If this is good for Blender, then… hurray!!

I’m not exactly fond of this occurrence but…. meh! XSI is a pretty good app… not as bad in the UI department as some would make out, and it is certainly very powerful – making a lot of in-roads particularly when it comes to game animation. Considering the features they just released in V.7, I doubt the user base is suddenly going to jump ship just because AD owns it now. XSI is one of the best apps in the industry… you don’t abandon it’s power, features and your several thousand dollar investment just because you don’t like the new owner.

Not a whole lot has happened with Max or Maya either. And people were going on about the end of the world then, too.

Besides, enough people are switching to other apps like Blender, but more especially, modo to keep AD a little competitive.

competition fosters innovation. if they cut the competition, it stifles the sense of need to create new tools (features) for 3d artists. obviously it doesn’t mean there’ll be no more new features; they still have competition (i.e. blender)

Also. Autodesk has one of the worst agreements possible on student versions. They sell it for a year or even a semester and force students to buy new each semester. And they also chop it into small parts for engineers or design.

“I just wish there was some way to challenge the MAJOR studios to use blender. I wish… if only if only…”

that’s what Blender Foundation is more or less doing

I can’t help but look at this as a good thing. I’ve known for while that XSI is much more Blender user-friendly and wanted to learn it rather than Maya, but there’s only a short trial version of XSI out, where Maya has a PLE. Now that Autodesk owns it, not only might they put out an XSI PLE, but it will probably become as widely accepted as Maya and Max in the industry.

Even though I don’t like their notion of buying everything up, I think this could be good for Blender users in the long run.

Plus, for some reason, this has made me want to download Truespace 7…

My only concern is that one day Blender will be added to their “collection”.

But honestly, if I was Ton and Autodesk approached me with 50 million to cease development… I don’t think I would say no. Would you?

Let’s hope that day never comes :)

” But what if your employer makes you use a certain software you have never used before simply because you weren’t going to pay $2000 for a license to use it at home? Your dreams are slashed, ”

Well, happened to me (my 3d tool was not Blender, but neither Max) , and needed to learn well Max. Which is not the bad tool some people think, and has evolved a lot. (in other occasions, learned only what was needed in stressed environments, of XSI and Maya)

Indeed, am an XSI not experienced user,(Foundation 4) tho never had a crazy passion about it..

Learning new tools is not bad. Let’s you have a quite wider understanding of 3D, and faster ability to learn, when you get back, at home or after sometime, to your tool of choice.
The big monopolies can do whatever, but 3D is closely merging in ways of doing, and your mind is capable of filling the gaps and translations…

I personally think the 3 apps will keep being in the market depending on how strongly the studios and companies push for it, buying new licenses, etc. After all, stuff is about money. It’s possible that there might be some dark plan of not investing as much in Maya or XSI as in Max (which would benefit me professionally as I mainly know Max deeply) , but while one never knows, I’d doubt XSI would go away, nor Maya, any time soon…as those do produce quite license sells. At the end, companies will observe the tendencies of development of Autodesk on each package, and surely, as usual in industry, will bet for a combo of ” right tool for the task” (uber complex tasks, often) , custom tools made during the years for an specific application, and also will consider the tendency of Autodesk to develop further a tool or let it die(and will consider other factors..). People say here about frozen Maya, but I have heard of some Maxers be angry of lately less important updates. As a Max user, I can say Max 5, 6 , 7 , 8 (don’t know latest 9) have been huge improvements over previous, but imo. Majority of people have the old feel that transmitted Max 2 – 4, and compare to modern competitors(?), and rarely they know deeply Max to make a critic, which isn’t very realistic analysis, today… I totally agree on the huge price tag, and how much was a better approach the Foundation versions, that I hope every one had noticed how near in time had been the cut of the Foundation cheap line… That says quite.

I have it really difficult to believe what would happen one way or the other…Though I’d probably expect a slight more push to Max, to let it be slightly dominant, but not the uber king some are afraid of. They couldn’t kill Maya (I think they did not tried and dedicated similar resources than to max..or that it does seem…) , among other things, because such a big amount of movies and big console tiltes (PS3, etc) use heavily for animation wonder, team features, powerful mel scripts already made during years…

Imo this should not affect much Blender. Unless Autodesk try to buy it as well, lol…

With no special fan feeling, as am not very passional with softwares, what I see as a clear thing is the extremely good health of Blender project. I am personally tired of trusting(and purchasing!) comercial packages wavings .

