Fwd: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

[Perry Harovas]

Today I received a response from Carl Bass, President and CEO of Autodesk.

It was pretty much what everyone thought would happen.
He basically stated that Softimage users are 1/20th the number of
those of Maya or Max.
So, as expected, it all comes down to money.

Not that I fault them for that. I want to make that perfectly clear.
They are a public corporation, and I understand that making money
is highest on the list of priorities (even for non-publlic companies, this is
important, and not inherently "evil").

That there was no acknowledgement, especially from the highest level,
of the pain that
this inflicted upon Softimage users, I suppose, is not entirely
surprising, but thoroughly disappointing.

My father owned more than 30 restaurants in his lifetime, and the
number one edict he lived his life
and ran his businesses by was this:

The customer is the most important part of a business.
They may not always be right, they may not know the difficulty of meeting
their exact demands 100% of the time, but if they are treated with
respect, care and given every benefit
of the doubt, they will appreciate it, they will return and they may
even tell others about it.
He knew that the negatives that resulted from bad word of mouth
(especially in the pre-internet and pre-social media days),
would hurt his business financially much harder than whatever money he
might have to lose to make those customers happy.

Certainly far more importantly, he ran his business (and his family)
the same way. He taught my sister and I,
as well as his employees to do what was required to make people happy,
to be willing to admit mistakes were made,
or at least to acknowledge that someone had a bad experience, and to
make it as right as possible. This attitude moved from the top all the
way down.
My father made the customer know that HIS success, was because of
THEIR business.

That is not what Autodesk exudes (but to be fair, it never has), and
few large multi-billion dollar companies have this attitude.
Some do, and those are the companies where I will choose to spend my money now.

One of the hardest pills to swallow in all this debacle, though, is
the lying (especially by omission) regarding Softimage's
future, especially with regards to the comments Chris Vienneau made 17
months ago.

Softimage had already been planned to be relegated to few if any
updates. This is clear, and admitted
by Maurice. We should all have been told this. Making us guess, but
never knowing, and telling us that
they told us about the move to Singapore is NOT the same thing as
coming right out and telling us
that they status of Softimage had changed.

Look, assume we are stupid, tell us outright, but don't insult us and
expect us to
just think "Oh, they are right, they told us the team was being
outsourced to Singapore, we really should have known
that meant little to no real feature updates."

Is that how Autodesk treats their shareholders, by giving them some
information, but letting them guess the
real intent on their own? I hope not. Makes me really happy to not be
an Autodesk shareholder.

Well, while I appreciate a response from Mr. Bass (if indeed it
actually was written by him), it just proves that
the treatment of a company's customers starts from the top and works
its way down the latter.

By this letter, and certainly by the way everything was handled within
Autodesk during this EOL, I would say we are the lowest rungs on that
latter.

I am OK with that now. At least I know, and happily jump off the
latter, to make room for anyone who wants to climb on.
Be my guest, but watch your back, because Autodesk certainly isn't going to.



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carl Bass <carl...@autodesk.com>
Date: Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 6:21 PM
Subject: RE: An Open Letter to Carl Bass
To: Perry Harovas <perryh...@gmail.com>
Cc: Chris Bradshaw <chris.b...@autodesk.com>


Dear Mr. Harovas,


Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts on the Softimage
retirement and I appreciate that you have choices. Our decision to
retire Softimage was not taken lightly. We recognize that there are
loyal Softimage users doing award winning work, but the fact is there
are just not enough Softimage users to justify continuing support
beyond the next two years. Today there are many times more users of
Maya and 3ds Max creating award winning work in new and innovative
ways. Our focus is to accelerate new capabilities in Maya and 3ds
Max, including incorporating capabilities that many admire in
Softimage, and brand new features that are critical to media and
entertainment artists' success today and tomorrow.

When these products were originally conceived, most everything was
done on the workstation or desktop and artists were working with
scenes of millions of polygons. Today we still have the desktops but
they are being used in conjunction with a world of cloud-based
collaboration and rendering, rapidly evolving touch and mobile
devices, and users who are working with scenes of billions of
polygons. We are very excited about this future and are making the
investments to be able to deliver great products and services to meet
the demands of the most talented artists and technical teams in the
world.

However, given the magnitude of the change in the industry, we have to
choose where we focus. Today there is only one user of Softimage for
every 20 users of Maya and 3ds Max. This does not diminish the
creativity of Softimage users nor the incredible work done in
Softimage. It does however influence the choice we have to make to
continue to innovate and advance our offerings in 3D visual effects
and animation sphere. We have decided that the best path is for us to
focus future development on Maya, 3ds Max, and new cloud and mobile
offerings while incorporating the best that Softimage has to offer. We
are providing support for all Softimage subscribers for two years and
a migration path to either Maya or 3ds Max with continued access to
Softimage for as long as users need it.

We are not choosing which products are better but we are choosing to
invest in the products that the vast, vast majority of our media and
entertainment customers use as we go forward. We realize that you and
all of our users also have the right to choose. We hope you choose
Autodesk and we will work hard to ease the transition from Softimage
to Maya or 3ds Max. I invite you and anyone to provide suggestions to
ease the transition and for future features that you would like to see
in our products.


Best,

Carl

________________________________
From: Perry Harovas [perryh...@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 10:11 AM
To: Carl Bass
Cc: Chris Bradshaw
Subject: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

Dear Mr. Bass

My name is Perry Harovas.

You don't know me, but I am a 10 year Softimage user.
10 years is actually a small amount of time when compared to my
peers who having been using Softimage for up to 20 years.

I am writing to you because I cannot be silent on this.

I have been in this business for 25 years. I started out using
Lightwave in Video Toaster V1 on an Amiga computer.
I then moved on to Alias PowerAnimator and took the new abilities of
that software (over Lightwave) into
feature films out of a small studio in (of all places) Newark, NJ.

I was an Alpha tester of Maya, before it was even announced publicly.
I put up with no docs, breaking code, a renderer that was written only
months earlier and barely worked, changing workflows, etc.
I learned everything I could about the software, and eventually
co-authored the first book about Maya, "Mastering Maya Complete 2".

I was the loudest, most exuberant fan of Maya on the face of the
planet. I couldn't get enough. I worked myself into bouts of
sleeplessness
in an effort to know more about this seemingly magical application
that would allow me to create anything I could dream of.

Except, in reality, the word 'dream' is appropriate, because as I took
on larger projects and tried to do more work with it, I found one of
the largest obstacles
with Maya was (and is) that it needs a support team behind it to code
tools into either working together, or sometimes, working at all.

A good example of this is when I was directing two 30 minute CG
children's shows with me and my small crew of 4 other people.
We had 6 months to create 60 minutes of animation, including building
the characters, rigging them, animating them, texturing, lighting,
etc.
An insane task given the budget, crew size and amount of animation.
But we plunged head on into doing it.

Then, after many, many minutes of animation had been done, we found
that our characters were coming
into our scenes with no animation except their mouth lip sync. Where
had all the animation we did gone?

Our one technical guy on staff looked into it and happened to find
that the animation curves were still there,
but had detached themselves from the character rig (his skeleton, if you will).
Fortunately, he was able to code up a way to automatically reconnect
the animation curves to the rig, saving months of work.

We then realized we were not going to be the only people to have this
issue. We spoke with Support, and they acknowledged this was a known
issue.
We even offered to give them our script to help others who were having
similar issues. They refused to let us help.
We then started experiencing render problems, referencing issues, and
a list of other things
so long that I can't remember it now.

Needless to say, it was frustrating, it prevented the quality from
being consistent, and endangered our whole company.

We soldiered on, finishing the two shows on schedule, barely, and
vowing to NEVER use Maya again.
We eventually decided on Softimage|XSI. Sure it was rough re-learning
a new application, but it was rewarding in that it worked, didn't fail
us,
and didn't need a dedicated team to produce work that was better than
what we could produce in Maya. This was astonishing to me!
Thoughts of "Why did we not do this earlier?" ran through my head. The
power in one application seemed to be nearly limitless.

Limitless, that is, until I started Alpha testing Moondust, which
eventually became ICE.
This was an area I knew nothing about, coding, and suddenly I was
doing things that I could not believe.
I created a way to have fur just appear on the silhouette of my
cartoon dog, in literally 20 minutes of "fiddling around" with ICE.

Even with the lack of documentation at that point, with the alpha, and
then beta, status of the software, it was the most powerful tool I had
ever used.

Bar none. No doubt, No hyperbole.

I could not believe what I could now do, just ME, not a team of
people. Imagine what a team of people could do?
Well, there is no need to imagine, we have many examples to point to
from just the last few years:

-'The Lego Movie'
-The Mill's '98% Human' ad
-The Embassy's 'Science Project' commercial
-'Iron Man'
-'Pacific Rim'
-'Now You See Me'
-Subaru 'Car Parts' ad

These are just off the top of my head.

This software, the one your company just retired (also known as EOL,
or End Of Life) is Softimage.
You remember Softimage, don't you? You bought it from Avid in 2008. I
wouldn't blame you for not remembering,
it never showed up on your home page, it was barely promoted, and it
was something that you had to hunt for in Siggraph demos.

Softimage, the software that gave rise to dinosaurs in 'Jurassic Park'
(in a previous, less powerful, incarnation of the software).
Softimage, the software that gave the world 'Terminator 2'', 'Death
Becomes Her', 'Babe, 'Casper', 'Jumanji', 'Mars Attacks' and just too
many others to list.
Softimage, the software that invented Inverse Kinematics.
Softimage, the software that Animal Logic used to create the number
one movie in America at the time Autodesk made this announcement.

Of course, I could go on. But I am sure you get the point.

This is the software that your company just killed.
That really is the only word for it, KILLED.
Killed, because it is now seen by many as obsolete even though, as you
hopefully know, it is the newest of the 3 DCC apps your company owns
and far from obsolete.
It is now perceived that way because of this action.

I have been in visual effects and animation production my entire
career, and a few years ago I also started teaching.
In 2007, I moved myself and my family from the East Coast of the USA
to Illinois.
While there, I helped start a new college in Chicago called
'Flashpoint, The Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences',
which was renamed to 'Tribeca | Flashpoint Academy' when Robert De
Niro's Tribeca,
purchased 50% of the school. I was the Chair of the Visual Effects and
Animation Department.
I wrote the entire curriculum in my department. The software world was
100% open to me, I could use anything I felt would be appropriate.

I chose to use Softimage, not Maya, as the main application to teach
the students.
I took on what I called an agnostic approach to teaching 3D software,
in that students would learn the best tool for the job,
and hopefully not be as software biased as my generation was/is. The
reason for this, as I told them, was because you never know when
your software will just vanish, the company will kill it, or go out of business.

Wow, I wish I wasn't right about that one...

Knowing how to use many applications, how to be aware of what was
going on behind the
curtain of the software, was (and is) far more important and helped
prevent being unable to work due to not
having skills in one application, especially if that application was
discontinued.

Well, now because of the actions that your company took on March 4,
2014, that has happened, and I am in exactly that position.
I can continue to use Softimage for a couple of years, but as you no
doubt understand,
the stigma associated with using EOL Software (never mind teaching it)
is too great to bear.
The driver support would quickly become a problem, the renderer
support would be an major issue, and before too long,
it will become impossible to use Softimage in production.

So your company has now given me, all of us Softimage users, a choice.
We can use 3DS Max or we can use Maya.
Well, I chose not to learn 3DS Max as it relied too heavily on
plugins, and Maya, well, you now know how that played itself out for
me...

I will make a choice, but it will be to not use Autodesk products anymore.
I am choosing to learn an entirely new 3D DCC application, and I can
assure you it will not be an Autodesk product.
I could easily go back to using Maya, especially with my history with
the software. I choose not to.

See? A choice.

Even if I thought Maya was a great base of code on which to build the
future DCC application that will rule the world (and I certainly do
not),
I wouldn't use Maya based upon principal alone. Maya is not a great
base to build upon, because as you are well aware, it is more than 17
years old and
wasn't written when multi-core processors were even a dream in the
labs of chip makers. It is really like tearing down the 5 story
building, in favor of making
a 10 story building on the foundation of a 17 year old house that has
been patched together with one new idea after another. The foundation
is showing its age,
the wood is starting to rot, and yet the plan is to build on top of
this base. That is what I believe you are doing with your company's
plans to build upon Maya.

A company that does this to their loyal customers, in my opinion, is a
company that does not have the best interests of those customers at
heart.
A company that does, what your company did in less than 6 years
(killing a product) is a company that should not have made the
purchase of
that product in the first place.

Was it not obvious, when Autodesk evaluated the purchase of Softimage,
that having three DCC apps was not a good financial decision?
Was it not obvious that this fairly small market segment could not
sustain development on these three apps?

If it wasn't obvious, then perhaps there is more wrong with Autodesk
than anyone realized.
Unless, there was another reason to buy Softimage, but that would be
pure speculation...

So, what now?

I now teach at another well respected institution, and continue to
work in the industry very actively.
Will I still teach Maya? Yes. It is part of the curriculum, and will
help these students get jobs in the industry.

However, I will be teaching another product as well, again, to prevent
what has happened to me and my peers from happening
to these students that are just starting out on this career path.

Mr. Bass, I have seen interviews with you. I believe you are a kind
person. You certainly seem to be in love with this business.
I hate the decisions that your company made, that you approved, but I
don't personally hold any hatred for you.

I just wanted you to know that there are many, many artists out there
that just want to continue to use the application that we chose to
use.
We had a choice, and Softimage was what we chose to use. Taking away
that option, your company has now asked us to chose software
that we could have chosen before, and did not. This isn't a choice,
this is a hijacking.

I cannot speak for others, but, as you may now know, the overall
sentiment of Softimage users is to chose NOT to use Autodesk products
anymore.
I can only believe this wasn't what Autodesk, or you, wanted. We are a
very passionate bunch, who now are passionately opposed to using
Autodesk
products. Again, I can't speak for all of us, but the forums on your
competitions' websites are filled with users looking to switch.

