Autodesk acquired SoftImage!

r4inm4ker

Autodesk Signs Agreement With Avid Technology to Acquire Softimage

Acquisition to Accelerate Autodesk's Games Strategy; Complements Digital Entertainment and Visual Communications Offering; Lets Artists Choose their Passion

SAN RAFAEL, Calif., Oct. 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) and Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID), announced that they have signed a definitive agreement for Autodesk to acquire substantially all of the assets of Avid's Softimage business unit for approximately $35 million.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?id=12022457&siteID=123112

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This is a big news for graphics / digital content creation industry, because the three main softwares in Film/game industry (Max,Maya,XSI) is now owned by same company, Autodesk. A lot of people dislike Autodesk, and thus despise this move. But I don't have any particular preference, since I don't use XSI. I just hope that it means they can share the good tools and remove the bad ones.

A little background about Autodesk and SoftImage for those who don't familiar with them:

Autodesk
Autodesk is first widely known for its CAD tool AutoCAD. In late 90's, they bought Discreet Logic, thus owning it's popular software 3DS Max. In 2006 they again acquired another major player in 3D graphics industry, Alias, thus owning arguably the most popular software for film / VFX , Maya, and also MotionBuilder. Besides those two 'big' players, they also bought some other companies such as SkyMatter(mudbox), REALVIZ, etc.

SoftImage
SoftImage was the creator of Softimage|3D, a very popular software in early 3D industry. In 1994 the company was bought by Microsoft, who sold it to Avid in 1998. SoftImage|XSI was released in 2000, and currently is one of the most popular all-around 3D tools in the 3D industry.

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feel free to correct me if there's anything that's not the fact in the explanation above.

poppat

Sound like there will be a monopoly on 3D graphics before too long.

poppat

r4inm4ker

well, i personally do not think it's that dangerous or bad. As someone has stated in another forum, Adobe also owns 2D market almost exclusively with its creative suites applications, especially photoshop, and it seems that nobody bashed them, maybe because they keep launching good products. But I believe Autodesk people are able to do this too. The new release of Mudbox 2009 looks very strong and promising, one of the proof that they are not complete fool.

prithvi

Now Autodesk is a big, big giant Shocked

End users have been having mixed feelings regarding this.
Though there will be better and compatible streaming of workflow between the softwares in the days to come, the initiative to come out with better features (which was prevalent in the presence of competitors) might take a back seat now.

Waiting for the day when they will come up with a common software combining the features of all their related products, though that is not going to happen soon.