Stunning that they bought the company for just $35 million. If the economy wasn’t so bad they could have fetched hundreds of millions for it, if not a billion. They were probably running out of cash to hand over the company for a mere pittance.

Anyway, it’s positive for Blender since it will yet again gain marketshare, get more publicity and attract new developers from the academic world (since universities and colleges will be switching to Blender, due to its cost advantage). I believe in the end there will be only two camps, open-source Blender and AutoDesk.

Blender is already a billion dollar product, fortunately for us it’s wrapped in a non-profit organization and open-sourced under GPL.

i hope something like this never happen to blender. thats why i love blender and i would also pay for this. autodesk is another microsoft! :(

I don’t like this … I don’t like this at all, one bit. The reason why each of these programs were doing so great was because they WEREN”T PWNED BY THE SAME COMPANY. Oops, I mean, OWNED. This is going to stifle innovation and instill complacency.

This is all good for Blender, but that’s what it *looks* like. I just don’t have a good feelingn about this in general, it’s a bit too fishy … they claim they are not a monopoly? Everyone has played Monopoly at some time in their lives and the way that you win is by owning all the property to drive others out of business.

Obviously, the most famous “monopoly” is/was Microsoft, which I guess would make Blender the underdog, i.e. Apple. Bah, but I’m just rambling.

Although some people might be happy with news like this. Something terrible happened… For something like autodesk can buy other softwarehouses to prevent some nasty concurency. When all the major players are bought it’s time for foundations…. like blender. They will be a lot harder to take over (since the nature of open source). BUT there’s probably some code, functions en design in blender that conflicts with the many patents AD has aquired. Since buying an application (and it’s developer) implies that patents go to the new owner.

So I’m not worried by actual aquire but I’m truely concerned by the enormous amount off patents AD must have by now…

It will be very interesting, how they will handle development decisions of 3 major 3d packages on the market. At the time as they have been real competitors, creating new different features that differs from the others or were better implementations defined their business – just to gain more customers. Now it is interesting how one company handles this.

Is this related to blender development? Think not. So why bother?

sorry, i am a softimage AND blender user for years, infact i have used blender already as it was not opensource. blender is a nice thing, sure, and i liked its old userinterface, but theres a *lot* more to do as redesigning the userinterface for blender, to compete with something like softimage.

@tidbit: you obviously forgot, that the 3d world has more than two d’s ;) – there are a lot of 3d apps out there, and a lot of them are better then blender, houdini, cinema, modo (which lacks a few features.. yet), animation master and more

dont get me wrong, i like blender, i especially like its cross plattform effort (infact i use blender on all platforms it is available, and i would like to see it on more – amiga os4 please ;) ) – but blender is not on a point, where developers should lean back and say, hey look, we only have one competitor, so just copy them and everythings fine

@tidbit: Autodesk vs. who ??? Who is Blender in the CG-Industry?? :-))
Blender never will have one of the first positions of cg-products (the reasons you can read above)!
Right now nobody in CGFX is working or will work with it!
Give to everybody of the Blender-Team € 10 Mio and they will leave!! That’s it!!
But this is for our world-community a bad thing! (the minds of all humans involve bad things naturally!)
I think the future-war is Autodesk vs. Adobe! And Autodesk will loose (1.7 Mrd against 5.4!!).

I remember the same kind of complaints when Autodesk bought Maya, and Maya was not ruined. In fact in the final two years or so Alias had been slipping in their ability to provide competent customer support and each Maya update was causing an uproar within the Maya communities when it came to how sparse the new features lists where. In the end Maya has not died, it isn’t perfected but what truly is? For every complaint with Maya I can find an equal complaint with another 3D package. As for XSI I haven’t used it in a long time and am not familiar with the new ICE feature, but I will hold off on any woes and wait and see what actually happens.

A better comparison would be AutoDesk/Blender to Microsoft/Apache.
Apache supplies needs and develops at a quicker pace than Microsoft’s servers, but it will always be an open-source project. Blender can takes risks in its development–Verse, anyone?–that Autodesk cannot.
I don’t see Blender taking over an established field, but instead becoming the new software platform for emerging technologies. For example, who is going to be writing the 3d software for spray-on self-organizing-matrix OLEDs? Not Autodesk.

