To whom it may concern:
Re: Autodesk Softimage
Dear Autodesk,
This is by no means a hate letter, quite the opposite.
I am an established filmmaker based in Los Angeles I have been using Most of your entertainment products for 14 years now... My relationship with your products goes back to before you acquired any of them. And without sounding like an arrogant person I would like to put my self forward as a good data sample for your analytical process.
my CG story starts in Mexico City when I was 11 years old (I'm 28 now so we're talking 1996)
-1996
My father was working at Nintendo as a programmer at the time... And I would skip school and visit my dad's office. in order to not interrupt his work he would let me play with the computer next to him which was an O2 Sgi box with Power Animator (before it was called maya) I learnt basic navigation and started experiencing the world of cg thanks to iris GL (before open GL) for the first time and fell in love with it straight away. so I continued to skip school and learning this instead, it got to a point where they needed their high end box and they couldn't let an employee's kid use it all the time so my dad put me on a windows nt box and told me that power animator now was called "maya"and that they had made it finally for windows NT By then I was 12.
-1997
The license came with a complementary book called Mastering Maya 2.
I skipped school even more to read the entire book which was as thick as the bible itself. And I learnt maya at the age of 12. (When it was owned by Alias Wavefront)
Unfortunately Those Nintendo offices closed down (decline in sales caused by video game piracy) so my dad was layed off and I immediately lost access to this technology... Feeling frustrated not being able to apply my recently acquired knowledge, I decided to drop out of school all together at the age of 13.
-1998
and I went to knock on studio's doors to look for work. only one man was crazy enough to hire me after he saw my renders on a VHS tape,at age 14 when I had my first job in the Cg industry doing animations for infomercials.
-1999
My boss couldn't afford Maya from Wavefront so he instead purchased 3DStudio max by Kinetix at the time. I immediately felt like 3ds max was easier to learn than Maya and more user friendly. the power of maya was still not matched by 3dsmax.
But most importantly I was able to produce the work I was payed to do in 3dsmax.
After 8 months of turning around 1 infomercial per week I quickly gained more knowledge in other softwares such as FCP (it had just come out) and After Effects, etc.. Since I had to perform editorial/comp tasks to sell my animations better.
I was quickly burnt out from too much work but had actually saved my money. And just wanted to learn more So I quit my job at the age of 14 and took an internship at a well known post house that owned an Inferno and a Flame (by Discreet back then) running on SGI onyx and octane respectively.
I quickly fell in love with it and found it easy to learn since I was so young and already knew Maya and 3dsMax so Flame just opened a whole new door for me.
I became obsessed , I would often stay up all night while the facility was empty just learning this amazing piece of software (flame)... I still was able to apply my 3d skill set and I quickly was able to exploit the strongest features of flame at the time...
-2000
eventually still at the age of 15 I got offered a job as a flame artist to specifically work on the entire TV campaign for the first installment of BigBrother (reality tv show) in Mexico. after an intense year of work and a successful tv campaign.
And after saving some money, I decided to quit my job, partner up with my best friend and a couple of investors to setup my own company...
-2001
problem was, a 16 year old cannot setup a company, so we had to do a verbal partnership so that I could... we realized the high end industry was changing and we purchased one license of maya (since I believed more in it than 3dsmax) and we also purchased a license of combustion (by Discreet )
luckily for us we were awarded our first 2Danimation project which we ENTIRELY completed using combustion... From Character design to delivery... ALL 100% combustion. Due to different interests between partners I left the partnership disappointed at greed and monetary interests.
-2002
As soon as I became 17, I made a drastic change in my career and applied for a job as an on set production assistant for the feature film "Troy" which was shot in Mexico. Once I was back in square 1 making coffee for people. Well I made coffee for the VFX supervisor of the show, and I had the opportunity to show him my showreel in the editorial trailer on a miniDV tape. And MPC London offered me to work on the VFX of the show after we finished filming.
-2003
So at the age of 18 I moved to London and started working in MPC on the same show. (In fact if u watch the movie, you can see my 2 credits, one in the production section, and the other in the VFX section).
MPC was great for me since I was able to apply all my knowledge... I quickly got back into Maya and had the pleasure to use it for my compositing tasks (I.e camera projection for cleanup work) and at the time flame was too expensive for high shot counts, so it made sense for me to move to "Shake" (by NothingReal) and I quickly became part of the desktop cg culture in the UK...