The most asked question on these forums seems to be something like:
"How do I do this thing I used to do in Softimage, in your app?"

That should tell you something Mr Bass. The users of Softimage just
want to keep using Softimage, its workflow, its amazing tools, and not
be burdened by the archaic workflow
of your other two DCC apps. They want to do amazing work. They want to
be able to feed their families and to keep their employees.

They are so hungry for this, they are looking for this workflow in the
welcoming arms of your competitors.
The amount of money this may end up costing Autodesk in the not too
distant future will most likely dwarf the amount of money it would
have taken to just keep Softimage going.

I didn't go to business school, but even I can see this isn't a great
way to run a business.

So, after this long email (that I actually edited believe it or not).
where do I stand?

Well, I want to ask you to reconsider your company's decision.
This cannot be an easy matter, and I am sure I don't know all the
legal and financial problems this may create.
But in a naive, passionate, and yes, tearful, way, I want to ask you:

Please bring back Softimage.

Please keep this software we all love going.
Please just keep it alive in the most basic way.
Keep fixing bugs, keep updating the support for graphics drivers, keep
updating the SDK to allow the large
community of developers to continue to enhance it.

Please do this for us, the people who put their faith, their financial
dependence, in the software
that your company owns.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Perry Harovas

--





Perry Harovas
203-448-7206
Animation and Visual Effects

http://www.TheAfterImage.com

-25 years experience
-Co-Author of "Mastering Maya"
-Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)



--





Perry Harovas
Animation and Visual Effects

http://www.TheAfterImage.com

-25 Years Experience
-Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)

[Angus Davidson]

Well my response is that we will teach maya while its still an industry standard. We will re-evaluate in 2 years time. The noises coming out of people in my country is that most are moving to a modo / zbrush / houdini pipeline while continuing to use SI as much as possible.

For my personal stuff I am already on the Modo ship and thanks to Jordi's excellent pdfs dipping my feet into Houdini as well.

Personally I will not give Autodesk any more money.

Kind regards

Angus
________________________________________
From: Perry Harovas [perryh...@gmail.com]
Sent: 24 March 2014 01:31 AM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Fwd: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

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[Jason S]

I wonder how much Composite or Matchmover costs every year.. while still
being around...

[phil harbath]

that is an interesting thought. for whatever reason those products
(especially) Composite is used very little it seems. I have also wondered
how this affects the suites, doesn't it devalue both of them, along with the
lack of mudbox updates, I don't see how they can keep selling them at that
price or maybe at all.

[Raffaele Fragapane]

The mentions of the cloud for MnE as a success factor like it might have been or become in CAD are, presently, scaring the living daylight out of me a lot more than Maya's obvious deficiencies ever might.

I can deal with the latter, the former however would be a legal impossibility to deal with, and there's only that many times one can reboot a pipeline to new software in a few years.

Back then Bass came up with this massive cloud testicle fondling, but Petit was quick in addressing it and stating that MnE wouldn't fall under the same priorities, though he seemed to have been gone largely unacknowledged by Bass at the times it's true that nothing happened outside the CAD front for the years following. I wonder how much longer that will go on for and what the current management (Bradshaw and Stevens I'd guess? Maybe the PMs and PM senior management) thinks of it.

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

[Luc-Eric Rousseau]

On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 8:12 PM, phil harbath
<phil.h...@jamination.com> wrote:
>> I wonder how much Composite or Matchmover costs every year.. while still
>> being around...

> that is an interesting thought. for whatever reason those products
> (especially) Composite is used very little it seems. I have also wondered
> how this affects the suites, doesn't it devalue both of them, along with the
> lack of mudbox updates, I don't see how they can keep selling them at that
> price or maybe at all.

Actually, Composite and MatchMover were not Suite features, they
shipped directly with the products.
They are no 2015 versions of them, afaik; their latest 2014 service
pack builds will be free downloads for 2015 products clients.

[Tim Crowson]

Raf, I thought the same thing when I read the comment about the cloud stuff. A even winced a little. That sounds an awful lot like a developer/publisher wanting to dictate workflow  because they want to be seen as anticipating our needs, Steve Jobs-style.

"The Future of the Cloud is Bright."

-Tim

--

 

[Raffaele Fragapane]

I'm far from anti-cloud, possibly even the opposite, but I hope it doesn't get rushed into things, and most importantly it doesn't go the way of Adobe where it's more or less rammed down your throat from day one whether you like it or not.

Once even Bass starts throwing the buzz around you can bet it's not more than one or two years away at least some embryo form. In feature animation two years is absolutely nothing, in games even less.

This might need some clarifying on AD's side sooner rather than later.

[Raffaele Fragapane]

And damn, as usual it's worded so vaguely. He could have meant anything, cloud products completely separate, ancillary, cloud Maya as an option, or cloud Maya rammed down the windpipe...

[Jason S]

Maybe.. but the point is they are still availble,  and you can still buy Combustion 2008 today.

Saying like "We had no other choice but to not make it available anymore" can indeed stretch credulity.

>From Wiki..

Some of Autodesk's "retired" products are listed here:

• Lightscape 3.2 Was the worlds only radiosity rendering package at the time (1991) developed from work done by Donald Greenberg at the Cornell University Department of Computer Graphics. 
  The problem with this part of Autodesk's history is that it was a time of discovery in computer graphics, and Cornell was one of the birthplaces for the technology.
  In this sense Lightscape was more than just another product, it was an essential part of the development of rendering technology generally, and part of its evolution.
  Additionally the software came from a university research department and represented the start of a development cycle that users the world over were watching closely.
  
  Regardless, Autodesk purchased rights to the software and promptly discontinued its sale.
  A very primitive version of the radiosity renderer was incorporated into the companies 3d Studio Max product, whilst existing Lightscape customers and the product were simply dropped.
  The most likely reason for this was that Lightscape offered a number of features that were simply too ahead of its time and therefore did not offer the optimum economic return for the company.

[Tim Crowson]

Raf said "...the way of Adobe where it's more or less rammed down your throat from day one whether you like it or not."
Yeah this is what I was wincing at. Whether it's cloud computing or cloud subscription or cloud whatever... The last year or so has left a sour taste for some of us where this is concerned, and I've not seen too many reasons to be optimistic about a proper cloud implementation in VFX.

Anyway, that's semi-off-topic I guess...

-Tim

[Ed Manning]

Well, I think or hope the cloud issue will be settled by the contract lawyers for the film studios and advertisers.  There's a big difference between putting up a $100M building and making

[Ed Manning]

Crap. Hate phone buttons.  

Between a $200m bldg and a $200m movie.  

In the former, there's little or no proprietary IP.  If one critical detail fails to be communicated, in the worst case people die.  

In the latter, no ones' lives are at stake but if one critical detail goes to the wrong person, there may be huge repercussions financially, but no ones life is at stake. 

So there are very different needs for information sharing. 

Despite superficial similarities, making a movie or TV spot with digital tools and designing and building a physical structure with digital tools are fundamentally different and the idea that there could be some magical cloud solution that fits both would appear to be wishful thinking at best, snake oil at worst. 

In the long run, I just don't see what AD can do for the M & E world with this attitude.  

[Raffaele Fragapane]

If anybody moves a software I rely on to deliver a movie to the cloud with no alternatives there are plenty lives at stakes. Those of anybody around me in a 1Km radius for a start, and then several others after that.

 I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for more maintenance fees, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my software work offline, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

P.S.

If you haven't seen Taken you might be inclined to take the above more seriously than it should be :p

[Henry Katz]

Unclear to me how 95% of non-Softimage AD users are able to do their
work then using Maya or Max given the
additional requirements to ease workflow, or other limitations (eg. no
ICE), without expending considerable sums
of money and/or time. Where is the efficient market here?

[Sebastien Sterling]

I say bring it, bring the cloud, let them bring it and let it be the worst most singular monumental blunder in the recorded history of client/provider inter dynamics.

A fuck up of such magnitude it can be viewed from space.

Sure we'd have to get creative for one year maybe two, but it's no difference to what is happening now.

And when the dust settles maybe they finally learn their lesson, or they go extinct.

personally am rooting for the latter.

[Perry Harovas]

Speaking of the cloud... (sort of)

Uhhhh... Yeah. Didn't think it was possible to make me not want to use Maya more than usual, but this kicks it up a notch:

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/cory/autodesk-remote-running-desktop-software-on-an-ipad

[Raffaele Fragapane]

Yeah, except that at that point there would be no viable commercial software left in the world to animate on that could be legally used and bought seats for and have ready to go in a reasonable amount of time and without training hundreds of people on it.

It would be a lot worse than now and it'd take years to catch up to such a nuclear winter scenario.

I mean, it's great that everybody is loving Houdini, Modo and all that, but if both Maya and Soft were to have no seats you could purchase for offline use next year a very large number of places would be screwed. The competition isn't anywhere near being able to replace either without an inordinate amount of work going into re-doing, re-wrapping, and re-training... yet again for those coming from Soft.

No, thank you, I'd rather we get another three or four years before AD nukes itself taking a large chunk of the userbase with them if they really plan on the market equivalent of a suicide bombing. Sure, let them, but free the area of crowds first, please :p

[Sebastien Sterling]

The beautiful irony being, we won't have a say either way ;)

[Doeke Wartena]

I expected a better letter from Carl Bass,

one with answers deeper rooted to the letter of Perry.

I doubt he even wrote the reply, I think he just sended it.

Let's hope maya stays as shit as it is and modo and houdini turn into gold.

fu AD

[Tim Leydecker]

Thanks for sharing that response.


I can see why moving to a cloud based service can be tempting
when looking at the recent news from Adobe:

http://www.adobe.com/news-room/pressreleases/201403/031814Q1FY2014results.html

If you then go and look into this press release:

http://www.adobe.com/news-room/pressreleases/201403/031014AdobeLicenseAgreementwithDoD.html

You might want to take a moment and think about this snippet:

"While these commercial applications utilize online services,
they also support offline and private cloud implementations—as
used by government for enterprise deployments."


--

For me as a customer, I might actually welcome the ease of licensing and
additional short term rental options Adobe is now able to offer.

Autodesk´s expansion of licensing models is also a welcome thing, as a
freelancer, I get more options to budget a project and actually get it done.

But.

The above is not about a specific function of the content creation software,
it´s all about the access to such software and licensing it´s usage.


In terms of focus, it´s a bit like working in a TVC/commercials project.

The pool of people claiming responsibility and credit easily extends into the 100´s,
the group of people actually doing all the artwork boils down to a small few.
Everybody else just reserves their right to take their cut by status.

As cool as it is to review a TVC on a retina display iphone, google cast it
around the office or order a sandwich while idling around bored in a suite,
that´s not where the money is spent for software.

The actual software is used by only the few doing the artwork.

Not by all the guys riding their back. Like ticks, they don´t invest, they want it for free.

I´m not sure you want them.

You want the artists.

Cheers,

tim

[David Saber]

Did you tell him that the lack of user is linked to the lack of marketing?
That's another unanswered question: why Softimage wasn't made more visible?
This question has been asked countless times but I'm not sure it got a
proper answer yet.
David

[Mirko Jankovic]

Guys isn't it obvious so far that from day one plan was to purchase and kill Softimage and rip of everything from it. 

Is anyone else here like a kid or something to believe AD fairy tales???

No need to discuss o r think about that anymore at all.

Keep up the great work not because of AD made us great tools but despite AD not helping us out at all.

[Sebastien Sterling]

+1

Though i do think Perry's letter brings an element of closure.

Let's us know the fibre of their fabric.

Unredeemable.

[Tim Leydecker]

I guess what I try to say is:

You want the Artists because the Artists are the only
ones in the whole DCC pipeline that actually have to
commit to anything.

First and foremost, investing life time to learn the tools.

Everybody else is tempted to strive to NOT commit.

Opening licensing down to convenient rental modes and
a stronger feeling of "being in control" of sofware usage
actually enables everybody else but the Artists to commit
even less - as a decision can be postponed or reversed easier than before.

That´s a bad thing.

It means a general, more long-term commitment can be reduced without consequences.

The result will be more pressure and less revenue.

Cheers,


tim

[Maurice Patel]

Hi Jason
You can no longer purchase either Composite (Toxik) or Combustion from Autodesk as products. Toxik is available if you buy Maya or 3ds Max. Softimage will be available too but under slightly different conditions: prior version usage. The software industry is full of companies buying tech and discontinuing tech. It is not unique to Autodesk and it is not unique to large companies and it is particularly prevalent in the entertainment industry.
Maurice

Maurice Patel
Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Jason S
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 9:58 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

Maybe.. but the point is they are still availble, and you can still buy Combustion 2008 today.

Saying like "We had no other choice but to not make it available anymore" can indeed stretch credulity.

>From Wiki..


Some of Autodesk's "retired" products are listed here:

· Lightscape 3.2 Was the worlds only radiosity rendering package at the time (1991) developed from work done by Donald Greenberg at the Cornell University<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_University> Department of Computer Graphics.

[Martin]

Hi Maurice,
Where can I have more info about this ? I was contemplating the possibility to buy a few licenses in the near future before the EOL announcement because I will most probably have some SI projects on my own and I don't have a commercial license right now (I work with my current employer license) and may need extra hands later, so If I buy the current version would I be able to purchase a few more seats later? Or am I too late for this?

Thanks

Martin
Sent from my iPhone

> On 2014/03/25, at 1:07, Maurice Patel <mauric...@autodesk.com> wrote

[Nuno Conceicao]

I think you have until the 28th March to be able to purchase Softimage for the first time (not a current client)

[Nuno Conceicao]

So for what I understood you can buy your first license only till the 28th then after this you are able to purchase more.

If you have no licenses after this date you wont be able to purchase Softimage anymore... :(

So I would suggest you get in touch with a retailer asap, he will be able to confirm this info obviously

[Emilio Hernandez]

What I still don't understand is why Autodesk cannot still deliver Softimage last version to Max or Maya suite, bundle or whatever name it has.

I know they've saying a lot of reasons, but really none of them makes anysense to me.

