Re: Technicolor acquires The Mill

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

I hope so

jb


> On 15 Sep 2015, at 21:32, Amaan Akram  wrote:
> 
> It's good. We were VC owned before. Now we are owned by someone in the 
> business.
> 
> On 15 Sep 2015 20:02, "Mats Bertil Tegner"  > wrote:
> On 2015-09-15 20:17, Sebastien Sterling wrote:
> > Is this good ?
> 
> Probably not, they already own MPC in the U.K.
> 

Re: Friday Flashback #238

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

The future is around the corner, we just need to look at the right place.

Nuke and its ever expanding 3D capabilities integrated into the NukeStudio and 
Mari is in my opinion the natural evolution, albeit clunky still, but certainly 
interesting enough for me to invest my time. If you add on top of that Modo is 
becoming a serious contender, there is a sense of things to come that I guess 
was where DS+XSI were heading into, ahead of its time for sure were 3D was not 
what it is today, a semi-mechanised industry.

jb


 On 28 Aug 2015, at 21:40, pete...@skynet.be wrote:
 
 ah
 DS discontinued by Avid and XSI discontinued by AD.
 and what’s there to fill that particular void?
  
 they shared architecture and interface to a degree, and both had some very 
 interesting forward thinking (visionary?) concepts at their origin.
 I remember opening a softimage 3D asset in the DS timeline, and changing the 
 texture placement on it, and having it re-render, right there in the editing 
 timeline, with mental ray - 15 years ago. It wasn’t all that useful, but it 
 hinted of some very exciting future links between 3D and editing/comp.
 But then Avid drove a wedge between DS and XSI, pushing DS into a very 
 awkward position in the Avid portfolio, and XSI into a kind of no mans land – 
 like an unwanted child they ended up with, not knowing what to do with. 
 Somehow, that child managed to survive Avid and even start to show promise, 
 then got sold off to AD, and even survived that and prospered. A while.
  
 I guess the industry as a whole didn’t need that integrated Digital Studio, 
 and few really used DS and XSI in tandem - but I feel we are all the poorer 
 without it.
 Sure, there’s some interesting convergence happening between 3D and comp 
 these days – but how I miss that particular Softimage spin on it.
  
  
  
 From: Stephen Blair mailto:stephenrbl...@gmail.com
 Sent: Friday, August 28, 2015 9:58 PM
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject: Friday Flashback #238
  
 SOFTIMAGE|DS: Originality distinguishes art from craft
 http://wp.me/powV4-3dT http://wp.me/powV4-3dT
  

Re: Ping

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

Still using Softimage here!!! yoo-hoo

and houdini.

jb

 On 26 Aug 2015, at 01:34, Tenshi . tenshu...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 wtf guys =S , i received a lot of emails in my cellphone for this test, 
 only one is enough haha
 
 On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 7:02 AM, Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dk 
 mailto:x...@colorshopvfx.dk wrote:
 Ping
 

Re: Get rid of your flip phone and get current on maya!

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

It’s clearly targeted to the Cinema4D crowd obviously, designers and kind of 1 
man band artist/designers/directors running on a laptop and darting through 
london on a uber expensive bicycle.

The problem is that these guys have a great tool in their hands and its 
connection with After Effects is difficult to beat so I see it as a very 
uninformed marketing campaign.

But may be I am wrong and they are going to sell these to my mother-in-law too 
so she can do some dinosaurs and get rich.
jb

 On 11 Jul 2015, at 18:07, Steven Caron car...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 BUT carpenters do rent some tools... not their core tools but typically the 
 larger more expensive tools. Maybe this campaign is not for us. ie. The 
 people who use 3d tools everyday. Maybe the people that never have used 3d 
 tools before are the focus of this campaign. My colleagues and I have 
 discussed this a bit and this is one of the conclusions we came to. This is a 
 play designed for getting new customers and new revenue, mostly.
 
 I still think this is campaign is completely silly, but I can say I am 
 honestly not surprised.
 
 *written with my thumbs
 
 On Jul 11, 2015 8:36 AM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com 
 mailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  It would be so easy to write them off a idiots
 
  DCC are TOOLS in nature, they are selling them as a service, which is 
  fundamentally incompatible.
 
  As a carpenter you don't rent a hammer or a tool belt, not if it is your 
  business, that is insane.
 

Re: OT: I know a lot has been said about MODO but this...!?!

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

I am very excited following Modo development, lately their drive for animation 
and rigging has been exceptional and if you are impressed by this when you look 
at the truly well done animation tools they published on 801 you should be very 
excited.

look forward to work with it on a real animation project
jb

 On 29 Jun 2015, at 21:01, Pierre Schiller activemotionpictu...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 
 https://vimeo.com/131766938 https://vimeo.com/131766938
 
 Jaw dropping. Now it looks like they nailed. Did everyone see the mesh 
 retarget? and the FK/IK friendly switching?
 
 Opinions?
 
 Cheers.
 David.
 
 -- 
 Portfolio 2013 http://be.net/3dcinetv
 Cinema  TV production
 Video Reel https://vimeo.com/3dcinetv/reel2012

Re: End of the ride

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

Thanks Graham, you work has been great and Autodesk is loosing a key asset and 
the culture few of the remaining Softimage guys brought to it, sad strategy 
they have.

Wish you the best and hope we can work together in the near future.
jb

 On 13 May 2015, at 15:53, Alan Fregtman alan.fregt...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Thank you for all the help throughout the years, Graham! :)
 
 
 On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 11:39 AM Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dk 
 mailto:x...@colorshopvfx.dk wrote:
 Well then thanks for the assistance you have provided over the years and good 
 luck where ever you will be going!
  
 Cheers Graham!
  
  
 Best Regards
 Morten Bartholdy
 - Softimage user since 1992
  
  
 
 Den 13. maj 2015 kl. 00:59 skrev Graham Bell bell...@gmail.com 
 mailto:bell...@gmail.com: 
 
 I hadn't wanted to make any kind of announcement, but reading Stephens latest 
 Flashback thread and the discussions on where peoples journey with Softimage 
 first started, it's kinda made me realise that mine has basically ended. 
 And as I'm posting here, I didn't want to fly under false colours, so to 
 speak. 
  
 As of the start of this month, I'm no longer at Autodesk, The bloodline of 
 european Softimage AE's from Ben, Chinny, and James, to myself has now ended.
  
 Perhaps it's time to start earning an honest living again. lol :-)
 
  

Re: contacting autodesk support is really tricky these days

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

Lovely

 On 6 May 2015, at 22:30, Mario Reitbauer cont...@marioreitbauer.at wrote:
 
 And then in case you reach someone, what you hope for :D
 I hope you don't need a bug fixed ;)
 
 2015-05-06 23:21 GMT+02:00 Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com 
 mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com:
 If it wasn’t so sad I would laugh..
 
 jb
 
 On 6 May 2015, at 21:55, Stephen Blair stephenrbl...@gmail.com 
 mailto:stephenrbl...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 There is no direct e-mail address for technical support (unless that changed 
 in the last 2.5 years)
 
 If you're off subs, then it's the forums or @AutodeskHelp 
 (https://twitter.com/autodeskhelp https://twitter.com/autodeskhelp)
 
 Or maybe this
 http://autodesk.force.com/ExternalWebForm/StillNeedAssistanceWebForm?language=en
  
 http://autodesk.force.com/ExternalWebForm/StillNeedAssistanceWebForm?language=en
 
 Or go through your sales contact, if you have one
 
 On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 4:07 PM, Steven Caron car...@gmail.com 
 mailto:car...@gmail.com wrote:
 Does anyone have any tips on getting an actual email address or some form 
 for contacting Autodesk?
 
 I can't find it through my subscription account (probably because I let it 
 lapse). They are so proud about their knowledge base they send you in 
 circles and circles right back to the knowledge base, but never any direct 
 contact...
 
 Thanks
 Steven
 
 
 

Re: contacting autodesk support is really tricky these days

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

If it wasn’t so sad I would laugh..

jb

 On 6 May 2015, at 21:55, Stephen Blair stephenrbl...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 There is no direct e-mail address for technical support (unless that changed 
 in the last 2.5 years)
 
 If you're off subs, then it's the forums or @AutodeskHelp 
 (https://twitter.com/autodeskhelp https://twitter.com/autodeskhelp)
 
 Or maybe this
 http://autodesk.force.com/ExternalWebForm/StillNeedAssistanceWebForm?language=en
  
 http://autodesk.force.com/ExternalWebForm/StillNeedAssistanceWebForm?language=en
 
 Or go through your sales contact, if you have one
 
 On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 4:07 PM, Steven Caron car...@gmail.com 
 mailto:car...@gmail.com wrote:
 Does anyone have any tips on getting an actual email address or some form for 
 contacting Autodesk?
 
 I can't find it through my subscription account (probably because I let it 
 lapse). They are so proud about their knowledge base they send you in circles 
 and circles right back to the knowledge base, but never any direct contact...
 
 Thanks
 Steven
 

Re: The shadow over The Foundry

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

This could be quite a blessing.

jb

 On 27 Apr 2015, at 11:11, Nicolas Esposito 3dv...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Looks like Adobe is trying to get a piece of the VFX industries
 
 Link of the article 
 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/privateequity/11562472/Adobe-eyes-200m-bid-for-British-visual-effects-firm-The-Foundry.html
 
 Good? Bad? Adobe to be the next Autodesk-Evil-Corp-Inc?

Re: OT: Houdini cluster materials

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

What I suggest you do is a ingest  process workflow.

1 - Ingest - Use the object load to spit your objects onto the parts you want, 
make sure you put some nicely name nulls (these will be your hooks) and if you 
are very tidy add a red material in your object level. Also this is the point 
in which you repair broken models, add normals at vertex level instead of point 
level, remove things you don’t point wise, etc… but don’t add just yet the 
attributes that are specific to the task at hand, simply the basics.

2 - Process - Then create in object level as many OBJ as you need and read the 
hooks you created from inside, adding the materials at object level here!!! 
this should override the red color and thus you have a visual clue of what has 
been updated or is left to do (if you see a red object chances are you forgot 
to add a material  ;-)  Here is where you add your own attributes and given 
Bgeo can store them it is the perfect conduit to have you master version of the 
model (on steroids)

If you are preparing an asset (let’s say a car) you may want to optimise this 
workflow and simply cache out (freeze your data) onto the disk for rigging and 
what not with all the atrributes cleaned and ready for final usage.

hope it helps
jb


 On 23 Mar 2015, at 01:07, Nono nnois...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Hi,
 what i don't clearly understand is how material assignment at object level is 
 useful if object merge don't keep them... ? am i missing something ?
 
 Noël
 
 On Tue, 10 Mar 2015 at 20:08 Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com 
 mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:
 ...
 My take is to try to do things at object level due to easiness with for 
 example transformations, material assignment, scene optimisation and LOD.
 

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

Is this processing time or hardware time? (disks, network, etc..)

Of course saving gigabytes per frame is slow but may be a clever local SSD sync 
to the main server could do the job to make the process faster?

jb


 On 19 Mar 2015, at 12:56, Ciaran Moloney moloney.cia...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 I'm loving working with Houdini, but sometimes it's just frustratingly slow. 
 Even with the new VDB tools, converting and caching everything out as volume 
 fields is a real drag.
 But then again the caching workflow is super-slick. I shudder at the thought 
 of all the time lost to the mysteries of ICE caching.
 
 On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 10:11 AM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com 
 mailto:nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
 I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might save the 
 life of a fellow artist.
 
 So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can 
 compete against people straight out of collage.
 This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage artists 
 here in South Africa.
 At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to 
 happen in maya for me.
 My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
 I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now, just 
 in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead to allot of 
 back tracking.
 
