Spoiler Alert: NO SPOILERS ANYMORE

[Hirazi Blue]

And again....This is just a point release:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option= ... Itemid=360
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option= ... &Itemid=66

This sums everything.

I really don't think that this really does sum up everything. To get the complete picture, you'd also have to visit their "Licensing & Pricing" page, especially noting their "Annual Upgrade Plan", which financially is like "Subscription with Gold Support" on steroids (and then some). Comparing anything to Houdini must take Houdini's high cost to initially buy and to maintain into account, I'm afraid. Houdini's "point" releases surely pack a punch, but so do its costs.

[angus_davidson]

And again....This is just a point release:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option= ... Itemid=360
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option= ... &Itemid=66

This sums everything.

I really don't think that this really does sum up everything. To get the complete picture, you'd also have to visit their "Licensing & Pricing" page, especially noting their "Annual Upgrade Plan", which financially is like "Subscription with Gold Support" on steroids (and then some). Comparing anything to Houdini must take Houdini's high cost to initially buy and to maintain into account, I'm afraid. Houdini's "point" releases surely pack a punch, but so do its costs.

Houdini is not the cheapest solution but you cant fault them in the way they are very robustly adding to their software. From a feature for money point of view they are quickly becoming very competitive. Also you add the fact that you have unlimited render tokens it allows you to set up your render farm very cheaply.

They have also in the last few years pushed very heavily on getting tuts and learning info out there. Its not the easiest program to get to grips with , but its not nearly the TD only package it was a few years back.

[gfxman]

Usually to scare people even more with digital bureaucracy...

I wouldn't agree. Talking with my colleagues in the other areas of Autodesks business, it actually makes perfect sense, and as an example its where Autodesk's PLM, BIM and 360 programs come very much into play. These businesses and companies are spending millions on infrastructure and software pipelines, and on a scale that is hard to even quantify.

I hope its just me, but why i have the feeling that everything coming from your post is completely useless and just add noise to the discussion?

You're the only AD rep here, and no real information ever comes from you. The only thing you have to say in this topic is

1 - yes that's the final 2014 feature list, we have to remove it beacause it's gone online too soon
2 - no, the list was incomplete, there's more to come.

Is that so hard? We all know the answer i fear.

I'm very concerned about softimage future.
I feel like even the "ice oriented dev" idea it's gone, and that no one is really interested in the app itself or what the user wants.

The "bug topic" opened in the dead xsi-base, why it wasn't reopened here, for example?

[angus_davidson]

I think Graham being on here is very brave thing to do. While we always give him a lot of Flak he needs to work within his companies guidelines. Its not really his fault that the people he works for are so tight arsed about information. Not everyone gets his sense of humor right away either.

While I agree that its would have been the right thing for ADSK to do and confirm or deny that leaked list, with the Unfold event just over a week away there is no chance that any company would be drawn into that. Unfortunately that's how Big Business works.

He is definitely trying to change their attitude on how they deal with customers but its not something that will change overnight. As I have put out in another post they only seemed to leap into action when we cancelled our Maya subs. Maybe if enough people / small companies cancel their suite subscriptions they might get the message and make that change.

Either way I would much rather have someone from ADSK willing to post here , then having no one at all. Even if its not always what we want to hear. It still disturbs me that Cory isnt a regular poster here. I am not sure if Marks bus has internet ;)

Not to forget Luceric. While personally he and I tend to agree on very little it is amazing to have someone with such good insight into the physical nuts and bolts of the programs we use.

[SreckoM]

I really don't think that this really does sum up everything. To get the complete picture, you'd also have to visit their "Licensing & Pricing" page, especially noting their "Annual Upgrade Plan", which financially is like "Subscription with Gold Support" on steroids (and then some). Comparing anything to Houdini must take Houdini's high cost to initially buy and to maintain into account, I'm afraid. Houdini's "point" releases surely pack a punch, but so do its costs.

I do have Houdini license. And initial cost for HoudiniFX (4.5K USD including first year subscription) is basically much lower than what I would have to pay for Maya (6K USD without subscritpion) or XSI (5kUSD without subscritpion), I am European based.
Subscription for XSI is 1000EUR. And you get few bugfixes releases per year and upgrade. We all know what does this means.

For HoudiniFX you pay 2500 USD subscription per year (and when you buy Houdini first time you have first year free). And you get access to daily builds, unlimited render nodes, much much better point releases, no territory limitations and all that AD license crap ...

[Bullit]

daily builds, unlimited render nodes, much much better point releases, no territory limitations and all that AD license crap

That says much.

For giant firms with thousands might justify the whole system. But i have listened to horror stories of PLM that turned everything slower due to bugs and impossibility to adapt to the whole pipeline that made several firms dropping PLM. Spaceclaim for example one of fast growing mechanical cad applications, that started/went with the trend of circumventing the traditional history based approax. of MCAD applications doesn't have a PLM itself.

