Re: Intro to the new team (was RE: Softimage development)

[David Gallagher]

Enthusiastic hello from me!
Dave G

On 4/19/2012 6:14 AM, Chun-Pong Yu wrote:
> Luc-Eric's comments are a good segway for me to introduce some members of the new team and what they're working on. We've been lurking on the list so far, and have been amazed by the passion of most in the community for Softimage and will support it as best as we can. Now that Luc-Eric, Guillaume LaForge, Guillaume Laferriere, etc. have moved to the Maya team, we'll be participating more actively especially when there're technical issues reported.
>
> We're all based in Singapore btw (so the comments on durians were apt) where the cost of labour isn't that much different from Montreal and certainly much higher (3x?) than in China. And there're more people in the team than there were in Montreal two years ago. Moreover, folks like JF, Francis, David, Manny, Graham, etc. are still around (the first 3 are in fact still developing enhancements and bug fixes for customers). Hence Autodesk is still investing in the Softimage since guess what? Soft still makes money for the company.
>
> It's true that the team doesn't know the code as well as Luc-Eric and team but that's not to say that we're newbies to software development, 3D graphics, simulations, rendering, etc. either. Sure, we don't have the 10-15 year histories with Soft that the "old" team had, but we're happy to say that they're still around (even many from the acquisition who eventually moved to other Autodesk teams) and still helping out when there's a need. But that should go down as we become more familiar with the code.
>
> So here goes:
>
> Hsiao Ming Chia - Core, Ref Models. From NVIDIA, worked on games middleware and runtime engines for 8 yrs.
> Yury Khmel - Core, ICE, FaceRobot. 12+ years, last 5 as an architect in games development.
> John Tensuan - Rendering, Data Management. Last in Ubisoft doing rendering and engine systems.
> Ho Chung Nguyen - ICE, Simulation. Wrote core libraries for math, physics simulation, rendering while at LucasArts.
> Joany Yang - UI, SDK. Mainly engaged in UI projects using COM, MFC, C++, etc while at another team at Autodesk.
>
> Me? I just manage the team so am the "overhead" :-)
>
> If you're ever in Singapore, we'd love to meet you.
>
> Regards,
> Chun Pong
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau
> Sent: Wednesday, 18 April, 2012 10:38 PM
> To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: Re: Softimage development
>
> On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 3:26 AM, Mirko Jankovic<mirko.j...@aeonproduction.com> wrote:
>> It is a bit bad that even after so many concerns displayed from
>> customer about Softimage and AD's plans for it, that not a single
>> official line of word was put out.
>> Is it so hard to let people know what is going on and where does it
>> all lead?
> Actually, you're getting a lot of official information right here in this thread.
>
> None of us moving to the new Maya FX Montreal team, which is led by me, are really doing it to quit Softimage, it's just a natural evolution of thing. As written previously, this was planned and we've been hiring and training a whole lot of new group of great people to work on Softimage.
>
> So what does that mean? Well first it means that Autodesk is committed to continuing the development of Softimage - otherwise we wouldn't be spending so much effort building a new team. We worked a lot on this!
> I interviewed every single one of these guys - and some we rejected.
> The new guys have backgrounds in game production, real time shader, physics, etc. They're bring new ideas and skills.
>
> And it also means that Autodesk is renewing its effort on the Maya FX's toolset, which is not super interesting to you guys obviously, but is that a thing that makes sense.
>
> It's hard to leave Softimage, but it's also hard to not get excited with the new projects. We're going to Digital Domain and ILM this week with Duncan. New experiences! If we can just stop hitting the S key to orbit the camera, everything will be fine.

[Eric Lampi]

Welcome!

Yes, this is a pretty enthusiastic group, and we look forward to the fruit of your efforts.

The tone of this list is sometimes pretty light, but in general you have a lot of very smart, talented folks many who have decades of production experience with SoftImage and other tools. Having visited other 3D forums in the past, you don't get a lot of nonsense here. Feel free to pick people's brains, I learn something new constantly on this list just by passively reading it.

Eric

--
Freelance 3D and VFX animator

[Bradley Gabe]

Greetings and salutations!

I appreciate your taking the time to introduce the new team to the community. This is an important and helpful step.

Something the old devs hopefully made you aware of is that as SI users, we really do have a community of mutual support and mutual respect that centers around this mailing list.

Some of us have been on this list and its prior incarnations for almost 20 years, dating back to before XSI was even in development.

Don't be amazed by the passion expressed by those in the community. Passion is a necessary attribute (along with pigheaded stubbornness) for anyone who wishes to succeed in CG. It's that passion that inspires one to restart, reload, and retry until finally, a solution is found and the day is saved.

As Softimage users, we have always felt the underdogs. For the most part, we don't have the 500-artist studios with the internal RnD departments, and intranets with Q&A and support. All we have is each other, on this list and a couple of forums. And over the years, having devs and reps at the mothership who would go out of their way to talk to us was an important factor, a security blanket (whether real or only perceived), that helped stoke that passion.

One of my main concerns when Autodesk took over the reigns of Softimage was not about what they would do with the technology, but rather *would they continue to talk to us*, or would they be consumed into a distant posture more typical of the mega-corporate culture.

So don't be strangers. You have no idea how important it is to the well-being of this community.

-Bradley

[an...@andynicholas.com]

Cool! Welcome to the new team! Thanks for introducing them to us Chun Pong.

+1 on them sending out their Twitter IDs. Definitely encourage them to pop up on
the list and say hello "in person" if they want to.

Cheers,
Andy

[Eric Turman]

Twitter is fine, but please don't forget to have a presence on this list too. There are some of us out here who do not use twitter or facebook.

--




-=T=-

[Christian Gotzinger]

Hello and welcome!