Seriously, who cares..

RNS “Ton have to make a decision now whether sell blender or make a stand and fight to keep it free for the blender community” Get over it. Blender is GPL. xD

” Give to everybody of the Blender-Team € 10 Mio and they will leave!! That’s it!! ”

There may be some point I am missing… Blender is totally open source, so, while the injury would be **huge** to loose just any of the core developers(and the non core) , let alone all at a time, (that’s too many millions ;) , a piece of gold like XSI was purchased by just 35 ) …but…unless I understood it badly all these years, the warranties open source gives, anyone of the HUGE mountain (its main strength) of Blender followers, lovers, however called, will replace the persons. Painfully, and most of all full of sorrow (yet I’d be happy knowing Ton or the others got great cash!! heck, good for them…) yep, but there are waay more people than millions of dollars, and lately is more the case… You can dry em in millions, indeed, as a technique fo killing the giant…there’s neverending quantity of blenderheads, I can confirm that, lol (all this last matter is in joke tone, but definitely nothing to fear…)

If I stay with Blender,(for personal projects, uncapable to convince my old game bosses to use anything than Max or the other two) while having had extensive experience with several commercial tools , is, as I see, the main advantage of Blender…is the long life and endurance. Sort of the Linux concept. But it is proven more and more, that this was not an unpractical point of view…And I was quite more skeptical long time ago…But getting convinced by pure facts. Specially on how much more one has to migrate between comercial ones UIs, etc, as companies die easily, products get abandoned by just the company in favour of others (and code is closed, so, no way, even with large users bases)

I agree on some recent points. I strongly doubt a mass of XSI artists will jump into Blender wagon for their professional work. Apart from having their jobs demanding only maya or XSI (and capability to handle custom tools, in my field of games I know how true is this, in movies, I’ve been told) , there are still several features and workflows they will not be wishing to loose…

But main reason is they eat everyday. Same reason why I at least try to keep up to date with Max…(companies at my country bet a lot for Max, and when not games, the architecture ones… I don’t mind working at all that, or web design, is food on the plate… )

well, about not being related to Blender…Is 3D, and imo is not good to stay totally disconnected to what happens in the rest of the world, plus is a pleasure to check the stability , solid status of Blender, instead…

“Autodisk’s slogan should be: “Since we can’t innovate, we acquire and then dominate”
:)”

No, that is Microsoft’s slogan. :-P

If I was Autodesk and owned 3 competing products, there is no way that I would support all three. First thing I’d do is to spend some time working out which one is giving the lowest returns, then drop it. Bad luck if you happen to be a user. I’ve been on the receiving end of a similar situation in the past.

Very good news for products that are not susceptible to this sort of thing, like Blender !

This isn’t really healthy for the 3D graphics software market. Prices could be inflated artificially (if they are the only supplier in town, you have to buy from them, kinda like OPEC). Also, innovation will suffer. Why have 3 products doing the same thing? I’m guessing softimage will go the way of FoxPro (Foxsoft) when Microsoft bought them (first version after acquisition had serious bugs, they later got fixed, but FoxPro basically got killed off), or Linksys after it got acquired by Cisco (Linksys still has some pretty good stuff, but support isn’t quite there, and if you want to do slightly more than ‘home network’ they immediately try to push a big Cisco router at you (costing thousands). I have Blender and its GPL so (like Linux) it can’t be ‘bought out’ unless every last contributer agrees to the license change (in the case of the Linux kernel there were more than 20,000 past and current contributers/developers the last time someone made an offer, and they couldn’t all be swayed). I have a fear that commercial innovation will slow down though (microsoft didn’t update IE for literally more than 10 years until Firefox 2 came along, then they had to re-assemble a team and once again compete). Its just all speculation of the future based on the past, but its a set of reasonable guesses.
Bob

I think this acquisition is bad news for 3D file interchange, and for COLLADA interchange format in particular: XSI was a good COLLADA supporter.

>>the thought of FBX becoming the .DOC of 3D worries me
There is all reason to worry, because FBX IS already the .proprietary DOC of 3D for too many.