After all we will be buying Maya, MAX seats to get Softimage.  It still means revenue from them for a software they are going to stop devoloping, addressing bugs or fixes.

Ok. Don't sell Softimage seats perse, but package Softimage like Toxic.  Let the user decide what tool he wants to work with.  Just keep the Send to Softimage button regardless of the Maya version.

This is no additional cost to Autodesk.

Is this too much to ask?

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

[Christoph Muetze]

On 24/03/14 19:59, Emilio Hernandez wrote:

Ok. Don't sell Softimage seats perse, but package Softimage like Toxic.  Let the user decide what tool he wants to work with.

+1

i'd be really interested in an answer from Maurice why we can't have Soft in the future the way we have Toxic right now.

Cheers!
Chris

[Mirko Jankovic]

Because everyone will contninue to see and become aware how much better SI is and starts wondering wtf they are paying for??

[Maurice Patel]

The bundle is a transition bundle therefore it is only for those who already have Softimage to get access to Maya or 3s Max for free
Existing customers can also purchase new seats to increase capacity if they need to
Softimage is discontinued from sale because we would prefer for anyone starting a career or a business not to do so on a product we are no longer developing. However if you really want it there is an option: Softimage will be in the Ultimate Suite for 2 more years, If you are a student with an accredited institution you should qualify for special discount rate too.
BTW - everything has a cost and implementing and maintaining offerings in our systems is not trivial

Maurice


Maurice Patel
Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Emilio Hernandez
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 2:59 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

What I still don't understand is why Autodesk cannot still deliver Softimage last version to Max or Maya suite, bundle or whatever name it has.
I know they've saying a lot of reasons, but really none of them makes anysense to me.

After all we will be buying Maya, MAX seats to get Softimage. It still means revenue from them for a software they are going to stop devoloping, addressing bugs or fixes.
Ok. Don't sell Softimage seats perse, but package Softimage like Toxic. Let the user decide what tool he wants to work with. Just keep the Send to Softimage button regardless of the Maya version.
This is no additional cost to Autodesk.

Is this too much to ask?



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

2014-03-24 12:23 GMT-06:00 Nuno Conceicao <nunoalex...@gmail.com<mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com>>:

So for what I understood you can buy your first license only till the 28th then after this you are able to purchase more.
If you have no licenses after this date you wont be able to purchase Softimage anymore... :(
So I would suggest you get in touch with a retailer asap, he will be able to confirm this info obviously

On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Nuno Conceicao <nunoalex...@gmail.com<mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I think you have until the 28th March to be able to purchase Softimage for the first time (not a current client)

On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 4:52 PM, Martin <furi...@gmail.com<mailto:furi...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Maurice,
Where can I have more info about this ? I was contemplating the possibility to buy a few licenses in the near future before the EOL announcement because I will most probably have some SI projects on my own and I don't have a commercial license right now (I work with my current employer license) and may need extra hands later, so If I buy the current version would I be able to purchase a few more seats later? Or am I too late for this?

Thanks

Martin
Sent from my iPhone

> On 2014/03/25, at 1:07, Maurice Patel <mauric...@autodesk.com<mailto:mauric...@autodesk.com>> wrote

[Emilio Hernandez]

Thank you for your response Maurice.

Another question.  Are you still going to include Toxic after 2 years if I am new customer?  fe.  If I open a new studio and I want to buy brand new seats of Maya, MAX?

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

[Maurice Patel]

Hi Emilio,
I am not sure I follow the question

Maurice

Maurice Patel
Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Emilio Hernandez
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 3:44 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

Thank you for your response Maurice.
Another question. Are you still going to include Toxic after 2 years if I am new customer? fe. If I open a new studio and I want to buy brand new seats of Maya, MAX?



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

2014-03-24 13:27 GMT-06:00 Maurice Patel <mauric...@autodesk.com<mailto:mauric...@autodesk.com>>:

The bundle is a transition bundle therefore it is only for those who already have Softimage to get access to Maya or 3s Max for free
Existing customers can also purchase new seats to increase capacity if they need to
Softimage is discontinued from sale because we would prefer for anyone starting a career or a business not to do so on a product we are no longer developing. However if you really want it there is an option: Softimage will be in the Ultimate Suite for 2 more years, If you are a student with an accredited institution you should qualify for special discount rate too.
BTW - everything has a cost and implementing and maintaining offerings in our systems is not trivial
Maurice


Maurice Patel
Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com> [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com>] On Behalf Of Emilio Hernandez

Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 2:59 PM

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

Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass
What I still don't understand is why Autodesk cannot still deliver Softimage last version to Max or Maya suite, bundle or whatever name it has.
I know they've saying a lot of reasons, but really none of them makes anysense to me.

After all we will be buying Maya, MAX seats to get Softimage. It still means revenue from them for a software they are going to stop devoloping, addressing bugs or fixes.
Ok. Don't sell Softimage seats perse, but package Softimage like Toxic. Let the user decide what tool he wants to work with. Just keep the Send to Softimage button regardless of the Maya version.
This is no additional cost to Autodesk.

Is this too much to ask?



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

2014-03-24 12:23 GMT-06:00 Nuno Conceicao <nunoalex...@gmail.com<mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com><mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com<mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com>>>:

So for what I understood you can buy your first license only till the 28th then after this you are able to purchase more.
If you have no licenses after this date you wont be able to purchase Softimage anymore... :(
So I would suggest you get in touch with a retailer asap, he will be able to confirm this info obviously

On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Nuno Conceicao <nunoalex...@gmail.com<mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com><mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com<mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com>>> wrote:
I think you have until the 28th March to be able to purchase Softimage for the first time (not a current client)

On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 4:52 PM, Martin <furi...@gmail.com<mailto:furi...@gmail.com><mailto:furi...@gmail.com<mailto:furi...@gmail.com>>> wrote:
Hi Maurice,
Where can I have more info about this ? I was contemplating the possibility to buy a few licenses in the near future before the EOL announcement because I will most probably have some SI projects on my own and I don't have a commercial license right now (I work with my current employer license) and may need extra hands later, so If I buy the current version would I be able to purchase a few more seats later? Or am I too late for this?

Thanks

Martin
Sent from my iPhone

> On 2014/03/25, at 1:07, Maurice Patel <mauric...@autodesk.com<mailto:mauric...@autodesk.com><mailto:mauric...@autodesk.com<mailto:mauric...@autodesk.com>>> wrote

[Chris Vienneau]

Toxik and Matchmover will be available on Autodesk xchange in a week or two with no eula. You won't need a license to use them anymore. http://apps.exchange.autodesk.com/MAYA/en/Home/Index .



cv/

________________________________
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Maurice Patel [mauric...@autodesk.com]
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 3:48 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

[Andres Stephens]

I hope this too will happen to SI, don’t snuff it out of existence after April 2016... I would throw money into Maya or Max, or an Autodesk Subscription if only I still could use SI on the side - begrudgingly, but I would if I could (after two years and beyond).

-Draise

 

[Emilio Hernandez]

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

[Martin]

Hi Maurice

I don't think anyone who is going to start a CG career will do it based on SI even if you don't stop selling it for a few months or years! It isn't logic to do it. Only those who are already Softimage users and have Softimage based projects running will need new licenses to use a few years more.

There are still too many projects based on Softimage in the industry and we need to be able to buy Softimage licenses for at least a year or two to be able to pick those jobs and finish them!

I was planning to buy one license soon, go freelance and probably buy a few more later before the announcement. So should I just give up and don't take those jobs ? just because you decided that that was the best solution for us? You should have give us time to plan what to do with our business.

Isn't it bad enough that you discontinue, without warning, the best tool we have to make a living ?

Martin
Sent from my iPhone

> <winmail.dat>

[Perryharovas]

+1

[Perryharovas]

I guess the costs Maurice spoke of (with keeping something in their system) that is associated with Toxik and Matchmover, is  more palatable for those products to Autodesk than it is if it was for Softimage. How can these two be available with no EULA, but Softimage gets buried and we won't be able to even buy it???

Sent from my iPhone

Please excuse typos and

brief replies. 

Thank you!

[Jason S]

On 03/24/14 12:07, Maurice Patel wrote:

Hi Jason
You can no longer purchase either Composite (Toxik) or Combustion from Autodesk as products. Toxik is available if you buy Maya or 3ds Max. Softimage will be available too but under slightly different conditions: prior version usage. 

[...]
  

Hi Maurice, I knew they were not "sold" but served as examples of how it was -entirely possible- to have minimally maintained apps.
(and how "not possible" was hard to beleive)

And I actually did see Combustion sold in a few places such as here
but I guess that would be like residual "off the shelf" leftovers..

BUT it WAS officially offered at least  *up to 2011* from it's product page.
(~4 years later.. and not just to existing customers) 


Also if I may, the very (very) partial reversal did make you (not reffering to "you" personally) look quite generous,
yet correct me if I'm wrong, but while it now technically possible for existing customers to get more seats within that *2* years,
doesn't restraining that possibility -exclusively- to the included version in the Suite,
make getting more Softimage seats like ~2x the price?

And saying you could now use your existing SI as long as you wished..
does it mean that previously you could prevent perpetual SI's from working or being rightfully used?..  (wow)
.. well if so, thank you! (not "you" personally) for not being just *completely* .. (can't find the words.)

So all the "reversal" mostly meant was the ability for people on subsciption to continue to have their SI's work at all (for 2 yrs),
(if they decided to continue the with a supported software)
and the ability to get more seats (included in suites only).  Man.. How *considerate*.

On 03/24/14 12:07, Maurice Patel wrote:

[...]

The software industry is full of companies buying tech and discontinuing tech. 

It is not unique to Autodesk and it is not unique to large companies and it is particularly prevalent in the entertainment industry.

Maurice

I completely agree with you that this sort of behavior (competition elimination) can be petty widespread. 

Yet the question of that widespreadness making such moves any less wrong, can be very questionable to say the least.


How many people worked on SI, and what could it do that either others could not, or could not as fast or as well?
and that's just the beginning of it...

(have these questions been at-all asked or weighed?)

Cause those are the true consequences, all in the name of saving whatever would have involved bare minimal "support"+logistics of something kept available, and/or perhaps a handful of seats becoming Maya.

Thanks,
J

[Maurice Patel]

To a certain extent yes we had other plans for those products
maurice

Maurice Patel
Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Perryharovas
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 6:35 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

I guess the costs Maurice spoke of (with keeping something in their system) that is associated with Toxik and Matchmover, is more palatable for those products to Autodesk than it is if it was for Softimage. How can these two be available with no EULA, but Softimage gets buried and we won't be able to even buy it???



Sent from my iPhone
Please excuse typos and
brief replies.
Thank you!

On Mar 24, 2014, at 3:58 PM, Andres Stephens <drai...@outlook.com<mailto:drai...@outlook.com>> wrote:
I hope this too will happen to SI, don’t snuff it out of existence after April 2016... I would throw money into Maya or Max, or an Autodesk Subscription if only I still could use SI on the side - begrudgingly, but I would if I could (after two years and beyond).
-Draise

From: Chris Vienneau
Sent: ‎Monday‎, ‎March‎ ‎24‎, ‎2014 ‎14‎:‎52‎ ‎
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:soft...@listproc.autodesk.com>

Toxik and Matchmover will be available on Autodesk xchange in a week or two with no eula. You won't need a license to use them anymore. http://apps.exchange.autodesk.com/MAYA/en/Home/Index .



cv/

________________________________

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com> [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com>] on behalf of Maurice Patel [mauric...@autodesk.com<mailto:mauric...@autodesk.com>]

Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 3:48 PM

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

Subject: RE: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

Hi Emilio,
I am not sure I follow the question
Maurice

Maurice Patel
Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com> [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Emilio Hernandez
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 3:44 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:soft...@listproc.autodesk.com>
Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

Thank you for your response Maurice.
Another question. Are you still going to include Toxic after 2 years if I am new customer? fe. If I open a new studio and I want to buy brand new seats of Maya, MAX?



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

2014-03-24 13:27 GMT-06:00 Maurice Patel <mauric...@autodesk.com<mailto:mauric...@autodesk.com><mailto:mauric...@autodesk.com>>:

The bundle is a transition bundle therefore it is only for those who already have Softimage to get access to Maya or 3s Max for free
Existing customers can also purchase new seats to increase capacity if they need to
Softimage is discontinued from sale because we would prefer for anyone starting a career or a business not to do so on a product we are no longer developing. However if you really want it there is an option: Softimage will be in the Ultimate Suite for 2 more years, If you are a student with an accredited institution you should qualify for special discount rate too.
BTW - everything has a cost and implementing and maintaining offerings in our systems is not trivial
Maurice


Maurice Patel
Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com><mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com> [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com%3cmailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com>>] On Behalf Of Emilio Hernandez

Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 2:59 PM

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

Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass
What I still don't understand is why Autodesk cannot still deliver Softimage last version to Max or Maya suite, bundle or whatever name it has.
I know they've saying a lot of reasons, but really none of them makes anysense to me.

After all we will be buying Maya, MAX seats to get Softimage. It still means revenue from them for a software they are going to stop devoloping, addressing bugs or fixes.
Ok. Don't sell Softimage seats perse, but package Softimage like Toxic. Let the user decide what tool he wants to work with. Just keep the Send to Softimage button regardless of the Maya version.
This is no additional cost to Autodesk.

Is this too much to ask?



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

2014-03-24 12:23 GMT-06:00 Nuno Conceicao <nunoalex...@gmail.com<mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com><mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com><mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com<mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com>>>:

So for what I understood you can buy your first license only till the 28th then after this you are able to purchase more.
If you have no licenses after this date you wont be able to purchase Softimage anymore... :(
So I would suggest you get in touch with a retailer asap, he will be able to confirm this info obviously

On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Nuno Conceicao <nunoalex...@gmail.com<mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com><mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com><mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com<mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com>>> wrote:
I think you have until the 28th March to be able to purchase Softimage for the first time (not a current client)

On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 4:52 PM, Martin <furi...@gmail.com<mailto:furi...@gmail.com><mailto:furi...@gmail.com><mailto:furi...@gmail.com<mailto:furi...@gmail.com>>> wrote:
Hi Maurice,
Where can I have more info about this ? I was contemplating the possibility to buy a few licenses in the near future before the EOL announcement because I will most probably have some SI projects on my own and I don't have a commercial license right now (I work with my current employer license) and may need extra hands later, so If I buy the current version would I be able to purchase a few more seats later? Or am I too late for this?

