Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
Ya know, since ICE is already IN and working great IN Softimage, AD could save itself a lot of money, time, and pain by just migrating the primitive Mayans to a complete system that already works great... like Softimage. :) Daniel VFXM
RE: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
I don’t think it ‘actually’ confirms anything that ICE is going into Maya, more what Luc-Eric/Chinny and myself have said before - it took x-amount to get ICE ready for XSI 7 and then x-amount to get it where it is now. So, getting all that literally into Maya, wouldn’t be a short project. Just about every Maya person I speak too mentions the words “ICE into Maya”, but this doesn’t mean they literally want ICE in Maya, they want a ICE/Houdini style workflow and level of interaction. Maya’s nucleus framework and nParticles/Cloth/Hair isn’t that bad, it’s just people (including myself) just fine it clumsy to work with and they want something more Node based. Plus there’s still lots to do in continuing to improve Maya’s Node Editor so it gets anywhere near Softs Rendertree/ICEtree. G From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Rob Chapman Sent: 06 September 2012 11:28 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare hey thanks for this Eric, how does one get an invite to this secret 3Dpro list ? So its just a confirmation then of what Luceric has already hinted as to why the ex devs from Softimage are working on MayaFX - to port something like a new ICE \ Naiad over to Maya. A bit more open about it than in the past which is better than usual. what I still don't get from this post or from any actions like this from Autodesk, where does this leave Softimage once this work is complete?. If our dear old 'marge is worthy of pillaging yet is still only sold as a companion to Maya because of ICE, once Maya has its own ICE what is the point of Softimage in the M E scheme? Facerobot...?? we (Softimage users) are already 2nd class citizens on the AD ship, one this is finished how will we not be demoted to third class alongside Toxic and Matchmover :( would it be possible for mr Vienneau to answer this? or he only speaks to market share above a certain percentage? cheers Rob On 6 September 2012 04:04, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.commailto:ethivie...@gmail.com wrote: This was posted on the 3dPro list from Chris Vienneau of AD: Hi everyone, Amino has been showing up in a technology preview we have called Skyline which is a games animation authoring system. You can find plenty of videos online. We are still working on the technology preview with a small number of customers. Nothing ready for prime time yet. Games animation is hard for the record. ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare as ICE was years of work and hooking into Softimage was a big chunk of that work. What I can say is that anyone interested in FX in Maya and what is happening with Naiad (anyone? :) ) should contact me or Kamal Mistry and we can discuss. At least on the surface they admit it isn't as easy to just port ICE to Maya and years of work as well. Anything regarding MayaFX in my eyes is just a continuation / extension of dev on their FX tools. Eric Thivierge http://www.ethivierge.com attachment: winmail.dat
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
You don't talk about oh right... hmm. You get invited by someone on the list willing to vouch for you. Well its going to be something ICE-like it seems. Honestly though think about it. Any new technology that is being developed these days is going to be procedural or node based. Look at Coral and Nanode and probably Fabric. Even Max has some node editors now. Its just the way things are going. If they DIDN'T put a node editor into Maya that would be surprising. Also the best flatery is imitation. Just proves that it works and work well. Softimage is inspiring Maya! The Softimage is a red headed step child of Maya and Max is a long drawn out beaten to death topic that we're going to have to agree to disagree on. Try taking an outside look without any loyalty to any of the 3 apps and with no history of the 3d apps. You would see that Maya has a crap ton more seats in VFX studios. To get more of those studios who are already established and having pipelines based around Maya to use more of your apps, you bundle them and improve interop. That gets you more sales and makes studio to studio asset sharing easier. Thus you market a Maya suite to the majority since they are using it. Same with Max. Lets not kid ourselves, we all know we're in the minority, we're probably never going to be the majority. Good for us, we get to use cool stuff and have a more flexible app out of the box. Lastly on this thought, keep in mind they have to build their node editor on their already aging core. As the statement I posted above states, its years of hard work and lots of things had to change (and break) because of it. Softimage users are specialists in awesome and at the core, we're all still 3D artists. I've been finding myself more and more lately realizing that while I love this one software, it'd be silly not to embrace the overall area of expertise (for me rigging and tool dev). I wouldn't ever want to be someone who only knew how to do 3D in 1 application. If that 1 application tanks I'll be hard pressed to continue in the field easily and I don't ever want to have to relearn the lion's share of my chosen profession. Plus it makes me more valuable (at least I think so). Softimage isn't going anywhere. It's been stated numerous times by numerous people, Softimage is huge in Asia and provides a crap ton of income for AD and that market isn't going to just up and switch to Maya just as the majority of VFX houses aren't going to do the reverse. AD is a business that needs money to survive. Regardless of whether you have overlap and redundant features in apps, you don't get rid of something that is making you money. He did state that he's open to questions and I'll email and ask if he would mind if I posted his email here. * My personal opinion and outlook. 2014 is going to be an interesting release with the new devs in the drivers seat. Hoping for great things. Eric Thivierge http://www.ethivierge.com
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
OK, thanks all. so what confirmations, if any, do we actually have or 'allowed' to talk about? 1. its not going to be ICE but will have same workflow / functionality - I really dont appreciate the difference? so each node will be called a mayacompound and not xsicompound ? will there be any interop with Softimage / Maya planned in this regards? 2. Its going to take a few years 3. Its not a separate App, but part of the main Maya I am good to assume these as actual facts then? :) And certainly dont want or need yet another tirade / rant / sky is falling thread, am trying to tread carefully, be less emotional and just ask rational questions based upon facts, which would be much more rewarding for those that feel are being kept in the dark. but as a Softimage customer using ICE everyday since the last 6 years , (in the ultimate niche of niches - Softimage FX) I feel I have a right to know what the is going on that will affect my favourite apps future? is the only option available is to wait until 2014? cheers Rob On 6 September 2012 12:01, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com wrote: there is no such thing as MayaFX. A couple people wrote on linkedin being in the Maya FX team. That's like saying you work in the Maya UI or Maya Rendering team. It's not a product, it's the name of the team in the org chart. We have since learned to be more careful about those things, since it is meaningless. For example, the guys working on the Node Editor are the UI team although that might end up being useful in FX or Rendering. Who is reports to is meaningless. On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 6:28 AM, Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com wrote: So its just a confirmation then of what Luceric has already hinted as to why the ex devs from Softimage are working on MayaFX - to port something like a new ICE \ Naiad over to Maya. A bit more open about it than in the past which is better than usual.
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
last nail to softimage coffin? anyway I agree, maya is the worst nightmare :p From: Eric Thivierge Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2012 5:04 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare This was posted on the 3dPro list from Chris Vienneau of AD: Hi everyone, Amino has been showing up in a technology preview we have called Skyline which is a games animation authoring system. You can find plenty of videos online. We are still working on the technology preview with a small number of customers. Nothing ready for prime time yet. Games animation is hard for the record. ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare as ICE was years of work and hooking into Softimage was a big chunk of that work. What I can say is that anyone interested in FX in Maya and what is happening with Naiad (anyone? :) ) should contact me or Kamal Mistry and we can discuss. At least on the surface they admit it isn't as easy to just port ICE to Maya and years of work as well. Anything regarding MayaFX in my eyes is just a continuation / extension of dev on their FX tools. Eric Thivierge http://www.ethivierge.com
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
1. Compare ICE to Houdini's node editor workflow. Similar but not the same. The Node editor is the UI. My guess is that Maya will have a prettier UI to work with what it already has. 2. Who knows... 3. Yes seems that they are beefing up the interaction model in Maya for working with its FX tools that are already there. Less similar to ICE since ICE redefined pretty much the entirety of particles in Softimage. Nothing that I've said is official fact but educated assumptions based on the facts and comments repeatedly given in the threads. In the end if you got your solid answers of what exactly they were doing with Maya, what does it matter? They'll do it if they want especially if their Maya users want it. You're not going to stop it. Are you going to stop using Softimage because of it? Even if its still alive and kicking? Think of it in a wider perspective. How does it affect you if you're happily using Softimage with all the awesome ICE stuff and flexible workflow, while the Maya dudes just get some lipstick slapped on their pig? Keep in mind they stated they weren't stopping dev on Softimage (fact). Eric Thivierge http://www.ethivierge.com On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 10:26 PM, Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com wrote: OK, thanks all. so what confirmations, if any, do we actually have or 'allowed' to talk about? 1. its not going to be ICE but will have same workflow / functionality - I really dont appreciate the difference? so each node will be called a mayacompound and not xsicompound ? will there be any interop with Softimage / Maya planned in this regards? 2. Its going to take a few years 3. Its not a separate App, but part of the main Maya I am good to assume these as actual facts then? :) And certainly dont want or need yet another tirade / rant / sky is falling thread, am trying to tread carefully, be less emotional and just ask rational questions based upon facts, which would be much more rewarding for those that feel are being kept in the dark. but as a Softimage customer using ICE everyday since the last 6 years , (in the ultimate niche of niches - Softimage FX) I feel I have a right to know what the is going on that will affect my favourite apps future? is the only option available is to wait until 2014? cheers Rob On 6 September 2012 12:01, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com wrote: there is no such thing as MayaFX. A couple people wrote on linkedin being in the Maya FX team. That's like saying you work in the Maya UI or Maya Rendering team. It's not a product, it's the name of the team in the org chart. We have since learned to be more careful about those things, since it is meaningless. For example, the guys working on the Node Editor are the UI team although that might end up being useful in FX or Rendering. Who is reports to is meaningless. On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 6:28 AM, Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com wrote: So its just a confirmation then of what Luceric has already hinted as to why the ex devs from Softimage are working on MayaFX - to port something like a new ICE \ Naiad over to Maya. A bit more open about it than in the past which is better than usual.
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
There is not as much enthusiasm in having ICE in Maya internally as you'd think, and I think that mail from Chris means to infer that to the community to cause some reactions, and to look beyond ICE. One reason is that unlike XSI 6.0, Maya has always been node-based, so it would not be as much as game changer in Maya as it is in XSI which had nothing. The confusing hypergraph UI and some legacy stuff (like older nodes having too many inputs) obscures the use of Maya existing node system, but the Maya team is working on that already with the new Node Editor, no need to introduce a duplicate system. Another reason is much more interesting, though I suspect the message boards will incinerate me for suggesting it. Basically, there is a train of thought that ICE is great, but it's just the Now, not the Next; it's not scalable to the extremely large scale procedural work that the Maya film clients are _already_ doing in custom apps and a series of odd tools. This is work that they wouldn't be able to undertake in ICE today, because it doesn't scale well to extremely large data sets. Since any kind of development takes several years, Autodesk wants to focus on finding the Next, rather than just trying to catch up to the Now. The creators of Naiad, who worked on PhysBAM and Zero at ILM and have multiple film credits are cooking up that vision. Since Maya is targeted at the large studios and not the one-man boutique, Autodesk doesn't want to work on any tech that works just fine for general data sets, but falls flat on its face on extremely large one. Large data set scalability is a requirement for anything new we add to Maya. That might mean something comes up that's comparatively less elegant to use than ICE in XSI, but more scalable. Maya is more like a construction truck than a family car, it needs to move large stuff around, and that stuff keeps getting larger. On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 8:26 AM, Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com wrote: OK, thanks all. so what confirmations, if any, do we actually have or 'allowed' to talk about? 1. its not going to be ICE but will have same workflow / functionality - I really dont appreciate the difference? so each node will be called a mayacompound and not xsicompound ? will there be any interop with Softimage / Maya planned in this regards? 2. Its going to take a few years 3. Its not a separate App, but part of the main Maya I am good to assume these as actual facts then? :) And certainly dont want or need yet another tirade / rant / sky is falling thread, am trying to tread carefully, be less emotional and just ask rational questions based upon facts, which would be much more rewarding for those that feel are being kept in the dark. but as a Softimage customer using ICE everyday since the last 6 years , (in the ultimate niche of niches - Softimage FX) I feel I have a right to know what the is going on that will affect my favourite apps future? is the only option available is to wait until 2014? cheers Rob
