Softimage 2015 Last Release Announcement

#81

Heads Up!
Apparently Luxology/TheFoundry gives a 50% Modo price reduction as a reaction to the current events. Got this from the SI mailing list …

4:15 AM (5 hours ago)

But are the competitors any better? Any more accessible and transparent in their communication and dealings?

Well, I was having an exchange in private with Brad Peebler, founder of Luxology, and I put to him whether the Foundry/Luxology would have the flexibility and agility to do something about short term.
Turns out they do.
In a few hours they set up everything for a 50% discount on Modo purchases. No strings attached, just because I jokingly challenged him to.

Go to the online store and use the coupon “raffofkahn” for half price check-out.

I’m not a Modo user, nor have the time or inclination right now to become one. I’m not going to suddenly wish AD any ill or stop using their products, though they sure did their damnest to make me even more guarded when dealing with their PR and promises.
I did really enjoy dealing with the Foundry in the past though, and I have now to extend that respect to its Luxology arm. At the very least they are willing to act transparently and unconditionally on matters all the way from the top of the product chain.

Cheers,
Raff

P.S.
The actual coupon’s text was Brad’s idea, not mine! I imagine he read my signature and thought I was a Trekkie or something like that.

P.P.S.
I’m not getting anything out of this. I’m not a modo user, I’m not getting freebies, it has nothing to do with my employer, what the hell, it barely has anything to do with me outside the last few hours and this e-mail itself. I simply thought it was a nice and significant gesture on Brad’s side and decided to help him reach out on account of his personality and display of good will.

–

#82

yeh totally aware of that being a 3dsmax user since 1999 :cool: just wanted to also point out that autodesk acquired softimage, face robot etc + c.a.t. for 3dsmax rather than just softimage on its own.

so…we’re now waiting to see what awesomeness is arriving for 3dsmax and maya for the 2015 versions.

i guess we’ll know by march 14th?

#83

Softimage’s one big flaw is that it has always been ahead of its time, and still is.
The brains at AD didn’t realize this / weren’t patient so they took this ice cold business decision.

#84

There’s a small sneak peak available now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg9KZUzkSHE
Looks more to be about small enhancements rather than big new features …

#85

So, in conclusion… long live BLENDER and Open Source!

#86

Blender is released under the GNU General Public License, and is very restrictive for use of 3rd party developers (plugins, script in house development and so on)

The only way is to license it under the Apache2 license

#87

That looks interesting, the voucher doesn’t work on the UK store (yet) but I’ve left a message with sales, to see what the deal is.

#88

There are studios that are using Blender as in-house tool.
There are also modified versions of Blender. Like this:Interior Design and Architectural Rendering with Microvellum and Blender

There are also plugins for commercial render engines like V-Ray.

Any question and concern regarding Blender licensing can be answered on blenderartists.org forum.

Also, Blender have a pace of development incredibly fast…

#89

I am not a Softimage user but I really feel deeply with everyone who over the years invested countless hours mastering this software and developed specialized workflows, which can’t get replicated anywhere else. Autodesk with this measure brings to the point which criteria are relevant for their decisions. This should also be of interest for all Autodesk customers, also those who are seemingly unaffected by the EOL of Softimage.

        Autodesk by no means wants this product to get further developed. They rather dump hundred thousands of man-hours of development time instead of selling a product which (economically) doesn't [i]perform[/i] as expected to a competitor.
        
        Autodesk clearly wants you to stop using Softimage and to instead pay for other programs they [b]currently[/b] consider worth concentrating on.  Already in the past Autodesk has made further use of perpetual versions impossible by simply turning off Licensing Servers, many of you have lost thousands of dollars due to nothing but capriciousness.
       
        What Autodesk does here can not be excused. It can only be explained by predatory capitalism.
        Other efforts for explanations, even if meant well by individual employees are just doomed to fail.
    
        I hope that this measure doesn't only make everyone sad and pissed but will lead to action. What firms like Autodesk do to you and your work is by no means acceptable. Lawsuits of course will not force Autodesk to further develop the product. But what one could reach is, that they had to make the product available for as long as one wants to use it. Simply making re-registering of existing licenses impossible hardly can be in line with European law, here one effectively own the license one has purchased. You are many, you could be loud, also outside web fora. I just hope you guys don't just moan for a couple of weeks and then silently comply with your fate.
#90

I can only agree on this as being a logic move, instead of jumping the modo horse. Foundry is nothing short of a smaller Autodesk brother, considering they bought Nuke and Modo as well. Recently they are experiencing shortcomings in terms of monetary compensation, which might explain the extreme price drop now;)

If an existing XSI users considers himself to be rather limited by what XSI could do, he would surely switch to Houdini to never feel any kind of limitations.

