Re: The Softimage mailing list

[James De Colling]

I'm shipping my last softimage project next week. A great way to see it off! 
Still have yet to find a replacement, blender looks like somthing I'll invest 
some time into.

James.

Get Outlook for 
iOS

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
 on behalf of Stephan Haidacher 

Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2020 12:13:31 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com 
Subject: Re: The Softimage mailing list

I'm still using xsi for productions as well ;) (but i find myself doing more 
and more in houdini these days)
While i've rarely posted on this list, i've probably read most of the 96k 
messages since 2005 ;) and it was very helpful to say the least. So thanks 
everybody, i'll for sure miss this great community! (if it every disperses)

best,
  --stephan

On 2/18/2020 12:05 PM, Olivier Jeannel wrote:
Hahaha

Le mar. 18 févr. 2020 à 12:02, Chris Marshall 
mailto:chrismarshal...@gmail.com>> a écrit :
currently animating maggots.

On Tue, 18 Feb 2020 at 10:44, Chris Marshall 
mailto:chrismarshal...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Still here and still using it daily.


On Tue, 11 Feb 2020 at 16:54, Kris Rivel 
mailto:krisri...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Great thread, trying to catch up on these. LOL. Still nice to see familiar 
names on here. I'm still using it especially for animation. If you tried 
messing with animation curves in Maya or C4d...ugh...forget it. I'm still in 
the commercial biz and maybe one of the last few generalists still working. I 
use Soft constantly and have a brand new box and it still runs great for now! I 
try to use other apps when I have the time or if there's something I just can't 
ignore that's actually pretty cool but I'll still use Soft forever most likely. 
Hope this community keeps going!

Kris

On Tue, Feb 4, 2020 at 10:07 AM Artur W 
mailto:artur.w...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I am currently using XSI modeling for cinematic. I can't really use anything 
else. Even though I don't usually do that nowadays, coming back is so easy.

On Mon, Feb 3, 2020 at 11:35 PM Ben Barker 
mailto:ben.bar...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Literally yesterday ran into a modeler using XSI in production. We had a great 
chat.

On Sun, Feb 2, 2020 at 12:05 PM David Saber 
mailto:davidsa...@sfr.fr>> wrote:
Hah good news. I hope this community stays alive. Even if it's smaller
now, it's still the BEST 3d community ever!!

Is François Lord still around?


Thanks

David


On 2020-01-30 19:12, Alan Fregtman wrote:
> > hello, the Google Group is juts for archiving? Can we talk on this?
>
> You will be able to when the official list officially dies. It's still
> running so the Google Group is read-only to avoid confusion/fragmentation.
>
> (François Lord is an admin, I think??)
>

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Mint Motion Limited
029 20 37 27 57
07730 533 115

Re: // 3D Printing

[James De Colling]

i use Meshmixer for all this kinda stuff, I know it can prep for print, not
sure on the stl export though

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.meshmixer.com_=DwIFaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=MYPRnz9BbcInFU3LGMmAxY7PLKtWi63SumYuhVaDJuA=170TAx41BhdSfe0hVgoVjyGILuTo5xdcB9Di5-sfEJk=

On Thu, Apr 5, 2018 at 11:03 AM, Eugene Flormata 
wrote:

> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.meshlab.net_=DwIFaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=MYPRnz9BbcInFU3LGMmAxY7PLKtWi63SumYuhVaDJuA=fVLZQqBS3h4iW7EDSF3wzCz4ARO10OWwOgh2PEgIxY8=
> 
> actually this should be able to do it
>
> On Wed, Apr 4, 2018 at 5:15 PM, Tenshi  wrote:
>
>> Hi guys,
>>
>> Hope somebody could enlighten me in this, i´ve never worked with 3D
>> Printing and Softimage, My client wants a model that´s going to be metal,
>> for what i know it´s a ´simple box´, soon i´ll have the Autocad plane with
>> all the dimensions.
>>
>>  I´ll use Softimage to model this, but my client wants a ´.stl´ format.
>>
>> How can i export this from Softimage?
>> There´s some free plugin? or Do i need to export an .obj/fbx file to
>> another software and convert it?
>>
>> thanks in adv,
>>
>> --
>>
>> --
>> Softimage Mailing List.
>> To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com
>> with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.
>>
>
>
> --
> Softimage Mailing List.
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> with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.
>
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Re: Wacom Cintiq 13

[James De Colling]

I tried out both the 13 and 16" mobile studios. the 2.5k screen on the 13
and 4k on 16 look great in a matte finish. the pen holder is a little pokey
thing that slots in the side and sorta-kinda holds your pen, not very
convincingly. they are quite heavy, but the side buttons feel nice, and
they do get hot on the sides since the vents are on each side now. the
intel realsense 3d capture was quite fun though, for very basic stuff.

no dock is also a killer, you get a dinky little bluetooth keyboard, but
since you cant physically connect it, (and there is no built-in stand) its
a "why?" kinda moment.

the price and the fact the disreet gpu is for some reason a
quadro (seriously, why not a regular geforce?) makes it unattractive to me,
especially with nice 2in1's coming onto the market so you get the best of
both worlds (Lenovo Yoga 460 / P40, Surface Book etc)

james.

On Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 12:40 PM, Martin  wrote:

> Btw, you can use an iPad Pro as a Cintiq replacement with Duet Pro. It
> would be a simple solution if you already have an iPad.
>
> I had a surface pro 3. The stylus buttons functions are not configurable,
> you can only use right click and eraser. Since I use a lot middle click in
> almost every software (XSI, Maya, Zbrush, 3DCoat, etc) I really hate it.
>
> The Wacom Companion is very bulky. I don't own one but one of our
> designers does and I've borrow it a few times. The screen looks too grainy
> for my taste but otherwise it seems quite useful. You can use it as a
> another screen in your desktop PC but have some limitations in the
> resolution if you want to use it as a mirror display.
>
> The new MobileStudio looks very nice in the pictures, but I haven't touch
> one yet and I'm not very interested in portable solutions.
>
> Personally I'm still using my old Intuos and waiting for the new Cintiqs.
>
> Martin
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On 28 Dec 2016, at 19:51,   wrote:
>
> My suggestion for the surface book as alternative to a Cintiq was *as a
> standalone with digitizer and a keyboard*.
> If you want an input device for an existing workstation - replacing an
> intuos with a cintiq - then a Surface will do you no good.
>
> The Cintiq Companion is interesting as it can do double service as ‘mobile
> studio’ and input device. (at least certain models can)
> You pay for it of course, and they are very bulky tablets. One that almost
> made sense to me was the Companion Hybrid: reasonably priced (for a Wacom)
> - about the same as a Cintiq 13 – so its like you get the Android tablet
> part for free. Also rather outdated now - and drawing in an app is too
> gimmicky for real work.
>
> If you swear by Wacom as a brand, the pen in the surface hasn’t been Wacom
> since the surface 2 – it’s N-trig now (bought by microsoft).
> Wacom remains superior for drawing, but when considering the complete
> picture, with display quality, form factor, performance, storage, price,
> battery life – it certainly doesn’t come without its flaws.
>
> Bottom line: input device and/or mobile studio – it’s an ongoing quest.
>
>
>
> *From:* Martin Yara 
> *Sent:* Tuesday, December 27, 2016 3:39 PM
> *To:* Official Softimage Users Mailing List.https://groups.google.
> com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list 
> *Subject:* Re: Wacom Cintiq 13
>
> If you can live with a stencil with useless buttons that can't be changed,
> no nibs options, lower sensitivity, no tilt feature and generally less
> precision, then a Surface Book isn't bad.
>
> The buttons were a deal breaker for me. I'm not really sure if you can use
> it as a tablet in another PC. I know that you can do that with a Wacom
> Companion but not sure about Surface.
>
> I'd choose a new Cintiq 16" that will be available next year.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 27, 2016 at 7:34 PM, Olivier Jeannel 
> wrote:
>
>> Can the Surface Book screen replace a Cintiq on a regular" workstation ?
>>
>> 2016-12-27 11:20 GMT+01:00 Rob Wuijster :
>>
>>> Surface Studio?? ;)
>>>
>>> Rob
>>> \/-\/\/
>>>
>>> On 25-12-2016 22:10, pete...@skynet.be wrote:
>>>
>>> A bit late to get one under the tree.
>>>
>>> If I had that kind of money, I’d much rather get a Surface Book.
>>> Cintiq keyboard options are underwhelming - that’s a dealbreaker for 3D
>>> I think.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* Olivier Jeannel 
>>> *Sent:* Sunday, December 25, 2016 3:17 PM
>>> *To:* sidefx-houdini-l...@sidefx.com ; softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
>>> *Subject:* Wacom Cintiq 13
>>>
>>> Is anyone using a Cintiq for 3D work (Houdini/XSI) ?
>>>
>>> Just wondering, my intuos is slowly dying...
>>>
>>> Cheers and Mery Christmas
>>> --
>>> --
>>> Softimage Mailing List.
>>> To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com
>>> with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.
>>>

Max has a new uv editor texture

[James De Colling]

https://youtu.be/YHYXgZuTVhE?t=107

some of you might find this amusing.
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Re: Render Region and Autosave

[James De Colling]

happens with MentalRay too, quite annoying. would love to know of a fix.

Cheers,

James

On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 11:28 PM, Fabian Schnuer Gohde 
wrote:

> Hi,
> I thought I'd ask in case anyone has run into this and has a workaround.
>
> With heavy scenes I regularly get lock-ups with the render region is open
> and autosave kicks in. This is with redshift so I'm not sure if the problem
> is solely there.
>
> Are there any hooks for a script or anything that surpress autosave or is
> there some way to do an entirely custom autosave that checks for regions
> before triggering?
>
> Best regards,
> Fabian
>

Re: Redshift users?

[James De Colling]

sorry for the potentially silly question, but how is redshift with
Rendermap? we use it extensively with MR, and would need redshift to have
the same capability

James,

On Fri, Jan 8, 2016 at 8:01 PM, Morten Bartholdy 
wrote:

> Wow, it is quite impressive what an impact Redshift has made already.
>
>
>
> I have done a fair amount of testing with Redshift too and find on average
> scenes to be 5-10 times faster than Arnold with comparable quality, plus a
> number of things are simpler to set up the way you want it, in part because
> of the rapid feedback in the renderregion. I have yet to test it on really
> complex scenes, so that will be the next thing to check. I agree on a lack
> of shader support in certain parts, especially compared to Arnold/Sitoa, so
> it is reassuring that Burtnyk and Co are so responsive :)
>
>
>
> We will likely also incorporate it to some extent when it supports vdb and
> volumetric rendering and see where it takes us.
>
>
>
>
>
> Morten
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Den 5. januar 2016 kl. 19:50 skrev "Emilio Hernández" :
>
>
> Softimage and Redshift.Best marriage ever!
>
>
>
> I have 4 licenses.
>
>
>
>

Re: Windows 10 - what's the current verdict.

[James De Colling]

clean and upgraded (from 8.1) installs around the office here, no problems
with SI, Maya or Unity.

all machines running GTX960/970 cards.

On Thu, Nov 26, 2015 at 7:02 AM, Stephan Woermann <
swoerman...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> At SI start, i have problems with floating windows. The first opened have
> sometimes no buttons and is frameless. Especially with the render preview.
> When all floating windows are closed with the help of a script, the issue
> is gone...
>
> Latest NVidia driver is used. From SI2013-15.
>

Re: OT: Mouse recommendations

[James De Colling]

i swear by the steelseries stuff, have been using them exclusively for a
few years now

On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 10:19 PM, Ognjen Vukovic ognj...@gmail.com wrote:

 The mx has an crapy scroll with no actuation points , go with the g400s :)
 cant beat it.

 On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 2:05 PM, Artur Woźniak artur.w...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 http://finalmouse.com/

 2015-06-22 13:42 GMT+02:00 Adam Seeley adammsee...@gmail.com:

 Hi Folks,

 I'm need of a decent mouse, tired of squeezing my hand around a small
 one (fnar!)

 .. any glowing recommendations out there?

 Ideally wireless with a dock.

 Logitech performance seems popular.

 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Logitech-Performance-MX-Wireless-Mouse/dp/B002L3TSKC/

 Thasnk,

 Adam.

Re: GATOR - A feature in Softimage since 2008

[James De Colling]

I did a lot of car modelling for games, Gator was awesome for doing live
uv'sbasically a custom projection. use a dense grid, throw a lattic on
it and project away

fun times,

On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 8:10 AM, Bradley Gabe witha...@gmail.com wrote:

 I can't claim credit for that idea coming from SI, only that GATOR made it
 possible. I believe Houdini likely had an attribute transfer solution long
 before XSI (if anyone would care to verify).

 On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 4:44 PM, Pierre Schiller 
 activemotionpictu...@gmail.com wrote:

 Thank you Bradley, for that acquintance. I thought Blender guys were the
 ones who ideally found that method exploit, I´ve seen them in a lot of
 their rigs
 (low cage deformer aided by weights from bones, to drive more complex
 bodies/facials)... I´m glad that came from softimage.
 Not surprisingly all SI people on Japan is migrating to Blender

Re: Maya thinks they're clever....and that's the problem

[James De Colling]

heh, shadermonkey reminds me of ATI's rendermonkey

http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/archive/legacy-cpu-gpu-tools/rendermonkey-toolsuite/

On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 2:33 PM, Bradley Gabe witha...@gmail.com wrote:

 One vote for hypercheese and shadermonkey

 You know, for the next iteration.

