Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[skuby]

Softimage is ready out of the box now with no new features added.  Why not, leave it as is, but continue to support new Mental Ray and FBX updates so that it still continues to fit nicely into any pipeline and leave continued development past 2016 at those simple two things.  Leave the rest up to plug-in developers and forever-more include Softimage as a free throw-in with any Maya or Max or Suite purchase or rental, so there will be many ways to own it or rent it while exclusively promoting your other packages.  The other great thing, since it can only now come with Max/Maya or a Suite, is that Soft users are never a financial burden to their employers since it will always be a free seat with any existing Max/Maya licence.

This could be a very easy, welcomed add-on to the existing Softimage retirement announcement.  Please please, consider this as an option Autodesk and please, everyone, support and promote this idea to Autodesk, I think it's our best bet and we might actually be able to get this.

-regards

[Matt Lind]

Short version:

 

1) Softimage supports more than just film/video.  There are people working in many industries which won’t be served by mental ray and FBX updates.  My studio is a prime example (games).

 

2) The SDK is not open enough for plugin developers to do what you suggest.  Many of the 3^rd party efforts to date usually required some amount of help from the Softimage developers to make possible.  Softimage tended to implement new features, then expand the SDK to support those new features. For 3^rd party development, you need the SDK expanded ahead of the features.  In other words, while the SDK is mature, it’s also not expanded too far outside of what you can already do out of the box.  New plugin efforts would largely amount to using existing levers and switches instead of making new levers and switches like you and everybody else would like. 

 

There’s still plenty of tools that can be written, but probably not anything earth shattering as the SDK is single threaded and some of the components it leans on are getting long in the tooth too as Luc-Eric has recently mentioned.  Basically, Softimage is that car that still performs really great, but has high mileage and about to enter that period where major parts will need repairing/replacing making it a very expensive upkeep.  Since the driver hasn’t seen that breakage firsthand yet, he’s under the impression there isn’t a problem and the car can drive on indefinitely into the sunset.

 

Autodesk was at our site just as the press release was officially hitting the wire.  While no specifics were mentioned by Autodesk or our reseller in our offices, my personal poking, prodding and reading between the lines lead me to believe a lot of work (refactoring) has gone into Maya the past few years to accommodate some of this burden in migration, but some (much) work still has to come.  I think we’ll see parts of that work in Maya 2015 and probably explains why the Softimage Montreal team has been busy for the past 2 years on Maya instead of Softimage.  I have no idea if there’s any truth to this, but it’s what I’ve come to believe based on the sparse bits and pieces I could put together, and witnessing how such migrations were handled in the past.

 

I’ll share the rest of my thoughts from 21+ years of Softimage experience in another thread at another time.  Right now I’m neck deep in getting the project out the door Ben Houston so kindly posted the other day.

 

 

 

Matt

[skuby]

Ok you are very right on the SDK/Plug-in front, I really didn't think about it like that.  However, I think that dominated your response and your accidentally throwing out the baby with the bathwater in effect.  (without question, no matter what, Softimage is depreciated but I'm trying to get the best effect out of a transition here)

Soft, as is, without plug-ins or new features, is STILL usable for games, movies, commercials and more.  Removing it as a stand-alone product, and packing it SOLEY as a tie in bonus with Maya, Max or any Suite, ONLY further promotes the packages AD wants to keep alive while appeasing the small studios (Japan/Vancouver/etc.) and freelance users of Softimage quite a bit better than just a 2016 cutoff.  By keeping alive Crosswalk/FBX functionality for some time longer, -modeling, animation, UV, rigging, etc. can all still be done as is in Soft and if needed, easily sent over to Maya, as that features work right now between those two packages quite well (a little trickier with max as you don't get all the automated 2-way crosswalk features last I checked but you still have FBX handy and a TD can easily work with that).  Keeping up to date Mental Ray, allows existing pipe-lines that go in the other direction, or use Softimage entirely, able to keep up and extend the transition period beyond 2016.  Now, remember, all the while anyone primarily using Softimage with these Crosswalk/Mental Ray add-ons, are also going to have full up to date copies of at least one of the  2 non-depreciated softwares that AD wants to continue  and actively promote at this time, which is only going to increase AD's revenue by ensuring many Japanese/Vancouver studios and others stay in the Autodesk family, and that alone will likely provide more than enough revenue that would potentially be lost (even if only in small amounts) to the obvious hoard of disgruntled orphans.

I don't want to make this too long, but I had hoped by now, AD would have already merged the 3 major userbases (I expect with a Maya base above all else because big studios have a lot invested in existing pipelines with it and that just makes financial sense) .  I think the above will really help with that transition, and they can promote in the future a refined Maya with a well needed updated hypershade (Softimage's render tree kills the current, dated, hypershade without question usability wise) and with a much needed update to the interaction model/keyboard shortcut/user interface that Softimage has over every other package out there, out of the box as a default.  When you tack on the upcoming ICE replacement, and the best is done not to alienate hurt Softimage users, I think many if not most will naturally migrate to a well refined Maya without much cajoling with the above mentioned treats and perhaps some love given to the animation/keying/rigging/weighting systems.

Anyways, that's my peace, I put it out there with the best of intentions.  Mudbox is one of my favorites, I started with Max, moved onto Maya and ended up with Softimage.  And in the current forms I have to wait for the future to move on from Softimage, because nothing, inside or outside of the AD family is going to replace it today, and I want that extended for as long as possible as Maya is refined into the obvious front-runner than merges the 3 bases.

[skuby]

""""Martin furi...@gmail.com

With SI retired you can't buy licenses for SI anymore, it doesn't come with Max or Maya, you can only use the licenses you have right now. You should add "keep selling SI licenses" to your idea.

Martin
Sent from my iPhone""""""""""""""

Thing is, Softimage IS now depreciated, like it or not, no petition will likely change that, that should be clear, -it's not going to move forward like it used to and it will eventually fully die.  With that, I don't think Autodesk will want to encourage new users to Softimage, so not selling new licenses directly makes sense for them to continue selling Softimage directly, when they want to be selling/promoting Maya and presumably Max licenses, -(yes it makes sense to us but not for them and we aren't going to win that one).  But, to keep it updated with FBX/Crosswalk and Mental Ray is a great transition boon for those interested in migrating to either Maya or Max.

This will allow people in the middle of a transition to easily return to familiar territory and get work done fast and clean and go back and forth with ease, at their own pace as they re-learn all of their skills as well as totally new features in their new package of choice.

Two years, now until 2016, may very well not be enough time for some studios/freelancers if they are buried in much needed work and it may not be so easy to get all of the functionality out of the interfaces they are accustomed to integrated into Max/Maya in such a short time at a level that would be acceptable to all users.  This keeps Soft development in a depreciated state, but gives a little bit more growing room than the 2016 deadline which is rightfully ambitious.  And none of this encourages new Softimage users, which is I suspect a quality they are wisely after given their total gameplan.

[skuby]

The above has a severe typo:  Should read:   With that, I don't think Autodesk will want to encourage new users to Softimage, so not selling new licenses directly makes sense for them, when they want to be selling/promoting Maya and presumably Max licenses.

sorry, my error

[Martin]

Now I get it. Forget it, I misread those lines from your email.

Martin

Sent from my iPhone

[Mirko Jankovic]

All that "we are fully developing Maya so it will be great just you see"is pure PR crap.

From couple sides is heard that bifrost which is one big argument on their side is still too young to be usable. It is not even full grown fluid simulation and to replace ICE it will take years.. even after, by AD's plan, SI is long gone they will still be not near the level of ICE.  Not to mention all other aspects of Maya workflow which are SOOOO wrong that won/t get to table at all for years to come.

If they are so confident in Maya development they should let people see it for them self and move by own choice.

But having whole road map so closed and under all NDAs is selling a cat in the bag. You have no idea where is Maya going at all what is planned and WHEN it will be available. 

That is big pile of crap if you have to plan transition.

[Matt Lind]

I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  What you have to understand is Autodesk doesn't want customers running concurrent sessions off a single license as in a Maya/Max and a Softimage session running in parallel.  that would effectively allow double the users to work while paying only half the price.  eg; if a customer has 50 licenses it would allow 50 maya + 50 softimage users to run concurrently, but pay for only 50 licenses.  Some studios are ethical and wouldn't do something like that, but as someone mentioned just the other day, other studios in lesser affluent places might not be so ethical.  Even if Softimage were included for free, it still consumes some amount of resources to ensure it still installs and runs as advertised.
 
I agree in principle Autodesk should continue Softimage until one of their other products can replace the functionality.  If anything, that's the ball that was dropped in this whole debacle.  Of all companies on the planet, you'd think the one with all the accumulated experience of all the products that went through this process in the 1990's would know better and be more prepared than anyone else.  But what's done is done.

The problem with the theory of disgruntled users leaving and hurting Autodesk is that the Softimage user base isn't large enough to really be missed on Autodesk's bottom line.  think about it.  Only 8% of Autodesk's revenue comes from media and entertainment.  Of that 8%, about 5% of it is from Softimage (0.4% total) - and that might be a generous number.  For every $100 Autodesk earns in revenue, 40 cents comes from Softimage.  Take out expenses and you're looking at much less. 

I don't remember the actual number, but I thought somebody recently reported Autodesk earned $392 million last year.  So, let's run that through the calculator:

   $392,000,000 USD * 0.004 = $1,568,000 Softimage gross revenue

I don't know what 10 developers in Singapore get paid, so I'll use conservative values based on USA rates:
 
   10 * $100,000 = $1,000,000
 
subtract expenses from revenue:
 
   $1,568,000 - $1,000,000 = $568,000

I don't know what marketing of Softimage costs, but I'm willing to bet $568,000 USD doesn't go very far for a product that needs a lot of attention to survive.  Even if tripled, that's still lean.  See the problem?

One item of note that probably hasn't been brought up in discussion yet is that Softimage has been included in the Max and Maya suites the past few years, so some sales of Max and Maya may actually be Softimage sales in a certain light - I know of at least one studio where that is the case.  In that scenario Softimage is getting the short end of the stick when it comes to accounting.

I mourn the loss of Softimage as much as anybody having dedicated 21+ years of my life to it both as professional user and former owner of a Softimage certified training center.  Sometimes life sucks.
 
Matt
 

[sku...@gmail.com]

I agree completely, which is why I’m hoping that if we all band together and ask for this small set of concessions, it will help us all make wiser and easier transitions where-ever we may end up.

1. you can rent or own either Max or Maya or some larger Suite and with any of these, you would automatically get the now depreciated Softimage 2015 package for legacy/pipeline purposes and uses.
2. Full development of the now Depreciated Softimage stops, as planned in 2016, however we still continue to get some additional years of FBX/Crosswalk support as well as regular Mental Ray updates which will go hand in hand with Crosswalk.

