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Autodesk Acquires Alias
eggegg is one of many readers to write to tell us that "Autodesk, of AutoCAD and 3dsmax fame, is reporting that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Alias, makers of Maya and MotionBuilder. Will Autodesk use the inherited expertise and codebase to finally develop their product line for the platforms most of their customer base would prefer, or does this mean the end of development of Alias products on OSX and Linux?"
Autodesk will kill other platforms and there'll be crazy anti-piracy attached to all the aquired products.
Umm.. The problem with your scenario is that you're ignoring how FCP is eating Premiere and Avid's lunch. Apple's selling enormous FCP/Xsan/Shake/Xserve/SXserve raid packages every day. As for Maya, Autodesk is in business to make money, not to throw away huge revenue streams just to spite Steve Jobs. Maya will stay on the Mac, unless Apple ships an app that tops it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"does this mean the end of development of Alias products on OSX and Linux?"
What about IRIX? Let's not forget about it. It was the first OS that any Alias software ever ran on. If memory serves, Alias was spun-off from Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Slashdot = -1 Redundant, Asperger, kdawson FUD, Libertarian, and Linux
Some really great features that Blender has over the competition:
Heck there is even a ton of free documentation, ranging from a wikibook to other books and guides.
It was used for previz stuff on Spider-man 2, in case anyone asks if it has been used in the industry.Since the page you linked to claims that the manual is based on version 2.32, and, according to yourself, big improvements (meaning big changes) happened on version 2.34 and 2.35, and the current version is 2.37a, how can the manual be "pretty fucking good" ? It should be hopelessly out of date by now.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
No, this is no big entry for Blender. Yes, Blender is far away from competing with Maya. It's probably even far away from competing with 3DSCrap - allthough not so very far I'd say.
But there is one thing significant about Blender as an OSS Design Software:
While comparing Gimp to PS or Sketch to Illustrator is just plain silly, there is actually a point in comparing Blender to commercial 3D Software.
Let's not forget: Blender was a commercial package itself back then. I even bought a licence for ca. 400$.
So, yes, over time it is not unlikely that Blender will be a solid alternative to Maya, Softimage, Houdini, Lightwave and the rest. Blender 2.4 is coming (probably at the blender conference next week) with a complete redo of IK. There are less than 10 open ends that need programming/redoing (renderer, joints, proper NLA, more/better modelling to name a few) but even though this is lots of work, it's an overseable amount of work. Each of these open ends can be done by a good programmer with a few months time.
Blender *is* invading the 3D market. Especially in education. Softimage's 3Democracy campaign is one result of this.
If the Blender team could be the first to come clear with an XML based 3D format they could even call the shots and establish a new universal 3D standard.
Bottom line:
Over time Blender could very well become a big player in the 3D world. Just not tomorrow.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I feel sorry for all the Maya users out there. The Maya forums are full of messages like "I'm switching to XSI/Houdini", "they're going to ruin Maya". While the Max user base is over the moon. In reality, nothing much will change. Maya was starting a slow decline. It's infrastructure is at least two generations older than Houdini, and one older than XSI. It's turned into a collection of modules that really don't fit into each other. Max has been going that way for years. Sure, its great for games - but pretty clunky by todays standards.