Re: Best graphic card for Softimage?

[James De Colling]

thats bizarre, I had a quadro4000 in my old machine for 2 years without a
problem. it was on 24/7

now I have a 770TI and again, its on 24/7

maybe look at some better cooling solutions?

cheers

james,

On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 10:28 AM, hk-vndr hk-v...@iscs-i.com wrote:

 Apologies to my thumbs. I meant how long do you keep your computer on with
 a card that generates such heat?

 In my case, I've had to replace my mobo twice this year from my Nvidia
 quadro 4000.


 Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone


  Original message 
 From: Mirko Jankovic
 Date:12/11/2014 2:32 PM (GMT-05:00)
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject: Re: Best graphic card for Softimage?

 How long can you can your computer on with this card in it?

 Sry but clarification please?

 On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 2:28 PM, hk-v...@iscs-i.com wrote:

  How long can you can your computer on with this card in it?

 On 2014-12-11 05:36, Mario Reitbauer wrote:

  Got the msi gtx 970 gaming 4g.
 Quite happy with it.

 2014-12-11 10:03 GMT+01:00 Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com:

 right now 970 is best bang for backs.
 they do not heat too much, power consumption is prety low and they do
 really good job.
 and on top of that Redshift as perfect companion ;)
 viewport performance is not that big issue at all between two cards but
 being able to utilise GPU rendering with CUDA is way more higher on the
 list then couple more FPS in viewport

 On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 9:26 AM, Christoph Muetze c...@glarestudios.de
 wrote:

 I'd stay clear of the ATI/AMD consumer cards if I were you. From our
 experience Soft becomes generally less stable (crashing a lot more), and
 the raycast selection is going haywire sometimes.

 Chris

 On 11/12/14 04:44, phil harbath wrote:
  I went Redshift and have been very pleased.  I can get by using a lot
 less computers than before on most projects,  volume smoke is pretty much
 all I use MR for anymore.   I have several computers with a combination of
 780TI, 770, and 970,  while I think the 780Ti give the best performance, it
 really makes more sense to buy the 970 as they are priced better or 980 if
 you have more cash.  The Redshift say go with the cards with the most ram
 (that would be Titan 6tb, if you got even more cash), depends on your needs
 of course.
 
  From: David Rivera
  Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2014 8:51 PM
  To: Softimage Mailing List
  Subject: Best graphic card for Softimage?
 
  I know this subject has been posted a lot over the years, but it
 happens that I read a benchmark performance between autodesk products on
 certain webpage. They tested Radeons vs Nvidias and turns out that Mudbox
 and Softimage ran better on AMD (Radeons) - this is mental ray render.
 
 
  So I was wondering whether to go full on mental ray (CPU) or take my
 savings and put it on a GPU renderer? Either case, now a days, which is the
 middle ranked graphic card for softimage? (My budget is around 1k).
 
 
  Thanks.
 
  David Rivera
  3D Compositor/Animator
  LinkedIN
  Behance
  VFX Reel
 

Re: inverted uv's not baking with rendermap?

[James De Colling]

tried the extract geo trick, same result. I would have thought exporting as
obj and reimporting would strip it of any weirdness though.

in the end, we did the bakes in maya, worked fine. needed the maya
derivatives checkbox turned on, but the result was as expected.

from here on we'll keep baking through maya, for the uv's but also due to
another fact rendermap only supports 1 thread when doing final gather
processing. another issue unlikely to get fixed now.


Cheers

James,

On Tue Nov 18 2014 at 10:18:53 AM olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr
wrote:

 Top of my head : Select all polygons, then extract polygon.
 Sometimes helps to clean a geometry.

 Le 17/11/2014 21:46, James De Colling a écrit :
  got a weird one here. im baking out lighting onto some objects for
  some realtime assets.
 
  rendermap seems to be falling over when dealing with inverted (then
  frozen) objects? if I turn on front (or back!) faces only in rendermap
  options, I get some pretty random faces not rendering. its different
  for each of the 4 objects in my scene.
 
  4 meshes, 3 are scaled and rotated in -1 then transforms frozen
 
  all normals are fine, i can export to maya / unity no problem. no
  overlapping faces. nice clean geo. (maya batch bake with mr/fg works
  fine, just would much prefer to get it done entirely with softimage)
 
  ive tried merging all the geo together and resplitting it, ive
  exported it as obj and reimported. same problem...only when baking
  with rendermap.
 
  any ideas?
 
  Cheers
 
  James,
 

inverted uv's not baking with rendermap?

[James De Colling]

got a weird one here. im baking out lighting onto some objects for some
realtime assets.

rendermap seems to be falling over when dealing with inverted (then frozen)
objects? if I turn on front (or back!) faces only in rendermap options, I
get some pretty random faces not rendering. its different for each of the 4
objects in my scene.

4 meshes, 3 are scaled and rotated in -1 then transforms frozen

all normals are fine, i can export to maya / unity no problem. no
overlapping faces. nice clean geo. (maya batch bake with mr/fg works fine,
just would much prefer to get it done entirely with softimage)

ive tried merging all the geo together and resplitting it, ive exported it
as obj and reimported. same problem...only when baking with rendermap.

any ideas?

Cheers

James,

Re: SemiOT: organizing images textures

[James De Colling]

XNview here, previously acdsee. ive tried zoner and ifran and bridge,
xnview just works well for me. remap the mouse to scroll images, put
thumbnails at 192x192m change background to dark grey (turning off
thumbnail shadow etc) and its quick too.

I purely use image viewers as just that though, screaming through large
collections of textures / ref images etc, then drag/drop into photoshop. I
dont use any of the editing features etc.

On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 10:35 AM, Paul Griswold 
pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com wrote:

 I might be taking back what I said about Zoner.

 I've been testing it  FastStone today, along with continuing to use
 Bridge.  Zoner honestly does a really good job of being not just a fewer,
 but an organizer.  It's basically a cross between Bridge, Lightroom and
 XnView.

 It handles video, vectors, and all the normal bitmap formats.  It also
 doesn't choke on HDRs - which Bridge can do.  And, it has no problem with
 network drives.

 Although their website looked very spammy, I'm fairly impressed with it.
 The only real negative I can come up with at the moment is, the
 organizational options are limited to just favorites.  I'd like to be
 able to create collections the way you can in Bridge.  But beyond that,
 it's certainly worth a look.

 -Paul


 On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 7:01 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.net
 wrote:

 For quick video viewing, I use DJView

 http://windjview.sourceforge.net/

 I leave it on my desktop as an icon, and just drag the video file from my
 file browser onto the
 DJView icon. The reason that I like it, is because it will deal with a
 series of stills (even Softimage .pic files)

 I hope you find that useful.



 On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 4:23 PM, Paul Griswold 
 pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com wrote:

 Doing a little research this afternoon.  Xnview has one big problem as
 far as I can tell.  If you try to favorite a network folder, it favorites
 it, but when you click on the favorite it freaks out and takes you to
 SkyDrive instead.  Since all my images, textures, etc., are all on a
 server, that puts Xnview out of the picture.

 Irfranview doesn't seem to have any organization tools at all, but it's
 still a great little image viewer.

 Zoner Photo Studio came up in some searches.  The first negative I see
 is, they require you to sign up to their website just to get the free
 version.  It feels very pro-sumer in how they present it, but maybe that's
 just my impression.  It's got a nice, Lightroom-like interface, but I'm
 just concerned it's one of those programs that attaches adware to your
 system, sells your email address, etc again - that's just the vibe I'm
 getting.

 FastStone Image Viewer was listed as an alternative to ACDSee.  I've
 never heard of it  have no opinion.  I might give it a try.  It can be
 found here:  http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm



 On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 3:20 PM, Paul Griswold 
 pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com wrote:

 I forgot about Xnview.  I think it has some decent features.  I'm not
 sure if it handles video, though.

 On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 3:07 PM, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 A few years ago I was using Windows Photo Gallery or Live Gallery or
 something like that, can't remember the name, a free app from Microsoft.

 It was interesting. I was creating my own texture library with tags,
 keywords and categories, but I couldn't finish it. It's just too much 
 work.

 For just visualizing images I use Irfanview too.

 Martin






 --

 Best Regards,
 *  Stephen P. Davidson*

 *(954) 552-7956 %28954%29%20552-7956*sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com

 *Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic*


- Arthur C. Clarke

 http://www.3danimationmagic.com

Re: Rendermap SSS albedo

[James De Colling]

there was a sss shader a while ago we used to do rendermaps with, cant
remember exactly but it bypassed/ignored the lightmap input and was normal
shader input. kin or something is all I rememeber.

cheers,

james,


On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 4:45 AM, Christian Freisleder m...@buntepixel.eu
wrote:

 hey list,

 is there a way to get a albedo map from a mr sss shader?
 Rendermap/ultimapper seems to just support the old mr phong, blinn ...
 shaders.
 any ideas???

 Cheers
 Christian

Re: softimage interaction

[James De Colling]

i get stuck in a tool/mode when im in the texture editor and an autosave
kicks inthen the mode I am in gets stuck and wont come back until
texture editor is closed/opened again. anyone else get that?


On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 1:38 PM, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi sorry for the late response, but you can easily get around that by
 manually selecting Orbit or Pan from the viewport camera menu
 to shake SI from that frozen state when it happens.




 On 04/25/14 14:15, todd peleg wrote:

 perhaps it has been discussed before..

 but someone please tell me why softimage changed so i have to constantly
 bang around my keyboard aimlessly to try and go between tools in soft...

 modes are staying active after i release the tools... like O.. P... Z...

 i let go and they stay active...

 or i tag something.. hit v.. move it.. then i cant get out of translate
 until i bang around angrily and hit esc..

 i never had to do this before..
 what happened?!?!?!?!


 and it seems random.. sometimes it stays selected.. sometimes it doesnt...
 sometimes it works as a toggle.. sometimes it doesnt..

 if they dont fix this.. they should consider shutting down the
 developement of softimage.. (just a suggestion)

 todd

Re: Re[2]: lag when editing components

[James De Colling]

make sure your not using High Quality mode in the viewport settings, it
lags heavily for me when creating / deleting objects.

...not to mention someone decided to remove AA when there is viewport
interaction...*grumble*


On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 10:26 PM, Sven Constable
sixsi_l...@imagefront.dewrote:

 Nvidia Quadro4000 with driver version 332.50



 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Eugen Sares
 *Sent:* Tuesday, April 22, 2014 2:17 PM
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Re[2]: lag when editing components



 Ok, interesting! Thanks for the test!

 Which graphics card are you using?







 -- Originalnachricht --

 Von: Sven Constable *sixsi_l...@imagefront.de*sixsi_l...@imagefront.de
 

 An: 'Eugen Sares' *sof...@mail.sprit.org* sof...@mail.sprit.org;
 *softimage@listproc.autodesk.com* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

 Gesendet: 22.04.2014 14:10:53

 Betreff: RE: lag when editing components



 I tried a testscene with around 11,000 objects (~11 mio. triangles). All
 hidden except one object and transforming and selecting components on it
 performs as fast as in a single-object scene. I'm using a quadro4000. Maybe
 it's on the graphics card.

 sven



 *From:* 
 *softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com[mailto:
 *softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com]
 *On Behalf Of *Eugen Sares
 *Sent:* Tuesday, April 22, 2014 11:48 AM
 *To:* *softimage@listproc.autodesk.com* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* lag when editing components



 Hello,

 architectural scene here, 5500 objects.

 Whenever I edit any polygon mesh, I get a strange few seconds delay before
 the components actually move. Extremely annoying!

 When I create a new object, there's a few seconds delay, too.

 Is all this due to the fact that Softimage doesn't handle high object
 counts too well?

 Anything I can do about it?

 Splitting up the scene, of course. Already did this to a degree, but that
 make things quite hard to keep together in the end.



 Thanks a lot!

 Eugen


 --

 http://www.avast.com/

 Diese E-Mail ist frei von Viren und Malware, denn der *avast! 
 Antivirus*http://www.avast.com/Schutz ist aktiv.




 --

 http://www.avast.com/

 Diese E-Mail ist frei von Viren und Malware, denn der *avast! 
 Antivirus*http://www.avast.com/Schutz ist aktiv.

Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

[James De Colling]

Regarding the marketing, ive been in mostly maya based studios for the last
4 years and softimage based before that what really struck me though was
the Maya guys (and some Max guys) were all talking about Modo, how it was
such a fast modeller / uv tool etc. Not a single one of them had even
considered softimage, they knew of it, just nothing about what it did.

Maya and Max would come out with fanfare every release, write-ups, new
features videos etc. softimage just got a basic change list. fxguide is a
good example, even the death of softimage article got half a page, yet
the future of Naiad got multiple posts and pages. bifrost / naiad
received more fanfare than ICE did, for arguably a much less capable
product.

if existing customers of your own group of products don't know what your
selling. your really dropping the ball.





