Shake 4.1 Arrives

[user_deleted]

And it only costs $500 for a full license now! Amazing development. I thought Apple would release a iComp or something, not make their highend app a compliment to final cut, etc. Wild. Not sure how this will shake out the industry -- Fusion will have to drop their price, for sure. And not sure what the price for Shake for Linux is -- assume it's still pretty high.

Pretty wild though!

j

[user_deleted]

my boss is going to feel sick. He just bout shake 4 +maintenance package for $4500

Does anyone know if there is anything new other than universal?

[user_deleted]

QUOTE(mikemarcus @ 06/20/06, 09:05 AM) [snapback]240270[/snapback]
my boss is going to feel sick. He just bout shake 4 +maintenance package for $4500
Happens all the time with super secret companies, the end user is not told software direction leaving the door open to screw us with corporate igrorant bliss.

Does anyone know if there is anything new other than universal?

There is nothing new in the new version of shake other than fixes to the bugs that were coded in the last version. From what I can gather the shake team has been bus bailing out the aperture team to impliment anything other than bug fixes and minor GUI enhancements. Which is another black eye to what was supposed to be a good thing with mac buying nothing real.

[user_deleted]

The story thickens. From Apple:

We are very pleased to announce the release of Shake 4.1. Please carefully
read this entire email. The important points contained within are:

1. Summary of enhancements
2. Your download user name and password.
3. Software download and install instructions
4. License setup
5. How to get assistance

Shake 4.1 is a Mac OS X Universal Binary which means it runs natively on
both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs

Shake 4.1 is an upgrade to Fedora Core 4 Linux.

Shake 4.1 is a maintenance release. Make sure you check out the
Late-Breaking News link in the Shake help menu for additional information on
Shake 4.1.

-----------IMPORTANT NOTICE-----------

New Mac OS X seats can now be purchased via the Retail box for a modest
price of $499 with unlimited render licenses. Shake 4.1 Linux licenses
remain available directly through shake-sales@apple.com.

Apple will no longer be selling maintenance for Shake and no further
software updates are planned as we begin work on the next generation of
Shake compositing software. While we're excited about the innovations we can
bring in the future, we understand you have a business to run today that
requires Shake. To that end, we will provide all Maintenance customers with
the following three options:

A. Customers can continue with end-user e-mail support, as well as SDK
support for the duration of their Maintenance contract.

B. Customers may elect to cancel their Maintenance and receive a pro-rated
refund for the unused portion. Existing software licenses would continue to
function according to the Software License Agreement. Maintenance customers
that wish to cancel their contract must do so by July 23, 2006.

C. Additionally, Maintenance customers may choose to license the Shake 4.1
Source Code for $50,000. The Source Code license includes a 5,000 seat
volume license of Shake 4.1. This offer is designed to help facilities with
significant Shake investments maintain a reliable and controllable visual
effects pipeline. Maintenance customers that wish to license the Shake 4.1
Source Code must do so by July 23, 2006. Apple reserves the right to refuse
any maintenance customer source Code access.

Thoughts?

j

[deke-kincaid]

Atleast all our caching and quicktime issues will be fixed with the next gen version of Shake. Also I'm sure it's going to be a gpu compositor instead of a software renderer.

[user_deleted]

From here on in it's anyones guess.....

sigh....Been a long time since they actually announced something new other than being bought out by the man.

Two schools of thought would be that they are finally trying to payback all of us hard core shake users with a little price break for their lack of moving forward with shake since becomming part of the man. OR... the liquidation sale could be on to pave the way for a whole new exciting bug ridden new release of some uber cool apple (motion+shake+FCP) all-in-one-compositing package making everyone start at ground zero again.

Please don't get me wrong, I have made a good living from using shake on feature films and I hope to continue as I believe that it is an amazing package once you have a few years of work outside of the manual learning all the little quirks and broken stems of code. I have not been impressed at ALL as to how they have dealt with support and their lack of moving the technology forward, and I still pray that someday something good will come of this whole apple deal....

~rant off~

[mediasaurus]

Apple, you're unbelievable. You purchase one of the best (if not the best) software companies producing an amazing compositing app and basically manage to bring it to a screeching halt in terms of forward progress. You kill the Windows version, then barely make any improvements, and now the entire Shake program is done?! Apple you sure make it hard to wanna switch over.

To all the former employees of Nothing Real, I applaud you for creating one of the greatest pieces of software I've ever laid hands on.

[user_deleted]

My head is spinning. Great that it is affordable, but will it still support the high-end market?

I was interested to read in the press release that they really pushed the 3d compositing feature. Does this mean there are some serious bug fixes in the multiplane node in the 4.1 release?

Catherine

[user_deleted]

I'm working in a shop that is still using 2.5 on windows, so even though 4.1 is the end of the line, it'll still be used for many years to come. Gonna take an awfully amazing piece of software to compete with Shake as it is today...

j

[joojaa]

The greatest problem shake imposes on apple is that... Its not realya piece of software that reflects macintoshs core mentality. Imean mac progs are geared to be accessible by the common man.

