Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
Are you implying that modernizing Softimage's core would have been less expensive/time consuming than having to fix both of Maya's core and interaction models/workflow? Raf is right. We focused a lot on modernizing the core of Maya so that we can enable third parties to play nice within the Maya environment and Bifrost works much the same way splice works in that it is a node inside Maya that passes data back and forth to another world that is more suited to a given task. For example with crowds we now have Golem, Mirarmy, and Massive for Maya. A perfect example of the work ahead of us is something like Gator. Maya has all the transfer tools inside of Gator but they are spread out and inconsistent. A DG master can do many of the things in the operator stack but the UI sucks. Designing a proper workflow and UI is a lot harder than coding one and we have hired real interaction designers and not just maya experts. The consistent thread is something out of the box that is not daunting and is consistent and properly presented in an interactive way. cv/ From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Raffaele Fragapane [raffsxsil...@googlemail.com] Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2014 7:11 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible? You already have most of what is possible in ice in Maya, it's called splice for Fabric. The only thing missing are some primitives and the visual programming paradigm and GUI, performance and portability are mostly better already. Honestly, I don't know why people keep mentioning things such as she of vote or rewrites and the such. XSI wasn't rewritten to get ICE with its current considerable set of limitations (some of which aren't present in splice on Maya), but everybody wants so badly for Maya to be called older, when in actuality it's clunkier, horribly fragmented, but arguably a lot younger and more modern than Soft at this point. People have a perception of modernity based on their interaction with a mix of look, slickness and use experience, and then think and wasn't too the mythical core of the app to be equally modern or ancient based on how it feels, but the two things are seldom related. And on the same note, of Maya will get ICE, it still won't be Soft ;) What Chris mentioned with H Maya, if it will ever get anywhere, would be a lot more important than rewriting the core. Modern software development and software modernisation don't work the way most people seem to perceive it. On 16 Mar 2014 21:20, Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.commailto:nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote: Yeah I get your point, but for that to happen i can imagine that maya would have to be almost totally rewritten, right? Em 16/03/2014 05:22, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.commailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com escreveu: Yeah Nuno, I can easily enough. The stack is a patch for the lack of proper graph, not a feature worth promoting as the future. Maya has issues with evaluation missing certain things in default nodes, but the general paradigm of the graph is a superior approach. The lack of threading is more of an issue, but the stack doesn't facilitate that, ice works intra op, not across. Four the sake of all that's good in the world let's not push a attack against a proper DG as a superior feature, or make the mistake of thinking it's enabling in any regard. A proper sparse and arbitrary DG with the addition of simple entry and exit gates to facilitate things such as shape modeling at different stages, storing differentials and so on is an infinitely superior approach. On 15 Mar 2014 05:30, Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.commailto:nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote: Something just came up on my head while doing blendshapes and using ICE to help along. Can you guys imagine how would ICE (or Biftrost) would work in Maya without a proper modelling stack like XSI''s? Even something as simple as using ICE to invert weight maps that are hooked with shapes with an already enveloped character or fixing some poses maybe... -- - Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at - keyvis digital imagery 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: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
Yeah I get your point, but for that to happen i can imagine that maya would have to be almost totally rewritten, right? Em 16/03/2014 05:22, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com escreveu: Yeah Nuno, I can easily enough. The stack is a patch for the lack of proper graph, not a feature worth promoting as the future. Maya has issues with evaluation missing certain things in default nodes, but the general paradigm of the graph is a superior approach. The lack of threading is more of an issue, but the stack doesn't facilitate that, ice works intra op, not across. Four the sake of all that's good in the world let's not push a attack against a proper DG as a superior feature, or make the mistake of thinking it's enabling in any regard. A proper sparse and arbitrary DG with the addition of simple entry and exit gates to facilitate things such as shape modeling at different stages, storing differentials and so on is an infinitely superior approach. On 15 Mar 2014 05:30, Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote: Something just came up on my head while doing blendshapes and using ICE to help along. Can you guys imagine how would ICE (or Biftrost) would work in Maya without a proper modelling stack like XSI''s? Even something as simple as using ICE to invert weight maps that are hooked with shapes with an already enveloped character or fixing some poses maybe...
Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
You already have most of what is possible in ice in Maya, it's called splice for Fabric. The only thing missing are some primitives and the visual programming paradigm and GUI, performance and portability are mostly better already. Honestly, I don't know why people keep mentioning things such as she of vote or rewrites and the such. XSI wasn't rewritten to get ICE with its current considerable set of limitations (some of which aren't present in splice on Maya), but everybody wants so badly for Maya to be called older, when in actuality it's clunkier, horribly fragmented, but arguably a lot younger and more modern than Soft at this point. People have a perception of modernity based on their interaction with a mix of look, slickness and use experience, and then think and wasn't too the mythical core of the app to be equally modern or ancient based on how it feels, but the two things are seldom related. And on the same note, of Maya will get ICE, it still won't be Soft ;) What Chris mentioned with H Maya, if it will ever get anywhere, would be a lot more important than rewriting the core. Modern software development and software modernisation don't work the way most people seem to perceive it. On 16 Mar 2014 21:20, Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote: Yeah I get your point, but for that to happen i can imagine that maya would have to be almost totally rewritten, right? Em 16/03/2014 05:22, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com escreveu: Yeah Nuno, I can easily enough. The stack is a patch for the lack of proper graph, not a feature worth promoting as the future. Maya has issues with evaluation missing certain things in default nodes, but the general paradigm of the graph is a superior approach. The lack of threading is more of an issue, but the stack doesn't facilitate that, ice works intra op, not across. Four the sake of all that's good in the world let's not push a attack against a proper DG as a superior feature, or make the mistake of thinking it's enabling in any regard. A proper sparse and arbitrary DG with the addition of simple entry and exit gates to facilitate things such as shape modeling at different stages, storing differentials and so on is an infinitely superior approach. On 15 Mar 2014 05:30, Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote: Something just came up on my head while doing blendshapes and using ICE to help along. Can you guys imagine how would ICE (or Biftrost) would work in Maya without a proper modelling stack like XSI''s? Even something as simple as using ICE to invert weight maps that are hooked with shapes with an already enveloped character or fixing some poses maybe...
Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
I ducking hate writing emails on a phone.
Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
yeah was gonna say Raph, its a bit rich complaining about Emelio not making much sense the other day after trying to leverage some comprehension into your last statement..! Get Brads phone model, his seems much more lucid to write on :P On 16 March 2014 11:12, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.comwrote: I ducking hate writing emails on a phone.
RE: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
Raf is right. We focused a lot on modernizing the core of Maya so that we can enable third parties to play nice within the Maya environment and Bifrost works much the same way splice works in that it is a node inside Maya that passes data back and forth to another world that is more suited to a given task. For example with crowds we now have Golem, Mirarmy, and Massive for Maya. A perfect example of the work ahead of us is something like Gator. Maya has all the transfer tools inside of Gator but they are spread out and inconsistent. A DG master can do many of the things in the operator stack but the UI sucks. Designing a proper workflow and UI is a lot harder than coding one and we have hired real interaction designers and not just maya experts. The consistent thread is something out of the box that is not daunting and is consistent and properly presented in an interactive way. cv/ From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Raffaele Fragapane [raffsxsil...@googlemail.com] Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2014 7:11 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible? You already have most of what is possible in ice in Maya, it's called splice for Fabric. The only thing missing are some primitives and the visual programming paradigm and GUI, performance and portability are mostly better already. Honestly, I don't know why people keep mentioning things such as she of vote or rewrites and the such. XSI wasn't rewritten to get ICE with its current considerable set of limitations (some of which aren't present in splice on Maya), but everybody wants so badly for Maya to be called older, when in actuality it's clunkier, horribly fragmented, but arguably a lot younger and more modern than Soft at this point. People have a perception of modernity based on their interaction with a mix of look, slickness and use experience, and then think and wasn't too the mythical core of the app to be equally modern or ancient based on how it feels, but the two things are seldom related. And on the same note, of Maya will get ICE, it still won't be Soft ;) What Chris mentioned with H Maya, if it will ever get anywhere, would be a lot more important than rewriting the core. Modern software development and software modernisation don't work the way most people seem to perceive it. On 16 Mar 2014 21:20, Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.commailto:nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote: Yeah I get your point, but for that to happen i can imagine that maya would have to be almost totally rewritten, right? Em 16/03/2014 05:22, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.commailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com escreveu: Yeah Nuno, I can easily enough. The stack is a patch for the lack of proper graph, not a feature worth promoting as the future. Maya has issues with evaluation missing certain things in default nodes, but the general paradigm of the graph is a superior approach. The lack of threading is more of an issue, but the stack doesn't facilitate that, ice works intra op, not across. Four the sake of all that's good in the world let's not push a attack against a proper DG as a superior feature, or make the mistake of thinking it's enabling in any regard. A proper sparse and arbitrary DG with the addition of simple entry and exit gates to facilitate things such as shape modeling at different stages, storing differentials and so on is an infinitely superior approach. On 15 Mar 2014 05:30, Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.commailto:nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote: Something just came up on my head while doing blendshapes and using ICE to help along. Can you guys imagine how would ICE (or Biftrost) would work in Maya without a proper modelling stack like XSI''s? Even something as simple as using ICE to invert weight maps that are hooked with shapes with an already enveloped character or fixing some poses maybe... attachment: winmail.dat
Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
Amen. Finally some sensible words — thank you Raffaele. Andy On Mar 16, 2014, at 12:11, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Honestly, I don't know why people keep mentioning things such as she of vote or rewrites and the such. XSI wasn't rewritten to get ICE with its current considerable set of limitations (some of which aren't present in splice on Maya), but everybody wants so badly for Maya to be called older, when in actuality it's clunkier, horribly fragmented, but arguably a lot younger and more modern than Soft at this point. People have a perception of modernity based on their interaction with a mix of look, slickness and use experience, and then think and wasn't too the mythical core of the app to be equally modern or ancient based on how it feels, but the two things are seldom related.
Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
I going to ask something and in my defense I am completely ignorant of most things technical, given how fast redshift is at GPU rendering (and to me it is just magic how much faster it is than plain old 6-core cpu rendering), why can’t more parts of these Programs which require a lot of calculations be moved to the GPU (I guess lack of ram would be one thing). I guess for me that would be modernization. From: Andy Goehler Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2014 6:14 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible? Amen. Finally some sensible words — thank you Raffaele. Andy On Mar 16, 2014, at 12:11, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Honestly, I don't know why people keep mentioning things such as she of vote or rewrites and the such. XSI wasn't rewritten to get ICE with its current considerable set of limitations (some of which aren't present in splice on Maya), but everybody wants so badly for Maya to be called older, when in actuality it's clunkier, horribly fragmented, but arguably a lot younger and more modern than Soft at this point. People have a perception of modernity based on their interaction with a mix of look, slickness and use experience, and then think and wasn't too the mythical core of the app to be equally modern or ancient based on how it feels, but the two things are seldom related.
Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
Hi Phil - the problem is that the GPU is not as broad in capabilities as the CPU. What this means is that many kinds of work have to be moved back and forth from the CPU memory to the GPU memory in order to complete them - they can't just stay on the GPU. The cost of this movement usually kills any advantage you may have gained from using all the GPU cores, as the bus speed is extremely slow by comparison. If you can do the calculations and stay on the GPU then it can be very powerful, which is why GPU renderers are so fast. The other issue is writing code for GPUs is quite time consuming, and still hardware specific (OpenCL for AMD/Intel, CUDA for NVidia) - so generally you have to pick problems that merit the investment of resources - i.e. hair sims Now, it's not all bad news - the future is looking pretty awesome. There are various types of shared memory architectures coming through (HSA from AMD, CUDA6 from NVidia, Intel and AMD with SPIR). What this means is that the hardware vendor starts taking care of the memory management - through having CPU and GPU sharing physical memory, and through smart management of the memory. This is awesome. *warning, imminent Fabric plug* - at GTC (NVidia's conference in a few weeks) we will be showing our KL language executing on CUDA6 without making any changes to the KL code. So we'll be showing a KL deformer running in Maya via Fabric Splice, running at some crazy speed. This means that some KL code is going to be running on the GPU without requiring any special investment of effort - what's nice here is that if you have a CUDA6 capable card, you're going to have this capability as soon as those drivers become available (it's initially a software solution). We should also be shipping the same support for AMD's HSA architecture around the same time. We're able to do this because of the design of Fabric, but I expect other companies will have their own ways of taking advantage of this stuff. I think it's going to be an awesome time - enabling a TD to author tools that are GPU accelerated will be amazing. (I can see all the RD people holding their heads already). I hope that made some kind of sense, it really is an amazing time for hardware. Paul On 16 March 2014 18:51, phil harbath phil.harb...@jamination.com wrote: I going to ask something and in my defense I am completely ignorant of most things technical, given how fast redshift is at GPU rendering (and to me it is just magic how much faster it is than plain old 6-core cpu rendering), why can't more parts of these Programs which require a lot of calculations be moved to the GPU (I guess lack of ram would be one thing). I guess for me that would be modernization. *From:* Andy Goehler lists.andy.goeh...@gmail.com *Sent:* Sunday, March 16, 2014 6:14 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible? Amen. Finally some sensible words -- thank you Raffaele. Andy On Mar 16, 2014, at 12:11, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Honestly, I don't know why people keep mentioning things such as she of vote or rewrites and the such. XSI wasn't rewritten to get ICE with its current considerable set of limitations (some of which aren't present in splice on Maya), but everybody wants so badly for Maya to be called older, when in actuality it's clunkier, horribly fragmented, but arguably a lot younger and more modern than Soft at this point. People have a perception of modernity based on their interaction with a mix of look, slickness and use experience, and then think and wasn't too the mythical core of the app to be equally modern or ancient based on how it feels, but the two things are seldom related.
Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
but to kill Softimage I would think that Maya would have to prove to be an ice replacement within 2 years. How else do you justify it. While what you're saying makes perfect sense, the Bifrost-based-ice-replacement does not exist and given Autodesk's track record, I think it's very likely to never exist. As for having it in two years, I think that might actually be literally impossible. And BTW, I'm leaving out the ecosystem that exists around ICE in soft (weight maps, groups, clusters, render tree integration, etc) that can make it so amazingly useful. Like Perry said, having this stuff involves changing the internals of Maya, and having that in two years seems even more impossible. Ultimately I don't see how people who transition to Maya can reasonably expect to have something like ICE ever again. On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 4:00 PM, phil harbath phil.harb...@jamination.comwrote: perhaps I am terrible ignorant to think this and I have no knowledge of what the upcoming 2015 version of Maya will contain, but to kill Softimage I would think that Maya would have to prove to be an ice replacement within 2 years. How else do you justify it. In my opinion Autodesk considers Maya superior in everyway except ICE, so that would be the last step needed to make Softimage totally redundant (again in the eyes of Autodesk). *From:* Jonah Friedman jon...@gmail.com *Sent:* Friday, March 14, 2014 3:57 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible? To make matters worse for the Bifrost-replacing-ice idea- Bifrost, at the moment, is fluid simulation. Hell, Bifrost hasn't even been proven to be good at fluid simulation yet, although I have no doubt it eventually can be. But as for Bifrost-the-ICE-replacement, it's not even at the level of vaporware. It hasn't been officially promised, just vaguely hinted at. Once Bifrost actually succeeds at its current purpose- fluid simulation- then we can talk about what it might take to rebuild ICE based on it. I'm imagining one possible future a couple years down the line everyone is happy that Maya finally solved their fluid simulation problem which is apparently holding Maya back, and team Bifrost turns their attention to replacing ICE. At this point, they're several years away from making something as good as ICE and we can start having this conversation in earnest. This is a best case scenario. There's another possible future where where it turns out people are using Houdini and/or Realflow for their fluid simulation needs, and nobody cares very much about having one directly in Maya, even if it's awesome, and Bifrost is deemed yet another misguided direction Maya was taken in by AD. And in this future, no matter how good the technical underpinnings of bifrost are, and ICE is a distant memory and Bifrost is just more abandonware in Maya. So yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath for an ice replacement from Autodesk. On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 3:25 PM, Daniel Sweeney dan...@northforge.co.ukwrote: I will be surprised if bit frost is anything compared to ice. But who knows. I will be honest I have never used Maya, and never have ventured into that territory from things I have heard. With all the thing I'm reading after the EOL was announce I just think out the box it far too technical/hardwork for my personal work flow. Let's be rational, ice is 5 some years old and was 2-3 years in the making before that. So that's 7-8 years. I would be interested to find out how long this bit frost has been in the making.now considering they only bought niad not too long ago and I read its based somehow on that, I would be sceptical how well it could work or how mature it is. I just think all of this is based on pure market share and pleasing the share holders. But like I said I don't know. But I know I will be looking for another route away from autocash for sure. I hope most people follow another path to show these bully tactics are bull shit and the customer is always right. Daniel On 14 Mar 2014 18:43, Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote: Gee, I guess how many features wont be supported in Bifrost, or how long it will take them to have it at the level ICE currently is... On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:37 PM, Ahmidou Lyazidi ahmidou@gmail.comwrote: # mean mode on They should introduce first the concept of weight map object in Maya as currently it's all blackboxed in the different nodes, and all with different SDK access... # mean mode off --- Ahmidou Lyazidi Director | TD | CG artist http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos http://www.cappuccino-films.com 2014-03-14 19:29 GMT+01:00 Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com: Something just came up on my head while doing blendshapes and using ICE to help along. Can you guys imagine how would ICE (or Biftrost) would work in Maya without a proper
Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
Autodesk cut us the legs and they are offering us a wheelchair...
Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
Yeah Nuno, I can easily enough. The stack is a patch for the lack of proper graph, not a feature worth promoting as the future. Maya has issues with evaluation missing certain things in default nodes, but the general paradigm of the graph is a superior approach. The lack of threading is more of an issue, but the stack doesn't facilitate that, ice works intra op, not across. Four the sake of all that's good in the world let's not push a attack against a proper DG as a superior feature, or make the mistake of thinking it's enabling in any regard. A proper sparse and arbitrary DG with the addition of simple entry and exit gates to facilitate things such as shape modeling at different stages, storing differentials and so on is an infinitely superior approach. On 15 Mar 2014 05:30, Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote: Something just came up on my head while doing blendshapes and using ICE to help along. Can you guys imagine how would ICE (or Biftrost) would work in Maya without a proper modelling stack like XSI''s? Even something as simple as using ICE to invert weight maps that are hooked with shapes with an already enveloped character or fixing some poses maybe...
Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
Stupid smartphone autocorrect... Stack, not attack... and couple other idiotic things slipped in there. Hopefully the gist of it is still clear. On 16 Mar 2014 16:22, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Yeah Nuno, I can easily enough. The stack is a patch for the lack of proper graph, not a feature worth promoting as the future. Maya has issues with evaluation missing certain things in default nodes, but the general paradigm of the graph is a superior approach. The lack of threading is more of an issue, but the stack doesn't facilitate that, ice works intra op, not across. Four the sake of all that's good in the world let's not push a attack against a proper DG as a superior feature, or make the mistake of thinking it's enabling in any regard. A proper sparse and arbitrary DG with the addition of simple entry and exit gates to facilitate things such as shape modeling at different stages, storing differentials and so on is an infinitely superior approach. On 15 Mar 2014 05:30, Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote: Something just came up on my head while doing blendshapes and using ICE to help along. Can you guys imagine how would ICE (or Biftrost) would work in Maya without a proper modelling stack like XSI''s? Even something as simple as using ICE to invert weight maps that are hooked with shapes with an already enveloped character or fixing some poses maybe...
ICE in Maya is it really possible?
Something just came up on my head while doing blendshapes and using ICE to help along. Can you guys imagine how would ICE (or Biftrost) would work in Maya without a proper modelling stack like XSI''s? Even something as simple as using ICE to invert weight maps that are hooked with shapes with an already enveloped character or fixing some poses maybe...
Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
# mean mode on They should introduce first the concept of weight map object in Maya as currently it's all blackboxed in the different nodes, and all with different SDK access... # mean mode off --- Ahmidou Lyazidi Director | TD | CG artist http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos http://www.cappuccino-films.com 2014-03-14 19:29 GMT+01:00 Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com: Something just came up on my head while doing blendshapes and using ICE to help along. Can you guys imagine how would ICE (or Biftrost) would work in Maya without a proper modelling stack like XSI''s? Even something as simple as using ICE to invert weight maps that are hooked with shapes with an already enveloped character or fixing some poses maybe...
Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
Gee, I guess how many features wont be supported in Bifrost, or how long it will take them to have it at the level ICE currently is... On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:37 PM, Ahmidou Lyazidi ahmidou@gmail.comwrote: # mean mode on They should introduce first the concept of weight map object in Maya as currently it's all blackboxed in the different nodes, and all with different SDK access... # mean mode off --- Ahmidou Lyazidi Director | TD | CG artist http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos http://www.cappuccino-films.com 2014-03-14 19:29 GMT+01:00 Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com: Something just came up on my head while doing blendshapes and using ICE to help along. Can you guys imagine how would ICE (or Biftrost) would work in Maya without a proper modelling stack like XSI''s? Even something as simple as using ICE to invert weight maps that are hooked with shapes with an already enveloped character or fixing some poses maybe...
Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
I will be surprised if bit frost is anything compared to ice. But who knows. I will be honest I have never used Maya, and never have ventured into that territory from things I have heard. With all the thing I'm reading after the EOL was announce I just think out the box it far too technical/hardwork for my personal work flow. Let's be rational, ice is 5 some years old and was 2-3 years in the making before that. So that's 7-8 years. I would be interested to find out how long this bit frost has been in the making.now considering they only bought niad not too long ago and I read its based somehow on that, I would be sceptical how well it could work or how mature it is. I just think all of this is based on pure market share and pleasing the share holders. But like I said I don't know. But I know I will be looking for another route away from autocash for sure. I hope most people follow another path to show these bully tactics are bull shit and the customer is always right. Daniel On 14 Mar 2014 18:43, Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote: Gee, I guess how many features wont be supported in Bifrost, or how long it will take them to have it at the level ICE currently is... On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:37 PM, Ahmidou Lyazidi ahmidou@gmail.comwrote: # mean mode on They should introduce first the concept of weight map object in Maya as currently it's all blackboxed in the different nodes, and all with different SDK access... # mean mode off --- Ahmidou Lyazidi Director | TD | CG artist http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos http://www.cappuccino-films.com 2014-03-14 19:29 GMT+01:00 Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com: Something just came up on my head while doing blendshapes and using ICE to help along. Can you guys imagine how would ICE (or Biftrost) would work in Maya without a proper modelling stack like XSI''s? Even something as simple as using ICE to invert weight maps that are hooked with shapes with an already enveloped character or fixing some poses maybe...
Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
To really recreate something close to ICE in Maya would mean a HUGE change to the way Maya works internally. Something I never see Autodesk doing. EVER. They still have never solv ed the problem of a plugin mysteriously not loading willy-nilly. Even Mental Ray doesn't show up as a renderer like 20% of the time. This isn't isolated, in every place I have worked, in every installation I have done of Maya, for the entire 17 or so years I have used Maya, this is STILL a problem. For God sake, they can't get their shit together to reliably load a plugin! How they will ever recreate anything close to ICE is beyond me. No, actually, it is impossible. They don't have the attention to detail and customer driven awareness for user experience to ever do anything like ICE. Maya is a feature graveyard. Every time there is a shiny new way to do something, they leave the last 2 or 3 ways inside Maya as dead ends, and they often never can communicate with newer parts of Maya. Here is one more problem: Every time a new version of Maya comes out, EVERY plugin has to be re-compiled. EVERY ONE. If it isn't, it won't work in a new version of Maya. How the hell will they ever get out of their own way? On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 3:25 PM, Daniel Sweeney dan...@northforge.co.ukwrote: I will be surprised if bit frost is anything compared to ice. But who knows. I will be honest I have never used Maya, and never have ventured into that territory from things I have heard. With all the thing I'm reading after the EOL was announce I just think out the box it far too technical/hardwork for my personal work flow. Let's be rational, ice is 5 some years old and was 2-3 years in the making before that. So that's 7-8 years. I would be interested to find out how long this bit frost has been in the making.now considering they only bought niad not too long ago and I read its based somehow on that, I would be sceptical how well it could work or how mature it is. I just think all of this is based on pure market share and pleasing the share holders. But like I said I don't know. But I know I will be looking for another route away from autocash for sure. I hope most people follow another path to show these bully tactics are bull shit and the customer is always right. Daniel On 14 Mar 2014 18:43, Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote: Gee, I guess how many features wont be supported in Bifrost, or how long it will take them to have it at the level ICE currently is... On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:37 PM, Ahmidou Lyazidi ahmidou@gmail.comwrote: # mean mode on They should introduce first the concept of weight map object in Maya as currently it's all blackboxed in the different nodes, and all with different SDK access... # mean mode off --- Ahmidou Lyazidi Director | TD | CG artist http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos http://www.cappuccino-films.com 2014-03-14 19:29 GMT+01:00 Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com: Something just came up on my head while doing blendshapes and using ICE to help along. Can you guys imagine how would ICE (or Biftrost) would work in Maya without a proper modelling stack like XSI''s? Even something as simple as using ICE to invert weight maps that are hooked with shapes with an already enveloped character or fixing some poses maybe... -- Perry Harovas 203-448-7206 Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com http://www.theafterimage.com/ -24 years experience -Co-Author of Mastering Mayahttp://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Maya-Complete-Perry-Harovas/dp/0782125212 -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)http://www.visualeffectssociety.com/
Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
To make matters worse for the Bifrost-replacing-ice idea- Bifrost, at the moment, is fluid simulation. Hell, Bifrost hasn't even been proven to be good at fluid simulation yet, although I have no doubt it eventually can be. But as for Bifrost-the-ICE-replacement, it's not even at the level of vaporware. It hasn't been officially promised, just vaguely hinted at. Once Bifrost actually succeeds at its current purpose- fluid simulation- then we can talk about what it might take to rebuild ICE based on it. I'm imagining one possible future a couple years down the line everyone is happy that Maya finally solved their fluid simulation problem which is apparently holding Maya back, and team Bifrost turns their attention to replacing ICE. At this point, they're several years away from making something as good as ICE and we can start having this conversation in earnest. This is a best case scenario. There's another possible future where where it turns out people are using Houdini and/or Realflow for their fluid simulation needs, and nobody cares very much about having one directly in Maya, even if it's awesome, and Bifrost is deemed yet another misguided direction Maya was taken in by AD. And in this future, no matter how good the technical underpinnings of bifrost are, and ICE is a distant memory and Bifrost is just more abandonware in Maya. So yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath for an ice replacement from Autodesk. On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 3:25 PM, Daniel Sweeney dan...