Softimage Founder Daniel Langlois, Partner Dominique Marchand Found Dead in Dominica
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Sad news. I have very happy memories of learning Softimage|3D on SGI workstations in the sweltering computer lab at Teesside University 94/95.
And being on work placement at SGI when Microsoft bought Softimage. You could see the panic in managements eyes 
RIP Dan
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Yeah, Softimage was the bomb back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. And later, XSI was revolutionary as well.
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Softimage’s ICE was at the peak when ADSK took over
It was the blender geometry nodes and unreal PCG all in one but XSI has gotten in the devils hands and progress was halted for decades! I wonder what will autodesk do now that these tools exist outside of their products, will the ICE resurface or what?
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Probably nothing. They’ve owned it for years, and I think they bought it just to eliminate a competitor.
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Well it was a rhetorical question, I know why they bought xsi. And sure they did eliminate competition in a field there was no competition in. They did dirty smart moves back then. What’s left to do now? ICE was clearly the thing that would set all the standards in cgi production. ADSK bought some time but now blender geometry nodes and unreal pcg is building some standards that ADSK could have secured back 10-12? Years ago. So I wonder…
They have been developing Bifrost for the last 4 or so years. Part of that project is directly based on ICE. It’s been simultaneously developed in both 3dsMax and Maya, and is the first time the 2 dev teams have actively collaborated on anything.
I’m not sure what stage it is at yet as I left the 3dsMax beta 2 years ago.
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