Well, First off. I’ve been using XSI since it came out with 1.0 and came licensed with Softimage|3D, and no XSi was never a VFX tool. It may have been positioned as such later on in it’s life but initially it was a character animation tools and XSI’s animation tools especially its NLA stuff is very good. Softimage even integrated CAT at some point to the tool. If anything the tool was positioned as a DCC tool for game development. Which is where we got tools like GATOR and XSI has had the ability to do GLSL viewport shader trees since at least version 4.
The reason XSI was never going to beat out Houdini as a VFX tool is because Houdini has a long history in the part of the field and while XSI made in-roads (especially in newer or smaller VFX houses) a lot of companies who did VFX already had a their VFX workflow setup in Houdini and other packages like Maya which even then was used heavily for VFX work with particles etc. Maya’s particle system is no slouch. Prior to ICE XSI’s particle tools were basically Particle Tools for Softimage | 3D but modernized a bit. They weren’t great. You could do some cool things but they were very rudimentary. Softimage didn’t have the pedigree of being a VFX tool so it wasn’t taken seriously in that field.
Whether it best fit as a VFX tool within Autodesk’s lineup is neither here nor there because VFX wasn’t really Sofitmage’s focus. At the time that Sofitmage got bought XSI had started making significant in-roads into the game development market with tools targeted at that kind of workflow (XSI is a really popular tool used in Japan for game development). Autodesk also at the time was trying to position Maya for that purpose but they had no way to do the things that gamedevelopers needed namely a viewport that could show shaders.
Autodesk could have positioned XSI as a modern DCC tool for games but they were too afraid to step on Max’s toes which is also heavily used for that market.
At the end of the day if Autodesk really wanted XSI to succeed they had the opportunity. Even if they bought the tool for VFX work as you said they sure didn’t market the tool enough for that purpose nor did they add much to it to strengthen their position. As for inter-operability. They added the silly viewport cube that nobody wanted, changed some keymappings, and added FBX support. That as far as it went.
Well Adobe bought Macromedia so they could kill Freehand and transfer some of the Freehand tools into Illustrator.
Till today AI however still has a pathetic pen tool - utterly garage but now AI can have art boards. Of course to prevent
users from using AI as a lay-outing tool they do not offer master pages which Freehand had and for which you need
InDesign …
Adobe also bought Marcomedia so they could push Dreamweaver more and they killed their own web app GoLive
they bought before.
I never used XSI nor Max but I think there are often many things at play.
lol well the Cube has nothing to do with inter op exactly. The “send to” features and all of the work that went on under the hood all the way up to the end to port ICE dynamics into Maya for instance to make it more workable to send animations to Softimage to use in the new Crowd Effects, just to name a few off the top of my head. But I do agree it was not really adequate. I never really felt that that devlopment was panning out. And one of the reasons was that Softimage had a significantly different way of handing rigs. So it was very difficult even through FBX to go back and forth. send to or not.
And I agree, absolutely XSI was a great animation tool. But you are completely forgeting about ICE and all of the development that went into it under Autodesk. And myself having switched over to Maya from XSI long before it was shut down, I can say there are many good reasons that Maya was a much better choice in an animation and Game pipeline. Softimage never held up as well with that in my opinion and from my experience using a Maya/MotionBuilder pipeline.
And we are agreeing more than you realize. Because we are sitting here discussing why it failed, after the fact and you bring up strong points that indicate, quite simply Autodesk did not handle it well. After all it did fail. Did it not?
I would not be prepared to say that Softimage would have been successful as a rival to Maya or max on that market, left alone. I just don’t know. And factually no one does. It is pure speculation.
And as a long time XSI user you are echoing what I said earlier. That XSI users don’t see Softimage as only a VFX tool. And I understand that. But there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Adutodesk made a good run at making it succeed as one within their offering.
And having studied up on an used ICE, I can see why they would have tried.
It failed.
You have pointed out some good reasons as to why that may have been. Those are good strong arguments.
But any argument that suggests they only bought it to kill it and so on is not at all based on any facts. Nor does it make any logical sense.
Coming back to the OP, really it is a non issue in regards to any purchase of The Foundry by any corporation including Autodesk.
What happened to Softimage is not a benchmark for what will happen in the future with other tools. Each situation is completely different.
Nothing wrong with profit. Its actually the best kind of incentive, since profit is just value and by our very nature we seek things of value. Value translates to opportunity. A blender developer might see value in a personal accomplishment just as much as an investor see’s accomplishment in making a smart investment and succeeding at getting more out of it.