Thanks

Martin
Sent from my iPhone

> On 2014/03/25, at 1:07, Maurice Patel <mauric...@autodesk.com<mailto:mauric...@autodesk.com><mailto:mauric...@autodesk.com><mailto:mauric...@autodesk.com<mailto:mauric...@autodesk.com>>> wrote

[Maurice Patel]

If you buy a license now you will have a certain flexibility later to add new licenses. But ultimately, yes, the program was built for existing customers to be able (if they want) to transition their licenses to 3ds Max and Maya and not really for new customers to be able to invest in Softimage.
maurice

[Emilio Hernandez]

Well it is not that we are "investing" in Softimage.

Let's put it on another perspective.

We want Maya or MAX to continue having the Softimage plugin as it is.

Autodesk will have its money and we will have our Maya/MAX with the Softimage plugin.

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

[Perry Harovas]

 If you really want to be scared, listen to this audio interview with Carl Bass. 

The link cuts right to the appropriate moment, but you should listen to the entire thing if you have the chance. 

Essentially, he is saying that when you have competing products, it isn't a good idea to exert control, piss off customers 

and try to force them to use another one of your products, when they already use one of yours. 

He says killing a product will just lead to about half of them saying, essentially, screw you. 

Wow, he should take his own advice from 13 months ago... 

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9-yZ5JVOBA#t=1054

And he was only talking about a PLUGIN... He was talking about T-Splines, and how customers would revolt and probably use the competitors

products if Autodesk forced them use only use it with their own software, instead of working in the apps of the competition.

The interview is also scary for how much (especially if you listen to the entire interview) he wants all Autodesk apps on the cloud.

ALL OF THEM.

Uh, no thank you. A choice, sure, but to have software only available on the cloud would really annoy me, if I was still using Autodesk products...

--

Perry Harovas
Animation and Visual Effects

http://www.TheAfterImage.com

-25 Years Experience

-Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)

[Bradley Gabe]

That's where his head is at the moment.

[Francisco Criado]

Hi Maurice, could you explain what you mean by "certain flexibility". I began working as head of 3d in a new studio, and they were working until now with Maya and we would like to migrate to a profesional tool like softimage. I won't be able to start the purchase process until April 15th. Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks in advance.

F.

[Saeed Kalhor]

He is a DICTATOR!!!

[Emilio Hernandez]

I am sorry to raise the fuel again on this one, and it has nothing to do with you Maurice nor Chris.

I have not read any answer from Autodesk that really is convincing of why Autodesk is not being able to still ship Softimage with Maya/Max after April 2016, or do the same thing as they are going to do with Toxic and Matchmover.

All is mumble jumble about "wanting to focuse" into products that are more popular, that does not mean they are better.

My personal conclution is that Softimage was getting more attention lately, and the Maya "innovation and creativity" project was starting to fall appart.  So the only viable solution for this was to put a bullet in the head and another one into the heart of Softimage. So people will turn away their sight from the death corpse after some  PR.

 

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

[Rob Chapman]

Personally, the gut instinct is to naturally assume conspirancy when
emotionally involved with the reasons for and why, but in reality I
very much doubt there was a conspiracy. we are too much like small
fry. it's more like Raph alludes to. sheer incompetence in planning
and direction. I do believe that the autodesk 'ship' has moved. the
some VP has made more money in something called BIM and is getting to
call shots. Autodesk is now aiming to engulf the common user and not
the technical one. simple economics. 1000,000 units at $100 is more
than 1000 units at $1000

sell sell sell buy buy buy etc

[Emilio Hernandez]

Yes Rob, I agree for the most, and all the responses have the core of reason.

And I totally agree with Raff into Autodesk's incompetence.  But then why Autodesk cannot keep shipping Softimage like they did with Toxic and Motionbuilder all this years?

Wouldn't it make more sense something like this:

"For all the reasons we said, Softimage is not anymore to be developed further, we will still be incluiding Softimage 2015 last release,  with any purchase of Maya/Max without any support after April 2016.  We are developing new  innovative and creative technologies for our M&E division, and want to focus in the ones that are most used in their respective industries."

Now you are going to be able to still have Toxic and Matchmover without license, but not Softimage as Chris stated.

Toxik and Matchmover will be available on Autodesk xchange in a week or two with no eula. You won't need a license to use them anymore.

And Maurice response:

BTW - everything has a cost and implementing and maintaining offerings in our systems is not trivial
Maurice

So Toxik and Matchmover don't generate this costs as well?

Even that Toxik is still alive it is absolutley dead.  I cannot say the same of Matchmover as I know some people is still using it.

Trying to take out passion out of the equation, still makes no sense at the loose ends.

Just my thoughts.

Cheers!

[Chris Vienneau]

HI Emilio,



I think that now you have heard from Carl I think I will weigh in here and what I am writing comes from having been in and around softimage for twenty years as I grew up in Montreal and came onto the tech scene around 1993 when Softimage was on fire and right before it got bought by Autodesk. There is no doubt that Softimage starting in 1986 had the early lead in animation software and when I started at Discreet Logic even had a claim on Flame code with Eddie. Microsoft was a crazy rising star at that point and bought them up as all entertainment tools were sold on big ass SGI systems which almost killed me once or twice. They wanted to have a team to build out pro tools on windows at all costs. That was when Sumatra (1996) was started and many of the early decisions made then to highly leverage windows only tech was one of the biggest handicaps that this new code base developed around when Maya developed from an IRIX base. Maya started to appear in the late 90s and started to gain a lot of traction as people did not see the movement they wanted and many were scared by the windows direction. Given that 80% of work in film revolves around 20-30 companies that were around back then it is pretty easy to see how losing many of those customers back then can have a big impact now as the hundreds of companies that make up the film/vfx world mostly spawned from people coming from those original seed fx companies. And yes people built their own tools on top of Maya but back in 1998-1999 there were not that many tools period in either Sumatra or Maya except that Maya had a great API to build tools upon so it started to take off.



As the transition to Avid happened the product and team were focused on the Digital Studio and more television workflows. They wanted to have a full suite around the media composer with DS and Soft being the poster children for a full post production workflow. Avid like many of us got hit really hard in the 2001 crash and if you want to read a great article on what happens when companies don't constantly re-invent themselves this is it: http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml . While 3dsmax continued down the path of being 3500$ and building a monster library of plugins Maya and Softimage fought customer by customer from 2002 to 2006. Maya was bought and sold three times and Avid starved out the softimage team while they were in a fight for their life. There have been other posts on other forums but Sumatra simply took too long to go from demo to product and many customers got tired of waiting. I was working on Combustion back in 2002-2004 and we saw Maya take off in many markets and many people switch away from Softimage. The numbers don't lie. In 2000 Softimage 3D had a bigger market share than 3dsmax and Maya in entertainment.



By the time Autodesk acquired Maya in 2006, Avid was in the middle of its financial troubles having spent a lot of money to buy tons of companies and having a real hard time getting back to growth. Softimage was losing out in schools by that point and when Autodesk acquired Maya and got access to the global network of sales people places like India and east asia began to really solidify around Maya. Softimage always suffered at Avid because it was a broadcast company that did not really know what to do with this small independent minded group. So Softimage got the freedom to be themselves but they suffered when it came to resources. Autodesk is primarily driven by resellers and has been that way since 1978 when the founders started letting the first users of AutoCAD sell to their friends. Autodesk invests a huge amount in emerging markets and education. As work started to get outsourced to India and China there was a network of 3dsmax and Maya users waiting and that really was the biggest boom in the last few years for things like episodic animation, vfx (starting with rotoscoping), and games asset production.



The product manager that was around for driving the ICE direction was my ex-boss and a very smart guy. Let's not mince words when this was an attempt to leap frog Houdini, 3dsmax and Maya as Softimage was not growing and losing money at Avid. ICE started as a particle project and then morphed into a more general framework. No one here at Autodesk is arguing you can't do amazing things with ICE and I think we have made it clear we are working on how that can complement Maya but you can't argue that it failed to convert enough Houdini, 3dsmax, and Maya users to Softimage to stop the decline of the revenue. This was despite every major FX house having the opportunity to try it and evaluate it. It was just not enough to switch from the tool base they had built in the early 2000s and it was just easier to find talent and new users from schools.



So as we get to the acquisition by Autodesk the big damage to what was once a strong market share in film and games had already been done and the key engines needed to grow products which is a strong channel and education market had been also severely compromised. The Softimage team had done an amazing job given how little they were funded by Avid. I can tell you that Marc Petit ran 3dsmax, Softimage, and Maya with no master plan to merge them and there was a full team on XSI for the first few years of the acquisition with Chinny at the PM helm. We included it in the education suite giving it access to way more schools and for the first time it was available in many places where previously Avid did not have the reach or choose not to invest. We were very excited by the prospect of sharing technology and best practices with the soft team as they were the bitter enemy during the dcc wars. It was like getting to see the inside of a Russian sub as the Captain of a British sub and seeing how things had evolved over time.



Soon after the acquisition we started investing in a new core that we hoped would power all three apps which became skyline and eventually bifrost. There are inherent limitations to ICE in terms of scalability that are linked with the host application (XSI) and we wanted to have something more portable that could be re-used in games as well. We also needed a core for all the cloud requirements we had coming down the pipe and we will get more into that in a second. So we had a good sized softimage team and an investment that matched the revenue so yes were profitable but the dev team was able to do new features and maintain the core. Soft settled into a niche with games in Japan and post vfx for television/advertising.



When the recession hit in 2009, it was another shock to the system and we like everyone else in the industry laid off people and tightened our belts. When the economy recovered things were not the same in our industry. From 2010-2012 the VFX industry in the US collapsed and advertising started to get split between tv and online. The industry lost so many good small boutique companies in that run and many people moved onto other industries like mobile gaming instead of staying around and re-starting like they had in the past. The closure of Modus FX (a great FX house in Montreal) and even Rhythm and Hues show that there is a big problem in this industry and both of those companies made 1-2 mistakes in how they handled their cash flow and were gone in a heart beat. If you don't think that the Foundry and Houdini were not affected both have made big pushes into the game market recently. So the niche base of Soft was hit pretty hard by this trend and that would have happened had it been on its own, with a new mystery owner or with Avid. This trend resulted in the large companies getting bigger and the middle thinning out both in film and games and those disappearing soft seats did not resurface but went to Maya or Houdini.



As things settled down in the last year or so it was clear that we needed to accelerate our plans for Bifrost and that as Maya and 3dsmax were growing Soft continued to shrink. We moved the development to Singapore and they are a great team capable of delivering cool features. So we made the decision late last year to move forward with the EOL plans of Softimage to focus and we are here. You can say it was foolish for Autodesk to think they could run three products that once competed but to put the blame for the current situation on our shoulders ignores the decisions made by Avid and Microsoft. A product needs a lot more than just technology to succeed and you can argue all that you want about which DCC is better but Soft did not have the ecosystem around it to be successful in the key years around 2000 when this industry was really wide open and shifting rapidly and Sumatra/XSI was just too late to the party. So no there is no conspiracy about trying to hold back softimage. XSI is a known entity and if people wanted to switch to it they would have already. If you visit the 3dsmax customers they like their mountain of plugins and if you visit Maya customers they like being able to customize the application. You are seeing Houdini has a loyal fan base. Just like with religion one person does not love god more or less because of their religion.



Before we get to the two year limit and the cloud I will take a break. This is my interpretation of what happened based on my relationships with the softimage team that came from being in Montreal and the subsequent involvement since the acquisition. Before we get into the why can't we just maintain Soft I want to see if others share my view or have another opinion.



cv/

[Chris Vienneau]

doh first sentence mistake "Bought by Microsoft"

________________________________
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Chris Vienneau [chris.v...@autodesk.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 9:34 AM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

[Angus Davidson]

Hi Chris

I can understand all of the business reasons for the EOL of Softimage. 

With one caveat

I do however believe it was actively accelerated by the resellers who pushed Maya to everyone. I have detailed on so-community how you virtually had to threaten them to get them to sell Softimage.

The damage being done however. Softimage was always going to bow out. That surprisingly I don’t have an issue with. All things have their lifesapn

What I do have an issue with was how it was Managed

SEC rules not withstanding Autodesk was woefully unprepared for the implementation of this decision. 

There was no understanding that on the commercial side 2 years was really not enough time to migrate pipelines and retrain people. (Thank fully now somewhat addressed)

There was no understanding just how badly this would affect the education sector. This has caused serious havoc which hasn’t been addressed at all.

There was no plan announced with the eol as to what measures would be put in place to help people through the transition.

You  were trying to replace a proven tool (ICE) with on that is only in the first stages of its release. (softimage should have only been EOL after Bifrost internals are opened up)

When we queried things at the announcement we got very little feedback at all. It was only once the Anger became very visible that things started changing and to me that is unacceptable.

There should also be no reason why you can’t EOL Softimage in the same way that you are currently doing with toxic. At least that would go some way to repair the damage that your decisions have made.

Kind regards

Angus (Educator)

This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary.

[Emilio Hernandez]

Thank you for taking the time to response Chris.

This is all clear to me as I bought a couple of Digital Studio stations at version 2.0  while it was still Microsoft.  If it wasn't because they were dependable on the Intergraph video board that eventually got fried after 15 years, and they lacked of HD support, I will still be using them.  Those turnkey systems were the ones that kept me out of the Inferno, Smoke, etc. solutions more expensive by far than the DS solution.

I agree that Avid did not a lousy but a terrible job with the Softimage asset as they were running like headless chickens towards anywhere but where the useres needed, and that is when Final Cut got in.

