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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Autodesk Acquires Softimage

kalone said:
Sorry having to say this, but nothing could be further from reality than these two of your opinions. Just look back what happened with those applications Autodesk acquired, sometimes I even get the feeling that it is the Discreet part that messes everything up. There was an app called "Frost" for virtual studios, "River" for sound, "edit" for...eh editing, all three disappeared just years after their acquisitions, then comes Illuminaire Paint and Composition which were at least fusioned into Combustion but only crawls forward since two versions back. The big stupidity is Flint/Flame/Inferno which factually runs on the same hardware (except the stone storage) but has a difference in pricing that could easily buy you a luxurious house. But most hilarious are Max & Maya whose only progress are their version numbers (ok, they`ve put "nucleus" into maya...OH, and that navigation cube!!!). And Toxik`s entry was a big joke in my opinion - they advertised the database-centric workflow and "next gen" technology...but where is it on the greater scale? Toxik is nearly meaningless in the industry compared to fusion and nuke.
Mudbox (to finish the rant) is too fresh to judge if the recent improvements in it`s "version 2009" were already in the works before acquisition or not. Summary: Autodesk didn`t do anything good in the past, so this is in no way anything positive. I didn`t even touch their insane pricing and licensing scheme so far which makes my blood boil only thinking about it...and please don`t forget what happened to 5D cyborg - I will not speculate about assimilate...
Click to expand...

so basically you're saying that the tools and the product development decision-making at Autodesk/discrete :

1. "messes everything up"
2. are "stupid"
3. is "meaningless"
4. "Autodesk didn`t do anything good in the past"
5. "insane"
6. and they make your blood boil

Did I miss anything?


*edit* - not trying to be a jerk here. This is just a broadly sweeping and all-inclusive indictment of the most prolific company in the VFX and digital motion media design technology space.

I'm just wondering what happened to you personally that causes such as "axe to grind" so to speak... no disrespect meant.
 
It looks like Avid paid ~$201 million for Softimage from Microsoft, which consisted of DS, 3D, Eddie, and Toonz.
http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=35215

And now they are selling part of what they bought for just $35 million. It seems to me that Avid got ripped off somewhere along the line. Maybe they know something that Autodesk doesn't know? But even then, if you are going to hand somebody the keys to a near monopoly, you might as well receive a premium for doing so.

2- Avid as a company is losing money. Selling a presumably-profitable segment of their company won't change that... it'll be interesting to see if Avid can turn their ship around. (I doubt it though.... lately it seems that there has been a lot of inaction in making their company a profitable one.)
 
AVID should have stayed focused on ProTools & their own editing SW. They were (still are) bound to disappear from the market, unless they focus on what they were good at. I am personally pissed of about Sumatra. The way they killed the original concept of DS and separated 3D out of it. I was one of the initiators of the integrated DS platform, 3D was meant to be one of the side icons in the DS system that was so much more then just the editing/FX system. Even the kernel for XSI was for the first few months "DS.exe" - they just blocked the 3D code in DS and everything else but 3D in XSI. Then they start calling it AVID-DS and AVID-XSI, while at the same time call Media Illusion as Softimage Media Illusion... When I saw that I knew it was bye bye to the original DS concept - here comes the customer extortion...

I don't denny it - I hate AVID and I love Softimage, but after 15+ years with Softimage I am now learning Maya, since we all or on OS-X platform...

:) Peter
 
BOXXLabs said:
so basically you're saying that the tools and the product development decision-making at Autodesk/discrete :

1. "messes everything up"
2. are "stupid"
3. is "meaningless"
4. "Autodesk didn`t do anything good in the past"
5. "insane"
6. and they make your blood boil

Did I miss anything?
Click to expand...

Yeah. They are evil ;-)


BOXXLabs said:
*edit* - not trying to be a jerk here. This is just a broadly sweeping and all-inclusive indictment of the most prolific company in the VFX and digital motion media design technology space.

I'm just wondering what happened to you personally that causes such as "axe to grind" so to speak... no disrespect meant.
Click to expand...

I`ve closely watched what they did the last 5 years, in a nutshell, it was quite nothing. Their main focus seems to be on their shareholders only - and we, the artists have quite no choice than accept their non-action, you can`t switch from one app to the other that fast, it`s going to take at least a year - not speaking about the fact that a big chunk of the 3D industry is max & maya dominated.
I´ve worked with Maya last year and it was hilarious, the GUI and it`s logic is laughable in comparision to xsi, c4d and modo.
 
