Autodesk Signs Agreement with Avid Technology to Acquire Softimage

#381

What a sad day…

The end of competition.

The end of a moderate pricing policy (for sure).

The end of Innovation?

What a sad day.

#382

well, sorry for the bad language but, FUk AUTODESk!!!
@#$#$^%$&^%&^%&#$%#$@##$@#%%$&^&(&)()(%&#%$#%@%
:banghead:

deam loosers! they just wont sink like a normal Titanic…
like Adobe and Microsoft!

CS4 ? anyone ?
what are the recommended specs ? 4TB or RAM, 35 CPUs… 4x4 quatro SLI ???

loosers!

#383

This is what I fear the most.

#384

Who pays CGtalk?

#385

ah well… i guess i should post in what will be an enormous thread…

i’m not fussed about the software itself - i use max, xsi and other apps. they’re all great packages. but it’s the businesses you have to deal with (sales/support etc) that make all the difference for me.

regardless of if they dump/keep/change/don’t change XSI, the fact is that sales/support will most likely end up having to go through Autodesk. And my experience with Autodesk and sales/support is an absolute disgrace. I really dread having to deal with them for two sets of sales now… I loved dealing with Soft in sales and support, such helpful folks. AD on the other hand…

I’d love to see a breakdown of market share with all the 3D DCC developers out there, because surely now Autodesk has the largest market share - wouldn’t this be a monopoly? And therefore unlawful in some way? I would have thought “unfair competition” would have been touted around by now…

i’m not a software fanboy - the idea itself is rather silly - but i am a huge supporter of softimage and what they have achieved over the years. now that competition is virtually 0 and the business side of things will move to AD I fail to feel optimistic in the slightest about where this can go.

#386

Strange…
Don’t understand the “politic” of Autodesk…
Another point which looks very strange is the egemony of autodesk on 3D software…
Will the american economic system avoid this ?
What about the anti-trust law ?
the 3 major 3D package are now owned by autodesk…
As a Maya user, I was really upset by acquisition of Maya few years ago…
What the xsi owners think about this ?
Where are we going to ?

I think I will begin to learn Blender, probably the only package Autodesk couldn’t buy…

#387

Sales of books, resale of products, banners/ads fees, CGS members, collabs…
I understand the point of your question, but it’s quite the wrong example :slight_smile:

#388

well actually its not. the investors want more money, they dont care for the users.
so, they invest money and expect a lot of profit!
they will sell theare mother for profit too
This is how the things are in these comercial days :shrug:

but actually the money/profit comes from the users

#389

And the great lidless eye did turn its burning gaze on XSI and consumed in fire it was.
A random passion lit the heavens: the future dimmed and became uncertain.

thankfully, autodesk isnt a bank…
Raj

#390

I can’t think of many companies that are so much disliked by their customers as Autodesk is. Sooner or later this will backfire. It just ins’t a good recipe for long-term success. Imagine Google had bought Softimage. Would we hear the same kind of comments? I bet they’d be more positive. Autodesk’s time will come too, I’m sure of that, but the sad thing is that it could drag all these good things (they bought) down into their hole.

#391

hum, because Autodesk is buying with the cash produced by its other divisions?

#392

But it is the same bussines case with open source. Sales of books, resale of products, banners/ads fees, special memberships, collabs…

#393

I think that one is crappy workflow. I almost NEVER know the visual size of the cube I’m about to create, as I’m creating it. I bet you need to reposition and rescale it after its creation anyway, so what’s the point? To the contrary, I very often rely on the cube being perfectly symmetrical and completely centered at origo which helps me a lot to position it in a correct perspective, when aligning cameras or modeling after a reference I need as many “knowns” as possible, I have no use of arbitrary cubes. However, if I want to move it to the location of the camera, I can just snap it to an object in view with a Ctrl-click in XSI, resizing is a breeze since you can move the object center by simply holding Alt and move it temporarily, and snap it to a point. It’s fast and completely exact. The drag’n’build workflow of max always seemed stupid to me. I don’t build objects out of cubes like legos, I build them FROM cubes.

#394

I understand that this was mostly management level decision and obviously they would say all the nice things. I think autodesk hasn’t done the best job to satisfy customer but this is like a deja vu to me.

When Adobe bought Macromedia all the Flash users had similar responses (I was one of them). And most people thought adobe will make flash resource heavy and may probably not focus much on it. However, adobe did a great job in improving flash as a tool and as a platform. (And adobe had to let go of their previous goLive software). So I am hopeful that it might not be as bad as what people’s first reactions indicate. Just give some time and things will be all normal again.

#395

Wow,

I havn’t been on this site for a few years since I left the 3d world, but I just got a twitter about this truly bad news. My last 3d purchase and hope was in soft, now that its gone to a company I truly hate I glad I left the 3d world. I just feel bad for all the amazing people at soft that need to pretend this is a good thing, and the developers that make it such an amazing software.

It really does make me sad to see this.

#396

So Autodesk now employs three seperate huge development teams to create largely overlapping applications for a market that has seen much better times.
Should be interesting to see when (not if imo) they start to add the numbers and what the result will be.

Cheers
Björn

#397

theare is no competition left on the market! The other small companies cant compete anymore now…

Its just sad news! And all that bullcrap Autodesk has wrote on the site, that positive shit, is just a mud in the eyes of the users!
If they wanted to create a new tools for games and etc. They just could work toghether with all the companies out theare!
This is just a way to save theare ases. Autodesk was nicely dieing :shrug:
well, this wont happen anymore!

p.s. Now i expect them motherfu*krs to change the logo of XSI :bounce:
Like they did with Maya’s logo :bowdown:

#398

If AD would have aquired mentalray (before nvidia did) or 3delight, or any other promising renderer I’d be all for it. But… After thinking a while, it’s still better than Adobe owning it.

What makes me also wonder is the price paid for softimage: $35M

That’s about 350 licences of Face Robot.

#399

it’s easy to picture Autodesk as a player in a game of Monopoly… give it a try :slight_smile:

A few years ago Autodesk landed on Broadwalk (Maya) and bought it, but couldn’t do much as they didn’t have Park Place (XSI). Alias is out of the game.

Then they mortgaged Baltic Avenue (Viz) and ripped all the houses off Mediteranian Avenue (MAX), turning them both into independent properties, with little hope for development without houses on.

And now they just landed on Park Place and bought it at a bargain price. They’ll probably stick some shabby hotels on it soon enough. Avid’s also out of the game now. There are a few small players still on the board (Maxon, Newtek, SideEffects etc) but they’re all hiding in jail hoping not to roll a double or to get landed on.

I wonder how long before Autodesk have to pay “general repairs”. Or perhaps “Go directly to jail for unfair competition”.

perhaps we could try this with Risk or Sorry. :scream:

#400

that’s for sure will have 2 directions

  1. the integration between Autodesk products will be better and reduces time, also the development cycle will be better.
  2. also by doing this it will decrease the competition between products and each other, as Softimage was one of hard competitors for Maya long time ago and still…