 At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag of 
 Houdini FX.
 It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was one, 
 of only a few houdini artists around.
 Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.
 
 The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me.
 
 I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than I 
 can with Maya after a year.
 The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package works as 
 one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing something new is 
 fun and pretty easy.
 
 This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non 
 destructive open work flow.
 So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the whole 
 there is a script for that mentality... there is a sop for that
 
 G
 

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

I agree with Francois, little steps, start with the simple stuff, from 
modelling and animation, rigging (SOPs specially) and lighting, then move into 
VEX and VFX also in chunks, fluids, pyro, then particles and last DOPs 
(dynamics) which is where the meat is.

With regards with Redshift, I really hope so.

Regarding freelance work... you will have less competition for a high end 
market that is desperate for talent. How does it sound?

;)

jb


 On 18 Mar 2015, at 14:37, Byron Nash byronn...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Does Redshift have any plans for Houdini? Have you all found there are many 
 opportunities for remote Houdini work? I wonder since it's a smaller market 
 share that the competent artists may be able to negotiate better 
 circumstances like remote or better pay? 
 
 On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 9:54 AM, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com 
 mailto:flordli...@gmail.com wrote:
 If you are a Softimage power user, it will take a lot of time to get back to 
 that level in Houdini. However, you don't need to be a Houdini power user to 
 use Houdini. Learn the basics (basic modeling, basic UVs, basinc animation, 
 etc) and then choose an area where you want to dive first. Most people choose 
 simulation because it's where Houdini really excels, but you don't have to do 
 like everyone. If you choose lookdev, you will quickly realize that Mantra is 
 very much like Arnold. You end up being up and running very quickly, and can 
 work on production shots.
 
 Houdini is a lot more fun to learn and work with than all the rumors I heard 
 about it over the years. And no, it's not just for technical people.
 
 
 On 18-Mar-15 08:51, Leendert A. Hartog wrote:
 I might have quoted too much in my previous post. The idea that you're thrown 
 back to (almost) entry-level skill set, competing against people straight 
 out of collage is a plight,
 one would imagine, every Softimage user will have to suffer as it takes time 
 to get back on track (on a serious level with new software regardless of 
 which software he or she choses.
 I just expressed my concerns that in the end this wouldn't take any less 
 long with Houdini (although the ride would undoubtedly be more enjoyable, 
 one would think).
 And the sentiments towards Autodesk go without saying, I guess... ;)
 
 Greetz
 Leendert
 
 Gerbrand Nel schreef op 18-3-2015 om 13:23:
 and got to a point where I can compete against people straight out of collage.
 
 
 

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

That certainly is a great approach but even better is if you go in the other 
direction, use Houdini as the backbone and render from 
Mantra/Arnold/Octane/PRMan/3Dlight/whatever as the FX live inside Houdini and 
therefore it is the natural backbone.

Ultimately you will be using a myriad of tools that will funnel “dumb” cached 
data (just baked geometry, particles with attributes and little more) to 
Houdini and from there you are free to assemble your scenes as you need to.

Furthermore, if you need to scale you will find Houdini excels at that so imho 
it is a no brainer.

hope it helps

jb


 On 17 Mar 2015, at 18:15, Manuel Huertas Marchena lito...@hotmail.com wrote:
 
 I am wondering if any of you guys working in film use houdini for digital 
 asset production, or is it still more of a fx tool for most part? (having 
 said that I do realize that houdini is not and end to end solution or all 
 kinds of assets, but still I feel that there is a lot of stuff that could/can 
 be created using  a procedural approach,
 ex: buildings, concept modeling, snow, rocks, trees, props...etc..)

Re: OT: Houdini cluster materials

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

And the drag and drop mechanism works on the OBJ level, therefore I try to 
minimise the amount of “cluster like” approaches and operate at Object level as 
much as I can.

hope it helps
jb

 On 11 Mar 2015, at 11:47, Andy Goehler lists.andy.goeh...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 The material SOP sets the ‘shop_materialpath’ attribute on primitives. This 
 attribute has a higher priority than object level material assignment.
 Same with Softimage actually, a material assigned to a cluster is not 
 overridden by it’s object material.
 
 Andy
 
 
 On Mar 11, 2015, at 12:33, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com 
 mailto:cgc...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Another thing to note, if you apply materials inside the objects subnets 
 then the material applied on the object level has no effect. 
 I am really just getting started with rendering but this was quite 
 surprising coming from xsi ;)
 
 C
 
 On 11 March 2015 at 09:50, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com 
 mailto:cgc...@gmail.com wrote:
 Materials in houdini are essentially applied per polygon (primitives in 
 houdini). Check the details view of a geometry that has a material, and the 
 select the primitive icon. You will see each individual poly has got the 
 material applied to it.
 
 By the way, the Details View panel is your best friend. If you are not using 
 it, you are not using houdini very well ;)
 
 C
 
 On 10 March 2015 at 19:08, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com 
 mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:
 You will certainly use them a lot as you will have surely many streams of 
 data (a bit like if you had in one single object multiple parallel operator 
 stacks that you can blend/merge/dispose/etc…
 
 My take is to try to do things at object level due to easiness with for 
 example transformations, material assignment, scene optimisation and LOD.
 
 For example, every component of a wheel of a car I separate and make objects 
 and have a hierarchy, this allows me to do very quick low resolution objects 
 out of big ones. Transformations are much faster and ultimately I can do 
 clever camera based hiding and what not.
 
 Also given I use bundles a lot having objects is very convenient as I can do 
 text searches that bring the objects to the bundles so it is a major win 
 after a bit of a slow prep time of course.
 
 So I would say my best friend is “object merge” operator rather than merge.
 
 ;-)
 
 hope it helps
 jb
 
 On 10 Mar 2015, at 17:47, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com 
 mailto:jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 (see addendums in bold)
 
 On 03/10/15 13:32, Jason S wrote:
 On 03/10/15 12:15, Christopher Crouzet wrote: 
 This is a core concept when you have to deal with such graphs—it is so 
 essential that the `Merge` node is probably one of the most used nodes in 
 Houdini. 
 I can understand why, whether for optimization, [or] manageability 
 purposes. 
 Groups in Houdini share roughly the same purpose than clusters from 
 Softimage. 
 They are a core concept in Houdini as every node understand them. What 
 you can do with clusters, you can do with groups, and much more out of 
 the box. 
 I can imagine, as core [or as basic of a concept] as in Soft I would 
 assume. [or so it would seem]
 
 And thanks for the, I think important clarification.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Re: OT: Houdini cluster materials

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

You will certainly use them a lot as you will have surely many streams of data 
(a bit like if you had in one single object multiple parallel operator stacks 
that you can blend/merge/dispose/etc…

My take is to try to do things at object level due to easiness with for example 
transformations, material assignment, scene optimisation and LOD.

For example, every component of a wheel of a car I separate and make objects 
and have a hierarchy, this allows me to do very quick low resolution objects 
out of big ones. Transformations are much faster and ultimately I can do clever 
camera based hiding and what not.

Also given I use bundles a lot having objects is very convenient as I can do 
text searches that bring the objects to the bundles so it is a major win after 
a bit of a slow prep time of course.

So I would say my best friend is “object merge” operator rather than merge.

;-)

hope it helps
jb

 On 10 Mar 2015, at 17:47, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 (see addendums in bold)
 
 On 03/10/15 13:32, Jason S wrote:
 On 03/10/15 12:15, Christopher Crouzet wrote: 
 This is a core concept when you have to deal with such graphs—it is so 
 essential that the `Merge` node is probably one of the most used nodes in 
 Houdini. 
 I can understand why, whether for optimization, [or] manageability purposes. 
 Groups in Houdini share roughly the same purpose than clusters from 
 Softimage. 
 They are a core concept in Houdini as every node understand them. What you 
 can do with clusters, you can do with groups, and much more out of the box. 
 I can imagine, as core [or as basic of a concept] as in Soft I would assume. 
 [or so it would seem]
 
 And thanks for the, I think important clarification.
 
 

Re: OT maya random/linear in channel box

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

  
 Before someone jump in saying that maya is the worst thing in the universe 
 because of scripting and so on... 4 lines of code.
 
 from maya import cmds
 from random import random
 for each in cmds.ls http://cmds.ls/(sl=True, l=True):
 cmds.setAttr(each + .translateX, random() * 500)
 
 Is it better than Softimage? hell no!
 Is it a big deal? not at all.

It does to me as it breaks my thinking flow and momentum, exactly the same than 
someone asking to jump on a meeting while you are animating, when you go back 
your mindset is in a different planet and takes ages to get back to the zone.

It’s the Artist  technical  Artist switching that XSI does manage so well and 
this is one very good example of why IMO workflow in Maya is a total mess.

jb

Re: akeytsu animation software demo

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

But that is because is not done correctly in Max either.

 On 4 Mar 2015, at 14:53, David Saber davidsa...@sfr.fr wrote:
 
 A world devoid of rigging is the world of Max's Biped... I know a lot of 
 animators who are really happy with it! But when you come from Softimage of 
 Maya, it's shocking. I still think a custom rig is better.
 David
 
 
 
 On 2015-02-27 11:11, Jordi Bares Dominguez wrote:
 Rigging should not exist in a perfect world, how is hat for a controversial 
 statement?
 
 
 

Re: akeytsu animation software demo

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

It would be too boring world to live in.

jb

 On 27 Feb 2015, at 23:12, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com 
 wrote:
 
 A perfect world would contain no animators. I therefore agree with you :)
 
 On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 9:11 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com 
 mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:
 Rigging should not exist in a perfect world, how is hat for a controversial 
 statement?
 
 ;)
 
 jb
 

Re: akeytsu animation software demo

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

Rigging should not exist in a perfect world, how is hat for a controversial 
statement?

;)

jb


 On 26 Feb 2015, at 23:28, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com 
 wrote:
 
 Animators themselves are probably the ones crippling the rigging paradigm, 
 not the other way around ;) That's half the reason.
 The other half is that 90% of TDs out there who would struggle to find their 
 arse with both hands tied behind their back and an anatomical atlas open on 
 the Gluteus Maximus page taped to their face.
 
 Maya, in small part, is responsible for having formed that generation of 
 hacks with MEL and a number of other factors, but all in all I strongly 
 believe the people are to blame for the state of things, not the software 
 houses.
 
 There is no user base more resistant to change in the whole industry that 
 I've ever seen than the coupling of animators and riggers who think 
 scripting a blend is the height of technical achievement.
 
 Here's my controversial statement for the month, just in time for the end of 
 it ;)
 
 On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 8:44 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com 
 mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:
 The whole rigging paradigm is simply crippling animators and pimping it does 
 not really help, this part of our workflow should change massively and I see 
 akeytsu as the the first of many to come.
 
 It is insanity the level of micromanagement required to build a human rig, it 
 is time for packages to provide such primitive objects and be able to play 
 like lego with them.
 
 The fact that some rigging TD uses M
 
 

Re: akeytsu animation software demo

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

The whole rigging paradigm is simply crippling animators and pimping it does 
not really help, this part of our workflow should change massively and I see 
akeytsu as the the first of many to come.

It is insanity the level of micromanagement required to build a human rig, it 
is time for packages to provide such primitive objects and be able to play like 
lego with them.

The fact that some rigging TD uses M



 On 22 Feb 2015, at 04:58, Mario Reitbauer cont...@marioreitbauer.at 
 mailto:cont...@marioreitbauer.at wrote:
 
 Well at least in maya this is allready possible isnt it ?
 At least I saw a rig which didnt use any controllers.
 
 2015-02-21 1:12 GMT+01:00 Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com 
 mailto:g...@janimation.com:
 ^^THAT^^  I have been talking about interacting wanting to have the mesh have 
 hot spots for years.. please get rid of all that visual clutter between me 
 and my character.
 