Rereading what i said above doesn't show some of what i wanted to convey. Autodesk and one of its staples is Autocad. Autocad only did/does that because it reached to almost every architectural studio, or even one man band.
We must be afraid of gigantism fetish, and that can be seen in Autodesk today. I saw some people that went work for UE bureaucracy completely changed - for worse - because at that level they feel the power to control hundred of million of people, and then all plays for them at that scale. A big company is more or less the same thing, a big bureaucracy that risks to kill itself because they start to cater only to big juicy contracts.

We also see a bit of that in Softimage, the hangover from Hollywood Softimage golden years makes them always try to chase that - hence probably the birth of CrowdFX to take on Massive - while the reality shows that the best work that is being done in Softimage are commercial spots not film work.

[Bellsey]

Usually to scare people even more with digital bureaucracy...

I wouldn't agree. Talking with my colleagues in the other areas of Autodesks business, it actually makes perfect sense, and as an example its where Autodesk's PLM, BIM and 360 programs come very much into play. These businesses and companies are spending millions on infrastructure and software pipelines, and on a scale that is hard to even quantify.

I hope its just me, but why i have the feeling that everything coming from your post is completely useless and just add noise to the discussion?

You're the only AD rep here, and no real information ever comes from you. The only thing you have to say in this topic is

1 - yes that's the final 2014 feature list, we have to remove it beacause it's gone online too soon
2 - no, the list was incomplete, there's more to come.

Is that so hard? We all know the answer i fear.

Apologies for my seemingly useless posts, but yeah it is hard. And the only thing I have to say on this topic is no comment. (I've been instructed/reminded to tow company line here.)

Regardless of whatever the circumstances, the cold hard fact is that (unless authorised or announced) I'm not able to openly discuss in public, any future products, features and roadmaps. If I did, I could potentially cost the company millions in lost revenue, put the company in breach of numerous business rules, and most probably be fired to boot. Autodesk take this very seriously. So much so, that I have to undertake regular training and receive quarterly and annually reviews to ensure I understand the processes. Autodesk is a public listed company, and so it has many rules to adhere. These rules also applied to Softimage under Avid and (AFAIK) Microsoft.

[dfp123]

Thank you Bellsey for your continuing participation here. It is nice to have AD involvement in our community.

However, AD lack of response about the Wiki page is very telling. If that was not the complete list, then it would have been a wise decision by AD to let you come here and assure the community that there is more to the 2014 update. I wouldn't expect you to make that decision or go off on your own to do that, that would have to be AD's decision. That would have stopped a lot of bad blood toward the company.

I think they didn't do that, because that list on the Wiki is the 2014 update. All AD had to release "is that the Wiki page was not the complete list of updates to the 2014 Softimage". But they didn't.

The bulk of the 2013 update was CrowdFX and the HQViewport, both of which I have never used. Now it looks like another slim update with little to no new additions I will be using. I will be suspending my subscription until there are additions or fixes to areas of the software I will be using (hopefully a SAP 2014 or maybe 2015 release). I am tired of paying for subscription and seeing the software upgraded to cater to big companies with features that I will never use. Softimage is the best software solution for the small studio and freelance artist. However, the marketing by AD fails to recognize this, and the updates have forgotten this community.

My subscription money this year will be going to Exocortex's Species and 3delight. Now, this will be a great year.

[Tekano]

im waiting to comment properly on specifics because I signed an NDA, which I would like to abide to, but pretty much yes, I think at this late stage its safe to say that the leaked roadmap for 2014 appears to be exactly the same as the 2013 version except the already sneak peeked 'feature' of camera mixing. something that is going to be great for layout artists but as I am not one of these it really is of not much interest to me.

I also never updated my subscription last week based not just on the already mentioned absence of any new development or Autodesk's clear lack of interest in furthering Softimage but also on the shoddy way in which key , valuable staff were layed off for the sake of 'profit' for the shareholders.

my money is going instead on Eric Mootz's next version of emfluid & Holger Schönberger's keenly anticipated Ba_fluid shader - and pretty much anything by Exocortex. clear champions in the Softimage development department for me

[gfxman]

Apologies for my seemingly useless posts, but yeah it is hard. And the only thing I have to say on this topic is no comment. (I've been instructed/reminded to tow company line here.)

Regardless of whatever the circumstances, the cold hard fact is that (unless authorised or announced) I'm not able to openly discuss in public, any future products, features and roadmaps. If I did, I could potentially cost the company millions in lost revenue, put the company in breach of numerous business rules, and most probably be fired to boot. Autodesk take this very seriously. So much so, that I have to undertake regular training and receive quarterly and annually reviews to ensure I understand the processes. Autodesk is a public listed company, and so it has many rules to adhere. These rules also applied to Softimage under Avid and (AFAIK) Microsoft.

