Autodesk Signs Agreement with Avid Technology to Acquire Softimage

#821

Autodesk bought XSI…what a twist!

#822

SI and Alias rewrote their software because they had reached fundamental limitations in the core
Thank you. My point entirely. People talk about innovation, you get it from new sofware, it has the capacity for innovation, not from software at the end of its life, max and maya are there right now, so complaints about AD’s lack of innovation with these two is not valid.

#823

I think the issue that bother me the most is Innovation.

A company which now owns the top 3 animation softwares, no longer has too much of a need to innovate because people will still keep on using them, because you don’t have much of a choice anymore, unless you are willing to leave you software all together and learn something new and those choices have gone down considerably.

I say this because of past experiences. If you look at the past 3 releases of Max and Maya, they primarily look like bug fixes and speed improvements. There have hardly been any additions of new tools expect for the Nucleus system in maya. Max has hardly any new tools between max 9 and 2009 except for Mentaly ray.

In comparision look at Cinema4d , Houdini or XSI, their current releases have been quite innovative, full of new and improved tools.

Now that Autodesk owns XSI I just hope it doesnt go down the same road as Max and Maya, with yearly releases but hardly anything new worth talking about.

I dont think they will shut down XSI, it just makes bad business sense.

It’s just that Autodesk doesnt have a great record for creating innovative tools, just buying them and riding with them for as long as they can and then buying something else new and fancy and going with that.

That is my only concern.

with regards
Rohan Dalvi

As to what Airflow says, If C4d , XSI and Houdini could rewrite their softwares, I am pretty sure Autodesk can do it too. They are definitely big enough and have enough money to do it and cant really make excuses because the above mentioned softwares have already done it, and they are a lot smaller than autodesk.

#824

Just to clarify a few things, please read max’s history. It was not aquired.

Max History

#825

Couldn’t agree more.

#826

But Maya and XSI are about the same age. If you are claiming XSI is innovating and the others are not, it is clearly nothing to do with age.

#827

And another thing, I keep reading about the issues that would have to face
a studio “x” in order to change it’s pipeline and all, but my question is
(and please correct me if I’m wrong).
But was it the same situation back in the 90’s when Softimage /3d was the big beast
in mostly every studio and then Maya appear with all it’s greatness and everybody was
able to make the jump? (or at least most of them)

So why it is so insane to think this could happen again?.

#828

Check your history mate, they are not. How could people waiting for sumatra to be finished give up and start using maya instead if they are the same age. SI lost its edge to maya because they spent a long time developing xsi.
And my point is about max stagnation, its because they are making the next iteration ala SI to Xsi

#829

I am very familiar with the history, and I said about the same age. In terms of the core, both Maya and XSI started development around the same time, so the cores have similar ages. I clearly remember the race to see who would release first. Both products took a long time to come out, but XSI took longer. Even in terms of release date there is not a huge difference, Maya was released 10.5 years ago and XSI 8.5 years ago, both being demoed in beta for some time before that. So you cannot claim this is a massive difference in age.

And my point is about max stagnation

You’ve been talking about both Max and Maya being too old up to now…

its because they are making the next iteration ala SI to Xsi

And and you know this how?

#830

Yes, I was at a firm in 1997 and had ny first go on maya beta.

Lets just say, there are lots of people who know this.
And how much development can you do to a core in a whole 2 years?
And did you use the first version of xsi, it was incomplete, barely held together, and came with SI for free, had no polygon engine and literally crashed every 10 mins. To say it was rushed was an understatement.
They continued ameding it for some time to come afterwards. They could have spent atleast 18 months finishing it off properly.

#831

I was talking about Softimage 3d not XSI (code name Sumatra), lost of people made the jump from Softimage 3d to Alias Maya.

#832

Ok more info:

from
MontrealTechWatch:

One troubling thing in this acquisition is the price paid by SoftImage. The same company was bought by Microsoft in 1994 for $130 million, then was bought by Avid from Microsoft for $285 million in 1998. The difference makes it look like a firesale price, as if Avid did destroy SoftImage’s value 8 fold in a timelapse of 10 years.

