I have a quick question about this whole thing.
As a European customer we all have to buy Autodesk products via Authorised resellers. At the moment I’m still able to buy XSI online without reseller and without the crazy European price conversion.
Do you think it’s better to buy XSI right now rather than in 3 months?
I see many people saying this, but isn’t that like cutting off your nose to spite your own face?
Blender is no replacement for XSI
I couldn’t resist.
Im tired from working 18 hours today - this just woke me up and made my day.
Dude — thank you for sharing!
:applause:
^^ Sad times for XSI for sure but I have to say that tube clip had me laughing out loud!
Well for me this is the second time around - first was with my beloved Dreamweaver and Fireworks, now XSI (well there was also that fiasco with Eovia and Hexagon 2 - so that’s actually three…)
My thing is, that so called new management team should have looked at where XSI was going especially with the release of ICE and all the positive energy from the community instead of just looking at spreadsheets and financial data.
I feel somewhat stabbed in the back - especially considering the emails I received during my upgrade process to v7 “…you won’t regret the upgrade along with maintenance - especially with all the great stuff coming down the line…”
I’m paraphrasing but obviously the sales reps didn’t know this was coming either. (I’d hope.)
I guess my little “$1800 to show my support to Softimage” will be going to AD now.
My thing is - instead of having faith in the division, they sold out cheap - pretty much everyone that heard about this was surprised how cheap AD got all this for.
Sure there’s potential for XSI to now have more funding and resources but I thought business was also about not being afraid of the numbers? To risk it all - sweating and fighting your way up from being the underdog to being number one and the best , the glory of victory - what happened to that business spirit?
When I think of all the buzz and hoopla Softimage had going around siggraph time - damn, they even had Vanilla Ice at the party :shrug: to then turn around and do this to everyone - I just have to shake my head.
I say keep Softimage as a division of Avid and SAVE a large chunk of money by toss’n out dem dudes they hired that came up with this lousy idea that shows NO loyality to the customers, development team OR to the Softimage brand name.
-Will
You’re kind of on the right track. The Autodesk - Adobe analogy draws a bit of a fuzzy line, but the battery of specialty apps you get with Creative Suite does in a lot of ways reflect the specialty 3D apps that’ve been popping up–like Mudbox and Motion Builder. That argument falls apart when you look at the main three apps that Autodesk now owns, where they each share functionality but with wildly different interfaces. It’s easy to see it as a monopolistic acquisition of the properties for the sake of culling the field as classically monopolies tend to get rid of things that “compete” with what they see as the main product line.
I don’t see Autodesk’s acquisition as being monopolistic, though. In today’s economy smaller companies with a lot of potential can be destroyed very easily, and even a company like Avid can hit the kind of financial stress that could bring it down–and Avid is definitely not the most wild success ever as a company. To give you an idea, we use their non-linear editing software at my school, but virtually all the students here avoid it in favor of FinalCut Pro unless an instructor absolutely REQUIRES them to use it; plus we have exactly two liscenses and no more since there may be exactly one instructor using it. At any rate it’s only natural in this economy to see consolidation–large companies buying properties they deem of value and interest, both adding an asset to their portfolio cheaply and providing resources and economic shelter in bad times. That, at the very least, is the argument Autodesk will use, if not one that has some truth.
To the question of whether or not XSI’s features will blend with the other two apps, I don’t think so. Programming just doesn’t work that way. Look at it this way: since they bought Max, how much of it and its feature set has truly blended in with Maya? I can see them lifting some algorithms where XSI does things more precisely than the other programs for the sake of improving those programs’ performance in things like UV transfer, but at the deepest level these three programs were still born of what amounts to some wildly different code bases. Bigger features are hardcoded in or close to the foundations of the program, which means re-doing most of Maya or Max for the sake of making them do what XSI already does or re-doing most of XSI to try and make it work more like the other programs.
Finally, I will re-iterate, they all have their particular (broad) specialties. Who can say that since Autodesk acquired Max that its architectural tools are present in Maya, for instance? Or its system of filters? Who can say that Max’s basic UI has changed even the slightest bit to resemble Maya more? I’ve been using Max since it was still owned by Discreet and it’s remained largely the same. There’s little reason to believe that any of these programs will change on an earth-shattering level now that XSI is in Autodesk’s hands–especially since there’s no word yet that they intend to dismantle Softimage as a company. I predict that the absolute worst thing we’ll be able to say is that instead of “Softimage XSI” we’ll be calling it “Autodesk XSI” or “Autodesk Softimage XSI.”