I would believe that Avid's original vision of developing the DS into a unified 2D/3D/editorial/VFX platform proved harder to design and implement than it looked on paper.

They were originally working on combining elements of matador, elastic reality, Soft XSI ("Sumatra" at the time), DS and Twister (mental ray).

*edit* just saw Peter's post* I agree Peter - Maybe there's something to be said for sticking with what you're best at and not trying to own the whole pipeline...
 
jedi666 said:
AVID bought Softimage for 180mil and sold it for 35mil. that 35 mil is gonna go to cover the net loss they had this quarter vs last year and still not even it up. i doubt they will flush it into more development. we have Michael P in our corner so theres always that :) .

help us Michael P you're our only hope...
Click to expand...

Bwahaha... well, they are keeping the DS part (which is what they really wanted all along, right?), aren't they? Don't think DS was worth the 145mil difference, though.

Agree DS could be so much more than what it is now. I mean, come on, they should be leading the world in 2D / 3D integration. Come on... 3d objects rendered in Mental Ray in a compositor - how can it be so hard?

That said, when the heck are nVidia going to get large chunks of Mental Ray running on their gfx cards? They have the chance to design the hardware from scratch to do this... hope it's in the works and the reason the 260 / 280 are kinda gigantic is because they're laying the foundations to prep for this ;)

Sad to hear they got close to porting XSI to Mac and then stopped - it's such a great program. I know a lot of design houses in LA who would kill for a Mac version of XSI.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
I am concerned for AVID with this move. AVID is a staple in professional editing software and ProTools for audio. XSI being sold is not a good sign IMO.
I hadn't worked on an Avid Media Composer since College and for the first time in years I was asked specifically to edit a commercial on Avid MC. I primarily use FCS. I must say, I missed working in an Avid as a few days before hand I attempted to re-familiarize myself with the MC. Couple things I noticed,

1. (The Commerical was a RED Job) - Getting files into Media Composer 3.05 was a drag to say the least. Transcoding to DNxHD and ingesting it into an AVID MC was just long and counter productive. I could have had a first rough cut done in FCP by the time my footage got into the AVID. But that's just a RED/AVID thing that will hopefully be worked out over time.

2. The Interface and way of doing things hasn't changed, mostly!? (this is good and bad).
Good - I slowly began to remember where everything was from my college professor who made us memorize all the keyboard shortcuts :) It has many features and tools that just work better and make more editing sense than FCP
Bad - Nothing has changed! Avid IMO needs an overhaul. I feel they are attempting to play in the new age arena but are slow to take the dive. Unfortunately, I say this with sadness. May sound strange being a FCP user mostly, but I want AVID to succeed. I wish there were more opportunities that AVID would jump on quickly.
 
Has DS been sold with the bundle?

Avid did not take the leap to push their antique platforms to a up to today platform (wich made FCP happy and strong).DS should have been their basic interface. AVID Xpress/MC seams to be at the level of Imovie software with some work around...

Hope DS will find a good godfader.

Patrick
 
Nice one :)

I couldnt understand after a major leap and development in XSI 7 with breakthrough ICE, and 3rd party development renderer, it just hard to believe.
 
Rivai said:
Nice one :)

I couldnt understand after a major leap and development in XSI 7 with breakthrough ICE, and 3rd party development renderer, it just hard to believe.
Click to expand...

if you looked at Avid's financial Statements it isn't.
 
Rivai said:
I couldnt understand after a major leap and development in XSI 7 with breakthrough ICE, and 3rd party development renderer, it just hard to believe.
Click to expand...

Life`s a bitch. But this is way too mean...
 
if you looked at Avid's financial Statements it isn't.
Click to expand...
Avid does has cash... and it has blown it on buying back shares.

During the first quarter of 2008, the company used $93.2 million in cash to repurchase 4.3 million shares of common stock under the previously-announced share buyback program.
Click to expand...

It looks like the current management is taking its shareholders for a ride. If they don't succeed in turning Avid around, their buyback would simply have made shareholders' losses a lot worse (e.g. compared to issuing a dividend). And so far, it looks like Avid is still bleeding money. And they're sitting on what should be gold mines- Avid and Pro Tools both have large market shares. Technology companies make huge profits with scale... with such high volume, they should be quite profitable.
 
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