Re: Softimage and Houdini work flow

[Stefan Kubicek]

For a quick way to transfer geo between applications (including XSI, 
Maya, Houdini and Max) you might want to check out Oliver Hotz' 
CopyPasteExternal scripts here: 
https://u9432639.ct.sendgrid.net/ls/click?upn=A5uD99yDGgJFqsHo0L78rjo3fW-2BI05z8hPddj-2BYSrjut8V8Kr3SyUl8pLj-2FCGT-2FDeNKab7qfuyVCb3REukB7uG-2FnTuJKoUHLQmxzv4gT0JMLKlzkZqKcGGYA-2Fih90lIL-2BLBWsa1YUJBNjGxhNaRXngpWR4u2y4rO4EQx5pS1VrQy7o1eHLJi9weRs23kLyfGW-2Bv7GULCA7VOJxPKGBJLrrBeVqXj0vvSaIFyB8fOALaM7AhGYkYR7XHcY36mnSmXETK1VX2UJqx2tLXpbX0fFhqtcfpnjCMFX879EUxwmfRA-2BUCmfjlE6ceGo7COzh48PEswNvxuOAc0r0KTUrWdkrybIw2irH1tpBHYAnifDEQQBtfoRh8r-2BhzoHtZYiN-2BYHRpQa5XN4BQdOOLOPsmWYQ-3D-3DNdx3_x9fWPgxQbfi69QJnHJqUKZsAJHrwlN1lgOIh62WX2fTqFvkkf7f6K3DecqpzEOz5a7AwM5S2qrdsJ3c4N-2F-2FYGe8C-2By8C6kRTkI8J7Or8m3HIzlrofL-2FeFkxKjtPTfPH-2BZLjEJTPYimk1V6qesaqU1AxLDy9gE2zdXThfoxc4oZa2CksynwWZlx60kesLDB97Q8EJVXGGF66oXw03x3KWYzcQmglqkMUrYIdr9Zf7L3hHetcy-2Fvij5ekE6wvhajea
 

Don't think it supports animations though. And: I only found this a 
couple of days ago, I had no time to try for myself yet.


On 21/04/2020 00:02, J R Sanchez wrote:
> So I am a little late to get on the Houdini Bandwagon. Great for FX but 
> wouldn't use it for modelling etc.   I am wondering how many are using 
> both Softimage and Houdini?  I am wondering what your workflow is.  It 
> seems to be a chore to get Houdini VDB files into Softimage. Alembic 
> import keeps crashing XSI. I can bring in ROP FBX but textures dont seem 
> to come in.   Its pretty simple in Maya.  I would rather use XSI but I 
> can use Maya if I have to.  I am just wondering if there is a simpler 
> workflow I am missing.  I am fairly new to Houdini but really like the 
> procedural ICE workflow and the presets they have to get started on 
> effects.
> 
> https://u9432639.ct.sendgrid.net/ls/click?upn=A5uD99yDGgJFqsHo0L78rjo3fW-2BI05z8hPddj-2BYSrjut8V8Kr3SyUl8pLj-2FCGT-2FDk0UrpzXAK69iEJrgCwoTDS0qgcpmWI-2FuJ79jVYaio-2BLsYsmeoM-2FgLSyxFARBEEI34UMXDryB4qi4fDuUOMA-2B4S96mF2srSfbX654rpAVzD-2BcQ61wNARzWXIWYuUqdviKGTvLuIV6CqmOrf40FUniD3IZUJqNjnwX4Q8jaFyitzA0q5skxmEO4UX8zhzNlQrZZJQZAkn-2FxpKSZ-2FRcpl-2FYplYgomHBQNb6XACnr8PnPbj3gYaz7TDoELLvutfcw2QMJb7zszSiNFfnc8vdwAq-2BAuMz4wdKPUB2nZb9bhEelvsikObnQAt1BF78n82B3GiUoCyC_x9fWPgxQbfi69QJnHJqUKZsAJHrwlN1lgOIh62WX2fTqFvkkf7f6K3DecqpzEOz5a7AwM5S2qrdsJ3c4N-2F-2FYGUVIK6yQnedQn6fR4vw9TZZtxv0VD2am2rvPRi2Rh-2FMQ-2FM6mPonJ4ormNT43tPTq5P9VDmdzZaCfzKWMpwS4CLSpIEeS7cw-2BlUwLD9I1flh16spFxpD7iXra9pYX-2BOirEpaPIRF0floTcAGTu3MoDntohMHKE35woR6PsC7Lsg2x
>   
>   >
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Re: Friday Flashback #387

[Stefan Kubicek]

I remember this one, thanks for posting :-)

On 11/10/2019 15:15, Stephen Blair wrote:
> *From start to finish…hp workstations
> *circa 2001
> 
> with Manta
> 
> https://u9432639.ct.sendgrid.net/wf/click?upn=lIXdN6W56FnEjHCwrBXqOq0HQNpV0huvAGw1zu6Xp8eVQuk2cNZiNFjx2k-2FfTNchE18B7lYLnvRU16qf6Hf-2B5h6WW-2BHiXhRHpfxxa5NBTcePOpmpL8ZxAgSWaHShW0KnvVGrN9fPygmX7gXUWXUUtorVm8S0jWGRbqgDRHBK9zalT-2Bhul4TT2ll-2F3JWZG-2FltBU1IaSKcUb-2FfWTFl4YcJ6dQevFuaDgBYFXtZo9KzN952Ggl6CFIi2i5x2MDP46Low70Q-2Bdat7FwexWV4Qm2Qj-2FWKGjYJb883c4Qx9rXnyMzlk-2BNiz0PQ7vnaT7CSu29kA6hEqNeoDFxHKFbUNO-2BfeW1tdHxFVwbWRmM-2B5xAgAF6WVD-2FB9PBSJgQ-2BUS6n5rDL_a6oQc7tnfcb0GKvoO27fPkrQ0ATQyF1SDBXJOg7-2FbuRTJ-2BG8sloTJULJHy8V5EIBIf0mIs7pcEuq-2BmSqFgkqlo7lbf0XUzoFdwLgeGjomdEUyE5Sl5-2F8wk0o02r3-2By3Qa8Fugiy-2BlkSnnBWpkXfrKcQbgkn960-2Bf3a-2F5RWNgLi49syLd-2BdTQDcR55KQqvmiK2R0oK6RyQ0rv68X7Cws6hb0kkiOun-2BSgsxrirF3UGxY-3D
>   
>   >
> 
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Re: render tree mixer/texture limit

[Stefan Kubicek]

Could it be a limitation of the renderer, or is it really the render 
tree or translator? What are you rendering with? Mental Ray?

S

On 30/08/2019 05:18, Kris Rivel wrote:
> Hey all...been ages but still here! Weird question but anyone know if 
> the render tree has a max limit on the number of nodes, 8mixers or 
> textures it can load beyond any memory issue...just physical "number" 
> limit? I have about 65+ texture nodes plugged into a stack of mixers and 
> all was working fantastic but I noticed some are missing and only show 
> up in render if I unplug a few. So I'm thinking that I've hit some sort 
> of ceiling. I have no memory issues at all, they're just not there and 
> mysteriously show up if I cut some out. If there is a limit, anyway to 
> bypass it?
> 
> Kris
> 
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Re: Maya Manipulators How to keep them in the vieport.

[Stefan Kubicek]

You mean you want to see the manipulator even when the object to be 
manipulated is off screen? Afaik this is a very Softimage-specific 
feature, I'm almost certain neither Maya nor 3dsmax do that.

I remember a conversation I had with a colleague in 2007 that even if 
Softimage would stop developing their software it would take Autodesk at 
least 5 years before they could pimp Maya enough to catch up. That was 
before Autodesk bought Soft from Avid, and I thought I was making a very 
conservative, not to say pessimistic, estimate. From todays POV it was 
hopelessly optimistic.



On 6/14/2018 9:26 PM, F Sanchez wrote:
> I would like to keep the manipulator always visible even if I zoom in on 
> something.  How do I do this in Maya? I know there must be a way. I just 
> cant find any mention of this. Anyone?
> https://u7507473.ct.sendgrid.net/wf/click?upn=5SmYwFIJXHmC5X9wAP0G6mg4oLGBuQENbeDkYXezg3m6vjHxJcC6rUMd8QE2MtqzSHNkSzixRBldLshOpvo8CwFXi-2B40dpCumSorWPhDPKfd-2FcKUAGb54g4KxzX7Tst130vpyj8wzdnrFkt4dU-2FnIyEIJWT-2FxtfJKHNMYKbB0fvMT68D-2FpEObcUAzmAqrdktDpD4q7H-2Ft2z9-2BWOc52oXrhL1MJ96OuIpQfQeuEZR0qZ40Q-2FmMHg2c6jTa39k9LBp80eo5bTzuu9h-2Fh6RK59zlRPkH7-2Fia-2BiEk-2FI3-2B7b4gNCq8hEj6TBoHPZdCJtEKGe-2FiWo3PL-2BLVUUu4smlctksGrVF6qGsIRG2BeZy2XlUQZqQkmaR3LtCa58Tzv8UwF9T_a6oQc7tnfcb0GKvoO27fPkrQ0ATQyF1SDBXJOg7-2FbuT6DRsfc-2F-2FzmoHMSVvI5tMSW93r4uqF7yhbrR3b55rkazxjCK0tQzb3osDjj0wQSKAadtwjly8qUf-2FTQVvN0IYbKAOwLjkDgN4xm6yOdb6y133rxwdUCTXQf-2Bhv5mg3iKOnCSraq8PsjUJd6niXcp9qcKpEskE-2Fj8nyooDaTavoIAGIrgIADFYLbM-2FKudKh4QU-3D
>  
> 
> 
> 
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Re: OTish - Maya namespaces - clearing that up

[Stefan Kubicek]

Everybody hates Namespaces, but you don't necessarily need to use them.
First of all: Maya is more permissive with regards to duplicate names 
since it only demands an objects "Full Name" (i.e. the name of the 
object prepended by all it's parent's names) to be unique in a scene. In 
Softimage, an objects name needs to be unique within it's Model, 
irrespective of it's location in the hierarchy under that model, which 
is of course a more deterministic way of identifying objects with 
regards to file referencing, the animation mixer, etc, but that's not 
the point here.

In Maya, just like in 3dsMax or Softimage (or any other 3d package I 
think), you get automatic numbering of objects in case of a name clash 
(i.e. when the full name of the new object is similar). That usually 
occurs when creating or duplicating an object or node, importing or 
referencing a file, or rearranging objects in a hierarchy.
The closest thing to the Softimage Model paradigm in Maya you can get is 
to use groups. For example, instead of maintaining your character rig 
and meshes under a model in Soft, you do the same under a group in Maya.
There is even an option to automatically group objects on import, which 
is what I usually do, and/or to rename (i.e. number) clashing names on 
import, which is less tidy but also helpful sometimes. That's it.

Stefan

PS: I still hope to find out the address of that moron at Alias one fine 
day who decided that namespaces are a clever way to handle scene complexity.





On 14.06.2018 09:56, Morten Bartholdy wrote:
> I am sure I am not the only one finding Mayas namespaces extremely annoying.
> 
> If I do a search on Maya namespaces, numerous hits explain how 
> namespaces are annoying and how to handle them and/or get rid of them 
> via built-in tools, scripts, or other methods – one of these even come 
> from an Autodesk Technical Specialist: 
> https://u7507473.ct.sendgrid.net/wf/click?upn=5SmYwFIJXHmC5X9wAP0G6ui9ndn-2BrPckKmQuMExySxDcB-2B2Cv43FA1Cl3CAceI0DUKvGEyTFpaxxyHOzrsJPBkmw8ivBqIosXKC6PGdBtnsN407Paq9UtwShjpFRRsmi19O8ieW0TuwT44wrPXhckQ-3D-3D_a6oQc7tnfcb0GKvoO27fPkrQ0ATQyF1SDBXJOg7-2FbuQUWkBhFKTjN6aNanGKm8YRhT75SW5Xky-2BRRPjw0fH-2FbXhsJApYTxE3RHou7BgCPV2jY2y7HWel32ZHdEFZvLwYx4P-2BIJ0QkZTvDtupX5nq9eh0KTIIQ17nUsMuzu7YtnObQXeyUzMEiil1v-2BB4UC7-2BS3p5sBRqy5QPghrxR-2FyiEFFxWB4UCwt0t7ssJjoVbGA-3D
>  
> 
>  
> so even Autodesk knows how annoying this is… these guys are inane.
> 
> I get why there has to be a nameclash handling mechanism but find the 
> straightforward method of incremental numbering in XSI as hassle free as 
> possible, so I was wondering if anyone knows if there are any benefits 
> at all with the Maya namespace method or if it has to do with Maya data 
> handling why they haven't used the more straightforward incremental 
> numbering which seems to be working in Maya anyway!?
> 
> Thanks Morten -- Softimage Mailing List. To unsubscribe, send a mail 
> to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with “unsubscribe” in the 
> subject, and reply to confirm.
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Re: The Maya Chronicles - or how retarded that software is...

[Stefan Kubicek]

To be fair, that was the case in Softimage too occasionally.
E.g. changing a color swatch resulted in 3 "Set Value" commands issued, 
one for each color component, which had to be undone separately.


On 18.04.2018 11:24, Artur W wrote:
> Ctrl+Z doesn't work as you might expect in Maya.
> It seems that 1 click or 1 option change may produce series of commands 
> and Ctrl+Z reverts only the last one, so in consequence you may have to 
> do it several times to go back where you need.
> 
> Artur
> 
> 
> 2018-04-18 11:10 GMT+02:00 David Saber  >:
> 
> Okay I re did it again on a new blank scene. New polygon plane, then I
> translated half of the points in the Y axis again like last time. The
> smooth was working well, the wavy shape was very nice and CTRL+Z
> gave me
> back the geo I had before the smooth. So I must partly apologize to
> Mr Maya!
> 
> On the other scene I had a FBX import that perhaps change the
> properties
> of the whole scene? Anyway I believe what I'm trying to do should work
> also on a scene with an FBX import.
> 
> David
> 
> 
> On 2018-04-17 17:28, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES II] wrote:
>  > Replicating this as described I got the results I think you were
> expecting. I've been unable to repeat the anomoly.
>  >
>  > And did the "wave" occur on the Z & X axis or just Z or X? I'd
> also be curious if you had any kind of parenting relationship that
> might have affected the smooth direction. But I can't imagine what.
>  >
>  > Did you perform this in a clean scene? What version of maya?
>  >
>  > Joey
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > -Original Message-
>  > From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
> 
> [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
> ] On Behalf Of David
> Saber
>  > Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2018 9:55 AM
>  > To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> 
>  > Subject: Re: The Maya Chronicles - or how retarded that software
> is...
>  >
>  > Maya is full of surprises. Here's my story today:
>  > I wanted to create a wavy surface so I got a polygon grid and
> selected every second points and translated in Y.
>  > Then I applied a smooth. The result was bizarre: only the edges
> were wavy shaped, the rest was flat. I was not happy so I undid the
> smooth with CTRL+Z.
>  > I should have recovered my grid with half of its points
> translated in Y... But no. Some border vertices were translated in
> Y, all the rest of the grid was flat... And of course my selection
> was lost.
>  > I tried this a second time to be sure I didn't lose my mind and I
> got the same result.
>  > Great job Maya.
>  > So I did in in XSI and exported an obj.
>  > David
>  >
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Re: Maya's reassign locally?

[Stefan Kubicek]

Select the mesh that contains the skinned vertices you want to assign, 
open the paint skin weights tool panel. Select all vertices you want to 
assign to a single joint manually, or right-click on one of the joints 
in the tool panel joint list and choose "Select Vertices".
Select the joint you want to assign them to and enter 1.0 for the paint 
"Value", then press "Flood". This will assign a weight of 1,0 to all 
selected vertices for the joint selected in the weight painter tool 
joint list.


Stefan

On 12.02.2018 18:17, David Saber wrote:
> How can I select a bunch of vertex in Maya and tell him they should be
> assigned to one bone only?
> 
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Re: Houdini 16.5

[Stefan Kubicek]

They've also cleaned up and enhanced the hair & fur tools process: 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__vimeo.com_241561057=DwICaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=FWVp5oXMhuj0d0d0GeCjrbcZ2PknKuyVRCGH_naszhg=34VwBKw8I879WGu18fmiY-jnoYl6-MKwP67CewHh35w=


On first glance, this looks like the end solution for digital hair and 
fur, among a boat load of other stuff .


Available to everyone. Now.

Complete change list: 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.sidefx.com_docs_houdini16.5_news_16-5F5_index.html=DwICaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=FWVp5oXMhuj0d0d0GeCjrbcZ2PknKuyVRCGH_naszhg=xl6ocovlu7ooCkYuz13QvXJhVnzDQpZl7iRkB7OXpDs=




On 08/11/2017 11:15, Artur W wrote:

Downloaded and installed. Playing...

2017-11-08 10:05 GMT+01:00 Rob Wuijster >:


It's official: 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.sidefx.com_products_whats-2Dnew-2D165_=DwICaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=FWVp5oXMhuj0d0d0GeCjrbcZ2PknKuyVRCGH_naszhg=cAThqXyB3xQyqWWJTQsYV95c1r3ev713v1GeHXvjo2M=


:)

-- 




Rob

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Re: Softimage - not going away...

[Stefan Kubicek]

No official statement yet from anyone I know there.

If they don't open source it I hope at least someone worthy buys it  
(i.e. not Autodesk, and not some insurance company who are looking for a 
faster way to do their number crunching either). But since they are 
funded by an investor I doubt they have a lot of influence on such 
decisions. It might even end up in the lap of some large VFX vendor who 
already is their customer (was that MPC or the Mill, don't remember). 
Speculation is futile I suppose.

S


On 30/10/2017 12:47, Angus Davidson wrote:
> Anyone know what is going on with that ?
> --
> ICT Project Manager
> Digital Arts
> Wits School of the Arts
> angus.david...@wits.ac.za
> 011 717 4683
>
> 
> From: Morten Bartholdy [x...@colorshopvfx.dk]
> Sent: 30 October 2017 11:23 AM
> To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List.  
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_xsi-5Flist=DwIGaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=foIbz6TYA6v29rC2bpfHV6Y8p_zM8GqIkvC6Tz2lZsQ=gS8BYrYbaNceApRP5V72OlR9ino30s96DsSsNDWPrUg=
> Subject: Re: Softimage - not going away...
>
> Aw, that is sad.
>
> Morten
>
>
>> Den 27. oktober 2017 klokken 19:26 skrev pedro santos :
>>
>>
>> Another hit :(
>> fabricengine.com
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 27, 2017 at 6:16 PM, Mirko Jankovic 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> It is really sad that years after SI is killed best possible replacement
>>> is still years away
>>> What are we talking about? Let's kill best software it is not so
>>> profitable as others and push back production workflow and progress 10
>>> years back who needs progress when you can charge subscription for
>>> every day getting close to where Softiamge already is (yes.. AD.. yes...)
>>>
>>> ᐧ
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> --
>>
>> Pedro Alpiarça dos Santos
>>
>>
>> * probiner.xyz 
>> 
>>  *
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--
Softimage Mailing List.
To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with 
"unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.

Re: Softimage - not going away...

[Stefan Kubicek]

On a brighter note, you won't need the NVidia Apex clothing plugins to 
set up cloth in UE4 anymore, at least if I get their claims right for 
version 4.18


https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.unrealengine.com_en-2DUS_blog_unreal-2Dengine-2D4-2D18-2Dreleased=DwIDaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=Y-_x9ysHpEaSR2MwBxa5Zvg1aTg0bdU7vHZYSJP419w=5oft3grrpxXSV3m9GVvIyMq1RSF7BLYKTo5ImUDgn24=

(You will need to scroll down to approx. 30% of the page). Says also 
that the old APEX plugin workflow is still supported.


S


On 28/10/2017 20:22, skuby wrote:

Jordi

Thanks for the input, your 'point list' is very well thought out.  I 
think I'm covered (UE4 side for realtime and Houdini for composited 
works).


I'd give a point for serious Cross-Platform support (OSX, Linux).  I 
think I might even give more than 1 point to open standards support 
(in theory) but it's not always viable, I wish it were.  Walled off 
FBX is dominating, especially in games, for transporting rigged 
characters and animation to and from UE4 or the other needed devils 
like NVidia's game tools for generating clothing simulation files.  
It's worth a point on your list at the very least but for me it's 
unfortunately make or break.


On Sat, Oct 28, 2017 at 10:35 PM, Andres Stephens 
> wrote:


Seems like open source is the best 3D software model to make
something float indefinitely regardless of market trends. Hope FE
does that…. Unless they got bought out or something.

-Draise


*From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com

> on behalf of
Jordi Bares >
*Sent:* Saturday, October 28, 2017 9:41:04 AM
*To:* Official Softimage Users Mailing List.

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_xsi-5Flist=DwIDaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=Y-_x9ysHpEaSR2MwBxa5Zvg1aTg0bdU7vHZYSJP419w=HTlI9AfkhNO92R4OaUsj7jZzcklDH8grpxfcGIjL3JA=


*Subject:* Re: Softimage - not going away...
Although I understand where you are coming from the minimising
risk side, it is also true that you end up investing a lot more in
both, the software and glue to communicate various software
applications with a myriad of file formats and what not, therefore
I advocate for a hybrid approach in which;

- You define your FX and render backbone (one single application
always) and everything else feeds it.
- No plugins if possible unless you have a solid environment
resolution system in place and are willing to maintain it.
- No strategic dependencies with one manufacturer with a proven
record of discontinuing software (Apple and Autodesk are specially
bad)
- And make sure you build as much as possible in open standards
like Alembic, OpenColorIO, OpenImageIO, USD, VDB, etc...

With that in my head, I go and evaluate the next things to define
what should be my backbone.

