Softimage, I will dearly miss you

#1

I’ve been doing 3D now and then since 2004 I think. I started learning 3ds Max assuming that the largest userbase implied the best software.

A few years later I heard some people laughing with 3ds Max and claimed XSI kicked ass, so I checked it out in 2006. And yes, it definitely kicked ass: fast and 21st century UI, render region in viewport, fast and intuitive mouse based modelling, node based materials, later we got ICE and a whole bunch of other great improvements.

So I did most of my 3D in XSI. I tried going back to 3ds. I tried Lightwave just for fun, but nope, they couldn’t replace XSI.

Now Autodesk killed it. I knew they would from the start. It makes me angry. But well, that’s how the world works sometimes. So that is that. Adapt, and move on.

Now I’m learning Maya and Cinema 4D. Maya sure is powerful, but it looks and feels like going back to the nineties if you’re coming from XSI. Cinema 4D is a lot more intuitive and faster to model in than Maya (in my opinion). I would drop Maya if I could, but it’s industry standard, so I’m going to learn it for that reason alone. But Cinema 4D clearly has my preference.

Either way, Cinema 4D isn’t XSI either. Realizing that I just feel sad. I wish Avid wouldn’t have sold out to big bad Autodesk. I mean, what good has Autodesk ever done for 3D?

I very much hope that the independent companies that make Modo, Houdini, Cinema 4D and Lightwave never sell out. Software companies: love your software, improve it, never sell out. Make Autodesk’s life hard. I beg you :slight_smile:

B.

#2

C’mon maaan, wtfck is wrong with you.

I am 3dsmax user.
But let’s take your claim that “getting out into Maya is like getting back into nineties” alone - :arteest:

I wish that Maya users slaaaaaap you with something soft but heavy enough to beat the Softimage-uber-soft egocentrism out of you for the sake of you as an artist.

And yes, there is lots of folks which do model in Maya. And yes, they do amazing things.
Go and learn, stop winning.

No offense man. You could of course go and cry, if you like. But maybe better don’t.

#3

Just expressing my feelings and thoughts Intars5d. I am well aware that anything can be done in any of the 3D packages, it’s the artist, not the tool. But for me, the way to get there was better in Softimage.

Yes, I’ll get over it. Let me mourn a bit first ok :stuck_out_tongue:

#4

:beer:

No,no,no - no offense.
And yes, a little mourn will not hurt anybody. It will add some fun

#5

“…I wish Avid wouldn’t have sold out to big bad Autodesk. I mean, what good has Autodesk ever done for 3D?”

I recall making the same comment about Avid, many years ago
:sad:

Microsoft bought Softimage in the late 90’s. They were trying to get the “high-end” 3D market to take their OS seriously and figured they would buy the “big boy” on the block (at the time) and then get them to port to Windows.

During this period, Silicon Graphics dominated with their IRIX based platform. We’ll, Silicon Graphics freaked at the Microsoft purchase of Softimage and figured they would buy the other big players which were Alias and Wavefront and consolidated them into one company that would maintain an exclusive IRIX base.

However, Alias was already seeing the writing on the wall, and was developing their next generation app “Maya” to run on both Windows and IRIX. The windows market was just too big, and companies like Intergraph were making hardware that could compete with Silicon Graphics, but much cheaper.

Eventually, SGI realized they would have to get into the Windows market as well, and started developing the O2, which was an expensive, buggy Windows machine (that never sold well). Then they asked Alias to port Maya to Windows, which Alias had already been developing for anyway. I recall the very week that Alias announced they would port Maya to Windows, Microsoft sold Softimage to Avid, because I assume they no longer needed them.

However, Avid wasn’t interested in Softimage for their 3D software XSI. Avid was a video editing solutions company. They wanted Softimage because they also were developing Digital Studio (DS), which was a next gen video solution. They had originally planned on killing DS, but ended up embracing it. By the way Softimage used to also make toon animation software as well.

Anyway, they did keep developing Softimage XSI, which I do agree is the best software on the market. Unfortunately, Autodesk did buy them from Avid, who was never a 3D company anyway. I disagree that Autodesk is not 3D company. My only fear is that Softimage was the last real threat to them, (other than ZBrush on the modeling end).

Now Autodesk owns pretty much the whole market. There are still some players, such as Houdini, Lightwave, Modo, Blender and Cinema 4D, but on a capabilities level, Autodesk is not threatened by anyone and brings in so much cash, they can crush anyone who does start to look as real threat.

I am optimistic that Autodesk is trying to develop Maya into a better product. One thing about our industry is that it is always bleeding edge. “Make it twice was powerful, and the customers will do twice as much”.

Respectfully,
Ohmanoggin

#6

hate to be the nit picker, but who else is going to be? :stuck_out_tongue:

That wasn’t the O2, which was an IRIX box. It was the Visual PC 540 and 320.

