Autodesk is to release Toxik and MatchMover, its legacy compositing and match-moving software, for free via theAutodesk Exchange Apps online store.Both products – Toxik developed by Autodesk, MatchMover acquired with RealViz in 2008 – are no longer actively developed, but are bundled with 3ds Max and Maya, the former under the name Autodesk Composite.
The two will become available “in a week or two” without a EULA – and presumably, without support. No plans to do the same for Softimage
The news was [“]posted by Autodesk Director of Media and Entertainment Chris Vienneau](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/xsi_list/mfL5T0knfj8[26-50-false) on a thread on the Softimage mailing list reporting Autodesk CEO Carl Bass’s response to the recent open letter ventingSoftimage users’ anger at the discontinuation of the software.
Not surprisingly, the announcement led list members to call for Softimage to be made available in the same way once updates cease in April 2016.
That drew a detailed response from Vienneau, noting that Softimage, unlike Toxik or MatchMover, includes third-party libraries, including mental ray, Syflex, Shave and a Haircut, PhysX and Lagoa.
“If we wanted to do what we did with Toxik, [we] would have to remove all those features … and [since the Linux emulator is also a third-party library, there would be] no Linux [version],” he said.
As well as hobbling the software, the work required would be prohibitively expensive, said Vienneau.
“This is a massive code base requiring at least 4-5 developers plus support just to keep it running. Open source is not an option given how much code that is in Maya and 3ds Max is [also] in Softimage.
“We could not release enough of it to be worth putting a team around.”
The thread, which includes lengthy exchanges between Vienneau and Autodesk industry manager Maurice Patel and senior visual effects artists, is well worth reading in full: [”]it starts here](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/xsi_list/mfL5T0knfj8[26-50-false).
They are standalone, but are very well integrated with other autodesk products. So in terms of fitting in a pipeline and having compatibility, they are both head and shoulders above blender.
Matchmover is a 3d tracker. I have used it on one project and it was pretty decent. Not sure how it compares to b3d’s 3d tracking since I havent used that yet.
Toxik is a node based compositing software and NLE. Cant say much about it since I am more of an aftereffects guy. Currently Nuke is kicking its arse and industry is pretty much ignoring it. So thus why autodesk is probably losing interest in selling it as standalone. They have also probably merged most of it with maya.
They used to bundle both of them with maya as standalone apps. Changed toxik’s name over the years a couple of times. it is arguably very powerful, but a bit counter intuitive.
This is almost like a practical joke. It’s still not the first of april though.
I will believe they give them away for free when they do. Right now its not really official.
There is probably some sort of a catch. Like for example “it is free to all autodesk clients”
It might be free, but it probably is not going to ever be open source. Autodesk would never open source a product they used to sell.
And yeah you will probably need to have an autodesk ID in order to download them. The ID is free, you need to share with them some personal information though.
The only case where you dont need an ID to download an autodesk product is when you download service packs and hotfixes from their website. The other exception is ofcourse downloading their stuff from torrent trackers illegally .
Autodesk is releasing these two apps as freeware.
Autodesk also includes these apps with all of their 3D products.
These apps aren’t useful to anyone who doesn’t own an Autodesk product.
How exactly are they integrated? Because in my opinion they are NOT integrated at all. They are both separate, old apps.
Matchmover is outdated but still pretty powerful (only 32bit tho which makes it horrible with larger projects; not enough ram to cache it all make it very slow to track). I can`t tell much about Blender trackin yet, still ahead of me.
Just noticed that Autodesk Matchmover, Composite and Backburner are available as free downloads on the Autodesk Exchange site. Not sure what the EULA is like, but as far as I can tell, you only need to register on the Autodesk site in order to be able to download them.
EDIT: my bad, they released those as well only recently!
Holly hell, they actually did it. Autodesk releasing software for free.
Their seem to be focused on setting up an official market place for autodesk users that has lots of free goodies to lure them in. Going for a freemium market strategy there. And even more- becoming a cg software publisher / distributor (selling third party software that is not theirs).
I can recall suggesting this at this forum more than a year ago. (an official asset,plugin, etc store)
To compare and contrast Blender cloud is a closed subscription club with no free tasters. It serves a completely different set of goals.
I cant believe I am saying this, but Autodesk has finally gotten its head out of its ass and is doing it’s best to compete and lure more users - even though it is still the industry standard monopoly . Something is making them aggressively competitive.
On a side note- wouldnt it be kind of cheeky if we feature blender there as a free software
THey [autodesk] only does it because Ceres, and the fact Blender has 3d tracking, match moving now.
There’s no way I download it or register to download it now, if they did it 3-4 years ago maybe. Now the workflow is better for me to stay inside Blender as long as possible.
I guess that’s why it’s free now, keeping others from trying Blender because of the match moving, because when I talk to fellow 3d nerds that doesn’t use Blender there’s two things mentioned. 3d tracking looks great! and Cycles. Being able to progressive render on the GPU.
Although I had to explain why Blender/Cycles has buckets/tiles when doing final render.
i’ll check out matchmover tomorrow (and probably learn it today)
my best guess would be that the whole dedicated for camera tracking app would probably be better than something not wholesomely targeted toward camera tracking! but that’s just me.
i’ll check out and probably compare the two.
i could make two or three paragraphs about how my upcoming statement is valid and explain each better feature separately and then spend a lifetime answering questions later so i would rather bunch it down in three lines.
Matchmover > Blender Video Tracking system
there is one thing though… owning any big boy autodesk software(max or maya) will help you in your workflow if you chose to do the later things in blender, but when i say “help you” i mean it would get less worse for you to integrate it in your workflow with blender.
