What if Softimage died?

[angus_davidson]

As an application specialist, Mark has never been part of the M&E Division - application specialists are part of the sales group. He would have been sharing what he had been shown/told by people from division, so he is not at fault here. Mark is Softimage to his core and I am sure the past 5-6 years have been as bad for him to see as they have been bad for anyone here to experience. Honestly, he doesn't deserve to be the target of anyone's ire.

Angus - with regard to the acquisition by AD, very few people knew about it until the day it was announced. I'm including senior directors at Softimage in this - there were rumours around Siggraph but nobody knew anything for sure. Most people in the company heard about it on the day it was announced. So again - neither Mark nor your sales rep would have known anything when they came on-site.

I am not blaming him directly , he was sold a sucker punch, they however could have given us the option to cancel once we queried what was going on. To me that was bad faith right from the start. Luckily Stephen Blair stuck with us through the pain of trying to get the new licences sorted out .

[talent103]

We all knew in our hearts it was over when Chinny went to Maya as well as the whole XSI development team. We just didn't want to believe it.

[SreckoM]

Sad that they want to kill probably best cg app today. Crap.

I switched to Houdini 2 years ago. I would recommend going there plus using another app (keep XSI) if you are character modeler. Houdini is true pipeline app, you can easily combine it with any app.

It is smart not to keep with app that is discontinued. Even 3rd party devs keeps supporting it, at some point there will be bug or for example driver issue that will prevent them to continue unless source code is changed. And what than?

[MauricioPC]

Sad that they want to kill probably best cg app today. Crap.

I switched to Houdini 2 years ago. I would recommend going there plus using another app (keep XSI) if you are character modeler. Houdini is true pipeline app, you can easily combine it with any app.

It is smart not to keep with app that is discontinued. Even 3rd party devs keeps supporting it, at some point there will be bug or for example driver issue that will prevent them to continue unless source code is changed. And what than?

In that sense, Softimage will live forever!

If this happens, I guess it's good to have knowledge of other applications that keep evolving, but use it together with Softimage. I mean ... the animation tools of Soft won't deteriorate or Face Robot or ICE. So if you have Houdini (for example) with all the new tech in dynamics, the amazing Mantra Render and the new formats (the next alembic, etc), you are good to go and continue working. You can still model in Soft, you can still animate in it, you can still develop stuff in ICE. You can do this for a lot of years.

P.S.: I think I've already said this ... but last year I went to a masterclass here with the Animation Supervisor of Vetor Zero (which is the biggest animation studio in Latin America) and he told us that there they are really considering taking Maya out and putting Houdini as the central HUB of the pipeline, since they like a lot of how Houdini work and they weren't happy with how Maya was being developed.

[Morgan Nilsson]

Out of curiosity.

I see a lot of people saying that Softimage is one of the most complete packages out of the box. What other packages comes near? I figure it would be Houdini?

Best regards
//Morgan

[Grims]

Hello there!

I just want to say that for me, this all situation affects severely the credibility of Autodesk as a company and I still recall that about six months ago there was that 3ds Max situation about Autodesk lack of development and Tom Hudson initiatives, all related with the fear that Autodesk would kill Max (and Softimage in the same boat, but this was on the maxunderground forum) in favor for the Maya development focus.

Autodesk had to tranquilize the users saying that they would not kill anything, not even Softimage because it was "Big in the East". Well, we are about to see that it only took six months to confirm, even with all that "announcements and assurances", that they can change very rapidly their ideas.

And after some time? Is 3ds Max next? Even saying that they have many users? Softimage also have many users in Asia, but that don't seem to matter... I know that 3ds Max would not be killed right now, but can't they slowly give smaller updates from version to version until a vast amount of users switch to Maya? As they did to Softimage?

I am talking about my perspective as a professional and a teacher. I use and teach all programs in the "Entertainment Creation Suite" with the exception of Motion Builder. But now I just have a gigantic lack of faith in this company and I will definitely use other 3D software outside of Autodesk in my professional and academic life. For good and forever!


Thank you very much for your attention!

[talent103]

Out of curiosity.

I see a lot of people saying that Softimage is one of the most complete packages out of the box. What other packages comes near? I figure it would be Houdini?

Best regards
//Morgan

I would Say Maya is the next best. However; the problem with Maya is that it takes 3 times as long to do things as it does in Soft.

[MauricioPC]

Out of curiosity.

I see a lot of people saying that Softimage is one of the most complete packages out of the box. What other packages comes near? I figure it would be Houdini?

Best regards
//Morgan

I would Say Maya is the next best. However; the problem with Maya is that it takes 3 times as long to do things as it does in Soft.

I guess this always depend on what you want to do. If you don't mess much with animation, than Modo would be my bet. If you do mostly motion graphics, than C4D would be my bet. If you do FX, than Houdini would be my bet. If you like some cool plugins, than 3ds Max would be my bet (Tp, Rayfire, Krakatoa, Frost, etc, are killer).

