date:20130327


The GTX Titan is not a gimmick but uses the successor to the chip series
used in the GTX 680, e.g. the GT(X) 6xx series uses the GK104, while
the GTX Titan uses the GK110. You can find the GK110 in the Tesla K20, too.

You could describe the GTX690 as a gimmick, as it uses two GK104 on one card
to maximize performance at the cost of higher powerconsumption, noise and heat.

The performance gain between a GTX680 and a GTX Titan is roughly 35%
and can be felt nicely when using it with higher screenresolutions like
1920x1200 or 2560x1440 and higher antialiasing in games.

That´s where the 6GB VRAM of the GTX Titan come in handy, too.

Cheers,

tim





On 27.03.2013 05:24, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:

Benchmarking is more driver tuning than it's videocard performance, and if
you want to look at number crunching you should look at the most recent
gens.

The 680 has brought nVIDIA back up top for number crunching (forgetting the
silver editions or gimmicks like the titan), and close enough to bang for
buck best, but AMD's response to that still has to come.

Ironically, though, the 6xx gen is reported as a crippled, bad performer in
DCC apps, although I can't say I noticed it myself. It sure as hell works
admirably well in mudbox, mari, cuda work, and I've had no issues in maya
or soft. I don't really benchmrak or obsess over numbers much though.

When this will obsolesce, I will considering AMD again, probably in a
couple years.

For GPU rendering though, well, that's something you CAN bench reliably
with the engine, and AMD might still win the FLOP per dollar run there, so
it's not to be discounted.

Would be good to know what the redshift guys have to say about it
themselves though if they can spare the thought and can actually disclose.

On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Mirko Jankovic
mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote:


well no idea about pro cards.. really never got financial justification to
get one, quadro 4000 in old company didn;t really felt anything much better
than gaming cards so...
but in gaming segment..
opengl scores in sinebench for example:
gtx 580: ~55
7970: ~90

to start with
not to mention annoying issue with high segment rotating cube in viewport
in SI.
7970 smooth at ~170 fps
with gtx580 bfore that.. to point out that the rest of comp is identical
only switched card... for the first 30-50sec frame rate was stuck at
something like 17 fps... and after that it kinda jump to ~70-80fps...

in any case with gaming cards ati vs nvidia there is no doubt. and if you
are not using CUDA much then no need to even thing which way to go.
Now redshift is game changer heheh but I'm still hoping that OpenCL will
be supported and I'm looking forward to test it out with two of 7970 in
crossfire :)

btw I'm not much into programming waters but is it really
OpenCL programming  that as I understood should work on ALL cards, is that
much more complex than for CUDA which is limited to nvidia only? Wouldn't
it be more logical to go with solution that is covering a lot more market
than something limited to one manufacturer?


On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Arvid Björn arvidbj...@gmail.comwrote:



My beef with ATI last time I tried FirePro was that it had a hard time
locking into 25fps playback in some apps, as if the refresh rate was locked
to 30/60. Realtime playback in Softimage would stutter annoyingly IIRC.
Plus it seemed to draw text slightly differently in some apps.

Nvidia just feels.. comfy.



On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 5:21 AM, Raffaele Fragapane 
raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:


These days if you hit the right combination of drivers and planet
alignment they are OK.

Performance wise they have been ahead of nVIDIA for a while in number
crunching, the main problem is the drivers are still a coin toss chance,
and that OCL isn't anywhere as popular as CUDA.

With win7 or 8 and recent versions of Soft/Maya they can do well.

nVIDIA didn't help with the crippling of the 6xx for professional use,
and pissing off Linus. They are still ahead by a slight margin, for now,
but I wouldn't discount AMD wholesale anymore.

If the next generation is as disappointing as Kepler is, and AMD gets
both Linux support AND decent (and properly OSS) drivers out, I'm moving
time come for the next upgrade. For now I recently bought a 680 because it
was kind of mandatory to not go insane with Mari and Mudbox, and because I
like CUDA and I toy with it at home.


On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 9:58 PM, Dan Yargici danyarg...@gmail.comwrote:


Ati was tested over and over and showing a lot better viewport results
in Softimage than nvidia... 

Really?  I don't remember anyone ever suggesting ATI was anything other
than shit!

DAN

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

2013-03-27 Thread Mirko Jankovic

On the other hand Titan is more expensive than 2 gtx680 if I'm not
mistaken... and i bet that with two 680 in SLI, when multi GPU is supported
you will have better performance than with 1 titan right?


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 8:55 AM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:

 The GTX Titan is not a gimmick but uses the successor to the chip series
 used in the GTX 680, e.g. the GT(X) 6xx series uses the GK104, while
 the GTX Titan uses the GK110. You can find the GK110 in the Tesla K20, too.

 You could describe the GTX690 as a gimmick, as it uses two GK104 on one
 card
 to maximize performance at the cost of higher powerconsumption, noise and
 heat.

 The performance gain between a GTX680 and a GTX Titan is roughly 35%
 and can be felt nicely when using it with higher screenresolutions like
 1920x1200 or 2560x1440 and higher antialiasing in games.

 That´s where the 6GB VRAM of the GTX Titan come in handy, too.

 Cheers,

 tim






 On 27.03.2013 05:24, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:

 Benchmarking is more driver tuning than it's videocard performance, and if
 you want to look at number crunching you should look at the most recent
 gens.

 The 680 has brought nVIDIA back up top for number crunching (forgetting
 the
 silver editions or gimmicks like the titan), and close enough to bang for
 buck best, but AMD's response to that still has to come.

 Ironically, though, the 6xx gen is reported as a crippled, bad performer
 in
 DCC apps, although I can't say I noticed it myself. It sure as hell works
 admirably well in mudbox, mari, cuda work, and I've had no issues in maya
 or soft. I don't really benchmrak or obsess over numbers much though.

 When this will obsolesce, I will considering AMD again, probably in a
 couple years.

 For GPU rendering though, well, that's something you CAN bench reliably
 with the engine, and AMD might still win the FLOP per dollar run there, so
 it's not to be discounted.

 Would be good to know what the redshift guys have to say about it
 themselves though if they can spare the thought and can actually disclose.

 On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Mirko Jankovic
 mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com**wrote:

  well no idea about pro cards.. really never got financial justification
 to
 get one, quadro 4000 in old company didn;t really felt anything much
 better
 than gaming cards so...
 but in gaming segment..
 opengl scores in sinebench for example:
 gtx 580: ~55
 7970: ~90

 to start with
 not to mention annoying issue with high segment rotating cube in viewport
 in SI.
 7970 smooth at ~170 fps
 with gtx580 bfore that.. to point out that the rest of comp is identical
 only switched card... for the first 30-50sec frame rate was stuck at
 something like 17 fps... and after that it kinda jump to ~70-80fps...

 in any case with gaming cards ati vs nvidia there is no doubt. and if you
 are not using CUDA much then no need to even thing which way to go.
 Now redshift is game changer heheh but I'm still hoping that OpenCL will
 be supported and I'm looking forward to test it out with two of 7970 in
 crossfire :)

 btw I'm not much into programming waters but is it really
 OpenCL programming  that as I understood should work on ALL cards, is
 that
 much more complex than for CUDA which is limited to nvidia only? Wouldn't
 it be more logical to go with solution that is covering a lot more market
 than something limited to one manufacturer?


 On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Arvid Björn arvidbj...@gmail.com
 wrote:


 My beef with ATI last time I tried FirePro was that it had a hard time
 locking into 25fps playback in some apps, as if the refresh rate was
 locked
 to 30/60. Realtime playback in Softimage would stutter annoyingly IIRC.
 Plus it seemed to draw text slightly differently in some apps.

 Nvidia just feels.. comfy.



 On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 5:21 AM, Raffaele Fragapane 
 raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:

  These days if you hit the right combination of drivers and planet
 alignment they are OK.

 Performance wise they have been ahead of nVIDIA for a while in number
 crunching, the main problem is the drivers are still a coin toss
 chance,
 and that OCL isn't anywhere as popular as CUDA.

 With win7 or 8 and recent versions of Soft/Maya they can do well.

 nVIDIA didn't help with the crippling of the 6xx for professional use,
 and pissing off Linus. They are still ahead by a slight margin, for
 now,
 but I wouldn't discount AMD wholesale anymore.

 If the next generation is as disappointing as Kepler is, and AMD gets
 both Linux support AND decent (and properly OSS) drivers out, I'm
 moving
 time come for the next upgrade. For now I recently bought a 680
 because it
 was kind of mandatory to not go insane with Mari and Mudbox, and
 because I
 like CUDA and I toy with it at home.


 On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 9:58 PM, Dan Yargici danyarg...@gmail.com
 wrote:

  Ati was tested over and over and showing a lot better viewport
 results
 in Softimage than nvidia... 

 Really?  I don't

Re: Softimage 2014

2013-03-27 Thread Eugen Sares


Matt,
since I see these issues you refer to as a potentially dangerous 
roadblock for the future of Softimage, too, I'd say let's continue 
hammer the devs with this...

Mr. Chia, are you listening? This is fundamental.
The cluster issues CAN be fixed, it has been done for ICE, and can be 
done for the SDK, too.
The operator stack issues... I don't know... I guess anything is 
possible when the importance of it has been recognized.
Interactive stack update when adding operators down the stack WITHOUT 
deactivating above ops should definitely be possible.


Am 27.03.2013 00:56, schrieb Matt Lind:


The issue with Softimage is the pieces are there, but don't play 
together nice enough.  The tools were adequate in the day years ago.  
Production has evolved quite a bit since then but the Softimage 
modeling core has not.  Many of the tools I need to create for our 
artists cannot be done in the Softimage API due to lack of a developed 
core for things like being able to preserve textures and materials 
(clusters) when updating topology, or being able to control where 
operators appear in the construction history.


Example 1:  Mirror plane.

This is a tool from 3DSMax where the user is given an implicit plane 
and can place it to slice a mesh and have it symmetrized across the 
plane.  Softimage can do this much with the slice operator and 
symmetrize operator.  BUT the 3DSMax version has the ability to 
continually read user input to update the mesh further (eg. Push/pull 
point positions on the original mesh and have the symmetrized half 
update in real time).  Basically it's symmetrical modeling across a 
user defined plane of symmetry.  The user can add as many planes as 
desired to build up organic geometry very, very quickly.  Softimage's 
modeling architecture is limited and cannot read further user input 
because it occurs higher on the construction history than the symmetry 
and slice operators.  There is also no way to force those operators 
higher on the stack as they're bound to the modeling marker.  
Softimage cannot support multiple planes either or else instability 
results.


Example 2: Preserve UVs

I'm always pounded for this one.  It's a tool which allows users to 
manipulate vertices in the 3D viewports while preserving the Texture 
UVs as they're moved.  Eg. When a vertex is translated in one 
direction, the UVs associated with that vertex are pushed in the 
opposite direction to allow the vertex to 'swim' through the 
projection.  Softimage has a 'swim' feature, but only for implicit 
projections which is useless in a games development pipeline as 99% of 
all assets use explicit UV projections.  Again, like with the mirror 
plane, Softimage is limited by how it's construction history is 
organized to read further input from the user once the operator is 
applied.


Example 3:Locking topology

In a games development environment, assets are usually created 
piecemeal.  A character isn't a solid seamless mesh.  The customizable 
features presented to the customer are often built as separate 
objects, but these objects must assemble together to appear like a 
seamless mesh.  This means any work to the vertex placement or sample 
data such as user normal, vertex colors, and texture UVs must be 
locked down along the seams to prevent artists from accidentally 
making modifications to these portions of the mesh.  Softimage 
provides no ability to do this.  The best option on the table is an 
ICE operator placed at the very top of the construction history to 
lock the user specified vertices. However, this falls short in that if 
the user clicks the 'freeze' button, the operator will be frozen and 
removed from construction history.  Again, limitation of the core 
architecture.


Example 4:  Paint.

