Nuke logoWary of The Foundry’s recent purchase of the Nuke compositing app developed by Digital Domain, Autodesk has terminated the company’s membership in Autodesk’s Authorized Developer Network (ADN) program that gives it access to beta software, source code, and other potentially sensitive information. So if you’re an Autodesk jockey who’s been thinking about beefing up your repertoire with some of the plug-ins available from The Foundry, now may be a good time to buy — the company is offering deep discounts on its Autodesk products at least until the end of January. The catch is that the future of the products is in doubt.


“At the moment, we don’t have any access to Autodesk software — we’ve had to delete our copies of Flame and the like — so we can’t actually support our customers,” Foundry CEO Bill Collis told StudioDaily. “They don’t want to help a competitor, which isn’t an unreasonable stance to take. But there are ways to solve the problem that don’t give us sensitive information.”

Collis said he received word at the beginning of December that The Foundry was going to lose its authorized-developer status, but said his company has been in discussions with Autodesk since then, trying to find a solution that works for both companies. “We’re hopeful that they come up with something, and we’re waiting to hear back from them,” Collis said.

An Autodesk spokesperson confirmed that the two companies are still trying to work out a mutually agreeable solution, and made it clear that Autodesk isn’t trying to keep The Foundry from developing plug-ins based on their access to published software. But it’s difficult, Autodesk says, to justify more intimate relations with a developer that is selling a competing product.

Collis said that although the Autodesk plugins have historically been very important to The Foundry, representing “some of the best, brightest, and most creative customers,” today they generate only “a tiny percentage” of the company’s overall revenues. So The Foundry doesn’t appear to be in any financial danger from this situation.

It will be a shame, for both companies as well as (more importantly!) the users, if the products go away completely. But if you’ve been dragging your feet on picking them up, and you’re fairly confident you won’t be reliant on tech support or long-term compatibility to get your money’s worth, node-locked licenses for Furnace GUI (retiming, degraining, match-grading, wire removal) and Tinder GUI (blurs, flares) have been reduced to a mere $1000, and Keylight GUI (a blue-screen and green-screen keyer) is just $500.