Quote:Original post by rick_appleton
While I do agree that the effort would be enormeous (sp?) to convert the programs, I do think the effort might be smaller than a lot of you might think. I know that 3D Studio Max has all its tools written in MAXScript. None of that would have to be ported. So in that case, only the backbone of the program would have to be rewritten. Not a small task of course, but significantly smaller than the entire app.

Breaking an API signs the death knell for an animation Package. Softimage as a company, collapsed after it decided to release Xsi. Companies in industry stuck with the Softimage rather than switching to XSI since it would have broken their animation pipelines.

It's taken about 3 years and a number of different owners before the company has managed to stand on its feet again. It's only now starting to see it's market share return to the levels it once had.

Switching any Anim Package from C++ to C# would signal the same problems for that animation company. The only realistic method would be to release a new package entirely, something that Softimage has shown to be almost impossible to do, and stay afloat.

No, it will never happen - you seem to be ignoring the vast complexity of these Apps. Fancy porting the Fluids to C# after having spent 2 years fixing all of the Bugs in the C++ version? No, you probably wouldn't. The users would also be switching packages in droves if they again had to deal with bugs in something that has been stable for two versions.

Ironically, XSI is the package you need to look at for C#. It will support any programming language for plugins that can use COM.

I thought C# and .NET were going cross-platform, hmm?

The softimage to xsi shift was deliberate and did not criple Avid. More and more developers are choosing xsi as softimage would not be able to compete in todays market. Also, upgrades between max versions in the past has discreet announce the new version was completely rewritten, designed from the ground up. Also, with the comment about max using 10% of the cpu when running, this is true when first started but see what happens a few hours later when you have a 1000000 polygon scene with subdivision sufaces and all the other stuff, it is almost unusable.
I dont know how many times i've heard users of max say it needs a new core because of unstability, slowness ect

Also, think about how many lines windows xps code would have. Changing over to longhorn will have taken Microsoft about 6 years or so. As they said, it is a complete paradigm shift, like dos to windows. People are already referring to native apps as the dos equivalent.

Anyway, I'm not talking about an overnight shift, say in maybe 5 to 10 years. By that time, graphics technology would have changed so much that they will all need to be rewritten, so why not in the better language, assuming of course that c# is better than c++ by then.
Just wondering about the future :)
no flame wars intended :)