Thank you for introducing yourself and the team. It really feels good to know that you guys are out there, and that you're a bigger team than team Montreal.

[Steven Caron]

Laferriere too! doh! i just mentioned how he replaced halfdan and i felt comfort. lol. so John is our go to guy now?

anyways, welcome to the community!

s

[Gustavo Eggert Boehs]

So is there a Montral team still? Or is it over?

--
Gustavo E Boehs
3d Artist
http://www.gustavoeb.com.br/blog

[Vladimir Jankijevic]

Hi and welcome to the community

I hope you guys will continue to make this product a more stable and interesting place to be for the future generations of like minded people!

Thanks!

Vladimir

--
---------------------------------------
Vladimir Jankijevic
Technical Direction

Elefant Studios AG
Lessingstrasse 15
CH-8002 Zürich

+41 44 500 48 20

www.elefantstudios.ch
---------------------------------------

[Alok Gandhi]

Welcome guys, you can treat this forum as the "nerve center" of the soft community. Hope to see you guys actively participate !

[Matt Lind]

> So is there a Montral team still? Or is it over?

 

 

That is my question as well. 

 

Who has left, who’s still on the product, and who is in the process of moving on if they haven’t left already?

 

I’m not panicked, but one thing that separated Softimage from other products is the amount of interaction with the development team.  While it’s nice to see a hello message, it would be nicer to get an idea of the scope/magnitude of this change so we the customer can make our own adjustments to how we do things.  I’ve been around Softimage for 20 years (come July), and as Brad mentioned earlier I’m part of the group that pre-dates the current product’s existence.   In that time I have seen plenty of people come and go, but not wholesale like this.

 

 

Matt

[Stefan Andersson]

Is Chinny still there? :) When he leaves, that's when you can panic.

regards

stefan

--

STEFAN ANDERSSON // Creative Director // Mad Crew AB // http://www.madcrew.se

[Scott Lange]

"In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king."

 

Scott Lange

Animation and VFX

 

 

 

 

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Stefan Andersson

Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 3:10 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com

[Steven Caron]

i literally held my breath and cringed for few seconds... dont make me sad stefan. plz :(

[Stefan Andersson]

we'll see what the official channel has to say. I'm just surprised that he hasn't chimed in yet... he usually does that to calm us all down....

[Christian Gotzinger]

My god, what an awful thought. Chinny, please post!

[klak06]

Welcome to the list!

 

Hopefully you find the time to be as active as the guys from the dev team have been on this list over the years.

Curious about the things to come...

cheers, Klaus  

[Jason Brynford-Jones]

Well like most others on the team who have posted, I too will be working with them on something new. Softimage is mature enough now and in very capable hands.

While we will no longer be working on Softimage, we are all still here to help if the occasion arises.

As you have seen, we are still on this list ;-)

Chinny

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Christian Gotzinger
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 3:55 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Intro to the new team (was RE: Softimage development)

My god, what an awful thought. Chinny, please post!

[Christian Gotzinger]

And apparently Maya still needs lots of help. It sounds like the entire SI team has been dissolved.

[Steven Caron]

grumble...grunt... grrr

have fun guys.

[Chris Marshall]

Well good luck Chin! I'm slightly sad to hear you've moved on. There was never anyone with more passion and raw enthusiasm for Sumatra/XSI/Softimage than you! Respect!!

--

Chris Marshall

Mint Motion Limited

029 2002 5762

07730 533 115

www.mintmotion.co.uk

[Greg Punchatz]

Good luck to you and everyone else... I truly cant  thank all of you enough for the amazing ride softimage has been.

All this does make me sad, but I hope something good comes out of it.... ohh and please make maya less stupid ;)

---

Greg Punchatz

Sr. Creative Director
Janimation
214.823.7760
www.janimation.com

[Bradley Gabe]

They were originally going to make these announcements 2 and a half weeks ago. Imagine how confusing THAT would have been!

[Eric Lampi]

Well I don't know anyone who loves Maya past the fact that a lot of work has come out of it. Most people who have used both are in a world of hurt, because they know it can be better.

Here's an idea: Why don't you guys just re-write Maya as ICE nodes and package it up so it runs on top of SoftImage. No one would ever know.

At least they'd have working passes. Ha ha.

[Scott Lange]

A deep and sincere thank you for all the amazing development and support over the years... you guys are a big part of my career.

 

Thank you so very much.

 

Scott Lange

Animation and VFX

347 256-7247

[Matt Morris]

Well that's a bit of a shock. Thanks for the good times Chinny! Good luck with the new roles to everyone.

--
www.matinai.com

[David Barosin]

Yes a big thank you for all the amazing work.   I hope the move is a good one.   Keep the spirit alive. 

[Tim Crowson]

Don't what else to say. I think this sums things up....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oabcM9SOF-E

I only know one thing for sure: I hate modeling in Maya.

Tim Crowson Lead CG Artist

Magnetic Dreams Animation Studio, Inc.
2525 Lebanon Pike, Building C. Nashville, TN 37214
Ph  615.885.6801 | Fax  615.889.4768 | www.magneticdreams.com
tim.c...@magneticdreams.com

On 4/19/2012 3:38 PM, Chris Marshall wrote:

--

 

 

[tak...@earthlink.net]

Agree 1000%. 

Party on...

-T

-----Original Message-----
From: David Barosin
Sent: Apr 19, 2012 4:55 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Intro to the new team (was RE: Softimage development)

[john clausing]

Yes, of course thank you Guillame, Chinny, etc. we all wish you the best.

Is everyone really just sanguine about this? losing some of the best developers we've known of, and counted on for years?

It goes without saying that this is not a reflection on the new folks that are taking over the Softimage dev.......

