Autodesk Signs Agreement with Avid Technology to Acquire Softimage

#1181

(pardon, I did not mean to go off topic, and Thank You guys for the info / feedback on the tests done with ‘XSI vs. Max vs. Maya.’ I’ve been using Max for ~ 8 years & I’ve just started to learn XSI, so I sincerely appreciate it).

In relation to being (hopefully) more on topic with this thread, -was what the end of the conclusion of that article states;

If you were completely new to 3D and were choosing a software application, why would you choose Max given this information? I think Autodesk will soon realize this if they haven’t already. There is no need to have two apps (Max and XSI) geared towards the same users. Especially if one is far more efficient than the other.

http://www.3dspeedmachine.com/News/compare/compare4.htm

What Cresshead said above also makes a lot of sense (I think), and I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, -I’m just feeling a little lost in the fog of the buyout & where that might put the future of things (I remember getting Plasma years back…). Anyway, Thanks to ALL for the information, -I’m very glad to get it!

#1182

It’s not just about the software you know. Perhaps some people have had a very bad experience dealing with Autodesk in the past and do not wish to have it repeated. I don’t know about you but I HAVE walked a little bit further and paid a little bit more for an item just because I’ve had less than pleasant experience with the closer/cheaper shop.

#1183

i wouldn’t blame any XSI artist or shop for re-evaluating their pipeline plans after this buyout. the fact that Softimage was scooped up for only $35 million should be a good indication of the state of the company. Industry wise, this is was a steal. For Autodesk, gaining market dominance was the prize. Face Robot, ICE, smart team of developers, was just icing on the cake. For those that think $35m is a lot of money, think of this… BARNYARD, a barely successful animated film made with XSI, costed $51 million to make. For the full sale price of Softimage you couldn’t even finish half of BARNYARD!

granted AD may keep developing and supporting XSI well into the future. but if i were to startup a new studio or pipeline, XSI would not make the cut at this point in time. too much speculation over its future.

think about it. if you were a small company like Chaos, would you keep pouring dollars into developing a XSI plug-in for Vray?

#1184

I was informed by a user of this board that I should respond to this thread. I am the admin of 3dspeedmachine.com and posted the article in question regarding the software comparisons.
Let me be clear that I’m merely summarizing the work done by Jon Peddie Research. Softimage commisioned them to do the test, that is true but it does not mean the tests are invalid per se. I was in communication with a Director at Softimage regarding these tests and we were discussing publishing these tests on my site. As you can imagine, in light of recent events, I have been unable to reach my contacts at Softimage. I asked Jon Peddie if I could summarize the findings, which he agreed to.

Regardless. These tests are valid. Of course it depends on how you look at it. A Director at Autodesk has contacted me requesting to refute the claims made in Peddie’s white paper. I will certianly give them this opportunity. They are working on the refute and IT DOES have merit. I will post it on my site as soon as they present it to me. Mainly it has to do with the fact that direct x is not optimized for wireframes…again it depends on how you look at it. Do you run things in wireframe all the time or shaded? If shaded, then your GPU will come into play…which is not addressed in this test.

IMO there is no way to “compare” 3 different major software apps. My studio uses 3ds Max all day, everyday. Its what we know. Is it the the most efficient? Well…all I have to go on is my own experience using 3ds Max and input from the community.

Jon Peddie’s research is not biased. Softimage commisioned them to do the study and they compared all the softwares a certian way. Autodesk’s tests will no doubt point out Max’s strength’s…and XSI’s weaknesses.

Anyone who says “Our software is the best” is trying to sell you something. It doesn’t necessarilly maen their reasoning is biased. There is value is Peddie’s test. There will be value in Autodesk’s refute. For what its worth I’m right there with you anxious to see what happens next.

Your messenger,
Joe Pizzini
www.3dspeedmachine.com

#1185

100 people shouting complaints in a crowd of 20,000 xsi users does not mean that 20,000 are unhappy and complaining.

we’ve had all this before with the alias buy out…and this is a much smaller userbase
maya’s still doing it’s thing and maya users still use maya.

until the sky actually starts to fall in on top of people…what’s to complain about?

out of the possible companies that may have taken on softimage like adobe, corel, apple,
maxon, google i belive that autodesk offers the best future for developing xsi.

the only major change we more or less know about is in the autodesk e.u.l.a compred to the softimage e.u.l.a [end user licence agreement]

#1186

Right On…i am with ya! :deal:

#1187

Keep in mind I’m not a big studio - I use 3D in a small way to enhance photography (I have XSI Foundation and C4D), so my understanding of the “industry” is not that indepth.

