Re: selecting nulls inside of geometry when xray is on

[David Gallagher Softimage]

Right - good thought and that's better than nothing. But now my usual 
workflow is restored after setting that environment variable.



On 4/18/2018 10:35 AM, Andi Farhall wrote:


or just use the null selection filter...



...
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.hackneyeffects.com_=DwID-g=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=8LqYSnIBN9_o68en7quYJGjneT6orJtUh7utJmcaeB4=mV3PC7sfPEz3pGUKVnxV5RvM3ZswOpBZYFdzJKo0qtQ= 
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.hackneyeffects.com_=DwMF-g=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=h2qJKTx3ETiXNjwnOPrw5gODoh9ZvOoVK3BJEz3MaRI=stcvsP83adD-s5WKxEc-Tov5ZKRhbOx7tVVCxXcsQBk=>
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__vimeo.com_user4174293=DwID-g=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=8LqYSnIBN9_o68en7quYJGjneT6orJtUh7utJmcaeB4=d0NfBosQZcmA0-SvE-YUw26Szc73GZ7mXLjXp25H9JU= 
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__vimeo.com_user4174293=DwMF-g=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=h2qJKTx3ETiXNjwnOPrw5gODoh9ZvOoVK3BJEz3MaRI=U_E8_tnBzKvPe4fWmFMppAudc6HYofTWs6J73ufgCB8=>
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.linkedin.com_pub_andi-2Dfarhall_b_496_b21=DwID-g=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=8LqYSnIBN9_o68en7quYJGjneT6orJtUh7utJmcaeB4=Rydb6QsgOwO9x0L_XJ1TPOW5jeLQ9ktLDovWCjpsweI= 
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.linkedin.com_pub_andi-2Dfarhall_b_496_b21=DwMF-g=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=h2qJKTx3ETiXNjwnOPrw5gODoh9ZvOoVK3BJEz3MaRI=c0_87GXNv9-3tceqLDG85AWiRIVTEU_XNHltTH6MmfU=>



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*From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
<softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com> on behalf of Andres Stephens 
<drais...@outlook.com>

*Sent:* 18 April 2018 16:30:59
*To:* Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
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*Subject:* RE: selecting nulls inside of geometry when xray is on

You need to set a variable in the bat file.
They disabled this to optimize the viewport responsiveness.
A UI workaround: If you hold don’t CTRL while clicking, or SHIFT, or 
ALT, I think this alternates the selections under mouse. I don’t recall.


Here is the variable:

*File Location*
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2015\Application\bin\setenv.bat

*Append: *

:Fix selection block

set XSI_DISABLE_NEW_PICK=1

-Draise


*From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
<softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com> on behalf of Softimage 
<lp3ds...@gmail.com>

*Sent:* Wednesday, April 18, 2018 11:27:49 AM
*To:* Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
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*Subject:* Re: selecting nulls inside of geometry when xray is on
Make the outer object unselectable?
Is that enough for what you want?
Cheers
Lawrence

> On 18 Apr 2018, at 17:21, David Gallagher Softimage 
<davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> Hello!
> Au

Re: selecting nulls inside of geometry when xray is on

[David Gallagher Softimage]

Yes, that's what I was doing as a workaround, thanks.

On 4/18/2018 10:27 AM, Softimage wrote:
> Make the outer object unselectable?
> Is that enough for what you want?
> Cheers
> Lawrence
>
>> On 18 Apr 2018, at 17:21, David Gallagher Softimage 
>> <davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Hello!
>> Autodesk wouldn't issue me a license for Softimage 2014 on my new
>> computer so I'm forced to use Softimage 2015 on it now.
>> Unfortunately now I don't seem to be able to select objects inside of
>> polygon models. It always selects the outermost object which is the
>> geometry. In previous versions I would turn the camera to xray which
>> would then allow me to select nulls and objects inside/behind the geo.
>>
>> I'm looking for some option that would restore this workflow but so far
>> no luck.
>>
>> Ideas?
>> Thanks,
>> Dave G
>> --
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Re: selecting nulls inside of geometry when xray is on

[David Gallagher Softimage]

The environment variable worked. Thanks so much for telling me about that!
Dave G

On 4/18/2018 10:30 AM, Andres Stephens wrote:


You need to set a variable in the bat file.
They disabled this to optimize the viewport responsiveness.
A UI workaround: If you hold don’t CTRL while clicking, or SHIFT, or 
ALT, I think this alternates the selections under mouse. I don’t recall.


Here is the variable:

*File Location*
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2015\Application\bin\setenv.bat

*Append: *

:Fix selection block

set XSI_DISABLE_NEW_PICK=1

-Draise


*From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
<softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com> on behalf of Softimage 
<lp3ds...@gmail.com>

*Sent:* Wednesday, April 18, 2018 11:27:49 AM
*To:* Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_xsi-5Flist=DwID-g=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=ylHB8rNe15DIPLQ1vHL5ce9nhD2CjYTLji15PWn_njU=uiZF5dn6iO1BjyuumiP8eRe6hJomwq9rAEYQ53X5hnA=

*Subject:* Re: selecting nulls inside of geometry when xray is on
Make the outer object unselectable?
Is that enough for what you want?
Cheers
Lawrence

> On 18 Apr 2018, at 17:21, David Gallagher Softimage 
<davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> Hello!
> Autodesk wouldn't issue me a license for Softimage 2014 on my new
> computer so I'm forced to use Softimage 2015 on it now.
> Unfortunately now I don't seem to be able to select objects inside of
> polygon models. It always selects the outermost object which is the
> geometry. In previous versions I would turn the camera to xray which
> would then allow me to select nulls and objects inside/behind the geo.
>
> I'm looking for some option that would restore this workflow but so far
> no luck.
>
> Ideas?
> Thanks,
> Dave G
> --
> Softimage Mailing List.
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softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with "unsubscribe" in the 
subject, and reply to confirm.


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selecting nulls inside of geometry when xray is on

[David Gallagher Softimage]

Hello!
Autodesk wouldn't issue me a license for Softimage 2014 on my new 
computer so I'm forced to use Softimage 2015 on it now.
Unfortunately now I don't seem to be able to select objects inside of 
polygon models. It always selects the outermost object which is the 
geometry. In previous versions I would turn the camera to xray which 
would then allow me to select nulls and objects inside/behind the geo.

I'm looking for some option that would restore this workflow but so far 
no luck.

Ideas?
Thanks,
Dave G
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"unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.

Re: Softimage - not going away...

[David Gallagher Softimage]

Great work!

Big high-five for using Softimage still. I do too!
Curious though, how do you handle new employees? Do you only bring in 
people who know Softimage already? I'm just imagining a new employee 
learning your pipeline with EOL software and how they handle that.


On 10/24/2017 7:16 AM, Jean-Louis wrote:

Hi list,

Softimage still alive and well over here at Digital Golem: 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.digitalgolem.com_portfolio_range-2Drover-2Dfireflies_=DwIC-g=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=_-4bGgzUpCFbHoQUmrjzVsFQovWtbGnW19exoPS8oXk=QHCpv6DOvgONJ2wkF6zM_lEPp3wd461Nj2jkQ0e7u-Q= 



Cheers,
JL


Jean-Louis Billard
-
*Digital Golem*
BE: +32 (0) 484 263 563
jean-lo...@digitalgolem.com 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.digitalgolem.com_=DwIC-g=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=_-4bGgzUpCFbHoQUmrjzVsFQovWtbGnW19exoPS8oXk=TAzGDPL27l9KD9wbQKZsi-hH_tIYaw9rprlf01xV25Y= 


53 Rue Gustave Huberti
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Re: Maya plug-in developers

[David Gallagher Softimage]

Thanks!

On 9/6/2017 7:12 AM, Alan Fregtman wrote:

Hey David,

I think you might have better luck with the "Python Inside Maya" list 
here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?#!forum/python_inside_maya 
<https://groups.google.com/forum/?#%21forum/python_inside_maya>


I know it has "Python" in the name but C++ developers exist among the 
crowd as well.


If that fails you can also try the "Highend3D Maya" list:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?#!forum/maya_he3d 
<https://groups.google.com/forum/?#%21forum/maya_he3d>

(It's probably the most popular Maya-focused general mailing list.)

Cheers,
   -- Alan


On Tue, Sep 5, 2017 at 5:53 PM David Gallagher Softimage 
<davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com <mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com>> 
wrote:



Hello!
Some of you might know about our free AnimSchool Picker plug-in
enjoyed by thousands of Maya users and many studios. We also have
a Softimage version!

Anyone here interested in this? Or know where I could post it on a
similar Maya list?

http://www.animschool.com/DownloadOffer.aspx
<http://www.animschool.com/PickerInfo.aspx>
http://www.animschool.com/PickerInfo.aspx

 We are looking for a programmer to help compile the plug-in for
the different versions and platforms (PC, Mac, multiple versions
of Linux). There is usually quite a bit of troubleshooting and
setup issues to overcome for each version of Maya.

part-time/contract work
If you are interested, please email j...@animschool.com
<mailto:j...@animschool.com>
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Maya plug-in developers

[David Gallagher Softimage]

Hello!
Some of you might know about our free AnimSchool Picker plug-in enjoyed 
by thousands of Maya users and many studios. We also have a Softimage 
version!


Anyone here interested in this? Or know where I could post it on a 
similar Maya list?


http://www.animschool.com/DownloadOffer.aspx 


http://www.animschool.com/PickerInfo.aspx

 We are looking for a programmer to help compile the plug-in for the 
different versions and platforms (PC, Mac, multiple versions of Linux). 
There is usually quite a bit of troubleshooting and setup issues to 
overcome for each version of Maya.


part-time/contract work
If you are interested, please email j...@animschool.com
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"unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.

redshift rendering help

[David Gallagher Softimage]

Hello! I'm looking for a really good redshift Softimage lighter to help 
with something I'm trying to materialize/render. Remote! Maybe a day or 
less of work.

Reply to me if you're interested.
Thanks!
Dave Gallagher
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Re: New iMac Pro? Yay or Nay?

[David Gallagher Softimage]

How do you see prices on those?


On 6/7/2017 6:15 AM, Andreas Böinghoff wrote:

For new machines we're going for supermicro.

https://www.supermicro.nl/products/system/4U/7048/SYS-7048GR-TR.cfm

We always had HP Z800-840 - Since we were doing more and more jobs on 
redshift his workstations are the best machines we ever had.


A

On 07/06/2017 14:02, Rob Wuijster wrote:


I agree, although some of my friends who are into 2D design and a tad 
of AfterEffects will probably running to the store as soon as they 
can get their hands on it ;-)


Rob

\/-\/\/
On 7-6-2017 13:45, Jonathan Moore wrote:
Now more than ever I think of OS X and Apple hardware as the luxury 
end of the consumer PC market. There’s so much about OS X that I 
prefer to Windows but I’m also aware that I’m paying an extreme 
premium for the experience.


However, It’s been a long time since I’ve considered Apple hardware 
to be an optimal choice for creative professionals per se, never 
mind 3d professionals. The iMac Pro is a lustful piece of consumer 
electronics for sure but it would be a exceptionally odd choice for 
a 3d professional.


On 7 Jun 2017, at 12:17, Christopher Crouzet 
> wrote:


Something to consider beyond the hardware is the software.

During the years that I've been using MacOS, Apple often shined at 
only supporting outdated OpenGL versions in their OS, or poorly 
implementing it. To make things worse, they decided to go their own 
way with their Metal API without providing any support for Vulkan 
(unless I missed something). I don't think many developers are 
willing to write their software using the Metal API to boost 
rendering performances when the 3D market is fairly small on Mac.


Surely it's a bit cocky from them to be boasting their graphics 
marketing when they seem to be hated by graphics developers.



On 7 June 2017 at 17:37, Rob Wuijster > wrote:


One of the first reviews, and it's not really a glowing one:


https://www.slashgear.com/imac-pro-still-doesnt-give-the-one-thing-pros-want-06487652/



Rob

\/-\/\/

On 6-6-2017 21:50, Angus Davidson wrote:

Unfortunately Apple has defined pro market to mean , FCP X and
a little bit of after effects. Its the only reason I can think
of for some of the dumb decisions made in the last two years.
Up to and including today.

At least dell gives decent EDU discounts. Going to make the
move from apple far less painful for us

--
ICT Project Manager
Digital Arts
Wits School of the Arts
angus.david...@wits.ac.za 
011 717 4683










*From:* Stanley Mpofu
*Sent:* 31 May 2017 03:14 PM
*To:* Collen Rasalanavho; Angus Davidson; Brian Maistry;
Shunmuga Pillay; Andrew Sam; Tumishi Madihlaba; Donald
Dandawa; Bekir Genc; Arinavho Tshifularo; Simon Mofokeng;
Charl Roberts; Mark Allen; James Mokoka; Ernest Maluleke;
Shereen Jacobs
*Subject:* Wits ICT Strategy.pptx

Colleagues

As discussed this morning, Please note the attached strategic
direction as well intended service catalogue that will talk to
the SLAs between ICT and the University. Please respond with
comments and more ideas around what I have proposed for Wits
going forward.



Many thanks


Dr Mpofu Mgobansimbi SB

*Chief Information Officer (Wits)*

+27117171662

+27733779947

stanley.mp...@wits.ac.za 

"Lions Don’t Worry About The Opinion Of Sheep"


*PA*

Celesse-Ann Brandt-Jacobs

Tel  : +2711 717 1602

Email  : celesse.brandt-jac...@wits.ac.za






*From:* Marc-Andre Carbonneau
[marc-andre.carbonn...@ubisoft.com
]
*Sent:* 06 June 2017 09:38 PM
*To:* Official Softimage Users Mailing List.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list

*Subject:* RE: New iMac Pro? Yay or Nay?

Heheheh thanks everyone. I’m not so much using powerful pcs
anymore but was interested in getting the low down on these
“new” contenders.

MAC


*From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com

[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
] *On Behalf
Of *Jonathan Moore
*Sent:* June-06-17 3:36 PM
*To:* Official Softimage Users Mailing List.
https://groups.google .

unity animation export

[David Gallagher Softimage]

Is anyone here familiar with Unity? I'm trying to export a rig and an 
animation to unity.
I've made a rig with all the bind joints in a separate heirarchy, all 
parent constrained to the rig parts. I exported that and it seems ok.


Then I tried to plot the animations, Plot>All Transformations like this.

It created a 2.5 MB file so it may have the info but I don't think it's 
importing it correctly. Instead of a single animation file, it is 
getting a list of objects -possibly. Dragging it onto the character 
doesn't seem to be working like the few tutorials I've done.


Any help welcome.
Thanks,
Dave G
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Re: Jordskott tv series visual effects, Softimage+Redshift

[David Gallagher]

Impressive!

On 5/22/2015 2:37 PM, Arvid Björn wrote:
Hi guys, just wanted to show a couple of shots we did for the Swedish 
tv series Jordskott. We did all the 342 vfx shots for all 10 
episodes, all cg in Softimage, rendered in Redshift, Houdini for smoke 
sim and Nuke for comp.


Here's some of the more interesting ones I think (excuse the compression):

Full cg env and destruction. Redshift+ICE instance scattering achieved 
the level of detail, comped using deep data to combine Redshift and 
Mantra smoke renders. RS frame time was about 20 minutes on this, 
which is the highest I've ever reached with Redshift I think.

https://app.frame.io/f/9839ef2c-0a25-4c41-8308-548078b613b1

Here's a bunch of cg ravens rigged and animated in Softimage, rendered 
in Redshift.

https://app.frame.io/f/17a5c43d-0b29-4928-a0ae-35779930a492

This is a face wound-type thing in a dream sequence, Soft+Redshift
https://app.frame.io/f/e7740833-7faa-4e13-a92e-b0be2f75f3b0

All the underwater environments in this sequence is full cg combined 
with some green screen uw-plates of the actress. The entity is made 
with a bit of ICE strand magic. Soft+Redshift, RS really has awesome 
volumetrics btw.
https://app.frame.io/f/680ec84a-573d-4e9f-b0e3-9d68a0c3ad3a (with 
sound, without grade)


And about 300 other shots.. =)

We worked for ~8 months with a core team of 3 artists including 
myself, and a few more for shorter periods. I also supervised the vfx 
on the show, which was a true pleasure! Can't imagine a better tool 
for the job than Soft and RS, it's quite remarkable how well they work 
together, it's all rendered on cheap GTX780's as well.


So Softimage is alive and well over here at least! The Maya licenses 
doesn't even work as a door stop, not sure why we keep them around really.


We'll do a proper reel for the whole season soonish, hope you like it!

Cheers

Re: Maya, sheesh!

[David Gallagher]

I'm still using Softimage every day and exporting my work to Maya. It's 
more pleasant than beating my head against the wall in Maya.


Dave G

On 2/13/2015 9:58 AM, Greg Punchatz wrote:

Amen Kris !

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 13, 2015, at 10:45 AM, Kris Rivel krisri...@gmail.com 
mailto:krisri...@gmail.com wrote:


Ugh...I really hope Autodesk is taking notes on the pain we're 
enduring switching over...I doubt it though. I'll die before I use 
Maya or Max as much as Soft. Its so friggin stupid that we have to 
take a major step down in day to day routine stuff and hunt for 
work-arounds, hacks, scripts, etc. just to do something simple. I can 
tear through stuff in Soft with ease that I KNOW I can't do in Maya 
or Max as quickly. When I'm in a hurry I'm connecting, overriding, 
layering like a mad-mangetting sh!t done...and on time while my 
Maya/Max brethren is taking their time trying to find the best 
plugin or script to do what I did in 2 seconds. End rant.


Kris

On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 10:31 AM, Marco Peixoto mpe...@gmail.com 
mailto:mpe...@gmail.com wrote:


I think i explained why by default its like that, unless you are
animating thing with a keyframe here and there and have your
animation be dictated by the Curve Tension instead of having
your animation be dictated by what you really key, then yes
unlocking the tangents is the best way to go, but if you want
full control then not really, of course this varies with
preferences, I prefer to have my overshoots keyed and relying on
curves with handles pulled, if I need to shift poses around my
overshoots are always like i made them and not what the curve
interpolation managed to do.

Anyway unlocking the Curves its a simple click and  you can even
do it on Maya preferences:


Preferences---Animation---Uncheck the Weighted Tangents (and use
Spline not Auto).

My explanation on why I break the handles its because on simple
bouncing objects its faster to break the Tangents and use it like
that instead of making 2 extra keys, but its the rare occasion I
break them and if timming adjusting is needed i will loose time
trying to find the same tension values again.

Its all workflow preferences, I use some scripts in Maya (that I
only use for Character Animation) and have colleagues that dont
use a single script and animate all day long with vanilla out of
the shelf Maya.

On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 1:23 PM, Artur Woźniak
artur.w...@gmail.com mailto:artur.w...@gmail.com wrote:

Not that I am using or will be in the near future (Autodesk
product that is), but I'd rather have option to lock it if
necessary rather than having to unlock it every time i need
it. Knowing what you doing with handles is advisable if you
animating, so I don't see the point of having them locked by
default.


Artur

2015-02-13 12:11 GMT+01:00 Marco Peixoto mpe...@gmail.com
mailto:mpe...@gmail.com:

Maya Graph is a bit different (but not that much) than
XSi one, we need to select the handles to move them
opposed to Xsi where we just drag them, maybe you have
the Handles locked (always same lenght), which is
advisable, unless you know what you are doing and really
want to mess with them. Why is it advisable, because when
animating and having lots of keys when you change things
and make a new Key between two other keys or shift keys
around, the handle stays the same and the curve info is
what you defined early, so its you in control of the
curve, with free handles everything goes whacky if you
insert new keys or shift frames.

Usually the only times I unlock the Handles is if Im
animating Bouncing Motions and I break the handles so i
can make the contacts sharper.

If you can or want, take a look at the How To Cheat in
Maya book, the Graph section will tell you a lot of Maya
Graph and you don't need extra Graph scripts that are a
clutter mess IMO.



On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 11:08 AM, Cesar Saez
cesa...@gmail.com mailto:cesa...@gmail.com wrote:

What about select a handle and middle click dragging?
(a quite common pattern in Maya)

I don't want to be that guy, but this is not the
right attitude to learn anything! I don't like Maya
and I've been frustrated using it as much as any
softimage user out there, but hey! it's time to get
over it and move forward... just saying.

Best luck,
Cesar


On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 9:25 PM, Laurence Dodd
laure...@porkpie.tv mailto:laure...@porkpie.tv wrote:

Re: Maya, sheesh!

[David Gallagher]

Ha! I really should.

Hope to see you in General Reviews again Sofronis!

On 2/13/2015 11:25 AM, Sofronis Efstathiou wrote:

Hahahaha David... I know your pain. But the Animschool sessions are going 
well.. Maybe you should sign up ;o)

Sofronis Efstathiou

Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Festival Director
Computer Animation Academic Group
National Centre for Computer Animation

Email: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk

Tel: +44 (0) 1202 965805

Profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sofronisefstathiou

Student Work:
http://www.youtube.com/NCCA3DAnimation
http://www.youtube.com/NCCADigitalFX
http://www.youtube.com/NCCAAnimation




-Original Message-
From: David Gallagher [davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com]
Received: Friday, 13 Feb 2015, 17:09
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com [softimage@listproc.autodesk.com]
Subject: Re: Maya, sheesh!