That's it, no more we can really hope to ask for considering how this was all presented without much of a choice or say, but that little bit right there, might be a lot more than it sounds like in terms of what it can do for all current Softimage users, as they transition to Maya, Max or elsewhere completely -and Autodesk will make some bucks in the process and hopefully keep more users in their AD family than they likely will otherwise.

I hope that's all stated clear enough now.  I know everyone, myself included will want way more (personally I’d axe Max and Maya and just keep Softimage but that's unrealistic), but given the way this all went down, we are lucky if we get the above concessions, and if future Maya development goes smoothly (aka. the new Maya Ice is good, they replace the dated Hypershade with a system akin to the Softimage Render Tree, they add some love to weight painting and rigging and animation tools, and they make realistic steps to making Maya a fully usable and coherent/streamlined package out of the box, interface wise with rich keyboard and mouse interactions like Softimage has) well then by all means, you can call me a happy Maya user in time, at my own pace.  But you are 100% correct that this is all subjective, it’s all PR, it’s not here and right now and it’s not the near foreseeable future until proven otherwise, that's why I’m asking for the small 2 point concession above to make things better for all of us and I hope you will all join me in asking these small things from Autodesk as a professional courtesy for the hours/years, the schooling and money we all put in to learning these skills and loving this software.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask, but I think we all have to ask.

Sent from Windows Mail

[skuby]

""""Matt Lind spey...@hotmail.com via listproc.autodesk.com	3:46 PM (8 minutes ago)
to softimage

21+ years of development experience you have and you don't even have the simplest faith in Autodesk that they can allow Soft and Maya to run on one single machine at the same time for crosswalk purposes but not allow them to run separately on two machines at the same time?  ok, sure

[Toonafish]

Sales revenue was 2.31 Billion in 2013, and gross income 2.07 Billion.

The "funny" thing is that while I read on the list the reason for shutting SI down is that they believe they can focus more on innovation this way.

But AD spent only 600 million of that money on R&D,  and 2.83 Billion on "sales and administration".  They spend way more money on selling the idea they are innovative, then they spend on actually trying to innovate. And when you consider how little innovation they have been able to squeeze out of a budget that is still humongous to smaller, much more innovative shops, it's simply embarrassing.

http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/adsk/financials#

You can sell customers, or sheep as they are called in some business models, heaps of crap as long as you spend enough dough on convincing them it really doesn't stink, it's the sweet smell of innovation.
 
I suspect the peeps that pull the strings at AD really couldn't care less about clients or innovation as long as this attitude brings in higher profits. They wouldn't smell innovation even if it sat on their face. Softimage with ICE is one of the most innovative DCC packages they have on their hands, and even though they seem to understand that you need to spend at least some money to sell innovation, they couldn't be bothered to lift a single finger to sell SI.

but I'm rambling on..

-Ronald

-- 
Ronald van Vemden
-----------------------------------------------
3D Graphics & Animation
Cyberfish Laboratories | www.cyberfish.nl
Toonafish | www.toonafish.nl
tel. +31(0)20 5289291
fax  +31(0)20 5289292
email: ron...@toonafish.nl 

[Martin]

AFAIK that's how the suites worked. You can use all apps in your PC with a single license and as soon as you run any of the apps you'll be using the license and won't be able to use any other app on any other PC.

I think that is quite reasonable. Make it subscription only, or time limited maybe I don't know, but that would save a lot of current Softimage projects that may need much more than 2 years to migrate and may need to increase their seats meanwhile.

I also don't have faith in Autodesk doing this (or anything at all to help us), but IMHO it's a reasonable solution.

[Chris Vienneau]

Hi Mirko,



We have already shown the maya roadmap to about 60% of the softimage user base under NDA. I have had calls with several people on this forum last week and I apologize to those that I have not got to already. We will launch our new software line up this week and GDC is here with Nvidia GTC and NAB all back to back so things are crazy. Anyone that needs more information for their transition that has asked for a road map will get one in the next couple of months. There are users in a variety of different situations that have different things to weigh.



The largest community of softimage users is in Japan building games and most use the modeling and animation tools but very little ICE. This community is focusing on the transition to the PS4 and Xbox One console cycle and want features like DX11 APIs and .net programming as well as back end API for FBX and Middleware. The main work we did with Microsoft and Sony for supporting the next gen consoles was done in Maya although the transition for a games developer is pretty big when they have to swap out engines or back end pipelines. These users upgrade usually once every five years around the time a console changes. With the work you will see in Maya 2015 this week we are addressing most of the big modeling feature concerns in terms of legacy things like crappy Booleans and bevel and we have a whole new retopology tool set. We also have done tons of work on supporting UV tiling and workflows and ported over the Unfold 3D work into Maya.



As for the workflows we have an internal project called Project H (or Humanize Maya) where we are working with all sorts of users from students to pros to studios to come up with proposals to the problems that have come up here and in the Maya user base. We invite anyone here and many of you have taken up our offer to contribute and it is up to us to show that we are delivering over the next two years during the transition period. If we don't at the end than you will all have choices and plenty of time to evaluate your options.



As for ICE and Bifrost you will see this week the liquid workflows for generalists. We have three user personas we work with: generalists, tds, and programmers. If you want a great view of our thoughts on Bifrost than read this article from fx guide: https://www.fxguide.com/featured/bifrost-the-return-of-the-naiad-team-with-a-bridge-to-ice/ . The underlying procedural core that powers was written by a core group of developers that worked on ICE except this time they built it separate from Maya so that we could potentially re-use it in other areas. So we will show the benefits of a modern procedural core running on all CPUs but we will not expose the node graphing network underneath in the first version. As you will read in the article and see in the videos the graph which is very much like ICE is there but we want to focus on enabling a key workflow like liquids first for the big user base and then expose it to tds through a node graph interface and then programmers through an API. We have been working on this core for a long time so we are confident that it is ready for prime time with the hundred of thousands of Maya users out there today. Again those of you that want to take part in how we expose this procedural core through a node interface are welcome to join the beta.



As for modernizing Maya's core there are several components that make up the core of an application. This is by no means exhaustive but for this conversation let's imagine the primary components are UI, Viewport, Data model, and Evaluation. Higher level things like API and scripting are also in the equation. For Maya we ported the entire UI to QT over the last couple of years and you will see us start to take advantage of that in the 2015 release. The viewport 2.0 project will be completed in the 2015 release so we will make it the default viewport. This supports all the modern DX11 techniques like gpu tessellation, opensubdiv and will natively display UV tiling, Ptex, Alembic streaming, and most elements of the hypershade and good chunks of mental ray. With GPU caching and proper use of the GPU we are loading huge scenes into Maya and showing them with a much higher level of fidelity than ever before. With the new bifrost tiled architecture we are showing 200-300 m particles in some cases and they are interactive if you have a beefy enough gfx card.



For data we have been working with a lot of the larger studios on a project called open data. The alembic work we put into the open source came out of this project and we are actively working on projects like USD (http://graphics.pixar.com/usd/) and the future of how materials are stored openly (http://code.google.com/p/alembic/wiki/AbcMaterial) . The key is that the way data is stored is not owned by any one application but an open source framework so you can share data between applications, renderers, and frameworks. If you want to see how this comes together and benefits the user you can watch this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsn6i1YVZo8). This is also the future of how people will interact on the cloud as you will be have scenes that have objects with multiple representations including streamable assets. You can author in a lightweight environment and then pass around changes that are stored in open formats like json or xml and use whatever you want (Maya, Houdini, Fabric, C++) to bring it all together and back end tools like Shotgun can work with the data without having to load Maya. I don't think anyone on this list including Paul from Fabric that the future for storing data is in open standards that are supported by all tools and pipelines. The other key elements of the open data framework is working with remote data like drop box and autodesk 360. As more and more workflows go cloud having scenes that can reference remote elements and having compute on demand will be key for any facility that wants to keep costs in line with the production.



Evaluation is what you do with the data to get the resulting geometry, pixels, manipulators, etc... . Generalists make up a vast majority of the 3D user base. They like the 3dsmax, Maya, XSI model of being able to do modeling, animation, fx, and lighting in one package and the key constraint here is that you have to fit all of that into your memory. Each application has its own way of exposing that to user from a fully procedural environment like Houdini to mixed models like XSI, Maya, and Softimage to more direct always move forward models like Modo. We are currently evaluating how we can expose the history of Maya in a more operator like stack UI like Softimage but the underlying feature set is there. ICE is a mixed evaluation model with a modern procedural core plugged into a more interactive traditional model. I won't talk about the future on an open forum but the article written on fxguide shows a lot of the intent of what we are trying to do and we have been very clear that we want to capture the best elements of the ICE workflow with this new approach. For API/Scripting Maya is the industry standard for extensibility. We increased our python support and added .net (games industry standard) over the last few years. Maya is a great tool to plug into a pipeline. We are very confident that as we expose our backend procedural core to programmers people will have a choice between Fabric, Houdini Engine, and Maya and will probably mix them all together. The other work done on the API was to properly expose the rendering API to make Maya much more friendly to third party renderers. Now you can choose between Mental Ray, Vray, vue, Arnold, Renderman, Maxwell, Caustic, Iray, Furry Ball, Red Shift, Gorilla, and Otoy Octane. There are a few more hiding in the weeds that will come out this year that are great.



So for modernizing the application you have to start from the ground up and work your way towards the artist facing work. So in Maya 2015 as a games artist you will see exactly what you will see in the console or mobile device and load levels that match what can be seen on the xbox one or PS4. For a film/vfx artist you can work with high resolution subdivided meshes (open subdiv rocks) that have uv tiles painted in Mari and see a much closer view of the final look and you can choose between tons of great renderers that are not on Houdini or Modo or Soft.



Where we need to work on is user workflow and hiding the complexity of Maya. If you think of all the work that went into the work you see above the team is making this a top priority now that we have a modern base layer of UI, data, evaluation, and viewport on which to work. Maya sucks at lighting and rendering compared to Soft and we need to fix that along with a bunch of other things. If you want to hedge your bets than sign up for the roadmap or continue to write in here. Maya's modeling community have been working with us for two years to bring it up to speed with applications like modo and we have monthly drops and a tight community that keeps us honest. The videos in two days will be testament to that.



As for the whole NDA thing I am not going to apologize that is how we have to do business as that is how Adobe, Apple, and anyone else who is a public company has to operate. If you want to see what happens when you don't work that way look at what happened to Avid. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/bobbyowsinski/2014/02/27/major-changes-around-the-corner-for-music-as-avid-delists/) They played fast and loose with promises and they couldn't be honest with the people who invested in them. I am so tired of the whole public evil corporation thing as investors are people like you and me who just want to retire one day. Investment companies just keep these companies honest and the laws put in place prevent disasters like what happened with Enron where people were stealing money and getting away with it. We need to be responsible. There are no investors making calls at Autodesk. Everyone in this industry from the Foundry (google Caryle Group) to Fabric (Marc Petit big investor) have people that fund them and expect a return for their investment. Considering we have spoken with 60% of the user base already and plan on hitting 80% under NDA by Siggraph I think we are getting the best of both worlds. You as the user are informed about what we intend to do and we are not breaking any laws.



