable, but also consider their futures and inherently SI's too, they wont always do things that way, and especially with dx 10, 11 and 12, and what the market demands those products to be.

I am very surprised that this core 'dx' functionality and clear future-proofing has been left untouched for so long. To me, that's just one example of functionality that clearly has to be addressed by AD itself, to make the statement ring true and to be true.

[Hirazi Blue]

Second, "Nine women can't make a baby in one month".

Did you ever test this? Seems plausible, but I haven't tried it myself...

[luceric]

I can't really be sold that it's "forward-looking enough for a long time", without certain functionality clearly being implemented by Autodesk itself.

One such example is that for a long time there has only been dx9 support. Considering what you say its use in games companies. The way ports are done it's understandable, but also consider their futures and inherently SI's too, they wont always do things that way, and especially with dx 10, 11 and 12, and what the market demands those products to be.

I am very surprised that this core 'dx' functionality and clear future-proofing has been left untouched for so long. To me, that's just one example of functionality that clearly has to be addressed by AD itself, to make the statement ring true and to be true.

it's pretty forward looking ICE wise and SDK wise. DirectX wise, we've haven't been so good at that, in part due to lack of interest by the clients. We did support DirectX 10, but dropped it in Softimage 2011, in the latest RTS Shader API re-write. The game "Lost Planet" is the only client that know who used it. DirectX 10 coming back to Softimage is a question of game studios demanding it.

[angus_davidson]

I dint say that things haven't been added. what I was saying is that you can only add to something for so long before you need to rethink the underlying base. They have done very well on the platform that was laid, but it wont be enough to keep market share if the other peoples tools are so much better and faster.

Macs have always been overpriced but they have also been very common in our particular area. They are also exceptionally common in education where you start your grass roots growth. yes SI has always has a proportionately small foot print, but its one that could have been greatly extended had it been available on more platforms and had a little work done to make it much easier to run under Linux.

Lets have a little look at your main competition

Houdini, Cross platform (windows, mac and Linux)
Modo , Cross Platform (Windows, mac and now with version 7 Linux as well)

Both companies have seen a significant growth because they produce great products that allow the people to use it on the platform of their choice. They are also far more accessible to their user base then Autodesk has been of late. People value that far more now because it is so rare compared to a decade ago when it was more the norm.

I am not trying to make out that the 3D section of Autodesk is going to fail, but it is in danger of becoming far less of a driving force. I have been in the computer business for 25 years and I have seen the same sequence of events play out again and again. Hell my last company before i went into the education side of things went through it too. In their arrogance they didn't listen to the clients or their technical leads and they were closed down by their parent company.

Just for your information Luceric that is where I got into the habit of shortening Microsoft to M$. Well before I had even seen my first Macintosh. I am pretty sure judging a person on how they contract a word pretty much makes most of my points for me.

[Letterbox]

I can't really be sold that it's "forward-looking enough for a long time", without certain functionality clearly being implemented by Autodesk itself.

One such example is that for a long time there has only been dx9 support. Considering what you say its use in games companies. The way ports are done it's understandable, but also consider their futures and inherently SI's too, they wont always do things that way, and especially with dx 10, 11 and 12, and what the market demands those products to be.

I am very surprised that this core 'dx' functionality and clear future-proofing has been left untouched for so long. To me, that's just one example of functionality that clearly has to be addressed by AD itself, to make the statement ring true and to be true.

it's pretty forward looking ICE wise and SDK wise. DirectX wise, we've haven't been so good at that, in part due to lack of interest by the clients. We did support DirectX 10, but dropped it in Softimage 2011, in the latest RTS Shader API re-write. The game "Lost Planet" is the only client that know who used it. DirectX 10 coming back to Softimage is a question of game studios demanding it.

Yes we know it was unfortunately dropped in 2011, but with that example, it's a shell game, as if one does not do it preemptively, and as said that's only one(1) example, and again how ps4 etc changes that game. Also it always raises an issue, they, the customers might just look else where for what they need, because you were not preemptive seeing nor addressing the needs of customers, using product lead time and innovations to see them.

Dont get me wrong we look forwards not backwards, whats done, os wise etc is what it is. But a shell game, that says, we need users to ask for it en masse, before it gets done, that never really works out well.

As if your not driving the market, we can all agree ICE did clearly do that, but by not, you always run the risk of letting others define what the future is, and thus the product(s) that define it. That's a game of catchup you hardly ever win, at least not without massive and significant investment.