COLLADA, the open free alternative and .ODF of 3D, needs more support then ever.

They can’t buy Blender. If they did, with goat blood and magic spells, someone else said it before, we’ll fork the development. Considering how many other people they’d be able to buy faster before hand, they’d be fighting the small dogs, and not interested in developing fast, so the free side of the fork would probably progress faster and make them look like chumps.

But seriously, ICE was good stuff. I hope they don’t completely screw it up.

I knew i wasn’t the only one who wanted to see an Ice system implemented into Blender. Anything that takes some of the coding out of developing complex system gets a thumbs up from me.

A Node system would be amazing, but i’d be perfectly fine with an After Effects’ style “pickwhip” system. Click and drag parameters into an expression, etc.

Making Blender easier/quicker to develop and design in can only help to gain ground in the professional market.

Microsoft Windows does not cost like 3d Studio Max or Maya ? Microsoft is not so bad!
Think you pay 300-400 euro for Photoshop , 100 euro for Microsoft Windows but for 3d Studio…3000 euro is kinda not so nice.

If Autodesk continue this strategy will end abruptly, maybe they buy all the development studios to make a new suite ?! With more expensive PRICE.

For anyone saying that they “destroyed” 3DS Max or Maya, I would heartily disagree. They didn’t destroy either app, they just stopped improving them. Next to Blender, Softimage had the fastest development and most innovation in the industry (and the most immature advertising but that’s another matter). Now that they’re under the Autodesk umbrella, their innovation will pretty much cease. There have just been minimal ui changes and a few odd (and small) features added here and there to existing feature sets. Like all of the other property that Autodesk has purchased, it will simply stagnate; but it will not immediately become worthless. Afterall, it’s already a good app as it sits today, and for most studios out there it, like Maya, may still be “good enough.”

That said, don’t expect this huge exodus to Blender from former SoftImage users. They spent a great deal of money for that software, and it didn’t become unusable overnight. They will simply continue to use said software until someone else offers something that SoftImage, Maya or Bax simply do not offer.

So how much do you want to see this little exodus? There is something that you can do, even if you can’t code. Donate to the blender foundation. Given enough donations, this may enable Ton to hire more developers to work on Blender full time, create more open movies to push development with, and push “must have” features through the pipeline.

The single most important feature that Blender needs, that could eventually take away any edge that Autodesk’s products have, is to create a very thorough plugin API; perferably one that won’t break when new versions of Blender are released. From talking to fellow artists at Siggraph the last two years, that was the one thing keeping them away from Blender. They just had too much invested in not only their existing software, but in third party plugins that added features they couldn’t live without. Of course, the market for Blender plugins has to be there, but this will seriously propel interest. Especially if existing Maya plugins could be adapted for blender with little effort, though I don’t know how that would be possible.

That feature may be useless to most of you, but believe me, the industry would take blender a great deal more seriously if it was there. This falls under the category of “know your users.” Does Blender really want to target the mainstream 3D market? If not then keep doing what you’re doing; because it’s darn near perfect for hobbyists, freelancers, and studios who haven’t already invested in mainstream products.

If you think you don’t get anything out of more people using Blender, then think about this: The more people use it, the more potential money there is to support development. And as for the plugin API, wouldn’t you like to have stuff like Vue6 integration? How about working with CityGen from right in Blender? Blender will probably never have every imaginable feature out there, especially features as complex as those. (blender has surprised me in the past but we’ll see)

As a former Maya user, I personally want this, but what does everyone else want?

Again , about selling blender, read on http://www.blender.org the story of blender, it can not be sold why ?

The people around the world pay`d the source of blender and bought the blender base and even the name Blender is a Public Domain , you can`t sell the thing bought by a majority of people around the world.

So no worry about Blender getting down due Autodesk , Ton made blender to version 2.48a with long run and help from developers around the world not alone , Blender is more profitable GPL than an app sold cause it has a big user base and get interest in the University around the world and if the Foundation will continue to make good movies and other technical demonstrations in years to come we will see more and more media made with Blender.

The only software I don`t see to be bought by Autodesk is Houdini and Renderman/Pixar but others ……. that`s bad

JoOngle – I agree what you had written and some of those sleeper whom rather join autodesk big move don’t understand the level stability of the GPL
license ,we need to prepare for the worst to come. Let cut the bull @#!%%$^and start shooting.

