Re: A Good Read!
I believe so too, both the animation tools and rigging tools are evolving extremely fast and is certainly something I am going to dive in once I finish the project I embarked. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 2 Apr 2014, at 05:35, Sergio Mucino sergio.muc...@gmail.com wrote: Modo's rigging capabilities are fairly underrated, IMO. It's not yet at the level of Soft or Maya, but it's pretty capable and I'm hopeful it'll get better. I'm in the process of porting over to Modo some ICE nodes that I've used quite a bit as Assemblies (Modo's version of an ICE Compound), and I'm happy about having them back. Mostly math-related. Modo's schematic environment will let you do the equivalent to ICE Kinematics, and it's particle system is node-based too, but there's not way yet to access mesh data, so don't expect to go as crazy as you can with ICE. Still, I've already delivered a few rigs in Modo over to clients, and I'm happy about them. Looks like Modo + Houdini will keep me cozy and warm (and I do need to start looking into Blender more seriously). Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Apr 1, 2014, at 10:49 PM, Eugene Flormata eug...@flormata.com wrote: wow I've never touched modo but that modo zen thing looks amazing. that mixed with non-linear weighting/rigging from XSI would be awesome in any program On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 2:13 PM, Maurice Patel maurice.pa...@autodesk.com wrote: No I had not, thanks for sharing Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2014 3:56 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: A Good Read! Maurice, did you see the CAD Junky Zen slim UI presentation ? that is your solution right there. show people what it could be like, give them the option, doesn't have to be compulsory, Maya has that one thing going, that you can completely reshape the interface, every palette, role out menu, viewport. this would not be an expensive endeavor. and would give you a lot of good press. like it did for modo. http://cadjunkie.com/zen On 1 April 2014 20:39, Maurice Patel maurice.pa...@autodesk.commailto:maurice.pa...@autodesk.com wrote: That article was a very interesting read. IMO (and I stress that is my opinion only): the one big challenge in the entertainment industry is the constant need to be creative which means that as soon as you have perfected your formula 1 race car, someone now wants it to fly to the moon, or to dive into the Marianas trench or do the Paris-Dakar or do something else it the designers never imagined doing in the first place - whereas in racing, any given track is a pretty fixed entity and the skill is indeed about optimization. This is also where ME differs from many other production processes such as manufacturing. While it is feasible these days to program robots to build cars it is not even remotely possible to do the same thing for VFX. I also agree that usability is THE big barrier in 3D. My wife is a jewellery designer and metalsmith who just started her first foray into Rhino and is not enjoying it (in her craft it is the industry standard). I have not had to replace any monitors yet but I soon might be :). We often discuss this problem here. The Mudbox team went all out to focus on usability but there is this unfortunate damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't problem in our industry. Everyone wants more in the product and they are all doing different things, have different pipelines, different ways of working before you know it you have several ways of doing the same thing. And deep down people want more features - it is the only thing they really want to pay for. While everyone will argue that stability and usability are important they don't want to pay for it (and these things are complex and costly to solve). 3ds Max 2015 focused heavily on these aspects - making five clicks two, cleaning up key problem areas of UI such as the scene navigator and we took a beating for it. And we know we have to do this for Maya too. The usability 'issue' is a very, very real one for all 3D applications and one that I don't think anyone has figured out a perfect solution for yet. The curve the author describes is pretty accurate. The problem is that you cannot easily keep things at that optimal point. maurice Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134tel:514%20954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2014 2:25 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: A Good Read! Here is a better race related analogy
RE: A Good Read!
Like Sebastien wrote: It's about enabling an individual's, and giving them peace of mind. I understand the part about 3D having become immensely more complex throught the pat decade, requiring more advanced tools and subsequently more skills from the artist, but I really also think the software devs put way too little effort into making these tools userfriendly and easily accessible, so the artist can concentrate on the task at hand rather than how to stick it together at all. Maya is a great example here - lots of power but fairly poor UI makes it difficult for a non technically inclined artist to do quite advanced stuff. Softimage is much better in this respect, but also here there is a lot of room for improvement. I have spent countless hours trying to figure out how to make simple stuff work in ICE which ought to be really simple to do and just get on with it. Context mismatches and lack of high level nodes for everyday nuts and bolts stuff makes ICE hard at times for a guy like me. I do like learning and think it is good since, as Olivier say, it empowers you when you unlock more of the tech under the hood, but most of the time, I can't find the time to do this - I just need to produce. Don't get me wrong - I love ICE too, and use it on probably 80-90% of my productions (mostly simple stuff and that which can be done with the excellent tools by Mootzoid, Exocortex and others), but I would love to spend much less time trying to figure out the how-to, so I can focus on making it look great. Mind you, I am not asking for a Kais Power Tools for 3D, but there is no reason why advanced stuff shouldn't be easier to do - it would make a lot more people do great work, and thus boost the industry. It will be interesting to see how far the Humanize Maya will go in this respect. Given that the devs are on a path to provide as much functionality as possible in a short timeframe I am afraid real UI improvements will not be prioritized enough. Morten Den 1. april 2014 kl. 20:55 skrev Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za: I think we have had this discussion before that things should have been further along by now ;) I just said that Softimage was very good at allowing the very skilled and the very new to easily achieve great things. Having taught Maya and Softimage to people new to 3D its very easy to see the difference between an application that can do that well and one that cant. When you are in education you see that learning curve being tackled over and over again. I think Sebastiens race car analogy and conclusions put it far better then I did. From: Luc-Eric Rousseau [luceri...@gmail.com] Sent: 01 April 2014 08:04 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: A Good Read! it's interesting blog but I don't think that guy is saying anything that would suggest Softimage is doing any better... (if you read the bit about rigging having not evolved)... On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 1:10 PM, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za mailto:angus.david...@wits.ac.za wrote: I think the original author does have a point but I dont think he expressed it the way he wanted to. I can feel his frustration. If you think of where we are and its been 20 years or so, shouldn't things be simpler? Zbrush is a good example , immensely powerful program but such an uphill battle to get used to the interface to do anything useful. HeadUs and their unwrap interface is another one. yes you can get beautiful results with it, but in the time it takes you figure crap out, you could have done just as good a job sticking to massaging a standard unwrap The idea is that your software should enable you from the beginning no matter your expertise with it. Yes you will get highly skilled with it if you stick to using it , but you shouldn't have to put your fist through a few monitors to get there. Its one of the things I will miss a lot about teaching Softimage. It enabled both he novice and the professional to do amazing things out the box. This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary.
Re: A Good Read!
