Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Great thread and great to see everyone hanging on! We're very small and I still just use Soft mostly. I too love and use Redshift for everything. I just can't see anything that comes close in terms of flexibility and speed. We mostly do commercial and marketing stuff. No time for pipeline development...just jumping in and getting dirty fast. I need passes and rely heavily on the operator stack and overrides. The only challenge I have is whenever I need people in Soft it's a very small pool. Luckily most of my needs are modeling so I don't care what they use but a few times I've needed a Soft user and my list is much smaller than it used to be. Kris On Fri, Aug 21, 2015 at 10:34 AM, Andy Goehler lists.andy.goeh...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, it’s great to work that way. SolidAngle have just recently added polysoup support and tickets are in place for packed primitives and alembic procedural for HtoA. On Aug 21, 2015, at 16:28, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com wrote: Yeah I tested that last night at home. It's even better than Delayed Load shaders because you see the geo in the viewport and you can assign materials. This is a huge advantage over Arnold. In fact, I'm surprised SolidAngle doesn't provide an Alembic procedural.
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Yeah I tested that last night at home. It's even better than Delayed Load shaders because you see the geo in the viewport and you can assign materials. This is a huge advantage over Arnold. In fact, I'm surprised SolidAngle doesn't provide an Alembic procedural. On 2015-08-20 17:22, Andy Goehler wrote: Yes, when using packed Alembics (default) only the object declaration is written to the IFD. The actual geometry is referenced to the Alembic file on disk, hence IFDs stay reasonably small. On Aug 20, 2015, at 16:46, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com mailto:flordli...@gmail.com wrote: What about disk space? Can you, in Mantra, reference alembic deforming geometry directly so it doesn't have to be part of the ifd file at each frame? On 2015-08-20 10:40, Sandy Sutherland wrote: At Sunrise we had 5 IFD generating machines (Engine lics), and I wrote a tool to submit renders from Houdini to RR that had the main render job wait for the IFD job to finish, before starting - easy to do. The IFD generating was pretty quick, so we did not really have machines waiting to render. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 3:30 PM, Ciaran Moloney moloney.cia...@gmail.com mailto:moloney.cia...@gmail.com wrote: Pretty sure that applies also to Mantra renders. But, most places have a smaller pool of engine licenses and export all frames to .ass or .ifd for rendering. Since export times are usually shorter than render times, it works out quite efficiently. But yeah, definitely another expense to consider. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Mike Donovan m...@smoke-mirrors.com wrote: One thing that is a bummer with HTOA is that you will need to purchase a Houdini Engine license for every node on your farm unless all the geometry creation is done before rendering. This cost be quite steep … essentially a $500 additional cost to each Arnold license.
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
So I was also interested if there is still any need for Softimage Generalists / TD's out there ? If so you might give us a shout ;) 2015-08-21 11:38 GMT+02:00 Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com: +1 on that delayed load shader setup for Houdini, a real rendering speed boost! On 21 August 2015 at 10:29, Christoph Muetze c...@glarestudios.de wrote: hey thanks for the tip - I will try that out right away! Cheers! Chris On 08/20/2015 09:59 PM, toonafish wrote: I stopped using Modo as much as I did for different reasons, and it doesn’t work as reliable as it does in Softimage, but you can keep your tool active while selecting other components by activating “select through” in Modo. Don’t know why that isn’t activated by default though, just like the “lazy selection” that makes selecting components so much better With those two activated modeling is a lot closer to what you’re used to in Soft I think. - Ronald I want to select my tool and simply use it until I switch to another t ool - like in Softimage. -- -- cont...@marioreitbauer.com 0049 (0)157 86272215 Professor-Brix-Weg 9 22767 Hamburg --
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
hey thanks for the tip - I will try that out right away! Cheers! Chris On 08/20/2015 09:59 PM, toonafish wrote: I stopped using Modo as much as I did for different reasons, and it doesn’t work as reliable as it does in Softimage, but you can keep your tool active while selecting other components by activating “select through” in Modo. Don’t know why that isn’t activated by default though, just like the “lazy selection” that makes selecting components so much better With those two activated modeling is a lot closer to what you’re used to in Soft I think. - Ronald I want to select my tool and simply use it until I switch to another t ool - like in Softimage.
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
+1 on that delayed load shader setup for Houdini, a real rendering speed boost! On 21 August 2015 at 10:29, Christoph Muetze c...@glarestudios.de wrote: hey thanks for the tip - I will try that out right away! Cheers! Chris On 08/20/2015 09:59 PM, toonafish wrote: I stopped using Modo as much as I did for different reasons, and it doesn’t work as reliable as it does in Softimage, but you can keep your tool active while selecting other components by activating “select through” in Modo. Don’t know why that isn’t activated by default though, just like the “lazy selection” that makes selecting components so much better With those two activated modeling is a lot closer to what you’re used to in Soft I think. - Ronald I want to select my tool and simply use it until I switch to another t ool - like in Softimage.
RE: Continued use of Softimage question
I can second these comments about HTOA … Solid Angle’s support is also incredibly responsive. One thing that is a bummer with HTOA is that you will need to purchase a Houdini Engine license for every node on your farm unless all the geometry creation is done before rendering. This cost be quite steep … essentially a $500 additional cost to each Arnold license. Mantra is quite amazing though and we are trying to figure out if we just use Mantra for most of our Houdini projects. Of course our lighting artists will kick an scream and threaten to jump out the window if forced to use something other than Arnold. … haha. M From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Cristobal Infante Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2015 6:04 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Continued use of Softimage question IPR window shader picking wow man this is nice, didn't know about this ;) Another good one is that you can assign materials via the IPR windows just by dragging and dropping them onto the objects. The massive plus with mantra, it's deep integration with Houdini means that everything just works out of the box. Even though HTOA is really well implemented is still a plugin and like Sitoa it has the typical arnold caveats (render doesn't update with every move, adding property to objects, etc). Still is pretty awesome to have the options, and it's great to see the pace of development of HTOA. With every release there is always something working 20% faster ;) By the way, has anyone given akeytsu a proper go? On Wednesday, 19 August 2015, Andy Goehler lists.andy.goeh...@gmail.commailto:lists.andy.goeh...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Francois, all Houdini projects so far have been rendered using Mantra. For our type of work we’ve found it performing very well in comparison with Arnold. Here’s are some of my day to day time savers: distributed rendering being able to use the farm on a single frame during lighting is great artist friendly lights I have my shortcomings with Arnolds lights, mainly either controlling the spread on area lights or texturing spots to get realistic specs mouse cursor bucket picking sounds trivial, saves me so much time IPR window shader picking ctrl clicking in the render view brings up the properties of that pixels shader. click - adjust - done. That being said, we’re keeping an eye on HtoA and I try to set up new projects with Arnold as well and run a comparison. On Aug 19, 2015, at 16:39, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.commailto:flordli...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Andy. Did you move to Mantra, or stayed with Arnold? Softimage crashing too often in lookdev is the #1 reason why I'm actively looking elsewhere. On 19-Aug-15 10:35, Andy Goehler wrote: We at Fiftyeight moved on from Softimage to Houdini for scene assembly and rendering. While Houdini’s offerings may not be the designed/perfect pass system currently, we’ve managed to adjust to a level of comfort. Shading and lighting productivity has gone way up. Houdini has proven to be very stable during shading and lighting, contrary to my frustration with Soft crashing unacceptably often. We were not looking for the best solution currently available either, we were looking for a platform to build upon. And are very happy with Side Effects as a software vendor. Licensing, Bugs reports and fixes, feature requests and implementation and daily builds make us a satisfied customer. Andy GOGREEN Climate Protection with DHL: please consider your environmental responsibility before printing this email. This email is intended exclusively for the individual or entity to which it is addressed. This communication may contain information that is proprietary, privileged or confidential. If you are not the named addressee, you are not authorized to read, print, retain, copy or disseminate this message or any part of it. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately by email and delete all copies of the message.