Not to be insulting, but here is some perspective:

People die of AIDS all over the world, while the ability to help them exists.
Millions starve while we throw away cubic yards of food.
9 out of 10 babies with down’s syndrome are aborted, next step: genetic cleansing for all.

But yes, Autodesk is evil.

I always find my self struggling with getting the proper perspective, but perhaps you have got the hang of it better, in that case just laugh at the world we live in. :)

Check this one out!
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=kR7UWImpG54

CG market? What market? It’s all owned by one company now. Yay capitalism!

kurang ajar autodesk… peret tenan yo… tapi gag popo seng penting blender tetep maju

Wow. As son as they try to buy Cinema4D and Softimage as well I’ll migrate to Blender completely. X__X
That’s insane. Hw much more 3D Apps do they need to sell????

Blender forever! now I have two monopolies to hate (adobe and autodesk), Blender used to shine as a gem in my eyes, now it shines even more! it’s like a Sun! Go Blender! it is the future! And I think that Blender already has huge fan club that would go crazy mad with anyone who would try to hit it and make fall, even Blender idea as one thing makes you wanna support it and fight for it.

Blender forever!!!!!!!!

Sorry, the situation with XSI made me a bit sad but then blender received better colors in my eyes than ever before, blender seemed to be so good, now it is the only one that is good and best choise!

well! I see a dark future for proprietary software! I see a rising of several big monopolies. Who uses proprietary software maybe will pay a fortune to work. Some samples are: ADOBE, MICROSOFT, and now AUTODESK. It’s a very dark future, without competitions. Well, I hope a fast evolution of other opensource projects, like Gimp and Inkscape to be matures applications like Blender.

A video (parody) about the whole Autodesk/XSI acquisition process is here: Http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR7UWImpG54&fmt=18
Ruzz originally posted this on XSIbase.

One can also read an FXGuide article on it here: http://www.fxguide.com/article505.html

Softimage won´t change anything, they will keep it as it is, and many companyes relies on it.
have used softimage myself, the old Softimage 3D 3.7, and i haven´t seen nothing so advances in characted animation, blender is very close to have what softimage had in 1997, but blender constraints works FAST, that´s what I LOVER about it.
Blender is far from being complete, but is much more ambicious because of the comunity, the benevolent (and effective) dictator which is focused in the project goals, and the flexibility to work with python to try new features that may be added later, these things give for granted the blender growth in the future and its independence, but professionals already exists, and works with certain toos, why change?

FBX will be THE file format to have interoperativity, so the blender pro can work with other studios.

Marquitux from argentina
(a former 3D Max, Softimage 3D user)

Woah. Autodesk is out of control. Alias, Skymatter, and now Softimage? The image of Autodesk as a vulture seems to be increasingly true, and it’s a scary image indeed.

Will Autodesk monopolize or even consolidate a large part of the 3D industry? And which company will they set their sights on next?

“” I get the feeling that not too many people know what they’re talking about on this topic seeing as XSI is $295.00 with a student discount, and… let’s face it… Blender users are cheapskates. “”

No…I purchased long ago XSI Foundation 4… Extremely nice bunch of docs, videos, lots of learning stuff, a book (quite basic) , and the linux dvd install… All packaged with lots of care, a luzury thing for a bargain price, imo. Just I did not have hair (one of the reasons I went back to Blender) rendering.

Besides I purchased several softwares… all specialized task tools, being XSI the exception. I DID make a direct question to Softimage for the *.x export inside, and they INMEDIATELY, lighting speed response,(and embarrased to admit they disturbed someone else to help me ;) ) (clearly somebody with quite technical knowledge) solved my doubt entirely (and I provided some feedback that maybe was as well useful, I helped as “power user” with several x exports for not only blender) , I noticed they really wanted to help. To such a huge company, with the loads of nobodies like me asking, just indy pros or hobbyst out there that might have made questions by loads in the very first times of Foundation 4 launch at those ~500$ , the level of attention and personal uber kind treatment left me with *no words* … Thanks to that I learnt the tiny tips (but crucial, a bit different than the usual x export issues in Max, Blender, cfx, etc) I was leaving out for good x export in those times, from that app. Simply, they sent me several replies till thing was ironed totally, and didn’t want to stop it till be very sure it was solved!!! .Man.

Heck, I can tell the amount of mails I sent for license issues, and other matters(rarely technical) to other companies, other tools, and no sort of response… Another nice exception here I must say was Zbrush (also have it) customer attention, and very specially that humble, small, but total jewell that have been in the early years (and yet now) Ultimate Unwrap.. One only man, but extremely kind.

So, nope, we’re not all againts buying some software, and some did use extensively these tools…

For XSI users (I did learnt the general use of XSI, but have quite a warmer feeling with Blender…is sth strange… so went back to it. ) would not worry a single bit, if it is true that the staff has been simply moved to Autodesk, that are same people… If that’s so,only they’d may fear is chair decissions, big bosses at Autodesk, but they’re not as silly as to stop making big bucks of selling XSI licenses for many stablished studios and years long workflows…heck, what was that.. Dominant market in Japan? and … Lastest metal gear solid, and half Life 2… and surely a large number of porjects running secret or publicly said, that move and generate loads of money…

in the longer shot…yep..maybe danger for them there…
For Blender…I have a hard time to see any prob related with this for Blender… :?

Autodesk is following the steps of Adobe…

3d production today is much more professional and restricted than 10, 15 years ago. So, there’s no more room for a high number of 3d software companies in the market. This is a fact. A 3d package demands high costs of development and support; there are very good open-source free options, like Blender; and, of course, there’s the question of piracy, too.

Is it bad for the professional customer? I don’t think so. Consolidation will stop the software development? No, it all depends on customer demands.

Akhenathon, I agree with that…

I myself if gotta hunt for 3d job again, would LOVE it only be one software for all companies.I freaking don’t mind if is XSI , Maya or Max..but one, and concentrate on it for would be demanded at any place…(if it’s Max I’d get the advantage, but wouldn’t mind other to get predominant and learn the differences… )

@Oin

“And I can asure you, in games there’s not even the shadow of aiming towards Blender for any reason.”

I have to disagree with that. I have a close friend working in a game development company and he is using Blender for their work. In fact, he has stated that it is far quicker and more efficient in getting the job done than the clunky interface on Max and Maya – once you know how to use it.

I agree though, that for companies that have invested heavily in creating custom scripts and hooks for specific proprietary software would find it ‘laborious’ to switch. But then, I would consider it a bad business decision to build my business around another businesses software – because then you depend on them. At least with Blender you know its not going to die, go away or cost you an arm and a leg. On the contrary, its going to constantly improve – for free.

For anyone getting into the industry – this is something they have to seriously weigh up. Companies come and go, but as long as humans and computers exist, Blender will improve. It is also something for larger, more established companies to consider in this economically unstable environment – cost cutting is becoming increasingly important. Blender would save literally millions on license fees per year for larger companies (note: there are costs for training and commercial support – if needed – but this is something needed for even proprietary software)

Now, if only we can get some really good commercial support for Blender! This is the last step for a lot of big-wigs to be able to take the plunge with confidence.

“I have to disagree with that. I have a close friend working in a game development company and he is using Blender for their work. In fact, he has stated that it is far quicker and more efficient in getting the job done than the clunky interface on Max and Maya – once you know how to use it.”

I know the use of both (not so much of Maya) , but i was referring to it as general statistic. I also know some very few cases of somebody using Blender for a shareware game (heck,me.. ) , or for a no AAA games, taht still make decent bucks. But was speaking as general move, as something actually happeningor having at least a 20% of the big companies in games using it. Is not that. I have one friend in a ps 3 title, and certainly is not even possible to imagine that they’d move from maya to anything else. Neither Max or XSI. They need loads of team work and they have years and years of mel scripting doing functionality of every complex super freak thing one could imagine. And nope, you can’t port all that to other package. You can *always* but would need a crazy amount of very qualified ppl dedicated to that years… And if sth happens with games, is are every time more demanding, developments of 5 years and more, very hard tomaintain the investment so long ,as a game is not making money in the way like other business…