But really? What the hell?

To suggest that this wasn't expected is foolish, but i repeat.

What the Hell? Autodesk? Care to comment?

John

---

From: Tim Crowson <tim.c...@magneticdreams.com>
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 4:58 PM

[Stefan Andersson]

+1 to that. Good luck everyone! It's sad, but I'm not surprised. I hope the people in Singapore will have their jobs at least a year or two before the complimentary coffee cup from Autodesk shows up. Unlike Greg, I don't think anything good will come out from this (but he has always seen the glas half full and not half empty).

But good news everyone! There are actually a lot of softwares out there which is just longing for your expertise and knowledge. And lots of black frames that needs content, and the frames doesn't give a **** what kind of software you used :)

best regards

stefan andersson

[Eric Lampi]

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.
END OF LINE.

[Byron Nash]

Thanks for all you guys have done over the years. I look forward to hearing from the new team an hope they chime in as the old team has over the years. I agree with the masses here that one of the really nice things about Softimage is being able to hear from the devs on occasion and maybe meet a few at SIGGRAPH or somewhere.

Happy trails on the Maya team.  Please polish out the suck!

[Mirko Jankovic]

good by and thanks for all the code.. something in that line ;)

hope that SI will keep going if nothing else at least bug fixing... it would still be way better than anything else for years to come. 

[Rob Chapman]

incredulous, absolve the the entire known dev team ( except Brent stays yes?) into fecking Maya, plan it for over year, whilst denying everything and that nothing is going to happen to Softimage.  seriously? 

[Graham Bell]

Jeez, com guys, these posts make for depressing reading.
Whilst some will see this as the ‘end’, it’s also the start of something new. Everything has got to change over time and Softimage (nee XSI) is no different. I don’t see the point in wallowing, the best thing now would be to give as much support as possible to Chun-Pong and his team.

G

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Stefan Andersson
Sent: 19 April 2012 22:13
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Intro to the new team (was RE: Softimage development)

+1 to that. Good luck everyone! It's sad, but I'm not surprised. I hope the people in Singapore will have their jobs at least a year or two before the complimentary coffee cup from Autodesk shows up. Unlike Greg, I don't think anything good will come out from this (but he has always seen the glas half full and not half empty).

But good news everyone! There are actually a lot of softwares out there which is just longing for your expertise and knowledge. And lots of black frames that needs content, and the frames doesn't give a **** what kind of software you used :)

best regards
stefan andersson

On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 10:45 PM, Greg Punchatz <gr...@janimation.com<mailto:gr...@janimation.com>> wrote:
Good luck to you and everyone else... I truly cant thank all of you enough for the amazing ride softimage has been.

All this does make me sad, but I hope something good comes out of it.... ohh and please make maya less stupid ;)
________________________________
Greg Punchatz
Sr. Creative Director
Janimation

214.823.7760<tel:214.823.7760>
www.janimation.com<http://www.janimation.com>

On 4/19/2012 3:38 PM, Chris Marshall wrote:
Well good luck Chin! I'm slightly sad to hear you've moved on. There was never anyone with more passion and raw enthusiasm for Sumatra/XSI/Softimage than you! Respect!!


On Thursday, 19 April 2012, Jason Brynford-Jones wrote:
Well like most others on the team who have posted, I too will be working with them on something new. Softimage is mature enough now and in very capable hands.

While we will no longer be working on Softimage, we are all still here to help if the occasion arises.

As you have seen, we are still on this list ;-)

Chinny

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com> [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com]<mailto:[mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com]> On Behalf Of Christian Gotzinger
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 3:55 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:soft...@listproc.autodesk.com>
Subject: Re: Intro to the new team (was RE: Softimage development)

My god, what an awful thought. Chinny, please post!

On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 9:10 PM, Stefan Andersson <ste...@madcrew.se<mailto:ste...@madcrew.se<mailto:ste...@madcrew.se%3cmailto:ste...@madcrew.se>>> wrote:
Is Chinny still there? :) When he leaves, that's when you can panic.

regards
stefan



--

Chris Marshall
Mint Motion Limited
029 2002 5762
07730 533 115

www.mintmotion.co.uk<http://www.mintmotion.co.uk>





--

STEFAN ANDERSSON // Creative Director // Mad Crew AB // http://www.madcrew.se<http://www.madcrew.se/>

[Steven Caron]

stay calm, there are others still around... unless they are leaving too. sean, marc-andre, yanick, brent... those are just off the top of my head.

dont forget all the support guys too! stephen, graham, siddarth, matthew.. i am sure i am missing someone...

s

[Steven Caron]

thats just stefan... his heart moved on long ago ;)

[Eric Turman]

So long guys! Thanks for all your help. If Luc-Eric and crew were involved in the interviewing process I'm confident that the "new guard" is going to shine :).

Welcome aboard Chun-Pong and crew, I look forward to a bright future!

-=T=-

--




-=T=-

[Graham Bell]

Sidd does the same AE role as me, but in APAC and is based in.....Singapore. :)

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Steven Caron
Sent: 19 April 2012 22:41
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Intro to the new team (was RE: Softimage development)

stay calm, there are others still around... unless they are leaving too. sean, marc-andre, yanick, brent... those are just off the top of my head.

dont forget all the support guys too! stephen, graham, siddarth, matthew.. i am sure i am missing someone...

s

[Greg Punchatz]

GO Chun-Pong! GO team Singapore! Make my beloved softimage even better than those pesky french canadians ever could ;)  Show us what you can do!  You have big shoes to fill!

