The Foundry up for sale

Relevant thread on CGSociety and the news it relates to. What makes me shiver is that Autodesk could easily shell out that money.

P.S.: main CGSociety thread appears to be here.

yet another reason to go opensource:)

Shit. Lets just hope autodesk don’t get their grubby hands on it and pixologic step up

preparing for face palming myself for buying one of their tools… ugh I am feeling really dumb now.

opensource clearly is shaping more and more up to be the way to support and stick to, especially when you either want to be or already are a professional and want future proof solutions.

Is this the VFX group or the software company? I wasn’t aware that the software company also did VFX for movies…

It is the company, the article is just really bad journalism. But the fact is the Carlyle Group does own the Foundry (Software Company).

There’s some confusing information on the CGTalk thread, but the very possibility of Modo being up for sale is a surprise to say the least.

I can’t say for sure that it is the right thing to see a purchase by Autodesk as a foregone conclusion at this point, but I think it still is possible because I think they actually did see if Luxology would sell to them at one time before the merge.

If Autodesk does buy them, then as the thread suggests, they would have a lot of people who jumped ship from XSI as their customers again, which would mean the only remaining viable alternatives being Cinema 4D, Houdini, and (out favorite free 3D program), Blender.

Here is the response from Modo’s head honcho: http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/post.aspx?f=4&t=94740&p=849080

"Greetings!

Don’t panic! Actually… PANIC! OK. Not really. I understand people fear change and on the surface this news looks like BIG change! Maybe so or maybe not. One thing is for certain, change is inevitable. The companies that embrace change and chase after it are the ones that evolve. Or die! But that’s the exciting part of the ride. OK enough fluff talk, let’s get down to business.

Are we for sale? Look, when owned by private equity, the only certainty is that an “exit” will happen. It’s the natural progression of the business relationship.

So, technically everyone is for sale. You can buy Autodesk right now online! Well, you can buy little pieces of it but to be certain every company has investors and those investors change from time to time. That’s how the PE process works. Rather than dwelling on what may or may not happen in the years to come let’s take a look back at what has happened due to recent changes.

Two years ago Luxology merged with The Foundry. Remember that? You didn’t know in advance that it was happening and when it did some people were excited and some people were afraid. What is excitement but controlled fear anyway? :wink: Let’s take a moment to review what has happened to MODO and the MODO community since we merged with The Foundry.

  1. MODO on Linux happened. That was engineered almost entirely by the great MODO team in London from The Foundry.

  2. MODO QA has improved radically. Derek Cicero did a bulk of the work while it was still Luxology. But after the merger we had more resources to finally realize the plan he had worked so hard to pull together. Tom MacDevitt and his team deserve major kudos. MODO development is so much better today than it was 2 years ago it’s hard to define.

  3. MODO development. We’ve grown substantially and to be fair, the resources supporting MODO have grown faster than the sales of MODO since the merger. What you couldn’t know as someone who is not inside the company is that the MODO team has received a huge uplift in talent and tech since the merger with The Foundry. Also, the core team that started MODO in 2002 is STILL here driving the future of the product and intermingling with the other teams at The Foundry. There are some amazing things happening that wouldn’t have if we hadn’t merged.

  4. Enterprise MODO. What? That’s right. Special versions of our offerings (configs, plug-ins, content) for enterprise clients who have a specific need. The reason for us to do this is multi-fold. There is the obvious commercial benefit of getting money from big companies. There is the commercial benefit of increasing the MODO install footprint and creating more opportunities for MODO users in these companies. And there is the technical benefit that we often need to create cool and new technologies for these clients that will eventually make their way back into the mainline product for you to use. Finally there is the benefit that we absorb industry knowledge so that we can expand the use of 3D (MODO) into new markets. This is good for us and good for you. As Luxology, we thought about doing this but we were too small. As The Foundry, we have that scale….
    Did you know we have a dedicated office in Manchester full of MODO developers who build these cool custom tools? Probably not. This is a direct result of hard work by Andy Whitmore and Jon Atfield on the London side and Yazan Malkosh and Derek Cicero on the US side. Not to mention the amazing team we have working for there.

  5. Cross pollination. Many people were excited about what could come from MODO getting some tech from the other Foundry apps. There have been small steps visible in MODO 801 with UDIM support, OpenColor IO and other smallish workflow enhancements such as layered EXR with better NUKE compatibility. There are also larger examples such as ColorWay, but there are other even larger projects in the works that leverage IP from The Foundry into MODO and vice versa. I know you haven’t seen the results yet but you will in 2015…

  6. Of course, aside from people wanting to see the tech from The Foundry make it’s way to the MODO community there was also the desire to see the Luxology philosophies make their way into the corporate DNA of The Foundry. Luckily in many ways we were already very similar. While our products serviced a very different client base, we all shared a customer first approach especially amongst the development teams. The reality of The Foundry two years ago was that we were a company that lived and died in the very high-end space of VFX and Media Production. Today we have MODO and MARI Indie for the small shops and we have Mischief at price points of $25 and ZERO dollars. The Foundry is in mid-pivot. We will continue to service the highest end clients of VFX, we will continue to drive our products down to the larger market of mid-tier media and entertainment production, we are moving rapidly into games and we continue our efforts to drive MODO and other Foundry technologies into the “design” market which includes graphic design, industrial design, visualization, motion graphics and CGAM (computer graphics for advertising and marketing). Luxology wanted scale and tech from The Foundry and The Foundry wanted new markets and tech from Luxology. Once together there was a flurry of creative ideas about how we can leverage our massive mountain of technology. We are working very hard to bring these ideas to light. It takes people, it takes vision, it takes passion, it takes scale to make these things happen.

