For me ICE is very situational (I never said it wasn’t useful). I’ve spent a good deal of time researching ICE and have made a few useful (if situational) compounds, but my projects tend to be measured in days and I don’t have the time to do a ton of research on building rigs (or whatever) in ICE. The last I heard about rigging in ICE is that that it tended to be buggy and wasn’t really recommended so I haven’t really looked into it too much since if was first introduced. My limited programming knowledge along with my memory not being as good as it used to means that I spend a lot of time relearning things in ICE every time I need to use it. I can’t count how much time I’ve spent trying to do something in ICE that seems like it would be easy only to find it nearly impossible. More often than not it ends up being easier and quicker for me to do things the old fashioned way. As for VP2, I don’t think they should have even released it in it’s current state. It’s still quicker and more accurate to do small preview renders then deal with that thing, IMO.
I haven’t jumped ship yet, but there’s a good possibility that I will not be renewing my subscription this time around unless they release some really impressive stuff. The last few upgrades have just felt like wasted money to me. From: Raffaele Fragapane Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2012 8:51 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Siggraph - Softimage? This is stuff that goes in cycles. If you don't need crowds, a viewport API, various additions to ICE, the fCurve editing additions and so on of course the last couple upgrades won't be very convenient for you. Personally, I have very little use for the VP2 stuff (beside the fact it stuffed royally and irreparably quite a few things for some people over in TVC), but I had been begging and crying for a viewport API for probably close to 8 years now. At some point Maya will go through a cycle of stuff you have no use for, while in the other camp the things Soft had been lagging behind on will be added, and the grass will yet again be greener on the other side. IE: if you need a decently rendered fire without plugins, currently Maya is more or less your only option, but if you need crowds OOTB then Soft is. By all means, diversify if there's any point in another app for you, or get a suite, but I wouldn't write off 2012 and 2013 in general (we planned or did moves to both over here in example, and we don't up versions overnight for no good reason in film). Calling ICE situational though usually means you haven't bothered rather than not having found it useful. If there is ONE thing that improves my day to day work every single time it gets extended that's ICE. If you think it's something just for the occasional dust puff you're sorely mistaken. I'm writing this with a graph in front of me that over a few days went from a prototype to representing a sizable chunk of a rig that featurePerDay is cheaper than anything I've done before, and an order of magnitude faster than the equivalent expression-y/constrain-y alternative, and I'm coming out of a two year span on a project where every single deformation on very large and complex creatures would have been literally impossible or prohibitively expensive without ICE, which was used as a deformation tool, as a seamless bridge to our propietary system, and as a pipeline crutch for reference geometry injection. Be mindful of kneejerking yourself into something that will most likely require months to years to barely be able to be back to the par your work and cost sits at now. On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 1:35 PM, Sam Bowling <sbowl...@cox.net> wrote: CrowdFX.... I'm finding it harder and harder to find a reason to upgrade this software. I love the program, but there's just nothing new being added other ice stuff and that is really situational in use. I really can't think of anything added in 2013 that I needed for day to day use. I thought maybe there would be a few useful goodies added in the SAP, but that's out for this year. I guess it's time I start looking in to Max or Maya since they still seem to be getting some useful development.