It would be fair in saying we've been seeing a lot of that recently, products not defining what users want and not just with just AD products, levels of frustrations increasing. Yet conversely, new exciting product development, new innovations really do start capturing the imagination and creativity. And thoughts of moving begin...

Maybe it's just that we can see SI still doing that to some degree, capturing the imagination and creativity. Not though if there is not a clear and dominant driving force either wanting to or making it happen. Sadly we're not seeing that.

[angus_davidson]

Second, "Nine women can't make a baby in one month".

Did you ever test this? Seems plausible, but I haven't tried it myself...

While the test would be worth undertaking I am sure my wife would probably take her objections to the idea to me in a very messy terminal kind of way. red heads are like that ;)

[bottleofram]

"Nine women can't make a baby in one month".

Why is the good doctor delivering one month old fetuses than? Why is he getting paid instead of getting jailed?

[luceric]

Lets have a little look at your main competition

Houdini, Cross platform (windows, mac and Linux)
Modo , Cross Platform (Windows, mac and now with version 7 Linux as well)

Both companies have seen a significant growth because they produce great products that allow the people to use it on the platform of their choice. They are also far more accessible to their user base then Autodesk has been of late. People value that far more now because it is so rare compared to a decade ago when it was more the norm.

I am not trying to make out that the 3D section of Autodesk is going to fail, but it is in danger of becoming far less of a driving force

if you think the Mac is important to Autodesk's future, I have good news for you! Autodesk thinks so too and makes an app for the Mac already that's used in most movies, games and tv shows that you see. Its user base is at least 10 times larger than the next closest competitor and it keeps growing. maya.

[Eugen]

Guys, slap on bloody bootcamp, and you have Softimage on your mac!

[McNistor]

if you think the Mac is important to Autodesk's future, I have good news for you! Autodesk thinks so too and makes an app for the Mac already that's used in most movies, games and tv shows that you see. Its user base is at least 10 times larger than the next closest competitor and it keeps growing. maya.

Growing like a plague

[origin]

So much talk about maya, i think im gonna puke. Maybe Hirazi should move forum to new domain eg. ex-si-community.com

[angus_davidson]

Guys, slap on bloody bootcamp, and you have Softimage on your mac!

Oh I do ;) And it runs really well. Unfortunately as I mentioned before on a lot of Campus's boot camp isnt supported or even recognised by their IT departments. So while for you an me its not really an issue , for the students and lecturers they dont get that choice.

Which ends up in them normally teaching Maya as it runs really well on a Mac. The point though is from a SI point of view thats a lot of potential Si seats that has been moved to Maya. Its not really a big issue for Autodesk as they get the money either way, but its a big loss for SI as those are people that are generally lost to the SI community.

Think about it this way. The more people get diverted into Maya the less SI folks there are to request changes, to create amazing plugins, start little companies that use SI etc. It just saddens me to see such a loss of potential. I suppose the older you get the more those things tend to bug you.

[Eugen]

Jeez... just because some block-headed sysadmins want to spare themselves some hassle, a good part of the SI development energy should be drained?
Bad logic.

[McNistor]

Jeez... just because some block-headed sysadmins want to spare themselves some hassle, a good part of the SI development energy should be drained?
Bad logic.

[pressing the 'like' button]

While I do believe it would have been better to have XSI on an extra platform, investing energy (which is not very abundant as it is) into a Mac version at this time would sink Softimage to even deeper waters.

[angus_davidson]

With current architecture making a Mac version would be a waste of resources agreed. However the main point that I was making was that AD needs to fairly shortly totally redo most of their 3D Apps to remain competitive.

When that times comes it would make sense to build them in such as way as to target a wider range of customers. That would be a great time to build in things like decent source control (either via Mecurial, SVN etc) Stuff that is very difficult to tack on properly as opposed to integrating it from the ground up.

[Rork]

Softimage on OSX....

imho... never.going.to.happen.

The tight integrating with Windows, like 3dsMax will make up for some big hurdles.
Also, with the (pending) removal of the MacPros out of the collection, there's even less point in this.

Yes, I know a lot of people work with those nice all-in-one screen/computer Apples, but looking at those I really cannot see a professional 3d/video system in those. Too many restrictions hardware wise. Same with the MacbookPro's. And really, why isn't there a numeric keypad on those things???? ;)