Maya was already released and cross platform when Microsoft sold Softimage. Microsoft sold softimage to Avid, because it doesn’t care about really expensive (DS was 130,000$), low volume products and in part as a play to get Avid to adopt their doc file format (which would before AAF) as a video format standard, to replace Avid’s OMF, which was based on OMF/Apple technology. This came up in documents of the Microsoft US monopoly trials.

You’re thinking Softimage Toonz. Softimage was just a redistributor, and the software is still available by the company that made it http://www.toonz.com/

#7

This all went down in the late 90’s, so its been a lot of years and my memory is fuzzy
:smiley:

“That wasn’t the O2, which was an IRIX box. It was the Visual PC 540 and 320.”

You’re right. I forgot the O2 was their answer to Windows/Intel pricing. They still had their Octane line, which was in the neighborhood of $50K but the O2 price was in the range of other highend PC’s but still an IRIX based box. Still, as I said it was too little, too late and they never sold enough to make up for the cheaper price. The PC’s did even worse. SGI made great hardware, but they just didn’t know how to compete in the larger lower volume markets. They might have done better if they had more time to adapt to the Windows platform.

“Maya was already released and cross platform when Microsoft sold Softimage.”

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply Maya was on the market before they confirmed dual platforms. I only meant that the industry knew Alias wanted to be on both, and just kept doing what they were doing while their mother company SGI acted like they were going to stick only with IRIX. Everyone knew the Windows stuff was going to happen and no one was surprised when it did.

“Microsoft sold Softimage to Avid, because it doesn’t care about really expensive (DS was 130,000$), low volume products and in part as a play to get Avid to adopt their doc file format (which would before AAF) as a video format standard, to replace Avid’s OMF, which was based on OMF/Apple technology. This came up in documents of the Microsoft US monopoly trials.”

Microsoft never cared about Softimage 3D or their next gen Sumatra (XSI) either. Their whole motive was getting their platform in the high-end market. Once that was done- they cut them loose. This seems to confirm with the above statement, but feel free to correct me if you think I remember this wrong.

“You’re thinking Softimage Toonz. Softimage was just a redistributor, and the software is still available by the company that made it http://www.toonz.com/”

I always wondered what happened to their Toonz stuff. I never knew they were a reseller, but then I didn’t pay much attention to it. You would see it in their marketing and demo it in their booth at trade shows. It seemed to disappear when Avid took over.

I will shut up now. The original post sparked some old memories, and I was just sort of reminiscing about Softimage myself.

Ohmanoggin
Forever a “Softie”.

#8

The Softimage failure has nothing to do with its roots. Several 3D applications Cinema4D, Modo established itself after and were comparatively much weaker for a long time.

It has to do with being the 3D most expensive software at start of the century, missing the Global Illumination revolution when Foundation arrived, having an erratic strategy
and never having an unique area of capability - that somewhat only appeared with ICE.

And when it was growing up and once agian being noticed with great ICE work being done, between version 2011 and 2012 was killed by Autodesk.

#9

Hmm, I was selling XSI at the beginning of the century, and one of the few selling points of the first few buggy versions was that it was MUCH cheaper than Maya and on top of that came with MRay licenses. Compared to Maya’s utterly useless SW renderer that pushed people to cahce out to LW, or use buggy converters for extra box engines, between a choice of two, a shitty lacklustre MRay, or a PRMan back when you needed a small army of engineers to squeeze a textured ball out of it.

Only Max was marginally cheaper, but again the sheer plug-in park and issues that were required/plagued it back then made for a rather unattractive price point when you looked at the actual final price. Not that anybody in their right mind would have taken on character jobs with it anyway back then, and that was a time when characters in ads were raking in money for studios of all sizes.

As someone who circulated a considerable amount of licenses and maintenance contracts over a couple years I’m pretty positive I wasn’t lying to clients when we were doing the maths for pricing :stuck_out_tongue:

It was only more expensive for a short stretch of time between the price slash of Maya in-complete (it got cut to 2k) and the release of foundation.

#10

I come into discussion only because I remember the days of Alias v3.0, 1992 NURBS, Alias v4.0 in 1993 which I thought was at the time the most advanced system for 3D in dealing with architectural modeling and that was in the early 90s.

This does not mean the end of Softimage, maybe in terms of new versions, because users can always keep it relevant with plugins and sharing of resources amongst the user base. Look at what has happened over time with the Amiga computer. Still user supported and active after all this time http://www.amiga.org/.

#11

Softimage is dead?

I had to check because I was not sure. But yes. It sill runs on my computer. Had me going there for a minute.

I do like modeling in XSI however but I learned to like it in Maya actually quite a bit better. Basically Softimage “died” for me a long while before AD decided to drop it.

Just for me and what I wanted to do, Maya made more sense.

If it didn’t I’d just still be using Softimage for a few years. Great software, will be for sometime.

In a lot of ways I do miss things about it. But alas I have already turned to the dark side. And word on the street has it, there is no turning back now… :slight_smile: