Autodesk Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Alias

[xam]

:o 依我見解，Autodesk買Alias除了想增加市場占有率，最重要的是把技術和市場

做一次大型的整合，雖然Autodesk表示，在Alias整合到Autodesk其下不會改

變Alias產品的市場方向，但Alias R&D會有重組到Autodesk裡，而Maya及Max有

著十分相似的市場定位，好難唔令人認為Autodesk將在未來會把Maya及Max R&D

的資源集中，去發展次世代的3D Animation Tool。Aivd的XSI有著64bit Platfrom

及特破性的Production Workflow，都是對對手Maya及Max的一大沖擊，如今3D界的

兩大對手在沒有新技術發表前合並，好明顯有兩個可能性，(1)是等待兩間公司

合並完成才把有利的消息發表，這可能性是為了平定Maya及Max用戶的信心，令

用戶放心Maya及Max的R&D Support是不會受合並事件所影響，減低用戶因對Tech.

Support的固累轉投對手XSI的方向。(2)是和XSI作正面的交戰，整合Maya及Max的

R&D出產次世代的3D Animation Tool，比起Maya及Max各自研發新的resource的資

源更有效益。和Autodesk Combution及Inferno唔同，Compositing Software在系統

需求上及品質上都有不同，Maya及Max大家的用戶層及工作層面太相似了，固意為

Max定案為Game Field或Maya定位為Film Field對兩者都唔公平，和兩者的特性太

相似在同一家公司存在的可能性是極少發生的事情，我相信下年SIGGraph 2006就

是答案，大家要惜目以待啦!!

What you have mentioned is almost what I want to said. Thank you because I don't need to do the chinese typing which may takes me a month to do that.

Just two additional notes:

1. The 64bit max version is alomost done which had been shown in Siggraph 2005.

2. Similar products still have the CHANCE to co-exist together FOR A WHILE (1 year, 3 years, 5 years? It depends on the market). For example, Autodesk Revit and Autodesk Architectural Desktop. They have similar functions and co-exist for about 5 years now.

Yes~~ that's my two cents.

[chiographic]

其實3ds max 當初 都唔系autodesk開發的, 3d studio max R3 之後比autodesk 買左仲改名做 3dS max 4.
由max 4 到現在都不斷有新功能加入和進步,所以我覺得may比autodesk收購之後會有唔錯既發展,不過就好大機會改名喇.....

[EricLo]

在CGTalk.com有關Autodesk收購Alias的Topic上

Alex Alvarez - Gnomon Hollywood CG School Founder

出言分析這事對我們CG界的影響.....

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread. ... =107&pp=15

Hi all...
Can't keep up with this thread! So here's my .02c.

As far as my opinion about the merger (I've been using Alias for over 10 years, before sgi merged alias and wavefront, before Maya.)... well, it is all about money. You could say greed, but that would imply the notion of 'evil' which would be wrong. When alias was bought from SGI, I think a lot of us were happy that alias was no longer part of a sinking ship... that perhaps the aquisition would yield the innovation that we witnessed in the late 90's. But in the end, it was clearly all about money. Alias was aquired for $150M and a year later sold for $180M. A nice profit for a small handful of investors. You can't fault people for trying to make money I guess. But is it good for the users? Hell no.

The alias/max merger now means that Autodesk has 90% market share. Why even bother innovating at this point? Look at Photoshop. How much has that changed in the last 10 years? Why? No competition.

Things will continue as usual... Maya will continue to -slowly- add features, as will Max. Perhaps they will merge into a new app in a few years. But should we expect ground breaking innovation? No. Just more of the same. I hope I'm wrong, but the whole Autodesk/Alias merger is bad. For everyone. The only innovation we're probably going to see at this point will come from t



he small players (Pixologic, Softimage, etc). But will they be able to compete? Time will tell. We are definitely witnessing a Microsoft/Apple scenario in the cg world. I wouldn't be surprised if prices for 3D apps begin to rise as a result of this merger. Not to the $50k prices of 7 years ago, but they will probably go up. Autodesk could raise the prices of Maya and Max by 25% and you think everyone will jump ship to XSI? I doubt it.

When Alias and Wavefront merged, they had complementary products, and the end result, Maya, was a good thing. But what do maya and max really bring to the table to warrant a merger of their technologies, with the costs involved in doing such a thing? They are too similar to spend the r&D money to merge, especially with minimal competition.