The paint tools in Softimage are lacking.  They were designed for 
painting weight maps to alter envelope weights and deformers -- that's 
it.  The paint brush for vertex colors is just an extension of that 
and not very robust.  There is no color palette available to load/save 
colors to use in other scenes, or even the current scene beyond the 
palette borrowed from windows.  There is no ability to compare colors 
side-by-side on adjacent polygons without having to dig into user 
preferences to turn off selection highlights, then turn it on again 
when you're done with your comparison.  Very clunky.  There are no 
tools available to modify topology via paint.  The best option 
available is pushing points via the push operator which is, back to 
the beginning, a weight map tool.  We need more than deformations.  We 
need a paint tool that can destructively edit the mesh by adding 
vertices, edges, polygons, and samples.  We need the adjustments for 
the brush to be informative and customizable to accommodate modeler's 
needs.  Falloff options, brush tip shapes, intensity controls other 
than simple hardness applied uniformly, angular attenuation, operator 
assignments, and so on.  A 'push'

Re: Setting Local ICE Tree Moves Object

2013-03-27 Thread peter_b

you are combining concepts here that are not strictly related – such as 
parenting and dynamics, and squeeze and raycast.
sit down  - think straight.

“squeeze” sounds like dynamic deformation, so investigate solid bodies – which 
were made for this.
the objects that are interacted with would be passive bodies.
raycasting is not going to deform anything - it is an approach to test for 
intersections between a ray and a surface.
one could write a collision based on this. good idea - try it out let us know 
how it turns out.
if your question is “did anyone write a dynamic deformation compound based on 
raycast collisions and wants to share it – than just say so? (no I didn’t)

But you’re probably better of to have a look at soft bodies and learn how they 
work, because they have collisions and deformations built in and are documented.
Look for the circus goblin scene in the samples database, which should give you 
a good idea of what can be done, and a good laugh as well.


From: Christopher 
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 2:53 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com 
Subject: Re: Setting Local ICE Tree Moves Object

My intention was to use point clusters, for a 'industrial rubber' type effect 
weight maps are a better solution.  How do I get the child of an object to 
collide with another object so that is 'squeezes' between the parent and the 
static object that sits on it's own ?  Raycasting seems like it may be the 
solution ?

Christopher



  Grahame Fuller
  Tuesday, March 26, 2013 1:06 PM
  You can see the start of the conversation here: 
http://www.si-community.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=15t=3506sid=12d5574a4a1ce9b8e87b5e424648b05dstart=20

  Based on the last post, it seems that what Christopher really wants to do is 
use the distance between two objects to drive the strength of a deformation or 
the blend between two shapes. When rephrased like that, it's just a matter of 
subtracting the two object positions, plugging the result into a Length node, 
and plugging that into whatever is driving the deformation.

  gray

  From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sam Cuttriss
  Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2013 11:49 AM
  To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
  Subject: Re: Setting Local ICE Tree Moves Object


  So You have an ice tree that moves points. When you plug it in; it moves 
points?
  On Mar 26, 2013 7:04 AM, Eric Thivierge 
ethivierge@gmail.commailto:ethivie...@gmail.com wrote:
  Looks like my filter is still working. :)

  
  Eric Thivierge
  http://www.ethivierge.com

  On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 12:42 AM, Raffaele Fragapane 
raffsxsilist@googlemail.commailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:
  I was trying to make sense of the paragraphs, then I saw the e-mail address...
  Welcome back?
  On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 1:10 PM, Christopher 
christopher@thecreativesheep.camailto:christop...@thecreativesheep.ca wrote:
  Hi, I have a scene whereas the local translation is frozen, when I create an 
ICE Tree, which two ICE trees have been supplied to me, the object moves from 
it center, the center stays where it should but the object moves immediately 
after plugging it into the ice tree ?

  One of the ICE trees involves 'multiple matrix by vector' and setting points 
the other is a tad bit more complex, either solution isn't working.

  --===
  I wanted to say hi to everyone :)



  --
  Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and 
let them flee like the dogs they are!



  Sam Cuttriss
  Tuesday, March 26, 2013 11:48 AM
  So You have an ice tree that moves points. When you plug it in; it moves 
points?


  Eric Thivierge
  Tuesday, March 26, 2013 10:03 AM
  Looks like my filter is still working. :)

  
  Eric Thivierge
  http://www.ethivierge.com





  Raffaele Fragapane
  Tuesday, March 26, 2013 12:42 AM
  I was trying to make sense of the paragraphs, then I saw the e-mail address...
  Welcome back?




  -- 
  Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and 
let them flee like the dogs they are!


  Christopher
  Monday, March 25, 2013 10:10 PM
  Hi, I have a scene whereas the local translation is frozen, when I create an 
ICE Tree, which two ICE trees have been supplied to me, the object moves from 
it center, the center stays where it should but the object moves immediately 
after plugging it into the ice tree ?

  One of the ICE trees involves 'multiple matrix by vector' and setting points 
the other is a tad bit more complex, either solution isn't working.  

  --=== 
  I wanted to say hi to everyone :) 
compose-unknown-contact.jpgpostbox-contact.jpgpostbox-contact.jpg

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer


Personally, I´m hesistant to using two or more cards with SLI
because of micro stuttering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_stuttering

If there would be a solution to that, I´d go with two GTX670 w/4GB VRAM,
as they are the same GK104´s with a 915MHz chipspeed instead of a 1006Mhz
chipspeed as in the reference design GTX680. That could save another 15-35%
percent of investment compared to two single chip GTX 680 cards or one GTX 
Titan.

Overclocked versions may use slightly different chip/shader speeds.

In any case, as much VRAM as available, as that always helps in many progamms
like Mudbox, Redshift and isn´t much of an added cost (comparing 2GB vs 4GB).

At a company I worked Mari 1.5.x behaved bitchy unless it was given a Quadro
or forced to ignore the actual card´s game heritage. But that may have been
solved with 2.0...

Cheers,

tim



On 27.03.2013 08:59, Mirko Jankovic wrote:

On the other hand Titan is more expensive than 2 gtx680 if I'm not
mistaken... and i bet that with two 680 in SLI, when multi GPU is supported
you will have better performance than with 1 titan right?


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 8:55 AM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:


The GTX Titan is not a gimmick but uses the successor to the chip series
used in the GTX 680, e.g. the GT(X) 6xx series uses the GK104, while
the GTX Titan uses the GK110. You can find the GK110 in the Tesla K20, too.

You could describe the GTX690 as a gimmick, as it uses two GK104 on one
card
to maximize performance at the cost of higher powerconsumption, noise and
heat.

The performance gain between a GTX680 and a GTX Titan is roughly 35%
and can be felt nicely when using it with higher screenresolutions like
1920x1200 or 2560x1440 and higher antialiasing in games.

That´s where the 6GB VRAM of the GTX Titan come in handy, too.

Cheers,

tim






On 27.03.2013 05:24, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:


Benchmarking is more driver tuning than it's videocard performance, and if
you want to look at number crunching you should look at the most recent
gens.

The 680 has brought nVIDIA back up top for number crunching (forgetting
the
silver editions or gimmicks like the titan), and close enough to bang for
buck best, but AMD's response to that still has to come.

Ironically, though, the 6xx gen is reported as a crippled, bad performer
in
DCC apps, although I can't say I noticed it myself. It sure as hell works
admirably well in mudbox, mari, cuda work, and I've had no issues in maya
or soft. I don't really benchmrak or obsess over numbers much though.

When this will obsolesce, I will considering AMD again, probably in a
couple years.

For GPU rendering though, well, that's something you CAN bench reliably
with the engine, and AMD might still win the FLOP per dollar run there, so
it's not to be discounted.

Would be good to know what the redshift guys have to say about it
themselves though if they can spare the thought and can actually disclose.

On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Mirko Jankovic
mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com**wrote:

  well no idea about pro cards.. really never got financial justification

to
get one, quadro 4000 in old company didn;t really felt anything much
better
than gaming cards so...
but in gaming segment..
opengl scores in sinebench for example:
gtx 580: ~55
7970: ~90

to start with
not to mention annoying issue with high segment rotating cube in viewport
in SI.
7970 smooth at ~170 fps
with gtx580 bfore that.. to point out that the rest of comp is identical
only switched card... for the first 30-50sec frame rate was stuck at
something like 17 fps... and after that it kinda jump to ~70-80fps...

in any case with gaming cards ati vs nvidia there is no doubt. and if you
are not using CUDA much then no need to even thing which way to go.
Now redshift is game changer heheh but I'm still hoping that OpenCL will
be supported and I'm looking forward to test it out with two of 7970 in
crossfire :)

btw I'm not much into programming waters but is it really
OpenCL programming  that as I understood should work on ALL cards, is
that
much more complex than for CUDA which is limited to nvidia only? Wouldn't
it be more logical to go with solution that is covering a lot more market
than something limited to one manufacturer?


On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Arvid Björn arvidbj...@gmail.com

wrote:




My beef with ATI last time I tried FirePro was that it had a hard time
locking into 25fps playback in some apps, as if the refresh rate was
locked
to 30/60. Realtime playback in Softimage would stutter annoyingly IIRC.
Plus it seemed to draw text slightly differently in some apps.

Nvidia just feels.. comfy.



On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 5:21 AM, Raffaele Fragapane 
raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:

  These days if you hit the right combination of drivers and planet

alignment they are OK.

Performance wise they have been ahead of nVIDIA for a while in number
crunching, the main problem is the drivers are still a coin toss
chance,
and that OCL isn't

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

2013-03-27 Thread Ben Davis

That's exactly what I'm eager for, having multiple cards in (linked by sli
or not) participating in the render. Huge bang for buck potential.

Ben

--
Benjamin Clifford Davis

www.moondog-animation.com

office:   +33 9 50 04 76 15
mobile: +33 6 88 48 54 50

6 bis avenue des Iles
74000 Annecy
FRANCE


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 8:59 AM, Mirko Jankovic
mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote:

 On the other hand Titan is more expensive than 2 gtx680 if I'm not
 mistaken... and i bet that with two 680 in SLI, when multi GPU is supported
 you will have better performance than with 1 titan right?


 On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 8:55 AM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:

 The GTX Titan is not a gimmick but uses the successor to the chip series
 used in the GTX 680, e.g. the GT(X) 6xx series uses the GK104, while
 the GTX Titan uses the GK110. You can find the GK110 in the Tesla K20,
 too.

 You could describe the GTX690 as a gimmick, as it uses two GK104 on one
 card
 to maximize performance at the cost of higher powerconsumption, noise and
 heat.

 The performance gain between a GTX680 and a GTX Titan is roughly 35%
 and can be felt nicely when using it with higher screenresolutions like
 1920x1200 or 2560x1440 and higher antialiasing in games.

 That´s where the 6GB VRAM of the GTX Titan come in handy, too.

 Cheers,

 tim






 On 27.03.2013 05:24, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:

 Benchmarking is more driver tuning than it's videocard performance, and
 if
 you want to look at number crunching you should look at the most recent
 gens.

 The 680 has brought nVIDIA back up top for number crunching (forgetting
 the
 silver editions or gimmicks like the titan), and close enough to bang for
 buck best, but AMD's response to that still has to come.

 Ironically, though, the 6xx gen is reported as a crippled, bad performer
 in
 DCC apps, although I can't say I noticed it myself. It sure as hell works
 admirably well in mudbox, mari, cuda work, and I've had no issues in maya
 or soft. I don't really benchmrak or obsess over numbers much though.

 When this will obsolesce, I will considering AMD again, probably in a
 couple years.

 For GPU rendering though, well, that's something you CAN bench reliably
 with the engine, and AMD might still win the FLOP per dollar run there,
 so
 it's not to be discounted.

 Would be good to know what the redshift guys have to say about it
 themselves though if they can spare the thought and can actually
 disclose.

 On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Mirko Jankovic
 mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com**wrote:

  well no idea about pro cards.. really never got financial justification
 to
 get one, quadro 4000 in old company didn;t really felt anything much
 better
 than gaming cards so...
 but in gaming segment..
 opengl scores in sinebench for example:
 gtx 580: ~55
 7970: ~90

 to start with
 not to mention annoying issue with high segment rotating cube in
 viewport
 in SI.
 7970 smooth at ~170 fps
 with gtx580 bfore that.. to point out that the rest of comp is identical
 only switched card... for the first 30-50sec frame rate was stuck at
 something like 17 fps... and after that it kinda jump to ~70-80fps...

 in any case with gaming cards ati vs nvidia there is no doubt. and if
 you
 are not using CUDA much then no need to even thing which way to go.
 Now redshift is game changer heheh but I'm still hoping that OpenCL will
 be supported and I'm looking forward to test it out with two of 7970 in
 crossfire :)

 btw I'm not much into programming waters but is it really
 OpenCL programming  that as I understood should work on ALL cards, is
 that
 much more complex than for CUDA which is limited to nvidia only?
 Wouldn't
 it be more logical to go with solution that is covering a lot more
 market
 than something limited to one manufacturer?