To the folks moving to Maya.... PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE if you happen to be working on ICE for Maya, please make it as close to ICE in soft as you can , so us old softies will have a leg up on the Maya guys when its released.... that and for the love of god give us a soft interaction model :)

---

Greg Punchatz

Sr. Creative Director
Janimation
214.823.7760

www.janimation.com

[Steven Caron]

i know right. we made one for them... least they could do ;)

[Graham Bell]

I’m not sure what else we can say, when we are as up front and honest as possible, no one seems to believe us anyway.

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Rob Chapman
Sent: 19 April 2012 22:33
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Intro to the new team (was RE: Softimage development)

[pet...@skynet.be]

I dont claim to know the bigger picture – but I’ll make a wild guess:

 

Softimage is going to be more focussed on games from now on. To me, this team, as well as the move to Singapore seem in line with that.

 

Maya will remain targeted on film – and those from the softimage team moving to maya might do so because of this, besides not wanting to relocate.

(or because maya is going to be the next gen platform?)

 

Max will remain to be the one-for-all software.

 

If you’re a softimage user in games this could prove to be a good change, if you’re a film customer not so much.

 

Overlapping 3D softwares from the Autodesk portfolio aligning themselves more to different industries sounds like a reasonable strategy, though I wont claim to like that direction – and I hope I’m wrong.

At least its clear where Autodesk puts their eggs (or is it?) - and its not like the film industry didn’t already largely move to Maya anyway.

 

 

Anyways, good luck to old and new teams alike – regardless of what these changes mean.

[Jason Brynford-Jones]

>>>

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Chris Marshall
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 4:38 PM

Well good luck Chin! I'm slightly sad to hear you've moved on. There was never anyone with more passion and raw enthusiasm for Sumatra/XSI/Softimage than you! Respect!!

>>>
I think I know of one with more...
[cid:image0...@01CD1E57.8A7E8D70]
Mark Schoennagel is still thrashing the Softimage drum :-D

[Greg Punchatz]

Well that saves me a phone call :)

---

Greg Punchatz

Sr. Creative Director
Janimation
214.823.7760
www.janimation.com

[Eric Cosky]

I believe you. I was a dev on a MMO game for a number of years and it was always interesting to see how the perception of the users was affected by the occasional exit of someone - or several people - who were more visible to the players than the average person on the team. This was always a little frustrating for the vast majority of us who continued to work behind the scenes to keep improving the product because no amount of messaging seemed to help alleviate the concerns. There will always be some portion of the user base who would prefer everyone they know who is working on the project stay there indefinitely and considers anything else to be a sign of trouble, when really what is important (to me anyway) is that the product continues to be well supported by qualified people. There are a lot of smart people out there who could contribute to Softimage's future and change is not necessarily a bad thing.

Maybe the sky is falling, I dunno. I do know that for the very first time ever I received an email asking for more information about one of my automated crash reports (CER) that was sent in, which to me is progress. I've wondered for years now if anyone even looked at those.

[Xavier Lapointe]

Hey Steven, you were missing Manny Papamanos on the support team (;

[Alok Gandhi]

Thanks Chinny, that is really reassuring !

On 4/19/2012 4:29 PM, Jason Brynford-Jones wrote:

Well like most others on the team who have posted, I too will be working with them on something new.  Softimage is mature enough now and in very capable hands.

While we will no longer be working on Softimage, we are all still here to help if the occasion arises.

As you have seen, we are still on this list ;-)

Chinny

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Christian Gotzinger
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 3:55 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Intro to the new team (was RE: Softimage development)

My god, what an awful thought. Chinny, please post!
On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 9:10 PM, Stefan Andersson <ste...@madcrew.se<mailto:ste...@madcrew.se>> wrote:
Is Chinny still there? :) When he leaves, that's when you can panic.

regards
stefan

-----
No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2012.0.1831 / Virus Database: 2090/4557 - Release Date: 10/17/11
Internal Virus Database is out of date.

[Raffaele Fragapane]

We welcome the new overhead overlord and his minions!
More seriously, good to hear from, or at least about, you guys. Please do make sure you pick up the torch of mailing list interactions where the old guard left it, even if at the cost of a feature or two per release :)

On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 8:14 PM, Chun-Pong Yu <chun-p...@autodesk.com> wrote:

Luc-Eric's comments are a good segway for me to introduce some members of the new team and what they're working on.  We've been lurking on the list so far, and have been amazed by the passion of most in the community for Softimage and will support it as best as we can.  Now that Luc-Eric, Guillaume LaForge, Guillaume Laferriere, etc. have moved to the Maya team, we'll be participating more actively especially when there're technical issues reported.

We're all based in Singapore btw (so the comments on durians were apt) where the cost of labour isn't that much different from Montreal and certainly much higher (3x?) than in China.  And there're more people in the team than there were in Montreal two years ago.  Moreover, folks like JF, Francis, David, Manny, Graham, etc. are still around (the first 3 are in fact still developing enhancements and bug fixes for customers).  Hence Autodesk is still investing in the Softimage since guess what?  Soft still makes money for the company.

It's true that the team doesn't know the code as well as Luc-Eric and team but that's not to say that we're newbies to software development, 3D graphics, simulations, rendering, etc. either.  Sure, we don't have the 10-15 year histories with Soft that the "old" team had, but we're happy to say that they're still around (even many from the acquisition who eventually moved to other Autodesk teams) and still helping out when there's a need.  But that should go down as we become more familiar with the code.

So here goes:

Hsiao Ming Chia - Core, Ref Models.  From NVIDIA, worked on games middleware and runtime engines for 8 yrs.
Yury Khmel - Core, ICE, FaceRobot.  12+ years, last 5 as an architect in games development.
John Tensuan - Rendering, Data Management.  Last in Ubisoft doing rendering and engine systems.
Ho Chung Nguyen - ICE, Simulation.  Wrote core libraries for math, physics simulation, rendering while at LucasArts.
Joany Yang - UI, SDK.  Mainly engaged in UI projects using COM, MFC, C++, etc while at another team at Autodesk.