I don't know how that will work out, but if you found ICE troublesome, Maya is going to kill you (or maybe not... Who knows!). I actually never had much problems with the Maya UI. I think the biggest issue people have is with the workflow behind it. I also got used to that. What I found very difficult to deal with is getting changes to work (once you get into complex stuff). For example, there are certain things that cannot be reordered unless you do it manually, and doing so is extremely tricky, given the relationships that exist within the DAG. To make matters worse, Maya has to have the most unintuitive and anti-user friendly node editor from all the ones I've tried, to the point where I preferred to work with the Hypergraph (I just got the hang of it a few months ago after fiddling with it a bit, and then it was ok, but a lot of thing are still not user friendly. It's basically a nicer-looking Hypergraph. Nothing else changed). Maya does need quite a bit of work in the usability area. Some things are easy once you're familiar with them, but getting to that point can be painful. Others are kinda ridiculous, actually (like its weights painting system. It's horrible). Of course, it has nice things too. I like the rigging tools. Can't speak much for the rest of the applications, since I just rig. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Apr 2, 2014, at 6:03 AM, Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dk wrote: Like Sebastien wrote: It's about enabling an individual's, and giving them peace of mind. I understand the part about 3D having become immensely more complex throught the pat decade, requiring more advanced tools and subsequently more skills from the artist, but I really also think the software devs put way too little effort into making these tools userfriendly and easily accessible, so the artist can concentrate on the task at hand rather than how to stick it together at all. Maya is a great example here - lots of power but fairly poor UI makes it difficult for a non technically inclined artist to do quite advanced stuff. Softimage is much better in this respect, but also here there is a lot of room for improvement. I have spent countless hours trying to figure out how to make simple stuff work in ICE which ought to be really simple to do and just get on with it. Context mismatches and lack of high level nodes for everyday nuts and bolts stuff makes ICE hard at times for a guy like me. I do like learning and think it is good since, as Olivier say, it empowers you when you unlock more of the tech under the hood, but most of the time, I can't find the time to do this - I just need to produce. Don't get me wrong - I love ICE too, and use it on probably 80-90% of my productions (mostly simple stuff and that which can be done with the excellent tools by Mootzoid, Exocortex and others), but I would love to spend much less time trying to figure out the how-to, so I can focus on making it look great. Mind you, I am not asking for a Kais Power Tools for 3D, but there is no reason why advanced stuff shouldn't be easier to do - it would make a lot more people do great work, and thus boost the industry. It will be interesting to see how far the Humanize Maya will go in this respect. Given that the devs are on a path to provide as much functionality as possible in a short timeframe I am afraid real UI improvements will not be prioritized enough. Morten Den 1. april 2014 kl. 20:55 skrev Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za: I think we have had this discussion before that things should have been further along by now ;) I just said that Softimage was very good at allowing the very skilled and the very new to easily achieve great things. Having taught Maya and Softimage to people new to 3D its very easy to see the difference between an application that can do that well and one that cant. When you are in education you see that learning curve being tackled over and over again. I think Sebastiens race car analogy and conclusions put it far better then I did. From: Luc-Eric Rousseau [luceri...@gmail.com] Sent: 01 April 2014 08:04 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: A Good Read! it's interesting blog but I don't think that guy is saying anything that would suggest Softimage is doing any better... (if you read the bit about rigging having not evolved)... On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 1:10 PM, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za wrote: I think the original author does have a point but I dont think he expressed it the way he wanted to. I can feel his frustration. If you think of where we are and its been 20 years or so, shouldn't things be simpler? Zbrush is a good example , immensely powerful program but such an uphill battle to get used to the interface to do anything useful. HeadUs and their unwrap interface is another one. yes you can get
Re: A Good Read!
This guy has a point. MB Den 31. marts 2014 kl. 16:17 skrev Saeed Kalhor ndman...@gmail.com: When in a production environment, I don't care how the tool works under the hood, I just want to get into the driver's seat, strap in, and hit the gas . Barry Zundel This is what Autodesk doesn't want us to do! Read the full article here: http://barryzundel.blogspot.de/2012/07/tool-productivity-curve.html http://barryzundel.blogspot.de/2012/07/tool-productivity-curve.html
Re: A Good Read!
... Red this very quickly, because it upsets me every 4 words. Frankly, the guy who is way too smart or to arty for those complex 3d software, should just buy a pen... Remember me some Texas Lightwave/NT communication from back in the day. Le 01/04/2014 11:40, Morten Bartholdy a écrit : This guy has a point. MB Den 31. marts 2014 kl. 16:17 skrev Saeed Kalhor ndman...@gmail.com: *When in a production environment, I don't care how the tool works under the hood, I just want to get into the driver's seat, strap in, and hit the gas* . /Barry Zundel/ / / This is what Autodesk doesn't want us to do! Read the full article here: http://barryzundel.blogspot.de/2012/07/tool-productivity-curve.html
Re: A Good Read!
I think he is quite right in his assertion, what was hurting you Olivier ? On 1 April 2014 16:29, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: ... Red this very quickly, because it upsets me every 4 words. Frankly, the guy who is way too smart or to arty for those complex 3d software, should just buy a pen... Remember me some Texas Lightwave/NT communication from back in the day. Le 01/04/2014 11:40, Morten Bartholdy a écrit : This guy has a point. MB Den 31. marts 2014 kl. 16:17 skrev Saeed Kalhor ndman...@gmail.comndman...@gmail.com: *When in a production environment, I don't care how the tool works under the hood, I just want to get into the driver's seat, strap in, and hit the gas* .*Barry Zundel* This is what Autodesk doesn't want us to do! Read the full article here: http://barryzundel.blogspot.de/2012/07/tool-productivity-curve.html
Re: A Good Read!
Well from my experience, you can't ignore what's under the hood and get into blablabla... That would be a little too easy. We're technical artist, some are more techy, some are more arty. But nobody jumps into the driver seat. Le 01/04/2014 18:39, Sebastien Sterling a écrit : I think he is quite right in his assertion, what was hurting you Olivier ? On 1 April 2014 16:29, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr mailto:olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: ... Red this very quickly, because it upsets me every 4 words. Frankly, the guy who is way too smart or to arty for those complex 3d software, should just buy a pen... Remember me some Texas Lightwave/NT communication from back in the day. Le 01/04/2014 11:40, Morten Bartholdy a écrit : This guy has a point. MB Den 31. marts 2014 kl. 16:17 skrev Saeed Kalhor ndman...@gmail.com mailto:ndman...@gmail.com: *When in a production environment, I don't care how the tool works under the hood, I just want to get into the driver's seat, strap in, and hit the gas* . /Barry Zundel/ / / This is what Autodesk doesn't want us to do! Read the full article here: http://barryzundel.blogspot.de/2012/07/tool-productivity-curve.html
Re: A Good Read!
