CGenie - Professional CG Textures

As I discussed over the Autodesk purchase of Softimage, the position of Autodesk within the current 3d market is now approaching a monopoly. A lot of artists and companies have rightly been unsettled over these moves, though in my article I did seek to allay some of those fears with the somewhat more mundane realities of corporate takeovers.

Yet what I am considering today is that what we are watching is not the coronation of a monopolistic giant, but the opening moves in a truly monumental battle of titans. I suggesting that, far from there being a monopoly, there are several huge competitors rolling their tanks into Autodesk's territory. Companies that, for all Autodesk's size, make them seem far less powerful than you would think...

Opening Gambit

So let's look at the Autodesk purchase of Softimage. Many artists have quite correctly questioned why Autodesk bothered.  The payment of $35 million for Softimage only underlined Avid's situation and Autodesk's valuation of the software (we must remember that 10 years ago this was the same software that cost Avid $285 million).

It's quite clear that Avid aren't exactly having the best of times, but as many Softimage employees have underlined, Softimage wasn't part of the problem - it was profitable and staff were breaking sales targets. So for a lot of people, it appears that Autodesk are simply snapping up one of their competitors, not because they particularly need them (if they did, that $35 million would have had at least one extra zero!), but because they just want to keep a knock down offer away from competitors. If you've read through forums, you'll be familar with this viewpoint - yet something no one has tried to address yet is: Who is the competition?

So excuse the head-scratching for the moment, but in my view Autodesk were running the 3d show before and now they're even more so. We can look at the likes of Cinema 4d, Lightwave, Modo, Z Brush, but none of these could really been seen as a company that would be aggressively damaging the Autodesk market share. And any time it looks like it, Autodesk simply plough the R&D or acquisition budget to retaliate - so we now have Autodesk Mudbox to keep ZBrush entertained.

So who on earth is going to be a serious competitor to Autodesk?

Saturation point

Well if we assume that Autodesk has the 3d design market sewn up, let's look at other similar markets. Let's say the 2d design industry?  Here we have a similar situation with Adobe dominating the market. Think of the spectrum of products within the Creative Suite Master collection every aspect of 2d art is covered whether it's raster or vector, still or moving, web-based or paper-based.

So from a business perspective these two companies are now under pressure to maintain their growth patterns and as with any company that is reaching saturation in a market, you look for new markets.

Now before you scream that Adobe is never going to enter the 3d market, maybe you should look at the latest two releases of their software - CS3 & CS4 and look at the trends yourself. Photoshop Extended CS3 was released with new 3d model features, the CS4 release has massively improved this element - arguably the toolset they've focused on most in this release. In addition the support of GPU, multiple cores and 64bit now means CS4 is a lot better equipped to deal with this.

It doesn't stop there, Flash you'll know is now seriously focusing on 3d. Realtime rendering, Inverse Kinematics, joint manipulation - see for yourself. I can go through the range, but you get the point - indeed even Acrobat is going 3d.

So Adobe are clearly edging on the 3d market (albeit don't expect any Jurassic Parks from them too soon!), instead they are moving in towards the online 3d and realtime visualisation markets.

Ironically many of the blogs around the web were pointing at Softimage with it's strengths in the real time markets as an ideal next step for Adobe, weeks before Autodesk's latest move.

So we have a battle of two enormous monopolies? There is already a fair bit of skirmishing between the two at the video effects edges of their territory - the Flame/Inferno/Smoke/Toxics against the After Effects/Premieres.

But that's not all...

Bit of Backrubbing

Backrub, or Google as you now know it. Is a big company. It's an aggressive company that not only looks for acquisitions, but looks to dive into emerging markets before people even know they're there.

Most of us will be aware of Google's most notable 3d forays, Google Earth with it's goal of 3d modelling every building and feature on Earth. To aid this, they snapped up Sketchup, a promisingly simple 3d modelling application.  They've also been 3d modelling oceans, mars, and so on - but their real focus is simply making 3d models and modelling accessible to Joe Public.

They've been growing 3d warehouses packed full of models that people can use and adapt to visualise.scenes themselves. This is also a market Microsoft are starting to enter.

So perhaps what we are witnessing is the emergence of a wider market for 3d. One where it is no longer contained within the film, game and art industries, but where it is a fundamental part of web design, product visualisation, mapping, navigation.

Bob Bennett, a veteran of the market having worked at Autodesk, Microsoft, Alias and most recently Luxology describes the future brilliantly:

I believe the future of the 3D market is one of diffusion. The computer science of 3D nurtured in the old 3D ecosystem will now radiate in many directions. There will always be a thriving professional market of "pure" 3D professionals, just as there are professional video editors, professional photographers, and professional sound editors. And just like with other forms of media, the professionals will establish the quality bar, set the trends, and guide much (but not all) of the technology development.

With so many new players in the market, innovation in the field of 3D is just as likely to come from Google or Nokia as it is from the original 3D industry. Opportunities abound for anyone with the talent and the foresight to leverage this flowering moment in the history of 3D.

The rest of his article is well worth a read.

Clash of the Titans

So in view of this, suddenly Autodesk looks far less dominant, indeed if anything it highlights the threat of powerful new competition approaching this market. The operating profits of Autodesk suddenly become far less titanic when compared with Adobe & Google.

The focus on quick, disposable, instant models and quick & easy applications are things that most artists would baulk at - as they have for many years when they see another 'poser render'.

But the market is changing and it will change. This is not something to concern artists, rather celebrate - Hollywood will always want original, detailed work as will the computer game industry - however there's potentially a hell of a lot of work in the realtime visualisation market. There will be a renewed focus on low poly modelling and increased demands for the models and textures themselves, not just the finished image or video.

Autodesk must be highly conscious of this approaching clash and the move to keep decades of 3d research and development from competition must be viewed as sensible from their angle.

There may well be concern by artists over the future of their chosen toolset (my feeling is this is not something to worry too much about). What is certain however, is that whatever the outcome, things are going to get busy.

As for Adobe, Google and Microsoft? Well, with Adobe in particular, it wouldn't surprise me if we saw moves towards the next on the list - Cinema 4d/Lightwave/Modo?

Pure speculation of course, but I'll take the credit when it happens...