RE: Continued use of Softimage question
An interesting thread, so here’s my 2ps worth based what I had seen, up to relatively recently. So, naming no names and not stirring up the retirement debate….. From what I’d seen, hardly anyone has dumped Soft from their pipeline entirely. It’s still being used in some shape or form. Most of (if not) all people, if they hadn’t already started to think about transitioning away from Soft, they were about to. Some were further along already because they’d been running hybrid pipeline for some time, with the likes of Houdini, Fabric being the most common. Others had merely dabbled and were now putting serious plans together. A Maya+Houdini+Fabric was a common discussion though. It’s fair to say that many haven’t found a direct replacement for Soft (and ICE), and probably won’t, but there are some good things out there. The downside is that they’re not in one place like Soft. Maya might not have a lot of love from some, but it does have many positives, although the render layer/pass system and no real non-linear animation system has stopped many from fully adopting. Both of which, I believe, are on AD’s radar. This was very common to see, many decent alternatives out there, but not many had mature enough features to match some of Soft’s. So, I don’t see Soft going away soon, but there will be a tipping point where people might have to jump, painful as it might be. In terms of renderers, am seeing a lot of Redshift now, especially in Maya studios who are doing shorter turnaround stuff like commercials or tv work. The speed and quality has been too good ignore. Some now use it as their default instead of Arnold or Vray. G From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sandy Sutherland Sent: 19 August 2015 11:08 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Continued use of Softimage question Hi all, After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for this - Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage? Who might still be on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...? Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family. Thanks Sandy
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Actually i see no reason to use HTOA instead of mantra in houdini, the integration mantra has can never be achieved by a third party. And the results seem very impressive, not that different from what you would get with Arnold. I haven't tried HTOA but from what i have touched upon with Mantra, it seems very capable. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 12:53 PM, Mike Donovan m...@smoke-mirrors.com wrote: I can second these comments about HTOA … Solid Angle’s support is also incredibly responsive. One thing that is a bummer with HTOA is that you will need to purchase a Houdini Engine license for every node on your farm unless all the geometry creation is done before rendering. This cost be quite steep … essentially a $500 additional cost to each Arnold license. Mantra is quite amazing though and we are trying to figure out if we just use Mantra for most of our Houdini projects. Of course our lighting artists will kick an scream and threaten to jump out the window if forced to use something other than Arnold. … haha. M *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Cristobal Infante *Sent:* Wednesday, August 19, 2015 6:04 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Continued use of Softimage question *IPR window shader picking *wow man this is nice, didn't know about this ;) Another good one is that you can assign materials via the IPR windows just by dragging and dropping them onto the objects. The massive plus with mantra, it's deep integration with Houdini means that everything just works out of the box. Even though HTOA is really well implemented is still a plugin and like Sitoa it has the typical arnold caveats (render doesn't update with every move, adding property to objects, etc). Still is pretty awesome to have the options, and it's great to see the pace of development of HTOA. With every release there is always something working 20% faster ;) By the way, has anyone given akeytsu a proper go? On Wednesday, 19 August 2015, Andy Goehler lists.andy.goeh...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Francois, all Houdini projects so far have been rendered using Mantra. For our type of work we’ve found it performing very well in comparison with Arnold. Here’s are some of my day to day time savers: *distributed rendering* being able to use the farm on a single frame during lighting is great *artist friendly lights* I have my shortcomings with Arnolds lights, mainly either controlling the spread on area lights or texturing spots to get realistic specs *mouse cursor bucket picking* sounds trivial, saves me so much time *IPR window shader picking* ctrl clicking in the render view brings up the properties of that pixels shader. click - adjust - done. That being said, we’re keeping an eye on HtoA and I try to set up new projects with Arnold as well and run a comparison. On Aug 19, 2015, at 16:39, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Andy. Did you move to Mantra, or stayed with Arnold? Softimage crashing too often in lookdev is the #1 reason why I'm actively looking elsewhere. On 19-Aug-15 10:35, Andy Goehler wrote: We at Fiftyeight moved on from Softimage to Houdini for scene assembly and rendering. While Houdini’s offerings may not be the designed/perfect pass system currently, we’ve managed to adjust to a level of comfort. Shading and lighting productivity has gone way up. Houdini has proven to be very stable during shading and lighting, contrary to my frustration with Soft crashing unacceptably often. We were not looking for the best solution currently available either, we were looking for a platform to build upon. And are very happy with Side Effects as a software vendor. Licensing, Bugs reports and fixes, feature requests and implementation and daily builds make us a satisfied customer. Andy GOGREEN Climate Protection with DHL: please consider your environmental responsibility before printing this email. This email is intended exclusively for the individual or entity to which it is addressed. This communication may contain information that is proprietary, privileged or confidential. If you are not the named addressee, you are not authorized to read, print, retain, copy or disseminate this message or any part of it. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately by email and delete all copies of the message.
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
I´ve pretty much phased out using Softimage towards the end of last year. I still do have latest version(s) installed and make sure whenever I update the Redshift3D builds the Softimage plug-in(s) will be updated as well but my primary tool has become Maya. It took me roughly six months to come to terms with the transition, using mostly the Maya 2015sp6Ext1 on projects plus some dabbling with Maya2016+Maya2016sp1. For rendering, on projects usually Arnold and at home for my doodling and learning Redshift3D. I´ve still an active subscription contract for many AD 3D applications and will probably extend subscription for another year (not jumping to desktop subscription, I mean I will probably just get myself the updates to my packages) until around beginning of 2017. That´s the limit I have given myself to finally start looking into Cinema4D or Houdini. Or Modo. All that is not really based on personal preferences but on available jobs and requirements for those jobs. For fun, I do a bit of 3D scanning and am starting to like 3D Coat 4.5.x for merging my crappy partial 3D scan data into a starting point for a complete mesh using voxel tools. Cheers, tim
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Pretty sure that applies also to Mantra renders. But, most places have a smaller pool of engine licenses and export all frames to .ass or .ifd for rendering. Since export times are usually shorter than render times, it works out quite efficiently. But yeah, definitely another expense to consider. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Mike Donovan m...@smoke-mirrors.com wrote: One thing that is a bummer with HTOA is that you will need to purchase a Houdini Engine license for every node on your farm unless all the geometry creation is done before rendering. This cost be quite steep … essentially a $500 additional cost to each Arnold license.
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
At Sunrise we had 5 IFD generating machines (Engine lics), and I wrote a tool to submit renders from Houdini to RR that had the main render job wait for the IFD job to finish, before starting - easy to do. The IFD generating was pretty quick, so we did not really have machines waiting to render. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 3:30 PM, Ciaran Moloney moloney.cia...@gmail.com wrote: Pretty sure that applies also to Mantra renders. But, most places have a smaller pool of engine licenses and export all frames to .ass or .ifd for rendering. Since export times are usually shorter than render times, it works out quite efficiently. But yeah, definitely another expense to consider. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Mike Donovan m...@smoke-mirrors.com wrote: One thing that is a bummer with HTOA is that you will need to purchase a Houdini Engine license for every node on your farm unless all the geometry creation is done before rendering. This cost be quite steep … essentially a $500 additional cost to each Arnold license.
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
What about disk space? Can you, in Mantra, reference alembic deforming geometry directly so it doesn't have to be part of the ifd file at each frame? On 2015-08-20 10:40, Sandy Sutherland wrote: At Sunrise we had 5 IFD generating machines (Engine lics), and I wrote a tool to submit renders from Houdini to RR that had the main render job wait for the IFD job to finish, before starting - easy to do. The IFD generating was pretty quick, so we did not really have machines waiting to render. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 3:30 PM, Ciaran Moloney moloney.cia...@gmail.com mailto:moloney.cia...@gmail.com wrote: Pretty sure that applies also to Mantra renders. But, most places have a smaller pool of engine licenses and export all frames to .ass or .ifd for rendering. Since export times are usually shorter than render times, it works out quite efficiently. But yeah, definitely another expense to consider. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Mike Donovan m...@smoke-mirrors.com mailto:m...@smoke-mirrors.com wrote: One thing that is a bummer with HTOA is that you will need to purchase a Houdini Engine license for every node on your farm unless all the geometry creation is done before rendering. This cost be quite steep … essentially a $500 additional cost to each Arnold license.