[http://montrealtechwatch.com/2008/10/25/autodesk-buys-softimage-for-35m/](http://montrealtechwatch.com/2008/10/25/autodesk-buys-softimage-for-35m/)

Autodesk now has the most powerful portfolio of 3D products that any company has had since the birth of 3D. Petit points to others making significant 3D investments: companies such as Nvida move with Mental Images, Microsoft’s R&D investments, Adobes move to include 3D in flash and Google with products such as Sketch up, Maxon and others.
Still one could be concerned whether this move will reduce the competition in the 3D market, Petit replies that “3D is coming everywhere and the business,… the landscape has completely changed… we are ready for a good fight, we think we are a leader but in the long run we expect it to be a very competitive and heated market place”.

http://www.fxguide.com/article505.html

And here is a reply to the Luxology comments on the sale…

So I got asked to comment on the modcast

I don’t really have a lot to respond to in this podcast, here. It’s somebody’s opinion, and that somebody has an agenda. Anyway - I’ll take a listen and post some thoughts.

http://softimageinsider.blogspot.com/

#833

I think his point about if Dassualt bought XSI is true…

Dassualt’s approach to taking market share is to do it by having absolutely the best technology bar nothing that is completely integrated.

Compared to other companies they re-invest a lot more revenue into R&D their policies can be painful but they know how to develop very good 3d software…

Had Dassualt got XSI Autodesk would of had to work real hard to keep Maya and Max competative particulary in the games sector where DS has a kick ass engine as well now.

#834

The purchase price would generally be figured based on a multiple of annual earnings. I have seen estimates for SoftImage between 12 and 16 million annually so a multiple of 2-3 is a descent price but not a fire sale by any means. The 8 fold value drop could be due to market conditions as well as mismanagement.

#835

Wow! I just found out about the acquisition news today and just spent the last 3 hours reading this epic post.

You know why I’m late to the party? I’ve spent the last week holed up in my cubicle doing nothing but going through DVD tutorials on XSI and learning the software…finally emerging only to be greeted by this news!

I’m a hobbyist who started learning 3D with 3DS Max earlier this year (I decided to go with 3DS Max because it seemed to be the industry standard and most of the 3D Choice artists on CG Society seemed to be using it). I found the workflow quite tedious and heard that there were other 3D software packages that were more refined. After spending a few months reading forum posts and reviews trying to decide which 3D package to invest in I decided to go with XSI. My experience so far with XSI has been wonderful. The team at SoftImage has really put a lot of effort into the user experience and workflow. I feel like I can focus more on creativity rather than struggling through UI.

Just as I’ve fallen in love she tells me she got engaged to a serial polygamist.

The news of this aquisition does make me nervous about the future of XSI, but is not going to prevent me from using it today. It’s an incredible piece of software - something the SoftImage team should be proud of. I just hope Autodesk keeps the team together.

From what I can gather from the various news releases, interviews, and blog postings is that Autodesk has larger plans for Digital Content Creation - they see 3D asset creation as just a part of it. I would not be surprised if they cherry-picked talent from each of the 3DS Max, Maya, and XSI teams to start development on next-generation Digital Content Creation tools - which likely means fewer innovations with each release of the existing 3 products, but also hopefully means some awesome software is coming down the pipe.

#836

What a twist!!

#837

as far as who came first and if it mattered-- i think it did- dont forget max came out before maya too, by about the same amount as maya befor XSI. also lets not forget that at first it cost 1/4th as much as alias or soft?

and not just cheaper software but ran on a cheap desktop PC unlike those 2 tied to overpriced and already dead by the time maya came out $illy-con graphics boxes, which let max get a nice running start in the current desktop pc based 3d scene. whereas it took soft and maya awhile to wake up and smell the coffee about desktop PC becoming dominant in all 3d production. and evenn longer to stoop so low as to compete on price.

same thing with the game industry- these guys really missed the boat vs. autodesk on the biggest area of 3d entertainment right now. i can say alias was very intelligently interested in getting maya into the gaming market along with getting on PC pretty early on, i had some very good support at a place i worked in the late 90s when not many folks were using maya for games yet. but autodesk was the already the default choice for game dev in the late 90s with pretty much the entire game market, and the fact that max came out first and ran on PC from day 1 and was cheaper and was not bad pretty much locked them in.

