Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
What!??

What is Apple doing??

This makes no sense to me.

Keep Shake maintained and updated until your other app is ready to go. Now you are going to have people jumping back to Nuke and such (on a pc). Such that when Phenomenon comes out, people are going to be all comfy in Nuke land and not want to jump back to the mac side. (Obviously some will... but not all.)

They are cutting off their own balls here.

Makes no sense to me. I love shake!

Of course I'm sure Apple had SOMEONE think this through somewhere along the lines... so I' probably worried for nothing.

~B
 
Wow... Macrumors has a source now... this is pretty significant. Finally we get some original esclusive rumors here, and this source is highly accurate.
 
arn said:
That quote comes from Apple, so Shake is definitely done.

arn

But the quote doesn't say Shake is done. ???? It just says the next generation of Shake compositing software.

Just says to me that there will be a major upgrade to and I quote "shake compositing software."

I believe it's true that Shake is dead, but it certainly isn't that quote that makes it so.
 
sprynmr said:
What is Apple doing??

This makes no sense to me.

Keep Shake maintained and updated until your other app is ready to go. Now you are going to have people jumping back to Nuke and such (on a pc). Such that when Phenomenon comes out, people are going to be all comfy in Nuke land and not want to jump back to the mac side. (Obviously some will... but not all.)

They are cutting off their own balls here.

Makes no sense to me. I love shake!

Of course I'm sure Apple had SOMEONE think this through somewhere along the lines... so I' probably worried for nothing.

~B

They'll probably have some sort of cross-upgrade path, but they should mention it. Instead they've dropped the price $2500! That will get more switchers to Shake (and the Apple platform) and then the next version, reportedly shake-like and based on Motion code, will be their next choice.
 
baleensavage said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Shake big news in the video industry? It seems to me that Apple is pulling an iPod Nano here, pulling the plug on a successful product at the height of it's popularity. One can only hope that this "phenomenon" is just that and knocks everyone's socks off.

You're wrong. It's big new in the film industry!
 
Looks to me like what has happened is Apple has removed staff from the Shake project and aigned them to work on this new product. Reasignning staf is the only effective way to transfer "shake technology". Of cource de-staffing Shake means that no new releases will happen. Apple could not clone the staff so this is how they handed it.
 
bretm said:
But the quote doesn't say Shake is done. ???? It just says the next generation of Shake compositing software.

Just says to me that there will be a major upgrade to and I quote "shake compositing software."

I believe it's true that Shake is dead, but it certainly isn't that quote that makes it so.

Perhaps. I suppose if the next version is called Shake, than this is a lot about nothing. Still, it is a very strange transition.

arn
 
Also note that Apple has offered Shake customers currently on the maintenance contract the option of licensing the source code for $50000 including 5000 seats for it as well.
Something similar like this has happened in the past.
When SoftImage 3D turned v3.9 (I think it was) it's source code too was up for sale. I believe ILM (Industrial Light+Magic... George Lucas' Effects facility for those not it the know) made use of this and bought in to it. SoftImage (the developer) was at the time working on it's next gen version of the software which we know today as XSI. In light of this I can totally understand Apple's reasoning behind all this.
It'll be interesting to see what happens in the mean time with the Shake client base. SoftImage ended up loosing a huge slice of the pie to Alias Wavefront's Maya as their XSI development time dragged on longer than it should have.
Whilst there are competitors in the VFX compositing market (Nuke, Digital Fusion, Combustion, perhaps Toxik to name a few) I doubt we'll see an instant departure from Shake.

tipdrill407 said:
I hope "Phenomenon" or w/e will be bundled in FCS so we could all play around with it.

I hope not. Applications like Shake are pretty hard core and run hugely complex compositing trees. Trust me when I say that Apple will alienate the majority of vfx compositors if they all of the sudden were forced to work inside an editing app. to do their single shot composites. It's extra system resource baggage they'll have no use for.
I'd much rather see Apple design it for easy interaction in their Pro software pipeline. But please.. nothing embedded.
 
I'm going to guess this next product will move most of the heavy-lifting code over to be GPU-based rather than CPU-based, and it may require some spectacular new GPU technologies than only Apple (and ATI and NVidea) currently knows about. 4x/8x/16x GPUs, new shader engines, 16 bit-per-channel optimizations, large amounts of fast VRAM (useful for storing many temporary buffers in a compositing app, and for dealing with film-resolution material), etc.
 
arn said:
That quote comes from Apple, so Shake is definitely done.

arn

Apple's quote says: "as we begin work on the next generation of Shake compositing software."

Note the use of Shake in their own quote. It may still be called Shake since they say it right in the quote.
 
Major VFX work

Here's something that doesn't get taken into consideration enough when talking about Shake and Apple... The fact is that (whilst it is used on all the big VFX films) all the big VFX companies use the Linux version. All the Shake shots for King Kong and LOTR were done on Linux boxes. Most of these big FX houses have complex data piplines built round Linux scripts, and the OS X version of Shake just isn't an option. Also the Linux version is the one the big boys go with because it is faster.

