Softimage EOL articles

[bb3d]

In the latest release of the German DCC magazine "Digital Production" is an interview with some guy from Polynoid/Woodblock. In this interview they say how shocked they were about the EOL announcement and that they are looking at a Houdini/Fabric route now, not using any Autodesk product anymore in the future.

Anyways, I don't care much about articles, because words won't change anything, as long as people continue to buy Autodesk products. The only thing that really could change anything would be a massive loss of customers, which is unlikely to happen, because even many Softimage users are considering to continue to use AD products. Of course for many Softimage users transitioning to Maya is the most comfortable option, but life never was easy and if we want things getting changed we have to go the hard route. The time for this is here and now.

[luchifer]

I have used and remember: Shake, Combustion, Elastic Reality, Parallax Matador, SGI Explore (I believe this is today known as Maya). I know there are several others I dont quite remember, but every software reachs the end of line sooner of later. I know is hard to relearn everthing.. but... arent we always learning something new?

[FXDude]

@bb3d; Most 'comfortable' Maya route.. notwithstanding a plethora of night/day usability differences requiring 2x more energy to get to the same result.. (well after adoption)

@Grims; Thanks for the article. I to think, at least for the number of users, that Max won't be retired,
But where I dissagree is when it refers to SI's slow decline (since 2012 .. or 2008?) as a naturally occurring thing which could then justify the move.

And when talking about what killing off Max would require of Maya to fill the gap,

It would require them to basically build an entirely new 3D application from the ground up

While what would/could 'fill the gap' in respects to SI would at least involve something of the sorts,
Dreamworks or Pixar actually releasing whatever they used, would be both more likely to happen AND more likely to fill the gap if released, .. but any of which remains pretty unlikely.


Also, an other recent DT article was comparing both 3DS & Maya, and SI is still way (way!) up there on every (either 'easy to use' or 'powerful') point mentioned (some by leaps and bounds, as well as for other points not mentioned). That, either with or without taking 'habit' into account, enough to still be hard to overlook for anyone having done anything in SI.


@luchifer; Shake, Combustion, Elastic Reality, Parallax Matador, .. all had far more comparable alternatives upon their retirement, while SI returns Maya as the closest thing (and/or Houdini on the ICE side, and/or Modo / C4d on the human friendlyness side) .. But while SI brings together most (or more) of the main advantages of each of these alternatives into one, they aren't labeled as 'dead' of course being the most important (superficial) thing. ;)

[FXDude]

It would require them to basically build an entirely new 3D application from the ground up

While what could 'fill the gap' in respects to SI would at least involve something of the sorts,
Dreamworks or Pixar actually releasing what they used, would be both more likely to happen AND more likely to fill the gap if released, .. but any of which remains pretty unlikely.

That, or if a great 25$ Industry-third truly non-destructive, procedural workflow, no matter what you do 3D equivalent mysteriously pops-up out of the blue in the next decade

[angus_davidson]

It would require them to basically build an entirely new 3D application from the ground up

While what could 'fill the gap' in respects to SI would at least involve something of the sorts,
Dreamworks or Pixar actually releasing what they used, would be both more likely to happen AND more likely to fill the gap if released, .. but any of which remains pretty unlikely.

That, or if a great 25$ Industry-third truly non-destructive, procedural workflow, no matter what you do 3D equivalent mysteriously pops-up out of the blue in the next decade

The smaller and agile companies will do better in the long run. The bigger companies are too hamstrung by their own inefficiencies and corporate governance. Fortunately the time for companies to hide behind SEC excuses will come to an end. People just cannot afford to be put at such a disadvantage compared to a shareholder anymore. Economic times are very hard and the more clarity and flexibility you have regarding your options the happier you will feel. People like the foundry, sidefix, Fabric will make big inroads. People like Adobe and Autodesk in the M&E market will battle. We are also looking at pretty much dropping adobe as hardly anyone uses any of their products their full potential and the additional costs are just not worthwhile.

For Photoshop, we can use paint .net / Krita on windows and pixelmater or even gimp on mac. Its been far more beneficial for us to buy two licences of Substance designer then we have ever gotten out buying Photoshop. Along with quite a few others we have taken a conscious decision (often forced by economics) to be far more strategic to what we buy what it is we require, rather then just what is considered an industry standard. With one exception. For the next two years our ability to get students to come and study requires us to use Maya as it is the only other 3DDC standard in South Africa for now. In two years time that will have changed.

[FXDude]

The smaller and agile companies will do better in the long run.

Agreed! Somehow, the bigger the size the more inefficient and spread-out things tend to become (sometimes becoming twice as slow (dev), while being twice (or several times) as big)

Also, I wasn't sure to post this here or in the Ormr thread, .. but OMG! doesn't the following sound familiar?!
(to either SI's situation amongst others, or the hole point of the software?! )
(at least conceptually) ...

from here; http://mashable.com/2012/11/10/ormr/ (neat article about a neat program by the way)

... have you ever edited an image and later realized you initially resized it too small? Or built a custom shape that later needed tweaking? It's impossible to go back to a larger image size without losing all your adjustments. It's a frustrating point in any artist's workflow and can tack[-on] countless hours onto design projects.

Now Ormr, a project currently campaigning on Kickstarter, seeks to eliminate that hassle by saving the actions performed to each layer so they can be adjusted later, without affecting other adjustments.

So, why doesn't Photoshop already work this way? "It sounds like a simple idea," says Oleg Samus, Ormr's lead developer at Sad Cat Productions. "But it's actually quite difficult to implement."

Masks and smart objects can only take you so far. Because of the power required to store and run all that information in the background,
if Adobe were to add this capability to Photoshop, Samus says it would have to be redesigned from the ground up.

On the surface Ormr looks like most standard image editors, except when you open a layer you'll be able to see all the actions and change everything you've done to that image.

As for the program, actually it was the first time I got the feeling of Eddie paint in the last 20 years! (like a procedural photoshop) (while missing the aspect of time of course.. ah the regressions.. )