@northforge.co.ukwrote: I will be surprised if bit frost is anything compared to ice. But who knows. I will be honest I have never used Maya, and never have ventured into that territory from things I have heard. With all the thing I'm reading after the EOL was announce I just think out the box it far too technical/hardwork for my personal work flow. Let's be rational, ice is 5 some years old and was 2-3 years in the making before that. So that's 7-8 years. I would be interested to find out how long this bit frost has been in the making.now considering they only bought niad not too long ago and I read its based somehow on that, I would be sceptical how well it could work or how mature it is. I just think all of this is based on pure market share and pleasing the share holders. But like I said I don't know. But I know I will be looking for another route away from autocash for sure. I hope most people follow another path to show these bully tactics are bull shit and the customer is always right. Daniel On 14 Mar 2014 18:43, Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote: Gee, I guess how many features wont be supported in Bifrost, or how long it will take them to have it at the level ICE currently is... On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:37 PM, Ahmidou Lyazidi ahmidou@gmail.comwrote: # mean mode on They should introduce first the concept of weight map object in Maya as currently it's all blackboxed in the different nodes, and all with different SDK access... # mean mode off --- Ahmidou Lyazidi Director | TD | CG artist http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos http://www.cappuccino-films.com 2014-03-14 19:29 GMT+01:00 Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com: Something just came up on my head while doing blendshapes and using ICE to help along. Can you guys imagine how would ICE (or Biftrost) would work in Maya without a proper modelling stack like XSI''s? Even something as simple as using ICE to invert weight maps that are hooked with shapes with an already enveloped character or fixing some poses maybe...
Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
perhaps I am terrible ignorant to think this and I have no knowledge of what the upcoming 2015 version of Maya will contain, but to kill Softimage I would think that Maya would have to prove to be an ice replacement within 2 years. How else do you justify it. In my opinion Autodesk considers Maya superior in everyway except ICE, so that would be the last step needed to make Softimage totally redundant (again in the eyes of Autodesk). From: Jonah Friedman Sent: Friday, March 14, 2014 3:57 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible? To make matters worse for the Bifrost-replacing-ice idea- Bifrost, at the moment, is fluid simulation. Hell, Bifrost hasn't even been proven to be good at fluid simulation yet, although I have no doubt it eventually can be. But as for Bifrost-the-ICE-replacement, it's not even at the level of vaporware. It hasn't been officially promised, just vaguely hinted at. Once Bifrost actually succeeds at its current purpose- fluid simulation- then we can talk about what it might take to rebuild ICE based on it. I'm imagining one possible future a couple years down the line everyone is happy that Maya finally solved their fluid simulation problem which is apparently holding Maya back, and team Bifrost turns their attention to replacing ICE. At this point, they're several years away from making something as good as ICE and we can start having this conversation in earnest. This is a best case scenario. There's another possible future where where it turns out people are using Houdini and/or Realflow for their fluid simulation needs, and nobody cares very much about having one directly in Maya, even if it's awesome, and Bifrost is deemed yet another misguided direction Maya was taken in by AD. And in this future, no matter how good the technical underpinnings of bifrost are, and ICE is a distant memory and Bifrost is just more abandonware in Maya. So yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath for an ice replacement from Autodesk. On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 3:25 PM, Daniel Sweeney dan...@northforge.co.uk wrote: I will be surprised if bit frost is anything compared to ice. But who knows. I will be honest I have never used Maya, and never have ventured into that territory from things I have heard. With all the thing I'm reading after the EOL was announce I just think out the box it far too technical/hardwork for my personal work flow. Let's be rational, ice is 5 some years old and was 2-3 years in the making before that. So that's 7-8 years. I would be interested to find out how long this bit frost has been in the making.now considering they only bought niad not too long ago and I read its based somehow on that, I would be sceptical how well it could work or how mature it is. I just think all of this is based on pure market share and pleasing the share holders. But like I said I don't know. But I know I will be looking for another route away from autocash for sure. I hope most people follow another path to show these bully tactics are bull shit and the customer is always right. Daniel On 14 Mar 2014 18:43, Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote: Gee, I guess how many features wont be supported in Bifrost, or how long it will take them to have it at the level ICE currently is... On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:37 PM, Ahmidou Lyazidi ahmidou@gmail.com wrote: # mean mode on They should introduce first the concept of weight map object in Maya as currently it's all blackboxed in the different nodes, and all with different SDK access... # mean mode off --- Ahmidou Lyazidi Director | TD | CG artist http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos http://www.cappuccino-films.com 2014-03-14 19:29 GMT+01:00 Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com: Something just came up on my head while doing blendshapes and using ICE to help along. Can you guys imagine how would ICE (or Biftrost) would work in Maya without a proper modelling stack like XSI''s? Even something as simple as using ICE to invert weight maps that are hooked with shapes with an already enveloped character or fixing some poses maybe...
Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible?
Well, to begin with, I don't think Softimage was killed off due to Autodesk feeling Maya was superior. It's more about marketshare than quality here. Second, most Maya users are not accustomed to using ICE, and therefore simply have no idea what they are missing. Bifrost will be better than what they now have, and that will be perceived by the larger community of Maya users as progress — regardless of how it stacks up next to ICE. IMO, Autodesk has painted itself into a corner, casting their entire lot with old bloated code. If Maya is to compete with more modern solutions it will need a rewrite, and that takes time and resources. Where will Houdini be by the time Maya is brought up to speed? Hell, where will apps like MODO and Cinema 4D be by then? They may not ever be what Softimage is to this community, but they may be attractive alternatives to Maya, which comes with an Autodesk relationship. Anyway, I think you are asking about these things from a certain logical perspective. My point is that your particular perspective/assumptions, however logical, are probably not the concerns that are driving this EOL issue or the development of Maya. On Mar 14, 2014, at 3:00 PM, phil harbath phil.harb...@jamination.com wrote: perhaps I am terrible ignorant to think this and I have no knowledge of what the upcoming 2015 version of Maya will contain, but to kill Softimage I would think that Maya would have to prove to be an ice replacement within 2 years. How else do you justify it. In my opinion Autodesk considers Maya superior in everyway except ICE, so that would be the last step needed to make Softimage totally redundant (again in the eyes of Autodesk). From: Jonah Friedman Sent: Friday, March 14, 2014 3:57 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: ICE in Maya is it really possible? To make matters worse for the Bifrost-replacing-ice idea- Bifrost, at the moment, is fluid simulation. Hell, Bifrost hasn't even been proven to be good at fluid simulation yet, although I have no doubt it eventually can be. But as for Bifrost-the-ICE-replacement, it's not even at the level of vaporware. It hasn't been officially promised, just vaguely hinted at. Once Bifrost actually succeeds at its current purpose- fluid simulation- then we can talk about what it might take to rebuild ICE based on it. I'm imagining one possible future a couple years down the line everyone is happy that Maya finally solved their fluid simulation problem which is apparently holding Maya back, and team Bifrost turns their attention to replacing ICE. At this point, they're several years away from making something as good as ICE and we can start having this conversation in earnest. This is a best case scenario. There's another possible future where where it turns out people are using Houdini and/or Realflow for their fluid simulation needs, and nobody cares very much about having one directly in Maya, even if it's awesome, and Bifrost is deemed yet another misguided direction Maya was taken in by AD. And in this future, no matter how good the technical underpinnings of bifrost are, and ICE is a distant memory and Bifrost is just more abandonware in Maya. So yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath for an ice replacement from Autodesk. On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 3:25 PM, Daniel Sweeney dan...@northforge.co.uk wrote: I will be surprised if bit frost is anything compared to ice. But who knows. I will be honest I have never used Maya, and never have ventured into that territory from things I have heard. With all the thing I'm reading after the EOL was announce I just think out the box it far too technical/hardwork for my personal work flow. Let's be rational, ice is 5 some years old and was 2-3 years in the making before that. So that's 7-8 years. I would be interested to find out how long this bit frost has been in the making.now considering they only bought niad not too long ago and I read its based somehow on that, I would be sceptical how well it could work or how mature it is. I just think all of this is based on pure market share and pleasing the share holders. But like I said I don't know. But I know I will be looking for another route away from autocash for sure. I hope most people follow another path to show these bully tactics are bull shit and the customer is always right. Daniel On 14 Mar 2014 18:43, Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote: Gee, I guess how many features wont be supported in Bifrost, or how long it will take them to have it at the level ICE currently is... On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:37 PM, Ahmidou Lyazidi ahmidou@gmail.com wrote: # mean mode on They should introduce first the concept of weight map object in Maya as currently it's all blackboxed in the different nodes, and all with different SDK access... # mean mode off
