Re: Bad news (rumor)

Hmmm, I drop into the forum for the first time in a while and I see...the same old story. All this was pretty obvious to me quite a while back when C was dumped from the discreet lineup, and the once impressive website for C turn into less than a press release. At Siggraph, you would've been hard-pressed to know the product even existed.

It's obvious autodesk wants to deal strictly with big money. You know it's only a matter of time before Max and Maya become one, and guess how much that will be licensed? They milk the crap out of studios with the subscription license they're dishing out for all the discreet products. Stuff like C is nothing but a nuisance.

That said, if your using C in your present pipeline, you have enough inertia in the existing app to allow you to start looking into modern alternatives. On the "low" end, there's really only really AE, a product that while probably annoying for most C users to deal with, has a strong development, user, and support base. It's the obvious app to jump to. Jashaka looks like it coming along, although it's still a long way off, and dependent on the GPU to process data, so no multithreading. Cheap enough to farm, tho. :-)

As is, C is a capable compositor for the vast majority of comps, and even if it dies tomorrow it'll be quite useful for a long time. I wouldn't sweat it too much. It would certainly be clear that autodesk is not a company that you ever want to deal with again if they dump C. You certainly have plenty of 3D options if you wanted to jump ship from Max or Maya. Lightwave for one cost peanuts in comparison, is multiplatform and can be farmed on Linux no less.

So I wouldn't worry too much about C dying. You should never put all your eggs in one basket in this business anyway, and as Mr. Spock would say, "There are always alternatives". :-)