About three months ago I made a hard decision and left the Maya development team at Autodesk. It was a hard decision because I'd been part of the Maya team since January 1994, when I started as a student intern. The main reason I left is that I had been working on the same piece of software for thirteen years, which is an eternity in the software industry. The Maya team is a great group of people and they've got lots of big plans for Maya stretching off for years into the future. But for me, its time for a change.

My new gig is Side Effects Software, makers of the Houdini 3D animation software. While Autodesk is the fifth largest software company in the world, Side Effects is at least in the top five makers of software named after famous escape artists. That is too say, they are a much smaller shop. For a developer, that means a less overhead and more connection to the customers.

For anyone who's written Houdini off as a niche product should have a look at the Houdini 9 Public Beta. There are some great things happening in Houdini.

Now that I've gotten this post out of the way, I hope to get back to writing up bits and bobs that I come across, probably unrelated to my daily work for the most part.