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
Scalability is a good buzzword, but what does it actually mean? Does it mean you can process more data in the same amount of time compared to another app? And what kind of data? Procedural geometry? Rendered Images? Does it mean you can load more assets into the same amount of available RAM on a machine compared to another app? How would the automation of such processes need to look like to scale well? Scripted? C++? Node-based like ICE? Multithreading across the board? Or is it a question of architecture rather than which programming language was used to implement it (scripted vs C++)? What does Maya offer in this regard, or where does it differ, to scale well/better than Soft or app X in your opinion? In my experience Softimage offers pretty much the same mechanisms to automate processes and handle scene complexity as Maya does, + ICE on top, and I found it can load a good chunk more data simultaneously than Maya can fit into the same amount of memory, especially when it comes to working with textures and realtime shaders. That was up until two versions ago, maybe that has changed? If all that doesn't mean it scales well, what exactly does it mean then? Note: I'm not a Softimage fanboy or Maya hater (ok, just a little, but not enough to not use it if it offers something that helps me to do my work), I just try to understand what scalability means by your (or anyones) standards compared to how I understand it. There is not as much enthusiasm in having ICE in Maya internally as you'd think, and I think that mail from Chris means to infer that to the community to cause some reactions, and to look beyond ICE. One reason is that unlike XSI 6.0, Maya has always been node-based, so it would not be as much as game changer in Maya as it is in XSI which had nothing. The confusing hypergraph UI and some legacy stuff (like older nodes having too many inputs) obscures the use of Maya existing node system, but the Maya team is working on that already with the new Node Editor, no need to introduce a duplicate system. Another reason is much more interesting, though I suspect the message boards will incinerate me for suggesting it. Basically, there is a train of thought that ICE is great, but it's just the Now, not the Next; it's not scalable to the extremely large scale procedural work that the Maya film clients are _already_ doing in custom apps and a series of odd tools. This is work that they wouldn't be able to undertake in ICE today, because it doesn't scale well to extremely large data sets. Since any kind of development takes several years, Autodesk wants to focus on finding the Next, rather than just trying to catch up to the Now. The creators of Naiad, who worked on PhysBAM and Zero at ILM and have multiple film credits are cooking up that vision. Since Maya is targeted at the large studios and not the one-man boutique, Autodesk doesn't want to work on any tech that works just fine for general data sets, but falls flat on its face on extremely large one. Large data set scalability is a requirement for anything new we add to Maya. That might mean something comes up that's comparatively less elegant to use than ICE in XSI, but more scalable. Maya is more like a construction truck than a family car, it needs to move large stuff around, and that stuff keeps getting larger. On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 8:26 AM, Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com wrote: OK, thanks all. so what confirmations, if any, do we actually have or 'allowed' to talk about? 1. its not going to be ICE but will have same workflow / functionality - I really dont appreciate the difference? so each node will be called a mayacompound and not xsicompound ? will there be any interop with Softimage / Maya planned in this regards? 2. Its going to take a few years 3. Its not a separate App, but part of the main Maya I am good to assume these as actual facts then? :) And certainly dont want or need yet another tirade / rant / sky is falling thread, am trying to tread carefully, be less emotional and just ask rational questions based upon facts, which would be much more rewarding for those that feel are being kept in the dark. but as a Softimage customer using ICE everyday since the last 6 years , (in the ultimate niche of niches - Softimage FX) I feel I have a right to know what the is going on that will affect my favourite apps future? is the only option available is to wait until 2014? cheers Rob -- --- Stefan Kubicek Co-founder --- keyvis digital imagery Wehrgasse 9 - Grüner Hof 1050 Vienna Austria 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 an engineer's worst nightmare
thanks Eric, ok let me rephrase as I'm already painfully aware that as a Softimage customer I currently have zero influence with Autodesk in the future development of my app of choice - because the other apps have higher priority. I understand your points and I really don't care what the other AD apps get or have , I'm not using them on a daily basis. what Im eager to know is, and this btw does fundamentally affect my decision for further use and which direction to head next - is if it is still going to be developed (more in the style it was prior to the purchase rather than of lately) after its only unique selling point (in the eyes of AD marketing) is assimilated into Maya. Its already been said elsewhere and demonstrated as fact that AD wont develop in areas that crossover to the other apps areas of interest. - in fear of reprisal from the other larger user bases and economic reasons, If it continues the way it has then really there is no point to using a product that is being held in 'maintenance' mode is there? Its a slow death that the likes of Mr Rabiller predicted years ago and I would rather make the course change sooner rather than later. Maya is to be the new platform of choice, has this new FX dev with lots of investment in viewports etc, Max, it seems, they are admitting are limiting to Design / Archviz only so no new *SIGNIFICANT *games / animation or effects dev in the future for them but they do have an ongoing XBR dev project. Where is Softimage in all of this scheming? is there a roadmap for the next 5 years that the users would appreciate and are we to expect any new features in the future of Softimage? On 6 September 2012 14:45, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.com wrote: 1. Compare ICE to Houdini's node editor workflow. Similar but not the same. The Node editor is the UI. My guess is that Maya will have a prettier UI to work with what it already has. 2. Who knows... 3. Yes seems that they are beefing up the interaction model in Maya for working with its FX tools that are already there. Less similar to ICE since ICE redefined pretty much the entirety of particles in Softimage. Nothing that I've said is official fact but educated assumptions based on the facts and comments repeatedly given in the threads. In the end if you got your solid answers of what exactly they were doing with Maya, what does it matter? They'll do it if they want especially if their Maya users want it. You're not going to stop it. Are you going to stop using Softimage because of it? Even if its still alive and kicking? Think of it in a wider perspective. How does it affect you if you're happily using Softimage with all the awesome ICE stuff and flexible workflow, while the Maya dudes just get some lipstick slapped on their pig? Keep in mind they stated they weren't stopping dev on Softimage (fact). Eric Thivierge http://www.ethivierge.com On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 10:26 PM, Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com wrote: OK, thanks all. so what confirmations, if any, do we actually have or 'allowed' to talk about? 