Me?  I just manage the team so am the "overhead" :-)

If you're ever in Singapore, we'd love to meet you.

Regards,
Chun Pong

-----Original Message-----
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau
Sent: Wednesday, 18 April, 2012 10:38 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com

Subject: Re: Softimage development

On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 3:26 AM, Mirko Jankovic <mirko.j...@aeonproduction.com> wrote:
> It is a bit bad that even after so many concerns displayed from
> customer about Softimage and AD's plans for it, that not a single
> official line of word was put out.
> Is it so hard to let people know what is going on and where does it
> all lead?

Actually, you're getting a lot of official information right here in this thread.

None of us moving to the new Maya FX Montreal team, which is led by me, are really doing it to quit Softimage, it's just a natural evolution of thing. As written previously, this was planned and we've been hiring and training a whole lot of new group of great people to work on Softimage.

So what does that mean? Well first it means that Autodesk is committed to continuing the development of Softimage - otherwise we wouldn't be spending so much effort building a new team.  We worked a lot on this!
 I interviewed every single one of these guys - and some we rejected.
The new guys have backgrounds in game production, real time shader, physics, etc.  They're bring new ideas and skills.

And it also means that Autodesk is renewing its effort on the Maya FX's toolset, which is not super interesting to you guys obviously, but is that a thing that makes sense.

It's hard to leave Softimage, but it's also hard to not get excited with the new projects.  We're going to Digital Domain and ILM this week with Duncan. New experiences!  If we can just stop hitting the S key to orbit the camera, everything will be fine.

--
Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!

[Sylvain Lebeau]

Sorry for the french swearing...

Sacrament de tabarnak ...

Welcome to you guys Chung-Pong!!
i have mixed up feelings of course. I really must admit this is major in terms of seeing Softimage finally vanish but i cant do anything except to hope for the best for all of us softimage underdogs. Taking all the devs out to Maya is a sign we cannot put our heads under the sand.....

Chung-Pong, you guys seem's to come from a gaming background mostly... Could you tell us about your plans for the futur? .. i mean what was asked to you?.... probably you cannot say anything...  But i really hope you guys are going to bring something new and refreshing so we can still hope for a futur.... You guys have a great challenge under hands. Millions of code lines to delve into..... I wonder how the SP1 will look like. Good luck from the bottom of my heart! Hat's off for the undertaking.. :-)

caliss de siboire....

btw: anyone can tell me how to plug textures in the hypershade plz??  I middle click and drag onto the shader then a pop up connection editor come's across.... and nothing i can do in there...... any tips? .... Ohh almebic is already there?? wow nice!!. ...  i' ll still install Helge's version.
and how do i do render layers exactly? ..... membership something? Where are the partitions? .... overrides? ...

... chu en tabarnak .... sacrament.. ...Dans l'cul Autodesk de marde avec ma grosse graine.

sly

--

Sylvain Lebeau // SHED
V-P/Visual effects supervisor
1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8
T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM <http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM>

 

Raffaele Fragapane

Thursday, April 19, 2012 7:56 PM

We welcome the new overhead overlord and his minions!
More seriously, good to hear from, or at least about, you guys. Please do make sure you pick up the torch of mailing list interactions where the old guard left it, even if at the cost of a feature or two per release :)

--
Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!

Chun-Pong Yu

Thursday, April 19, 2012 6:14 AM

Luc-Eric's comments are a good segway for me to introduce some members of the new team and what they're working on. We've been lurking on the list so far, and have been amazed by the passion of most in the community for Softimage and will support it as best as we can. Now that Luc-Eric, Guillaume LaForge, Guillaume Laferriere, etc. have moved to the Maya team, we'll be participating more actively especially when there're technical issues reported.

We're all based in Singapore btw (so the comments on durians were apt) where the cost of labour isn't that much different from Montreal and certainly much higher (3x?) than in China. And there're more people in the team than there were in Montreal two years ago. Moreover, folks like JF, Francis, David, Manny, Graham, etc. are still around (the first 3 are in fact still developing enhancements and bug fixes for customers). Hence Autodesk is still investing in the Softimage since guess what? Soft still makes money for the company.

It's true that the team doesn't know the code as well as Luc-Eric and team but that's not to say that we're newbies to software development, 3D graphics, simulations, rendering, etc. either. Sure, we don't have the 10-15 year histories with Soft that the "old" team had, but we're happy to say that they're still around (even many from the acquisition who eventually moved to other Autodesk teams) and still helping out when there's a need. But that should go down as we become more familiar with the code.

So here goes:

Hsiao Ming Chia - Core, Ref Models. From NVIDIA, worked on games middleware and runtime engines for 8 yrs.
Yury Khmel - Core, ICE, FaceRobot. 12+ years, last 5 as an architect in games development.
John Tensuan - Rendering, Data Management. Last in Ubisoft doing rendering and engine systems.
Ho Chung Nguyen - ICE, Simulation. Wrote core libraries for math, physics simulation, rendering while at LucasArts.
Joany Yang - UI, SDK. Mainly engaged in UI projects using COM, MFC, C++, etc while at another team at Autodesk.

Me? I just manage the team so am the "overhead" :-)

If you're ever in Singapore, we'd love to meet you.

Regards,
Chun Pong


-----Original Message-----
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau
Sent: Wednesday, 18 April, 2012 10:38 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Softimage development

[Vincent Fortin]

Epic swearing, thanks for the laugh, Sylvain 8-)

[Simon Pickard]

Bit selfish I know but can I get an OSX version of Softimage before they bin it?
Ta! :)

[Eric Thivierge]

Flame war on Simon!!! But honestly, who uses Macs for serious 3D production work anyway? :P

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

[Simon Pickard]

Not many Softimage users that's for sure.