I understand where Autodesk is going, nothing I can do about it, even though I tried far beyond this list in ways that this is not the arena to talk about it.

Still in your response I can't read the answer of:

Why Autodesk is not willing to continue ship Softimage 2015, unsupported with an open SDK along Maya/MAX 2020?

Maurice said because the inherent costs.  You answered because of Autodesk wants to focuse in developing Bifrost or whatever new technology Autodesk is bringing.

What is that inherent cost?  

Thinking of some...

1. Packaging Softimage into the Maya/MAX download, self extract for each new year release.

2. Server space for holding a larger file.

3. Keep the SI online help file

In which way Softimage will drive your development resources away from focusing into the new tools if there is no one that moves a single line of code?

I not doing so, you started to loose clients already...

So what is costing more?

At this moment seeing several users of Softimage becoming ex-clients of Autodesk at a faster pace, even faster than I think Autodesk expected.  I seriously would reconsider the no Softimage policy after April 2016.

Two years of uncertainty of what will be Autodesk decision...  It is a long time.  By then, I don't think that you will be able to get back what you are loosing now.

But anyway, this is thing how they are now.  And that is the decision of Autodesk on Softimage for now.

To bad to end in an "Only time will tell..."  statement.

Thank you again.

[Perry Harovas]

Hi Chris,

My appreciation of the effort you took to write all that, and the thought that must have went into it is considerable.

I truly and honestly appreciate that you did that, and I look forward (more than before) to your second part where you explain

why Autodesk can't just keep Softimage around (and perhaps why doing that is diffeent than doing that with Toxik and MatchMover).

Does this solve everything? Does this make me a renewed Autodesk customer? No, but your email really helped a lot with regards to understanding the

lay of the land as it has been leading up to now.

One other thing that would be helpful is:

Why Softimage was not marketed. Yes, you can blame (or partially hold as culpable) Microsoft and Avid as to the small sales numbers for Softimage, but after Autodesk

acquired it, in many ways the marketing was FURTHER reduced. This, I believe, leads mostly towards the mindset people have that either Autodesk was trying to kill it, or Autodesk didn't care if it died, or Autodesk only bought it for the technology and if it sold that was icing, but that it wasn't a goal. Those things directly come from a couple things: Lack of Softimage appearing on the home page, lack of advertising, lack of features while under Autodesk.

I would be interested in knowing how you respond to that.

Again, much appreciated, Chris.

Perry

[David Saber]

Another thing that strikes me with this heartbreaking story is that I
only learn it now! For years I thought Softimage was on top shape and
gaining grounds, when in fact it was slowly agonizing since the year
2000? It's a shock.

[Martin Chatterjee]

Hi Chris,

Couldn't have phrased it better than Angus. 

+1

Cheers, Martin

--
       Martin Chatterjee
 
[ Freelance Technical Director ]
[   http://www.chatterjee.de   ]

[ https://vimeo.com/chatterjee ] 

[Chris Vienneau]

Ok part II. Toxik and Matchmover were not part of the DCC nuclear arms race so they developed in relative vacuums and because they ran on multiple platforms a lot of code was written just to do basic things as there were very few libraries available. The only real big expense there was codecs and in the free versions we have had to turn off some codecs. To keep up, Softimage got features by integrating third party technology and those agreements are only for commercial versions of the software. Given they were not the market leader they often paid more for technology.

For Softimage, here are the big things that are third party libraries that are part of the commercial offering:


* Mental ray

* Syflex

* Shave and a hair cut

* Physx

* Lagoa

This is just touching the surface as there are libraries we license for all sorts of things like codecs, importers, linux emulation, etc... . If we wanted to do what we did with Toxik you would have to remove all those features above, no ability to render any video longer than 5 seconds, and no linux. This is a massive code base requiring at least 4-5 developers plus support just to keep it running and maintaining and to give you an idea the lines of code in Soft are about 10 times that of Toxik and 20 times that of Matchmover. Open source is not an option given how much code that is in Maya and 3dsmax is in Softimage. We could not release enough of it to be worth putting a team around.

Someone here referred to the linked in numbers of 3dsmax, Maya, and Softimage and it comes down to 25000 for max, 25000 for maya and 1000 for Softimage. Since linked in does not usually capture Asia and Africa this is more of a north American/European view but it gives you a sense of the overall relative sizes that Carl referred to. Just to give you another idea of scale there are over 1 m trial downloads of 3dsmax and Maya per year and hundreds of thousands of students who get to download and use every piece of software we make for free. We track student usage very heavily and they are split with max and maya with soft less than 5%. That is with no marketing and no prompting. Now there are exceptions but the amount of young people that have used a pirated copy of max or maya is huge and that was due to Autodesk investing heavily in early education as far as twenty years ago.

So two years of paying support to all these companies and maintaining a team big enough to deal with all the bugs, escalations, and fixes is a big commitment dollar wise and a far better send off than what XSI's brother DS got last year. We respect what XSI brought to this industry and we are working with all of our customers who want to work with us to help with the transition. Many of the larger customers had already begun this transition a couple of years ago and they might take a few more as multi-year projects work their way through the system. Schools have a much more tough transition and the main group who has the biggest group to make is the group of freelancers who either ran their own businesses or supported the larger business with contract work.

The big customers are happy we changed the policy for keeping soft licenses alive as that covers older projects but they are full blast into planning their next moves whether that be with Autodesk or The Foundry or Side FX or all of it mashed together. I am glad we have had some constructive threads on what we can do to make Maya better for everyone (Not just softimage users) and we have to show progress fast. We have enough bandwidth to handle unique cases and a lot of private threads are going on to deal with them so Maurice and I are the conduits.

I am not a suit. I was in the DCC wars where we fought to have 3dsmax and then Maya switch back and forth vs Softimage and I always respected their spirit given the odds against them and the bum hand they were dealt by being part of Avid. I will not stop working to help out those that want our help.

Cv/

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Emilio Hernandez

[Jean-Louis Billard]

Hi Chris,

And thanks for having taken the time to write such a long explanation.

I too have been around Softimage for twenty years (as a user, but also as an instructor) and have followed it along its bumpy road, so nothing that you recount surprises me.

However, what *does* intrigue me is the fact that recently, in the last couple of years, and despite the lack of marketing push and development by Autodesk, I truly believe that Softimage was finally beginning to gain ground. Many, many high profile commercials had been made with it, as well as playing a big role in a few features (Lego being the obvious and most pertinent example).
This was in large part due to ICE, of course, but nevertheless it seemed that Softimage was being talked about more than ever before, and infact it seemed to be gaining ground in a few educational facilities too.

Of course I’m not privy to information about number of users or seats sold, but I can’t help wondering if the figures haven’t been skewed by the introduction of bundles that effectively show up as Maya or 3DSMax licenses, despite the fact that Softimage was the software being used.

Care to comment?


Thanks,
Jean-Louis



Jean-Louis Billard

Digital Golem
BE: +32 (0) 484 263 563
UK: +44 (0) 7973 660 119
jean-...@digitalgolem.com
http://www.digitalgolem.com/
53 Rue Gustave Huberti
1030 Brussels

On 25 Mar 2014, at 14:34, Chris Vienneau <chris.v...@autodesk.com> wrote:

> HI Emilio,
>
>
>

> I think that now you have heard from Carl I think I will weigh in here and what I am writing comes from having been in and around softimage for twenty years as I grew up in Montreal and came onto the tech scene around 1993 when Softimage was on fire and right before it got bought by Autodesk. There is no doubt that Softimage starting in 1986 had the early lead in animation software and when I started at Discreet Logic even had a claim on Flame code with Eddie. Microsoft was a crazy rising star at that point and bought them up as all entertainment tools were sold <snipped>

[Maurice Patel]

Hi Perry,

Softimage was marketed. It was marketed in ways that have, in most cases, actually proved successful for other Autodesk products but there are many factors at stake here. Hindsight is 20-20 but we used a model that actually worked extremely well for the Alias integration. We had one rapidly growing product (3ds max) added Maya and because of Autodesk's sales and distribution channel we were able to scale the Maya business dramatically without cannibalizing 3ds Max. Was it unreasonable not to expect the same results with Softimage? At the time of the acquisition all three product lines were growing fast and so it was assumed so - not that we did not know that it would not have its own set of problems - but we felt we could tackle them. When that did not work out we changed strategies to focus on Suites.

Marketing is a mix of things: product, price, promotion, place. As mentioned above 'place' is critical. It is the means of distributing your product - it requires all kinds of investment to do probably including a lot of systems integration. We invested in making it available in every EDU bundle, through student downloads, Suites etc to get it into the hands of as many people as possible. Another is price. We kept the lower price and that initially was to see if this would broaden adoption - it did not. The third is product and the product is a great product.

For promotion, we invested in integrating it into Autodesk systems and we actually invested more than other Autodesk products typically get given the revenue tier Softimage was in. What we did not do was maintain a separate web site for the product (we don't do that for any of our products). People often ask us why there were no campaigns to try and get Maya or 3ds Max users to switch to Softimage but the answer to that should be self-evident - and it was certainly never going to be a serious option for us. The main purpose of marketing campaigns is to generate revenue and so they tend to focus on the where there is a revenue opportunity such as getting Maya or 3ds max users current (upgrades). Once we introduced Suites, the best revenue opportunity for Softimage was to get customers to upgrade to Suites and that was the focus.

>From a business (and therefore marketing) perspective the question was always: could Softimage bring in net new business and how? Not how could it replace Maya or 3ds Max revenue. Given that it was actually cheaper, replacing 3ds Max or Maya would actually have meant a revenue decline not just a swap. Ultimately the hope was always that ICE would offer enough value to 3ds Max and Maya users drive Suite adoption. That was very much the product strategy and where the development team focused and so that is what we marketed. And yes I know that Softimage is more than just ICE and that it is a very capable all round animation solution - as did Marc Petit and the other execs in charge - but the strategy was to build, market and sell a suite of interoperable products (which we spent a lot of money doing). As a percentage of revenue Softimage got more investment than other products. In total dollar amounts a lot less (because it was a higher percentage of a much, much smaller base) . So whether we invested or not is relative to what point of view you take.

Maurice Patel
Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Perry Harovas
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 10:39 AM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com

Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

Hi Chris,

My appreciation of the effort you took to write all that, and the thought that must have went into it is considerable.
I truly and honestly appreciate that you did that, and I look forward (more than before) to your second part where you explain
why Autodesk can't just keep Softimage around (and perhaps why doing that is diffeent than doing that with Toxik and MatchMover).

Does this solve everything? Does this make me a renewed Autodesk customer? No, but your email really helped a lot with regards to understanding the
lay of the land as it has been leading up to now.

One other thing that would be helpful is:

Why Softimage was not marketed. Yes, you can blame (or partially hold as culpable) Microsoft and Avid as to the small sales numbers for Softimage, but after Autodesk
acquired it, in many ways the marketing was FURTHER reduced. This, I believe, leads mostly towards the mindset people have that either Autodesk was trying to kill it, or Autodesk didn't care if it died, or Autodesk only bought it for the technology and if it sold that was icing, but that it wasn't a goal. Those things directly come from a couple things: Lack of Softimage appearing on the home page, lack of advertising, lack of features while under Autodesk.
I would be interested in knowing how you respond to that.

Again, much appreciated, Chris.

Perry

On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 10:28 AM, Emilio Hernandez <emi...@e-roja.com<mailto:emi...@e-roja.com>> wrote:
Thank you for taking the time to response Chris.
This is all clear to me as I bought a couple of Digital Studio stations at version 2.0 while it was still Microsoft. If it wasn't because they were dependable on the Intergraph video board that eventually got fried after 15 years, and they lacked of HD support, I will still be using them. Those turnkey systems were the ones that kept me out of the Inferno, Smoke, etc. solutions more expensive by far than the DS solution.

I agree that Avid did not a lousy but a terrible job with the Softimage asset as they were running like headless chickens towards anywhere but where the useres needed, and that is when Final Cut got in.
I understand where Autodesk is going, nothing I can do about it, even though I tried far beyond this list in ways that this is not the arena to talk about it.
Still in your response I can't read the answer of:
Why Autodesk is not willing to continue ship Softimage 2015, unsupported with an open SDK along Maya/MAX 2020?
Maurice said because the inherent costs. You answered because of Autodesk wants to focuse in developing Bifrost or whatever new technology Autodesk is bringing.
What is that inherent cost?
Thinking of some...
1. Packaging Softimage into the Maya/MAX download, self extract for each new year release.
2. Server space for holding a larger file.
3. Keep the SI online help file
In which way Softimage will drive your development resources away from focusing into the new tools if there is no one that moves a single line of code?
I not doing so, you started to loose clients already...
So what is costing more?
At this moment seeing several users of Softimage becoming ex-clients of Autodesk at a faster pace, even faster than I think Autodesk expected. I seriously would reconsider the no Softimage policy after April 2016.
Two years of uncertainty of what will be Autodesk decision... It is a long time. By then, I don't think that you will be able to get back what you are loosing now.
But anyway, this is thing how they are now. And that is the decision of Autodesk on Softimage for now.
To bad to end in an "Only time will tell..." statement.
Thank you again.





--




Perry Harovas
Animation and Visual Effects

http://www.TheAfterImage.com<http://www.theafterimage.com/>

[Jason S]

Right we just -have- to kill it.. (however you may feel about it)

With all due respect, the only reason we have the privilege of having your and others' responses here (in respects to SI),
is to fulfill your (PR) mandate to provide a mere -illusion- of dialog and consideration (of whatever proposition).
and to defend by whatever argument (anything is good), already pre-decided decisions.

As if you yourselves had any actual say about it.
(otherwise it would mean that you yourselves would be pretty inconsiderate, and I don't believe that.)

[Stephan Haitz]

This is also my impression about it. Think of all the amazing third
party developments starting from Softimage: i. e. Arnold, Redshift, and
many Plugin developers brought out a Softimage version though there was
this small userBase.

I had the feeling that there are more and more people interested in
Softimage. (Perhaps others had this feeling too and this is the reason
for assuming a conspiration ? ). But apparently it was wishful thinking...