> Software companies with a fair price and licensing structure
have 1 point.
> Software companies that support and adopt open standards have an
extra point.
> Software companies with strong R also have another extra point.
> Software companies that maintain their code have another extra
point.
> Software companies that top support have another extra point.
> Software companies that understand what we do have another extra
point.
> Software companies that keep refining their UX have another
extra point.
> Software companies that keep refining their core have an extra
point.
> Software companies that listen to their customers in a prompt
and agile way have another extra point.

You make the choice of course for your particular scenarios but
this is my view of how to choose your backbone.

Hope this makes sense.

jb


On 28 Oct 2017, at 14:20, skuby > wrote:

Investing your time into mastering the totality of one major
software is risky.

The specific example that I want to test in the coming months
doesn't seem unreasonable for one person (and you could swap the
parts out to suit your tastes/budget/needs/prior experience) (but
please critique the idea.  I value your experience 

Re: Softimage - not going away...

[Stefan Kubicek]

There are only two kinds of CG artist in the world: Those who use
Softimage, and those who never tried.

S

-Original Message-
From: Morten Bartholdy 
Reply-to: "Official Softimage Users Mailing List.


https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_xsi-5Flist=DwIDaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=QlldJiBL18aXEJ17DNGup4yl49-idQLqvaXfTwQeJQ0=QE3ckC9GK7WPFXoMa4iFbvFLcjJpaa5u98JrEqLaEuw=;


To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List.

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google=DwIDaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=QlldJiBL18aXEJ17DNGup4yl49-idQLqvaXfTwQeJQ0=NxAaMqkq9iQETVUC7EXDQ2ptrv8PXk3QHLlJlEpq8VQ=
.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list 
Subject: Re: Softimage - not going away...
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2017 09:20:56 +0200 (CEST)

Amen to that!!

If I knew the people who decided to EOL Soft I would make sure they had
flat tires for a year.
If I knew those who designed Maya I would strongly suggest they admit
themselves to a mental facility.
Oh, and the ones who decided to EOL Softimage I would also flog with
wet newspapers for a year.

I read the stories by people who had the bad fortune to have to learn
Maya earlier and I have to say everything they wrote is true and then
some. After 3 months+ of everyday Maya punishment I actually only like
some modeling tools and being able to see layered textures in the
viewport - the rest is a horrible mess. And our Maya artists are
blissfully oblivious to how much easier their lives could have been if
things had been different.


Morten




> Den 24. oktober 2017 klokken 21:59 skrev Mirko Jankovic  t...@gmail.com>:
> 
> 
> I do believe that there is still ton of Softimage people that are
> pushed
> into hell of maya that would give a leg to have a chance to work
> again in
> Softimage so..  :)
> ᐧ
> 
> On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 9:47 PM, David Gallagher Softimage <
> davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Great work!
> > 
> > Big high-five for using Softimage still. I do too!
> > Curious though, how do you handle new employees? Do you only bring
> > in
> > people who know Softimage already? I'm just imagining a new
> > employee
> > learning your pipeline with EOL software and how they handle that.
> > 
> > 
> > On 10/24/2017 7:16 AM, Jean-Louis wrote:
> > 
> > Hi list,
> > 
> > Softimage still alive and well over here at Digital Golem:
> > https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.digitalgole
> > m.com_portfolio_range-2Drover-2Dfireflies_=DwIFaQ=76Q6Tcqc-
> > t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P
> > 0jVMsrMw7PFsA=zxoKUURPDY_p7pajTkkFnh2ByLCrbBLVKAszjFx6zOA=xNkb2
> > ahCYupFGKwPqnIZyYQ8bR_QW7V_uRaMaaQW44k=
> >  > em.com_portfolio_range-2Drover-2Dfireflies_=DwMFAg=76Q6Tcqc-
> > t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P
> > 0jVMsrMw7PFsA=zX2AFFJUH4U7HfKwQjxPRdohiYSqEOMJ8eEO-
> > lBeIyA=WurWJJ6SCwAekkwmyOjODKH5Zz2HhLUn46A5Cd-uYjs=>
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > JL
> > 
> > 
> > Jean-Louis Billard
> > -
> > *Digital Golem*
> > BE: +32 (0) 484 263 563
> > jean-lo...@digitalgolem.com
> > https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.digitalgole
> > m.com_=DwIFaQ=76Q6Tcqc-
> > t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P
> > 0jVMsrMw7PFsA=zxoKUURPDY_p7pajTkkFnh2ByLCrbBLVKAszjFx6zOA=0_YH6
> > IZI7Lxy5elO-n3Ncs30aXU03EcGQdV8Tua6pek=
> >  > em.com_=DwMFAg=76Q6Tcqc-
> > t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P
> > 0jVMsrMw7PFsA=zX2AFFJUH4U7HfKwQjxPRdohiYSqEOMJ8eEO-
> > lBeIyA=Gq9YaxWiO1d-lilhxIivNgjNRmHGBXG5pCHGZKI47qE=>
> > 53 Rue Gustave Huberti
> > 1030 Brussels
> > -
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > --
> > Softimage Mailing List.
> > To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-request@listproc.autodesk.
> > com with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > --
> > Softimage Mailing List.
> > To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-request@listproc.autodesk.
> > com
> > with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Mirko Jankovic
> *https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.cgfolio.com_
> mirko-2Djankovic=DwIFaQ=76Q6Tcqc-
> t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0j
> VMsrMw7PFsA=zxoKUURPDY_p7pajTkkFnh2ByLCrbBLVKAszjFx6zOA=0piQpz03S
> cpiX79OmxIHjrJ70J7s7ykNjCF2qnro2oE=
>  mirko-2Djankovic=DwIFaQ=76Q6Tcqc-
> t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0j
> 

Re: Autodesk acquires Solid Angle

[Stefan Kubicek]

Correction: ADSK bought softimage for $35 million.


On Wed, 20 Apr 2016 10:36:18 +0200, Tom Kleinenberg <zagan...@gmail.com>  
wrote:


That drop in market share was largely down to AD's inability to market  
it.


That was my perception as well, though I'd make that unwillingness,  
rather than inability.
Phasing out Softimage however was not so much a long term financial  
decision (they know they need to innovate to stay in business, and  
>innovation always needs investments now to make revenue later), I  
suspect it was more a question of survival for those who made the Maya  
deal. >Soft cost the $60 million to buy from Avid, if I remember  
correctly, Maya  cost them $185 millions! Writing 185 off is a lot even  
by Autodesk >standards. That would not have sat well with the board and  
investors, resulting in some heads on the chopping block. So in order to  
make it look >like a good decision to spend that much money on Maya,  
they had to go keep going with it, even if it meant weakening the whole  
ME section of >their business in the long run (which it still does). It  
seems that throwing good money after bad money is acceptable for them as  
long as long as >nobody notices it.

-------
Stefan Kubicek
---
keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at
-- This email and its attachments are --
--confidential and for the recipient only--




--
-------
Stefan Kubicek
---
keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
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Softimage Mailing List.
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Re: Autodesk acquires Solid Angle

[Stefan Kubicek]

On Wed, 20 Apr 2016 10:36:18 +0200, Tom Kleinenberg <zagan...@gmail.com>  
wrote:


That drop in market share was largely down to AD's inability to market  
it.


That was my perception as well, though I'd make that unwillingness, rather  
than inability.
Phasing out Softimage however was not so much a long term financial  
decision (they know they need to innovate to stay in business, and  
innovation always needs investments now to make revenue later), I suspect  
it was more a question of survival for those who made the Maya deal. Soft  
cost the $60 million to buy from Avid, if I remember correctly, Maya  cost  
them $185 millions! Writing 185 off is a lot even by Autodesk standards.  
That would not have sat well with the board and investors, resulting in  
some heads on the chopping block. So in order to make it look like a good  
decision to spend that much money on Maya, they had to go keep going with  
it, even if it meant weakening the whole ME section of their business in  
the long run (which it still does). It seems that throwing good money  
after bad money is acceptable for them as long as long as nobody notices  
it.


---
Stefan Kubicek
---
keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at
-- This email and its attachments are --
--confidential and for the recipient only
Softimage Mailing List.
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"unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.

Re: Re: Autodesk acquires Solid Angle

[Stefan Kubicek]

Having no competing product didn't stop them from shutting XSI down.



I can't see autodesk killing off arnold as they have no competing  
products. Maybe the push towards cloud rendering will put off some  
customers >though.


On 18 April 2016 at 13:56, Leo Quensel <le...@gmx.de> wrote:
God I am glad I left this industry two years after Autodesk acquired  
Softimage. They make everything worse and are >>now off to kill another  
product (and don't tell me that won't happen...). Gesendet: Montag, 18.  
April 2016 um 14:51 Uhr

Von: "Artur W" <artur.w...@gmail.com>
An: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" <softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
Betreff: Re: Autodesk acquires Solid Angle
Frederic, I am sure you mean well, but I actually try learning from the  
history, which is: Autodesk doesn't care.
 2016-04-18 14:46 GMT+02:00 Frederic Servant  
<frederic.serv...@gmail.com>:
Hi Arthur,Since I'm the developer of HtoA, that was my first question  
when we got briefed by Marc Stevens of Autodesk >>>when we got  
disclosed, and his answer was a clear yes. They want more people to  
use Arnold, on any platform.
Thus the development for the non-Autodesk products will continue as  
well (Houdini, C4D, Katana).

--
Fred
 On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 1:36 PM, Artur W <artur.w...@gmail.com> wrote:

and what about HTOA?
 2016-04-18 14:34 GMT+02:00 Artur W <artur.w...@gmail.com>:

SITOA is dead. Is that what it means?
 2016-04-18 14:32 GMT+02:00 Jordi Bares <jordiba...@gmail.com>:
It will be fine guys, Autodesk do not have any competing product so  
it actually may be a good thing.jb

On 18 Apr 2016, at 13:27, Artur W <artur.w...@gmail.com> wrote:
 I don't believe it. NO. I refuse t believe this.
 2016-04-18 14:26 GMT+02:00 Artur W <artur.w...@gmail.com>:
FUCK YOU AUTODESK. 2016-04-18 14:18 GMT+02:00 Oliver Weingarten  
<li...@pixelpanic.de>:

Hey there...some news..so it seems. Take a look

"SAN FRANCISCO---Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) has acquired Solid  
Angle, developer >>>>>>>>>of Arnold, an advanced, ray-tracing  
image renderer for high-quality 3D animation and >>>>>>>>>visual  
effects creation used in film, television and advertising  
worldwide. Acquisition terms >>>>>>>>>were not disclosed."


http://news.autodesk.com/press-release/autodesk-boosts-advanced-rendering->>>>>>>>>capabilities-through-acquisition-solid-angle

Cheers,
oli
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Softimage Mailing List.
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softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with  
>>>>>>>>>"unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.

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softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with "unsubscribe" in  
>>>>>>>the subject, and reply to confirm.


--
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softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with "unsubscribe" in the  
subject, >>>>>>and reply to confirm.


--
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softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with "unsubscribe" in the  
subject, and >>>>reply to confirm.


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To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com  
with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and >>>reply to confirm.
-- Softimage Mailing List. To unsubscribe, send a mail to  
softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with >>"unsubscribe" in the  
subject, and reply to confirm.


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with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.




--www.matinai.com




--
---
Stefan Kubicek
---
keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at
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Softimage Mailing List.
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Re: Autodesk acquires Solid Angle

[Stefan Kubicek]

I think it's actually "Fuck you Marcos".
To be fair, I don't know anything about the financial structure of Solid  
Angle, it might not have been Mr. Fajardo's sole decision to sell his life  
achievement, hence a general "FUCK YOU SOLID ANGLE" might be more  
appropriate.


Arnold out of the way means good news for Redhsift?



FUCK YOU AUTODESK.
2016-04-18 14:18 GMT+02:00 Oliver Weingarten <li...@pixelpanic.de>:

Hey there...some news..so it seems. Take a look

"SAN FRANCISCO---Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) has acquired Solid Angle,  
developer of Arnold, an advanced, ray->>tracing image renderer for  
high-quality 3D animation and visual effects creation used in film,  
television and advertising >>worldwide. Acquisition terms were not  
disclosed."


http://news.autodesk.com/press-release/autodesk-boosts-advanced-rendering-capabilities-through-acquisition-solid-angle

Cheers,
oli


--
Softimage Mailing List.
To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com  
with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.






--
---
Stefan Kubicek
---
keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at
-- This email and its attachments are --
--confidential and for the recipient only
Softimage Mailing List.
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Re: "Trouble in paradise"

[Stefan Kubicek]

Not to forget 5D Cyborg!




Combustion and ...

John Morgan24/10/2008


Not to fuel any fears, because this is regarding (Autodesk) Discreet  
Edit*


but I still keep my "End of Life (EOL) Notification Letter" as grim
reminder. It reads:

Dear edit* Customer,
We are writing to inform you that, regretfully, Discreet will be
discontinuing the edit* NT-based nonlinear editing system effective June
30, 2002.

This is one of the most difficult decision in Discreet's history. Our
decision to discontinue edit* was reached only after considering and  
number
of options and factors, particularly the investment that our customers  
have

made in their edit* systems, and the commitment to Discreet that this
represents.  This was balanced with the challenge of providing customers
with a competitively featured and priced solution, in the face of
increasing market polarization in the editing market.The conclusion,  
from our evaluation, was to discontinue the product.


You, and other edit* customers, have been true ambassadors and  
evangelists
of this product, and we recognize the levels of concern and  
disappointment

that may result from our action. Please understand that we are committed
providing you with the information and guidance you may require. If you
have any questions, or would like to discuss any outstanding issues, feel
free to contact your local Discreet representative.

_

They basically killed edit* because it was getting too close in features  
to

their much higher-priced Smoke/Flame package.

Three 3D apps with overlapping features!? Brace yourselves.
John




From Wiki..

Some of Autodesk's "retired" products are listed here:
Lightscape 3.2 Was the worlds only radiosity rendering package at the  
time (1991) developed from work done by Donald >Greenberg at the Cornell  
University Department of Computer Graphics. (coining the term "Cornell  
Box") The problem with this part of Autodesk's history is that it was a  
time of discovery in computer graphics, and Cornell was one >of the  
birthplaces for the technology.In this sense Lightscape was more than  
just another product, it was an essential part of the development of  
rendering >technology generally, and part of its evolution.Additionally  
the software came from a university research department and represented  
the start of a development cycle that >users the world over were  
watching closely.
Regardless, Autodesk purchased rights to the software and promptly  
discontinued its sale.A very primitive version of the radiosity renderer  
was incorporated into the companies 3d Studio Max product, whilst  
>existing Lightscape customers and the product were simply dropped.The  
most likely reason for this was that Lightscape offered a number of  
features that were simply too ahead of its time and >therefore did not  
offer the optimum economic return for the company.


[...]

Softimage  Was discontinued after the release of Softimage 2015 in April  
14, 2014.





On 02/07/16 16:16, Phil Harbath wrote:
I still use combustion,  what I find difficult with after effects is  
every input is s small.

From: Nono
Sent: ‎2/‎7/‎2016 4:09 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: "Trouble in paradise"

Yes they screwed that too, combustion was very good and well in place  
too, that's even sad.
Le dim. 7 févr. 2016 à 21:40, Laurence Dodd <laure...@porkpie.tv> a  
écrit :
Interesting reading the comments, it's not just us Softies that are  
jumping ship. I was a Combustion user for years, I have a knack >>>of  
championing the underdog.


On 6 February 2016 at 17:35, Sebastien Sterling  
<sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hehe :)

On 6 February 2016 at 15:25, Emilio Hernández <emi...@e-roja.com>  
wrote:


If they sticked with Sofitmage… instead of “the other”….





From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com  
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On >>>>>Behalf Of  
Ognjen Vukovic

Sent: sábado, 6 de febrero de 2016 09:20 a. m.
To: softimage <softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
Subject: OT: "Trouble in paradise"


http://cgpress.org/archives/autodesk-announces-restructuring-925-layoffs-planned.html






--
Laurence Dodd
Porkpie Animation
E: laure...@porkpie.tv
W: www.porkpie.tv
M: 07570 702 576
T: 01273 278 382






--
---
Stefan Kubicek
---
keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at
-- This email and its attachments are --
--confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: TCC on titan cards

[Stefan Kubicek]

No idea, but interesting question. Have you considered asking on the  
redshift forum?





Hey guy,
I;ve bin looking around but no luck so figure why not to try here as  
well.
For some time now we are able to setup Titan cards into  TCC mode.I did  
manage to do that, notice some performance improvement but also huge  
problem.
Once card is in TCC mode there is no way to control fan, and while  
rendering (Redshift)
I've seen cards going up to 85 degrees even more with fan going max at  
around 40%.


So question is if anyone have any experience or idea if it is possible  
to actually control rpm of fans with Titan cards in TCC mode?
Even setting up static rpm at max speed or something from command mode  
card by card.


Tried searching on net, nvidia forums.. nothing...
Thanks




--
---
Stefan Kubicek
---
keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at
-- This email and its attachments are --
--confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: photoscan on peaople

[Stefan Kubicek]

It depends on the type of movement you want to capture, and whether the model 
you are creating from the photos needs to hold up from every angle or not.
Most full body scans I've seen were created with a spherical array of cameras, 
which narrows the volume of movement down quite abit.
That said, capturing someone runnig will require an entirely different setup, 
and probably some compromise (e.g. back of the model not visible)
For subtle movement the room inside a spherical array might just be enough 
though.



Hi All,
Anyone used Agisoft Photoscan on people? We've not done much of this kind of 
stuff, so any thoughts / feedback / pitfalls etc are welcome. Or are >there 
better solutions?
Thinking along the lines of capturing snapshots of moving people with a bunch 
of synced cameras possibly.

Thanks

Chris


--Chris Marshall
Mint Motion Limited
029 20 37 27 57
07730 533 115
www.mintmotion.co.uk
www.dot3d.com






--

Re: this is the end......

[Stefan Kubicek]

Thx Cristobal, that's the one:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1154841-REG/autodesk_977h1_wwr11c_1001_vc_maya_with_softimage_2016.html

Two (ok, one and a half)  for the price of one?


B?

Goodbye softy lad ;(

May the force be with you all.
On Wednesday, 27 January 2016, Dave Gallagher Softimage 
 wrote:


How could I buy an extra one today before it's too late? I don't see it on 
their online store. Do I have to go through a reseller?


On 1/27/2016 6:46 AM, adrian wyer wrote:


well seeing as today is the final day you can purchase stand alone licenses of 
Softimage, i guess i'll be the first to say


farewell old friend, long will you be remembered as the better app


a


ps. still use it everyday, but freelancers are hard to find..


Adrian Wyer
Fluid Pictures
75-77 Margaret St.
London
W1W 8SY++44(0) 207 580 0829


adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com


www.fluid-pictures.com

Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales.
Company number:5657815
VAT number: 872 6893 71








--

Re: this is the end......

[Stefan Kubicek]

I must have missed that part of business school where they taught us that 
discontinuing a product without offering a reasonable alternative
is a viable strategy to gain market share.
Must've been the buying price of 70 million for Soft vs the 2 billion for Maya 
that made a difference?
Writing off 2bn was certainly out of the question, even if it'll takes another 
2 billion to bring it up to modern standards and customer expectations.


From what I understand this affects only standalone licenses? Network licenses 
and Suit products with Softimage can still be bought?
I also believe to remember that there was a Maya transition bundle offer for an 
attractive price, but I can't find the link anymore





well seeing as today is the final day you can purchase stand alone licenses of 
Softimage, i guess i'll be the first to say



farewell old friend, long will you be remembered as the better app


a


ps. still use it everyday, but freelancers are hard to find..


Adrian Wyer
Fluid Pictures
75-77 Margaret St.
London
W1W 8SY++44(0) 207 580 0829


adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com


www.fluid-pictures.com

Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales.
Company number:5657815
VAT number: 872 6893 71






--

Re: Pixar USD

[Stefan Kubicek]

Is it meant to replace Alembic?


Hi Folks

On a slightly less depressing note I was wondering if anyone had spent much 
time with Pixars' USD. Is it a worthy upgrade from alembic ?






--

Re: So.. Maya rigging is still a thing...

[Stefan Kubicek]

Does nothing else have this functionality? it seems like such a no brainner...


Maya does. When you are in weight painting mode, just hover your mouse cursor over a bone 
that is a valid deformer to the envelope you are working on, right-click and choose 
"Select Influence" from the radial menu.

Given that I see all the frustration in Maya users curing and swearing all day 
at work next to me as they use their tool of choice (well more often than not 
it's someone elses tool chosen for them) I usually side with the Maya basher's, 
but weight-painting is one of its rare things that I actually find pleasant to 
use.

As long as you keep the Normalize Skin Weights option set to "interactive" and 
limit the number of skin weights per vertex to a reasonable level (I hardly ever allow 
more than 4) I find myself getting good results very quickly. Weight mirroring but works 
well enough,
and I next to never waste time selecting joints in the list of the weight 
painting tool. Similarly, I next to never lock any weights, except on really 
hard and obsure to paint areas (oral cavity, fingers).

Just like in Max or Softimage, the default skin weight distribution right after 
skin binding can have stray skin weights from far away joints.
These can be hard to find. What I normally do is I assign all vertices to the 
highest possible deforming joint in the hierarchy (usually the pelvis, if any), 
then I go down the hierarchy and paint in the weights joint after joint. Within 
a day, I usually have good results, depending on resolution of the mesh and 
whether the face neede to be weighted too.

The only probelm I ever had with this tool was that it sometimes caused stray 
weights after undoing a paint operation, but it seems this has been fixed some 
releases ago, at least it never happened the last couple of years.







