Phil Hoppes
Forum Replies Created
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As one might well imagine there is a huge thread on this over at the Modo Forum. Tim about nails it with his analysis although I still think that Autodesk is probably still a viable suitor. From a Modo User perspective, the preferred buyer is most likely Adobe. Given the Softimage debacle if AD were to by TF Modo will stick around a short term, and then resources will be pulled. I could see the rendering engine put into Revit and Inventor and the render Modo render license agreement with Solidworks pulled. A stragegic thrust for AD and then Modo would just die a death like Softimage. AD is going full subscription on everything starting Feb 2016 although if you want you can buy a full license. I think the price on Nuke, Mari, Hero et.al. would stay higher if AD were to purchase them but they already sell to that high end market and know the customer base very well. Adobe, while I sure the big production houses use CC, with their huge consumer base the products from TF are a bit of a different sell. I’d love to see tighter integration between AE/Modo and one wonders what will happen to the Maxon deal. I cannot see that continuing if Adobe was to by TF.
I really think the big question to answer is will there be a “Hitler reacts to Adobe buying The Foundry” video or “Hitler reacts to Autodesk buying The Foundry” video.
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I heard they were going to fire Tim Cook and steal Balmer from the Clippers. They are building a special office in SpaceShip Apple with a retractable window just so Steve can kick chairs into the central park area.
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Just to give you a benchmark point. I have CenturyLink DSL at my home in Phoenix Az. I have a mirrored server at a residence up in Overgaard. I run cron jobs on my Linux server to backup my data in Phoenix to Overgaard. My DSL service is 12Mb down and .9Mb up. I actually average around 0.85Mb up. Looking at actual transfer rates, especially on large files, I get around 350Mb/Hour on a good day “going downhill with the wind to my back”.
If you do a shoot of any reasonable length you are going to generate, I’m guessing, at least 5Gb if not 10Gb to 20Gb of data correct (most likely more)? At my crappy internet speeds 10Gb is going to take 28.5 hours. Do the math for your use and I’m sure you will get depressed.
This one point really ticks me off when I hear ISP’s grousing that customers don’t need upload speed. You see these ad’s for “Cloud” backup. Right…. and you currently have only, what, 350Gb of data sitting on your 1Tb drive right now so to do your initial backup is ONLY going to take 1000 hours at my speeds (41.6 days), during which time your internet connection is going to be crap for anything else because your are doing nothing but uploading. For the moment all of these services are a frigging joke. I lust for Google fiber (1Gb Up/Down) to come into my neighborhood but till then we are all in Casablanca and all we do is wait…… and wait……. and wait………..
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While I would agree that Tim clearly does not have the same focus that Steve had I think it is too soon to tell who’s management style succeeds. I worked with Apple a number of years ago as a supply vendor when Steve was there and while I do respect his accomplishments….. the guy was a dick. One could clearly ask a valid question of how much did Apple lose simply because good people left because they could not stand to work with the guy? Have we already forgotten the debacle that was Apple Maps under Steve? How about the initial rollout of Mobile Me? Yes, Apple has had some recent software issues and they are bothersome but it’s not like software development under Steve was all rainbows and unicorns either.
With respect to Tim’s more charitable outlook on society, I for one am glad to see it. Again, Steve was a jerk, IMHO, especially when it came to charity. He openly said it numerous times. Apple certainly has the cash to afford to be more charitable and I’m glad to see the things that they are doing.
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[David Mathis] “Side note, I have been considering jumping to Linux. Problem is, which flavor? Just my rambling tangent and two cents, carry on!”
Curious… for what? All of my personal data servers are Linux. I run CentOS. RedHat has gotten goofy IMHO on their Fedora releases. I use to like KDE but now find the desktop next to worthless. For a server I want stability and reliability. I don’t need gee-wiz interfaces. CentOS is built on Red Hat Enterprise releases. They are quite stable and if you doing anything with LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) installation is a snap.
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Excellent analysis Walter. I use Nuke and AE and like using both. AE is fast and one does not have to bend your head around the whole linear workflow like you do with Nuke. For complicated comps however, especially with CGI, of which I do a fair amount, nothing comes close to what you can do with Nuke.