I'm still using Softimage every day and exporting my work to Maya. It's more 
pleasant than beating my head against the wall in Maya.

Dave G

On 2/13/2015 9:58 AM, Greg Punchatz wrote:
Amen Kris !

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 13, 2015, at 10:45 AM, Kris Rivel 
krisri...@gmail.commailto:krisri...@gmail.com wrote:

Ugh...I really hope Autodesk is taking notes on the pain we're enduring switching 
over...I doubt it though. I'll die before I use Maya or Max as much as Soft. Its so 
friggin stupid that we have to take a major step down in day to day routine stuff and 
hunt for work-arounds, hacks, scripts, etc. just to do something simple. I can tear 
through stuff in Soft with ease that I KNOW I can't do in Maya or Max as quickly. When 
I'm in a hurry I'm connecting, overriding, layering like a mad-mangetting sh!t 
done...and on time while my Maya/Max brethren is taking their time trying to find the 
best plugin or script to do what I did in 2 seconds. End rant.

Kris

On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 10:31 AM, Marco Peixoto 
mpe...@gmail.commailto:mpe...@gmail.com wrote:
I think i explained why by default its like that, unless you are animating thing with a 
keyframe here and there and have your animation be dictated by the Curve 
Tension instead of having your animation be dictated by what you really key, 
then yes unlocking the tangents is the best way to go, but if you want full control then 
not really, of course this varies with preferences, I prefer to have my overshoots keyed 
and relying on curves with handles pulled, if I need to shift poses around my overshoots 
are always like i made them and not what the curve interpolation managed to do.

Anyway unlocking the Curves its a simple click and  you can even do it on Maya 
preferences:


Preferences---Animation---Uncheck the Weighted Tangents (and use Spline not 
Auto).

My explanation on why I break the handles its because on simple bouncing objects its 
faster to break the Tangents and use it like that instead of making 2 extra keys, but its 
the rare occasion I break them and if timming adjusting is needed i will loose time 
trying to find the same tension values again.

Its all workflow preferences, I use some scripts in Maya (that I only use for 
Character Animation) and have colleagues that dont use a single script and 
animate all day long with vanilla out of the shelf Maya.

On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 1:23 PM, Artur Woźniak 
artur.w...@gmail.commailto:artur.w...@gmail.com wrote:
Not that I am using or will be in the near future (Autodesk product that is), 
but I'd rather have option to lock it if necessary rather than having to unlock 
it every time i need it. Knowing what you doing with handles is advisable if 
you animating, so I don't see the point of having them locked by default.


Artur

2015-02-13 12:11 GMT+01:00 Marco Peixoto 
mpe...@gmail.commailto:mpe...@gmail.com:
Maya Graph is a bit different (but not that much) than XSi one, we need to 
select the handles to move them opposed to Xsi where we just drag them, maybe 
you have the Handles locked (always same lenght), which is advisable, unless 
you know what you are doing and really want to mess with them. Why is it 
advisable, because when animating and having lots of keys when you change 
things and make a new Key between two other keys or shift keys around, the 
handle stays the same and the curve info is what you defined early, so its you 
in control of the curve, with free handles everything goes whacky if you insert 
new keys or shift frames.

Usually the only times I unlock the Handles is if Im animating Bouncing Motions 
and I break the handles so i can make the contacts sharper.

If you can or want, take a look at the How To Cheat in Maya book, the Graph 
section will tell you a lot of Maya Graph and you don't need extra Graph 
scripts that are a clutter mess IMO.



On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 11:08 AM, Cesar Saez 
cesa...@gmail.commailto:cesa...@gmail.com wrote:
What about select a handle and middle click dragging? (a quite common pattern 
in Maya)

I don't want to be that guy, but this is not the right attitude to learn 
anything! I don't like

Re: deleting disconnected clusterkeys

[David Gallagher]

Great! I will try it.
On 2/5/2015 5:37 AM, David Barosin wrote:

This is untested but the idea is there.

###
import win32com
from win32com.client import constants as c

oCls = Application.FindObjects2(c.siClusterID)

for i in oCls:
if clskey in i.Name:
Application.DeleteObj(i)

###

On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 12:59 AM, David Gallagher 
davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com 
wrote:



Does anyone know how I can purge my scene from these clusterkeys I
can't seem to delete? It errors with this each time I save this file.

' WARNING : 3000 - Save: [6] objects were not saved normally
' WARNING : 3000 - -- [clskey267] was saved, but is disconnected
from the scene. (Floating object)
' WARNING : 3000 - -- [clskey52056] was saved, but is
disconnected from the scene. (Floating object)
' WARNING : 3000 - -- [clskey3221] was saved, but is
disconnected from the scene. (Floating object)
' WARNING : 3000 - -- [clskey18389] was saved, but is
disconnected from the scene. (Floating object)
' WARNING : 3000 - -- [clskey52757] was saved, but is
disconnected from the scene. (Floating object)
' WARNING : 3000 - -- [clskey21774] was saved, but is
disconnected from the scene. (Floating object)

deleting disconnected clusterkeys

[David Gallagher]

Does anyone know how I can purge my scene from these clusterkeys I can't 
seem to delete? It errors with this each time I save this file.


' WARNING : 3000 - Save: [6] objects were not saved normally
' WARNING : 3000 - -- [clskey267] was saved, but is disconnected from 
the scene. (Floating object)
' WARNING : 3000 - -- [clskey52056] was saved, but is disconnected 
from the scene. (Floating object)
' WARNING : 3000 - -- [clskey3221] was saved, but is disconnected from 
the scene. (Floating object)
' WARNING : 3000 - -- [clskey18389] was saved, but is disconnected 
from the scene. (Floating object)
' WARNING : 3000 - -- [clskey52757] was saved, but is disconnected 
from the scene. (Floating object)
' WARNING : 3000 - -- [clskey21774] was saved, but is disconnected 
from the scene. (Floating object)

Re: Maya Rigging Online courses

[David Gallagher]

AnimSchool is awesome  ;)

iAnimate is more geared toward gaming, if that's relevant for you.

Dave G (CEO of AnimSchool)
Email me with any questions.

On 11/26/2014 7:09 PM, Sofronis Efstathiou wrote:


Hi all,

I’m trying to get my head around the rigging tools in Maya, and need a 
quick boost in terms of knowledge - I need to support a ton of rigs my 
students are creating after Christmas. Any recommendations? I would 
prefer not to have a course aimed at beginners,  just something that 
can introduce some mid/high level concepts and techniques. Having said 
that, as I need to learn an entire new toolset it’s probably wise to 
start with the basics (as long as it moves quickly into other areas). 
Has anyone taken the iAnimate course? 
http://www.ianimate.net/workshops/rigging.html


Animschool also allows you to take a single class via its express 
option as well - 
http://www.animschool.com/Catalog/ProgramDescription.aspx?ID=1# 
http://www.animschool.com/Catalog/ProgramDescription.aspx?ID=1


Any help, opinions or guidance much appreciated…

Cheers

Sofronis (Saf) Efstathiou

Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Competition  Festival Director

Computer Animation Academic Group

*National Centre for Computer Animation*


Email: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk 
mailto:sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk


Tel: +44 (0) 1202 965805

Profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sofronisefstathiou


Student Work:

http://www.youtube.com/NCCA3DAnimation

http://www.youtube.com/NCCADigitalFX

http://www.youtube.com/NCCAAnimation

Description: Description: C:\Users\sefstathiou\Pictures\nccalogo.jpg 
http://ncca.bournemouth.ac.uk/Description: Description: 
C:\Users\sefstathiou\Documents\My 
Dropbox\Work_Files\NCCA\VFXandAnimation_competition\BFX_website\BFX_Website\bfx_logo_facebook.png 
http://www.bfxfestival.com/


http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/Images/QueensAwardLogo.jpg

*Awarded for world-class computer animation teaching *

*with wide scientific and creative applications*

BU is a Disability Two Ticks Employer and has signed up to the Mindful 
Employer charter. Information about the accessibility of University 
buildings can be found on the BU DisabledGo webpages 
http://www.disabledgo.com/en/org/bournemouth-university


This email is intended only for the person to whom it is addressed and 
may contain confidential information. If you have received this email 
in error, please notify the sender and delete this email, which must 
not be copied, distributed or disclosed to any other person.


Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do 
not necessarily represent those of Bournemouth University or its 
subsidiary companies. Nor can any contract be formed on behalf of the 
University or its subsidiary companies via email.

Re: subscription for maya on linux

[David Gallagher]

Yes, good point Raffaele. We've talked about doing it that way too.


On 10/19/2014 4:49 PM, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:
BTW you don't need to be able to run Maya to compile something for it. 
As long as you have the linux header and lib includes you can compile 
away.
Whether there are licensing issues with that, or you might be bothered 
by the fact you won't be able to test the build if you can't run Maya, 
well... that's a different thing :)

Re: subscription for maya on linux

[David Gallagher]

Ok we'll try that. Thank you!

On 10/16/2014 9:17 PM, Jill Ramsay (Contractor) wrote:

As far as I have been able to ascertain... (don't shoot me if I end up being 
wrong please!), your EDU license should work with Linux, but reasons that are 
not currently clear, the download is not posted. You should be able to obtain 
the executable here:

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/downloads/caas/downloads/content/autodesk-maya-2015-service-pack-5.html

Fingers crossed, hope this works, if it doesn't I'm going into hiding for a 
week or two. :-)

G'night all.

Jill

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Graham Bell
Sent: October-16-14 8:26 PM
To: David Gallagher; softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: subscription for maya on linux

Ah interesting.

I noticed that you couldn¹t download Maya Linux education site, so I wondered 
if educators would of obtained Linux through there Autodesk ARC accounts 
instead. Perhaps not.

I double checked to correct myself and you can run Maya Linux in Standalone 
license, but perhaps with education the Standalone activation doesn¹t work for 
the reasons mentioned.

I shall defer to Jill though.



G



On 16/10/2014 16:15, David Gallagher davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com
wrote:



On 10/15/2014 5:52 PM, Graham Bell wrote:

Hi David

To the best of my knowledge, you can 'rent' Maya on Linux, certainly
here in the UK anyway, so I assume it will be the same in the US.

Thanks for the info!

It shouldn't make a difference with education either, you should be
able to obtain a linux install, though I notice you can't download
this version from the EDU website.

Someone from Autodesk here says the educational license doesn't work on
linux?:
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/installation-licensing/licensing-maya2013
-in
-linux-just-not-valid/m-p/3839396#M60613



Though this will have to be Network licensed, as Standalone
(node-locked) isn't available on Linux. Network licenses are not OS
specific, once their running on a server, any insall (Win/Mac/Linux)
can just point to the server.



Thx,


Graham




-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of David
Gallagher
Sent: 16 October 2014 00:15
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: subscription for maya on linux


Hello! We are planning on offering a linux version of AnimSchool
Picker for Maya.
www.animschool.com/pickerInfo.aspx
We don't have any linux licenses of Maya, and they don't offer them
through Autodesk's educational program,  so we're not sure how to
proceed.

We just need to know if we can rent Maya on linux --long enough to
compile AnimSchool Picker. I called and chatted Autodesk and got
different responses from different people.

Any Autodesk people here know?

Thanks,
Dave G



Autodesk Limited
Registered Office: One Discovery Place, Columbus Drive, Farnborough,
Hampshire GU14 0NZ  Registered in England and Wales, No. 1839239

Re: subscription for maya on linux

[David Gallagher]

On 10/15/2014 5:52 PM, Graham Bell wrote:

Hi David

To the best of my knowledge, you can 'rent' Maya on Linux, certainly here in 
the UK anyway, so I assume it will be the same in the US.


Thanks for the info!

It shouldn't make a difference with education either, you should be able to 
obtain a linux install, though I notice you can't download this version from 
the EDU website.


Someone from Autodesk here says the educational license doesn't work on 
linux?:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/installation-licensing/licensing-maya2013-in-linux-just-not-valid/m-p/3839396#M60613




Though this will have to be Network licensed, as Standalone (node-locked) isn't 
available on Linux. Network licenses are not OS specific, once their running on 
a server, any insall (Win/Mac/Linux) can just point to the server.



Thx,


Graham




-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of David Gallagher
Sent: 16 October 2014 00:15
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: subscription for maya on linux


Hello! We are planning on offering a linux version of AnimSchool Picker for 
Maya.
www.animschool.com/pickerInfo.aspx
We don't have any linux licenses of Maya, and they don't offer them through 
Autodesk's educational program,  so we're not sure how to proceed.

We just need to know if we can rent Maya on linux --long enough to compile 
AnimSchool Picker. I called and chatted Autodesk and got different responses 
from different people.

Any Autodesk people here know?

Thanks,
Dave G



Autodesk Limited
Registered Office: One Discovery Place, Columbus Drive, Farnborough, Hampshire 
GU14 0NZ
Registered in England and Wales, No. 1839239

subscription for maya on linux

[David Gallagher]

Hello! We are planning on offering a linux version of AnimSchool Picker 
for Maya.

www.animschool.com/pickerInfo.aspx
We don't have any linux licenses of Maya, and they don't offer them 
through Autodesk's educational program,  so we're not sure how to proceed.


We just need to know if we can rent Maya on linux --long enough to 
compile AnimSchool Picker. I called and chatted Autodesk and got 
different responses from different people.


Any Autodesk people here know?

Thanks,
Dave G

Re: subscription for maya on linux

[David Gallagher]

Sure, we'll get that done (I thought it already was working). Thanks,
Dave

On 10/15/2014 5:32 PM, Eric Turman wrote:
speaking of the Picker...is there going to be a 2015 release for 
Softimage? The one that we have for an earlier version does not work 
in 2015.


cheers,
-=Eric T

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 6:14 PM, David Gallagher 
davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com 
wrote:



Hello! We are planning on offering a linux version of AnimSchool
Picker for Maya.
www.animschool.com/pickerInfo.aspx
http://www.animschool.com/pickerInfo.aspx
We don't have any linux licenses of Maya, and they don't offer
them through Autodesk's educational program,  so we're not sure
how to proceed.

We just need to know if we can rent Maya on linux --long enough to
compile AnimSchool Picker. I called and chatted Autodesk and got
different responses from different people.

Any Autodesk people here know?

Thanks,
Dave G




--




-=T=-

Re: EOL showreel (again)

[David Gallagher]

If this gets off the ground, we'd be happy to provide tons of material 
with AnimSchool's Malcolm rig, made in Softimage.
Most people use it in Maya, but it was all authored in Softimage first 
and converted.



On 9/24/2014 4:27 AM, Leendert A. Hartog wrote:

Well, I'm not particularly versed in Mailing List parlance,
but I take this as a resounding don't bother.
;)

Greetz
Leendert

Re: synoptic editor script

[David Gallagher]

(If you're on Windows/Mac), you could also check out our free AnimSchool 
Picker for Softimage:

http://www.animschool.com/pickerInfo.aspx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTUe1YbPAPk

Much better than Synoptic.

On 9/19/2014 12:18 PM, Francisco Criado wrote:

Hi guys,

just trying to do a quick synoptic view for a simple rig i made, 
already loaded the image and made the hotspots but everytime i try to 
run it Error executing the script file appears.

About the script it only contains this kind of stuff:

sub MOSCA_CON_RIG.eff1(in_obj,in_mousebutton,in_keymodifier)
SynopticSelect in_obj, MOSCA_CON_RIG.eff
end sub

Any help appreciated!
F.

Re: Autodesk considering ditching perpetual licenses

[David Gallagher]

In the shifting sands of SoftwareAsService, the deal could change at any 
time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsW9MlYu31g
Later the price could increase to 699/mo. Once they own your way of 
accessing your data, your only choice is to pay in perpetuity.



On 8/29/2014 5:36 PM, Sebastien Sterling wrote:
pay 399 per month per license to access your data and functionality, 
and then pay another 399 a month later, and do it again and again :) 
sure... independents are catered to... :P



On 30 August 2014 00:32, Sergio Mucino sergio.muc...@gmail.com 
mailto:sergio.muc...@gmail.com wrote:


It was just a matter of time until Autodesk figured out that
software is not where the value is, but in the data created with
it. Going rental-only has upsides and downsides, and the biggest
downside I see is it becomes a very effective way to hold your
data hostage. You're forced to pay just go access your data. In
some cases, this may be irrelevant, in others, it won't be.

Another thing to consider is that sometimes, we forget to see
these maneuvers through Autodesk's eyes. Autodesk is much more
than the ME division. Autodesk has figured that, like Adobe, it
has the luxury of being not only the standard, but pretty much a
monopoly (other CAD products are as much as an alternative to
AutoCAD, as GIMP is an alternative to Photoshop). So, there's
little to fear there in terms of user migration.
Unfortunately for the ME division, their products do have very
viable alternatives out there (many topics on this list are
testament to that). I guess we'll have to wait and see (it
wouldn't be the first time either that a given statement never
comes to materialize itself).

I don't think this would affect the big guys as it would the
smaller shops and freelancers. I can see those walking away
definitively. Does Autodesk care? I'm not really sure. They
certainly didn't care for the entire user base of an entire
product (in terms of asking the users what they thought if the idea).

Anyway, don't wanna start the whole pain cycle all over again :-).
It's Friday, and I got better things to do than being online.
Like... Fallout 3!! :-D (maybe I can finish it in a few months...
After... What? 4 years playing it?).

Sergio Muciño.
Sent from my iPad.

On Aug 29, 2014, at 6:41 PM, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com
mailto:jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote:



From Si-Community, quoting  'jonmoore' at C4DCafe.com
http://C4DCafe.com

With /*upgrades due to be eliminated early next year,*/ next up
on Autodesk's chopping block is the perpetual license. Here is
the exchange from a recent conference call with financial
analysts (reproduced with permission of Seeking Alpha):

Matt Hedberg (RBC Capital Markets): Carl, I'm wondering, when
might you eliminate perpetual sales?
And maybe more generically, what is the framework for eventually
pulling this license option?

Carl Bass (Autodesk): I'll ask you Matt, what do you think is a
good timeframe to do that?

Matt Hedberg: I would certainly probably depend on the products,
but the market generally wants it-- seems to be wanting it
sooner than later.

Carl Bass: We’ve been looking at considering it seriously, and
we’ll talk again a little bit more about this in October [at
Autodesk's annual conference for financial analysts] what our
plans are. Right now, we have a fair amount of transition going
on in the business with the elimination of the upgrades and
certainly inspiring people to action. But as we move into next
year, we’ll have more to say on that.

_

 when might you eliminate perpetual sales?  [...] the market
generally wants it-- seems to be wanting it sooner than later.
Now who the heck is this market?

Is it a collection of users pressuring for this? (among other
(wrong but legal) things?)

Matt Hedberg is no user (RBC Capital Markets),  he speaks on
behalf of (all impersonal) investors and shareholders that each
have stakes in the ADSK title, as one of their eggs in their
varied baskets of eggs,
all calling for one thing,  -MORE-
(with quite noticably (and quite unsurprisingly) very little
concern for whatever implications to the end user if at all).

Are there conference calls where users can say..
hey Carl, users cant access their old scenes unless they  they
commit with the flexible option.
So when would you expect that to change? We've been waiting for that.

Carl may be a CEO, but it's not like he, along with other
executives don't answer to anyone.

Responsibility is to shareholders  first.
(who quite normally, predictably and constantly couldn't care less)


But here it's almost like their saying it's time!
time for what? well.. the hegemony of the company is at a 

Re: OT: a few Maya questions if I may

[David Gallagher]

What about the blendshapes?

On 6/13/2014 9:21 AM, Mario Reitbauer wrote:

For transfering those weights you can use abweightlifter.

Make a copy of your skinned objects and combine them and sew the 
border edges and freeze that object.

Skin this new object to all joints (face and body).

Use the new object as destination in abweightlifter and the head only 
as source and copy weights. Do the same for the body and the acording 
body joints.


more steps needed then in softimage but at least it works this way.
You can still keep your seperated objects and paint on them. every 
time you need a weightupdate you can just copy the weights again.



2014-06-13 16:18 GMT+02:00 Siew Yi Liang soni...@gmail.com 
mailto:soni...@gmail.com:


Use edit smooth skin - copy skin weights. Its better if you make a
selection of the verts that you want to copy over as selection
sets. Not ideal, but it works. (This is scriptable)

On 13 Jun 2014 05:11, Nicolas Esposito 3dv...@gmail.com
mailto:3dv...@gmail.com wrote:

Sorry if add a question:

Need to combine two enveloped meshes ( face and body ) and two
different rig ( facial rig and body rig ) into one

Soft workflow: First simply Parent the facial rig to the body
rig on the neck controller; then select the face first and
then the body, merge  transfer attributes ( tada! )

Similar/same workflow inside Maya is possible? reading all the
post related to Maya looks like the mesh combining is a big
deal...


2014-06-13 13:37 GMT+02:00 Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com
mailto:nagv...@gmail.com:

Thanks guys!
Not the answers I was hoping for but at least I now know :)
Love this list!
G

On 2014/06/13 12:31 PM, Mirko Jankovic wrote:

for #3 keep in mind that is NOT Scene explorer in
Softimage, nor it provides same functions so take care
there.
Nodes in Maya were always kind of labyrinth to me and SI
scene explorer was fresh air giving real overview and
control of everything in scene.
That is not something you have in Maya.
Not to mention Max's new scene explorer if anyone with
right mind would even call it like that.