But I´m also interested in the comment to this...

Stephan Haitz

[Jason S]

YES! Softimage was "taken care of" alright!

[Srecko Micic]

Unfortunately, XSI was bought by AD and that was worst thing that could happen to it, we all witnessed it. I am 100% sure that Foundry or Dassult bought them, today we would have totally opposite situation.

On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Jason S <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

YES! Softimage was "taken care of" alright!

On 03/25/14 13:07, Maurice Patel wrote:

Hi Perry,

Softimage was marketed. It was marketed in ways that have, in most cases, actually proved successful for other Autodesk products but there are many factors at stake here. Hindsight is 20-20 but we used a model that actually worked extremely well for the Alias integration. We had one rapidly growing product (3ds max) added Maya and because of Autodesk's sales and distribution channel we were able to scale the Maya business dramatically without cannibalizing 3ds Max. Was it unreasonable not to expect the same results with Softimage? At the time of the acquisition all three product lines were growing fast and so it was assumed so - not that we did not know that it would not have its own set of problems - but we felt we could tackle them. When that did not work out we changed strategies to focus on Suites.

Marketing is a mix of things: product, price, promotion, place. As mentioned above 'place' is critical. It is the means of distributing your product - it requires all kinds of investment to do probably including a lot of systems integration. We invested in making it available in every EDU bundle, through student downloads, Suites etc to get it into the hands of as many people as possible. Another is price. We kept the lower price and that initially was to see if this would broaden adoption - it did not. The third is product and the product is a great product.

For promotion, we invested in integrating it into Autodesk systems and we actually invested more than other Autodesk products typically get given the revenue tier Softimage was in. What we did not do was maintain a separate web site for the product (we don't do that for any of our products). People often ask us why there were no campaigns to try and get Maya or 3ds Max users to switch to Softimage but the answer to that should be self-evident - and it was certainly never going to be a serious option for us. The main purpose of marketing campaigns is to generate revenue and so they tend to  focus on the where there is a revenue opportunity such as getting Maya or 3ds max users current (upgrades). Once we introduced Suites, the best revenue opportunity for Softimage was to get customers to upgrade to Suites and that was the focus.

> From a business (and therefore marketing) perspective the question was always: could Softimage bring in net new business and how? Not how could it replace Maya or 3ds Max revenue. Given that it was actually cheaper, replacing 3ds Max or Maya would actually have meant a revenue decline not just a swap. Ultimately the hope was always that ICE would offer enough value to 3ds Max and Maya users drive Suite adoption. That was very much the product strategy and where the development team focused and so that is what we marketed. And yes I know that Softimage is more than just ICE and that it is a very capable all round animation solution - as did Marc Petit and the other execs in charge - but the strategy was to build, market and sell a suite of interoperable products (which we spent a lot of money doing). As a percentage of revenue Softimage got more investment than other products. In total dollar amounts a lot less (because it was a higher percentage of a much, much smaller base) . So whether we invested or not is relative to what point of view you take.

Maurice Patel
Autodesk : Tél:  514 954-7134

--
Micic Srecko
-------------------
Mail:
srecko...@gmail.com
Skype:srecko.micic
-------------------
3D/Graphic Portfolio:
http://www.coroflot.com/SreckoM

[Eric Thivierge]

No, the worst thing would be if Avid simply canned it and didn't sell
it.

Eric T.

[Maurice Patel]

Hi Jean-Louis,

That is not really the case. Our data shows that in the past two years there was a significant decline in both new seat sales and subscription renewal (note: this does not reflect declining usage as much as that usage was not growing and that users were choosing not to renew Subscription for reasons already discussed elsewhere). However more telling was what was happening with Suites. There has been a consistent but extremely low usage of Softimage in the Suites (less than 6% in 3ds Max ECS Premium, less than 2% in Maya ECS premium. Skeptics will say yes but that is to be expected why would anyone use two animation products.

Things get very interesting (and telling) when you look at the ECS Ultimate though - and remember we are talking about usage of a single user license. Usage of 3ds Max is 53% and Maya is 39% Softimage is less than 3%. So given a choice users do use two 3D animation applications, they just do not seem to want to use Softimage as much as they do either Maya or 3ds Max. Now before my words get thrown back in my face this is just ONE data point and we use many to make decisions - and like any data there are always caveats to take into consideration with any given data point.

As to why you feel things were gaining ground. There is a good reason for that. There have always been great projects done by Softimage users - some recently were maybe more high profile than usual. More importantly, over the past year there has been an incredible increase in activity from Softimage users themselves, promoting their work, as the community rallied together. What you were seeing was more a result of that than an increase in the usage of Softimage. And I am not going to argue that this community was way more creative in doing this than Autodesk was, is or could be.

maurice

Maurice Patel
Autodesk : Tél:  514 954-7134

-----Original Message-----
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Jean-Louis Billard
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 12:37 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

[Jason S]

On 03/25/14 13:41, Maurice Patel wrote:

..Softimage is less than 3%..


Post-aquisition

[Jean-Louis Billard]

Hi Maurice,

Thanks for the insight, it’s interesting to see the figures.
But given what you say in your last paragraph, don’t you think it would have been worth trying to keep things going at least another year to see where this momentum was going?

Regards,

Jean-Louis


Jean-Louis Billard

Digital Golem
BE: +32 (0) 484 263 563
UK: +44 (0) 7973 660 119
jean-...@digitalgolem.com
http://www.digitalgolem.com/
53 Rue Gustave Huberti
1030 Brussels

[Maurice Patel]

Anything constructive to add? That could be implied and pre-acquisition is not relevant to the question which was about an apparent recent gain in traction

maurice

Maurice Patel
Autodesk : Tél:  514 954-7134


-----Original Message-----
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Jason S
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 1:44 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

[Andres Stephens]

I do not think nor agree with: “XSI is a known entity and if people wanted to switch to it they would have already.”

No-one other than a few select (and those who do know it love it) here in this country know it (in South America). Only those tired of the traditional DCC apps search for alternatives, find it, and would stick to it if they could. Not many realize it’s an option, including students and Autodesk clients. Resellers do not give it as a viable option even if it was included in the suites. Education of it was not promoted as much as was Maya or Max, here in this country, and yes.. maybe because it didn’t need as much education to learn how to do FX and animation with SI as counterpart packages - thus less students learning about it? Students don’t need to learn as much on how to use this package, thus there is less educational demand for it!

I agree that lately it has gained more traction, mainly for movies like 300, Lego Movie, etc and a number of amazing commercials and effects. And it IS much more or as powerful than nearly everything out there.

I tell people “I work in SI”, and no one has a clue it existed here (South America) - and if they did, they loved it and wished their studios or universities used it.

But it’s not the software that matters, it’s business planning and execution.


Was it really just “let’s see if it lives within our ecosystem and offers” mentality with your current business model?

Was there no “Let’s make a business from this asset, and come out on top as a whole benefitting from an already coded asset (instead of coding and investing in a completely new one = more expensive - not to mention “not ready yet” liability)? 

“Let’s create a better ecosystem that will empower other packages - with as little investment possible.”  = SI and it’s concepts that Bifrost and your Maya improvements are trying to work off..

Are you taking a riskier road to show “innovation” and you only caring about your majority? (what about the minority in your ecosystem?) Do the XSI user base have to become like some ethnic minority being forgotten and wiped out?

Where is the true business mind in this?

People still want to buy Softimage, as that is what is happening and being shown, and you refuse a sale.. because.. you refuse a sale? People want to keep on buying it in the future…. and you refuse a sale again? People want to buy it and they don’t even want you to keep on developing it!? No investment sale!? You refuse more investment from a satisfied customer, money into your system, a small 1/20th investment into your other products? Is not 1/20th better than none at all?



Why are you refusing a sale to studios who want to invest years into a product you already have, coded and no-longer need to develop much?

Why are you refusing a sale: “Do you have Coke?” “No, it’s in storage and we don’t sell it anymore, only Pepsi, but it comes free with the desire to buy coke!” (yes, sounds generous) “Really?! that’s odd. Ah, no thanks *walks out of the store*”. It’s that simple.

And also, this 1/20th income from the M&E sector could be a no-loss asset and profit for a few years, you wouldn’t need to invest development into that asset, only serverside-executable downloads and website maintenance (which is not expensive). This asset would earn cash just existing freeing you to have that much more kick into your next big solution that will remedy the rest (a 5% and growing low investment asset for the rest of your business).

When the bugs for Bifrost come out, the new features being ironed out through trial and error, what will you be able to fall on? Who will be able to learn how a creative nodal system implemented into 3D work before it is even released? How can people learn how they work and their potential within the graphic scene unless it has a track-record? Why are you starting out UNDER your competition with a product still years behind them? Why not start AHEAD, years ahead of them!?

Why can’t SI and ICE be sold to compliment Bifrost as the “Successor to ICE, check out these beautiful results and testimonies done in ICE. Bifrost is ICE/SI squared!”

People will buy into SI (which you’d be maintaining for very little cost after April 2016, low cost asset, high turnover) and train in it preparing for the nodal system Bifrost would offer by then. You would earn more money from a division in your business that doesn’t need much uptake after two years! Schools would benifit, students will be ready for nodal systems, and your other platforms will be ready. But more, when the two years are up and you have that nodal system in place, you have something studios can fall on, a tried and true system - instead of the new and upcoming and buggy and untried system which will take years to mature.

Maya right now has a liability of underdeveloped software and functionality. Max also, Bifrost is a liability till proven trustworthy and becomes something mature.

For the sake of the industry, you probably should try avoid what Avid did (shooting themselves in the foot), and take a more secure route, yes, a one where you have to “thin out your business” and “clarify your goals” but in a less risky way! Use the assets you have already. Invest the little it takes to make SI known online and to Resellers as the “selling point for the potential of Bifrost in Maya/Max/Games” and  “SI is the educational platform for Bifrost and it’s future” and for your “promises for Bifrost and it’s future will look similar to Softimage and these beautiful videos and functions it can do with ease”; “these products made in SI were done with a system coming to Maya soon, and squared!” 

You have a marketing tools already coded, an asset already made, you don’t need to invest a whole team into making it the next few years after April 2015, without much investment and possibly liability for similar functions you’d have to invest 2, 3, 5 years into your other software packages - you have an asset to take advantage of to potentially earn you much more than just 5% of you M&E division while you keep investing in liabilities like Bifrost and Maya till it becomes an asset and covers it’s costs.

This could potentially save your future blunders - and already offer those who are not happy with your current products or pipelines an alternative, instead of telling them “Go use Houdini or Modo or Blender or C4D, we have no other options for you after April 2016, or better yet, if you're new, we have NO options other than the ones you might not want, go to the competition.”

Students have to study A LOT to get into Maya, or Max, but very little for SI to get similar results. Students crave better ways, but pirate and loose cash learning something that takes so long to learn to do something so simple and easy to do that SI and ICE could offer right out of the box. They can’t afford plugins, they can’t afford an expensive and work-heavy pipeline. Small studios also!

You could keep and earn a bigger fanbase, grow the industry with more options (healthy competition) and still stay up on top. I feel as a business, you guys are somehow being “less innovative” in the terms of marketing and sales - security and investment and future proof options.

Why are you taking away the mattress out from underneath you before you take the jump?

Where is the business, money earning, secure investment, future proof business planning in this?




Why are you denying seats for an already coded product that you wouldn’t have to maintain so much after April 2016? Why are you limiting the industries “options” on the basis of delivering promises or “acquired and integrated” functionality? Why are you putting all your eggs in one basket with products that aren’t even fully developed yet?

Why are you not working on USING your assets even for 5% of your revenue (which compliment everything else you really want to focus on?)

SI does not take away from you, it adds to you. A seat in SI is a seat for Autodesk. Any graphic produced in ICE or SI is a compliment to the future of Bifrost and Autodesk. And now you are snuffing out even the very IDEA that Bifrost COULD work in production as a nodal system.

As a business model and plan, this is absurd.


Absurd.



I don’t see Softimage as a sad story, I see the businesses that manage these millions of lines of code as a sad story, and as it is, I also see Autodesk as a sad story if they are not careful and use their assets instead of putting them into a box to collect dust!!!!

If you want innovation, use what you have to make your business work. Don’t invest millions in underdeveloped (yes, future proof) products without something to rest on! the 5% revenue SI gives you and the selling points it has to help your upcoming products and it’s continued use, to help you refine where Bifrost will go, out of 20 years experience in cinema, commercials and the like, is much more valuable than 50% or 95% invome. You wan’t to grow your assets to 200% or 1000% right?…. instead of stepping out on a limb into an unknown production ideology with Nodal like creative systems without trusting an experienced product, it’s absurd. Risky. And certainly not mature enough to do it in the next 2 years with the current platform you have.

You have no “Plan B”!

And the majority of SI users have already turned to “Plan B” and the first options you provide and only want to provide are simply not there, not in two years, not in 5, not in 10, because it hasn’t had the 10 years backing and experience in that particular field. Even studios like Animal Logic turned to “Plan B” because animating in Maya probably didn’t make the cut without ICE.

Your 5% is growing without development, your 5% is slowly becoming more and it doesn’t require a whole new product to cover the needs you are trying to satiate with the huge invesments into Bifrost and Maya. Your 5% is not getting worse, it’s your lack of management of the assets you have, and investment into riskier “innovative” approaches to reinvent the wheel for the majority who are looking and demanding for more.

This is my thoughts to the history of SI, it’s not the software that killed itself, nor it’s fanbase. It’s how the business works with it’s assets.

And a business that discards and disposes of an asset is like a person walking out of his house because he dreams of a better one - only to find himself on the street with only wishful thinking.

Yes you have other houses, and you’re building another house.. but come on, you had a perfectly wonderful house, state of the art for many more than 20 years, and you are just going to leave it to rot?

What if your new house takes too much cash before it comes to find that it has leaks, holes, and lets the tenants down because of it’s empty promises?

