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The Foundry was sold for £200m this year


Carlosan
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This is pretty interesting. The Carlyle group doesn't appear to be associated with the CG industry at all. They are just buyers and sellers. Buy low, sell high. And with Black Magic Design dropping Nuke's closest competition, Fusion, down to $1k for the Studio version (and free for the non-studio version), the Foundry's latest financial numbers probably took a hit. That tells this group it's time to sell while they can still turn a good profit.

 

However, for the Foundry and their userbase, it could be either the best thing to happen or the worst. If Autodesk makes the purchase, it's probably going to give Modo the XSI roadmap...down a dead end road and over a cliff. With Nuke....it helped cripple Autodesk's entire compositing line, so I can see some prolonged water-boarding action in it's future :D (and I'm not talking about skiing on a lake)...before it joins Combustion and Toxik in the compositing app graveyard.

 

However, if Adobe steps in, it would be greatly advantageous for them, because they could now own the compositing market at all levels + finally have their very own modern 3D App (Modo), plus a high-end Texture painting app. This would make the most sense to me. And for Modo users, it would be a big boon. Within a year or two, it would be taught in colleges right along with Maya or 3ds Max, and the 3rd party community would being to swell rapidly.

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This is pretty interesting. The Carlyle group doesn't appear to be associated with the CG industry at all. They are just buyers and sellers. Buy low, sell high. And with Black Magic Design dropping Nuke's closest competition, Fusion, down to $1k for the Studio version (and free for the non-studio version), the Foundry's latest financial numbers probably took a hit. That tells this group it's time to sell while they can still turn a good profit.

 

However, for the Foundry and their userbase, it could be either the best thing to happen or the worst. If Autodesk makes the purchase, it's probably going to give Modo the XSI roadmap...down a dead end road and over a cliff. With Nuke....it helped cripple Autodesk's entire compositing line, so I can see some prolonged water-boarding action in it's future :D (and I'm not talking about skiing on a lake)...before it joins Combustion and Toxik in the compositing app graveyard.

 

However, if Adobe steps in, it would be greatly advantageous for them, because they could now own the compositing market at all levels + finally have their very own modern 3D App (Modo), plus a high-end Texture painting app. This would make the most sense to me. And for Modo users, it would be a big boon. Within a year or two, it would be taught in colleges right along with Maya or 3ds Max, and the 3rd party community would being to swell rapidly.

 

 

 

This is the correct POV. CG used to be a dark art, costing a fortune. In 2000 I went shopping with a businessman trying to start up a ad agency company. He was shopping for a computer and software to do 3D with. SGI computer was $20k, and Lightwave, Alias, Wavefront (Maya was not yet formed from the merger yet) and Soft Image were $80k each.

 

Now you can afford to buy them and much more, anybody can. You can see the trajectory of the price point..

 

Blender is nipping at everyone's heels with functional software for free.

 

Pixar Renderman is going to be free which to me is incredible.

 

The financial bottom is dropping out of the market. It's a bulk commodity now, nothing special no magic at all.

 

In 5 years the CG business landscape may be unrecognizable. Carlysle Group has historically focused on arms, weapons, defense industries. The  Foundry was an odd purchase for them.

 

Modo has a problem and it's not how it fares with the sale of the Foundry though; It's problem is Zbrush 5 is turning into a game changing monster.

 

And this is just one little tendril of the world computer revolution...

Edited by L'Ancien Regime
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Lightwave was $995 in 2000 and ran on off-the-shelf PCs. Roughnecks was produced 99% on off-the-shelf PCs that we built, with TNT2 graphics cards, and the renderfarm was mostly Celeron 300A-366As depending on what was the best bang for the buck that month.

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Lightwave was $995 in 2000 and ran on off-the-shelf PCs. Roughnecks was produced 99% on off-the-shelf PCs that we built, with TNT2 graphics cards, and the renderfarm was mostly Celeron 300A-366As depending on what was the best bang for the buck that month.

 

 

Oops my age is showing..I meant 1990...not 2000

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Modo could potentially gain a lot of ground in the market once AD goes subscription-only, but otherwise this might be a good business move on their part.

Hopefully whoever buys them is supportive; I really don't want to see a repeat of XSI (or Mudbox for that matter).

 

For sure, from what we are seeing on Polycount and just the quick gains its suddenly making, I can see Modo going quite far. I think the foundry knows this too, thus the big games push for 901 (supposedly). I know some of the foundry people are also showing up at game jams and other game related events to show off and support modo use as well. Lets hope it ends up in good hands.

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... and wasn't available in 1990.

1990 - LightWave 3D 1.0

1990 saw the first actual release of LightWave on the Commodore Amiga-based Video Toaster. NewTek had been promising its arrival for about two years at this point, but the problem lay with the chipset for the Video Toaster itself, not LightWave. At this point in time, there were 3D programs available, but they tended to cost tens of thousands of dollars, while the whole Toaster retailed for less than $5,000. The only real competition for 3D on the Amiga at that time came in the form of Imagine.

 

The presenter couldn't make it work for us..

 

http://lightwiki.com/wiki/LightWave_History

 

 

1995 - LightWave 3D 5.0

This was when NewTek really started to branch out. LightWave was available for Intel and now also for SGI, DEC Alpha, Macintosh, and in its last version for Amiga

 

 

Could have been 1995 though...hmmm a long time ago..they were all doing their presentations on SGI's..