...And obviously he never drove a Ferrari. Le 01/04/2014 18:55, olivier jeannel a écrit : Well from my experience, you can't ignore what's under the hood and get into blablabla... That would be a little too easy. We're technical artist, some are more techy, some are more arty. But nobody jumps into the driver seat. Le 01/04/2014 18:39, Sebastien Sterling a écrit : I think he is quite right in his assertion, what was hurting you Olivier ? On 1 April 2014 16:29, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr mailto:olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: ... Red this very quickly, because it upsets me every 4 words. Frankly, the guy who is way too smart or to arty for those complex 3d software, should just buy a pen... Remember me some Texas Lightwave/NT communication from back in the day. Le 01/04/2014 11:40, Morten Bartholdy a écrit : This guy has a point. MB Den 31. marts 2014 kl. 16:17 skrev Saeed Kalhor ndman...@gmail.com mailto:ndman...@gmail.com: *When in a production environment, I don't care how the tool works under the hood, I just want to get into the driver's seat, strap in, and hit the gas* . /Barry Zundel/ / / This is what Autodesk doesn't want us to do! Read the full article here: http://barryzundel.blogspot.de/2012/07/tool-productivity-curve.html
RE: A Good Read!
I think the original author does have a point but I dont think he expressed it the way he wanted to. I can feel his frustration. If you think of where we are and its been 20 years or so, shouldn't things be simpler? Zbrush is a good example , immensely powerful program but such an uphill battle to get used to the interface to do anything useful. HeadUs and their unwrap interface is another one. yes you can get beautiful results with it, but in the time it takes you figure crap out, you could have done just as good a job sticking to massaging a standard unwrap The idea is that your software should enable you from the beginning no matter your expertise with it. Yes you will get highly skilled with it if you stick to using it , but you shouldn't have to put your fist through a few monitors to get there. Its one of the things I will miss a lot about teaching Softimage. It enabled both he novice and the professional to do amazing things out the box. From: Sebastien Sterling [sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com] Sent: 01 April 2014 06:39 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: A Good Read! I think he is quite right in his assertion, what was hurting you Olivier ? On 1 April 2014 16:29, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.frmailto:olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: ... Red this very quickly, because it upsets me every 4 words. Frankly, the guy who is way too smart or to arty for those complex 3d software, should just buy a pen... Remember me some Texas Lightwave/NT communication from back in the day. Le 01/04/2014 11:40, Morten Bartholdy a écrit : This guy has a point. MB Den 31. marts 2014 kl. 16:17 skrev Saeed Kalhor ndman...@gmail.commailto:ndman...@gmail.com: When in a production environment, I don't care how the tool works under the hood, I just want to get into the driver's seat, strap in, and hit the gas . Barry Zundel This is what Autodesk doesn't want us to do! Read the full article here: http://barryzundel.blogspot.de/2012/07/tool-productivity-curve.html table width=100% border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 style=width:100%; tr td align=left style=text-align:justify;font face=arial,sans-serif size=1 color=#99span style=font-size:11px;This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary. /span/font/td /tr /table
Re: A Good Read!
Imho, things are simpler it's just there are _more_ things. Every 3D sector got specialized. I think being generalist is quite a chalenge, much more than 20 years ago. Look at how modeling has pushed with Zbrush, Texturing with mary. Before I was pressing buttons, now since Ice I know what a vector is, and I think I'm better since I know the math under the hood. Frankly, if you start to draw you're gonna throw a few papers to the trashcan, an if you're starting to sculpt you'll break some molds. Read Jordi Bare, I believe he's expanded his creative power since he broke into Houdini. Learning makes you learn more until you get old and die... no ? Le 01/04/2014 19:10, Angus Davidson a écrit : I think the original author does have a point but I dont think he expressed it the way he wanted to. I can feel his frustration. If you think of where we are and its been 20 years or so, shouldn't things be simpler? Zbrush is a good example , immensely powerful program but such an uphill battle to get used to the interface to do anything useful. HeadUs and their unwrap interface is another one. yes you can get beautiful results with it, but in the time it takes you figure crap out, you could have done just as good a job sticking to massaging a standard unwrap The idea is that your software should enable you from the beginning no matter your expertise with it. Yes you will get highly skilled with it if you stick to using it , but you shouldn't have to put your fist through a few monitors to get there. Its one of the things I will miss a lot about teaching Softimage. It enabled both he novice and the professional to do amazing things out the box. *From:* Sebastien Sterling [sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com] *Sent:* 01 April 2014 06:39 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: A Good Read! I think he is quite right in his assertion, what was hurting you Olivier ? On 1 April 2014 16:29, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr mailto:olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: ... Red this very quickly, because it upsets me every 4 words. Frankly, the guy who is way too smart or to arty for those complex 3d software, should just buy a pen... Remember me some Texas Lightwave/NT communication from back in the day. Le 01/04/2014 11:40, Morten Bartholdy a écrit : This guy has a point. MB Den 31. marts 2014 kl. 16:17 skrev Saeed Kalhor ndman...@gmail.com mailto:ndman...@gmail.com: *When in a production environment, I don't care how the tool works under the hood, I just want to get into the driver's seat, strap in, and hit the gas* . /Barry Zundel/ / / This is what Autodesk doesn't want us to do! Read the full article here: http://barryzundel.blogspot.de/2012/07/tool-productivity-curve.html This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary.
Re: A Good Read!
it's interesting blog but I don't think that guy is saying anything that would suggest Softimage is doing any better... (if you read the bit about rigging having not evolved)... On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 1:10 PM, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.zawrote: I think the original author does have a point but I dont think he expressed it the way he wanted to. I can feel his frustration. If you think of where we are and its been 20 years or so, shouldn't things be simpler? Zbrush is a good example , immensely powerful program but such an uphill battle to get used to the interface to do anything useful. HeadUs and their unwrap interface is another one. yes you can get beautiful results with it, but in the time it takes you figure crap out, you could have done just as good a job sticking to massaging a standard unwrap The idea is that your software should enable you from the beginning no matter your expertise with it. Yes you will get highly skilled with it if you stick to using it , but you shouldn't have to put your fist through a few monitors to get there. Its one of the things I will miss a lot about teaching Softimage. It enabled both he novice and the professional to do amazing things out the box.
Re: A Good Read!
I think the author point was that a lot of 3D programs doesn't give usability enough attention as they should. I totally agree with the ZBrush thing. It is a wonderful tool but the UI and usability in general could be better. I remember It took me a while to understand what are tools and scenes. Even now I'm not so sure I fully understand Zbrush scenes. One of the biggest reasons why we love Softimage and not so much Max, or Maya, or Blender. Even if you can have the same final result, 9 out of 10 you could do it faster and easier in Softimage, and not because Softimage technology is infinitely superior. Jordy Bares' Blender link is a little related to this, how much Blender sucks in usability from a Blender user POV. I've only watched part 1 but it is interesting so far. Selecting with right click. Yeah, I'm one of those who couldn't figure it out from start, and when I did, I decided to quit. Martin On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 2:51 AM, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.frwrote: Imho, things are simpler it's just there are *more* things. Every 3D sector got specialized. I think being generalist is quite a chalenge, much more than 20 years ago. Look at how modeling has pushed with Zbrush, Texturing with mary. Before I was pressing buttons, now since Ice I know what a vector is, and I think I'm better since I know the math under the hood. Frankly, if you start to draw you're gonna throw a few papers to the trashcan, an if you're starting to sculpt you'll break some molds. Read Jordi Bare, I believe he's expanded his creative power since he broke into Houdini. Learning makes you learn more until you get old and die... no ?
