Autodesk Signs Agreement with Avid Technology to Acquire Softimage

#841

Yeah but i bet Mental Ray costs less to develop, less to market, less to sell and makes more revenue hence the higher price…

Also wasn’t owned by a company desperate for cash…

#842

Looking at all the frustration, anger, worry expressed here, I’m so glad I’ve been on Blender for 2 years, especially now that it’s developing so fast.
(by the way, I did use Max and Lightwave for a few years, so it’s not like I don’t have any comparison)

#843

mental ray was in good health, had lots of strategic deals, and had things going that nvidia, hurt from getting short changed with how they played gelato, really wanted.
That it costs less to develop, when all the bits are considered, I’m not as sure. It definitely produced more short term revenues though, with a better net yield too.

#844

the mentals puts ~10-15% of their resources on mental ray (5-7.5 people out of 50). All the rest is desperately trying to make years of financing on reality server senseful.
50 people do cost a lot, especially in EU, but as you say they leave all the marketing&sales cost to their OEMs (in this they are not stupid at all).

So, even considering this, it was way overpriced.
The point is that mental keeps an aura of mistery and secrecy around itself and this makes it attractive to others. Also it is run by a person that can convince an eskimo to buy a broken refrigerator, so that helps too.

Also wasn’t owned by a company desperate for cash…

It was actually the opposite.
They spent a huge amount of money from external financers, from NV, and from Sony, on RS for several years, without selling a single license (and they bought their only customer, Luminova, because they knew how to use it better then them… :slight_smile: ). You can understand all this by reading cum-grano-salis their public press releases (of course you have to de-BS all first :wink: ).

Anyhow, we are going offtopic.
My speculations were more thoughts on the Softimage sale and to ADSK still hungry.
After having worked for Alias|wavefront -> Alias systems -> AutoDesk and mental images -> nVidia it’s impossible to restrain your personal opinions :slight_smile:

p

#845

Interesting insight! can’t believe they are putting so many resources into reality server! Imagine if they put that effort into MR

#846

Being a little speculative, but within the realms of what’s actually happening within markets, I wrote this:
http://www.cgenie.net/cgenie-content/articles/clash-of-the-titans.html

Just perhaps, Autodesk aren’t in quite as an unassailable position as we think… a lot of the debate here has been about the position of companies within the market, without wondering whether the market itself may be moving/expanding (as they always do!).

Just speculation, but hopefully you might find it an interesting perspective & I’d certainly welcome your views!

#847

This was purely the state of things when I was working there. Most of the people were on reality server. Technology was ported from RS to mental ray, but porting was a nightmare. Most of the people that didn’t quit I assume they still are on RS. What you see now in ray 3.6/3.7 was being initiated in 2006, and all the people who did that, eg irradiance particles, bsp2, particle maps etc are gone (you can see all this from linkedin, again :slight_smile: ).

From my perspective mental ray is a finished product that just lives on its past success in being integrated in OEMs. The codebase and architecture is too old to do anything innovative with it in an efficient quick and clean manner. Of course other will believe the opposite and love it (I actually liked it myself - shame on me - before having some terms of comparisons), anyway mine is a purely personal opinion. I just like simplicity, freedom and openness.

Softimage realized all this first, they opened the rendering API very well with XSI 6.5. That was a signal of lack of satisfaction towards mental. They were ahead already with ICE and multithreading, and were actually a profitable company (I think they were doing 120% of their targets last year and this year it would have been way better).
That is why I am a bit sad it is not an independent company. Also a lot Soft people lost their work in the worst time possible, so that is sad too.

If ADSK management keeps their high promises and the company has no financing problem then all should be alright.
But of for any reason ADSK will be in troubles, then they will be forced to cut down on their overlapping or less profitable products.

Also they have no renderer (I have to say they have some cool stuff in showcase, as you mentioned, but that is not for animation) while mental ray is sprayed allover with different integration quality, very very risky & bad. They should think of a safer solution, a unified integration, and keep a very open rendering API & policy at the same time (so that more modern renderers can be integrated properly). A challenge.

On a separate line, just look at the poor implementation of RenderPasses in Maya2009. What a horrible work they’ve managed to do in two years of R&D is absolutely unbelievable from my point of view.

p

#848

What about opticore seems to be a solid piece of tech from what i have seen…

Remember they acquired that about 10months ago, surely that technology integrated with Showcase makes for quiet a interesting new direction in rendering technology.

#849

Interesting but you completely ignored Dassualt Systemes the biggest 3D software developer in the world.

#850

i reckon autodesk will buy a renderer for themselves next, maybe one of these>
1.Vray
2.Final Render
3.Brazil

#851

Sure I do remember, and note that they they’ve chosen Opticore and not RealityServer, even they understood it was vaporware!

I think Opticore-tech is good in Showcase for design, architecture & related visualization. But for film/animation (which is an order of magnitude smaller market), it’s not.

