Luxology & the Foundry merge

[luceric]

Yes mudbox and naiaid were struggling.

I'm not sure where you are getting that Naiad and Mudbox were struggling - what proof do you have of that? They were at the height of their popularity when they were acquired (which is why the founders did the deal and why AD was interested...they were a success as is, not acquired for some obscure patent....well Naiad maybe was).

that's an excellent question that'll help clear up what I mean. they were both companies with only a few employees unable to grow with their income. Naiad was just written by two people. To go to the next step, you need a lot more people and you need money for that.

Just like when Softimage sold to Microsoft, they had no future ahead of them because they need loads of cash to hire new people and grow. Popularity doesn't pay the bills. Softimage was going bankrupt after Jurassic park and that's why they went shopping for a buyer. My theory is that luxlogy figured that they could not continue the way they were for much longer. the fact that everyone loves modo doesn't mean they can continue to pay the bills and grow to the next step.

two random things I find interesting:
for the character animation stuff, they licensed it from ikinema, they didn't program it themselves. that's interesting that after ten years they still needed outside help for this.

Luxology is a 13 years old today.

[gustavoeb]

Chiming in late...
If AD buys SI for 30mil, that is extra cheap... very good deal and I think they were lucky no one topped this offer at the time
If Facebook buys Instagram buys 1bil that is stupid. No online thing is worth that much. It is just another bubble.
If FB was to buy the (so called) seccond largest video hosting site (which i, honestly, had never ever heard about) for 60mil, that would sound very reasanoble.
But under AD, a 3d company, it sound like the culture clash will have the same effect as AOL had over Winamp or Yahoo over FLICKR.
Ad has no cloud/social culture. This discussions reminds me of some speeches by Ed Catmull when he talks about guys from Silicon Graphics paying no attention at what everybody was pointing was wrong in theire decisions....
Lets talk about all this again in 5 years.

Ps: greg your first post was spot on

[Hirazi Blue]

I will go ahead and go back to lurking now, this was an epic fail.
-Greg

From my Admin/Mod POV:
@Greg - I really wouldn't call your posts "an epic fail" & I most definitively wouldn't go back into lurking mode on account of that. The fact that some of us disagree with some of the things you wrote (and we can be a "vindictive bunch", but we're "mostly harmless", as you must have learned from lurking!), can't be helped, but is in itself no reason to be discouraged. At the very least you did liven up this discussion. The initial remarks about Softimage, while not necessarily untrue, might have given some the impression you dropped in primarily to provoke, but IMHO you've proved that impression to be wrong, so I want to welcome you to our little community and by that I mean, obviously, that you're more than welcome to stay/post...

I fear Hirazi rage

[Nizar]

maybe some truth into the voice affirming Modo was the native code for a new Lightwave refused by Newtech, and neologism with LW are many (and IMHO only LW users and few more can defining modelling tools in modo the best, the workflow seems like a LW evolution), IMHO this is another reason about the slow development cycle, modelling and rendering was just ready when Lux was founded, the rest was added and not finished release after release in a very slow cycle. I remember an old Jay Roth interview where he calling modo "our primary competitor", I think the first objective by Lux was erode/stolen clients from Lightwave userbase, but this seems don't work so well as they expected, LW is still here and seems had not suffer so much by Modo competition, also Blender gain ground with every release, and modo and blender has very similar target (small studio and freelancer), also Cinema operating in the some price tag and some customers, and Cinema evolution seems more fast then modo one (and is just a consolidate software, modo in 10 seem always the outsider).

I guess the actual balance cannot cage so easy (need some technology revolution)

They was in financial trouble? Don't know, before acquisition they hiring for two position, a small grow, but if you have trouble don't hire at all.

About modo rigging, Greg, are you sure you need three click for adding another bone to an existing, just enveloped, bone chain? I don't remember correctly (as said Mattheus forgotten modo workflow is very easy, not so easy for blender, for using a different software by softimage), but I think you need to paint entirely the weight map, weight in modo is not so smart and also very slow (if I remember correctly), every bone in softimage has a distinctive color and can be selected by a summary tab, in modo need to select one by and control the influence of every bone.

For others, did you see? Greg knew softimage thanks to Suite, so AD marketing after all working

OT: Greg, please, don't be fooled by (apparently) Hirazi good nature, try to forget URL tag and see...

[Maximus]

I am not sure where this thread is going, I also dont see how the acquisition could be negative.
Both The Foundry and Luxology are stellar people, that always brought news, modern tools, updates. You cant really say the same about Autodesk lately.
So yeah, i dont think they will disappoint anyone at all, if any its gonna be a really interesting development and future for both Nuke and Modo.

Modo render engine is insanely good, i wouldnt be surprised if they put it into Nuke, considering there is alread Moma for Maya (which is even free).
Modo has a lot of great things.
Dont think anything better could have happened for both company.