Re: A Good Read!
Here is a better race related analogy You are a race car driver, you've spent a career diligently homing your skills and natural talent, you know instinctively how to calculate angles, torque, speed, drifting, terrain, weather, pressure you can read other drivers movements and anticipate their decisions. When you go down into the pit, you don't get out of the car to see what is wrong, to remove the wheels or refuel, these are not your main priority, you just want to get back out there. There is a dedicated team there that take care of these thing, that is their job to make sure you and your machine can function as one and perform at your best. It's about enabling an individual's, and giving them peace of mind. Imagine you are that same race car driver, only instead of focusing on the important things (toque angles speed overtaking) half your brain is taken up by will it crash will it crash?, will it crash?, should i head down to the pit? are the wheels overheating?, what is making that sound? will it crash, WILL IT CRASH? If you can't trust your car to perform, how can you trust yourself. Now i know that we live in an imperfect world, and that in this industry artists are often obliged to get down on all fours and look under the hood. However this should not be viewed as a fatality, but an incentive, to build the most reliable and program with the most fluid interface that allows your users to reach that special place that 1:1 ratio where there is no more keyboard or stylus there's just you and the data, and you doing what you where made to do, unimpeded free. This quality this lucidity, to my mind is more precious then all the bullshit and bells trotted out each release. On 1 April 2014 18:10, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za wrote: I think the original author does have a point but I dont think he expressed it the way he wanted to. I can feel his frustration. If you think of where we are and its been 20 years or so, shouldn't things be simpler? Zbrush is a good example , immensely powerful program but such an uphill battle to get used to the interface to do anything useful. HeadUs and their unwrap interface is another one. yes you can get beautiful results with it, but in the time it takes you figure crap out, you could have done just as good a job sticking to massaging a standard unwrap The idea is that your software should enable you from the beginning no matter your expertise with it. Yes you will get highly skilled with it if you stick to using it , but you shouldn't have to put your fist through a few monitors to get there. Its one of the things I will miss a lot about teaching Softimage. It enabled both he novice and the professional to do amazing things out the box. *From:* Sebastien Sterling [sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com] *Sent:* 01 April 2014 06:39 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: A Good Read! I think he is quite right in his assertion, what was hurting you Olivier ? On 1 April 2014 16:29, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: ... Red this very quickly, because it upsets me every 4 words. Frankly, the guy who is way too smart or to arty for those complex 3d software, should just buy a pen... Remember me some Texas Lightwave/NT communication from back in the day. Le 01/04/2014 11:40, Morten Bartholdy a écrit : This guy has a point. MB Den 31. marts 2014 kl. 16:17 skrev Saeed Kalhor ndman...@gmail.comndman...@gmail.com: *When in a production environment, I don't care how the tool works under the hood, I just want to get into the driver's seat, strap in, and hit the gas* . *Barry Zundel* This is what Autodesk doesn't want us to do! Read the full article here: http://barryzundel.blogspot.de/2012/07/tool-productivity-curve.html This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary.
Re: A Good Read!
Sebastien I get your point, and that is just another arguing thread for me :) I have pleasure arguying for nothing :) But, concerning the driver analogy I tend to disagree : Have you seen The Rush ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzNbGH1oZJc#aid=P-3SQ679EzI Anyway, Le 01/04/2014 20:24, Sebastien Sterling a écrit : Here is a better race related analogy You are a race car driver, you've spent a career diligently homing your skills and natural talent, you know instinctively how to calculate angles, torque, speed, drifting, terrain, weather, pressure you can read other drivers movements and anticipate their decisions. When you go down into the pit, you don't get out of the car to see what is wrong, to remove the wheels or refuel, these are not your main priority, you just want to get back out there. There is a dedicated team there that take care of these thing, that is their job to make sure you and your machine can function as one and perform at your best. It's about enabling an individual's, and giving them peace of mind. Imagine you are that same race car driver, only instead of focusing on the important things (toque angles speed overtaking) half your brain is taken up by will it crash will it crash?, will it crash?, should i head down to the pit? are the wheels overheating?, what is making that sound? will it crash, WILL IT CRASH? If you can't trust your car to perform, how can you trust yourself. Now i know that we live in an imperfect world, and that in this industry artists are often obliged to get down on all fours and look under the hood. However this should not be viewed as a fatality, but an incentive, to build the most reliable and program with the most fluid interface that allows your users to reach that special place that 1:1 ratio where there is no more keyboard or stylus there's just you and the data, and you doing what you where made to do, unimpeded free. This quality this lucidity, to my mind is more precious then all the bullshit and bells trotted out each release. On 1 April 2014 18:10, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za mailto:angus.david...@wits.ac.za wrote: I think the original author does have a point but I dont think he expressed it the way he wanted to. I can feel his frustration. If you think of where we are and its been 20 years or so, shouldn't things be simpler? Zbrush is a good example , immensely powerful program but such an uphill battle to get used to the interface to do anything useful. HeadUs and their unwrap interface is another one. yes you can get beautiful results with it, but in the time it takes you figure crap out, you could have done just as good a job sticking to massaging a standard unwrap The idea is that your software should enable you from the beginning no matter your expertise with it. Yes you will get highly skilled with it if you stick to using it , but you shouldn't have to put your fist through a few monitors to get there. Its one of the things I will miss a lot about teaching Softimage. It enabled both he novice and the professional to do amazing things out the box. *From:* Sebastien Sterling [sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com mailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com] *Sent:* 01 April 2014 06:39 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: A Good Read! I think he is quite right in his assertion, what was hurting you Olivier ? On 1 April 2014 16:29, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr mailto:olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: ... Red this very quickly, because it upsets me every 4 words. Frankly, the guy who is way too smart or to arty for those complex 3d software, should just buy a pen... Remember me some Texas Lightwave/NT communication from back in the day. Le 01/04/2014 11:40, Morten Bartholdy a écrit : This guy has a point. MB Den 31. marts 2014 kl. 16:17 skrev Saeed Kalhor ndman...@gmail.com mailto:ndman...@gmail.com: *When in a production environment, I don't care how the tool works under the hood, I just want to get into the driver's seat, strap in, and hit the gas* . /Barry Zundel/ / / This is what Autodesk doesn't want us to do! Read the full article here: http://barryzundel.blogspot.de/2012/07/tool-productivity-curve.html This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus
RE: A Good Read!