On 25 January 2016 at 07:03, Martin Yara  wrote:

For v2014 and later I'd recommend Skin Wrangler, a pyQT+python tool that is pretty 
good for that kind of workflow. And for 2013 and previous >>versions without 
pyQT support, Max Skin Weight Tool, a mel script based on Max workflow.

In games, at least here and other places I've worked, we rarely use paint weights 
because it is more common to have mistakes and uneven >>weights.

Maya's Weight Hammer is the equivalent to Softimage's smooth weights, but way inferior and 
without any option at all. I rarely use it because it >>tends to mess up my weights 
smoothing it too much and using influences I don't want to. SI's smooth weights could work 
very nice selecting >>all points (ex: the whole snake model), while Maya's Hammer do 
some decent job only if you select the points where the joints intersect.

If someone at Autodesk is reading, is it possible to have Softimage Smooth 
Weights to be ported to Maya?

ngSkinTools smooth was nice, but I didn't get used to it's workflow. I may give 
it another try when I need to paint weights.

I found another tool called as_SmoothNearest that looked good in the video demo, but it 
ended up being a combination of the Maya's default >>Weight Hammer command and grow 
selection. And without using the normalizing option with a potentially risk to have 1+ 
total weights per >>point. I fixed that code but, still  not quite what I wanted.

I ended up writing a custom tool to use smooth paint for selected weights and lock 
all the other joints so it would only smooth based on the >>selected points 
deformers. Now with that, SkinWrangler and Maya's Heat Map, my weighting workflow is 
a little less painful.


Martin




On Sun, Jan 24, 2016 at 11:28 PM, Sebastien Sterling 
 wrote:

I remember skinning in max, not the best but definitely not the worst, it didn't have any pretences let's 
say, you HAD to use vertex weight >>>selection assignments or "Weight Tool" (envelops 
are garbage), and they had a very practical little menu for that, with options for assigning >>>a 
few default pre-sets, 0.1, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1, as well as the ability to copy/past values.
selection assignment is the slowest method, not great for fast turn around, but 
it is also the most precise method.

Softimage kind of had something similar, plus a really good smoothing algorithm, (is it 
just me or was soft's smooth weight function, the >>>bomb ?!)


Is there anything like this for maya currently, like max's weight tool i mean ? and the first 
words better not be "In Bonus tools ... !" so help me >>>god !


On 24 January 2016 at 13:50, Graham Bell  wrote:


Man I feel you guys’ pain.
I haven’t rigged in Maya for a while, but the thing is if you’ve been in Maya land for some time, then you kinda 
get to know how it works and get the best from it. Many guys like it, because they can get quiet 
deep into it, but like anything it’s not without its eccentricities. If you’re gonna keep on 
comparing to Soft though, then you’re in for constant disappointment. But holey 

Re: So.. Maya rigging is still a thing...

[Stefan Kubicek]

There are only two kinds of 3D Artists:
Those who use Softimage, and those who never tried.

The story of Softimage's demise is one of ignorance.




But they don;t know for better so burning bed for them is as good as it gets.
They have no idea what is a fluffy feeling of Softimage around you :(

On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 8:26 AM, Gerbrand Nel  wrote:

I know many of us are forced by employers or situations to convert to maya.
My heart goes out to you!
But the rest of you fuckers who choose to go to maya over all the other options 
out there.
You have made your beds, now burn in them.

Re: Guilty Gear XX made with softimage - RT Outline controlled by map

[Stefan Kubicek]

But this is all speculation. Has anyone on the list worked with this  
approach before? (thickness outline driven by weightmap?)

Cheers.


I have (in Maya), but the workflow is the same. For outlines apply  
thickness, invert, assign black shader. Controll thickness of outline with  
a weight map. For interior lines, simply paint them into the texture.  
Personally I don't like creating extra geometry for outlines so much, but  
it's one way of doing it. A good toon shader should give you better  
results and more control.
Controlling mesh normals is also important if you want clean separation of  
lit and shadowed mesh areas, see https://vimeo.com/115104048 for reference  
(there's also a link to a tool streamlining mesh normals editing further  
down in the video's description)





On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 2:58 PM, Eugene Flormata <eug...@flormata.com>  
wrote:

for the inside lines
the UVs are square patches where the border may have a black line
with a buncha textures that have straight black lines, there's no  
texture scaling in the screen so it maintains resolution the whole time  
if i recall >>correctly from the video



On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 12:56 PM, Eugene Flormata <eug...@flormata.com>  
wrote:

that's for the outline


On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 12:55 PM, Christian Freisleder  
<m...@buntepixel.eu> wrote:

hey,

to me it looks like it's a mesh clone with a push and inverted  
Normals with Backsides transparent. Black constant material on it.

But I might be wrong. ;)

Christian



On 29/10/2015 20:24, Pierre Schiller wrote:

Hello and good day. I came across this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4T1cDJryOI
Which basically shows how the guys on blender are making the  
realtime outline for a character like Guilty Gear´s game  
>>>>>conference exposed.
My question is regarding the method the guys on GG used to make the  
outline for the character on real time with a texture >>>>>map. That  
part I can´t get my head around.
Has anyone here on the list boarded this method to create thick-thin  
lines through a texture map?


I´ve seen the entire GDC video over and over and they don´t  
(technically) explain on detail how they got it made on  
>>>>>softimage. So I thought to share this video if anyone could  
point me to the right direction.


Thanks
Cheers.
David R.

--Portfolio 2013
Cinema & TV production
Video Reel










--Portfolio 2013
Cinema & TV production
Video Reel




--
---
Stefan Kubicek
---
keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at
-- This email and its attachments are --
--confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: OT:Houdini indie render solution

[Stefan Kubicek]

 Some of the guys at one of my clients were testing cycles vs redshift..  
Weird thing is, Cycles kicked redshifts butt on some of the tests, and  
was >never much slower on the rest.


That's interesting! Did you/they test any large data sets? Supposedly, one  
of the strengths of Redshift is that it keeps rendering even when the size  
of the scene data exceeds the memory available on the grapics card (albeit  
at a  slower pace) .  How does Cycles handle that, if at all?

Does Cycles render Volumes?




On 26/10/2015 12:01, Ognjen Vukovic wrote:

+1

On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 10:59 AM, Rob Wuijster <r...@casema.nl> wrote:

yes, but on a Indie version it's still out of reach.

It would be great if there was a slightly more expensive Indie version  
of Houdini that would actually allow 3rd party >>>renderers. The FX  
version including maintenance is just a tad too rich for a lot of  
people. ;-)

Rob

\/-\/\/
On 26-10-2015 10:52, Sandy Sutherland wrote:
Gerbrand - Redshift may well be appearing in a Houdini near you  
soon'ish, just a FYI.

S.

On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 9:37 AM, Ognjen Vukovic <ognj...@gmail.com>  
wrote:
Generally fur with redshift isnt a problem at all. I have rendered  
Paul's fuzz plug-in a couple of times, and its a >>>>>breeze to work  
with. Hair cached as alembic should work without a problem. Theres  
one gotcha and its if the >>>>>points are created in ice as any  
shape other then segment, it wont render.


On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 9:02 AM, Tim Leydecker <bauero...@gmx.de>  
wrote:

Hi Gerbrand,

for curves, e.g. fur, the latest versions of redshift are supposed  
to support Maya´s Xgen
for fur descriptions, I think there´s one or two guys here on the  
list who render fur with redshift.


Also version 2.10 of yeti was announced to support redshift, which  
would mean rendering

yeti data using redshift.

Both I haven´t gotten around to try yet (i have no yeti license at  
home and no redshift at work...)
but would love to get some info. The difficult bit would be how to  
get such data from Houdini Indie into >>>>>>Maya?


For volumes, I have no news from redshift but it´s on their list  
afaik.


Cheers,

tim

Am 26.10.2015 um 08:11 schrieb Gerbrand Nel:

Hi guys.
I have been doing most of my jobs in houdini since the start of  
2015, and I'm loving the work flow.
Most things just work, and although I have to re-learn allot of  
skills, I feel like this is an upgrade to my skill >>>>>>>set.

There is one huge problem though.
Everything needs to get rendered at the end of the day.
Mantra is beautiful, and amazingly powerful, and can get the job  
done, but its kinda slow.

Well slow in my incapable hands.
I've done a few tutorials on rendering, but no matter how much I  
tweak, a render still takes around 15 to 20 >>>>>>>min per frame.
As far as cpu renders go, this is not so bad, but I'm a  
freelancer, and most of the other freelancers around >>>>>>>me  
have switched to redshift.
I've done a few comparisons, and most of the times redshift will  
give you the same results in 1/5 of the >>>>>>>time.
Rendering normal geometry via alembic in soft or maya is not the  
end of the world, but how would I render >>>>>>>fur or volumes?
I'm using houdini indie, so 3rd party renders in houdini are out  
of the question for me.
Do you guys know of a way to get fur or volumes from houdini into  
maya/softimage?
I would like to give Blender/Cycles a go, but I have never used  
blender for anything other than camera >>>>>>>tracking.
Cycles seems like it is up for the task, but without alembic, how  
would this work?

Any input on this matter would rock!!
Thanks guys
Gerbrand








No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
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--
---
Stefan Kubicek
---
keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at
-- This email and its attachments are --
--confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: use python installed with softimage

[Stefan Kubicek]

Are you saying that even when setting the preferences back to using  
Softimage's "internal" Python version it would fail to initialize that  
scripting language? I never had this problem. Try renaming the external  
Python folders one by one and restart Softimage each time to see which one  
is offending. If that doesn't help I'm out of ideas.




Hi,

I have python26 and python27 on my C partition installed and now I am  
not able to enable python that comes with softimage 2015. When I do and  
>restart soft there is no python, just vb and jscript.


Anyone had and possibly solved this issue?

Thanks.
Ivan

--Ivan Vasiljevic
-
Lighting TD
Founder, Digital Asset Tailors
-
web:http://digitalassettailors.com/
email:  i...@digitalassettailors.com






--
-------
Stefan Kubicek
---
keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at
-- This email and its attachments are --
--confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: [CDH] again

[Stefan Kubicek]

Hi Oleg,

I have never used the CDH, but depending on what you want to do you might  
want to take a look at Fabric Engine.
I believe it (v.1.53, not sure about just-released 2.0) does support  
Softimage/Linux and allows for the display of arbitrary data and  
interaction in the Softimage viewports. Correct me if I'm wrong pls.


Stefan



Hi list,

does anybody have experience with custom display host under linux ? I  
spent about week being unable to make opengl view there ( well, actually  
i >can not make anything, even simple drawing in x11 win ). The problem  
with x11 native x wins is i dont see a way to pass my events processing  
>callback, stuff with xt\motif etc is too complex to even understand the  
basics ( all tutorials around web i found do not help at all for the cdf  
case ) . I >was tried to to something with qt, but all i got is instant  
segfault once the debbugger steps into the creation of qt widget. ( ldd  
shows there is no >problems with libs )
I am on centos 6 but i doubt there are any principial difference for  
distros . Native way  would be the best option, but the qt way is good  
too.Thanks for any help




--
---
Stefan Kubicek
---
keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at
-- This email and its attachments are --
--confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: Soft licenses still available for purchase?

[Stefan Kubicek]

That's exactly how I got my license too.

And: I don't remember the original price of Softimage standalone,
but $3700.- for Maya/Max + Softimage is the same as for Maya/Max only?
At least in the EU I don't think it has ever been much cheaper?

Not that it's incredibly cheap to begin with, but  2 packages for the  
price of one doesn't sound like that bad a deal to me.





I don´t know about latest developments or newly introduced intricacies 
but I can report a successful transfer of a Softimage license ownership  
to me.


The process involved a signed document of the previous owner, basically 
transfering ownership to me, my adress, my signature and a helpful  
resellermaking that transfer happen with Autodesk.
If I recall correctly, the transfer process involved a fee but that was  
dropped
in favour of me directly buying subscription support to "help" the  
transfer process.


It´s a while back and it took a while to sort out the Autodesk database  
to merge
multiple stray entries in my customer account listings but in the end,  
it all worked out.


The moment the license ownership was transfered, I never had to get back  
to the

original owner. I saw the document once, signed once and that was it.
--

Personally, I don´t see the disturbing problem in getting a  
Maya+Softimage bundleinstead of insisting on just the Softimage license.  
Or a 3DS Max+Softimage bundle.


There is a good chance things change in the future and it seems wise to  
brace for
that by having alternatives ready or to make sure an upgrade or  
crossgrade option

is readily available?

4 grand is steep but that´s in line to the prices rising across the  
board a while back.
I can still remember my first Maya rental license, a month´s usage cost  
me roughly $2000 then.


That is not to say it wouldn´t be desireable to have someone look into  
the general pricing scheme
of things. Of course, something like 2-2500 dollars would feel  
better to have to shell out

as an unexpected expense that may or may not bring venues.
It´s obviously not the same to keep 4 grands in the bank or burried in a  
license eventually needed.


Myself, I wish I could "return" my 3DS Max snippet of my ultimate bundle  
with the next upgrade

and just go with a Maya centric subscription supported box.

I never really opened 3DS Max since I went for the ultimate bundle. Just  
bought it to open

a potential client market by being able to say yes to 3DS Max files...


--

Cheers,

tim






Am 15.09.2015 um 23:37 schrieb Graham Bell:
I'm not sure its that simple. I looked into this EU ruling in my AD  
time and l was told at the time by one of the legal guys that its is  
>>Autodesk's belief that their license transfer policy is compatible  
with the EU ruling.
I would advise checking with Autodesk and/or one of their partners on  
this though, if you wanted to take things further.
On Tue, 15 Sep 2015 at 22:29, Tom Kleinenberg <zagan...@gmail.com>  
wrote:
I believe in the EU second-hand trading of software licenses are  
legal.  
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240214493/>>>Second-hand-software-legal-or-illegal

Of course, finding somebody prepared to sell is possibly problematic.

On 15 September 2015 at 22:49, Tenshi . <tenshu...@gmail.com> wrote:
I was saving for a Softimage license only, i thought i could get one  
from a reseller but now it's clear that we need to spend 4k >>>>for  
a)software i don't want. b)software that is already dead. This is  
real?I want my machine to have at least one softimage license, not  
student or something like that.
Really i don't see what is the trouble selling a dead software, what  
is the cost to that if they're saying those licenses are  
>>>>perpetual, so they don't need any servers to keep checking  
online? .. I find this whole situation absurd, really.If we have  
money, we can't buy;, and if they gave us an option the only one is  
spending too much for something i will not use.




On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 3:23 PM, Patrick Neese  
<patrickne...@gmail.com> wrote:
As a hobbyist with a single license...I fear the day I create  
something worth while that I have to figure out how to render  
>>>>>with more than one machine...since I only have one Mental Ray  
license for softimage.  I'm  trying to learn Maya...  It is  
>>>>>unfortunate I can't have a softimage/mental ray license (or  
20)  transferred to me from someone who just isn't using the  
>>>>>software anymore...or...is that possible? It appears the LSA  
could allow for a transfer via written approval by Autodesk  
>>>>>(2.1.1 of the 2014 LSA) :) It's worth a shot :)










--
---
Stefan Kubicek
---
keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at
-- This email and its attachments are --
--confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: gehen Syflex announces Syly

[Stefan Kubicek]

Maybe just wishful thinking on my side :-)

I just stumbled over an old thread about Raafal (Guy Rabiller et al?).
http://raafal.org

I wonder if this is still in development, I guess not?





Don't you think we all collectively have Fabric and/or Softimage on the
brain? :p
Looks like a nodal system to me, sort of default look'n'feel.

Liefs en groetjes
Leendert




--

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 Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231
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 This email and its attachments are
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Re: Continued use of Softimage question

[Stefan Kubicek]

Hi Mario!

Right, Modo. I keep hearing it's quite a bugfest. Do you have any experience on 
how stable is it with high poly and object counts,
i.e. large datasets in general?
I would still prefer Houdini for it's a bility to do things Soft can't do, let 
alone daily builds.



If that is all you are searching for Modo might do the rick. Should be a nice 
tool to get your data in for rendering.

2015-08-19 14:41 GMT+01:00 Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com:

Hi Francis,

thanks for your insights into Renderpass-alike mechanisms in Houdini.
I was about to investigate those in hope to find a viable alternative to Softimage 
for scene assembly _and_ rendering, but what you wrote about Material Style 
Sheets and Takes has discouraged me enough to hold it off for now.

S




I know some companies in Montreal are still using Softimage, while
preparing their exit. In our case (Oblique), we are moving more slowly
than I was expecting. There are several reasons for this. Change
resistance from the artists is one. But also the lack of a good pass
system in the other softwares makes it difficult to use them as a hub to
gather the assets and finish the shots. The Maya guys said they were
working on it 2 years ago and we're still waiting. The Houdini guys
released the material style sheets which doesn't do half the job, and
wasn't even designed as a pass system. Don't get me started on Takes in
Houdini, it's almost there but it's not what we need. It wasn't designed
as a pass system either.

We've taken the awesome Sort Controller plugin from Andy Jones and Jonah
Friedman and modified it extensively. This has catapulted Softimage far
ahead of any competitors (except Katana) in terms of pass management
when using ref models. So I guess we will continue to use Softimage as
our main hub until someone comes with a nice solution. I'm eyeing Katana
even though it's overpriced.

By the way, I do plan to release our version of the Sort Controller, but
I need to fix a few things in it before.

F

On 19-Aug-15 06:08, Sandy Sutherland wrote:

Hi all,

After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a
Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis
animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for
this -

Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage?  Who might still be
on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...?

Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family.

Thanks

Sandy





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cont...@marioreitbauer.com
0049 (0)157 86272215
Professor-Brix-Weg 9
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Re: Continued use of Softimage question

[Stefan Kubicek]

Hi Francis,

thanks for your insights into Renderpass-alike mechanisms in Houdini.
I was about to investigate those in hope to find a viable alternative to 
Softimage for scene assembly _and_ rendering, but what you wrote about Material 
Style Sheets and Takes has discouraged me enough to hold it off for now.

S



I know some companies in Montreal are still using Softimage, while
preparing their exit. In our case (Oblique), we are moving more slowly
than I was expecting. There are several reasons for this. Change
resistance from the artists is one. But also the lack of a good pass
system in the other softwares makes it difficult to use them as a hub to
gather the assets and finish the shots. The Maya guys said they were
working on it 2 years ago and we're still waiting. The Houdini guys
released the material style sheets which doesn't do half the job, and
wasn't even designed as a pass system. Don't get me started on Takes in
Houdini, it's almost there but it's not what we need. It wasn't designed
as a pass system either.

We've taken the awesome Sort Controller plugin from Andy Jones and Jonah
Friedman and modified it extensively. This has catapulted Softimage far
ahead of any competitors (except Katana) in terms of pass management
when using ref models. So I guess we will continue to use Softimage as
our main hub until someone comes with a nice solution. I'm eyeing Katana
even though it's overpriced.

By the way, I do plan to release our version of the Sort Controller, but
I need to fix a few things in it before.

F

On 19-Aug-15 06:08, Sandy Sutherland wrote:

Hi all,

After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a
Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis
animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for
this -

Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage?  Who might still be
on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...?

Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family.

Thanks

Sandy





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Re: Continued use of Softimage question

[Stefan Kubicek]

Thanks Francois and Andy,
that does sound reassuring, I'll have to take a closer look..


We at Fiftyeight moved on from Softimage to Houdini for scene assembly and 
rendering. While Houdini’s offerings may not be the designed/perfect pass 
system currently, we’ve managed to adjust to a level of comfort. Shading and 
lighting productivity has gone way up. Houdini has proven to be very stable 
during shading and lighting, contrary to my frustration with Soft crashing 
unacceptably often.

We were not looking for the best solution currently available either, we were 
looking for a platform to build upon. And are very happy with Side Effects as a 
software vendor. Licensing, Bugs reports and fixes, feature requests and 
implementation and daily builds make us a satisfied customer.




Andy




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Re: gehen Syflex announces Syly

[Stefan Kubicek]

Yup, that's the one with the tiny screenshots.




www.sylyn.com


On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 4:46 AM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote:

The screenshots are too tiny to see those nodes in detail, yet they look 
strikingly familiar.


The gehen in the thread title is the result of quick copy-paste of a
cross-post on the German xsiforum.de :D




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Perry Harovas
Animation and Visual Effects

http://www.TheAfterImage.com

-25 Years Experience
-Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)




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Re: gehen Syflex announces Syly

[Stefan Kubicek]

I wouldn't be surprised if it got Fabric under the hood already, the whole UI 
looks very much like it.
What surprised me is that this is coming from a company that hasn't done 
anything new in 15 years.
Syflex cloth technology goes all the way back back to the Final Fantasy - 
Spirits within movie if I remember correctly.




So This will become a Houdini kind of program?
Or more something like Fabric?

With those few and tiny screenshots it's hard to tell which way they're going.
And creating a new, all procedural 3D app from scratch must be quite a big task.

Rob

\/-\/\/
On 19-8-2015 11:08, Perry Harovas wrote:

I would imagine more detail will come out once it gets out of Alpha.Very cool 
idea, to have the entire thing be nodal. Literally every part of it.

Like making Softimage entirely from ICE nodes. Which you can then expand
on to make more ICE nodes, evolving the software. I am guessing that a large
part of the success of this will be ease of sharing nodes and compounds among 
users.

If it takes off, it could evolve very quickly. Remember when we started seeing 
raytracers
created with ICE nodes? Paul Smith even made a version of Space Invaders with 
it.

This could be very cool. The Syflex guys really know their stuff.Will 
definitely be watching this develop.





On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 4:57 AM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote:

Yup, that's the one with the tiny screenshots.




www.sylyn.com

On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 4:46 AM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote:

The screenshots are too tiny to see those nodes in detail, yet they look 
strikingly familiar.