Considering himself rather intermediate, there is enough room to switch to Cinema4D, LightWave or Blender.

The remaining artists already started to look into Max or Maya I’d assume as this outcome was to be expected from a certain point of view.

#91

Blur studio also use(d) it for animation, though they mostly use max for almost everything else.

#92

This seems to be the corporate mentality. Gobble up your competition and then kill their product. Adobe did the same thing with Macromedia Freehand and Fireworks.

#93

In 6 years after acquisition of Softimage, the only major innovation was the crowd system, and Autodesk always lied to Softimage user, saying it would have a great future, the future of Softimage was to have his team dismembered and sent to the Maya, for the implementation of Nayad.

With this Autodesk philosophy, Softimage has no future in this company, and I definitely don’t trust anymore in Autodesk, I will continue using Softimage until a better solution appears, and certainly do not intend to use any other Autodesk software, companies like SideFX and The Foundry, has much more respect to the user. The only salvation for Softimage is open source the code to the community, and I think it will not happen.

Cheers.
Paulo Duarte

www.pauloduarte.ws

#94

Well, not unexpected, because that is how the corporate world works.

To all the developers and creators of Softimage, thanks. It is an amazing product, so highly refined and well thought out. So fast at modelling and building scenes. I got things done in SI that I could never get done in 3dsmax and Maya.

#95

ADSK itself is profiting from open-source techs like openSubdiv, Alembic, EXR format to name a few… Some of those contributors are pretty big studios and I think they should put pressure on ADSK and force it to give back to the community.

But ADSK keeps everything close to its chest. They’re not even opening the broken FBX format. Which makes people even more creative actually and helps them come up with better stuff like alembic.

I hope someone comes up with an character animation app, that does to animation, what Zbrush did to modelling. Because ADSK doesn’t have anything special (including bifrost) except character animation tools.

#96

Autodesk have made contributions to all of the open-source technologies that you listed.

#97

That’s certainly nice, but probably the only 3D apps that are as capable as Soft are Maya and HDN. But then again not everyone uses these apps for just the more complex things, so maybe I’m wrong.

#98

By trying to figure out how to make them work within their own apps?

#99

Just a few thoughts on this:

  1. Why was Autodesk even allowed to buy Softimage? Shouldn’t anti-trust laws have stopped this? I think most of us feel that AD bought Softimage because it saw it as a threat. A small threat but a threat nonetheless. If they bought it and it did well, great. If it didn’t they could always shut it down.

  2. I think Autodesk does this on so many products… Like Mudbox… Or Motion Builder. I think as far as industry use Softimage had a bigger following than either. AD is holding them because I believe their philosophy is “if we can’t have them, no one can”. If SI was doing poorly, it should’ve been sold - like Avid did - to a company that could afford to continue to develop it. It would’ve been the ethical thing to do. Instead they shut it down. They made a statement last year that they wanted to help a struggling CG industry. That’s really infuriating after this.

  3. I’m not sure if this has been mentioned but one of my biggest complaints here is all the SI tech dies with SI. So do it’s contributors. If they can’t tightly or easily integrate it into Maya, it’s gonna die in AD’s basement. They’re not gonna open source any of the tech because then it becomes a threat. All of the people who helped develop any of this are probably under non-competitive clauses and have to wait “x” years before being able to work somewhere else that could be competition. I wouldn’t be surprised if that applied even to those laid off. If any of the contributors try to start anything up that resembles anything they were working on in SI I imagine lawyers shutting it down very quickly.

I jumped off the AD cart a few years ago so this doesn’t affect me as much. My workflow is now Modo, Zbrush, Substance. Still it is very upsetting when you see a company act imo so unethically because of it’s own greed and fear.

#100

During a web conference on Tuesday, an Autodesk representative said that the company made the decision not to sell Softimage on because it now contains too much proprietary Autodesk IP.

http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/news/motion-graphics/autodesk-kills-softimage-2015-version-be-last/

So that nixes any ideas for open-source, as well. As if they’d ever consider that anyway.