On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 11:37 AM, Perry Harovas
perryharo...@gmail.com mailto:perryharo...@gmail.com
wrote:

And to show I am not just here to laugh, the answer
to #2 and #3 below:

#2: No, and whats more, do not fcheck while
rendering. That has always been a sure way to kill
your render. Seriously, you have to specify the end frame
to be at least 2 or 3 frames BEFORE the current frame
that is rendering in order to not crash. Been like
that ever since the beginning. Last time I checked, it
was still a bug. Of course, it depends upon the
renderer you are using, so if you are using mental
ray or (God help you) the Maya renderer, then you
cannot see it while it renders.
If you are using some other renderer with its own
render viewer, perhaps 3Delight, then you can watch
it render with that software's render viewer.

#3: You are correct, and to see more stuff, go to the
top (happily, I don't have Maya installed at the
moment, so I can't check the exact menu wording) of
the Outliner and you will see that you can enable the
viewing of more
things in the Outliner. It defaults to simplifying
your view (which I always hated) but you can change
that to show you every ugly little node it shoves
into your scene.




On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 5:26 AM, Gerbrand Nel
nagv...@gmail.com mailto:nagv...@gmail.com wrote:

Hey Guys
So I'm getting into Maya, and so far it's horrible.
I realize that Maya animators must be more
passionate about 3D than me, because there is no
way I would have put up with this shit for the
last 10 years.
Rant aside, I was hoping someone could help me
make sense of a few things.

1: selecting hierarchies:
I don’t understand why Maya insists on making the
whole hierarchy green when I only select the top
node. What is the benefit of this, and can I turn
it off?
I also find that when I select multiple objects
in a hierarchy, the second last thing I selected

Re: Shameless plug

[David Gallagher]

Congratulations! Looks great.

Thank you Softimage! I feel sick again.

On 6/3/2014 8:00 PM, Matt Lind wrote:


I don't get to say this often, but I've finished a project using 
Softimage which all can see.  Well, it's not actually 'finished' as 
it's an online game which is continuously maintained, updated, and 
ongoing, but it's now live and I can talk about it beyond 
generalizations.  Yay! My last completed project was my previous 
production --Barnyard the animated feature back in 2006.  It's been a 
long time coming, a relief, and refreshing to be able to refer to 
something I did in the current decade.


Wildstar officially launched last Friday night at midnight for early 
access, but opened up the flood gates today for everybody else.  The 
game is now running smoothly in North America and Europe for all to 
see and experience.  If you were part of the beta, let it be known 
significant improvements have been made since on all fronts. If you 
haven't tried the game yet, point your browser to 
www.wildstar-online.com http://www.wildstar-online.com and click on 
the shiny buttons.  The first 30 days are free with initial purchase.


Production started in 2005 using Softimage XSI v3.5 and launched with 
Softimage 2013 SP1 -- all of it in 32 bit land.  Majority of the 
content created in Softimage 7.5 which we used for roughly 5 years.  
Softimage was used for a heavy majority of the 3D artwork including 
characters, props, environments (other than the ground), buildings, 
dungeons, and everything inside of them.  We didn't use ICE at all 
(but not for lack of trying, and we tested heavily), so this is a good 
example of what the fundamental toolset can do.  Heavy use of custom 
properties, vertex colors, user normals, clusters, envelopes, UV 
spaces, and hardware (real time) shaders to customize and iterate on 
our content.  What made these simple components really nice is they 
were general and could be re-targeted for many uses outside of their 
original intended purpose.  Our particles were created and applied in 
Softimage, but simulated only in engine.  The SDK was used to write 
500+ tools to assist artists to create their content include tools 
like 'mimick' which is a command similar to GATOR which can transfer 
attributes, but do so on select subcomponents instead of the entire 
object, along with other bells and whistles. Often overlooked and  
understated, but Softimage scaling was incredibly powerful for 
controlling the squash and stretch scaling of deformers used in our 
envelopes to animate characters with cartoon whimsy and without ugly 
shearing often associated with other software.  It is used on every 
asset that moves.  Relational views were used to create tools such as 
a face editor to view and animate faces for our player characters, and 
adjust face customizations to see how they'd appear in the game as 
each of our characters have multiple faces and other components which 
can plug in like a Mr. Potato head doll.  It was important to see the 
various components in context side-by-side for comparison while 
creating the content so consistency could be maintained.  This was 
achieved using many 'object view' embedded into the relational view.  
Under the hood the face editor drove the animation mixer to perform 
face pose blending so artists could see the animation in real time on 
their characters.  Also, NURBS, that's right, NURBS surfaces were used 
to transfer face poses and clothing between characters.  The details 
must remain a trade secret, but I just had to mention we used NURBS in 
all their unfinished glory to get meaningful work done with 
significant contributions to the end product.  Render passes were used 
to re-dress environments to allow artists to create geometry once, 
then swap textures, shader settings, and other details many times for 
each variant of the environment.  Not only does it simplify the artist 
workflow by centralizing all their interaction to a few clicks, but it 
also allows assets to be packed into compact files for use in our 
engine. Render passes are used in housing and dungeons.  If we had to 
do this in Maya, we'd probably have to break up each variant into its 
own scene and have to figure out a way to merge all the scenes 
together that shared the same geometry.  These polished touches 
matter.  Softimage for the win.


So that said, while many 3D software could create the assets in their 
own time and space vacuum, Softimage (in my opinion) was the only 
software that could've tackled this project given our specific time, 
resources, and budget as there were many close calls along the way.  I 
say Softimage because many of the aforementioned features came out of 
the box with us ready to roll and not have to spend oodles of time 
reinventing the wheel.  Not having to write an animation mixer to do 
face pose blending, or render pass systems to do texture/shader swaps 
were incredible time savers and something we could lean on.  

Re: deselect components not working

[David Gallagher]

Thanks so much Jordi, Jason, Matt, Sebastien, and Jack.
I tried almost all of those things.

BUT, a complete system reboot has now fixed it!
Whew.



--

Have you checked the selection mode extended component selection and Si style 
selection?

I believe those are the names but will check in the office

Jb

Sent from my iPhone




On 3/27/2014 11:31 PM, Jason S wrote:
I remember something like that,   it was some program having global 
hotkeys (cant remember which) that was interfeiring.


You can try ending all other programs just to see, and if both Ctrl  
Shift also work elsewhere.


And maybe temporarily renaming your SI profile folder something else 
(resetting personal settings)

to see if it has anything to do with plugins or settings.

good luck!



On 03/28/14 0:59, David Gallagher wrote:

No, that didn't do it.


On 3/27/2014 10:40 PM, Sebastien Sterling wrote:

Does the Esc key do anything for you ?

Re: AnimSchool Student Showcase

[David Gallagher]

Hello! We will begin to remove Softimage assignment options, 
unfortunately, as it appears the students will no longer be able to 
download a student version, and we would be unwise to promote it for 
their sakes.


We will continue to offer our more advanced rigs in Softimage to the 
animation students who may already have it, and our free, public rigs as 
well.


I will continue to show Softimage's amazing capabilities to our students 
in my extra help sessions with the students.


Thanks for the compliment!
Dave G

On 3/27/2014 1:05 PM, Tenshi S. wrote:

Hello David,

I haven't heard what the school is going to do, but after all this 
disaster; AnimSchool will still be teaching Softimage?

I'm just curious, i always was amaze by those modeling/animation reels.


On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 2:16 PM, David Gallagher 
davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com 
wrote:



Yes, all AnimSchool student work.

We have different instructors for the various classes. I help in a
supplemental session. Thanks!



On 3/25/2014 1:00 PM, Jason S wrote:

Wow all that is student work?   Very good teacher I guess :)

On 03/25/14 14:25, Sebastien Sterling wrote:

That was quite a daring choice on Emilio's part, Vintage Disney
is very difficult to pull off.


On 25 March 2014 17:04, David Gallagher
davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com
mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com wrote:

In case you're interested, our Modeling/Rigging Student
Showcase.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW6-R2xDP8Ilist=UUPYQOUnJ3G1-QVUtZg62JNQ

I worked with many of the students on their models and face
rigs, mostly bringing their models into Softimage to edit
them for appeal. Note the work of list member Emilio Hernandez!

Dave G

Re: AnimSchool Student Showcase

[David Gallagher]

Oh, that's good. The educational side of this debacle was perhaps 
handled the worst.



On 3/27/2014 4:03 PM, Jon Hunt wrote:

Hi David,
I had a Skype call today from a chap from autodesk where it was 
confirmed from the feedback they have received, the free student 
versions shall be offered for another year (timeframe - iirc it was a 
year) to aid migration of the education community.


I have certainly found this useful in our plans
J


On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 9:04 PM, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com 
mailto:jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote:


Yet I'm sure that a number of positive silver linings would come
out of this in coming versions of Maya,
Cheers



On 03/27/14 16:36, Jason S wrote:


Nad Center in Montreal is also hit pretty hard..(among many)


The thought of where XSI7 was heading,
in that sense I can undestand what may have motivated the
measures taken in consequence.

Typical sentiment in Area Forum back then


/  .. with programs like Houdini and XSI 7 (with ICE)
gaining a lot of ground  in the development arena,
 is Autodesk actually taking a hard look at Maya
and making it more stable while providing new features?

The underlying theme I get from people on forums is if Maya
2009 doesn't deliver
or Autodesk doesn't lay out some sort of roadmap worthy of
sticking around,
people will in fact jump to XSI or Houdini./


Makes me wonder where XSI would be today, had it not been subject
to Laws of the Jungle.

I'm sure Maya would have been very much (if not more) alive 
well...  as well..
(having more reasons to keep-up)


On 03/27/14 15:32, David Gallagher wrote:

Hello! We will begin to remove Softimage assignment options,
unfortunately, as it appears the students will no longer be able
to download a student version, and we would be unwise to promote
it for their sakes.

We will continue to offer our more advanced rigs in Softimage to
the animation students who may already have it, and our free,
public rigs as well.

I will continue to show Softimage's amazing capabilities to our
students in my extra help sessions with the students.

Thanks for the compliment!
Dave G

Re: AnimSchool Student Showcase

[David Gallagher]

On 3/27/2014 6:07 PM, Jon Hunt wrote:

Angus,
I agree with not teaching EOL software it may not be approprite for 
you. However I'm not totally undecided or against migrating over the 3 
years. Obviously it depends on the set up of the syllabus and staffing.


Hi David,
I have many questions but my my initial questioning is around 
character setup and what is an appropriate autorigger (that could 
complement some rigging principles)


We currently use the rigging tools as well as the biped as well as 
some Gear.


The Maya ones I have on my research radar so far are:
abAutoRig
Advanced skeleton
Human IK
Mgear


Hi! We don't use auto riggers. We teach them how to do things manually, 
then script simple tasks. Then the last rigging course is learning how 
to automate tasks in python in Maya. So, make an auto-rigged body part.


I don't teach any of those classes -- I don't really keep current on 
Maya and don't enjoy rigging in it, so we have some other instructors 
involved in that. I teach the aesthetic side of things.





Kind regards,
Jon





On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 11:27 PM, David Gallagher 
davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com 
wrote:



On 3/27/2014 5:21 PM, Jon Hunt wrote:

My chat today was very constructive and supportive. I would
certainly request that if you haven't already, contact Maurice
and he can put you in touch with the best channels.

It's far from rosie as I have a lot of retraining in a short
space of time and a lot of equivalents to find/discover that they
don't exist. If there are any educators that already have Maya in
their syllabus that can offer some advice I would be grateful.


Thanks.

We teach in Maya  (with some support for Softimage, that is now
winding down.)
Do you have any specific question?




Kind regards,
Jon



On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 10:38 PM, David Gallagher
davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com
mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com wrote:


Oh, that's good. The educational side of this debacle was
perhaps handled the worst.



On 3/27/2014 4:03 PM, Jon Hunt wrote:

Hi David,
I had a Skype call today from a chap from autodesk where it
was confirmed from the feedback they have received, the free
student versions shall be offered for another year
(timeframe - iirc it was a year) to aid migration of the
education community.

I have certainly found this useful in our plans
J


On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 9:04 PM, Jason S
jasonsta...@gmail.com mailto:jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote:

Yet I'm sure that a number of positive silver linings
would come out of this in coming versions of Maya,
Cheers



On 03/27/14 16:36, Jason S wrote:


Nad Center in Montreal is also hit pretty hard..(among
many)


The thought of where XSI7 was heading,
in that sense I can undestand what may have motivated
the measures taken in consequence.

Typical sentiment in Area Forum back then


/  .. with programs like Houdini and XSI 7 (with ICE)
gaining a lot of ground in the development arena,
 is Autodesk actually taking a hard look at Maya
and making it more stable while providing new features?

The underlying theme I get from people on forums is
if Maya 2009 doesn't deliver
or Autodesk doesn't lay out some sort of roadmap
worthy of sticking around,
people will in fact jump to XSI or Houdini./


Makes me wonder where XSI would be today, had it not
been subject to Laws of the Jungle.

I'm sure Maya would have been very much (if not more)
alive  well...  as well..
(having more reasons to keep-up)


On 03/27/14 15:32, David Gallagher wrote:

Hello! We will begin to remove Softimage assignment
options, unfortunately, as it appears the students
will no longer be able to download a student version,
and we would be unwise to promote it for their sakes.

We will continue to offer our more advanced rigs in
Softimage to the animation students who may already
have it, and our free, public rigs as well.

I will continue to show Softimage's amazing
capabilities to our students in my extra help sessions
with the students.

Thanks for the compliment!
Dave G

deselect components not working

[David Gallagher]

All of a sudden, when I'm in component mode, Ctl-Shift no longer 
deselects. It toggles, just like Crtl. I can only get toggle and add 
to selection to work.


I'm looking around for some preference might have toggled/changed, 
restarting, changing keymaps, but coming up empty-handed.


Has anyone ever seen this? Ideas?

Re: deselect components not working

[David Gallagher]

I'm using 2011. I just tried 2013 though, and I'm seeing the same thing.

Crazy. I wonder if there's something wrong with my keyboard.


On 3/27/2014 8:06 PM, Matt Lind wrote:

What version of Softimage are you  using?  I've seen flakey behavior like this 
in 2013 SP1 (without explanation as to cause), but not so much in 2014 SP2.


Matt






-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of David Gallagher
Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2014 7:01 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: deselect components not working


All of a sudden, when I'm in component mode, Ctl-Shift no longer deselects. It toggles, just like 
Crtl. I can only get toggle and add to selection to work.

I'm looking around for some preference might have toggled/changed, restarting, 
changing keymaps, but coming up empty-handed.

Has anyone ever seen this? Ideas?

Re: deselect components not working

[David Gallagher]

No, that didn't do it.


On 3/27/2014 10:40 PM, Sebastien Sterling wrote:

Does the Esc key do anything for you ?


On 28 March 2014 03:07, David Gallagher davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com 
mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com wrote:



I'm using 2011. I just tried 2013 though, and I'm seeing the same
thing.

Crazy. I wonder if there's something wrong with my keyboard.



On 3/27/2014 8:06 PM, Matt Lind wrote:

What version of Softimage are you  using?  I've seen flakey
behavior like this in 2013 SP1 (without explanation as to
cause), but not so much in 2014 SP2.


Matt






-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of
David Gallagher
Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2014 7:01 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: deselect components not working


All of a sudden, when I'm in component mode, Ctl-Shift no
longer deselects. It toggles, just like Crtl. I can only get
toggle and add to selection to work.

I'm looking around for some preference might have
toggled/changed, restarting, changing keymaps, but coming up
empty-handed.

Has anyone ever seen this? Ideas?

AnimSchool Student Showcase

[David Gallagher]

In case you're interested, our Modeling/Rigging Student Showcase.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW6-R2xDP8Ilist=UUPYQOUnJ3G1-QVUtZg62JNQ

I worked with many of the students on their models and face rigs, mostly 
bringing their models into Softimage to edit them for appeal. Note the 
work of list member Emilio Hernandez!


Dave G

Re: AnimSchool Student Showcase

[David Gallagher]

Yes, all AnimSchool student work.

We have different instructors for the various classes. I help in a 
supplemental session. Thanks!



On 3/25/2014 1:00 PM, Jason S wrote:

Wow all that is student work?   Very good teacher I guess :)

On 03/25/14 14:25, Sebastien Sterling wrote:
That was quite a daring choice on Emilio's part, Vintage Disney is 
very difficult to pull off.



On 25 March 2014 17:04, David Gallagher davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com 
mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com wrote:


In case you're interested, our Modeling/Rigging Student Showcase.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW6-R2xDP8Ilist=UUPYQOUnJ3G1-QVUtZg62JNQ

I worked with many of the students on their models and face rigs,
mostly bringing their models into Softimage to edit them for
appeal. Note the work of list member Emilio Hernandez!

Dave G

Re: A confession

[David Gallagher]

Let me know if you find one.

On 3/21/2014 12:51 PM, Matt Lind wrote:


I think the key phrase is 'Maya renderer' -- who uses that anymore?

I'm almost positive there is an equivalent to object to cluster 
constraint out of the box in Maya.  I think it's classified as a 
deformer for meshes (wrap?), but I cannot say for sure as it's been 
many years since I've had to use  it.


Matt

*From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Jordi 
Bares

*Sent:* Friday, March 21, 2014 11:47 AM
*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
*Subject:* Re: A confession

You must be joking!!!

:-ARghghhgh

Jordi Bares

jordiba...@gmail.com mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com

On 20 Mar 2014, at 16:59, David Gallagher 
davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com 
wrote:





Exactly. For example, in Maya there is no object to cluster 
constraint, so you have to use a 3rd party tool Rivet to attach things 
to geometry. But if you need to apply a Smooth to render it in the 
Maya renderer, it explodes.

So, don't use the Maya renderer, or...
You can use djRivet, which uses follicles intead of edges, but which 
relies on UV's being present.

Works great.. until you change the UVs in any way.

Not really a non-linear workflow. It's more like a circular workflow.



On 3/20/2014 10:22 AM, Adam Sale wrote:

Something I have found in the last couple weeks, which I
personally find mind numbing is how tied to UVs some tools are.

Hair work... try and groom something, and then realize you need to
tweak your UVs. Gotta start over

Painting weights. Gotta have UV's to do smoothing.  - Edit the
Uv's.. start over.

On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 9:02 AM, Mirko Jankovic
mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote:

but why scripting is new artist tool!

REAL artist model in full screen text editor! who needs viewport
at all

start notepad, and begin typing coordinates for each vertex...

that is how REAL hardcore stuff is done.

buttons are for p...

On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 4:34 PM, Morten Bartholdy
x...@colorshopvfx.dk mailto:x...@colorshopvfx.dk wrote:

+1

IMHO scripting is for making crappy software work at all (Maya)
and for creating something special with good software that has
buttons for all the ordinary stuff (XSI).

I simply don't have time to learn scripting, not least because my
mind doesn't lend itself to that kind of thinking and remembering
syntax etc. My time is better spent figuring out how to do great
stuff with ICE. The only scripting I do is some half arsed copy
pasting from the script editor to facilitate unified pass setups
across multiple shots and similar stuff on that level. That I can
do :)

Morten


Den 20. marts 2014 kl. 13:42 skrev Greg Punchatz
g...@janimation.com mailto:g...@janimation.com:

Just learn to script

It's not that easy for every one...

My brain simply does not work that way, I would rather keep
polishing my art skills and learn all the amazing new painting
tools  than learn to script. Being person with dyslexia makes
its more than a bit difficult for me to jump on the scripting
train.

All this talk of the reality of the need for constant
scripting as part of your daily work flows in Maya makes me
literally sick to my stomach

Sent from my iPhone

Re: A confession

[David Gallagher]

Exactly. For example, in Maya there is no object to cluster constraint, 
so you have to use a 3rd party tool Rivet to attach things to geometry. 
But if you need to apply a Smooth to render it in the Maya renderer, it 
explodes.

So, don't use the Maya renderer, or...
You can use djRivet, which uses follicles intead of edges, but which 
relies on UV's being present.

Works great.. until you change the UVs in any way.

Not really a non-linear workflow. It's more like a circular workflow.



On 3/20/2014 10:22 AM, Adam Sale wrote:
Something I have found in the last couple weeks, which I personally 
find mind numbing is how tied to UVs some tools are.


Hair work... try and groom something, and then realize you need to 
tweak your UVs. Gotta start over
Painting weights. Gotta have UV's to do smoothing.  - Edit the Uv's.. 
start over.





On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 9:02 AM, Mirko Jankovic 
mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote:


but why scripting is new artist tool!
REAL artist model in full screen text editor! who needs viewport
at all
start notepad, and begin typing coordinates for each vertex...
that is how REAL hardcore stuff is done.

buttons are for p...


On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 4:34 PM, Morten Bartholdy
x...@colorshopvfx.dk mailto:x...@colorshopvfx.dk wrote:

+1

IMHO scripting is for making crappy software work at all
(Maya) and for creating something special with good software
that has buttons for all the ordinary stuff (XSI).

