Yes, Foundation is extremely cool. No argue about that.
But Softimage isn't the salvation Army, they didn't introduce the low Fnd price because they are just such good people, but because there were not enough users and especially freelancers for the bigger studios to choose from. For maya there were plenty... So studios didn't switch.
No serious artist will work for long in one of those "learning editions" so they did a very clever marketing stunt that worked perfectly. Supported by the sinking Lightwave-ship and other environmental conditions it was a big bang for the 3D world.
But I wouldn't be surprised if there is more profit from Foundation than from Essentials and Advanced combined.
And yes, Foundation is too good a value, but on the other hand, without making the offer serious, it wouldn't have worked.
But there is a problem: how to sell people on the big licenses?
Advanced for half the price isn't coming out of thin air I would think...
Now that Ben created long hair for Foundation (will they sue him?), there are already ways to import rigid body stuff from external sources, compositing is mostly done externally anyway...
Mental Ray licenses is some kind of binding force, but for how long, after external rendering will be finally available?
When FaceRobot came out, I thought that this could be a major selling point for Advanced. But well, it doesn't look like this is to happen anytime soon. ;-)
So let's adjust the thumbscrews a bit so that the Fnd users don't feel too comfortable...
Just my two philosophizing cent, but I find it fascinating to see this game unfold...
I look forward to the next move :-)
Cheers,
Thomas Helzle
On Fri, 09 Jun 2006 20:09:28 +0200, Adam Seeley <adam.seeley(at)clearpost.co.uk> wrote:
>
> I agree that you get a hell of a lot for an entry level price and that Fdn is not supposed to be a full production tool as such, but not allowing a .01 version bug fix does seem a little mean. A .1 upgrade maybe, but .01 ?
>
> Of course there may be other labour intensive issues that I'm not aware of when it comes to ensuring a cut down piece of software is stable and inherits it's big brothers fixes.
>
> To be honest I think Soft probably gave away a few too many Advanced features in Foundation in the first place.
>
> Adam.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM]On Behalf
> Of Bernard Lebel
> Sent: 09 June 2006 18:14
> To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
> Subject: Re: XSI 5.11 Announced
>
>
> I think the idea behing "3Democracy" is "hobbyists and freelancers can
> now get very studio-level software at a hobbyist/freelancer-level
> cost."
>
> I think in that regard it still delivers its promises..... mixed
> pipelines or not. As far as mixing advess with fnd licenses go, I
> always this was a risky combo, specifically for this kind of reason.
> An understable combo, but a risky one nonetheless.....
>
>
> Bernard
>
>
>
> On 6/9/06, Tim Leydecker <BauerOink(at)gmx.de> wrote:
>> Thomas HelzleÂs reaction is therefore pretty much logic , a marketing
>> statement promising 3D-democracy,
>
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