Same way, other companies withother kind of games and workflows, like the old Blizzard, or others, do depend a real lot on Max. But if you look closely, since years, in job offers, they do ask “Max, Maya or equivalent” : several reasons for this: They already have a bunch of seats of each, for needs arised in stage whatever of the game…and even for simply using some aces of A or B package… Other reason is that is a matter of fact that once you learn deeply a tool (experienced and seen many ppl doing it too) , is not such a problem to get to speed to a new package. What companies aim at is tools witha rich feature set and very solid workflow. And of course, industry-proved. AAA games have been done, largely with all those 3! even with Lightwave (Serious Sam comes to mind, but several others). That last part is really mor eimportant than many people from Blender think, I have been in several game staffs, and none could be convinced, trust me, not only about Blender but any free software. They did let me use my tools as saw the result, but I could not avoid needing provide them with final Max or Maya file. I just handled the conversions with no hassles.

So, yep, I think is not going to reach easily that exact world. Or it will, but it willnot be fast, and now is quite far from that part. Trust me , I don’t say this happily.

About them building their business around busines of closed source comercial packages, with riskof those getting bankrupcy etc…it rarely happens (is more aquirements, like now . Adobe only trashed Freehand afte rth epurchase, but the populear way…slooowly… they dont wanna be too unpopular all of a sudden. Now you mainly here bout Illustrator and Indesign, in print design (my field now) .Not casual, imo… ) If Maya would fall now, yep, would be TERRIBLE for more than one ps3 title, as far as I now certain internals… But they risk waaay more in many other matters that are not much well known…. There are several other kind of game companies that work hybridly, ie, doom3 latest news I had is was used at least Lightwave, and Maya… And surely also Max… Several of those companies would bea ble to move assets to other package, what would totally kill them is, for example, moving to a package that did not have A or B feature (required for AAA games) , not so much prob if the artist gotta recycle, and put to speed in a a month, and get the warm feel of it in some months. Not more as 3D is 3D, *always* , everywhere. Trust on what has “the excelency of the industry” is absolutely key for the game sector I know. The money handled is way way bigger in other matter than in the actual licenses purchases of the softwares…

yet another proof that capitalism doesnt work, gives me the same feeling as when adobe bought macromedia.

We all share this feeling that total monopoly is never good and “alternatives” need to be kept alive.
So here are a couple of ideas I wanted to share and suggest for Blender to stay in the harsh battle of 3D apps :
There are still some fields to push in the 3d app development where 3dsmax and Maya are not perfect :

- HLSL / GLSL / Cg integration : (well, not HLSL as Blender is on OpenGL only but we never know…)

Nvidia seems to be pushing on that front with OpenGL and Collada’s CgFX, bringing everything together with a very complete FXcomposer and Mental Image tools , ATI’s ASHLI is odd but Rendermonkey is quite stable and simple with cool UI, 3dsmax is still kind of slow at rendering these shaders and you might need Lumonix shaderFX plugin for tech artists, etc…

In other words : it’s not quite yet very consistent, plus Microsoft has stopped supporting their “Content Creation Tools” in DirectX SDK : they only maintain the Photoshop DDS exporter. (lame as they kind of over dominate already with DirectX as well : so they could at least make a little bit more efforts…)

- Facial animation capture through direct video tracking :

This might sound very specific, however convincing characters are the cornerstone of 3d anims (games and movies) and motion capture pipelines are critical for production speed : we’ve seen some extremely powerful results with Contour Reality or Image Metrics (the “Emily Demo”, which is kind of half faked by the way : it’s only the face remapped onto a real actor footage and camera doesn’t move around…) : all this is just about great “After-Effect-like” pixel tracking expertize by the way.

I tried to reproduce this kind of stuff at home with something called Eyesweb : this Italian research program is impressive to play at catching any video stream and transforming it into any sort of output especially sound : I tried to get a MIDI signal through MIDI-OX to control animation in Max’s MIDI controller (which is dating back to Kinetix by the way and hasn’t seen any improvement since but could be very powerful though if they actually wanted to put more effort into it)

MIDI is the kind of stuff used by DJ’s only anyway : so it has always stayed in the shadow and quite ignored by the 3d world.

However, I believe anyone could animate an “Emily demo” with only a webcam and some better tools though : and it could unlock an inimaginable amount of creativity.

The only last standing licensed product is probably Houdini now.