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
I'm still using Softimage and i think i would not let it go for a long time. Playing with Sitoa and now Redshift. Learning maya only for render stuff, but that's the only use i could find for now. As far as new software, the only one that's keeping me interested is Modo, nothing more out there. Maybe the new app Syflex is building could help some softimagers to transition, the bad thing is that it's aimed as an animation app, nothing more for now, until it grows a lot and they put a good simple interface and began to add a few modeling stuff, or rendering... Anyway. Softimage it's the only easy non-destructive for now. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 5:57 PM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote: I´ve pretty much phased out using Softimage towards the end of last year. I still do have latest version(s) installed and make sure whenever I update the Redshift3D builds the Softimage plug-in(s) will be updated as well but my primary tool has become Maya. It took me roughly six months to come to terms with the transition, using mostly the Maya 2015sp6Ext1 on projects plus some dabbling with Maya2016+Maya2016sp1. For rendering, on projects usually Arnold and at home for my doodling and learning Redshift3D. I´ve still an active subscription contract for many AD 3D applications and will probably extend subscription for another year (not jumping to desktop subscription, I mean I will probably just get myself the updates to my packages) until around beginning of 2017. That´s the limit I have given myself to finally start looking into Cinema4D or Houdini. Or Modo. All that is not really based on personal preferences but on available jobs and requirements for those jobs. For fun, I do a bit of 3D scanning and am starting to like 3D Coat 4.5.x for merging my crappy partial 3D scan data into a starting point for a complete mesh using voxel tools. Cheers, tim
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Yes, when using packed Alembics (default) only the object declaration is written to the IFD. The actual geometry is referenced to the Alembic file on disk, hence IFDs stay reasonably small. On Aug 20, 2015, at 16:46, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com wrote: What about disk space? Can you, in Mantra, reference alembic deforming geometry directly so it doesn't have to be part of the ifd file at each frame? On 2015-08-20 10:40, Sandy Sutherland wrote: At Sunrise we had 5 IFD generating machines (Engine lics), and I wrote a tool to submit renders from Houdini to RR that had the main render job wait for the IFD job to finish, before starting - easy to do. The IFD generating was pretty quick, so we did not really have machines waiting to render. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 3:30 PM, Ciaran Moloney moloney.cia...@gmail.com mailto:moloney.cia...@gmail.com wrote: Pretty sure that applies also to Mantra renders. But, most places have a smaller pool of engine licenses and export all frames to .ass or .ifd for rendering. Since export times are usually shorter than render times, it works out quite efficiently. But yeah, definitely another expense to consider. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Mike Donovan mailto:m...@smoke-mirrors.comm...@smoke-mirrors.com mailto:m...@smoke-mirrors.com wrote: One thing that is a bummer with HTOA is that you will need to purchase a Houdini Engine license for every node on your farm unless all the geometry creation is done before rendering. This cost be quite steep … essentially a $500 additional cost to each Arnold license.
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
+1 to that. We're still almost a 100% on Softimage over at Glare Productions. I took a long look at Cinema and its userbase but what I saw was not convincing. Then I bought a Modo 801 license but don't use it anymore because the core modelling workflow with it's first select element, then the tool, then apply, then deselect - repeat is so annoyingly cumbersome and slow that i'm close to hating it. no cool addition to that toolset (and Modo has quite a few under its belt already) can ever change that imho. I want to select my tool and simply use it until I switch to another tool - like in Softimage. To be honest, I gave up on the idea of replacing Soft. That said, I was pleasently surprised over what I saw in the Houdini 15 announce video - so this just became my last hope and I'm looking forward to seeing more. Cheers! Chris On 08/20/2015 05:57 PM, Olivier Jeannel wrote: To bounce on whate Graham wrote, I'd like also to add that I'm staying completly out of next (whatever it will be) Autodesk product.ge I don't know if there are still many very stubborn people like me. My feelings are the same as a greek vs Goldman sachs... On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 4:59 PM, Christopher Crouzet christopher.crou...@gmail.com mailto:christopher.crou...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, you can! http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini14.0/nodes/shop/vm_geo_file On 20 August 2015 at 21:46, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com mailto:flordli...@gmail.com wrote: What about disk space? Can you, in Mantra, reference alembic deforming geometry directly so it doesn't have to be part of the ifd file at each frame? On 2015-08-20 10:40, Sandy Sutherland wrote: At Sunrise we had 5 IFD generating machines (Engine lics), and I wrote a tool to submit renders from Houdini to RR that had the main render job wait for the IFD job to finish, before starting - easy to do. The IFD generating was pretty quick, so we did not really have machines waiting to render. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 3:30 PM, Ciaran Moloney moloney.cia...@gmail.com mailto:moloney.cia...@gmail.com wrote: Pretty sure that applies also to Mantra renders. But, most places have a smaller pool of engine licenses and export all frames to .ass or .ifd for rendering. Since export times are usually shorter than render times, it works out quite efficiently. But yeah, definitely another expense to consider. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Mike Donovan mailto:m...@smoke-mirrors.comm...@smoke-mirrors.com mailto:m...@smoke-mirrors.com wrote: One thing that is a bummer with HTOA is that you will need to purchase a Houdini Engine license for every node on your farm unless all the geometry creation is done before rendering. This cost be quite steep … essentially a $500 additional cost to each Arnold license. -- Christopher Crouzet /http://christophercrouzet.com/
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Yes, your whole scene could be comprised of delayed-load assets. Exports will fly in that case. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 3:46 PM, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com wrote: What about disk space? Can you, in Mantra, reference alembic deforming geometry directly so it doesn't have to be part of the ifd file at each frame? On 2015-08-20 10:40, Sandy Sutherland wrote: At Sunrise we had 5 IFD generating machines (Engine lics), and I wrote a tool to submit renders from Houdini to RR that had the main render job wait for the IFD job to finish, before starting - easy to do. The IFD generating was pretty quick, so we did not really have machines waiting to render. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 3:30 PM, Ciaran Moloney moloney.cia...@gmail.com wrote: Pretty sure that applies also to Mantra renders. But, most places have a smaller pool of engine licenses and export all frames to .ass or .ifd for rendering. Since export times are usually shorter than render times, it works out quite efficiently. But yeah, definitely another expense to consider. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Mike Donovan m...@smoke-mirrors.com m...@smoke-mirrors.com wrote: One thing that is a bummer with HTOA is that you will need to purchase a Houdini Engine license for every node on your farm unless all the geometry creation is done before rendering. This cost be quite steep … essentially a $500 additional cost to each Arnold license.
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Yes, you can! http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini14.0/nodes/shop/vm_geo_file On 20 August 2015 at 21:46, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com wrote: What about disk space? Can you, in Mantra, reference alembic deforming geometry directly so it doesn't have to be part of the ifd file at each frame? On 2015-08-20 10:40, Sandy Sutherland wrote: At Sunrise we had 5 IFD generating machines (Engine lics), and I wrote a tool to submit renders from Houdini to RR that had the main render job wait for the IFD job to finish, before starting - easy to do. The IFD generating was pretty quick, so we did not really have machines waiting to render. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 3:30 PM, Ciaran Moloney moloney.cia...@gmail.com wrote: Pretty sure that applies also to Mantra renders. But, most places have a smaller pool of engine licenses and export all frames to .ass or .ifd for rendering. Since export times are usually shorter than render times, it works out quite efficiently. But yeah, definitely another expense to consider. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Mike Donovan m...@smoke-mirrors.com m...@smoke-mirrors.com wrote: One thing that is a bummer with HTOA is that you will need to purchase a Houdini Engine license for every node on your farm unless all the geometry creation is done before rendering. This cost be quite steep … essentially a $500 additional cost to each Arnold license. -- Christopher Crouzet *http://christophercrouzet.com* http://christophercrouzet.com
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
I stopped using Modo as much as I did for different reasons, and it doesn’t work as reliable as it does in Softimage, but you can keep your tool active while selecting other components by activating “select through” in Modo. Don’t know why that isn’t activated by default though, just like the “lazy selection” that makes selecting components so much better With those two activated modeling is a lot closer to what you’re used to in Soft I think. - Ronald I want to select my tool and simply use it until I switch to another t ool - like in Softimage.
