Autodesk Signs Agreement with Avid Technology to Acquire Softimage

[Kel_Solaar]

Posting Into The Epic Thread !

This is just jaw dropping, hope XSI will not suffer from this proprietary change.
Time will tell.

[leonard]

Hi all,

As a staff member at Softimage and as a member of the community, I just wanted to weigh in some comments.

The news today came as a shock for many staff members at Softimage. Despite this, there was an air of relief in knowing what exactly was going on. Everyone smelled something in the air the last few weeks and it had been very stressful. In true Softimage fashion, most of us ended up at the pub afterwards. At the end of the day, it is the people that make Softimage truly a special and great place to work.

I think I speak on behalf of most of us at Softimage when I say that we are extremely proud of what our team has achieved. Despite having a small team and limited resources, we were able to deliver a lot in terms of innovation, product quality, service to customers and marketing. Our team is very very small but we have achieved great things overall.

The irony for many people is that we were purchased because we were doing well. In the last two years, we have managed to really turn things around, not only making Softimage profitable but also revitalizing many aspects of the business. The release of XSI 7 was a huge success for us and put Softimage back in the minds of many people in the industry.

There was some comments here that we “sold out”, which simply is not the case. For the majority of staff members (myself included), we were unaware of the deal until very recently. This is an Avid/Autodesk deal.

Right now, I know there’s a lot of speculation as far as what will happen with the products. However, I’d like to focus attention on the human aspect of this. Some say that “people are your greatest asset”. I disagree – they are your only asset. The source code for XSI or Face Robot is pretty much useless without the developers that understand the code intrinsically, and everyone from product management to documentation, QA, support, licensing, marketing and sales all have critical roles to play in making a quality product and service.

Many people have made huge life choices to work at Softimage. We have relocated from all over the world including Australia, New Zealand, UK, US and Japan to move to Montreal. This doesn’t just affect the Montreal office, but all our regional offices and remote staff as well. Many of us have also rejected job offers and opportunities at other companies to keep working with the great team at Softimage.

We will soon find out where our careers are going to take us. I am confident that everyone at Softimage will emerge stronger and in a better place whether it be at Autodesk or other companies. We have proven ourselves and have made an impact on the industry.

It is with unwavering confidence that we will take the future in stride. Whether we are at Autodesk, or other companies, we will continue to deliver our very best. And no large corporation will ever be able to quell that passion.

Best regards,

Leo

[Br1]

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.

If you don’t like it, it’s the kind of thing that can easily be toggled on or off. same goes for the Viewcube everyone is complaining about. Just disable what you don’t want to use, just learn to use your softwares …

[alexyork]

Excellent post Leo. Best of luck to you and the team!

[SeBoR]

One 3d package to rule them all, one 3d package to find them, one 3d package to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them lol.

[3dtutorial]

XSI didn’t get bought because it needed help financially, it’s quite the opposite, now that financially it was going very strong it got enough attention for AVID to get some liquidity out of the sale.
Companies aren’t bought only when they can be got for scraps, they are more often bought when they can be made more profitable by reducing marketing friction or injecting more finance into their marketing and get a lot more out of it.

Rubbish - plain and simple.

(The part about XSI not needing financial help that is).

J

[ViCoX]

Well said Leo! : )
Now move your asses to luxology and start revolution!

[Mazer]

Nemetschek (maxon c4d) stock charts…

http://nemetschek.com/en/home/investor_relations/the_share/stock_charts.html

not good at all
and blender ? Well you dont have to buy the app just trow some undred thousands to the hippies and they stop working for free…

[ediris]

I remember when Power Computing came out with the G3 prototype, Apple jump in run Power Computing out of business, and stop licensing OS.

Innovation, well now is time for all the competitors to be innovative and have more advanced tools, i bet there is a lot of programmers waiting to be incorporate into these low end 3d applications that need new and fresh innovation.

Pricing, now more than ever is time to get those prices lower if you care so much for the costumers.

Dont like hypocracy at the end all these people complaining and bitching have AD products and they use them evryday. Regardless of what you say if you had Maya/3DMAX/XSI than you have lots of cash to spend in FEES,costumer support,or whatever it is that you dont like to be charged for.

