Toxik/Strata/Mezzo at NAB 2004?

[eltopo]

With all the rumours going one way to another, it seems that Toxik future may be into a bigger jeopardy than even I could thought. If we look at all the rumours, it seems like not even Discreet knows what Toxik is or isn’t and even less when it will be released. Hardware driven, software driven, design as a rental system to studios, 5d technology. Each rumour contradicts the one before leaving only one thing straight. It seems that Discreet’s doesn’t have a roadmap (or if it does, it is a very bad one). I don’t know the answer to what it needs to do in order to remain competitive but it needs to stop going around in circles and choose a strategy.

[Anonymous]

Toxik was there but not as a product, it was in part of a private workflow demo – which we are not free to openly discuss.

Toxik is not dead, but after the problems of showing it two years ago – before there was a proper application – well I am guessing Discreet wants to get it right.
Speaking generally Flame and Smoke are now on non SGI – linux boxes… surely this points to Discreet moving towards this sort of technology – and not away from it ???

As for Autodesk – well perhaps this was a remark intended to get a rise, but any large publicly listed company needs to be accountable to shareholders and so killing off a huge division for no reason would be odd.

Given discreet is not discussing Toxik makes its future hard to gauge but I would not personally write it off.

-Mike

[sidewalksurfing]

S-H-A-K-E-K-I-L-L-E-R

😀

[eltopo]

I think Shake’s position should be re-evaluated as well. If we thought Autodesk was big, Apple is bigger, richer and more talented. Shake is no longer is the product of a tiny company. It has a tremendous backup in hardware (the hole Apple line-up of g5’s and servers), software (integration with FCP, Quicktime and all the software available for the mac) and tons of money in R&D. Plus we have to take into account that Apple is set to dominate this market and it is doing a very good job.

So now Discreet has a rival that pound for pound is bigger and can actually put the company against the ropes; Shake is just $3000 with render licences for free and being able to run on laptops, workstations and servers, and if indeed rumours are true and professional video cards are just days away plus a new os and an even bigger g5’s for less than 10K you could well have an Inferno killer.

So if Discreet takes longer and longer and it doesn’t make a difference now with a product miles away from everything else, Toxik may well be it’s last product, being too little too late.
And if indeed this happens, Autodesk may as well take the same road as SGI. Move out of the media market and focus of it’s core market (autocad, etc.), maybe keeping 3DS Max, selling Combustion to someone like Adobe and sell as junk the big Discreet operation to god knows who, who obviously will have no way but to transform the products into just another window programme.

[Anonymous]

eltopo wrote:

Shake is just $3000 with render licences for free and being able to run on laptops, workstations and servers, and if indeed rumours are true and professional video cards are just days away plus a new os and an even bigger g5’s for less than 10K you could well have an Inferno killer.

there’s nothing i repeat nothing out there to be or soon to get an inferno killer.
there isn’t even something to reach flame. in a couple of years? maybe. but not very soon…

[renderizer]

eltopo wrote:

Shake is just $3000 with render licences for free and being able to run on laptops, workstations and servers, and if indeed rumours are true and professional video cards are just days away plus a new os and an even bigger g5’s for less than 10K you could well have an Inferno killer.

I believe that there is no point in comparing FFI with Shake, as these products are based on completely different paradigms. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want to sit through a client attended sessions using Shake as your weapon, even on a big-ass G5 with two CPUs.

And on more: I’m so fed up with all those speculations about Discreet being killed by Autodesk…yep, this is really the global village, and gossips are all the rage…

[Anonymous]

Eltopo,

How many hours have you spent playing with FFI?

— Xavier

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

eltopo wrote:

Shake is just $3000 with render licences for free and being able to run on laptops, workstations and servers, and if indeed rumours are true and professional video cards are just days away plus a new os and an even bigger g5’s for less than 10K you could well have an Inferno killer.

there’s nothing i repeat nothing out there to be or soon to get an inferno killer.
there isn’t even something to reach flame. in a couple of years? maybe. but not very soon…

agreed!
and i’m also not happy with all those rumors. but they’re always present, everywhere. no matter
what issue 😉

[eltopo]

Even though sometimes it doesn’t seem so, I really like o work on the inferno. It took a while to get used to, but I really like it.

My concern is about getting Discreet to survive. And my point was that they have thougher compettion now, which they do. Apple is a very competent company. And my questions are about pressing Discreet to come up with a strategy different from that of SGI (we all know what happened…) of selling overexpensive out of date products… which is my concern with Toxik

And I think is healthy that concers about it’s business strategy are made public, specially among its customers, because I believe that if you switch to shake (or other) is because you want to, not because you have to

[Anonymous]

eltopo wrote:

I believe that if you switch to shake (or other) is because you want to, not because you have to

ah, well. thinking of shake’s price…
i guess for some people or comapnies it’s not a matter of what they want. for low budget stuff
it’s simply the only choice!
and no company will admit that of course. or this one will be killed soon by the marketing team 😀

[Xavier]

Eltopo,

For a Mac fan, Eltopo, I’m surprised that you believe the “Discreet is dead” rumours. Isn’t Apple supposed to be out of business every year for the last ten years according to media? After all Microsoft is such a big competitor… there is no way Apple can survive on it’s 3% market share… 🙂

As for Discreet’s reliance on SGI hardware, Flint, Smoke and Burn are already running on non-SGI stuff (intel+linux), proving that Discreet can migrate to something else if SGI doesn’t fit the bill anymore. Technically, the entire discreet code-base can now run on non-SGI stuff.

As for so-called Discreet over-pricing, that’s a very quick fix on Discreet’s part. Slash the prices. It happened with Shake, it happened with Maya. If Discreet stops selling Flames *only* because they are too expensive, don’t worry they’ll drop the price. That’s much easier than spending zillions of R+D hours on a new magical product.

As long as some people are still willing to pay the premium price of FFI, the price will remain high. Offer and demand theory 101.

Like I said elsewhere, I’d rather have to slash the price of a good/expensive product to sell it than to have to make a crappy/cheap product less crappy.

— Xavier

[Anonymous]

Now you talked alot of toxic as a shake killer – but it will still be a version one, and we all know it will take a hell of a long time to get useable – most applications is first worth looking at when in version 3 or something.

I’ll loved to see the Flint as a combetitor to shake – imagine as flint on linux without any special hardware (software only) for a price betwenn 5,000-15,000$

I think this would be the smartest move for discreet to do.

[sidewalksurfing]

Jonas wrote:

Now you talked alot of toxic as a shake killer – but it will still be a version one, and we all know it will take a hell of a long time to get useable – most applications is first worth looking at when in version 3 or something.

really? seems like combustion v1 had some problems but it was a usable product right out of the box. Also, a lot of what will be in toxik is inhereited from the rest of the product line, not written from the ground up. I’m sure there will be some rough spots, but i’m sure they will get worked out. A major fact i think everyone (eltopo) is overlooking here is that shake is ALREADY DEAD ON ANYTHING BUT MAC. gee, last time i looked not a SINGLE large scale efx house (DD; WETA; SONY IMAGES WORKS; ESC; ASYLUM; ILM ) has a pipeline built on macintosh. that’s laughable. dont get me wrong, i love macs and im typing this on one now, but to discontinue shake PC development so quickly is a major strategic error on apple’s part. What do you think any efx house is going to do? junk a pipeline after years of perfecting & investing in it and spend major $$$ to retool everything for apple shake? or just plug the very capable competition product for barely a FRACTION of the cost into the existing PC/linux-centric pipeline?

seems pretty obvious to me…

[eltopo]

Pixar is switching to a Macintosh Pipeline, and even though it is kind of a cheat, it shows what the macs are becoming.

But going to the Apple point. Yes it’s true that analyst rarely know what they are talking about. However if we take a look at Apple during the late 1990’s strategy of overpricing ‘old technology’ and how it almost broke the company we can see a close reminiscence with Discreet’s current strategy.
Is Toxik becoming Copland?

So Apple had Steve Jobs to save it, but does Discreet has its own saviour?
how many visionaries of that calibre are in the industry right now?

[Deke]

sidewalksurfing wrote:

A major fact i think everyone (eltopo) is overlooking here is that shake is ALREADY DEAD ON ANYTHING BUT MAC. gee, last time i looked not a SINGLE large scale efx house (DD; WETA; SONY IMAGES WORKS; ESC; ASYLUM; ILM ) has a pipeline built on macintosh. that’s laughable. dont get me wrong, i love macs and im typing this on one now, but to discontinue shake PC development so quickly is a major strategic error on apple’s part. What do you think any efx house is going to do? junk a pipeline after years of perfecting & investing in it and spend major $$$ to retool everything for apple shake? or just plug the very capable competition product for barely a FRACTION of the cost into the existing PC/linux-centric pipeline?

seems pretty obvious to me…

really? Where have you been? Most studios are still using Shake just fine on linux. Apple has been updating it right along with the mac version just fine. Dreamworks, Cinesite, R&H, Weta, Framestore/CFC, etc… are all still using it on linux. The time for Apple to kill it on Linux has long since past(Irix version is even still being updated even though they don’t advertise it for sale).

Also I have no idea where your going with the whole Toxik being a shake killer. Last I new 2 years ago at NAB they talked about it as a 100k turnkey solution like Flint. That is a long way from the current 5k for Shake on linux (3k on mac). Combustion would be a fine shake killer allready if it didn’t crash all the time or croak in schematic view. I don’t even know why they bother with the mac version because it sucks so bad(slow ass monkey).

-deke

[Author]

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