I simply don't have time to learn scripting, not least because
my mind doesn't lend itself to that kind of thinking and
remembering syntax etc. My time is better spent figuring out
how to do great stuff with ICE. The only scripting I do is
some half arsed copy pasting from the script editor to
facilitate unified pass setups across multiple shots and
similar stuff on that level. That I can do :)

Morten


Den 20. marts 2014 kl. 13:42 skrev Greg Punchatz
g...@janimation.com mailto:g...@janimation.com:

Just learn to script
It's not that easy for every one...
My brain simply does not work that way, I would rather
keep polishing my art skills and learn all the amazing new
painting tools  than learn to script. Being person with
dyslexia makes its more than a bit difficult for me to
jump on the scripting train.
All this talk of the reality of the need for constant
scripting as part of your daily work flows in Maya makes
me literally sick to my stomach

Sent from my iPhone

Re: ICE - When will we have todays functionality in Maya?

[David Gallagher]

This email was fascinating. I'm curious though; we've been told we can't 
hear roadmaps because they run afoul of SEC rules. And yet, here we get 
a somewhat detailed roadmap.


Dave G

On 3/20/2014 5:30 PM, Adrian Graham wrote:

I suppose it's time I chime in to this thread, and this discussion board.

I work at Autodesk as the Product Designer for Bifrost (among other FX-related 
components in Maya), working with Marcus Nordenstam.

I'm not entirely sure where to start, as there's a ton of activity surrounding 
the introduction of Bifrost in Maya 2015 and the EOL of Softimage. I've been 
lurking on this board for a couple of weeks, so I'm only familiar with the 
discussions (and rants) that have happened since then.

Let's start here: because Bifrost is a new and complex framework we're 
designing from the ground-up, we're releasing it in stages. We've been 
referring to these as the 'generalist', 'FX TD' and 'developer' releases.

Maya 2015 is essentially the 'generalist' release, meaning it will be most 
useful for people who do not need to gain access to the underlying graph and 
can live with a fairly simplified workflow to get liquid FX jobs done. This 
doesn't mean that other users shouldn't try it out, just that they may feel 
blocked by the current limitations. But note, this will not be, in any way, an 
equivalent to ICE.

The next release, the 'FX TD' release, will expose the procedural graph and 
allow much more control over the solvers and order of operation, just what you 
would expect in an ICE-like procedural workflow. The difference here (and this 
is where Marcus can chime in), is that we're designing Bifrost to be a visual 
programming language, where you will be able to dive down into any compound to 
reveal the basic programmatic or mathematical nodes that drive higher-level 
functionality. This is very much like ICE. Here's the difference, however: 
these graphs are JIT-compiled for efficiency, then run as virtual executables 
by the Bifrost Computation Engine. More on that in another thread.

The third (and by no means final) release we call the 'developer' release, 
where you'll be able to write your own custom C++ nodes and utilize the full 
Bifrost API (C++ and possibly Python). You can then insert these nodes into 
your graph, call them as rendertime procedurals or whatever.

So are we simply tacking on a half-baked feature onto Maya? Absolutely not. Are 
we going to stop Bifrost development after Maya 2015? No way, there's SO much 
stuff we're working on, but there's obviously only so many people we can put on 
the team, even for a huge company like Autodesk.

And I know this sounds like a cliche, but we're really trying to do things 
right in designing a future-proof framework. We spent a lot of time figuring 
out how to decouple Bifrost from Maya; to pass data between the two processes 
and not have Bifrost dependent on Maya, but rather Maya be a client to Bifrost. 
This means that we'll eventually be able to run Bifrost as a standalone app, on 
the cloud, on a farm, on your gaming system, iPad, Atari 2600, etc.

If you feel this first release of Bifrost to be limited in functionality, consider that 
we had to postpone development on certain features in order to deliver a solid usable, 
basic (if simplified) initial workflow. We'd have much rather done this than pushed an 
unfinished solution through the pipe to increase the number of bullet points on the 
back of the box. We're just laying the foundation at this point.

Mist, foam and spray are some things you may have heard that are indeed missing 
from Bifrost in Maya 2015. We had to choose between developing that or focusing 
on things like threading, furthering development on the FLIP solver or memory 
management, all of which take precedence over furthering the implementation of 
Bifrost particles.

We've also had the opportunity to design the Bifrost codebase from the 
ground-up, utilizing modern libraries that Maya or Softimage would otherwise 
not have access to. This is why everything is so well threaded in Bifrost. I 
have to shamelessly disclose that I have a dual-CPU machine with 32 cores, and 
to see (and hear) them all humming at 100% is a marvelous thing. That, and Maya 
is still interactive and fluid whilst computation takes place in the 
background. This is totally new for Maya, but I know a other apps can do this.

So, is Bifrost ready to take the place of Softimage ICE? No, not yet.

In Maya 2015, Bifrost is a procedural FX framework with a FLIP liquid solver, 
based on the technology seen in Naiad. But as time goes by, Bifrost can be 
involved in more and more components of Maya, and give users access to graphs 
for anything they do in Maya, not unlike how ICE works. As you can guess, it 
sounds like a hell of a lot of work, and would involve all areas of design and 
development. The next step is opening the graph, which means we have to improve 
the Node Editor and devise new workflows to deal with, for 

Re: Softimage user migrating to Maya

[David Gallagher]

Why is it necessary to dump on Emilio or require that he have a proper 
pedigree of participation?


Much of what Emilio is saying is what I'm feeling. I'm so angry, and 
feel that Softimage EOL is a huge blow to my... quality of life. For the 
first time in my life I've actually had thoughts of detaching from being 
hands-on the industry in a few years. That makes me mad.


Thanks for making me laugh, Emilio, and I appreciate the passion.
Dave G

On 3/20/2014 6:00 PM, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:

Do we really need threads like this?
This list has gone to shit, and while some people have been 
consistently or predominantly posting interesting and constructive 
thoughts or initiatives in the process (Jordi, Tim, Alastair etc.), 
some others have,however, elected to do nothing but post snarky BS and 
one liners that are nothing but rioting and non-sense, largely people 
who were practically unheard of before this debacle, many of which 
completely unseen before just a few years, if not even just months ago.


Some of it was warranted and all, it's tough times, but at some point 
it'd be nice if the community AD inflicted such a blow on didn't eat 
itself out into uselessness from the inside.
This list could still be useful for something more informative and 
constructive than posting funny pictures, could we please make an 
effort to enable a recovery?

Re: ICE - When will we have todays functionality in Maya?

[David Gallagher]

Yes, definitely giving them a chance! If they turn Maya/Bifrost into 
something great that can give me back what I just lost, believe me I 
will be one happy guy.


On 3/20/2014 6:29 PM, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:
The product will be released within the quarter. To be fair, that info 
if you were on beta has been consistent and available for quite a 
while now, so it's not some last minute stunt.


Marcus, Adrian and the rest of the team are nice guys, give them a chance.


On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 11:17 AM, David Gallagher 
davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com 
wrote:


This email was fascinating. I'm curious though; we've been told we
can't hear roadmaps because they run afoul of SEC rules. And yet,
here we get a somewhat detailed roadmap.

Dave G

Re: How long will it take (?)

[David Gallagher]

On 3/20/2014 12:33 PM, Yang-hai Eakes wrote:


Hello David Gallagher,

I would first like to thank you for sharing all this. As many of us at 
Autodesk, I honestly think you have some very strong points here and 
please rest assured that we are listening. I will be discussing these 
points in detail internally to see what could be done, sooner rather 
than later.


Animation workflows, which for me includes rigging, is very important 
and will be an area of focus for Maya over the up-coming releases. The 
out-of-the-box workflows and the artist friendly mentality that 
Softimage has, are definitely areas that Maya would benefit from. We 
do want to bring some of these workflows into Maya. We simply need to 
make sure we properly understand, design and implement them, that is… 
in a meaningful/useful manner… basically respecting the workflows. 
This will be part of our thought process and plans for Maya moving 
forward. This is why this feedback is so important, so again, thank you.


We are also getting a lot of similar feedback from many channels and 
need to respectfully take the time to listen, understand and compile 
that feedback. I “will” follow-up to this thread in a more detailed 
manner, but please do expect the detailed feedback to take some time, 
as I want to be confident about what can or cannot be addressed in a 
timely manner.




Glad to hear it!
I would be happy to web conference with someone there to show the 
workflows in more detail.


Thanks,
Dave G

Again, I know I’m not the only one to agree with your point of view 
and feedback, so thank you for sharing this in detail.


Regards,

Yang-hai

Autodesk Designer

*From:* David Gallagher
*Sent:* ‎Wednesday‎, ‎March‎ ‎19‎, ‎2014 ‎5‎:‎34‎ ‎PM
*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com,
davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com


Thanks for posting that Jason.

I'll keep using Softimage for AnimSchool's rigs.
Over the next few years, I'll be looking for some software that
allows me to do those things.


On 3/19/2014 3:01 PM, Jason S wrote:

(previously posted, yet I think it's worth a new thread with alink to 
the original Maya / XSI article)

  


Here is a notable(_comprehensive_)  post on rigging from David 
Gallagher

in response to the super long and(seemingly purposefully)  diluted article  http://mayavxsi.blogspot.com/2011/09/rigging-m-22-x-15.html  


comparing SI / Maya rigging  (concerning rigging workflow -alone-)

weighing pro  cons, while overweighing pros, underweighing cons,

overlooking a bunch of things(most of which outlined below)

identifying things like the ability to use locators as rig components as a 
con

  


and ending with ;

/The time that Maya saves with its rigging technology and superior 
workflow, outweighs the additional cost./

  

  


/So how long will it take to get there?/

*David Gallagher*



image001.gif

Jan 8

I rigged on quite a few characters in Maya at Blue Sky
Studios and now (Softimage) AnimSchool.
We offer the well-known Malcolm rig for free.

There is no comparison to rigging in Softimage and
Maya--not the kind of rigging I do.

I often assume by now they have better workflows in Maya,
but I'm often surprised to find how convoluted and
limiting the workflows are to this day.

Most Maya people must not know there are better ways of
working
or aren't doing the kinds of things I am, because the
difference is profound.

- At any point in the rigging process, you can make edits
in the model stack to change the shape and topology of the
model.

After experimenting, you can freeze that part of the stack
and continue on with that new shape,
retaining almost every bit of work you've done.

YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY.

This difference is huge. You can work toward completion
without fear of losing work.

You can experiment freely--knowing it's fine if you want
to make a major change.

I'm never afraid of losing blendshape work.

And if the changes are really significant, you can always
Gator your way out of a jam.

- You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry,
modelessly, instead of on a separate blendshape object.

- There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes.
In Softimage, you go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a
few points.
In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several
plug-ins and scripts

Re: Digital Golem : Brillant and beautiful

[David Gallagher]

Our pipeline is Softimage-Arnold-Nuke and despite all the turmoil I 
can tell you I have no intention whatsoever to change that in the near 
future.

It works, it works well, and nothing else right now can touch it.

So Autodesk can shove their “innovation” right back up their 
collective arse and choke on it -- as far as I’m concerned they’ve 
just killed a member of my family.


Exactly right.
Trying to keep my anger tamped down.



Cheers,
Jean-Louis


On 19 Mar 2014, at 04:39, Tenshi Sama tenshu...@gmail.com 
mailto:tenshu...@gmail.com wrote:




Nice! All in Softimage?


On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 8:18 PM, Francisco Criado 
malcriad...@gmail.com mailto:malcriad...@gmail.com wrote:


Excelent work, so nice!


On Tuesday, March 18, 2014, olivier jeannel
olivier.jean...@noos.fr mailto:olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote:

https://vimeo.com/groups/ice/videos/89426397

Kudos to Digital Golem !

Re: Softimage webinar - Q/A - finally uploaded

[David Gallagher]

I've been thinking of doing some videos entitled You can't buy this 
and showing the amazing things I can do with Softimage facial rigging. 
But sorry -- you can't buy this software.




On 3/19/2014 1:35 PM, Bk wrote:
I'd love for AD to agree to a  First get an expert to do it in 
Softimage and get an expert do it in Maya comparitive workflow video 
series.

 It would be most entertaining.
Especially when you start bringing ice into the equation. Ive had some 
experience of this before. One notable occasion went  Me in ice -30 
mins.. 2 guys in Maya- a week and a half, but to be fair, they would 
usually achieve things in under a week.




On 19 Mar 2014, at 19:22, Nicolas Esposito 3dv...@gmail.com 
mailto:3dv...@gmail.com wrote:


I asked directly to Maurice to do some videos to compare the workflow 
of a single task using Softimage and Maya, similar to what Emilio 
Hernandez did for the Dorrito technique


I really hope that they'll do that because right now I want to know 
how the workflow will change


By the way, on the area blog there's no Softimage 2015 announcement...

Jesus...even with all those request and question they just don't care 
about Softimage, not even a single line...except the farewell from 
Mark Schnnoegel



2014-03-19 19:55 GMT+01:00 Paulo César Duarte paulocdua...@gmail.com 
mailto:paulocdua...@gmail.com:


What I don't understand is howthey want me tomakethe transition
toa software thatdoesn't have thetools thatI usedbefore? Such as
ICEmainly,in MaxorMaya2015I won't havemyworkflowagain,sothere is
notransition.

I will continueusingSoftimageas long as I can, and
complementwithHoudini,Modo or Blenderwhennecessary... because
these softwares are those that more listen to your users, and
that is the future for me.


2014-03-19 14:23 GMT-03:00 David Rivera
activemotionpictu...@yahoo.com
mailto:activemotionpictu...@yahoo.com:

So I head onto:
http://area.autodesk.com/products/features/softimage , right?
and I skipped intro (in a 1 hour lenght video, skipping intro
is going straight to the middle, after all the verbose). So
what they´re doing? Talking about maya in a softimage video.

Quitted. Closed the tab on browser. Go on with my life.
Now I´m pissed, because at the last announcement there
wasn´t even a word of consideration for 15 years career on
softimage.
Not even an apology for taking away the the one thing that
supports families and pays bills...

*David Rivera*
/3D Compositor/Animator/
LinkedIN http://ec.linkedin.com/in/3dcinetv
Behance https://www.behance.net/3dcinetv
VFX Reel https://vimeo.com/70551635




-- 
www.pauloduarte.ws http://www.pauloduarte.ws

Re: Softimage webinar - Q/A - finally uploaded

[David Gallagher]

$38 per foot. If it's educational *which this certainly would be* ;) the 
first 200 square feet is half price.


Our AnimSchool booth in 2012 was 20x10:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qc37eMNFYFo/UC_O6fCXNcI/Amg/Kiwd6LS21NY/s1600/siggraphPhoto16.JPG

A booth like Zbrush, etc is about 3x that size.
http://s2014.siggraph.org/sites/default/files/SIGGRAPH%202014%20Floor%20Plan.pdf


On 3/19/2014 2:28 PM, Sebastien Sterling wrote:

how much is a siggrath booth i wonder ?



On 19 March 2014 20:15, Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.com 
mailto:perryharo...@gmail.com wrote:


I would SO do that.


On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 4:10 PM, Leendert A. Hartog
hirazib...@live.nl mailto:hirazib...@live.nl wrote:

An unofficial EOL showreel might be an idea also, if you can
get enough studios to participate...

-- 


Leendert A. Hartog -- Softimage hobbyist
AKA Hirazi Blue -- Administrator  @, NOT the owner of
si-community.com http://si-community.com





-- 






Perry Harovas
Animation and Visual Effects

http://www.TheAfterImage.com http://www.theafterimage.com/

Re: Softimage webinar - Q/A - finally uploaded

[David Gallagher]

HA! That's what I was thinking.

Or we can register as the company Autodisk and announce our *brand new 
software package* and show all the amazing things you can do with it.   ;)



On 3/19/2014 3:54 PM, Bk wrote:
Id they don't show, we could pretend we /are/ Autodesk and make an 
official statement that we are proud to reintroduce Softimage as the 
flagship product to our portfolio of digital content creation tools.





On 19 Mar 2014, at 21:47, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com 
mailto:ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote:


The past few years they had a booth and no user group meeting.  Last 
year they reversed course and had a user group meeting, but no booth.


What they do this year remains to be seen.


Matt



-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Rob Chapman

Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 2:31 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com 
mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

Subject: Re: Softimage webinar - Q/A - finally uploaded

were Autodesk actually at Siggraph last year..? will they be there 
this year?


http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-1112659.html



On 19 March 2014 21:20, Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.com 
mailto:perryharo...@gmail.com wrote:

If this actually happens, I love the fact that Autodesk created this
problem for themselves on the Siggraph show floor, where they always
think they are king.

The other funny part is, they could have screwed us just like they
did, but if they handled it far different (meaning with humility and
care), this may not have become such a shit storm.

OK, it still would have, but we perhaps wouldn't be discussing things
like this (and hopefully doing them)...

They are doing the equivalent of walking along a wooden bridge with an
automatic rifle, just shooting at the wood in front of them, thinking
it will get rid of Softimage as well as impress everyone else with the
fireworks, but all it is doing is weakening the bridge and the bridge
will eventually snap.

Re: Autodesk webinar

[David Gallagher]

I'm starting to realize there isn't some new Autodesk software that's 
going to fill this spot, and Maya isn't going to do it even after a few 
years of releases.


I'm so angry with Autodesk for this absurd move.

Where do I sign up for the resistance?
Dave G

On 3/18/2014 12:34 PM, Paul Griswold wrote:

Thanks Maurice,

So the information I have today is - most of my work is done with 
Softimage and there is 0% chance it will be continued.


Autodesk has a 99% failure rate internally with creating innovative 
products. (your words)


Autodesk wants me to move to Maya, an old, outdated package that 
cannot do what I need now, requires significant work (scripts, 
plugins, etc.) to make usable, is not conducive to small shops or 
freelancers, and there is no promise that it will ever be able to do 
what Softimage can do right now.  Making that move not only moves me 
back to the junior level, but reduces my pay, lowers the quality of my 
work, and significantly hampers my ability to compete.


Bifrost is being developed at a company with a 99% failure rate with 
creating innovative products.  Bifrost is not an ICE replacement and 
may never be one.


And, apparently in this industry you should not have all your eggs in 
one basket.  Unfortunately Autodesk bought the goose laying the golden 
eggs and wrung it's neck.  Now there's no more eggs.  I also find it 
ironic that someone from ADSK just said we shouldn't have all our eggs 
in one basket, yet they want everyone to buy suites and are trying to 
emulate the Adobe model  Or was that just something you say 
because there's really no answer for what Autodesk has done?


Yes, I think I can make a decision based on that information.


-Paul




On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 1:47 PM, Maurice Patel 
maurice.pa...@autodesk.com mailto:maurice.pa...@autodesk.com wrote:


Hi Paul, Adam
We do understand that people build their livelihoods on our
software. This is something we take seriously, although (with good
reason)  you might find it hard to believe right now. Every year
we spend significant resources maintaining legacy code so that the
new features we add to our products don't radically disrupt
customers workflows. We really do try not to take unnecessary
risks with our software. And we have an incredibly long track
record  of developing software for the long term - one can just
look at AutoCAD and 3ds Max. Even acquisitions like Flame and Maya
have continued to be extensively developed at Autodesk as have
other product acquisitions.

We have stated and are committed both to developing our core
products and to innovating. Our decision to focus on 3ds max and
Maya was so we could continue to do both adequately (not one or
the other). We are a high tech company so it wouldn't be realistic
to expect us not to try to innovate even if the risks are high.
That does not mean that is all we do.

I am not denying that Softimage customers are now facing some
challenging decisions. But several have said on the forum, and I
would personally agree with them, that in this industry - as in
any high-tech industry - it can be risky to have all your eggs in
one basket, even if that means looking outside of Autodesk (and
there are some very interesting solutions out there). Giants fall
(look at SGI). We are not immune to that either. Personally, I do
not think that will happen, but no one at Autodesk will ever make
any explicit guarantees about the future. All I can say is make
your software decisions based on what you see today - anything
else would be, to a certain extent, vaporware and speculation,
especially the farther out you look.

maurice


Maurice Patel
Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134 tel:514%20954-7134

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of
Paul Griswold
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2014 12:15 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Autodesk webinar

In Softimage we have a production-proven, solid tool.  ICE works
TODAY, not 2 years from today, not in a dream of a product called
Bifrost, but right NOW.

Are you telling everyone here who has based their ENTIRE business
around Softimage, we should trust Autodesk to have a fully
functioning tool ready that will do EVERYTHING Softimage can do
TODAY by the time Softimage hits the end?  We should believe that
after you've just admitted that Skyline was a failure?

These aren't a bunch of ideas or concepts here, these are our
businesses!  We feed our families, we pay our bills, we survive
based on Softimage and now we have to hope that somehow Bifrost is
not in the 99% failure, but 1% innovation?

Do you 

Re: Top List of ICE Nodes That Cover 80% of What You Do With The Toolset

[David Gallagher]

You wrote all that on your phone?  :)

On 3/15/2014 1:31 PM, Bradley Gabe wrote:
This is what concerns me about the future for where Autodesk takes 
their DCC flagships. Bullet-point thinking.


It's not any specific list of ICE nodes that make it so powerful and 
useful, rather it's how well it plays within the data structures of 
the rest of the application.


Everyone who ever looked at ICE from the outside, without ever going 
into the daily battle that is production, simply saw it as a particle 
system (and maybe tipped their hat to it's clever ability to 
multiprocesses). And despite the SI community's repeated insistence 
ICE was far more important than that, a particle system is precisely 
how it was marketed by Autodesk, providing continuing evidence that 
Autodesk didn't know what they actually had, didn't want to listen to 
the people who were actually using it... or didn't care.