I think we have had this discussion before that things should have been further along by now ;) I just said that Softimage was very good at allowing the very skilled and the very new to easily achieve great things. Having taught Maya and Softimage to people new to 3D its very easy to see the difference between an application that can do that well and one that cant. When you are in education you see that learning curve being tackled over and over again. I think Sebastiens race car analogy and conclusions put it far better then I did. From: Luc-Eric Rousseau [luceri...@gmail.com] Sent: 01 April 2014 08:04 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: A Good Read! it's interesting blog but I don't think that guy is saying anything that would suggest Softimage is doing any better... (if you read the bit about rigging having not evolved)... On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 1:10 PM, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.zamailto:angus.david...@wits.ac.za wrote: I think the original author does have a point but I dont think he expressed it the way he wanted to. I can feel his frustration. If you think of where we are and its been 20 years or so, shouldn't things be simpler? Zbrush is a good example , immensely powerful program but such an uphill battle to get used to the interface to do anything useful. HeadUs and their unwrap interface is another one. yes you can get beautiful results with it, but in the time it takes you figure crap out, you could have done just as good a job sticking to massaging a standard unwrap The idea is that your software should enable you from the beginning no matter your expertise with it. Yes you will get highly skilled with it if you stick to using it , but you shouldn't have to put your fist through a few monitors to get there. Its one of the things I will miss a lot about teaching Softimage. It enabled both he novice and the professional to do amazing things out the box. table width=100% border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 style=width:100%; tr td align=left style=text-align:justify;font face=arial,sans-serif size=1 color=#99span style=font-size:11px;This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary. /span/font/td /tr /table
RE: A Good Read!
That article was a very interesting read. IMO (and I stress that is my opinion only): the one big challenge in the entertainment industry is the constant need to be creative which means that as soon as you have perfected your formula 1 race car, someone now wants it to fly to the moon, or to dive into the Marianas trench or do the Paris-Dakar or do something else it the designers never imagined doing in the first place - whereas in racing, any given track is a pretty fixed entity and the skill is indeed about optimization. This is also where ME differs from many other production processes such as manufacturing. While it is feasible these days to program robots to build cars it is not even remotely possible to do the same thing for VFX. I also agree that usability is THE big barrier in 3D. My wife is a jewellery designer and metalsmith who just started her first foray into Rhino and is not enjoying it (in her craft it is the industry standard). I have not had to replace any monitors yet but I soon might be :). We often discuss this problem here. The Mudbox team went all out to focus on usability but there is this unfortunate damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't problem in our industry. Everyone wants more in the product and they are all doing different things, have different pipelines, different ways of working before you know it you have several ways of doing the same thing. And deep down people want more features - it is the only thing they really want to pay for. While everyone will argue that stability and usability are important they don't want to pay for it (and these things are complex and costly to solve). 3ds Max 2015 focused heavily on these aspects - making five clicks two, cleaning up key problem areas of UI such as the scene navigator and we took a beating for it. And we know we have to do this for Maya too. The usability 'issue' is a very, very real one for all 3D applications and one that I don't think anyone has figured out a perfect solution for yet. The curve the author describes is pretty accurate. The problem is that you cannot easily keep things at that optimal point. maurice Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2014 2:25 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: A Good Read! Here is a better race related analogy You are a race car driver, you've spent a career diligently homing your skills and natural talent, you know instinctively how to calculate angles, torque, speed, drifting, terrain, weather, pressure you can read other drivers movements and anticipate their decisions. When you go down into the pit, you don't get out of the car to see what is wrong, to remove the wheels or refuel, these are not your main priority, you just want to get back out there. There is a dedicated team there that take care of these thing, that is their job to make sure you and your machine can function as one and perform at your best. It's about enabling an individual's, and giving them peace of mind. Imagine you are that same race car driver, only instead of focusing on the important things (toque angles speed overtaking) half your brain is taken up by will it crash will it crash?, will it crash?, should i head down to the pit? are the wheels overheating?, what is making that sound? will it crash, WILL IT CRASH? If you can't trust your car to perform, how can you trust yourself. Now i know that we live in an imperfect world, and that in this industry artists are often obliged to get down on all fours and look under the hood. However this should not be viewed as a fatality, but an incentive, to build the most reliable and program with the most fluid interface that allows your users to reach that special place that 1:1 ratio where there is no more keyboard or stylus there's just you and the data, and you doing what you where made to do, unimpeded free. This quality this lucidity, to my mind is more precious then all the bullshit and bells trotted out each release. attachment: winmail.dat
Re: A Good Read!
Maurice, did you see the CAD Junky Zen slim UI presentation ? that is your solution right there. show people what it could be like, give them the option, doesn't have to be compulsory, Maya has that one thing going, that you can completely reshape the interface, every palette, role out menu, viewport. this would not be an expensive endeavor. and would give you a lot of good press. like it did for modo. http://cadjunkie.com/zen On 1 April 2014 20:39, Maurice Patel maurice.pa...@autodesk.com wrote: That article was a very interesting read. IMO (and I stress that is my opinion only): the one big challenge in the entertainment industry is the constant need to be creative which means that as soon as you have perfected your formula 1 race car, someone now wants it to fly to the moon, or to dive into the Marianas trench or do the Paris-Dakar or do something else it the designers never imagined doing in the first place - whereas in racing, any given track is a pretty fixed entity and the skill is indeed about optimization. This is also where ME differs from many other production processes such as manufacturing. While it is feasible these days to program robots to build cars it is not even remotely possible to do the same thing for VFX. I also agree that usability is THE big barrier in 3D. My wife is a jewellery designer and metalsmith who just started her first foray into Rhino and is not enjoying it (in her craft it is the industry standard). I have not had to replace any monitors yet but I soon might be :). We often discuss this problem here. The Mudbox team went all out to focus on usability but there is this unfortunate damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't problem in our industry. Everyone wants more in the product and they are all doing different things, have different pipelines, different ways of working before you know it you have several ways of doing the same thing. And deep down people want more features - it is the only thing they really want to pay for. While everyone will argue that stability and usability are important they don't want to pay for it (and these things are complex and costly to solve). 3ds Max 2015 focused heavily on these aspects - making five clicks two, cleaning up key problem areas of UI such as the scene navigator and we took a beating for it. And we know we have to do this for Maya too. The usability 'issue' is a very, very real one for all 3D applications and one that I don't think anyone has figured out a perfect solution for yet. The curve the author describes is pretty accurate. The problem is that you cannot easily keep things at that optimal point. maurice Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2014 2:25 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: A Good Read! Here is a better race related analogy You are a race car driver, you've spent a career diligently homing your skills and natural talent, you know instinctively how to calculate angles, torque, speed, drifting, terrain, weather, pressure you can read other drivers movements and anticipate their decisions. When you go down into the pit, you don't get out of the car to see what is wrong, to remove the wheels or refuel, these are not your main priority, you just want to get back out there. There is a dedicated team there that take care of these thing, that is their job to make sure you and your machine can function as one and perform at your best. It's about enabling an individual's, and giving them peace of mind. Imagine you are that same race car driver, only instead of focusing on the important things (toque angles speed overtaking) half your brain is taken up by will it crash will it crash?, will it crash?, should i head down to the pit? are the wheels overheating?, what is making that sound? will it crash, WILL IT CRASH? If you can't trust your car to perform, how can you trust yourself. Now i know that we live in an imperfect world, and that in this industry artists are often obliged to get down on all fours and look under the hood. However this should not be viewed as a fatality, but an incentive, to build the most reliable and program with the most fluid interface that allows your users to reach that special place that 1:1 ratio where there is no more keyboard or stylus there's just you and the data, and you doing what you where made to do, unimpeded free. This quality this lucidity, to my mind is more precious then all the bullshit and bells trotted out each release.