 G
 
 On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 6:04 PM, Eugene Flormata eug...@flormata.com 
 mailto:eug...@flormata.com wrote:
 I hope something revolutionary comes out for rigging/ animation comes out like
 zbrush did to modeling.
 
 https://vimeo.com/103633309 https://vimeo.com/103633309
 this one sure is neat
 
 On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 4:05 AM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com 
 mailto:s...@tidbit-images.com wrote:
 I was looking forward to this one too.
 They wanted to release in fall last year, but are delayed as it seems.
 From its description it looks like a technical preview of what could be 
 achieved with Fabric's Kraken one day, at least as  far as encapsulation and 
 rig complexity is concerned :-)
 
 There is also this: http://en.esotericsoftware.com/spine-in-depth 
 http://en.esotericsoftware.com/spine-in-depth
 
 but it's strictly 2D.
 
 Yes !!! i was looking for this the other day, but couldn't remember the name.
 
 On 19 February 2015 at 14:00, Marco Peixoto mpe...@gmail.com 
 mailto:mpe...@gmail.com wrote:
 Really need to try it on, so far im not impressed on its UI, but of course 
 its a first impression and its outside of what im used so I think its a bit 
 normal :)
 
 Now it seems it only exports FBX and I guess its more targeted for Game 
 Animation, since the rig is Pre Built and doesn't seem to have extra 
 deformation than the regular Bone Chains.
 
 Nevertheless its a vey welcome adition to the field of CA Maya dominated :D
 
 On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 8:42 AM, Oscar Juarez tridi.animei...@gmail.com 
 mailto:tridi.animei...@gmail.com wrote:
 It looks like a very interesting software, working on bare bones with nice 
 manipulation modes. With a traditional animation approach.
 
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74eSHxwoGdQ 
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74eSHxwoGdQ
 
 
 
 
 
 --

 -
Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at 
 mailto:%22ste...@keyvis.at%22+%3cste...@keyvis.at%3E
 -
   Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
 A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
  Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231 tel:%2B43%20%280%29%20699%2012614231
www.keyvis.at http://www.keyvis.at/
  This email and its attachments are
 confidential and for the recipient only
 
 
 

Re: Maya thinks they're clever....and that's the problem

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

Very true, consistency should be paramount. 

jb

 On 20 Feb 2015, at 19:39, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 I'd say both are happy(er) when things are consistent and predictable 
 (however they work), with care to eliminate as many steps as possible, 
 because sometimes even microsteps make all the difference.
 
 
 On 02/20/15 14:08, Rob Chapman wrote:
 So now we get to a crux of an issue of ui design, who is the more human, the 
 artist or the programmer
 
 On 20 Feb 2015 18:43, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] 
 j.ponthi...@nasa.gov mailto:j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote:
 That really is the point, isn’t it? 
  
 --
 
 Joey
 
  
  
 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 Mirko Jankovic
 Sent: Friday, February 20, 2015 1:13 PM
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject: Re: Maya thinks they're cleverand that's the problem
 
  
 If programmer making something for artists shouldn't that follow what 
 artists needs not what programmer feels it should be ;)
 
  
  
 

Re: akeytsu animation software demo

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

“writing” is the key word here.

jb


 On 24 Feb 2015, at 13:32, Alan Fregtman alan.fregt...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 You can do something like that by writing a selection change event that looks 
 for a specific property on the object for what to select instead; a kind of 
 selection proxy, if you will.
 
 On Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 7:12 PM Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com 
 mailto:g...@janimation.com wrote:
 ^^THAT^^  I have been talking about interacting wanting to have the mesh have 
 hot spots for years.. please get rid of all that visual clutter between me 
 and my character.
 
 
 G
 
 On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 6:04 PM, Eugene Flormata eug...@flormata.com 
 mailto:eug...@flormata.com wrote:
 I hope something revolutionary comes out for rigging/ animation comes out like
 zbrush did to modeling.
 
 https://vimeo.com/103633309 https://vimeo.com/103633309
 this one sure is neat
 
 On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 4:05 AM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com 
 mailto:s...@tidbit-images.com wrote:
 I was looking forward to this one too.
 They wanted to release in fall last year, but are delayed as it seems.
 From its description it looks like a technical preview of what could be 
 achieved with Fabric's Kraken one day, at least as  far as encapsulation and 
 rig complexity is concerned :-)
 
 There is also this: http://en.esotericsoftware.com/spine-in-depth 
 http://en.esotericsoftware.com/spine-in-depth
 
 but it's strictly 2D.
 
 Yes !!! i was looking for this the other day, but couldn't remember the name.
 
 On 19 February 2015 at 14:00, Marco Peixoto mpe...@gmail.com 
 mailto:mpe...@gmail.com wrote:
 Really need to try it on, so far im not impressed on its UI, but of course 
 its a first impression and its outside of what im used so I think its a bit 
 normal :)
 
 Now it seems it only exports FBX and I guess its more targeted for Game 
 Animation, since the rig is Pre Built and doesn't seem to have extra 
 deformation than the regular Bone Chains.
 
 Nevertheless its a vey welcome adition to the field of CA Maya dominated :D
 
 On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 8:42 AM, Oscar Juarez tridi.animei...@gmail.com 
 mailto:tridi.animei...@gmail.com wrote:
 It looks like a very interesting software, working on bare bones with nice 
 manipulation modes. With a traditional animation approach.
 
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74eSHxwoGdQ 
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74eSHxwoGdQ
 
 
 
 
 
 --

 -
Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at 
 mailto:%22ste...@keyvis.at%22+%3cste...@keyvis.at%3E
 -
   Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
 A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
  Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231 tel:%2B43%20%280%29%20699%2012614231
www.keyvis.at http://www.keyvis.at/
  This email and its attachments are
 confidential and for the recipient only
 
 

Re: akeytsu animation software demo

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

Minute 14 onwards explains quite a bit about rigging and seems you won’t need 
the complexity of our current rigs after all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74eSHxwoGdQ 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74eSHxwoGdQ

Regarding “need to build specific rigs” isn’t more a film requirement than 
commercials where we simply don’t have time to rig properly in many cases in 
the first place.

Still is quite a bit of speculation on both sides, I am quite interested though 
in moving away from building rigs and more into animating more.

jb



 On 23 Feb 2015, at 13:37, Mario Reitbauer cont...@marioreitbauer.at wrote:
 
 Well I am quite sure Akeytsu isn't really for everyone out there.
 I would bet it is for all those TV shows out there were you have to animate a 
 lot in a short amount of time and were you won't need any fancy rig with 
 special features.
 
 It might also work for games, but in that case I am not sure how it will 
 handle mocap data or how the integration to engines will work.
 
 And for feature or commercials were you need to build specific rigs with 
 certain features I guess it is not useful at all.
 
 But without knowing how the underlying rig works and how it can be adapted at 
 least to me those previews are quite pointless.
 
 2015-02-23 10:58 GMT+01:00 Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com 
 mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com:
 That is the method I have been toying around in Houdini but truly is not the 
 same, I had to do quite a lot of work to set it up and ultimately you have 
 various rigs going on which slows you down and is far from perfect.
 
 I think their idea is so elegant and simple has made me very interested but 
 as someone mentioned, it will be nice to see what is the pipeline like when 
 updating characters and all that.
 
 My feeling also is that I see Akeytsu as an specialised tool and don’t expect 
 to do anything else than pure animation that will be fed to my (more 
 sophisticated with muscles and what not) rig in Houdini.
 
 mm
 
 jb
 
  On 23 Feb 2015, at 09:43, David Saber davidsa...@sfr.fr 
  mailto:davidsa...@sfr.fr wrote:
 
  I have a question about this kind of new way to interact with the 3d 
  character:
  Isn't it just like before, but with hidden rig control objects?
  Thanks,
  David
 
  On 2015-02-21 01:04, Eugene Flormata wrote:
  https://vimeo.com/103633309 https://vimeo.com/103633309
  this one sure is neat
 
 
 
 

Re: akeytsu animation software demo

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

That is the method I have been toying around in Houdini but truly is not the 
same, I had to do quite a lot of work to set it up and ultimately you have 
various rigs going on which slows you down and is far from perfect.

I think their idea is so elegant and simple has made me very interested but as 
someone mentioned, it will be nice to see what is the pipeline like when 
updating characters and all that.

My feeling also is that I see Akeytsu as an specialised tool and don’t expect 
to do anything else than pure animation that will be fed to my (more 
sophisticated with muscles and what not) rig in Houdini.

mm

jb

 On 23 Feb 2015, at 09:43, David Saber davidsa...@sfr.fr wrote:
 
 I have a question about this kind of new way to interact with the 3d 
 character:
 Isn't it just like before, but with hidden rig control objects?
 Thanks,
 David
 
 On 2015-02-21 01:04, Eugene Flormata wrote:
 https://vimeo.com/103633309
 this one sure is neat
 

Re: akeytsu animation software demo

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

The whole rigging  animation paradigm is simply crippling animators and 
pimping it does not really help, this part of our workflow should change 
massively and I see akeytsu as the the first of many to come.

jb


 On 22 Feb 2015, at 04:58, Mario Reitbauer cont...@marioreitbauer.at wrote:
 
 Well at least in maya this is allready possible isnt it ?
 At least I saw a rig which didnt use any controllers.
 
 2015-02-21 1:12 GMT+01:00 Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com 
 mailto:g...@janimation.com:
 ^^THAT^^  I have been talking about interacting wanting to have the mesh have 
 hot spots for years.. please get rid of all that visual clutter between me 
 and my character.
 
 G
 
 On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 6:04 PM, Eugene Flormata eug...@flormata.com 
 mailto:eug...@flormata.com wrote:
 I hope something revolutionary comes out for rigging/ animation comes out like
 zbrush did to modeling.
 
 https://vimeo.com/103633309 https://vimeo.com/103633309
 this one sure is neat
 
 On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 4:05 AM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com 
 mailto:s...@tidbit-images.com wrote:
 I was looking forward to this one too.
 They wanted to release in fall last year, but are delayed as it seems.
 From its description it looks like a technical preview of what could be 
 achieved with Fabric's Kraken one day, at least as  far as encapsulation and 
 rig complexity is concerned :-)
 
 There is also this: http://en.esotericsoftware.com/spine-in-depth 
 http://en.esotericsoftware.com/spine-in-depth
 
 but it's strictly 2D.
 
 Yes !!! i was looking for this the other day, but couldn't remember the name.
 
 On 19 February 2015 at 14:00, Marco Peixoto mpe...@gmail.com 
 mailto:mpe...@gmail.com wrote:
 Really need to try it on, so far im not impressed on its UI, but of course 
 its a first impression and its outside of what im used so I think its a bit 
 normal :)
 
 Now it seems it only exports FBX and I guess its more targeted for Game 
 Animation, since the rig is Pre Built and doesn't seem to have extra 
 deformation than the regular Bone Chains.
 
 Nevertheless its a vey welcome adition to the field of CA Maya dominated :D
 
 On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 8:42 AM, Oscar Juarez tridi.animei...@gmail.com 
 mailto:tridi.animei...@gmail.com wrote:
 It looks like a very interesting software, working on bare bones with nice 
 manipulation modes. With a traditional animation approach.
 
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74eSHxwoGdQ 
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74eSHxwoGdQ
 
 
 
 
 
 --

 -
Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at 
 mailto:%22ste...@keyvis.at%22+%3cste...@keyvis.at%3E
 -
   Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
 A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
  Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231 tel:%2B43%20%280%29%20699%2012614231
www.keyvis.at http://www.keyvis.at/
  This email and its attachments are
 confidential and for the recipient only
 
 
 

Re: Maya thinks they're clever....and that's the problem

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

Very true, consistency should be paramount. 

jb

 On 20 Feb 2015, at 19:39, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 I'd say both are happy(er) when things are consistent and predictable 
 (however they work), with care to eliminate as many steps as possible, 
 because sometimes even microsteps make all the difference.
 
 
 On 02/20/15 14:08, Rob Chapman wrote:
 So now we get to a crux of an issue of ui design, who is the more human, the 
 artist or the programmer
 
 On 20 Feb 2015 18:43, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] 
 j.ponthi...@nasa.gov mailto:j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote:
 That really is the point, isn’t it? 
  
 --
 
 Joey
 
  
  
 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 Mirko Jankovic
 Sent: Friday, February 20, 2015 1:13 PM
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject: Re: Maya thinks they're cleverand that's the problem
 
  
 If programmer making something for artists shouldn't that follow what 
 artists needs not what programmer feels it should be ;)
 
  
  
 

Re: maya graph dependencies

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

I am going to need a picture of that in my wall… 

;-)
jb

 On 3 Feb 2015, at 15:14, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 @Jordi: I routinely rig almost exclusively through the node editor and even
 with thousands of nodes in a rig (which is the average for us) have no
 issues tracking the operations. The NE itself is getting better, though it
 needs a lot more to be truly smooth, but it has the potential to get there
 if they don't suddenly stop working on it.
 I have my ideas about what doesn't work and what is needed, but there's a
 degree of overlap with things that have been shown in private demos and
 betas, so I can't expand on that any further, apologies in advance for that.

Re: maya graph dependencies

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

That may be my point, having to boil the ocean to be able to display a node 
network is kind of wrong… unless you are a dirty dog that is.

;)
jb

 On 3 Feb 2015, at 15:27, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com 
 wrote:
 
 I abuse bookmarks and some custom filters and related scripts. If I selected 
 all DG nodes in the scene and simply graphed them all out for a shot with 
 four digidoubles in it the power in the building would probably go down, and 
 every cat in a five miles radius would catch on fire, or make love to a dog, 
 or possibly both things at the same time. The dog wouldn't be happy.
 
 On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 4:25 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com 
 mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:
 I am going to need a picture of that in my wall…
 
 ;-)
 jb
 
  On 3 Feb 2015, at 15:14, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com 
  mailto:luceri...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  @Jordi: I routinely rig almost exclusively through the node editor and even
  with thousands of nodes in a rig (which is the average for us) have no
  issues tracking the operations. The NE itself is getting better, though it
  needs a lot more to be truly smooth, but it has the potential to get there
  if they don't suddenly stop working on it.
  I have my ideas about what doesn't work and what is needed, but there's a
  degree of overlap with things that have been shown in private demos and
  betas, so I can't expand on that any further, apologies in advance for 
  that.
 
 
 
 
 
 -- 
 Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and 
 let them flee like the dogs they are!

Re: maya graph dependencies

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

will have a look

thx
jb

 On 3 Feb 2015, at 15:51, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com 
 wrote:
 
 Well, you don't need to. It's not even limiting not doing it. That's why I 
 was saying it's not bad (though not perfect). You can select something of 
 interest and expand in depth from there incrementally, or select just a 
 couple items and lay out the path between them, and then the surrounding path 
 segments, in just a few clicks.
 
 It's honestly quite good, and I've converted a few old school people to 
 working this way in the last year or so and once they get used to it none of 
 them goes back to something else.
 
 It seriously lacks things such as compounds, and bookmarks need improvements, 
 and from an assettization point of view Houdini absolutely stomps all over 
 it, but for rigging it's quite functional.
 
 
 On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 4:45 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com 
 mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:
 That may be my point, having to boil the ocean to be able to display a node 
 network is kind of wrong… unless you are a dirty dog that is.
 
 ;)
 jb
 
 On 3 Feb 2015, at 15:27, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com 
 mailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:
 
 I abuse bookmarks and some custom filters and related scripts. If I selected 
 all DG nodes in the scene and simply graphed them all out for a shot with 
 four digidoubles in it the power in the building would probably go down, and 
 every cat in a five miles radius would catch on fire, or make love to a dog, 
 or possibly both things at the same time. The dog wouldn't be happy.
 
 On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 4:25 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com 
 mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:
 I am going to need a picture of that in my wall…
 
 ;-)
 jb
 
  On 3 Feb 2015, at 15:14, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com 
  mailto:luceri...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  @Jordi: I routinely rig almost exclusively through the node editor and 
  even
  with thousands of nodes in a rig (which is the average for us) have no
  issues tracking the operations. The NE itself is getting better, though it
  needs a lot more to be truly smooth, but it has the potential to get there
  if they don't suddenly stop working on it.
  I have my ideas about what doesn't work and what is needed, but there's a
  degree of overlap with things that have been shown in private demos and
  betas, so I can't expand on that any further, apologies in advance for 
  that.
 
 
 
 
 
 -- 
 Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and 
 let them flee like the dogs they are!
 
 
 
 
 -- 
 Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and 
 let them flee like the dogs they are!

Re: maya graph dependencies

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

I wonder how does it look a full character outlined in this manner… will it 
even fit on a 4K screen?

:-/

jb



 On 3 Feb 2015, at 11:31, a...@andynicholas.com wrote:
 
 Oh god. I nearly threw up in my mouth looking at that ;) How would anyone ever
 know that hooking those nodes up like that would be a permissible operation?
 
 
 I'm sure this must make sense to someone, and I'd bet that there's some genius
 programming going on to make that work. But to me, that picture epitomises
 everything that is wrong with Maya.
 
 A
 
 
 
 
 On 02 February 2015 at 21:17 Mario Reitbauer cont...@marioreitbauer.at 
 wrote:
 
 
 Hey guys
 Could someone explain me this ;)
 I just can't wrap my head around why, what, when is executed/calculated.
 And what is driving what.
 
 
 
 

Re: Sad days...

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

Such an amazing job you did with Softimage Creatives… sad thing to loose it but 
you are right.

sniff.

jb


 On 3 Feb 2015, at 18:23, a...@andynicholas.com wrote:
 
 The timing is to do with the expiry of the web hosting. It's not really about
 the money, but more to do with the fact that we stopped having the meetings 
 over
 a year ago after The Announcement, and we currently don't have any plans to
 restart.
 
 Cheers,
 A
 
 
 On 03 February 2015 at 18:00 olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote:
 
 
 Does it really have to close ? Is this about money for the website ?
 
 Le 02/02/2015 10:39, Jon Hunt a écrit :
 
 This is sad times,
 A big thanks to the Softimage Creatives Team. I always left these event
 either inspired, informed, half cut or well networked. Truth be told it
 usually would be all of these!
 Its a shame I got to only meet a few of you Softies and if the
 community should arise in a different from and some spare hands/help/supoort
 is needed then give us a hola.
 
 Thanks again,
 
 Jon
 
 
 On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 8:27 AM, Laurence Dodd laure...@porkpie.tv
 mailto:laure...@porkpie.tv  wrote:
 Denial is getting much harder these days. Thanks guys.
 
 
  On 2 February 2015 at 01:27, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com
 mailto:jasonsta...@gmail.com  wrote:
 I would rather identify Softimage related declines as
 Bullshit days.
 
 
   On 02/01/15 18:49, Matt Morris wrote:
 
 
 
 Man I loved the atmosphere of that first meeting!
 Ok we had some sound troubles, but the enthusiasm
 and just the sheer amount of people there made it
 feel like SI still had a future. Thanks for the
 good times Andy and everyone there!
 
 
   On Sunday, 1 February 2015, Jacob Gonzalez
 jacobgo...@gmail.com mailto:jacobgo...@gmail.com  wrote:
 sad indeed!!
it was certainly great stuff what you guys put together
 with SIC!!
 
J
 
On Sunday, 1 February 2015, a...@andynicholas.com
 a...@andynicholas.com wrote:
 One last tribute as our web hosting is
 about to run out...
 
 http://www.softimagecreatives.com
 http://www.softimagecreatives.com
 
 
 A huge thanks to all of you who supported us.
 
 Andy
 
   --
   www.matinai.com http://www.matinai.com
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  --
  Laurence Dodd
  Porkpie Animation
  E: laure...@porkpie.tv mailto:laure...@porkpie.tv
  W: www.porkpie.tv http://www.porkpie.tv
  M: 07570 702 576
  T: 01273 278 382
 
 
 
 
 

Re: Excellent Recent Gems

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

Great piece, quite amazing such a small team can pull such a big project all on 
their own.

jb

 On 3 Feb 2015, at 16:48, Paulo Cesar Duarte paulocdua...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Amazing work, all Softimage.
 
 http://www.cgmeetup.net/home/le-gouffre/ 
 http://www.cgmeetup.net/home/le-gouffre/
 
 2015-02-03 11:01 GMT-02:00 Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com 
 mailto:jasonsta...@gmail.com:
 
   Pretty inspiring peice by 3 guys with a small budget, 
   and seemingly as much audacity, creativity and determination at overcoming 
 obstacles as the characters portrayed :)
 
   Le Gouffre 
http://vimeo.com/118471437 http://vimeo.com/118471437
 
The Journey behind...
http://vimeo.com/118472904 http://vimeo.com/118472904
 
http://www.legouffre.com/en/ http://www.legouffre.com/en/
 
  Mail Attachment.jpeg
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 -- 
 paulo-duarte.com http://paulo-duarte.com/

Re: OT houdini questions

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

And the Rivet SOP too

 On 2 Feb 2015, at 12:55, a...@andynicholas.com wrote:
 
 You might want to check out the Creep SOP in that case.
 
 
 A
 
 
 On 02 February 2015 at 12:27 Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 
 Thanks guys!!
 What I want out of a surface deformer is the UV control.
 It's different than a cage or lattice because it lets you slide/deform things
 based on uv data, and offset along normals
 I find it very useful to model things where allot of detail has to follow a
 certain shape.
 I modelled some running shoes in the beginning of the year, and all of the
 parts followed this one master nurbs surface.
 I'll look into the ray sop and lattice, but I think a surface deformer
 digital asset might need to be made :)
 One that works like soft.
 This way I can engine it into bloody maya if I ever need to go to that dark
 place again.
 G
 
 On 02/02/2015 12:45, philipp seis wrote:
 
 Hi Gerbrand,
 
 from the top of my head i'd say, there should be a checkbox so that
 your curve
 won't get a surface.
 Then, here is a curve basics tutorial from peter quint:
 http://vimeo.com/40771484 http://vimeo.com/40771484
 
 I'd be interested in a deform by surface too. The Ray SOP gives a
 little bit of that
 behaviour out of the box, and the attribute transfer SOP as well, if
 match Point Position ( i guess that was the name) Checkbox is on. Those 2
 work on proximity.
 And finally you might want to try the Lattice SOP, which in Houdini is
 also customizable,
 ending up being very close to the cage deformer from Soft.
 And then, you could also add a Normal attribute to your SOP, with the
 point SOP, and create a VOPSOP in which you manipulate those. This might be
 the equivalent to an ICE closest point to location node.
 I'd consider myself a real houdini novice though, just trying to
 transfer my Softimage workflows, so please correct me if i'm wrong.
 
 I would like to add the question: How would you do a simple Object to
 Cluster Constraint ?
 So far i found only options that are uv based, like the rivet...
 
 best, Philipp
 
 
 
 
 
 
 2015-02-02 10:43 GMT+01:00 Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com
 mailto:nagv...@gmail.com :
 So 3 quick houdini questions if you don't mind:
  Why do I automatically get a surface on a closed curve?
  Can I kill it without killing the curve, or can I set it to never
 create?
  Is there something like deform by surface in soft for houdini?
  That is it for now :)
  Thanks
  G
 
 
 

Re: OT houdini questions

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

Have a look at Sticky SOP, may be the thing you are looking after (plus you 
have blending via UVs which is very interesting.

jb

 On 2 Feb 2015, at 15:58, Christopher Crouzet christopher.crou...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 
 Disclaimer: I'm a total beginner and there's most likely better/easier ways 
 to do it.
 