[Bullit]

If AD buys SI for 30mil, that is extra cheap... very good deal and I think they were lucky no one topped this offer at the time

Without knowing the financial details of SI it is impossible to judge. Probably the Asia market of Softimage made that possible. Note the opportunity costs, 30 M$ that AD paid for Softimage is 30M$ that AD didn't made to any other investments, didn't increased workers salaries and/or didn't increased stockholder revenues.

You sell yourself when you cannot, or don't want, to continue alone. But usually when you cannot.

I think in this cases is when you can't see making a jump without more financial muscle. Modo could continue like this, but then if there is need to develop a GPU renderer, new technologies to maintain competition and the money isn't there to increase the quality of the product?

A good example of this at another scale is Arnold that is only sold for studios. They seem to have some sort of cross pollination tech with studios like Sony but Arnold appears to be just something with a shelf life of 5-10 years. Maybe they could get more investment from studios when they need more muscle.

Then the Peter Principle also applies to firms...

[Letterbox]

Back to the OP. One thing surprises me that has not been mentioned here.

Probably the biggest concern going forward is Modo's price. The price difference in Foundry products and Luxology products is quite large. I don't see Foundry products falling in price any time soon.

Yet, one low price product in any range, somewhat devalues and detracts from the asking price for the others.

Thoughts?

[bottleofram]

Yet, one low price product in any range, somewhat devalues and detracts from the asking price for the others.

Which is probably one of the reasons they would want to stay and act as separate entities for a while. And by the looks of it, they will.

It's going to be very interesting to see how they sync business-wise. Two very different approaches, those two...

[Mathaeus]

Mathaeus, as far as adding a new bone....um...setup mode, add a bone and bind it? I think it's 3 clicks.
-Greg

Just for info, "adding bone" In Softimage, and Max to some extent, does not means only a new member in set, it automatically creates vertex assignment and initial weight map as well. But it's not only about "add bone", there is a list of missing things in Modo. Lattice deformer, cage deformer, quaternion rotations.... yes I know Maya don't like quaternions that much, but that's Maya which can afford that.

Anyway let's go back to "design". Modo 601 introduced a new hair shader . Let's take look at render times. here, guy got about 130 hours of render time (one hundred and thirty). In Modo hair is not an object, it's shader, but still applied to polygons. So, he got a double evaluation of subsurface skin, together with very expensive dual scattering hair shader. That's about shader tree.
here is mine. Of course styling is Softimage ICE, imported into Modo. I've been lucky, I didn't even used subsurface. Also I've used a bunch of hidden emitters. So, quite good 3 hours, but still not enough samples. Let's say, six or ten hours would be enough. All the time I had to fight with crashes, while Modo didn't displayed even ten percent of hairs. For comparison, getting the same look with 3Delight, using very different methods, could take about twenty minutes, a few minutes more when adding subsurface. More work, but, twenty minutes... With all hairs displayed in viewport, if I want this.
And that's about Modo galleries. Nice pics, but characters, bald and hats...

Long story short, with a lot of work, there is a chance for Modo to get back some of users.
I don't believe the current price will stay same.

[Greg]

Hi Mathaeus, thanks for the cordial post. I don't think people probably want to see a technical modo discussion on a SI board...and I don't want this to turn into an X vs. Y...but I'll address a couple of these. Of course modo is missing a number of things with regards to animation - it's deformation system was developed within the last 18 months, it's brand new. Lattice deformers have a patent fee attached to them...but they're aware of the need for it (and the cage deformer). Quantarions...hmmm, the modeling rotation tools can definitely work in that space...I would have to look at the animation side. You can add as many transform channels per item in modo as you want (so you don't need to add nulls..do a hierarchy...that kind of thing)..so there's a lot of flexibility there. I'm not (and never have) argued that modo doesn't need work in animation, deformation and simulation. Of course it does (which is why i bought Maya and SI for my company as well) - but it's a nice system and has a lot of potential. I just used modo exclusively for some shots for Shark Week this past month. For bones....creating a weight map as soon as you add a bone can be good or bad...depending on if you want it to effect the other weighting. You can easily add a bone and do a re-bind (rigid, smooth or heat map) or you can add weights manually (using the painting or the weight adjust tool)..or you can use weight containers which is a bit of a new paradigm and was added at the suggestion of some of the Pixar people who test modo. So again, there's a lot of flexibility there...it's different and hardly warrants 'half baked'.

