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?"

Comments

AutoCAD is too far up MSs back end...

[MrCranky]

to get built for Linux. The whole product embeds every microsoft technology possible, including basing core functionality on IE6. The most likely outcome will be that Alias products will become Windows-only. I give Linux and MacOS Alias products one more rev before it goes strictly Windows.

Some useful information...

[USSJoin]

Background on Alias's history can be obtained here, and background on Autodesk, here.

Hope for the future of Maya on Linux, can be found at /dev/null.

Re:End of the Line

[BrynM]

...there'll be crazy anti-piracy attached to all the aquired products.

As a registered Maya user, I can tell you that there already is. Usually it's FlexLM, which gets bound to your hardware (or can run on a license server) or a bonafide hardware dongle. No changes expected there. Alias is just as careful (paranoid) as Audtodesk.

Re:The slippery slope for apple started years ago

[jcr]

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

Re:How do Maya and Max compare to Blender?

[LetterRip]

[QUOTE]But my question is: How does the open source Blender [blender3d.org] modeling and animation package compare to Maya and Max for creating content for movies, animations and games. What is it missing, what does it not do as well, what would it need to be able to compete? Is Blender even a worthy substitute for Maya or Max?[/QUOTE]

Depends on the studio, developer costs, and what type of animation you want to do. For high end photoreal Blender isn't there yet (render isn't 'high end' enough). For simulation based particle effects (fire, smoke, complex physics, crowd simulations, certain other fluid effects) Blender doesn't have those capabilities or are extremely limited (no volumetric shaders and no simulation system for smoke and flame, crowd dynamics could come shortly after the next release though). For most other TV quality animation, game animation, and small scale movie cinematics Blender is very much a possible consideration. Blender lacks some modeling tools but has a very solid core for subdivision surface modeling and has the truely neccessary tools (additional tools could improve speed and workflow). With much less than half a year of developer time, it could probably be brought to Silo equivalency for modeling, and with a full developer year could challenge Modo or ZBrush in modeling. With a half a year of dev time on texturing it could likely become ZBrush or Modo equivalent. Animation wise the next release will put it mostly on par with other character animation tools (but will still have a serious short coming in that it doesn't have motion capture capabilities). For game developers I noted above the limitations Blender has - again 6 months of developer time.

So in short it isn't a serious contender today for what major animation studios currently do with Maya or 3dsmax, but with a bit of funding could easily be there within a years time.

LetterRip