Alias being purchased by Autodesk!!

Did you guys hear about this?

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/10/04/alias/index.php

Uh oh. We all know that Studio Max has a 'no way will we ever build a mac version of max' attitude. Anyone want to guess as to where Maya is going to go and when? I'm thinking Maya 7 might be the end of the road for the mac version.

Come on Apple! Throw your hat in the ring and give is the next best thing for 3d on the Mac... I thought I read somewhere about a job posting for Apple's application shop in Pittsburgh looking for 3d resources. Hmmm.

Any thoughts?

- Erik

 

I would guess that it will take a til next years Siggraph for everything to be sorted out.

But this brings up a really big issue: FBX

For Alias the FBX format was to make inroads into the game creation industry. An industry that Max is leader in. This acquisition could spell doom for the FBX format, especially animation. Autodesk could easily isolate and conquer, by shutting off exchange between other applications. If they have Maya and no longer need to compete with Maya they could just shut everyone out.

I would also guess that Maya, Max, or whatever amalgam emerges will have an increase in price.

Maybe the now is the time for the OTEE guys to consider offering support for another ANIMATION(not static) format other than FBX.

 

First off let me say that I kinda hate to see this. I have bad experiences working through M&A's, especially as the acquired. When a public company acquires a rather tangential market space it seems that it is often because they are not growing at the rate that their investors would like. Look at the history:

• Flat line in stock value from 95 to early 2002 when the impact of a significant acquisition strategy started to show on the books. Since then they have seen solid regular growth coupled to an insatiable appetite for innovative high margin companies.
  
  Previous uptick in stock around April/May was heralded by the purchase of Colorfront and the annoucement of the Midway deal (with discreet tools) and the Q1 results being up (duh...bought companies with good to great margins) Notice though that the March new product annoucements got them nowhere.
  
  Look at the major milestones that they themselves publish as a clear indication of how they view their own growth and development. Looks like a pattern from innnovation to acquisition in order to meet growth demands.

However, I would cautiously suggest that the real questions are (and I don't know the answers):

• What has happened to the offerings from Discreet or any of these other companies? Was there a change in service quality? Quality of goods? Innovation? Direction? Was a central party line enforced on supported platforms?
  
  Can Autodesk support both Max and Maya? Really? I'd almost expect that they create a consolidated toolset that they 'encourage' all the dev studios to adopt. It could very well in that case be a way to buy the customer base of Maya.

These might be a decent bellweather for how Autodesk might handle the Alias acquisition. Maybe they know enough to leave it alone and let it continue to add revenue and margin at the same rate to the bottom line.

My 2 cents.

---
Best regards,
Doc

 

These news are interesting in addition to that some weeks ago there were rumors that maya employees were hiring for Adobe/MM if i remember right. So they might really be after some further 3d in the future...

Anyway hopefully there will be some good 3dsmax-support in the future of unity.


Greetings,

taumel

 

3dsmax already exports FBX, so integration is as complete as it can be across two different platforms

 

Also, according to the Alias FAQ about the aquisition online, the Mac and Linux version of their software will continue to be made available for those platforms. In some ways, it's a perfect compliment ... Max is mostly used for gaming, while Maya has been traditionally used for higher-end movie animation work. And the two companies were always ripping of each others technologies/advancements/workflow ideas as they continually battled to win the hearts and minds (and $$) of 3D users everywhere. We'll see how distinct the two remain after the six month transition period os over. Here's the linkie to the downloadable PDF FAQ ...

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=5970886&siteID=123112

 

I havent read the readme, but to me it sounds like they are merging the two (like Alias was doing with motionbuilder and Maya)..

Not really sure what to think of this, I'd hate to see another frankenstein!

 

Hi Nicholas,

>>>3dsmax already exports FBX, so integration is as complete as it can be across two different platforms<<<

I haven't dug this deep into fbx to see if there are any export-problems when using anis and so on so you may or may not be right with this one.

From a lazy point of view i prefer saving max-scenes as i simply press a shortcut and whoops the scene is saved. I honestly never looked up if i can do this with export too...have to check. :O)


Greetings,

taumel

 

We'v tested Studio Max (the latest version ... 7 or is it 8 now Ron?) quite extensively with Unity as the second monkey (Ron) develops all the stuff for our widgets and game(s) on a PC using Max. Until we strike it rich and can afford a Mac that can run Maya well.

 

Hi DaveyJJ,

so was it 7?


Greetings,

taumel

 

Not sure, Ron's now in a separate building at our (large) company. We always use the very latest version though.