It's been long enough Smithmicro

[heyvern]

WooooHoooo!

I feel just like John Denver at the end of the movie "Oh God!".

I am an employee of Smith Micro who works full time on Anime Studio.

They let you go home and visit your family at night and on weekends though right? Or at least every other weekend?

Keep up the... uh... work*.

*I'd say keep up the "good work" but we won't know for sure till we see it.



-vern

[synthsin75]

WOOHOOO!!!

Full time developement! That's amazing news Mike! Hopefully this will also improve our experience with Smith Micro, now that we have a trusted 'inside man'.

This news has totally made my day.

Mike, are you still the sole developer, or do you expect Smith Micro to support a team for developement? And what, if anything, do you expect this to do for pricing? Do you still maintain the rights to AS? Last I heard you had only sold the distro rights to SM.

[Lost Marble]

This news has totally made my day.

Glad to hear it!

Mike, are you still the sole developer, or do you expect Smith Micro to support a team for developement? And what, if anything, do you expect this to do for pricing? Do you still maintain the rights to AS? Last I heard you had only sold the distro rights to SM.

Unfortunately, I'm no longer speaking as "just myself", but now as part of the company. This means I can't always speak freely. Hopefully I'll get a clearer understanding of what kinds of things I can say, but for now I think I'll just avoid specific questions.

It's not that companies don't like to communicate with customers. But suppose a company says that product A is going to be released on date B for a price of C dollars. This could cause people to go out and buy or sell stock, and then if A, B, or C changes, you've opened yourself up to lawsuits and all kinds of nastiness.

-Mike

[synthsin75]

Hopefully I'll get a clearer understanding of what kinds of things I can say, but for now I think I'll just avoid specific questions.

Understandable.

Hopefully this means we may have better announcements of future updates. That last one was a bit of a debacle.

Hope you enjoy the new employer, Mike.

[mkelley]

Which is very good news for all of us...

[chucky]

Wooohooo Awesome, thanks Mike. This is great news.

[Rudiger]

If I wore a hat it would certainly be off right now to both Mike and Smith-Micro.

If I say negative things about Anime Studio, it's only because I can see the great potential in it and hate the thought of it going to waste. However, hearing that Smith-Micro is putting money into it, and Mike is leading the development has certainly made my whole year!

And Vern, I'm glad that you find my posts humerous . For the record, I never said that it doesn't take a great deal of effort to add new features and fix bugs. Obviously, the features that were added weren't ones that GreyKid thought they would use, otherwise I believe they would have upgraded. I mean they're not using Moho3 or Moho4, are they?

[Víctor Paredes]

I didn't wanted to be part of the discussion (i always feel limited by the language), but i always trust in the future of AS, it's a tremendous software that can't be discontinued. thanks mike to write here, you really make happy a lot of people, included me.

[DK]

Great news Mike....congratulations.

Cheers
D.K

[heyvern]

And Vern, I'm glad that you find my posts humerous .

Hope I wasn't too harsh but I laughed so hard... coffee came out my nose. It just struck me funny when I read it... the wording of it. Some programs only get ONE feature with a new version but AS 5.6 had 3. Of course we knew ahead of time what they were which made the wait so much worse. I like it better not knowing. It doesn't build up expectations.

------

On a side note:

A while back Martin Hash created a special group called "The Hash Fellows". Our job was to create a list of ten features for the next version of Animation Master, discuss and "argue" amongst ourselves in a private area of the forum, narrow it down to 3 features and he would pick one to be implemented into A:M.

It was a pretty cool feature we ended up with... although... I had no idea what it was at the time. Support for the multichannel OpenEXR image format. What the heck is "EXR"? Isn't that a Windows executable? Anyway, he only did that experiment once. It wasn't a fun process. And poor Martin had to figure out how to implement it.

Hash puts out a new version each year because of the subscription model for Animation Master. Usually there is ONE big new feature... like hair, or physics simulation, or in the current beta, fluids and liquid simulations. Hash has a small team (ten or less at last count, may be less) more than just one programmer. But of course AM is 3D which makes it harder.

But being on the "inside" during that feature experiment was a real eyeopener for me. Hearing first hand from the guy who created the software and ran the company for 20 years, what is involved with software development and adding even just one simple new feature and putting up with miserable complaining customers... holy crap! It is hard... very very hard. No one is ever completely happy.

I will never ever ever ever take "adding features" or creating a "new version" of anything lightly. It's a chore. And look at the list of what everyone wants in Anime Studio? No matter what gets chosen for the short list there will be bunches of annoyed people... waiting for the next version.

I have no clue... zero... nada what v6 will be like... but I know it will be cool as heck and I can't wait. Will I get the GI-Joe with kung-fu grip or remote control car for christmas? If I get a sweater and a pair of socks... well... I'll be warm and my feet will look nice.

-vern

[madrobot]

But I can tell you the simple facts: I am an employee of Smith Micro who works full time on Anime Studio.

Please rest assured that this is very good news for Anime Studio.

-Mike

Thank you very much for this fantastic news:!:
That is awesome, and I am stoked.

[DK]

EDIT: stoked = (pronounced stow-kd), Californian surfspeak term for very happy

D.K

[chucky]

Hey DK sorry but stoked is ...like totally Californian surfspeak.

[DK]

Thanks Chucky!

Cheers
D.K

[slowtiger]

From my limited programming experience I know that "adding a feature" often is the easier task, compared to "re-implement an existing feature in a more comfortable way" - but the second is the one where a program really scores. It's all about usability.

Have a look at Photoshop. That is one of the slickest pieces of consumer software ever made, and it is successful because the Knoll Bros. made some clever decisions right at the start. One of them was the implementation of a plug-in API. With that kind of architecture, the core program only supplies basic file handling and so on, while the big bunch of image filtering and other manipulations could be done by little blackboxes, the plug-ins. And they always had clever marketing, too. Remember the flood of third-party plug-ins in the 90's? Everbody and my aunt coded some nifty little PS filter. Most of them were utterly useless - but some of them got the accolade of being inculded in the next official release. Which was another clever marketing stunt: any new filter counts as a new function - and a plug-in can be developed without even touching the core application.

Every long-time coder knows that situation where any change to an existing software is more difficult than the last, because former decisions fence him with restriction after restriction. Often it's a good decision to re-write exitsting code in a way to get back the flexibility of a more open architecture. The user might not notice this at all, or only if he gets some more preference options.

I noticed that my own wishes to Santa Mike tend to go into the direction "existing feature X, but with more knobs to adjust it to my personal needs", or my other favourite "it works, but please make it easier to use". The latter one is perhaps the most difficult task for every programmer!