1. its not going to be ICE but will have same workflow / functionality - I really dont appreciate the difference? so each node will be called a mayacompound and not xsicompound ? will there be any interop with Softimage / Maya planned in this regards? 2. Its going to take a few years 3. Its not a separate App, but part of the main Maya I am good to assume these as actual facts then? :) And certainly dont want or need yet another tirade / rant / sky is falling thread, am trying to tread carefully, be less emotional and just ask rational questions based upon facts, which would be much more rewarding for those that feel are being kept in the dark. but as a Softimage customer using ICE everyday since the last 6 years , (in the ultimate niche of niches - Softimage FX) I feel I have a right to know what the is going on that will affect my favourite apps future? is the only option available is to wait until 2014? cheers Rob On 6 September 2012 12:01, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com wrote: there is no such thing as MayaFX. A couple people wrote on linkedin being in the Maya FX team. That's like saying you work in the Maya UI or Maya Rendering team. It's not a product, it's the name of the team in the org chart. We have since learned to be more careful about those things, since it is meaningless. For example, the guys working on the Node Editor are the UI team although that might end up being useful in FX or Rendering. Who is reports to is meaningless. On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 6:28 AM, Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com wrote: So its just a confirmation then of what Luceric has already hinted as to why the ex devs from Softimage are working on MayaFX - to port something like a new ICE \ Naiad over to Maya. A bit more open about it than in the past which is better than
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
Re: ...rather than just trying to catch up to the Now - Agreed that Maya has not caught up to the Now that is Softimage and ICE. Hurry Maya, the train of innovation is leaving the station. If you run, you might catch up. Re: ...Autodesk wants to focus on finding the Next, rather than just trying to catch up to the Now - Well, I guess we will see if AD is going to remain dedicated to spending the time and the money to leapfrog Maya into those high bars. Dang it Maya, you idiot... you need buy a ticket before you can get on the train of innovation. When AD lets go of a loyal and dedicated worker like Stephen Blair, no rooster is safe, and a coyote can enter the hen house and change the fates of all instantly. Daniel VFXM
RE: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
Wondering myself - as we have used ICE extensively to huge set dressing and creation of bushes etc.. for Khumba - worked like a charm - and using that 'other' renderer proved to be the cherry on the top - we certainly did not hit any walls. S. _ Sandy Sutherland Technical Supervisor sandy.sutherl...@triggerfish.co.za _ From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Stefan Kubicek [s...@tidbit-images.com] Sent: 06 September 2012 17:22 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare Scalability is a good buzzword, but what does it actually mean? Does it mean you can process more data in the same amount of time compared to another app? And what kind of data? Procedural geometry? Rendered Images? Does it mean you can load more assets into the same amount of available RAM on a machine compared to another app? How would the automation of such processes need to look like to scale well? Scripted? C++? Node-based like ICE? Multithreading across the board? Or is it a question of architecture rather than which programming language was used to implement it (scripted vs C++)? What does Maya offer in this regard, or where does it differ, to scale well/better than Soft or app X in your opinion? In my experience Softimage offers pretty much the same mechanisms to automate processes and handle scene complexity as Maya does, + ICE on top, and I found it can load a good chunk more data simultaneously than Maya can fit into the same amount of memory, especially when it comes to working with textures and realtime shaders. That was up until two versions ago, maybe that has changed? If all that doesn't mean it scales well, what exactly does it mean then? Note: I'm not a Softimage fanboy or Maya hater (ok, just a little, but not enough to not use it if it offers something that helps me to do my work), I just try to understand what scalability means by your (or anyones) standards compared to how I understand it. There is not as much enthusiasm in having ICE in Maya internally as you'd think, and I think that mail from Chris means to infer that to the community to cause some reactions, and to look beyond ICE. One reason is that unlike XSI 6.0, Maya has always been node-based, so it would not be as much as game changer in Maya as it is in XSI which had nothing. The confusing hypergraph UI and some legacy stuff (like older nodes having too many inputs) obscures the use of Maya existing node system, but the Maya team is working on that already with the new Node Editor, no need to introduce a duplicate system. Another reason is much more interesting, though I suspect the message boards will incinerate me for suggesting it. Basically, there is a train of thought that ICE is great, but it's just the Now, not the Next; it's not scalable to the extremely large scale procedural work that the Maya film clients are _already_ doing in custom apps and a series of odd tools. This is work that they wouldn't be able to undertake in ICE today, because it doesn't scale well to extremely large data sets. Since any kind of development takes several years, Autodesk wants to focus on finding the Next, rather than just trying to catch up to the Now. The creators of Naiad, who worked on PhysBAM and Zero at ILM and have multiple film credits are cooking up that vision. Since Maya is targeted at the large studios and not the one-man boutique, Autodesk doesn't want to work on any tech that works just fine for general data sets, but falls flat on its face on extremely large one. Large data set scalability is a requirement for anything new we add to Maya. That might mean something comes up that's comparatively less elegant to use than ICE in XSI, but more scalable. Maya is more like a construction truck than a family car, it needs to move large stuff around, and that stuff keeps getting larger. On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 8:26 AM, Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com wrote: OK, thanks all. so what confirmations, if any, do we actually have or 'allowed' to talk about? 1. its not going to be ICE but will have same workflow / functionality - I really dont appreciate the difference? so each node will be called a mayacompound and not xsicompound ? will there be any interop with Softimage / Maya planned in this regards? 2. Its going to take a few years 3. Its not a separate App, but part of the main Maya I am good to assume these as actual facts then? :) And certainly dont want or need yet another tirade / rant / sky is falling thread, am trying to tread carefully, be less emotional and just ask rational questions based upon facts, which would be much more rewarding for those that feel are being kept in the dark. but as a Softimage customer using ICE everyday since the last 6 years