What if those in the Maya and Max house want another house to live in, one with more room to move in already? (without plugins, without an external nodal system Bifrost offers - without “renovations”)

Why are you snuffing away a safety net, and snuffing a 5% asset? Why work with less? Be greedy and USE YOUR ASSETS! And also be complacent and safe, invest little into a product that has much already going for you. Do that so you can have a safe bet when you invest millions into developing products that are just trying to catch up to the concepts SI has tried and true for years and years and years to come.

Thanks,

-Draise

[Jean-Louis Billard]

Hi Andres,

Unfortunately Chris already explained that, and it makes sense: AD have to pay for third parties libraries. It’s not worth it for them given the small revenue stream.

I think we’re collectively tripping if we think we are going to get AD to revoke their decision.

What we need to do now (for those, like me, who want to stay with Soft) is to make sure we keep using it to create great work, generate enough demand for third parties to invest time in developing for it, and just keep having fun using a great piece of software for the years to come until a credible solution comes along and gives us the opportunity to move on in a graceful way.

Regards,

Jean-Louis

Jean-Louis Billard

Digital Golem

BE: +32 (0) 484 263 563

UK: +44 (0) 7973 660 119

jean-...@digitalgolem.com

http://www.digitalgolem.com/

53 Rue Gustave Huberti

1030 Brussels

[olivier jeannel]

Agree 100%

[Andres Stephens]

Valid enough.

Unfortunate either way..

From what I understood though, it is too expensive to “opensource” or maintain thirdparty applications within SI. How much would it really cost to maintain them? Would the low sales really come out as a deficit in the long term?

I don’t suggest leaving SI as opensource nor free - just keep selling it longer. Sell seats.

But yes, I agree with you Jean-Louis… Valid enough.

[Jason S]

Sorry I think it's the all the defending of the quite frankly hardly defensible actions/inactions (which have not been of your making) leading to this outcome, putting me in sort-of a "non-accept mode".

Nothing personal.

Cheers,
J

[Francisco Criado]

Hi Maurice, already asked this, but maybe was lost with all the mails on the group.

I would like to adquire Softimage licences on April, for a studio that doesn´t have any older Softimage license. Is there any chance to get them? tried to talk to Autodesk Argentina, but their answer was that they don´t sell this prodcuct (had to explain them what was softimage, ouch)

Thanks in advance,

F.

[Toonafish]

yeah, pearls before swine I tell you....pearls before swine...

AD seems to simply follow the road to the easyest buck with no consideration for much else. There's nothing wrong with making a buck. But a badly managed business that goes for the biggest profit possible by blindy following the route of taking as much as they can and giving back as little as possible in return, can easily end up something resembling a parasite.

And when I look at what AD has been giving us, in return for our hard earned subsciption money over the years. And what they have done with Softimage now, they are really striving for that. They suck up and burn 3rd party innovation and customer cash without giving much in return.

-Ronald


On 3/25/2014 12:17, Emilio Hernandez wrote:

I am sorry to raise the fuel again on this one, and it has nothing to do with you Maurice nor Chris.

I have not read any answer from Autodesk that really is convincing of why Autodesk is not being able to still ship Softimage with Maya/Max after April 2016, or do the same thing as they are going to do with Toxic and Matchmover.

All is mumble jumble about "wanting to focuse" into products that are more popular, that does not mean they are better.

My personal conclution is that Softimage was getting more attention lately, and the Maya "innovation and creativity" project was starting to fall appart.  So the only viable solution for this was to put a bullet in the head and another one into the heart of Softimage. So people will turn away their sight from the death corpse after some  PR.

 

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

2014-03-25 4:43 GMT-06:00 Saeed Kalhor <ndma...@gmail.com>:

He is a DICTATOR!!!

On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 6:41 AM, Perry Harovas <perryh...@gmail.com> wrote:

 If you really want to be scared, listen to this audio interview with Carl Bass. 

The link cuts right to the appropriate moment, but you should listen to the entire thing if you have the chance. 

Essentially, he is saying that when you have competing products, it isn't a good idea to exert control, piss off customers 

and try to force them to use another one of your products, when they already use one of yours. 

He says killing a product will just lead to about half of them saying, essentially, screw you. 

Wow, he should take his own advice from 13 months ago... 

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9-yZ5JVOBA#t=1054

And he was only talking about a PLUGIN... He was talking about T-Splines, and how customers would revolt and probably use the competitors

products if Autodesk forced them use only use it with their own software, instead of working in the apps of the competition.

The interview is also scary for how much (especially if you listen to the entire interview) he wants all Autodesk apps on the cloud.

ALL OF THEM.

Uh, no thank you. A choice, sure, but to have software only available on the cloud would really annoy me, if I was still using Autodesk products...

On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 9:10 PM, Emilio Hernandez <emi...@e-roja.com> wrote:

Well it is not that we are "investing" in Softimage.

Let's put it on another perspective.

We want Maya or MAX to continue having the Softimage plugin as it is.

Autodesk will have its money and we will have our Maya/MAX with the Softimage plugin.

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

2014-03-24 17:21 GMT-06:00 Maurice Patel <mauric...@autodesk.com>:

If you buy a license now you will have a certain flexibility later to add new licenses. But ultimately, yes, the program was built for existing customers to be able (if they want) to transition their licenses to 3ds Max and Maya and not really for new customers to be able to invest in Softimage.
maurice

> On Mar 24, 2014, at 4:36 PM, Martin <furi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Maurice
>
> I don't think anyone who is going to start a CG career will do it based on SI even if you don't stop selling it for a few months or years! It isn't logic to do it. Only those who are already Softimage users and have Softimage based projects running will need new licenses to use a few years more.
>
> There are still too many projects based on Softimage in the industry and we need to be able to buy Softimage licenses for at least a year or two to be able to pick those jobs and finish them!
>
> I was planning to buy one license soon, go freelance and probably buy a few more later before the announcement. So should I just give up and don't take those jobs ? just because you decided that that was the best solution for us? You should have give us time to plan what to do with our business.
>
> Isn't it bad enough that you discontinue, without warning, the best tool we have to make a living ?
>
> Martin
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On 2014/03/25, at 4:27, Maurice Patel <mauric...@autodesk.com> wrote:
>>
>> The bundle is a transition bundle therefore it is only for those who
>> already have Softimage to get access to Maya or 3s Max for free
>> Existing customers can also purchase new seats to increase capacity if they need to Softimage is discontinued from sale because we would prefer for anyone starting a career or a business not to do so on a product we are no longer developing. However if you really want it there is an option: Softimage will be in the Ultimate Suite for 2 more years, If you are a student with an accredited institution you should qualify for special discount rate too.
>> BTW - everything has a cost and implementing and maintaining
>> offerings in our systems is not trivial Maurice

>>
>>
>> Maurice Patel
>> Autodesk : Tél:  514 954-7134
>>

>> From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com
>> [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Emilio
>> Hernandez
>> Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 2:59 PM
>> To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
>> Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass
>>

>> What I still don't understand is why Autodesk cannot still deliver Softimage last version to Max or Maya suite, bundle or whatever name it has.
>> I know they've saying a lot of reasons, but really none of them makes anysense to me.
>>
>> After all we will be buying Maya, MAX seats to get Softimage.  It still means revenue from them for a software they are going to stop devoloping, addressing bugs or fixes.
>> Ok. Don't sell Softimage seats perse, but package Softimage like Toxic.  Let the user decide what tool he wants to work with.  Just keep the Send to Softimage button regardless of the Maya version.
>> This is no additional cost to Autodesk.
>>
>> Is this too much to ask?
>>
>>
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------
>> Emilio Hernández   VFX & 3D animation.
>>
>> 2014-03-24 12:23 GMT-06:00 Nuno Conceicao <nunoalex...@gmail.com<mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com>>:
>> So for what I understood you can buy your first license only till the 28th then after this you are able to purchase more.
>> If you have no licenses after this date you wont be able to purchase
>> Softimage anymore... :( So I would suggest you get in touch with a
>> retailer asap, he will be able to confirm this info obviously
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Nuno Conceicao <nunoalex...@gmail.com<mailto:nunoalex...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> I think you have until the 28th March to be able to purchase
>> Softimage for the first time (not a current client)
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 4:52 PM, Martin <furi...@gmail.com<mailto:furi...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> Hi Maurice,
>> Where can I have more info about this ? I was contemplating the possibility to buy a few licenses in the near future before the EOL announcement because I will most probably have some SI projects on my own and I don't have a commercial license right now (I work with my current employer license) and may need extra hands later, so If I buy the current version would I be able to purchase a few more seats later? Or am I too late for this?
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Martin
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>>> On 2014/03/25, at 1:07, Maurice Patel
>>> <mauric...@autodesk.com<mailto:mauric...@autodesk.com>>
>>> wrote
>>>
>>> Softimage will be available too but under slightly different conditions: prior version usage.
>>
>>
>>
>> <winmail.dat>
>

--

Perry Harovas
Animation and Visual Effects

http://www.TheAfterImage.com

[phil harbath]

I don’t doubt that people were letting their subscriptions lapse, I let a couple of ours lapse to make a statement (look where that got me), the last couple of releases were horribly subpar compared with pre-acquisition.   I hate that argument, it is just baloney.  I agree with others, with autodesk, Softimage dies,  it is just plain redundant and an underachiever compared with the big two, and embarrassment to them,  most anywhere else it probably survives (I did not say thrive, I understand that Softimage is a niche product). 

 

[Maurice Patel]

Hi Phil,
Yes, I referred to that in my reply. The question I was answering was whether there had been a gain in traction recently. My answer was “no.” I described what we were seeing and I explained that the reason that’s subs were declining was for reasons already discussed on the list, such as the reason you state below. So it is not ‘baloney.’ The reasons you state and that I allude to are valid.
Maurice

Maurice Patel
Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of phil harbath
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 2:44 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

[Perry Harovas]

Hi Maurice,

I appreciate the detailed answer. It does help to know the details, and of course, you certainly know your own business better than we do.

One thing that just seems odd, why did I never see ads for Softimage? I understand that percentage wise, it was getting more ad dollars than

Max or Maya (which in and of itself is weird, because they seemingly don't need advertising as much as Softimage did, but anyway).

I would expect that I am more likely to notice a Softimage ad than a Maya user, because it already is something that I like and accept.

Maybe that assumption is incorrect, but it seems to make some sense. 

I don't recall ever seeing an ad for Softimage. 

Ever.

I don't doubt they existed, just that I never saw one. I have an almost insatiable thirst for CG news/content. It has been that way for 25 years now.

Every day (multiple times per day) I scour the internet for information on 3D, Softimage, new CG innovations, software, articles, reviews.

I read all the magazines I have time for, and even if I don't have time to read them, I flip through all the major ones, putting aside what I want to read later.

With all of that, I would have thought I would have seen SOME advertising about Softimage. But I didn't!

The only things I ever saw were articles about Lagoa (not ads, but articles), or articles about the acquisition.

Why was that (I am honestly asking, I am not being snarky)? 

Also (and this has been asked so many times I feel that the answer to it is being withheld because it includes the location of Jimmy Hoffa's corpse), WHY WASN'T SOFTIMAGE PROMOTED ON YOUR HOMEPAGE?

Seems like free advertising might be the best advertising when you are trying to bring up the sales numbers of a fledgling product, no?

Thank you (and Chris) for answering these questions.

We don't always like the answers you give, we may not always believe the answers you give, but that does not mean that I don't appreciate that you and Chris are

trying to answer them anyway.

Perry

[phil harbath]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RwxdzP8rG4

:)

-----Original Message-----
From: Maurice Patel
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 3:06 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com

[Maurice Patel]

Hey don't mess with my baloney
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_sausage
It helped build an empire :)

Maurice Patel
Autodesk : Tél:  514 954-7134

[Paul]

I think every softimage user would concede to the arguments given by autodesk if we had all witnessed them try their utmost in the marketing of softimage in the past 5 years. 

However, it's been obvious from the outset of their plan and I believe that the fact this has occurred 5 years post acquisition us no coincidence. It was on the cards all along. 

Making excuses about sales is a nonsense considering the effort to drive those sales. 

And if softimage was doing so badly why buy it?  Nothing adds up in autodesks favour. 

[Maurice Patel]

We wanted an engineering team? I don’t think that as a secret we said so at the time

Maurice Patel
Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Paul
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 3:22 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

I think every softimage user would concede to the arguments given by autodesk if we had all witnessed them try their utmost in the marketing of softimage in the past 5 years.
However, it's been obvious from the outset of their plan and I believe that the fact this has occurred 5 years post acquisition us no coincidence. It was on the cards all along.
Making excuses about sales is a nonsense considering the effort to drive those sales.
And if softimage was doing so badly why buy it? Nothing adds up in autodesks favour.

On 25 Mar 2014, at 19:13, Perry Harovas <perryh...@gmail.com<mailto:perryh...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Maurice,

I appreciate the detailed answer. It does help to know the details, and of course, you certainly know your own business better than we do.
One thing that just seems odd, why did I never see ads for Softimage? I understand that percentage wise, it was getting more ad dollars than
Max or Maya (which in and of itself is weird, because they seemingly don't need advertising as much as Softimage did, but anyway).
I would expect that I am more likely to notice a Softimage ad than a Maya user, because it already is something that I like and accept.
Maybe that assumption is incorrect, but it seems to make some sense.

I don't recall ever seeing an ad for Softimage.

Ever.

I don't doubt they existed, just that I never saw one. I have an almost insatiable thirst for CG news/content. It has been that way for 25 years now.
Every day (multiple times per day) I scour the internet for information on 3D, Softimage, new CG innovations, software, articles, reviews.
I read all the magazines I have time for, and even if I don't have time to read them, I flip through all the major ones, putting aside what I want to read later.

With all of that, I would have thought I would have seen SOME advertising about Softimage. But I didn't!
The only things I ever saw were articles about Lagoa (not ads, but articles), or articles about the acquisition.

Why was that (I am honestly asking, I am not being snarky)?