I really understand your position, and losing the job would be simply madness to just give us some hint on the future of the product.
But: why do you boder to post if you can't and don't have nothing to say at all?
It irritates me to read your post and find out that as usually you didn't say anything on topic worth to be red.

For example:
Can you say how big is the softimage dev team now?
Can you say what happened to the bug list topic opened in the xsibase forum?
Was any of that bug list addressed or not?

[jamination]

im waiting to comment properly on specifics because I signed an NDA, which I would like to abide to, but pretty much yes, I think at this late stage its safe to say that the leaked roadmap for 2014 appears to be exactly the same as the 2013 version except the already sneak peeked 'feature' of camera mixing. something that is going to be great for layout artists but as I am not one of these it really is of not much interest to me.

I also never updated my subscription last week based not just on the already mentioned absence of any new development or Autodesk's clear lack of interest in furthering Softimage but also on the shoddy way in which key , valuable staff were layed off for the sake of 'profit' for the shareholders.

my money is going instead on Eric Mootz's next version of emfluid & Holger Schönberger's keenly anticipated Ba_fluid shader - and pretty much anything by Exocortex. clear champions in the Softimage development department for me

The gap between what autodesk and I consider an appropriate release has become so great that it makes my decision to end subscription easy (going back to 3.5). I think the releases of Modo/Houdini are what we should expect from a Softimage and the way it was not too long ago (and max in the early days), this feels like what they tried to get users to buy when combustion 2008 came out. Sadly I can't just switch to another program, I do character animation, and athough Softimage hasn't updated the tools in years, nobody else has either. I hope somebody out there uses that fabric business to bolster areas of softimage that really need tending too, I would pay good to money to that person.

I said this before, I don't think Autodesk would mind if they "had" to stop development on Softimage due to poor sales/subscription, I think their assumption is that eventually most of those dead softimage seats would end up as max or maya seats... even if it takes several years.

[t4d]

$1000+ per seat for this update BS...

we have subscriptions until 2014 for softimage but I have already put in for are company to STOP updating softimage. ( we stopped maya last year to focus on softimage if we get nothing for the money why update ?

we in the process to order modo for the whole studio.

even if we have to come back to Softimage it's cheaper to wait 5 or 6 years for something worth paying to come back to.

it's a waste of money clearly Autodesk are being LAZY or greedy what ever. we are moving to modo and just keeping are maya 2010 - 2012 and softimage 2011- 2014 active and put focus on moving to modo pipeline Sad tho I think Autodesk will try to forces us out of those old licenses or closes then for what ever forceful reason they think up to stop us using old versions... sorry NO more Autodesk BS !!

there more innovation in Blender and every other 3D developer and all are ALOT cheaper...

[rray]

(Removed your triple Post)

[FXDude]

For whatever it's worth, the bug fix list (which was also in the google cache) was quite extensive.

And while bug fixes surely can't justify an entire release point number,
apart from the Cam Sequencer, and various smaller things,
it seems the HQV compiling would be cached, and if that's what I think it is,
only the first time would you switch to it would it take longer, and then only the changes.

And just so you know, the HQV does support a quite extensive number of rendertree nodes including mixer blending modes and masked textures which is very powerful, like a live real-time render tree, and you can actually render various passes with it, if not use it to preview whatever you happen to be doing.

Yet I agree that new feature/improvement-wise that it could have been better,
(assuming that the list was it)
and Maya sneak peak showing a grease pencil suggests that it probably wouldn't be much better if at all, but of course I might be wrong.

(a company having a monopoly to a certain degree, might have something to do with it)

[Bellsey]

I really understand your position, and losing the job would be simply madness to just give us some hint on the future of the product.
But: why do you boder to post if you can't and don't have nothing to say at all?
It irritates me to read your post and find out that as usually you didn't say anything on topic worth to be red.

For example:
Can you say how big is the softimage dev team now?
Can you say what happened to the bug list topic opened in the xsibase forum?
Was any of that bug list addressed or not?

I'm not able to discuss resource and team sizes.

I don't know what happened to the xsibase bug list you refer too. I believe that our QA did have some visibility of a public list on a forum, but I don't know what forum that was on. Chris Chia is visible on the userlist, so he might know more.
One thing I would say though, is that bug lists on public forums (as good as they might appear be), are no good to us. People need to report whatever bugs they have. If you're on Subs, go through the Subs Center and log them, send in any CER reports, and also CIP data as well. Frankly the more we have, the better. The data people send in, does go somewhere and get logged and not (as many think) some bottomless abyss in Autodesk.

I'm unable to comment on whether anything on that bug list was addressed. If bugs get reported and logged into our systems, then I'm sure the teams do their best to fix as much as possible.

[xsisupport]

If you're not on Subscription, you can log bugs here.