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 11:22 AM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote: Scalability is a good buzzword, but what does it actually mean? In the specific context of FX, scalability means very large number of objects, billions of particles, huge fluid grids, etc. Stuff that may not even fit in RAM at once. Juhani's mention of Katana is a good one; it doesn't just everything in RAM at once and process it the way traditional apps do, it creates a receipe that will run in the renderer as needed. For very large data sets, different tools and approach are required other than just adding more RAM to a single PC and doing things the old way. It's also difficult to reference, track, change all those assets if the system isn't thought for that. Again, truck vs family car. Does it mean you can process more data in the same amount of time compared to another app? And what kind of data? Procedural geometry? Rendered Images? Does it mean you can load more assets into the same amount of available RAM on a machine compared to another app? How would the automation of such processes need to look like to scale well? Scripted? C++? Node-based like ICE? Multithreading across the board? Or is it a question of architecture rather than which programming language was used to implement it (scripted vs C++)? What does Maya offer in this regard, or where does it differ, to scale well/better than Soft or app X in your opinion? In my experience Softimage offers pretty much the same mechanisms to automate processes and handle scene complexity as Maya does, + ICE on top, and I found it can load a good chunk more data simultaneously than Maya can fit into the same amount of memory, especially when it comes to working with textures and realtime shaders. That was up until two versions ago, maybe that has changed? If all that doesn't mean it scales well, what exactly does it mean then? Note: I'm not a Softimage fanboy or Maya hater (ok, just a little, but not enough to not use it if it offers something that helps me to do my work), I just try to understand what scalability means by your (or anyones) standards compared to how I understand it.
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
*Agreed that Maya has not caught up to the Now that is Softimage and ICE.* Surely the target for 'Now' isn't Soft, it's Houdini? As great as ICE is it doesn't exactly match Houdini in terms of 'pure' procedural workflows. I can certainly take Luc-Eric's point that just bringing Maya up to Soft's level isn't exactly pushing the envelope. I mean, personally, I think Maya has just too much baggage to ever really push boundaries again but if that's what AD is pushing towards then they have to look beyond what Soft is doing at the moment. On 6 September 2012 16:30, Sandy Sutherland sandy.sutherl...@triggerfish.co.za wrote: Wondering myself - as we have used ICE extensively to huge set dressing and creation of bushes etc.. for Khumba - worked like a charm - and using that 'other' renderer proved to be the cherry on the top - we certainly did not hit any walls. S. _ Sandy Sutherland Technical Supervisor sandy.sutherl...@triggerfish.co.za _ From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [ softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Stefan Kubicek [ s...@tidbit-images.com] Sent: 06 September 2012 17:22 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare Scalability is a good buzzword, but what does it actually mean? Does it mean you can process more data in the same amount of time compared to another app? And what kind of data? Procedural geometry? Rendered Images? Does it mean you can load more assets into the same amount of available RAM on a machine compared to another app? How would the automation of such processes need to look like to scale well? Scripted? C++? Node-based like ICE? Multithreading across the board? Or is it a question of architecture rather than which programming language was used to implement it (scripted vs C++)? What does Maya offer in this regard, or where does it differ, to scale well/better than Soft or app X in your opinion? In my experience Softimage offers pretty much the same mechanisms to automate processes and handle scene complexity as Maya does, + ICE on top, and I found it can load a good chunk more data simultaneously than Maya can fit into the same amount of memory, especially when it comes to working with textures and realtime shaders. That was up until two versions ago, maybe that has changed? If all that doesn't mean it scales well, what exactly does it mean then? Note: I'm not a Softimage fanboy or Maya hater (ok, just a little, but not enough to not use it if it offers something that helps me to do my work), I just try to understand what scalability means by your (or anyones) standards compared to how I understand it. There is not as much enthusiasm in having ICE in Maya internally as you'd think, and I think that mail from Chris means to infer that to the community to cause some reactions, and to look beyond ICE. One reason is that unlike XSI 6.0, Maya has always been node-based, so it would not be as much as game changer in Maya as it is in XSI which had nothing. The confusing hypergraph UI and some legacy stuff (like older nodes having too many inputs) obscures the use of Maya existing node system, but the Maya team is working on that already with the new Node Editor, no need to introduce a duplicate system. Another reason is much more interesting, though I suspect the message boards will incinerate me for suggesting it. Basically, there is a train of thought that ICE is great, but it's just the Now, not the Next; it's not scalable to the extremely large scale procedural work that the Maya film clients are _already_ doing in custom apps and a series of odd tools. This is work that they wouldn't be able to undertake in ICE today, because it doesn't scale well to extremely large data sets. Since any kind of development takes several years, Autodesk wants to focus on finding the Next, rather than just trying to catch up to the Now. The creators of Naiad, who worked on PhysBAM and Zero at ILM and have multiple film credits are cooking up that vision. Since Maya is targeted at the large studios and not the one-man boutique, Autodesk doesn't want to work on any tech that works just fine for general data sets, but falls flat on its face on extremely large one. Large data set scalability is a requirement for anything new we add to Maya. That might mean something comes up that's comparatively less elegant to use than ICE in XSI, but more scalable. Maya is more like a construction truck than a family car, it needs to move large stuff around, and that stuff keeps getting larger. On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 8:26 AM, Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com wrote: OK, thanks all. so what confirmations, if any, do we actually have or 'allowed' to talk about? 1. its not going to be ICE but will have same
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