In real estate, they say the most important things are location, 
location, location. In CG production, the most important things are 
workarounds, workarounds, workarounds. ICE has provided SI users with 
a highly potent, splendidly integrated, reasonably artist friendly, 
visual node based toolkit for discovering and developing production 
workarounds, without having to resort to coding for every little 
thing. Particle effects are merely a byproduct of the system.


It was through interacting with ICE that I developed a much more 
profound understanding of CG data structures, an intuitive sense of 
how the linear algebra drives transforms, of how I could influence 
operators to do the things I could only imagine in times past. Every 
day in production is a day of experiment and discovery using ICE. Do 
you have any idea how empowering that feels after years of waiting for 
technical help from developers that never arrived?


Furthermore, after years of tech experimenting and workarounds with 
ICE, my ability to develop non-ICE tools for animation, deformation, 
etc, had increased drastically. Tools that used to require a week for 
me to work out the math, I could develop in less than a day, because 
ICE had both provided me with enough practice to greatly enhance my 
thinking, but also because I could use it as a prototype laboratory to 
quickly hash out more difficult concepts, prior to sitting down to 
write out the code.


If you're wondering why people are concerned about life without XSI, 
these are some pretty major reasons. You're going to have to convince 
us the future of node-based work in Maya/Max isn't a bullet point list 
of nodes for creating particle or fluid sim effects. Rather, that it's 
a fully developed, operator development kit, from which particles, 
fluids, simulations, and all kinds of production workarounds, 
workarounds, workarounds are possible!


-Bradley


Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 15, 2014, at 12:00 PM, Andy Jones andy.jo...@gmail.com 
mailto:andy.jo...@gmail.com wrote:


On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 6:41 AM, Chris Vienneau 
chris.vienn...@autodesk.com mailto:chris.vienn...@autodesk.com wrote:


Do you guys think there is a top list of nodes in ICE and
compounds you all use that cover 80% of what you do with the toolset?


Nope

Re: Export rigs from Softimage to Maya

[David Gallagher]

I've done a lot of exporting. I use slightly earlier versions of Maya 
and Softimage for maximum animator compatibility, so maybe this is 
easier with later versions of Softimage/Maya. It takes me DAYS to 
transfer everything perfectly for our AnimSchool rigs. And it sort of 
works -- for the important parts. The envelope and shapes. They come 
over exactly matching. But you have to do it in bits and pieces. Don't 
expect the control rig to carry over effortlessly. You have to recreate 
IK chains.


Jack Kao has done some of this too for AnimSchool and might have better 
workflows.


I purposely use things in Softimage I know I can transfer/recreate 
easily in Maya.


My workflow is to use .xsi for the heirarchy. You'll need to recreate 
the control rig using those parts.


For the envelope, sometimes it only works by isolating the envelope and 
exporting JUST the object and the deformers ONLY in a flattened 
heirarchy. I'm not sure why that is. Select the envelope/s, then select 
all the deformers (Select Deformer from Envelope). Unparent all those. 
Group them all under a new transform group. So they are all flattened.

Export that via .xsi
CrossWalkExport to Maya.
Use .xsi 5.0 binary. Everyting else seems to crash.
Import into a fresh Maya scene.
Save the weights using Comet's Save Weights.
Get a list of the deformers
Open up your main Maya rig file and import the weights.

For the shapes, the .xsi will include shapes, but I delete them because 
they are not connected to objects.
So I use this tool for exporting all the shapes as separate objects. 
(attached)
Turn off/down your undo before using this tool. It will eat all the 
memory otherwise.
Select the shapes in the explorer you want to export, then 
ShapeCopySelectedShapeKeyInNewModel
It creates a ton of objects. Export them to Maya and make them all 
blendshapes to the object.


Once everything is up and working in Maya, I can make edits in 
Softimage, and just export positions for matching or new shapes/envelope 
weights.


I use a script for making the maya scene (all selected objects) match 
all the positions from the exported Softimage heirarchy (via fbx or .xsi):

(in worldspace)

string $selected[]=`ls -sl`;

for($x=0; $xsize($selected); ++$x){

string $fbxVersion = (yourNamespace: + $selected[$x]);

print $fbxVersion;

float $translate[3]=`xform -q -rp -ws $fbxVersion`;

move -a -ws -rpr $translate[0] $translate[1] $translate[2] $selected[$x];

float $rotation[3]=`xform -q -rotation -ws $fbxVersion`;

rotate -a -ws $rotation[0] $rotation[1] $rotation[2] $selected[$x];

};


or sometimes the local space works better.

string $selected[]=`ls -sl`;

for($x=0; $xsize($selected); ++$x){

string $fbxVersion = (yourNamespace: + $selected[$x]);

print $fbxVersion;

float $translate[3]=`xform -q -t $fbxVersion`;

move -a -ls $translate[0] $translate[1] $translate[2] $selected[$x];

float $rotation[3]=`xform -q -rotation -os $fbxVersion`;

rotate -a -os $rotation[0] $rotation[1] $rotation[2] $selected[$x];

};



I use some scripts for listing all the constraints and expressions in 
Softimage. Then I reformat them to be like mel commands.

I think Eric Thivierge wrote those for me. Thanks Eric!




On 3/11/2014 4:57 AM, Nicolas Esposito wrote:

Hi guys,

Since I'm not a Maya user I would like to ask you a couple of things 
regarding exporting a rigged character from Softimage to Maya.


I'm using Species and there is already a video on how to export the 
rig to Maya, but, even using Gear rig or a custom one, it is possible 
to export the shadow rig as well?


My few attempts on send a rig to Maya, or send a rig from Maya to 
Softimage resolved always into Softimage crashing ( 2013 x64 no SP ), 
so I was force to delete everything on the rig, except just the 
skeletal rig and the meshes, without any shadow rig/controllers


So, anyone succesfully ported a rig from Softimage to Maya, or if in 
Maya, in order to have the shadow rig, you just have to built it from 
scratch, or use one of Maya tools in order to generate the shadow rig 
( similar to Softimage? )


Cheers

Nicolas



function XSILoadPlugin( in_reg )
{
in_reg.Author = hpayer;
in_reg.Name = CopyShapeKeyPlugin;
in_reg.Email = ;
in_reg.URL = ;
in_reg.Major = 1;
in_reg.Minor = 0;

in_reg.RegisterCommand(CopyShapeKey,CopyShapeKey);

in_reg.RegisterMenu(siMenuTbAnimateDeformShapeID,CopyShapeKey_Menu,false,false);
//RegistrationInsertionPoint - do not remove this line

return true;
}

function XSIUnloadPlugin( in_reg )
{
var strPluginName;
strPluginName = in_reg.Name;
Application.LogMessage(strPluginName +  has been unloaded.);
return true;
}

function CopyShapeKey_Init( ctxt )
{
var oCmd;
oCmd = ctxt.Source;
oCmd.Description = ;
oCmd.ReturnValue = true;

return true;
}

function CopyShapeKey_Execute(  )
{
logmessage(selection.count);

Re: does anyone benefit at all from Softimage being killed?

[David Gallagher]

Well, it was a difficult decision, we're assured by Autodesk.

Not as difficult as it is for us.

On 3/11/2014 1:16 PM, Ed Manning wrote:

Serious question.

Autodesk has gone on at some length about serving their ME customers 
better, not dispersing their resources on multiple applications, etc. 
 We have now heard, especially here on the Softimage list, but also in 
other forums, from several companies and scores of individual users 
who are unhappy about this, and who feel that their work and their 
income will suffer as a result.  Many of us have had private 
conversations with people who are unhappy about it, some of whom speak 
with the weight (if not the official voice) of sizable studios behind 
them. Many of those studios are mostly built around Maya pipelines, 
but use Softimage as well.


So far as I can tell, not ONE Autodesk customer, /even those who 
primarily use Maya and already use Houdini/, believes that they will 
not be hurt by this. I haven't heard anyone say, thank God -- at last 
I can save a fortune by not deploying Softimage. For any shop that 
does transition from Softimage, the very best-case possible scenario 
is simply that costs stay about the same -- after all, they will have 
just as many, if not more seats to provision.  But no one seems to 
even think the best-case scenario is plausible.


Every single company that uses Softimage, uses it for some good 
reason. After all, since it's not the market leader, there HAS to be 
some special advantage to using it, otherwise we wouldn't go to the 
extra trouble of using it, integrating it, and staffing projects for 
it (and that last one can be a LOT of extra trouble).  Whether you 
believe that reason is workflow efficiency, ICE, flexibility, the 
in-built compositor, Arnold integration,or the available talent in 
your area (most likely a combination of the above), if you have been 
using Softimage, you have generally had to make a conscious choice to 
do so.


That choice is sometimes invisible to outsiders in the case of 
Soft-only or Soft-centric shops, but it is obvious in the case of 
large Maya-centric shops that nevertheless adopt Softimage for some 
projects.  So, given all that extra effort and inconvenience 
(#sarcasm), where are the people who are relieved that it's over?


It seems, there aren't any.

I would be very interested to read official statements from any 
Autodesk customers who feel that they will benefit from this decision. 
 Yes, in the long run, many will, since they will transition to 
Houdini, Modo, or some yet-to-be tool, but I'm talking about anyone 
who thinks that they will make more money, or have an easier time of 
the next 2 years.


In fact, I would be interested in reading anything from anyone /at 
Autodesk/ explaining how this decision benefits ANY of Autodesk's 
customers.  Does it help Maya-only shops because now they have a 
more-level playing field? Does it help multi-app shops because now 
they'll be single-app shops using the best-in-breed? Certainly can't 
both be true.  And if either one of those statements is true, then 
there will be some Autodesk customers with even more questions than we 
have now.


As far as I can tell, even Maya-only customers do not feel that, say, 
the move of the dev team to Maya, does anything beyond slightly 
improve what has been an unacceptable stagnation in Maya development.


So if there is anyone reading this far who can make a positive case 
for killing Softimage, please do so.


And if you can't, and you're in a position of any responsibility at an 
Autodesk customer company that feels it's been negatively impacted in 
any way, please consider having your company make a calm, rational, 
public or private statement to Autodesk detailing that negative impact.


Thanks

Ed Manning

Re: Maya feature request from Softimage users

[David Gallagher]

Sadly true. And it causes endless problems with clusters and materials.

However, if you use other renderers (not Maya renderer) you don't have 
to subdivide polys/smooth though. You just use the smooth preview (3 
button) for viewport purposes.


There are so many things that are absurdly substandard  compared with 
Softimage.


Their subD modeling was bizarre. You had to convert the object to it. 
Then if you wanted to change topology, you had to convert back. It was 
crazy, so no one really used it (They did a few times at Blue Sky) . So 
it sounds like they dropped it.


On 3/8/2014 2:17 PM, Greg Punchatz wrote:
And, one of most important thing is, there is no *Subdivision* 
modeling in Maya. There used to be, but it's gone. They normally use 
*Smooth* to render... how ridiculous software is that...


I have heard some crap about maya that blows my mind but I am 
pretty sure you are missing something.. otherwise there would be Maya 
users jumping off bridges everywherethey already cant edit in 
multi mode why would I do that?? I would just write a script to do 
it said the maya user...sigh

Re: The one question I have not seen asked: Autodesk, what's your price?

[David Gallagher]

Does anyone have a guesstimate of how many Softimage users there are? 4000?


On 3/8/2014 8:47 PM, Daniel G wrote:

Everyone has a price.

Can we all agree that if somebody offered Autodesk $100 million, they 
would sell Softimage in a heartbeat? Their shareholders would demand it.


Okay. So somewhere between zero and $100 million is the real, magic 
number. We have only to get somebody at Autodesk to put it in writing 
-- or somehow appeal to the shareholders directly.


The network of people and studios who are very upset about this is 
already significant, and they have the collective ability to put 
together and disseminate perhaps the most polished crowdfunding 
campaign the world has ever seen.


Keep in mind that not only would existing customers contribute, but 
also many champions of open source and lovers of computer graphics 
would help to expose SI's source code to the light of day -- the kind 
of money you couldn't get ahold of by trying to raise money the 
conventional way, for a conventional company.


For those who've already given up: at some point we (as a culture, as 
a species) have to move beyond raw, unthinking capitalism. Far from an 
isolated casualty, this is yet another example where humans 
reflexively decide they have no power in the face of an impersonal 
corporation.


It is simply not right for a company to take possession of something 
loved by so many only to bury it in the ground, for no other reason 
than PROFIT. It's all just bits on a hard drive, and there's no 
reason it can't be out in the wild helping people to create beautiful 
things. The fact that so many are just rolling over and giving up, as 
if this is perfectly acceptable behavior for a company in the year 
2014, is the real tragedy here.


And for anybody who maintains that Autodesk would never part with SI 
due to patents -- Google has already set a precedent for this: 
https://www.google.com/patents/opnpledge/pledge/ . Autodesk could 
similarly pledge not to enforce its Softimage-related patents so long 
as nobody tries to re-commercialize anything deriving from the source 
code. Win-win.


*Autodesk, what is your price?*

Re: Article in La Presse, Montreal Newspaper about Softimage's retirement

[David Gallagher]

Softimage would have turned 30 in 2016, he said. It's the end of an era 
for many people. Softimage community is very united and very passionate 
and it makes a lot of noise in it. 


Also includes the decision. The damage has been done by AVID. Autodesk 
has continued for six years, but has never been able to reverse the 
sales curve. 


A lot of noise. We can't figure why.

Despite their mighty efforts, they were never able to turn the sales around.



On 3/6/2014 12:08 PM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau wrote:


You can read what Marc Petit and Pierre Raymond(Hybride founder) think 
of Autodesk's move.


Google Translate :

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=frtl=enjs=nprev=_thl=enie=UTF-8u=http%3A%2F%2Ftechno.lapresse.ca%2Fnouvelles%2Flogiciels%2F201403%2F06%2F01-4745102-derniere-version-de-softimage-la-fin-dune-epoque.php

Original french article :

http://techno.lapresse.ca/nouvelles/logiciels/201403/06/01-4745102-derniere-version-de-softimage-la-fin-dune-epoque.php

animators at Animal Logic?

[David Gallagher]

Hi! We'd like to interview an animator on LEGO movie. I don't have 
connections there. Does anyone know one to start the search?


Thanks!
Dave G
www.animschool.com

Re: Softimage interaction n Maya?

[David Gallagher]

  
  

  Hello! No, it is ready and works great. We just have to post it on
  the site and roll it out.
  
  I can send it to you (and anyone else here interested).
  
  
  
  On 3/4/2014 2:56 PM, Siew Yi Liang wrote:


  
  Dear Mr. Gallagher:
  
  A bit off-topic, but I would like to ask since I haven't heard
  anything and I don't have friends at AnimSchool...with this
  news, does this mean your abxPicker project for XSI is on
  hold/cancelled? =( I was looking forward to having a much
  easier way to creating synoptics in XSI...

Yours sincerely,
Siew Yi Liang
On 3/4/2014 1:51 PM, David Gallagher wrote:
  
  


  FYI, if you click here twice, and highlight a channel, you can
  use it a little more like Softimage. You middle drag to change
  that channel.
  
  
  On 3/4/2014 1:52 PM, Christian Gotzinger wrote:


  Indeed. I hate the idea of having to click on
transform gizmos. It's so much less convenient, and slower
too.
  
  

On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 9:36 PM,
  Andreas Bystrom andreas.byst...@gmail.com
  wrote:
  

  getting properly used to alt+qwer instead of
s+xcv only takes a couple of weeks really, but if
they are going to add anything in the way of
navigation to maya it should be the ability to SRT
using the mousebuttons like in xsi, left, middle and
right mouse button for XYZ... having to find and
click the maya transform gizmo in the viewport is a
shit workflow.


  


  

  
  On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at
9:27 AM, Alexander Akbarov wat...@gmail.com
wrote:

  Obviously not http://clip2net.com/s/6WRRyY
  
  

2014-03-04 22:23
  GMT+02:00 Matt Lowery ma...@glassworks.co.uk:
   
Is there a
  Softimage interaction mode in Maya?
  (like the Maya interaction mode in
  Soft) If not, Autodesk needs to sort
  that out for those of us who are going
  to have to switch.
  
  m@

  


  

  
  
  
  

  
  -- 
  Andreas
Bystrm
  Weta Digital

  


  


  
  


  

AnimSchool Picker

[David Gallagher]

Some good news on this bad news day...

AnimSchool releases today our AnimSchool Picker for Softimage! Free to 
download:

http://www.animschool.com/DownloadOffer.aspx

Nearly identical in function to the Maya one shown in the videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTUe1YbPAPk

Available for Windows. If anyone would like to help get it compiled on 
Linux, please contact me.

Thanks!
Dave G

Re: new upgrade policy

[David Gallagher]

I can't find the webpage, but remember just before Autodesk bought 
Softimage, Softimage won several tech/software awards from the 
community. So much promise! Does anyone remember that more specifically?



On 2/28/2014 12:49 PM, Emilio Hernandez wrote:
Well if at some point it happens that another company is interested in 
buying Sofitmage from ADSK. I belive they will have a very good 
handicap to make this adjustments.


And I believe we will all be patient with them while they change the 
old stuff.


Some things can be address right away if in that acquisition de devs 
go with them.  Fix some bugs, minor adjustments, etc.


While they at the same time start to polish and update the core.

So really buying Softimage is not that bad.   As it is right now it is 
rocking hard and strong.


Cheers!




2014-02-28 13:22 GMT-06:00 Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com 
mailto:ml...@carbinestudios.com:


I don't think that is an option as AD isn't going to give up
source code which holds many patents. If they did, I would tend to
think the asking price would be too steep.

But let's pretend AD offers the source code and the price is
affordable -- is Softimage really worth the price of acquiring as
a business venture?  Based on all the pieces of information I've
gathered about the product over the years, it sounds like it would
take a few years just to get familiar with the code and be
comfortable enough to do any significant work.

While one could inherit a nice system like ICE, animation mixer,
render pass system, and so on.  To put new features into it would
likely require a lot of study of existing code for ripple effect
of adding new features or implementing significant changes.  The
application as a whole is still tremendously useful and a great
general purpose 3D environment, but it's design is from the 1990's
and showing its age in some areas.  The user interface is still
single threaded, the playback engine isn't the speediest and
doesn't loop nicely, and the real time shaders aren't real time.
Some of the things we would want to implement in Softimage if we
had the source code would be things that I don't think the
architecture supports -- ability to put modeling operators outside
the modeling marker or pin them into specific slots of the
construction history to enforce order of evaluation, for example.

On a personal level, having been around the product for so long I
would be extremely interested in looking and tinkering with the
source code, and perhaps fix/modify stuff that always drove me
nuts.  It would at least explain why certain things are the way
they are.  I always thought it be a nice gesture if at Siggraph
you'd get swag in the form of a capsule on a keychain that
contained all the source code to discontinued product(s). 
Granted, this will not likely ever happen due to patents, trade

secrets, and other business interests, but would be good for
customer morale and developing interest in 3D animation.  I wonder
if anybody would gain anything (business-wise) from obtaining the
Softimage|3D code today considering its successor is also on its
way out to pasture?  It would be more useful swag than T-shirts or
CD cases.

As for my employer, I cannot speak on their behalf.

Matt

Hey Matt --



Out of genuine curiosity -- can your employers not get a source
code license out of AD?  IIR, deals like that were

not unknown among the larger studios -- or was that all
pre-acquisition?



Ed

AnimSchool Picker for Softimage

[David Gallagher]

Hey all!

We are soon releasing our AnimSchool Picker plugin for Softimage. We 
offer this free to the public.

http://www.animschool.com/pickerInfo.aspx

If anyone would like to test it, please email me:
da...@animschool.com

Thanks!
Dave G

Re: Whiskytree, Elysium breakdown

[David Gallagher]

Impressive!

Promoted on our Fb: https://www.facebook.com/AnimSchool

On 2/4/2014 11:46 AM, Steven Caron wrote:

Here is a breakdown of Whiskytree's Elysium work...

https://vimeo.com/85581391

Steven

Re: The Lego Movie: Behind the Scenes and How They Made the Movie

[David Gallagher]

  
  

  Great work. Excited about this! My children were sure this was a
  stop-motion movie. (heh)
  
  On 1/27/2014 8:13 AM, Alan Fregtman wrote:


  Nice!! Great work, animals. :)


  
  

On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 7:56 AM,
  Sofronis Efstathiou sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk
  wrote:
  

  
With loads of Softimage goodness!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N9jr0FqYMk

Really looking forward to this,
  Will done Animal Logic!

Sofronis
Efstathiou

  Postgraduate
Framework Leader and BFX Competition and Festival
Director

  Computer
Animation Academic Group
National
  Centre for Computer Animation

Email: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk

Tel:
+44 (0) 1202
  965805

Profile:
  http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sofronisefstathiou

Student Work: 
http://www.youtube.com/NCCA3DAnimation
  
http://www.youtube.com/NCCADigitalFX
  
http://www.youtube.com/NCCAAnimation






Awarded for
world-class computer animation teaching 
with wide
scientific and creative applications

  
   
  

   
  

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  has signed up to the Mindful Employer charter.
  Information about the accessibility of University
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Re: Envelopes, Weights, Deformers and setting them up.

[David Gallagher]

Nice workflow you have there!

On 1/20/2014 4:06 PM, pedro santos wrote:
This was the solution I came up with. Still refining it to have more 
options per null but already using it in production.