 If you want to constrain your object to a single point, one way would be to 
 create an expression on each of the translate channels of your object and use 
 the `point` function, such as: `point(/obj/path_to_geometry, point_number, 
 P, index)` where `index` is 0 for the position X, 1 for the position Y and 
 2 for the position Z.
 
 If you want your object to snap to an actual group of points, then the idea 
 that I've got is slightly more involved.
 Basically, you'd need to put your points into a group and create an 
 `AttribWrangle` in which you'd loop over the points in the group and return 
 an average position.
 Here's a working VEX snippet:
 
 vector @clusterPosition = {0, 0, 0};
 
 int count = 0;
 int ptnum;
 vector P;
 int handle = pcopen(@OpInput1, P, {0, 0, 0}, 1e6, int(1e6));
 while (pciterate(handle)) {
 pcimport(handle, P, P);
 pcimport(handle, point.number, ptnum);
 if (inpointgroup(@OpInput1, group_name, ptnum)) {
 @clusterPosition += P;
 count++;
 }
 }
 
 if (count  0) {
 @clusterPosition /= count;
 }
 
 Note that the `pcopen` function creates a point cloud with a K-D tree, so 
 it's really overkilled here. I'll be looking forward a better answer to that 
 one! :)
 
 Also both solution will match only the position. To also match the 
 orientation, you might want to use the attributes created by `PolyFrame`.
 
 
 On 2 February 2015 at 22:01, philipp seis dpi...@gmail.com 
 mailto:dpi...@gmail.com wrote:
 hey guys, i'd be super happy for any advice on an object to cluster 
 Constraint in H,
 like i would use it for a dorrito
 
 2015-02-02 15:38 GMT+01:00 Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com 
 mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com:
 And the Rivet SOP too
 
  On 2 Feb 2015, at 12:55, a...@andynicholas.com 
  mailto:a...@andynicholas.com wrote:
 
  You might want to check out the Creep SOP in that case.
 
 
  A
 
 
  On 02 February 2015 at 12:27 Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com 
  mailto:nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 
  Thanks guys!!
  What I want out of a surface deformer is the UV control.
  It's different than a cage or lattice because it lets you slide/deform 
  things
  based on uv data, and offset along normals
  I find it very useful to model things where allot of detail has to follow a
  certain shape.
  I modelled some running shoes in the beginning of the year, and all of the
  parts followed this one master nurbs surface.
  I'll look into the ray sop and lattice, but I think a surface deformer
  digital asset might need to be made :)
  One that works like soft.
  This way I can engine it into bloody maya if I ever need to go to that 
  dark
  place again.
  G
 
  On 02/02/2015 12:45, philipp seis wrote:
 
  Hi Gerbrand,
 
  from the top of my head i'd say, there should be a checkbox so that
  your curve
  won't get a surface.
  Then, here is a curve basics tutorial from peter quint:
  http://vimeo.com/40771484 http://vimeo.com/40771484 
  http://vimeo.com/40771484 http://vimeo.com/40771484
 
  I'd be interested in a deform by surface too. The Ray SOP gives a
  little bit of that
  behaviour out of the box, and the attribute transfer SOP as well, if
  match Point Position ( i guess that was the name) Checkbox is on. Those 
  2
  work on proximity.
  And finally you might want to try the Lattice SOP, which in Houdini is
  also customizable,
  ending up being very close to the cage deformer from Soft.
  And then, you could also add a Normal attribute to your SOP, with 
  the
  point SOP, and create a VOPSOP in which you manipulate those. This might 
  be
  the equivalent to an ICE closest point to location node.
  I'd consider myself a real houdini novice though, just trying to
  transfer my Softimage workflows, so please correct me if i'm wrong.
 
  I would like to add the question: How would you do a simple Object to
  Cluster Constraint ?
  So far i found only options that are uv based, like the rivet...
 
  best, Philipp
 
 
 
 
 
 
  2015-02-02 10:43 GMT+01:00 Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com 
  mailto:nagv...@gmail.com
  mailto:nagv...@gmail.com mailto:nagv...@gmail.com :
  So 3 quick houdini questions if you don't mind:
   Why do I automatically get a surface on a closed curve?
   Can I kill it without killing the curve, or can I set it to never
  create?
   Is there something like deform by surface in soft for houdini?
   That is it for now :)
   Thanks
   G
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 -- 
 Christopher Crouzet
 http://christophercrouzet.com http://christophercrouzet.com/
 

Re: H14 is out !

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

 modified a 
 sculpt to be better for rigging, but that shape then becomes my base shape. 
 What is the difference?
 
 
 
 On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 2:31 PM, Raffaele Fragapane 
 raffsxsil...@googlemail.com mailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:
 If you're doing combinatorics you don't model the shapes in isolation, you 
 tweak a base and need to see the result on the combination, which might be 
 one to four tiers of combinations away.
 You don't do combination sculpting without the rig because you don't do 
 combination sculpting on the final shape half the time if you're sensible and 
 can't waste a lot of time in kickbacks.
 
 Doing shapes in ZBrush is doable, but they all need a lot of work after 
 coming back in because by the nature of ZBrush you will have shit drifting 
 all over the place. When they will add more than a single morph and a few 
 simple vector operations to wire the morphs it will then be the ultimate tool 
 for it, right now it's like trying to drive a truck out of a parking lot with 
 a small gate. Blindfolded. On iced out ground. With a monkey hitting you on 
 the head with a baseball bat every five seconds. Technically doable, but not 
 worth the bother unless you get to show the mental breakdowns on TV and cash 
 them in :)
 
 If you're doing cartoony or largely procedurally shaded stuff you can take a 
 fair amount of drift. if you're doing something that has hundreds of rigid 
 scales or precisely styled hair bound to the UV space it's an unmitigated 
 disaster when you don't have something like Soft (or a shitton of stuff piled 
 on top of Maya) around to do the work.
 
 On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 6:16 PM, Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com 
 mailto:g...@janimation.com wrote:
 Raff while what you say is true about needing to check the results of your 
 sculpts in combination with with other shapes and deformers. There is no 
 reason those edits should not be done in the tool-set best suited to sculpt.
 
 Using something like Zaplink or a few scripts can make the back and forth 
 seamless.  ICE made it so much easier to to pose based deformations and 
 corrective shapes using Zbrush to edit.
 
 That being said I still do a great bit of my shape work in soft, unless its a 
 very dense mesh, then I whip out the Z
 
 On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 6:16 PM, Raffaele Fragapane 
 raffsxsil...@googlemail.com mailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:
 The problem with ZBrush, or any modelling app that doesn't have your full rig 
 in it, is that for things like combination sculpting they are useless, 
 because you need to see multiple timelines of the shapes converging as you 
 refine them for the result to be any good. It's also a ton easier to get 
 combinatorics started in Soft since you can start any shape from any number 
 of others with ICE. I so miss that in any other app (that last bit is 
 literally the only one where Houdini could compete or even surpass Soft, 
 actually, though it's somewhat painful to wrangle the shit together when you 
 hit a certain degree of complexity and you end up spending more time making 
 an uber rig than you do working the shapes' alignment).
 
 On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 11:27 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com 
 mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:
 Thanks for the notes, there has been quite a lot of changes but it is true 
 there are a few of your comments still pending, the most pressing to me is 
 speed and the viewport needs still lots of love.
 
 BTW, I was not advocating to use Houdini for modelling though, rather use 
 Zbrush to be honest and now that Zbrush is getting closer to a full set of 
 traditional modelling tools it is pretty obvious it is the route to go.
 
 My feeling is that character work is certainly more painful but at least you 
 get some serious gains and unfortunately there are no options so we are in a 
 transition moment.
 
 So far they are listening and moving forward so I will stick to Houdini for 
 the time being and keep an eye on others.
 
 :-)
 
 jb
 
 
 On 16 Jan 2015, at 21:28, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com 
 mailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:
 
 A lot of quality rigging, despite piles of papers trying to sell the public 
 on the contrary, is still manually tweaked. Taking things out of the app 
 where you have the full rig makes authoring a major pain. The most basic 
 example is shapes, doing shapes work in XSI for something like a combination 
 sculpting setup was as easy as it got, especially after ICE.
 The way data is presented and accessible, the speed on large meshes, the 
 modelling toolkit, it all lent itself to that kind of work in a perfect 
 storm scenario.
 Doing the same in Maya, comparatively, is beyond painful and requires a 
 pretty big staging effort to separate work and write accessory tools, in 
 Houdini you don't even have a particularly intuitive modelling toolkit, and 
 the handling of large meshes was pretty meh with it (at least up to 12, it 
 seems to be getting better

Re: Teaching Unreal vs Unity

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

I like Unreal but Unity strength on multiple platform compilation and the huge 
user base and market place make it extremely attractive.

If you aim for pure games may be Unreal is more appropiate, if you aim to get 
your students to do games and web, and digital content and… then Unity is 
pretty much  the standard nowadays, specially with the upcoming Unity5 which 
looks very very good indeed.

hope it helps
jb

 On 19 Jan 2015, at 22:03, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za wrote:
 
 Hi All
 
 Mostly out to educators , but very all opinions welcome as I know quite a few 
 folks have played around with Unity and Unreal
 
 We have a new Games design degree. We are now in the Fourth year which means 
 our first set of student are in their final year. We are in a situation where 
 we have started our 2nd and 3rd game design students in Unity3d (for the past 
 year)
 
 This went fairly well for a first year and we got some decent work out of it. 
 However since paying for our first 30 EDU licences a few things have happened
 
 1) Unlike last year the timetables make it impossible to only need 30 
 licences for 60 students
 2) We now have a fourth year adding another 30 licences to that figure for a 
 total of 90
 3) As per the usual at a University our budget has been cut , however this 
 time its been cut 40%
 4) Our lovely currency has gone to crap vs the dollar
 5) Unreal released a free edu version of their engine.
 
 So the burning question is do we suck up the one year with Unity and move to 
 Unreal or is Unity the better one to stick with for teaching purposes. its 
 worth noting we are also stuck with Maya as the 3d App that they will have 
 access to, as we are no longer allowed to teach our beloved Softimage :(
 
 Apologies for the wide scope of the question but budgeting is currently 
 giving me sleepless nights .
 
 -- 
 Angus Davidson
 ICT Project Leader- Digital Arts
 University of the Witwatersrand.
 074 580 3744
 
 This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If 
 you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately 
 and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this 
 communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised 
 signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the 
 University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message 
 may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal 
 views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and 
 opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements 
 between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless 
 the University agrees in writing to the contrary. 

Re: Teaching Unreal vs Unity

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

The thing is that Unity produces content for Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, Web… 
and you can manage the output optimisation as you go along and have one single 
development in C# but then produce the content for each device/platform, this 
is the reason is getting so much traction, its simpler and cost effective so 
they will get a job easier I would imagine.

I would suggest you ask to the industry in your area and see.

cheers
jb

 On 19 Jan 2015, at 22:28, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za wrote:
 
 Hi Jordi
 
 Every little bit helps ;)
 
 We are currently only looking at PC/Mac  so being able to compile for all 
 devices / platforms is not a requirement.
 
 Unity does seem to have far more content which is definitely useful when you 
 need to point the student towards additional tutorials. 
 
 The games they make are fairly small. as the focus is more on the design of 
 the game itself (they do of course go hand in hand to a large extent,) In 
 first year they don’t use a computer at all, focusing purely on analogue 
 games to allow them to get to grips with gameplay design and theory.
 