If you do animation, than I guess Maya would be the choice (keeping in mind I don't thing Maya is the best animation solution, that's Softimage).

[Maximus]

Still, after everything been said, people will switch to Maya
And autodesk always knew this. Nothing will ever change if people still keep doing their play.

Of course i can understand situations where you have jobs, seats, pipelines etc. But this was kinda expected and they always knew, they probably have said something on those lines

"let them bitch, cry and yell, after we done with Softimage they wont have much alternatives than go to Maya. We will lose some but the majority will switch, so we wont lose much, actually we'll gain, cause switchin to maya = subscription".

Surprised that people are so surprised. I stopped givin money to AD when i saw the updates werent matching the cost required. And so everyone should have in my opinion. The "hope for a better future" is just being blind and naive.

AD is a very selfish corprate, and you should know how those things go, cant really blame them for being what they are. Its you who should take action and prevent yourself from being "f*cked"

[punchatz]

Mark Schoennagel is a liar, a big liar. Lie to customers is not marketing, and he is not the only liar inside ADSK.
.

EXCUSE ME!!???!!!! Mark FOUGHT tooth and nail for us.... You have NO IDEA what you are talking about... He is the one person that never gave up on us... never.

There are people to blame, but please do not ever speak this way again about Mark Schoennagel. He was our champion......

[Morgan Nilsson]

Out of curiosity.

I see a lot of people saying that Softimage is one of the most complete packages out of the box. What other packages comes near? I figure it would be Houdini?

Best regards
//Morgan

I would Say Maya is the next best. However; the problem with Maya is that it takes 3 times as long to do things as it does in Soft.

I guess this always depend on what you want to do. If you don't mess much with animation, than Modo would be my bet. If you do mostly motion graphics, than C4D would be my bet. If you do FX, than Houdini would be my bet. If you like some cool plugins, than 3ds Max would be my bet (Tp, Rayfire, Krakatoa, Frost, etc, are killer).

If you do animation, than I guess Maya would be the choice (keeping in mind I don't thing Maya is the best animation solution, that's Softimage).

This may seem silly, but I have this weird need to be able to do everything in one app, Softimage fit that bill the most it seems.

Maybe I should give Houdini another go at modeling. Or perhaps Blender, considering it is getting volumetrics to the new render engine. Else is biting the sour apple and go with AD Maya

[EricTRocks]

Yeah, please leave Mark Schoennegal out of this. He's the biggest Softimage fan out there and one of the most straight talking no bullshit people you'll find.

[Hirazi Blue]

Come on, people, three posts below his too forceful statement, Nizar has already apologized to Mark, should he ever read this. Let's leave it at that!

[MauricioPC]

This may seem silly, but I have this weird need to be able to do everything in one app, Softimage fit that bill the most it seems.
Maybe I should give Houdini another go at modeling. Or perhaps Blender, considering it is getting volumetrics to the new render engine. Else is biting the sour apple and go with AD Maya

It's not silly, I feel the same way. I know it looks badass to know all the existing apps, but I prefer to master only one and be really good with it.

For Blender, there's V-Ray for Blender now, powered by ChaosGroup. That in itself could be very cool since the license of V-Ray Standalone (which you need to run in Blender) is half the price of the V-Ray for Maya/Max/SI.

[Firebird]

Dont you guy´s think its a bit to early to jump ship.

I mean If 2015 Is really the last Version before SI is at it´s EOL, you still got 1 year before the 2016 line will be out.

And then make a decision if its now worth switching because of new super cool features in Maya

When I think about the reactions on old releases nobody was really impressed with their Releases anyway.

So for me SI isn't dead yet and wont be dead for minimum another Year.

And I really doubt that they will present me a über feature next year that will make me switch.
Just because I need that and can´t be done other than switching to Maya.

I managed to do all kinds of jobs with SI 5, 6, 7, etc. etc.

What is it that I need and don´t have now on a daily basis.
Everybody that needs super special effects is using more than 1 App anyway now to get things done so why on earth shouldn't I be able to still use Soft as my main App and Export stuff if I need to.
Again at least for the next year.

[Morgan Nilsson]

This may seem silly, but I have this weird need to be able to do everything in one app, Softimage fit that bill the most it seems.
Maybe I should give Houdini another go at modeling. Or perhaps Blender, considering it is getting volumetrics to the new render engine. Else is biting the sour apple and go with AD Maya

It's not silly, I feel the same way. I know it looks badass to know all the existing apps, but I prefer to master only one and be really good with it.

For Blender, there's V-Ray for Blender now, powered by ChaosGroup. That in itself could be very cool since the license of V-Ray Standalone (which you need to run in Blender) is half the price of the V-Ray for Maya/Max/SI.

Yeah I read about V-Ray coming for Blender, I am not sure what it means down the line for it, but it can't be anything but great for the future of Blender. Might even convince a lot of smaller studios to hop onboard.