 On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Arvid Björn arvidbj...@gmail.com
 wrote:


 My beef with ATI last time I tried FirePro was that it had a hard time
 locking into 25fps playback in some apps, as if the refresh rate was
 locked
 to 30/60. Realtime playback in Softimage would stutter annoyingly
 IIRC.
 Plus it seemed to draw text slightly differently in some apps.

 Nvidia just feels.. comfy.



 On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 5:21 AM, Raffaele Fragapane 
 raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:

  These days if you hit the right combination of drivers and planet
 alignment they are OK.

 Performance wise they have been ahead of nVIDIA for a while in number
 crunching, the main problem is the drivers are still a coin toss
 chance,
 and that OCL isn't anywhere as popular as CUDA.

 With win7 or 8 and recent versions of Soft/Maya they can do well.

 nVIDIA didn't help with the crippling of the 6xx for professional use,
 and pissing off Linus. They are still ahead by a slight margin, for
 now,
 but I wouldn't discount AMD wholesale anymore.

 If the next generation is as disappointing as Kepler is, and AMD gets
 both Linux support AND decent (and properly OSS) drivers out, I'm
 moving

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

2013-03-27 Thread Ben Davis

I don't think micro stuttering would be a terrible issue as far as GPU
rendering goes, it's mostly a frustrating drawback as far as framerates
being slightly crippled in gameplay, no?

--
Benjamin Clifford Davis

www.moondog-animation.com

office:   +33 9 50 04 76 15
mobile: +33 6 88 48 54 50

6 bis avenue des Iles
74000 Annecy
FRANCE


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 9:26 AM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:

 Personally, I´m hesistant to using two or more cards with SLI
 because of micro stuttering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**
 Micro_stuttering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_stuttering

 If there would be a solution to that, I´d go with two GTX670 w/4GB VRAM,
 as they are the same GK104´s with a 915MHz chipspeed instead of a 1006Mhz
 chipspeed as in the reference design GTX680. That could save another 15-35%
 percent of investment compared to two single chip GTX 680 cards or one GTX
 Titan.

 Overclocked versions may use slightly different chip/shader speeds.

 In any case, as much VRAM as available, as that always helps in many
 progamms
 like Mudbox, Redshift and isn´t much of an added cost (comparing 2GB vs
 4GB).

 At a company I worked Mari 1.5.x behaved bitchy unless it was given a
 Quadro
 or forced to ignore the actual card´s game heritage. But that may have been
 solved with 2.0...

 Cheers,

 tim




 On 27.03.2013 08:59, Mirko Jankovic wrote:

 On the other hand Titan is more expensive than 2 gtx680 if I'm not
 mistaken... and i bet that with two 680 in SLI, when multi GPU is
 supported
 you will have better performance than with 1 titan right?


 On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 8:55 AM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:

  The GTX Titan is not a gimmick but uses the successor to the chip series
 used in the GTX 680, e.g. the GT(X) 6xx series uses the GK104, while
 the GTX Titan uses the GK110. You can find the GK110 in the Tesla K20,
 too.

 You could describe the GTX690 as a gimmick, as it uses two GK104 on one
 card
 to maximize performance at the cost of higher powerconsumption, noise and
 heat.

 The performance gain between a GTX680 and a GTX Titan is roughly 35%
 and can be felt nicely when using it with higher screenresolutions like
 1920x1200 or 2560x1440 and higher antialiasing in games.

 That´s where the 6GB VRAM of the GTX Titan come in handy, too.

 Cheers,

 tim






 On 27.03.2013 05:24, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:

  Benchmarking is more driver tuning than it's videocard performance, and
 if
 you want to look at number crunching you should look at the most recent
 gens.

 The 680 has brought nVIDIA back up top for number crunching (forgetting
 the
 silver editions or gimmicks like the titan), and close enough to bang
 for
 buck best, but AMD's response to that still has to come.

 Ironically, though, the 6xx gen is reported as a crippled, bad performer
 in
 DCC apps, although I can't say I noticed it myself. It sure as hell
 works
 admirably well in mudbox, mari, cuda work, and I've had no issues in
 maya
 or soft. I don't really benchmrak or obsess over numbers much though.

 When this will obsolesce, I will considering AMD again, probably in a
 couple years.

 For GPU rendering though, well, that's something you CAN bench reliably
 with the engine, and AMD might still win the FLOP per dollar run there,
 so
 it's not to be discounted.

 Would be good to know what the redshift guys have to say about it
 themselves though if they can spare the thought and can actually
 disclose.

 On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Mirko Jankovic
 mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote:


   well no idea about pro cards.. really never got financial
 justification

 to
 get one, quadro 4000 in old company didn;t really felt anything much
 better
 than gaming cards so...
 but in gaming segment..
 opengl scores in sinebench for example:
 gtx 580: ~55
 7970: ~90

 to start with
 not to mention annoying issue with high segment rotating cube in
 viewport
 in SI.
 7970 smooth at ~170 fps
 with gtx580 bfore that.. to point out that the rest of comp is
 identical
 only switched card... for the first 30-50sec frame rate was stuck at
 something like 17 fps... and after that it kinda jump to ~70-80fps...

 in any case with gaming cards ati vs nvidia there is no doubt. and if
 you
 are not using CUDA much then no need to even thing which way to go.
 Now redshift is game changer heheh but I'm still hoping that OpenCL
 will
 be supported and I'm looking forward to test it out with two of 7970 in
 crossfire :)

 btw I'm not much into programming waters but is it really
 OpenCL programming  that as I understood should work on ALL cards, is
 that
 much more complex than for CUDA which is limited to nvidia only?
 Wouldn't
 it be more logical to go with solution that is covering a lot more
 market
 than something limited to one manufacturer?


 On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Arvid Björn arvidbj...@gmail.com

 wrote:



  My beef with ATI last time I tried FirePro was that it had a hard time
 locking into 25fps

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer


I don´t know how the setup of two or more cards would be best done
for GPU rendering purposes but I would at least try to enable SLI
to get the best framerate/redraw performance in general applications
and games to better justify the investment.

But maybe, if I don´t have to bother about it and just see the GPU renderer
pick up all the available cards I´d be just as happy with the increased
renderspeed and possibilities this gives.

In general I´m most likely hesistant as I´ve been burnt by things like
mR unified sampling messing up framebuffers (in xsi2012/mR 3.9.x) or not
correctly supporting satellite rendering (in xsi2012/mR 3.9.x) and seing
those flaws eat up the initial benefit I had hoped for to some extend.

Anyone using VRay RT on Maya or mentalray´s iRay here and able to supply info?

Cheers,

tim



On 27.03.2013 09:34, Ben Davis wrote:

I don't think micro stuttering would be a terrible issue as far as GPU
rendering goes, it's mostly a frustrating drawback as far as framerates
being slightly crippled in gameplay, no?

--
Benjamin Clifford Davis

www.moondog-animation.com

office:   +33 9 50 04 76 15
mobile: +33 6 88 48 54 50

6 bis avenue des Iles
74000 Annecy
FRANCE


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 9:26 AM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:


Personally, I´m hesistant to using two or more cards with SLI
because of micro stuttering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**
Micro_stuttering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_stuttering

If there would be a solution to that, I´d go with two GTX670 w/4GB VRAM,
as they are the same GK104´s with a 915MHz chipspeed instead of a 1006Mhz
chipspeed as in the reference design GTX680. That could save another 15-35%
percent of investment compared to two single chip GTX 680 cards or one GTX
Titan.

Overclocked versions may use slightly different chip/shader speeds.

In any case, as much VRAM as available, as that always helps in many
progamms
like Mudbox, Redshift and isn´t much of an added cost (comparing 2GB vs
4GB).

At a company I worked Mari 1.5.x behaved bitchy unless it was given a
Quadro
or forced to ignore the actual card´s game heritage. But that may have been
solved with 2.0...

Cheers,

tim




On 27.03.2013 08:59, Mirko Jankovic wrote:


On the other hand Titan is more expensive than 2 gtx680 if I'm not
mistaken... and i bet that with two 680 in SLI, when multi GPU is
supported
you will have better performance than with 1 titan right?


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 8:55 AM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:

  The GTX Titan is not a gimmick but uses the successor to the chip series

used in the GTX 680, e.g. the GT(X) 6xx series uses the GK104, while
the GTX Titan uses the GK110. You can find the GK110 in the Tesla K20,
too.

You could describe the GTX690 as a gimmick, as it uses two GK104 on one
card
to maximize performance at the cost of higher powerconsumption, noise and
heat.

The performance gain between a GTX680 and a GTX Titan is roughly 35%
and can be felt nicely when using it with higher screenresolutions like
1920x1200 or 2560x1440 and higher antialiasing in games.

That´s where the 6GB VRAM of the GTX Titan come in handy, too.

Cheers,

tim






On 27.03.2013 05:24, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:

  Benchmarking is more driver tuning than it's videocard performance, and

if
you want to look at number crunching you should look at the most recent
gens.

The 680 has brought nVIDIA back up top for number crunching (forgetting
the
silver editions or gimmicks like the titan), and close enough to bang
for
buck best, but AMD's response to that still has to come.

Ironically, though, the 6xx gen is reported as a crippled, bad performer
in
DCC apps, although I can't say I noticed it myself. It sure as hell
works
admirably well in mudbox, mari, cuda work, and I've had no issues in
maya
or soft. I don't really benchmrak or obsess over numbers much though.

When this will obsolesce, I will considering AMD again, probably in a
couple years.

For GPU rendering though, well, that's something you CAN bench reliably
with the engine, and AMD might still win the FLOP per dollar run there,
so
it's not to be discounted.

Would be good to know what the redshift guys have to say about it
themselves though if they can spare the thought and can actually
disclose.

On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Mirko Jankovic
mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote:


   well no idea about pro cards.. really never got financial
justification


to
get one, quadro 4000 in old company didn;t really felt anything much
better
than gaming cards so...
but in gaming segment..
opengl scores in sinebench for example:
gtx 580: ~55
7970: ~90

to start with
not to mention annoying issue with high segment rotating cube in
viewport
in SI.
7970 smooth at ~170 fps
with gtx580 bfore that.. to point out that the rest of comp is
identical
only switched card... for the first 30-50sec frame rate was stuck at
something like 17 fps... and after that it kinda jump to ~70-80fps...

in any case with gaming cards

Re: Face Robot Interface there, but contents of panes missing

2013-03-27 Thread Stephen Blair


Hi Adam

For comparison, here's my security settings for the Internet Zone:
http://screencast.com/t/kxvNub3ax3q6




On 27/03/2013 1:50 AM, Chris Chia wrote:

Hi Adam,
Our Dev has checked and it looks like the code is using the x64 browser 
settings.
Please make sure ActiveX control and Jscript are enabled for your IE.

Note: It might have been the windows update that could have changed some 
security settings on your machine.


Regards,
Chris

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Chris Chia
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 10:27 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Face Robot Interface there, but contents of panes missing

I am pretty sure u have ActiveX controls disabled.
Use your ie to see whether you could see this  [installation 
path]\FaceRobot\Application\views\facestage1_sideview.html


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Chris Chia
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 9:14 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Face Robot Interface there, but contents of panes missing

Could you use NetView to view that page?

On 27 Mar, 2013, at 8:37 AM, Adam Sale 
adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.com wrote:
The question is which settings? Since I don't use IE at all, I have gone back 
and enabled everything I could check, still nothing. I've restarted IE9 64, 
still nothing.
Netview works fine with no FR related content, the plugins work fine, but no FR.

Adam

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 5:11 PM, Chris Chia 
chris.c...@autodesk.commailto:chris.c...@autodesk.com wrote:
I believe that's root cause.
Try configuring the Internet options?