They have their feet in two markets, visualization & film/animation.
Two different kind of needs, two different kind of users with different demands and expectations.
Three very different products, with different API and different philosophies.
Three different integrations of the same renderer (which they do not own) that is more oriented towards one of those markets and another product based on another renderer that overlaps a bit with the needs covered by the previous one. Amazing.

I’d say that there is enough to work for the next 10 years.

#852

But do you think its really worth writing a completely new renderer?

For every market but film realtime is the future its perfectly clear that is the way foward when you look at products like showcase/mudbox/bunkspeed etc…

For film / tv that market is nicely covered by Renderman so what is the point of competing with Pixar I’m sure they would rather have Pixar as a customer then a competitor.

Maybe they are just going to use MR to hold them over till all the design/viz stuff shifts to realtime tools…

#853

Interesting but you completely ignored Dassualt Systemes the biggest 3D software developer in the world.

Absolutely - there are plenty of other players out there, I was focusing on the new players - eg Adobe/Google etc. Although Dassault are making inroads with ranges like 3dvia, think they’re still very much sited in their industrial roots.

Also would question whether they were the ‘biggest 3d software developer in the world’ - of course there’s a million ways to look at it but revenues normally a pretty good gauge:

Autodesk 2007: $2,718m
Dassault 2007: $1,837m

But to be honest I think if you’re looking within the industry for competition (which is a digression from the point of the article) - I reckon some of the realtime competitors are more likely a foe at these points.

There may be even other ‘new product ranges’ - I’m sure you’ve seen the VRay realtime raytracing tech previews…

Reckon there’d be a lot of dosh-laden customers for something like that…

#854

just read all the posts…what a read!!
took a few beers to get through all that…

just my two cents…

but, and i may be wrong, why is everyone bagging autodesk for snatching
up what seems to be a sweet deal for them? they didn’t go “hunting” to
buy out XSI as it would seem from reading everyones end of the world posts…
there were other bidders involved.

This was a business deal. get over it. It may hurt some people but its the real world.

Im a maya user and when ADSK bought it out a while ago i was a little worried, but
really i dont think it has made the slightest difference to me at all. I know that is different for alot of people but for me it is all cool.

if it DID get bad id just change to blender. it really seems that everyone in this
industry is too hung up in their tools. There has been some amazing stuff made
years ago that didnt have what we had now,that goes for games and films. But we are becoming really dependent on everything too much…

anyway thats just my two cents…

cyb

#855

I think same sequence repeating now as they did with alias and Maya
i felt so angry when i knew the news and felt more angry when it become true
i have nothing against Auto desk but i hated the way the change the menus and other stuff in maya ,i didn’t feel its maya i used to work on … but after while i forced my self to adapt with maya auto desk just when ncloth and ndynamic start to be available on maya
I think they will do the same to softimage :sad:

#856

this is exactly what i mean…we are so reluctant to change…

#857

No it’s not worth. There’s plenty already in fact.
Developing a renderer takes a bunch of years, 5 at the very very least.
They should just provide plenty of support to who’s best in the market: I would currently focus on modern codebases, like VRay for HQ arch/design visualization, and 3Delight RenderMan for film/animation.

For every market but film realtime is the future its perfectly clear that is the way foward when you look at products like showcase/mudbox/bunkspeed etc…

I think film will hardly go full realtime due to the demand in flexibility for the renderer (didn’t we already discuss this? :wink: ). Film renderers needs to be highly multithreaded and have a rock solid, production proof, industry standard shading language.

Film previz is another story, it s already realtime in fact.
For the viz market I agree with you: they should and they do have a realtime renderer for such previz/design products.

For film / tv that market is nicely covered by Renderman so what is the point of competing with Pixar I’m sure they would rather have Pixar as a customer then a competitor.

RenderMan is not only Pixar, it is a standard: there are several other RenderMan renderers.

Maybe they are just going to use MR to hold them over till all the design/viz stuff shifts to realtime tools…

That is the most probable option, and I think they will try to get mental ray from NV since now it is the right time: market crash + 1 year from NV acquisition (as per EU laws the buyer after 1 year has more operability freedom). I would still go for a newer codebase, like VRay & 3Delight.

A very open rendering API on all their products with open SDK including all shaders code for 3rd part integration should be a must. At least as long as they don’t have a renderer nor a Shading Language.

P.

#858

Well obviously things are going to change, hopefully they won’t change for the worst. It will defiantly change things. Twos company, threes a crowd.

#859

With owning Max,Maya, and XSI, it’s as if they own Mental Ray… (probably 95-99% of Mental Ray licenses come from these). That gives them all the more power in shaping Mental Ray’s future. Mental Images wouldn’t want to mess with Autodesk.

#860

Mental Images wouldn’t want to mess with Autodesk.

but mental images does not own mental ray anymore, Nvidia does.