 
 Kind regards
 
 Angus
 
 -- 
 Angus Davidson
 074 580 3744
 
 On 19 January 2015 at 10:07:43 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez 
 (jordiba...@gmail.com mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com) wrote:
 
 I like Unreal but Unity strength on multiple platform compilation and the 
 huge user base and market place make it extremely attractive.
 
 If you aim for pure games may be Unreal is more appropiate, if you aim to 
 get your students to do games and web, and digital content and… then Unity 
 is pretty much  the standard nowadays, specially with the upcoming Unity5 
 which looks very very good indeed.
 
 hope it helps
 jb
 
 On 19 Jan 2015, at 22:03, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za 
 mailto:angus.david...@wits.ac.za wrote:
 
 Hi All
 
 Mostly out to educators , but very all opinions welcome as I know quite a 
 few folks have played around with Unity and Unreal
 
 We have a new Games design degree. We are now in the Fourth year which 
 means our first set of student are in their final year. We are in a 
 situation where we have started our 2nd and 3rd game design students in 
 Unity3d (for the past year)
 
 This went fairly well for a first year and we got some decent work out of 
 it. However since paying for our first 30 EDU licences a few things have 
 happened
 
 1) Unlike last year the timetables make it impossible to only need 30 
 licences for 60 students
 2) We now have a fourth year adding another 30 licences to that figure for 
 a total of 90
 3) As per the usual at a University our budget has been cut , however this 
 time its been cut 40%
 4) Our lovely currency has gone to crap vs the dollar
 5) Unreal released a free edu version of their engine.
 
 So the burning question is do we suck up the one year with Unity and move 
 to Unreal or is Unity the better one to stick with for teaching purposes. 
 its worth noting we are also stuck with Maya as the 3d App that they will 
 have access to, as we are no longer allowed to teach our beloved Softimage 
 :(
 
 Apologies for the wide scope of the question but budgeting is currently 
 giving me sleepless nights .
 
 -- 
 Angus Davidson
 ICT Project Leader- Digital Arts
 University of the Witwatersrand.
 074 580 3744
 
 This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. 
 If you have received this communication in error, please notify us 
 immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or 
 disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. 
 Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on 
 behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content 
 of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may 
 contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not 
 necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, 
 Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are 
 subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the 
 contrary. 
 
 
 This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If 
 you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately 
 and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this 
 communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised 
 signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the 
 University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message 
 may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal 
 views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and 
 opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements 
 between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless 
 the University agrees in writing to the contrary. 

Re: H14 is out !

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

 On 17 Jan 2015, at 21:59, Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com wrote:
 
 Also Eric,  I had heard of folks having a different neutral vs skinning pose 
 but I have not really seen a good explanation of the idea. I have modified a 
 sculpt to be better for rigging, but that shape then becomes my base shape. 
 What is the difference?


Animation transfer between characters is my main reason.

Re: H14 is out !

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

I am preparing a list as many of these come from direct feedback from some of 
us.

To name a few, animator editor has been revamped in quite a major way, 
animation layers, viewport enhancements, manipulation enhancements (edge loops, 
etc…) shortcuts and interaction. color picker, etc…

Regarding the net view, there has been one similar and also pretty left behind 
the times net view-like tool but I think you want to invest in the new QT 
interface, just check the tutorial on characters.

enjoy

jb

 On 17 Jan 2015, at 22:16, Graham D. Clark mailgrahamdcl...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 1:44 PM, Sebastien Sterling
 sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote:
 Have any of the Softy Houdini converts noticed new features you requested ?
 
 
 They already put a lot of our soft requests in there many years ago
 like netview, similarities to rendertree, etc. ;)
 -- 
 Graham D Clark, VP/Head of Stereography, Stereo D, Deluxe
 phone: why-I-stereo
 http://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamclark

Re: H14 is out !

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

 
 combinatorics started in Soft since you can start any shape from any number 
 of others with ICE. I so miss that in any other app (that last bit is 
 literally the only one where Houdini could compete or even surpass Soft, 
 actually, though it's somewhat painful to wrangle the shit together when you 
 hit a certain degree of complexity and you end up spending more time making 
 an uber rig than you do working the shapes' alignment).
 
 On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 11:27 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com 
 mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:
 Thanks for the notes, there has been quite a lot of changes but it is true 
 there are a few of your comments still pending, the most pressing to me is 
 speed and the viewport needs still lots of love.
 
 BTW, I was not advocating to use Houdini for modelling though, rather use 
 Zbrush to be honest and now that Zbrush is getting closer to a full set of 
 traditional modelling tools it is pretty obvious it is the route to go.
 
 My feeling is that character work is certainly more painful but at least you 
 get some serious gains and unfortunately there are no options so we are in a 
 transition moment.
 
 So far they are listening and moving forward so I will stick to Houdini for 
 the time being and keep an eye on others.
 
 :-)
 
 jb
 
 
 On 16 Jan 2015, at 21:28, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com 
 mailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:
 
 A lot of quality rigging, despite piles of papers trying to sell the public 
 on the contrary, is still manually tweaked. Taking things out of the app 
 where you have the full rig makes authoring a major pain. The most basic 
 example is shapes, doing shapes work in XSI for something like a combination 
 sculpting setup was as easy as it got, especially after ICE.
 The way data is presented and accessible, the speed on large meshes, the 
 modelling toolkit, it all lent itself to that kind of work in a perfect 
 storm scenario.
 Doing the same in Maya, comparatively, is beyond painful and requires a 
 pretty big staging effort to separate work and write accessory tools, in 
 Houdini you don't even have a particularly intuitive modelling toolkit, and 
 the handling of large meshes was pretty meh with it (at least up to 12, it 
 seems to be getting better and promising to be getting better again).
 
 The toolkit in general is pretty hard to impossible to give to a modeller 
 with little inclination to learn something like Houdini, while with both 
 Maya and Soft that's not a big challenge.
 
 I haven't tried the muscle system in a while, so my comment might be dated 
 to the point of not being valid, but the last time I did it was a bit of a 
 joke. No arbitrary topology for the deformers unless you cloth collided (and 
 the cloth solver was anything but acceptable), only some weak superset of 
 metaballs, rather slow, but at least it was relatively stable, and overall 
 clunky and requiring the lot a lot of micromanagement and a lot of SOPs that 
 often refused to play nicely with the rest of the app.
 Mind, I haven't found a single commercial muscle system I would use if they 
 paid me for it, which is pretty embarrassing given when we needed one for 
 WWD we got a rather intuitive one done in just a few weeks that worked for 
 over 99% of the show meshes without manual intervention of any sort on the 
 sim, and literally only a dozen mesh fixes across over 800 shots.
 
 On top of all that, and again this is pre-14, most pre-13, it's slow. Mind 
 boggingly slow to articulate a decent animation rig. I suspect this last 
 point has been, or is about to be, superseded though since the viewport has 
 been getting some love.
 
 The main issue though remains that preparing an asset in Houdini remains a 
 long and involved process which very few people from other departments, some 
 times nobody, can be recruited into, it's born, lives and dies in the hands 
 of TDs.
 
 I've always had a soft spot for Houdini, and I'd give my money to SideFX 
 rather than many other companies any day of the year, but as a company their 
 commitment to character work of artistic or hybrid nature has always been 
 patchy (and I don't necessarily blame them for it) and subpar.
 They have a lot of work to make up for it, but they seem to be slowly doing 
 it while making sure they don't lose their core business with FX and 
 end-to-end clients.
 
 I will certainly be looking at H14 as soon as some space for it in the stash 
 of stuff I need and want to do before clears up :)
 
 
 On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 6:45 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com 
 mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:
 May I ask you to elaborate the “complex character rigging and tuned 
 deformation”, I may be missing something.
 
 To start with you have muscles in Houdini which you don’t, let alone FEM 
 simulations and a universal physics engine to cope with pretty sophisticated 
 things…
 
 Certainly it is easier in Softimage and more artist friendly to setup

Re: H14 is out !

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

I particularly like the procedural nature of your rig and how you can 
“assetize” the various components to be reused later, and they have their own 
built in code and logic so it becomes like lego.

Also the skinning process is really really flexible and allows for a lot of 
experimentation and transfer of data which is a pleasure.

And of course if you update the geometry things just work in a very elegant way 
so having a “factory” scene that creates characters is pretty much trivial, 
something you will be pressed to do in Maya or XSI without lots of code.

All in all the issue I had in the past is that H13 had a weak animation system 
and H14 sorts that (surely can be improved) but right now it is no longer a 
major issue like before.

The process of animating/review/animating with multiple is not as fast as XSI 
or Maya but I am sure will get there.

hope it helps
jb


 On 16 Jan 2015, at 12:28, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Well I say nicer, because there are allot of toys to play with.
 I think rigging is the part where you need a non destructive procedural work 
 flow the most.
 In Maya it feels like you have to make damn sure you are done with step A 
 before moving onto step B.
 Houdini is flexible to the point where you become reckless with your work 
 flow :)
 Bit more complex when you get started, but worth it.
 The auto rig at the very least doesn't break like the soft one used to in 
 2011 :)
 G
 
 On 16/01/2015 14:08, Mirko Jankovic wrote:
 Riggin nicer then Soft?
 Will have to check it out then.. In maya rigging and enveloping is huge crap 
 and biggest reason that I don't wanna ago back int othat hell at first 
 place. 
 
 On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 12:11 PM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com 
 mailto:nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
 After trying to learn maya for about 6 months, learning houdini is a breath 
 of fresh air!!
 It is not softimage, but I think its the only thing that will come close to 
 the flexibility and power of soft for small studios and freelancers.
 Once you get into it, It is even more power.
 I tried learning it about 2 years ago, and gave up because I thought my time 
 would be better spent getting better in soft (the future was still bright 
 back then)
 Back then it seemed complicated, but after dealing with maya, it feels sooo 
 much friendlier.
 The way I see it, you get the operator stack, and ice tree, all in one 
 place, the network view
 So its one thing to learn.
 In Maya I feel like I have to learn new software every time I do something 
 else.
 Rigging I found nicer than soft, and the animation editor in houdini feels 
 like a polished version of the soft one.
 Houdini engine is still blowing my mind.. like it doesn't stop!!
 At $300 you cannot ignore this as a piece of your pipeline!
 I'll probably do allot of work in maya because I need to fit into teams of 
 Mayans, but with the houdini engine, I can do the work in the software best 
 suited for it, without forcing the rest of the team to conform.
 G
 
 
 
 
 On 16/01/2015 12:08, Mirko Jankovic wrote:
 modeling and character riga nd animation wise it is I assume sitill nt as 
 suser friendly as SI right?
 how us ievrall generalist and smalls tudio experience?
 SI is more or less out of the box great steramlined solution..
 
 
 

Re: H14 is out !

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

So true… how many times I have seen it happening and no-one, literally no-one 
knew what was going on...

jb

 On 16 Jan 2015, at 12:40, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 heheh sounds good, I mean yea in Maya I always felt like walking on glass 
 feets, and f you make a slight move in wrong direction everything falls apart 
 and no way to put it together again :) 
 thanks
 
 On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 1:28 PM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com 
 mailto:nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
 Well I say nicer, because there are allot of toys to play with.
 I think rigging is the part where you need a non destructive procedural work 
 flow the most.
 In Maya it feels like you have to make damn sure you are done with step A 
 before moving onto step B.
 Houdini is flexible to the point where you become reckless with your work 
 flow :)
 Bit more complex when you get started, but worth it.
 The auto rig at the very least doesn't break like the soft one used to in 
 2011 :)
 G
 
 
 On 16/01/2015 14:08, Mirko Jankovic wrote:
 Riggin nicer then Soft?
 Will have to check it out then.. In maya rigging and enveloping is huge crap 
 and biggest reason that I don't wanna ago back int othat hell at first 
 place. 
 