The gehen in the thread title is the result of quick copy-paste of a
cross-post on the German xsiforum.de :D




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--




Perry Harovas
Animation and Visual Effects

http://www.TheAfterImage.com

-25 Years Experience
-Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)




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--




Perry Harovas
Animation and Visual Effects

http://www.TheAfterImage.com

-25 Years Experience
-Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)

No virus found in this message.
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Re: LAST CHANCE TO FIX STUFF

[Stefan Kubicek]

I'd have a couple of nasty ones too. Shall I just post them here?


Ok so I have very good reason to believe we will get an SP2 for  
Softimage and the Reinterpret location to new Geometry Node will be  
fixed.
As mentioned, your issue has been reported to our engineering  
department.


Here is the logged issue with Development:

BSPR-18973 The 'reinterpret Location to new Geometry' ICE node does not  
work properly



No eta is determined for a fix date yet although I was told that they  
will look into integrating the fix on the next SP release.



SO... this will be the last fix we get in all likelihood.Time is running  
out. The reinterpret node was the only thing thats stopping me using  
2015, so I'm delighted, but if there is anything else you guys really  
want fixing in 2015 then lets assemble a list and post it to them. (  
complete with examples etc). I'm in direct communication with AD now so  
I can hopefully prompt them to give the list proper attention.

From: Matt MorrisSent: Tuesday, July 14, 2015 10:08 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.comSubject: Re: Fuzz trouble

Its the compounds that allow hair pointclouds to deform along with  
animated geometry, and it does use the reinterpret node. Unfortunately  
its something we used a lot!
If you try opening this model in 2014 it should be fine, open in 2015  
and instant lock up:

https://app.box.com/s/vpctkz2k1xnxxhbc1dgglhr022gkc7sh
On 14 July 2015 at 09:17, p...@bustykelp.com wrote:
Do you know which ones? It may be that they are using the ‘reinterpret’  
node too. It would be good to collate any other 2015 issues for a  
final fix push to AD.
As to why some people on here are trying to influence me to not bother.  
It seems a very odd and defeatist thing to do and its not going to  
work.

Its the squeaky wheel that gets the oil.



From: Matt MorrisSent: Tuesday, July 14, 2015 1:15 AM

To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

Subject: Re: Fuzz trouble

It also broke a few key compounds kristinka uses. I might be able to  
dig up an old scene if it will help. This stopped us moving to 2015  
from 2014sp2.

On 14 July 2015 at 00:55, Busty kelp p...@bustykelp.com wrote:

And AD asked me tonight for a sample scene to test.


Sent from my iPad



On 13 Jul 2015, at 21:38, Matt Lind speye...@hotmail.com wrote:

You overlook the fact you need to be on Softimage 2015 to get  
support. They're not going to touch 2013.



Matt





Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2015 10:07:36 +0100
From: p...@bustykelp.com
Subject: Re: Fuzz trouble
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

Well so far its taken me around half an hour of my time.
In my book, a 1% chance is better than a 0% chance. I'm fully  
expecting them

to do nothing.
I have a face to face meeting with AD soon, not about this issue but  
in

which I will flag this again.
In the very least, I have a catalogued situation of me trying to get  
this
fixed so I can work with the latest version and AD doing nothing  
about it.

I can refer to this in the future if necessary.

I don't use 2015 I use 2013, which is fine for me, so i have nothing  
to

lose. Thanks for your concern about my welfare though.








--www.matinai.com



--www.matinai.com




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Re: SI 2014

[Stefan Kubicek]

If I remember correctly, SI shipping with ECS 2016 is SI 2015 SR2 (service  
release 2), which is the same as SP1 (apart from the name). That is: No  
bug fixes or feature additions.






Sorry about. 2016 apparently is listed as part of the Entertainment  
Creation Suite which we have. I’m guessing it is probably the same as  
2015 like what they did to Sketchbook last year with 2013/2014? Does  
anyone know?



--

Joey Ponthieux

LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES)

MYMIC Technical Services

NASA Langley Research Center

__

Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not
represent the opinions of NASA or any other party.


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com  
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Mirko  
Jankovic

Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2015 3:53 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: SI 2014


I dont think that you can update to 2016, maybe 2015 SP1? :)


On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 9:13 PM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES]  
j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote:


I’m running Soft 2014. I am experiencing a lot of render crashes where  
Mental Ray is being purposely disabled by the software.




I can update to:


2014 SP1

2014 SP2

2015

2016


Whats the best choice? What is everyone having the least issues with?



Thanks


--

Joey Ponthieux

LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES)

MYMIC Technical Services

NASA Langley Research Center

__

Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not
represent the opinions of NASA or any other party.









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Re: OT: mantra problem

[Stefan Kubicek]

I know nothing about Houdini, but what I would try first is remove objects  
from the scene bit by bit to find the offending one (I would guess it's  
the fur object(s).


Once you have identified the problematic object see if there is anything  
you can change on it (like re-export from Maya with a slightly different  
hair count or segment count, or by splitting it up in two separate  
objects/hair clumps.


At least that's what I'd start with in case of total lack of other hints  
at the actual source of the problem.

Good luck!





Hey guys
I'm in deep shit right now.
Tomorrow is deadline and my scene refuses to render.
I'm rendering fur on characters animated in maya.
All animations gets exported as alembic files for me to fur and render  
in houdini.
I've rendered 9 shots with almost no problems, but the last shot just  
keeps crashing.

Where do I start trouble shooting?
Here is what I've done so far
I've changed the sampling up and down.
Changed the tile size up and down by factors of 8
I've changed the tile order
I've even rebuilt the scene from scratch based on a scene that renders  
fine.

I've created new cameras and deleted the alembic cameras.
This is my first real job in houdini, and allot is riding on this. I  
had to convince allot of people that they can trust me to deliver this  
job in houdini.


Help my dumb-ass  please!!

G

Here is a error log from one of the crashed frames:

.
PROGRESS: 0.54/1
PROGRESS: 0.55/1
PROGRESS: 0.56/1
PROGRESS: 0.57/1
PROGRESS: 0.58/1
PROGRESS: 0.59/1
PROGRESS: 0.60/1
PROGRESS: 0.61/1
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini  
14.0.361\houdini\scripts\hqueue\hq_render_from_hip.py, line 4, in  
module

 hqlib.callFunctionWithHQParms(hqlib.renderFromHip)
   File C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini  
14.0.361\houdini\scripts\hqueue\hqlib.py, line 1848, in  
callFunctionWithHQParms

 return function(**kwargs)
   File C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini  
14.0.361\houdini\scripts\hqueue\hqlib.py, line 1011, in renderFromHip

 _invokeRopAndCatchErrors(rop, project_name, frame, True)
   File C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini  
14.0.361\houdini\scripts\hqueue\hqlib.py, line 441, in  
_invokeRopAndCatchErrors

 raise e
hou.OperationFailed: The attempted operation failed.
Error:   Command Exit Code: -1073741819




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Re: The shadow over The Foundry

[Stefan Kubicek]

Well put Perry, exactly my thoughts!

Speaking of Fusion: I had the pleasure of using the free version last week  
for 7 consecutive days in a a row, 10 hrs a day.  It was blazingly fast  
(compared to AE anyway), did not crash once, and the look of the node tree  
was pleasing enough to not make my eyes bleed (as opposed to Nuke's). Even  
the pro version is a bargain for $1000 for what you get.




+1 on all

Totally agree.
This news sickened me and if true, could mean great things for Fusion  
and nothing but bad news for the rest.
I've seen the usability and stability of After Effects (AE) decline  
sharply over the timeframe that AE has been a rental product. Updates  
cause problems instead of fixing them and development has slowed (even  
further). Not so with Nuke.
Adobe wants VFX to be accessible to the consumer, and while I don't  
discount the research they have done, some of which has been quite  
amazing, most of their focus has been on one button type of VFX  
solutions and not on stability and flexibility, which is what we need  
and what The Foundry supplies software that excels in.
Rotobrush, PuppetTool, CameraTracker all designed to make as close to a  
one button solution as possible. These tools works great in certain  
situations, but when the shot gets tough, you quickly run out of  
options.

Nuke is nothing but options, and is  far more ICE-like than AE is.
Having something as flexible as Nuke owned by a company that has a huge  
competitive market-dominating product like AE, should send chills up  
your spine as to how closely it matches the Autodesk Maya/Soft debacle.


Sent from my iPhone
Please excuse typos and
brief replies.Thank you!

On Apr 28, 2015, at 2:05 AM, Raffaele Fragapane  
raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:


AD owned and produced a lot of stuff over the years. The various  
acquisitions you are thinking of in the ME group are a drop in the  
ocean that is their arch, viz, CAM/CAE budgets.
Alias was bought for studio and the inlet in industrial CAM they missed  
at the time. Maya in and of itself is probably not scratching 3 or 4%  
of their revenue and I doubt Soft even made it to an integer number.


Adobe is already a bigger company than AD for the record, and has MORE  
of a monopoly on its market segments than AD does. They beat AD in  
revenue and net by a factor of two most years.


Again, I don't know what Adobe you guys are thinking of, but the one I  
know of is nothing to hope for. They make EA sports and AD ME look  
positively benign in the VFX geography.




On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 3:49 PM, Nicolas Esposito 3dv...@gmail.com  
wrote:
If I remember correcty Autodesk, before the big buyout in recent  
yearsm had only Autocad and 3ds to carry on and make good  
money...when they start acquiring Alias and all the others they  
establish themself as the company to go, simply because they were  
the owners.


For me Adobe could possibly be the next Autodesk, but I really hope  
I'm wrong.


2015-04-28 7:24 GMT+02:00 Raffaele Fragapane  
raffsxsil...@googlemail.com:

There must be another company named Adobe I'm not aware of...

Adobe has had nothing but contempt for VFX for years, and people  
would actually get on board with this?


If there is any truth to these incompetently written piece of news  
whatsoever, and that's pretty much 50/50 at best, be ready to  
rent. Windows and half arsed Mac ports only, of course.


On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 1:37 PM, Tenshi S. tenshu...@gmail.com  
wrote:

Better Adobe than Autode$k. Is the less bad co. between both.






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




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Re: Softimage Icon Removed from Mudbox?

[Stefan Kubicek]

1.) afaik there will be no Softimage 2016.
2.) The Send to functionality only works across applications of same  
version number, hence from one 2016 app to another,

not from 2016 to one from 2015.
3.) Since the version of Softimage bundled with ECS Ultimate 2016 will be  
version 2015, Send to does not work and has been removed.


Read: Our programmers would need to invest 5 minutes to adjust the Send  
To code in each application of the ECS (which we sell/sold to you for an  
enormous amount of money) to make it work across different versions of our  
applications (which we bought from all over the world in the first place,  
just because we could) and our fbx format (which our part-time interns  
have been working on for the last 10 years in an attempt to implement hard  
edge support and iron out the bugs from each respective previous intern).  
We hence decided it's not worth the effort, especially for an EOL software  
(for which we also took an inordinate amount of money from you).

Re: Pose based deformations/corrections in Maya

[Stefan Kubicek]

This might be helpful too:
https://vimeo.com/120117324



Hi,


Quick question – has anyone seen this way of creating pose based  
deformations/corrections in Maya, we are not having much success -  


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6ab0kKBlHQ


When I try to implement this (it’s not that hard – like an input and  
output between two nodes!), I get a few problems. For example, it  
appears that this only works correctly if the manipulation of the points  
is sympathetic to Global transforms. If I try for example to rotate the  
lower leg backwards, and move some points around the knee and calf to  
simulate a better pose deformation; when I reset the joints back to  
zero, the points do not keep their relative offsets correctly. Instead  
it appears the offsets are global values - not relative. Therefore the  
points begin to collapse into the mesh. I know there are a few plugins  
we can use -  but thought this may have been a tidier approach.



Anyway – if anyone got it to work we would love to know.


Cheers


Sofronis (Saf) Efstathiou
Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Competition  Festival Director

Computer Animation Academic Group

National Centre for Computer Animation



Email: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk



Tel: +44 (0) 1202 965805


Profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sofronisefstathiou



Student Work:


http://www.youtube.com/NCCA3DAnimation
http://www.youtube.com/NCCADigitalFX
http://www.youtube.com/NCCAAnimation


  






Awarded for world-class computer animation teaching
with wide scientific and creative applications

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Re: akeytsu animation software demo

[Stefan Kubicek]

I was looking forward to this one too.
They wanted to release in fall last year, but are delayed as it seems.
From its description it looks like a technical preview of what could be 
achieved with Fabric's Kraken one day, at least as  far as encapsulation and 
rig complexity is concerned :-)

There is also this: http://en.esotericsoftware.com/spine-in-depth

but it's strictly 2D.


Yes !!! i was looking for this the other day, but couldn't remember the name.

On 19 February 2015 at 14:00, Marco Peixoto mpe...@gmail.com wrote:

Really need to try it on, so far im not impressed on its UI, but of course its a first 
impression and its outside of what im used so I think its a bit normal :)

Now it seems it only exports FBX and I guess its more targeted for Game Animation, 
since the rig is Pre Built and doesn't seem to have extra deformation than 
the regular Bone Chains.

Nevertheless its a vey welcome adition to the field of CA Maya dominated :D

On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 8:42 AM, Oscar Juarez tridi.animei...@gmail.com wrote:

It looks like a very interesting software, working on bare bones with nice 
manipulation modes. With a traditional animation approach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74eSHxwoGdQ








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Re: OT: Flowbox

[Stefan Kubicek]

Marcus Ottoson posted a link to an fx-guide video of an interview with the 
makers of flowbox during siggraph asia on the fabric engine mailing list a 
couple of days ago:
http://www.fxguide.com/fxguidetv/fxguidetv-198-siggraph-asia-2014/





Very interesting:

flowbox.io

--

Re: Lets Hope Autodesk Buys the Foundry!

[Stefan Kubicek]

LOL, exactly what I was thinking :-)

Swallows? We Softies are the black knights, don't you see? Arms and feet  
chopped off by Autodesk and only considering it a flesh wound.

But we can still spit, can't we?




Lets Hope Autodesk Buys the Foundry! They can EOL Nuke/ Mari in a few  
years. The future would be bright! ( sarcasm)

http://www.thedrum.com/news/2014/12/15/special-effects-company-foundry-expected-sell-200m

www.johnrichardsanchez.com




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Re: The Ballad of Uncle Pat

[Stefan Kubicek]

The main problem I had with Soft's hair was that sometimes the guides  
would pop, change shape without any apparent reason. So I had to be  
really careful and keep several copies of it.



Yes, I had that too last year. It appeared to me that it would happen more  
often when undoing a hair modeling operation and then saving the file.  
Upon reopening some hairs would pop into seemingly random directions (most  
of the time penetrating the surface they grow from).
It did happen frequently (like several times a day) but Icouldn't find a  
way to reliably reproduce it.


Another real problem I found was that hair simulation malfunctions (read:  
creates totally unpredictable and wrong looking results, including totally  
stiff strands)  when telling it to collide with a subdivision level of the  
emitter surface. It sort of worked having it collide with the unsubdivided  
base mesh, but that would cause visible faceting of the rendered hair due  
to the coarse nature of the base mesh in my particular case (Shave doesn't  
seem to interpolate emitter normals on a per render hair basis).
An alternative would have been to actually subdivide the emitter mesh  
instead of using subD's, but that would've created so many additional  
guide strands that the grooming process would have become too slow. Even  
having the hair collide with a subdivided copy of the emitter mesh created  
erratic results. In the end I gave up and did not use dynamics at all,  
which was ok-ish in my case since the hair was relatively short.
Did you encounter the same problem, and if so, how did you solve it? It's  
reproducible in 2013, 2014 and 2015 btw, at least for me.


That's one fluffy, great looking bird btw!





On 6 Nov 2014, at 12:49, Ognjen Vukovic ognj...@gmail.com wrote:


Great job.
I can only presume you used grids with opacity maps to cut the  
feathers,did that kill the render time? Also did you run a test maybe  
using ice strand generated feathers, and would that maybe cut down on  
the render time compared to opacity maps?


On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 12:39 PM, Simon Burke simobu...@gmail.com  
wrote:
That's right, feathers were done by Mario Domingos using mbFeather  
Tools.


On 6 November 2014 09:44, Ognjen Vukovic ognj...@gmail.com wrote:

Just out of curiosity, is that mbFeather's ?

On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 10:16 AM, Mirko Jankovic  
mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote:

Haven;t you heard?Zombies are IN now ;)
Nice work.
On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 4:41 AM, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com  
wrote:

Whoa! lol!

https://vimeo.com/110905739

Not bad for 'obsolete' zombie software :)



On 11/05/14 20:20, Paulo Cesar Duarte wrote:

Although all credits are in the link, I'm putting here too.

Lead 3D / Head Model, Blendshapes / Shading,  
Lighting, Render - Simon Burke

Rigging / Lead Animator / Body Model - Sam Boyd
Grooming / Feathers / Props Modelling - Mario Domingos
Compositing / Grade - Gavin Kelly
Directed by Gavin Kelly

Again, beautiful work.

2014-11-04 16:35 GMT-02:00 Paulo Cesar Duarte  
paulocdua...@gmail.com:

Nice work on The Ballad of Uncle Pat
by Simon Burke

http://bit.ly/1xYrPIb




--

paulo-duarte.com




--paulo-duarte.com














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Re: affordable Mocap on kickstart

[Stefan Kubicek]

There has been quite some discussion around that thing on LinkedIn.
I suspect that it will suffer the same problems as other  
magnetic-field-based systems: It will be hard to operate in environments  
with lots of steel (e.g. steel concrete), and lack proper capturing of  
jumping characters (depending on how good the software detects such  
situations).
Other than that the price is certainly hard to beat. If it really works as  
advertised you'll get a lot for your money.



I think I'm going to buy two ( the 1000$ offer ) of those, it looks like  
pretty damn good and it comes with finger tracking too...

Only downsides:
- Software to process data has no price yet ( pro version, basic version  
is free without data cleaning and other stuff )
- Customs costs from China are ridicosously expensive in Europe ( around  
30% )


For this price I think that is a good deal, since the profession mocap  
suit cost around 35-40k last time I checked


Haven't tried any of their previous mocap system, but they look legit  
and professional



2014-09-03 16:29 GMT+02:00 Daniel Sweeney dan...@northforge.co.uk:

Hey List,

Just wondered if anyone had saw this and what thoughts they had on it?

had anyone tried this companies previous mocap system?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1663270989/project-perception-neuron

Cheers





Daniel Sweeney

3D Creative Director

Mobile: +44 (0)7743429771
Email: dan...@northforge.co.uk
Web: http://northforge.co.uk






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Re: Fabric Siggraph talks on visual programming and data flow graph are up

[Stefan Kubicek]

I believe it's this one:
https://vimeo.com/103485088


First one has gone? Damn :)




Simon Reeves

London, UK
si...@simonreeves.com
www.simonreeves.com
www.analogstudio.co.uk


On 15 August 2014 02:50, Paul Doyle technove...@gmail.com wrote:

Hi guys – we’ll get all of the user group sessions up over the next few days, 
but these are probably the most interesting from a SI perspective.

Visual programming: https://vimeo.com/103474492
Data Flow Graph: https://vimeo.com/103474550
Cheers,

Paul






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Re: ultimate SOFTIMAGE|UeberTage 2014, Friday, September 19th 2014

[Stefan Kubicek]

Awesome!
I hope I can make it again.





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keyvis digital imagery
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Re: great set of procedural debris tools

[Stefan Kubicek]

Haha, the closest thing to a make art button in a long time. The pigeon  
maker made my day.





for Max, unfortunately



https://vimeo.com/102691168


a


Adrian Wyer
Fluid Pictures
75-77 Margaret St.
London
W1W 8SY++44(0) 207 580 0829


adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com


www.fluid-pictures.com

Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales.
Company number:5657815
VAT number: 872 6893 71






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Re: Maya 2015 Node Editor

[Stefan Kubicek]

That was always my notion too. Just imagine an ICE graph without Get Data and 
Set Data nodes and replacing them with actual connections from/to the main ICE 
node. You'd get lots of loops, making the the graph more descriptive but also 
harder to read, besides exploding the number of input and output connections on 
the main ICE node.



I think we should draw a line to show the parenting in the Maya Node
Editor, that would make transform vs object make more sense, something
we're not doing.

For loops... actually Maya and XSI have similar in architecture, and
XSI's scene graph is full of loops as well.  Every operator, like the
moveop, is an operator that reads and writes back to the same object,
so it's a loop. I recall the kinestate to be particularly hairy.
We've kept all that kitchen stuff hidden under the hood in XSI. It's
just not showable:  a trivial operator like the moveop has half a
dozen connections, a hidden cluster, and it just gets more complicated
from there. The maya dg is a lot more simple, but it still isn't
designed be directly used, and the hypergraph/node editor are more
debugging tools than authoring tools.  Bifrost will be designed for
authoring.

On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 11:06 PM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com wrote:

I think my main problem with the node editor is that some things that are
influencing each other, aren't connected in the node editor. Other things
are connected in a loop.
This makes no sense to us humans.
I was hoping the node editor would fill the gap left by the lack of a proper
operator stack, but it still blows my mind how destructive Maya's work flow
is.
For now the node editor is where I do my shading, and check to see if my
deformers are still linked when things don't seem to work right.

OH here is a fun thing to try: put some animation on a sphere. Then graph
that in the editor, and add animation layers. My nose almost started
bleeding :)





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Re: Anyone seen that New Foundry Colorway Demo ?

[Stefan Kubicek]

If that's true it sucks.



More about Colorway and Colimo :(

http://etereaestudios.com/blog/2014/07/about-colorway-colimo-chat-victor-feliz-motiva


On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 9:10 AM, Vladimir Koylazov vl...@chaosgroup.com wrote:

It is a start; however it looks they have more work to do - notice how reflections of 
the object don't change. Compare with Colimo 
(http://www.motivacg.com/en/colimo/)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VTmlQm5aiY

Best regards,
Vlado





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 This email and its attachments are
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Re: Is it realy ?

