Autodesk - Please Say Something

[JabbaTheNut]

Dear Autodesk,

Could you please indicate something...anything...about Mudbox and its future?

It is widely believed that you intend to phase out Mudbox.  I don't know why you would want to do this.  You have a great product with a significant following that would love to continue. There are many more that would use Mudbox if they knew development were to continue.  Additionally, if you were to incorporate the geo creation technology that was previewed during this last year, Mudbox would become a powerhouse sculpting app that would attract a dominant share of the market.  You must know this.

Your silence regarding these "kill" rumors is leading most to believe they must be true.  This is causing many to either stay away from Mudbox or to leave Mudbox for a competing product. In an effort to protect your business, you maintain the position that you do not discuss future development.  In this case, however, your silence is hurting your business.  Furthermore, many are beginning to doubt if they should continue using Autodesk products at all, given the lack of concern for the customer base.  I have seen many discussions to this effect on the other Autodesk forums.  If growing your business is important, than your silence is not helping your cause.

I have been a staunch defender of Autodesk. However, I am beginning to lose faith. When you reach the point of losing me, you will have definitely reached the point of losing most.

I appeal to your better business sense.  Please say something.

Sincerely,

An Autodesk Advocate

[maurice.patel · Accepted solution]

Hi JabbaTheNut,

I can confirm Mudbox is still part of our product portfolio. The team is also focused on building sculpting tools in Maya which is their primary focus at the moment. Longer term we are looking at an even broader challenge of what cloud and virtualization of technology might mean for software in general. What that means is that while we cannot talk specifically about how our products will evolve over the next few years, we continue to invest in 3D paint and sculpting tools. A few years ago we did make a decision that we would not go head to head against Z-Brush with Mudbox and that is still our strategy (if that is what you mean by being dominant). 

maurice

[JabbaTheNut]

Hi Maurice,

Thank you for the response. It is much appreciated.

It is good to hear that Autodesk is continuing to invest in 3D painting and sculpting tools.  I am assuming this is referring to continued investment in Mudbox .  I understand the decision to not go head-to-head with ZBrush.  I do not think you need to.  Mudbox is a great product.  I look forward to its continued existence

[loganfoster]

Hi Maurice,

First I must say thank you for being one of the first people at Autodesk to actually come forward and say something, anything really, about the future of Mudbox. It means a lot for you to be the one to stick your head into a room of quite livid people and speak on behalf of the other side.

If I may though, I would like to respond to what you posted:

1. I am glad that Autodesk still sees a future in sculpting tools and technology.

2. I am however incredibly disappointed, frustrated, and even more than a bit angry that work on Mudbox has by all accounts been suspended for this very long term goal of trying to put the Mudbox tools into Maya. As someone who relied on Mudbox as a stand alone product, I see this as a step backwards and to be honest I do indeed feel cheated and lied to by the management team who went forth with this decision. Once again however I do thank you for responding and letting us know, your response is the first in almost 2 years on this subject from anyone at Autodesk on Mudbox. But I cannot help but think that if communication from management would have been more clear from the get go when the decisions were made not to compete with Zbrush, and also when the decision was made to focus on the integration of Mudbox into Maya. Many of us here would not be as frustrated as we are today.

3. Speaking of the Mudbox in Maya integration and forgoing development of Mudbox. I am perplexed as to why this decision was made and why little to no consideration was given to those of us that were using Autodesk's more commercially successful 3D application, 3DS Max. It is nice that your teams have been working over the past several years at integrating the Mudbox technology into Maya and I am sure those users will appreciate those efforts, but from my perspective this work sends many mixed messages about what the management of the M&E side is up to and that isn't good for anyone.

4. I love Mudbox, I really do think it was a great product, it is such a shame that its where it is and this rift between the user base and Autodesk had to occur. With that said though my only hope really at this point is that lessons can be learned and mistakes not repeated again in the future with other tools, software, and services that I use or might consider using from Autodesk.

[maurice.patel]

hi Loganfoster,

I think what you say is very fair. I posted to this thread because my attention was drawn to it in a private email from a Mudbox user on this forum, otherwise I would not have known it was happening and it may have gone unanswered yet again.

Truth is things are not always as well organized here as they should be. Autodesk is actually not very hierarchical, contrary to popular belief. Teams have a lot of autonomy on what they do and how they do it. With agile methods things have become even more fluid. Communication is not always consistent between teams and tends to depend on individuals and their comfort talking about specific subjects, especially if they are difficult subjects. So yes communication can be inconsistent but that's not so much a management decision as it is a by-product of the autonomy I mentioned earlier.

