We paid to acquire the IP as well as the engineers and we're using a lot of these concepts in our other products. So any transition is going to require resources on our part to do and so the question is, is it worth it?
#Selling softimage 3d code#
There's code bases, third party IP, we have to go through all of it to understand where all the IP came from, etc.
We've looked at open-sourcing, not just Softimage but other applications, but it's not trivial to do these things.
#Selling softimage 3d software#
There's too much tied into the software for us to do that safely. We're not just going to dump software and run and we can't. We're not talking about trivial code bases, either one of those would require significant effort and investment on our part if it was to work. Doing all of those things diligently, is not insignificant. I think that there was no real clear business case to see why we would want to do that. MP: We looked at a bunch of very different scenarios and they were very quickly removed from the table. Did you consider the viability of selling Softimage? Or possibly licensing it to a third party to onwardly develop with clauses to protect your patents and IP? Many companies don't give any time at all or provide a year, so we do believe this a reasonable time and, as I mentioned, it doesn't mean people have to stop using Softimage at the end of the two years. We need to be able to plan things through properly so we believe that a two-year transition is reasonable it's longer than is typically given in the industry. We would like people to make the choice between Maya and Max over the the next two years so that we know where we are at the end of that period.
But the two year transition is really about the transition to add Maya or Max to your pipeline, not having to move off Softimage. There's no doubt that if you have a large pipeline built around Softimage with a lot of customisation it will take you longer. On the forums, a lot of people would like us to continue to develop it going forward, change those decisions, but given that the product is not being developed and that people can continue to use it if they already have it, we think it's sufficient time. What we're talking about is not developing new functionality and features for it, not that people can't use it or continue to use it while they're transitioning over longer periods of time. Ultimately, across the next two years we believe that we can stabilise Softimage to such a point that it doesn't need ongoing maintenance. You have to remember, Softimage users can continue to use their product for much longer, it's not that people have to stop using that program, it's just that we won't be developing it. I think some will make the transition faster, some might take longer. Given the massive complexity of 3D applications, do you really think two years is a reasonable transition time frame? We basically realised along the way that this was going to be too monumental, even more disruptive and that there were other ways of doing this, including re-engineering core parts of out other applications, Maya and Max. In the end, that technology did not come to market. So, was there an expectation that we would be introducing new technology and we start replacing old ones? I think that would be true to say, yes.īut it was too early to start thinking about the exact mechanics of how this was going to play out.
We wanted to build next-gen technologies and there was a lot of excitement about doing those things.Īt the same time, when you're building next generation technology, you're hoping, down the road, that those will replace your older ones. At that point, our company and division was growing very rapidly and we needed skilled engineers, and that was an opportunity to bring them on board. We'd already hired several engineers from that company.
#Selling softimage 3d driver#
That was the primary driver behind why we wanted it. MP: The primary reason for acquiring the technology was to acquire the engineering teams, to have them work on next generation technology. Why did Autodesk acquire Softimage from Avid back in 2008 when it already had two 3D DCC apps? We did know that it was going to be difficult for Softimage customers, but we've tried to offer programs and make this as flexible as possible. The realisation in that planning process last year was that if we really wanted to accelerate the rate of development in Max and Maya then we needed to make some tough choices. And so we had to make some decision to focus if we wanted to serve our greater customer base and move our products forward at a quicker rate. Our Max, Maya and Softimage customers were all unhappy with the rate of innovation because of such changes and they want us to move faster to help them with that change.
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