On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 10:01 AM, Maurice Patel
maurice.pa...@autodesk.comwrote:

 Hi Francisco. I am waiting an internal reply on this one. I do not know
 why your reseller cannot sell you Softimage or is saying this.
 Maurice

 Maurice Patel
 Autodesk : Tél:  514 954-7134

 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Francisco Criado
 Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 6:57 PM
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

 Hi Maurice, for the third time now ...(seems you are too much worried with
 the discusion and not with the replies :) ) i would like to purchase a
 couple of licenses of Softimage, and your offices from Argentina don´t know
 what Softimage is, and they say that Autodesk doesn´t sell this product.
 Can you give me a hand with this?

 Thanks in advance,
 F.

 (a simple latino from third world, nothing fancy here)

 2014-03-25 19:45 GMT-03:00 Maurice Patel maurice.pa...@autodesk.com
 mailto:maurice.pa...@autodesk.com:
 Hi Rob,
 We moved people off of other teams to work on Skyline too. And we did not
 say anything to those users either - resources get moved around regularly
 in organizations from project to project This is one of the reasons why we
 try to avoid getting into discussions about how many engineers are working
 on X, Y or Z - especially as that can always be subjective in terms of
 output sometimes a small team can be more productive than a big team and
 vice versa. When we moved all the Montreal engineers off of Softimage and
 moved development to Singapore we did talk about it.
 maurice


 Maurice Patel
 Autodesk : Tél:  514 954-7134

 -Original Message-
 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Rob Chapman
 Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 5:51 PM
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 
 Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass
 Hi Maurice

 yes sorry, my previous mail the 'you' was much more directed at Autodesk
 the entity than you personally, I hope you understand.  and yes it was
 mashed, but I hope to elaborate.

 Now that 'you' (Autodesk) are making it is very clear that those great
 engineers that were moved onto other projects were one part of the reason
 for purchase, the other was Softimage the product. but at the time , whilst
 assuring us the existing customers of Softimage the product was going to be
 ok eg 'the future is bright' etc I do feel that the Softimage user base at
 that time were never informed properly of the true extent of the engineer
 stripping until long afterwards .

 this is perhaps one of those lingering disagreeable tastes as is feels
 like your obligation was fulfilled with minimum effort whereas back then
 there was not a sense of EOL as we were assured the product was going to be
 ok. as long as it was sold as a plugin. or a suite. or not all...

 so to clarify. with some actual history because yes I am not entirely sure
 of the facts here and others may be more clued :) but at what point were
 the Softimage customers informed that the entire engineering team had been
 moved to a new application? was this only, as you say in Autodesk's
 statement of intent? as this, in my opinion, was never truly communicated
 and somewhat hidden to the user base until much later on.

Re: YOUR TOP 5

[James De Colling]

1. Modelling tools - (everything from snapping / m etc...hell, even the
bevel tool is something I cant live without)
2. UI - from the layout to things like multiple instances of the same
windows, locking panels etc (I can live without the viewcube...I know its
autodesk's gold star feature, but...im ok, thanks)
3. Passes - very intuitive and easy to use.
4. ICE - ive only scratched the surface with it, but its been very handy
5. small thingslike the ability to change a texture res displayed in
the viewport, per texture, on the flyvery, very handy for checking game
texture size. or passing a imageclip through fxtree to get a realtime color
correction on it to see what it looks like in the scene next to other
models...extremely handy (that said, if rendertree could display realtime
edits on clips, that would be even better...no renders please, some of us
live in the games world)

meh, choosing 5 best is leaving too much on the table


On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 10:29 PM, Jon Swindells
jon_swinde...@fastmail.fmwrote:

  1. Tool/gfxSequencer API
 2. Gator
 3. Operators (ICE, scops  - dev and gen usage)
 4. Rig and shapes workflow
 5. M-tool



 --
  Jon Swindells
  jon_swinde...@fastmail.fm

Re: SI and Houdini

[James De Colling]

fantastic, looking forward to your guide Jordi, thanks!


On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 9:52 PM, Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dkwrote:

   Wow, that is very geerous of you Jordi - much appreciated.



 Morten




 Den 6. marts 2014 kl. 10:18 skrev Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com:

  for those who have not read what is going on in the Houdini forums, I
 will be putting together some basic guides to transition to Houdini easily
 and maintain your workflows under the new philosophy, from partitions, to
 overrides, to...

 I may need help so guys so don't hesitate to pop and drop a line,
 specially if you have already done the transition.

 see you very soon!

  Jordi Bares
  jordiba...@gmail.com

  On 6 Mar 2014, at 02:33, Francisco Criado  malcriad...@gmail.com 
 wrote:

  Already signed in, and must say it feels very comfortable how sidefx is
 receiving ex-si users!
 Thanks a lot!
 F.


 On Wednesday, March 5, 2014, Halfdan Ingvarsson  half...@sidefx.com 
 wrote:

  I was young and I needed the money!

 And the beer.

 Mmm... beer.

  - 1/2

 On 14-03-05 06:55 PM, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:

  On account of having furthered something like Mental Ray in the past,
 even if with the best intentions, I reckon all beer debt is forfeit. He's
 lucky he's getting away lightly with just a beer forfeiting.
 At least he seems to be working on something that's not qualified as a
 crime against humanity these days.


  On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Meng-Yang Lu  ntmon...@gmail.com  wrote:


  So what's the deal?  Do we still owe him beers or are we absolved?  :P

 Good to see you Halfy!

  -Lu


  On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 2:07 PM, Halfdan Ingvarsson  half...@sidefx.com 
 wrote:


 Hello there

 It's been a while.

 I thought I'd post here and let you know, since there's been a lot of
 interest in Houdini, that we've created a dedicated forum for SI users on
 the SideFX site. ( http://goo.gl/cixz4s ). Feel free to swing by and ask
 any questions you'd like about Houdini and SideFX. I know this is a pretty
 tough time for everyone, but I just wanted to let you know that you're all
 welcome in our community.

 Hope to see you there!

 All the best,

 - 1/2




 --
 Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it
 and let them flee like the dogs they are!

Re: Softimage Devs petition

[James De Colling]

1.0...no idea, I remember 5.xx was around 350mb or so though


On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 11:24 AM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote:

 Sowho's going to deliver the message at AD?   Won't be Marc Petit for
 obvious reasons.

 Let's have a wager on the following:

 1) Who made the decision.

 2) Who delivers the news.


 Winner gets a Softimage|XSI v1.0 installation disc.if I can find it.
  Which leads to the bonus question:

 3) Today's installer for Autodesk Softimage is approaching 2 GB.  How big
 was the installer for XSI v1.0?






 Matt



 -Original Message-
 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Eric Thivierge
 Sent: Monday, March 03, 2014 4:18 PM
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Cc: Stephan Hempel
 Subject: Re: Softimage Devs petition

 I suspect somewhere around 12-16 hrs from now-ish.

 On Monday, March 03, 2014 7:13:49 PM, Martin Contel wrote:
  Wait a minute, are you serious that today (March 4th) Autodesk will
  announce that Softimage 2015 is the last version they will release?!?!
 
  --
  Martin Contel
  Square Enix (Visual Works)

Re: new upgrade policy

[James De Colling]

it's a crap policy to be sure,  however,  given the last couple of
releases,  maybe 2015 isn't worth the bother,  and we all save money :)
On 27/02/2014 11:18 AM, Scott Parrish scotte...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm actually confused why Autodesk even thinks this is a good idea from a
 monetization and customer retention standpoint.
 It might sound like a good way to make more money by forcing most users to
 stay on subscription or pay a penalty for a lapse in coverage.
 In practice however, it might give smaller shops and individuals who are
 less married to a pipeline built around a particular piece of software an
 opportunity to change to another software package when they're coverage
 lapses.

 Let's see, would I like to pay MSRP for Soft or Maya again because I didnt
 feel like paying subscription this past year? Or should I evaluate other
 options that I can buy for about the same price and with better terms for
 maintenance or future upgrades?



 On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 4:12 PM, Matt Morris matt...@gmail.com wrote:

 Inclined to agree.


 On 27 February 2014 00:10, Scott Parrish scotte...@gmail.com wrote:

 Again, I know!

 I just think the new upgrade policy is bullsh*%.



 On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 2:50 PM, Graham Bell 
 graham.b...@autodesk.comwrote:

 Well of course it's limited, because the upgrade policy itself is
 changing next year.

 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Scott Parrish
 Sent: 26 February 2014 22:39
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject: Re: new upgrade policy

 It's not news, no. But it is a pretty anti-consumer change in policy.
 The 70% discount is for a limited time only.

 It says right there in the FAQ:
 How can a customer get current if they have an older version of
 software after February 1, 2015?
 Customers who wish to use the latest release after February 1, 2015
 will have the option to purchase the latest version at SRP (Suggested
 Retail Price).

 As a customer I'd like to be on paid maintenance because there is some
 sort of benefit that it provides. Not because there is a gun to my head
 that I lose my investment in purchasing the software and risk paying full
 price for upgrades in the future otherwise.


 On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 2:34 PM, Graham Bell graham.b...@autodesk.com
 mailto:graham.b...@autodesk.com wrote:
 This isn't anything new, this has already been announced last year and
 discussed here and on other forums.
 Also currently, upgrade pricing is 70% of the price of a new seat.

 G

 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Kris Rivel
 Sent: 26 February 2014 22:15
 To: Softimage List
 Subject: Re: new upgrade policy

 I'm looking at Modo, Houdini and anything else with some drive, passion
 and inspiration behind it.  I'll use Soft till it doesn't run anymore and
 just gives me a blue screen or something.

 But this aggressive tactic just comes off as greedy and is poorly
 planned.  I wonder how many other holes they can put in their boat.

 Kris
 On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 4:19 PM, Daniel Sweeney 
 dan...@northforge.co.ukmailto:dan...@northforge.co.ukmailto:
 dan...@northforge.co.ukmailto:dan...@northforge.co.uk wrote:

 I am as quick as I can off the autodesk rollercoaster. A few things
 have made my choice I will always love soft and use the tool when its
 needed but I think I need to look for another avenue. Looking at modo?
 Thoughts??

 Autodesk bollocks.
 On Feb 26, 2014 8:52 PM, Kris Rivel krisri...@gmail.commailto:
 krisri...@gmail.commailto:krisri...@gmail.commailto:
 krisri...@gmail.com wrote:
 I read it and couldn't help but say WTH?!

 Kris
 On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 3:36 PM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com
 mailto:emi...@e-roja.commailto:emi...@e-roja.commailto:
 emi...@e-roja.com wrote:
 Seems they need to fill the vault...
 [http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/8965/erojamailpleca.jpg]

 2014-02-26 14:29 GMT-06:00 Kris Rivel krisri...@gmail.commailto:
 krisri...@gmail.commailto:krisri...@gmail.commailto:
 krisri...@gmail.com:

 So...what's everyone's take on this gem?  So if I don't upgrade to
 latest version  now...then when I want that version I have to pay full
 price?


 http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Frequently-Asked-Questions-about-the-Autodesk-Upgrade-Policy.html

 Kris







 --
 www.matinai.com

Re: Redshift3D Render

[James De Colling]

quick one, can your rendermap with redshift?


On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 7:39 PM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote:

 Well I finally got nice reason to get 4 Titans.. mmm 4way SLI and 3 27
 mon stereo gaming.
 Soo nice to have same comp good for both job and gaming.



 On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 3:49 AM, Sebastien Sterling 
 sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote:

 Call me immature, but i kind of love the idea of my gaming pc also being
 my render farm :P

 Sod of Nvidia and your flaby Quadro cards there expensive as fuck and you
 can't play Crysis on them :)


 On 8 January 2014 23:13, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:

 For a current list of features available as well as a roadmap,
 I would like to suggest to just go and give it a free try:

 https://www.redshift3d.com/get-redshift

 Yes, actually you don´t even have to commit to spending $100 directly,
 the Free Beta Trial gives you 30 days of full access to Redshift.

 A special benefit of this free trial option is that you could actually
 try out how a bunch of machines would run using redshift in a farm or
 knot.

 Reading the docs doesn´t require a login:

 http://docs.redshift3d.com/Default.html


 Redshift is a really well balanced renderer and I wholehartedly trust in
 it´s success.

 With the above opportunity available it is a good time to test it in
 your production scenario
 and wheight it against VRay and Arnold, which are also both very nice
 plattforms with
 enough momentum to also be around for quite a while.

 I am sure Redshift is a valuable addition to that arsenal.

 Cheers,

 tim








 On 08.01.2014 22:44, Emilio Hernandez wrote:

 Backing up Tim, in the forums there is actually a hair test in
 Softimage with a simple phong shader.  And IMHO it looks nice.




 2014/1/8 Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com mailto:
 tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com


 They've stated pretty clearly that Hair and Strand support is the
 next big thing to come... shouldn't be too long now...

 -Tim



 On 1/8/2014 3:36 PM, Daniel Kim wrote:

 I found some weird result of displacement map with Redshift.
 Elevation is okay, but sometimes I could see weird connection of UVM. All
 UVM boders wasn't smooth and I had no
 idea how to fix it. Arnold has that option though : / But more
 option I need is... hair @__@ and ICE strand


 
 ---
 Daniel Kim
 Animation Director  Professional 3D Generalist
 http://www.danielkim3d.com
 
 ---




 On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 10:31 AM, Emilio Hernandez 
 emi...@e-roja.com mailto:emi...@e-roja.com wrote:

 Displacement and bump map are there and they work beautiful.
  They event implement a scalar change range into the displacement node.