Also (and this has been asked so many times I feel that the answer to it is being withheld because it includes the location of Jimmy Hoffa's corpse), WHY WASN'T SOFTIMAGE PROMOTED ON YOUR HOMEPAGE?
Seems like free advertising might be the best advertising when you are trying to bring up the sales numbers of a fledgling product, no?

Thank you (and Chris) for answering these questions.
We don't always like the answers you give, we may not always believe the answers you give, but that does not mean that I don't appreciate that you and Chris are
trying to answer them anyway.


Perry

On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 1:07 PM, Maurice Patel <mauric...@autodesk.com<mailto:mauric...@autodesk.com>> wrote:
Hi Perry,

Softimage was marketed. It was marketed in ways that have, in most cases, actually proved successful for other Autodesk products but there are many factors at stake here. Hindsight is 20-20 but we used a model that actually worked extremely well for the Alias integration. We had one rapidly growing product (3ds max) added Maya and because of Autodesk's sales and distribution channel we were able to scale the Maya business dramatically without cannibalizing 3ds Max. Was it unreasonable not to expect the same results with Softimage? At the time of the acquisition all three product lines were growing fast and so it was assumed so - not that we did not know that it would not have its own set of problems - but we felt we could tackle them. When that did not work out we changed strategies to focus on Suites.

Marketing is a mix of things: product, price, promotion, place. As mentioned above 'place' is critical. It is the means of distributing your product - it requires all kinds of investment to do probably including a lot of systems integration. We invested in making it available in every EDU bundle, through student downloads, Suites etc to get it into the hands of as many people as possible. Another is price. We kept the lower price and that initially was to see if this would broaden adoption - it did not. The third is product and the product is a great product.

For promotion, we invested in integrating it into Autodesk systems and we actually invested more than other Autodesk products typically get given the revenue tier Softimage was in. What we did not do was maintain a separate web site for the product (we don't do that for any of our products). People often ask us why there were no campaigns to try and get Maya or 3ds Max users to switch to Softimage but the answer to that should be self-evident - and it was certainly never going to be a serious option for us. The main purpose of marketing campaigns is to generate revenue and so they tend to focus on the where there is a revenue opportunity such as getting Maya or 3ds max users current (upgrades). Once we introduced Suites, the best revenue opportunity for Softimage was to get customers to upgrade to Suites and that was the focus.

>From a business (and therefore marketing) perspective the question was always: could Softimage bring in net new business and how? Not how could it replace Maya or 3ds Max revenue. Given that it was actually cheaper, replacing 3ds Max or Maya would actually have meant a revenue decline not just a swap. Ultimately the hope was always that ICE would offer enough value to 3ds Max and Maya users drive Suite adoption. That was very much the product strategy and where the development team focused and so that is what we marketed. And yes I know that Softimage is more than just ICE and that it is a very capable all round animation solution - as did Marc Petit and the other execs in charge - but the strategy was to build, market and sell a suite of interoperable products (which we spent a lot of money doing). As a percentage of revenue Softimage got more investment than other products. In total dollar amounts a lot less (because it was a higher percentage of a much, much smaller base) . So whether we invested or not is relative to what point of view you take.

Maurice Patel

Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134<tel:514%20954-7134>
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com> [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com>] On Behalf Of Perry Harovas

Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 10:39 AM

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

Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

Hi Chris,

My appreciation of the effort you took to write all that, and the thought that must have went into it is considerable.
I truly and honestly appreciate that you did that, and I look forward (more than before) to your second part where you explain
why Autodesk can't just keep Softimage around (and perhaps why doing that is diffeent than doing that with Toxik and MatchMover).

Does this solve everything? Does this make me a renewed Autodesk customer? No, but your email really helped a lot with regards to understanding the
lay of the land as it has been leading up to now.

One other thing that would be helpful is:

Why Softimage was not marketed. Yes, you can blame (or partially hold as culpable) Microsoft and Avid as to the small sales numbers for Softimage, but after Autodesk
acquired it, in many ways the marketing was FURTHER reduced. This, I believe, leads mostly towards the mindset people have that either Autodesk was trying to kill it, or Autodesk didn't care if it died, or Autodesk only bought it for the technology and if it sold that was icing, but that it wasn't a goal. Those things directly come from a couple things: Lack of Softimage appearing on the home page, lack of advertising, lack of features while under Autodesk.
I would be interested in knowing how you respond to that.

Again, much appreciated, Chris.

Perry

[Paulo César Duarte]

I'm sure the Softimage user preferred to continue using the program without these tools, than having the software discontinued, for all these tools there is an option. Even without these tools Softimage still a great software.

2014-03-25 13:33 GMT-03:00 Chris Vienneau <chris.v...@autodesk.com>:

For Softimage, here are the big things that are third party libraries that are part of the commercial offering:


*         Mental ray

*         Syflex

*         Shave and a hair cut

*         Physx

*         Lagoa

--

www.pauloduarte.ws

[Bk]

So from the outset, you bought Softimage with the view to take all the engineers from it and put them onto another product?
If that is the case why not just be upfront about it and say this was your 5 year plan instead of pretending you respected the userbase and pretending wanted to continue Softimage, then suddenly giving a months notice regarding the purchases of new licences?
Ive been frantic all month trying to figure out what I can or can't do with my new as yet unformed company regarding buying licences.
I'm sorry, but I'm still furious.

> <winmail.dat>

[Maurice Patel]

No, and we are going round in circles as multiple topics are getting meshed together. I doubt anything I can write will make you less furious. If you want to talk I am open to that.
maurice

Maurice Patel
Autodesk : Tél:  514 954-7134

[Rob Chapman]

please do! if your conversation can satisfy Paul then am sure a lot
more of us will feel a heck of a lot more assured.

the main issue being. you 'suddenly discover' the fact that you have
3 competing products. if we knew this was to happen 5 years ago,
myself, Paul and many others would have a 5 year head start on what we
now are forced to embark upon.

on one hand you say "we did not plan this" and in the other you say
"this is what we said at the beginning"

does. not. compute.

[Max Evgrafov]

I do not want to offend people from AD ... but in slavonic language AD means Hell. Strange coincidence and accidentally of course, I'm sorry, I'm just sad :`-( 

(Summatr)

https://vimeo.com/user3098735/videos  

--
Евграфов Максим.(Summatr)

https://vimeo.com/user3098735/videos  
-------------------------------------------------------
Хорошего Вам настроения !!! :-)

[Paul Griswold]

You do see the frustration here, right Maurice?  

By nature I'd say most Softimage users are very logical, straight forward, thinking individuals who quite often either own their own business or work as freelancers and therefore have a good understanding of how to run a business.  

Every reason given so far for this entire situation seems to fall under the concept of "plausible deniability" because otherwise none of it makes sense.  You have to believe that Softimage either A. had an incredible string of bad luck which, despite Autodesk giving 100% of it's effort to develop, market and sell the product, caused it to fail.  or B. Autodesk bought Softimage for it's patents, technology and developers, then intentionally marginalized Softimage to the point of where a business case could be made to shut it down and force users to move to Maya.

-Paul

“I think...a more reasonable view…[is] trying to allow customers to do what they want to do instead of being heavy-handed and forcing customers to do things that are in their best interest.”  - Carl Bass

[Christoph Muetze]

On 25/03/14 19:44, phil harbath wrote:

I don’t doubt that people were letting their subscriptions lapse,

...at Glare we let our two Maya Entertainment Creation Suite subs lapse just yesterday.

I've been reading this mailing list carefully to find a reason to continue our business relationship with Autodesk but it was made absolutely clear by Maurice and Chris that Autodesk doesn't want to support a tool with a small user base, no matter how great the artistic outcome of this user base is.

all i read out of this is "masses instead of classes" - and as an artist who is depending on good tools to perform i couldn't disagree more...

Chris

[Bk]

We are going around in circles because it doesn't add up. I suspect that the bottom line is that there is dishonesty at the root of that, but I am no implying that it is on your part. I'm sure you are a nice guy and disclosing what you are allowed to.
It is easy to negotiate one question at a time, and yes it will invite another until the point where it all makes sense, You are right when you say that it will probably never arrive at a resolution, because I doubt there is an explanation that will contain enough honest facts about the real situation to bring closure.

> <winmail.dat>

[Maurice Patel]

If you mash up bits of different emails you can make me say anything you want :)
Chris and I have gone over this several times in past emails. In 2008 the world was very different. When we acquired Softimage we told everyone that we were doing it for two reasons. Softimage was good product and there was a highly trained and skilled engineering team that we wanted to work on other projects we had in mind. We already discussed this.

maurice


Maurice Patel
Autodesk : Tél:  514 954-7134


-----Original Message-----
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Rob Chapman
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 4:07 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

[Doeke Wartena]

I have once seen an advertisement for softimage, i can't remember what magazine it was.

It had this modelled lego parrot in it (untextured if i remember correct):

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/uploads//1335111129/gallery_273_58_52809.png

And the interface was a bit cleaner then current version, as in things missing.

Unfortunately it was a dream :( (i'm not kidding, i really dreamed this like 2 years ago).

And Maurice and Chris, i really appreciate the time you guys take to write answers. However i'm hurted really deep lately and it's only getting worse.

I lost my trust in Autodesk, not for all the lies but the choices made over the years.

I think a major reason for maya and max being so big is that so many companies use those products and there for schools teaches those products. It's hard to break that cycle and i think it's where AD failed. If schools with maya or max seats where teaching ICE as well then softimage would have won slowly more ground. It's so sad that i always have to explain what softimage is while they know what maya and 3d max is.

O yeah when was it 2008? Like 6 years ago. Why didn't AD tell the future of SI is dark.

I hope i can turn away from AD products as long as possible. And seeing what products they have left, it can't be that hard. I hope the choices made by AD will hurt AD in the long term. Not because i'm evil, it's because i want AD to learn a very valuable lesson. The worst thing of all is the 2 year period, i think it's a big middle finger from AD to so many customers. 2 years is nothing.

Even if you put one programmer on SI i will be happy. His taks could be open SDK and driver support, nothing more. The problem however will be that people will stop buying new products. And it's all about the fucking money.

[Maurice Patel]

Yes the frustration is natural - I understand that
If only the world were simple and clear cut :(. Neither A nor B is an adequate description of what happened and what did includes aspects of both. Also I would not say we put 100% of our effort into Softimage. That was never the case, we are always balancing efforts. Softimage was run as a separate division at Avid and was 100% focused on its products pre-acquisition - but they had also had to make some tough decisions to EOL some of their products. But yes that 100% focus was lost when it was acquired as it is for any company that gets acquired. No-one wanted to cause hardship to any of our users (3ds Max, Maya or Softimage). The dynamics of human systems are chaotic, it is never possible to fully predict outcomes.
Maurice

Maurice Patel
Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Paul Griswold
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 4:16 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

You do see the frustration here, right Maurice?

By nature I'd say most Softimage users are very logical, straight forward, thinking individuals who quite often either own their own business or work as freelancers and therefore have a good understanding of how to run a business.

Every reason given so far for this entire situation seems to fall under the concept of "plausible deniability" because otherwise none of it makes sense. You have to believe that Softimage either A. had an incredible string of bad luck which, despite Autodesk giving 100% of it's effort to develop, market and sell the product, caused it to fail. or B. Autodesk bought Softimage for it's patents, technology and developers, then intentionally marginalized Softimage to the point of where a business case could be made to shut it down and force users to move to Maya.

-Paul

"I think...a more reasonable view...[is] trying to allow customers to do what they want to do instead of being heavy-handed and forcing customers to do things that are in their best interest." - Carl Bass

On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 3:59 PM, Maurice Patel <mauric...@autodesk.com<mailto:mauric...@autodesk.com>> wrote:
No, and we are going round in circles as multiple topics are getting meshed together. I doubt anything I can write will make you less furious. If you want to talk I am open to that.
maurice

Maurice Patel

Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134<tel:514%20954-7134>

[Rob Chapman]

Hi Maurice

yes sorry, my previous mail the 'you' was much more directed at
Autodesk the entity than you personally, I hope you understand. and
yes it was mashed, but I hope to elaborate.

Now that 'you' (Autodesk) are making it is very clear that those great
engineers that were moved onto other projects were one part of the
reason for purchase, the other was Softimage the product. but at the
time , whilst assuring us the existing customers of Softimage the
product was going to be ok eg 'the future is bright' etc I do feel
that the Softimage user base at that time were never informed properly
of the true extent of the engineer stripping until long afterwards .

this is perhaps one of those lingering disagreeable tastes as is feels
like your obligation was fulfilled with minimum effort whereas back
then there was not a sense of EOL as we were assured the product was
going to be ok. as long as it was sold as a plugin. or a suite. or not
all...

so to clarify. with some actual history because yes I am not entirely
sure of the facts here and others may be more clued :) but at what
point were the Softimage customers informed that the entire
engineering team had been moved to a new application? was this only,
as you say in Autodesk's statement of intent? as this, in my opinion,
was never truly communicated and somewhat hidden to the user base
until much later on.

[Bk]

"Also I would not say we put 100% of our effort into Softimage. That was never the case, we are always balancing efforts."

Nobody would expect that Autodesk as a company that has many products would expend 100% of its effort into Softimage at the expense of all it's other products. What we would expect however is that softimage would be given 100% of the relative attention it deserved as a product.

[John Clausing]

Last year, we were fortunate to be written up in "3D World"......a rare occurrence for a Softimage project.

We sent a press release to Softimage and never heard a word. At that point it was clear to us that AD wasn't even trying.

I would have thought you could sell that sort of PR, but they didn't.
Really disappointing.

Sent from my iPhone

[Nancy Jacobs]

On Mar 25, 2014, at 4:15 PM, Paul Griswold <pgri...@fusiondigitalproductions.com> wrote:

> or B. Autodesk bought Softimage for it's patents, technology and developers,

Don't forget to add, and USER BASE

> then intentionally marginalized Softimage to the point of where a business case could be made to shut it down and force users to move to Maya.

Um, yeah... USER BASE = Present and future income. Once the people are signed on for the ride, the driver can take them anywhere. So obvious...