Cheers

https://vimeo.com/84025815


On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 10:15 PM, Manny Papamanos 
manny.papama...@autodesk.com mailto:manny.papama...@autodesk.com 
wrote:


Perhaps deform by volume?
This doesn't deal with weight though but can be flexible since you
can interactively mod the radius on the volume deformers.


Manny Papamanos
Product Support Specialist
Americas Frontline Technical Support


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of
pedro santos
Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 4:45 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Envelopes, Weights, Deformers and setting them up.

Hi
We use Species here for ease and speed. So the head and jaw have
their deformers, and the facial expressions are done through
Shapes on a FaceRig panel. For some time now the animator wants
some additional Facial controls so he isn't restricted by the
range of the shapes. And he wants something that does not turn
into a cumbersome task given the revisions/iterations over an
asset. I'm fairly new to Softimage and these were the approaches I
went about:


Doritos
I had it setup, just one thing that is dragging the process;
Envelopes are generated by distance but there's always
normalization. So if I want them to just have a straight spherical
falloff into black I can't. Or even to falloff into another dummy
null weight, I can't. So I had to paint, around the ears, on the
top of the head and sides, neck, etc. I was trying to minimize
paitings so iterations on a model's rig can be faster.
I could put an inplicit per Derformer set on Bounding Volume 
Limit. But it's an abrupt cut off.


Deform by Spine
Creates the falloff I want from the curve. I like the drawn
deformations it does on mouth and eyes. I do an operator per
curve, since the combined weights of several curves seems wonky.
The downside seems to be that I can't transfer them with GATOR.
How would you come about to transfer Deform by Spine between
objects to save time?


General Concerns.
I come from Lightwave and Envelopes to me seem to be like a box of
weights that are usually normalized. I see that deformers like
Cage, Spine also generate such box of weights, but they don't seem
to be handled as envelopes.
How flexible and manipulated can be weights and the underlying
connections of Softimage between the mesh object, the weight, the
control null and the deforming operator?? Seems to me that such
weights don't exist without the deformers.


This

Imagehttps://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/143766132/Forums/SI-Community/WeightMapsDeform.png
illustrates what I'me trying to do.

Cheers
probiner




--
[img]http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s202/animatics/avatar_1.gif[/img]

Re: OT: Setting up Proxy Params in Maya?

[David Gallagher]

Yes, it does!

As clunky as it is, I put SetDrivenKeys and such on a separate shadow 
controller, then pipe them in to the blendshapes, etc, so if the 
deforming object has to be replaced, I don't lose all the complex 
relationships I made.


A rigging advantage of Softimage I forgot to list!
Dave G


On 1/17/2014 9:35 AM, Eric Thivierge wrote:
Well it's dumb not to have this functionality. If I delete 1 
controller that has the parameters on it that drive expressions, 
positions, other data; it removes all those connections and has to be 
rebuilt.


On Friday, January 17, 2014 11:27:30 AM, Bradley Gabe wrote:

You're thinking about this the wrong way. The correct way to approach
it is, if Maya doesn't have it, you don't need it. :-p



On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 10:18 AM, Michal Doniec doni...@gmail.com
mailto:doni...@gmail.com wrote:

No such thing as proxy parameters in Maya out of the box, AFAIK.


On 17 January 2014 16:02, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@hybride.com
mailto:ethivie...@hybride.com wrote:

Hey all,

Sorry for the Maya question but it's semi-related to
Softimage. I'm working on setting up a rig in Maya that clones
one I have built in Softimage and am wondering if Maya has the
Proxy Parameter type functionality of having a master
parameter (attribute in Maya) which you make a shortcut to on
other objects.

Haven't found anything online so far.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Eric T.




--
--
Michal
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/mdoniec

Relax deformer equivalent?

[David Gallagher]

I'm putting a relax deformer on a characters upper arm/shoulder 
connection to make it smoother.


I'm looking for a similar deformer in Maya, but not finding a good one.

polyAverageVertex1 I suppose?
http://www.mediafire.com/view/32xn8diu6u77cju/relaxDeformer.png#

Re: rigging in xsi vs maya

[David Gallagher]

Great! I love Norman.


On 1/9/2014 8:29 PM, Max Evgrafov wrote:

Hi guys. Now I adapt the Norman's rig for XSI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIUTkJcWPv8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nUTCBbQaYM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZajrQCVbLU


2014/1/10 Cesar Saez cesa...@gmail.com mailto:cesa...@gmail.com

We worked out the default weighting for Justin using the lowpoly
'slices' of the mesh (we needed them anyway) and a bit of smoothing.
Simple stuff, but with 2 clicks (a simple script) we were able to
get a quite decent base to work on.




--
Евграфов Максим.(Summatr)
https://vimeo.com/user3098735/videos
---
Хорошего Вам настроения !!! :-)

Re: rigging in xsi vs maya

[David Gallagher]

I rigged on quite a few characters in Maya at Blue Sky Studios and now 
(Softimage) AnimSchool. We offer the well-known Malcolm rig for free.


There is no comparison to rigging in Softimage and Maya--not the kind of 
rigging I do. I often assume by now they have better workflows in Maya, 
but I'm often surprised to find how convoluted and limiting the 
workflows are to this day. Most Maya people must not know there are 
better ways of working or aren't doing the kinds of things I am, because 
the difference is profound.


-At any point in the rigging process, you can make edits in the model 
stack to change the shape and topology of the model. After 
experimenting, you can freeze that part of the stack and continue on 
with that new shape, retaining almost every bit of work you've done.

YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY.
This difference is huge. You can work toward completion without fear of 
losing work. You can experiment freely--knowing it's fine if you want to 
make a major change. I'm never afraid of losing blendshape work.
And if the changes are really significant, you can always Gator you're 
way out of a jam.


-You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry, modelessly, 
instead of on a separate blendshape object.


-There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes. In Softimage, you 
go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a few points.
In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several plug-ins and 
scripts and HOPE that it works. If the scenario is simple enough, it might.
Several people here tried to help a student make a single corrective 
blendshape on an elbow -- and we're all experienced Maya riggers. After 
hours of attempting, we threw up our hands. There was something in that 
object's history that was making the blendshape plug-in fail. The answer 
is what it often is: just start over.
-EDITING corrective blendshapes. In Maya, heaven help you if you want to 
edit that blendshape later. Start the process again and make a new one. 
In Softimage, drag a few points and you're done in seconds.


-For facial work, being able to make face shapes in conjunction with the 
mixer, working directly on the main geo. To see other shapes muted, 
soloed as you're working. This allows you to craft shapes that work for 
different scenarios, with just the right falloff. You can make 
correctives for shape combinations quickly. In face work, it's all about 
how the functions combine to make the range of expressive results.


-The envelope weighting is far superior. The smoothing is just better, 
and more reliable. Negative weight painting actually works.
Being able to make sophisticated weighting allows you to make lighter 
rigs, because fewer nodes and calculations are needed.
I can't believe someone actually compared Maya's Component Editor to 
Softimage's Weight Editor. I'm stunned.
Sometimes, demoing Maya's envelope weighting, it just stops working for 
no reason -- I have no idea why. (Mind you, I've been rigging in Maya 
since 1999.)


-You can envelope/skin null objects, not just joints. (Yes, Maya will 
let you add other objects as deformers but it is limiting and causes 
problems.)


-The tweak tool. You can grab anywhere and it will just get the nearest 
point/edge/poly and transform it precisely. Add the proportional editing 
and it's very sculptural without giving up precise transform control. I 
far prefer this workflow to the Zbrush approach geared toward paintstrokes.


-In Softimage, you can change the wireframe on shaded opacity. You can 
change the point sizes. These mean I can visualize and work with the 
shape, not get visually stuck on the tech clutter like in Maya.


-LinkWithOrientation. Does Maya have anything built-in yet? I know there 
are pose readers out there, but they are slow and 3rd party.


-The smooth preview Geometry Approximation is better, faster, and more 
stable in Softimage.


-Even with the army of tools and plug-ins we had at Blue Sky Studios, I 
would still much rather use off-the-shelf Softimage.


-You can select controls without selecting (and highlighting) all its 
children. This makes it easier to animate the rig -- just drag selecting 
will get you the selectable controls. In Maya, drag-selecting gets a 
mixture of heirarchy parts.


All this means that I can focus on the ART, the shaping of the rig, not 
jump through hoops all day.

As a result, our characters are more flexible and expressive.



On 1/8/2014 2:30 AM, Stefan Kubicek wrote:
To be fair, I weighted a fair amount of characters in Maya over the 
years but I never experienced anything like that.
When exactly is this happening? The only hickup I ran into 
occasionally was when painting weights, and then undoing that 
operation, which in rare cases does what you describe, but I think 
they fixed that in version 2013 or 2014. I never locked the skin 
weights, workflow wise I always found that highly disruptive.



I was quite shocked to learn from 

Re: rigging in xsi vs maya

[David Gallagher]

On 1/8/2014 4:42 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote:
how many years ago was the BlueSky rigging experience and how much was 
it? I remember seeing you as a Softimage fan since very early XSI - 
perhaps a Softimage 3D user before that as well?   I might be 
confusing you with another user.


The topology updates in Softimage is its best and most unique feature, 
along with render passes (property propagation).  I think no other app 
will ever have this.  There are architecture overhead and performance 
issue associated with that,  though.  can't talk about animation 
without talking about performance, and referencing.


Oh, I hope you're wrong and whatever product comes out of the marriage 
of Maya/Softimage/Max has that!


Yes, I worked on all the Blue Sky movies from Ice Age 1. I rigged for a 
few films, then animated, then oversaw the rigs from the animation side.


Yes, I used Softimage 3D as well.




Le mercredi 8 janvier 2014, David Gallagher a écrit :


I rigged on quite a few characters in Maya at Blue Sky Studios and
now (Softimage) AnimSchool. We offer the well-known Malcolm rig
for free.

There is no comparison to rigging in Softimage and Maya--not the
kind of rigging I do. I often assume by now they have better
workflows in Maya, but I'm often surprised to find how convoluted
and limiting the workflows are to this day. Most Maya people must
not know there are better ways of working or aren't doing the
kinds of things I am, because the difference is profound.

-At any point in the rigging process, you can make edits in the
model stack to change the shape and topology of the model. After
experimenting, you can freeze that part of the stack and continue
on with that new shape, retaining almost every bit of work you've
done.
YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY.
This difference is huge. You can work toward completion without
fear of losing work. You can experiment freely--knowing it's fine
if you want to make a major change. I'm never afraid of losing
blendshape work.
And if the changes are really significant, you can always Gator
you're way out of a jam.

-You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry, modelessly,
instead of on a separate blendshape object.
Ith

-There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes. In Softimage,
you go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a few points.
In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several plug-ins
and scripts and HOPE that it works. If the scenario is simple
enough, it might.
Several people here tried to help a student make a single
corrective blendshape on an elbow -- and we're all experienced
Maya riggers. After hours of attempting, we threw up our hands.
There was something in that object's history that was making the
blendshape plug-in fail. The answer is what it often is: just
start over.
-EDITING corrective blendshapes. In Maya, heaven help you if you
want to edit that blendshape later. Start the process again and
make a new one. In Softimage, drag a few points and you're done in
seconds.

-For facial work, being able to make face shapes in conjunction
with the mixer, working directly on the main geo. To see other
shapes muted, soloed as you're working. This allows you to craft
shapes that work for different scenarios, with just the right
falloff. You can make correctives for shape combinations quickly.
In face work, it's all about how the functions combine to make the
range of expressive results.

-The envelope weighting is far superior. The smoothing is just
better, and more reliable. Negative weight painting actually works.
Being able to make sophisticated weighting allows you to make
lighter rigs, because fewer nodes and calculations are needed.
I can't believe someone actually compared Maya's Component Editor
to Softimage's Weight Editor. I'm stunned.
Sometimes, demoing Maya's envelope weighting, it just stops
working for no reason -- I have no idea why. (Mind you, I've been
rigging in Maya since 1999.)

-You can envelope/skin null objects, not just joints. (Yes, Maya
will let you add other objects as deformers but it is limiting and
causes problems.)

-The tweak tool. You can grab anywhere and it will just get the
nearest point/edge/poly and transform it precisely. Add the
proportional editing and it's very sculptural without giving up
precise transform control. I far prefer this workflow to the
Zbrush approach geared toward paintstrokes.

-In Softimage, you can change the wireframe on shaded opacity. You
can change the point sizes. These mean I can visualize and work
with the shape, not get visually stuck on the tech clutter like in
Maya.

-LinkWithOrientation. Does Maya have anything built-in yet? I know
there are pose readers out

Re: rigging in xsi vs maya

[David Gallagher]

On 1/8/2014 5:12 PM, Bradley Gabe wrote:
Aren't you the guy who made the 3D Cat in the Hat animation I saw on 
the ride at Universal Studios?

I also remember some training tutorial videos and a UV mapping tool. ;-)

I'm not sure, but as a casual outside observer this entire thread 
seems like a trolling job. Nice to see Luc-Eric is still playing the 
role of agent provocateur.


Ha! Yes.






On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 5:52 PM, David Gallagher 
davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com 
wrote:


On 1/8/2014 4:42 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote:

how many years ago was the BlueSky rigging experience and how
much was it? I remember seeing you as a Softimage fan since
very early XSI - perhaps a Softimage 3D user before that as well?
  I might be confusing you with another user.

The topology updates in Softimage is its best and most
unique feature, along with render passes (property propagation).
 I think no other app will ever have this.  There
are architecture overhead and performance issue associated with
that,  though.  can't talk about animation without talking about
performance, and referencing.


Oh, I hope you're wrong and whatever product comes out of the
marriage of Maya/Softimage/Max has that!

Yes, I worked on all the Blue Sky movies from Ice Age 1. I rigged
for a few films, then animated, then oversaw the rigs from the
animation side.

Yes, I used Softimage 3D as well.





Le mercredi 8 janvier 2014, David Gallagher a écrit :


I rigged on quite a few characters in Maya at Blue Sky
Studios and now (Softimage) AnimSchool. We offer the
well-known Malcolm rig for free.

There is no comparison to rigging in Softimage and Maya--not
the kind of rigging I do. I often assume by now they have
better workflows in Maya, but I'm often surprised to find how
convoluted and limiting the workflows are to this day. Most
Maya people must not know there are better ways of working or
aren't doing the kinds of things I am, because the difference
is profound.

-At any point in the rigging process, you can make edits in
the model stack to change the shape and topology of the
model. After experimenting, you can freeze that part of the
stack and continue on with that new shape, retaining almost
every bit of work you've done.
YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY.
This difference is huge. You can work toward completion
without fear of losing work. You can experiment
freely--knowing it's fine if you want to make a major change.
I'm never afraid of losing blendshape work.
And if the changes are really significant, you can always
Gator you're way out of a jam.

-You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry,
modelessly, instead of on a separate blendshape object.
Ith

-There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes. In
Softimage, you go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a few points.
In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several
plug-ins and scripts and HOPE that it works. If the scenario
is simple enough, it might.
Several people here tried to help a student make a single
corrective blendshape on an elbow -- and we're all
experienced Maya riggers. After hours of attempting, we threw
up our hands. There was something in that object's history
that was making the blendshape plug-in fail. The answer is
what it often is: just start over.
-EDITING corrective blendshapes. In Maya, heaven help you if
you want to edit that blendshape later. Start the process
again and make a new one. In Softimage, drag a few points and
you're done in seconds.

-For facial work, being able to make face shapes in
conjunction with the mixer, working directly on the main geo.
To see other shapes muted, soloed as you're working. This
allows you to craft shapes that work for different scenarios,
with just the right falloff. You can make correctives for
shape combinations quickly. In face work, it's all about how
the functions combine to make the range of expressive results.

-The envelope weighting is far superior. The smoothing is
just better, and more reliable. Negative weight painting
actually works.
Being able to make sophisticated weighting allows you to make
lighter rigs, because fewer nodes and calculations are needed.
I can't believe someone actually compared Maya's Component
Editor to Softimage's Weight Editor. I'm stunned.
Sometimes, demoing Maya's envelope weighting, it just stops
working for no reason -- I have no idea why. (Mind you, I've
been rigging in Maya

Re: rigging in xsi vs maya

[David Gallagher]

HAHAHAHAHA!

What a farce.


On 1/6/2014 1:46 PM, Alan Fregtman wrote:


For flexibility and workflow, Maya wins the blendshape *point* by 
quite a distance.


I call shenanigans. lol -- Last time I tried to make a corrective 
shape in Maya *while in the same pose* using what's in the box, I 
wanted to shoot myself in the foot.




On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 3:29 PM, Mirko Jankovic 
mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote:


*The time that Maya saves with its rigging technology and superior
workflow, outweighs the additional cost.*

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
I saw this a long ago and not then not now it makes any sense at all..


On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 9:24 PM, Steven Caron car...@gmail.com
mailto:car...@gmail.com wrote:

i have only skimmed this but he has arbitrary decisions when
to give one app a 'point' and when to 'dock a point'.

he docks a point because he doesn't like the floating property
pages then adds a point later because he likes it (two
explorers to drag and drop).

@luc-eric, please please don't tell me anyone at autodesk is
taking this serious?

s


On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:13 PM, Steven Caron
car...@gmail.com mailto:car...@gmail.com wrote:

oh my god, get ready for every 'point' being argued.


On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:10 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau
luceri...@gmail.com mailto:luceri...@gmail.com wrote:

what do you guys think about this blog post:

http://mayavxsi.blogspot.com/2011/09/rigging-m-22-x-15.html

Re: geometry approximation vs subdivide

[David Gallagher]

PolyMeshSubdivide Polygons/Edges

On 12/20/2013 8:19 AM, Eric Thivierge wrote:

What tool are you using to subdivide?

On Friday, December 20, 2013 10:15:49 AM, David Gallagher wrote:


I'd like to get this geometry to subdivide just as I see it with
geometry approximation. Surprisingly, I'm having a hard time finding
any tool to do that. What am I missing?

Original in middle. Object on the right is subdivided (no good).
Object on left is just what I want -- but it's not real geo, just an
approximation of how it will render.

Re: geometry approximation vs subdivide

[David Gallagher]

On 12/20/2013 8:27 AM, Eric Thivierge wrote:

Shift + D will not get you good results.

Create  Poly Mesh  Subdivide


Perfect! Thanks Eric.


or
Select all polygons  right click  Local subdiv refinement should.


On Friday, December 20, 2013 10:19:11 AM, Eric Thivierge wrote:

What tool are you using to subdivide?

On Friday, December 20, 2013 10:15:49 AM, David Gallagher wrote:


I'd like to get this geometry to subdivide just as I see it with
geometry approximation. Surprisingly, I'm having a hard time finding
any tool to do that. What am I missing?

Original in middle. Object on the right is subdivided (no good).
Object on left is just what I want -- but it's not real geo, just an
approximation of how it will render.

Re: connections

[David Gallagher]

Thanks! I'll try it.

On 12/19/2013 8:39 AM, Martin Yara wrote:
So, basically you want to add an equal expression to match 
grpDrivenPunkSkirtXXX to ctlPunkSkirtXXX kinematics right? If then, 
you could use a simple loop, and extract the null's name substring to 
get the ctl name.


Something like this (for scale):

# select grpDriven nulls
si = Application
for item in si.Selection:
ctl = si.ActiveSceneRoot.FindChild(ctl + item.name 
http://item.name[9:])

si.SetExpr(item.sclx, ctl.sclx)
si.SetExpr(item.scly, ctl.scly)
si.SetExpr(item.sclz, ctl.sclz)


On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 11:51 PM, Eric Thivierge 
ethivie...@hybride.com mailto:ethivie...@hybride.com wrote:


This would be a perfect case for a for loop script. No tools built
in that I know of.


On Wednesday, December 18, 2013 9:54:43 PM, David Gallagher wrote:


I'm looking for some functionality that might already be there in
Softimage.

I want to connect a list of controls to other items -- in this
case a
list of spaced rig elements (that stay back at the origin).
I can select the lists here in the Parameter Connection
Editor, but
then I have to select all the transforms on both sides of the
list in
order to connect them.

I just want to connect all the transforms at one time. Instead
of this
one-by-one process.

Is there a tool out there to do this, or something I'm missing
in the
exisiting tool?
Thanks!

Re: AnimSchool Picker in Softimage

[David Gallagher]

Ok, now I have the code and handoff from Simon. If anyone is interested 
in working on this, let me know.


We will release it for free like the Maya version (with some Terms of 
Use) to the community, so it's a great project.

Thanks!
Dave G

On 12/4/2013 4:53 PM, David Gallagher wrote:


Simon Anderson started this, and made some good beginning progress, 
but I can't seem to get ahold of him now.


He was writing a softimage plugin in c++ that will get called create 
a Qt window and then utilize Jo's plugin for attaching into XSI.



On 12/4/2013 4:00 PM, Jon Swindells wrote:

I have to agree with Jeremie,
the only real OOTB python soloution would be Tkinter.
but then again, on the majority of *nix systems they would need to 
either build the right version or apt-get it.

so you might as well go with QT/Pyside and have a much easier time.
--
Jon Swindells
jon_swinde...@fastmail.fm
On Thu, Dec 5, 2013, at 12:41 AM, Jeremie Passerin wrote:
You definitely won't be able to do half of those feature without 
using Qt which is not native in Softimage.
On 4 December 2013 12:52, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@hybride.com 
mailto:ethivie...@hybride.com wrote:


Only reason I asked was that if it was, why not go back to the
original source. :)
On Wednesday, December 04, 2013 3:51:32 PM, David Gallagher wrote:

No, we had used abxPicker before, so we certainly looked at
that. But
it was inspired more by my experience at Blue Sky and their
tools.
It doesn't use any code from anything else though.
On 12/4/2013 1:42 PM, Eric Thivierge wrote:

Was that picker not a derivative of another generic Maya
picker plugin?
- Eric T.

