Hi Holger
First of all I want to say I am sorry to hear you are upset but it is perfectly understandable.
I have not returned postcards from the productions where I have used your shader collections, so I am one of the bad guys I guess. I will not excuse myself but offer an explanation. I have used the Ba Essentials collection on numerous productions and they are very useful tools for everyday use - thank you for offering these for free! However I never found the results to clearly show this, hence I did not find them useful for your purposes :/ and subsequently chose not to post them. Ususally BA Fractal is an integral part of many of my shadertrees, but it is a sort of invisible component which happens to make my life easier and help me produce the look I want faster.
Regarding the Volume Shader (which I purchased before it became available in Soft, because I found it very useful too) I have never found the results worthy of publication in themselves. I would much prefer to show stuff which is great :)
On a constructive note, I second these thoughts by Peter and Olivier. I have tested the BA Fluid Loader with emFluid 4 and while it looks really promising, inhouse I compete with Fume and Maya Fluids, so I have not gotten around to actually producing anything with it. With emFluid 5 I can see that changing, as Erics tools and your shader makes a killer combination - emFluid sims very fast, the shader renders really fast, and I can see the combo compete head to head with Maya Fluids and Fume. As Olivier mentions, landing a job is often down to making a good test quickly, and slowing down access to the tools can kill the process in its tracks. I would certainly also be prepared to pay to get immediate access if necessary. Regarding feedback, I guess the only thing I want to say, and probably should have on your forums, is that the fluid loader just works perfect, and maybe that is why you don't get terribly much feedback...
I use Arnold for my projects here and I would definately pay for a way to render emFluid5 volumetrics in Arnold so I could avoid Mental Ray altogether. I hope you and Eric find a way to get mutual satisfaction out of your efforts, which in my view are closely tied together.
All the best Holger
Morten Bartholdy
VFX Supervisor & 3D Lead
www.gimmickvfx.com
Den 30. oktober 2012 kl. 00:28 skrev pete...@skynet.be:
I could be very opportunistic and say I was one of the few people that did send an image. (there, that’s done)
Given that was more than six years ago, and it’s still there on your site, that’s saying something about just how few you did receive. Ouch.You are totally right – you offer a lot to the community, both in paid and unpaid tools – and expecting something in return is only natural – especially since you very clearly ask for this on your website.I’ll check for some more recent production images, and forward the message to some friends not on this list.Just a suggestion – how about forcing some goodwill, by offering the tools with a temp license – and the possibility to convert into a permanent license only after reception of a feedback mail with included image? I’d be totally in support of this.Thanks again for making totally awesome shaders, please do keep on doing so.regards,PeterHiDue to the poorly feedback I have decided to send new versions of the shader to an internal list of testers.If you have done some work with the shaders, send me some informations about it and you are in.You post something in my forum orEnd of last week I have started to send the new version to companies .I have not decided about the future of the fluid and other shaders.I thought nothing is easier than to send a reply with some information or with some work.As this does not work for any of my shader packages no matter how I state it on my website,I will probably change my way of offering shaders for free.I have better to do in my free time than to work for nothing (I do not mean any money. Community. "tit for tat")I did not got enough responses from commercial companies to turn it into a commercial project.(also includes that no production examples mean no publicity for new customers)If sending replies voluntary does not work, I thinking of forcing it.Perhaps I will only make all shaders available to registred customers only.To get registered, you need someone already on the list to invite you with some work.Or for every reply I get, I open 2 new puplic seats in the registration list.Or a limit. If I get 20 reponses, the new shader version is available for download.Anyway, no matter what I decide, a download without any kind of registration is not my favorite right now.Also, people seem to forget the future. Yes, my shader is done, I donwnload it, fine.But what about new shaders, for example I have a stack of papers written with specs and features for a new volume shader version.(Viewport preview, GI, less memory, better details, Arnold, caching, ...) It is kept in my drawer for years now.PS:
I have worked a few years in a commercial and visualisation departement as Shading&Lighting TD.You could tell the company name and what type of project you are working on.
How do you create your showreel? How does Maya/Softimage/Houdini create their showreel?
Commercials are usually free to view after a month. Some of them are available on your company site, on the customers site or even on youtube.
If I had a shot of a finished vfx movie production, I was able to use my particle sim on the showreel without any vfx background.
You can tell me to keep it confidential, or only to keep it confidential until the release....
If you think it will be available at some time (e.g. feature film) send me a name.Don't tell me it is not possible at all. In my small list of replies during the last 10 years, I had even large blockbusters from companies like ILM.They did not send me final images, they just described it and I was able to get it from the trailers once it was out or bought a DVD later.PPS: The issue I have is known to a lot of developers.S o the next time you work with any new tool/feature and think "wow, that's nice/fun/looks good", also think of sending something back.Holger Schönberger
Binary Alchemy - digital materialization
