"CG industry continues to struggle"

[Lupaz]

That's according to an article.
I wasn't looking into those titles really. My query was in the terms of CG industry growth. That's what's sad.

But what I found shocking, and probably I've got too late to the party, is that Autodesk isn't giving profits.

An article here celebrates a %13 jump on the stocks in august due to subscription increasing.

"The big news in the quarter was a 109,000 seat increase in subscriptions, ending the quarter with 2.82 million subscribers."

But then it says:

"Autodesk is still losing money, but its move to a subscription model should make the business more stable long-term. That's why there's so much excitement over the growth in subscribers, despite a decline in earnings. In fact, revenue may continue to fall as the model changes, but as customers are moved to subscriptions the company should make more money.
It's tough to determine what a software company that's losing money should be worth"

It's really shocking to me.
I was wondering if you guys feel that the CG industry is stagnant. I kind of feel it's been for a while now, no?.



EDIT: This is actually funny.
The market research in 2012 was giving a steady growth
The same research company shows this now: https://jonpeddie.com/press-releases...illion-by-2019

[AlexP]

I think it's inevitable as more design firms have moved towards sketchup and revit in-house (talking about Arch viz)

A lot of the smaller jobs have dropped off as it's just easier (and cheaper) for them to do a quick sketchup.

Large percentage of our jobs now start with the clients revit model. Few years ago, this would never have been the case, just cad plan and sketch.

It isn't a huge leap to expect that they will just do their own renders where they can, the designers can use revit/sketchup so they dont need extra personnel or cost. It's only a matter of time until Vray for skp/revit becomes good enough that they can produce "good enough" quality renders as they design.
Save the outsourcing for the jobs that really need it, the bigger jobs or more competitive jobs etc. Or where top quality visuals are needed to sign off designs etc.

[glorybound]

I have been crazy busy for three years, so I an not seeing a decline. Yes, larger architects have people in house, but for every large firm, there are 100 smaller ones who just don't have the talent in-house. Most of my work has been coming from the developers or real-estate firms. Many times the architect provides a rendering, but they are nowhere near the quality it would take to sell the property; most are SU renderings. If you are doing average work, then I think you'll have problem, but if you are doing stellar work, you'll be fine. This past year I have had a dozen projects come to me because the person they were using isn't doing anything special and it isn't setting their product above the rest, which is what they are looking for.

[AlexP]

I have been crazy busy for three years, so I an not seeing a decline. Yes, larger architects have people in house, but for every large firm, there are 100 smaller ones who just don't have the talent in-house. Most of my work has been coming from the developers or real-estate firms. Many times the architect provides a rendering, but they are nowhere near the quality it would take to sell the property; most are SU renderings. If you are doing average work, then I think you'll have problem, but if you are doing stellar work, you'll be fine. This past year I have had a dozen projects come to me because the person they were using isn't doing anything special and it isn't setting their product above the rest, which is what they are looking for.

Out of interest, what proportion of your work is residential / commercial / etc?

[glorybound]

In my case, I am 90% residential and 10% commercial.

[AlexP]

We're the other way round, but also in UK so will be a bit different. But, find that the bigger design firms are also the stingiest with money.
There has definitely been a shift, but we aren't doing the sort of jobs that someone like Dbox do. Generally much smaller size projects, usually very fast turnaround.

[Nicinus]

I think it will be very hard to make a living for average viz artists in the future, something that in effect may mean it will be difficult for Autodesk to focus 3ds Max on arch viz. I can see why they've seemed to position Maya on VFX and Max on games.

Some of the real time engines for Revit, the king in architecture, are rapidly approaching better than average renderer quality.

[Companioncube]

VR/AR should lead to a growth, it's still too new to be having any noticeable affect.

[glorybound]

I don't know. We have this conversation every year and all it does is puts fear into people. We have thousands of architects in the states and most are small firms with a few people. Most larger firms are now contracting out as much as they can, it's a trend that we will see more and more of. Even if they do keep their in-house guys, most are CAD tech's that find the render button in Revit. In a lot of cases, for residential, the builder is providing the plans and they don't have any in-house means to produce a marketable rendering.

[Lupaz]

Bobby, the original post, and the statistics, were about CGI in general, not just arch viz.

In any case, it's true that we had the conversation many times, but those things that people were saying 10 years ago are already happening.

"We have thousands of architects in the states and most are small firms with a few people."
Many outsource to cheaper countries or they just render in sketchup.
A small architect will not pay $1000 for an image if they can get a decent rendering for free with an intern.

"Most larger firms are now contracting out as much as they can, it's a trend that we will see more and more of."
In my opinion this is way wrong.
Larger firms have enough workload to have their own "renderers". Also BIM is slowly becoming mainstream. This means that they'll take engineers to deal with it and the renderings will come from it as crumbs from a cookie.

[Lupaz]

VR/AR should lead to a growth, it's still to new to be having any noticeable affect.

Totally agree.
It may take a good 15 years for AR though, when VR headsets become more like contact lenses.

[glorybound]

Since the US housing market crash, company's didn't bring back the people they laid off, they are outsourcing. I agree, some will go the cheap route, but that'll only bring them so far. The bigger companies will go overseas, to render sweatshops, but the smaller ones still want to keep things in the states, even if it does cost more. I am seeing a trend of architects ditching the computer and going back to paper. I guess the price of software is sinking them, so they are just pulling the plug. Heck, I just downloaded a trial of Autocad; what the heck happened there? AutoCAD has become some bloated mess that is no longer intuitive.

[Sawyer]

Since the US housing market crash, company's didn't bring back the people they laid off, they are outsourcing.

I would say the complete opposite is true here. Our firm was at 14 at the worst of the crash now we are looking to hire our 40th person. And in our area I see every firm is hiring as quick as possible. What I have seen is the value of the rendered image is very variable. Some clients are fine with a Revit image other projects need fully rendered photoreal and there are a few qualities in-between. I see less outsourcing overseas than I did before the crash but thats just me. I havent heard of a single person going to paper. Our deliverable is more and more BIM models so even the print is of less value than the model. But we are mostly hospital MOB and schools no residential.

Companies like Adesk have a tough biz model to perform to. They need more influx of cash but most software is pretty close to mature and they have reached almost saturation of the market.

[gandhics]

Companies like Adesk have a tough biz model to perform to. They need more influx of cash but most software is pretty close to mature and they have reached almost saturation of the market.

This is the exact reason why almost all companies eventually will go rental model( I'm not saying I like that nor support that).
For them, transitioning to rental is the matter of future survival.
I would not be surprise even VRay move to renal in the future.

[Sawyer]

This is the exact reason why almost all companies eventually will go rental model( I'm not saying I like that nor support that).
For them, transitioning to rental is the matter of future survival.
I would not be surprise even VRay move to renal in the future.

Yup and they will all figure it out. I dont feel bad for adesk.