Merry Christmas everyone
Re: Luxology Modo 50% off for this mailing list - A new word from Brad Peebler
I'll take a slice of that webinar. Might bring a few people online with me. :)
Re: new upgrade policy
Jordi, I agree completely. Softimage can easily be used for 3-5 years as a production tool in it's current release. Over the last few years we have seen more development from FabricEngine, SolidAngle, Exocortex, Mootz, and many others compared to the development from Autodesk. I'm certain if the plugin developers continue to support Softimage we will have a very viable and competitive tool for many years. Where would you rather have your software budget go? I've been looking for alternatives since the last Siggraph and I don't see anything on the market that comes close to the speed and production efficiency I currently have in XSI+Arnold+Crate. It's an extremely comprehensive tool kit off the shelf. I'm not too worried... Votch Levi On Sat, Mar 1, 2014 at 2:49 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: The point is that IF Softimage was abandoned, still has legs to last another 3-5 years in production while we users retrain to something other than Maya. The irony is (provided they kill it) I won't be putting my money into Autodesk if I can avoid it. My only fear is The Foundry being sold to Autodesk but I am confident anti monopoly laws would stop such a deal. Jb Sent from my iPhone On 1 Mar 2014, at 07:00, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za wrote: Probably AD are smiling that we are doing as expected. Either way however its has been managed incredibly poorly. Its particularly telling that there has not been any word from AD to wait and see. The only activity on the subject from AD has been a Maya person (Brent ) very kindly offering to help folks migrate to Maya. Not particularly reassuring. Yes this happens every year, however if you look at the Max community when folks started out bemoaning their lack of development and there was a build up of momentum, the AD management sent a very clear signal for them not to worry. Where as on the Softimage side we have had sweet blow all. For people paying the same money the imbalance is very large. That is why people are very upset. *From:* Graham D Clark [mailgrahamdcl...@gmail.com] *Sent:* 01 March 2014 08:28 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Cc:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: new upgrade policy Self fulfilling prophecy. Graham D Clark, Head of Stereography, Deluxe 3D dba Stereo D phone: why-I-stereo http://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamclark On Feb 27, 2014, at 9:11 AM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: Kris, Dead for certain? Not yet, it is still rumor and hope to stay that way 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 may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the 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.
Re: Solutions for running softimage on a MAC Station?
I have also had great success running softimage in vmware fusion. It's not as fast as running in native bare-metal but it does work. Votch Levi On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 5:29 PM, Simon Pickard m...@simonpickard.comwrote: I use VMWare Fusion for this. Works perfectly. Can't tell the difference between the VM or bootcamp. Funny that pretty much the fastest box I've run Softimage on is a Macbook Pro via a VM. Seems more stable than Linux as well. (runs for cover) On 22 January 2014 08:14, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.zawrote: Hi Jordi Will definitely need to test this myself. Which version are you using? 8 or 9 ? We have an intro to 3D course (modelling , texturing, simple animation with a pre defined rig) which I was going to boot camp for. This may be an easier solution. -- *From:* Jordi Bares [jordiba...@gmail.com] *Sent:* 21 January 2014 10:20 PM *To:* David Rivera; softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Solutions for running softimage on a MAC Station? It worked for me perfectly using Parallels, speed wise is perfect but there is one thing to take in account, you need more memory as you are holding both operating systems plus the software, render data, etc… And two, you are sharing the memory card of your graphics card (you can fine-tune this) but I felt this was the key limiting factor for me, big big scenes overflow the 2Gb Graphcs card I have… :-P Other than that it is actually extremely fun to virtualise Softimage, you can share data between systems, your devices (usb keys for example) are going to be piped wherever you want… etc… truly amazing. And also you can make your mac video capture record your Softimage session and still the machine works perfectly so there is a lot of power under the bonet. So, my conclusion is that if you are going to do power user work it is better to bootcamp as a solution, if you are doing production work but does not require massive amount of graphics card memory you are better of with Parallels. hope that helps. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 21 Jan 2014, at 18:40, David Rivera activemotionpictu...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi list, I talked to an IT guy the other day. He says that the MAC/WIN problem with softimage could be solved by virtualizing the MAC so Softimage can run in it. So I suggested that virtualization probably won´t take full advantage of the graphics card (as it is only an emulator of a safe display for windows in any case). So we agreed on making heavy-test-renders to see that point happen. In any case, are there any other solutions to installing Softimage into Mac stations? I´ve been googling and found no good - liable results. If anyone on the list with experience on network rendering / installing shares his/her experience on a softimage environment on MAC, would be greatly appreaciated. Thanks. Cheers. David. 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 may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the 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.
