Wait a second Chicken Littles!

Before starting unfounded rumors about the ultimate assimilation and demise of our favorite 3D app to Autodesk, let's take a minute and think.

It currently makes little sense for Autodesk or anyone else to purchase Vue as is, because of the pipeline issues. Vue needs to be able to use plugins and 3rd party renderers-- which it doesn't. Also, it's mostly impossible to export Vue object files into other applications-- as they don't manage objects the same ways. Of course, xStream does offer compositing solutions, but at Vue's current rendertimes, I'm not so sure it's all that attractive to someone like Autodesk. Much better for matte painters.

Besides, they (Autodesk) have their hands full right now with SI.

Now on to the new Pioneer product line. Not sure if anyone saw it, but from what I read, the cool thing is you can upgrade from Pioneer all the way to Vue7 Complete-- either all at once, or module by module. And I suspect, the 'issues' which plague an Esprit to Pro upgrade shouldn't be 'issues' anymore, as I would assume designing such an architecture would have the developers working out the migration tools/plugins in a much smarter way.

So, if you don't have the money to upgrade to Complete right off the bat, you can probably 'upgrade' to Esprit or Pioneer and then buy modules you need/want now, then wait later for your next paycheck to buy the rest!

I imagine they'll also have a sidegrade offer for Vue Infinite users to Complete as well-- which I suspect wouldn't cost too much either. So, before we get all upset regarding pricing, perhaps we should wait and see what the upgrade / sidegrade / downgrade prices will be? Just a thought.

Frankly, I think this 'modules upgrade path'  is a very smart way to do things.