[Kiril Aronofski]

Am I wrong in thinking that those who moved over to maya FX project are people largely responsible for ICE work in Softimage? Seeing how most of the new guys come with a strong game software engineering background, this to me signifies a big shift in development focus for both maya and softimage.

Just thinking out loud I guess. Definitely struggling to make any sense of what has happened here.


P.S. Sorry not to be enthusiastic about this. I admire those old xsi devs way too much to be happy about them packing their bags and leaving.

All the best to the Singapore team, of course.

[Sylvain Lebeau]

seriously Eric…. being obligated to drag a folder into terminal just to copy/paste a path is a shame…… no one can use a Mac for our work…. well i think so…..

Sylvain Lebeau // SHED
Vice-président, Visual Effects Supervisor 

1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8
T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM

[Eric Thivierge]

I don't think that many Maya ones either.

[Sylvain Lebeau]

the ones who left for maya fx are the ones responsible of the softimage heart and soul…..  amen

Sylvain Lebeau // SHED
Vice-président, Visual Effects Supervisor 

1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8
T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM

[Luc-Eric Rousseau]

On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 9:39 PM, Kiril Aronofski <flyo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Am I wrong in thinking that those who moved over to maya FX project are
> people largely responsible for ICE work in Softimage? Seeing how most of the
> new guys come with a strong game software engineering background,

We've trained new people in ICE, they've been co-developing the ICE
features with us for two releases now.
ICE development will continue. Chun Pong did not list the full staff
on the product

[Sam Bowling]

Before they Bin OSX? Another release like lion and it will be gone before Softimage!

 

From: Simon Pickard

Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 9:09 PM

To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com

Subject: Re: Intro to the new team (was RE: Softimage development)

[guillaume laforge]

Time to go to bed Luc-Eric, we've got a Maya meeting tomorrow!

Guillaume Laforge

Sorry, could not resist ;)

Sent from my phone

[Jim Yeh]

that hurts, Guillaume!

[Kiril Aronofski]

>we've got a Maya meeting tomorrow!

Hope no sacrifice will be involved.

[Raffaele Fragapane]

Open up houdini half way through and shout at them "see? DO YOU ****ING SEE WHAT I MEAN?!".
Please.

[Stefan Andersson]

Then leave to go to work for sidefx ;)

[Simon Pickard]

Hey at least copy and paste works in osx. Linux still hasn't worked that out.
Here's an example..









See what I mean?

Si

[Juhani Karlsson]

Nah, fresh blood is good. 

Anyone who has worked on a same project for 10 years knows that its gets to you. Changing to Maya team is then again not that different, but who cares. : ) 

I believe the new guys can deliver, maybe even better. Game development is not easy you know ; )

2012/4/20 Stefan Andersson <ste...@madcrew.se>

[Paul Griswold]

So this means an equal number of people were taken off Maya and moved somewhere else, right?  It's a big game of musical chairs! 

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

Paul

[Brent McPherson]

Ummm, all the devs are moving on to the new project and we are keeping the team together.

All the Softies have had a hand in training the Singapore team to make sure the transition is a smooth one. They have not been scared to jump into such a large product so I'm excited to see what they can do. As Chun-Pong mentioned there are some very experienced Softimage devs in the consulting team in Montreal that still work on Softimage and many of their fixes get rolled into each release. Everyone involved with Softimage over the past few years is still around so the knowledge is not going anywhere.
--
Brent

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Steven Caron
Sent: 19 April 2012 22:41
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Intro to the new team (was RE: Softimage development)

stay calm, there are others still around... unless they are leaving too. sean, marc-andre, yanick, brent... those are just off the top of my head.

dont forget all the support guys too! stephen, graham, siddarth, matthew.. i am sure i am missing someone...

s

[Steffen Dünner]

Interestingly Chinny didn't say that he works on Maya now but instead "on something new".

Cheers

Steffen

P.S.: It's just my wish that so much Softimage talent and passion doesn't get sucked up completely by the evil Mayans! ;)

-- 
PGP-ID(RSA): 0xCCE2E989 / 0xE045734C CCE2E989
Fingerprint: 394B 3DA9 9A9A 96C6  3A5A 0595 EF92 EE1F

[Stefan Andersson]

hahaha!! So the whole team is gone, and replaced by games people in Singapore. Do you actually believe that WE will believe that nothing will change?? Excuse me but... what?

Yeah right....

--

STEFAN ANDERSSON // Creative Director // Mad Crew AB // http://www.madcrew.se

[Rob Chapman]

'Until you manage to reverse the information flow, then the people
will remain subjected to the sick message dished out from the top' ,
Noam Chomsky

[Williams, Wayne]

Stefan,

You predominantly use the product the majority of the Softimage dev team just switched over to developing for so not quite sure what you’re going on about J I’m working in games at this point so am very, very excited to see what the Singapore team brings to the table. If you guys are taking requests Chun Pong I’d personally love to see:

 

1.       http://xoliulshader.com/   Something akin to the Xouli shader that is available to the max crowd. It’s easy to use and get great results.

2.       http://www.8monkeylabs.com/toolbag  An easy to set up lighting system as found in Marmoset.

3.       Better baking functionality than what ultimapper provides. i.e. Cages, baking FG, etc.

4.       Tighter export functionality with Cryengine/UDK/Unity. (not sure if this is on autodesk dev side or something the engine makers have to sort themselves)

5.       Fix the obj exporter. That thing is broke as hell. The file sizes it exports are way bigger than the same object coming from max and you can’t get your user normals out with your uv’s unless you do some workaround dragging things about in the explorer view.