Fair enough and agreed on, but why would Maya be a better candidate to be developed in that direction than any other app? On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 11:22 AM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote: Scalability is a good buzzword, but what does it actually mean? In the specific context of FX, scalability means very large number of objects, billions of particles, huge fluid grids, etc. Stuff that may not even fit in RAM at once. Juhani's mention of Katana is a good one; it doesn't just everything in RAM at once and process it the way traditional apps do, it creates a receipe that will run in the renderer as needed. For very large data sets, different tools and approach are required other than just adding more RAM to a single PC and doing things the old way. It's also difficult to reference, track, change all those assets if the system isn't thought for that. Again, truck vs family car. Does it mean you can process more data in the same amount of time compared to another app? And what kind of data? Procedural geometry? Rendered Images? Does it mean you can load more assets into the same amount of available RAM on a machine compared to another app? How would the automation of such processes need to look like to scale well? Scripted? C++? Node-based like ICE? Multithreading across the board? Or is it a question of architecture rather than which programming language was used to implement it (scripted vs C++)? What does Maya offer in this regard, or where does it differ, to scale well/better than Soft or app X in your opinion? In my experience Softimage offers pretty much the same mechanisms to automate processes and handle scene complexity as Maya does, + ICE on top, and I found it can load a good chunk more data simultaneously than Maya can fit into the same amount of memory, especially when it comes to working with textures and realtime shaders. That was up until two versions ago, maybe that has changed? If all that doesn't mean it scales well, what exactly does it mean then? Note: I'm not a Softimage fanboy or Maya hater (ok, just a little, but not enough to not use it if it offers something that helps me to do my work), I just try to understand what scalability means by your (or anyones) standards compared to how I understand it. -- --- Stefan Kubicek Co-founder --- keyvis digital imagery Wehrgasse 9 - Grüner Hof 1050 Vienna Austria 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 an engineer's worst nightmare
Think of Maya more like a standard than an application. It's a front end that people are already used to looking at, even though they might be using it to drive a different truck on the back end. If you don't like working within the Maya or Max environment, imagine what it was like working in a completely proprietary environment developed by your RnD department who was more interested in making cool effects possible than smoothing out the GUI and user experience! With a DCC application, you *have* to invest in the user experience because you need to sell as many seats as possible. With a custom RnD effort inside your studio, you don't care as much about user experience because you have a captive market who is facing the choice of do it my way if you even want to have a remote chance of doing it at all. It doesn't matter if the XSI experience is nicer for some of us. It doesn't matter if XSI's core is more mature or potentially easier to develop for functionality like ICE. At the end of the day, the larger market base has built their own trucks and is using Maya to drive them, and they might be starting to champ at the bit a little as their trucks are needing more modern controls. XSI is not an option to them, it's not even on the radar. The real threat is their fear of ADSK, and the potential that they re-wire their trucks without dependence on any DCC app. Meanwhile, for the rest of us who don't have our own RnD departments, XSI is great because something like ICE does empower non-programmers to do things we couldn't do otherwise. So at least we have a fighting chance. Compare the workability of a custom tool made by someone who only writes code all day, versus a custom tool developed by the user in the context of the usage. There is still a huge value to that, and should (hopefully) continue to be a market for that. -Bradley On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 12:04 PM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.comwrote: Fair enough and agreed on, but why would Maya be a better candidate to be developed in that direction than any other app?
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
Re: ...Luc-Eric's point that just bringing Maya up to Soft's level isn't exactly pushing the envelope - Well you have to first prove you can handle the 50 lb. bicep curl before you can move up to the 60's. While it's true a lot of shops are running Maya, they certainly aren't doing it without a lot of added cost from workarounds, custom survival tools, dedicated programmers, and overall hair-pulling. I worked for over a year with a fully loaded shop of Mayans and every day was a day of frustration, cussing, and chaos. That experience (I was there as a programmer) gave me plenty of time to contemplate a better 3D package. Maya is nothing but cobbled and hacked crap. Maya was initially popular over SI starting in 1998 only because it was much cheaper (1/10 of the SI price at the time) not because it was superior. Is Maya's target SI or Houdini? That's irrelevant to its present task... can it catch up to, or will it ever surpass either one? Not sure anymore if Softimage is an ever increasing target, but Houdini definitely is. Will AD pour thousands of hours and invest serious money into Maya to make all that happen? It's very clear AD is unpredictable. This is what happens when you try to convince everyone it's all ok and we're maintaining three products because we love you and we want you to have freedom of choice. Well fluffy marketing aside, AD can't effectively maintain three products that basically do the same thing. It was all poor strategy from the beginning. Daniel VFXM
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
I really think the fact that Sony built Katana to manage their large scene complexity rather than somehow pipelining Maya speaks to a fundamental lack of scalability inherent in the organization of the scene graph. Look at a render layer in the hypergraph. There are nodes, but the nodes that exist have little regard for streamlining execution. I think for scalability beyond what ICE and lots of RAM offers, you have to be thinking in terms of cloud computing, cluster computing, and similar distributed models. GPU computing essentially follows a similar need for a mapReduce scheme as well, as you need to be able to manage the large data sets in a massively parallel way in order for them to be useful. Honestly, though, I think building scalability on this magnitude is far more feasible for specialized tools designed to solve a particular problem (like a massive fluid sim) than as a modified framework for a general application. The reason is that unless you're talking about a specific tool (city generator, fluid sim, etc) actual scene content is human-bound, and therefore already mapReduced by the production workflow. Beyond that, the scene graph's purpose is to be a top-down interface to the entire scene graph. By it's nature it either fits everything at once, or has to load pieces on demand and/or use a proxy representation system in order to be useful as a complete view of your scene. Personally, I think for any of the big 3 apps, the scalability answer actually has more to do with offloading than changing the architecture. And the irony there is that offloading is actually a relatively simple problem to solve, compared to modifying node-based workflows. Exocortex will probably streamline it between the three apps long before Autodesk does. I mean, they're already well on their way with their Alembic plugin products. Once scenes are offloading efficiently, you simply design your specialty software to talk to the same offloading protocol, or act as a plug-in in software that already speaks that protocol. The bleeding edge for scene scalability is found in render software, not DCC apps. And it's pretty much always been that way. - Andy On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 9:30 AM, Williams, Wayne wayne.willi...