Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

venturebeat.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 153 posts

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#121

Post by robbies »

coldtea wrote: post #30
fsloth wrote: post #26

Just in case people are not familiar - Autodesk owns a considerable share of cad market (which is far more encompassing than just Autocad) and they've palmed few of the biggest 3D modeling suites - Maya, 3DMax and (sigh ) XSI. Their DWG format (Autocad's native databaseformat) is a binary blob that still has a huge impact in construction industry and is a major PITA unless one is using Autocad tools. They are a huge…

> They are a huge player with many expensive software suits. But they are not very innovative. Compared to what? "Disruptive" social sites and Uber for X? There is orders of magnitude more computer science innovation in Autodesk than in the average "unicorn".

I can't speak to the entirety of their empire, but as far as their rendering command stream: not innovative. Well...maybe 30 years ago. To be fair, that's most of the workstation industry.

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#122

Post by greenknight »

JeremyHerrman wrote: post #101
isaiahg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> notably a lack of UI refinement That's a common misconception. Blender's UI is extremely simple and innovative.

Back in 2011 if you googled "blender is ", you get these autocompleted options: blender is slow blender is too hard blender is hard to use I know this because I was so frustrated as a newcomer and took a screenshot that I still have today. Now if you google "blender is " today, you get these: blender is hard blender is damaged blender is confusing blender is free blender is slow In 2013 Andrew Price led an effort to…

Andrew price went on to say that his proposed UI was wrong -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aIA2LaB2Iw

Since then there has been a UI team, which has tackled the low hanging fruit... the bigger design changes probably will come over the next year or so during their 2.8 revamp... where they tackle the bigger issues with blender.

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#123

Post by martinpw »

greggman wrote: post #61
Silhouette wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the trouble is that the FBX format in parts of these industries is like the DOC(X) and XLS(X) formats in office productivity software: everyone uses it, so if you want to use a tool that doesn't reliably convert to/from it losslessly you are at risk of severe friction when working with others. And like DOC(X) and XLS(X), it's a proprietary format, which creates various complications for anyone who wants to cr…

I agree the Blender has problems. All I'm saying is the combined amount of money that companies like Pixar + Dreamworks + Disney + EA + Rockstar + Valve + Sony + Microsoft + all the other movie, CGI, and game companies spend on Autodesk software would probably fund 30-40 + well paid engineers and they could get an open source piece of software that they could all modify anyway they want VS what they have now, which i…

Thing is, studios will use tools like Maya if they meet their needs, and if not they develop internal proprietary software that does exactly what they need. Often they use both in different parts of the pipeline. It is not obvious that there is a space for a third option there of collaborating to build a complete end to end 3d application that will inevitably require compromises.

Open source already happens with specific focused packages (OpenSubdiv, OpenVDB, PTEX etc) which can be very good at one thing. Developing a complete 3d application that meets everyone's needs is unlikely to be appealing given the diverse studio pipelines and requirements.

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#125

Post by moron4hire »

Silhouette wrote: post #37
greggman wrote: post #34

I really wish all the various companies that use 3D modeling and animations software would fund and/or contribute to Blender (or some other open source 3D app) Maya and 3dsmax are great and arguably better than Blender but it seems like if they pooled their resources they could change that and everyone would be better off for it.

Part of the trouble is that the FBX format in parts of these industries is like the DOC(X) and XLS(X) formats in office productivity software: everyone uses it, so if you want to use a tool that doesn't reliably convert to/from it losslessly you are at risk of severe friction when working with others. And like DOC(X) and XLS(X), it's a proprietary format, which creates various complications for anyone who wants to cr…

Blender is no more UI-awful and no more poorly documented than any other 3D modeling package. The problem is that the entire market of 3D modeling packages are either A) massive clusterfucks of kitchen-sink UI, or B) woefully inadequate in feature selection.

Learning Maya or 3D Studio Max is just as much of an undertaking as learning Blender. There is nothing about them that make them inherently easier. But they do cost a lot of money, whereas Blender is free (and Free). So why not just start with Blender? You (the proverbial you) are probably not going to get a job in the games or movie industry anyway.

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#126

Post by [deleted] »

JeremyHerrman wrote: post #101
isaiahg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> notably a lack of UI refinement That's a common misconception. Blender's UI is extremely simple and innovative.

Back in 2011 if you googled "blender is ", you get these autocompleted options: blender is slow blender is too hard blender is hard to use I know this because I was so frustrated as a newcomer and took a screenshot that I still have today. Now if you google "blender is " today, you get these: blender is hard blender is damaged blender is confusing blender is free blender is slow In 2013 Andrew Price led an effort to…

[deleted]

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#127

Post by antod »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #88
Animats wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XSI was originally from Softimage. Softimage sold out to Microsoft, which had no idea what to do with a high-end product other than to make it run on Windows NT. That ended SGI's reign in Hollywood; between 1998 and 2001, studios moved off SGI onto PCs with lots of memory and graphics cards that rapidly got cheaper. Microsoft sold Softimage to Avid. Avid wanted Softimage because they also had a good non-linear editor…

> That ended SGI's reign in Hollywood; Big studios didn't convert to NT, they converted to Linux. SGI ended their own reign by not being able to compete with Nvidia and AMD/Intel. Even now all those studios use csh since that was the default shell that came with Irix.

There was a short lived start of a shift to NT in the 90s before Linux became established/respected enough to squash that idea.

Even SGI itself tried not to get left behind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Visual_Workstation

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#128

Post by chris_wot »

the_common_man wrote: post #29
justinclift wrote: post #4

Wonder how many of the layoffs will be from QA? Fusion 360 is the buggiest shipping product I've ever seen. Really hoping they don't lay off any QA staff. But, seeing the shipping product so far, I'm not optimistic. :(

I don't get your comment. If the product is buggy, isn't the QA to blame and should thus get the axe first?

Possibly. But it could be the QA team is great but the pushback from management is to let buggy releases occur. It happens, especially when it affects the bottom line.

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#129

Post by thisismyanon2 »

thisismyanon1 wrote: post #105
dba7dba wrote: post #33

All I can add is that Autodesk has the best office layout that I am aware of. In 1990s. In their HQ, every single employee got a little glassed in office with enough room for a desk, chair, and 2 chairs IN front of the desk. There was room for an employee to bring in a sleep bag and sleep if necessary with some privacy. IMO much better than this open office stuff. Hopefully they still have that.

Wow... I wish ADSK had offices like that. Our office in San Francisco is now a completely open office. I don't like it much. At least Management was very thoughtful when they introduced it.

Our office (ADSK) in San Francisco filled in all the open space with vacant desks, removing every possibility to decompress away from your desk.

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#130

Post by tucaz »

chefkoch wrote: post #66
imgabe wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are a leader because everybody uses them and if you need to collaborate (which you do, as architects, engineers, contractors are all separate companies) you need to use what everyone else is using. Revit has come a long way and it's starting to fulfill it's promise, but it's been a slow road.

Atm there is no real competitor to revit as openbim is not really market ready and all other software lacks compability.

I worked developing a Revit plugin for one of the biggest furniture manufacturers in the US for the past six months and despite the fact that Revit has a really good UX for people who is used to it, the development side is not as good feeling like they have been bringing the same stuff forward for the last ten years which turns their API into a bloated unfriendly piece of software.

Now we are starting to develop a replacement using Configura which is a swedish company working on the same space for the last 20 years or so and although they have a proprietary language and no documentation at all, still makes for a much better developer experience and game changing UX where users can design, render photos and produce movies of their project from within the tool. It's a whole different world.

However, both tools are, in my opinion, stuck in the past since I expect to see some competitor coming up in the next few years bringing the same experience in a web environment.

Post reply on HN