[Stefan Kubicek]

I don't think Max offers any unique advantage for arch viz or games. All can be 
done anywhere else and in my opinion, more efficiently.


As much as I'd want that to be true I need to disagree: Max still is hands down 
the single most efficient application for ArchViz. It comes with a ton of 
import options, great and fast Spline editing features, good enough 
proceduralism, a megaton of ready-made assets (Evermotion et al) already set up 
for different renderers, excellent Vray integration, and ease of use for simple 
scenes. I wouldn't want to do VFX with it (although some do), but for archviz 
it's _the_  most cost effective solution by miles.





Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 15, 2014, at 1:50 PM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:


I agree with your Max view,

Let's remember that is their core audience, architecture and engineering so killing 
the software that complements the key product in such a way would be foolish.

A different story is that they keep putting VFX goodies on it… that may be very 
possible..

Jordi Bares
jordiba...@gmail.com

On 15 Jul 2014, at 08:33, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com 
wrote:


The blogger has a really distorted perspective on market, apps and qualities. There's a 
distinct fanboi smell to the article.

I don't think MAX will be terminated in the next couple years, but if I had to bet money, I'd 
gladly put it on it being massively requalified for viz, and maybe, just maybe, to 
see an LT version for the indie gaming platform if Maya won't successfully dig that 
inlet.

When you read stuff like This definitely raised a few eyebrows because 3ds Max has typically 
been known as the go-to app for the game industry
You know the guy, like most of DT has been for its entire existence, lives in a reality 
predating the actual calendar by more than a few years.

I do have money with a friend on Mudbox and MoBu not seeing more than another Christmas 
or two tops though :)






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 This email and its attachments are
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Re: Is it realy ?

[Stefan Kubicek]

From the outside I couldn't tell which ones makes more money. Just out of 
curiosity: Do you have any concrete numbers?



This company is profit driven


Like any other company, and it makes more money out of 3Dsmax than Maya. A lot 
more.



So no, It will not die. It's a bit like a zombie ;)



On 15 July 2014 11:12, Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote:

2 or 3 years ago I was reading similar denial posts about the rumour Softimage 
demise.
This company is profit driven, the signs are already out there, I could come up with 
arguments for each possibility, the thing is, it depends really on Autodesk 
plans, imho...



On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 11:04 AM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote:



I don't think Max offers any unique advantage for arch viz or games. All can be 
done anywhere else and in my opinion, more efficiently.


As much as I'd want that to be true I need to disagree: Max still is hands down the single most efficient 
application for ArchViz. It comes with a ton of import options, great and fast Spline editing 
features, good enough proceduralism, a megaton of ready-made assets (Evermotion et al) already 
set up for different renderers, excellent Vray integration, and ease of use for simple scenes. I wouldn't 
want to do VFX with it (although some do), but for archviz it's _the_  most cost effective 
solution by miles.





Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 15, 2014, at 1:50 PM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:


I agree with your Max view,

Let's remember that is their core audience, architecture and engineering so killing the 
software that complements the key product in such a way would be foolish.

A different story is that they keep putting VFX goodies on it… that may be very 
possible..

Jordi Bares
jordiba...@gmail.com

On 15 Jul 2014, at 08:33, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com 
wrote:


The blogger has a really distorted perspective on market, apps and qualities. There's a distinct 
fanboi smell to the article.

I don't think MAX will be terminated in the next couple years, but if I had to bet money, I'd gladly put it on it 
being massively requalified for viz, and maybe, just maybe, to see an LT version for the 
indie gaming platform if Maya won't successfully dig that inlet.

When you read stuff like This definitely raised a few eyebrows because 3ds Max has typically 
been known as the go-to app for the game industry
You know the guy, like most of DT has been for its entire existence, lives in a reality 
predating the actual calendar by more than a few years.

I do have money with a friend on Mudbox and MoBu not seeing more than another Christmas 
or two tops though :)






-- -
  Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at
-
 Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
   A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231
  www.keyvis.at
This email and its attachments are
confidential and for the recipient only








--

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   www.keyvis.at
 This email and its attachments are
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Re: Toon lens broken on softimage 2014?

[Stefan Kubicek]

I did some toon rendering in 2014Sp2 and that worked without problems.





Hi. I create a toon paint and host material, go to my cam. Add a toon lens. 
Render preview: none, zilch, nada.


Apparently there´s nothing that´s got changed on SI 2014 for the toon lens to 
be broken.
Anyone else experiencing this? or known bug? I´m using SI 2014 hotfix 1.

Regards.
David Rivera
3D Compositor/Animator
LinkedIN
Behance
VFX Reel




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 This email and its attachments are
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Re: Is it realy ?

[Stefan Kubicek]

I believe to have seen a different survey not too long ago that spoke a bit 
more in favor of Maya than this one, putting both Max and Maya somewhere it in 
the 30% range, but certainly abobe 19%.
I guess there is quite a big dependency on where you are conducting that 
survey. Is it a portal that's more frequented by ArchViz people, games, more 
Germans, Americans, Spanish, French? E.g. the Lighwave part of the pie seems 
too big, I've heard figures as low as 2% rather than 7% for example. Houdini 
ditto.
Also, as far as revenue is concerned, I think there's a larger paying 
audience for Maya than there is for Max, which is often used by individuals (architects, 
single digit man-count game studios, one-man-show freelancers) who show up as users in 
such anonymous surveys, yet might not always be inclined to actually pay for the 
software, I hear.




http://halfblog.net/2010/02/24/3ds-max-vs-blender-revealing-results-of-a-cg-software-user-survey/


On 15 July 2014 11:26, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za wrote:

The question  is will max become purely developed for Archi Viz by Autodesk going 
forward. I think that is a distinct possibility. Max will always have the 
horde of plug in folks to fill in the gaps but the important thing here is where 
Autodesk is going to put it.

Autodesk has to focus on Maya as the animation platform going forward or it is going to get 
its arse kicked. Not to mention they need to have a redo of Maya with in the next 5 
years as well if its going to remain competitive against recently put together technology. 
Probably why they opted to have Bifrost float alongside.





From: olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr

Reply-To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Date: Tuesday 15 July 2014 at 12:17 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Is it realy ?

Come on guys, this just another so called journalist surfing. Absolutely no 
infos, just speculating on not even rumours.
Nothing to read here, except if you're in the toilet...


Le 15/07/2014 12:12, Nuno Conceicao a écrit :

2 or 3 years ago I was reading similar denial posts about the rumour Softimage 
demise.This company is profit driven, the signs are already out there, I could come up 
with arguments for each possibility, the thing is, it depends really on 
Autodesk plans, imho...



On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 11:04 AM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote:



I don't think Max offers any unique advantage for arch viz or games. All can be done anywhere 
else and in my opinion, more efficiently.


As much as I'd want that to be true I need to disagree: Max still is hands down the single most efficient application for 
ArchViz. It comes with a ton of import options, great and fast Spline editing features, good enough 
proceduralism, a megaton of ready-made assets (Evermotion et al) already set up for different renderers, 
excellent Vray integration, and ease of use for simple scenes. I wouldn't want to do VFX with it (although some 
do), but for archviz it's _the_  most cost effective solution by miles.





Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 15, 2014, at 1:50 PM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:


I agree with your Max view,
Let's remember that is their core audience, architecture and engineering so killing the software 
that complements the key product in such a way would be foolish.

A different story is that they keep putting VFX goodies on it… that may be very 
possible..

Jordi Bares
jordiba...@gmail.com

On 15 Jul 2014, at 08:33, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com 
wrote:


The blogger has a really distorted perspective on market, apps and qualities. There's a 
distinct fanboi smell to the article.
I don't think MAX will be terminated in the next couple years, but if I had to bet money, I'd 
gladly put it on it being massively requalified for viz, and maybe, just maybe, to see an LT 
version for the indie gaming platform if Maya won't successfully dig that inlet.

When you read stuff like This definitely raised a few eyebrows because 3ds Max 
has typically been known as the go-to app for the game industry
You know the guy, like most of DT has been for its entire existence, lives in a 
reality predating the actual calendar by more than a few years.

I do have money with a friend on Mudbox and MoBu not seeing more than 
another Christmas or two tops though :)






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This email and its attachments are
confidential and for the recipient only





This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. 
If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy 
the original message. You

Re: Is it realy ?

[Stefan Kubicek]

Again I'd love to agree, but nope, it does not. We spent inordinate amounts of 
time (mostly Eugen) pimping Soft's curve editing features to the point where we 
felt almost as comfortable as in Max, and it was still not there, let alone raw 
performance (i.e. loading/displaying 20.000 curves and actually editing them 
without having to take a coffee break right before and after each edit). Maya 
is better in the performance compared to Soft, but feature wise, it's also 
behind Max (including ease of use). And you often need those features to clean 
up and extrude floor plans and what not, as we still get 2D data from clients, 
even these days.



 It comes with a ton of import options, great and fast Spline editing features, 
good enough proceduralism.

Softimage has all of that. So does others like Maya, Modo, Houdini, Blender, 
C4D etc.

As for VRay and Readymade assets I agree, but these are third party stuff not 
shipped with Max. So I guess you are right partly.






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Re: Anyone seen that New Foundry Colorway Demo ?

[Stefan Kubicek]

Lesson learned: Even have your grandmother sign a f**ing NDA before telling her 
anything.




On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 11:06 AM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau 
marc-andre.carbonn...@ubisoft.com wrote:


Wow… couldn’t they have protected themselves better?
Why didn’t TF offer to buy them or the product and make it part of their 
product offering?


That's only a cost/benefit question for most businesses. The likely answer is that once the legal team decided that there was no significant legal obstacle to replicating the functionality, and the dev team estimated the effort to do so, the total cost was lower to do it internally than to buy Motiva or their IP (which might not have been for sale anyway).  
Maybe not the most ethically pure thing to do, but not on the face of it improper.


Often sucks to be the little guy. They have my sympathy.






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Re: XSI hair and Random Generation

[Stefan Kubicek]

I rendered hair from the same scene across multiple machines and never ran into 
this. That was with 3delight, though I doubt there is a dependency on the 
actual renderer as XSI is responsible for delivering the full hair description 
to the renderer.
However, what I did not use was clumping (Hair Multiplicity), in case you use that you 
might want to try to turn it off and render a few frames on all machines and see if that 
fixes the problem. Is the problem persistent on just those few machines, or 
does it wander across machines?
If it's always the same machines,  maybe you are using some sort of cut map (or 
other map influencing hair geometry) and some machines can't find that texture, 
hence rendering the hair slightly different on those machines that can't find 
it?




Is there something about XSI's standard hair primitives (not ICE) that causes the hairs to 
be generated slightly differently each time a scene is opened? We're rendering with 
Redshift, but I'm thinking we saw something like this a few years ago with Mental Ray as 
well. Basically, on the farm, some machines will render their frame ranges with 
slightly different hair than any other machine. The only solution seems to be to render all 
the hair on a single machine, and to do so in a way that keeps the scene open (so in 
the case of Royal Render for instance, set the sequence maximum to be the full range 
you need).

The rendered hair isn't 'bad' per se, it's just 'different' from surrounding frame 
ranges. The simplest description is that each machine seems to want to render 
the hair slightly differently. And I really wonder if it's not some bug with XSI 
hair.
--

Tim Crowson
Lead CG Artist

Magnetic Dreams, Inc.
2525 Lebanon Pike, Bldg C, Suite 101, Nashville, TN 37214
Ph  615.885.6801 | Fax  615.889.4768 | www.magneticdreams.com
tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com






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Re: is this anything to be concerned about?

[Stefan Kubicek]

One way of getting such messages is by create a texture projection and undoing 
the creation, then saving the file.
I believe to remember that yet another way of getting it is to create a pass, 
then undo the creation, and save (same as above).
I never saw this with Models though. Does it still come up after saving and 
loading?
 I had this too occasionally (with texture projections only) but never noticed 
any side effects, and it was always gone after saving/reloading.




// WARNING : 3000 - Save: [1] objects were not saved normally

// WARNING : 3000 - -- [CopyPaste_Model.N_null_.null.ICETree] was saved, but is 
disconnected from the scene. (Floating object)



Any idea how to flush this out?


--

Joey Ponthieux

LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES)

Mymic Technical Services

NASA Langley Research Center

__

Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not
represent the opinions of NASA or any other party.






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Re: Renderman

[Stefan Kubicek]

You might want to look into Affogato:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/affogato/

I have never used it, and from what I understand it is not as slick and  
well integrated/interactive as the other solutions we are accepting as  
standard these days. Dpending on project complexity it might still be  
worth a look, or you go with 3Delight directly, which is very  
Renderman-like and free for the first license per user afaik.







Hi Folks

One of our students is very interested in looking at using the new
renderman that¹s been slated for release just after SIGGRAPH.

Now currently they are our last batch that will be using Softimage. So we
have a few choices

1) We light and render purely in Maya which will allows us to in theory
move straight from Soft-Maya
2) We find a way to export out of softimage into a format Renderman  
Server

can handle. ( I am assuming some form of RIB file) Possibly exported from
3Delight ?

Are their any folks that make use of render man from softimage that can
suggest the best way to look at doing things.

Kind regards

Angus

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author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The  
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between  
the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the  
University agrees in writing to the contrary. /span/font/td

/tr
/table




--
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   Stefan Kubicek
---
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  Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
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 Phone:+43/699/12614231
  www.keyvis.at  ste...@keyvis.at
--  This email and its attachments are   --
--confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: Eric MOOTZOID Mootz is nominated for a 3D World CG Award!

[Stefan Kubicek]

That's an easy vote!


Hi there..!

Our community member and first class SOFTIMAGE plugin developer Eric
MOOTZOID Mootz is nominated for a 3D World CG Award!
He is listed in the category 3D Hall of Fame for his amazing and
intuitive third-party plug-ins.

Find more details about the nomination here:
https://thecgawards.com/vote/3d-world-hall-of-fame/eric-mootz/

Congrats for the nomination and good luck, Eric!!

And now, dear Softies, vote, vote, vote ;)

cheers,
oli











PS: @Autodesk: Thanks again for killing this amazing piece software Eric
is mainly developing for! Great job!




--

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 Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231
   www.keyvis.at
 This email and its attachments are
confidential and for the recipient only

Re: Software company Autodesk creates synthetic virus

[Stefan Kubicek]

I love science, but stuff like that scares the shit it of me.
Just because something is not explicitely forbidden doesnt automatically mean 
it is/should be allowed and done.





Written with my thumbs...

On Jun 6, 2014, at 1:51, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com 
wrote:

 Turns out old boys maya's a piece of shit as a DCC but it does have the odd 
 side effect of curing E.coli :P
 
 
 On 6 June 2014 00:08, Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.com wrote:
 Autodesk doesn't just make synthetic virus's.
 They ARE an synthetic virus.
 
 OK, this is just too easy...
 
 So, the company that can't figure out, or afford, to keep a small niche 
 software app like Softimage going, and who also
 can't be trusted to continue to develop a superior product even after they 
 said they would as recently as 18 months prior to the EOL, is
 now a company we should trust and believe are going to safely develop a 
 synthetic virus and keep it out of the hands of those who wish to cause us 
 all harm?
 
 If this wasn't so freaking scary, I would laugh at my own jokes.
 
 
 
 
 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 6:58 PM, Sebastien Sterling 
 sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote:
 Tomorrow’s biotech companies could look more like nimble and innovative 
 software companies rather than big, risk-averse big pharma giants.
 
 you know incompetent and unscrupulous with a total disregard for the user ?
 
 the future- Remember that xsi82 nano strand keeping the blood pumping 
 through your heart? yea well we are canceling it, no, we feel like moving 
 in a different direction and the violent deaths of millions is just a 
 acceptable collateral :P unless you want to use this new strand that will 
 keep you alive, but your legs will stop working and you will go 
 intermittently blind :P
 
 If ME is a puppy, i wouldn't trust AD with cucumbers and Vaseline
 
 
 On 5 June 2014 22:51, Paulo César Duarte paulocdua...@gmail.com wrote:
 These kind of research scare me.
 
 
 2014-06-05 18:30 GMT-03:00 Serch Mucino sergio.muc...@gmail.com:
 
 Hehehehe. Horribly possible (Monstanto it's already trying to get that 
 model working... with Nestle behind them)
 
 
 Sergio Mucino
 
 
 
 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 4:48 PM, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 Soon, you'll need to pay your subscription just to stay alive!
 
 On 05-Jun-14 16:42, Marc-Andre Carbonneau wrote:
 Okay…
 
  
 
 https://www.seriouswonder.com/software-company-autodesk-creates-synthetic-virus/
 
 
 
 
 -- 
 www.pauloduarte.ws
 
 
 
 -- 
 
 
 
 
 
 Perry Harovas
 Animation and Visual Effects
 
 http://www.TheAfterImage.com
 
 -25 Years Experience
 -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)
 

Re: SOFTIMAGE|UeberTage 2014...any interest??

[Stefan Kubicek]

Nice!

Please tell me the guy was not CG :-)



Apropos XSI, check out this new spot from Time Based Arts in London:

https://vimeo.com/96797246

100% XSI, using emTools, emTopolizer2 (mesher and UVW engineer), Lagoa
and some custom ICE setups, rendered with SItoA + Arnold.
Amount of XSI artists: one (Oscar Gonzalez Diez).







--

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   Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at
-
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A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
 Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231
   www.keyvis.at
 This email and its attachments are
confidential and for the recipient only

Re: Renderman price restructuring

[Stefan Kubicek]

Hi Matt,

I understand how markets work and prices are formed, I should have phrased  
it differently:
I'm surprised this relatively small market supports so many products doing  
more or less the same thing.


As for realtime renderers, having worked in games for half of my career,  
I've seen this coming
too for the last ten years. So far I see the problems that make people not  
adopt realtime renderes for everything in the lack of flexibility -  
usually there are additional techical prerequisites that need to be met by  
assets in order to be usable by the render engine, and that creates  
additional cost on the artist side (the expensive end of the pipe),  
whereas CPU compute time is relatively cheap. I think the image quality  
can already be right for many things, not just the classic realtime  
applications/games.


Congrats on Wildstar going gold btw, it looks totally awesome!

Stefan





Prices are coming down because it's a nearly fixed-size market.  If you  
price yourself too high, you won't get a cut of the pie.


There's also a shift in moving towards real time renderers and away from  
software renderers.  Real time isn't quite ready for full prime time for  
film/video, but it is proving capable for many scenarios.  This is  
probably the main instigator of price reductions from the likes of  
Renderman as the writing is on the wall how much longer it will remain  
relevant in the general consumer space outside of large film productions  
that have established pipelines around it.


In general, industry is producing more real time applications instead of  
linear format.  Expect to see less need for 3rd party renderers in  
general, and more demand for real time engines and editing environments.



Matt




-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com  
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Stefan  
Kubicek

Sent: Friday, May 30, 2014 9:18 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Renderman price restructuring

This was my impression too, when it comes for ootb shaders Arnold leaves  
a lot to be desired.
I'd even go as far as saying that is more so with Arnold than with any  
other third party renderer I've used so far - if it wasn't for third  
party shaders generously made available you wouldn't get too far with it.


It's been interesting to see entry price levels coming so much down in  
recent years. Vray used to be the cheapest, production-ready renderer  
one could buy 12 years ago (and you got unlimited render nodes per  
license), today, like Arnold, it's amongst the more expensive ones, with  
Redshift and even PRMan being more affordable, let alone 3Delight, which  
was always zero $ for the the first license (and supports practically  
any shader in Softimage). In any way, I never expected to see complex,  
niche software products to come down in price that much. Just cut  
throat competition, or is there really so much money to be made that it  
still pays off to sell so cheap? At least I think the price cut and free  
for non-com use of PRMan is an attempt to keep what's left of their  
market share, they must have lost a lot of ground to Arnold in recent  
years.








Arnold you get

While I’m still on honeymoon with Arnold I have to say that its ‘out
of the box’ shaders leave quite some room for improvement.

Examples:

Standard shader: lacks a second specular layer (quite the standard
these days), back facing is not textureable Fur shader: you only get
'Kajija-Kay’ (very old school) shading, no indirect specular, no
translucency, no glints Single scatter SSS is only a function in the
API and currently does not implement indirect lighting.

While some of these deficits can be solved in the render tree, others
are simply not accessible without coding them yourself or relying on
community generosity. Which has been the situation for the past four
years.

That being said, Anders Langlands is now working at Solid Angle as a
shader developer. He has previously shared shaders that address a lot
of the above and beyond. I see a bright future ;-)

Happy Rendering,

Andy

On May 30, 2014, at 14:19, Marc-Andre Carbonneau
marc-andre.carbonn...@ubisoft.com wrote:


Ya...what they don't tell you is the hidden cost of programmers you
have to pay to get it working afterwards...

Viva Arnold!


-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of
Leendert A. Hartog
Sent: 30 mai 2014 07:41
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Renderman price restructuring

Some industry nice that might interest some of you (I hope):
Pixar has announced a radical price restructuring of its RenderMan
3D and animation technology. With the upcoming version, the software
will be free to non-commercial customers, and will cost $495 for
individual licenses
Quoted from here: http://waa.ai/4jn8

Or better yet: go to the appropriate page on the Renderman

Re: Shameless plug

[Stefan Kubicek]

 together that shared the same geometry.  These polished  
touches matter.  Softimage for the win.