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Modo is sooo good for modeling, UVs and content creation. I'm really supprised you guys say it's clumsy. The action centers, falloffs, snapping and the selection workflow is just top notch imo. People are different I quess? : ) On 21 Aug 2015 00:22, Andy Goehler lists.andy.goeh...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, when using packed Alembics (default) only the object declaration is written to the IFD. The actual geometry is referenced to the Alembic file on disk, hence IFDs stay reasonably small. On Aug 20, 2015, at 16:46, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com wrote: What about disk space? Can you, in Mantra, reference alembic deforming geometry directly so it doesn't have to be part of the ifd file at each frame? On 2015-08-20 10:40, Sandy Sutherland wrote: At Sunrise we had 5 IFD generating machines (Engine lics), and I wrote a tool to submit renders from Houdini to RR that had the main render job wait for the IFD job to finish, before starting - easy to do. The IFD generating was pretty quick, so we did not really have machines waiting to render. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 3:30 PM, Ciaran Moloney moloney.cia...@gmail.com wrote: Pretty sure that applies also to Mantra renders. But, most places have a smaller pool of engine licenses and export all frames to .ass or .ifd for rendering. Since export times are usually shorter than render times, it works out quite efficiently. But yeah, definitely another expense to consider. On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Mike Donovan m...@smoke-mirrors.com m...@smoke-mirrors.com wrote: One thing that is a bummer with HTOA is that you will need to purchase a Houdini Engine license for every node on your farm unless all the geometry creation is done before rendering. This cost be quite steep … essentially a $500 additional cost to each Arnold license.
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
I agree I use Modo for modeling (organic), I really like the brushes... if Softimage had some basic Sculpting I probably wouldn’t use it just to keep everything in one app, plus it would be nice to have those for shape creation, which I do all in Soft. From: Juhani Karlsson Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2015 5:54 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Continued use of Softimage question Modo is sooo good for modeling, UVs and content creation. I'm really supprised you guys say it's clumsy. The action centers, falloffs, snapping and the selection workflow is just top notch imo. People are different I quess? : )
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
If that is all you are searching for Modo might do the rick. Should be a nice tool to get your data in for rendering. 2015-08-19 14:41 GMT+01:00 Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com: Hi Francis, thanks for your insights into Renderpass-alike mechanisms in Houdini. I was about to investigate those in hope to find a viable alternative to Softimage for scene assembly _and_ rendering, but what you wrote about Material Style Sheets and Takes has discouraged me enough to hold it off for now. S I know some companies in Montreal are still using Softimage, while preparing their exit. In our case (Oblique), we are moving more slowly than I was expecting. There are several reasons for this. Change resistance from the artists is one. But also the lack of a good pass system in the other softwares makes it difficult to use them as a hub to gather the assets and finish the shots. The Maya guys said they were working on it 2 years ago and we're still waiting. The Houdini guys released the material style sheets which doesn't do half the job, and wasn't even designed as a pass system. Don't get me started on Takes in Houdini, it's almost there but it's not what we need. It wasn't designed as a pass system either. We've taken the awesome Sort Controller plugin from Andy Jones and Jonah Friedman and modified it extensively. This has catapulted Softimage far ahead of any competitors (except Katana) in terms of pass management when using ref models. So I guess we will continue to use Softimage as our main hub until someone comes with a nice solution. I'm eyeing Katana even though it's overpriced. By the way, I do plan to release our version of the Sort Controller, but I need to fix a few things in it before. F On 19-Aug-15 06:08, Sandy Sutherland wrote: Hi all, After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for this - Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage? Who might still be on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...? Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family. Thanks Sandy -- - Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at - Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3 A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231 www.keyvis.at This email and its attachments are confidential and for the recipient only -- -- cont...@marioreitbauer.com 0049 (0)157 86272215 Professor-Brix-Weg 9 22767 Hamburg --
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
I know some companies in Montreal are still using Softimage, while preparing their exit. In our case (Oblique), we are moving more slowly than I was expecting. There are several reasons for this. Change resistance from the artists is one. But also the lack of a good pass system in the other softwares makes it difficult to use them as a hub to gather the assets and finish the shots. The Maya guys said they were working on it 2 years ago and we're still waiting. The Houdini guys released the material style sheets which doesn't do half the job, and wasn't even designed as a pass system. Don't get me started on Takes in Houdini, it's almost there but it's not what we need. It wasn't designed as a pass system either. We've taken the awesome Sort Controller plugin from Andy Jones and Jonah Friedman and modified it extensively. This has catapulted Softimage far ahead of any competitors (except Katana) in terms of pass management when using ref models. So I guess we will continue to use Softimage as our main hub until someone comes with a nice solution. I'm eyeing Katana even though it's overpriced. By the way, I do plan to release our version of the Sort Controller, but I need to fix a few things in it before. F On 19-Aug-15 06:08, Sandy Sutherland wrote: Hi all, After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for this - Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage? Who might still be on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...? Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family. Thanks Sandy
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Well, it shouldn't discourage you. Houdini is still better than Maya (yet) in that respect. I want to try a small project in Houdini to see how I can bend it to my needs. I know I will lose some things in there, but I will gain others. The digital assets (ref-models) in Houdini are amazing. To me, it's still the best bet. On 19-Aug-15 09:41, Stefan Kubicek wrote: Hi Francis, thanks for your insights into Renderpass-alike mechanisms in Houdini. I was about to investigate those in hope to find a viable alternative to Softimage for scene assembly _and_ rendering, but what you wrote about Material Style Sheets and Takes has discouraged me enough to hold it off for now. S I know some companies in Montreal are still using Softimage, while preparing their exit. In our case (Oblique), we are moving more slowly than I was expecting. There are several reasons for this. Change resistance from the artists is one. But also the lack of a good pass system in the other softwares makes it difficult to use them as a hub to gather the assets and finish the shots. The Maya guys said they were working on it 2 years ago and we're still waiting. The Houdini guys released the material style sheets which doesn't do half the job, and wasn't even designed as a pass system. Don't get me started on Takes in Houdini, it's almost there but it's not what we need. It wasn't designed as a pass system either. We've taken the awesome Sort Controller plugin from Andy Jones and Jonah Friedman and modified it extensively. This has catapulted Softimage far ahead of any competitors (except Katana) in terms of pass management when using ref models. So I guess we will continue to use Softimage as our main hub until someone comes with a nice solution. I'm eyeing Katana even though it's overpriced. By the way, I do plan to release our version of the Sort Controller, but I need to fix a few things in it before. F On 19-Aug-15 06:08, Sandy Sutherland wrote: Hi all, After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for this - Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage? Who might still be on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...? Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family. Thanks Sandy
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Hi Mario! Right, Modo. I keep hearing it's quite a bugfest. Do you have any experience on how stable is it with high poly and object counts, i.e. large datasets in general? I would still prefer Houdini for it's a bility to do things Soft can't do, let alone daily builds. If that is all you are searching for Modo might do the rick. Should be a nice tool to get your data in for rendering. 2015-08-19 14:41 GMT+01:00 Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com: Hi Francis, thanks for your insights into Renderpass-alike mechanisms in Houdini. I was about to investigate those in hope to find a viable alternative to Softimage for scene assembly _and_ rendering, but what you wrote about Material Style Sheets and Takes has discouraged me enough to hold it off for now. S I know some companies in Montreal are still using Softimage, while preparing their exit. In our case (Oblique), we are moving more slowly than I was expecting. There are several reasons for this. Change resistance from the artists is one. But also the lack of a good pass system in the other softwares makes it difficult to use them as a hub to gather the assets and finish the shots. The Maya guys said they were working on it 2 years ago and we're still waiting. The Houdini guys released the material style sheets which doesn't do half the job, and wasn't even designed as a pass system. Don't get me started on Takes in Houdini, it's almost there but it's not what we need. It wasn't designed as a pass system either. We've taken the awesome Sort Controller plugin from Andy Jones and Jonah Friedman and modified it extensively. This has catapulted Softimage far ahead of any competitors (except Katana) in terms of pass management when using ref models. So I guess we will continue to use Softimage as our main hub until someone comes with a nice solution. I'm eyeing Katana even though it's overpriced. By the way, I do plan to release our version of the Sort Controller, but I need to fix a few things in it before. F On 19-Aug-15 06:08, Sandy Sutherland wrote: Hi all, After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for this - Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage? Who might still be on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...? Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family. Thanks Sandy -- - Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at - Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3 A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231 www.keyvis.at This email and its attachments are confidential and for the recipient only cont...@marioreitbauer.com 0049 (0)157 86272215 Professor-Brix-Weg 9 22767 Hamburg -- -- - Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at - Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3 A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231 www.keyvis.at This email and its attachments are confidential and for the recipient only