Re: A Good Read!
Hi Maurice I have to say I did get up and running in Mudbox pretty quick and was able to fix some textures on a character pretty quick after a few hours driving it for the first time. On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 3:55 PM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Maurice, did you see the CAD Junky Zen slim UI presentation ? that is your solution right there. show people what it could be like, give them the option, doesn't have to be compulsory, Maya has that one thing going, that you can completely reshape the interface, every palette, role out menu, viewport. this would not be an expensive endeavor. and would give you a lot of good press. like it did for modo. http://cadjunkie.com/zen On 1 April 2014 20:39, Maurice Patel maurice.pa...@autodesk.com wrote: That article was a very interesting read. IMO (and I stress that is my opinion only): the one big challenge in the entertainment industry is the constant need to be creative which means that as soon as you have perfected your formula 1 race car, someone now wants it to fly to the moon, or to dive into the Marianas trench or do the Paris-Dakar or do something else it the designers never imagined doing in the first place - whereas in racing, any given track is a pretty fixed entity and the skill is indeed about optimization. This is also where ME differs from many other production processes such as manufacturing. While it is feasible these days to program robots to build cars it is not even remotely possible to do the same thing for VFX. I also agree that usability is THE big barrier in 3D. My wife is a jewellery designer and metalsmith who just started her first foray into Rhino and is not enjoying it (in her craft it is the industry standard). I have not had to replace any monitors yet but I soon might be :). We often discuss this problem here. The Mudbox team went all out to focus on usability but there is this unfortunate damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't problem in our industry. Everyone wants more in the product and they are all doing different things, have different pipelines, different ways of working before you know it you have several ways of doing the same thing. And deep down people want more features - it is the only thing they really want to pay for. While everyone will argue that stability and usability are important they don't want to pay for it (and these things are complex and costly to solve). 3ds Max 2015 focused heavily on these aspects - making five clicks two, cleaning up key problem areas of UI such as the scene navigator and we took a beating for it. And we know we have to do this for Maya too. The usability 'issue' is a very, very real one for all 3D applications and one that I don't think anyone has figured out a perfect solution for yet. The curve the author describes is pretty accurate. The problem is that you cannot easily keep things at that optimal point. maurice Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2014 2:25 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: A Good Read! Here is a better race related analogy You are a race car driver, you've spent a career diligently homing your skills and natural talent, you know instinctively how to calculate angles, torque, speed, drifting, terrain, weather, pressure you can read other drivers movements and anticipate their decisions. When you go down into the pit, you don't get out of the car to see what is wrong, to remove the wheels or refuel, these are not your main priority, you just want to get back out there. There is a dedicated team there that take care of these thing, that is their job to make sure you and your machine can function as one and perform at your best. It's about enabling an individual's, and giving them peace of mind. Imagine you are that same race car driver, only instead of focusing on the important things (toque angles speed overtaking) half your brain is taken up by will it crash will it crash?, will it crash?, should i head down to the pit? are the wheels overheating?, what is making that sound? will it crash, WILL IT CRASH? If you can't trust your car to perform, how can you trust yourself. Now i know that we live in an imperfect world, and that in this industry artists are often obliged to get down on all fours and look under the hood. However this should not be viewed as a fatality, but an incentive, to build the most reliable and program with the most fluid interface that allows your users to reach that special place that 1:1 ratio where there is no more keyboard or stylus there's just you and the data, and you doing what you where made to do, unimpeded free. This quality this lucidity, to my mind is more precious then all the bullshit and bells trotted out each release
Re: A Good Read!
Is that AD internal assumptions or have you ever approached your customers with the idea of a bug/usability fix upgrade? Honestly? Andy On Apr 01, 2014, at 21:39, Maurice Patel maurice.pa...@autodesk.com wrote: While everyone will argue that stability and usability are important they don't want to pay for it
Re: A Good Read!
They did it for SI 2013, and apparently to some extent for max this year, and people kicked up shit cause those releases where feature light, and they where quite right to do so. The thing is Fixing bugs and workflow are things that should really be addressed incrementally, not just left to build up over time, and clients are entitled to a functioning product experience, it should,'t even be flaunted as a feature, you don't plan your budget around whether you will have the money this year to fix bugs, you just fix the bugs, it's not something that you should have to weight for pros and cons. Do you see modo, zBrush, Houdini, featuring Bug fixes among there new features? On 1 April 2014 21:14, Andy Goehler lists.andy.goeh...@gmail.com wrote: Is that AD internal assumptions or have you ever approached your customers with the idea of a bug/usability fix upgrade? Honestly? Andy On Apr 01, 2014, at 21:39, Maurice Patel maurice.pa...@autodesk.com wrote: While everyone will argue that stability and usability are important they don't want to pay for it
Re: A Good Read!
Hey Seb and Andy, am fairly certain that Maurice here in this instance is not representing Autodesk and the really large IMO he started with means quite clearly 'in my opinion' :) I get what you are saying, but had enough AD bashing for now, 'fish in a barrel'... this thread was just getting interesting. I just wanted to add (to the thread) that there has to be a clear difference between a beginners interpretation of 'worlflow' and ease of use and an experts with a muscle memory developed over time. I agree yes Softimage is/was easy to pick up in specific areas but what was important for me or a 'eureka' moment is when you can do 'stuff' without thinking about which key is pressed or where the button is on a menu or what it is called. flow. timelessness. in the moment. this is what an artist feels when they are painting, or I did when I used to, Softimage3D allowed me to experience that and so did XSI and is what am looking for next. :) On 1 April 2014 21:26, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: They did it for SI 2013, and apparently to some extent for max this year, and people kicked up shit cause those releases where feature light, and they where quite right to do so. The thing is Fixing bugs and workflow are things that should really be addressed incrementally, not just left to build up over time, and clients are entitled to a functioning product experience, it should,'t even be flaunted as a feature, you don't plan your budget around whether you will have the money this year to fix bugs, you just fix the bugs, it's not something that you should have to weight for pros and cons. Do you see modo, zBrush, Houdini, featuring Bug fixes among there new features? On 1 April 2014 21:14, Andy Goehler lists.andy.goeh...@gmail.com wrote: Is that AD internal assumptions or have you ever approached your customers with the idea of a bug/usability fix upgrade? Honestly? Andy On Apr 01, 2014, at 21:39, Maurice Patel maurice.pa...@autodesk.com wrote: While everyone will argue that stability and usability are important they don't want to pay for it
Re: A Good Read!