Maybe Apple are killing off Shake because they want to recode from scratch so that the OS X version will be industry quality (like the Linux one is)?.

I always find it funny that when Apple shows shots from Kong in their Shake demos that they were not done on Macs. Not that It matters, I'm sure each individual shot could be done just as well on a Mac, but they certainly don't mind people not realising that they weren't.
 
Strangely worded, but...

I read this as:

No Updates = Next version, you must pay full price.

Phenomena = code name for next version of Shake, which may or may not have a name change.
 
baleensavage said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Shake big news in the video industry? It seems to me that Apple is pulling an iPod Nano here, pulling the plug on a successful product at the height of it's popularity. One can only hope that this "phenomenon" is just that and knocks everyone's socks off.

When an Apple product failes or ceases to meet Job's "insanely great" expectations, he kills it instead of letting it simply run its course. In that one aspect, Jobs is a marketing nightmare.

Rocketman
 
ChrisA said:
Looks to me like what has happened is Apple has removed staff from the Shake project and aigned them to work on this new product. Reasignning staf is the only effective way to transfer "shake technology". Of cource de-staffing Shake means that no new releases will happen. Apple could not clone the staff so this is how they handed it.


There should be ONE guy at Apple dedicated to offering a free OS 9.2.8 upgrade and incremental upgrades to dead software. The code exists and sufficient feedback has been received for some really easy and helpful upgrades to "old" stuff.

Mac Draw II on OS 10.4? :)

Rocketman
 
Macrumors said:
no further software updates are planned as we begin work on the next generation of Shake compositing software.

What am I missing here? It just sounds like this is the end of version 4. "Next generation of Shake" means there is going to be another Shake in the future...
 
count chocula said:
i'm kinda surprised that they arent going to have anything until 2008. that's going to be some really impressive software i bet.
Let's hope so!

Shake really needs to take on Inferno, which is a truly amazing piece of kit.

AndreMA said:
I read this as:

No Updates = Next version, you must pay full price.

Phenomena = code name for next version of Shake, which may or may not have a name change.
Same here.

I don't think there's any need for a name change, I just see this as Apple wanting to move the Shake userbase to a different licensing model (ie a more standard software one).

Also, I bet it won't be 2008 ;)

Edit : OH! Maybe this was the project that the "game" developers were hired for??? Hmmm. Makes sense!
 
Highland said:
I don't think there's any need for a name change, I just see this as Apple wanting to move the Shake userbase to a different licensing model (ie a more standard software one).

Also, I bet it won't be 2008!


It seems the uber users used the "tree" feature in Shake, so at minimum Apple should retain that capability in some form in the next Shake.

With an app of this magnitude even version control becomes quite helpful and as for the linux features, let's not forget BSD unix which OSX is, has all those features. People simply do not use them simply because there is a GUI to "confuse them".

I have claimed for several years Apple needs "supplemental" GUI's which access the *.* and rare aspects of linux/BSD for "the rest of us".

Unix without unix. BBedit does this with files.

That would be insanely great for production environments and enterprises.

A specialized GUI for
® multiple file import/mod
® network admin
® oldfile modernization
® oldOS emulation

Rocketman
 
Rocketman said:
It seems the uber users used the "tree" feature in Shake, so at minimum Apple should retain that capability in some form in the next Shake.
As does Inferno, Flame and Combustion (to name a few). I think it's the standard approach for high end compositing, and I'd expect to see it in the next Shake.
 
Interesting, wonder what this new app will do, Motion base and 2 years, should be good :cool:
 
Hmmmm 2008! This means....

The date say one thing to me. INTEL ONLY!!! It will require processors and expecially graphics engines that are top notch. It may require the move to Intel.

At some point they will drop all PowerPC support but probably not until 2010. I bet there might even be some really cool Intel only features in 10.5 (like we have Front Row now) that will prod a move for the existing base.
 
Someone already mentioned that the Linux version of Shake was used on most of these films but also it needs to be noted that Shake wasn't the only tool used. People still have Infernos that they are paying off or have paid off and they are using those also. I work in film/video post-production and know a number of digital artists/VFX supervisors and most of them aren't all that enamored of Shake. It gets used but it's not their go to tool. Other people may have different experiences. Your mileage may vary.


tk421 said:
Here is a partial list of films using Shake:

The Lord of the Rings
King Kong
Harry Potter
War of the Worlds
Star Wars Episode III
Fantastic 4
Mission Impossible 3
Poseidon
The Incredibles
Hulk
Pirates of the Caribbean 2
Cinderella Man

And here's a quote from a press release from Apple in 2004:

“We’re thrilled that for seven years in a row, movies created with Shake have won the Oscar for best visual effects,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Shake is helping Hollywood film editors communicate their vision and deliver their art at an Academy Award winning level. We couldn't be happier.”
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.