No 2013 Advantage Pack

[Tekano]

If you saw me today, then you have damn good eyesight, because I wasn't in the London office today. lol

haha or rather bad eyesite!! maybe you have a doppleganger. next time I see him he's going to get it

[Bellsey]

just for completeness: 3DSMax has been actually continually delivering their progress on XBR each release, it's not like XBR is vaporware. Scalability re-writes, QuickSilver viewport rendering, MassFX, tabbed layout/new workspace, slate editor, new ribbon UI, in-viewport overlays, all of that stuff has already shipped. It's what they had talked about in 2009, and work is continuing. So XBR is actually the counter-example of non-communication of here..

ha! sorry I'm the first to admit my ignorance when it comes to Max and XBR, And although its completely non representative I've gleaned all I know about Max from that thread. so it doesnt amount to much I thought that some user had said that it was 4 years and they still didnt have XBR. are you saying that some parts of it are already bolted onto Max and its not going to be a separate app? what was interesting to me was the high number of users who didnt want or see the point of the suites other than a corporate manoeuvre to increase profits, and the latest development on Max release strategy re-enforced this. bearing in mind the threads title and all the developments with Softimage I can associate myself with these guys quite easily!

Talking with my Max colleague and also Max customers, it took a while for many Max users to really understand what XBR actually was. And even now some that don't quite get it. When Autodesk announced it, having seen Softimage and ICE, I think many Max users thought it was going to be something along similar lines, or that it was going to be the 'new' Max, in the same way XSI was to Soft3D or Maya to PowerAnimator.

My comment on a big company was simply saying that Autodesk has lots of products, lots of people and procedures, etc. And the bigger the company, the less flexible and slower it appears to be. I often make the anology of Autodesk being like an oil tanker - its big, slow moving and can't turn on a sixpence. But it does do its job and can turn in the right direction, just not as fast as people would like it to.
Companies like SideFx, and Luxology, only sell one product. And being smaller, they can adapt more quickly and be more flexible in their pricing and business model. Softimage (pre-Autodesk) was very much the same.

[Maximus]

I think most of the frustration sometimes comes from the fact that max/maya/softimage are 360° applications. What i mean is, a suite i think has sense when you put into it softwares that has a specific task, all together create a 360° working environment.
Mudbox, Motionbuilder, Toxic are a good example for this, they have a precise field and task they do, so it makes sense to create a suite with them.
When first the suite came out i was really happy because it was a great move giving out a 3D software + all those specific application.

But the whole premium suite with all the 3dcc packages or even 2 wasnt a good idea, and i think AD is having an hard time sometimes to sell them hence why those price changes and so on.
Fact is that because maya/max/xsi are 3 complete packages, its disappointing and frustrating that you force the user to switch to another application just because they need 1 tool.

For example Maya user gets the suite with 3ds max, always did everything with maya and for one work he has to use Krakatoa, then goes to 3ds max. You force people basically to learn a whole package to just use 1 tool. Instead of taking care of those 3 packages each with updates, having them grow single, not as a suite. The suite should come after the individual software.

This is the main reason why AD development is damn slow, because its done on the suite, with interchange data, with the "send to" in mind, with the exchange datas set. And this slow down everything. Why would i want to go to animate in maya or model in maya when i can do it in Softimage? A software that i already know? i'm productive, i'm fast, i know already everything, why should i litterally waste my time learning another complex/deep/new software to do 1 task?
Not counting the amount of money i have to pay to do this.

To me the suites gonna be whats gonna sink Autodesk. They put together things that should be separate and have their own path/updates/development.

Have just 3 suites max+motionbuilder+mudbox+toxic | Maya+motionbuilder+mudbox+toxic | Softimage+motionbuilder+mudbox+toxic, and work on the interchange between them.
I know it wont happen, but the suites really made the freelance/small studios life really hard.

Also you say that people ask for multiple softwares to do tasks, this is the consequence of no-development from AD, not because people like to jump to other softwares.
Many behind the scenes we saw lately, they did everything in softimage then went to render in maya with arnold or mental ray, why? dont you have mental ray or arnold in Softimage?
Doesnt make sense. Or vice-versa.

AD is all about suites now, and in the end the development is and will be really slow. Was checking autodesk Lab and guess what i found? The monolitic project Geppetto. Which is nothing more than guess? A crowd system that was gonna be implemented in max. Probably it failed or they didnt make it happen, and they had Softimage devs create a crowd FX which was never asked from SI community at all. That tool was not really needed compared to many other features/updates people are asking since a lot of time. And this is frustrating when you see that the software you use is being projected and updated having in mind a "suite" and not the real benefit of the software itself, and your work.