Edited by L'Ancien Regime
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http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/about-u...from-hgcapital/

 

Quote:

LONDON, May 20, 2015 - The Foundry, a leading provider of award-winning creative software, announced a majority investment from HgCapital, one of the UK’s most prestigious private equity firms. Comprising experts from technology and business sectors, HgCapital are perceived as one of the top investors in European software. The Foundry will sit within the Technology, Media & Telecommunications (‘TMT’) sector of HgCapital. Under the terms of the deal, HgCapital will assume majority ownership from The Carlyle Group for an enterprise value of £200 million ($312 million USD).

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I think this is a more positive news than getting bought by ADSK or AD. Both would either kill it or have it on rental.

There's no guarantee that this new pension funders will not resell TF in 3 years again but atleast that's 3 years more extension.

Plus Carlyle group deals in morally dubious business while this new group deals in positive tech stuff.

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I suppose the same, 3 years

bought... sold... bought... sold... alias/wavefront, softimage, _ _ _ put name here, as far as I can remember, historically this never gave good results.

 

hope the best for the users.

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So hopefully this bit will give a bit more encouragement regarding how long they will be holding onto the  Foundry. 

 

"'The HgCapital team, lead by Nic Humphries (an electrical engineer by trade), have deep software experience and take a long-term view on their investments, which in some cases span a decade or more. '"

Key words are long-term view and the spanning of "decades or more".

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I saw the event for Modo 901 last night, solid release.. Check out the new features page if you have the chance.

https://modo901.thefoundry.co.uk/

Yeah I tried to watch the live event too, but it was very laggy and kept freezing up. I tried lowering the video resolution but that didn't help. Then I tried closing the chat function, and that seemed to help quite a bit, but not completely. At that point the presentation was watchable, but still laggy. Towards the end of the presentation I opened up the chat function again and found that the moderators had been carefully answering ALL of the questions (much better than the 801 presentation where they ignored any question they didn't like). I noticed several other viewers commenting about the lag problems too.

The most interesting part of the presentation was hearing real employees at real studios talking about how they use Modo, and why they like it. It seems like the fast preview render was one of the most important features for them. The renderer seems quite nice.

I also like that there now seems to be a good Houdini connection via OpenVDB, and that it can also be viewed pretty quickly in Modo's preview render.

Still no animation layers in Modo though. Several of the studios that were interviewed mentioned using Maya for their animation instead of Modo.

Overall though, Modo is starting to look good!

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I suppose the same, 3 years

bought... sold... bought... sold... alias/wavefront, softimage, _ _ _ put name here, as far as I can remember, historically this never gave good results.

 

hope the best for the users.

 

Well the only constant will be probably be Blender.

Still its better that Modo is alive for a few more years. Monopoly by Autodesk is not good.

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The most interesting part of the presentation was hearing real employees at real studios talking about how they use Modo, and why they like it. It seems like the fast preview render was one of the most important features for them.

 

I only watched one of those it was pretty boring.

Strange pipeline was one of the projects with the Shaq character. They sculpt in zbrush, RETOPO in maya, render in modo I think. Seems like they're jumping through hoops when they could do everything in one app.

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Very impressive looking release. They've managed to cover nearly every area I hoped they would.

Just need animation layers and a major overhaul to cloth physics now (I really want someone to try to compete with 'Marvelous Designer').

 

Am skeptical though about the symmetry since that has historically been an extremely buggy feature in Modo.

Edited by PolyHertz
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Well the only constant will probably be Blender.

Ha ha! Yeah I was thinking the same thing recently.

I guess we just need to accept the fact that any of our beloved apps could be discontinued at some point in the future, and we don't have much control over that. Usually it happens over the course of a few years though, so at least we have a little time to adapt.

It doesn't bother me that much anyways, getting up to speed in a new app can go pretty quickly. Just finish one or two projects in it and it starts to feel like home.

I only watched one of those it was pretty boring.

I liked the presentation about the Keds shoes. Those were 3D printed shoes he had on the table there, and they looked just like real shoes! Some day I want to 3D print a dinner for my wife and laugh when she tries to eat it!

Strange pipeline was one of the projects with the Shaq character. They sculpt in zbrush, RETOPO in maya, render in modo I think. Seems like they're jumping through hoops when they could do everything in one app.

That is an interesting point. I've often wondered if I save more time using a ton of specialized apps, or if it would be faster for me to just do it all in one app. I like to think it is faster using the perfect tool for each step, but constantly exporting and importing stuff does waste time too.

I saw a guy making 2D vector art using MOI (the 3D app)! He then finished it off in Illustrator. He probably could have just done the whole thing in Illustrator, but it did seem like his strange multi-app method was actually faster and easier.

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Yes fantastic news bought by HgCapital a private equity firm.

 

The fund seeks out investments to fund the growth and expansion of portfolio companies, that is, a collection of different companies, often from various industries.  This approach is done to diversify the fund and mitigate the risk involved; the more companies in a funds portfolio, the greater the diversification, and the lower the overall risk of default or loss.

from: http://baselinescenario.com/2012/01/27/what-is-private-equity/

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