 2014/1/8 Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com mailto:
 tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com


 I'll repost what I said in the other thread

 We started using Redshift back in March and pretty much
 use it exclusively now. Of course it all depends on the needs of the
 project (and there are still some real
 limitations).  The RS dev team is top notch though. I'm
 really excited to see how things will be at the end of this calendar year.
  Redshift development is
 progressing at a fantastic rate, and the pricing is very
 competitive. For facilities, even small ones, it does require that you
 spend some time considering your
 hardware and infrastructure, especially if you want to
 start converting CPU farms for GPU rendering, or augmenting them.
 Fortunately, Redshift isn't licensed per GPU,
 but per machine, and that should provide some breathing
 room.

 To be honest (and I realize we have many Arnold folks
 here), here at Magnetic we evaluated our rendering options (MR, vRay,
 3Delight, Arnold). I even started working
 on a Soft-to-Modo pipeline. Among these Arnold was the
 clear winner. That said, we felt that to be useful for us in production,
 Arnold was too costly a solution for
 us, both financially and in render time, /considering the
 kinds of projects we do/ . Then Redshift came along and despite its
 infancy, really turned our heads. We

 cautiously began using it on productions, and it has since
 proven itself for us.

 Again, it all depends on what kind of project you're
 working on! You need to evaluate it for yourself of course, but for 
 smaller
 houses like us, it allows us to
 produce better looking content faster, while staying in
 Softimage. And in this economy, we can't argue with that.

 -Tim



 On 1/8/2014 2:53 PM, Paul Griswold wrote:

 I've been using it along side Arnold for quite a while
 now.  I just finished a project for CES entirely in Redshift.

 I think Redshift falls 

Re: Redshift3D Render

[James De Colling]

how diminishing are we talking? some enthusiast motherboards support upto 6
cards, also does pci-e slot speed make a difference?


On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 10:40 PM, Paul Griswold 
pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com wrote:

 ​I just added 2 780ti's to my machine  use my 680 just to drive my
 displays.  One of the negatives right now with Redshift (AFAIK) is that
 it's not entirely optimized for more than 2 cards.  Once you get 3-4 cards
 in place you start seeing diminishing returns.

 But that might be an nVidia problem, not a Redshift problem.

 I think the main thing you have to consider is - do you already have a
 renderfarm that is CPU based and are you willing to migrate to GPU-based
 rendering?  I have rack-mounted machines that just have Intel motheboard
 graphics  no space for a GPU, so for now Redshift is limited to just 2
 machines.

 For larger companies there's a space  heat issue as well.  Running just
 the 2 780ti's all night long kept my office nice and toasty warm.  You need
 to have a very large power supply as well as a case  motherboard that can
 fit the cards.  It'd be very interesting to see a comparison of space, heat
 and watts consumed for CPU's vs GPU's for rendering...

 -Paul


 ᐧ


 On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 3:39 AM, Mirko Jankovic 
 mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote:

 Well I finally got nice reason to get 4 Titans.. mmm 4way SLI and 3 27
 mon stereo gaming.
 Soo nice to have same comp good for both job and gaming.



 On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 3:49 AM, Sebastien Sterling 
 sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote:

 Call me immature, but i kind of love the idea of my gaming pc also being
 my render farm :P

 Sod of Nvidia and your flaby Quadro cards there expensive as fuck and
 you can't play Crysis on them :)


 On 8 January 2014 23:13, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:

 For a current list of features available as well as a roadmap,
 I would like to suggest to just go and give it a free try:

 https://www.redshift3d.com/get-redshift

 Yes, actually you don´t even have to commit to spending $100 directly,
 the Free Beta Trial gives you 30 days of full access to Redshift.

 A special benefit of this free trial option is that you could actually
 try out how a bunch of machines would run using redshift in a farm or
 knot.

 Reading the docs doesn´t require a login:

 http://docs.redshift3d.com/Default.html


 Redshift is a really well balanced renderer and I wholehartedly trust
 in it´s success.

 With the above opportunity available it is a good time to test it in
 your production scenario
 and wheight it against VRay and Arnold, which are also both very nice
 plattforms with
 enough momentum to also be around for quite a while.

 I am sure Redshift is a valuable addition to that arsenal.

 Cheers,

 tim








 On 08.01.2014 22:44, Emilio Hernandez wrote:

 Backing up Tim, in the forums there is actually a hair test in
 Softimage with a simple phong shader.  And IMHO it looks nice.




 2014/1/8 Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com mailto:
 tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com


 They've stated pretty clearly that Hair and Strand support is the
 next big thing to come... shouldn't be too long now...

 -Tim



 On 1/8/2014 3:36 PM, Daniel Kim wrote:

 I found some weird result of displacement map with Redshift.
 Elevation is okay, but sometimes I could see weird connection of UVM. All
 UVM boders wasn't smooth and I had no
 idea how to fix it. Arnold has that option though : / But more
 option I need is... hair @__@ and ICE strand


 
 ---
 Daniel Kim
 Animation Director  Professional 3D Generalist
 http://www.danielkim3d.com
 
 ---




 On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 10:31 AM, Emilio Hernandez 
 emi...@e-roja.com mailto:emi...@e-roja.com wrote:

 Displacement and bump map are there and they work beautiful.
  They event implement a scalar change range into the displacement node.




 2014/1/8 Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com mailto:
 tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com


 I'll repost what I said in the other thread

 We started using Redshift back in March and pretty much
 use it exclusively now. Of course it all depends on the needs of the
 project (and there are still some real
 limitations).  The RS dev team is top notch though. I'm
 really excited to see how things will be at the end of this calendar 
 year.
  Redshift development is
 progressing at a fantastic rate, and the pricing is very
 competitive. For facilities, even small ones, it does require that you
 spend some time considering your
 hardware and infrastructure, especially if you want to
 start converting CPU farms for GPU rendering, or augmenting them.
 Fortunately, Redshift isn't licensed per GPU,
 but per machine, and that should provide some breathing
 room.

Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year

[James De Colling]

quick question, whats the powerdraw when graphics cards are idle? (purely
used as gpgpu, since no monitors attached)


On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 7:20 PM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote:

 I can totally confirm about Redshift.
 Actually I was saving for dual Xeon system as well but then tested
 Redshift and figured that for price of one Xeon CPU then I've got 2
 titans... so at the end I built 4x Titan system and it eats through
 everything, and still with i7 3930k can do CPU rendering if / when needed.
 Still beta but works great for 99% of the tasks. One comp render farm :)


 On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 8:59 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.comwrote:

 Hair is coming soon as well as strands.  For me Redshift is so fast that
 now I don't render without GI.  Also lighting is delicious as Redshift has
 also a progressive mode.  So you can adjust things easily and creativly.

 Before Redshift I was saving to buy a double Xeon to have at least 24
 cores of pure render power.   With my old GTX470 I was impressed with the
 speed and quality.  Goodbye to flickering with HDRI using FG.  Since
 Redshift all renders come without any flicker and noise in the blink of an
 eye compared to MR or even Arnold.  I started using it for production even
 from its first alpha versions.

 Instead of expending big bucks to upgrade my machine, I bought a Titan
 and now I have the Titan and the GTX470 in my four year old i7.

 Goodbye to MB and DOF passes and then comp.  Now from the beginning I
 have what I am looking for in terms of DOF and MB.   Those two shots of the
 Coors can with pouring liquid were rendered with my PC in less than 5 hours
 in a single pass.

 The biggest added value for me besides of course the render speed, is
 that I can continue on other tasks while rendering with the same
 computer.   I can start a render and still open Nuke or AE and do some
 other stuff while rendering.

 It had happended to me that I am doing other tasks and the render
 finished quiet ago.

 For a one man show, at least for me there is now no other render than
 Redshift.





 2014/1/7 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com

 Hair is unfortunately a breaker for me at this particular point as i'd
 like to get some xp in that domain, but Redshift looks nice enough, how
 does it handle compared to MR ? the number of times i've past the 15 min
 mark with MR waiting for 1 bucket before calling the time of death never
 knowing what param killed it...

 I may eventually get it, also need to check my Nvidia card.


 On 8 January 2014 04:55, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote:

 Hey Sebastian have you tried Redshift.  The beta is only 100USD and it
 works like a charm, it is full integrated into Softimage and unless you are
 going to do Hair or Strands it is worth every penny.  Specially for a one
 man show.  Forget about CPU and use the GPU.

 In my case I can continue working while I am rendering and that is
 surely a big added value.

 Faster than MR and faster than Arnold, and zero flickering with GI in
 animation.






 2014/1/7 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com

 9000€... it's going to be tough, but your worth it :)


 On 6 January 2014 13:34, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.dewrote:

 Maybe true but one thing to keep in mind is you don't have to spend
 extra money for mental ray (at least no significant amount). For one man
 shows like me mr is still useful. I use it on a small farm with 8 nodes
 plus the workstation. Switching to arnold will cost me 9000€ . Thats
 roughly the same cost that my whole DCC apps are about. I see mr like I 
 see
 the FXTree...it's does not compete to nuke but it's integrated in soft 
 and
 already there.  I agree that there aren't any reasons to stay with mr
 except the the expense factor and legacy things.

 sven

 -Original Message-
 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker
 Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 12:12 PM
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject: Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year

 Now while we are at it.

 I´m currently preparing assets that need to be free of 3rd party
 functionality.

 This means I have to set them up with a mR shading network to start
 folks off with.

 mental ray. The common thing between 3DSMax, Maya and Softimage.

 Please.

 Kill it.

 It´s not getting anyone anywhere anymore. I don´t want to discuss
 details or legacy reasons.

 Kill it. It´s over. It won´t come back.

 Selling three different DCC apps that actually share the fact that
 you will first have to invest in a 3rd party renderer to get something
 looking half way decent out of them can´t be the most ideal situation 
 but a
 pretty nice way of creating an industry standard of wasting people´s life
 with forcing them in personal overtime.

 What a crap.

 Really.

 Provide a renderer that actually works as advertised. Or don´t make
 me pay for that mR crap.


 

Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year

[James De Colling]

we use Maya primarily at our studio, but recently there has been a few
artists talking about modo and testing it out. they were very impressed,
however, most of the stuff they were showing me, or thought was impressive
was already standard workflow in softimage.

but softimage isnt and never was on their radar. they had no idea. that's
marketing for you.


On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 8:04 PM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:

 Same here, every time I use maya I hate the experience and wonder myself
 his is it possible that it is still being used?

 The workflow is f@cked up you become miserable.

 I use Houdini mainly now although we will get Softimage very soon, wasting
 too much time for things Houdini is not good at.

 Jb

 Sent from my iPhone

 On 6 Jan 2014, at 08:52, Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com wrote:

 So guys, I spent a weekend working with Maya…HOW THE F@CK THIS PROGRAM IS
 USED IN PRODUCTION?



 Ok, I can use Maya, I have a quite solid background working with Maya, but
 seriously guys…It’s so overcomplicated, and brainkilling…In Softimage
 almost everything is just fine (OK, we need development), but in Maya, the
 easiest task takes quite long compared to SI…Finally I found myself fixing
 UVs, Unfolding, etc. in Softimage…Anyway, I need some samples in Maya, so I
 take a big breath, and continue working with Maya…But seriously, Softimage
 is way better in many point of view. It has no artisan, has no PaintFX, but
 for example rendering is way faster (with MR), shading setup is way faster,
 modeling is lot faster, and so on. So I really don’t understand, how come
 that Softimage is not acknowledged at all. I swear guys, that I’ll spread
 the Word of Softimage





 Cheers



 Szabolcs



 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [
 mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.comsoftimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com]
 *On Behalf Of *Henry Katz
 *Sent:* Sunday, January 05, 2014 8:18 PM
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year



 Good thing I asked.

 On 01/04/2014 05:40 PM, Stephen Blair wrote:

 Softimage doesn't support Python 3.x





 On Sat, Jan 4, 2014 at 3:26 PM, Henry Katz hk-v...@iscs-i.com wrote:

 Steve,

 No issues with python 3.3 as well, before I bruise my knuckles on the
 bleeding edge?

 Cheers,
 Henry
 On 01/03/2014 02:47 AM, Steven Caron wrote:

 really?



 install pyqt

 set softimage to use system python, uncheck...
 filepreferencesscriptinguse python installed with softimage

 run the example scripts pyqtforsoftimage plugin provides. or just 'import
 PyQt4'



 s



 On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 10:27 PM, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za
 wrote:

 A non nonsense guide to installing pYQT would be great. So many great
 tools are never used because people cant get past trying to get the install
 to work.

Re: graphics board issue?

[James De Colling]

just an update on this, we ended up replacing the graphics card, no more
crashes (thus far)

cheersm

james,


On Sun, Oct 6, 2013 at 11:15 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.comwrote:

 if it says -1 it's a code defect in softimage or a plug-in

 On Sun, Oct 6, 2013 at 6:51 AM, James De Colling
 james.decoll...@gmail.com wrote:
  i'll try a mem test on the system, I just assumed it was the graphics
 board
  due to the display corruption before the message
 
  cheers,
 
  james,
 
 
  On Sun, Oct 6, 2013 at 9:14 PM, Jon Swindells squi...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  sounds more like a sys ram error than a dodgy gfx card
 
 
  On 6 October 2013 12:46, James De Colling james.decoll...@gmail.com
  wrote:
 
  hey guys,  one of our boxes keeps throwing an error Memory Allocation
  Warning
 
  Cannot allocate -1 bytes of contiguous memory. XSI may become unstable
  from now on
 
  anyone else seeing this? its a machine running a gtx580
 
  our machines with quadro 4000's run fine (but are very slow compared)
 
 
  also if we need to replace the card, anyone successfully running a 770
 or
  780 with no problems?
 
  cheers,
 
  james,
 
  --
  To unsubscribe: mail softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with
 subject
  unsubscribe and reply to the confirmation email.
 
