SAN FRANCISCO — Tweak Software, the developer of the RV image and sequence playback tool, has been acquired by Autodesk and will be joining forces with Shotgun Software. Effective immediately, the Tweak and Shotgun teams will work together to advance review and collaboration technology in an effort to equip visual effects, games and animation artists and supervisors with the tools they need.
The entire Tweak staff is joining Autodesk and will continue to work as a unit in the Shotgun team under the leadership of Tweak’s Jim Hourihan, Seth Rosenthal and Alan Trombla, in close partnership with Shotgun’s Don Parker. In addition to looking for new avenues to further integrate RV, Shotgun and Autodesk tools, Tweak will continue to develop, support and sell RV as an open and pipeline-agnostic tool.
"I'm excited to announce that our friends at Tweak, makers of the mighty RV player, will be joining our Shotgun team here at Autodesk! (Autodesk has acquired Tweak’s team and technology.) Effective this week, our combined teams will work side by side to build artists and supervisors the review collaboration tools they need to do their best work in a rapidly changing industry.
If you don’t know Tweak (what?!), they developed the RV image and sequence viewer relied on everyday by tens of thousands of artists, production teams, and studios worldwide. If you make a living creating images, you need an awesome tool to review them; knowing playback speed is great, color is spot on, and even things like stereo and high frame rates will just work. That’s RV. And like us, the Tweak team comes out of production, works closely with clients to build new tools, and is obsessed with providing amazing client support.
We’ve worked closely with them for years, integrating our tools, sharing booth space at Siggraph, traveling on road shows, and even throwing some great parties (white Russians anyone?!). Inevitably during most our events, we’d start brainstorming on how we could join forces to build products for our customers as a single, unified team. Autodesk has now given us the opportunity to bring all of our tech, teams, and experience together.
This deal was designed with our customers in mind. Let’s address some obvious questions:
What is happening to the Tweak team?
The whole Tweak team is joining the Autodesk Shotgun team, working as a unit under Jim, Seth, and Alan’s leadership and in close partnership with me and the rest of the Shotgun team.
Will RV stay on the market?
Yes. We plan to continue to develop, support and sell RV, and keep it open to integration by other companies.
Will I still get the same (legendary) support from Tweak?
If you have an existing Tweak support contract, your terms won’t change with this acquisition and you will continue to be serviced by the Tweak team as part of Autodesk. Their support team and tools will stay in place, and they’ll continue to operate and communicate with all of their customers as part of Autodesk. Over time, we’ll back them up with our “street team” to make sure you can come to the same great team about any issue and we’ll have you covered.
Will you combine Shotgun and RV?
We’re certainly going to do all we can to make using all our software great with no set-up time. We’re brainstorming through this now and will report back.
Is there a catch?
Nope. This is all good news.
I can’t tell you how excited we all are to be under one (virtual) roof, with direct access to all of the technology we’ve developed collectively and more resources to go faster for our clients. This is our idea of a dream team, and we expect great things to come out of it. Hold us to that."
Cheers,
Don and the Shotgunners (now with Tweak!)