Meh..not much to add really, a bit disappointed on how AD is running things now. Also if you push the suites you might consider to drop the price for single software or per seat for freelancers. Not everyone needs 5 sofwares to do simple tasks. I dont need maya or max or even mudbox and motion builder.. There are people that have 3d software+zbrush like friends of mine, they dont want mudbox, neither the other things in the suite. You need to leave people freedom and choice, not choke them with subscription price changes, price increases, slow development, and plague everyone with those suites and softwares.

[luceric]

For example Maya user gets the suite with 3ds max, always did everything with maya and for one work he has to use Krakatoa, then goes to 3ds max. You force people basically to learn a whole package to just use 1 tool. Instead of taking care of those 3 packages each with updates, having them grow single, not as a suite. The suite should come after the individual software.

Krakatoa is not an Autodesk product and it isn't ADKS's fault if it wasn't available for Maya.

This is the main reason why AD development is damn slow, because its done on the suite, with interchange data, with the "send to" in mind, with the exchange datas set. And this slow down everything. Why would i want to go to animate in maya or model in maya when i can do it in Softimage? A software that i already know? i'm productive, i'm fast, i know already everything, why should i litterally waste my time learning another complex/deep/new software to do 1 task?

There is almost nothing like this. There is Send To to make ICE easier to use by other products, that's all. It's all just a wrapper for the existing FBX.
The only "big work" was for motion builder<->Maya for mocap workflows.

Autodesk is absolutely not trying to force to have two or three "360" apps, that's a complete fantasy. It bundle Softimage to try to give ICE a change to capture more audience. The rest of what you say is a complete fabrication: if people use multiple apps, it's their decisions to do so, the suite isn't the cause of that. Also the Premium suites are a good way to give people a deal to keep they multiple apps they already use up-to-date. Because it's difficult to get them back in after they've fallen behind.

To me the suites gonna be whats gonna sink Autodesk. They put together things that should be separate and have their own path/updates/development.

Have just 3 suites max+motionbuilder+mudbox+toxic | Maya+motionbuilder+mudbox+toxic | Softimage+motionbuilder+mudbox+toxic, and work on the interchange between them.
I know it wont happen, but the suites really made the freelance/small studios life really hard.

Two of these suites already exists. The only difference with the Premium or Ultimate suite is that more apps are included in the box, that's zero development cost, it's just licensing.

Also you say that people ask for multiple softwares to do tasks, this is the consequence of no-development from AD, not because people like to jump to other softwares.
Many behind the scenes we saw lately, they did everything in softimage then went to render in maya with arnold or mental ray, why? dont you have mental ray or arnold in Softimage?
Doesnt make sense. Or vice-versa.

I don't know why they would do that and in what way Autodesk's suite would be responsible for that. It's more likely the lighters were a Maya pipeline; this business is about people first and foremost. That's how we got kicked out of ILM; the TDs taking the decisions liked Maya, even though the animators loved Softimage.

AD is all about suites now, and in the end the development is and will be really slow. Was checking autodesk Lab and guess what i found? The monolitic project Geppetto. Which is nothing more than guess? A crowd system that was gonna be implemented in max. Probably it failed or they didnt make it happen, and they had Softimage devs create a crowd FX which was never asked from SI community at all. That tool was not really needed compared to many other features/updates people are asking since a lot of time. And this is frustrating when you see that the software you use is being projected and updated having in mind a "suite" and not the real benefit of the software itself, and your work.

Max's Project Geppetto has been in development for years, by the creator of Character Studio. It's vastly superior at producing high quality crowds for filling environments, however it's not directly programmable. It's not a TD tool or an FX tool, it's for meant for visualization at this point. It's on Autodesk Labs for customer validation, as an "open beta" of sorts. It's part of an openness initiative.

It's unrelated to ICE Crowd getting made, which was decision by the Softimage PM only, but that team was surprised we would attempt to do crowds in a few month when they'd already worked year on one and saw how difficult it is to get the motion blending and path finding right (they're specializing in high quality motion capture clip blending). We ended up focusing on making a box of tools you could use for other stuffs.

[bottleofram]

My comment on a big company was simply saying that Autodesk has lots of products, lots of people and procedures, etc. And the bigger the company, the less flexible and slower it appears to be. I often make the anology of Autodesk being like an oil tanker - its big, slow moving and can't turn on a sixpence. But it does do its job and can turn in the right direction, just not as fast as people would like it to.
Companies like SideFx, and Luxology, only sell one product. And being smaller, they can adapt more quickly and be more flexible in their pricing and business model. Softimage (pre-Autodesk) was very much the same.

The bigger the company, the lesser the need to adapt; greater the opportunity to dictate.