 
 
 
  --
  Jon Swindells
  squi...@gmail.com
 
  --
  To unsubscribe: mail softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with
 subject
  unsubscribe and reply to the confirmation email.
 
 
 
  --
  To unsubscribe: mail softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with
 subject
  unsubscribe and reply to the confirmation email.
 --
 To unsubscribe: mail softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with subject
 unsubscribe and reply to the confirmation email.

--
To unsubscribe: mail softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with subject 
unsubscribe and reply to the confirmation email.

graphics board issue?

[James De Colling]

hey guys,  one of our boxes keeps throwing an error Memory Allocation
Warning

Cannot allocate -1 bytes of contiguous memory. XSI may become unstable
from now on

anyone else seeing this? its a machine running a gtx580

our machines with quadro 4000's run fine (but are very slow compared)


also if we need to replace the card, anyone successfully running a 770 or
780 with no problems?

cheers,

james,
--
To unsubscribe: mail softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with subject 
unsubscribe and reply to the confirmation email.

Re: graphics board issue?

[James De Colling]

i'll try a mem test on the system, I just assumed it was the graphics board
due to the display corruption before the message

cheers,

james,


On Sun, Oct 6, 2013 at 9:14 PM, Jon Swindells squi...@gmail.com wrote:

 sounds more like a sys ram error than a dodgy gfx card


 On 6 October 2013 12:46, James De Colling james.decoll...@gmail.comwrote:

 hey guys,  one of our boxes keeps throwing an error Memory Allocation
 Warning

 Cannot allocate -1 bytes of contiguous memory. XSI may become unstable
 from now on

 anyone else seeing this? its a machine running a gtx580

 our machines with quadro 4000's run fine (but are very slow compared)


 also if we need to replace the card, anyone successfully running a 770 or
 780 with no problems?

 cheers,

 james,

 --
 To unsubscribe: mail softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with
 subject unsubscribe and reply to the confirmation email.




 --
 Jon Swindells
 squi...@gmail.com

 --
 To unsubscribe: mail softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with subject
 unsubscribe and reply to the confirmation email.

--
To unsubscribe: mail softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with subject 
unsubscribe and reply to the confirmation email.

Re: Improvement requested For Softimage 2015: Normal Maps

[James De Colling]

seconded, we end up exporting to xnormal because softimage cant generate
acceptable resaults.
On 12/09/2013 2:16 AM, Adam Sale adamfs...@gmail.com wrote:

 Normal maps have not worked correctly in Softimage for some time now.
 I think they are a basic enough tool, needed by artists everyday.
 In the case of my experience with Softimage, I find a lot of people move
 away to Maya for shade and light, precisely because right out of the box
 normal maps do not work as expected.

 I have filed as a bug report many times, but really think it time to clean
 up the tool.
 Maybe even add the ability to increase normal map intensity. Not too much
 to ask ;-)

 Please, Please, Please.

 Adam

Re: Hard surface modeling question

[James De Colling]

what kind of shading issues are you having? and that guys model is nice,
but certainly not perfect. and entirely possible to do in softimage with
standard tools.

i model cars in softimage all the time with no hassles. just make sure you
plan out your mesh / loops early on. make all panel cuts etc after one or
two subdivisions down so you have the main surface already clean. also if
your going realtime, use shading edges or hard edges...there is nothing
else :)

if you really want to do tricky cuts, sometimes what I do is dupe the mesh,
locally subdivide it a few times, then project a fairly dense curve onto it
via shrinkwrap.

delete the subdivided mesh, (freeze the curve beforehand!) then use the
curve as a snapguide for your cuts. im sure there are plenty of other ways,
but this is what works well for me :)

cheers,

james,


On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.comwrote:

 Hey folks. On CgSociety there is a talented guy modeling a MI-24
 helicopter. He’s using Max for the modeling, and he’s got some extremely
 powerful technique to model lids, insets, etc, without ANY SHADING ARTIFACT.
 

 ** **

 I tried several things that I am aware of, but in vain, I always had
 shading issue on my model, even on extreme subdivision.

 ** **

 Shaded view:
 http://www.cantarel.de/external/WIP/MI-24/Mi-24_mdl_v239_view01.jpg

 Wireframe:
 http://www.cantarel.de/external/WIP/MI-24/Mi-24_mdl_v239_view02.jpg

 ** **

 And the thread itself:
 http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=7643118postcount=275

 ** **

 So any idea would help us a lot!

 ** **

 ** **

 Cheers

 ** **

 ** **

 ** **

 Szabolcs
 ___
 This message contains confidential information and is intended only for
 the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not
 disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender
 immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and
 delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be
 guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted,
 corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses.
 The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions
 in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail
 transmission. If verification is required please request a hard-copy
 version. Crytek GmbH - http://www.crytek.com - Grüneburgweg 16-18, 60322
 Frankfurt - HRB77322 Amtsgericht Frankfurt a. Main- UST IdentNr.:
 DE20432461 - Geschaeftsfuehrer: Avni Yerli, Cevat Yerli, Faruk Yerli

Re: Hard surface modeling question

[James De Colling]

oh, and make sure to check shading with highquality viewport, which
pixelshades instead of vertex shades
On 22/08/2013 10:12 PM, Tim Bolland tim_boll...@hotmail.co.uk wrote:

  Just a thought but have you looked at the geometry approximation
 settings? Maybe there is a difference there?

 Tim

 On 22/08/2013 13:55, Andreas Bystrom wrote:

  looks like your surface has more of a curve to it though, the more
 curved it is the more issues like that will show up..

  also, i doubt 3dsmax subdivides much different from softimage or maya for
 that matter, maybe you could ask the guy to send you that piece of the
 model as an obj so you can try it out.




 On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 11:44 PM, Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.comwrote:

  Thanks James,



 I thought and used similar approach but yet, here we tried to reproduce a
 similar surface that guy does, and we can’t replicate the same smoothness







 As you see, the unsubdivided model has clearly visible shading issues,
 and the subdivided has too. I made a similar (almost identical) topology
 around the corners, and it drives us crazy…





 Cheers





 Szabolcs



 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *James De Colling
 *Sent:* Thursday, August 22, 2013 12:33 PM
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Re: Hard surface modeling question



 what kind of shading issues are you having? and that guys model is nice,
 but certainly not perfect. and entirely possible to do in softimage with
 standard tools.



 i model cars in softimage all the time with no hassles. just make sure
 you plan out your mesh / loops early on. make all panel cuts etc after one
 or two subdivisions down so you have the main surface already clean. also
 if your going realtime, use shading edges or hard edges...there is nothing
 else :)



 if you really want to do tricky cuts, sometimes what I do is dupe the
 mesh, locally subdivide it a few times, then project a fairly dense curve
 onto it via shrinkwrap.



 delete the subdivided mesh, (freeze the curve beforehand!) then use the
 curve as a snapguide for your cuts. im sure there are plenty of other ways,
 but this is what works well for me :)



 cheers,



 james,



 On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com
 wrote:

 Hey folks. On CgSociety there is a talented guy modeling a MI-24
 helicopter. He’s using Max for the modeling, and he’s got some extremely
 powerful technique to model lids, insets, etc, without ANY SHADING ARTIFACT.



 I tried several things that I am aware of, but in vain, I always had
 shading issue on my model, even on extreme subdivision.



 Shaded view:
 http://www.cantarel.de/external/WIP/MI-24/Mi-24_mdl_v239_view01.jpg

 Wireframe:
 http://www.cantarel.de/external/WIP/MI-24/Mi-24_mdl_v239_view02.jpg



 And the thread itself:
 http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=7643118postcount=275



 So any idea would help us a lot!





 Cheers







 Szabolcs

 ___
 This message contains confidential information and is intended only for
 the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not
 disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender
 immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and
 delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be
 guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted,
 corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses.
 The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions
 in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail
 transmission. If verification is required please request a hard-copy
 version. Crytek GmbH - http://www.crytek.com - Grüneburgweg 16-18, 60322
 Frankfurt - HRB77322 Amtsgericht Frankfurt a. Main- UST IdentNr.:
 DE20432461 - Geschaeftsfuehrer: Avni Yerli, Cevat Yerli, Faruk Yerli






 --
 Andreas Byström
 Weta Digital



image/jpeg

Re: No anti aliasing while navigating?

[James De Colling]

having just upgraded here, im finding the same thing. whats happened? I
cant find any checkbox for AA whilst navigating.

James,


On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 6:19 PM, Christian Gotzinger
cgo...@googlemail.comwrote:

 Hi list,

 I turned on the High Quality viewport in SI 2014 in my scene to get
 anti-aliasing. But the anti-aliasing only works when the camera is
 stationary. As soon as start navigating, I get the old pixelated mess. I
 want it to be enabled all the time, not just when I stop navigating. What
 gives?

 Thank you

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

[James De Colling]

Welcome to the pro card market... I only use quadros because that's what
the sells we use ship with... Long gone are the days when people cards were
worth their sticker price
On Apr 4, 2013 4:28 PM, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote:

 I should be out of the office, but will test asap.
 For the quadro, well it was bundled with the workstation (HP Z620). It's
 no problem if the quadro is more expensive and produce better performance.
 It becomes a problem if they are really bellow game cards.
 Your gtx has more than 400 cores while the 4000 has 256... They are
 supposed to be stronger when working though...


 Le 04/04/2013 09:13, Octavian Ureche a écrit :

 Here you go:

 http://www.nvidia.com/object/**product-quadro-4000-us.htmlhttp://www.nvidia.com/object/product-quadro-4000-us.html
 http://www.geforce.com/**hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-**
 gtx-470/specificationshttp://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-470/specifications

 The last one is what i currently have. as you can see, the quadro's
 memory bandwith, cuda cores and memory interface are below the gtx. But you
 have bigger vram which means you can cram more into the scenes.
 Speed wise, given the differences it might be slower at the actual
 rendering, but we're talking gpu rendering here so i'm not sure if it's
 going to be that much noticeable.
 Do a render with both scenes and post your times in the forum. Then we'll
 know better how hardware affects the performance.

 To be honest, i always found quadros to be extremely overpriced, but
 maybe that's just me.

Re: Softimage 2014

[James De Colling]

I like working in the current hq viewport... 16x aa and really nice per
pixel shading / texture display... But only if I don't have to duplicate or
delete geometry.. There is a very annoying pause everytime.  Really kills
the mood... And switching passes with hq enabled is a party pooper too...
Hopefully that's been fixed in 2014
On Apr 3, 2013 9:08 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 3:39 AM, Ahmidou Lyazidi ahmidou@gmail.com
 wrote:
  Also about HQV/Dx11 it's kind of having double development for the same
  visual result.
  Shouldn't they focus on one?

 I'd said HQV and DX11 have quite different purpose. You'd make a DX11
 viewport for game development so artists can see their assets using
 custom DX11 shaders, so you don't actually need a high level of
 sophistication in the display in the bundled shaders..  However, a
 client for a HQV is going to be a freelancer that wants stuff to just
 work out of the box and want help preview an eventually offline
 render.

Re: creating atlas textures

[James De Colling]

What I generally do for atlas work is create a cluster for each object
(that wouldn't be easily selectable after merge)  then merge,  duplicate
the uv set,  layout the second set to something far more optimized for
atlas,  then rendermap (albedo only)  down to a new texture.  Delete the
first uv set and your good to go.

Unfortunately that's the quickest way I've found And I recommend
exporting the model into maya/modified etc for packing since xsi doesn't
have such a basic feature

James,
On Apr 1, 2013 7:20 PM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:

 Hey Carl,


 if you select all three objects and display the Texture Editor,
 do the UV shells overlap?

 If yes:

 1)
 The UV layout needs to be modified and the combined texture
 inputs baked into a new, single map that is assigned to a
 ne, single material. All clusters and modeling history
 can be deleted afterwards.

 A convenient way to do that is to merge the 3 meshes (or a copy)
 then create a new planar projection. From that, you get UV definition
 for all UVs/vertices in the mesh and can now selectively copy over
 existing/working Uvshells you like by selecting them, copying them
 into the new projection set even laying out new shells using unfold
 is not a problem as you can always copy just the shell bits you like
 into that planar projection map.

 Once happy with the modified (pseudo-)planar projection, all you need
 to do is bake the textures using the original UV space as a source and
 the new one as a target.

 2)
 If that sounds like too much work and texture space is not a rare good,
 you can also just create a plane, assign a planar projection to it,
 then select the first mesh and the plane, open texture editor and
 scale alle UVs down 0.5 (using the transform input) then snap the scaled
 down uv shells to the UV 0-0 origin. The plane functions as a guide as it
 centers
 your scale pivot to the center of the 0-1 range and let愀 you scale down
 everything nicely to 0.5.