There are developers on soft right now and we will keep them there for two years. The list of things we can do to help the transition is in their hands and we will see what we can do. Just a reminder there is the softimage webinar tomorrow online.



thx.



cv/







________________________________
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Mirko Jankovic [mirkoj....@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 4:26 AM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

All that "we are fully developing Maya so it will be great just you see"is pure PR crap.
>From couple sides is heard that bifrost which is one big argument on their side is still too young to be usable. It is not even full grown fluid simulation and to replace ICE it will take years.. even after, by AD's plan, SI is long gone they will still be not near the level of ICE. Not to mention all other aspects of Maya workflow which are SOOOO wrong that won/t get to table at all for years to come.

If they are so confident in Maya development they should let people see it for them self and move by own choice.
But having whole road map so closed and under all NDAs is selling a cat in the bag. You have no idea where is Maya going at all what is planned and WHEN it will be available.
That is big pile of crap if you have to plan transition.

On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 8:56 AM, skuby <sku...@gmail.com<mailto:sku...@gmail.com>> wrote:
The above has a severe typo: Should read: With that, I don't think Autodesk will want to encourage new users to Softimage, so not selling new licenses directly makes sense for them, when they want to be selling/promoting Maya and presumably Max licenses.

sorry, my error

On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 2:52 PM, skuby <sku...@gmail.com<mailto:sku...@gmail.com>> wrote:

""""Martin furi...@gmail.com<mailto:furi...@gmail.com>



[https://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif]

[https://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif]
[https://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif]

With SI retired you can't buy licenses for SI anymore, it doesn't come with Max or Maya, you can only use the licenses you have right now. You should add "keep selling SI licenses" to your idea.

Martin
Sent from my iPhone""""""""""""""

Thing is, Softimage IS now depreciated, like it or not, no petition will likely change that, that should be clear, -it's not going to move forward like it used to and it will eventually fully die. With that, I don't think Autodesk will want to encourage new users to Softimage, so not selling new licenses directly makes sense for them to continue selling Softimage directly, when they want to be selling/promoting Maya and presumably Max licenses, -(yes it makes sense to us but not for them and we aren't going to win that one). But, to keep it updated with FBX/Crosswalk and Mental Ray is a great transition boon for those interested in migrating to either Maya or Max.

This will allow people in the middle of a transition to easily return to familiar territory and get work done fast and clean and go back and forth with ease, at their own pace as they re-learn all of their skills as well as totally new features in their new package of choice.

Two years, now until 2016, may very well not be enough time for some studios/freelancers if they are buried in much needed work and it may not be so easy to get all of the functionality out of the interfaces they are accustomed to integrated into Max/Maya in such a short time at a level that would be acceptable to all users. This keeps Soft development in a depreciated state, but gives a little bit more growing room than the 2016 deadline which is rightfully ambitious. And none of this encourages new Softimage users, which is I suspect a quality they are wisely after given their total gameplan.

On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 1:17 PM, skuby <sku...@gmail.com<mailto:sku...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Ok you are very right on the SDK/Plug-in front, I really didn't think about it like that. However, I think that dominated your response and your accidentally throwing out the baby with the bathwater in effect. (without question, no matter what, Softimage is depreciated but I'm trying to get the best effect out of a transition here)

Soft, as is, without plug-ins or new features, is STILL usable for games, movies, commercials and more. Removing it as a stand-alone product, and packing it SOLEY as a tie in bonus with Maya, Max or any Suite, ONLY further promotes the packages AD wants to keep alive while appeasing the small studios (Japan/Vancouver/etc.) and freelance users of Softimage quite a bit better than just a 2016 cutoff. By keeping alive Crosswalk/FBX functionality for some time longer, -modeling, animation, UV, rigging, etc. can all still be done as is in Soft and if needed, easily sent over to Maya, as that features work right now between those two packages quite well (a little trickier with max as you don't get all the automated 2-way crosswalk features last I checked but you still have FBX handy and a TD can easily work with that). Keeping up to date Mental Ray, allows existing pipe-lines that go in the other direction, or use Softimage entirely, able to keep up and extend the transition period beyond 2016. Now, remember, all the while anyone primarily using Softimage with these Crosswalk/Mental Ray add-ons, are also going to have full up to date copies of at least one of the 2 non-depreciated softwares that AD wants to continue and actively promote at this time, which is only going to increase AD's revenue by ensuring many Japanese/Vancouver studios and others stay in the Autodesk family, and that alone will likely provide more than enough revenue that would potentially be lost (even if only in small amounts) to the obvious hoard of disgruntled orphans.

I don't want to make this too long, but I had hoped by now, AD would have already merged the 3 major userbases (I expect with a Maya base above all else because big studios have a lot invested in existing pipelines with it and that just makes financial sense) . I think the above will really help with that transition, and they can promote in the future a refined Maya with a well needed updated hypershade (Softimage's render tree kills the current, dated, hypershade without question usability wise) and with a much needed update to the interaction model/keyboard shortcut/user interface that Softimage has over every other package out there, out of the box as a default. When you tack on the upcoming ICE replacement, and the best is done not to alienate hurt Softimage users, I think many if not most will naturally migrate to a well refined Maya without much cajoling with the above mentioned treats and perhaps some love given to the animation/keying/rigging/weighting systems.

Anyways, that's my peace, I put it out there with the best of intentions. Mudbox is one of my favorites, I started with Max, moved onto Maya and ended up with Softimage. And in the current forms I have to wait for the future to move on from Softimage, because nothing, inside or outside of the AD family is going to replace it today, and I want that extended for as long as possible as Maya is refined into the obvious front-runner than merges the 3 bases.

[Mirko Jankovic]

Hey Chris

Thanks for extensive cover. That is first concrete post with specific points that makes sense.

Still stays question of killing Softimage in it's prime (even if it stagnating and Maya is on developers rise)

before covering at least thsoe basic workflow things. 

All underlying tech is great stuff but have little meaning if it is disconnected from user on top.

Tech makes fast viewport and faster then ever performance possible and workflow then cut that all in half or more.

IF in two years is possible to improve what Maya is lacking in terms of workflow then it does makes sense. But if it takes another 5-6 years then Softimage is killed prematurely. 

[Rob Chapman]

"We invite anyone here and many of you have taken up our offer to contribute and it is up to us to show that we are delivering over the next two years during the transition period. If we don't at the end than you will all have choices and plenty of time to evaluate your options."

what kind of choices? If you do not deliver to our criteriathen Softimage is not EOL or..  it is very unclear as to what our choices are exactly?

in 2016 will we be able to load ICE trees and compounds into Maya?

[Chris Vienneau]

Hi guys,



Your math is a little off as the number is 600 m in R&D and 1 billion in sales and administrative. The administrative covers everything from all the people that support the developers to the building and computers. Autodesk spends more on R&D than Adobe or Apple. Our CEO Carl Bass uses the products and tells about what he doesn't like all the time. Again you can check him making stuff here: http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/maker-king . We have a huge research group that drives its own agenda (http://www.autodeskresearch.com/) and our doing lots of labs/research projects here ( labs.autodesk.com) . Our research into multi-touch, reality capture and 3D printing is industry leading and we have been involved in projects like molecular maya working with MIT on cancer research (http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/10/features/biology-is-the-new-software ). Autodesk's executives (check their bio) including Marc Stevens who ran softimage and runs the film/tv group are all engineers and this is a technology driven company. I know it sucks that no one from Autodesk in M&E has said this to this community but I like working for Autodesk and believe that this is a good company.



For Maya 2015 we will show off the redesigned from the ground up fluid flip method from Dr. Robert Bridson , a new voxel based skinning method that was a siggraph paper , continued improvements on the hair and cloth simulation of Nucleus from Dr. Jos Stam. Most of the innovation in this industry comes from the top studios and the work that comes out of production. The snow in Frozen was amazing but a lot of work. (http://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/publications) If<http://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/publications)%20If> you take the innovation that has really driven the industry forward in the last five years the origins are all on production. With tech like Alembic, openvdb, Ptex, UV-tiling, opensubdiv, open color IO, Open EXR, etc.... there are smart people in studios like Sebastian Sylwain (ex-weta), Bill Polson (Pixar), Lincoln Wallen (DreamWorks), Rob Bredow (Sony), Dan Candela (Walt Disney animation), and Hilmar Koch (ILM) that make great code and open source to the benefit of the community. Then there are tons of contributors like Autodesk and the Foundry who do things like porting, standards and bug fixing so this all works together. Even the applications that are young and fast moving like Mari (weta) and Arnold (Sony) are from production and still take their main direction from production just like Maya. All of the applications from Soft with Jurassic to Maya with Dinosaurs got their footing with production work. The fact that Toy Story was all built on in house hardware and 20 years later you have amazing movies like Despicable Me and Lego movie made with mostly off the shelf tools is amazing. Go back and look at the tools you think are innovating and see how many of their "innovations" are based off Siggraph papers or are inspired by tools written in production. I for one have no problem giving credit where credit is due and most anything in Maya that is good has come from being built in partnership with customers.



This industry is lucky to have organizations like Siggraph and FMX that foster and promote innovation and we love that more and more of the base platform is community based. We have led the VES effort to standard Linux libraries for all the vendors (Foundry, SideFX, Autodesk) and get to work in organizations like open GL building out the next gen drivers and MPAA (setting the new ACES standard for replacing Cineon) all building up the base upon which the industry sits. We get to package up technology like Xgen and bring it to the larger market and all vendors get to put in Alembic to share data and open color I/O to set color within a facility.



This movement has allowed medium sized companies to do shots that were once only possible by a few shops and more importantly this has allowed stories to be told in countries that have never before had a voice. There is no one tool to rule them all and Max vs Maya vs Soft vs Houdini vs Modo vs Zbrush vs fabric does not foster innovation. Raf said it well when he described the Lego as all of those tools plus internal tools plus really smart people plus an amazing story made what we all enjoyed so much.