XSI’s complete suite used to be $90k if I’m not wrong , so maybe the best that could happen to Blender would be Autodesk increasing its price to get returns out of their investments : a lot of indie developers could then investigate even more and more what cheaper solutions are available out there…

Cheers
Seb.

darkcgi wrote:
> Just make sure autodesk doesnt buy Blender and I’ll keep my sanity.

How about an Autodesk Blender fork and distro? ;)

I love blender!

Well, on CGTalk, the “winner” was Houdini judging by interest showed by members. Not too much for Blender. Because it still have a difficult user interface and hard to model. And internal render engine is not suitable for that kind of animations made in small studios without render farms.

I hope 2.5x will make the difference. With a good interface and render API. The speed of render engine and easy to use and model remain the main “keys” in evaluating/adopting a product. The target are the big companies? Well, inside them are artists (human factor?).

*hello
*what really scares is that :blender is the only one of a kind!!!

Blender users, you suck! what the fuck is wrong with you? Blender is the worst 3d app out there, everyone nows this, and the only reason it has some popularity is because its free! but it sucks nonetheless!!!!

begin using maya/3ds/softimage instead of this crappy blender shit!!!
u assholes!

Softimage XSI showed real competition for 3Ds Max in the Game industry, as I know games like Assassins Creed, Project Gotham 4 were utilizing XSI, and you could see how those games looks fantastic no doubt Autodesk thought Max is slipping slowly if they let XSI move right along, after all this is Autodesk it’s world biggest CGI solution supplier noway it’s gonna let XSI get over MAX.
Guys let’s be realistic I like Blender but I guess for big projects that require VFX the big names comes first, Blender sure powerful but too much work to be done, but sure if I work in a studio I would use both Max and Blender simply because the way blender bevel and extrude is super fast ;)

i agree that xsi is a awesome app, i would have bought foundation if it hadn’t been killed off (no dought by autodesk) xsi is new and fresh’ i would give anything to have it but i’m just a hobbiest and too plain poor. gigapolygon core and can render anything you can imagine throwing at it (if everything was for free no one would make a living in this world, but that is why foundation was justifiable, it was a hair/fur, rigid body disabled cut down, that you would only buy if it was all you could afford- but if it was all you could buy, at least it would have been another sale for avid that would not have been had there been no option. with this sort of thing you want it all, so you can’t say a pro would cheat avid and buy cut down foundation. foundation was a foot in the door for hobbyists and students that would have weaned them into life long customers. that is gone now, and shame on them. leaning 3d apps is too tiring, you want to find something that can solve all your problems with no switch overs- that is probably what autodesk will eventually do, xsi would not go wrong with 3ds max’s shell modifier or excellent cloth and sim tools. (max could take xsi skeleton building tools!)

but naa, i’ll take this free app with weak polygon cutting tools and no incidence(xsi)/fall off mapping (3ds max).

blender dose have something great about it though-it can simulate inter-colliding soft/cloth/rigid bodies-xsi can’t! it has a cloth simulator that works- xsi doesn’t (drop a cloth on a cube and see how much work you got to do before the cube stops peaking through) it can simulate water and har/fur, blender’s game engine can enable you to control characters or objects and record the actions for a movie- like drive a car in a chase- xsi can do that but only with rigid bodies, blender can do it with soft/cloth/ and rigid bodies and even enable you to make your own games! if further releases refined these features- as they will obviously do you could make professional games even if you are no good at scripting (maybe). what ever weak points blender has- they are always going to improve like any othor app. its creaters are global heroes for anyone using blender but i wouldn’t say i wouldn’t want a copy of xsi if i was asked!

*And i am sure blender will become a great software.

I bought foundations and on sale from softimage still cost quite a bit, just before the buy out (I dind’t know this was coming) by auto desk. Now I can’t run it becuase the licencing server web site no longer exists. I wanted to be working on a project right now but intead I’m waiting…and waiting …and waiting for Autodesk to give me a way to run my expensive soft ware they don’t want to support. I had backed up my Key files but oh no they are encryted with random data every time you install and having the license key , my e-mail and softimage account , the key files and the original installation disc I can’t use it.

Dear user you are not connected to the internet , please connect…or perhaps our company is defunct/bought out in which case please use a time machine to travel back to when server was on line and somone gave a crap about this version of software you paid thousands of dollars for.