Hey Marcel, Sebastien and Rob, it was sincere question, I didn’t intend to offend. I guess it comes down to customer relation and communication, both of which have been talk about enough already. That sentence I replied to just triggered a button. Sorry, Andy On Apr 01, 2014, at 22:51, Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com wrote: Hey Seb and Andy, am fairly certain that Maurice here in this instance is not representing Autodesk and the really large IMO he started with means quite clearly 'in my opinion' :) I get what you are saying, but had enough AD bashing for now, 'fish in a barrel'... this thread was just getting interesting.
Re: A Good Read!
Sorry for lashing out of control. On 1 April 2014 21:51, Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com wrote: Hey Seb and Andy, am fairly certain that Maurice here in this instance is not representing Autodesk and the really large IMO he started with means quite clearly 'in my opinion' :) I get what you are saying, but had enough AD bashing for now, 'fish in a barrel'... this thread was just getting interesting. I just wanted to add (to the thread) that there has to be a clear difference between a beginners interpretation of 'worlflow' and ease of use and an experts with a muscle memory developed over time. I agree yes Softimage is/was easy to pick up in specific areas but what was important for me or a 'eureka' moment is when you can do 'stuff' without thinking about which key is pressed or where the button is on a menu or what it is called. flow. timelessness. in the moment. this is what an artist feels when they are painting, or I did when I used to, Softimage3D allowed me to experience that and so did XSI and is what am looking for next. :) On 1 April 2014 21:26, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: They did it for SI 2013, and apparently to some extent for max this year, and people kicked up shit cause those releases where feature light, and they where quite right to do so. The thing is Fixing bugs and workflow are things that should really be addressed incrementally, not just left to build up over time, and clients are entitled to a functioning product experience, it should,'t even be flaunted as a feature, you don't plan your budget around whether you will have the money this year to fix bugs, you just fix the bugs, it's not something that you should have to weight for pros and cons. Do you see modo, zBrush, Houdini, featuring Bug fixes among there new features? On 1 April 2014 21:14, Andy Goehler lists.andy.goeh...@gmail.com wrote: Is that AD internal assumptions or have you ever approached your customers with the idea of a bug/usability fix upgrade? Honestly? Andy On Apr 01, 2014, at 21:39, Maurice Patel maurice.pa...@autodesk.com wrote: While everyone will argue that stability and usability are important they don't want to pay for it
RE: A Good Read!
No I had not, thanks for sharing Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2014 3:56 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: A Good Read! Maurice, did you see the CAD Junky Zen slim UI presentation ? that is your solution right there. show people what it could be like, give them the option, doesn't have to be compulsory, Maya has that one thing going, that you can completely reshape the interface, every palette, role out menu, viewport. this would not be an expensive endeavor. and would give you a lot of good press. like it did for modo. http://cadjunkie.com/zen On 1 April 2014 20:39, Maurice Patel maurice.pa...@autodesk.commailto:maurice.pa...@autodesk.com wrote: That article was a very interesting read. IMO (and I stress that is my opinion only): the one big challenge in the entertainment industry is the constant need to be creative which means that as soon as you have perfected your formula 1 race car, someone now wants it to fly to the moon, or to dive into the Marianas trench or do the Paris-Dakar or do something else it the designers never imagined doing in the first place - whereas in racing, any given track is a pretty fixed entity and the skill is indeed about optimization. This is also where ME differs from many other production processes such as manufacturing. While it is feasible these days to program robots to build cars it is not even remotely possible to do the same thing for VFX. I also agree that usability is THE big barrier in 3D. My wife is a jewellery designer and metalsmith who just started her first foray into Rhino and is not enjoying it (in her craft it is the industry standard). I have not had to replace any monitors yet but I soon might be :). We often discuss this problem here. The Mudbox team went all out to focus on usability but there is this unfortunate damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't problem in our industry. Everyone wants more in the product and they are all doing different things, have different pipelines, different ways of working before you know it you have several ways of doing the same thing. And deep down people want more features - it is the only thing they really want to pay for. While everyone will argue that stability and usability are important they don't want to pay for it (and these things are complex and costly to solve). 3ds Max 2015 focused heavily on these aspects - making five clicks two, cleaning up key problem areas of UI such as the scene navigator and we took a beating for it. And we know we have to do this for Maya too. The usability 'issue' is a very, very real one for all 3D applications and one that I don't think anyone has figured out a perfect solution for yet. The curve the author describes is pretty accurate. The problem is that you cannot easily keep things at that optimal point. maurice Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134tel:514%20954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2014 2:25 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: A Good Read! Here is a better race related analogy You are a race car driver, you've spent a career diligently homing your skills and natural talent, you know instinctively how to calculate angles, torque, speed, drifting, terrain, weather, pressure you can read other drivers movements and anticipate their decisions. When you go down into the pit, you don't get out of the car to see what is wrong, to remove the wheels or refuel, these are not your main priority, you just want to get back out there. There is a dedicated team there that take care of these thing, that is their job to make sure you and your machine can function as one and perform at your best. It's about enabling an individual's, and giving them peace of mind. Imagine you are that same race car driver, only instead of focusing on the important things (toque angles speed overtaking) half your brain is taken up by will it crash will it crash?, will it crash?, should i head down to the pit? are the wheels overheating?, what is making that sound? will it crash, WILL IT CRASH? If you can't trust your car to perform, how can you trust yourself. Now i know that we live in an imperfect world, and that in this industry artists are often obliged to get down on all fours and look under the hood. However this should not be viewed as a fatality, but an incentive, to build the most reliable and program with the most fluid interface that allows your users to reach that special place that 1:1 ratio where there is no more keyboard or stylus there's just you and the data, and you
Re: A Good Read!