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Hi Francis, thanks for your insights into Renderpass-alike mechanisms in Houdini. I was about to investigate those in hope to find a viable alternative to Softimage for scene assembly _and_ rendering, but what you wrote about Material Style Sheets and Takes has discouraged me enough to hold it off for now. S I know some companies in Montreal are still using Softimage, while preparing their exit. In our case (Oblique), we are moving more slowly than I was expecting. There are several reasons for this. Change resistance from the artists is one. But also the lack of a good pass system in the other softwares makes it difficult to use them as a hub to gather the assets and finish the shots. The Maya guys said they were working on it 2 years ago and we're still waiting. The Houdini guys released the material style sheets which doesn't do half the job, and wasn't even designed as a pass system. Don't get me started on Takes in Houdini, it's almost there but it's not what we need. It wasn't designed as a pass system either. We've taken the awesome Sort Controller plugin from Andy Jones and Jonah Friedman and modified it extensively. This has catapulted Softimage far ahead of any competitors (except Katana) in terms of pass management when using ref models. So I guess we will continue to use Softimage as our main hub until someone comes with a nice solution. I'm eyeing Katana even though it's overpriced. By the way, I do plan to release our version of the Sort Controller, but I need to fix a few things in it before. F On 19-Aug-15 06:08, Sandy Sutherland wrote: Hi all, After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for this - Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage? Who might still be on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...? Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family. Thanks Sandy -- - Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at - Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3 A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231 www.keyvis.at This email and its attachments are confidential and for the recipient only
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
I'm still rocking the Softimage w/ Redshift at Xvivo Scientific Animation and will be until there's a better, non-autodesk option out there hopefully in a few years. I personally bought a Modo 801 license a year ago but haven't really had the time to test it out fully, seems like it might be a good option in a few years but alot of the features are kinda clunky from what I'm used to with ICE. -Tony B On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 10:56 AM, Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com wrote: We're still entirely in Softimage. Our plan is still to move gradually over to Maya, but the lighting stage would remain in Softimage unless AD delivers better tools for this. XSI's pass system, rendering flexibility, and our commitment to using Redshift would probably keep us in Soft for our lighting stages, which Alembic readily allows. Maya just blows chunks in the rendering area, not to mention the funky render layer system. Plus, I haven't finished writing our new SGTK apps, so I kinda need to get those done before we can really jump ship... I say: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Cracks me up too, because these are areas that AD hasn't touched in many years. Soft is running circles around the other guys in several key areas, and it's doing it with years-old code. I really like Modo, and I continue to actively test and provide feedback for The Foundry, but at Magnetic we couldn't do our animations in it just yet. Houdini is not a lighting option for us, as we're committed to Redshift at this point. -Tim C. On 8/19/2015 9:39 AM, Francois Lord wrote: Hi Andy. Did you move to Mantra, or stayed with Arnold? Softimage crashing too often in lookdev is the #1 reason why I'm actively looking elsewhere. On 19-Aug-15 10:35, Andy Goehler wrote: We at Fiftyeight moved on from Softimage to Houdini for scene assembly and rendering. While Houdini’s offerings may not be the designed/perfect pass system currently, we’ve managed to adjust to a level of comfort. Shading and lighting productivity has gone way up. Houdini has proven to be very stable during shading and lighting, contrary to my frustration with Soft crashing unacceptably often. We were not looking for the best solution currently available either, we were looking for a platform to build upon. And are very happy with Side Effects as a software vendor. Licensing, Bugs reports and fixes, feature requests and implementation and daily builds make us a satisfied customer. Andy -- -- -Tony Bexley Yes, Thee Tony Bexley
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
We’re still a Softimage pipeline, and just like most who are replying, the main reason is for the ease in lighting, rendering, and pass setup. We have an Arnold renderfarm but we are finding ourselves using that less often in favour of Redshift. Houdini is on our radar and we’ve been tinkering with it, and we have a Modo license but haven’t had the time to even install it. Overall I think that we are still more efficient using Softimage as it is, than we would be switching to a newer workflow, which (without wanting to start that whole discussion again) speaks volumes about the quality of Softimage, bearing in mind that we can assume its development essentially finished 5 years ago! Cheers, Jean-Louis Digital Golem On 19 Aug 2015, at 12:08, Sandy Sutherland sandy.mailli...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for this - Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage? Who might still be on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...? Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family. Thanks Sandy
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Hi Andy. Did you move to Mantra, or stayed with Arnold? Softimage crashing too often in lookdev is the #1 reason why I'm actively looking elsewhere. On 19-Aug-15 10:35, Andy Goehler wrote: We at Fiftyeight moved on from Softimage to Houdini for scene assembly and rendering. While Houdini’s offerings may not be the designed/perfect pass system currently, we’ve managed to adjust to a level of comfort. Shading and lighting productivity has gone way up. Houdini has proven to be very stable during shading and lighting, contrary to my frustration with Soft crashing unacceptably often. We were not looking for the best solution currently available either, we were looking for a platform to build upon. And are very happy with Side Effects as a software vendor. Licensing, Bugs reports and fixes, feature requests and implementation and daily builds make us a satisfied customer. Andy
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Francois - I setup a Houdini Mantra rendering pipeline at Sunrise in Cape Town, must say Mantra is not quite Arnold, but it is still a very good renderer! Also Houdini is a pipeline TDs wet dream! I did want to get Arnold in there, but Budget in South Africa is all too often a problem. S. On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 3:39 PM, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Andy. Did you move to Mantra, or stayed with Arnold? Softimage crashing too often in lookdev is the #1 reason why I'm actively looking elsewhere. On 19-Aug-15 10:35, Andy Goehler wrote: We at Fiftyeight moved on from Softimage to Houdini for scene assembly and rendering. While Houdini’s offerings may not be the designed/perfect pass system currently, we’ve managed to adjust to a level of comfort. Shading and lighting productivity has gone way up. Houdini has proven to be very stable during shading and lighting, contrary to my frustration with Soft crashing unacceptably often. We were not looking for the best solution currently available either, we were looking for a platform to build upon. And are very happy with Side Effects as a software vendor. Licensing, Bugs reports and fixes, feature requests and implementation and daily builds make us a satisfied customer. Andy
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Thanks Francois and Andy, that does sound reassuring, I'll have to take a closer look.. We at Fiftyeight moved on from Softimage to Houdini for scene assembly and rendering. While Houdini’s offerings may not be the designed/perfect pass system currently, we’ve managed to adjust to a level of comfort. Shading and lighting productivity has gone way up. Houdini has proven to be very stable during shading and lighting, contrary to my frustration with Soft crashing unacceptably often. We were not looking for the best solution currently available either, we were looking for a platform to build upon. And are very happy with Side Effects as a software vendor. Licensing, Bugs reports and fixes, feature requests and implementation and daily builds make us a satisfied customer. Andy -- - Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at - Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3 A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231 www.keyvis.at This email and its attachments are confidential and for the recipient only
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