First and foremost everyone who works at Autodesk in the M&E division including the people who used to work at Soft (there are way more than have left) love the film and games industry and the chance to be a part of it. The decision with Soft was a hard one but we back it so we can focus on helping the ecosystem make better movies and games. Innovation comes from the synergies of all these products, platforms, hardware and your talent and putting that on any one tool or company does not capture what is still a vibrant passionate community. The business model right now sucks and things need to change but there is still a bright future ahead and many problems left to solve.



cv/















________________________________
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Toonafish [ron...@toonafish.nl]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 7:39 AM

To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

Cyberfish Laboratories | www.cyberfish.nl<http://www.cyberfish.nl>
Toonafish | www.toonafish.nl<http://www.toonafish.nl>

tel. +31(0)20 5289291
fax +31(0)20 5289292

email: ron...@toonafish.nl<mailto:ron...@toonafish.nl>

[Chris Vienneau]

Do you guys think there is a top list of nodes in ICE and compounds you all use that cover 80% of what you do with the toolset?



thx.



cv/



________________________________
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Rob Chapman [tekan...@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 8:43 AM

To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Mirko Jankovic]

"but there is still a bright future ahead" all OK but this particular sentence invokes some really bad memories and taste for  Softimage people...

"The future is bright....click"

[Christoph Muetze]

First you beat us up and now you try to convince us that is was for our
own good and that you are actually really nice people... ?

Cancer research. really? You are pulling this card here and now? I'm
speechless.

Chris

[Francisco Criado]

Sorry, don' t want to be rude here, but what i am seeing in this thread and others, is Softimage users helping develop Maya for the Company that ruin Softimage. They kill the software and then come to us to ask what parts of your ripped software would you like to have on the software we want to market? 

Don't you have r&d? don't you have a mayan user database? ask them, not us. If you come to us is that you are approving soft is better software and now you need to begin to strip it.

Don't come to me with a phrase like "we want to hear what tools want the softimage artist needs to migrate to maya".

The Softimage artist needs Softimage, period, the best 3d tool you had as a product and decided to remove from market.

Again, sorry if it sounds rude.

F.

[Emilio Hernandez]

Yes take the name Softimage out and name it Maya reloaded if you want. Personally I don't want a Softimage Maya fembot.

It turns out that now they are listening after they realized that most of us will stay in a zombie software or are evaluating other company's options but none of the Autodesk "solutions".

[Tim Marinov]

Hahahaha...... this is all I can say to you!Good luck with the inovation!Autodesk,  it sounds that the future is bright for you as well.

[Chris Vienneau]

The topic was innovation and research. So no I was not trying to pull a cancer card but yes I was very proud to have helped out on that project. We are not trying to down play the fact that this decision sucks for many people on this list.

cv/

________________________________________
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Christoph Muetze [c...@glarestudios.de]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 10:24 AM

To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite

[Emilio Hernandez]

As I said in another post. Autodesk cut us our legs and now they are offering us a wheelchair. And they are trying to convince us that the weelchair is better than our legs by asking us how we want the wheelchair customized...   pfff.

Dont mean to be rude but... You can go back where you came from.  And you can ride your wheelchair all the way back.

[Emilio Hernandez]

Well innovating Maya is not such a difficult task...

[Chris Vienneau]

Emilio there are people on this list and within the community that are working with us right now and taking us up on our offer to hear more about what we are doing? What do you have to lose to hear our plan?



cv/



________________________________
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Emilio Hernandez [emi...@e-roja.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:13 AM

To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Emilio Hernandez]

Chris first bring back Softimage and then show us what you have to offer in Maya that will allow us to evaluate if what you are doing is good enough to replace Softimage.

But at this moment. Maya is still a long way behind Softimage.  I am not speaking of the ending result.  I am talking about how you get to that final result.

[Emilio Hernandez]

By the way just being curious...

During the time you made the decision of killing Softimage. Did you evaluate that maybe the one that you should have killed instead was Maya to dedicate your innovative effort to Softimage?

Or that never happened?

[Martin]

Improving Maya to make it better than any DCC available is a good thing, and I sincerely hope you success.
The problem is that you killed Softimage just too soon. Now as how it is, Maya isn't better than SI and I seriously doubt that it will be in 2 years, or 3 or 4. Even without having ICE in the comparison.

Martin
Sent from my iPhone

> <winmail.dat>

[Mirko Jankovic]

Problem is it is not just it sucks ok get over it and move on, it is a life changer for a lot of seasoned Softimage veterans out there that are effectively reduced back to Maya junior, 2 and more decades of experience stripped away. 

That is something that no invention can replace. 

Using software is not just fancy new tool inside it but years of experience and creative thinking and problem solving and after that much time you think like a software and becomes to understand it.

Now you are in whole new river trying t o find your way. No fancy tool can help there but another 10-20 years of experience.

[Francisco Criado]

Agree with you Mirko.

[Chris Vienneau]

We agree. That is why you need to see the plan on how we change how you get the end result. Otherwise this is probably a really lame thread to follow for the group as we talk over each other and it much less entertaining than the Chris is a lying piece of crap diatribe. Let's get on the same page and if you want to say after that Autodesk has its head up its ass then fine but if we agree that Maya, Houdini, 3dsmax, and Softimage can all produce amazing results albeit a different way then we are close. There is real value in the way Softimage does certain things we want to put in Maya.

cv/







________________________________
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Emilio Hernandez [emi...@e-roja.com]

Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:28 AM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

Chris first bring back Softimage and then show us what you have to offer in Maya that will allow us to evaluate if what you are doing is good enough to replace Softimage.

But at this moment. Maya is still a long way behind Softimage. I am not speaking of the ending result. I am talking about how you get to that final result.

El mar 15, 2014 4:18 PM, "Chris Vienneau" <chris.v...@autodesk.com<mailto:chris.v...@autodesk.com>> escribió:
Emilio there are people on this list and within the community that are working with us right now and taking us up on our offer to hear more about what we are doing? What do you have to lose to hear our plan?



cv/



________________________________

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com> [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com>] on behalf of Emilio Hernandez [emi...@e-roja.com<mailto:emi...@e-roja.com>]

Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:13 AM

To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:soft...@listproc.autodesk.com>

[John Clausing]

Chris,

I admire you for having the courage to come on this list and tell us your side.

But let's be clear, you don't get to be frustrated, angry, or abusive. You need to win us over, you have let us down, pure and simple. You have to convince us that there is a good reason to use your product, period.

With respect, you need to SELL us on maya as a replacement for soft. You need to tell us what we do when we don't have ICE. You need to put up with our frustration at losing our tools because it is not and won't be "just use Maya, they do the same thing". They don't, and you have put us in a situation with our clients that is untenable at least in the short term, so sell us and in the meantime, deal with the consequences of YOUR actions in as patient a way as you can.

I look forward to hearing from you, how I replace my tool in concrete ways.

John

Sent from my iPhone

> <winmail.dat>

[Francisco Criado]

Chris, nobody here on this list is saying you are that, its not you, is Autodesk, the company we complain. And again, suppose someone comes and guts your workflow in pieces and then says "look we want the best for you, so why don´t you tell me what you need", well we need that exactly way of working you just have taken away. Still don´t understand why is so difficult. 

If you want to have ice on Maya, first you should have to port a lot of "tools", (workflow i prefer to name it) that Softimage has, and i´m no programmer but think i have enough capacity to see Maya is not implemented for 3d in the way Softimage has.

F.

[Alen]

Nicely said, Mirko

A

[Chris Vienneau]

Agreed. I am running the transition training program and we need more ideas on how to help seasoned Soft users get trained up on Maya whether that be online or live training. Any thoughts are welcome.



cv/

________________________________
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Francisco Criado [malcr...@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:43 AM

To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite

Agree with you Mirko.


2014-03-15 12:38 GMT-03:00 Mirko Jankovic <mirkoj....@gmail.com<mailto:mirkoj....@gmail.com>>:

Problem is it is not just it sucks ok get over it and move on, it is a life changer for a lot of seasoned Softimage veterans out there that are effectively reduced back to Maya junior, 2 and more decades of experience stripped away.
That is something that no invention can replace.
Using software is not just fancy new tool inside it but years of experience and creative thinking and problem solving and after that much time you think like a software and becomes to understand it.
Now you are in whole new river trying t o find your way. No fancy tool can help there but another 10-20 years of experience.

[Emilio Hernandez]

I will add to Francisco.

All I have seen is that you are adding tools for Maya. Not really improving the workflow.  Starting with the UI.

[John Clausing]

Gosh, I hope you're sincere.

Please let us know where we can find such "transition vids".

Sent from my iPhone

> <winmail.dat>

[Greg Punchatz]

Chris,

 I am all ears, we are very interested in talking (as you know you were supposed to call or visit me a while back ; )

 Emilio, please don't be rude... while I think Chris's company and perhaps his are views and perception are misinformed and or misguided,   they are not evil people. Name calling will get us no where... in fact it just puts the nail in the coffin faster..

Pointing out facts are fine. Pointing ongoing issues with AD and its culture and results is awesome. Pointing out that Maya is in fact broken in so many ways is just what we need too....Mayans are used to working around these issues they don't even realize they are an issue. Pointing out how broken the communication is with the beta teams is awesome.

Pointing out things like the Xgen demo vs what the guys at Whiskey Tree can do with ICE is more than fair. Just because it's from Disney does not mean that its good... Xgen at Sig was just one of the worst product demos I have ever seen.... The hair part was nifty, but when they used it for placing tree's I just about busted a gut laughing at the inadequacies of the implementation or core tech. Pointing out that AD hid the Whiskey Tree demo because they knew it made the new micky mouse tech in Maya look useless is important to do because it shows that AD does in fact  stifle innovation if it is not aligned with the "Big Plan".

I just want to continue the discussion on how best to retire softimage or better yet put soft into semi retirement for just a tad longer.... so we can see if ADs plans (whatever they are) pan out. Keep it on standby in case the plans you currently have go the way of Toxic...

I want to use the best out of the box 3d DCC app in the world, if one day that is Maya, I am all aboard.  Right now it is not, its kinda just a fact.

[Rob Wuijster]

Hi Chris,

What AD doesn't seem/want to understand is that it took away the tool we make money with, to provide for ourself and our families.
And 'suck it up and change to Maya/Max' is basically the answer we got.

The question here is, can we retrain ourself? It will differ from person to person, and range of tools used on a daily basis. But in the end, sure.
But at what costs? We have spent a lot of money year after year on licenses, on training, on tools. Lots of hours spent learning the tool and honing your skills. Often after work hours. It will take a long time to get comfortable to that same level, and that means less income.

This retraining will probably be somewhat less evasive for smaller teams, but the bigger companies face a whole different ballgame here.
Pipelines have to be restructured, tools have to be rewritten, staff has to be retrained.

But, with the forced transition to Maya or Max, we cannot expect our clients to understand the price or timetable suddenly goes up because we cannot do the job as we normally could. Especially with tools like ICE, which have become an vital tool for all production for most of us.
Or have the same timetables and hire in extra staff, because the tools we have to use aren't as fast or good as we're used to.