@xaviant.com wrote: What I'd like to know is how the devs feel about the core of Maya in comparison to Soft now that they have access to the code (I'm guessing this is the case, please let me know if wrong). Are there any things you devs see that were done extremely well in Maya and Soft could have taken a cue from in that regard or vice versa? I realize that you can't go into specifics but figured I'd put the general question out there. -wayne -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Stefan Kubicek Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2012 12:05 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare Fair enough and agreed on, but why would Maya be a better candidate to be developed in that direction than any other app? On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 11:22 AM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote: Scalability is a good buzzword, but what does it actually mean? In the specific context of FX, scalability means very large number of objects, billions of particles, huge fluid grids, etc. Stuff that may not even fit in RAM at once. Juhani's mention of Katana is a good one; it doesn't just everything in RAM at once and process it the way traditional apps do, it creates a receipe that will run in the renderer as needed. For very large data sets, different tools and approach are required other than just adding more RAM to a single PC and doing things the old way. It's also difficult to reference, track, change all those assets if the system isn't thought for that. Again, truck vs family car. Does it mean you can process more data in the same amount of time compared to another app? And what kind of data? Procedural geometry? Rendered Images? Does it mean you can load more assets into the same amount of available RAM on a machine compared to another app? How would the automation of such processes need to look like to scale well? Scripted? C++? Node-based like ICE? Multithreading across the board? Or is it a question of architecture rather than which programming language was used to implement it (scripted vs C++)? What does Maya offer in this regard, or where does it differ, to scale well/better than Soft or app X in your opinion? In my experience Softimage offers pretty much the same mechanisms to automate processes and handle scene complexity as Maya does, + ICE on top, and I found it can load a good chunk more data simultaneously than Maya can fit into the same amount of memory, especially when it comes to working with textures and realtime shaders. That was up until two versions ago, maybe that has changed
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 12:30 PM, Williams, Wayne wayne.willi...@xaviant.com wrote: What I'd like to know is how the devs feel about the core of Maya in comparison to Soft now that they have access to the code (I'm guessing this is the case, please let me know if wrong). Are there any things you devs see that were done extremely well in Maya and Soft could have taken a cue from in that regard or vice versa? I realize that you can't go into specifics but figured I'd put the general question out there. -wayne We haven't been very deep into Maya yet, but the depth of the SDK is impressive (we were influenced by the way it works when designing the Softimage C++ SDK) and the extent to which the scripting is used in the UI is also surprising. Maya is all about the API. On the Softimage side, the SDK/Platform stuff was originally (1998) left to the magic Microsoft COM fairies. We added scripting about a year or two after the development had started in a reaction to Maya. We added a Windows-only COM SDK to XSI 1.5. The C++ SDK came up only at version 3.0, in late 2002. So four years after Maya 1.0 was released we came up with our first cross platform SDK. It's a lot more time and work to add this years after the app is already written and shipped, so there's still a lot that isn't there. On the other hand, we could evolve the architecture without being held back by API compatibility concerns :)
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
/Meanwhile, for the rest of us who don't have our own RnD departments, XSI is great because something like ICE does empower non-programmers to do things we couldn't do otherwise. So at least we have a fighting chance. Compare the workability of a custom tool made by someone who only writes code all day, versus a custom tool developed by the user in the context of the usage. There is still a huge value to that, and should (hopefully) continue to be a market for that./ Amen. Le 06/09/2012 18:34, Bradley Gabe a écrit : Think of Maya more like a standard than an application. It's a front end that people are already used to looking at, even though they might be using it to drive a different truck on the back end. If you don't like working within the Maya or Max environment, imagine what it was like working in a completely proprietary environment developed by your RnD department who was more interested in making cool effects possible than smoothing out the GUI and user experience! With a DCC application, you *have* to invest in the user experience because you need to sell as many seats as possible. With a custom RnD effort inside your studio, you don't care as much about user experience because you have a captive market who is facing the choice of do it my way if you even want to have a remote chance of doing it at all. It doesn't matter if the XSI experience is nicer for some of us. It doesn't matter if XSI's core is more mature or potentially easier to develop for functionality like ICE. At the end of the day, the larger market base has built their own trucks and is using Maya to drive them, and they might be starting to champ at the bit a little as their trucks are needing more modern controls. XSI is not an option to them, it's not even on the radar. The real threat is their fear of ADSK, and the potential that they re-wire their trucks without dependence on any DCC app. Meanwhile, for the rest of us who don't have our own RnD departments, XSI is great because something like ICE does empower non-programmers to do things we couldn't do otherwise. So at least we have a fighting chance. Compare the workability of a custom tool made by someone who only writes code all day, versus a custom tool developed by the user in the context of the usage. There is still a huge value to that, and should (hopefully) continue to be a market for that. -Bradley On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 12:04 PM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com mailto:s...@tidbit-images.com wrote: Fair enough and agreed on, but why would Maya be a better candidate to be developed in that direction than any other app?
