Autodesk aquires Alias
We have now officially entered the IT timevortex. If someone a year ago would have told me that Adobe buys Macromedia, Apple moves to Intel Processors and Autodesk would buy Alias I would have called the doctors.
Yes its true the company that makes the coolest 3D program in the world - Maya - is beeing bought up by its biggest competitor who makes the most Windows looking and awkward 3D program in the world - 3D Studio Max. 182 million Dollars later the most talented 3D artists in the world ask if they now have to relearn a new 3D tool from ground up (and yes in todays complex 3D tools that is a task of up to 6 month to be on the same level as before). If Autodesk will kill Maya or only the Linux and Mac versions or fuse Maya and 3D studio (for the worse) or what will happen with Motionbuilder and and and... And so I am stranded again with a new 3D tool in my toolbox that I learned over the past year (trying to catch up to the industry standard) with a platform underneath that makes another fundamental shift and with the outlook that the next 2-3 years everything will just stay as it is and just be "recompiled, adjusted, bugfixed". Now I might have to bite the bullet and look at this pesky Blender 3D or maybe Softimage makes a Mac version soon?
Highend 3D has the most indepth info on the matter
Update: Macnews.de has asked the marketing manager of Autodesk about the fate of Maya and its cross platform develpment. The statement is that at the moment neither maya nor its compatibility with the platforms it runs on are object to the red ink pen - at the moment...