Quote: "yes you are right they haven't merged yet, apparently they have approvals and stuff to work through. I agree it smacks of desparation. Imagine if they spend too much on Alias and fall over. I mean you wouldn't think it was likely, but what if....."
Not likely to happen. Alias are very good at surviving in a hostile market. Just look at what they've achieved over the past 20years despite being owned by one company or another. (Wavefront, SGI, AutoDesk)
With more products available than ever, they're excellent at providing support with the products that professionals will use in the same field.
You can literally seemlessly use Adobe Photoshop, Alias Maya and Apple Shake not just capable of using a resoucr created between the three but interactively use the same resource without having to saveout as a format you need.
They all simply link and can control the other in order to get the results you want. This said they've always really be orientated at the professional market, I doubt we'll see this changing anytime soon.
Quote: "Yeah yeah, Valve did HL2 with it, yadda yadda, it must be me who sucks - fair enough, I accept that, but that still doesn't excuse their very rude customer support"
When you have Advanced version support, Softimage will bend over backwards to help you. So provided your willing to spend professional amounts of cash you'll get professional support.
Everyone else really isn't worth thier time.
But hey, that's the french for you.
I've always prefered Maya in terms of 3D Applications, just a pitty there is not entry-level version.