So that said, while many 3D software could create the assets in their  
own time and space vacuum, Softimage (in my opinion) was the only  
software that could’ve tackled this project given our specific time,  
resources, and budget as there were many close calls along the  
way.  I say Softimage because many of the aforementioned features came  
out of the box with us ready to roll and not have to spend oodles  
of time reinventing the wheel.  Not having to write an animation mixer  
to do face pose blending, or render pass systems to do  
texture/shader swaps were incredible time savers and something we  
could lean on.  Spreadsheet queries and custom selection filters  
allowed us to quickly and easily find our custom data in any scene  
with just a click, view the data in a clean environment, and change  
it in bulk, if necessary without worry of missing a spot – highly  
important for finding and fixing bugs.  The elegant user experience  
was paramount to getting work done on tight schedules at high quality  
with minimal development resources available.  Everybody says that,  
but in our case it couldn’t be more true.  That user experience  
extends to the SDK as well.  Not having to relearn or rewrite code  
over many versions and upgrades over the span of nearly a decade was  
quite important in maintaining continuity and stability.  The  
scripting object model was more than a blessing to get under the  
hood and target only what we needed rather than having to rely on  
combinations of commands which do more work than necessary or don’t  
do exactly what we need as is available in most other 3D software.   
Backward compatibility with the API for C++ development was very  
important too.  While today’s OpenGL/DirectX viewport may seem  
antiquated, at the time this project started it was ahead of and  
more capable than any other in the industry, and fully compatible with  
all the other tools such as render passes.  That cannot be  
overlooked.



Finally, I should thank all the hard work and contributions from the  
Softimage developers and support, past and present, who put such an  
application together to make it possible.  Not just the foresight to  
see and understand the artist’s point of view, but also in the  
continued listening and support when we needed help along the way  
whether it be to fix bugs, augment existing features, or implement  
new features to accommodate our needs.  Building such an application  
is more than just writing and compiling code – it’s about  
understanding people.  You cannot understand people without forming  
relationships and maintaining those relationships over the long  
haul.  Softimage made the effort to establish and maintain those  
relationships contributing help and advice along the way, and that  
is why so many successful projects have resulted.  As much as I’ve  
ragged on many points, the bigger picture is not lost on the fact  
Softimage is a very capable and strong swiss army knife of 3D software  
to tackle many projects fearlessly.  It’s just a shame that in all  
my years of working with Softimage|XSI, this is only the 2nd long  
form project I’ve been able to call complete (due to project  
durations) and will be a shame that there will likely not be a 3rd.   
One point of satisfaction is of having worked on one of the first  
XSI projects in ‘Panic Room’, and now finishing one of the last in  
‘Wildstar’.  Both poetically apropos as Panic Room was a project  
fighting with a then beta-quality release rushed to market full of  
many bugs while Wildstar is a game about exploring and settling the  
planet Nexus much like the old west of America’s pioneer days of  
the 1800’s with wagons, staking claims to territory, gold rushes, and  
shootouts.  Only fitting as I must now look forward to a new  
destiny in uncharted territory as Softimage has literally been part of  
half my life in the 21 years I’ve used both Softimage|3D and  
Softimage|XSI….(and Eddie too!).



Thank you, Softimage.






Matt




--





--
---
Stefan Kubicek
---
keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at
-- This email and its attachments are --
--confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

[Stefan Kubicek]

I see what you mean, but at least you don't need a beefy machine.

Here's another one I haven't heard much of yet:
http://www.3dflow.net/3df-zephyr-pro-3d-models-from-photos/



and then you tell me how this is more convenient than having a desktop  
solution for this kind of stuff? please try to convince me ;)


cheers
vladimir


On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 11:31 AM, Graham Bell graham.b...@autodesk.com  
wrote:
If you have Maintenance Subscription or Desktop Subscription for Maya,  
Max, or Mudbox, you actually already have free access to ReCap 360.  
This includes the Photogrammetry service Photo on ReCap 360.


There is some limitation though, it’s capped at 50 images and export  
formats are limited, but it’s more than good enough for some things.
You can subscribe to the service for an annual of something like £45,  
then you can go up to 250 images and there’s more export formats.
The only things you’ll need are cloud credits for submitting data for  
generation.



G







--
---
Stefan Kubicek
---
keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at
-- This email and its attachments are --
--confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: Renderman price restructuring

[Stefan Kubicek]

This was my impression too, when it comes for ootb shaders Arnold leaves a  
lot to be desired.
I'd even go as far as saying that is more so with Arnold than with any  
other third party renderer I've used so far - if it wasn't for third party  
shaders generously made available you wouldn't get too far with it.


It's been interesting to see entry price levels coming so much down in  
recent years. Vray used to be the cheapest, production-ready renderer one  
could buy 12 years ago (and you got unlimited render nodes per license),  
today, like Arnold, it's amongst the more expensive ones, with Redshift  
and even PRMan being more affordable, let alone 3Delight, which was always  
zero $ for the the first license (and supports practically any shader in  
Softimage). In any way, I never expected to see complex, niche software  
products to come down in price that much. Just cut throat competition, or  
is there really so much money to be made that it still pays off to sell so  
cheap? At least I think the price cut and free for non-com use of PRMan is  
an attempt to keep what's left of their market share, they must have lost  
a lot of ground to Arnold in recent years.








Arnold you get
While I’m still on honeymoon with Arnold I have to say that its ‘out of  
the box’ shaders leave quite some room for improvement.


Examples:

Standard shader: lacks a second specular layer (quite the standard these  
days), back facing is not textureable
Fur shader: you only get 'Kajija-Kay’ (very old school) shading, no  
indirect specular, no translucency, no glints
Single scatter SSS is only a function in the API and currently does not  
implement indirect lighting.


While some of these deficits can be solved in the render tree, others  
are simply not accessible without coding them yourself or relying on  
community generosity. Which has been the situation for the past four  
years.


That being said, Anders Langlands is now working at Solid Angle as a  
shader developer. He has previously shared shaders that address a lot of  
the above and beyond. I see a bright future ;-)


Happy Rendering,

Andy

On May 30, 2014, at 14:19, Marc-Andre Carbonneau  
marc-andre.carbonn...@ubisoft.com wrote:


Ya...what they don't tell you is the hidden cost of programmers you  
have to pay to get it working afterwards...


Viva Arnold!


-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com  
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Leendert  
A. Hartog

Sent: 30 mai 2014 07:41
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Renderman price restructuring

Some industry nice that might interest some of you (I hope):
Pixar has announced a radical price restructuring of its RenderMan 3D  
and animation technology. With the upcoming version, the software will  
be free to non-commercial customers, and will cost $495 for individual  
licenses

Quoted from here: http://waa.ai/4jn8

Or better yet: go to the appropriate page on the Renderman website  
directly http://tinyurl.com/nkbmw8u


crossposted from the si-community, BTW

Greetz
Leendert

--

Leendert A. Hartog AKA Hirazi Blue
Administrator NOT the owner of si-community.com







--
---
   Stefan Kubicek
---
   keyvis digital imagery
  Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
   A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
 Phone:+43/699/12614231
  www.keyvis.at  ste...@keyvis.at
--  This email and its attachments are   --
--confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: Maya strengts (anyone?)

[Stefan Kubicek]

My 5 cents:

The viewport is more modern, faster than XSI's, and supports DX11 shaders.
The SDK is really open, there is hardly anything you don't have access to.
Texture swimming works.
The general notion of complex rig performance is that it's better than in XSI's.
Fluids and Muscles out of the box, abeit not user friendly and of limited 
usability/stability.
More robust NURBS import and surface modeling (e.g. curves on surface, etc).
Better support from game-related 3rd parties (exporters to various game 
engines).
MentalRay is a plugin (that has both pros and cons)


--

-
   Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at
-

Re: Maya strengts (anyone?)

[Stefan Kubicek]

Is it done loading ?


Currently loading a 12.3gb scene...
On 22 May 2014 12:12, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote:

Could you say it is scalable? able to do games and films ? i agree that from a TD 
perspective it seems ok, doesn't sweeten the pill for the end user though.

strengths, like it has more skinning algorithms then any other package: Voxel, 
quaternion, heat... but then it also has weight painting so bad i have never 
seen a TD ever use anything more then linear, or maybe quaternion.

Viewport 2.0 yea, that a legitimate better.



On 22 May 2014 12:02, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote:

Also you ahve to ask more precicely.
Do you mean strengths from technical point as it seems that TD guys loves it, 
or from artist point as it seems there is big difference there.


On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 12:59 PM, Leendert A. Hartog hirazib...@live.nl wrote:

So, absolutely no strengths? Market leader on marketing voodoo alone? Somehow I 
doubt that... ;)


--
Leendert A. Hartog AKA Hirazi Blue
Administrator NOT the owner of si-community.com









--

-
   Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at
-
  Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
 Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231
   www.keyvis.at
 This email and its attachments are
confidential and for the recipient only

Re: Maya strengts (anyone?)

[Stefan Kubicek]

Total nightmare. Reminds me on stories of the making of Myst (the game), with 
sometimes hours of loading time.
I couldn't imagine working like that. To be fair, I always found loading/saving 
in Maya pretty fast, even compared to XSI.
I tried with scenes of equal complexity (lots of geo, but little to no 
construction history) and found it to actually load faster than XSI in most 
cases.
Memory consumption was often two to three times higher though - I was able to 
load and work on scenes in XSI that wouldn't even fit in memory with Maya. That 
was yeras ago, don't know if anything was improved in this regard.



Yes about 30 mins to load
On 22 May 2014 12:21, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote:

Is it done loading ?


Currently loading a 12.3gb scene...
On 22 May 2014 12:12, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote:

Could you say it is scalable? able to do games and films ? i agree that from a TD 
perspective it seems ok, doesn't sweeten the pill for the end user though.

strengths, like it has more skinning algorithms then any other package: Voxel, quaternion, 
heat... but then it also has weight painting so bad i have never seen a TD 
ever use anything more then linear, or maybe quaternion.

Viewport 2.0 yea, that a legitimate better.



On 22 May 2014 12:02, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote:

Also you ahve to ask more precicely.
Do you mean strengths from technical point as it seems that TD guys loves it, 
or from artist point as it seems there is big difference there.


On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 12:59 PM, Leendert A. Hartog hirazib...@live.nl wrote:

So, absolutely no strengths? Market leader on marketing voodoo alone? Somehow I 
doubt that... ;)


--
Leendert A. Hartog AKA Hirazi Blue
Administrator NOT the owner of si-community.com









-- -
  Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at
-
 Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
   A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231
  www.keyvis.at
This email and its attachments are
confidential and for the recipient only




--

-
   Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at
-
  Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
 Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231
   www.keyvis.at
 This email and its attachments are
confidential and for the recipient only

Re: Maya strengts (anyone?)

[Stefan Kubicek]

A robot a day keeps the doctor away?



http://www.cgmeetup.net/home/making-of-the-amazing-spider-man-2-rhino/
blaa ?


On 22 May 2014 13:11, Martin furik...@gmail.com wrote:

Tough question.

Modeling. Nothing really. A few tools that SI lacks like preserve uvs, lock sub 
components, sculpt tool, some tools that work better, but nothing special.

Animation. Nothing either.

nCloth, nHair, and muscles may be an strength point but I almost never use them 
so I can't talk about it.

Viewport. Even the old Maya viewport is better than the newest SI one. And this is a 
big difference when you have to deal with alpha bitmaps, vertex colors and 
normal maps when you're modeling game assets.

Coding. You have access to a lot more places than with SI. But writing in Mel is a 
nightmare if you write something big, and the Python experience isn't very 
pleasant but I don't have experience with Pymel.

ASCII format.

Ignore version option. You can open data in older versions, sometimes. I find 
this feature a little unreliable since 2012 (or 2013?, can't remember)

I can't think about any other big strength, sorry.

Oh wait. It isn't dead, and you can find a lot of jobs and users around the world. It 
isn't a Maya feature but that's the main reason why Maya is the leader.


Martin

Sent from my iPhone






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   Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at
-
  Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
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 Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231
   www.keyvis.at
 This email and its attachments are
confidential and for the recipient only

Re: OT: Now that the grief over softimage, how did you get over your it on your daily basis?

[Stefan Kubicek]

Exactly my pov. The different packages are too much in flux atm to make a 
decision right now.
If I was forced to switch, I'd go Houdini though.



Still sticking with Softimage for now. There seem to be some changes coming in the 
next year or two in almost every package so I'm gambling on waiting a while 
before choosing a direction. Looking forward to the next step, it may have some 
things I'll miss but I'm sure there will be advantages to balance it out. One 
thing is for sure, wherever I end up will have to have a Redshift plugin.



On 22 May 2014 16:56, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote:

Well the same applies to me.

I now am getting into deep scripting in Softimage.

The big difference is that in Maya you script for necessitiy and in Softimage 
for the fun of it.

The real saviours here are Redshift, Mootz, 3D Quakers, Paul, etc.

For me it was never grief, it was anger.  And the anger has passed.


---
Emilio Hernández   VFX  3D animation.


2014-05-22 10:37 GMT-05:00 Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.net:


There is no grief, here. The software is definitely NOT over. Initially I thought 
Oh no (clean version),
but once I thought about it, as I was getting my new license for Redshift 3D, I 
realized that whatever I need this
existing software to do, I can do with ICE. I am only just starting to learn 
how to use ICE, so it a wonderful
new feature, to me.

I'm going to put any further efforts into learning more about ICE, rather than 
spend my time trying to learn
another 3D package.

3rd Parties still seem to be developing for Softimage, although I'm sure that 
will fade over time.
I turn 60 next month, so this is it for me. Even if I retire at 80. :)

I will not swallow the Kool-aid.

I feel bad for the kid who just graduated art school with a Softimage 
background.
That is a tough spot to be in. Fortunately young minds learn faster.



On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 7:04 AM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com 
wrote:

Who said that the grief is over?
Every single day I think at least once... oh AD how I hate you.
Also your software is obsolete from them ends up with I can still work 10 times 
faster in my obsolete software. Eat my dust!


On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 12:22 PM, activemotionpictu...@yahoo.com 
activemotionpictu...@yahoo.com wrote:

I know it's a sensible question, but now that the grief is over, could some of you share how you're 
dealing with the  your software its's obsolote phrase around your 
maya/C4D/3dsMax colleague?


I got my head under Modo blankets and hope the day comes around quickly.
Yeh, just being honest here.

:)

Enviado desde Yahoo Mail en Android








--

Best Regards,
 Stephen P. Davidson  (954) 552-7956
   sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

- 
Arthur C. Clarke








--www.matinai.com




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   Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at
-
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A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
 Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231
   www.keyvis.at
 This email and its attachments are
confidential and for the recipient only

Re: Ice UV

[Stefan Kubicek]

What format are you trying to export to?
I don't know of any tool or exporter that would translate ICE UVs to standard 
UVs (worst case though I'm pretty sure that could be scripted), but that 
doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Have you looked at Alembic or emTopolizer? I believe to have read that the 
latter does ICE geo baking to standard geometry, maybe it handles the UVs as 
well?

Eric?




Hi List
I was wondering if anyone had a way of getting ice UV's out from ice and onto 
geometry, I basically have some strands that are deforming. I have a empty poly 
that has strands extrusion applied, I can access the uv that it generates in the 
render tree but I need to export this geo out of softimage so need to bake the uv 
down onto the actual geo.

I was looking at this but was wondering if there was a better workflow in place 
now.

Simon Anderson simonbenandersonl...@gmail.com via listproc.autodesk.com

15/08/2012



to softimage





looks like something out of Mortal Combat..
- Get Empty Mesh
- Apply ICETree (Create Topo-Part)
- Freeze
- Planar TextureProjection
- Freeze
- Apply ICETree (Create UV-Part)
- Freeze
- Freeze
- Freeze
- [..]
- Open TextureEditor - Crash



Thnaks for any help.



Alex.




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 This email and its attachments are
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Re: OT: Graphic card for optimous performance with Redshift

[Stefan Kubicek]

Last time I checked they were more expensive than two separate titans.


What about the titan z series? Are they out yet? They could probably pack quite 
a punch :)


On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 9:35 AM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote:

I second that, the 780 with 6gb (~2300 cores vs ~2800 of the Titan)  is 
currently the biggest bang for the buck.

Make sure to get the one that adheres to NVidias reference cooling design to get rid 
of the heat at the rear instead of injecting it into the pc housing, as the 
other, cheaper one from EVGA does.




hey,
the titan black is very fast, but considering the benchmarks 
(http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html) the 780 isn't lame 
either, and the 6gb version is close to half the price of a titan.
so if you want a bargain that's still fast, I would go for the 780 6gb.

Christian

On 19.05.2014 18:46, David Rivera wrote:

Hi, now that Redshift is officially out and running smoothly, I´d like to ask 
you guys what
Graphic Cards for best GPU performance would be optimum for an I7 stream core?
I´m taking a look at:
EVGA EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN SuperClocked 6GB GDDR5 384bit, Dual-Link DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI,DP, 
SLI Ready Graphics Card Graphics Cards 06G-P4-2791-KR


But if I recall, there were some threads that were posted about the performance 
of the Quadro K4000 vs Titan.

I can afford something of 1k cost ($1000) but before buying I would like to ask 
if there´s a better (cheaper) option?

Like you all guys know, I´d like to take these considerations with softimage 
and later on the year
transition fully to Modo 801.

So what are your thoughts / recommendations?
Thanks for sharing.

David.






EVGA EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN SuperClocked 6GB...Amazon.com: EVGA EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN 
SuperClocked 6GB GDDR5 384bit, Dual-Link DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI,DP, SLI Ready Graphics Card Graphics Cards ...   


View on www.amazon.com  Preview by Yahoo







David Rivera
3D Compositor/Animator
LinkedIN
Behance
VFX Reel






-- -
  Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at
-
 Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
   A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231
  www.keyvis.at
This email and its attachments are
confidential and for the recipient only






--

-
   Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at
-
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A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
 Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231
   www.keyvis.at
 This email and its attachments are
confidential and for the recipient only

Re: OT: Graphic card for optimous performance with Redshift

[Stefan Kubicek]

When you render on the CPU directly from your DCC app, you have your scene in 
mem twice. Once in e.g. Soft, and once translated into what the renderer can 
render, both are stored in RAM, hence the memory consumption appears relatively 
high. In case of Redshift, video memory on the card (VRAM) is used for storing 
translated, renderable scene data, as long as it fits in.
Translated scene data is usually a lot more efficient to store than the actual, 
raw scene, which has a lot of metadata, construction history, etc, that is not 
needed for rendering. Hence, a scene consuming 10gb in RAM is usually easily 
renderable on a 6gb card, depending on how much additional unique and 
procedural geometry you create at render time (e.g. subd, displacement, hair).

There was a thread in the Redshift forum regarding actual triangle numbers 
storable in certain amounts of Vram. I can't find that thread now, but I 
believe it was around 100mio unique triangles in 6gb of Vram?




no, vram only gets used by the card it's built in.
but 6 gb vram is quite a lot and can't be compared to cpu ram.
Means, if your scene uses like 15gb in Vray that doesn't mean 6gb is not enough 
for the scene in Redshift.

Christian


On 20.05.2014 11:48, Cristobal Infante wrote:

If you have two 6gb cards, does Redshift consider this as 12gb of RAM or only 
6gb?


On 20 May 2014 10:32, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote:

Last time I checked they were more expensive than two separate titans.


What about the titan z series? Are they out yet? They could probably pack quite 
a punch :)


On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 9:35 AM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote:

I second that, the 780 with 6gb (~2300 cores vs ~2800 of the Titan)  is 
currently the biggest bang for the buck.
Make sure to get the one that adheres to NVidias reference cooling design to get rid of the 
heat at the rear instead of injecting it into the pc housing, as the 
other, cheaper one from EVGA does.




hey,
the titan black is very fast, but considering the benchmarks 
(http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html) the 780 isn't lame 
either, and the 6gb version is close to half the price of a titan.
so if you want a bargain that's still fast, I would go for the 780 6gb.

Christian

On 19.05.2014 18:46, David Rivera wrote:

Hi, now that Redshift is officially out and running smoothly, I´d like to ask 
you guys what
Graphic Cards for best GPU performance would be optimum for an I7 stream core?
I´m taking a look at:
EVGA EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN SuperClocked 6GB GDDR5 384bit, Dual-Link DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI,DP, SLI 
Ready Graphics Card Graphics Cards 06G-P4-2791-KR


But if I recall, there were some threads that were posted about the performance 
of the Quadro K4000 vs Titan.

I can afford something of 1k cost ($1000) but before buying I would like to ask 
if there´s a better (cheaper) option?

Like you all guys know, I´d like to take these considerations with softimage 
and later on the year
transition fully to Modo 801.

So what are your thoughts / recommendations?
Thanks for sharing.

David.






EVGA EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN SuperClocked 6GB...Amazon.com: EVGA EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN 
SuperClocked 6GB GDDR5 384bit, Dual-Link DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI,DP, SLI Ready Graphics Card Graphics Cards ...   


View on www.amazon.com  Preview by Yahoo







David Rivera
3D Compositor/Animator
LinkedIN
Behance
VFX Reel






-- -
  Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at
-
 Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
   A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231
  www.keyvis.at
This email and its attachments are
confidential and for the recipient only






-- -
  Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at
-
 Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
   A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231
  www.keyvis.at
This email and its attachments are
confidential and for the recipient only








--

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   Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at
-
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A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
 Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231
   www.keyvis.at
 This email and its attachments are
confidential and for the recipient only

Re: ICE Topology/Deform problem

[Stefan Kubicek]

Not sure if I'm getting the problem right, but how about making copies of  
the mesh and storing the required delta in every vertex first. Once the  
mesh is finished, move all vertices up/down by that delta value in a  
second step?




