Yesterday Autodesk announced that it was to acquire Avid’s Softimage. This news has rocked the 3D animation industry to its core. The merger brings two of the biggest competing 3D animation solutions (Autodesk’s Maya and Softimage|XSI) together under one roof. The $35 million deal would give Autodesk control of almost all of Softimage’s assets.

In a press release issued by Autodesk on Thursday the company will continue to develop and offer the following Softimage products: Softimage|XSI, Mod Tool, Face Robot, Cat, Crosswalk, and the Softimage XSI SDK.

This move makes Autodesk the undisputed dominant force in 3D animation and graphics solutions. They now own Maya, the industry standard for computer animation, 3DSMax, and Softimage XSI, among many other products. That portfolio is not only impressive, it’s tenacious. There are few studios out there that are not using one of those products.

So why did this happen? Though one could hardly suggest that the company is struggling, Avid has been losing money. Avid recently brought in a new management team to sort out their financial struggles. After much review, the decision was made to sell the Softimage division. It seems Avid simply needed to ‘lighten its load’ to save money.

Their interests were beyond money, however. The decision to sell Softimage seems to have been in the greater interest of the product. Mike Seymour of fxguide.com interviewed Marc Petit, Senior VP of Autodesk Media and Entertainment. Marc mentioned that it would require a significant investment on Avid’s part to let Softimage grow in the 3D market. The best thing for Softimage was to put in the hands of a company that would better be able to support the growth of the company and its products.

What should we expect from this acquisition? We can only really speculate at this point. It’s very good that Autodesk will continue developing the XSI products. XSI has a lot of technology that Autodesk’s other products can benefit from, and vice versa. XSI currently does not have renderman support. Maya has very solid renderman integration, not to mention Autodesk’s close relationship with Pixar. We expect Renderman intergration into XSI to be a given.

Perhaps this will be good for both parties. While Softimage has seen a strong user base in the gaming industry, Autodesk—and primarily Maya—have enjoyed lucrative adoption and success in the film and VFX industries. Both solutions could really benefit from each other and bridge the gap between those industries.

My biggest concern with this acquisition is the progression of XSI. Popularity has increased with each version of the software, which is now at version 7. XSI has become a serious contender with each subsequent release. With the addition of ICE—XSI 7’s node-based programming environment—the software has put great creative power in the hands of its users. Technology like ICE is the reason XSI needs to continue to grow and progress. If Autodesk can nurture XSI and continue this growth, I believe we will see great things come from this purchase.

The move does leave Autodesk largely uncontested in the market. Now that they own the 3 major 3D animation solutions it leaves few to compete with the behemoth. Hopefully this could centralize development and push the products to new heights. On the other hand we could see stagnation in software development and technology progression. As the video card race between Nvidia and AMD/ATI has shown, direct competition can be the greatest catalyst in technology advancement. It’s in the greater interest of the industry that Autodesk continues to work to keep their products on the bleeding edge of 3D animation technologies.

This very well could be the creation of a new era in 3D animation software, one that leads the many involved media industries to new heights. Regardless of how this acquisition turns out in the future, one thing is assured; we should get used to seeing the name Autodesk.