After a couple of other feature films in MPC (working with Shake and maya), I left because I missed the shorter turnaround of advertising. And the faster learning curve.
So I joined "Outpost Digital" London as a flame artist again. And at this point without knowing when or how it happened. Autodesk had already acquired Maya, Combustion, Flame, AND 3DStudio Max.
and at the time I actively worked with AND recommended my employers to purchase All these packages. My naive take on your actions was " this is great! Autodesk will make all these technologies talk to eachother..." It made sense at the time to me. (A 19 year old Mexican Artist in London) so I actively praised Autodesk... I told everyone how amazing all the programmers who work there are... How amazing your technologies are and how it's good that you gambled on the cool kids, meaning Kinetix,Wavefront,Discreet programmers and product designers.
-2004 to 2009
I then got offered a job as a senior flame artist at Glassworks London in 2004, I was still 19 at the time. I celebrated my 20th birthday in a flame suite full of clients from a FIFA job which I VFX supervised in Barcelona , and had the honor and pleasure to work with legendary DOP Chris Doyle.
I continued working at glassworks for the next 5 years. And as the industry knows, glassworks is built around Softimage XSI since it was founded. In fact glassworks was a big contributor to softimage's marketing at the time. (Back in Mexico my cg artist friends used to own softimage posters with glassworks' famous bjork fembot.)
Whilst working at glassworks I struggled a lot because I was a maya advanced user and I remember perfectly talking to the MD of glassworks (my boss) I told him "get rid of softimage and move to Maya". before I continue please let me stress that THAT WAS THE WORST THING I HAVE EVER DONE. And I absolutely take it back 100%.
of course they ignored me (thankfully). And instead, after seeing the amazing work that came out of glassworks EVERY month. I came around and decided to start learning softimage... (Note that this was after professionally working and getting payed with maya for over 6 years)
This was a hard move for me since I was only using Autodesk products, and XSI (owned by Avid at the time) was alien to me. But luckily for me In a matter of weeks I was producing equally good results than in maya. I discovered the world of render partitions and passes and the FAR FAR FAR more efficient interface. Within weeks I completely removed maya from my life and my results started getting better and better... As a filmmaker Softimage started to feel more like a virtual film studio. And maya felt more and more like a technical nightmare! I even started actively converting other maya artists to xsi, and Every single one kicked and screamed and in the end they all came around and agreed that xsi was a superior product (specifically for lighting and rendering more efficiently) I'm not saying that one produces better results than the other one. I am saying that from my scientific observations, xsi proved to be more efficient.
A few months later, Softimage introduced ICE...
as soon as glassworks updated ALL their seats to XSI 7 (with ICE) it was a no brainer for me. Not only I had narrowed down my filmmaker toolkit to two tools (softimage & flame) I acquired my first super16mm camera and started shooting my own short films with it. Taking advantage of the telecine at glassworks and the film community in soho London and I started to connect all the dots in regards to content creation.
So I decided to take my unused holidays along with my friend Vaclav (XSI extremely talented artist and photographer) and we financed and shot our first feature film. (On super16mm)
And once shooting was complete, I went back to my full time job and on the weekends I postproduced the entire film on flame.
At this point I would always require from productions that my suites always had a softimage as my left hand and flame as my right. And I quickly started turning jobs around faster since I had the best tools at hand.
eventually Autodesk acquired softimage from avid, and everyone in the community was extremely disappointed. I couldn't understand why. For me it was a good thing that my favorite tools where now in the hands of the same company.
I started gaining more interest in content creation. So as hard as it was, I quit my job at glassworks and went back to Mexico with the intention to make my second feature film.
As soon as I relocated to Mexico City with savings for my movie. I was made an offer to do all the VFX for a Mexican independent film (called "Perras")that was VFX heavy. It needed over 120 shots with a complex car accident scene. I quickly told the producers that to accomplish this challenging task on time and on budget our only hope was flame and softimage. Of course they couldn't afford flame so they rented a flint and purchased 3 softimage licenses. And thanks to both these tools I was able to almost single handedly complete the VFX work on time and on budget. Soon after the premiere of the film, with the same infrastructure I completed 60 shots for another feature film (called "saving private Perez"). Both these films were nominated for best VFX at the "pantalla de cristal Awards" in Mexico. Rendering myself as my own competitor at the nominations. And yes one of them won...And I want to stress that I owe this achievement to Softimage and Flame in particular.