Hi guys

I'm having the following ICE topology issue which ill describe bellow:

I'm using 2 nulls to distribute a series of pillars between them (using  
create copies from Polygon Mesh node)
I want these cloned pillars to adjust the height accordingly to the 2  
nulls height but since the pillars have some modelled details I cant use  
scale, nor flatten part of the geometry to either the top or bottom.
So I first created an ICE tree on the pillar with a simple Test Inside  
Null to define an area of the pillar that can be moved and stored as an  
Ice property.
Then my cloned pilars top part is aligned with the nulls height while  
the bottom part that was stored on the ICE property gets moved down to  
touch the ground.
So basically my issue is that I cannot get the deltas of each of the  
pillars, I only get the first pillar delta that gets cloned, so the only  
way around this was use a repeat node that iterates all the vertices  
and is really really slow if the geometry is complex.


Since ICE already iterates every vertice this isn't efficient (for now  
is just a workaround) so if someone more experienced with dealing with  
ICE topology changes can shed some light in how to deal with this issue  
would be greatly appreciated.


Cheers

Nuno






--
---
Stefan Kubicek
---
keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at
-- This email and its attachments are --
--confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: Disabling CAV display?

[Stefan Kubicek]

Hi Matt, I didn't know about  CurrentVertexColor, thx for that!

Here's what I ended up with in the mean time:

for oObj in Application.Selection:
   try:
for oMat in oObj.Materials:
 Application.SetInstanceDataValue(oObj.FullName, oMat.FullName + .CAV, 
None)
   except:
pass

Controlling vertex colors on a per material bases allows to make them visible 
per cluster, but atm it seems to be partly broken because objects displaying 
CAV per cluster causes the parts of the object no displaying any CAV to show 
seemingly random colors, which is really distracting  and odd looking.

Anyway, I got what I needed, thx again everybody.




If you need to disable CAV display for a viewport (instead of per object), you 
can do so via the display options.

(Display ) Display Options  Vertex Color  Never show (use material)
An alternate method for removing the current vertex color for an object in 
scripting:
// JScript
var oObject = Selection(0);
oObject.ActivePrimitive.Geometry.CurrentVertexColor = null;
Matt


Ah great,a punch in the crown jewels just when I needed it. I could've =20
sworn I tried both None and None
Thx Vladimir.






--

-
   Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at
-
  Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
 Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231
   www.keyvis.at
 This email and its attachments are
confidential and for the recipient only

Re: Disabling CAV display?

[Stefan Kubicek]

Hi Matt, I didn't know about  CurrentVertexColor, thx for that!

Here's what I ended up with in the mean time:

for oObj in Application.Selection:
   try:
for oMat in oObj.Materials:
 Application.SetInstanceDataValue(oObj.FullName, oMat.FullName + .CAV, 
None)
   except:
pass

Controlling vertex colors on a per material bases allows to make them visible 
per cluster, but atm it seems to be partly broken because objects displaying 
CAV per cluster causes the parts of the object no displaying any CAV to show 
seemingly random colors, which is really distracting  and odd looking.

Anyway, I got what I needed, thx again everybody.




If you need to disable CAV display for a viewport (instead of per object), you 
can do so via the display options.

(Display ) Display Options  Vertex Color  Never show (use material)
An alternate method for removing the current vertex color for an object in 
scripting:
// JScript
var oObject = Selection(0);
oObject.ActivePrimitive.Geometry.CurrentVertexColor = null;
Matt


Ah great,a punch in the crown jewels just when I needed it. I could've =20
sworn I tried both None and None
Thx Vladimir.






--

-
   Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at
-
  Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
 Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231
   www.keyvis.at
 This email and its attachments are
confidential and for the recipient only

Disabling CAV display?

[Stefan Kubicek]

Hi everybody,

I've been scratching my head over this ever since I first touched vertex  
colors in Softimage.

Feel free to lough in case I'm missing something entirely obvious...

I have a poly object with an additional CAV property with some painted  
vertex colors (the default Color CAV property seems to be unpaintable so  
I created a new one). I now see my object with painted vertex colors in  
the viewport. However, when I'm done painting, I want to concentrate on  
some texturing work again, so I want to see the effect of the texture  
only, and not have it multiplied with the vertex colors, hence I want to  
disable vertex color display, and this is what I can't figure out.


I tried setting the per-instance vertex color value of the object's  
material to None (via scripting because the list box won't let me set it  
it to None, it only shows a list of existing CAV properties):


Application.SetInstanceDataValue(cone,  
Sources.Materials.DefaultLib.Scene_Material.CAV, None)


Since that didn't help, I decided to check display filters of the viewport  
cameras, found all kinds of stuff, but no option to disable CAV display on  
a per camera basis, or even globally.


So am I doomed to see those vertex colors in this scene and on this object  
forever, or is there any known way of disabling it? Please tell me there  
is and I just missed something.


Cheers,

 Stefan





--



   Stefan Kubicek

 keyvis digital imagery
   Bürocenter Perchtoldsdorf
   Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
   A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone:+43/699/12614231
  www.keyvis.at  ste...@keyvis.at
--  This email and its attachments are   --
-confidential and for the recipient only-

Re: Disabling CAV display?

[Stefan Kubicek]

Ah great,a punch in the crown jewels just when I needed it. I could've  
sworn I tried both None and None

Thx Vladimir.




Oh I see now.
Application.SetInstanceDataValue(cone,  
Sources.Materials.DefaultLib.Scene_Material.CAV, None) - this won't  
work as you have to supply a string value
Application.SetInstanceDataValue(cone,  
Sources.Materials.DefaultLib.Scene_Material.CAV, None) - this will  
work however!



cheers

vladimir


On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 6:46 AM, Vladimir Jankijevic  
v.jankije...@gmail.com wrote:
objects Material - OpenGL Tab - Vertex Color Display Property group.  
just select the field and type 'None' into it ( or anything you like ).  
BANG!


cheers

vladimir



On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 6:37 AM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com  
wrote:

Hi everybody,

I've been scratching my head over this ever since I first touched  
vertex colors in Softimage.

Feel free to lough in case I'm missing something entirely obvious...

I have a poly object with an additional CAV property with some painted  
vertex colors (the default Color CAV property seems to be  
unpaintable so I created a new one). I now see my object with  
painted vertex colors in the viewport. However, when I'm done  
painting, I want to concentrate on some texturing work again, so I  
want to see the effect of the texture only, and not have it multiplied  
with the vertex colors, hence I want to disable vertex color  
display, and this is what I can't figure out.


I tried setting the per-instance vertex color value of the object's  
material to None (via scripting because the list box won't let me  
set it it to None, it only shows a list of existing CAV  
properties):


Application.SetInstanceDataValue(cone,  
Sources.Materials.DefaultLib.Scene_Material.CAV, None)


Since that didn't help, I decided to check display filters of the  
viewport cameras, found all kinds of stuff, but no option to disable  
CAV display on a per camera basis, or even globally.


So am I doomed to see those vertex colors in this scene and on this  
object forever, or is there any known way of disabling it? Please tell  
me there is and I just missed something.


Cheers,

Stefan





--


  Stefan Kubicek

keyvis digital imagery
  Bürocenter Perchtoldsdorf
  Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
  A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
   Phone:+43/699/12614231
 www.keyvis.at  ste...@keyvis.at
--  This email and its attachments are   --
-confidential and for the recipient only-









--
---
Stefan Kubicek
---
keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at
-- This email and its attachments are --
--confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: SI and Houdini

[Stefan Kubicek]

Hi Jordi,

I see all the files in your dropbox but all i get upon clicking on one is  
a Disabled Link warning page.

Am I the only one with this problem?

Thanks a ton for all your efforts btw!

Stefan

Kinematics now online… get ready, the next one may be the big one so it  
is time to get up to speed and catch up.


;-)

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forumItemid=172page=viewtopicp=147167#147167


Jordi Bares
jordiba...@gmail.com

On 3 May 2014, at 15:40, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:

Actually what started as a guide is becoming a bit of a bible… I may  
have to think about extending the content and publishing the whole  
thing on a book…


If anything so my mum can see I have done something of any use in this  
life other than help selling things nobody needs ;-)


Jordi Bares
jordiba...@gmail.com

On 3 May 2014, at 15:25, David Saber davidsa...@sfr.fr wrote:


Thanks again!
I'll purchase the book!

On 2014-05-02 22:46, Jordi Bares wrote:

Thanks Cristobal..
Well, finally the bones section is now done…
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forumItemid=172page=viewforumf=51










--
---
Stefan Kubicek
---
keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at
-- This email and its attachments are --
--confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: hair rendering

[Stefan Kubicek]

Same Render (Region) Settings for both views? Any lens shaders?



Hey guys

Got a question about hair rendering.
Anyone knows why hair rendering looks different when rendered in user  
view compared to rendering in camera view ?


Got a hairy animal and the hair rendering looks more blury in the  
userview.


So maybe someone allready stunbled upon this.

cheers
Mario




--
---
Stefan Kubicek
---
keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at
-- This email and its attachments are --
--confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: Re[4]: Houdini Engine for Cinema4D

[Stefan Kubicek]

The real mind bending starts when you import a HE digital asset that in turn 
has dependencies on Fabric Emgine :-)

Written with my thumbs...

On Apr 23, 2014, at 17:04, Eugen Sares sof...@mail.sprit.org wrote:

 Getting pre-fabricated shake-and-bake tools is also worth something, 
 especially since they remain procedural. C4D could surely can need more of 
 those.
 Just like with ICE. I use the thickness op, and it's a blessing to have it, 
 but I have not much of an idea how it works.
 Assuming that geometry tools will work - the ICE modelling equivalent in HE. 
 Is this the case?
 Could even Mantra be invoked via Houdini Engine?
  
 Anyway, it's clear that you cannot author the HE node network in the host 
 app, but when the frontend/interface is done well, the 'end user'/artist 
 needn't care that much.
  
  
  
 -- Originalnachricht --
 Von: Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com
 An: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Gesendet: 23.04.2014 16:40:01
 Betreff: Re: Re[2]: Houdini Engine for Cinema4D
  
 
 Houdini engine doesn't offer procedural authoring (it's only the engine, not 
 the UI), you still need to know and use Houdini to author the asset and load 
 it in the other app.  If you don't own Houdini, perhaps you're running other 
 people's assets, perhaps purchased on the asset store.  Like buying effects 
 presets or a plug-in. The modo fanboys think they would get the houdini 
 graph in Modo, for example, they are wrong.
 
 On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 10:16 AM, Eugen Sares sof...@mail.sprit.org wrote:
 ; }
  
 Luc-Eric has a point, though, in that you would have to learn 2 
 applications.
 But then, isn't ICE in a way an 'application' on it's own also, or at least 
 a very different department than the rest of the app?
  
 I guess this has been debated on other places already, but how deep is the 
 HE integration into the host app?
 Can tools also be authored, with some UI interactivity, or is it meant to 
 be more of a computing engine, that you invoke solely via some PPG?
  
  
 Bifröst, Fabric, HE... help! Too many nodes for a lifetime... must become a 
 cycle messenger...
 
 
   
 Diese E-Mail ist frei von Viren und Malware, denn der avast! Antivirus Schutz 
 ist aktiv.
 
 

Re: Another alternative to Softimage

[Stefan Kubicek]

Blender is a foundation, hence does not "belong" to anybody, very much like the source code, which is open source.Funding comes mostly from Google and Microsoft (afaik), with individuals making occasional donations too.
On Fri, 28 Mar 2014 09:49:30 +0100, Doeke Wartena clankil...@gmail.com wrote:Can blender be bought by a company? Or who owns blender?-- ---       Stefan Kubicek---   keyvis digital imagery  Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3   A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien Phone:+43/699/12614231  www.keyvis.at  ste...@keyvis.at--  This email and its attachments are   confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..

[Stefan Kubicek]

I'd say you should take a closer look at Redshift (www.redshift3d.com).Arnold is popular, tested, and very fast and stable, but it's also more expensive than Redshift.Vray will be officially discontinued (besides some last service pack, which won't feature VrayRT), and I don't know about Aghile's current plans for 3Delight.  StefanHello,I was beginning to ponder, in another thread, some rendering issues in SI. I've never really liked mental ray, tried to, spent a long time studying it, and could never get the kind of aesthetic I was able to achieve in Lightwave, with the Steve Worley plugin FPrime, or the newer Kray, which was beginning a promising development about when I left. Seems to have taken off now, too.I ported several projects over from Lightwave to XSI some years ago, and tried to reproduce the very nice rendering results I got in Lightwave. Totally different system of course. I figured it was one good approach to learning mental ray. Well, I couldn't get anywhere close, and it was a struggle, and I never really got acceptable results. Every other aspect of the projects went so much better, though, in XSI. And there was animation in XSI I couldn't even begin to do in Lightwave.I need fast GI effects, that's integral to what I do. A lot of interior architectural-like surfaces. Not necessarily total realism, just an aesthetic -- I need to really be able to get in there and tweak things and make them work. I use a lot of HDR lighting, I know how to hand tweak it in photoshop, or create it from scratch, and I like to use that to control my light and color. I've used FG quite a bit, and am not always happy how it translates things. GI is way too slow in my scenes.FPrime and Kray had a way of handling these GI lighting effects that was very efficient, and tweakable. That's the one thing from Lightwave that I REALLY miss. Anything comparable for Softimage?I remember I also could get some reflectivity and ray tracing in Lightwave at a fraction of the rendering time mental ray takes. I can't use it at all in mental ray, with GI (including FG) except on a single object basis. Not for animation on many frames, too costly. But I do like the nodal texturing system built into SI.Anyway, considering these factors, is there any rendering solution for SI that anyone can recommend that will give me what I'm looking for? That isn't too expensive...Thanks,Nancy Jacobshttp://www.childofillusion.net/-- ---   Stefan Kubicek---   keyvis digital imagery  Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3   A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien Phone:+43/699/12614231  www.keyvis.at  ste...@keyvis.at--  This email and its attachments are   confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: What use is ICE really?

[Stefan Kubicek]

It looks like http://rray.de/xsi/



Yes it's very nice, does it exist online?



--
---
   Stefan Kubicek
---
   keyvis digital imagery
  Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
   A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
 Phone:+43/699/12614231
  www.keyvis.at  ste...@keyvis.at
--  This email and its attachments are   --
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Re: A confession

[Stefan Kubicek]

ancois


*Denis-Jose FrançoisKnown to some as @HairytechKnown to others as +Denis-JoseOccasionally referred to as SimonAlways The Evil Hood





https://soundcloud.com/infiniversemedia
On 19 March 2014 09:32, Alastair Hearsum hear...@glassworks.co.uk wrote:



  


  
  
Folks
Here is a confession. I've never
  used Maya! Not really. I've had a little poke every now and again
  but no more than make a sphere and spin round it. 
Now, the lack of Maya knowledge may
  diminish the value of my comments in some eyes but I think that ,
  on the contrary, it puts me in quite a good position to appraise
  the software at a certain level. Here is an example of the trouble
  I'm having that may bring a smile to people's faces. But first
  just a couple of more sentences before I reveal my difficulty. I
  like to bill myself as the sensitive artist/animator who is
  technically all fingers and thumbs, like the woman by the side of
  her broken down car waiting on a big strong man to help her out.
  The truth is that its not true. I do have a degree in Fine Art but
  I also studied maths and physics at university and programmed
  extensively in Lisp in my first job. So I'm not stupid BUT:
I'm on my third night trying to
adjust the resolution of a sphere after I have applied n-cloth
to it!
Isn't that incredible? Its one
  example plucked from many experienced by people I work with who
  can and have used Maya. Its symptomatic of the all encompassing
  interface workflow issues that Maya has that I think are really
  fundamenta



-- ---       Stefan Kubicek---   keyvis digital imagery  Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3   A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien Phone:+43/699/12614231  www.keyvis.at  ste...@keyvis.at--  This email and its attachments are   confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?

[Stefan Kubicek]

Are you implying that modernizing Softimage's core would have been less 
expensive/time consuming than having to fix both of Maya's core and interaction 
models/workflow?



Raf is right. We focused a lot on modernizing the core of Maya so that we can 
enable third parties to play nice within the Maya environment and Bifrost works 
much the same way splice works in that it is a node inside Maya that passes 
data back and forth to another world that is more suited to a given task.  For 
example with crowds we now have Golem, Mirarmy, and Massive for Maya. A perfect 
example of the work ahead of us is something like Gator. Maya has all the 
transfer tools inside of Gator but they are spread out and inconsistent. A DG 
master can do many of the things in the operator stack but the UI sucks. 
Designing a proper workflow and UI is a lot harder than coding one and we have 
hired real interaction designers and not just maya experts. The consistent 
thread is something out of the box that is not daunting and is consistent and 
properly presented in an interactive way.



cv/




From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Raffaele Fragapane 
[raffsxsil...@googlemail.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2014 7:11 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?


You already have most of what is possible in ice in Maya, it's called splice 
for Fabric. The only thing missing are some primitives and the visual 
programming paradigm and GUI,  performance and portability are mostly better 
already.

Honestly, I don't know why people keep  mentioning things such as she of vote 
or rewrites and the such. XSI wasn't rewritten to get ICE with its current 
considerable set of limitations (some of which aren't present in splice on 
Maya), but everybody wants so badly for Maya to be called older, when in 
actuality it's clunkier, horribly fragmented, but arguably a lot younger and 
more modern than Soft at this point.

People have a perception of modernity based on their interaction with a mix of look, 
slickness and use experience, and then think and wasn't too the mythical core 
of the app to be equally modern or ancient based on how it feels, but the two things are 
seldom related.

And on the same note, of Maya will get ICE, it still won't be Soft ;)
What Chris mentioned with H Maya, if it will ever get anywhere, would be a lot more 
important than rewriting the core.

Modern software development and software modernisation don't work the way most 
people seem to perceive it.

On 16 Mar 2014 21:20, Nuno Conceicao 
nunoalexconcei...@gmail.commailto:nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote:

Yeah I get your point, but for that to happen i can imagine that maya would 
have to be almost totally rewritten, right?

Em 16/03/2014 05:22, Raffaele Fragapane 
raffsxsil...@googlemail.commailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com escreveu:

Yeah Nuno, I can easily enough. The stack is a patch for the lack of proper 
graph, not a feature worth promoting as the future. Maya has issues with 
evaluation missing certain things in default nodes, but the general paradigm of 
the graph is a superior approach.
The lack of threading is more of an issue, but the stack doesn't facilitate 
that, ice works intra op, not across.

Four the sake of all that's good in the world let's not push a attack against a 
proper DG as a superior feature, or make the mistake of thinking it's enabling 
in any regard. A proper sparse and arbitrary DG with the addition of simple 
entry and exit gates to facilitate things such as shape modeling at different 
stages, storing differentials and so on is an infinitely superior approach.

On 15 Mar 2014 05:30, Nuno Conceicao 
nunoalexconcei...@gmail.commailto:nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote:
Something just came up on my head while doing blendshapes and using ICE to help 
along.

Can you guys imagine how would ICE (or Biftrost) would work in Maya without a 
proper modelling stack like XSI''s?

Even something as simple as using ICE to invert weight maps that are hooked 
with shapes with an already enveloped character or fixing some poses maybe...




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Re: Why MAX is not option for me...

[Stefan Kubicek]

Haha, I had this too, it does indeed crash randomly even with not interacted 
with.
It's crashing even more often running on bootcamp on curent-gen IMacs, but I 
guess that's mostly due to gfx-card drivers.
I'm currently teaching a class of 5 once in a week on the basics of CG on 
3dsmax (because the school decided to use that, not because I wanted to) and 
it's crashing on them at least twice in 4 hours (and we do really basic stuff 
on super-lightweight scenes). Safe always, safe often...




..because this is the only 3d app that can crash without using it. Seriously. 
On the weekend I had a short freelance job with Max. That piece of shit crashed 
about 5 times in an hour, ate up 3 gigabytes of memory with a realtime 
motorbike model and it's realtime shader. The final stab was when I was viewing 
the references in XnView, and suddenly Max crashed in the background.

Shame on Autodesk, they are shipping faulty products, charging you for getting 
bugfixes, misleading you, and cheat on you. F.ck them. Thanks God modo and 
zbrush are very far from that huge, disgusting entity

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Re: Are we being blind choosing Maya over MAX?

[Stefan Kubicek]

I still don't quite understand as to why companies and individuals, who were 
bitten by their dependencies on third-party software, are now seeking to 
replace that software, which they had no real control over, with yet another 
such software.
I'd have expected a landslide push for community-driven, open-source or tools, but all I 
hear is: Should I go Maya, Modo, or Houdini?. Bizarre !

There is no immediate need to do that! Instead, look ahead a few years. What do 
you see yourself using then? Would you like to be in the same situation as 
today, only a few years down the road?





I’m all for a one Maya to rule them all mentality, but it’s no where near 
ready, when it is, I’ll happily join in.



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Re: More XSI Monkey business by The Mill

[Stefan Kubicek]

Wow, I love it! - Softimage.tv ?


While we are talking about why we want to keep using XSI, here goes another
very good reason:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQo0Qtr5iU8


Morten





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Re: Open letter to Autodesk

[Stefan Kubicek]

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Our latest work - Detur Hamster

[Stefan Kubicek]

 text/html; charset=iso-8859-15: Unrecognized 

Re: Open letter to Autodesk

[Stefan Kubicek]

Sehsucht?


Agree, agree.
I missed a lot of mails, but did Tim Borgmaan joined the happy
conversation ? And Polynoid ?
And Guillaume ?


Le 10/03/2014 12:10, Stefan Kubicek a écrit :

You just made my day! I wonder why we haven't heard more from other
places like yours, like Passion Pictures for example (of BBC's London
Olympics 2012 fame). Having met Mario Ucci in fall 2013 I know how
unhappy they are with the current situation too. Mario, where are you?
What about Blur? It's hard to imagine a Tim Miller staying passive on
this.



great words. This is the type of letter AD should be getting. Would be
great to see more of this coming. From the right people - like you guys.