AnimSchool Picker in Softimage

[David Gallagher]

Hello! Is anyone here interested in making our AnimSchool Picker for 
Softimage?


A lot of the code should be reusable from the Maya version.
http://www.animschool.com/pickerInfo.aspx

This paid work, obviously.
Thanks!

Re: AnimSchool Picker in Softimage

[David Gallagher]

I would guess pyQT.

On 12/4/2013 1:41 PM, Stefan Kubicek wrote:

I'd love to, but I'm totally booked atm.
I suspect this would need to based on pySide or pyQT for Softimage, or 
at least a Synoptic View, right?
I'm not familiar with the Maya version, but judging by the Screenshots 
and the description on your home page a Softimage-native PPG won't 
give you the required flexibility I think.



Hello! Is anyone here interested in making our AnimSchool Picker for 
Softimage?


A lot of the code should be reusable from the Maya version.
http://www.animschool.com/pickerInfo.aspx

This paid work, obviously.
Thanks!

Re: AnimSchool Picker in Softimage

[David Gallagher]

Simon Anderson started this, and made some good beginning progress, but 
I can't seem to get ahold of him now.


He was writing a softimage plugin in c++ that will get called create a 
Qt window and then utilize Jo's plugin for attaching into XSI.



On 12/4/2013 4:00 PM, Jon Swindells wrote:

I have to agree with Jeremie,
the only real OOTB python soloution would be Tkinter.
but then again, on the majority of *nix systems they would need to 
either build the right version or apt-get it.

so you might as well go with QT/Pyside and have a much easier time.
--
Jon Swindells
jon_swinde...@fastmail.fm
On Thu, Dec 5, 2013, at 12:41 AM, Jeremie Passerin wrote:
You definitely won't be able to do half of those feature without 
using Qt which is not native in Softimage.
On 4 December 2013 12:52, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@hybride.com 
mailto:ethivie...@hybride.com wrote:


Only reason I asked was that if it was, why not go back to the
original source. :)
On Wednesday, December 04, 2013 3:51:32 PM, David Gallagher wrote:

No, we had used abxPicker before, so we certainly looked at
that. But
it was inspired more by my experience at Blue Sky and their
tools.
It doesn't use any code from anything else though.
On 12/4/2013 1:42 PM, Eric Thivierge wrote:

Was that picker not a derivative of another generic Maya
picker plugin?
- Eric T.

Re: Whiskeytree Athens tech demo

[David Gallagher]

Great!

posted on our Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/AnimSchool

On 11/22/2013 11:34 AM, Steven Caron wrote:

thanks for the kind words everyone! i will pass along the praises...

some extra info for those interested...

-we used arnold 3.x to render this
-because of how we partitioned the work out, and how sitoa exports ICE 
instances we had to come up with a way to make sure there was no 
redundant instance masters. we created a system to do that. we then 
collaborated with solid angle to make this a first party feature. 
auto instancing of procedurals.. you're welcome! ;P

-memory consumption would be drastically lower in arnold 4.x
-this was the basis for the workflow we used on elysium, of course for 
more shots and a lot more detail... remember we rendered over 5 
trillion triangles for elysium.
-not everything was hand placed, we had some more ICE tools for 
automatically aligning and placing buildings.


steven


On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 9:37 AM, Juhani Karlsson 
juhani.karls...@talvi.com mailto:juhani.karls...@talvi.com wrote:


Tron legacy? Daft Punk? Maybe?

On Nov 22, 2013 7:12 PM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.com
mailto:peter@googlemail.com wrote:

What's that soundtrack from? Seems familiar but I can't quite
place it...


On 22 November 2013 16:58, Sebastien Sterling
sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com
mailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote:

Hairy ballz of the Gods !!!


On 22 November 2013 17:46, Sylvain Lebeau s...@shedmtl.com
mailto:s...@shedmtl.com wrote:

holy mother of god..

you guys rock at WT!

sly



On 11/22/2013 09:04 AM, adrian wyer wrote:


congrats to everyone at Whiskeytree for this epic demo!

https://vimeo.com/71148018

your library toolset is a thing of beauty!

a

NerdCorps

[David Gallagher]

Anyone from NerdCorps on this list? I need to talk to someone there 
about their recruitment efforts.

Thanks!
Dave G
www.animschool.com
--
To unsubscribe: mail softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with subject 
unsubscribe and reply to the confirmation email.

Re: Copying vertex weights

[David Gallagher]

Not exactly your need here, but make sure you're fully aware of GATOR. 
Transferring of skinning, maps, shapes is very powerful in Softimage.


On 9/24/2013 9:41 AM, Sergio Mucino wrote:

I've got a simple question regarding skinning/binding in Softimage.
A thing that I require to do quite often is to copy the weights from 
one vertex on  the mesh, and paste them on multiple vertices on a 
different mesh. Assuming both meshes already have the appropriate 
clusters, weightmaps, and deformers assigned, I'm wondering how to 
achieve this.
I looked for a Weight Copy tool in SI, and didn't find one, so I 
turned to Google. I was able to find a tool that supposedly does this 
(SA_SetPointWeights), but for some reason, It's not working for me. I 
select the 'source' mesh and launch the tool, where I can select it, 
but for some reason, it cannot find the Weight Map, even though it is 
there (I've attached a screen capture included below...)



If anyone is familiar with this tool, do you know what's up with it?
Otherwise, I'm open to any other suggestions around how to copy/paste 
vertex weights. I don't have much time to script it myself right now, 
and I haven given the GEAR tools a try yet because I need to ask IT to 
change my machine's environment to reference their scripts, but if 
that toolset has tools for this, I can push the please get it done 
button to be able to use them.

Thanks for any suggestions!

--
*Sergio Mucino*
Lead Rigger
Modus FX


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Re: Le Gouffre short film done in Softimage - Project of the Day on Kickstarter

[David Gallagher]

Great!

Now broadcast over the AnimSchool airwaves:
https://www.facebook.com/AnimSchool

On 9/12/2013 2:45 PM, Carl Beauchemin wrote:

Hi everyone,

We've just released a first teaser for our upcoming animated short Le 
Gouffre. We've been working on this for 2 years now, no salary, and 
it was all done in Softimage.


It was featured this week as Project of the Dayon Kickstarter. You 
can check out our ongoing campaign at:


http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1662185920/le-gouffre-animated-short-film

And here's the Vimeo link for the HD teaser only:

https://vimeo.com/74127187

Hope you enjoy!

-Lightning Boy Studio

Re: softimage.tv - Hello World!

[David Gallagher]

So happy to see this!

Great job Cris and Cesar.

Dave G

On 9/5/2013 11:10 AM, Michael Clarke wrote:

Great job.
That's a huge contribution to the community.



On Sep 5, 2013, at 11:48 AM, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com 
mailto:cgc...@gmail.com wrote:



About 100 user submitted videos between yesterday and today! Phew

but... is that ALL YOU GOT!!!




On 5 September 2013 15:15, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@hybride.com 
mailto:ethivie...@hybride.com wrote:


Yeah mine was in spam as well.


On September-05-13 10:13:43 AM, Alan Fregtman wrote:

Mine too.



On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 9:21 AM, Ognjen Vukovic
ognj...@gmail.com mailto:ognj...@gmail.com
mailto:ognj...@gmail.com mailto:ognj...@gmail.com wrote:

Check spam, somehow mine got lost there to.


On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 12:58 PM, Luca
superposit...@gmail.com mailto:superposit...@gmail.com
mailto:superposit...@gmail.com
mailto:superposit...@gmail.com wrote:

Hi! I registered yesterday, but didn't receive any mail
confermation...mh mh !...


2013/9/5 Kris Rivel krisri...@gmail.com
mailto:krisri...@gmail.com
mailto:krisri...@gmail.com
mailto:krisri...@gmail.com


Great idea...love it!


On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 8:10 PM, Nick Angus
n...@altvfx.com mailto:n...@altvfx.com
mailto:n...@altvfx.com mailto:n...@altvfx.com wrote:

Great idea Cris,

Stand by for content!

N
   


*From:*
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
   
mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com

mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
   
mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com

mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on

behalf of Cristobal Infante [cgc...@gmail.com
mailto:cgc...@gmail.com
mailto:cgc...@gmail.com
mailto:cgc...@gmail.com]
*Sent:* 04 September 2013 22:18

*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
*Subject:* softimage.tv
http://softimage.tv/ http://softimage.tv
http://softimage.tv/ - Hello

World!

Hi All,

Would like to announce the launch of
softimage.tv http://softimage.tv/
http://softimage.tv http://softimage.tv/
created to showcase the best

softimage work out there. It's meant to be
mainly a
video depository but hoping it will also
function as a
hub for the community.

The idea sparked from Andy Moorer's Nike
Evolution
write up on that Nike job, I thought amazing
effort
but how do we showcase it a bit more? The
list and
si-community are great place to discuss soft,
but I
think a lot users are not on it, not to mention
producers, agencies and decision makers.

It is still early days so this is a work in
progress,
we will be adjusting the layout based on the
predominant content we receive. This is where
eveyone
can help us a bit, If you ever created a
tutorial for
soft, uploaded a test, done an amazing tool,
 have a
 showreel to show off, finished a good
looking job
help us by submitting it.

You can directly submit your videos via very
simple
form in the website (Submit video). All you
need to
send is a title, vimeo/youtube url, and
description.
The wordpress will look after the thumbnails,
then all
we have to do is approve it. Ideally you will be
logged in when submitting, so the system will
put all
videos under your profile.

The website was created by myself 

Re: Future of Naiad

[David Gallagher]

Isn't it obvious Autodesk is spending their resources working on a next 
generation product, post Maya/Softimage/Max?


Didn't the Softimage people get shifted onto some faux project within 
Autodesk?


Of course they can't announce anything about that because it would be 
strategically stupid, and would undercut sales of existing products.



(Also agree with Adrian that you'll have to pry Softimage from my cold, 
dead fingers.)


Dave G

On 7/25/2013 9:50 AM, Stefan Kubicek wrote:

Doesn't prevent defense only make sense in games that have a defined end?

Am I the only one who thinks of the prevent defense when you look 
at what

Autodesk is doing with the entire Media  Entertainment line?

For you non-Americans / non-American football fans.  The prevent 
defense is

what some coaches use when they are in the lead and the game is near the
end.  The idea is, maintain the lead and don't make any mistakes.  
It's an

extremely conservative, boring way to try to win a game.

A lot of people would say the prevent defense prevents you from winning
because you don't try to do anything on offense except not screw up - 
you
don't try to score any more points, you just hold on to the ball and 
then
punt it back to the opposing team - and on defense you allow the 
opposition

to gain ground, hoping that if you give ground, they won't score more
points.  Meanwhile the other team still wants to win, so they pull 
out all
the stops and try every innovative thing they can think of to score 
as many

points as possible as quickly as possible.

I've seen a lot of games that ended badly for the team using the prevent
defense.

Autodesk has the lead in the market  they just want to play prevent
defense.  Meanwhile Fabric/Creation, Houdini, The Foundry, NewTek, etc.,
etc., realize the game isn't over.

-Paul





On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 9:10 AM, Graham Bell 
graham.b...@autodesk.comwrote:



Fair dues Greg...

Fyi, the 'boss' is Chris Bradshaw. He took over from Marc Petit and 
Marc

and Frank report into him.

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Greg Punchatz
Sent: 25 July 2013 14:07
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Future of Naiad

:( bad choice ... Graham how was that supposed to make any of us feel
better.?

It almost felt like salt in a wound...

I really appreciate that you try to keep us informed, but if you really
don't have anything concrete or encouraging to say it might be 
better to

let it rest at this point.. I know you're only the messenger, but there
are certain people with a higher pay grade that should be giving us 
the bad

news...

Marc Stevens got his job because of us and softimage.  Now he is the 
man

behind killing soft and he has left us for dead... From an outsider's
position that's exactly what seems to be happening.

Who is Marc and the Max guy's boss?
I think I might have a few things to say to him.

I gave Autodesk more than a fair shake after the purchase. But all 
of my

fears have come true..












Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 25, 2013, at 5:17 AM, Graham Bell graham.b...@autodesk.com 
wrote:


 Yes I know, but the original context was around Max, and a post 
made on

a Max site.

 I posted this just to add some additional info.

 -Original Message-
 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Massimo
 Galluzzo
 Sent: 25 July 2013 10:56
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject: Re: Future of Naiad

 Ok, so why no one speaks about Softimage?
 Maya, Max, Maya Max, Maya, Max, Maya Max.

 Just tell us the product will end the development cycle and enter a
bugfix phase untill it dies so we know already.
 This is pathetic.



 -Messaggio originale-
 From: Graham Bell
 Sent: Thursday, July 25, 2013 11:29 AM
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject: RE: Future of Naiad

 Overnight, Frank Delise (used to head up Max, but now heads our Games
 Solutions group, fyi, Marc Stevens heads up Film/TV), posted this to
 the Max underground site


 Hi all, I wanted to add some color to some of the concerns here.

 Yes, it was unfortunate that some of our max customer demos got
 canceled last minute. Siggraph was a bit different for us this 
year vs
 previous years. As a corp company, unfortunately we can’t disclose 
the
 roadmap of our products anytime we want like the good old days. 
Not by

 choice, but by revenue accounting laws. Since our product ship dates
 are not aligned with Siggraph, this causes us to have limited news to
share about our products.

 This is why we have our own event, the Unfold event. This allows 
us to

 share the roadmap that is aligned with ship dates.

 Then why did Maya show up with some cool stuff this year at Siggraph
 user event and not max? It just so happens that the technology 
preview

 for Maya was ready for Siggraph, whereas the 3ds max work that we are
 doing 

Re: OT: Pacific Rim

[David Gallagher]

Congratulations!

On 7/15/2013 3:07 PM, Alan Fregtman wrote:

Hey guys,

A lot of people say Softimage doesn't get used much in movies, so I 
personally love to hear stories when it does happen. Therefore, I 
wanted to share some details with you. :)


I'm the lead rigger at /Rodeo FX/ http://rodeofx.com and we did all of 
the interiors of the control pods (the cockpits, that is), including 
the visors, foot actuators  mechanical stilts, some digidoubles, etc. 
(except the holograms/UI graphics that were done by the folks at 
Hybride.) We also had the chance of doing our first organic creature, 
the brain in the lab (which involved a lot of gross ICE 
deformations), as well as many beautiful matte paintings and a couple 
of helicopters.


Overall, we did over a hundred shots. CG was done in Softimage and as 
far as I know it was all rendered in our favourite renderer, Arnold! 
We'd still be rendering today if Mentalray had been used. :p We threw 
countless ~8k textures with displacement and stupid amounts of 
topology, and good ol' Arnie performed like a champ.


The stilts (the leg controls in the cockpit) had anything from 1500 to 
2500 separate meshes and on average about 150 segments (solid groups 
of parts that moved as one.) Once we identified the segments by the 
end we had a rig of Arnold stand-ins with each segment saved as one 
ass file, and low-res geo representing that segment constrained to 
some part of the rig. It then became relatively light to have the 
standins rigged instead of the full raw geo, and it made it quite easy 
to replace parts or textures later in the pipeline during or after 
animation. (Also caching was a piece of cake in this scenario, as we 
only needed to plot the segment nulls instead of thousands of meshes 
or pointcaching anything.)


On the brain there was procedural pulsing animation driven by ICE 
deformers. Globules would breathe, a heart-like organ would pump its 
ventricles intermittently and an intestine-like organ flowed with 
bulges travelling along its tract. It was gross and (in my opinion) 
kind of awesome. lol Speaking of ICE, there was a kind of lettuce 
behind the brain that was also moving a bit. The modeling was done 
with strips that were procedurally curled and then if I remember 
correctly the whole thing was driven via Syflex as the brain gently 
floated. This lettuce thing was handled by another guy on this mailing 
list, my  coworker and friend Jonathan Laborde. Maybe if he's reading 
this he can give more details of how he used ICE in a few other shots.


It was crazy fun project to work on. Fingers crossed that Pacific Rim 
2 becomes a reality. :) Anyway, did you guys go see it? What'd you think?


Oh and speaking of other movies, we did a ton of work in Now You See 
Me as well, including hundreds of stadium dudes with our propietary 
ICE static crowd system, falling/flying money, cg bubbles, an 
art-directed liquid, lockpicking, flying cards, many vehicles, the 
projected motiongraphics near the end and a few invisible fx. (I feel 
like I probably missed something, but anyway, we did a lot.) We were 
the main vfx vendor on that film, delivering just over 20 minutes 
worth of vfx magic (pun intended.) Again, Soft  Arnold and lots of 
effects in ICE all throughout.


Cheers,

   -- Alan

Camera match to User View

[David Gallagher]

I seem to remember using a script that creates a camera and matches it 
to the User View, but I can't find it now.


Sound familiar to anyone?

Re: Camera match to User View

[David Gallagher]

Wow, thanks!


On 5/10/2013 7:38 PM, Vincent Ullmann wrote:

Just cant sleep. ;-)
Here you Go...

Select your real-Camera
Run script
Choose ViewPort you want to Match (A,B,C,D)

Am 11.05.2013 01:25, schrieb Lp3dsoft:
Rings a bell, I remember it as one of a set of camera tools that 
Chinny did


On 11 May 2013, at 00:08, David Gallagher 
davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com wrote:


I seem to remember using a script that creates a camera and matches 
it to the User View, but I can't find it now.


Sound familiar to anyone?

Triggerfish?

[David Gallagher]

Triggerfish is still going? After the news related by Sandy Sutherland, 
I was happy to hear this:


http://www.animationmagazine.net/features/buscemi-noni-rose-join-khumbas-voice-cast/

Re: Triggerfish?

[David Gallagher]

Yes, no apology necessary and I really hope they (and you) succeed. 
Khumba looked like a great step up -- wonderful work that should be 
commended and successful.



On 4/25/2013 10:45 AM, Leonard Koch wrote:

I understood that very clearly Sandy.
I don't think you need to apologize, but it's of course always kind to 
do so.
Can you tell those on the list who don't know you as well what your 
expertise are?

That way we will know better what work to toss in your direction.


On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 4:27 PM, Sandy Sutherland 
sandy.mailli...@gmail.com mailto:sandy.mailli...@gmail.com wrote:


Dave - yes Triggerfish is still going, sorry I did not mean to
make it appear not, it is just that after Khumba they did not have
budget to keep us on.  Right now it is ticking over with the
partners there, they are trying to get things going for a not so
diffucult future.  Raising funds to do each movie a movie at a
time, is a nightmare and I think they are planning to avoid that
method in the future!

However, it is not known when things might get sorted out, and as
someone with family responsibilities I am still very much looking
for opportunities.

Once again sorry for the confusion, Triggerfish did not close
down, but had to scale down after Khumba.

S.


On 2013/04/25 4:16 PM, David Gallagher wrote:


Triggerfish is still going? After the news related by Sandy
Sutherland, I was happy to hear this:


http://www.animationmagazine.net/features/buscemi-noni-rose-join-khumbas-voice-cast/

Re: Triggerfish?

[David Gallagher]

On 4/25/2013 4:16 PM, Andy Moorer wrote:
There are some seriously skilled softimage talents who were at 
triggerfish, if there are any producers lurking the list this 
downsizing has resulted in a number of at-large artists of a caliber 
and experience level which would ordinarily be very difficult to find 
at all..


It's frustrating seeing studios in LA and NyC desperate for 
experienced softimage talent but unable to hire outside of the states 
because of visa issues. Time to grumble at my congressional rep 
(that's sure to fix it, right?)


Which L.A./N.Y. Softimage studios are hiring?

Re: Last day

[David Gallagher]

http://www.animationmagazine.net/features/zambezia-becomes-south-africas-top-grossing-film/

Will this help reboot Triggerfish?

The animated feature /Adventures in Zambezia/ has grossed an estimated 
$18 million worldwide, making it the highest grossing South African film 
over the past 30 years.


Triggerfish Animation's highly successful film was recently sold to 
French distributor Metropolitan Films, which signed up for both 
/Adventures in Zambezia/ and Triggerfish's next feature, /Khumba/. Among 
the other final territories to be licensed on /Zambezia/ were Spain, 
which went to Big Pictures, and Hungary, which was acquired by ADS 
Services.




On 2/28/2013 5:27 AM, Sandy Sutherland wrote:
Yep - bar the partners - unfortunately, so some very talented people 
on the loose!


__
Sandy Sutherland mailto:sandy.sutherl...@triggerfish.co.za | 
Technical Supervisor

http://triggerfish.co.za/en 
http://www.facebook.com/triggerfishanimation
http://www.twitter.com/triggerfishza


*From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Szabolcs Matefy 
[szabol...@crytek.com]

*Sent:* 28 February 2013 11:46
*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
*Subject:* RE: Last day

Oh no, entire staff?

