Yes, you have read right. Autodesk is set to acquire substantially all the assets of Softimage (that includes Max plugin Character Animation Toolkit). Reactions at 3D forums have been very negative, if they represented a 3D stock market, one could say that today it has crashed. Here's a random sample: "the worst industry news ever", "a sad day for 3D", "short of a death in the family", "So now there's officially absolutely no competition anymore?", "Run Pixologic Run!", "One Company To Rule Them All", "Autodesk's country based licensing system is a joke", "For sale: 1 seat of xsi advanced version 6.5", "one more reason to move to Blender", "It is so bad, that I can't describe it". According to the posts, Max, Maya and XSI users are worried about a potential lack of innovation in future versions of their 3D software, the possibility of rising prices, Autodesk's licensing policies (which are far more restrictive than Softimage's), and the impossibility of being able to choose among major 3D software companies. Responses have been very emotional, as usually happens with releases and acquisitions of 3D software, but these latest ones have had a particularly negative tone, and whether the arguments will prove to be justified or not in the future, this symptom in itself does raise an eyebrow. One thing can be safely said, in the long run competition is better for everyone (yes, even Autodesk itself), and for the time being, among Autodesk's 3D software, only Mudbox seems to be forced to keep competing due to ZBrush's continued development. A few links related to the acquisition: press release at Autodesk.com, comments at Ken Pimentel's blog, reactions at Softimage's forums, CGTalk, Blenderartists.org, Leonard Teo's take on the subject. Read on for a sample of comments from the Softimage forums.

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Another sample, this time from the Softimage forums (which has been by far the site with the most negative user comments): "I think i'll cry", "Soon this great community will be swallowed up into that mess of a website Autodesk call The Area. Ugh!", "Time to saddle up and move out...", "Pass Go, collect $200", "Blender all of a sudden started to look a lot more interesting", "Absolutely pitiful", "MONOPOLY!", "This is a sad day.", "The only nice thing I can take from this is that we will all have a Cube in the top right side of our viewport", "horrible and sad news".

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