Weta Digital has announced a partnership with Autodesk to release WetaM, a suite of Weta Digital’s proprietary VFX tools provided as a commercialised cloud-based service.
The tools are built on Maya’s open API, and will be provided by Weta Digital as a subscription cloud service. The launch of WetaM is significant in that it marks the first product launch under a newly formed Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) division within Weta Digital. This new business arm is “an integral part of Weta’s expansion strategy to offer professional and prosumer tools to artists across the global entertainment industry”. Find out more on the WetaM website.
WetaM is expected to be available as a private beta this winter. Read the full PR and sign up for updates on the WetaM website.
Huge
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOW . aaaaaaaamazzzzzzzzzzing
Ok, so it the combination of 2 blobs, available on the cloud only.. ?
I cannot get existed by 2 absolute black boxes available from subscription plan only.
That is the ultimate “pay for it, but never get to know how it’s even made” model…
Good luck with debug and customization…
Better be cheap, because I doubt serious studios will put their company at risk with such a closed product.
This comes to mind, reading the press release:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O_h6N2Qms4
I think this is a great move for Autodesk users in general.
This is another SaaS, AKA: you don’t own anything you pay for, you need a connection to work with it at some point, if you go our of cash flow you put your business in risk.
But the remaining Autodesk users are already comfortable with this kind of business model, so why not add one more monthly cost to the bill?
It’s just xxx$ a month plus all those other xxx$ a month, but hey… you don’t have to do a big front payment, you just have to base your business model on a never-ending payment, I assume that’s awesome for some business.
I mean, I can see the usefulness of this model for BIG studios (little secret… they end up negotiating and never pay what you see because of many reasons), but for small or medium studios? ok, if the studio owner thinks it’s worth the risk and the money, why not? in the end… they already work with Autodesk software, so the biggest risk is there and they assume it 🙂
Smaller studios will most of the time not have the budget or time to utilise these tools anyways, but when they do, now they can. Before there is no way for them to get to these levels of technical control. So making state-of-the-art in house software available for the public is just simple great.
Do you know the pricing to assume that?
Because as far as I read, their target was not mainly big studios, but I may be wrong.
Anyways, medium studios can use this, no matter the price, this is another rental to the bill.
You are the one complaining about cost…
I am talking about time and money in terms of development of projects. Smaller studios with tighter budgets, in my experience tend to use less advanced techniques, like fur, muscle systems, particle simulations, etc. Because projects are shorter there is less opportunities to learn and develop these techniques from the ground up. Having them available as fully developed toolsets and being able to rent it for that one project where you want to try it, seems great to me.
If it makes you feel better, I feel Blenders open-source nature and popularity helped makes this possible. Weta probably wants to promote the techniques they spend so much investing in. Maybe Blur Studios could do the same for 3ds Max?
I’m not talking about the cost, I’m talking about the model, rental and it seems to be cloud based, that’s the problem, not the cost.
Blur shared their inside scripts for years, I don’t remember the name but they were available since always, probably other people can remember the name of the tools, and they shared it for free for everyone for download and use, it’s a different thing 🙂
“state-of-the-art in house”
You do realise these two are orthogonal by definition, yes?
Unless one’s exposed to the wider world, one’s bound to stay experimental.
The real work comes well after the PR is published with excess of pomp (Hey, USD, anyone?), and it’ll have to be on the shoulders of the paying customers, at least for a long while.
Very curious to see where this’ll go, if anywhere.
On that I can agree, I’m very curious.