*From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Sandy 
Sutherland

*Sent:* Thursday, February 28, 2013 10:06 AM
*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
*Subject:* Last day

Hi All,

Just letting you all know today is d-day for us at Triggerfish - end 
of day today the entire staff has been set loose.


I will be in London as from 5th March - so would absolutley love to 
meet up with fellow softies when there, maybe have a beer or two and 
plot the downfall of the 'dark side', or something like that..


I will still be on this list and will check mail when in the UK so 
please do all let me know if you would like to say hello!


Hoping for bigger and better things - and all the TF boys on this 
list, it has been a real pleasure finding such talent still in SA that 
could create two features way way way above the financial level they 
should have been, that have done so well and still will - Khumba just 
rocks, wish we could show more online!


Cheers

S.

__
Sandy Sutherland mailto:sandy.sutherl...@triggerfish.co.za | 
Technical Supervisor


http://triggerfish.co.za/en



http://www.facebook.com/triggerfishanimation

http://www.twitter.com/triggerfishza

Re: Playmobil Dragons Trailer

[David Gallagher]

Great work!
Dave G

On 2/1/2013 4:01 AM, Ivan wrote:



Hi Philipp

Thanks for sharing. Looks great!

Ivan

On 1 Feb, 2013, at 4:24 PM, philipp seis dpi...@gmail.com 
mailto:dpi...@gmail.com wrote:



Hello !

Here is our new contribution against boring childhoods ;).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTDQUaP4FBU

It's made in Softimage and Arnold.

all the best, philipp

Re: When you forget to press the Symetry button...

[David Gallagher]

Hi! I use:
http://jeremiepasserin.com/blog/index.php?post/2009/08/30/gShapeTools


And, to blend a shape to just one side, make a weightmap and 
ModulateShapeKeyWithWeightMap.



On 1/19/2013 11:44 AM, David Saber wrote:

Thank you both for the help.
David, I’d like to try your solution before Gustavo’s one, but... how 
do you mirror a shapekey? or do you mirror the weight map? is there a 
tool for that?

Thanks
David
*From:* David Gallagher mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com
*Sent:* Saturday, January 19, 2013 15:53
*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com 
mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com ; Gustavo Eggert Boehs 
mailto:gustav...@gmail.com

*Cc:* David Saber mailto:davidsabe...@sfr.fr
*Subject:* Re: When you forget to press the Symetry button...
Looks great! Simpler than my method
(Make a new shape key out of the new edits, blend off the shape key to 
only one side, mirror the shape key, Now it's a perfect mirror. 
Replace Shape Key)



Question. I haven't used ICE really at all. Do you have to create an 
ice tree for a model to use it? How did you get the menu item you use 
in the video?

Dave G


On 1/19/2013 9:10 AM, Gustavo Eggert Boehs wrote:
Its quite strait forward to do this in ice IF you have created a 
symmetry map before start moving your vertices around to create 
shapes. Here is a compound for that:

https://vimeo.com/36933815

Cheers


2013/1/19 David Saber davidsabe...@sfr.fr mailto:davidsabe...@sfr.fr

I’m modeling *shapes* symetrically, so I can’t use “symtrize
polygons”.
Sometimes I forget to press the “sym” button , so I have to redo
the same work on the other half.
Is there a way to tell the points on the “forgotten” half to
adapt to what was done on the modeled half?
Thanks
David



--
Gustavo E Boehs
http://www.gustavoeb.com.br/blog

Re: URGENT Softimage license question within a company !!!

[David Gallagher]

if you have used softimage in production you would doubtless realise 
that one does not ease back so readily into maya. 


Ha! It will be a cold day in hell before I go back to modeling/rigging 
in Maya.



On 1/8/2013 6:54 AM, Sebastien Sterling wrote:

Hello there Tim

I have nothing against the IT department, apparently, and from what i 
have been told this lies more with the individual, who is notoriously 
unhelpful, this is only my second day on the job so lets take that 
with a pinch of salt, however My Lead requested politely that he 
provide some means of contacting autodesk, given he being the head of 
IT should in theory have at least some means of contacting them, to 
which he answer No I'm not going to bother navigating there fucking 
website


if you have used softimage in production you would doubtless realise 
that one does not ease back so redely into maya. like using a hammer 
when you are used to a scalpal i only ask for the right to use the 
tool i purchased is this what it has come to? cause i think that if 
this is so you can all pack in your notions that this package will endure.


as for my resellers, i bought on the official autodesk webpage for EU 
and ireland.


I am an artist, my tool is softimage, i use it to model characters, 
and i provide my own license, i should not have to be bulied into 
another widely regarded as inferior in this domain package.


as for:

This is not obtuse but boringly difficult to setup

do you really think this is a valid excuse for a trained individual 
not to do there Job ?


I have nothing against IT, but i just spent 6000 euro to relocate to 
belgium for this compagny but since i had the temerity to but hope I 
could use the software in which i am the most confortable i can just 
fuck off?


I am a young artist, this may not seem much to other people but to me 
its my career, i'm just trying to make my way.


On 8 January 2013 12:19, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de 
mailto:bauero...@gmx.de wrote:


Hi Sebastian,


be glad you have IT. Please understand the legal consequences for the
administrator when installing a software and making it available to
use (via the network) to others than the registered user.

By the book, it would indeed be neccessary to verify if this is a
license that has to be restricted in access, e.g. even if it is a
network license, it may only be legit to be used by the registered
individual but should not be available to other users and therefor
not show as a desktop link or in their start menu.

This is not obtuse but boringly difficult to setup and maintain in
a multi-person-multi-machine-pipeline and brings the risk of ending
up with files either unacessible to many or even illegal to edit.

I would think that your reseller should be able to provide proof of
purchase or at least help you with the license transfer to the machine
that will run the license server for the duration of that job.

The documented license transfer to the new machine/MAC ID could be
regarded as legit proof of purchase/usage. I would recommend asking
your reseller for a temp license, thought.

It would be easier to wrap the job without leaving the license behind.

Long story short, that´s hoops you have to go through due to
Autodesk´s
licensing policy and it would most likely be seen as helpful if
you would
support your IT guys and client in a calm and pro-active manner.

You could at least look into using Maya for the modeling, the
asset will
most likely have to be delivered flawlessly as a Maya scene file
anyway.

If you see benefits in using Softimage, make the benefit felt,
especially
if there are stupid licensing problems to start your job with...



Cheers,


tim







On 08.01.2013 11:48, Rob Chapman wrote:

sorry no phone numbers just an email form with a support
number issued
can be found here

http://subscription.autodesk.com

On 8 January 2013 10:38, Sebastien Sterling
sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com
mailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote:

Does anyone have an autodesk support service number or
email, i don't seem
to have got one with my purchase conformation, big
surprise there...


On 8 January 2013 11:33, Sebastien Sterling
sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com
mailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com
wrote:


I'm getting the impression that the head of IT is an
incredibly obtuse
individual i have the installer, what i need is the
administrative rights so
that i can install it or he can install it, but there
is where he has my
head in a vice, he's making me jump through every
administrative whoop
twice. i like your Idea Dan, 

Re: URGENT Softimage license question within a company !!!

[David Gallagher]

Sebastien, what about using Softimage on a laptop and transfer the files 
on a usb drive?


Should work for modeling just fine.

On 1/8/2013 6:54 AM, Sebastien Sterling wrote:

Hello there Tim

I have nothing against the IT department, apparently, and from what i 
have been told this lies more with the individual, who is notoriously 
unhelpful, this is only my second day on the job so lets take that 
with a pinch of salt, however My Lead requested politely that he 
provide some means of contacting autodesk, given he being the head of 
IT should in theory have at least some means of contacting them, to 
which he answer No I'm not going to bother navigating there fucking 
website


if you have used softimage in production you would doubtless realise 
that one does not ease back so redely into maya. like using a hammer 
when you are used to a scalpal i only ask for the right to use the 
tool i purchased is this what it has come to? cause i think that if 
this is so you can all pack in your notions that this package will endure.


as for my resellers, i bought on the official autodesk webpage for EU 
and ireland.


I am an artist, my tool is softimage, i use it to model characters, 
and i provide my own license, i should not have to be bulied into 
another widely regarded as inferior in this domain package.


as for:

This is not obtuse but boringly difficult to setup

do you really think this is a valid excuse for a trained individual 
not to do there Job ?


I have nothing against IT, but i just spent 6000 euro to relocate to 
belgium for this compagny but since i had the temerity to but hope I 
could use the software in which i am the most confortable i can just 
fuck off?


I am a young artist, this may not seem much to other people but to me 
its my career, i'm just trying to make my way.


On 8 January 2013 12:19, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de 
mailto:bauero...@gmx.de wrote:


Hi Sebastian,


be glad you have IT. Please understand the legal consequences for the
administrator when installing a software and making it available to
use (via the network) to others than the registered user.

By the book, it would indeed be neccessary to verify if this is a
license that has to be restricted in access, e.g. even if it is a
network license, it may only be legit to be used by the registered
individual but should not be available to other users and therefor
not show as a desktop link or in their start menu.

This is not obtuse but boringly difficult to setup and maintain in
a multi-person-multi-machine-pipeline and brings the risk of ending
up with files either unacessible to many or even illegal to edit.

I would think that your reseller should be able to provide proof of
purchase or at least help you with the license transfer to the machine
that will run the license server for the duration of that job.

The documented license transfer to the new machine/MAC ID could be
regarded as legit proof of purchase/usage. I would recommend asking
your reseller for a temp license, thought.

It would be easier to wrap the job without leaving the license behind.

Long story short, that´s hoops you have to go through due to
Autodesk´s
licensing policy and it would most likely be seen as helpful if
you would
support your IT guys and client in a calm and pro-active manner.

You could at least look into using Maya for the modeling, the
asset will
most likely have to be delivered flawlessly as a Maya scene file
anyway.

If you see benefits in using Softimage, make the benefit felt,
especially
if there are stupid licensing problems to start your job with...



Cheers,


tim







On 08.01.2013 11:48, Rob Chapman wrote:

sorry no phone numbers just an email form with a support
number issued
can be found here

http://subscription.autodesk.com

On 8 January 2013 10:38, Sebastien Sterling
sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com
mailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote:

Does anyone have an autodesk support service number or
email, i don't seem
to have got one with my purchase conformation, big
surprise there...


On 8 January 2013 11:33, Sebastien Sterling
sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com
mailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com
wrote:


I'm getting the impression that the head of IT is an
incredibly obtuse
individual i have the installer, what i need is the
administrative rights so
that i can install it or he can install it, but there
is where he has my
head in a vice, he's making me jump through every
administrative whoop
twice. i like your Idea Dan, i will appeal the trial
version idea, but it
   

Softimage on AnimSchool Blog

[David Gallagher]

Merry Christmas Softimage folks! By the way, we often show Softimage on 
AnimSchool Blog.

For example:
http://www.animschoolblog.com/2012/12/animschool-general-review-ernesto.html

Dave G

Re: congrats to centreNAD

[David Gallagher]

Nice job!

On 12/20/2012 8:09 AM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau wrote:


Yup the Centre NAD still teaches Softimage!

The school is also responsible for this  other video that went viral:

Controlled Quantum Levitation on a Wipe'Out Track

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqmdv5iyIOY

*From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Rob 
Wuijster

*Sent:* 20 décembre 2012 06:12
*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
*Subject:* Re: congrats to centreNAD

Didn't see this one yet, but that's bloody brilliant!!!

Kudos to the students, and the hype that apparently swept the globe. LOL!!

  
  
Rob

\/-\/\/

On 20-12-2012 11:57, Matt Morris wrote:

For the 16 million views and counting in under 48 hours, amazing
job by the students there!

http://youtu.be/CE0Q904gtMI



-- 
www.matinai.com http://www.matinai.com


No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com http://www.avg.com
Version: 2013.0.2805 / Virus Database: 2637/5970 - Release Date:
12/19/12

Re: Rumors

[David Gallagher]

Good thoughts. The irritating thing to me is that the Maya/Max world 
doesn't understand the workflow strengths of Softimage. If those tools 
elsewhere turn out to be better, that's great. But lately it just feels 
like momentum is the driving force, not quality of software.


Dave G

On 12/19/2012 12:43 PM, Mathieu Leclaire wrote:
I'm sorry... but how exactly does it hurt the user? If what you are 
hearing happens to be true... doesn't that just mean good news for 
Maya? I don't see any bad news for Softimage here. Softimage ain't 
loosing anything. It's Maya whose gaining.


Even if Softimage ends up loosing some user base because they are 
moving to Maya or something else and Softimage stops evolving due to 
lack of users... Well, that's the cycle of life. In the end, ain't 
that the beauty of our industry? Things are evolving rapidly. There 
are always new softwares, new technologies to learn and adopt. Old non 
evolving technologies slowly die to make way to new better 
technologies. I love Softimage like all of you and I would be sad if 
it stopped evolving. But I'm a big boy. I'll adopt a new one if it 
helps our work get better. Sure, there would be an adaptation period 
if that happens, but in the end, softwares are just tools. Our jobs 
aren't in jeopardy. Only your comfort zone is. And that is only true 
IF your wort case scenario actually happens (i.e. new ICE like 
interface in Maya forces Softimage users to switch software and in 
doing so kills Softimage's future).


I think this process is completely natural and healthy. If Softimage 
is to die, it's not going to happen in the blink of an eye. It's going 
to be a slow natural transition towards that state. I hope not. I too 
hope it will keep evolving and keep it's place in the industry... but 
if it doesn't, then I'll be happy to face a new challenge and learn a 
new software.


-Mathieu

Tim Marinov wrote:
If it was publicly it won't be rumor and everyone will know.As I said 
this is something I 've heard recently and I really hope isn't true.I 
like Softimage XSI and what is happening with it lately, and these 
rumors really hurts long XSI users.



On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 4:34 PM, Graham Bell 
graham.b...@autodesk.com mailto:graham.b...@autodesk.com wrote:


publicly

Re: in case you didn't notice

[David Gallagher]

Wonderful!

On 12/3/2012 4:27 AM, Sebastian Kowalski wrote:

i know that tim is to humble to post it here, but these are to great and 
beautiful to go without some proper recognition.

nissan altima fx design concept eye candy,
https://vimeo.com/48823907 part1
https://vimeo.com/54739307 part2

giving me goosebumps. great work tim!

sebastian

reorder custom parameters

[David Gallagher]

Hi! Does anyone have a tool/script to reorder custom parameters?

Would be sooo handy.

Thanks,
Dave G

Re: Softimage Picker

[David Gallagher]

Thanks Jo! We will do that if the speed is a problem. Thanks!
Dave G
On 11/22/2012 4:19 PM, jo benayoun wrote:

hey david,
you shouldn't need to update your widgets every time the user has 
changed its selection (completely behind steve on that one) but 
everytime focus has changedback to your widget.
overload QWidget::enterEvent or QWidget::focusInEvent and update your 
highlight buttons when the widget is under the cursor.
your developer could also have a look to the tool sdk, both are 
compatible and you could end up with something nice (custom 
manipulater + synoptic).

-- jo





2012/11/21 Steven Caron car...@gmail.com mailto:car...@gmail.com

this is a good example. combined with a few other good reasons i
would probably implement an event, but if this were the only good
reason i would still avoid doing it with an event. as i said in my
email to david, if performance were to be an issue, i would
highlight the controls in the gui once the cursor enters the
application.

there are a few things in softimage that make me paranoid and
selection events is one of them. i remember a plugin that was
installed at blur a long time ago that did an on selection change
script that was the culprit for some serious lag for the animators.

i also imagine one might want to keep open multiple character guis
and i can see this getting out of hand. but its still worth some
investigation.

s


On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 3:56 PM, Raffaele Fragapane
raffsxsil...@googlemail.com mailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com
wrote:

Bi-Directionality is actually quite important.
A lot of people want to do part of a selection in the viewport
quickly, and then add a few missing, or easier to retrieve,
bits clicking around in the character pane.

Doing it with events isn't a huge drag, it only kicks in at
selection time in the viewport, and it's most likely done with
a monitor job in Maya, which tends to have comparable lag, so
if people find it ok in one they will most likely be fine with
the other's.


On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 9:52 AM, Steven Caron
car...@gmail.com mailto:car...@gmail.com wrote:

ya, it might be slow.

i dont see an advantage to the bi-directionality feature,
anyone care to give me a good example?

s

Re: Softimage Picker

[David Gallagher]

Hello!

Lots of helpful uses.
If you're learning what button is what control, selecting a control 
shows you where the button is.
If you select multiple buttons, you can see exactly what you have 
selected in a comprehensive way.
If you select all, or a set, you can see if something is missing in the 
picker, because buttons won't be highlighted.
Since the buttons highlight gray if the associated buttons are partly, 
but not all selected, if you are missing any buttons, it's really easy 
to tell.
In Maya, when you select multiple objects, you have no idea what you now 
have selected because it grabs the whole heirarchies. You're almost 
completely lost. The Picker actually helps you see what you have 
selected in Maya.
Some buttons select multiple objects -- wouldn't it be great to know 
exactly what it just selected?
With the Synoptic, you can select a button, but you may forget what 
button you hit. Having it stay linked to the selection is quite a bit 
more orienting.
If you drag a rectangle, you can see what buttons are being selected as 
you go.


Basically, once you use this workflow, it's really hard to go back!

Strangely, in Maya, the birectional highlighting is not slow.

I will probably make a quick demonstration so you can see the workflow 
and the benefits.

Thanks!
Dave G

On 11/21/2012 5:52 PM, Steven Caron wrote:

ya, it might be slow.

i dont see an advantage to the bi-directionality feature, anyone care 
to give me a good example?


s


On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 2:46 PM, Jeremie Passerin gerem@gmail.com 
mailto:gerem@gmail.com wrote:


The bi-directional is the only one I always find tricky... that
mean you have to create an event in Softimage I guess...
the rest looks totally doable with PyQt

Re: Softimage Picker

[David Gallagher]

Sounds good! So, for anyone who would use a port to Softimage, would 
they have to install that plug-in as well?


On 11/21/2012 5:04 PM, Simon Anderson wrote:

Hi David,

Im very happy to help and lend a hand, have done lots of pyQt for 
softimage pipeline programs over the years.
For Qt to work in Softimage you have to have Jo's + Steves Qt plugin, 
if your cool with that Ill gladly help script/port it.


Cheers
Si

On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 8:59 AM, David Gallagher 
davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com 
wrote:



Hello! We recently announced we are releasing this great Maya
Picker GUI plug-in to the community as a promotion.

http://www.animschool.com/Uploads/homepagemedia/AnimSchoolPickerBanner5RGBWeb.jpg

It's done using Qt. We have a wonderful programmer involved, but
he's not familiar with Softimage.

Would anyone care to guess if any/some parts would be portable to
Softimage? Or care to throw their hat in the ring for a potential
conversion to Softimage?

This is somewhat similar to the synoptic, but much more dynamic
and easy to author.

Thanks,
Dave G
AnimSchool




--
---
Simon Ben Anderson
blog: http://vinyldevelopment.wordpress.com/

Re: Softimage Picker

[David Gallagher]

Ok, sounds great. I hadn't seen that Zvgui app!

To be clear, AnimSchool Picker is a Maya plug-in, not a standalone app. 
One helpful thing: when you use the Maya manipulator hotkeys when in the 
Picker window, Maya responds to them normally, which is very handy for 
workflow. (If it's a totally separate app like abxPicker which we had 
been using, it doesn't. So when you select something and want to switch 
to rotate mode, you have to click in the interface to be back in Maya.)


On 11/21/2012 5:40 PM, Steven Caron wrote:

its not pyqt at all.. he said its XNA.

regardless the same concept should be done with pure pyqt, ie. an 
editor, custom buttons, and the ability to execute any code on those 
buttons, some sort of external format for saving a gui out, the 
ability to know its environment and execute maya code or softimage 
code, etc


s


On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 2:37 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.com 
mailto:ethivie...@gmail.com wrote:


I believe Paolo did some custom work with that gui as well. At
least that's what I remember he told me so that isn't just
straight vanilla PyQt. FYI.


Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com



On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Steven Caron car...@gmail.com
mailto:car...@gmail.com wrote:

i think its great to port this using the pyqt plugin jo and i
made... but this is what i have always wanted now that pyqt
and cross platform development is more easy.

http://www.paolodominici.com/products/zvgui/

no more porting of a character specific gui

s



On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 2:04 PM, Simon Anderson
simonbenandersonl...@gmail.com
mailto:simonbenandersonl...@gmail.com wrote:

Hi David,

Im very happy to help and lend a hand, have done lots of
pyQt for softimage pipeline programs over the years.
For Qt to work in Softimage you have to have Jo's + Steves
Qt plugin, if your cool with that Ill gladly help
script/port it.

Cheers
Si


On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 8:59 AM, David Gallagher
davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com
mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com wrote:


Hello! We recently announced we are releasing this
great Maya Picker GUI plug-in to the community as a
promotion.

http://www.animschool.com/Uploads/homepagemedia/AnimSchoolPickerBanner5RGBWeb.jpg

It's done using Qt. We have a wonderful programmer
involved, but he's not familiar with Softimage.

Would anyone care to guess if any/some parts would be
portable to Softimage? Or care to throw their hat in
the ring for a potential conversion to Softimage?

This is somewhat similar to the synoptic, but much
more dynamic and easy to author.

Thanks,
Dave G
AnimSchool




-- 
---

Simon Ben Anderson
blog: http://vinyldevelopment.wordpress.com/