 On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 12:11 PM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com 
 mailto:nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
 After trying to learn maya for about 6 months, learning houdini is a breath 
 of fresh air!!
 It is not softimage, but I think its the only thing that will come close to 
 the flexibility and power of soft for small studios and freelancers.
 Once you get into it, It is even more power.
 I tried learning it about 2 years ago, and gave up because I thought my time 
 would be better spent getting better in soft (the future was still bright 
 back then)
 Back then it seemed complicated, but after dealing with maya, it feels sooo 
 much friendlier.
 The way I see it, you get the operator stack, and ice tree, all in one 
 place, the network view
 So its one thing to learn.
 In Maya I feel like I have to learn new software every time I do something 
 else.
 Rigging I found nicer than soft, and the animation editor in houdini feels 
 like a polished version of the soft one.
 Houdini engine is still blowing my mind.. like it doesn't stop!!
 At $300 you cannot ignore this as a piece of your pipeline!
 I'll probably do allot of work in maya because I need to fit into teams of 
 Mayans, but with the houdini engine, I can do the work in the software best 
 suited for it, without forcing the rest of the team to conform.
 G
 
 
 
 
 On 16/01/2015 12:08, Mirko Jankovic wrote:
 modeling and character riga nd animation wise it is I assume sitill nt as 
 suser friendly as SI right?
 how us ievrall generalist and smalls tudio experience?
 SI is more or less out of the box great steramlined solution..
 
 
 
 

Re: H14 is out !

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

May I ask you to elaborate the “complex character rigging and tuned 
deformation”, I may be missing something.

To start with you have muscles in Houdini which you don’t, let alone FEM 
simulations and a universal physics engine to cope with pretty sophisticated 
things…

Certainly it is easier in Softimage and more artist friendly to setup but I see 
the rigging side as one very strong point.

If you are talking about screen space corrections, blend shapes and advanced 
contact collision its certainly doable with  the toolset.

:-|

thx
jb


 On 16 Jan 2015, at 16:59, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com 
 wrote:
 
 It's only true for some definitions of rigging.
 If you need proceduralism of course it does spectacularly well, and assets 
 are simply best of breed in the industry and have been for years, end of 
 story.
 For the hand-crafted complex character rig and tuned deformation kind of job 
 though, no, it's not nicer than Soft, and I'd be hard pressed to make an 
 argument for it over Maya (which I consider pretty bottom barreling already 
 without a ton of custom work).
 
 Some of the upgrades in H14 and some of the future roadmap do bode well for 
 that though.
 
 On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 1:28 PM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com 
 mailto:nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
 Well I say nicer, because there are allot of toys to play with.
 I think rigging is the part where you need a non destructive procedural work 
 flow the most.
 In Maya it feels like you have to make damn sure you are done with step A 
 before moving onto step B.
 Houdini is flexible to the point where you become reckless with your work 
 flow :)
 Bit more complex when you get started, but worth it.
 The auto rig at the very least doesn't break like the soft one used to in 
 2011 :)
 G
 
 
 On 16/01/2015 14:08, Mirko Jankovic wrote:
 Riggin nicer then Soft?
 Will have to check it out then.. In maya rigging and enveloping is huge crap 
 and biggest reason that I don't wanna ago back int othat hell at first 
 place. 
 
 On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 12:11 PM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com 
 mailto:nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
 After trying to learn maya for about 6 months, learning houdini is a breath 
 of fresh air!!
 It is not softimage, but I think its the only thing that will come close to 
 the flexibility and power of soft for small studios and freelancers.
 Once you get into it, It is even more power.
 I tried learning it about 2 years ago, and gave up because I thought my time 
 would be better spent getting better in soft (the future was still bright 
 back then)
 Back then it seemed complicated, but after dealing with maya, it feels sooo 
 much friendlier.
 The way I see it, you get the operator stack, and ice tree, all in one 
 place, the network view
 So its one thing to learn.
 In Maya I feel like I have to learn new software every time I do something 
 else.
 Rigging I found nicer than soft, and the animation editor in houdini feels 
 like a polished version of the soft one.
 Houdini engine is still blowing my mind.. like it doesn't stop!!
 At $300 you cannot ignore this as a piece of your pipeline!
 I'll probably do allot of work in maya because I need to fit into teams of 
 Mayans, but with the houdini engine, I can do the work in the software best 
 suited for it, without forcing the rest of the team to conform.
 G
 
 
 
 
 On 16/01/2015 12:08, Mirko Jankovic wrote:
 modeling and character riga nd animation wise it is I assume sitill nt as 
 suser friendly as SI right?
 how us ievrall generalist and smalls tudio experience?
 SI is more or less out of the box great steramlined solution..
 
 
 
 
 
 
 -- 
 Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and 
 let them flee like the dogs they are!

Re: H14 is out !

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

Thanks for the notes, there has been quite a lot of changes but it is true 
there are a few of your comments still pending, the most pressing to me is 
speed and the viewport needs still lots of love.

BTW, I was not advocating to use Houdini for modelling though, rather use 
Zbrush to be honest and now that Zbrush is getting closer to a full set of 
traditional modelling tools it is pretty obvious it is the route to go.

My feeling is that character work is certainly more painful but at least you 
get some serious gains and unfortunately there are no options so we are in a 
transition moment.

So far they are listening and moving forward so I will stick to Houdini for the 
time being and keep an eye on others.

:-)

jb


 On 16 Jan 2015, at 21:28, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com 
 wrote:
 
 A lot of quality rigging, despite piles of papers trying to sell the public 
 on the contrary, is still manually tweaked. Taking things out of the app 
 where you have the full rig makes authoring a major pain. The most basic 
 example is shapes, doing shapes work in XSI for something like a combination 
 sculpting setup was as easy as it got, especially after ICE.
 The way data is presented and accessible, the speed on large meshes, the 
 modelling toolkit, it all lent itself to that kind of work in a perfect storm 
 scenario.
 Doing the same in Maya, comparatively, is beyond painful and requires a 
 pretty big staging effort to separate work and write accessory tools, in 
 Houdini you don't even have a particularly intuitive modelling toolkit, and 
 the handling of large meshes was pretty meh with it (at least up to 12, it 
 seems to be getting better and promising to be getting better again).
 
 The toolkit in general is pretty hard to impossible to give to a modeller 
 with little inclination to learn something like Houdini, while with both Maya 
 and Soft that's not a big challenge.
 
 I haven't tried the muscle system in a while, so my comment might be dated to 
 the point of not being valid, but the last time I did it was a bit of a joke. 
 No arbitrary topology for the deformers unless you cloth collided (and the 
 cloth solver was anything but acceptable), only some weak superset of 
 metaballs, rather slow, but at least it was relatively stable, and overall 
 clunky and requiring the lot a lot of micromanagement and a lot of SOPs that 
 often refused to play nicely with the rest of the app.
 Mind, I haven't found a single commercial muscle system I would use if they 
 paid me for it, which is pretty embarrassing given when we needed one for WWD 
 we got a rather intuitive one done in just a few weeks that worked for over 
 99% of the show meshes without manual intervention of any sort on the sim, 
 and literally only a dozen mesh fixes across over 800 shots.
 
 On top of all that, and again this is pre-14, most pre-13, it's slow. Mind 
 boggingly slow to articulate a decent animation rig. I suspect this last 
 point has been, or is about to be, superseded though since the viewport has 
 been getting some love.
 
 The main issue though remains that preparing an asset in Houdini remains a 
 long and involved process which very few people from other departments, some 
 times nobody, can be recruited into, it's born, lives and dies in the hands 
 of TDs.
 
 I've always had a soft spot for Houdini, and I'd give my money to SideFX 
 rather than many other companies any day of the year, but as a company their 
 commitment to character work of artistic or hybrid nature has always been 
 patchy (and I don't necessarily blame them for it) and subpar.
 They have a lot of work to make up for it, but they seem to be slowly doing 
 it while making sure they don't lose their core business with FX and 
 end-to-end clients.
 
 I will certainly be looking at H14 as soon as some space for it in the stash 
 of stuff I need and want to do before clears up :)
 
 
 On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 6:45 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com 
 mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:
 May I ask you to elaborate the “complex character rigging and tuned 
 deformation”, I may be missing something.
 
 To start with you have muscles in Houdini which you don’t, let alone FEM 
 simulations and a universal physics engine to cope with pretty sophisticated 
 things…
 
 Certainly it is easier in Softimage and more artist friendly to setup but I 
 see the rigging side as one very strong point.
 
 If you are talking about screen space corrections, blend shapes and advanced 
 contact collision its certainly doable with  the toolset.
 
 :-|
 
 thx
 jb
 
 
 On 16 Jan 2015, at 16:59, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com 
 mailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:
 
 It's only true for some definitions of rigging.
 If you need proceduralism of course it does spectacularly well, and assets 
 are simply best of breed in the industry and have been for years, end of 
 story.
 For the hand-crafted complex character rig and tuned

Re: H14 is out !

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

:-)

love it

jb


 On 15 Jan 2015, at 22:00, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote:
 
 Lot's of xsi in there.
 Shortcuts very similar, edge loop quasi similar. even the LMB RMB and MMB to 
 use X,Y or Z axis remembers of the original SI.
 Animation layers too.
 Position solver makes me thinks of lagoa.
 
 Still watching the videos.
 
 The guys at SideFX did serious homeworks imho.
 
 
 Le 15/01/2015 22:44, Sebastien Sterling a écrit :
 Have any of the Softy Houdini converts noticed new features you requested ?
 
 On 15 January 2015 at 21:08, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr 
 mailto:olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote:
 http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=3042Itemid=66
  
 http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=3042Itemid=66
 
 

Re: OT: Visiting London in January, anybody wanna meet for beers?

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

Exactly, let’s meet!

 On 7 Jan 2015, at 09:24, Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com wrote:
 
 ok thanks for that Leendert, but back on topic.. seems there are a few 
 softies who saw this and feel like going but are not as vocal, so can we get 
 some consensus on date/time/place ?  I would tentatively like to pencil this 
 Friday 6.45pm front of white horse outside drinking area 16 Newburgh Street, 
 Soho, London W1F 7RY, United Kingdom
 
 
 cheers!
 
 Rob-c ‎
 
 On 6 January 2015 at 20:26, Simon Reeves si...@simonreeves.com 
 mailto:si...@simonreeves.com wrote:
 I'll be up for a drink sometime, shaston is quite small? What kind of 3d 
 artist drinks inside in soho? :)
 
 
 On Tuesday, 6 January 2015, Leendert A. Hartog hirazib...@live.nl 
 mailto:hirazib...@live.nl wrote:
 And that should have read store', not story obviously. :blush:
 
 -- 
 
 Leendert A. Hartog AKA Hirazi Blue
 Administrator NOT the owner of si-community.com http://si-community.com/
 
 
 
 -- 
 
 
 Simon Reeves
 London, UK
 si...@simonreeves.com mailto:si...@simonreeves.com
 www.simonreeves.com http://www.simonreeves.com/
 www.analogstudio.co.uk http://www.analogstudio.co.uk/
 
 

Re: semi OT : running SI on a Macbook Pro

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

BTW, I don’t use Softimage on my laptop although I do at work of course, for 
those little apps that you want to run that are Windows only I would recommend 
using CrossOver instead, no windows license necessary and everything is very 
tidy in the sense that each installation is like a bottle so you can always 
destroy the bottle and everything in it goes… really really love it.

jb

 On 1 Jan 2015, at 11:14, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 I tested Softimage on a Parallels 7 version that had quite a few troubles 
 with the DPI as Luc-Eric mentioned, with v8 it was way better and for small 
 things worked a treat for the convenience, after a while I started to 
 transition to Houdini and Modo that have OS X versions or even native 
 development and of course little by little started to switch.
 