 You repreat that process for the other two pieces, moving each to a
 seperate square of the 0-1 range. Ending up with three uv shells neatly
 packed into the UV 0-1 range (like tiles in a bathroom).

 You can then stamp your UVs to use as a guide in Photoshop and just move
 the three texture into their place there. If you had 3 2k maps, you end
 up with one 4k map. You could also rendermap but combining the map in
 Photoshop may give you cleaner results in that case.

 The cleaning up of history and clusters may involve creating another
 planar projection, then copying the seperate cluster uvs into that one
 and deleting everything you don愒 need afterwards anyway.

 If no:

 Merge, create new planar projection, copy the shells over into planar
 projection,
 delete clusters. Stamp the uvs as a guide. layer the three textures in
 photoshop
 (you should not need to nudge the textures in photoshop) combine into one
 layer
 by masking out the bits you need. save. assign to new material.
 double check for obsolete uv sets and clusters.

 Cheers,


 tim





 On 01.04.2013 06:17, carl callewaert wrote:

 But that does not create 1 texture that is an atlas texture of the 3
 separate texture.
 Merging create 3 cluster with 3 material with each their own texture. This
 is super bad for drawcalls in a game engine.

 c

 From:  Luca superposit...@gmail.com
 Reply-To:  
 softimage@listproc.autodesk.**comsoftimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 
 Date:  Monday, 1 April, 2013 12:04 AM
 To:  softimage@listproc.autodesk.**com softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 
 Subject:  Re: creating atlas textures

 Maybe you want to MERGE the objects. It will create 1 object. It will be
 considered as a unique object. So normally one knows when to use Merge.

 - Select the 3 objects.
 - (MODEL module)  (Create) Poly.Mesh  Merge.
 Then follow the options.








 2013/4/1 Christopher 
 christopher@thecreativesheep.**cachristop...@thecreativesheep.ca
 

 Make one object a parent and the other the children, then branch select
 and
 apply the material, I hope I'm right off the top of my head ? :)

 Christopher




   carl callewaert mailto:c...@fundi3d.com

Sunday, March 31, 2013 10:02 PM

 In my scene are 3 object with each a texture and each their UV.

 Is there an easy way to create 1 material with the 3 texture
 combined in 1 texture and 1 uv?

 c



   Jordi Bares mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com

Sunday, March 31, 2013 5:56 PM

 Finally managed to get  a moment to re-subscribe.

 Jordi Bares
 jordiba...@gmail.com

Re: creating atlas textures

[James De Colling]

That's a nice little trick,  will give it a shot.  Still extremely limited
alas,  but handy in a pinch
 On Apr 1, 2013 10:54 PM, Toonafish ron...@toonafish.nl wrote:

  With a litte cheating you can use the packing feature in Unfold. Just
 create some new UV's with Unfold, copy/paste the old ones into the Unfold
 UV's and use the packing.

 - Ronald

 On 4/1/2013 15:29, James De Colling wrote:

 What I generally do for atlas work is create a cluster for each object
 (that wouldn't be easily selectable after merge)  then merge,  duplicate
 the uv set,  layout the second set to something far more optimized for
 atlas,  then rendermap (albedo only)  down to a new texture.  Delete the
 first uv set and your good to go.

 Unfortunately that's the quickest way I've found And I recommend
 exporting the model into maya/modified etc for packing since xsi doesn't
 have such a basic feature

 James,
 On Apr 1, 2013 7:20 PM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:

 Hey Carl,


 if you select all three objects and display the Texture Editor,
 do the UV shells overlap?

 If yes:

 1)
 The UV layout needs to be modified and the combined texture
 inputs baked into a new, single map that is assigned to a
 ne, single material. All clusters and modeling history
 can be deleted afterwards.

 A convenient way to do that is to merge the 3 meshes (or a copy)
 then create a new planar projection. From that, you get UV definition
 for all UVs/vertices in the mesh and can now selectively copy over
 existing/working Uvshells you like by selecting them, copying them
 into the new projection set even laying out new shells using unfold
 is not a problem as you can always copy just the shell bits you like
 into that planar projection map.

 Once happy with the modified (pseudo-)planar projection, all you need
 to do is bake the textures using the original UV space as a source and
 the new one as a target.

 2)
 If that sounds like too much work and texture space is not a rare good,
 you can also just create a plane, assign a planar projection to it,
 then select the first mesh and the plane, open texture editor and
 scale alle UVs down 0.5 (using the transform input) then snap the scaled
 down uv shells to the UV 0-0 origin. The plane functions as a guide as it
 centers
 your scale pivot to the center of the 0-1 range and let愀 you scale down
 everything nicely to 0.5.

 You repreat that process for the other two pieces, moving each to a
 seperate square of the 0-1 range. Ending up with three uv shells neatly
 packed into the UV 0-1 range (like tiles in a bathroom).

 You can then stamp your UVs to use as a guide in Photoshop and just move
 the three texture into their place there. If you had 3 2k maps, you end
 up with one 4k map. You could also rendermap but combining the map in
 Photoshop may give you cleaner results in that case.

 The cleaning up of history and clusters may involve creating another
 planar projection, then copying the seperate cluster uvs into that one
 and deleting everything you don愒 need afterwards anyway.

 If no:

 Merge, create new planar projection, copy the shells over into planar
 projection,
 delete clusters. Stamp the uvs as a guide. layer the three textures in
 photoshop
 (you should not need to nudge the textures in photoshop) combine into one
 layer
 by masking out the bits you need. save. assign to new material.
 double check for obsolete uv sets and clusters.

 Cheers,


 tim





 On 01.04.2013 06:17, carl callewaert wrote:

 But that does not create 1 texture that is an atlas texture of the 3
 separate texture.
 Merging create 3 cluster with 3 material with each their own texture.
 This
 is super bad for drawcalls in a game engine.

 c

 From:  Luca superposit...@gmail.com
 Reply-To:  softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Date:  Monday, 1 April, 2013 12:04 AM
 To:  softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject:  Re: creating atlas textures

 Maybe you want to MERGE the objects. It will create 1 object. It will be
 considered as a unique object. So normally one knows when to use Merge.

 - Select the 3 objects.
 - (MODEL module)  (Create) Poly.Mesh  Merge.
 Then follow the options.








 2013/4/1 Christopher christop...@thecreativesheep.ca

 Make one object a parent and the other the children, then branch select
 and
 apply the material, I hope I'm right off the top of my head ? :)

 Christopher




   carl callewaert mailto:c...@fundi3d.com

Sunday, March 31, 2013 10:02 PM

 In my scene are 3 object with each a texture and each their UV.

 Is there an easy way to create 1 material with the 3 texture
 combined in 1 texture and 1 uv?

 c



   Jordi Bares mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com

Sunday, March 31, 2013 5:56 PM

 Finally managed to get  a moment to re-subscribe.

 Jordi Bares
 jordiba...@gmail.com

Re: 2014 New feature list... minor corrections list... you decide

[James De Colling]

that would be a service pack no?

imo - new features - new major version number
bug fixes - SP / .5 at best

On Friday, March 15, 2013, Sebastien Sterling wrote:

 What if they came out with a version with no new features... however they
 had fixed 75 % of all known bugs and issues known to the soft. would many
 people be interested in that ? a clean optimisation of what is already
 there, tightening down the screws as it where?

 On 15 March 2013 04:57, Sam sbowl...@cox.net wrote:

 I didn't withhold my money for several lackluster releases. This year I
 decided I would wait for them to prove they had something worth upgrading
 to and so far it looks as if I will be keeping my money. The problem here
 is that the proper channels don’t seem to care. If they did, they wouldn't
 have moved most of the Softimage team to Maya.  

 ** **

 ** **

 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Matt Lind
 *Sent:* Thursday, March 14, 2013 1:54 PM
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* RE: 2014 New feature list... minor corrections list... you
 decide

 ** **

 If enough T-shirts don’t sell, the company will investigate as to why that
 is and make changes.  Companies don’t like spending and not seeing a return.
 

 ** **

 BUT, as a customer you shouldn’t withhold your money as first course of
 action.  You should be communicating your issues through proper channels to
 get them resolved.  If and only you’ve gone down all available channels and
 still without resolution should you withhold payment in the form of using a
 different product.  Withholding payment should be the last resort, not the
 first.

 ** **

 ** **

 Matt

 ** **

 ** **

 ** **

 ** **

 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Mirko
 Jankovic
 *Sent:* Thursday, March 14, 2013 1:47 PM
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Re: 2014 New feature list... minor corrections list... you
 decide

Re: Panasonic 20 4K windows 8 tablet

[James De Colling]

im loving my upgrade from a 24 to a 27, the extra res/ppi is lovely

if those 36 4k Eizo's were a reasonable price, i'd jump at one. ditch the
dual screen setup, go back to a single, large screen



On Thursday, March 14, 2013, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:

 Looks like the laggiest crap I've ever seen.

 He had to tap stuff thrice or more before it'd pop up several seconds
 later, he pinch zoomed and nothing happened (moved on silently like a
 champ), lines appeared with several frames worth of lag, and I don't even
 wanna think what the battery life would be like.

 Most apps are bad enough with a 2.5k 27 monitor, a 4k 20 while OS' and
 software haven't woken up to the HR call yet? No thanks.

 Waiting for the Wacom one for now.

 Not sold on this new 4k revolution yet, definitely not on a tablet format.

 On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 8:10 AM, Manuel Huertas Marchena 
 lito...@hotmail.com javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'lito...@hotmail.com');wrote:

 Cool screen, but the pen looks like a fat crayola!

  Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2013 21:24:05 +0100
  From: softim...@keyvis.at javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
 'softim...@keyvis.at');
  To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
 'softimage@listproc.autodesk.com');
  Subject: Panasonic 20 4K windows 8 tablet

 
  Ain't that some interesting piece of hardware:
 
 
 http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/panasonic-20-inch-4k-windows-8-tablet-hands-on/
 
 http://gadgets.ndtv.com/tablets/news/panasonic-shows-of-a-20-inch-4k-windows-8-tablet-at-ces-315261
 




 --
 Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it
 and let them flee like the dogs they are!

Re: Octane render

[James De Colling]

What are the limitations with the gpu renderers?  Last time I looked at
it,  subdivision / displacement was unsupported,  I assume that's changed
now?
On Feb 14, 2013 8:08 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote:

 If you can provide the scene I can test in Maxwell in six Core i7 Extreme
 to compare.  Of course my guess is that Octane will beat it in time.  But
 at least is a good parameter.  The other will be if someone with Arnold can
 do the same.

everybody's favorite question...

[James De Colling]

the razer looks interesting, but the poor screen res is a shame, i'd want
something with pen support as well.

HP Elitebook Revolve is something that has me interested. 1920x1080ips
option, pen support, i7, 12gb ram

probably only intel hd4000 graphics, but thats probably plenty for a laptop
if your not gaming and just doing light-medium 3d

james,


On Saturday, January 12, 2013, Andy Moorer wrote:

 They are intended for gaming but both the razer 'blade' and 'edge' have me
 interested. I'm pretty pro-tablet these days since my iPad goes just about
 everywhere with me, the idea of a tablet that could conceivably act as a
 ultra-portable workstation is pretty appealing.

 I've found that anything much bigger than a tablet ends up fine for
 on-site gigs when I'm back in a hotel room but doesn't make it out and
 about with me to places I'd like to actually get some work done, like
 airplane seats, coffee shops etc. So even a less-powerful tablet which
 could have decent performance and reliability makes me hopeful. I'd be
 interested if anyone more hardware-centric than me thinks the specs on the
 razer tablet are sufficient for meaningful work (if only that screen was
 stereo...)

 The true laptop of theirs, well it's cool looking, check out that nifty
 LCD. :D But a MacBook might be a wiser choice?

 http://www.razerzone.com/

 Love the portability of my iPad but sick of living in Apple's walled
 garden, hoping we're close to the point where tablets are becoming more
 than really cool multimedia toys. Cheers - AM

 On Jan 11, 2013, at 10:15 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote:

 …What computer should I get? (for home).

 

 I have always used workstations and have already done the research for
 another purchase.  However, it’s been nearly 8 years since my last
 investment and my trusty Dell Precision workstation is starting to fail L.
 I am considering going mobile this time.  I’m asking for people’s
 experience with laptops as I have never used a laptop for 3D work before
 and have mostly heard bad things in the area of reliability and lack of
 selection.  I don’t need top of the line, but I am interested in something
 durable that won’t break the bank and performs at least as well as a
 mid-grade workstation.  Besides 3D, I’ll be doing a lot of coding,
 photography (editing), and some video with my DSLR.  So color accuracy and
 IO would be important features.  I would tend to think an SSD hard drive,
 multi-core CPU (4+), USB 3.0, a decent Nvidia Quadro card would be a good
 baseline.  Anything else people recommend in a laptop?  Or to avoid?

 ** **

 Please reply offline.

 ** **

 Thanks,

 ** **

 Matt

 ** **

Re: UV stamp plugin

[James De Colling]

where do I send the beers?

your a champ, cheers!

On Saturday, November 3, 2012, Simon Anderson wrote:

 Mr one again you RCK! haha.. :)

 checks you monday

 On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 3:40 PM, Ahmidou Lyazidi 
 ahmidou@gmail.comjavascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'ahmidou@gmail.com');
  wrote:

 Just forgot to say, it's obiviou but as it's a vector file, you can
 choose whatever size you want while importing in photoshop.