As you said that the end results are the same, but the route taken is different. We SI users still know and feel that Maya or Max aren't the proper road taken for that result. We strongly feel that both Maya or Max cannot do what SI can do in our situation. There's ton's of movies and commercials out there that prove that. On budgets that would be impossible to do in another app/pipeline.

You've read the letters from some very well known and respected names in the business. The damage AD is doing here is not just to the SI community, but far beyond that and it's not really sinking in at AD HQ I'm afraid.

You and Maurice are probably very nice people when met in person, but don't expect any understanding from us after years of 'The future for Softimage is bright' despite all the emails that say otherwise.

If Maya 2015 turns out to be the overruling app for us all, I will congratulate you guys.
But until than Hell is still a hot place, and pigs cannot fly......

Rob

\/-------------\/----------------\/

-----
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Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2014.0.4336 / Virus Database: 3722/7199 - Release Date: 03/15/14

[Emilio Hernandez]

Chris again. Thank you for helping in the transition and you are trying to do your job.  But you are still not listening to us. You just want to drag us. I have been working in Maya for three years from now for some particular projects that I needed to deliver in Maya.

Maya again is no option for us.  If you had not kill Softimage there will be no transition at all. Still even that you killed Softimage, Maya today is not an option for us.

We don't have the resources nor the time to work in Maya, even if we have the same level of skill to use Maya as we have in Softimage.

Simple by digging into the connections of the nodes in Maya in the node editor, is a mayhem!  The channel/layer editor is another mayhem.  The way you work with objects and the selections in Maya are terrible. Rigging is a nightmare. Managing the blendshapes is really annoying.

Doing math and expressions in Maya sucks. Your utility nodes have no coherence at all.  The inputs and outputs are presented in one way at the node editor and in another way in your connection editor.

Just to address a few.

Maya slows my workflow by twice the time at least to achieve the final result.

I am working in a rig that if I had done it in Softimage I would have it finished by now. But Maya's workflow takes me triple the time.

Believe me that if I had built the rig as fast in Maya as I do it in Softimage. Not because I do not know Maya. But because that is the way Maya works, we will be not having tgis transition conversation.

Expect not a transition but a flee from Autodesk to other solutions.

[Toonafish]

Sorry, my mistake. You're right, 1.12 Billion in 2013 according to marketwatch.

And that's a nice picture you paint of a bright future for all of us with AD family. But I'm sure you and the other good people at AD can understand why some of us will have a hard time believing in promises made by the friendly people of AD. The same friendly people decided to retire an amazing tool like Softimage, even though they promised us they would not do so, and are currently trying to replace it with a pie in the sky.

I believe it when I see it.

-Ronald

On 3/15/2014 14:37, Chris Vienneau wrote:

Hi guys,

 

Your math is a little off as the number is 600 m in R&D and 1 billion in sales and administrative. The administrative covers everything from all the people that support the developers to the building and computers. Autodesk spends more on R&D than Adobe or Apple. Our CEO Carl Bass uses the products and tells about what he doesn't like all the time. Again you can check him making stuff here: http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/maker-king . We have a huge research group that drives its own agenda (http://www.autodeskresearch.com/) and our doing lots of labs/research projects here ( labs.autodesk.com) . Our research into multi-touch, reality capture and 3D printing is industry leading and we have been involved in projects like molecular maya working with MIT on cancer research (http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/10/features/biology-is-the-new-software ). Autodesk's executives (check their bio) including Marc Stevens who ran softimage and runs the film/tv group are all engineers and this is a technology driven company. I know it sucks that no one from Autodesk in M&E has said this to this community but I like working for Autodesk and believe that this is a good company.

 

For Maya 2015 we will show off the redesigned from the ground up fluid flip method from Dr. Robert Bridson , a new voxel based skinning method that was a siggraph paper , continued improvements on the hair and cloth simulation of Nucleus from Dr. Jos Stam. Most of the innovation in this industry comes from the top studios and the work that comes out of production. The snow in Frozen was amazing but a lot of work. (http://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/publications) If you take the innovation that has really driven the industry forward in the last five years the origins are all on production. With tech like Alembic, openvdb, Ptex, UV-tiling, opensubdiv, open color IO, Open EXR, etc.... there are smart people in studios like Sebastian Sylwain (ex-weta), Bill Polson (Pixar), Lincoln Wallen (DreamWorks), Rob Bredow (Sony), Dan Candela (Walt Disney animation), and Hilmar Koch (ILM) that make great code and open source to the benefit of the community. Then there are tons of contributors like Autodesk and the Foundry who do things like porting, standards and bug fixing so this all works together. Even the applications that are young and fast moving like Mari (weta)  and Arnold (Sony) are from production and still take their main direction from production just like Maya. All of the applications from Soft with Jurassic to Maya with Dinosaurs got their footing with production work. The fact that Toy Story was all built on in house hardware and 20 years later you have amazing movies like Despicable Me and Lego movie made with mostly off the shelf tools is amazing. Go back and look at the tools you think are innovating and see how many of their "innovations" are based off Siggraph papers or are inspired by tools written in production. I for one have no problem giving credit where credit is due and most anything in Maya that is good has come from being built in partnership with customers.

 

This industry is lucky to have organizations like Siggraph and FMX that foster and promote innovation and we love that more and more of the base platform is community based. We have led the VES effort to standard Linux libraries for all the vendors (Foundry, SideFX, Autodesk) and get to work in organizations like open GL building out the next gen drivers and MPAA (setting the new ACES standard for replacing Cineon) all building up the base upon which the industry sits. We get to package up technology like Xgen and bring it to the larger market and all vendors get to put in Alembic to share data and open color I/O to set color within a facility.

 

This movement has allowed medium sized companies to do shots that were once only possible by a few shops and more importantly this has allowed stories to be told in countries that have never before had a voice. There is no one tool to rule them all and Max vs Maya vs Soft vs Houdini vs Modo vs Zbrush vs fabric does not foster innovation. Raf said it well when he described the Lego as all of those tools plus internal tools plus really smart people plus an amazing story made what we all enjoyed so much.

 

First and foremost everyone who works at Autodesk in the M&E division including the people who used to work at Soft (there are way more than have left) love the film and games industry and the chance to be a part of it. The decision with Soft was a hard one but we back it so we can focus on helping the ecosystem make better movies and games. Innovation comes from the synergies of all these products, platforms, hardware and your talent and putting that on any one tool or company does not capture what is still a vibrant passionate community. The business model right now sucks and things need to change but there is still a bright future ahead and many problems left to solve.

 

cv/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Toonafish [ron...@toonafish.nl]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 7:39 AM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com

Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Christoph Muetze]

On 15/03/14 17:24, Greg Punchatz wrote:

I want to use the best out of the box 3d DCC app in the world, if one day that is Maya, I am all aboard.  Right now it is not, its kinda just a fact.

I'm so with you on this..

We did take Autodesks offer a while back and upgraded two of our groups seats to the Maya Entertainment Creative Suit. Mainly for Mudbox, but also to have a deep look at Maya.

Fast forward 1 year and i'm more than convinced that Maya doesn't offer what i need on a day to day basis.

It's not only that there are many things not available in Maya but also that the tools that are available take more time away from me than their Softimage counterparts. And in the field that i work in with its super tight deadlines (where you have days, sometimes only hours to deliver) every click counts.

If anyone can beat me with another tool i will instantly drop Softimage. But this hasn't happened so far and i highly doubt it will happen in the next 2 years with someone using Maya.

Chris

[Angus Davidson]

Hi Chris

Part of the problem is the users have been begging to be heard for years now. Even if it was under NDA. Unfortunately the very few times that happened it was only for a very small amount of people at specific events (that 99% of your user base couldn't go to)  I have asked to be put under NDA  so I could find out what went on many times only to be told its limited to only the attendees. Whats happening now is very much reactionary to try and keep people within the AD fold. Its very plain that currently the majority of people who have voiced their opinion have come down to this. Use SI for as long as possible while finding a non AD alternative/s to switch to in the future. Which I am fairly sure was very far from AD's original thinking.

The 2013 and 2014 subscription releases were massive proof that AD was incredibly out of touch with everyone except a few studios in the far east. The major release for 2014 (ie the Camera sequencer ) wasn't even done with subscription money. It was paid for via your consultancy arm. This went a long way to explain why it was pretty much useless to everyone else. So people were already pissed off because their subscription money was giving a tiny ROI compared to Maya.

Because of this when it was announced it generated a lot of anger. People are still very angry, and while I don't necessarily agree with people telling you personally  to bugger off I can understand why they say that. Because of the way this was done it directly affects peoples livelihood. There will be companies that will close and a lot of freelancers that will loose jobs because they will not be allowed to use a tool of their choice.  With the best of intentions Maya is no where near as optimal as SI for the solo artist / small studio. You have had nearly a months worth of the worlds best artists telling you exactly that (years if you guys were listening on si-community). There is just no way that they can do the same work in the same time using Maya. That directly screws the bottom line. time = money. Going around a month or so telling your bigger clients what was happening was not nearly enough time and woefully inadequate..

For education it is a much bigger problem. While the commercial guys can go on using SI till you pry it from their cold dead fingers we cant. The day you announced it EOL we are no longer able to offer it as an option. No student in their right mind is ever going to play to learn EOL software. The irony is we have just last year gotten to the point of entering into international festivals (and being accepted and doing well) I can tell you that for a fact that would have been impossible using Maya. Because we will have to switch back to Maya (because of industry reasons) we will have lost all of that momentum.

We dont use ICE in our course due to time constraints but it very obvious to anyone in touch with the industry that Maya is a long way off providing a replacement for it. I am not against AD having fewer dcc apps. In fact if you go through my postings on si-community you will see I have called for AD moving to only one cross platform application. Until you do that you will always be out innovated no matter what technologies you put in. Mayas biggest problem is its a mass of really great tech with very little workflow benefit to show for it. The major problem is that SI EOL while inevitable (which I am sure to catch some flak for) was announced before Maya was in anyway able to replace it. Which brings me to my last point.

Maya should not have been the replacement to begin with. Take a step back and see that  trying to replace one 20+ year old software with another 20+ year old software  is a plan which will ultimately fail. No matter what great innovation you cram into Maya its base nuts and bolts has a limit. If your not working on a next Gen framework as of now you are in serious trouble. I have only heard of one commercial place locally looking at Maya as a replacement (our hand is somewhat forced in education for now) for SI. Everyone else is looking at apps like Houdini as they can see it as a long term investment. Autodesk has not only  opened the door to Alternatives with their handling of this whole thing they have practically invited them in. These are companies which are not bound by the same rules that you are. They are agile, they can tell people whats coming (and invite public opinion) and most importantly they actively engage with their communities. All of which you are unable to be.

I wish you the best of luck trying to integrate SI into Maya. Personally I think its a very bad idea. The last thing Maya needs is more workflow options.