That’s probably how Cg artists and companies will have to look at it ourselves, or just take our lumps and move on.
We’re more multi app every day anyways, so it’s a hard , necessary move to be multidexterous …use whatever is cost effective or on hand… I suppose. :rolleyes:
Not much, but using another example - quite a bit of MotionBuilder has been integrated into Maya. So they do look for some integration where they think it’ll help the most. Integration between XSI, Max and Maya should be stronger going forward, or so I hope.
I’d love to see something like what Adobe has done where you can import project files from one program into another program. I’d like to buy the “Autodesk Master Collection” and be able to model something in Max, save it off as a native file and open it in Maya natively to do some animation then open it in XSI to do some work in ICE all working in a single format. Sort of like an uber-FBX. No more .max files or .xsi or .ma/.mb files. But, as Michael says, programming doesn’t work like that and that’ll never happen. But one can dream… 
People talk of 3dsmax like it was acquired by Autodesk at some point. They have always owned it, just like 3dstudio Dos before it.
it did … from Discreet … i used to us it a looooong time ago too … my first 3d software … it took my 3d virginity 0_o
I would call that rebranding. Yost group made 3dsmax version 1 for Autodesk back in the day. Every other company since has been owned by Autodesk (kinetix, discreet). I see that they “bought” it from discreet (a company they own), but what does that mean?
ohhh .thanks … I did not know it was a subsid of AD …
but i knew the original was purchased somewhere along that line … thanks man
Blender is no replacement for XSI
People are not thinking of now, they’re thinking of the future, when Blender is still being updated on a regular basis, and Autodesk XSI is a forgotten backwater app used by diehard sentimentalists who cannot accept their dream died years ago, to be replaced with cosmetic alterations at inflated prices.
I hope to be proved wrong- but don’t expect to be, sadly.
No, it didn’t
3ds as a product line was by the yost group.
Max was developed under commission by AD under the AD owned kinetix brand, they bought discreet, and AFTERWARD they moved kinetix into discreet.
They’ve always owned the source and financed the whole research process, from scratch, of 3ds. From dos times, when it had the same interface of autocad, to modern days. Including the windows transition time and rewrite that was max.
Mine was taken by Fractal Design’s RayDream Studio 5!
Oh well. I guess I’ll use XSI 6FND until it breaks.
I will hate to see XSI 7.2 free update become XSI 2009 new version.:eek:
After reading all the posts here I figured I would add my very very small opinion.
I know that all for the most part are venting here because of what Avid did to our beloved 3D application, I am one of those myself, especially since I left LW and went to XSI and been studying it in school for last 2 + years.
However, I can almost see the people at AD, they don’t care what anyone here or any other forum has to say about this.
Why is that?
They know that demand for a 3D app is here and is not going anywhere, especially that now there are so many uses for them, from movies, to video games, to commercials etc. (I mean now because in last 8 years the use of CGI has grown). With that, knowing the demand is high, they know studios and artists will pay the price for it, if they want to stay in business.
I could compare it to oil companies, when oil prices started to go up, and gas price started to go up, they knew that no matter what price they would put on the pump consumer would pay it.
You can also look at it as EA, when they noticed that other companies were making way better games then they were what did they do? they purchased almost all of them and got rid of most of the good developers/designers, and they games for the most part still suck, but at least now there is no competition. (yes I know that there are many of them still out there, but look 5 years ago, there was alot more of them).
AD will most likely do something like that, they will controll the market with those apps, and they know demand will be there so they will be able to control the prices.
Personally I hope that Maxon, Houdini, LW will see this as opportunity to really step into the light with better apps, and show people that there is still hope for good, not buggy software.
This is only my point of view, trying to underline the fact that AD could care less what people think, they showed that with the apps they provide, and support they provide.
(My company uses AutoCad, and require support at times… it sure is not good, and outsourced).
Marek
P.S. I really hope my XSI 7 will not break too soon, personally I LOVE ICE and XSI of course (well, at least while it was Softimage).
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