Fabric Engine has left the building

I don’t know what happened but all Fabric Engine related sites and forums are now closed and on the main website fabricengine.com it says:

“Thank you for your interest in Fabric Engine. Please note that we are no longer developing our software platform and tools.”

This might be very important news to some. Now let’s wait and see what the reason is… :confused:

Bad news. Fabric engine was promising.

Oh wow. I get it though. The tool really had issues finding it’s place Houdini Engine kind of stole its thunder a bit, and Fabric never really knew what the tool was supposed to be and never marketed it properly because of it. What was Fabric supposed to be in the end? It started out as a platform of sorts to build your own tools for a production pipeline, then it transitioned to some kind of interchange application that allowed you to work in multiple DCCs.

What I was hoping was that they would have created some sort of DCC app out of the platform (to show people how it’s done) but they didn’t seem to have any interest. The idea though was pretty cool and imo would work better in an open source environment. A programming language, ui kit and and realtime rendering engine tailored to creating DCC tools.

What kind of 3d package would the community make with something like that? Without having to worry about licensing fees or whatever.

but it was closed, expensive… not efficient
what is really needed is lots of minds simply working their way through, not just a couple of wizards - those times are gone

I htink the main problem was that general public, me included, never understood what it was for… I never figured out how to use it inside any app :stuck_out_tongue:

What community? Almost everyone willing to do “community work” for 3D software is working on Blender.

I haven’t followed it closely, but Fabric Engine was usable without fees in the beginning. It was just another piece of technology. Sure, you could build something off of it, but there’s a long way to go for a real application that people can actually use.

You don’t have lots of (capable) minds in the first place, you might as well call the remaining ones “wizards”.

It wasn’t aimed at the general public. It was a framework aimed at developers. They probably couldn’t figure out a working business model for such a product.

Although there is no further info yet, I highly doubt that they were unsuccessful and had no working business model. They didn’t go benkrupt but quite the opposite: They were so successful that their outstanding technology and knowledge finally got bought by a really big player.
I guess / hope we know more next monday… :wink:

Too bad, it looked very powerful, providing both low level stuff as well as assemblies (sort of node groups), which is the houdini approach… it’s true though that without an out of the box solution, adoption is compromised…

TheFoundry probably acquired it although ADSK also has a void after killing XSI (with ICE). The Foundry already demonstrated it in Modo. It can be the missing piece that allows wider adaptation of Modo outside the scope of modeling. Lets see

I didn’t presume they went bankrupt, but buy-outs are a common outcome of bankruptcy.

A buy-out doesn’t imply a working business model either, it could be just “for the talent” or maybe to incorporate a part of the tech that was interesting for the buyer (and drop the rest). In fact, many startups never even aim for entering the profit zone, but to be bought out or to fail.

Whatever the situation is, they are “no longer developing their platform and tools”, so whoever bought in doesn’t want to continue the business.

That’s because Blender is the only community that has any kind of traction. If there were another piece of software especially one as powerful as Fabric Engine out there for free without any restrictions I think people would flock to it. Just like people have embraced OpenToonz, etc. Right now Blender is the only real game in town that has a relevant community. Doesn’t always have to be the case. If something better were released I don’t think Blender would enjoy the position it’s in now. While I don’t think Fabric Engine is it, the technology would have allowed for it. The realtime engine alone is heads and tails better than what Blender has even in the works now, being able to handle quite a lot of geometry. It’s wishful thinking on my part though. Like in everything I want Blender to have some real competition in the space they are in.

remind me of truespace which is bought by Microsoft and then can not be found anywhere

trueSpace was actually my first 3D app…way back in 2.1 on up to 7, along side lightwave…and it’s just sad when software dies…especially the ones you use because you like them, not because you need them.

dont know how reliable the source is but on cgchannel one comment says they went bankrupt. no big money buyout

My understanding is that Fabric Engine was founded by at least some of the developers behind XSI’s ICE platform, and in a way was an extension of that idea (providing building blocks to build powerful CG tools). The people who will be most familiar with this are probably (ex-?) XSI people. Check XSI forums and mailing lists for commentary.

You can check either the business is ok or not. It’s public info.

ps
at least in EU you can - can’t do business transparently otherwise

Someone bought them. I’m sure. I doubt it was Autodesk. The Foundry is more likely, having also bought Multiverse. Their Elara platform philosophy also fits well with the goals of Fabric.

Certainly the pricing was in line with The Foundry.