Kind regards

Angus

---

From: Chris Vienneau [chris.v...@autodesk.com]
Sent: 15 March 2014 05:17 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

Emilio there are people on this list and within the community that are working with us right now and taking us up on our offer to hear more about what we are doing? What do you have to lose to hear our plan?

 

cv/

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[Graham Bell]

Interestingly, you could flip that around and apply that to a Maya/Max guy/studio talking about Softimage. In fact more often than not, they did.

[Jason S]

Hello Chris,  I think you got spot-on what (or types of things) everyone wanted to know,
and goes a long way at inspiring confidence in what lies ahead,
and everything genuinely sounds quite amazing to say the least!

And to top it all, pretty-much adresses the main points that were commonly to be expected in a truer "Softimaya".

- Simpler UI

- Smoother Workflow

- More versatile Modeling

- History stack

- All with great performance.

And while (quite understandably) without going into details,
it definitely gave a broad idea of what is in the works.

(If you see me coming with a "but", well you would be right ;-)

BUT!..

.. what seems to be wrong in this situation, is the forcing of people in directions
which really is what seems to be the crux of the issue people are having.

Many of SI's main advantages have been part of it almost since it's launch, 
and are still today what enables average non-rocket scientist artists to do 
what would otherwise be far more difficult, complicated, long, or basically impossible,
and similarly has been known to expand the reach of actual rocket scientist.

And from that time there were a number of other solutions out to match it's
straightforward access to complexity, all with varying results.

So what I'm getting at is, if some, all, or most of these truly great plans were to come to pass,
people would -naturally- gravitate towards it, as people aren't asking for an SI clone,
but in the end .. to be able to churn out as much work out of it,
and/or at the same (or higher) level, without all the excessive overhead
that usually comes with doing such high-end stuff.

So the point of my message is, or if one single thing were to come across,
it would be ... for goodness sakes... LET PEOPLE CHOOSE..  (!)

As people would CHOOSE to go with the simpler yet more enabling solution
if that would indeed turn out to be the case.

Which would of course imply to..  yes..  LET SOFTIMAGE LIVE (!)  (for -goodness- sakes... )
.. and may the (actual) "best"  (in their respective contexts)
take-over naturally (right) ,
as opposed to forcibly
(very-much wrong in all accounts, or pretty-much at any way to look at it)

(only *if* people were actually a factor in, indeed, otherwise mostly money-driven corporate decision-making)

[Petr Zloty]

Chris:

I'm looking forward for this transition training videos. I cannot find any high quality level training (except few ones from Gnomon) that could speed up transition of senior XSI user to senior Maya user.

Please be sure to show us in that upcoming trainings how to do stuff in Maya we are used to do in XSI, in same time or faster in Maya. And show us please also something we cannot do in XSI.

Will there be any sneak peek of that mentioned features in Maya? Or they are far away from publishing?

It's quite disappointing that those videos aren't already published, It's almost 10 days when EOL was announced and probably much more than when it was planned and it looks like you started with this transition training idea just now. Please don't take it offensive.

Will there be recording of the live Q&A webinar that was planned for the monday (for viewing later on the web)?

Thank you very much, P.Z.

[Christoph Muetze]

Not preaching a religion here... In the 15+ years i've been using
Softimage products i've "converted" more hardcore Max and Maya users by
just outrunning them time and time again than i can count. Admittedly
realtime graphics is a very special field of profession and also very
rare outside of the gaming industry so it's kinda easy to become a user
of a tool that was just not designed to deliver here... and those users
are more likely to learn a new app if its vastly superior...which
Softimage (still) is.

Chris

[Graham Bell]

I¹ve absolutely no doubt, but in all the time I¹ve demoed Softimage, even
pre-AD, there was never anyone who didn¹t like the software, tech or
couldn¹t see the potential benefits. However despite this, it wasn¹t easy
for people to simply adopt.
We could easily lead the horse to water, but never make it drink.

[Christoph Muetze]

I feel your pain, i really do..

I never had problems with Softimage in this regard, but we faced similar
roadblocks 10 years ago when we spoke with huge Studios trying to sell
them our realtime procedural content creation solution... Everyone was
amazed and loved the outcome. Unfortunately the tool was too different
and alienated all the resident artists, so we didn't come far with it
with - just a few hardcore users out there. But unlike Autodesk we made
everything open source when we stopped its production ;)

Chris

On 15/03/14 18:44, Graham Bell wrote:
> Išve absolutely no doubt, but in all the time Išve demoed Softimage, even
> pre-AD, there was never anyone who didnšt like the software, tech or
> couldnšt see the potential benefits. However despite this, it wasnšt easy

--
---
Christoph Mütze / Mansteinstr. 18 / 20253 Hamburg / Germany
http://www.glarestudios.de
Phone: +49 40 18050886 / Mobile: +49 163-7261877
http://www.twitter.com/chris_muetze
c...@glarestudios.de

[Bk]

Thats the pipeline talking. Which demonstrates how disrupting it is to introduce something new.
Now imagine if, not only do you have to introduce something new, but your whole foundation has to fundamentally change.
This is what's being forced upon us. (I know you know this, and this isn't aimed at you. It's me throwing this out into the ether)

It's the bullying I can't stomach. The whole time-limit aspect, that undermines every sound and though out comment from AD representatives. It's so transparent that they are using their practical monopoly to leverage and force people to their ideal future. One where you toe the AD line and trust them, insensitive to the fact they have given us every reason not to.

> <winmail.dat>

[Cristobal Infante]

To be honest, we knew this was going to happen since the day Autodesk bought softimage. Today, six years after

the acquisition is when we should be seeing a rejuvenated softimage, but there was never long term plan for soft. 

I understand the numbers between soft/Maya/max were not even

close. We are by far the least used 3D

app, and we know that. But it

hurts being treated like a number. There are actual people behind this, and if a company can't see that then it just becomes a

machine.

The future was never bright.. At least admit that so we can finally draw a line under it..

[Bradley Gabe]

There is somewhat of a bright side folks, let's be realistic. Just about every single hard core XSI user I'd known who fully committed to switching over to Maya without looking back has gone on to do bigger and better things in the industry. They work at places like Weta, ILM, Dreamworks, Disney, heck a guy some of us used to work with every day back in the early XSI era just won an Oscar for best VFX! Just drink the cool aid and go with the flow, and better days await for you too. The last thing you want is for Donald Sutherland to pick you out of a crowd, point at you, open his mouth and shriek (it sucks, it happened to me back when I was at ILM).

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!... and spiders. Those little bastards are evil!

[Meng-Yang Lu]

That guy that won the Oscar probably didn't have to do the work... :P  

You know better than that Brad!!  

-Lu

[Michael Clarke]

Chris,

I think most here are actually desperate to hear about your plan — not objectives or goals, but the specifics and timing of a plan to move this thing forward.

You probably understand that the overwhelming feeling here is that we re being forced to take a giant step backward in many ways, and that we have no clear idea as to how many years it might take just to get back to our original point of departure. Adding capabilities to Maya is fine, but the greater concern here is building upon what Perry Harovas' letter aptly describes as an aging, inferior foundation. 

Anyway, more communication from Autodesk is needed right now. This is truly a disorienting moment, and I find it difficult to accept that AD would have made the EOL announcement without a coherent plan to communicate a vision to the Soft userbase, regardless of its size. 

Please. Tell us more.

On Mar 15, 2014, at 10:17 AM, Chris Vienneau <chris.v...@autodesk.com> wrote:

Emilio there are people on this list and within the community that are working with us right now and taking us up on our offer to hear more about what we are doing? What do you have to lose to hear our plan?



cv/

________________________________
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Emilio Hernandez [emi...@e-roja.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:13 AM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com

Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

As I said in another post. Autodesk cut us our legs and now they are offering us a wheelchair. And they are trying to convince us that the weelchair is better than our legs by asking us how we want the wheelchair customized...   pfff.

Dont mean to be rude but... You can go back where you came from.  And you can ride your wheelchair all the way back.

<winmail.dat>

Michael Clarke Design

Blue C Studios

713-927-9835

[Cristobal Infante]

Hi Brad,

I guess you mean a lot of our xsi friends decided to go into film industry and therefore had to switch to Maya. 

I am glad for them, they avoided the mess we are in but as I am sure you know most of us work on commercials.

This comes to mind :)

it's an opportunity?

http://cgmemes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/it-opportunity.html?m=1

[Eric Thivierge]

I think it's kind of insulting to say that. It's not the software that makes people able to do that kind of work. It's their skills. It's just a fact that most film studios have had Maya as their backbone for so long that film is typically done with Maya. Then again, we do work at Hybride on films and we use Softimage... so does Animal Logic...

--------------------------------------------
Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com

[Cristobal Infante]

insulting to say that the

film industry is mainly Maya? 

All my friends that transfered to Maya did it because they wanted to work in films that's a fact at least here in London. MPC, DNEG, Framestore, Cinesite etc are all Maya. Nothing wrong with that by the way, but that's just the way it is..

[Nuno Conceicao]

Nope

On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 1:41 PM, Chris Vienneau <chris.v...@autodesk.com> wrote:

Do you guys think there is a top list of nodes in ICE and compounds you all use that cover 80% of what you do with the toolset?



thx.



cv/



________________________________
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Rob Chapman [tekan...@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 8:43 AM

To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

"We invite anyone here and many of you have taken up our offer to contribute and it is up to us to show that we are delivering over the next two years during the transition period. If we don't at the end than you will all have choices and plenty of time to evaluate your options."

what kind of choices? If you do not deliver to our criteriathen Softimage is not EOL or..  it is very unclear as to what our choices are exactly?

in 2016 will we be able to load ICE trees and compounds into Maya?

[Steven Caron]

i worked next to him for 8 months recently, between gravity and him winning that oscar, using softimage in fact... he is talented and doesnt care which tool he is using.

but i get your point Lu... 

*written with my thumbs

[skuby]

Well, seeing the responses from AD officials in this post, it looks like we won't be getting even FBX/Mental Ray updates to extend Softimage's retirement past 2016, it was only a defeatist's last wish anyways, but I had to try.  I know Max, Maya and Softimage, I've spent some many dedicated years in each of them.  The development of all 3 of them have sadly stagnated under AD's roof (I'm not being rude, that's just an honest observation from a user who doesn't run custom proprietary Pixar/ILM/Weta versions of these software's, I run them out of the box, as is, with a few preference changes and plug-ins and a few self-written scripts).  