What it sounds like your problem is, is monopolies and cronyism. This can happen in or out of capitalism. You can find it in socialism, communism, monarchies, oligarchies, totalitarian regimes… ect. In free societies we try to have checks and balances that keep competition alive and open up the door for creators to compete.
That’s a load of crap, no offense. Studies have been done which show monetary incentive to not always be the best motivator. And in any case, how has that panned out for Adobe and Autodesk? Still charging for the same stale software year after year?
Not crap at all. Which “studies” are those? Some academic at KarlMarx University? Money is just value, value is the common variable which people work towards. Time has value, goods have value… value is the real currency here and it can exist in just about any form. Feeling good because you gave to charity? That has value. Imagine a class room where all the grades were averaged out, so no one could really get an A if they worked harder than everyone else. Would they? Getting a high score has value, and thus the desire to strive for it.
Anyways, I often find it funny when people rage against capitalism while they type on the computers, using the internet, and enjoying all the great techology that came from it…and yes the incentive to create it, which was the gain of value and trading value for value. Profit isnt a dirty word.
As for Autodesk and Adobe… they can charge whatever people are willing to pay. Thats the key concept you are ignoring. If people are wiling to pay for it, and theres no real competition nor adoption in professional fields of that software, then what motivation is for them to change anything? It doesnt stop competition, but it means the competition has to offer something with just as much if not more value to the customer for less. I’m not a big fan of Adobe or Autodesk, but their market and level of usage has a lot to do with customer choices.
If customers and studios wanted them to change, all they have to do is vote with their wallet, just like you would “vote” for a new leader and not the same one who doesnt do anything.
I’m not going to get into a philosophical debate loaded with libertarian indoctrination, just to come to the point that Adobe or Autodesk buying Foundry wouldn’t necessarily be good for the industry.
In any case this seems to have been a rumor that was blown out of proportion.
Moderation: I’d like to step in for a moment and remind everyone that discussions of politics is a violation of our forum rules. Please keep that in mind when drafting future posts.
I agree but feel its important to clarify that ideologies and economics are a bit of a blurred line. Not technically politics (unlike, “x party is better than y, or X country is better than Y country” which is). I do agree though that its easily perceived as such because they kind of rely on one another and discussions can blur the lines.
I concur with this moderation note though. Thanks.
It wouldnt be a good thing for The Foundry and Modo, but it wouldnt really be good or bad for the industry as a whole. The industry will still use the same software it relies on. Even After Effects is still heavily used in VFX houses.
Industry isnt worth worrying about, more or less its with just one application that can compete and grow to take the market share autodesk has a hold of. That would be Modo. Right now Modo is still niche so impact wise, it probably wouldnt cause any hiccups. Nuke is a lot like photoshop and maya, it doesnt have to change much for it to still be used often and most of the effects can come from plugins anyway.
As a Modo user I would prefer the software not get into a position where it ends up under bad management or shut down like previous 3d apps that got traded around. 3D is a hard market to make revenue in, even Autodesk has had massive losses with Maya and Max. Their biggest revenue stream comes from AutoCad and that has very little to do with media and entertainment.
As as for the rumor getting blown out of proportion, well yes that because people automatically jumped into the doom and gloom category which you kind of showcased here.
The good news is that we are seeing a lot of “If X happens, that’s it I’m giving up and going to Blender.” I see this coming from a lot of pros so, hey partially good news…in a way. If blender keeps polishing itself up and developing, who knows what kind of exodus would happen after people get fed up with the inability for non established apps to gain traction in the field.
the Foundry has been sold… surprise, surprise:) And what? a private equity firm you say… “HgCapital, a UK-based private equity firm” Well I’m certain they have the businesses best interests at heart. Excuse the sarcasm
Does not seem to be that bad news to me… I would feel much worse if it were adobe… Isn’t Carlyle group “private equity firm” as well - they did not seem to do such a bad job - from my outside perspective.
The majority of shares did sell and the Foundry had a role in who bought those shares. Nothing wrong with an equity firm… consider this… both TrueSpace and XSI died under Microsoft and Autodesk (neither equity firms). An equity firm is more likely to sell their shares than gut the company or let the product die.
HGCapital has a history of investing in European software, and according to the Foundry 'The HgCapital team, lead by Nic Humphries (an electrical engineer by trade), have deep software experience and take a long-term view on their investments, which in some cases span a decade or more. ’
So given all that… I think we will be good for quite some time and The Foundry can remain independent.