All in all every other single option is missing some key areas and they are all years away from catching with softimage. One thing that will probably affect more and more ppl is support for 4K monitors. SI doesn't go hand in hand with windows DPI scaling meaning that it needs to be used at scale ration of 100%, which even on 32 inch monitor is starting to get a bit small. I assume all other programs will deal with that sooner or later but Si will be left behind. Still even with that it is smaller pain in the ass compared everything else missing in all other potential programs. Also along with fact that studios wont be likely to go and provide bunch of 4K monitors to artists.. ;) But SI+Redshift truly is combo for the win, not windows but WIN :)
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
We at Fiftyeight moved on from Softimage to Houdini for scene assembly and rendering. While Houdini’s offerings may not be the designed/perfect pass system currently, we’ve managed to adjust to a level of comfort. Shading and lighting productivity has gone way up. Houdini has proven to be very stable during shading and lighting, contrary to my frustration with Soft crashing unacceptably often. We were not looking for the best solution currently available either, we were looking for a platform to build upon. And are very happy with Side Effects as a software vendor. Licensing, Bugs reports and fixes, feature requests and implementation and daily builds make us a satisfied customer. Andy
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
I agree with Andy and Francois here. Main reason Soft is crashing is combination with Arnold, Redshift look development is just great compared to Arnold. Yes going to main take to change parameter, crazy... But I got used to stay in main take and just change rendering take from drop down box. Not perfect I know but not so bad I'd say... And Houdini nodes, just great, copy paste from scene to scene, just change paths for vdb's and alembic, not Soft still but far ahead of Maya(waiting for their new passes system, I see lot's of copy paste from Soft, or it's CUT paste now :/) Cheers. Ivan On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 4:39 PM, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Andy. Did you move to Mantra, or stayed with Arnold? Softimage crashing too often in lookdev is the #1 reason why I'm actively looking elsewhere. On 19-Aug-15 10:35, Andy Goehler wrote: We at Fiftyeight moved on from Softimage to Houdini for scene assembly and rendering. While Houdini’s offerings may not be the designed/perfect pass system currently, we’ve managed to adjust to a level of comfort. Shading and lighting productivity has gone way up. Houdini has proven to be very stable during shading and lighting, contrary to my frustration with Soft crashing unacceptably often. We were not looking for the best solution currently available either, we were looking for a platform to build upon. And are very happy with Side Effects as a software vendor. Licensing, Bugs reports and fixes, feature requests and implementation and daily builds make us a satisfied customer. Andy -- Ivan Vasiljevic - Lighting TD Founder, Digital Asset Tailors - web:http://digitalassettailors.com/ email: i...@digitalassettailors.com
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Which is one of the reasons that I'm looking into 55-60 inch 4K televisions that support HDMI2.0 the monitor for my next workstations On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 10:28 AM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: All in all every other single option is missing some key areas and they are all years away from catching with softimage. One thing that will probably affect more and more ppl is support for 4K monitors. SI doesn't go hand in hand with windows DPI scaling meaning that it needs to be used at scale ration of 100%, which even on 32 inch monitor is starting to get a bit small. I assume all other programs will deal with that sooner or later but Si will be left behind. Still even with that it is smaller pain in the ass compared everything else missing in all other potential programs. Also along with fact that studios wont be likely to go and provide bunch of 4K monitors to artists.. ;) But SI+Redshift truly is combo for the win, not windows but WIN :) -- -=T=-
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
And I must add that using takes to control passes in Houdini is not that bad. You can do pretty much anything you want, but the workflow is painful. Houdini has a Main take, and all other takes are modifications on the Main one. Everytime you are inside a take, and you want to change something in the scene that you want to affect all takes (like moving en object), you have to go in the Main take, make the edit, and go back to the take you were editing to see the effect. But takes allow you to override about anything, which is good. On 19-Aug-15 10:09, Francois Lord wrote: Well, it shouldn't discourage you. Houdini is still better than Maya (yet) in that respect. I want to try a small project in Houdini to see how I can bend it to my needs. I know I will lose some things in there, but I will gain others. The digital assets (ref-models) in Houdini are amazing. To me, it's still the best bet. On 19-Aug-15 09:41, Stefan Kubicek wrote: Hi Francis, thanks for your insights into Renderpass-alike mechanisms in Houdini. I was about to investigate those in hope to find a viable alternative to Softimage for scene assembly _and_ rendering, but what you wrote about Material Style Sheets and Takes has discouraged me enough to hold it off for now. S I know some companies in Montreal are still using Softimage, while preparing their exit. In our case (Oblique), we are moving more slowly than I was expecting. There are several reasons for this. Change resistance from the artists is one. But also the lack of a good pass system in the other softwares makes it difficult to use them as a hub to gather the assets and finish the shots. The Maya guys said they were working on it 2 years ago and we're still waiting. The Houdini guys released the material style sheets which doesn't do half the job, and wasn't even designed as a pass system. Don't get me started on Takes in Houdini, it's almost there but it's not what we need. It wasn't designed as a pass system either. We've taken the awesome Sort Controller plugin from Andy Jones and Jonah Friedman and modified it extensively. This has catapulted Softimage far ahead of any competitors (except Katana) in terms of pass management when using ref models. So I guess we will continue to use Softimage as our main hub until someone comes with a nice solution. I'm eyeing Katana even though it's overpriced. By the way, I do plan to release our version of the Sort Controller, but I need to fix a few things in it before. F On 19-Aug-15 06:08, Sandy Sutherland wrote: Hi all, After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for this - Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage? Who might still be on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...? Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family. Thanks Sandy
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
We're still entirely in Softimage. Our plan is still to move gradually over to Maya, but the lighting stage would remain in Softimage unless AD delivers better tools for this. XSI's pass system, rendering flexibility, and our commitment to using Redshift would probably keep us in Soft for our lighting stages, which Alembic readily allows. Maya just blows chunks in the rendering area, not to mention the funky render layer system. Plus, I haven't finished writing our new SGTK apps, so I kinda need to get those done before we can really jump ship... I say: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Cracks me up too, because these are areas that AD hasn't touched in many years. Soft is running circles around the other guys in several key areas, and it's doing it with years-old code. I really like Modo, and I continue to actively test and provide feedback for The Foundry, but at Magnetic we couldn't do our animations in it just yet. Houdini is not a lighting option for us, as we're committed to Redshift at this point. -Tim C. On 8/19/2015 9:39 AM, Francois Lord wrote: Hi Andy. Did you move to Mantra, or stayed with Arnold? Softimage crashing too often in lookdev is the #1 reason why I'm actively looking elsewhere. On 19-Aug-15 10:35, Andy Goehler wrote: We at Fiftyeight moved on from Softimage to Houdini for scene assembly and rendering. While Houdini’s offerings may not be the designed/perfect pass system currently, we’ve managed to adjust to a level of comfort. Shading and lighting productivity has gone way up. Houdini has proven to be very stable during shading and lighting, contrary to my frustration with Soft crashing unacceptably often. We were not looking for the best solution currently available either, we were looking for a platform to build upon. And are very happy with Side Effects as a software vendor. Licensing, Bugs reports and fixes, feature requests and implementation and daily builds make us a satisfied customer. Andy -- Signature
RE: Continued use of Softimage question
Hi guys, Not being in the hi-res movie/ad industry anymore, I'm pretty surprised RedShift seems to have taken a place quite quick in your heart and more importantly in your pipeline. Of course the closer to real-time you get and the cost lowering Redshift provides is definitely interesting but I could not have predicted that Redshift would be such a game changer, at least for Softimage users.(I don't know about the other DCC users as I don't hang that much in 3D forums. Where is that taking you? I mean, what do you guys see as the next step? I heard Octane is pretty slick too but have you checked out Brigade? Is Arnold working towards this direction as well? Curious MAC -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Jean-Louis Billard Sent: August-19-15 11:52 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Continued use of Softimage question We’re still a Softimage pipeline, and just like most who are replying, the main reason is for the ease in lighting, rendering, and pass setup. We have an Arnold renderfarm but we are finding ourselves using that less often in favour of Redshift. Houdini is on our radar and we’ve been tinkering with it, and we have a Modo license but haven’t had the time to even install it. Overall I think that we are still more efficient using Softimage as it is, than we would be switching to a newer workflow, which (without wanting to start that whole discussion again) speaks volumes about the quality of Softimage, bearing in mind that we can assume its development essentially finished 5 years ago! Cheers, Jean-Louis Digital Golem On 19 Aug 2015, at 12:08, Sandy Sutherland sandy.mailli...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for this - Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage? Who might still be on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...? Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family. Thanks Sandy