Maya will stick around.... Max will stick around. And they will continue to -slowly- improve. It is now up to the small players to provoke change via innovation. But unfortunately, Softimage/Lightwave/etc have also been strugling with their own identities in the face of corporate financial politics.

This is all about money. Not software. Not cool 3D apps. The people who are making these decisions ARE NOT users. You think Doug Walker can even make a sphere in Maya? No. He's thinking about martinis on his 50' yacht in Greece. Sad but true. The exitement of the late 90's and software innovation are over... I just hope Softimage and Pixologic (and Luxology, SESI, etc), have a plan...

Strange times.

-Alex

雖然有點負面，但我覺得都很有道理。值得一看!!


ericlo - 2005

[xam]

Yes, all about money. He got the point!

That's why I asked you guys if you are interested in buying Autodesk stocks.... esp. when a company (company A) acquire another one(company B), there will be an initial drop in the stock price of company A, that will be a good chance to buy.

I donno why there are no people saying something good about max here..... in my opinion, BOTH MAX and MAYA ARE GOOD PRODUCTS. To me, Maya's interface is very complicate but i will not say it is bad. It is because I will be a "small frog under the well" to say that and I know what makes me feels complicate is I am not familiar with it, not because of the program itself.

That means I will only blame myself (at least before I fully understand Maya) instead of saying Maya is complicate or stupid.

I still remember when I went to Siggraph on 2002. I met a guy working in Blizzard, in which we know they use Max. I asked him that it seems there is a trend of Maya getting more popular, what did he think about that. He then said to me he will definitely not switch to another application because he can do whatever he want in Max and satisfy with it. And we know what good quality CG Blizzard can make. At that moment, my believe in "What makes a good CG is not the software but the man who use it." is further confirmed.

At this moment, as a CG lover and user, I will not worry about the coming new features of max or maya too much. Instead, I would like to put more effort on improving my skill and artistic sense.

To be honest, what kind of new features we want max or maya to have? I can hardly think of any since I am only using, maybe, 30 percent of the functions of the software.

[xam]

I like what this guy says.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=2715431&postcount=1592

I thought about that too.

[xam]

我想說我的心情很復雜...途人誰能明白我？

[soZon]

xam , dont worry !!!
many max user here !!

[xam]

xam , dont worry !!!
many max user here !!

哈哈！謝謝。

其實也沒什麼事，想不通不去想便是了。

唔知小弟要唔要進修一下Maya呢...

[Terry]

xam , dont worry !!!
many max user here !!

哈哈！謝謝。

其實也沒什麼事，想不通不去想便是了。

唔知小弟要唔要進修一下Maya呢...

小弟覺得學多套無壞，互補不足ma，若果遲D兩者的file format 可以溝通得好D，就更能達到尼個目的

[stantang]

Programs are like cars, only good drivers can push their limit; others try to do that will crash and die, these people should stay as slow drivers...

[xam]

Programs are like cars, only good drivers can push their limit; others try to do that will crash and die, these people should stay as slow drivers...

I will enjoy to use a so-called slow car but can drive faster than those who use a so-called fast car.

[DARKZEROT_T]

milkboy 寫到:
和Maya相比，像Max這類“反智”的操作定會繼續，看她近年不斷膨脹攪到全球最多人用總有原因，就是她夠低b，正如手機影相也極低b。所有“商品”在發展過程中都會慢慢被幼稚化，變成易被消費的“精品”。不要打塊面。


I don't know y many Maya user love say those stupid thing...
Can u do the work like War of Warcraft cinematic ? or you can do the work like onimusha cinematic ? If you cannot , that mean your skill suck than the low b software user ?

And what mean 幼稚化 ? In my eyes, Maya just click some button can creat the sea, the tree, the flower, the hair etc.. this not 幼稚?
2 year old children can do this..... But in our max user point , this is easy can do the works, no people will say that's 幼稚.

Max user never say this thing... I hope Maya user never say this thing forever TOO....OK ?

And give your guy a link (http://www.richardrosenman.com/) This is a max user web page , he write many max script , and do many good TVC, you can see what max can do . (Sorry for my bad Eng)

[HammerChugoh]

I think you have some misunderstanding.