I've stolen a quote from Ken Pimentel yesterday that best sums it up for me:
"Because you all don't have the complete facts/future of what is going on. You have limited information, the rest we're not allowed to talk to you about publicly. I can understand why you might ask these questions, but it doesn't mean we don't have answers, just that we can't talk about them publicly. I'm just trying to suggest there might be a reason and it might be clearer when you get the rest of the information we're holding back."

And how should this happen when you are not allowed to share information? Its perfectly understandable why you cant, its just nonsense to suggest things will get clearer at some point. I mean, no one will come out in few months and say "Yeah, we tried to impose the two-tier system to max users because of such-and-such and decided to do so-and-so." Doesn't happen.

Besides, we are perfectly aware that we do not have all the factual data of _right now_. But you don't need to. You can analyze what has Autodesk done in the past few years to see whats going on. Buying out competition, discontinuing some applications, hindering the development of other, bloating software with third party plugins, concentrating all RnD to one package, shipping out public betas, refusing to address long-term concerns, making no effort to provide users with up-to-date and decently implemented renderer (or a version without it), being unable to provide a decent community platform, being scared to formally communicate with the userbase, having no intention to innovate (even though the company has been named one of The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies in 2008, according to wikipedia), obvious misplaced priorities, product offering inconsistencies in different areas, sudden price changes, constantly keeping users in the dark and finally choosing unethical strategies to push people into buying more software they don't need. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I'm not one of those who look at the competition and see no flaws. In fact, i am yet to see a single complete and reasonably priced alternative generalist 3d package, but at least they are trying and the progress is there to be seen. Whatever the good things autodesk is doing, they are being dwarfed by the downright bad. Its easy to see why people feel like the only thing autodesk is trying is to maximize the profits by all means necessary.

And talk about inability to change: every year a number of this threads arises, blocks of texts are written and yet we still somehow believe an old oil tanker will turn. Makes me think its heading at just the right direction. Well, right for Autodesk.

/rant

[Maximus]

Krakatoa is not an Autodesk product and it isn't ADKS's fault if it wasn't available for Maya.

I know that krakatoa isnt an AD products, my point is the slow development, you could clearly develop a krakatoa render. Isnt in AD possibilities? So people dont have to jump to max and buy another 1k+ render engine? Thats what development is for.

There is almost nothing like this. There is Send To to make ICE easier to use by other products, that's all. It's all just a wrapper for the existing FBX.
The only "big work" was for motion builder<->Maya for mocap workflows.

Why if there is nothing like this then you ship 2 softwares or even three in the same suite that do the same thing? Again Why havin maya and softimage make sense? They almost do the same if not for ICE, actually Maya can just do the same with its particles and scripting. Develop ICE for Maya, update the single package instead of moving through suites. Thats my point.

Autodesk is absolutely not trying to force to have two or three "360" apps, that's a complete fantasy. It bundle Softimage to try to give ICE a change to capture more audience. The rest of what you say is a complete fabrication: if people use multiple apps, it's their decisions to do so, the suite isn't the cause of that. Also the Premium suites are a good way to give people a deal to keep they multiple apps they already use up-to-date. Because it's difficult to get them back in after they've fallen behind.

I'm speaking in general here, not Softimage only. AD is indeed forcing people to switch to Suites, when you dont develop and dont update softwares sections because the other software does it better its kinda "forcing" user to jump to the other software for that precise task. Instead of keep updating the software at 360° like always been and like every software house does.
Again this is my point.
If people use multiple apps is mostly because the development and the updates needed for one app is not covering what lacks, so people jump to another app. You are missing my point.
Work on a single app to not make people switch, instead of not working into single app because you have another that does the task so you just throw at people Suites.
I'm not saying the suite is the cause of that, the cause is the poor development from Autodesk, that now is completely sitting into a stagnant and slow development because they have the 3 major softwares under the same roof.

I don't know why they would do that and in what way Autodesk's suite would be responsible for that. It's more likely the lighters were a Maya pipeline; this business is about people first and foremost. That's how we got kicked out of ILM; the TDs taking the decisions liked Maya, even though the animators loved Softimage.

You have a perfect example here on how things work. People didnt see the need of switching application to do something they can do just fine in Maya, so they have no use of Softimage.
Instead of crying about why they didnt buy a Softimage license, why dont make Softimage stronger into what TD needed? Maybe next time they will get Softimage.
The point is simple. This is exactly what i'm talkin about, they dont need softwares that do the same thing, when they are already proficent with one.
Same goes for the suite. My point AD needs to work on Single packages and stop with this Suite crap.

[luceric]

It isn't possible to add ICE to Maya, it's too tied to Softimage's architecture. So the only thing that can be done is a bundle. Having the suite doesn't mean there isn't other development. It would be much dumber to do nothing and continue to have it difficult for users to use this stuff until you can figure something else.

