It’s that time of year again… Everybody is going to SIGGRAPH and pushing out new versions of their 3D software and users have to decide which way to go. That has been getting more difficult from year to year in the past already with prices dropping and even "small" programs becoming so feature reach that they already do more than one will probably ever need, but this year seems to be a make or break year for some products.

Most notably, Autodesk is putting a lot of pressure on competitors with their Entertainment Creation Suites Premium (yeah, it really does sound just as awkward and ominous as Adobe‘s suite branding) which include a ton of programs at a good price. If you read the signs, the inclusion of XSI as the baseline tool and the second one (Maya or MAX) being a choice item, you clearly get the impression that there is something cooking behind the scenes, indicating a possible merging of those apps. Not today and not tomorrow, but perhaps 3 or 4 years from now. You also get Mudbox and Lagoa Physics for ICE thrown in, which makes this a quite complete package for everything. Those 7000 bucks are still way over my budget, but considering, that at some point a single app alone would cost this, it’s quite amazing what you can buy for the money. Should be really interesting. They now have pretty much bought everything in terms of technology that they would need, now they just need to put it to use and either create a unified kilelr app or bring all apps consistently up to the same level…

In the more attainable world of mid-range 3D, there is some news on Lightwave. Obviously, their CORE project exploded in their face, but given NewTek‘s track record of poor development management and somehow always prioritizing the wrong things (let’s be honest: Who gives a fuck about creating a full custom skin for his 3D program, when in all seriousness the default one should cater all needs and be production ready?), I’m not really surprised. So before running out of money, they apparently decided to backward-transplant some of the more relevant parts from CORE to the "old" Lightwave and brand it as version 10 to get more people to sign up. Most of it is not particularly interesting to me, though, as I neither have need for game-centric features nor does the inclusion of Bullet physics give me a tingle, knowing how limited it is by itself and that it probably won’t integrate with Lightwave‘s own legacy particles and dynamics. So what’s left? Yes, it’s the interactive viewport rendering that may still pull me in. I’ve so gotten used to using FPrime and also the Preview in modo to tweak my stuff, that I can hardly do without it. It literally has helped me to produce 20 times more balanced, better renderings.

Slightly related to that, but more in an indirect way are rumours about SynthEyes 2011, the newest and latest version of this affordable 3D tracking and matchmoving tool. Adding geometry reconstruction sounds interesting, but then again their awful UI will not make it the most pleasant experience after all. Funnily, I was just running the demo of the 2008.1 version a few weeks ago because we may need to update/ replace our 2002 or so version (which in all these years we only used rarely enough as it is) for a potential upcoming project.

All that interesting 3D software is of course nothing without proper hardware to run it on, and in what seems more than just a coincidence, Apple also have announced the imminent release of new Mac Pros. Now I’m not particularly pro Mac these days, as they really, really, really have a list of serious issues to straighten out, but if someone would send me the money, I’d still take one – and run my Windows software on it (with an occasional boot into OS X). The performance is right and in this price range, it doesn’t really matter which logo is on the box, so one can indulge in the design factor at least.

There was a time in my life when I literally would go crazy over the latest news from SIGGRAPH and hunt for every bit of info, but these days I prefer to “quot;just let them come to me". For me, the biggest news are already known, anyway (modo 401 and Lightwave Core). Today Autodesk, now owner of several important "big" 3D programs opened the rounds, served with a side menu of some prematurely released announcements from yesterday (3D Equalizer, Pixar’s Renderman). Now everyone considers Autodesk the evil ones because they so agressively bought up products and have a monopoly in many areas, but how much power it gives them when they put it to use, is evidenced by Maya 2010. Not only have they thrown in toxic*, a tried and tested compositing tool, but also added Matchmover tracking technology from their RealViz acquisition. That’s pretty clever, if you ask me and the direction is clear – this is literally a kick in the balls of Fusion with its semi-fancy 3D features (With Maya and toxic* at your hands, why bother?) and it also takes a stab at Nuke‘s announced tracking/ matchmoving stuff. If you are a loyal Maya user, you really get a lot of bang for the buck. Naturally they also updated their other products like Mudbox and XSI, but there you mostly get workflow enhancements, bug fixes and minor improvements, no real new fancies.

It’s weird and funny and at the same moment quite disconcerting, how over the economical crisis everyone turns into a business analyst and makes up his own reasoning behind corporate policies. One of the better posts I read is this one. The usual acerbic attitude towards the “evil big companies” aside, the blog post linked at the start at least makes an attempt to underline its arguments with business figures. It’s still not giving the right picture, mind you, as it merely focuses on the immediate current events without giving credit to any long-term plans, but it’s a lot better than predicting the end of the CG world just because a company that happens to posess a considerable market penetration in those areas has laid off a few people…