The general phrase I keep reading over and over “How can AD possibly support development of 3 apps” has me stumped a bit - gotta tell you. As a business owner, I won’t buy anything that either won’t pay itself off, or won’t support itself outright in the long run. The sales of XSI alone must have been worth the purchase - especially considering the price tag was 35Million - and not BILLION.

AD doesn’t have a single bucket of cash to hopefully pleasepleaseplease maybe be able to pay for 3 things at once over the long term. The software sales pays for itself, as well as it’s further development.

If you stop buying it, it won’t pay for itself, and THEN development will stop and the software will disappear.

Like I wrote before, companies get purchased (and this is Softimage’s FOURTH owner - let’s not forget that!) - it’s still the software you love, just the logo on the box changed.

#1188

How can you possibly say that? You run your own general 3d app benchmarking site, surely you must be highly sceptical when some tests commissioned by softimage show that softimage’s software is the fastest there is in almost every test performed?

This is no better than all of the junk studies commissioned by MS which show windows is the best. Paid-for results are as useful as a condom in the vatican.

Personally im filing these in with most of the SPEC results

#1189

If the logo is the only thing that changes then everything is fine with me. But I have a feeling that the annual release cycle will stop XSI’s next version(s) from living up to what we’ve become accustomed to. Hope I’m wrong.

#1190

You’re right. It may not. Those 100 may just be a bunch of unhappy, sour, troll-like pricks sitting somewhere in the minority. There is something to be said for the power and unreasonability of a mob mentality mindset. Then again, those 100 - being a random sampling - may represent a cross-section of the whole. As such, though they’re only a 100 voices large, they could represent the sentiments of a much larger user base.

When 1 person complains, you can write it off and say, “This is a single disgruntled customer. Probably just somebody who’s not willing to see the big picture.” When it’s 100 users then you, as business person, have to start thinking about that big picture seriously yourself. It may only represent barely .5% of the whole user base, but the money adds up eventually. Potentially losing $5k in licenses here & there is different than dropping half a mil. Do that a couple of times and it’s potentially significant.

None of this bitching and moaning may turn into anything. However, if nothing else, it’s a sign post that Autodesk has to pay attention to. No doubt, Autodesk is probably doing a little damage control and spin right now, especially if you look at that recent Softimage/Autodesk video interview. They have to. It’s clear to them too. This initial fear and uncertainty may result in nothing happening or it may indeed represent a chunk of lost users in the coming year. 100 voiced concerns may represent many more unvoiced. It would be bad business to pretend that such concerns don’t exist.

#1191

How can you possibly say that? You run your own general 3d app benchmarking site, surely you must be highly sceptical when some tests commissioned by softimage show that softimage’s software is the fastest there is in almost every test performed?

You make it sound like they are sitting around scheming trying to figure out a way to fool us. If I go buy a used car, yes, I’m going to take everything the salesman has to say with a grain of salt. I think that goes without saying in this case. I’m certain Softimage knew getting into the tests that it would be known who paid for the whole thing…they certainly don’t hide that fact in the white paper. And I do think there is useful information in the paper…but take it with a grain of salt. When Autodesk replies to me with their refute for the the white paper, take that with a grain of salt as well. We should gain better insight to this when we look at both sides…again the issue is that the tests were run in wireframe which direct x isn’t optimized for (max) But hey, on friday I spent probably 3 hours working in wireframe (off and on) on a complex model. So the tests mean something to me. :slight_smile:

And if you want un biased benchmarks, head over to my database project. Thats why I started it in the first place.

All the Best,
Joe
www.3dspeedmachine.com

#1192

http://area.autodesk.com/softimage_announceVIDEO
See the interview with Marc Stevens, General Manager of Softimage, and Marc Petit, Senior Vice-President, Autodesk Media & Entertainment as they discuss this announcement.

http://area.autodesk.com/softimage_announce

#1193

there are many complaining about various experiences with ADESK and of course they complain about the negative ones. Other posts show the common anti-marketleader opinions…
We can not see into the future what ADESK will do, if it will drop XSI, slows down progress and development to a near halt because of the lacking competition etc.
The second one i think is not soooo unlikely…

But one is for sure, and i already posted this:

The days of open communication with the userbase are over for XSI.
Softimage used to mamage public bug databases, managed good communication between developers-users etc…
This all will stop now -

ADESK is not an open company, it has a strict one-directional approach to communication.
Public buglists are evil for them, giving you an overview of the things to come in the future is evil for them too. This was not the case with Avid’s way of operating Softimage.
And i’m quite sure XSI users will not like it…

#1194

Joe, thanks for your postings here. I sense some slight discomfort with your trying to defend the article, as evidenced by your final paragraph. Since you do your own independent benchmark testing, you clearly understand and value the importance of selecting a test suite that is not defined by the owners of one of the products being tested.

Of couse when AD comes back with a refutation they will probably pick some benchmarks that show their product in the best light and no doubt it will win the set of benchmarks they have selected. At the end of the day all you will have is two grains of salt. I’d come back to my point that the real value is a set of tests that is created in co-operation with all of the vendors involved, or with none of them.

A serious question for you - would you be willing to create and/or run such a set of tests, perhaps in collaboration with some users here at cgtalk? Given enough eyes watching, I’m sure it would be possible to come up with an more unbiased set of tests to compare the products. Of course it would not be perfect, but your experience with benchmarking and others experience with production workflows would be a very good starting point.

#1195

this is a little off topic but I’ll go there for a second…

 It is a fairly straightforward undertaking to accurately test, compare and analyze the relative performance of one workstation or rendernode -to that of another.
   
   The results of well-designed and rigorously conducted hardware benchmarking can be universally accepted because virtually all of the specific functions being tested rely on variables which are known and typically controlled or "neutralized'. 
   
   On the other hand, designing a benchmark testing regime designed to compare the relative performance of different software packages is MUCH more difficult in general -and the results FAR less universally accepted.
   
   The reason for this that there are simply many many more variables to consider and to neutralize. Driver/Software setup and "tuning" for maximum software performance in each application can be complicated, and as the study above mentioned, it is exceedingly difficult to find an application engineer who is intimately familiar with all of the applications being tested. 
   
   Also, benchmarking only a few specific functions (such as 3D wireframe drawing in the viewport) does not -and cannot- inform the reader to the overall efficiency of the individual applications being compared. Nor can it quantify the "user experience" of any of the programs being tested.
   
   One cannot argue that JPR (formerly Jon Peddie & Assoc.) have long been a trusted and competent source for comparative market data in the area of 3D and digital media applications. I try to read their "big report" every year. 
   
   However, in regard to the recently released "study" referenced above, I personally believe that the results are not terribly useful outside of "nuanced" tactical marketing plays.
#1196

Isn’t it weird that whatever Autodesk does brings up so much negative attitude everywhere on the forums?

I personally would be fine with whatever Autodesk does as long as it kept it FAIR! By fair I mean: $3600 USD for Max FOR EVERYONE and not $5069 USD in Europe! (even worse in the UK)

So, if only for this single reason, I’m really NOT HAPPY with all the buy-outs Autodesk does. Period.

#1197

read all about it! read all about it !!

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=59&t=690915

the world just turns faster and faster !!

and now, AutoDesk may just cry over what it has just done !!

1 ~2 weeks difference makes the winner [us] and the loser !!

#1198

I’ve read comments like “as autodesk bought XSI i will jump to another application” i find that way of thinking absolutely stupid (with all my respect)
What difference does the owner makes? somebody also wrote “I rather have XSI in autodesk hands before waiting it to vanish of the market” that’s the way of thinking!
There must exist a real good reasons for AVID to sell…if you Softimage lovers really love the software you use, why give up to it just for a matter that doesn’t concern to you?

…anyway, as long as you make your desitions work to keep your good job, use wathever you want …SPITE GIRLS!

#1199

One of the things I loved about the 3d industry circa 2000-2005 was all the rapid development and the way all the 3d companies would be inspired by/copy/steal features from other apps; all for the ultimate benefit of the customers.

Maya, lw, max, c4d, xsi, ts, ei, modo, blender, messiah, mudbox… Youll find masses of functionality which has clearly made its way through from one app to another, often even to the extent of keeping the exact same name or a slight derivative of it.

Despite all the piss taking, I enjoyed watching the rabid lw users go on the rampage promoting their app. Good times were had watching the frankly awesome softimage marketing team make even the most mundane of features sound like the second coming of leviathan.

As companies start falling off and getting acquired, all of this goes by the wayside. EI and LW are now about as threatening as a soggy kitten. Common sense says that the competition between max, maya and xsi is never going to be anywhere as good as it once was. Mudbox vs zbrush for the sculptors, I cant see zbrush hanging on long enough to pose much competition to mudbox. Mudbox will get inside access to the other AD software file formats and various other significant advantages, to the point where the choice would be a no-brainer for most people.

One large company buying up other companies isnt particularly a bad thing if its to beef up a vertical market, ala google. Theyve bought lots of smaller companies, but each one has been different, and its for the purpose of offering a full series of products which complement each other. Google search on a google phone while you talk over gchat checking your gmail which contains a youtube link…

AD on the other hand are about as horizontal as a hooker on a busy day. Buying out competitor after competitor for the purpose of making sure you have to come to them if you want a certain type of software.

This is why people don’t like them.

#1200

Amen.