Now then here comes the problem if indeed they make a program that reflects the way apple in general does things its certainly not going to be like shake at all. Wich while its probably GOOD at what it does best, i fear its not going to be that super flexible software shake is. BEcause thats just way too complicated to macintoshes views. Motion on steroids anyone?

Offcourse complex will never get easy, just easier makeing complex even MORE complex.

[deke-kincaid]

QUOTE(mediasaurus @ 06/20/06, 06:28 PM) [snapback]240315[/snapback]
Apple, you're unbelievable. You purchase one of the best (if not the best) software companies producing an amazing compositing app and basically manage to bring it to a screeching halt in terms of forward progress. You kill the Windows version, then barely make any improvements, and now the entire Shake program is done?! Apple you sure make it hard to wanna switch over.

To all the former employees of Nothing Real, I applaud you for creating one of the greatest pieces of software I've ever laid hands on.
psst: the original creators of shake all have thier hands in creating the next gen product.

[mediasaurus]

That's great news. I must admit I'm a little worried about Apple's agenda and the control they'll exert over the process, but the creators of Shake are simply amazing in my book. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Shake's purity will be maintained.

[user_deleted]

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1836

read a possibility for yourself....

[user_deleted]

mediasaurus,

I love this underlying notion that somehow, Apple forced Nothing Real to sell themselves for evil and cruel reasons. And that nothing good could possibly come from those fine programmers having larger resources and security. And somehow all of the incredible press apple gets both for free and puts out themselves about shake and the other pro apps is actually a smoke screen behind which apple can destroy all of these apps. This sits perfectly with the companies history of buying other companies to suppress competition and stifle development. No, wait. That's Microsoft!

Just for a moment, imagine if microsoft had bought nothing real. we would be running shake 2.5.7 by now and be glad if it didn't crash more than three times an hour.

The nothing real team produced a fantastic product that apple barely touched for years because it didn't need to. Why do so many people now assume they would now make a crap product? Isn't all the negative speculation a little insulting to the Nothing Real team, and the Chalice and Combustion teams?

Cheers,

Toby

[deke-kincaid]

QUOTE(mediasaurus @ 06/21/06, 05:49 PM) [snapback]240407[/snapback]
That's great news. I must admit I'm a little worried about Apple's agenda and the control they'll exert over the process, but the creators of Shake are simply amazing in my book. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Shake's purity will be maintained.
I'm really confused by this thought process. Just look at FCP, DVD studio or Motion. Neither are in anyway kiddie or anything like an iapp. DVD studio is actually still a little bit on the complicated side when you used the advanced interface for it. I dont' see why it would be any different with the next gen shake.

[user_deleted]

I think this is all great news. As great as shake is I think we all have to admit that it could be a ton better.
I am a big fan of Motion because it finally brings gpu excelleration to desktop compositing. The current codebase of shake would never support this.
Shake needs to be a true 64 bit applicaiton. Can you imagine using 16 gigs of Ram to comp? From discussions with the shake team this is also not currently possible.
It's great news to hear that they are going to thow out the code and start a clean sheet product. I'm sure it will be ton's faster and actually be interactive.
And now you can finally afford shake for home jobs!
This is the right thing.
Cheers,
Sam

[deke-kincaid]

QUOTE(SamEdwards @ 06/25/06, 06:52 AM) [snapback]240738[/snapback]
I think this is all great news. As great as shake is I think we all have to admit that it could be a ton better.
I am a big fan of Motion because it finally brings gpu excelleration to desktop compositing. The current codebase of shake would never support this.
It actually does. There is gpu shader support in the sdk. Too bad it was never explored.

[director]

hmm. this should be interesting. I just spent the last 7 months learning how to use Shake. I hope the functionality of the application is similar. ... and obviously improved.

[user_deleted]

QUOTE(SamEdwards @ 06/25/06, 06:52 AM) [snapback]240738[/snapback]
It's great news to hear that they are going to thow out the code and start a clean sheet product.

This is exactly what Softimage did for XSI and what was done waaaaay back when 3D Studio was converted to 3DSMax and Eyeon just did the same thing with Fusion. It's not that uncommon and it will be a move forward.

Apple is not going to turn their backs on the domination they have in the market. Fusion is small by comparison, but close on its heels. If you know Shake, you can learn Fusion in about a week and vice versa. Apple is surely aware of this, so they're pretty much giving the program away to keep people hooked. Just with a 2008 release, they need to do a bit more to keep people from wandering off.

I hope the retool will result in an incorporated particle system.

[user_deleted]

Is everyone going to be pissed at me for writing this? I have searched for an academic version of Shake before however just the other day I decided to check again. I just got my copy FedEx'd today, $249.

ajvelez