 Have a nice week end!



 2012/11/3 Ahmidou Lyazidi ahmidou@gmail.com javascript:_e({},
 'cvml', 'ahmidou@gmail.com');

 I have seen some people complaining about the UV stamp feature in
 Softimage, and I also found it annoying that you can't specifiy the image
 size, and that it's asking if we want replace the current texture with the
 UV one, which I'm sure everybody reply NO.
 So I gave it a try and it was quite straight forward. I was first
 thinking writing SVG as it's just xml, but Photoshop can't read them, so
 instead I found a Python module that can write .eps files.

 You can download it here
 https://github.com/ahmidou/Softimage_DEV/tree/master/UVstamp

 Just copy the files in your plugin folder, the command is located in the
 tool menu of the texture editor.
 You can also run it as a command:
 Application.stampUV( name, path, collection of UVprojections )

 Ho and the per UV projection is not working yet.

 Cheers

 --
 Ahmidou Lyazidi
 Director | TD | CG artist
 http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos




 --
 Ahmidou Lyazidi
 Director | TD | CG artist
 http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos




 --
 ---
 Simon Ben Anderson
 blog: http://vinyldevelopment.wordpress.com/

Re: UV stamp plugin

[James De Colling]

just a note, saving via rightclick save as in chrome adds a doctype line
in the py files, i had to copy / paste the contents from the raw data on
the site into the .py files themselves in order to work.

is there another way around that? i havent come across it before.

cheers

james,

On Saturday, November 3, 2012, Eric Thivierge wrote:

 You can send them to Animal Logic care of Eric Thivierge. I'm make sure he
 gets them, promise... :D

 
 Eric Thivierge
 http://www.ethivierge.com


 On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 7:44 PM, James De Colling 
 james.decoll...@gmail.com javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
 'james.decoll...@gmail.com'); wrote:

 where do I send the beers?

 your a champ, cheers!


 On Saturday, November 3, 2012, Simon Anderson wrote:

 Mr one again you RCK! haha.. :)

 checks you monday

 On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 3:40 PM, Ahmidou Lyazidi 
 ahmidou@gmail.comwrote:

 Just forgot to say, it's obiviou but as it's a vector file, you can
 choose whatever size you want while importing in photoshop.

 Have a nice week end!



 2012/11/3 Ahmidou Lyazidi ahmidou@gmail.com

 I have seen some people complaining about the UV stamp feature in
 Softimage, and I also found it annoying that you can't specifiy the image
 size, and that it's asking if we want replace the current texture with the
 UV one, which I'm sure everybody reply NO.
 So I gave it a try and it was quite straight forward. I was first
 thinking writing SVG as it's just xml, but Photoshop can't read them, so
 instead I found a Python module that can write .eps files.

 You can download it here
 https://github.com/ahmidou/Softimage_DEV/tree/master/UVstamp

 Just copy the files in your plugin folder, the command is located in
 the tool menu of the texture editor.
 You can also run it as a command:
 Application.stampUV( name, path, collection of UVprojections )

 Ho and the per UV projection is not working yet.

 Cheers

 --
 Ahmidou Lyazidi
 Director | TD | CG artist
 http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos




 --
 Ahmidou Lyazidi
 Director | TD | CG artist
 http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos




 --
 ---
 Simon Ben Anderson
 blog: http://vinyldevelopment.wordpress.com/

Re: UV stamp plugin

[James De Colling]

can someone verify its not lining up correctly?

a 2048x2048 stamp out of the uv editor in the standard way, is slightly
larger and 2 pixels left of what the EPS version is kicking out.

seems if I import into photoshop at 2060x2060 and nudge it, it lines up
correctly.



On Saturday, November 3, 2012, Simon Reeves wrote:

 Giving it a go thanks!



 Simon Reeves
 Freelance 3D VFX Artist

 London, UK
 *email: si...@simonreeves.com javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
 'si...@simonreeves.com');*
 *website: http://www.simonreeves.com*
 *
 *



 On 3 November 2012 10:07, Stefan Andersson 
 sander...@gmail.comjavascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'sander...@gmail.com');
  wrote:

 Very awesome of you! I'll send Eric the beers as requested... from Eric :)

 Note to the* Softimage devs*

 1.) Implement these scripts
 2.) The lenght of the Tools menu in the texture editor is getting
 really long!

 regards
 stefan andersson



 On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 5:38 AM, Ahmidou Lyazidi 
 ahmidou@gmail.comjavascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'ahmidou@gmail.com');
  wrote:

 I have seen some people complaining about the UV stamp feature in
 Softimage, and I also found it annoying that you can't specifiy the image
 size, and that it's asking if we want replace the current texture with the
 UV one, which I'm sure everybody reply NO.
 So I gave it a try and it was quite straight forward. I was first
 thinking writing SVG as it's just xml, but Photoshop can't read them, so
 instead I found a Python module that can write .eps files.

 You can download it here
 https://github.com/ahmidou/Softimage_DEV/tree/master/UVstamp

 Just copy the files in your plugin folder, the command is located in the
 tool menu of the texture editor.
 You can also run it as a command:
 Application.stampUV( name, path, collection of UVprojections )

 Ho and the per UV projection is not working yet.

 Cheers

 --
 Ahmidou Lyazidi
 Director | TD | CG artist
 http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos




 --
 stefan andersson - digital janitor - http://sanders3d.wordpress.com

Re: UV stamp plugin

[James De Colling]

is it lining up 100% with a normal stamp?

On Sunday, November 4, 2012, Rob Wuijster wrote:

  Did a quick test, seems to work fine.

 Thanks for that! Has been an annoyance for years.

 And yes, please add this to 2014!!!


 Rob Wuijster
 E r...@casema.nl javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'r...@casema.nl');

 \/-\/\/

 On 3-11-2012 14:08, James De Colling wrote:

 can someone verify its not lining up correctly?

  a 2048x2048 stamp out of the uv editor in the standard way, is slightly
 larger and 2 pixels left of what the EPS version is kicking out.

  seems if I import into photoshop at 2060x2060 and nudge it, it lines up
 correctly.



 On Saturday, November 3, 2012, Simon Reeves wrote:

 Giving it a go thanks!



 Simon Reeves
 Freelance 3D VFX Artist

  London, UK
 *email: si...@simonreeves.com*
 *website: http://www.simonreeves.com*
 *
 *



 On 3 November 2012 10:07, Stefan Andersson sander...@gmail.com wrote:

 Very awesome of you! I'll send Eric the beers as requested... from Eric :)

  Note to the* Softimage devs*

  1.) Implement these scripts
 2.) The lenght of the Tools menu in the texture editor is getting really
 long!

  regards
 stefan andersson



 On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 5:38 AM, Ahmidou Lyazidi ahmidou@gmail.comwrote:

 I have seen some people complaining about the UV stamp feature in
 Softimage, and I also found it annoying that you can't specifiy the image
 size, and that it's asking if we want replace the current texture with the
 UV one, which I'm sure everybody reply NO.
 So I gave it a try and it was quite straight forward. I was first thinking
 writing SVG as it's just xml, but Photoshop can't read them, so instead I
 found a Python module that can write .eps files.

 You can download it here
 https://github.com/ahmidou/Softimage_DEV/tree/master/UVstamp

 Just copy the files in your plugin folder, the command is located in the
 tool menu of the texture editor.
 You can also run it as a command:
 Application.stampUV( name, path, collection of UVprojections )

 Ho and the per UV projection is not working yet.

 Cheers

 --
 Ahmidou Lyazidi
 Director | TD | CG artist
 http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos

 No virus found in this message.
 Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
 Version: 2012.0.2221 / Virus Database: 2441/5370 - Release Date: 11/02/12

Re: Texture Editor, small annoying things.

[James De Colling]

There was a thread not long ago called small annoying things,  where all
this was already mentioned / requested.  We were told the devastating were
reading the thread... So we'll see
On Oct 31, 2012 5:29 AM, Stefan Andersson sander...@gmail.com wrote:

 I wouldn't mind at all if the stamp function was vector based :) Then
 you could chose in Photoshop/Gimp what size you wanted when you import
 the vector image. That would eliminate that you need to specify what
 resolution you needed.

 Could be a SVG or EPS.

 regards
 stefan


 On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 8:37 PM, Williams, Wayne
 wayne.willi...@xaviant.com wrote:
  Agreed. Having some presets that allow you to stamp out at 512x512,
  1024x1024, 2k, 4k, and oblong variants thereof like 1kx2k would be great.
  Having the background color in there would be nice as well. For me I
 always
  set my UV wireframe to black and stamp to white preset images so I can
 plop
  on top of psd and set to multiply but having the flexibility to let
 everyone
  do it their own way is the best route imo.
 
 
 
  I would also request a Relax by Face Angles like Max has. That thing
 works
  fantastic.
 
 
 
  Max’s align horizontal/vertical edge rings/loops is pretty slick as well.
 
 
 
  http://www.renderhjs.net/textools/
 
 
 
  Most of this stuff we already have but there are some neat features here
 and
  there.
 
 
 
 
 
  From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
  [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Simon
 Reeves
  Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 12:36 PM
  To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
  Subject: Re: Texture Editor, small annoying things.
 
 
 
  I make projects from a 'template' original structure, and in the pictures
  folder I have lots of square black images 1024, 2048 etc. so they're
 always
  there to grab.
 
  (would be nice not to press no every time though)
 
 
 
  On 30 October 2012 16:20, Arvid Björn arvidbj...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  Sign me up for all of these!
 
  I wish stamping was just simpler, I'd perfer if the stamp function didn't
  actually require an image. It's more of an annoyance to have to create
 the a
  black image first, then stamp it to a new file, click no - everytime -
  then back into photoshop to merge the place-holder with the second
  place-holder.
 
  Often I actually just take a screenshot of the texture editor without an
  image in it, paste in PS and crop the image, which actually seems like
 less
  of a hassle to me.
 
 
 
  On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 4:53 PM, Fabian Schnuer Gohde 
 list@schnuer.com
  wrote:
 
  Hi,
  having done a bunch of unwrapping of mechanical things the last week
 there
  are three little things that the texture editor could need (there are a
 few
  big things also but I'm trying to be realistic.)
 
  1) Comment out the line of code that asks me if I want to swap out the
  texture with the stamped one after stamping out the UV's. I think I have
  spend the last 10 years saying no here with no way to stop it from always
  asking.
 
  2) In addition to Island filter add an object filter. So when you select
 a
  component it selects all the others belonging to that object (connected
 or
  not). This would be useful when laying out a bunch of overlapping objects
  into one patch where one can keep the islands from each object close to
 each
  other. Right now if I go to the viewport and select the object I of
 course
  lose all the others and there is a lot of de- and re-selecting. Locking
 the
  selection locks it at component level and then that doesn't help sync
  either.
 
  3) Beyond that if you feel the need to really impress ;-) then a re-scale
  button would be great where all selected poly's are re-scaled
 proportionally
  with respect to their surface area. Having a preference for absolute
 scaling
  here would be great where you set 1 SI-unit^2 = 0.1 UV-units^2 for
 example
  and it would scale it up accordingly. Would make getting the scale right
 for
  cases where it's important easy. (1m2 carpet texture, scene in decimeter
  scale and then the uv's scale properly on the floor)
 
  Thank you for listening,
  Fabian
 
 
 
 



 --
 stefan andersson - digital janitor - http://sanders3d.wordpress.com

Re: Rendermap with Ambient Occlusion

[James De Colling]

dont suppose your little ice trick does colored AO as well?

On Monday, October 15, 2012, Leonard Koch wrote:

 Yeah, for us that was too slow, but it's definitely the better method.
 On Oct 15, 2012 7:31 AM, James De Colling 
 james.decoll...@gmail.comjavascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 
 'james.decoll...@gmail.com');
 wrote:

 just use the rendertree to rendermap instead of the occlusion setting
 built into the rendermap property. you have a lot more control that way
 too. just throw your occlusion in at the end, and it'll bake the whole lot
 together.

 On Saturday, October 13, 2012, Chris Marshall wrote:

 Hello,
 Haven't done much rendermap stuff before, but we're outputting some
 assets for a game engine. It appears that to render ambient occlusion into
 the rendered texture map, it has to be done as a separate pass then
 photoshopped together? As I have quite a few objects to generate these maps
 for, this is doubling my workload. Is there a way around this and render
 the AO in with the Surface Colour and Illumination map, or am I approaching
 this in the wrong way?
 Thanks

 Chris

Re: Rendermap with Ambient Occlusion

[James De Colling]

just use the rendertree to rendermap instead of the occlusion setting built
into the rendermap property. you have a lot more control that way too. just
throw your occlusion in at the end, and it'll bake the whole lot together.

On Saturday, October 13, 2012, Chris Marshall wrote:

 Hello,
 Haven't done much rendermap stuff before, but we're outputting some assets
 for a game engine. It appears that to render ambient occlusion into the
 rendered texture map, it has to be done as a separate pass then
 photoshopped together? As I have quite a few objects to generate these maps
 for, this is doubling my workload. Is there a way around this and render
 the AO in with the Surface Colour and Illumination map, or am I approaching
 this in the wrong way?
 Thanks

 Chris

Re: Softimage CIP Data - Screen Resolution

[James De Colling]

bring on that lovely 36 4k eizo.should skew the results a bitwell,
for the few people who took out a 2nd mortgage to buy one anyway.

