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Autodesk to acquire Alias; what does it all mean? Two seemingly completely different paradigms of 3d with Maya and 3ds Max now sharing the same parent. When I heard the news, like most of you I freaked out. What does this mean for the future and the choices of where we devote our time and energy in the 3d world?

I had an opportunity to speak with Dave Wharry, Vice President, Global Sales & Marketing, Alias, and Marc Petit, Vice President of Product Development and Operations, Media & Entertainment, Autodesk after preparing some questions based on all of the threads and personal conversations I had with many of you in both the Maya and 3ds Max communities. Since this was a voice conference I am summarizing a lot of the answers to my questions.

I wanted to start with the basics. Why exactly did Autodesk acquire Alias? My exact question was

"It is apparent by looking at the revenue sources of Autodesk and Alias, that the entertainment divisions are only a small portion of the respective company revenues. Is it fair to say that this acquisition was more about the industrial design, automotive, market and technology acquisition and less about how to mix Maya and Max?"

The answer was not what I expected. Dave noted that the majority of Alias' revenue came from the entertainment industry. One of the major reasons for the acquisition was not something I had posed in my question, but was about the synergies that could be created through both the high end film market where Maya and the Discreet product line (Inferno/Flame, Fire/Smoke, Lustre) are at the heart of many industry leading production pipelines in film, high end post and visual effects. Similarly, many game companies have built hybrid pipelines where 3dsmax works in conjunction with either Maya or Motionbuilder. According to Alias and Autodesk the variety of clients that use Maya or 3ds Max use them for different reasons throughout their pipelines or choose to use one over the other because they fit their needs more adequately

Ok, but aren't Maya and 3ds Max directly in competition? The short answer, No. Not as Autodesk sees it. They feel by owning both products and by changing the product marketing where necessary they can show the differences in the products and let the client decide which is better suited for their needs in each area. Also by focusing on the development synergies of the product they will be able to offer a better work flow between both applications. Maya is on the Mac and Linux for instance, 3ds Max is not. Mac users will therefore choose Maya when deciding which 3d product to buy from Autodesk.

So that got me to my next question before I had a chance to ask it; "will there be a best of both worlds product... a mayax or maxa?". The answer: At least not in the foreseeable future (product lines are only planned out for 3 years and there is no plan for that to happen during that time). They made it clear and emphasized this point. "we will maintain separate development teams, make no changes to resource commitment, funding the development of each product separately while moving forward. no changes whatsoever". They will "remain separate and focus on interoperability" to make things work. Marc joked about hoping to see a 3ds Max version 20 and a maya v20 -- although it was a bit far out to give me a commitment to! He also stated "By sharing designs we will be able to adopt similar representations and metadata in both packages which will help information flow much better throughout the production pipeline. For example; we could make sure that rendering and compositing happens in the same color space or enable material representations and complex animation constructs to flow freely between packages. As demonstrated by the delivery of the Vault with 3ds Max 8, our customers will benefit from many of the collaboration and workflow technologies that Autodesk is developing in other market verticals."

Dave brought up a recent acquisition in Autodesk to use as a comparison. He pointed out that when Autodesk acquired Revit for the architecture space users felt it was in direct competition with Architectural Desktop a product they already owned. "Both teams remained intact, both products remain separate, and grow separately still today". This is a perfect example of a sucessful implementation of just this concept in the 3d space.

Realistically, we see this all the time in other industries. Just look up how many competing companies Pepsi Co owns. We, in the 3d community, are just so used to software being merged when we hear acquisition we all jumped a bit soon. I guess those Softimage/Microsft and Alias/Wavefront days stay close in our memory as 3d users.

They tell me that both 3ds Max and Maya have seen great sales growth over the past year but the growth has been in complimentary areas. They are confident that by owning both products not only can they invest more in the 3d space but create new work flows, share work flows, and integrate better open source standards. Marc continued; "Having the industry's best portfolio of creative tools under one company will lead us to invest more and faster into these applications. We will be able to bridge some existing gaps into the current production workflow, offering solutions from pre-visualization, to production, post-production and mastering. FBX, a freely available toolkit, will be at the heart of our interoperability strategy. Autodesk and Alias share the vision of an open, connected production environment based on industry standards."

Understanding clearly that each product will remain separate we can get back to looking to the future of 3ds Max and Maya separately. Many 3ds Max users have expressed their concerns to me off-line. So I asked: "Max users have been awaiting a new rewrite, but they are also very invested into the 3ds Max paradigm and work flow. Will there be another Max rewrite or will there ultimately be a new product that combines the best features of Maya and Max?" Marc explained that with the recent restructuring of Discreet and movement of the 3ds Max development team to Montreal they have been able to really focus on the outstanding issues and tune up performance and work flow without the need for a rewrite. "3ds Max 8 is a gigantic step forward in performance" Marc stated, and referenced the extremely positive response they have been getting from their beta sites. "The Montreal team has focused heavily on development".

With Autodesk's deeper pockets the Alias divisions should be able to see more budget for R&D and by sharing intellectual property both divisions should be able to develop their products in ways not possible in the past. The bottom line; there will be no Mayax or Maxa in the foreseeable future. There will be no mixed team, no one product development team taking over the other's plans. There will be no major changes to the future of our products as we've seen them aside from working with the suite of Autodesk products much more seamlessly. They will share intellectual property and focus on interoperability not only between the 3d products but with their existing 2d lines. At the end of the day Autodesk will profit whether a buyer chooses Maya or 3ds Max, and maybe in some cases a client will choose both where in the past they would not have.

Regardless of whether or not you think this is a smart business move for either party, I think Maya and Max users can all rest a little easier knowing 3ds Max will remain 3ds Max and Maya will remain Maya...