On 27 Mar, 2013, at 8:05 AM, Adam Sale 
adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.com
 wrote:

Hi Chris. The test page runs fine in Chrome and in IE 32 bit, but not in IE64 
bit. I am on IE 9.

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 4:27 PM, Chris Chia 
chris.c...@autodesk.commailto:chris.c...@autodesk.commailto:chris.c...@autodesk.commailto:chris.c...@autodesk.com
 wrote:
Adam,
What do u see when you access this page via NetView;
http://javatester.org/javascript.html
On 27 Mar, 2013, at 7:17 AM, Adam Sale 
adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.com
 wrote:


Active Scripting is enabled btw.. for JS
Stephen.. All of the FR plugins are ok in the plugin manager.
Still nothing FR related is working in 2013 or 14.
On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 2:41 PM, Matt Lind 
ml...@carbinestudios.commailto:ml...@carbinestudios.commailto:ml...@carbinestudios.commailto:ml...@carbinestudios.commailto:ml...@carbinestudios.commailto:ml...@carbinestudios.commailto:ml...@carbinestudios.commailto:ml...@carbinestudios.com
 wrote:
Java and javascript are not the same thing.

Matt
From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com]
 On Behalf Of Adam Sale
Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2013 2:37 PM
To: 
softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Face Robot Interface there, but contents of panes missing

yep, I always enable FR to load it.
And in IE64bit, java applets are already enabled, still nothing.
On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 2:17 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau 
luceri...@gmail.commailto:luceri...@gmail.commailto:luceri...@gmail.commailto:luceri...@gmail.commailto:luceri...@gmail.commailto:luceri...@gmail.commailto:luceri...@gmail.commailto:luceri...@gmail.com
 wrote:
okay so it looks like the web browser control is running, but javascript isn't.
make sure you Enable Face Robot to load the plug-in, btw. you can't
just switch to the layout.
On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Adam Sale 
adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.com
 wrote:

Runonce.bat doesn't do the job

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

2013-03-27 Thread olivier jeannel


There was a subject on Redshift Forum about having two grapphic cards.
It seems to be possible to keep a quadro for dispaly (as it is 
significantly better at displaying), and have a Titan dedicated to 
rendering only (in Redshift you select which card is rendering) as they 
have a huge amount of cores and faster memory.
I think I've red somewhere that Titan has 2600 cores against 256 for the 
Quadro 4000.
After chating with Nicolas the Titan could be around 4 time faster than 
the Quadro4000 ...Which is huge :)


Le 27/03/2013 09:26, Tim Leydecker a écrit :

Personally, I´m hesistant to using two or more cards with SLI
because of micro stuttering: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_stuttering


If there would be a solution to that, I´d go with two GTX670 w/4GB VRAM,
as they are the same GK104´s with a 915MHz chipspeed instead of a 1006Mhz
chipspeed as in the reference design GTX680. That could save another 
15-35%
percent of investment compared to two single chip GTX 680 cards or one 
GTX Titan.


Overclocked versions may use slightly different chip/shader speeds.

In any case, as much VRAM as available, as that always helps in many 
progamms
like Mudbox, Redshift and isn´t much of an added cost (comparing 2GB 
vs 4GB).


At a company I worked Mari 1.5.x behaved bitchy unless it was given a 
Quadro
or forced to ignore the actual card´s game heritage. But that may have 
been

solved with 2.0...

Cheers,

tim



On 27.03.2013 08:59, Mirko Jankovic wrote:

On the other hand Titan is more expensive than 2 gtx680 if I'm not
mistaken... and i bet that with two 680 in SLI, when multi GPU is 
supported

you will have better performance than with 1 titan right?


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 8:55 AM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:

The GTX Titan is not a gimmick but uses the successor to the chip 
series

used in the GTX 680, e.g. the GT(X) 6xx series uses the GK104, while
the GTX Titan uses the GK110. You can find the GK110 in the Tesla 
K20, too.


You could describe the GTX690 as a gimmick, as it uses two GK104 on one
card
to maximize performance at the cost of higher powerconsumption, 
noise and

heat.

The performance gain between a GTX680 and a GTX Titan is roughly 35%
and can be felt nicely when using it with higher screenresolutions like
1920x1200 or 2560x1440 and higher antialiasing in games.

That´s where the 6GB VRAM of the GTX Titan come in handy, too.

Cheers,

tim






On 27.03.2013 05:24, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:

Benchmarking is more driver tuning than it's videocard performance, 
and if
you want to look at number crunching you should look at the most 
recent

gens.

The 680 has brought nVIDIA back up top for number crunching 
(forgetting

the
silver editions or gimmicks like the titan), and close enough to 
bang for

buck best, but AMD's response to that still has to come.

Ironically, though, the 6xx gen is reported as a crippled, bad 
performer

in
DCC apps, although I can't say I noticed it myself. It sure as hell 
works
admirably well in mudbox, mari, cuda work, and I've had no issues 
in maya

or soft. I don't really benchmrak or obsess over numbers much though.

When this will obsolesce, I will considering AMD again, probably in a
couple years.

For GPU rendering though, well, that's something you CAN bench 
reliably
with the engine, and AMD might still win the FLOP per dollar run 
there, so

it's not to be discounted.

Would be good to know what the redshift guys have to say about it
themselves though if they can spare the thought and can actually 
disclose.


On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Mirko Jankovic
mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com**wrote:

  well no idea about pro cards.. really never got financial 
justification

to
get one, quadro 4000 in old company didn;t really felt anything much
better
than gaming cards so...
but in gaming segment..
opengl scores in sinebench for example:
gtx 580: ~55
7970: ~90

to start with
not to mention annoying issue with high segment rotating cube in 
viewport

in SI.
7970 smooth at ~170 fps
with gtx580 bfore that.. to point out that the rest of comp is 
identical

only switched card... for the first 30-50sec frame rate was stuck at
something like 17 fps... and after that it kinda jump to ~70-80fps...

in any case with gaming cards ati vs nvidia there is no doubt. and 
if you

are not using CUDA much then no need to even thing which way to go.
Now redshift is game changer heheh but I'm still hoping that 
OpenCL will
be supported and I'm looking forward to test it out with two of 
7970 in

crossfire :)

btw I'm not much into programming waters but is it really
OpenCL programming  that as I understood should work on ALL cards, is
that
much more complex than for CUDA which is limited to nvidia only? 
Wouldn't
it be more logical to go with solution that is covering a lot more 
market

than something limited to one manufacturer?


On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Arvid Björn arvidbj...@gmail.com

wrote:



My beef with ATI last time I tried FirePro was

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

2013-03-27 Thread Mirko Jankovic

SLI and crossfire dio not affect viewport performance in any of 3d
application.



On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 11:12 AM, olivier jeannel
olivier.jean...@noos.frwrote:

 There was a subject on Redshift Forum about having two grapphic cards.
 It seems to be possible to keep a quadro for dispaly (as it is
 significantly better at displaying), and have a Titan dedicated to
 rendering only (in Redshift you select which card is rendering) as they
 have a huge amount of cores and faster memory.
 I think I've red somewhere that Titan has 2600 cores against 256 for the
 Quadro 4000.
 After chating with Nicolas the Titan could be around 4 time faster than
 the Quadro4000 ...Which is huge :)

 Le 27/03/2013 09:26, Tim Leydecker a écrit :

  Personally, I´m hesistant to using two or more cards with SLI
 because of micro stuttering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**
 Micro_stuttering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_stuttering

 If there would be a solution to that, I´d go with two GTX670 w/4GB VRAM,
 as they are the same GK104´s with a 915MHz chipspeed instead of a 1006Mhz
 chipspeed as in the reference design GTX680. That could save another
 15-35%
 percent of investment compared to two single chip GTX 680 cards or one
 GTX Titan.

 Overclocked versions may use slightly different chip/shader speeds.

 In any case, as much VRAM as available, as that always helps in many
 progamms
 like Mudbox, Redshift and isn´t much of an added cost (comparing 2GB vs
 4GB).

 At a company I worked Mari 1.5.x behaved bitchy unless it was given a
 Quadro
 or forced to ignore the actual card´s game heritage. But that may have
 been
 solved with 2.0...

 Cheers,

 tim



 On 27.03.2013 08:59, Mirko Jankovic wrote:

 On the other hand Titan is more expensive than 2 gtx680 if I'm not
 mistaken... and i bet that with two 680 in SLI, when multi GPU is
 supported
 you will have better performance than with 1 titan right?


 On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 8:55 AM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:

  The GTX Titan is not a gimmick but uses the successor to the chip series
 used in the GTX 680, e.g. the GT(X) 6xx series uses the GK104, while
 the GTX Titan uses the GK110. You can find the GK110 in the Tesla K20,
 too.

 You could describe the GTX690 as a gimmick, as it uses two GK104 on one
 card
 to maximize performance at the cost of higher powerconsumption, noise
 and
 heat.

 The performance gain between a GTX680 and a GTX Titan is roughly 35%
 and can be felt nicely when using it with higher screenresolutions like
 1920x1200 or 2560x1440 and higher antialiasing in games.

 That´s where the 6GB VRAM of the GTX Titan come in handy, too.

 Cheers,

 tim






 On 27.03.2013 05:24, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:

  Benchmarking is more driver tuning than it's videocard performance,
 and if
 you want to look at number crunching you should look at the most recent
 gens.

 The 680 has brought nVIDIA back up top for number crunching (forgetting
 the
 silver editions or gimmicks like the titan), and close enough to bang
 for
 buck best, but AMD's response to that still has to come.

 Ironically, though, the 6xx gen is reported as a crippled, bad
 performer
 in
 DCC apps, although I can't say I noticed it myself. It sure as hell
 works
 admirably well in mudbox, mari, cuda work, and I've had no issues in
 maya
 or soft. I don't really benchmrak or obsess over numbers much though.

 When this will obsolesce, I will considering AMD again, probably in a
 couple years.

 For GPU rendering though, well, that's something you CAN bench reliably
 with the engine, and AMD might still win the FLOP per dollar run
 there, so
 it's not to be discounted.

 Would be good to know what the redshift guys have to say about it
 themselves though if they can spare the thought and can actually
 disclose.

 On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Mirko Jankovic
 mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote:

   well no idea about pro cards.. really never got financial
 justification

 to
 get one, quadro 4000 in old company didn;t really felt anything much
 better
 than gaming cards so...
 but in gaming segment..
 opengl scores in sinebench for example:
 gtx 580: ~55
 7970: ~90

 to start with
 not to mention annoying issue with high segment rotating cube in
 viewport
 in SI.
 7970 smooth at ~170 fps
 with gtx580 bfore that.. to point out that the rest of comp is
 identical
 only switched card... for the first 30-50sec frame rate was stuck at
 something like 17 fps... and after that it kinda jump to ~70-80fps...

 in any case with gaming cards ati vs nvidia there is no doubt. and if
 you
 are not using CUDA much then no need to even thing which way to go.
 Now redshift is game changer heheh but I'm still hoping that OpenCL
 will
 be supported and I'm looking forward to test it out with two of 7970
 in
 crossfire :)

 btw I'm not much into programming waters but is it really
 OpenCL programming  that as I understood should work on ALL cards, is
 that
 much more complex than for CUDA which is

Re: A must see

2013-03-27 Thread ivan tay

Beautiful !



If you're on Vimeo and more specially in the Softimage Ice Video don't
 miss
 https://vimeo.com/60296337
 It's the making of this
 https://vimeo.com/59230893

 Awarded at Annecy, Ice poetry...

Re: Softimage 2014

2013-03-27 Thread Toonafish

N, not again!! I'm still recovering from the pain in my rectum after 
paying a grand for 2013 :-/


- Ronald

ICE to Fusion?

2013-03-27 Thread Paul Griswold

Hey guys -

Is there a way to get all the point positions from ICE over to Eyeon Fusion
as something like nulls?

I've tried exporting PC2 files, but that didn't work.  FBX, dotXSI, etc.,
also didn't give me anything useful.

Thanks,

Paul

Re: Softimage 2014

Why is 2013 painful?
I would say it's better to upgrade to 2014, isn't it?


