This kinda doesn't mean anything. Because we made no announcements on any new products (except for FBX Review) in our current quarter, then nothing is likely to appear before the end of July. Therefore if anything new is going to be announced/released/whatever, then the article is speculating that this is likely to be in our next Quarter - Q3. However I can't confirm on whether we will actually make any announcement on anything whatsoever in our next financial quarter.Bullit wrote:What does this mean?Most releases of new M&E software will not occur until Q3
I think at this time, people perhaps need to take a step back and although people will naturally speculate, try and avoid trying to fill in the gaps of information themselves. We haven't actually announced anything, no product, no firm details, no pricing, etc. What people saw was essentially a technology preview, or sneak peak if you will. But hopefully it shows that we haven't exactly been sitting on our hands since acquiring Naiad, approx 12 months ago. Even though I've seen various bits and bobs, even I haven't run Bifrost yet.
Anyway, to hopefully elaborate some more, this is a message from Marcus posted to the Max Undergroud thread that kicked off all this mess.
Yes, I know it doesn’t mention anything about Softimage, but I hope it does provide, as Marcus says, some perspective.
Hello everyone,
It seems many people are arriving at incorrect conclusions in regards to Naiad and Bifrost, and how they relate to Maya and Max.
Naiad was a standalone, node-based software that did fluid simulation (liquids in particular). You had to use a separate app (Naiad Studio) to make Naiad graphs, and then export the sim output into Max.
“Project Bifrost” (which is a CODE-name, btw, not necessarily the actual product name) is also a standalone, more general, node-based software that will do fluid-simulation – and much more, in time.
Bifrost does not know about Maya. There isn’t a single line of code in Bifrost that directly uses the Maya API. Maya, on the other hand, can be made to know about Bifrost. That’s how we, as a test, integrated Bifrost into Maya. It follows that Bifrost could easily be integrated into other DCCs, be made as a standalone product, ported to the iPad – you name it. One of the many strengths of the Bifrost architecture lies in the fact that it’s “product agnostic” and that it can “go anywhere”.
What we showed at the Autodesk User Group last week was the results of our experimental Maya integration. We have to focus on one product and do it right, and the decision was to go with Maya. I understand that users of other products such as Max may feel disappointed, but before you condemn Autdoesk to the 7th circle of hell you should take note of two things:
1. Autodesk has NOT said that Maya is the only DCC that will ever run Bifrost. Just because Maya was chosen does not mean it won’t appear elsewhere.
2. Even if Maya, in the end, is the only DCC to allow Bifrost FX authoring, is that really all that different from Naiad Studio? Nobody was complaining that you had to use Naiad Studio to author Naiad graphs, then export the sim output into your favorite DCC, and go from there? How would this be vastly different? Maya can, in the worst case, be viewed as a “better” Naiad Studio. Use Maya for making your Bifrost FX graphs – then export the sim results into Max and go from there. This is what you did with Naiad Studio + Max, and you can do it with Maya + Max.
I understand your frustrations, but I wanted to give you guys a bit of perspective
Best wishes, Marcus Nordenstam
Any claims that “Bifrost is part of Maya” are false claims.