A couple of things about hair/fur rendering. The big jump in rendertime was a bug with the newly released skin shader in 601 and it was mentioned by 2 Luxology engineers within hours of that 130 hour render being posted. I don't know if it's fixed in sp3...I haven't checked (but I can check the bug database since I'm a tester). Anyway, it doesn't normally take that long to render...fur actually renders very fast with full GI and sss. I would have to look at your scene to see what was going on...if you're trying to use IR caching on the hair that will slow things down...just use monte carlo. You can also use lights for the sss contribution instead of using GI for diffuse and sss (which is more expensive). None of this has to do with the shader tree which underneath is a node based structure...it's just an unbelievably complex node structure (I've seen a diagram of it) that shades the entire scene globally with overlay values and modes at every single level..shader tree is a whole other discussion that nobody here wants to see I'm sure. I would say long story short it's a chance for modo to continue adding thousands of new users at an even greater rate...I don't think the goal here is to 'get back users...' (but maybe you will come back...who knows).

Last thing...with regards to 'merger vs. acquisition' ....again, don't get hung up on the terms 'merger' and 'acquisition' - the terms of the deal are whatever Luxology and The Foundry mutually agreed upon...'merger' and 'acquisition' is just semantics really (as I've been saying).

Here...(you can find similar definitions other places...this was just at the top of the google list...Investopedia).

"Whether a purchase is considered a merger or an acquisition really depends on whether the purchase is friendly or hostile and how it is announced. In other words, the real difference lies in how the purchase is communicated to and received by the target company's board of directors, employees and shareholders."

As far as price...well the price has gone numerous times...it went up with 601 yet again. So I'm guessing it will continue to go up if major features are added. It's still less than just about anything else out there, even if you only use it to render.

-G

[Mathaeus]

well so much to read....

In short,
yes I've been interested in 601 Artist Friendly Marchner shader, too. I got render time close to recommended by your shader writer ( from '130 hours' thread), color mix is beautiful. But render time is really too long, even 'for fun' category. I'd believe some clever single scatter model, like Daniel's Rind's MuhHair for Mental Ray, together with deep shadow maps, should be so much faster, but there is no something like that in Modo. No problem, Modo isn't my only option 'for fun', not at all.

In everyday life I'll tell you what is my minimum. Not something I'd prefer or want, I just can't go bellow:
1: modeling, deformations: as much more by operator's stack. Visual programming language is welcome.
2:animation - rigging system inspired by Softimage 3d or Softimage XSI. Quaternions are must have.
3: shader assignment per-object. node editor for shaders. In worse case, simple system like in Cinema 4d. Remove shader tree from Modo.
4. common scripting language, like Python, Java, or close to that.
Beside Softimage... Max, C4d and Blender fulfill this, Modo doesn't. Again, I just can not go bellow, also I don't see any reason why Modo offers anything better. I'd always like to see more, but thicket.. is thicket. In meantime, I'd believe l'll keep my uninstalled copy.

[Greg]

Hmm, yeah - modo's a different app than SI and primarily serves a different market...I'm not sure it's really the program for you. You can get single scatter by using a scattering distance of 0 in the regular material..I honesty never use the hair and skin shaders as I don't do people. You can script in modo with python, lua and perl...but there's no built in script editor and a lot of people have been complaining about that...so I wouldn't be surprised to see it coming. One promising thing I've seen is Eric from Mootzoid making modo plugins. He has one out and is bringing over empolygonizer next...so it seems like there could be some good work between SI and modo as a modeler/renderer. I just need to get off my ass and learn SI because Maya is starting to look like somebody spilled a box of tiny, ugly icons all over my monitor.

-G

[TwinSnakes007]

I was with Modo since its beta, when all you could do was model. I remember Greg from the early days.

Like I said when they first introduced it, that Shader tree is a stupid design decision.

[Nizar]

Bah.... Do I'm the only not dislike shader tree?
The only reason I have modo on my HD is for rendering capabilities, for the rest I don't see any superiority, and sometime only issue (without disturbing softimage, prefer blender for all the rest, but not for rendering, rendering in modo is the things more close to "press doing a best render without issue" button). I mean in characters fields.

What I fear for modo is the lost of their user-friendly attitude. Luxology listen user complaint and wishes and modo grow up, slowly, but fitting the userbase needs and wishes. Also their licensing is very nice and only blender is better in licensing.

[TwinSnakes007]

Bah.... Do I'm the only not dislike shader tree?

The Shader Tree is gonna be the first thing the Foundary takes out. LOL

They better hurry too, because, the FabricEngine guys are integrating Vray into FabricEngine directly.

[Sil3]

Bah.... Do I'm the only not dislike shader tree?

In more than 2 places i´ve been, the Shader Tree was basically the main issue why those studios would not incorporate Modo render into their pipeline. No one wanted to the spend time learning it since it would be a mess after 100 or so materials. After getting used to Nodal its hard to go back to a Photoshop style for texture work.

If only we could have this inside Softimage:

http://vimeo.com/49527963#at=0


Things could bee different