For all of us it’s conjecture at this point as to who will buy TF. I might go as far as to say whom ever does, Nuke is probably on pretty strong ground as to being impacted the least. One of my other favorite 3D programs, Modo, however may not fair so well. As mentioned here before the list of possible suitors is really quite small. I’d put Adobe and AD on the tops of those lists. While I’d like to think that Modo might survive an Adobe acquisition it is difficult to see. Adobe already has a very tight integration with Cinema4D creator Maxon. Heck they distribute a light version of 4D with AE. They would really upset their current user base if they dumped 4D for Modo and I can’t see them supporting multiple 3D authoring software so they would either sell off the assets of Modo or just scrap it. For AD to by TF the same scenario exists, Nuke would be supported very well and Modo is an also ran against 3DsMax and Maya. Just ask any XSI user …… that movie has already been played and the hero died…… badly.
We shall see…..
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Interesting. Yea, I figured there was no way AJA or BM could even come close in buying them but Adobe could but my bets are still on Autodesk. The product family, sans Modo, is a perfect fit for what Autodesk currently sells, as is the volume and price points.
While I’d LOVE to have Nuke, Modo, Mari et.al. bundled in with my subscription, IMHO I think The Foundry product offering is a pretty far stretch for the market that Adobe currently sells and focuses on. Adobe sells to millions of customers with products in the hundreds of dollars. The Foundry sells to a few thousand customers with products in the thousands of dollars. Very different sales channel. Plus it is a very different market. I’m not sure the elasticity of the market would work such as dropping the price of Nuke to that of AE. You drop the price by a factor of 10 I’m not really sure you pick up 10x the volume so what’s the point?
Either way it will be interesting to see what happens.
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[Walter Soyka] “I wouldn’t read too much into the sale. Buy and hold is not the private equity model. It is the destiny of all PE-acquired companies to be sold in order to return money to investors.
Carlyle holds The Foundry in an investment fund, which buys, (hopefully) improves, and then sells stakes in companies. If they don’t sell the companies they buy at significant multiples (in this case, 75 million euros to 200 million euros), fund investors cannot realize the gains that make PE so attractive.”
I understand all of that and agree…. but having personally been on the receiving side of numerous acquisitions my own experience has been that it has been a positive thing 0% of the time. No, not all acquisitions are bad, of course not. But the success rate of acquisitions is not all that stellar and in particular, when company A is sold to company B, company A has no standing what so ever inside B. Internally, believe me, this is a true Master/Slave relationship. There is a clear head of the dog and it’s not the company that just got bought. Any strategic plans and directions just got tossed and who knows what’s going to shake out.
About the only thing I can say with certainty is I’m not springing for Modo 901 until I see where the dust settles.
…. and anyway, this is really what I’m looking for
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One would hope it’s not Autodesk. I use Maya and they have (finally) started to extend and develop that package well. They got Softimage XSI from Avid and proceeded to decimate it and finally killed it. Matchmover… destroyed it. Toxic… a joke.
If they bought it, and they have the pockets to do so, Nuke would probably continue and after a few years of most likely messing it up it might still be around. I don’t see that for Modo however. I love using Modo, especially for modeling but with 3DsMax and Maya in the barn already there would be no room for Modo. Just look at what happened to XSI.
Who knows about Mari, Ocula, Hero and their other products. Speaking from the outside I don’t understand at all their latest acquisition, mischief. That is a simple drawing program that sells for $25. Compared to their product family that is like the 25 cent give-away pen the sales guy gives you so he can keep talking to you for another 10 minutes. That one completely mystifies me. It makes no sense what so ever. That simple act right there might be more telling than anything else. The investors are dumping because the leadership has lost direction or are scrambling. Who knows.
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Interesting. I use NukeX as well as Modo which is now owned by them. Nuke is the compositing software of choice in VFX. Nothing else comes close. Since it is a private company no one knows the financials but one would hope this sale is simply indicative of the success of the products and the company, thus the increase in price and value, and not some deeper indication of trouble. Gad I would hate to see Nuke go down the same road that happened to Shake.