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
*On 6 September 2012 17:34, Bradley Gabe witha...@gmail.com wrote: * * The real threat is their fear of ADSK, and the potential that they re-wire their trucks without dependence on any DCC app.* and this is what Guy is talking about in another thread , no? in which case its already starting to happen :) and by your analogy of comparing the large film production studios as big trucks driven by Maya, then myself and Fabrice agreed that our little studio where we work is definitely a Fiat Panda driven by Softimage. :D
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
I'm starting to think a better analogy would have been cars pulling trailers. On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 5:57 PM, Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com wrote: *On 6 September 2012 17:34, Bradley Gabe witha...@gmail.com wrote: * * The real threat is their fear of ADSK, and the potential that they re-wire their trucks without dependence on any DCC app.* and this is what Guy is talking about in another thread , no? in which case its already starting to happen :) and by your analogy of comparing the large film production studios as big trucks driven by Maya, then myself and Fabrice agreed that our little studio where we work is definitely a Fiat Panda driven by Softimage. :D
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
On 6 September 2012 23:00, Bradley Gabe witha...@gmail.com wrote: I'm starting to think a better analogy would have been cars pulling trailers. nice, so in the case the studios are trailers of different sizes and maya and softimage are the cars and trucks ? So Softimage can be the fiat panda pulling our mobile fruit veg stall? :D
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
It's great to hear all this talk of rendering and FX, and scalability, two things that have seen paradigm shifts and multiple evolutions several times in the last few years, so that large firms can be catered to, when we already have our own solutions, or Houdini, we use for those that are very unlikely to be matched (because even if they are, we won't own the source). In the meantime, animation, interaction, the general feeling of an app, ease of use, clarity, the whole animation field and everything related, languish and are stuck in the realm of models, tools, procedures and concepts that last saw a generational hop with SOFTIMAGE|3D 3.0, and haven't seen one since. This leaves the large shops with a feature set we were already forced to develop quite a few years ago, and that needs to be close to the rendering engine (which is NOT going to be MRay, the one currently bundled with all products), and is absolutely useless unless you have that (rendertime injection and all), and doesn't even nudge all the static things that we actually DO use Soft or Maya for, rigging and animation. At the same time, the small boutique will still not be able to do the major scale stuff, because even with all the tools, frameworks and scalability in the world they won't have the infrastructure and deadlines to crack LA in two and sink it, and their breadbutter tools languish, and their staff still places keyframes on the same six bloody function curves they did fiften years ago, on animation rigs that feature, as their most complex technology provided by the app, IK that is the same that was made available to the first Jurassic Park. Of course I'm biased, I've always worked on a broad spectrum of things, but always around characters/creatures, so this might be a pointless and blindsided rant. But more likely, in the endless chase for bigger numbers and better headlines in reviews, the major software providers forget that as a large studio we can get ourselves a better fluid simulator for a movie in less than a year with three people than maya was able to provide in seven with a team of six. What IS phenomenally expensive to create (the user facing and enormously complex scene graph and data management side and the UI and GUI around it) is what both us and the smaller shops REALLY use day to day. And when the small shops need a multibillion particle sim they'll have three days to do, and will therefore pick up the first 400$ plugin that does it for them over an API built over a framework that scales like a Caterpillar mining truck, but can't be used without three engineers full time on it. As for ICE being the now and this massively scalable thing being the next, two years on Walking with Dinosaurs with a shitload of deformation and pipeline work relying on ICE beg to differ that large datasets are the next, and would like to raise their hand and affirm that some of us don't blow shit up all day for a living, and kinda relish a solid data model and a good UI :p
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
What said Raf +1 What's ironic about this part of this thread is that ICE and Arnold has let us reach a level of scale in our little boutique that I could not have even imagined before they showed up... Even on our outdated render farm, we can render enormous fully path traced , motion blured scenes in one pass that only a few years ago even the big boys would would of had to break into many passes Sent from my iPhone
RE: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
Is that due to ICE or because you’re now on 64 bit systems with extra hardware resources at your disposal? Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Greg Punchatz Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2012 5:17 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Cc: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare What said Raf +1 What's ironic about this part of this thread is that ICE and Arnold has let us reach a level of scale in our little boutique that I could not have even imagined before they showed up... Even on our outdated render farm, we can render enormous fully path traced , motion blured scenes in one pass that only a few years ago even the big boys would would of had to break into many passes Sent from my iPhone
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
Both...we were on 64 bit CPUs before we had ICE. It (ice) and Arnold have let us build light scenes that can generate incredible detail that has not been achievable for us. 64 bits made it feasible ... Ice and Arnold made it a reality. Now XSI could use a boost in scalability for sure... It fails in large number of objects. I always wondered if a optional simplified transform with out all the pivots, centers and offsets would give XSI a speed boost. G Sent from my iPhone On Sep 6, 2012, at 7:18 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: Is that due to ICE or because you’re now on 64 bit systems with extra hardware resources at your disposal? Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Greg Punchatz Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2012 5:17 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Cc: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare What said Raf +1 What's ironic about this part of this thread is that ICE and Arnold has let us reach a level of scale in our little boutique that I could not have even imagined before they showed up... Even on our outdated render farm, we can render enormous fully path traced , motion blured scenes in one pass that only a few years ago even the big boys would would of had to break into many passes Sent from my iPhone
Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
indeed, pursuit of performance increases should NEVER stop. SolidAngle does this with Arnold and its boring but it keeps everyone happy when nearly every release you see a performance improvement. On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 5:40 PM, Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com wrote: Now XSI could use a boost in scalability for sure...
RE: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare
Performance could improve by trimming transforms, but I don’t think scalability would be affected too much as the amount of data saved is tiny in comparison the ceiling we’re talking about. Scalability on this level is fundamental of working with crowds of data – it needs to be a primary focus of the design to do it well. Softimage opted for better performance of fewer complex objects. Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Greg Punchatz Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2012 5:40 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare Both...we were on 64 bit CPUs before we had ICE. It (ice) and Arnold have let us build light scenes that can generate incredible detail that has not been achievable for us. 64 bits made it feasible ... Ice and Arnold made it a reality. Now XSI could use a boost in scalability for sure... It fails in large number of objects. I always wondered if a optional simplified transform with out all the pivots, centers and offsets would give XSI a speed boost. G Sent from my iPhone On Sep 6, 2012, at 7:18 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.commailto:ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: Is that due to ICE or because you’re now on 64 bit systems with extra hardware resources at your disposal? Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Greg Punchatz Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2012 5:17 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Cc: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare What said Raf +1 What's ironic about this part of this thread is that ICE and Arnold has let us reach a level of scale in our little boutique that I could not have even imagined before they showed up... Even on our outdated render farm, we can render enormous fully path traced , motion blured scenes in one pass that only a few years ago even the big boys would would of had to break into many passes Sent from my iPhone