On 27 Mar, 2013, at 7:44 PM, Toonafish ron...@toonafish.nl wrote:

 N, not again!! I'm still recovering from the pain in my rectum after 
 paying a grand for 2013 :-/
 
 - Ronald
attachment: winmail.dat

Re: Setting Local ICE Tree Moves Object

2013-03-27 Thread Vladimir Jankijevic

I was trying and it happens to me. There is a solution. I think the key is
in Local, not globalmaybe. my try has been working for now and I hope
it works for you too.

here is the mp4 and the icetree with nodes:
http://xsi.jankin.com/dump/creativeTree.jpg
http://xsi.jankin.com/dump/creativeTree_comp.mp4

I can't anymore!
cheers

Re: Softimage 2014

Hi Matt,
It didn't work it to 2014 because there was quite some risk and it didn't work 
it to beta. But i believe it makes it's way to the SP ;)

Chris

On 27 Mar, 2013, at 12:28 AM, Matt Lowery 
ma...@glassworks.co.ukmailto:ma...@glassworks.co.uk wrote:

Yeah but I'm disappointed that the third party render crashing the f-curve 
editor bug isn't in the fixed bug list. Or did I miss it?



On 26/03/2013 16:13, Eric Cosky wrote:
I was impressed by the number of crash fixes. Nice job there.

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Jonah Friedman
Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2013 8:50 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Softimage 2014

I just finished reading through this list of bug fixes.. this isn't a small 
amount of work. I even found my bug on there - SOFT-6417 Inconsistent results 
when rendering Pass with ICE attributes. At least if that's what I think it is, 
that one has bothered me for years.

Also I'm thinking if it's a new team that did this, fixing this many bugs would 
require them to touch a huge amount of the the application.. which with a new 
team, seems like a great way to start.


On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 8:29 AM, Jason S 
jasonsta...@gmail.commailto:jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote:
 =  =
-
 \__/



On 26/03/2013 10:30 AM, Jens Lindgren wrote:
This is interesting... i think.
http://area.autodesk.com/2014unfold/products/softimage.html#future

/Jens




attachment: winmail.dat

Re: Softimage 2014

Lots of typo due to auto complete...

Hi Matt,
It didn't make it to 2014 because there was quite some risk and it didn't make 
it to beta. But i believe it makes it's way to the SP ;)

Chris

Sent from my iPhone

On 27 Mar, 2013, at 8:17 PM, Chris Chia chris.c...@autodesk.com wrote:

 Hi Matt,
 It didn't work it to 2014 because there was quite some risk and it didn't 
 work it to beta. But i believe it makes it's way to the SP ;)
 
 Chris
attachment: winmail.dat

Re: Softimage 2014

2013-03-27 Thread Felix Geremus

S, can somebody enlighten me what's so great about ICE overrides 
(one of our 4 amazing new features)? I just watched the video and all 
that can be done since forever by overriding the values of low level 
nodes instead of exposed compound parameters? Or am I missing something?


Felix

On 27.03.2013 13:20, Chris Chia wrote:

Lots of typo due to auto complete...

Hi Matt,
It didn't make it to 2014 because there was quite some risk and it didn't make 
it to beta. But i believe it makes it's way to the SP ;)

Chris

Sent from my iPhone

On 27 Mar, 2013, at 8:17 PM, Chris Chia chris.c...@autodesk.com wrote:


Hi Matt,
It didn't work it to 2014 because there was quite some risk and it didn't work 
it to beta. But i believe it makes it's way to the SP ;)

Chris

Re: Softimage 2014

2013-03-27 Thread Rob Chapman

yes, I thought that too,  we are allowed to talk about this now right?
the NDA is over?

but a big EG is you could vary the number of particles in different passes.
 personally, for this I have different point clouds per pass but hey, a
feature is a feature...  :)



On 27 March 2013 13:58, Felix Geremus felixgere...@googlemail.com wrote:

 S, can somebody enlighten me what's so great about ICE overrides (one
 of our 4 amazing new features)? I just watched the video and all that can
 be done since forever by overriding the values of low level nodes instead
 of exposed compound parameters? Or am I missing something?

 Felix

Re: Softimage 2014

It makes it so much easier to override parameters without going thru the hard 
way with the custom parameters... And it makes it easy to track what parameters 
have been overridden with the visual aids in the ice tree...


On 27 Mar, 2013, at 9:07 PM, Rob Chapman 
tekano@gmail.commailto:tekano@gmail.com wrote:

yes, I thought that too,  we are allowed to talk about this now right?   the 
NDA is over?

but a big EG is you could vary the number of particles in different passes.  
personally, for this I have different point clouds per pass but hey, a feature 
is a feature...  :)



On 27 March 2013 13:58, Felix Geremus 
felixgere...@googlemail.commailto:felixgere...@googlemail.com wrote:
S, can somebody enlighten me what's so great about ICE overrides (one of 
our 4 amazing new features)? I just watched the video and all that can be done 
since forever by overriding the values of low level nodes instead of exposed 
compound parameters? Or am I missing something?

Felix

attachment: winmail.dat

Re: Softimage 2014

This is very personal but i personally feel that for any ice enthusiasts, the 
enhanced ice crowds, ice overrides and ice syflex and the ability to slow down 
time (bullet time) or shuffle time mapping on ice simulation with the help of 
camera sequencer are plus points to get 2014.


On 27 Mar, 2013, at 9:10 PM, Chris Chia 
chris.c...@autodesk.commailto:chris.c...@autodesk.com wrote:

It makes it so much easier to override parameters without going thru the hard 
way with the custom parameters... And it makes it easy to track what parameters 
have been overridden with the visual aids in the ice tree...


On 27 Mar, 2013, at 9:07 PM, Rob Chapman 
tekano@gmail.commailto:tekano@gmail.com wrote:

yes, I thought that too,  we are allowed to talk about this now right?   the 
NDA is over?

but a big EG is you could vary the number of particles in different passes.  
personally, for this I have different point clouds per pass but hey, a feature 
is a feature...  :)



On 27 March 2013 13:58, Felix Geremus 
felixgere...@googlemail.commailto:felixgere...@googlemail.com wrote:
S, can somebody enlighten me what's so great about ICE overrides (one of 
our 4 amazing new features)? I just watched the video and all that can be done 
since forever by overriding the values of low level nodes instead of exposed 
compound parameters? Or am I missing something?

Felix

attachment: winmail.dat

Re: Softimage 2014

Just imagine the complexity of custom parameters one has to deal when you have 
multiple passes and ice parameters to override...


On 27 Mar, 2013, at 9:25 PM, Felix Geremus felixgere...@googlemail.com 
wrote:

 I was about to say that it can be done without custom parameters, see 
 attached screenshot. But then I discovered that this doesn't work when there 
 are more than one node of the same type in the tree. So yeah, kind of useful 
 I guess...
 
 
 On 27.03.2013 14:10, Chris Chia wrote:
 It makes it so much easier to override parameters without going thru the 
 hard way with the custom parameters... And it makes it easy to track what 
 parameters have been overridden with the visual aids in the ice tree...
 
 
 On 27 Mar, 2013, at 9:07 PM, Rob Chapman 
 tekano@gmail.commailto:tekano@gmail.com wrote:
 
 yes, I thought that too,  we are allowed to talk about this now right?   the 
 NDA is over?
 
 but a big EG is you could vary the number of particles in different passes.  
 personally, for this I have different point clouds per pass but hey, a 
 feature is a feature...  :)
 
 
 
 On 27 March 2013 13:58, Felix Geremus 
 felixgere...@googlemail.commailto:felixgere...@googlemail.com wrote:
 S, can somebody enlighten me what's so great about ICE overrides (one of 
 our 4 amazing new features)? I just watched the video and all that can be 
 done since forever by overriding the values of low level nodes instead of 
 exposed compound parameters? Or am I missing something?
 
 Felix
 
 
 scalar_override.jpg
attachment: winmail.dat

Re: Softimage 2014

2013-03-27 Thread Toonafish

No need for custom parameters, just plugin in a scalar or integer node 
and you're set to override a value



On 3/27/2013 14:10, Chris Chia wrote:

It makes it so much easier to override parameters without going thru the hard 
way with the custom parameters... And it makes it easy to track what parameters 
have been overridden with the visual aids in the ice tree...


On 27 Mar, 2013, at 9:07 PM, Rob Chapman 
tekano@gmail.commailto:tekano@gmail.com wrote:

yes, I thought that too,  we are allowed to talk about this now right?   the 
NDA is over?

but a big EG is you could vary the number of particles in different passes.  
personally, for this I have different point clouds per pass but hey, a feature 
is a feature...  :)



On 27 March 2013 13:58, Felix Geremus 
felixgere...@googlemail.commailto:felixgere...@googlemail.com wrote:
S, can somebody enlighten me what's so great about ICE overrides (one of 
our 4 amazing new features)? I just watched the video and all that can be done 
since forever by overriding the values of low level nodes instead of exposed 
compound parameters? Or am I missing something?

Felix

Re: Setting Local ICE Tree Moves Object

2013-03-27 Thread Christopher

Vladimir Jankijevic - 
That is the exact effect, is there a weight map on your cylinder object,
 any subdivisions ? Or is ICE taking care of most of the 'compression' 
stretch effect ? The static object is not in your scene that it will be 
'squeezed' against or is the PolytonNormal attribute acting on behalf of
 the 'static' object ?



   	   
   	Vladimir Jankijevic  
  Wednesday, March 
27, 2013 8:13 AM
  I was trying and
 it happens to me. There is a solution. I think the key is in Local, not
 globalmaybe. my try has been working for now and I hope it works 
for you too.here is the mp4 and the icetree
 with nodes:
http://xsi.jankin.com/dump/creativeTree.jpghttp://xsi.jankin.com/dump/creativeTree_comp.mp4
I can't anymore!cheers

  
   	   
   	pete...@skynet.be  
  Wednesday, March 
27, 2013 4:16 AM
  



you are combining concepts here that are not strictly related  
such as 
parenting and dynamics, and squeeze and raycast.
sit down - think straight.

squeeze sounds like dynamic deformation, so investigate solid 
bodies  
which were made for this.
the objects that are interacted with would be passive bodies.
raycasting is not going to deform anything - it is an approach to 
test for 
intersections between a ray and a surface.
one could write a collision based on this. good idea - try it out 
let us 
know how it turns out.
if your question is did anyone write a dynamic deformation 
compound based 
on raycast collisions and wants to share it  than just say so? (no I 
didnt)

But youre probably better of to have a look at soft bodies and 
learn how 
they work, because they have collisions and deformations built in and 
are 
documented.
Look for the circus goblin scene in the samples database, which 
should give 
you a good idea of what can be done, and a good laugh as well.





From: Christopher 
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 2:53 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 

Subject: Re: Setting Local ICE Tree Moves Object

My 
intention was to use point clusters, for a 'industrial rubber' type 
effect 
weight maps are a better solution. How do I get the child of an object 
to 
collide with another object so that is 'squeezes' between the parent and
 the 
static object that sits on it's own ? Raycasting seems like it may be 
the 
solution ?Christopher

   	   
   	Christopher  
  Tuesday, March 
26, 2013 9:53 PM
  

My intention was to use 
point clusters, for a 'industrial rubber' type effect weight maps are a 
better solution. How do I get the child of an object to collide with 
another object so that is 'squeezes' between the parent and the static 
object that sits on it's own ? Raycasting seems like it may be the 
solution ?