On Friday, September 28, 2012, Eric Turman wrote:

 I just noticed...the CIP does not capture multiple monitors. I use two 26
 (24 at work) inch monitors each running at 1920 x 1200 and my score only
 registers one of them. With all the PPGs and explorers and other windows
 fying around at any given moment I could use a third too ;) but I digress.
 Having never owned a cine display, doe it only use one head of the video
 card? I remember the dell equivalent years ago and it used two heads of the
 video card (as if it had two displays) Basically I'm wondering how
 accurate--how relavent--that chart is if it is ignoring second displays.
 How many people really use it in 1280x1024 mode without a second monitor?

 On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 2:05 AM, pete...@skynet.be javascript:_e({},
 'cvml', 'pete...@skynet.be'); wrote:

   Yeah – I’m surprised about the majority being less than 1500 by 1000.

 I thought of 24” at 1920x1200 as the de facto standard.



  *From:* Len Krenzler javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
 'l...@creativecontrol.ca');
 *Sent:* Thursday, September 27, 2012 11:02 PM
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
 'softimage@listproc.autodesk.com');
 *Subject:* Re: Softimage CIP Data - Screen Resolution

  What amazes me also is that there seems to be some at less than 1000
 and quite a few at around 1000.  Would there even be any viewport left at
 that point?  I'll have to try it for fun.  Why would anyone use a multi
 thousand dollar software package on a $10 monitor...hmmm...

 On 9/27/2012 2:37 PM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau wrote:

  Ya and that’s called bragging Votch. ;)

 We’re mostly on 24” here.

 

 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com javascript:_e({},
 'cvml', 'softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com'); [
 mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com javascript:_e({},
 'cvml', 'softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com');] *On Behalf Of *
 Votch
 *Sent:* 27 septembre 2012 16:28
 *To:* softimage
 *Subject:* Softimage CIP Data - Screen Resolution

 

 I was poking around in the CIP data preview and noticed an interesting
 stat. Everybody at Whiskytree has an Apple 30 Cinema Display. Is it
 possible we represent the .11% of Softimage users :)

 [image: Inline image 1]

 



 --
 _

 Len Krenzler - Creative Control Media Productions

 Phone: 780.463.3126
 www.creativecontrol.ca - l...@creativecontrol.ca javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 
 'l...@creativecontrol.ca');




 --




 -=T=-

Re: rendermap chrome ball with fg not working

[James De Colling]

instead of doing that, render 6 cameras with 90deg fov. much quicker as
well, since softimages useless rendermap is single threaded for finalgather.

also, if you have to do a lot of rendermapping with FG /
Reflections...another way to speed it up is do the old pre-cache FG trick,
then set you FG to readonly.

but anyway, not sure rendermap supports clusters...it may, but ive never
tried. also make sure you have ignore reflections turned off (on by default)

apart from that, nothing else I can think of.

Cheers,

James,

PS, softimage devs, I know its only a particle plugin, but can we please
fix the rendermap? ta.

On Thursday, September 27, 2012, Kris Rivel wrote:

 I'm trying to do a 360 render of a room.  I have a sub-d cube with a
 rendermap on each face.  Problem is that it seems to totally ignore FG.  It
 will take very long to render so its definitely on and processing it...but
 the result is no different than if I had fg off.  Is there a specific
 shader or something I should use?  I just have a constant set to full
 reflection.

 Kris

RE: Small Annoying Things

[James De Colling]

I will have a look at the refinement passed.  In general rendermap is
extremely slow compared to a normal render and as far as I know there is no
progress or completion info for it either
On Aug 31, 2012 8:13 AM, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.de wrote:

 hm,  MR does uses all cores and all  CPUs for FG at least for standard
 rendering. Only the old photon mapping GI/caustics) is single threaded, if
 I rember correctly (the newer irridiance particles uses always all cores
 and cpus, even sattelite CPUs). 

 ** **

 In terms of FG only: 

 In some cases ( or most) you can speed up the FG with using 'Refinment
 Passes' under the advanced options. Feels like It scales better on the
 cores than the default settings because it uses  the MR tile order. It
 doesn't hang that much on certain FG tiles that happens sometimes with
 large FG maps. Maybe it depends on the scene but you should give it a try
 next time when you're having 8h of FG calculation. 

 ** **

 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *James De Colling
 *Sent:* Friday, August 31, 2012 0:29
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Re: Small Annoying Things

 ** **

 another one...and I do like that term, Mental Delay

 ** **

 MR only uses 1 core to calculate FG points (in rendermap anyway) doing a
 4k rendermap with FG just took me 8 hours...to calculate the FG..11 cores
 sitting idle

 On Friday, August 31, 2012, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote:

 Users can't use the python that's installed with the Linux
 distribution. They need to use the version that's compatible with the
 pywin module compiled with MainWin by the development team and
 installed in the Softimage folder.  It's not obvious to update pywin
 with new versions of python because no one else uses pywin on linux or
 gcc (obviously!) and therefore it's usually not just a recompile. we
 originally paid the creator of the package to port it for us

 On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 12:02 PM, Chris Chia chris.c...@autodesk.com
 wrote:
  I don't understand. You can't get Linux Python to work?
 
  Chris
 
  On 30 Aug, 2012, at 11:50 PM, Alan Fregtman alan.fregt...@gmail.com
 mailto:alan.fregt...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  Not being able to use the system Python is a little annoying too. In
 Linux we're stuck in Py2.5 because only the built-in Softimage Python works.
 

Re: Small Annoying Things

[James De Colling]

autosave resets the render in progress in the render region, not a big
deal, but its annoying when it happens

james,

On Friday, August 17, 2012, Jeff McFall wrote:

 If the render tree window is open and one assigns a new material to the
 selected object the window does not automatically refresh to show the new
 material

 Not sure if this is intent or not but I often end up changing the wrong
 material because I expected my new material to be there

 everything else is perfect

 jeff


 -Original Message-
 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com javascript:; [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com javascript:;] On Behalf Of
 Eugen Sares
 Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2012 8:42 AM
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com javascript:;
 Subject: Small Annoying Things

 Hi list,
 Softimage has one of the slickest interfaces known to man, but nothing's
 perfect.
 Let's be nit-picky for a moment... what glitches, small flaws or
 inconsistencies annoy you most in Softimage?
 Any SPDL hacks worth doing when SI is installed freshly?
 This is about polishing, not cool new features (borders are blurry of
 course).

 Maybe the new developer team has nothing better to do (ha ha) and feels
 motivated to do a little mop-up...

 Here we go:

 - Render Tree
 When multiple objects are selected and all share the same Material, the RT
 should not nag with the message Update can't be done with two objects
 selected and display that Material.
 (besides, it says two, even when more are selected) 3ds max can even
 display multiple shader trees... would this make sense?

 - Material Manager
 ...should remember it's layout, expecially the horizontal divider.
 There's a bug with the text input field of the Shader balls names. It
 sometimes does not update, and you have to type blindly. After pressing
 enter it updates, however.

 - Timeslider
 When the Range Slider is moved, the timeslider should update with it
 interactively (does so in Maya).

 - Project Manager
 Would be nice if a double-click would open a scene in the list on the
 right hand side.

 - Operator Stack
 A double click on a Construction Mode Marker in the Explorer should
 activate that mode.
 Also, highlighting the markers in some way (bold or different color or
 whatever) would clarify which mode is active in the Stack, besides looking
 at the dropdown in the menu bar.

 - Operator Context Menu
 ... should contain all Commands related to Operators. Now they are strewn
 across the interface - some are to find in menu Edit  Operator, others in
 MCP  Edit  Operator.
 Collapse Operators is a good example. Would you go looking for that in
 the MCP menu?
 Freeze in the menu freezes everything below an operator, not the whole
 stack. Thus it could be named Freeze down or Freeze all below or
 whatever.

 - Texture Projection Operator Stack
 The Texture_Projection_Def property has buttons Reset and Freeze -
 somewhat hidden. Could reside in the Op Stack context menu as well.

 - Texture Support
 ... should show parameters GeoX, GeoY, GeoZ by default. This can be fixed
 with a litte hack of texture.spdl.
 I see no reason why it should not be possible to set the size of a TS
 numerically. I need this often.

 -  Texture_Projection_Def property
 Checkboxes U,V,W are off by default. Should be on, because when texture
 coords are outside the 0,0 - 1,0 range, textures render black, and the
 head-scratching begins.
 3D-Coat AppLink for example shifts UVs around that way.

 - UI graphics
 The browse icon (...) besides a path input field tends to draw artifacts
 when the PPG is resized. Could be graphics driver related (GeForce 460
 here).
 Does one need to go for an expensive Quadro card for this?

 - Render Region Options  Use current Pass options should be on by
 default.
 Often enough I have drawn an Render Region, tweaked the render parameters
 in the Render Manager and wondered why nothing happens...

 More to come...

 Thanks for reading!
 Best regards,
 Eugen

Re: Small Annoying Things

[James De Colling]

i'll add a few -

texture editor -
   why is it proportional settings are so small for this?
   repeat key doesnt work
   clip-grid properties are in preferences...at least make a
dropdown/slider in the toolbar (cant change colors either)
   default clip display res is 256x256...
   would be nice to get 25/50/100% clip zoom display size buttons
   unfold op doesnt automatically update the texture editor when
applying it for the first time, need to deselect/reselect the  mesh to
show up in the TE
   pack tool for pre-uv'd islands would be nice
   overlapping uv's could use mutliple shades of transparency.
   tear-off menu's in the TE would be lovely.
   typing in a u/v translate for multiple islands moves them all at
once...but try to undo it, and it undoes one at a time???
   ability to rename projections inside the TE would be handy
   ctrl-alt to move the temporary pivot of an island instead of needing
a button

general -

   apply a few ops to an object, why isnt the last automatically
selected when re-selecting the object?
   would be raly nice if bump/normal would display in the viewport
without a cg shader.



thats all for now :)

James,


On Thursday, August 16, 2012, Eugen Sares wrote:

 Hi list,
 Softimage has one of the slickest interfaces known to man, but nothing's
 perfect.
 Let's be nit-picky for a moment... what glitches, small flaws or
 inconsistencies annoy you most in Softimage?
 Any SPDL hacks worth doing when SI is installed freshly?
 This is about polishing, not cool new features (borders are blurry of
 course).

 Maybe the new developer team has nothing better to do (ha ha) and feels
 motivated to do a little mop-up...

 Here we go:

 - Render Tree
 When multiple objects are selected and all share the same Material, the RT
 should not nag with the message Update can't be done with two objects
 selected and display that Material.
 (besides, it says two, even when more are selected)
 3ds max can even display multiple shader trees... would this make sense?

 - Material Manager
 ...should remember it's layout, expecially the horizontal divider.
 There's a bug with the text input field of the Shader balls names. It
 sometimes does not update, and you have to type blindly. After pressing
 enter it updates, however.

 - Timeslider
 When the Range Slider is moved, the timeslider should update with it
 interactively (does so in Maya).

 - Project Manager
 Would be nice if a double-click would open a scene in the list on the
 right hand side.

 - Operator Stack
 A double click on a Construction Mode Marker in the Explorer should
 activate that mode.
 Also, highlighting the markers in some way (bold or different color or
 whatever) would clarify which mode is active in the Stack, besides looking
 at the dropdown in the menu bar.

 - Operator Context Menu
 ... should contain all Commands related to Operators. Now they are strewn
 across the interface - some are to find in menu Edit  Operator, others in
 MCP  Edit  Operator.
 Collapse Operators is a good example. Would you go looking for that in
 the MCP menu?
 Freeze in the menu freezes everything below an operator, not the whole
 stack. Thus it could be named Freeze down or Freeze all below or
 whatever.

 - Texture Projection Operator Stack
 The Texture_Projection_Def property has buttons Reset and Freeze -
 somewhat hidden. Could reside in the Op Stack context menu as well.

 - Texture Support
 ... should show parameters GeoX, GeoY, GeoZ by default. This can be fixed
 with a litte hack of texture.spdl.
 I see no reason why it should not be possible to set the size of a TS
 numerically. I need this often.

 -  Texture_Projection_Def property
 Checkboxes U,V,W are off by default. Should be on, because when texture
 coords are outside the 0,0 - 1,0 range, textures render black, and the
 head-scratching begins.
 3D-Coat AppLink for example shifts UVs around that way.

 - UI graphics
 The browse icon (...) besides a path input field tends to draw artifacts
 when the PPG is resized. Could be graphics driver related (GeForce 460
 here).
 Does one need to go for an expensive Quadro card for this?

 - Render Region Options  Use current Pass options should be on by
 default.
 Often enough I have drawn an Render Region, tweaked the render parameters
 in the Render Manager and wondered why nothing happens...

 More to come...

 Thanks for reading!
 Best regards,
 Eugen

Re: ping?

[James De Colling]

pong,

slow weekend perhaps (hopefully...)

james,

On Monday, June 11, 2012, Tim Crowson wrote:

  Is this thing working?
 --



 *Tim Crowson
 **Lead CG Artist*

   *Magnetic Dreams Animation Studio, Inc.
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