I will say what i was told in a C4D forum, if you can afford to buy a new licensed than charged more for your work.

Have a nice day.
Edgard

[DimitrisLiatsos]

:bounce::bounce::bounce:…and that’s it…period.

[Spin99]

Maybe it’s just a growing sign of world recession.

As a graphics fan I noticed when SGI stopped making supercomputers.
Adobe bought out Macromedia I couldn’t believe that one.
Then Alias Wavefront fell and Maya got saved by Autodesk.
Looks like SoftImage is now getting rescued by Autodesk as well.

Couple thoughts. Is Houdini next?
Also is XSI getting the animal logo treatment lol.

I dunno the only thing that really bothers me is how nice the logos/marketing of the individual companies were (Macromedia/Alias/and now SoftImage) and how boring their new owners look. It’s like recession is making all graphics companies go under the same colour and logo.

So much for the wild creativity and sprouting wow businesses of a previous era.
May it rest in peace.

P.S. K I forgot about Eovia’s Carrara and Hexagon getting caught by DAZ 3D not.

P.P.S. Oh yes and was it Skymatter that sold their Mudbox product…

[vlad74]

Thats it. I am moving to another planet.

[cresshead]

this looks good news for many people

1.3dsmax may get xsi cat intergrated in a new release

2.xsi may get> units of measurement, ies lights, left/bottom/back views and more importexport formats.
also interop with mudbox 2009

3.maya> maybe some of the crowd sim from xsi…though maya seems the strongest
app of all of them and ‘the one’ to use for film

for those talking of killing apps off…autodesk did kill off some discreet logic products
once they were bought such as viz 2008, edit, lightscape, paint, effect…of course some of the tech was moved into other products at a later time.

as for the competition that’s left>

maxon’s cinema
newtek’s lightwave
houdni
luxology’s modo
vue product line
pixologic’s zbrush
blender
hash animation master
daz3d’s product line including carrara, hexagon,bryce etc
poser pro, poser

so the main full app commercial competition is now>
lightwave, modo, cinema and houdini

it’s still far from a monopoly but def autodesk has some big hitters in their lineup>
maya 2009
3dsmax 2009
3dsmax design 2009
motion builder 2009
mudbox 2009
studio tools [the the spin off apps from that too]
sketchbook pro

and soon the softimage apps…

a good day for ‘consolidation’
seems the ‘credit crunch’ has it’s first victim/opportunity in the 3d app arena which could be good news long term…much better for autodesk to snap up the app than some investment company who have no interest in ‘3d’.

with the way things are going in the current state of huge corporations/banks falling flat on their faces this is GOOD NEWS for xsi long term.

[arvid]

Leo: I understand the human aspect. I’ve spent my entire career, 8 years and counting devoted to Softimage products. It has always delivered, and I’ve brought it with me all the way. In that sense it’s not just a tool.
I’m a resourceful guy so I’d find a way even if the worst were to happen to it, but I don’t want that, my greatest wish is for the Softimage team to enjoy greater freedom under AD to be able to keep the current path, because XSI has never been stronger.

[neuromancer]

i guess then softimage.com will turn in something like that ugly corporate autodesk.com/xsi let’s hope all that money makes xsi only better. i’ll keep my hopes up for softimage 2009 (ugghhh)

[sk3d]

Crap, not good. so much for innovation.

[JBoskma]

… you got to be kidding me. Well in that case:

Dear Autodesk,

Before you completely kill XSI....Please Intergrate all of XSI's Modelling tools and interface into Maya and Max.

Please?

Bah…what a way to start of my day.

[mikepolizos]

now, the one million dollar question is…
autodesk buys adobe or adobe buys autodesk?

[colkai]

In a bizzare way, I’m now kinda glad XSI dropped Foundation and prevented me from moving as I suffered first-hand from how Autodesk handled Motionbuilder.

Wonder how long before half the XSI staff are dropped and the price increased?
Under Autodesk, MB lost some of it’s key developers and it’s ‘standard’ package, wonder if ‘essentials’ will go the same way, because Autodesk wants to “appeal to the professional market” …ahem, (read, “more money for the shareholders”).

Thankfully there are still developers like Newtek out there.

[SebKaine]

That’s a very sad day for the CG community !