I then was offered to Write,Produce, Direct and Animate my second feature film. (A 98min documentary called "Earthships New Solutions")
-2010
After the filming was completed I was provided with a budget that again was used to hire a facility in Mexico which had my tools of choice so that I could do the work with the most efficiency. I wanted the film to have over 35 minutes of 3d animation and I knew that the only way to do it with the ever shrinking budgets of today, was with the fastest tools in the market. However I do still recognize which tool is best for what, and I will admit that I went back to maya one day only to use paint effects (great feature BTW). And that was it. The other 99.999 % of the cg was done in softimage and comped and finished in flint (pretty much flame at lower cost). The film was completed in 1 year from script to screening. It sadly remains canned because of interest conflicts between the actual owners of the IP
After being disappointed at greed and monetary interests in Mexico once again,and with my latest film canned..
I parted back to the UK. Soon after That I was offered by Director Steve Barron to VFX supervise and direct the 2nd Unit for a two part movie called "Treasure Island", featuring Elijah Wood, Donald Sutherland and Eddie Izzard.
-2011
as soon as shooting completed in Dublin and Puerto Rico, I headed back to the UK to embark on the biggest cg venture I've seen.
With a team of less than 10 people we were able to compete with India and China by completing 672 VFX shots of the highest standard in the UK, including over 150 shots which needed heavy CG like reconstructing Bristol Docks in the 1700's.
and note that no facility wanted to take on the task at hand for the budget.
my opinion is that most facilities are maya and nuke and even though this too gets the job done, I have enough scientific observations to point me to the conclusion that maya and nuke get the job done too as pretty, but clearly not as efficient. UNLESS FACILITIES CUSTOMIZE THESE TOOLS WITH INTERNAL R&D teams and that is not cost effective in this climate.
Therefore we were able to complete the work on time, using the other tools (xsi, flame)but for a fraction of the resources and most importantly (without any additional R&D)
Softimage and flame if known well can provide a fully integrated pipeline out of the box, for advanced VFX without having to customize much if at all.
Once Completing this movie, I was offered to join as a Fulltime VFX supervisor at a facility in London that had a complete new workflow to me.
-2012
At this new studio, the pipeline was ZERO Autodesk products. All 3D was done in Houdini and all 2D was done with nuke. Even though I highly respect the results and the quality of the work that comes out of this pipeline. I still was able to prove faster turnarounds with softimage and flame. I almost converted one of the artists to softimage and thankfully I didn't! we produced great work, but i know it could've combined with softimage to maximize profits for the company because of the faster turnarounds. In fact, I strongly believe my PREVIOUS employer Glassworks owes it's international success to having chosen the right tools for the jobs, again "Softimage and Flame".
At this time I was fully fluid with nuke and was able to deliver my same results with this new software to me. However because of personal reasons I had to quit my job and I soon got offered to join as VFX supervisor at Psyop. So I took the job and I relocated to Los Angeles.
-2013
Now I am part of a team of people who I consider (to my experience) to be THE MOST TALENTED artists I have ever worked with. when I first joined, Psyop was going under a transition to move its pipeline to a softimage environment because this EXTREMELY talented group of people where slowly recognizing softimage as a superior tool. And if u look closely one can observe this transition by looking at the results. I have experienced the most advanced workflow and the fastest turn arounds since the beginning of my career. and I fit in this place like a glove. it is here at Psyop that I have pushed the boundaries of our science. And I would not be doing it if it wasn't for softimage and flame. In fact we had long term plans with softimage.
-2014
For the last 3 years I have been developing my own intellectual property. And slowly but surely it is coming together thankfully without any corporate help. I have put together a team that for the last three years has ONLY been developing our OWN intellectual property, designing characters and writing screenplays of the highest standard. This move was in an effort to adapt to the fact that manufacturing and services industries moved to the third world and design and IP are the only hope left for the West. Since the east will continue to admire the good taste and design of the west (from Gucci to Softimage). Point is I had planned all along these 3 years a fully integrated autodesk pipeline for the production of ALL our assets. I was already looking into integrating your new character generator to our plans.
And our investment plans were revolving around Autodesk products. I thought I'd send this letter to you before We change our plans. Because they are long term plans.
I might be wrong but I recently read that softimage was created by a filmmaker and I assume that , that is exactly why it feels to me like a virtual film studio.
and Maya, well lets just say it doesn't feel like a virtual film studio. It feels like a PC application. however the artists who use maya produce good results because they themselves are the filmmakers. And I KNOW first hand that if they all experienced what I did they would've put their dollars on softimage in the first place.