(I think you misinterpreted my ILM comment; there was nothing that could have been done to save Softimage there ten years ago. My point was that software used at key places in the pipeline often has nothing to do with technology or missing features but rather with key individual's preference for a software, especially when either choices are "good enough".)

About krakatoa, Autodesk sees itself as creating a platforms for other developers. There are new renderers coming up every year, the DCCs should be great hosts for them. so most of the development is going in the platform, APIs and architecture. ICE Crowds isn't comparable to Massive; it's probable that a volumetric renderer written by Autodesk would not have been comparable to Krakatoa. Avid hired someone and failed horribly at trying to develop its own particle shader and ended up buying the Binary Alchemy shader. Development is much more expensive and hit-and-miss than it apears and that's why the companies ends up focusing on platform, licensing plug-in, proven tech for a lot of the rest when appropriate, and leaving the field opened for the rest

[Bullit]

DCC is about 10-15% of Autodesk revenue.

I also think the bundles/suites are great to allow people from different knowledge of softwares. At present it is very good specially to put Softimage in many studios.
Now that will be bad if it would mean that Maya/Max/Softimage loose their broad capability and start to be focused in some area.

[Pooby]

It isn't possible to add ICE to Maya, it's too tied to Softimage's architecture. So the only thing that can be done is a bundle.

I don't think, when people suggest ICE for maya, that they literally mean an exact clone of Softimage's version.
I can't see why the concept behind ICE. Ie a visual programming environment for manipulating scene data could not be developed for Maya.
Why is that not possible?

[bottleofram]

DCC is about 10-15% of Autodesk revenue.

Any source on this?

I also think the bundles/suites are great to allow people from different knowledge of softwares. At present it is very good specially to put Softimage in many studios.
Now that will be bad if it would mean that Maya/Max/Softimage loose their broad capability and start to be focused in some area.

Maximus' idea is idealistic and impossible. To develop 3 applications as if they were totally independent, self-centered, competitive projects... Hummm... No sane person would intentionally backstab him self over and over again, so neither would business.

But! This "suites will do good for softimage, they'll put it in more hands etc. etc." usual justification needs to stop. It never applied but especially not since they introduced standard ECSs which do not include softimage and are quite a few dollars cheaper. If i remember correctly, they came out a year after the initial bundles so the only window where studios didn't have a choice was that one single year. Now, the situation is completely different. Since there is no standard Softimage ECS (outside of Japan) they are putting max and maya seats into softimage studios. Brilliant, isnt it? And i dont believe for a moment premium and ultimate sell all that well. If they do, only an odd ICE artist or two will ever know about it.

[McNistor]

Are you people crazy? hah!

Why do you keep arguing with "Autodesk people"? They're happy to keep responding to your frustrations (often generating even more of it) until they grow old and retire with a fat monthly pension.

I no longer participate to these discussions (this time doesn't count as I'm not addressing the issue at hand) and I think the only way you can make your frustrations be heard is to speak in Moneyeze. That's the language Autodesk speaks. Otherwise you're wasting your time trying to get some useful answers or policy change from Autodesk. It's like a Tennis match with the ball bouncing from side to side, the only difference is that on one side it generates frustration while on the other, cash

Over and out!

[j3st3r]

My understanding was that Andrew Camenisch, Dave Cardwell, and Tibor Madjar were creators of Mudbox and subsequently Skymatter. Dave and Tibor have moved on but Andrew still heads up Mudbox though. You still see Dave doing some stuff though, like tutorials.

Skymatter actually outsourced the development to the Hungarian guys. The idea was originally theirs, and Skymatter jumped on it. A colleague of mine was close friend to one of the programmers, and I had the luck to talk to that guy.

[iamVFX]

I can't see why the concept behind ICE. Ie a visual programming environment for manipulating scene data could not be developed for Maya.
Why is that not possible?

Are you saw Coral integration? It can receive floats, integers, angles, matrices and vectors from maya via dg nodes and output data back

[Bullit]

Check here:
http://gfxspeak.com/2012/02/24/autodesk ... -increase/

DCC(Media & Entertainment) is around 10%.

[Nizar]

I think the only way you can make your frustrations be heard is to speak in Moneyeze.

Well said. Don't renew your subscription, so AD will understood

[Hirazi Blue]

Why do you keep arguing with "Autodesk people"? They're happy to keep responding to your frustrations (often generating even more of it) until they grow old and retire with a fat monthly pension.

I quote McNistor here, but it is meant as a general observation:
While it's tempting to take out our frustration about Autodesk on "our" local Autodesk representatives, let's try not to make this too personal. I am sure, even if I don't agree with them all of the time, "our" local Autodesk representatives do no come here just to generate frustration (even if it sometimes feels that way).

Let's try to not make this too personal (I know how hard this sometimes is!)