Christopher


  
   	   
   	Grahame Fuller  
  Tuesday, March 
26, 2013 1:06 PM
  You can see the start of 
the conversation here: 
http://www.si-community.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=15t=3506sid=12d5574a4a1ce9b8e87b5e424648b05dstart=20Based
 on the last post, it seems that what Christopher really wants to do is 
use the distance between two objects to drive the strength of a 
deformation or the blend between two shapes. When rephrased like that, 
it's just a matter of subtracting the two object positions, plugging the
 result into a Length node, and plugging that into whatever is driving 
the deformation.grayFrom: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sam 
CuttrissSent: Tuesday, March 26, 2013 11:49 AMTo: 
softimage@listproc.autodesk.comSubject: Re: Setting Local ICE Tree 
Moves ObjectSo You have an ice tree that moves points. 
When you plug it in; it moves points?On Mar 26, 2013 7:04 AM, "Eric 
Thivierge" 
ethivie...@gmail.commailto:ethivie...@gmail.com wrote:Looks
 like my filter is still working. :)Eric
 Thiviergehttp://www.ethivierge.comOn Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 
12:42 AM, Raffaele Fragapane 
raffsxsil...@googlemail.commailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com
 wrote:I was trying to make sense of the paragraphs, then I saw the 
e-mail address...Welcome back?On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 1:10 PM, 
Christopher 
christop...@thecreativesheep.camailto:christop...@thecreativesheep.ca
 wrote:Hi, I have a scene whereas the local translation is frozen, 
when I create an ICE Tree, which two ICE trees have been supplied to me,
 the object moves from it center, the center stays where it should but 
the object moves immediately after plugging it into the ice tree ?One
 of the ICE trees involves 'multiple matrix by vector' and setting 
points the other is a tad bit more complex, either solution isn't 
working.--===I wanted to say hi to everyone :)--Our
 users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it 
and let them flee like the dogs they are!
   	   
   	Sam Cuttriss  
  Tuesday, March 
26, 2013 11:48 AM
  So You have an ice tree 
that moves points. When you plug it in; it moves points?

Re: Softimage 2014

Ice overrides can do more than just overriding a base node value ;)

On 27 Mar, 2013, at 9:33 PM, Toonafish ron...@toonafish.nl wrote:

 No need for custom parameters, just plugin in a scalar or integer node and 
 you're set to override a value
 
 
 On 3/27/2013 14:10, Chris Chia wrote:
 It makes it so much easier to override parameters without going thru the 
 hard way with the custom parameters... And it makes it easy to track what 
 parameters have been overridden with the visual aids in the ice tree...
 
 
 On 27 Mar, 2013, at 9:07 PM, Rob Chapman 
 tekano@gmail.commailto:tekano@gmail.com wrote:
 
 yes, I thought that too,  we are allowed to talk about this now right?   the 
 NDA is over?
 
 but a big EG is you could vary the number of particles in different passes.  
 personally, for this I have different point clouds per pass but hey, a 
 feature is a feature...  :)
 
 
 
 On 27 March 2013 13:58, Felix Geremus 
 felixgere...@googlemail.commailto:felixgere...@googlemail.com wrote:
 S, can somebody enlighten me what's so great about ICE overrides (one of 
 our 4 amazing new features)? I just watched the video and all that can be 
 done since forever by overriding the values of low level nodes instead of 
 exposed compound parameters? Or am I missing something?
 
 Felix
 
 
attachment: winmail.dat

Re: Moving objects using ICE and raycast?

2013-03-27 Thread Alan Fregtman

Or you know... select your null, go to the ICE module, (below the
Kinematics label) go to Constrain-to Closest Surface and pick your mesh.

:)




On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:46 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.comwrote:

 You don't need to use a simulated tree to do this.

 You'll need to set the kine.global of the object with a matrix which you
 can build from an SRT to Matrix node. Feed your position from your raycast
 into the translation of the SRT to Matrix node.

 
 Eric Thivierge
 http://www.ethivierge.com


 On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:41 PM, Sam sbowl...@cox.net wrote:

 First off, this is just a learning exercise, not an actual project. I’m
 trying to set up an ice tree where I’m using a null to get a location on
 another mesh (raycast) and then move an object along that mesh. I can get
 the position on the mesh just fine, but I’m having trouble moving the
 object. I can seem to set the object position through ICE, but I’m sure it
 should be possible. Also I’m not completely sure how I would move the
 object along the position. What I’m doing now is just getting the positions
 per frame, but I’m not sure this would be the best way because I’m not sure
 this will work correctly with motion blur. I thought about using the points
 to create a curve and then moving the objects along the curve, but I’m not
 sure this is completely possible to do through ICE. Any help is appreciated.

Re: Moving objects using ICE and raycast?

Man, trying to take the learning out of everything around you Alan? :P


Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 10:00 AM, Alan Fregtman alan.fregt...@gmail.comwrote:

 Or you know... select your null, go to the ICE module, (below the
 Kinematics label) go to Constrain-to Closest Surface and pick your mesh.

 :)




 On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:46 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.comwrote:

 You don't need to use a simulated tree to do this.

 You'll need to set the kine.global of the object with a matrix which you
 can build from an SRT to Matrix node. Feed your position from your raycast
 into the translation of the SRT to Matrix node.

 
 Eric Thivierge
 http://www.ethivierge.com


 On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:41 PM, Sam sbowl...@cox.net wrote:

 First off, this is just a learning exercise, not an actual project. I’m
 trying to set up an ice tree where I’m using a null to get a location on
 another mesh (raycast) and then move an object along that mesh. I can get
 the position on the mesh just fine, but I’m having trouble moving the
 object. I can seem to set the object position through ICE, but I’m sure it
 should be possible. Also I’m not completely sure how I would move the
 object along the position. What I’m doing now is just getting the positions
 per frame, but I’m not sure this would be the best way because I’m not sure
 this will work correctly with motion blur. I thought about using the points
 to create a curve and then moving the objects along the curve, but I’m not
 sure this is completely possible to do through ICE. Any help is appreciated.

Re: Softimage 2014

2013-03-27 Thread Toonafish

Okay, I'm curious. What can it override that we can't already by adding 
a node ? I can already override values, color, particle shape etc.
Can we rename the input names in the override PPG to make it a bit 
easier to see what the override is actually controlling ?





On 3/27/2013 14:43, Chris Chia wrote:

Ice overrides can do more than just overriding a base node value ;)

On 27 Mar, 2013, at 9:33 PM, Toonafish ron...@toonafish.nl wrote:


No need for custom parameters, just plugin in a scalar or integer node and 
you're set to override a value


On 3/27/2013 14:10, Chris Chia wrote:

It makes it so much easier to override parameters without going thru the hard 
way with the custom parameters... And it makes it easy to track what parameters 
have been overridden with the visual aids in the ice tree...


On 27 Mar, 2013, at 9:07 PM, Rob Chapman 
tekano@gmail.commailto:tekano@gmail.com wrote:

yes, I thought that too,  we are allowed to talk about this now right?   the 
NDA is over?

but a big EG is you could vary the number of particles in different passes.  
personally, for this I have different point clouds per pass but hey, a feature 
is a feature...  :)



On 27 March 2013 13:58, Felix Geremus 
felixgere...@googlemail.commailto:felixgere...@googlemail.com wrote:
S, can somebody enlighten me what's so great about ICE overrides (one of 
our 4 amazing new features)? I just watched the video and all that can be done 
since forever by overriding the values of low level nodes instead of exposed 
compound parameters? Or am I missing something?

Felix

Re: Softimage 2014

2013-03-27 Thread Eric Turman

Overall I'm very pleased with the Softimage list's positive tone.

To echo what Rob Chapman asked: Is the NDA over? 'cause it seems like
we're dipping into stuff a bit.

Regardless, I'm renewing my subscription for the bug fixes alone =) as well
as for (surprisingly) the camera sequencer which is turning out to be more
useful than I initially thought it would be.

-=Eric


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 9:20 AM, Toonafish ron...@toonafish.nl wrote:

 Okay, I'm curious. What can it override that we can't already by adding a
 node ? I can already override values, color, particle shape etc.
 Can we rename the input names in the override PPG to make it a bit easier
 to see what the override is actually controlling ?





 On 3/27/2013 14:43, Chris Chia wrote:

 Ice overrides can do more than just overriding a base node value ;)

 On 27 Mar, 2013, at 9:33 PM, Toonafish ron...@toonafish.nl wrote:

  No need for custom parameters, just plugin in a scalar or integer node
 and you're set to override a value


 On 3/27/2013 14:10, Chris Chia wrote:

 It makes it so much easier to override parameters without going thru
 the hard way with the custom parameters... And it makes it easy to track
 what parameters have been overridden with the visual aids in the ice 
 tree...


 On 27 Mar, 2013, at 9:07 PM, Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com
 mailto:t**ekano@gmail.com tekano@gmail.com wrote:

 yes, I thought that too,  we are allowed to talk about this now right?
   the NDA is over?

 but a big EG is you could vary the number of particles in different
 passes.  personally, for this I have different point clouds per pass but
 hey, a feature is a feature...  :)



 On 27 March 2013 13:58, Felix Geremus felixgere...@googlemail.com**
 mailto:felixgeremus@**googlemail.com felixgere...@googlemail.com
 wrote:
 S, can somebody enlighten me what's so great about ICE overrides
 (one of our 4 amazing new features)? I just watched the video and all that
 can be done since forever by overriding the values of low level nodes
 instead of exposed compound parameters? Or am I missing something?

 Felix






-- 




-=T=-

Re: Softimage 2014

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 10:40 AM, Eric Turman i.anima...@gmail.com wrote:

 To echo what Rob Chapman asked: Is the NDA over? 'cause it seems like
 we're dipping into stuff a bit.


Generally once the features are announced and info dispersed you can talk
about the new features.


Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com

Re: Softimage 2014

2013-03-27 Thread Eric Turman

Really? Some past betas we had to keep quiet until actual release, so I'm
just checking to be safe.


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 9:42 AM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.comwrote:


 On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 10:40 AM, Eric Turman i.anima...@gmail.comwrote:

 To echo what Rob Chapman asked: Is the NDA over? 'cause it seems like
 we're dipping into stuff a bit.


 Generally once the features are announced and info dispersed you can talk
 about the new features.


 
 Eric Thivierge
 http://www.ethivierge.com




-- 




-=T=-

RE: Moving objects using ICE and raycast?

2013-03-27 Thread Sam

I'm not sure that would work with what I'm trying to do. What I was thinking
was sort of a laser effect. I can move or rotate my null to aim it at
objects and it would leave a trail of particles behind which I will then
emit more particles from for smoke. My biggest problem is figuring out which
nodes I need to use to make it work. For example, raycast gives me a
location, but I cannot plug that into the translation on the SRT to matrix
node. So, once again I am stuck. This is what gets me stuck 99% of the time
with ICE. I know it's possible, but I can spend hours trying to figure out
something that seems like it should be very simple. It would be great if Ice
could be a little smarter about things like this.

 

 

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Alan Fregtman
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 7:00 AM
To: XSI Mailing List
Subject: Re: Moving objects using ICE and raycast?

 

Or you know... select your null, go to the ICE module, (below the Kinematics
label) go to Constrain-to Closest Surface and pick your mesh.

 

:)

 

 

 

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:46 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.com
wrote:

You don't need to use a simulated tree to do this.

You'll need to set the kine.global of the object with a matrix which you can
build from an SRT to Matrix node. Feed your position from your raycast into
the translation of the SRT to Matrix node.





Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com

 

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:41 PM, Sam sbowl...@cox.net wrote:

First off, this is just a learning exercise, not an actual project. I'm
trying to set up an ice tree where I'm using a null to get a location on
another mesh (raycast) and then move an object along that mesh. I can get
the position on the mesh just fine, but I'm having trouble moving the
object. I can seem to set the object position through ICE, but I'm sure it
should be possible. Also I'm not completely sure how I would move the object
along the position. What I'm doing now is just getting the positions per
frame, but I'm not sure this would be the best way because I'm not sure this
will work correctly with motion blur. I thought about using the points to
create a curve and then moving the objects along the curve, but I'm not sure
this is completely possible to do through ICE. Any help is appreciated.

Re: Moving objects using ICE and raycast?

2013-03-27 Thread Alan Fregtman

It just takes practice.

So you have a location from your raycast... that's basically an abstract
place on geometry from which you can extract any ICE attribute, and their
magic is they interpolate (blend, kind of) based off the attribute values
off their neighbors.

For example if you get a weightmap value in the middle of a polygon (and as
you might know, weightmaps are per-vertex values), it takes care of
checking the nearest triangle's vertex weights and blending them such that
you get the expected value at that particular place. You don't need to know
how it works, but if you feel like reading, the black magic under the hood
revolves around barycentric coordinates.

Anyway, back to your issue... plug the Location output of the Raycast into
the Source input of a GetData set to just PointPosition (no self. or
anything), and that will get your position at the raycast hit location.

You can then plug that into the SRT To Matrix to get a transform with that
position.



