Apple... Yeah RIGHT

[Michael McLaughlin]

http://petersalvia.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/apple-buys-nuke-rumorama/


but I guess crazier things have happened.

[Kwan Khan]

Nuke from FCP, Keylight included with FCP? Humm
Same Here.... Will take that over Blu-Ray authoring any day.

[Andy Jarosz]

No no no! Please, no. Why fix a good thing when it isin't broken? The foundry was doing fine with Nuke...the last thing I want to see it be is an apple-only product totally messed with.
The Foundry is a smaller company which, sadly, means this is more likely. But after nuke's gone, what's left? Are they going to make their earnings just selling plugins?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Guys... That rumor site is full of crap. Also it was "Phenomenon" not "Persuasion". And the Nuke buy-out is kinda old news, as in it happened last week. And no, Apple is not the buyer! It's ILM.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

ILM didn't buy nuke. They bought a site license for Nuke.

And if Apple buys The Foundry and Shakes Nuke I'm going to go kick Steve Job's ass.

[Martin Weiss]

FULL PRESS RELEASE
London, UK, 3rd June, 2009: Leading visual effects software developer, The Foundry (www.thefoundry.co.uk), whose software products have been used to make many of the past year’s biggest motion pictures, today announced a management buyout for an undisclosed sum led by Advent Venture Partners.
Advent has backed The Foundry’s management team, led by CEO Dr Bill Collis and the original founders, in a transaction that sees the sale of the shareholdings of previous investors, Wyndcrest Holdings.
The Foundry is highly profitable and has more than doubled revenues in the last eighteen months to $10m. Advent’s support will permit the company to continue expansion plans that have seen staff numbers more than double from 20 to over 50 in the past two years, necessitating the company’s expansion into two additional floors of its Wardour Street headquarters.
Established in 1996, The Foundry is a world-leading innovator of visual effects and image-processing technologies that boost productivity in motion picture and video post production. The Foundry’s product portfolio includes two AMPAS (Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences) Sci-Tech Award® winners: Nuke, a high end compositing system, and Furnace, a collection of problem solving tools based on advanced motion estimation technology.
The Foundry has a well-established client base that includes leading visual effects facilities worldwide, such as Weta Digital in Wellington, New Zealand, Framestore in London, and Sony Imageworks and Digital Domain in Los Angeles. It is at the cutting edge of software development, marketing and sales for visual effects compositing. With Nuke, The Foundry has been taking significant share from the market leader, Apple’s Shake product, since 2007, and Advent believes it will become the industry standard over the next few years.
Nuke was originally developed by Los Angeles post-production house, Digital Domain, before becoming part of The Foundry’s offering in 2007. Since then, The Foundry has invested aggressively in the product’s development, culminating in 12 software releases.
The Foundry’s products have facilitated ambitious effects sequences on numerous major Hollywood blockbusters including: The Dark Knight, the Harry Potter franchise, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street; Speed Racer; Iron Man, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Star Trek, Australia, Watchmen, X-Men Origins, Wolverine and many more.
Commenting on the completion of the transaction, Bill Collis, CEO of The Foundry said, ”The Foundry is renowned for responding to user need and developing useful tools that boost productivity. With the backing of our previous investors, we enjoyed substantial growth and are now in a strong position to take the business forward with our new partners. We are ready to realise our further ambitions for Nuke and the rest of our product portfolio, ensuring the company goes from strength to strength whilst maintaining strong customer focus.”
Mike Chalfen, General Partner at Advent Venture Partners, remarked, “We are delighted to be backing an innovative and entrepreneurial management team with such a strong reputation and enviable market leading track record that together will generate interesting opportunities for this business. The Foundry‘s products are ubiquitous in its field, its Ocula 3D stereoscopic technology is poised to dominate its market, and the company is a true European digital technology success story. Furthermore, our investment fits with Advent’s strategic focus of backing capital efficient, defensible and differentiated businesses that have a number of levers to make money for shareholders. We look forward to working with the team to realise the company‘s enormous potential.”

[Curran Giddens]

Yeah, old news. They just got a new backer, that's all.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

The Fxguide writeup:
http://www.fxguide.com/article535.html

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

The Fxguide writeup:
http://www.fxguide.com/article535.html

If you read that article, it seems that Apple is going to have to move from their buts and begin working on their pro-apps again, because many of the industry are thinking (or are already) of switching to other workflows than Shake...

(I'm not a visual fx artist, just reading the article).

You can't blame them. Apple buys Shake, do a great thing by lowering the price, but then completely abandons all support or development on the program. Let's hope FCS 3 and Snow Leopard has some nice suprises for everyone...
Because it's pitty that Apple, so long a big force in the creative industry, has been doing so much strange moves towards their (old?) customer base... (Expresscardslot, glossy screens, firewire, glossy ACD, limited connectivity on the ACD...)

[Jeff Kilgroe]

ILM didn't buy nuke. They bought a site license for Nuke.

And if Apple buys The Foundry and Shakes Nuke I'm going to go kick Steve Job's ass.

Yeah, my bad... I was operating off incomplete info too. Ooops.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Honestly I don't think Apple can afford to get back into the game.

Shake was the definitive application in the First Generation Compositor category but entering the game now I think would be prohibitively expensive. The expectations are so much higher now and Apple honestly has almost no experience in the field. When was the last time you ever heard Apple even apply innovactive image manipulation algorithms let alone develop them?

Actually if anyone was well positioned to enter the game it would be Microsoft. They publish more Siggraph papers and have a huge investment in image processing. Their 3D Division is second to none. They have an enormous influence on the interactive 3D industry through DX.

I also don't think it would be competitive enough to push Apple Computers.

[GlennChan]

Microsoft has some interesting stuff in Digital Image Suite... e.g. if it had the right interface for video, it might be an interesting specialty tool for rotoscoping.

But it seems like Microsoft's interest in that has waned as they no longer develop DIS.

2- The economics of visual effects software doesn't seem that compelling to me... there's enough competition out there already.

Shake
Autodesk's/Discreet's numerous products, e.g. Combustion FFI
After Effects
Nuke
Motion (kinda)
Digital Fusion

The Foundry only makes $10M in revenue? Microsoft will hardly get excited over that. Adobe makes $3.5B in revenue. That is more Microsoft sized. But unfortunately it seems that they can't do much against Adobe (e.g. Frontpage? Meh. Digital Image Suite? Discontinued. etc. etc.).

[Brandon Kraemer]

A lot of folks have already moved towards Nuke, but Shake is still a valuable tool to compositors and I don't see what that would change anytime soon. If ILM bought a Nuke site license than that is good news for users of Nuke everywhere. ILM's pipeline was very dependent on Shake and they must be migrating away from that, but I doubt they are cutting the cord completely.

Also the developer of Shake left Apple to help with the development of Nuke. If (and this is not the case) Apple bought the Foundry, it's not like it would change the development much, and as a FCP user I would welcome more integration with Nuke.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Shake is very dated now, but still a great application for sure. And at the current price, I don't see how anyone doing any kind of motion media creation could justify not owning it if they have a Mac to run it on. But like I said, it's dated. It can't run in the same league as Nuke or Fusion these days.