J


On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 10:43 AM, michael johansson
mich...@lowend.sewrote:


Just a small remark to get it right and avoid that discussion. Under So
the last two sentences: Autodesk have adjusted this so we can both
switch
to 3ds or maya and still continue to use softimage as long as we
want. So
that point is not valid anymore.

Let me know when you publish it. I will be happy to re-publish it in
all
my channels.

/michael johansson


2014-03-10 11:30 GMT+01:00 patrick nethercoat
patr...@brandtanim.co.uk:

Great letter, Alastair, sounds very nicely pitched to me.



On 10 March 2014 10:26, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr
wrote:


 At last ! the voice of the big guys !
Thank you ! thank you !

Le 10/03/2014 11:20, Alastair Hearsum a écrit :

Folks
Dan Y and other folks, I hope this comes across as firm but
reasonable.
I will post it on other appropriate sites. Any ideas on that front?










* An open letter to Autodesk. Dear Autodesk My name is Alastair
Hearsum.
I'm a founding partner, director and head of 3d at Glassworks. If you
haven't heard of us, we are a small to midsized company which has
been
creating VFX and animation for TV commercials for markets around
the world,
for the past 20 years. We have branches in London, Amsterdam and
Barcelona.
We create innovative and multi award winning work and we use
Softimage.
Your announcement that you are retiring Softimage has left us
saddened,
disappointed and not a little angry. The anger for two reasons;
that you
have shot the racehorse of the 3d software world in the head in
its prime
but also that you didn't consult with us about this assassination or
discuss any of your plans for the future with us. We have no idea
what the
future from you holds. We are big and longstanding users of other
Autodesk
products as well as Softimage. The puzzling thing is, technologically
speaking, there was no writing on the wall as there was with Henry
and
Flame, for example, or these days with Flame and Nuke. We have been
punching above our weight, in London, for the past 20 years
competing well
with the much larger organisations of MPC, Framestore and The
Mill. One of
the reasons we have been able to do that, apart from the deep
talent of our
crew is, I believe, because of the software that we chose. I'm
nearly 150
years old  now but I still sit at the computer making pictures for TV
commercials to the same arduous schedule that I always have. So I
know what
I'm talking about. For a period a few years back we had a 50/50
split of
Maya and Softimage. We chose to go 100% Softimage. Its better for
the work
that we do and the sector we are in. Its no coincidence that all the
finalists in the recent British Animation Awards (tv commercials)
did their
work in Softimage. Similarly, both silver and gold award winners
in the 3d
animation category at this year's British Television Advertising
Craft
awards were Softimage companies. You may well go on to list major
work
that's been done in Maya. Sure there has, and great work too. But
Maya is
used as a shell in the major film effect companies. It is heavily
customised and unrecognisable as the product you ship. We have our
proprietary software and tailored workflow as well, but Softimage
remains
pretty much untouched. It is lean, efficient, and the ICE
environment is
innovative and empowering. So you've done it. What's next? Like I
said we
have had vague information about what the future holds. We hear
rumours
about bi-frost and that's about it. From what I understand from
various
sources there are no plans to replicate the efficient workflow and
full ice
functionality that made us so productive. You have offered free
transitionary licenses of Maya with the threat of having to
discontinue
using Softimage in 2 years time. The final thought is not just
about what
software is best for our future but also about what sort of
software supply
company we want to get into bed with. The attributes that come top
of my
list: listening to customers, acting on their recommendations, speedy
development, innovation. Now does that sound like you? Alastair
Hearsum
Glassworks.*



--
 Alastair Hearsum
 Head of 3d
[image: GLASSWORKS]
 33/34 Great Pulteney Street
London
W1F 9NP
+44 (0)20 7434 1182
glassworks.co.uk http://www.glassworks.co.uk/
 Glassworks Terms

Re: Listening

[Stefan Kubicek]

That's the problem with big corporations (and governments): Not a single person is ever responsible for anything.Come on ... is not like he has the final say on things. Attacking him personally won't solve a thing.Let's all act like grown ups.I curse AD as a company ... but as a company it has employees and most of the time they don't have a fault on how things worked out.

Anyway ... just chill out on the personal attacks.On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 6:43 PM, Mihai Iliuta mihai...@gmail.com wrote:

You are listening??Ok, listen to your own bullshit:"The first is to flatly call out that the rumor that the eol of Softimage and 3dsmax is upon us is totally false."


"Cory Mogk is now also responsible for Softimage and we have been working with the team on the future of the product with lots of key customers.""We understand people make their living from this software and that they make huge decisions about their projects and companies and we take that responsibility very seriously."


"Again the door is open to contact us or challenge us. Please let everyone you know their products are safe."So today, we can safely say you are a lying piece of shit. You have no dignity, you have no character, and you have no word. I can't imagine any developer feeling any pride anymore working for you or this fucked up company. What you have done here and HOW you've done it, is irreparable and you and your company is from now on going downhill. You expect anybody to ever trust you or your company again? Is that worth anything for a business? It's worth everything.


Nobody finds it in the least suspicious why SI was killed now? When the whole community around SI and the nr of independent developers working developing tools for it was at an all time high???


I don't know when you lost your balls and your word Mr. Vienneau, but "good luck" regaining both.Piece of shit.


On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 10:05 PM, Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.com wrote:


While Dan's heart is breaking (and so is mine), I still have (at least) one nagging question:Clearly this has been under discussion for a while at Autodesk, so why were the following comments



from September 5th of 2012 made:"The rumor that the EOL of Softimage and 3DS Max is upon us is totally false."So, if I understand this correctly, what I get out of it is that when Autodesk assures customers that their product is not on the chopping block,



that statement is really only good for about a year and a half (less if you take into account that this EOL must have been decided a while back).That doesn't imbue anyone with much confidence. I am not a 3DS Max user, but if I was, I think I'd be worried, and would take any Autodesk assurances that there was no reason to worry



with a very large grain of salt.Can someone please, finally, address this?Thank you

On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 3:47 PM, Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com wrote:




  

  
  
Thanks Chris! And thanks as well for the update to the licensing
terms. That's a big deal.
-Tim

On 3/7/2014 2:14 PM, Dan Pejril wrote:

Good
  to know you are listening.
  
  
  If you listen closely, you can heart my heart breaking
  
  
  On 3/7/2014 3:01 PM, Chris Vienneau wrote:
  
  Hi everyone,


I just want to let you know there are people from the maya dev
and pm teams coming online to this forum but we are shipping
software and answering a lot of calls but the mails you are
writing are being passed back and forth as they are coming at a
furious pace. Stay tuned for some answers and we plan on doing
some private webinars under NDA for soft users to ask questions
direct to us. Anyone interested in such a thing please write me
a private mail at
chris.vienn...@autodesk.commailto:chris.vienn...@autodesk.com
.


Thx.


Cv/

  
  


-- 
  
  
  

  

-- 




Perry Harovas
203-448-7206
Animation and Visual Effects

http://www.TheAfterImage.com

-24 years experience
-Co-Author of "Mastering Maya"
-Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)


-- gonebadfx.com- your source for bad fx

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Re: Just a thought - I hear the framestore use an ancient version of maya......

[Stefan Kubicek]

That's a good point, though then years is quite a lot of time and should even 
allow the largest company with lots of backlog to transition gracefully to 
whatever is hot and sexy then. Meanwhile, how about using a virtual machine of 
XP in a more modern version of windows along with your other apps?




Here's a thought experiment for you:
Imagine Soft had died years ago and XP was the only version it ran in and
Win7/8 gave errors. :( Now imagine the latest cool helpful software, say
the latest version of ZBrush, no longer ran in XP in the latest version
(because who uses that, right?) Now you're gonna have to keep one OS for
your Soft antiques and one for the modern stuff. That's not gonna be fun.

Granted this won't happen for several years, but better learn new platforms
now before you're dead in the water.



On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 10:24 AM, Arvid Björn arvidbj...@gmail.com wrote:


What's the risk of Soft 2015 ceasing to work with future versions of
operating systems and hardware?


On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 4:17 PM, Jonah Friedman jon...@gmail.com wrote:


Long term, that's roughly my thinking with using Fabric Engine for in
house development. It puts that very idea within reach of smaller places.


On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 10:06 AM, Andi Farhall hack...@outlook.comwrote:


just as a shell basically with their own customization and updating, so
could one of the larger houses using soft not do the same thing?


...
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http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andi-farhall/b/496/b21


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Re: Softimage Has Been Killed, the Future of CG Softwares Is Now in TD's Hands

[Stefan Kubicek]

Hi Christopher,cice blog post. I can't entirely agree on the allround softwareinevitably being shut down sooner or later because it's hard to maintain part though.I too feel like it's worth investing into proprietary software to minimize the risk of exposure to third party technology, but there are so many peoplethat do not write code, hence their own tools, either because they can't for time or monetary reasons, or simply because they don't know how to.These are mainly the single user shows and small shops. They deserve a cost-effective solution to their production problems too, and that is usually catered for by big, all-in-one CG applications like Max, Maya, Softimage, C4D. Yes, there are special-purpose applications like Marvelous Designer, RealFlow, SpeedTree,etc, but they cover rarely-encountered niche cases, compared to the vast amount of other stuff that is produced everywhere every day. Imagine you'd have to use one app for modeling, another for animation, another for simulation, one for hair  fur, etc..on a daily basis and concurrently. And each one had a different interface and required a different way of thinking.If you were working in a department and working with one of those, that would be a different thing, but constantly jumping between those apps, and having to transfer data between them, would soon drive you crazy. It's for this reason everybody I have ever met in this industry was searching for the one tool to rule them all. Even Lightwave, that consists of only two parts (modeler and layout), can drive you nuts.Modern software is modular, I think it's well possible to maintain and improve it, even change the paradigms it's built on, it just needs a bit of forward thinking and the will to do it. I remember stories about whole parts of Soft having been rewritten when the old one turned out to be insufficiently designed (the animation mixer in particular), I'm not sure in how far this is really true, or if it was only marketing blurb.What I can imagine is a Fabric-based host application which others can interface with to form a consistent application as demand arises,the hard part will be to draw the line between Fabric Engine, this base application (done by somebody else?), and the actual modules, yet done by others, and agreeing on a standard that those developers are willing to agree on and don't feel hindered by, as it's frequently the case with complex APIs that are lacking the one but crucial feature X for which you have to wait a full year until the next release to have it implemented after kindly asking the developers several times. I'm not saying it's not doable, just not entirely easy. I'm not saying small standalone apps are not desirable either, I just think they make more sense for special purposes rather than for standard stuff, unless the standard stuff they do is done in a true, outstandingly nice new way.Your 2 cents will worth a few bitcoins quickly Christopher. I'm in.On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 9:34 PM, Christopher Crouzet christopher.crou...@gmail.com wrote:

My 2 cents on this: http://christophercrouzet.com/blog/post/2014/03/07/Softimage-Has-Been-Killed%2C-the-Future-of-CG-Softwares-Is-Now-in-TD-s-Hands


I'm looking forward to the future, how about you?-- Christopher Crouzethttp://christophercrouzet.com





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Re: Luxology Modo 50% off for this mailing list - A new word from Brad Peebler

[Stefan Kubicek]

+1!



Yes of course, I'm also up for the webinar!


On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 6:04 PM, Chris Johnson chr...@topixfx.com wrote:


I'm in for the Webinar. and what is the contact information again to
e-mail him directly?


On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 11:50 AM, Tim Crowson 
tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com wrote:


 More contact from Brad off-list He says the following...

 *I've been thinking about how this all went down and I'm feeling a bit
sad about it. I have a new idea. People should not feel like they have to
rush to make a move. They don't! Soft is still awesome and will be for
years to come. Rather than offering another promo code what I would like to
do is offer an extended trial of MODO for anyone who wants it. They can
contact me directly and I'll get them setup with a 60 day license. My offer
still stands that anyone who talks to me directly will also find that I am
a man of my word (with regard to the code). Wink wink. I can't publicly
extend that offer but I will stand by it for anyone on that list.*

 *I would also be willing to set up an invitation only webinar for the
list so we can talk openly under a gentlemens NDA. I'd love to clear up
some of the confusion about MODO being built as a modeler only and share
some short, mid and long term goals for the product. Finally, I'm getting
quite a bit of email this week so if someone doesn't hear from me straight
away please feel free to send your email again. I won't be offended to get
spammed. :)*


If you guys are interested in taking him up in his webinar idea, please
voice it! I'm pretty sure he can read these messages on the Google group,
but if not I'm happy to convey your corporate response.

-Tim










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Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Stefan Kubicek]

 studios having the same problems at the same time is a HUGE  
opportunity if we leverage it properly.


I completely agree about the collaboration that will be necessary from  
users.  However, for studios' part, I know a lot of places are  
interested in Fabric already, even if they haven't actually bought  
licenses yet.  So if part of the incentive was some kind of agreement  
for the FE guys to help nurture a scene assembly tool to life quickly,  
it might help tip the scale for whatever cost/benefit analysis places  
are doing.  The devs working on Fabric are truly some of the best in the  
world (and from what I understand, a big part of the reason AD bought  
Softimage to begin with).  They are a big part of the equation for what  
will happen in the future, even if they don't end up wanting to build a  
scene assembler as a supported product in itself (or who knows --  
maybe they will?).


It would be great to get a little (or big?) list of studios that are  
interested in this sort of project (or other ones) and possibly have  
some kind of summit with the FE guys about what it would take to  
fast-track FE into certain critical areas of production, assuming a  
certain number of licenses were purchased.  No commitments at this point  
-- just a list of interested parties who might be curious enough to be  
part of the conversation, pending whatever other conversations need to  
be had with superiors.  I.e., it's understood that nobody is speaking  
for their companies at this point.  Just indicating that they think  
their company *might* be interested.


I'll start:

Psyop
Massmarket




On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 1:18 PM, Felix Geremus  
felixgere...@googlemail.com wrote:


You are probably right. But these times are a little bit different and  
maybe that's exactly the one chance inside all this mess. We're all  
sitting in the same boat at the same time. I know a lot of studios who  
entirely rely on Softimage for lighting. All of these will have to spend  
time and thus money to move on to another pipeline during the next two  
years anyway. So why not invest at least parts of this time into the  
same thing? Individuals are great, and the community should absolutely  
try. But it's so hard to put something like this together in your spare  
time. A few studios supporting and profiting from this effort would  
accelerate the whole process immensely. And about showing potential:  
wasn't Stage, and all the other fabric applications build for exactly  
this reason? To show the potential of such a project?





2014-03-04 21:55 GMT+01:00 Steven Caron car...@gmail.com:


it is a bit harder for visual effects vendors/studios, in an already  
difficult market, spending money on software development (not their core  
business) is a hard sell. seeing a product or product in development on  
the other hand drums up interest which leads to real investment and  
collaboration. they need to see if their ideas are aligned with others  
on the project. don't take my comment as discouragement, it is just how  
i see it... for now it will be on individuals to come together on a  
project which shows potential. i hope we, the remaining softimage  
community, can do that together. again, not discouragement to any studio  
which wants to partner to make something happen...


steven



On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Felix Geremus  
felixgere...@googlemail.com wrote:




So now that Softimage will be gone, isn't there room or even need for  
collaboration here? Before everybody tries to build something  
themselves, shouldn't people try to bundle forces? And I'm not only  
talking about individuals here. I'm talking about small to medium size  
companies who couldn't afford to build something like this alone.









--
---
   Stefan Kubicek
---
   keyvis digital imagery
  Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
   A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
 Phone:+43/699/12614231
  www.keyvis.at  ste...@keyvis.at
--  This email and its attachments are   --
--confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Stefan Kubicek]

 out. So I  
think I will stay with my second love until I go the Kim Aldis  
route.


Just my 2 cents. Sorry for the rambling speech.

I am still very thankful that I got in touch with  Softimage at Spans  
und Partner 8 years ago after messing around with 3dsmax and Maya.  
Thanks to the developers and the community for supporting such a great  
product over the last 28 years.


Cheers,
Stephan.

+1

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 5, 2014, at 5:11, Jeffrey Dates jda...@kungfukoi.com wrote:

This.
Everything Andy said.



On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 4:52 PM, Andy Jones andy.jo...@gmail.com wrote:

Many studios having the same problems at the same time is a HUGE  
opportunity if we leverage it properly.


I completely agree about the collaboration that will be necessary from  
users.  However, for studios' part, I know a lot of places are  
interested in Fabric already, even if they haven't actually bought  
licenses yet.  So if part of the incentive was some kind of agreement  
for the FE guys to help nurture a scene assembly tool to life quickly,  
it might help tip the scale for whatever cost/benefit analysis places  
are doing.  The devs working on Fabric are truly some of the best in  
the world (and from what I understand, a big part of the reason AD  
bought Softimage to begin with).  They are a big part of the equation  
for what will happen in the future, even if they don't end up wanting  
to build a scene assembler as a supported product in itself (or who  
knows -- maybe they will?).


It would be great to get a little (or big?) list of studios that are  
interested in this sort of project (or other ones) and possibly have  
some kind of summit with the FE guys about what it would take to  
fast-track FE into certain critical areas of production, assuming a  
certain number of licenses were purchased.  No commitments at this  
point -- just a list of interested parties who might be curious enough  
to be part of the conversation, pending whatever other conversations  
need to be had with superiors.  I.e., it's understood that nobody is  
speaking for their companies at this point.  Just indicating that they  
think their company *might* be interested.


I'll start:

Psyop
Massmarket




On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 1:18 PM, Felix Geremus  
felixgere...@googlemail.com wrote:


You are probably right. But these times are a little bit different and  
maybe that's exactly the one chance inside all this mess. We're all  
sitting in the same boat at the same time. I know a lot of studios who  
entirely rely on Softimage for lighting. All of these will have to  
spend time and thus money to move on to another pipeline during the  
next two years anyway. So why not invest at least parts of this time  
into the same thing? Individuals are great, and the community should  
absolutely try. But it's so hard to put something like this together in  
your spare time. A few studios supporting and profiting from this  
effort would accelerate the whole process immensely. And about showing  
potential: wasn't Stage, and all the other fabric applications build  
for exactly this reason? To show the potential of such a project?





2014-03-04 21:55 GMT+01:00 Steven Caron car...@gmail.com:


it is a bit harder for visual effects vendors/studios, in an already  
difficult market, spending money on software development (not their  
core business) is a hard sell. seeing a product or product in  
development on the other hand drums up interest which leads to real  
investment and collaboration. they need to see if their ideas are  
aligned with others on the project. don't take my comment as  
discouragement, it is just how i see it... for now it will be on  
individuals to come together on a project which shows potential. i hope  
we, the remaining softimage community, can do that together. again, not  
discouragement to any studio which wants to partner to make something  
happen...


steven



On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Felix Geremus  
felixgere...@googlemail.com wrote:




So now that Softimage will be gone, isn't there room or even need for  
collaboration here? Before everybody tries to build something  
themselves, shouldn't people try to bundle forces? And I'm not only  
talking about individuals here. I'm talking about small to medium size  
companies who couldn't afford to build something like this alone.












--
---
   Stefan Kubicek
---
   keyvis digital imagery
  Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
   A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
 Phone:+43/699/12614231
  www.keyvis.at  ste...@keyvis.at
--  This email and its attachments are   --
--confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Stefan Kubicek]

Hi Andy,Stefan, re-reading my post, I'm not sure I was totally clear about modeling. I'm not sure if this puts us back in agreement or not, but to clarify, what I meant was just that most pipelines have a reasonable degree of choice in which package they use for modeling. I don't spend much time modeling personally so I'm not qualified to comment on the capabilities of the different packages. From what I do know I fully agree that losing XSI is a hit in this area. For me, it's a hit in every area, just due to how I can make use of ICE pretty much across the board. Not to mention the rest of the tools and the operator stack. I think part of why I glossed over modeling is that I think users who want to will be able to stick with XSI for modelling a little longer in that area than in, say, lighting, where things have to be more consistent across the studio.I just re-read your first post as well and I misunderstood the point you were trying to make, and to which I agree: As far as modeling goes there is a broad range of options to go with (both commercial and non-commercial)I would also say, I think my comments don't really at all capture the needs of game studios. We're all more alike than we are different, and I consider us one user community, but as far as my personal experience, I'm definitely coming at this from a primarily commercials/features point of view. Not sure if your a games guy or not, but I'm just realizing that's a broad category of people who are likely not as antsy as me about getting a new scene assembly tool :)I used to be in games for several years. Most studios I've seen are running some sort of home-grown editor to assemble their game worlds, along the lines of the Cryteks Sandbox, Unity, etc..I doubt they would find a scene assembly tool geared towards shading/rendering useful out of the box, unless it was some emerging games company with awareness of what FE could bring to the game development table and the will to build on it with the goal to transform it into their game editing environment. As for FE used in games, I'm quite surprised seemingly nobody has picked that up yet.I wonder how complicated it would be to get it to run on current consoles and even mobile devices.Now I'm truly going on a tangent, but I would also imagine that a scene assembly tool that exports to Arnold would also serve as a good framework for collecting, prepping, optimizing, and exporting game assets :) You're basically exporting things to a "renderer" after all.Like above, to a certain extent. It might be cool for texture baking/lighting, but the general tendency is to go real-time with as much of the lighting pipeline as possible - It's just so much more flexible and cheaper in the end, and I'm sure we'll see more of that happening in the near future (on faster hardware).Here's a nice example of what's already possible: http://molecularmusings.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/real-time-radiosity/#more-298@Andy J.:Thanks for summing it up so nicely and comprehensively. I need to disagree on the modeling part though. Even in XSI I miss a lot, especially in terms of symmetrical modeling and sculpting. There is huge potential for improvement in any existing application out there.


-- ---       Stefan Kubicek---   keyvis digital imagery  Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3   A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien Phone:+43/699/12614231  www.keyvis.at  ste...@keyvis.at--  This email and its attachments are   confidential and for the recipient only--