Re: Whiskeytree Athens tech demo
We did build some tools for auto aligning objects (non particles) to surfaces though it's not in that demo :) On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 11:43 AM, Simon van de Lagemaat si...@theembassyvfx.com wrote: Ya I realize that demo was sped up... I guess I let my mind run away a little :-) I was thinking you had done some sort of mesh drop using a constrained null or something. Then I started thinking you could switch between normal constraints or just axis constraints i.e. align to ground or just Y up and slide the mesh around. You can show us that demo when you've implemented those features ;-) On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 11:24 AM, Steven Caron car...@gmail.com wrote: i think the speed of the demo and clever use of interactive snapping might be fooling you ;) but you give me an idea for a custom tool plugin like piotrek's mesh paint plugin but for our pipeline. On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 11:15 AM, Simon van de Lagemaat si...@theembassyvfx.com wrote: I love how when you drop a ref model down on the ground it's just a select and click to drop, sweet.
Latest work from Whiskytree -- Elysium
Now that Elysium is out I can mention the project publicly! Here is an article on some of the work we did for Elysium. http://library.creativecow.net/kaufman_debra/VFX_Elysium-Whiskytree/1 When I was a kid I wanted to work in VFX so that I could build space ships and work on SCI-FI films. Elysium is my first SCI-FI project and personally it was totally worth the wait. Votch Levi Whiskytree
Re: Small Annoying Things
This same behavior with modal windows happens in win7 as well and can be very frustrating. On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 8:05 AM, Alan Fregtman alan.fregt...@gmail.comwrote: In Linux modal XSI windows aren't quite modal... You can accidentally click behind them and lose focus, wondering why XSI is unresponsive, only to realise in the taskbar there's a window you have to OK to. And like Xavier said, Copy/paste in Linux ARGHH! Rarely works and when it does it's like two seconds after I trigger a paste. Behavior varies between softwares, too. gedit pastes very quickly but pretty much every other program (like Firefox or SublimeText2) doesn't paste instantly or reliably when having copied from SI. On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 10:59 AM, Len Krenzler l...@creativecontrol.cawrote: A very simple thing I find annoying. In the file menu, there's a import model, and export model but no replace model. Also when UI windows like the material editor and explorer are opened and set where I want them I wish SI would remember their preferred location for next time. -- __**___ Len Krenzler - Creative Control Media Productions Phone: 780.463.3126 www.creativecontrol.ca - l...@creativecontrol.ca
viewport navigation performance
It seems like every model I work on lately has ~10Million Triangles. I've always thought XSI handled large poly counts well and have'nt put much thought to it. That all changed yesterday after exporting one of our large models over to Maya. The Maya viewport interaction is buttery smooth with a very tactile response to viewport navigation. It feels connected like a Lotus Elise on the bends in Big Sur. I can't believe it. For years XSI had the upper hand with polycounts but it seems the tables have turned. I had not realized just how slow it was. It's so bad ( and Maya is so good) I suspect something must be wrong with my machine or it's not tuned for XSI but alas I can't find a problem. I've tried a few drivers and fiddled with the settings but nothing seems to help. Anybody have any tips to improve XSI viewport performance? Or are we just behind the performance curve. Votch Levi