My plan is to keep using Softimage as is, and to learn Side Effect's "Houdini" which I started yesterday (and it's quite promising so far) if not to just have yet another tool in my bag of tricks.  Moving exclusively back to Maya (or Max) as it sits now, would be a harsh downgrade.  I'm excited (but honestly highly skeptical) to see what AD does with Maya and their new refined focus development approach, -I'll be paying close attention to Maya 2015 and Maya 2016 but as far as going back to Maya exclusively, that doesn't make any good sense at this time.  My hopes are high for the future and Maya will always and continue to be a useful tool in my bag, but for it to return to number one spot again for me, it's just a dream at this point as that isn't a realistic option at this time in reality, now.

Max looks like it's next on the chopping block, although I think with Max they will never officially say it is dead and just keep selling it to avoid this sort of debacle but it's pretty clear Max will continue to be a second class package.  If there is any package I will continue to leave on the shelf, it will be Max, maybe that is paranoid but I think it's justifiably paranoid and I really don't think I need to take anyone's word to the contrary, considering how cheap words are in this business.

Anyways, best of luck to all of my fellow Softimage users out there.  I hope you all find and come to the conclusions that are best for you, individually, and have a great time forward.  I'm not going to keep posting further, I've chosen my new path, wish me luck and I wish all the best of luck back to you all and I wish the best of luck to Autodesk, in particular to their continued development of Mudbox, Maya and Sketchbook in that order.  -Cheers, respect and best regards to all.

[Adam Sale]

Chris, the possibilities when using ICE are so endless, that all nodes are fair game. Hard to narrow it down to just a few, especially with a lot of the heavy duty ICE users. Just have a look at the vast repository on rray.de

There are some very innovative ideas to be found there, it's also the way ICE communicates seamlessly with the rest of Softimage.

[Julian Johnson]

On 15/03/2014 17:44, Graham Bell wrote:
> Išve absolutely no doubt, but in all the time Išve demoed Softimage, even
> pre-AD, there was never anyone who didnšt like the software, tech or
> couldnšt see the potential benefits. However despite this, it wasnšt easy

> for people to simply adopt.
> We could easily lead the horse to water, but never make it drink.

Graham, as everyone at Autodesk seems convinced there is no market for
Softimage what harm could there be in selling it? If the might of
Autodesk's marketing resources had no impact then it stands to reason
that no one else is going to be able to make a success of it. I mean
you've tried your best, right? It's just not possible to market
Softimage. Avid tried and failed, you tried and failed. It stands
absolutely no chance of ever becoming a competitor to Maya or Max as
it's too hard to adopt. Why not, therefore, sell it on to an interested
third party who could solely cater for the niche Softimage audience?
Don't we all win that way? We have an interested 'owner' - you can focus
your resources on Maya and Max and walk away with a lump sum for
'innovative' R&D and you still have no competition. You no longer have
an alienated and hostile Softimage customer base.

Better still, as soon as Maya becomes a more attractive option we then
have the choice to adopt or not. Given the myriad improvements listed by
Chris that adoption in a few years time should be a no-brainer for us,
shouldn't it? We can once more re-enter the Autodesk fold willingly and
migrate to the better product. If you, Chris and Maurice genuinely
believe in 'new' Maya and Autodesk's own marketing abilities it should
be relatively easy to sell it to Softimage customers in a few years
time. I'm sure we're going to be blown away by the new innovations that
Maurice talked about. With the current roadmap and user input Maya will
undoubtedly be a better product than Softimage is now. I know you
wouldn't be asking us to transition to an inferior product - that just
wouldn't make business sense. No billion dollar business would treat
their customers that way.

Fundamentally, it seems as though if the initial decision to buy XSI was
motivated by a desire to move the product forward and market it in
earnest (with a genuine business case that demonstrated either more
sales or additional revenue - and why else would you have bought XSI?)
then there has been a colossal failure in that business plan by
Autodesk. The burden of that failure has been placed solely on the
customers to whom, surely, Autodesk has some level of responsibility.

And yet, that burden of responsibility doesn't seem to have been
reflected in the manner in which Softimage is currently being EOL'd. I
can't think of a more brutal scenario - immediate cessation of
development; no prior warning; no safe-harbour alternative option; no
pre-planning or understanding of the essential migratable features in
Softimage; no in-place transition training; no concept of recompense for
your failure; and no willingness to negotiate or ameliorate the terms of
the EOL in any substantial way.

Julian

[pet...@skynet.be]

excellent stuff Julian.

-----Original Message-----
From: Julian Johnson
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2014 9:47 AM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free
w/Mayaor Max or any Suite.

[Graham Bell]

Julian, I’m hardly the best person to answer that. Besides I think Maurice
may have already responded to suggestions of selling Softimage.
It might seem like simple and easy thing to do, but unfortunately things
don’t always work like that.

On 16/03/2014 08:47, "Julian Johnson" <jul...@exch.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>On 15/03/2014 17:44, Graham Bell wrote:

>> I¹ve absolutely no doubt, but in all the time I¹ve demoed Softimage,
>>even
>> pre-AD, there was never anyone who didn¹t like the software, tech or
>> couldn¹t see the potential benefits. However despite this, it wasn¹t

[Martin]

Selling SI is something that has already been discussed thousands of times since the EOL announcement and it is clear that it will never going to happen. I guess if someone offer 10x what Autodesk paid may have a chance to but that will never happen so let's stop with that topic.

SI is never going to come back either so that's another battle we can't win. It doesn't make sense to keep these complaints.

We should focus in something Autodesk could agree so we can have a better transition, or just pick a non Autodesk route.

The FBX idea or SI license for a few years with some conditions like having Maya under sub doesn't sound like a bad deal for ADSK and for those who want to migrate to Maya or Max. Still I doubt they will agree but it sounds a little more realistic.

Keep returning to these complains or demands that obviously doesn't benefit ADSK at all like selling SI or resuscitate SI won't get us anywhere.

Martin
Sent from my iPhone

> On 2014/03/16, at 17:47, Julian Johnson <jul...@exch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> On 15/03/2014 17:44, Graham Bell wrote:

>> I¹ve absolutely no doubt, but in all the time I¹ve demoed Softimage, even
>> pre-AD, there was never anyone who didn¹t like the software, tech or
>> couldn¹t see the potential benefits. However despite this, it wasn¹t easy

[Raffaele Fragapane]

I don't know if it's clear, but AD already reverted the decision of timebombing licences tied to a suite, so you already get a perpetual concurrent licence of Soft if you downgrade to Maya.

The problem, and something worth fighting for IMO, is expanding, since no new seats will be available for purchase no matter what dark god you sacrifice small animals to.

Asking AD for continued life support coupled with Soft bundled with Maya/Max mutually exclusive tokens though would be useful and not unreasonable.

They had that courtesy for quite a while with Toxic, which frankly speaking was both a preannounced stillborn failure, and an absolute crock of shit.
Reserving at least the same degree of respect for something that was still vital, adopted, at the foundation of many people's livelihood, not to mention a piece of history instead of crap doesn't sound like too much to ask.

If people stopped for a minute to spit and spout in the face of any AD employee around and start asking for reasonable things we might actually still get something out of this, much like the (truly retarded) time bomb decision was reverted in 48h, something unprecedented for Autodesk.

I'm not suggesting people bend over and take up the rear entrance with a smile on their face, but you can be a contrary arsehole and make sure we all get nothing so your righteous sense of software justice is appeased, or we can negotiate some minimal insurance for running and near future projects while looking at other solutions.

P.S. with you I don't mean whoever e-mail will be before mine in this thread, I mean in general terms.

Still "ducking" hating having to write to the list from a phone

[Chris Vienneau]

Hi Julian,

I feel like the open letter written by Perry captures the best sentiments of the threads I have read the last few weeks. Carl will respond as he is very pragmatic and down to earth and was a software developer writing tools for many years. Sending the letter to Chris and Carl is the right place to put the effort and I thought the letter was balanced, passionate and fair. We looked at how Shake, FCP, and Avid DS went down and wanted to provide a two year transition window with support, a roadmap for the transition under NDA with key features and workflows being brought over, and a training plan that could be agile enough to work with the community to tailor it over time and do hands on work in central soft hotspots like Tokyo, London and Montreal.

I think this article captures for many what has been a brutal three years in the vfx business as we have seen so many good companies (Modus FX being the latest) get taken under by the broken business model of the film industry:

http://www.thewrap.com/dear-hollywood-fix-vfx-will-fix-movie-business/

I think there are great ideas here on how to make the transition better and I will let Carl and Chris comment on whether they want to change that plan.

cv/
________________________________________
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of pet...@skynet.be [pet...@skynet.be]
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2014 5:32 AM

To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Mayaor Max or any Suite.

excellent stuff Julian.

-----Original Message-----
From: Julian Johnson
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2014 9:47 AM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free
w/Mayaor Max or any Suite.

On 15/03/2014 17:44, Graham Bell wrote:

> I¹ve absolutely no doubt, but in all the time I¹ve demoed Softimage, even
> pre-AD, there was never anyone who didn¹t like the software, tech or
> couldn¹t see the potential benefits. However despite this, it wasn¹t easy

[Chris Vienneau]

great site

________________________________
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Adam Sale [adam...@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2014 3:49 AM

To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

Chris, the possibilities when using ICE are so endless, that all nodes are fair game. Hard to narrow it down to just a few, especially with a lot of the heavy duty ICE users. Just have a look at the vast repository on rray.de<http://rray.de>

There are some very innovative ideas to be found there, it's also the way ICE communicates seamlessly with the rest of Softimage.

On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 6:17 PM, Nuno Conceicao <nunoalex...@gmail.com<mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Nope

On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 1:41 PM, Chris Vienneau <chris.v...@autodesk.com<mailto:chris.v...@autodesk.com>> wrote:
Do you guys think there is a top list of nodes in ICE and compounds you all use that cover 80% of what you do with the toolset?



thx.



cv/



________________________________

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com> [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com>] on behalf of Rob Chapman [tekan...@gmail.com<mailto:tekan...@gmail.com>]

Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 8:43 AM

To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:soft...@listproc.autodesk.com>

[Eugen Sares]

 

Cite from Chris Vienneau:

 

As for the workflows we have an internal project called Project H (or Humanize Maya) where we are working with all sorts of users from students to pros to studios to come up with proposals to the problems that have come up here and in the Maya user base. We invite anyone here and many of you have taken up our offer to contribute and it is up to us to show that we are delivering over the next two years during the transition period. If we don't at the end than you will all have choices and plenty of time to evaluate your options.

 

 

'Humanize Maya'... I like that!

 

It brings me to a topic that often seems to falls short in discussions about a user interface, due to the technical nature of 3d applications: aesthetics/readability.

Not workflow logic/consistency/ergonomics, which are of course absolutely vital (and also one of Maya's big weaknesses, but I'm leaving this out intentionally for now), but just the sheer visual appearance.

An equally important piece in the puzzle in my opinion.

 

As someone with an education and background in graphics design, I dare to say that Maya's UI is ugly. Like the devil's old grandmother.

