new app

If you head over to MacRumors, I think they ran the main rumor about the relacement, ....but Apple play their cards close to their chests, NOTHING has been made public except that Shake (in its current form) is EOL. The bits and pieces I can glean are that the core Nothing Real team (who originally designed and coded the original and who moved under the Apple banner when they bought Shake) are still on board for this new project (which is good news). With Mac's now going Intel, I think the time was right for them to break away and do a total rebuild, ....large software applications have to do this from time to time as new technologies evolve and the core foundations of the code base start to groan under the strain of the tasks they're being asked to perform (3d software shows this evolution in products, for example 3d studio to 3d Max, Alias Power Animator to Maya, Softimage to XSI). Going on what you see from such evolutions I think you will see a new application that works faster utilizing GPU for setting comps up (see Conduit working in Motion for an idea of how cool that can be), be based on toolset and nodal flow we know and love in shake, ...and more than likely building in a more robust 3d compositing environment. I love Shake to bits, but when you look at where the competition has come in the last few years and where Shake has come since v2.5, ...Shake has been losing ground to Fusion (with its 3d comping, basic particles and access to AE plugins) and Nuke (sheer kick arse speed). Apple has made a good move, they are starting afresh, offered Shake at a bargain basement price to get more users out there, Shake in its current form will still be totally useable for the next few years (...there are facilities in LA still using Shake 2.5 for windows!!), and when the new app is ready I'm sure it will bare more than a passing resemblence to Shake (so transition shouldn't be too hard). Only bad news is that Apple will probably only release OSX versions, ....I know how many people i work for utlilize the Linux versions...

Anyway, there is no hard and fast news, all just speculation, ...we will all wait to see what Apple comes up with in the next 12 to 18 months.

Cheers,

andrew

:-)