I've been known to back a few of the wrong horses when it comes to tech.
When some folks chose the Apple II, I chose the Commodore 64.
When the Macintosh and then the IBM PC were released in the mid 80's, I chose to think different and began my love affair with the Amiga.
Over its seven year lifespan, I bought every new model and pushed the boundaries of the Amiga's graphics and video capabilities. But while most 3d artists fell in love with the Newtek Video Toaster and Lightwave, I just had to be an individual and chose to master Impulse's Imagine3d and its little-known 24-bit framebuffer called the Firecracker.
And when I returned to 3d graphics in 2004 after a decade-long absence, I tried to learn to love industry leading 3DS Max and Maya, but instead I became infatuated with Softimage.
Today, Autodesk announced that the upcoming 2015 release of Softimage will be the last and that the program will be forever retired in 2016.
I've been in mourning ever since the news was confirmed and, to mark my grief, I remembered this photo I took a while back of an Amiga 500 I modeled in Softimage last year, region rendered on a Surface Pro.
I meant the image to represent the computing power of the tablet, but instead it's a snapshot of two under-appreciated technological marvels done in by consumer indifference and corporate mismanagement.
The Amiga 500, modeled and region rendered in Softimage 2014 on the Surface Pro. Mental Ray, full anti-aliasing, two lights, 27,000 triangles, 110 objects, 95 textures and the Surface Pro didn't even break a sweat.
Given my track record, I also admit that I'm worried that the Surface Pro might someday join that sad roster consigned to footnotes in tech history.