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Redshift is very fast and without any glitches that we used to experience with MR. The only problem I see going forward is, we know and they know Soft is a dead end, their focus in Redshift's development will with Maya, 3D max, C4D Houdini etc. And who can blame them. So far they have been excellent to deal with on every level. So I see for us Soft will be good for another 2-3 years. On 19/08/2015 12:59 PM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau wrote: Hi guys, Not being in the hi-res movie/ad industry anymore, I'm pretty surprised RedShift seems to have taken a place quite quick in your heart and more importantly in your pipeline. Of course the closer to real-time you get and the cost lowering Redshift provides is definitely interesting but I could not have predicted that Redshift would be such a game changer, at least for Softimage users.(I don't know about the other DCC users as I don't hang that much in 3D forums. Where is that taking you? I mean, what do you guys see as the next step? I heard Octane is pretty slick too but have you checked out Brigade? Is Arnold working towards this direction as well? Curious MAC -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Jean-Louis Billard Sent: August-19-15 11:52 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Continued use of Softimage question We’re still a Softimage pipeline, and just like most who are replying, the main reason is for the ease in lighting, rendering, and pass setup. We have an Arnold renderfarm but we are finding ourselves using that less often in favour of Redshift. Houdini is on our radar and we’ve been tinkering with it, and we have a Modo license but haven’t had the time to even install it. Overall I think that we are still more efficient using Softimage as it is, than we would be switching to a newer workflow, which (without wanting to start that whole discussion again) speaks volumes about the quality of Softimage, bearing in mind that we can assume its development essentially finished 5 years ago! Cheers, Jean-Louis Digital Golem On 19 Aug 2015, at 12:08, Sandy Sutherland sandy.mailli...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for this - Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage? Who might still be on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...? Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family. Thanks Sandy
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
SI, Ice Redshift for me. Trying hard to force myself to get some interests for Houdini and C4D, but they give me half the hard-on... Le 19/08/2015 21:12, Tim Crowson a écrit : Marc-Andre, The others you mention (Octane, Brigade...) are progressive renderers only, and have other limitations that make them tricky to implement effectively in animation pipeline. Redshift was designed from day one as a bucket-based production renderer for animation, and to be integrated into common DCC apps. We've been using it at Magnetic for over two years now, and I can't overstate how much of a difference it has made for us. I think they'll continue to support Soft as long as there is demand for it. I spoke with the Redshift guys at Siggraph and they seemed to be getting some really great traffic. I couldn't begin to make any guess on what the future holds, but I'm optimistic. Those guys are awesome. Not sure what the Arnold plan is. -Tim On 8/19/2015 1:03 PM, Leoung O'Young wrote: Redshift is very fast and without any glitches that we used to experience with MR. The only problem I see going forward is, we know and they know Soft is a dead end, their focus in Redshift's development will with Maya, 3D max, C4D Houdini etc. And who can blame them. So far they have been excellent to deal with on every level. So I see for us Soft will be good for another 2-3 years. On 19/08/2015 12:59 PM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau wrote: Hi guys, Not being in the hi-res movie/ad industry anymore, I'm pretty surprised RedShift seems to have taken a place quite quick in your heart and more importantly in your pipeline. Of course the closer to real-time you get and the cost lowering Redshift provides is definitely interesting but I could not have predicted that Redshift would be such a game changer, at least for Softimage users.(I don't know about the other DCC users as I don't hang that much in 3D forums. Where is that taking you? I mean, what do you guys see as the next step? I heard Octane is pretty slick too but have you checked out Brigade? Is Arnold working towards this direction as well? Curious MAC -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Jean-Louis Billard Sent: August-19-15 11:52 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Continued use of Softimage question We’re still a Softimage pipeline, and just like most who are replying, the main reason is for the ease in lighting, rendering, and pass setup. We have an Arnold renderfarm but we are finding ourselves using that less often in favour of Redshift. Houdini is on our radar and we’ve been tinkering with it, and we have a Modo license but haven’t had the time to even install it. Overall I think that we are still more efficient using Softimage as it is, than we would be switching to a newer workflow, which (without wanting to start that whole discussion again) speaks volumes about the quality of Softimage, bearing in mind that we can assume its development essentially finished 5 years ago! Cheers, Jean-Louis Digital Golem On 19 Aug 2015, at 12:08, Sandy Sutherland sandy.mailli...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for this - Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage? Who might still be on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...? Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family. Thanks Sandy -- Signature *Tim Crowson */Lead CG Artist/ *Magnetic Dreams, Inc. *2525 Lebanon Pike, Bldg C, Suite 101, Nashville, TN 37214 *Ph* 615.885.6801 | *Fax* 615.889.4768 | www.magneticdreams.com tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com /Confidentiality Notice: This email, including attachments, is confidential and should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient(s). If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage mechanism. Magnetic Dreams, Inc cannot accept liability for any statements made which are clearly the sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of Magnetic Dreams, Inc or one of its agents./
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Marc-Andre, The others you mention (Octane, Brigade...) are progressive renderers only, and have other limitations that make them tricky to implement effectively in animation pipeline. Redshift was designed from day one as a bucket-based production renderer for animation, and to be integrated into common DCC apps. We've been using it at Magnetic for over two years now, and I can't overstate how much of a difference it has made for us. I think they'll continue to support Soft as long as there is demand for it. I spoke with the Redshift guys at Siggraph and they seemed to be getting some really great traffic. I couldn't begin to make any guess on what the future holds, but I'm optimistic. Those guys are awesome. Not sure what the Arnold plan is. -Tim On 8/19/2015 1:03 PM, Leoung O'Young wrote: Redshift is very fast and without any glitches that we used to experience with MR. The only problem I see going forward is, we know and they know Soft is a dead end, their focus in Redshift's development will with Maya, 3D max, C4D Houdini etc. And who can blame them. So far they have been excellent to deal with on every level. So I see for us Soft will be good for another 2-3 years. On 19/08/2015 12:59 PM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau wrote: Hi guys, Not being in the hi-res movie/ad industry anymore, I'm pretty surprised RedShift seems to have taken a place quite quick in your heart and more importantly in your pipeline. Of course the closer to real-time you get and the cost lowering Redshift provides is definitely interesting but I could not have predicted that Redshift would be such a game changer, at least for Softimage users.(I don't know about the other DCC users as I don't hang that much in 3D forums. Where is that taking you? I mean, what do you guys see as the next step? I heard Octane is pretty slick too but have you checked out Brigade? Is Arnold working towards this direction as well? Curious MAC -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Jean-Louis Billard Sent: August-19-15 11:52 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Continued use of Softimage question We’re still a Softimage pipeline, and just like most who are replying, the main reason is for the ease in lighting, rendering, and pass setup. We have an Arnold renderfarm but we are finding ourselves using that less often in favour of Redshift. Houdini is on our radar and we’ve been tinkering with it, and we have a Modo license but haven’t had the time to even install it. Overall I think that we are still more efficient using Softimage as it is, than we would be switching to a newer workflow, which (without wanting to start that whole discussion again) speaks volumes about the quality of Softimage, bearing in mind that we can assume its development essentially finished 5 years ago! Cheers, Jean-Louis Digital Golem On 19 Aug 2015, at 12:08, Sandy Sutherland sandy.mailli...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for this - Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage? Who might still be on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...? Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family. Thanks Sandy -- Signature *Tim Crowson */Lead CG Artist/ *Magnetic Dreams, Inc. *2525 Lebanon Pike, Bldg C, Suite 101, Nashville, TN 37214 *Ph* 615.885.6801 | *Fax* 615.889.4768 | www.magneticdreams.com tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com /Confidentiality Notice: This email, including attachments, is confidential and should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient(s). If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage mechanism. Magnetic Dreams, Inc cannot accept liability for any statements made which are clearly the sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of Magnetic Dreams, Inc or one of its agents./
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Yes, however the development speed is impressive. On 19-Aug-15 16:51, Juhani Karlsson wrote: Floating license price is just bit too much...