Why?

Imagine the cockpit of a jet plane riddled with such a motley bunch of deranged elements and icons... get the point?

 

Presenting complexity in a way that can be processed by our visual cortex with the least effort is an art form, and Maya fails miserably. Softimage did it right.

 

Ironically, where Maya shows it's qualities mostly (...) is as a studio 'backbone' - exactly where you would least expect people fancying funny little fiddly colored icons.

Like putting a hello kitty sticker on the airplane's throttle control....

 

 

Some recommendations:

Generally, reduce the visual clutter! Hide everything that isn't important - show in only in the proper context.

 

Hire graphics designers, in addition to user interface designers, if you didn't already - the best you can find. The ones with a good taste.

 

Text instead of icons, wherever you can!

For me, it's no question that text is easier to 'read' than icons, from a certain (quite low) level of complexity on. A simple arrow is ok, but just don't tell me most of those Maya icons are intuitive...

Tastes are different, true, but at least give the user the option to switch icon/text, or both!

 

Offer a colorless UI scheme, or at least one with a much reduced palette!

 

Make the UI steplessly scalable! You probably have the chance now, after all you use Qt.

 

The hypergraph/hypershade icons, also the Bifröst nodes, from what I see... horrible design. Compare this to ICE!

Try to find a color code where the different colors have the same lightness. E.g. dark blue is barely visible, and you get a confusing and misleading visual contrast between elements of equal importance.

 

Get inspired... Softimage has this noble, modest and efficient appearance. Windows Metro - if Microsoft has the courage for such a step, maybe you do, too.

 

Less is more - I can't think of a better example of that old saying!

 

We all eat with our eyes also, don't we, and after all 3d users are mostly visual people (sometimes I'm not so sure about developers).

 

All this might sound superficial, but when it helps keeping track, it ain't anymore.

 

And, finally, what harm is done when your girlfriend puts one some mascara... ; }

 

Thanks for your attention!

Respectfully,

Eugen

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[Arvid Björn]

Indeed, that would do wonders to my willingness to learn the application.

Another example of a UI that scared me away is Digital Fusion, http://img.tamindir.com/ti_e_ul/genel/digital.jpg

It's not icons, but 100 abbreviated text buttons, it pretty much just as bad. The problem is that everything is just layed out in a flat mess, and it's only helpful to an experienced user who knows all the nodes already. And if it's not somewhere in the pile, it's in some menu on top – I guess?

What Softimage do is to divide everything into groups very consistently. Color coded modules, then always Get/Create/Modify, or some variant of that. You don't need to remember where most of the stuff is, because it's usually in the only logical place. And it always writes the shortcut next to the command for quick learning.

Also, the Hotbox in Maya is a good concept, but horribly executed in terms of design. I wish it was a nicer experience. Softimage's simple context sensitive popup menu does most of what you need most of the time.

[Manuel Huertas Marchena]

'Humanize Maya'... I like that!   +1 

...I don't know what is it but the render tree of soft just felt right to the eyes the interface was clean and the way the nodes

flow in a shading tree regardless of its size was always ok good for me. With hypergraph I don't feel the say way at all

it looks clumsy and not as elegant as soft's render tree... haven't use the node editor yet... but people say its closer to softs render tree right...  I ll have to take a look..

IMDB | Portfolio | Vimeo | Linkedin

---

From: arvid...@gmail.com
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 15:02:32 +0100
Subject: Re: Maya UI aesthetics
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com

[Rob Wuijster]

not sure 'closer' is the right word. Think of the Hypershade with a sprinkle of ICE alike nodes.
Some of the benefits, most of the UI mess is still there....

Rob
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[Dan Yargici]

Hi Chris, I've had to ignore the list for the last week for personal reasons, so apologies if this has been mentioned somewhere across the myriad threads...

I keep hearing yourself, Maurice, Graham, and everyone else from Autodesk who have stuck their heads above the parapet continuously mention movies and games, movies and games, movies and games (I've quoted the last paragraph from you mail below).  It's always been my impression that most of the people on the list, and users of Softimage in general, are working in *broadcast and commercials*.  Without wanting to step out of line, it seems to me to be the crux of your problem here and why you find yourselves having to swim so hard against this raging tide of discontent and abuse.

In terms of creating broadcast and commercial graphics with it's associated constraints and problems, I think I speak for a lot of people here in saying we feel we already have the tool that we want and need (minus the continued feature updates and bugfixes we were already expecting before you dropped the bomb on us).  Neither Maya or Max fit that bill as cleanly.

Much akin to Brad's reference to bullet-point driven decision making, I think you have a large chunk of users here representing a square-peg which feel you are relentlessly trying to bash them through a round hole.

Just an observation, and again, apologies if this has been mentioned previously, it's hard to keep track coming in cold after my break...

DAN.

On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 3:37 PM, Chris Vienneau <chris.v...@autodesk.com> wrote:

 

First and foremost everyone who works at Autodesk in the M&E division including the people who used to work at Soft (there are way more than have left) love the film and games industry and the chance to be a part of it. The decision with Soft was a hard one but we back it so we can focus on helping the ecosystem make better movies and games. Innovation comes from the synergies of all these products, platforms, hardware and your talent and putting that on any one tool or company does not capture what is still a vibrant passionate community. The business model right now sucks and things need to change but there is still a bright future ahead and many problems left to solve.



cv/

[Ed Manning]

Excellent point, Dan!

Maybe start a new thread with this topic?

[Stephen Davidson]

I am just a freelancer, but I have never worked on a "Movie" or a "Game" in over 20 years.

Only Commercial, Corporate, and Broadcast (some Web videos as well)

A show of hands?

--

Best Regards,
  Stephen P. Davidson 
       (954) 552-7956
    sdav...@3Danimationmagic.com

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

                                                                             - Arthur C. Clarke

[Alastair Hearsum]

Julian

Great. Articulate

a

Alastair Hearsum

Head of 3d

33/34 Great Pulteney Street
London
W1F 9NP
+44 (0)20 7434 1182
glassworks.co.uk

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On 16/03/2014 08:47, Julian Johnson wrote:

On 15/03/2014 17:44, Graham Bell wrote:

I¹ve absolutely no doubt, but in all the time I¹ve demoed Softimage, even
pre-AD, there was never anyone who didn¹t like the software, tech or
couldn¹t see the potential benefits. However despite this, it wasn¹t easy

[Alastair Hearsum]

We do TV commercials almost exclusively. No games no movies. We have the best tool in SI

Alastair Hearsum

Head of 3d

33/34 Great Pulteney Street
London
W1F 9NP
+44 (0)20 7434 1182
glassworks.co.uk

Glassworks Terms and Conditions of Sale can be found at glassworks.co.uk

(Company registered in England with number 04759979. Registered office 25 Harley Street, London, W1G 9BR. VAT registration number: 867290000)

Please consider the environment before you print this email.

DISCLAIMER: This e-mail and attachments are strictly privileged, private and confidential and are intended solely for the stated recipient(s). Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Company. If you are not the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this e-mail in error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If this transmission is received in error please kindly return it to the sender and delete this message from your system.

[olivier jeannel]

And yet, that burden of responsibility doesn't seem to have been reflected in the manner in which Softimage is currently being EOL'd. I can't think of a more brutal scenario - immediate cessation of development; no prior warning; no safe-harbour alternative option; no pre-planning or understanding of the essential migratable features in Softimage; no in-place transition training; no concept of recompense for your failure; and no willingness to negotiate or ameliorate the terms of the EOL in any substantial way.

Julian

I think when we'll all work in the cloud, it'll be even more violent.
The future is bright and under control ...click.

Le 16/03/2014 09:47, Julian Johnson a écrit :

On 15/03/2014 17:44, Graham Bell wrote:

I¹ve absolutely no doubt, but in all the time I¹ve demoed Softimage, even
pre-AD, there was never anyone who didn¹t like the software, tech or
couldn¹t see the potential benefits. However despite this, it wasn¹t easy

[Matt Lind]

During our pre-briefing of the retirement announcement, Autodesk said in plain English they don’t want that.

 

Matt

 

 

 

 

 

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of skuby
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 2:05 AM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

 

21+ years of development experience you have and you don't even have the simplest faith in Autodesk that they can allow Soft and Maya to run on one single machine at the same time for crosswalk purposes but not allow them to run separately on two machines at the same time?  ok, sure

[Emilio Hernandez]

So we wrongly called it a rumor. It was a "pre-briefing"...

Now it makes sense all this "innovation" with booleans and non destructive bevel super tools of the future

--

-------------------------------------------------------
Emilio Hernández   VFX & 3D animation.

[Chris Vienneau]

Great post

Sent from Windows Mail

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[Manuel Huertas Marchena]

thanks Rob, thats a good way to put it..!! hehe

IMDB | Portfolio | Vimeo | Linkedin

---

From: chris.v...@autodesk.com
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com; sof...@mail.sprit.org

Subject: Re: Maya UI aesthetics

Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:22:03 +0000

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[Jason S]

On 03/19/14 10:22, Chris Vienneau wrote:
> we have an internal project called Project H (or Humanize Maya)

I would have hoped for such an internal project would to not be limited
to Maya,
but a "Humanization" project which could highten sensitivity towards
what people are actually saying/asking.

Allowing for continued (unrestrained) use of a currently unmatched
product in many respects,
(in a frozen state)
until another product becomes more-or-less on par in those respects (in
capability),
is not only not-at-all unreasonable, but would definitely qualify as
having basic sensitivity.
(referring to ironcladness of decisions that seemingly go against
everyone concerned)

[Jason S]

or whatever anyone might be saying in the background noise chatter..

[Alastair Hearsum]

Eugene

Brilliant brilliant brilliant. Exactly. Very well put.

I often think of the analogy of mobile phones. Before Apple (and don't get me wrong here, I'm no Apple fan boy) you had flip phones, slidey phones, phones with loads of keys, phones with few all sorts of ugly shapes and ill considered graphics. Apple came along and you thought how could it have been any other way. That is what you are aiming for and, to an extent, what Softimage has. It has been designed with some thought. The Maya UI has not been designed by a good designer.

Alastair

Alastair Hearsum

Head of 3d

33/34 Great Pulteney Street
London
W1F 9NP
+44 (0)20 7434 1182
glassworks.co.uk

Glassworks Terms and Conditions of Sale can be found at glassworks.co.uk

(Company registered in England with number 04759979. Registered office 25 Harley Street, London, W1G 9BR. VAT registration number: 867290000)

Please consider the environment before you print this email.

DISCLAIMER: This e-mail and attachments are strictly privileged, private and confidential and are intended solely for the stated recipient(s). Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Company. If you are not the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this e-mail in error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If this transmission is received in error please kindly return it to the sender and delete this message from your system.