Conclusion:
I strongly believe that the reason why Autodesk didn't make money out of softimage was because Maya was released for windows before softimage and the big facilities like ILM (which by the way recently complained about the inefficiencies of Maya), etc for cost reasons were obliged to go for maya. Had softimage been released first. I am sure it would be Maya you would be killing. ( and that is still not a good thing anyway, because Maya too is a good tool)
I understand enterprise enough to know that it was a hard decision.
I understand Autodesk has shareholders that just want to increase the value of a public company every year. my message to your shareholders is:
Scientific progress has always been paralyzed by the interest of power in our history.
From the library of Alexandria being burnt down by the Roman Catholic Church To softimage being killed by Autodesk.
This is an evident pattern of human kind and probably an inevitable force.
I 100% understand that piracy is a big issue since the day my own father got layed off from a video game company because of this very reason.
What I don't understand is why killing the software made more sense than dropping retail price to a consumer level price. this would've rendered piracy of your products a thing of the past. And this is why NETFLIX, ITUNES AND ADOBE CC are not having to kill anything to impress their shareholders.
The name Autodesk tells me that it is a company that makes technology.
behind the name there is a truth, You DONT make the technology.
programmers and cool people make the technology. Autodesk buys the tech & people and then maximizes profits regardless of technological progress. And buying competitors and killing them has become a strategy to maximize profits.
I firmly believe (and observe) that the true future of technological innovation lies in THE EXACT OPPOSITE DIRECTION that Autodesk is taking.
and the mistake here wasn't killing XSI. The real mistake was selling XSI to Autodesk.
the world used to have Tesla ,Galileo, Da Vinci, Copernicus, Newton, Einstein. And the original creators of softimage.
now the world has , Apple, Adobe, Autodesk, Microsoft, Google, Facebook
and these corporations now just acquire the galileos and newtons and place them where they see fit to impress shareholders...
I think your shareholders would've been happier with the money to be made providing you apply a competent marketing campaign to what is a true innovation in our society. Like Softimage or 5D cyborg, or Combustion, to mention a few...
Autodesk you ARE a technology company, this statement, places you in the scientific community and the scientific community has something called peer to peer. And it is thanks to this very method that the programming language (that allowed your intellectual property to exist) was created.
But your customers can smell now that there is no peer to peer here, there is only Autodesk to shareholder.
and also I don't understand where You found lawyers of such high caliber that you can get away with monopoly of this kind and have true scientists punching in and out of your buildings every Morning. This will be your legacy.
All I can say is, I hope America regulates you the way they regulated the tobacco corporations.
I'm not saying you need to disappear Autodesk, I am just saying you might need to go on a diet and stop eating companies before u become diabetic. and perhaps start listening more to your customers instead of your whipping shareholders. Because you can have all the shareholders in the WORLD, but without customers... Well..
And who knows, maybe take a shot at creating something new rather than just buying.
lets just say tobacco corporations got lucky that they can sell individual cigarettes to kids in the third world after the first world kicked them out and that's why they are still impressing their shareholders.
but I doubt that Mexican kids will buy maya or max outside their schools,the way they buy cigarettes.
I also know that entertainment is not your main source of revenue. So perhaps we should all assume that you are also likely to kill flame, 3dsmax and Maya.
This renders all of us cg artists incapable of long term planning with your ever dying products...
And the historical lesson learnt from your public actions, HAS to be. if a good commercial proposition comes about. Do not allow it to be acquired by the competition. U can acquire anything u want except your competitors.
simple law. one line of code for the social operating system of today. Which I honestly hope gets updated fairly soon. Before I become unable to create art, like evolution intended for me.
I send my BIGGEST admirations and respect to ALL the scientists and designers at Autodesk. and I wish you all a fruitful future.
and to all the management trying to impress the shareholders:
well, all I can say is that I hope Evolution is disappointed at you and has begun its natural selection process once again. And like every great empire AND emperor you shall fall. And give the galileos and newtons inside your belly, back to the world so that WE can get on with scientific progress. And you can enjoy your precious money. which by then it will be so inflated that will buy you a loaf of bread.
I hope the money we all threw your way is worth enough for you to read this far.
Art is the seed of all science. And science is the seed of all Art.
sincerely,
Diego Vazquez Lozano.
Director/VFX Supervisor.