There are many reasons why maya is used in highend film production environment right now. Mel and it's well developed and documented API are 2 of the main reasons, but the biggest reason is it's advanced dependency graph architecture. It really lower the cost of developing plug-in and scripts for maya to do what you want that is not offered by maya rite now. And this ability is really really important for those big production house. So what he said "low B" is actually referring to how easy and how much you can hack into the lower level of the package.
You probably can't feel much the difference unless you are a TD or a developer.

One typical working approach of max user is to find plug-ins, or try new renderer, but it's not the case for those maya users in those huge hollywood production houses. They write plugins, script to merge maya into their pipeline and creating solution that is not exist in the market at that moment. How many of those japanese cinematic studios can do that? I don't think there're too many. And I am not sure how many precent of studio that use Max will have shader writer and plug in developer working with the team. there must be some, but I believe it's not the typical case. As far as I know, even blizzard haven't done much in this area either. And hopefully you can tell the technical difference between the CG of KingKong and the onimusha cinematic.

just my little opinion.

milkboy 寫到:
和Maya相比，像Max這類“反智”的操作定會繼續，看她近年不斷膨脹攪到全球最多人用總有原因，就是她夠低b，正如手機影相也極低b。所有“商品”在發展過程中都會慢慢被幼稚化，變成易被消費的“精品”。不要打塊面。


I don't know y many Maya user love say those stupid thing...
Can u do the work like War of Warcraft cinematic ? or you can do the work like onimusha cinematic ? If you cannot , that mean your skill suck than the low b software user ?

And what mean 幼稚化 ? In my eyes, Maya just click some button can creat the sea, the tree, the flower, the hair etc.. this not 幼稚?
2 year old children can do this..... But in our max user point , this is easy can do the works, no people will say that's 幼稚.

Max user never say this thing... I hope Maya user never say this thing forever TOO....OK ?

And give your guy a link (http://www.richardrosenman.com/) This is a max user web page , he write many max script , and do many good TVC, you can see what max can do . (Sorry for my bad Eng)

[stantang]

milkboy 寫到:
和Maya相比，像Max這類“反智”的操作定會繼續，看她近年不斷膨脹攪到全球最多人用總有原因，就是她夠低b，正如手機影相也極低b。所有“商品”在發展過程中都會慢慢被幼稚化，變成易被消費的“精品”。不要打塊面。


I don't know y many Maya user love say those stupid thing...
Can u do the work like War of Warcraft cinematic ? or you can do the work like onimusha cinematic ? If you cannot , that mean your skill suck than the low b software user ?

And what mean 幼稚化 ? In my eyes, Maya just click some button can creat the sea, the tree, the flower, the hair etc.. this not 幼稚?
2 year old children can do this..... But in our max user point , this is easy can do the works, no people will say that's 幼稚.

Max user never say this thing... I hope Maya user never say this thing forever TOO....OK ?

And give your guy a link (http://www.richardrosenman.com/) This is a max user web page , he write many max script , and do many good TVC, you can see what max can do . (Sorry for my bad Eng)

Here comes my car theory once again. Slow car is slow, fast car is fast; they will both move slow if drove by slow drivers, it's not about the car, it's the driver... unless you're one of those drivers that's good enough to push the limit of a car....

For a second, I thought I'm talking about the story of Initial D...

[johngalliano]

I think you have some misunderstanding.

There are many reasons why maya is used in highend film production environment right now. Mel and it's well developed and documented API are 2 of the main reasons, but the biggest reason is it's advanced dependency graph architecture. It really lower the cost of developing plug-in and scripts for maya to do what you want that is not offered by maya rite now. And this ability is really really important for those big production house. So what he said "low B" is actually referring to how easy and how much you can hack into the lower level of the package.
You probably can't feel much the difference unless you are a TD or a developer.

One typical working approach of max user is to find plug-ins, or try new renderer, but it's not the case for those maya users in those huge hollywood production houses. They write plugins, script to merge maya into their pipeline and creating solution that is not exist in the market at that moment. How many of those japanese cinematic studios can do that? I don't think there're too many. And I am not sure how many precent of studio that use Max will have shader writer and plug in developer working with the team. there must be some, but I believe it's not the typical case. As far as I know, even blizzard haven't done much in this area either. And hopefully you can tell the technical difference between the CG of KingKong and the onimusha cinematic.

just my little opinion.

[/quote]

very well said. couldn't agree any more.

My opinion upon this merge thing is, it brings less competition, therefore bad news for the users. I'd like to see maya and max compete with each other in terms of their technologies implemented into their softwares, but this competition is over. No good!