ok so a private firm bought Alias?
Remember awhile back the buzz was that apple was buying alias... well now all thats left is a discreet (and its a dog I might add) I guess apple will never help nor develop itself OSX all it could be for the 3d platform 
I mean c'mon if only we had good cards, and great driver support, in Maya. Gah the possiblities... they are endless.
Anyone with any info as to see if this private firm has any apple ties tho?
I mean c'mon if only we had good cards, and great driver support, in Maya. Gah the possiblities... they are endless. Anyone with any info as to see if this private firm has any apple ties tho?
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Also supposedly discreet has been laying off hundreds of its Max Team..
?As an independent entity, Alias would be able to further expand its business, extend customer value and create significant growth with its products and services,? said Doug Walker, president of Alias. ?The investor believes that there is a great potential and synergy to having design and entertainment focused products, services and customers. The new investor has been briefed in detail on our roadmap and is attracted to Alias precisely because of our product and services portfolio.?
Um, SGI is spinning off alias. No big deal here. They're selling Alias to itself. Strange concept, yes, but don't worry about it. There are lots of investors out there, and an investor isn't going to stop his company from a profitable enterprise. . . that is, selling software for macs.
Originally posted by kraig911
maybe tahts the case and I'm not worried they won't stop making maya for mac either, but what the talk was that apple was going to buy that division from SGI. Really this just put longterm ideas and goals on standby for the whole industry. Whats odd is discreet and alias are just doing so poorly and I can't but ask why?
Alias made 5.7 million of operating profit. What is poor about that? They sell a niche product. I don't know how well Discreet is doing, but 3DSMAX is less capable that many other modelers out there and I guess people are starting to figure that out.
I'd be more stressed about Cleaner and/or Combustion going Windows only. Cleaner is already leaning this way, and Combustion for Mac has trailed by about 6 months per its' Windows counterpart.
Anyways...I wouldn't worry about SGI. They are a corpse grasping to the last living flesh they think they have.
As I sidenote, I had 2 seperate animators in my employ (both in different timeframes) go pretty much insane when trying to switch from their comfortable Alias|Wavefont software (that was a few years ago and I forget the name) to Maya. Seriously. One had a nervous breakdown and the other just quit on me.
Maya is evil.
OK, maybe not evil...but a huge jump for the 'traditional' SGI animators.
FWIW.
Apple wouldn't buy Alias. There are plenty of other good packages on the market for the Mac. From LightWave, Cinema 4D, Maya, EI, and many others. Apple doesn't want to piss off that many strong developers. if they bought Alias there would be a lot of tension.
The reason Apple bought FCP from Macromedia and put all this money into it was because Premiere was a lacking product and there wasn't much else on the market for it.
That is when really starts to get into buying companies. now I know they bought Shake and Rayz, but that was because there was no "high-end" film compositing packages on the mac. After Effects prior to 6 had weak film support. Also, AE and Shake vary greatly. Also, the future for combustion was rocky.
As for Discreet...3ds is a dead product to them. Version 6 is that last version of the application that will be released. They have been working on a whole new 3D application for the past couple years in their Canadian labs. They were supposed to show it off at last years Siggraph but it got pushed back to who knows when.
Higher-end cards and more hardcore driver support will come. We just have to be patient. Back in the day, people were moving from high-end and expensive SGI workstations to much cheaper WinTel boxes. That transition took a long time. This is another similar thing. A lot of facilities are moving from Windows over to Linux and OS X. It will take some time for it to happen, so we must be patient. Me and my partner will only have a couple workstations running Windows, but most will be G5s and Linux workstations in our new facility.
Just a few thoughts I thought I would bring up.
Why Split from SGI?
Alias is no longer strategic to the long-term success of SGI. The reason is that the desktop component of their business is no longer a significant focus. So, it is a good time to take a look at how the money that?s tied up in the investment of Alias can be used to create more value for the SGI shareholder ? the obvious answer is to liquidate this asset and use the cash to target SGI?s strategic direction more effectively.
Would the split effect Mac users?
From our perspective, the vast majority of our sales today are on the Windows platform with a growing number on Mac and Linux.
Is Apple the "private equity firm"?
We took a look at all of the potential buyers for Alias, including ?strategic? companies that would purchase Alias in order to leverage another part of their business ? such as a hardware company [read: Apple]. The other category of investor, financial, is interested in investing in technology in order to create a more significant value for the company over the next several years. We looked at both alternatives, and in the end, the better return for the SGI shareholder was the financial buyer. As it turned out, that was the way we at Alias were hoping it would go. A private equity firm is the kind of company that has ?deep pockets? or, the ability to invest and is patient with their investment. I can tell you that this company, which has significant experience in the technology business, averages an investment of six or seven years in their companies before they do anything with them to create a return for their shareholders?so it?s very patient money. Their objective is to significantly grow the value of the company by introducing new products and services that they can create a return with.?
So in a nutshell Apple isn't the buyer, Alias will continue Mac support because it has become so profitable lately, and they are leaving SGI due to stagnation of their desktop properties.
The article also contains interviews with lead Avid (Softimage) and Discreet (3DS Max) execs on the future of their products. Good read, but make sure to have PithHelmet (or similar) in full force on that web site though.
Originally posted by 709
Maya is evil.
Maya isn't evil, Actually I think it's a pretty easy program to learn compared to what say Softimage 3d was. I think the older alias stuff was split, one app for modeling forget the name, one for animation which was called power animator I think. Now for instance when XSI first came out it was complete shit compared to Soft 3d, but now i heard it's good.
Basically if you do 3d you have to be willing to constantly learn new things all the time.
I am a Mac user, and a Maya user! I am currently studying Maya on G4's, but I am the only MacMan in the class... all the rest are Windows users. All day long I have to sit and listen to them bitch and moan about how much better maya is on Windows. If Apple had have bought Alias it would have been music to my ears.
Just so long as they keep developing Maya for the Mac, I will be happy camper... especially comsidering I just bought a G5 to help with my work... trying to render complex images on a G3 just wasn't working.
Les T.
Originally posted by les t
Argh!!!!!!!
I am a Mac user, and a Maya user! I am currently studying Maya on G4's, but I am the only MacMan in the class... all the rest are Windows users. All day long I have to sit and listen to them bitch and moan about how much better maya is on Windows. If Apple had have bought Alias it would have been music to my ears.
Just so long as they keep developing Maya for the Mac, I will be happy camper... especially comsidering I just bought a G5 to help with my work... trying to render complex images on a G3 just wasn't working.
Les T.
Here's a piece of advice: If you model a lot of non-character scenes -- that is, mechanical stuff -- Get EI for the student price and laugh at your classmates as you render 20 frames in the time it takes them to render 1.