 I am not fond of Windows on a Mac with Retina but only a handful of 
 applications felt weird so I would not be deterred bit it, after all, 
 Softimage is officially terminated so…
 
 Anyway… make sure you get a Mac with nVidia graphics instead, they are really 
 amazing machines.
 jb
 
 
 On 31 Dec 2014, at 18:11, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote:
 
 Ok, so Graham said it works very well and Luc Eric describes the worst 
 nightmare...
 I'm having hard time to figure...
 
 
 Le 31/12/2014 15:37, Luc-Eric Rousseau a écrit :
 On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 4:18 AM, olivier jeannel
 olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote:
 Tiny ? Tiny how ? Ain't SI able to use the complete surface of the screen ?
 Or are 2880 pixels making too tiny buttons ?
 
 Windows on a high DPI display is a nightmare. Most apps don't scale so
 the buttons are a 4 millimeter wide and the text is tiny.
 Worse, since there is that much more pixel to push, OpenGL performance
 is slow.  Huge slow viewport, small UI - what's not to like!   It's
 not a serious windows setup unless you hook it up to an external, non
 retina display, and a windows keyboard to have the ctrl/alt keys in
 the right place and a delete key.
 
 the power management issues are real.  The macbook pro will run hot
 under windows and it will shorten its life.
 
 Other problem.  Normally with the macbook pro you'll end up using
 thunderbolt, that's what's used with an external display for example.
 Well unlike OSX, thunderbolt is not hot-swappable on windows, so
 you'll need to reboot to connect the internet adapter.  You get
 frustrating stuff like putting the macbook to sleep and sometimes the
 monitor is not detected, or everythign getting really confused when
 you switch between OS.  I'm thinking it's better to buy a cheap PC
 than to bother with this.  You have to buy a copy of windows anyway.
 
 
 
 

Re: semi OT : running SI on a Macbook Pro

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

I tested Softimage on a Parallels 7 version that had quite a few troubles with 
the DPI as Luc-Eric mentioned, with v8 it was way better and for small things 
worked a treat for the convenience, after a while I started to transition to 
Houdini and Modo that have OS X versions or even native development and of 
course little by little started to switch.

I am not fond of Windows on a Mac with Retina but only a handful of 
applications felt weird so I would not be deterred bit it, after all, Softimage 
is officially terminated so…

Anyway… make sure you get a Mac with nVidia graphics instead, they are really 
amazing machines.
jb


 On 31 Dec 2014, at 18:11, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote:
 
 Ok, so Graham said it works very well and Luc Eric describes the worst 
 nightmare...
 I'm having hard time to figure...
 
 
 Le 31/12/2014 15:37, Luc-Eric Rousseau a écrit :
 On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 4:18 AM, olivier jeannel
 olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote:
 Tiny ? Tiny how ? Ain't SI able to use the complete surface of the screen ?
 Or are 2880 pixels making too tiny buttons ?
 
 Windows on a high DPI display is a nightmare. Most apps don't scale so
 the buttons are a 4 millimeter wide and the text is tiny.
 Worse, since there is that much more pixel to push, OpenGL performance
 is slow.  Huge slow viewport, small UI - what's not to like!   It's
 not a serious windows setup unless you hook it up to an external, non
 retina display, and a windows keyboard to have the ctrl/alt keys in
 the right place and a delete key.
 
 the power management issues are real.  The macbook pro will run hot
 under windows and it will shorten its life.
 
 Other problem.  Normally with the macbook pro you'll end up using
 thunderbolt, that's what's used with an external display for example.
 Well unlike OSX, thunderbolt is not hot-swappable on windows, so
 you'll need to reboot to connect the internet adapter.  You get
 frustrating stuff like putting the macbook to sleep and sometimes the
 monitor is not detected, or everythign getting really confused when
 you switch between OS.  I'm thinking it's better to buy a cheap PC
 than to bother with this.  You have to buy a copy of windows anyway.
 
 
 

Re: OT: houdini mickymouse mode

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

I must confess that after testing the three versions the most stable by a mile 
is the linux version, then the mac version (due to the old OpenGL in H13) and 
then windows which although works nicely overall has some strange things going 
on and slight freezes.

I am waiting for Houdini 14 and see if OpenGL has been updated to v3.2 which 
will unify all versions of Houdini and promises to be the perfect platform 
(let’s see though)

:)

jb



 On 17 Dec 2014, at 08:01, Frantisek Hradecky fra...@visualfx.cz wrote:
 
 Experienced similar kind of UI stall few times, sometimes switching to 
 different Desktop helps.
 
 On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 3:57 AM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com 
 mailto:nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
 Well I've played with houdini before, but found it a bit strange
 Then I started learning Maya and I believe I gave it a fair chance. Almost 6 
 months now.
 Houdini doesn't seem so strange now :)
 Maya is shitty in my opinion. It is going to be a big part of my future as a 
 freelancer, but it's probably gonna go from shitty to slightly crappy at 
 best. 
 Houdini indie, and unreal engine 4 is where I will have my fun, and regain my 
 sanity.
 G
 
 
 On 17/12/2014 02:24, Simon van de Lagemaat wrote:
 Ya I've had some oddities on Windows when it comes to dual monitors i.e. the 
 mplay window keeps popping over to the wrong screen and I've had the cursor 
 one as well.  I think the worst is the crashing I've been having with GL 
 volumes but this is on v12.
 
 I'm holding off on being too critical until 14 because it sounds like 
 they're altering the interface somewhat, QT I think?
 
 On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 8:07 AM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com 
 mailto:nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hey guys
 I decided to get into houdini as I might be dead by the time bifrost is 
 mature.
 Right of the bat I got a real show stopper.
 I lovingly call it mickymousemode
 My cursor turns into the mickymose hand, normal associated with panning a 
 window, and stays like that.
 No keyboard short cuts or anything else works.
 If I try to close Houdini, I cant even click the save or exit buttons.
 Has anyone seen this, and found a fix?
 Thanks guys
 G
 

Re: OT: houdini mickymouse mode

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

;-)

jb

 On 17 Dec 2014, at 10:12, Arvid Björn arvidbj...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 That's the oddest part of Houdini so far for me, how the viewport can be so 
 inconsistent and buggy. The way component selections and polygon shading are 
 displayed can vary a lot between sessions and OGL settings. And sometimes you 
 just have to close the viewport and open a new one to get it to update the 
 view correctly, it even happens a bunch of times in some of the tutorial 
 videos I've watched!
 
 I'm also hoping H14 will bring an end to some of that.. :)
 
 
 
 
 
 On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 10:59 AM, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com 
 mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:
 I must confess that after testing the three versions the most stable by a 
 mile is the linux version, then the mac version (due to the old OpenGL in 
 H13) and then windows which although works nicely overall has some strange 
 things going on and slight freezes.
 
 I am waiting for Houdini 14 and see if OpenGL has been updated to v3.2 which 
 will unify all versions of Houdini and promises to be the perfect platform 
 (let’s see though)
 
 :)
 
 jb
 
 
 
 On 17 Dec 2014, at 08:01, Frantisek Hradecky fra...@visualfx.cz 
 mailto:fra...@visualfx.cz wrote:
 
 Experienced similar kind of UI stall few times, sometimes switching to 
 different Desktop helps.
 
 On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 3:57 AM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com 
 mailto:nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
 Well I've played with houdini before, but found it a bit strange
 Then I started learning Maya and I believe I gave it a fair chance. Almost 6 
 months now.
 Houdini doesn't seem so strange now :)
 Maya is shitty in my opinion. It is going to be a big part of my future as a 
 freelancer, but it's probably gonna go from shitty to slightly crappy at 
 best. 
 Houdini indie, and unreal engine 4 is where I will have my fun, and regain 
 my sanity.
 G
 
 
 On 17/12/2014 02:24, Simon van de Lagemaat wrote:
 Ya I've had some oddities on Windows when it comes to dual monitors i.e. 
 the mplay window keeps popping over to the wrong screen and I've had the 
 cursor one as well.  I think the worst is the crashing I've been having 
 with GL volumes but this is on v12.
 
 I'm holding off on being too critical until 14 because it sounds like 
 they're altering the interface somewhat, QT I think?
 
 On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 8:07 AM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com 
 mailto:nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hey guys
 I decided to get into houdini as I might be dead by the time bifrost is 
 mature.
 Right of the bat I got a real show stopper.
 I lovingly call it mickymousemode
 My cursor turns into the mickymose hand, normal associated with panning a 
 window, and stays like that.
 No keyboard short cuts or anything else works.
 If I try to close Houdini, I cant even click the save or exit buttons.
 Has anyone seen this, and found a fix?
 Thanks guys
 G
 
 

Re: OT: houdini mickymouse mode

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

I have experienced the icon behaviour changing a handful times in Windows when 
I switch to another application and back, the trick I use is to ControTab and 
back, things get back to normal.

I never experienced that in Mac or Linux so it may be related to Windows and 
hot it manages the window focus? I guess I have to do some investigation
jb

 On 16 Dec 2014, at 16:07, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Hey guys
 I decided to get into houdini as I might be dead by the time bifrost is 
 mature.
 Right of the bat I got a real show stopper.
 I lovingly call it mickymousemode
 My cursor turns into the mickymose hand, normal associated with panning a 
 window, and stays like that.
 No keyboard short cuts or anything else works.
 If I try to close Houdini, I cant even click the save or exit buttons.
 Has anyone seen this, and found a fix?
 Thanks guys
 G

Re: maya

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

Sounds like a very productive Maya day then.  ;-)

jb

 On 10 Nov 2014, at 18:27, Andi Farhall hack...@outlook.com wrote:
 
 I've been in it all day. My emotional range is getting a workout is all I'll 
 say. and I've done almost zero actual work. 
 
 ...
 http://www.hackneyeffects.com/ http://www.hackneyeffects.com/
 https://vimeo.com/user4174293 https://vimeo.com/user4174293
 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andi-farhall/b/496/b21 
 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andi-farhall/b/496/b21
 
 
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/lord_hackney/ 
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/lord_hackney/
 http://spylon.tumblr.com/ http://spylon.tumblr.com/
 
 This email and any attachments to it may be confidential and are intended 
 solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any views or 
 opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily 
 represent those of Hackney Effects Ltd.
 If you are not the intended recipient of this email, you must neither take 
 any action based upon its contents, nor copy or show it to anyone.
 Please contact the sender if you believe you have received this email in 
 error.
 
 
 
 Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2014 19:11:25 +
 Subject: Re: maya
 From: sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com mailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 
 It would be a little redundant of me to say, i feel you buddy. :P that said...
 
 
 I feel you buddy ;)
 
 On 7 November 2014 18:47, Ognjen Vukovic ognj...@gmail.com 
 mailto:ognj...@gmail.com wrote:
 But all in all, yes one 'v' did slip through, well maybe not one but two or 
 more... i cant handle this anymore...  i probably should keep this to myself, 
 but Maya is a piece of ... i love autodesk.  I really love you all. *** . 
 Great work guys on Maya. Awesome Cant wait till Maya 2916.
 
 On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 7:39 PM, Ognjen Vukovic ognj...@gmail.com 
 mailto:ognj...@gmail.com wrote:
 All ctrl+v and no play makes Jack a dull boy. :)
 
 On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 7:36 PM, Alen amu...@xnet.hr mailto:amu...@xnet.hr 
 wrote:
 one v slipped...again :D
 
 
 On 11/7/2014 7:34 PM, Ognjen Vukovic wrote:
 All Maya and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
 All Maya and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
 All Maya and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
 All Maya and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
 v
 All Maya and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
 All Maya and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
 All Maya and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
 All Maya and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
 All Maya and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
 All Maya and no play makes Jack a dull boy.