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
After few projects in Houdini I'm starting to warm towards it. The passestakes are ok and mantra is quite capable. Theres a lot of things that can be done with frame buffers and having very many passes is quite rare for me. I would be interested to test out Redshif/Octane there but they are still in beta afaik. With the attribute visualizers + vopvex I can work quite similar style as in ICE. Naturally Houdini simulation solvers are really good and that really makes a difference. Floating license price is just bit too much... On 19 Aug 2015 22:41, Gmail facialdel...@gmail.com wrote: SI, Ice Redshift for me. Trying hard to force myself to get some interests for Houdini and C4D, but they give me half the hard-on... Le 19/08/2015 21:12, Tim Crowson a écrit : Marc-Andre, The others you mention (Octane, Brigade...) are progressive renderers only, and have other limitations that make them tricky to implement effectively in animation pipeline. Redshift was designed from day one as a bucket-based production renderer for animation, and to be integrated into common DCC apps. We've been using it at Magnetic for over two years now, and I can't overstate how much of a difference it has made for us. I think they'll continue to support Soft as long as there is demand for it. I spoke with the Redshift guys at Siggraph and they seemed to be getting some really great traffic. I couldn't begin to make any guess on what the future holds, but I'm optimistic. Those guys are awesome. Not sure what the Arnold plan is. -Tim On 8/19/2015 1:03 PM, Leoung O'Young wrote: Redshift is very fast and without any glitches that we used to experience with MR. The only problem I see going forward is, we know and they know Soft is a dead end, their focus in Redshift's development will with Maya, 3D max, C4D Houdini etc. And who can blame them. So far they have been excellent to deal with on every level. So I see for us Soft will be good for another 2-3 years. On 19/08/2015 12:59 PM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau wrote: Hi guys, Not being in the hi-res movie/ad industry anymore, I'm pretty surprised RedShift seems to have taken a place quite quick in your heart and more importantly in your pipeline. Of course the closer to real-time you get and the cost lowering Redshift provides is definitely interesting but I could not have predicted that Redshift would be such a game changer, at least for Softimage users.(I don't know about the other DCC users as I don't hang that much in 3D forums. Where is that taking you? I mean, what do you guys see as the next step? I heard Octane is pretty slick too but have you checked out Brigade? Is Arnold working towards this direction as well? Curious MAC -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [ mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Jean-Louis Billard Sent: August-19-15 11:52 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Continued use of Softimage question We’re still a Softimage pipeline, and just like most who are replying, the main reason is for the ease in lighting, rendering, and pass setup. We have an Arnold renderfarm but we are finding ourselves using that less often in favour of Redshift. Houdini is on our radar and we’ve been tinkering with it, and we have a Modo license but haven’t had the time to even install it. Overall I think that we are still more efficient using Softimage as it is, than we would be switching to a newer workflow, which (without wanting to start that whole discussion again) speaks volumes about the quality of Softimage, bearing in mind that we can assume its development essentially finished 5 years ago! Cheers, Jean-Louis Digital Golem On 19 Aug 2015, at 12:08, Sandy Sutherland sandy.mailli...@gmail.com sandy.mailli...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for this - Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage? Who might still be on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...? Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family. Thanks Sandy -- *Tim Crowson **Lead CG Artist* *Magnetic Dreams, Inc. *2525 Lebanon Pike, Bldg C, Suite 101, Nashville, TN 37214 *Ph* 615.885.6801 | *Fax* 615.889.4768 | www.magneticdreams.com tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com *Confidentiality Notice: This email, including attachments, is confidential and should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient(s). If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage mechanism. Magnetic Dreams, Inc cannot accept liability for any statements made which are clearly the sender's own
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Hi Francois, all Houdini projects so far have been rendered using Mantra. For our type of work we’ve found it performing very well in comparison with Arnold. Here’s are some of my day to day time savers: distributed rendering being able to use the farm on a single frame during lighting is great artist friendly lights I have my shortcomings with Arnolds lights, mainly either controlling the spread on area lights or texturing spots to get realistic specs mouse cursor bucket picking sounds trivial, saves me so much time IPR window shader picking ctrl clicking in the render view brings up the properties of that pixels shader. click - adjust - done. That being said, we’re keeping an eye on HtoA and I try to set up new projects with Arnold as well and run a comparison. On Aug 19, 2015, at 16:39, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Andy. Did you move to Mantra, or stayed with Arnold? Softimage crashing too often in lookdev is the #1 reason why I'm actively looking elsewhere. On 19-Aug-15 10:35, Andy Goehler wrote: We at Fiftyeight moved on from Softimage to Houdini for scene assembly and rendering. While Houdini’s offerings may not be the designed/perfect pass system currently, we’ve managed to adjust to a level of comfort. Shading and lighting productivity has gone way up. Houdini has proven to be very stable during shading and lighting, contrary to my frustration with Soft crashing unacceptably often. We were not looking for the best solution currently available either, we were looking for a platform to build upon. And are very happy with Side Effects as a software vendor. Licensing, Bugs reports and fixes, feature requests and implementation and daily builds make us a satisfied customer. Andy
Continued use of Softimage question
*IPR window shader picking *wow man this is nice, didn't know about this ;) Another good one is that you can assign materials via the IPR windows just by dragging and dropping them onto the objects. The massive plus with mantra, it's deep integration with Houdini means that everything just works out of the box. Even though HTOA is really well implemented is still a plugin and like Sitoa it has the typical arnold caveats (render doesn't update with every move, adding property to objects, etc). Still is pretty awesome to have the options, and it's great to see the pace of development of HTOA. With every release there is always something working 20% faster ;) By the way, has anyone given akeytsu a proper go? On Wednesday, 19 August 2015, Andy Goehler lists.andy.goeh...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Francois, all Houdini projects so far have been rendered using Mantra. For our type of work we’ve found it performing very well in comparison with Arnold. Here’s are some of my day to day time savers: *distributed rendering* being able to use the farm on a single frame during lighting is great *artist friendly lights* I have my shortcomings with Arnolds lights, mainly either controlling the spread on area lights or texturing spots to get realistic specs *mouse cursor bucket picking* sounds trivial, saves me so much time *IPR window shader picking* ctrl clicking in the render view brings up the properties of that pixels shader. click - adjust - done. That being said, we’re keeping an eye on HtoA and I try to set up new projects with Arnold as well and run a comparison. On Aug 19, 2015, at 16:39, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Andy. Did you move to Mantra, or stayed with Arnold? Softimage crashing too often in lookdev is the #1 reason why I'm actively looking elsewhere. On 19-Aug-15 10:35, Andy Goehler wrote: We at Fiftyeight moved on from Softimage to Houdini for scene assembly and rendering. While Houdini’s offerings may not be the designed/perfect pass system currently, we’ve managed to adjust to a level of comfort. Shading and lighting productivity has gone way up. Houdini has proven to be very stable during shading and lighting, contrary to my frustration with Soft crashing unacceptably often. We were not looking for the best solution currently available either, we were looking for a platform to build upon. And are very happy with Side Effects as a software vendor. Licensing, Bugs reports and fixes, feature requests and implementation and daily builds make us a satisfied customer. Andy
Re: Continued use of Softimage question
Yes Non-Indie price (especially for things like access other renderers) can be quite steep, although as mentionned, dev speed and frequency seems excellent, plus the very recent tweak tools and such should greatly ease thing-up for Softimagers. (reminds me of when NEX came) Yet it's also still generally a comparitive mouthful to deal-with daily (being the price of almost ultimate flexibility) or to get to similar results depending on what (used as a non-FX centered general purpose DCC) but seems to (rather quickly) be going in a good direction in those respects. Concerning passes, C4d also have just sported a promising new takes system (strikingly very similar to SI in both functionality and capability) and looks like it took all their dev resources to pull it off, as the one main thing in v17. One of the drawbacks of C4d though still seems to be performance with (or sometimes even ability to at-all deal with) more complex scenes. So it seems possible to recover at least different bits and peices what Soft provides (or provided) depending on what is considered more important. (almost feels like the retirement of soft pushed every package to step-up) While of course it's not so much of a stretch to say that to a certain extent, soft has (and has-had)-it-all on an impressively wide range of fronts, including a no-nonsense approach to what's normally way more complex/finnicky stuff. (with it's own share of finnickyness specially in ICE) Cheers, On 08/19/15 16:59, Francois Lord wrote: Yes, however the development speed is impressive. On 19-Aug-15 16:51, Juhani Karlsson wrote: Floating license price is just bit too much...
Continued use of Softimage question
Hi all, After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for this - Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage? Who might still be on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...? Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family. Thanks Sandy
