Like Sebastien wrote: " It's about enabling an individual's,  and giving
them peace of mind."

I understand the part about 3D having become immensely more complex
throught the pat decade, requiring more advanced tools and subsequently
more skills from the artist, but I really also think the software devs put
way too little effort into making these tools userfriendly and easily
accessible, so the artist can concentrate on the task at hand rather than
how to stick it together at all.

Maya is a great example here - lots of power but fairly poor UI makes it
difficult for a non technically inclined artist to do quite advanced stuff.
Softimage is much better in this respect, but also here there is a lot of
room for improvement. I have spent countless hours trying to figure out how
to make simple stuff work in ICE which ought to be really simple to do and
just get on with it. Context mismatches and lack of high level nodes for
everyday nuts and bolts stuff makes ICE hard at times for a guy like me. I
do like learning and think it is good since, as Olivier say, it empowers
you when you unlock more of the tech under the hood, but most of the time,
I can't find the time to do this - I just need to produce.

Don't get me wrong - I love ICE too, and use it on probably 80-90% of my
productions (mostly simple stuff and that which can be done with the
excellent tools by Mootzoid, Exocortex and others), but I would love to
spend much less time trying to figure out the how-to, so I can focus on
making it look great. Mind you, I am not asking for a Kais Power Tools for
3D, but there is no reason why advanced stuff shouldn't be easier to do -
it would make a lot more people do great work, and thus boost the industry.

It will be interesting to see how far the Humanize Maya will go in this
respect. Given that the devs are on a path to provide as much functionality
as possible in a short timeframe I am afraid real UI improvements will not
be prioritized enough.

Morten



Den 1. april 2014 kl. 20:55 skrev Angus Davidson
<angus.david...@wits.ac.za>:

> I think we have had this discussion before that things should have been
> further along by now ;)  I just said that Softimage was very good at
> allowing the very skilled and the very new to easily achieve great things.
> Having taught Maya and Softimage to people new to 3D its very easy to see
> the difference between an application that can do that well and one that
> cant. When you are in education you see that learning curve being tackled
> over and over again.
> 
> I think Sebastiens race car analogy and conclusions put it far better then
> I did.
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: Luc-Eric Rousseau [luceri...@gmail.com]
> Sent: 01 April 2014 08:04 PM
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: Re: A Good Read!
> 
> it's interesting blog but I don't think that guy is saying anything that
> would suggest Softimage is doing any better... (if you read the bit about
> rigging having not evolved)...
> 
> 
> On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 1:10 PM, Angus Davidson < angus.david...@wits.ac.za
> <mailto:angus.david...@wits.ac.za> > wrote:
> > I think the original author does have a point but I dont think he expressed
> > it the way he wanted to. I can feel his frustration.  If you think of where
> > we are and  its been 20 years or so, shouldn't things be simpler?
> > 
> > Zbrush is a good example , immensely powerful program but such an uphill
> > battle to get used to the interface to do anything useful. HeadUs and their
> > unwrap interface is another one. yes you can get beautiful results with it,
> > but in the time it takes you figure crap out, you could have done just as
> > good a job sticking to massaging a standard unwrap
> > 
> > The idea is that your software should enable you from the beginning no
> > matter your expertise with it. Yes you will get highly skilled with it if
> > you stick to using it , but you shouldn't have to put your fist through a
> > few monitors to get there.
> > 
> > Its one of the things I will miss a lot about teaching Softimage. It
> > enabled both he novice and the professional to do amazing things out the
> > box.
> > 
> > 

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