On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 11:36 AM, Sam sbowl...@cox.net wrote:

 I’m not sure that would work with what I’m trying to do. What I was
 thinking was sort of a laser effect. I can move or rotate my null to aim it
 at objects and it would leave a trail of particles behind which I will then
 emit more particles from for smoke. My biggest problem is figuring out
 which nodes I need to use to make it work. For example, raycast gives me a
 location, but I cannot plug that into the translation on the SRT to matrix
 node. So, once again I am stuck. This is what gets me stuck 99% of the time
 with ICE. I know it’s possible, but I can spend hours trying to figure out
 something that seems like it should be very simple. It would be great if
 Ice could be a little smarter about things like this.

 ** **

 ** **

 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Alan Fregtman
 *Sent:* Wednesday, March 27, 2013 7:00 AM
 *To:* XSI Mailing List
 *Subject:* Re: Moving objects using ICE and raycast?

 ** **

 Or you know... select your null, go to the ICE module, (below the
 Kinematics label) go to Constrain-to Closest Surface and pick your mesh.*
 ***

 ** **

 :)

 ** **

 ** **

 ** **

 On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:46 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 You don't need to use a simulated tree to do this.

 You'll need to set the kine.global of the object with a matrix which you
 can build from an SRT to Matrix node. Feed your position from your raycast
 into the translation of the SRT to Matrix node.


 

 
 Eric Thivierge
 http://www.ethivierge.com

 ** **

 On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:41 PM, Sam sbowl...@cox.net wrote:

 First off, this is just a learning exercise, not an actual project. I’m
 trying to set up an ice tree where I’m using a null to get a location on
 another mesh (raycast) and then move an object along that mesh. I can get
 the position on the mesh just fine, but I’m having trouble moving the
 object. I can seem to set the object position through ICE, but I’m sure it
 should be possible. Also I’m not completely sure how I would move the
 object along the position. What I’m doing now is just getting the positions
 per frame, but I’m not sure this would be the best way because I’m not sure
 this will work correctly with motion blur. I thought about using the points
 to create a curve and then moving the objects along the curve, but I’m not
 sure this is completely possible to do through ICE. Any help is appreciated.
 

 ** **

 ** **

Re: Moving objects using ICE and raycast?

Well locations contain tons of information about the location which is
being returned. If you raycast onto a polymesh you'll have a bunch of
information within that location you can use. One of which is
pointposition which you can plug into the translation of the matrix node.
If you plug the location output into a get data node you can then explore
and see all the available attributes you can use from that location.

Since you're dealing with particles, yes you should be using a simulated
ICE Tree and can use the Add Point node to create particles at each frame.

Raycast[Location]  Get Data[Point Position]  Add Point[positions]



Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 11:36 AM, Sam sbowl...@cox.net wrote:

 I’m not sure that would work with what I’m trying to do. What I was
 thinking was sort of a laser effect. I can move or rotate my null to aim it
 at objects and it would leave a trail of particles behind which I will then
 emit more particles from for smoke. My biggest problem is figuring out
 which nodes I need to use to make it work. For example, raycast gives me a
 location, but I cannot plug that into the translation on the SRT to matrix
 node. So, once again I am stuck. This is what gets me stuck 99% of the time
 with ICE. I know it’s possible, but I can spend hours trying to figure out
 something that seems like it should be very simple. It would be great if
 Ice could be a little smarter about things like this.

 ** **

 ** **

 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Alan Fregtman
 *Sent:* Wednesday, March 27, 2013 7:00 AM
 *To:* XSI Mailing List
 *Subject:* Re: Moving objects using ICE and raycast?

 ** **

 Or you know... select your null, go to the ICE module, (below the
 Kinematics label) go to Constrain-to Closest Surface and pick your mesh.*
 ***

 ** **

 :)

 ** **

 ** **

 ** **

 On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:46 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 You don't need to use a simulated tree to do this.

 You'll need to set the kine.global of the object with a matrix which you
 can build from an SRT to Matrix node. Feed your position from your raycast
 into the translation of the SRT to Matrix node.


 

 
 Eric Thivierge
 http://www.ethivierge.com

 ** **

 On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:41 PM, Sam sbowl...@cox.net wrote:

 First off, this is just a learning exercise, not an actual project. I’m
 trying to set up an ice tree where I’m using a null to get a location on
 another mesh (raycast) and then move an object along that mesh. I can get
 the position on the mesh just fine, but I’m having trouble moving the
 object. I can seem to set the object position through ICE, but I’m sure it
 should be possible. Also I’m not completely sure how I would move the
 object along the position. What I’m doing now is just getting the positions
 per frame, but I’m not sure this would be the best way because I’m not sure
 this will work correctly with motion blur. I thought about using the points
 to create a curve and then moving the objects along the curve, but I’m not
 sure this is completely possible to do through ICE. Any help is appreciated.
 

 ** **

 ** **

RE: Softimage 2014

2013-03-27 Thread Grahame Fuller

About Preserve UVs, that has always been  available even with explicit 
projections. Just drag the TextureOp node above the Modeling region marker. 
When you hover the mouse over the TextureOp node, the popup should say reading 
just above Modeling.

gray

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Matt Lind
Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2013 07:56 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Softimage 2014

The issue with Softimage is the pieces are there, but don't play together nice 
enough.  The tools were adequate in the day years ago.  Production has evolved 
quite a bit since then but the Softimage modeling core has not.  Many of the 
tools I need to create for our artists cannot be done in the Softimage API due 
to lack of a developed core for things like being able to preserve textures and 
materials (clusters) when updating topology, or being able to control where 
operators appear in the construction history.

Example 1:  Mirror plane.

This is a tool from 3DSMax where the user is given an implicit plane and can 
place it to slice a mesh and have it symmetrized across the plane.  Softimage 
can do this much with the slice operator and symmetrize operator.  BUT the 
3DSMax version has the ability to continually read user input to update the 
mesh further (eg. Push/pull point positions on the original mesh and have the 
symmetrized half update in real time).  Basically it's symmetrical modeling 
across a user defined plane of symmetry.  The user can add as many planes as 
desired to build up organic geometry very, very quickly.  Softimage's modeling 
architecture is limited and cannot read further user input because it occurs 
higher on the construction history than the symmetry and slice operators.  
There is also no way to force those operators higher on the stack as they're 
bound to the modeling marker.  Softimage cannot support multiple planes either 
or else instability results.

Example 2: Preserve UVs

I'm always pounded for this one.  It's a tool which allows users to manipulate 
vertices in the 3D viewports while preserving the Texture UVs as they're moved. 
 Eg. When a vertex is translated in one direction, the UVs associated with that 
vertex are pushed in the opposite direction to allow the vertex to 'swim' 
through the projection.  Softimage has a 'swim' feature, but only for implicit 
projections which is useless in a games development pipeline as 99% of all 
assets use explicit UV projections.  Again, like with the mirror plane, 
Softimage is limited by how it's construction history is organized to read 
further input from the user once the operator is applied.

Example 3:Locking topology

In a games development environment, assets are usually created piecemeal.  A 
character isn't a solid seamless mesh.  The customizable features presented to 
the customer are often built as separate objects, but these objects must 
assemble together to appear like a seamless mesh.  This means any work to the 
vertex placement or sample data such as user normal, vertex colors, and texture 
UVs must be locked down along the seams to prevent artists from accidentally 
making modifications to these portions of the mesh.  Softimage provides no 
ability to do this.  The best option on the table is an ICE operator placed at 
the very top of the construction history to lock the user specified vertices.  
However, this falls short in that if the user clicks the 'freeze' button, the 
operator will be frozen and removed from construction history.  Again, 
limitation of the core architecture.

Example 4:  Paint.

The paint tools in Softimage are lacking.  They were designed for painting 
weight maps to alter envelope weights and deformers - that's it.  The paint 
brush for vertex colors is just an extension of that and not very robust.  
There is no color palette available to load/save colors to use in other scenes, 
or even the current scene beyond the palette borrowed from windows.  There is 
no ability to compare colors side-by-side on adjacent polygons without having 
to dig into user preferences to turn off selection highlights, then turn it on 
again when you're done with your comparison.  Very clunky.  There are no tools 
available to modify topology via paint.  The best option available is pushing 
points via the push operator which is, back to the beginning, a weight map 
tool.  We need more than deformations.  We need a paint tool that can 
destructively edit the mesh by adding vertices, edges, polygons, and samples.  
We need the adjustments for the brush to be informative and customizable to 
accommodate modeler's needs.  Falloff options, brush tip shapes, intensity 
controls other than simple hardness applied uniformly, angular attenuation, 
operator assignments, and so on.  A 'push' tool has been around forever, where 
is the accompanying 'pinch' tool?  Max and Maya are far in the lead in this 
area.  Softimage's paint

Re: Face Robot Interface there, but contents of panes missing

2013-03-27 Thread Stephen Blair


Hi Adam

Maybe you uninstall IE9 (revert to IE8) and then reinstall IE9.
Or move up to IE10.

On 27/03/2013 11:46 AM, Adam Sale wrote:

Hi Stephen, My Settings are identical to yours. Nadda.


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 2:57 AM, Stephen Blair 
stephenrbl...@gmail.com mailto:stephenrbl...@gmail.com wrote:


Hi Adam

For comparison, here's my security settings for the Internet Zone:
http://screencast.com/t/kxvNub3ax3q6

Re: Scntoc Res Manager v 1.0 released

2013-03-27 Thread Alok


And here are the features video:

Standalone App:
https://vimeo.com/62579294

Soft Addon:
https://vimeo.com/62658588

On 27/03/2013 1:40 PM, Alok Gandhi wrote:

Hi All,

I have released Version 1.02 of the Scntoc Res Manager. There were a 
lot of improvement in the UI.


Here is the summary of ver 1.02 updates:

1. Ability to select and change resolution path of the multiple models 
in a single go.

2. A find and replace functionality in the resolution path change dialog.
2. A lot of bug fixes.

Also an addon for Softimage is released:
1. The exact same functionality as the stand alone application.
2. An open scene event to parse scntoc files before the scene is loaded.
3. A standalone GUI inside softimage as well so that any other scntoc 
file on disk can be opened and manipulated.

4. Open scene event can be enabled/disabled with a single command.

With this update I think most of the work needed for reference model 
resolution is concluded.


Here are the download links:

Scntoc Res Manager (StandAlone):

git:
https://github.com/alok1974/scntocResManager.git

zip:
http://bit.ly/XkguD0

Scntoc Res Manager Soft Addon:
http://bit.ly/15V6yQK

I hope you guys like it.

Please drop me line if you have any suggestions, questions or bugs at:

alokdotgandhiatgmaildotcom

Here is what to expect in future:

Addtion of Passes and Render Settings manipulation from the Scntoc 
Manager.


I am not british but I will still use the greeting : cheers !

Keyshot Anyone ever use it?

2013-03-27 Thread John Richard Sanchez

This looks really interesting.
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/03/luxion-keyshot/?viewall=true

-- 
www.johnrichardsanchez.com

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

2013-03-27 Thread Ed Manning

I installed my Titan yesterday, and it bloody screams.

Images soon as I get through this project deadline.




On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 6:47 AM, Mirko Jankovic
mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote:

 SLI and crossfire dio not affect viewport performance in any of 3d
 application.



 On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 11:12 AM, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr
  wrote:

 There was a subject on Redshift Forum about having two grapphic cards.
 It seems to be possible to keep a quadro for dispaly (as it is
 significantly better at displaying), and have a Titan dedicated to
 rendering only (in Redshift you select which card is rendering) as they
 have a huge amount of cores and faster memory.
 I think I've red somewhere that Titan has 2600 cores against 256 for the
 Quadro 4000.
 After chating with Nicolas the Titan could be around 4 time faster than
 the Quadro4000 ...Which is huge :)

 Le 27/03/2013 09:26, Tim Leydecker a écrit :

  Personally, I´m hesistant to using two or more cards with SLI
 because of micro stuttering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**
 Micro_stuttering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_stuttering

 If there would be a solution to that, I´d go with two GTX670 w/4GB VRAM,
 as they are the same GK104´s with a 915MHz chipspeed instead of a 1006Mhz
 chipspeed as in the reference design GTX680. That could save another
 15-35%
 percent of investment compared to two single chip GTX 680 cards or one
 GTX Titan.