so max has reaped huge rewards from their positioning on the regular desktop and games market at that point in time. and at the time they were the underdog trying to compete with these supercomputers and film wizards on a desktop pc… its easy to forget that. and the smug attitute of the guys who were lucky enough to work at a studio to buy a funny color box and 20k software for them to use, vs. anyone using more affordable tools, just because of the price- when imo max was better than, but anybody would say, able to get the same results as alias power animator or soft 3.0 that were out when it debuted. kind of like some of the prejudice now against blender :wink:

but dont think i forgot the huge disappointment of my first job using an SGI computer and alias poweranimator and softimage software, and it was nothing compared to what max was already doing on my affordable home desktop. and it turned out lot of other ppl noticed this too, so that the little guys using cheaper stuff, in mass, got bigger than the few big film high end places… who are now the underdogs. but i still remember those smug bastards. they got what was coming to em. i hope the same happens for adesk in their time.

let some other company come along and make the right moves, i dont know that the writing is nearly on the wall for 3d innovation.

#838

Damage. I’m maya user and I shall have prefer it stays with alias. For me if there isn’t competition anymore it’s the monopoly and that tells monopoly, said cash, not needs to innovate (not concerns of competition)… Instead of buying companies, they would better make take charge of them software…I hope that zbrush, modo, and adobe (yes lol) will remain intact.

#839

that has got to be the funniest line ive ever seen in my 5 years reading forums online

sad… but true

#840

I have to say this is the first time I was surprised by an acquisition and I didn’t really see it coming along, it was a well kept secret.

So here’s thoughts to spice up the discussion:

  • 35M$ definitely underpaid. Compared to what nVidia (over)paid the mental institute - one year ago - in nov2007 (~90M$ - you can check on www.sec.gov, it’s a bit complicated because there was some technology investment from NV in mental already, but you can get the right number) is really insane. I believe behind Soft acquisition there was some intense stock trading, and a bad quarterly result from AVID, which announced this sale right before the quarter results (they lost on friday 30% http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:AVID, with abnormal volume). Kaboom.

  • Softimage was without doubts spending a lot of R&D on XSI core technology, ICE which started as a node-based particle system and propagated to replace the underlying architecture of XSI, was a major innovation and would have been a serious competitor with Maya, as in fact IMHO it is already. XSI was also providing a more modern API. multithreaded allover, and a they were the first to realize the rise and decline of mental ray codebase, trying to get more independent from it by opening their rendering SDK as much as possible. So they had a good plan. I would have been more happy to see a v8 made in Softimage. Anyhow the market situation did not help and maybe in the hands of Avid situation could have been worse. Autodesk now commits to maintain all the lines of its overlapping and internally competing softwares, XSI, Maya and 3dsmax. Big commitment spoke out loud by management. I would suggest a more conservative do-before-talk and I still prefer to see competition from externals, but there is no safety in open market ruled by corporations’ cashflow during a market crash. The only thing to hope is management enlightment, which is rare.
    For VFX animation now only Houdini stands out, and shines of its own originality.

  • Autodesk. Where to start. They never cease to amaze me. Although XSI really was becoming a strong competitor, they did not really need Softimage… Market crash made the marmelade jar too juicy and they stuck their hands deep in it.
    They needed more an asset management solution and - oh boy - a renderer. My call is that the period of acquisition is not ended. nVidia has surely realized they overpaid the mentals, and they are not in a fantastic market situation, also many people (more than 10) quit mental and some moved to NV research [you can get all this by looking at linkedin so I am not disclosing any info], so NV had what they want (for an insane price but still); ADSK has interest in having mental ray code because they spray it allover their products (and they don’t know what a trappy bugnest it is, but they have acquisition hunger so let them eat and digest later) so I foresee some trading on this line.

Two things are for sure:

  • ADSK has a lot of cash in the bank and the period of acquisition has not ended.
  • There was a nostalgic and epic wake at the pubs in Montreal :wink:

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