wow I've never touched modo but that modo zen thing looks amazing. that mixed with non-linear weighting/rigging from XSI would be awesome in any program On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 2:13 PM, Maurice Patel maurice.pa...@autodesk.comwrote: No I had not, thanks for sharing Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2014 3:56 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: A Good Read! Maurice, did you see the CAD Junky Zen slim UI presentation ? that is your solution right there. show people what it could be like, give them the option, doesn't have to be compulsory, Maya has that one thing going, that you can completely reshape the interface, every palette, role out menu, viewport. this would not be an expensive endeavor. and would give you a lot of good press. like it did for modo. http://cadjunkie.com/zen On 1 April 2014 20:39, Maurice Patel maurice.pa...@autodesk.commailto: maurice.pa...@autodesk.com wrote: That article was a very interesting read. IMO (and I stress that is my opinion only): the one big challenge in the entertainment industry is the constant need to be creative which means that as soon as you have perfected your formula 1 race car, someone now wants it to fly to the moon, or to dive into the Marianas trench or do the Paris-Dakar or do something else it the designers never imagined doing in the first place - whereas in racing, any given track is a pretty fixed entity and the skill is indeed about optimization. This is also where ME differs from many other production processes such as manufacturing. While it is feasible these days to program robots to build cars it is not even remotely possible to do the same thing for VFX. I also agree that usability is THE big barrier in 3D. My wife is a jewellery designer and metalsmith who just started her first foray into Rhino and is not enjoying it (in her craft it is the industry standard). I have not had to replace any monitors yet but I soon might be :). We often discuss this problem here. The Mudbox team went all out to focus on usability but there is this unfortunate damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't problem in our industry. Everyone wants more in the product and they are all doing different things, have different pipelines, different ways of working before you know it you have several ways of doing the same thing. And deep down people want more features - it is the only thing they really want to pay for. While everyone will argue that stability and usability are important they don't want to pay for it (and these things are complex and costly to solve). 3ds Max 2015 focused heavily on these aspects - making five clicks two, cleaning up key problem areas of UI such as the scene navigator and we took a beating for it. And we know we have to do this for Maya too. The usability 'issue' is a very, very real one for all 3D applications and one that I don't think anyone has figured out a perfect solution for yet. The curve the author describes is pretty accurate. The problem is that you cannot easily keep things at that optimal point. maurice Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134tel:514%20954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2014 2:25 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: A Good Read! Here is a better race related analogy You are a race car driver, you've spent a career diligently homing your skills and natural talent, you know instinctively how to calculate angles, torque, speed, drifting, terrain, weather, pressure you can read other drivers movements and anticipate their decisions. When you go down into the pit, you don't get out of the car to see what is wrong, to remove the wheels or refuel, these are not your main priority, you just want to get back out there. There is a dedicated team there that take care of these thing, that is their job to make sure you and your machine can function as one and perform at your best. It's about enabling an individual's, and giving them peace of mind. Imagine you are that same race car driver, only instead of focusing on the important things (toque angles speed overtaking) half your brain is taken up by will it crash will it crash?, will it crash?, should i head down to the pit? are the wheels overheating?, what is making that sound? will it crash, WILL IT CRASH? If you can't trust your car to perform, how can you trust yourself. Now i know that we live in an imperfect world, and that in this industry artists are often obliged to get down on all fours and look under the hood. However this should
Re: A Good Read!
Modo's rigging capabilities are fairly underrated, IMO. It's not yet at the level of Soft or Maya, but it's pretty capable and I'm hopeful it'll get better. I'm in the process of porting over to Modo some ICE nodes that I've used quite a bit as Assemblies (Modo's version of an ICE Compound), and I'm happy about having them back. Mostly math-related. Modo's schematic environment will let you do the equivalent to ICE Kinematics, and it's particle system is node-based too, but there's not way yet to access mesh data, so don't expect to go as crazy as you can with ICE. Still, I've already delivered a few rigs in Modo over to clients, and I'm happy about them. Looks like Modo + Houdini will keep me cozy and warm (and I do need to start looking into Blender more seriously). Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Apr 1, 2014, at 10:49 PM, Eugene Flormata eug...@flormata.com wrote: wow I've never touched modo but that modo zen thing looks amazing. that mixed with non-linear weighting/rigging from XSI would be awesome in any program On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 2:13 PM, Maurice Patel maurice.pa...@autodesk.com wrote: No I had not, thanks for sharing Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2014 3:56 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: A Good Read! Maurice, did you see the CAD Junky Zen slim UI presentation ? that is your solution right there. show people what it could be like, give them the option, doesn't have to be compulsory, Maya has that one thing going, that you can completely reshape the interface, every palette, role out menu, viewport. this would not be an expensive endeavor. and would give you a lot of good press. like it did for modo. http://cadjunkie.com/zen On 1 April 2014 20:39, Maurice Patel maurice.pa...@autodesk.commailto:maurice.pa...@autodesk.com wrote: That article was a very interesting read. IMO (and I stress that is my opinion only): the one big challenge in the entertainment industry is the constant need to be creative which means that as soon as you have perfected your formula 1 race car, someone now wants it to fly to the moon, or to dive into the Marianas trench or do the Paris-Dakar or do something else it the designers never imagined doing in the first place - whereas in racing, any given track is a pretty fixed entity and the skill is indeed about optimization. This is also where ME differs from many other production processes such as manufacturing. While it is feasible these days to program robots to build cars it is not even remotely possible to do the same thing for VFX. I also agree that usability is THE big barrier in 3D. My wife is a jewellery designer and metalsmith who just started her first foray into Rhino and is not enjoying it (in her craft it is the industry standard). I have not had to replace any monitors yet but I soon might be :). We often discuss this problem here. The Mudbox team went all out to focus on usability but there is this unfortunate damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't problem in our industry. Everyone wants more in the product and they are all doing different things, have different pipelines, different ways of working before you know it you have several ways of doing the same thing. And deep down people want more features - it is the only thing they really want to pay for. While everyone will argue that stability and usability are important they don't want to pay for it (and these things are complex and costly to solve). 3ds Max 2015 focused heavily on these aspects - making five clicks two, cleaning up key problem areas of UI such as the scene navigator and we took a beating for it. And we know we have to do this for Maya too. The usability 'issue' is a very, very real one for all 3D applications and one that I don't think anyone has figured out a perfect solution for yet. The curve the author describes is pretty accurate. The problem is that you cannot easily keep things at that optimal point. maurice Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134tel:514%20954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2014 2:25 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: A Good Read! Here is a better race related analogy You are a race car driver, you've spent a career diligently homing your skills and natural talent, you know instinctively how to calculate angles, torque, speed, drifting, terrain, weather, pressure you can read other drivers movements and anticipate their decisions. When you go down into the pit
Re: A Good Read!
This is good too: http://barryzundel.blogspot.de/2013/10/workflow-workflow-workflow-its-all.html On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 6:47 PM, Saeed Kalhor ndman...@gmail.com wrote: *When in a production environment, I don't care how the tool works under the hood, I just want to get into the driver's seat, strap in, and hit the gas*. *Barry Zundel* This is what Autodesk doesn't want us to do! Read the full article here: http://barryzundel.blogspot.de/2012/07/tool-productivity-curve.html