I am sorry you feel cheated and lied to. We tend to try to not make any specific promises about the future of any of our products for several reasons - first and foremost for revenue accounting reasons but also to avoid setting any false expectations either good or bad. Ultimately all we ever should be promising is what you get today - the future can change in unpredictable ways. But again, we are not always consistent in that, teams are free to act as they see best and so if you have been lied to about the specifics regarding the future of Mudbox all i can say is it should not have happened  and i am sorry it did.

As regards your 3ds max/ Maya question. These are also separate teams adn have a high level of autonomy. They determine the roadmaps of their products based on what they feel they need to do for their users and the business. both teams need to prioritize their features based on a combination of customer needs/requirements and long term goals to grow their user base. I am not specifically involved in any product planning so those kind of requests have to be channeled into the product teams directly.

I think Autodesk is caught in a dichotomy driven by the fact that a large part of our customers want more common data structures - this is why the industry is putting so much effort behind things like USD, alembic, Open EXR etc  - but also a large number of users are individual users where this is less of a priority. We try to balance both needs, but ultimately integrating capabilities like sculpting and simulation on a common data structure has become an important priority for the Maya team.

The Mudbox team is part of the Maya team they will continue to balance their priorities between the two, but yes they are very focused on Maya now. Also if sculpting should become a priority for the 3ds max team they would of course have access to the technology should they need it. we do share a lot of tech between groups.

Hope this gives you a better understanding of things here - its not our intent to mislead, we don't typically shy away from difficult communications. If there is a misunderstanding its typically an oversight or because either (1) things have changed - we constantly revise our strategies on an ongoing basis - or (2) things were just unknown at the time of the original communication. Like today it is unknown whether we will virtualize our products or not - it is research but no decisions have been made.

maurice

[Out-Of-Light]

Thank you Maurice for answering Jabba’s questions.

I also created a similar thread unanswered by Autodesk,, and there are a few other threads on this subject unanswered.

Lots of members were getting pretty peeved at AutoDesk’s absence in answering any of the questions.

I haven’t read your reply fully, just skipped over it, will read it in full later.

I didn’t know Mudbox is part of the Maya development team, has it always been?

I have only been using Mudbox for 2 years and have it on subscription, but I feel the last subscription payment was a complete waste, as there is no improvement over Mud 2016 and the previous extensions, over Mud 2017. The new feature in 2017 seems to be the ability to highlight the new features , that Autodesk didn’t add.?

A quote from Sigourney from the movie Avatar comes to mind! Anyone want to guess?

Oh and they changed the title from 2016 to 2017 yey!

If the Maya team is making Maya the priority and integrating Mud into it etc, this seems very unfair, for individual users of Mud and people using Mud+Max.

After all we paid extra for the separate program in the first place, and for subscription every year, yet Maya will be getting the latest and greatest developments for free, while people that actually pay extra for the stand alone program end up at the back of the development queue, yet Max and Maya are priced exactly the same. This is seriously unfair IMO and I feel cheated.

My subscription for Mud and Max is up for renewal in 20 days, and If the people that pay extra for the full program will continue to get the back of the queue treatment, I don’t see any point in continuing with the subscription program for Mud.

[Ianucci]

Thank you for communicating with us Maurice.

I still just cannot process ADs attitude to Mudbox. Why not have at least have a couple of devs doing minor updates/UI improvements, even that would be greatly appreciated by the user base. Taking the existing software and just slapping 2017 on the loading screen is frankly insulting.

I recall hearing years ago about the shift in focus towards Maya, I understand these things take time but how long does Mudbox have to be left on the sidelines? Why cant Mudbox have its own team independant from Maya?

What and who is driving the homogenization of the software? VFX studios? I am aware of the benefits of sculpting in Maya but I also see major issues with that approach. Where does this focus on Maya leave all the small boutique vendors and one man band outfits?

Why the fear of competing with ZBrush? ZBrush is great but even in its current state Mudbox does certain things much better. Imagine if there had been active development these last few years... The lack of competition for ZBrush is bad for artists and bad for the industry.

[FalconCrest]

The priority is integrating Mudbox into Maya, that seems to be made clear at the same time Mudbox continues to be developed primarily with hot fixes.  I was informed that for the current release of Mudbox, Autodesk may give a full refund.  

Otherwise I don't believe it is of good practice to charge those especially on perpetual license for another year.  With a valid key for Mudbox 2017 all future hot fixes should be released without a valid current subscription until the transition for Mudbox into Maya is complete; which if a majority of the Mudbox team is working on integrating Mudbox into Maya, I don't foresee that taking longer then it has at this point.

Why insist Mudbox users particularly on perpetual license pay for another year ?