6.       A more streamlined methodology for creating hair/wig alpha cards.

This is just off the top of my head. It shouldn’t have to be like jumping through flaming hoops while doused in gasoline when I try to view a real time asset in Softimage or get those things to a game engine but that’s what it feels like right now. Please, extinguish my pain!

 

As for the Soft guys and gals that are leaving, you will surely be missed. A heartfelt thanks for all the years of your life you dedicated towards Softimage and to providing us end users with the help we needed every single day of the week on this list. Respect.

 

-wayne

[Brent McPherson]

Things change. It is a simple fact of life.

Sometimes change is good and sometimes it is bad. You can believe what you want but some of us are optimistic and have done everything we can to try and make this a smooth transition.

Now excuse me while I go and refill my half-full coffee cup... ;-)
--
Brent

[Daniel Sweeney]

i do look at the glass is half full, so i hope that only good will come from this.

i can only hope and imagine Autodesk has been planning this for a while so everything should be planned to the smallest detail. dont know if they have shipped any of there other software developement out to the east. so maybe this is a test and they have decided to try this with a recent acquisition. 

some one said in the studio that it may have been moved east bound because there is a large market share for soft.

but also i see a lot of bigger companies, from all different industries having a stab at moving operations to countries that have cheaper labour. and this may be another factor in the decision by Autodesk. but then again i dont know what the rate of pay is in Singapore. so apologies if this comment means nothing.

Its a shame the seasoned soft developers are moving on, (thanks for all the hard work and keeping in touch with the community) but nothing can be done about this and you just have to embrace change. and hopefully its for the best.

I do hope the new team keeps in touch with the community like the old, and you guys definately have some big boots to fill. Work hard guys!

I just hope Autodesk is doing this for the right reasons...and not greed.

my two cent.



Daniel Sweeney
3D Generalist

Mobile: +44 (0)7743429771
Email: Danielb...@gmail.com

[Rob Chapman]

Thanks Brent, I'm not sure what to believe, still pretty shocked, from
my perspective it looks right now like things are changing for the
better of Maya and for worse for Softimage. Survival of the fittest
and all that, is this why we got a dinosaur primitive in the last SAP
release - a not so subtle hint of things to come.

Oh and am expected to believe all of the previous Soft Dev team
collectively came up with the idea of working on Maya themselves did
they? and they suggested it to the powers that be at AD and they said
- wow what a fantastic idea, lets do it! Cynical and glass half empty
perhaps, but you really expect us last remaining folk who work within
a Softimage only based pipeline to be happy and optimistic about this?

A smooth transition to what?

[Ben Beckett]

If it takes the soft boys and girls to fix maya than that can't be a bad thing, we know we love the way they made soft work. let hope no one from the Maya team is trying to better soft!

 

Ben

[Williams, Wayne]

Oh, and another request I forgot!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnhxPMAXiVY&hd=1

 

This ties in with #3.

[Bradley Gabe]

To the team in Singapore, are you fellas located far from Chinatown and Food Street?

[Mirko Jankovic]

Time spent fixing Maya would be better spent polishing Softimage and making it even better.

Big studios using Maya are doing their fixes on top of it anyway so...

Softimage is already best character animation software. Strengthen it in architecture and gaming areas and you would never need another piece of software.

And replace Mental Ray with Arnold or even better remove rendering completely and left it optional to pay with licence for Arnold or even VRay.

Now, who wouldn't like you to buy one software and be set for all your production need... 

Let's not be kids. We all know that financially speaking best option would be to have every single part of production covered with different program. Modeling in one, texturing in other *yes they would separate that too and so on.

That is already on the way for years now. 

Before we had and needed 1 piece of software for all 3d work now you go from sketching software, to modeling software, over to animation and so on.

Maya had sculpting started back in version 2.5 if I remember... it really couldn't evolved in something like zbrush or mudbox inside it?

Separating production is what gives more money back and that is how everything will keep evolving. 

It is not in interest of company to evolve all parts in one software and use one Softimage for all your 3d needs.

Simple as that..

What is next.. remove any other rendering completely and leave only real time shader.. convert it to game engine...

For any other rendering buy maya / max....

[Brent McPherson]

> Oh and am expected to believe all of the previous Soft Dev team collectively came up with
> the idea of working on Maya themselves did they? and they suggested it to the powers that
> be at AD and they said - wow what a fantastic idea, lets do it!

I don't see how anything that has been said so far would lead you to this conclusion.

[Peter Agg]

"Time spent fixing [software I don't use] would be better spent polishing [software I use] and making it even better."

To be honest both Soft and Maya still need a fair amount of work done to them: they each have their own weird blind-spots. I think the case for using some of Soft's UI/ICE guys giving some of their expertise to Maya is pretty strong, whichever way you look at it - not every Maya user has an rnd team behind them, after all..

[Rob Chapman]

> I don't see how anything that has been said so far would lead you to this conclusion.

sorry, I was attempting some sarcasm. maybe it went down more like
this at Autodesk HQ

http://youtu.be/kR7UWImpG54

:D so that was a joke ok, some of us are just more resistant to
change than others, no hard feelings to the (ex) soft devs at all

[Mirko Jankovic]

So creating another ICE in maya instead of using Sotimage as ICE addon to maya :)

[Rob Wuijster]

I was wondering when that one would pop up, this thread has been going on for a while now...... ;-)

Rob

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

:D   so that was a joke ok, some of us are just more resistant to
change than others, no hard feelings to the (ex) soft devs at all


-----
No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2012.0.1913 / Virus Database: 2411/4947 - Release Date: 04/19/12

[Alan Fregtman]

Godwin's Law proves true yet again... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law :P

[Bradley Gabe]

And the thread has reached Godwin's Law status...