The merger two years ago has been a rollicking success in all of these ways. Was it perfect? No. Has it been hard work for everyone involved? Yes. Just like any marriage it takes work but if both parties are committed it can be beautiful. Has it resulted in massive advantages for our combined install bases? Yes. Has it opened new doors for us all in new markets? Yes! And the “us” I’m referring to is the new bigger Foundry as well as all of you. When we expand our footprint into new markets we bring you with us. Every time I go to a design client to discuss MODO I meet artists who migrated from VFX to design. We are the “nexus” if you will of these very different markets, working very hard to bring them together with YOU as the bridge.

OK, OK so what about the news that Carlyle is going to sell The Foundry? Point of fact is that this is what private equity does and so it is natural for us all to assume that one day Carlyle will sell their shares. Did you know The Foundry has been sold before? A couple times actually and each time it has gotten bigger and stronger. What does that mean for the future? Even I can’t say. But I can tell you that if I have anything to do with it, we’ll be a household name in 5 years. How?

Today we dominate in VFX

Today we are rapidly growing in games development from AAA to indie and mobile.

Today we have a strong foothold in design and CGAM.

We are working to change the way people think of product design and doing so with some AMAZING partners. You won’t believe it when you read it. I wish I could say more.

We are the leader in image manipulation for the budding AR/VR market. Consider AR/VR as a viable use case for stereographic and/or multi-cam 360 immersive content and you can quickly see that NUKE is positioned to dominate yet another important market.

Mischief is a very successful first cut at our massive brand building activities but the engine behind it ADF is equally if more subtly important to our long term strategy.

There are so many industries that will embrace The Foundry tech from our standard VFX/Media and games, to Design, AR/VR and even 3D printing. Did I mention user generated, customizable content? Probably too soon to mention that but let’s call this a placeholder.

Indeed, one day there will be a new major stockholder in The Foundry and they will have made a very wise investment indeed. As have you, our loyal customers. Change can be scary but one thing that hasn’t changed is our commitment to being open and honest with you. Now, let’s enjoy the ride shall we?

B"

I remember very similar letters from Softimage people reassuring their customers all is well and the future is bright when Autodesk bought them. We’ll see who ends up buying The Foundry, but if its the most likely candidate, I most certainly wont be buying any of their products again.

In addition, it’s generally a business 101 thing to not tell customers to panic when major changes to both the company and their respective products are ahead.

If they rather said “This is the end of Modo you guys, the next version will very well be our last, thank you for sticking around all these years”, the community a year later would become a dustbowl and any future revenue earnings would take a hard hit.

From doom soothsayer to fellow doom soothsayer: we have an easy job, don’t we? Everything goes to bad to worse and sooner or later we always have the pleasure of quoting ourselves telling our former detractors “we were right and you were wrong”.

Now there will be a kind of slave-sale-auction and Autodesk, having very deep pockets and a strong motivation to kill The Foundry competing products, will surely win.

And now, from my coffee cup… some coffee stains…

  • in six months, Autodesk managers will swear on the head of their first sons that MODO will continue and even improve better than ever;
  • a few people will cry doom, the usual “flat headed” and “rational” guys will flame them;
  • a few iterations of the product, in which adding a minor tool will be the subject of a 15 minutes long youtube video, complete with rousing Two Steps from Hell soundrack;
  • and then, around 2018, the announcement of MODO termination plus some switch offer to Maya 2019 which will make Darth Vader “deals” look merciful.

Remember, you read it here first.

Signed, Cassandra.

Haha, funny post, “Cassandra”! But I’m not much of a doom soothsayer. :slight_smile: I was just trying to point out that it should be in no way a surprise that Carlyle Group will put The Foundry up for sale. I’m surprised that anyone who had looked at the situation and corporate ownership would be surprised, since this is exactly how private equity firms like Carlyle make money: by buying low-priced companies and selling them for higher prices not longer after. It was basically written in stone that this sale would happen, and soon.

Hi Ace

4U Lightwave is not a contender anymore ?

ty

When I found out that Modo was originally developed by a group of ex-Amiga programmers, I just had to check it out. Modo was, from a first glance, well designed, well thought out and relatively logical while being almost wholly artist-oriented. It was missing a few features, but I had faith development would continue along the original vein and all would be well.

Then they ‘merged’ with the Floundry (Oops! I think I misspelled that). Over the next while, Modo got a lot of those missing features, but when I looked at the latest release, it was like someone had thrown it into a blender (No, not Blender; a blender). Logic was out the window dragging terminology and UI organization with it. Now I understand why. The new owner simply wanted a full-featured product to make the company more attractive to potential buyers.

So, I’m glad I didn’t take the leap. Of course, them raising the price didn’t help much, either.

Considering the Core debacle, the ancient multi-app. structure, and the somewhat small size of their latest release, I don’t know if one can count them as a serious contender anymore until they find a way to step on the gas with development. (I’m talking about viability among studios finding alternatives to solutions like XSI).

If your competition is developing their software faster than you are, then there’s no possibility of catching up.

Now one might question the idea of Blender being a serious alternative, one look at what’s coming down the pipeline (the work in branches), gives you an optimistic view that very good things are happening in development.

It’s probably not part of their plan, but it would be nice if OTOY bought them. They have done Octane good and I’m sure that Modo would be handled just as nicely.

I knew of things like Modo and Nuke but never paid attention to Mari, seems like Autodesk would also want to move those users to Mudbox.

so… group buy? :stuck_out_tongue:

Yup, GB… make it part of BF.

Yeah, let’s open-source that puppy. :slight_smile: