Your day job.
And think, once your day job consists of working for clients using the 3d package you created, then youre now using that tool to make money, whilst you put money back into to make you more.
Sound like a fairy tale? :banghead:
Autodesk Signs Agreement with Avid Technology to Acquire Softimage
FreakWizz
#162
Wow it’s not even April Fools day… As for benefiting from the move, Nobody has gained a thing from having Maya and Max under the same label in fact everyone lost, and nobody will gain from Autodesk owning XSI.
But at least Lightwave, C4D and Modo and Houdini, and Blender users may rejoyce at being the only non-joke 3D companies left in the industry. And thankfully i believe most are all private companies and not publically listed, which means common sense tends to govern them before money does. Sad, Sad day…
LucentDreams
#164
Well considering how well organized their announcement is and how these deals typically go you know that they were well aware of this during siggraph and the announcement of XSI 7. I think its quite probable that Autodesk had influence on that decision and wanted it to happen before acquisition so they don’t look as ruthless as they did when they dropped the cheaper motionbuilder versions.
mr_Bob
#165
Choice , don’t make me laugh. Autodesk only answer to one group of people and that’s shareholders. All that matters is the bottom line and making profit.Cornering the market is a common business strategy to destroy your competition and then increase prices.
They can kill applications now at will and you will still have to buy one of their 3d product lines because you wont have any choice.
Autodesk support & updates …shivers
B
Magnus3D
#167
Let’s hope that Autodesk won’t implement it’s now infamous 3D Studio Max instability (crashing) in XSI, that would be like kicking the users already laying down on the ground in pain from this recent takeover. 
/ Magnus
Array
#168
You should try working overtime on some software in order to meet a deadline and then coming home and coding some more sometime 
ThE_JacO
#169
What’s best is that they managed to keep it under very tight wraps.
The same marketing and sales AD people that two weeks ago were telling everybody how XSI sucks now have to sell the thing. That’s gonna be funny.
Vong
#170
One Company To Rule Them All… and In the Darkness, Bind Them!
Sorry, it had to be said! :wavey:
Bullit
#171
Choice , don’t make me laugh.
There are a lot of car comapnies that have competing products in their line.
notlongago
#172
This is called corporate communism. Most of the people who digg the means and ways of capitalism should take a note because soon you wont have anything else except what Autodesk offers you.
Ben-Davis
#173
It’s sad that one company can have so much influence over the industry; if they want something they can get it. Softimage just introduced ICE and Autodesk thought (in a posh voice),
“golly were losing a lot of customers to this ‘ICE’ thing, perhaps we should develop something similar to go in one of our 3D applications,what are they called again? oh yes 3DS max and Maya… What am I thinking? lets just buy this here ICE thing, no need in wasting time making our own”
I give it a few months and Autodesk will announce the intergration of ICE into either Max or Maya, or even both. Doing so will make XSI redudant. Well I guess there’s one good thing to come from this, no-one will have to worry about what program to learn, they’ll just learn ‘The Autodesk’
Ulven
#174
Unlucky. oh, well, at least messiah, lightwave and a couple of others are still free and frank. I say, bring it on!
airflow
#176
Doom and gloom, Woe is we!!!
Personally its good news to me. Means more ap intergration.
Will SI stagnate, to be honest I think no, Maya has actually improved leaps and bounds over max, which is stagnant because the next incarnation is being built. Whats interesting now, is what will happen to this next gen app, will it be reworked, it will definatly tie into all 3 programs so the connection wont be a deal breaker whoever buys this new app, it also means true interoprability, I can go into any office, from using max into this app, and have a guy come in and go from maya and use this app, while a guy drops off some shots from xsi and is using it too. I really hope they allow connection from the 3 programs and extend them through a unified software, I think it would be great for the industry. And great for Houdidn, which I started learning about 6 months ago.
I can see worry about lack of innovation, but come on, max and maya are old tech, the innovation in xsi is because it was so young and forced to be so small by avid. Now it has propper cross over abillity.
Prices going up, maybey. But max has stayed around 2-3 grand its whole existance while maya and SI were sky high, Im hoping the current climate and AD’s new improved muscles dont build up to somthing bad, now it has all the marbles it dont have to play nice anymore. I hope they do the right thing. And no matter what, this is a red letter day for SideFx, they are gonna have a bumper xmas with all the people moaning about jumping ship… 
cheebamonkey
#177
ouch… you’re actually trying to compare Messiah and LW to Max, Maya and XSI. funny.
ICE in Maya… bring it.
DizzyJ
#179
Eventually, I suspect a lot of software will be subscription-based. It makes more sense for developers, although the transition would be hard. You’d need a very strong value prop to get people to buy in initially, unless you start giving it away (DAZ figured out a brilliant 3rd gen business model: give the software away, sell the content).
aglick
#180
for perspective:
Avid bought Softimage from Microsoft in 1998 (for $285M) mainly for the DS and XSI (which was called “Sumatra” at the time). Their original vision was to blend these powerful toolsets for post 3D animation, VFX compositing and editorial post -(along with a rendering engine licensed from mental images to be named “twister”) into one “killer app”
Their vision for tight integration between 2D and 3D pipelines proved to be alot cleaner on paper than it was to develop -and i belive around 2002/2003 they abandoned that path.
Since then, XSI has beocme an elegant 3D design & animation tool in its own right, with a rabid & loyal if somewhat small user base.
Unfortunately, things havn’t worked out for Avid as a company. Their core NLE business has been decimated over the past decade by Final Cut Pro and other powerful alternative toolsets.
To me It makes good business sense for Avid to spin off Softimage.
This does not mean that I think it’s good for the industry. On the contrary, I think a lack of comptetion generally stiffles innovation.
In the long run, though, the free market will win.
If Autodesk gets too “big and fat” and does not deliver the products that people really want, then the market will open up for a stealth player to swoop in and capitolize on the opporunity to take marketshare.
Sadly, in the short-to-medium term, I predict that we will see more “consolidation” like what happened today as smaller players are forced to sell.