[Rob Chapman]

Its OK I didn't have an argument or any credibility to start with , so
nothing lost here :)

but apologies for derailing the thread, nothing to see here, back to
the topic at hand

[Raffaele Fragapane]

I'm surprised it took this long, and honestly can't blame Rob for taking it there. It is a Godwin worthy thread if there ever has been one on the list this year :p

[Siddharth Bolurker]

Took me a while to chime in, cause i`ve been on leave this week having just had a baby girl earlier this week :)
I know some of y`all on this list for those who I dont, i`ve been with Softimage up in montreal in various roles in QA and support, and post aquisition after having spent a while with Adsk support have moved to Singapore last year as the AE for APAC (atleast in this part of the world i`m doing my bit to make sure Soft is out there and well repped).

With regards to the changes the you`ve become aware of, sure its sad to see some experienced hands moving onto other stuff, but rest assured from what i`ve heard, some of them will still be guiding hands to the new team. The new team, who incidently are in the in nxt bldg from mine (@Brad : Its a fair bit from Chinatown), is more than capable of carrying on the good work done in the past , and more importantly highly motivated about working on Soft. In terms of numbers, the staff announced are just the core and there are more guys on the team as well(Infact right now in terms of numbers i feel more confident than the past 2 years). Being a passionate soft user for many years and also someone who has a look into the inside I can safely say that I feel confident about these guys taking Soft forward. Like Chun Pong said earlier feel free to ping the dev guys or me if your ever in the region, and like always keep extending your support to the new team, they`ll do well!!

[Christian Gotzinger]

You've made your point a billion times over, and I'm quite sick of it to be honest.
I think we all know by now that you go with the flow in your company and don't have any issues with these other applications. I do, so please stop telling me how wonderful the world outside of SI is. I go there every day for at least 15 to 30 minutes, and I'm always glad when I'm back in SI territory.

On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 11:13 PM, Stefan Andersson <ste...@madcrew.se> wrote:

But good news everyone! There are actually a lot of softwares out there which is just longing for your expertise and knowledge. And lots of black frames that needs content, and the frames doesn't give a **** what kind of software you used :)

[Rob Chapman]

So, lets try and reach some logical clarity then, for I am still
somewhat confused and in a dilemma over this brash move with the
development of my application of choice.

Is Autodesk implying here that as an existing Softimage customer I should:-

a) Stick with Softimage even though the entire original development
team has been moved to Maya or left and replaced

b) Move to Maya, as it is the lead application of choice in M & E
division and all the best developers are attracted here through AD
internal strategies

?

Congratulations on your newborn by the way Sidharth!

[Bradley Gabe]

There are too many variables at play with giant, multi-person projects like software or, for the sake of example, movies:

George Lucas made the Star Wars movies.
He then went on to make Howard the Duck.

Conversely, while Lucas directed "A New Hope", Irvin Kirshner directed Empire.

There are many more options than a & b from your list. We should deal with the ones we have control over.
Do the best you can with what you have, and hope for the best while hedging your bets. :-)

Cheers!

[David Gallagher]

It doesn't seem like we've been discussing a likely scenario: The
Softimage developers are being tapped for a new 3D application entirely.
Maya is definitely showing its age -- if they try to shoehorn ICE in
there, is it really going to work well? Maybe they are starting a new
app. Of course they have to keep it secret because they can't undercut
existing sales.

If they were doing that, they would want to involve all the key people
from Softimage since they have built the most modern/recent core out
there, and it clearly has tech advantages.

Possible?

Dave G

[Bradley Gabe]

Didn't Luc-Eric already explain this in a prior post, in a different thread?

[Eric Turman]

Yeah I thought that they were enticed over to the new project because the new project had cookies. Makes perfect sense :)

--




-=T=-

[David Gallagher]

I haven't read all the posts carefully enough probably. So I just read his post about moving to MayaFX. Not sure what that is even.

[Kiril Aronofski]

>There are too many variables at play with giant, multi-person projects like software or,
>for the sake of example, movies:
>
>George Lucas made the Star Wars movies.
>He then went on to make Howard the Duck.
>
>Conversely, while Lucas directed "A New Hope", Irvin Kirshner directed Empire.

So, basically, what you're saying is, you need a great team around you in order to make a great product. Or else, you make Howard the Duck. Subsequently, you go on to make 3 more episodes proving once and for all you are really just a bad director who had a bit of luck the first time around. Essentially, you are better off letting people who know what they are doing, do the job you arent capable of doing yourself... Ah, there! You can fill in the blanks if you like. I'll give you a hint; mayans had no idea how to direct a movie. ;)

On a more serious note (although, I'm not sure how significant my opinion is here), I'd have to agree with Rob on this whole uncertainty afair with Softimage. As a student, I chose to invest my time in learning Softimage despite a huge presure all around not to do so and instead spend time in front of Maya. I saw the quality and was assured by the fact that upon acquisition Autodesk did not dismantle the product or the team behind it. This last couple of weeks have taken a huge toll on that certainty and made me very uncomfortable about my decision. I wonder how many newcomers are here to feel the same. This company have done everything in its power to discourage people who do not comply to the "maya philosophy".

It's not the end of the world, but the signs are not looking good.

[Simon Van de Lagemaat]

"Multivac, what will happen to Softimage"

 

"THERE IS INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

 

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Bradley Gabe
Sent: April-20-12 11:42 AM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Intro to the new team (was RE: Softimage development)

 

There are too many variables at play with giant, multi-person projects like software or, for the sake of example, movies: