Archive notice: This article was originally published on March 5, 2014. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Autodesk officially announces that Softimage 2015 will be the last version released—support will then continue until April 2016. For those switching, Autodesk offers a free dual license for Max or Maya to ease the transition period. This option will remain available until February 2016—which means that anyone who has Softimage can then add Max or Maya. Autodesk justifies the decision with “a focus of developer resources in order to improve the existing products more quickly”.
This is promising insofar as the simulation technology in Softimage is, of course, in direct competition with Bifröst, i.e. the former Naiad, and having more developers on one package certainly makes more sense here. According to Autodesk, the ICE technologies will continue to exist, but no longer as a separate package.
Softimage—which was originally called Softimage Creative Environment and was used by ILM for Jurassic Park, among other things—was bought by Microsoft in 1994 and became Softimage|3D before going to Avid in 1998 and Autodesk in 2008. One of Softimage’s strengths, which is why it remained relevant, was ICE—the Interactive Creative Environment.
It remains to be seen what other help and support Autodesk will provide for Softimage users, but as a start, the Entertainment Creation Suite in the USA has been reduced from $8395 to $6,825 dollars.