It has been officially confirmed that Autodesk signed agreement with Avid Technology to Acquire Softimage.

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

Users’ feelings are mixed for the future of the Softimage product line.

In general the most important questions are:

  1. Are they to kill Softimage?
  2. Till now Autodesk acquired all major 3D packages. What about competition ?
  3. What are the pros and cons of such an acquisition?

Some say no, Softimage is not to be killed, and this in a way is probable. Autodesk never killed any of its previous aquisitions, including Maya, Mudbox, Descreete Logic products etc. They still develop these products but evidently the “innovation curve” have changed. It is a truism that we havent seen any major additions to Maya since Autodesk aquired it. We hope this will change in the near feature.

In general, the pros and cons that most users identified in various forum discussions are:

Pros & Cons

  1. Autodesk, compared to Avid who where particularly interested for Softimage|DS, is a healthy financial environment for Softimage . No doubt.
  2. Softimage might be killed or merged with other Autodesk products… MaXsi !!!
  3. Promise that development teams will stay untouched,
  4. Interoperability with other pippelines.
  5. Possibility to for a new pippeline to emerge. Although this is usually the result of antagonism.
  6. Better support,…. maybe? well…
  7. More studios might start using it?
  8. What will happen to the Softimage community?
  9. Monopoly.
  10. Altering Softimage’s interface.
  11. ViewCube nightmares !!
  12. Worst support?
  13. What will happen to pricing ??
  14. Nobody thinks of what Max can give to XSI… apart from viewcube!

And some responses of absolute, “softy”, fine humour:

Softimage XSI vewcube

Hillarious video about the internal discussion that took place in Autodesk:

Lets hope XSI will still XSI with active development. And some words we have to remember:

“We intend to provide customers with greater choice and greater efficiencies in their production pipelines. Autodesk plans to create more efficient workflows between SOFTIMAGE|XSI and its other software products, using the power of the platform-independent Autodesk® FBX® software 3D data interchange solution. Autodesk plans to develop and maintain SOFTIMAGE|XSI, its 3ds Max and Maya animation software products and its other animation offerings. Customers will still have choice and a broader range of functionality when selecting their 3D animation tools. They will also benefit from the depth and breadth of the Autodesk 3D development team.”

Last word, please keep it as Autodesk Softimage|XSI.