 Overclocked versions may use slightly different chip/shader speeds.

 In any case, as much VRAM as available, as that always helps in many
 progamms
 like Mudbox, Redshift and isn´t much of an added cost (comparing 2GB vs
 4GB).

 At a company I worked Mari 1.5.x behaved bitchy unless it was given a
 Quadro
 or forced to ignore the actual card´s game heritage. But that may have
 been
 solved with 2.0...

 Cheers,

 tim



 On 27.03.2013 08:59, Mirko Jankovic wrote:

 On the other hand Titan is more expensive than 2 gtx680 if I'm not
 mistaken... and i bet that with two 680 in SLI, when multi GPU is
 supported
 you will have better performance than with 1 titan right?


 On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 8:55 AM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de
 wrote:

  The GTX Titan is not a gimmick but uses the successor to the chip
 series
 used in the GTX 680, e.g. the GT(X) 6xx series uses the GK104, while
 the GTX Titan uses the GK110. You can find the GK110 in the Tesla K20,
 too.

 You could describe the GTX690 as a gimmick, as it uses two GK104 on one
 card
 to maximize performance at the cost of higher powerconsumption, noise
 and
 heat.

 The performance gain between a GTX680 and a GTX Titan is roughly 35%
 and can be felt nicely when using it with higher screenresolutions like
 1920x1200 or 2560x1440 and higher antialiasing in games.

 That´s where the 6GB VRAM of the GTX Titan come in handy, too.

 Cheers,

 tim






 On 27.03.2013 05:24, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:

  Benchmarking is more driver tuning than it's videocard performance,
 and if
 you want to look at number crunching you should look at the most
 recent
 gens.

 The 680 has brought nVIDIA back up top for number crunching
 (forgetting
 the
 silver editions or gimmicks like the titan), and close enough to bang
 for
 buck best, but AMD's response to that still has to come.

 Ironically, though, the 6xx gen is reported as a crippled, bad
 performer
 in
 DCC apps, although I can't say I noticed it myself. It sure as hell
 works
 admirably well in mudbox, mari, cuda work, and I've had no issues in
 maya
 or soft. I don't really benchmrak or obsess over numbers much though.

 When this will obsolesce, I will considering AMD again, probably in a
 couple years.

 For GPU rendering though, well, that's something you CAN bench
 reliably
 with the engine, and AMD might still win the FLOP per dollar run
 there, so
 it's not to be discounted.

 Would be good to know what the redshift guys have to say about it
 themselves though if they can spare the thought and can actually
 disclose.

 On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Mirko Jankovic
 mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote:

   well no idea about pro cards.. really never got financial
 justification

 to
 get one, quadro 4000 in old company didn;t really felt anything much
 better
 than gaming cards so...
 but in gaming segment..
 opengl scores in sinebench for example:
 gtx 580: ~55
 7970: ~90

 to start with
 not to mention annoying issue with high segment rotating cube in
 viewport
 in SI.
 7970 smooth at ~170 fps
 with gtx580 bfore that.. to point out that the rest of comp is
 identical
 only switched card... for the first 30-50sec frame rate was stuck at
 something like 17 fps... and after that it kinda jump to ~70-80fps...

 in any case with gaming cards ati vs nvidia there is no doubt. and
 if you
 are not using CUDA much then no need to even thing which way to go.
 Now redshift is game changer heheh but I'm still hoping that OpenCL
 will
 be supported and I'm looking forward to test it out with two of

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

2013-03-27 Thread Daryl Dunlap

Congrats!  Wish I could get one of those puppies.


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 2:20 PM, Ed Manning etmth...@gmail.com wrote:

 I installed my Titan yesterday, and it bloody screams.

 Images soon as I get through this project deadline.




 On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 6:47 AM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com
  wrote:

 SLI and crossfire dio not affect viewport performance in any of 3d
 application.



 On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 11:12 AM, olivier jeannel 
 olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote:

 There was a subject on Redshift Forum about having two grapphic cards.
 It seems to be possible to keep a quadro for dispaly (as it is
 significantly better at displaying), and have a Titan dedicated to
 rendering only (in Redshift you select which card is rendering) as they
 have a huge amount of cores and faster memory.
 I think I've red somewhere that Titan has 2600 cores against 256 for the
 Quadro 4000.
 After chating with Nicolas the Titan could be around 4 time faster than
 the Quadro4000 ...Which is huge :)

 Le 27/03/2013 09:26, Tim Leydecker a écrit :

  Personally, I´m hesistant to using two or more cards with SLI
 because of micro stuttering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**
 Micro_stuttering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_stuttering

 If there would be a solution to that, I´d go with two GTX670 w/4GB VRAM,
 as they are the same GK104´s with a 915MHz chipspeed instead of a
 1006Mhz
 chipspeed as in the reference design GTX680. That could save another
 15-35%
 percent of investment compared to two single chip GTX 680 cards or one
 GTX Titan.

 Overclocked versions may use slightly different chip/shader speeds.

 In any case, as much VRAM as available, as that always helps in many
 progamms
 like Mudbox, Redshift and isn´t much of an added cost (comparing 2GB vs
 4GB).

 At a company I worked Mari 1.5.x behaved bitchy unless it was given a
 Quadro
 or forced to ignore the actual card´s game heritage. But that may have
 been
 solved with 2.0...

 Cheers,

 tim



 On 27.03.2013 08:59, Mirko Jankovic wrote:

 On the other hand Titan is more expensive than 2 gtx680 if I'm not
 mistaken... and i bet that with two 680 in SLI, when multi GPU is
 supported
 you will have better performance than with 1 titan right?


 On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 8:55 AM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de
 wrote:

  The GTX Titan is not a gimmick but uses the successor to the chip
 series
 used in the GTX 680, e.g. the GT(X) 6xx series uses the GK104, while
 the GTX Titan uses the GK110. You can find the GK110 in the Tesla
 K20, too.

 You could describe the GTX690 as a gimmick, as it uses two GK104 on
 one
 card
 to maximize performance at the cost of higher powerconsumption, noise
 and
 heat.

 The performance gain between a GTX680 and a GTX Titan is roughly 35%
 and can be felt nicely when using it with higher screenresolutions
 like
 1920x1200 or 2560x1440 and higher antialiasing in games.

 That´s where the 6GB VRAM of the GTX Titan come in handy, too.

 Cheers,

 tim






 On 27.03.2013 05:24, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:

  Benchmarking is more driver tuning than it's videocard performance,
 and if
 you want to look at number crunching you should look at the most
 recent
 gens.

 The 680 has brought nVIDIA back up top for number crunching
 (forgetting
 the
 silver editions or gimmicks like the titan), and close enough to
 bang for
 buck best, but AMD's response to that still has to come.

 Ironically, though, the 6xx gen is reported as a crippled, bad
 performer
 in
 DCC apps, although I can't say I noticed it myself. It sure as hell
 works
 admirably well in mudbox, mari, cuda work, and I've had no issues in
 maya
 or soft. I don't really benchmrak or obsess over numbers much though.

 When this will obsolesce, I will considering AMD again, probably in a
 couple years.

 For GPU rendering though, well, that's something you CAN bench
 reliably
 with the engine, and AMD might still win the FLOP per dollar run
 there, so
 it's not to be discounted.

 Would be good to know what the redshift guys have to say about it
 themselves though if they can spare the thought and can actually
 disclose.

 On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Mirko Jankovic
 mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote:

   well no idea about pro cards.. really never got financial
 justification

 to
 get one, quadro 4000 in old company didn;t really felt anything much
 better
 than gaming cards so...
 but in gaming segment..
 opengl scores in sinebench for example:
 gtx 580: ~55
 7970: ~90

 to start with
 not to mention annoying issue with high segment rotating cube in
 viewport
 in SI.
 7970 smooth at ~170 fps
 with gtx580 bfore that.. to point out that the rest of comp is
 identical
 only switched card... for the first 30-50sec frame rate was stuck at
 something like 17 fps... and after that it kinda jump to
 ~70-80fps...

 in any case with gaming cards ati vs nvidia there is no doubt. and
 if you
 are not using CUDA much then no need to even thing which way to go.
 Now

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

2013-03-27 Thread Steven Caron

i bet, but damn... its an expensive card.


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 11:20 AM, Ed Manning etmth...@gmail.com wrote:

 I installed my Titan yesterday, and it bloody screams.

 Images soon as I get through this project deadline.

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

2013-03-27 Thread Ed Manning

yes, but reasonably less than Tesla and Maximus setups that it outperforms
and uses less power than.

And much less than a new computer.  Makes my quad-xeon 2008 Mac Pro a
viable workstation/renderbox  for non-CPU tasks.


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 2:26 PM, Steven Caron car...@gmail.com wrote:

 i bet, but damn... its an expensive card.


 On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 11:20 AM, Ed Manning etmth...@gmail.com wrote:

 I installed my Titan yesterday, and it bloody screams.

 Images soon as I get through this project deadline.

VS2012 and 3D Production

2013-03-27 Thread Marc Brinkley

I know I am not supposed to evangelize other products here but I just ran
across this and had to share it.

And I also know that Windows is the enemy and MS is evil blah blah blah...

Visual Studio 2012 has recently added a bunch of graphics tool. Including the
ability to open FBX files, view them in 3D and play back animations...and it
even has a node based shader designer to author and debug HLSL shaders.

My TAD and I stumbled across this when we accidentally opened an FBX file in
Visual Studio 2012...and after some digging found a whole bunch of cool stuff.

I would imagine that its mostly game devs\TADs that are going to like this stuff

* Add, edit, and compile HLSL shaders more easily.

You can use syntax coloring, indenting, and outlining when you are coding HLSL
shaders, and MSBuild automatically supports the Microsoft HLSL Compiler
(fxc.exe).

* View and modify image assets more efficiently.

You can use the Image Editor to create, inspect, and modify bitmap and
compressed image formats (DDS, TGA, TIFF, PNG, JPG, GIF), and the editor
supports transparency and mipmaps. For more information, see Image
Editorhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh315744.aspx.

* Work with 3-D models.

You can use the Model Editor to inspect standard 3-D model formats (OBJ,
COLLADA, and Autodesk FBX). You can also use the built-in 3-D primitive
generation and materials to create placeholder art for 3-D games and apps,
thereby improving artist-developer workflow. For more information, see Model
Editorhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh315734.aspx.

* Create advanced pixel shaders.

You can use the Shader Designer, which is a graph-based shader creation tool
that provides a live preview of the effect, to create advanced pixel shaders
and export them as HLSL code that you can use in apps that are based on
DirectX. For more information, see Shader
Designerhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh315733.aspx.

Also there is this video on Channel 9 showing some of these features off.

http://channel9.msdn.com/(A(DIZWlv8LzQEkOTQ0NWI2ZTUtM2ZlYS00Yjg1LTg4NzMtNzJhZjA1MmUwZmMxAmqfHykWJRBKmZh75HL0--PjXeY1))/posts/Visual-Studio-3D-StarterKit

Right around 12:30 mark you can see the shader designer in action.

Fun stuff.

Cheers!

___
Marc Brinkley
GO GO GO
Microsoft Studios
[Fun]ction Studio
marc.brinkley [at] microsoft.com

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

2013-03-27 Thread Ed Manning

In what spare time I have I'm setting up a shootout between Octane
standalone and redshift in SI.

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

2013-03-27 Thread Daryl Dunlap

Ed, did Octane ever release their SI plugin?


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 3:23 PM, Ed Manning etmth...@gmail.com wrote:

 In what spare time I have I'm setting up a shootout between Octane
 standalone and redshift in SI.

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

2013-03-27 Thread Alan Fregtman

And Vimeo lets you allow people to download the video too, if you enable
that option.



On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:08 PM, Ahmidou.xsi ahmidou@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi Nicolas, you could maube consider vimeo as a better option.
 Cheers

 Le 27 mars 2013 à 13:43, Nicolas Burtnyk nico...@redshift3d.com a
 écrit :

 Hey guys,

 Just wanted to share a couple of very short videos we made that show the
 stability of the GI in Redshift.
 Unfortunately Youtube's compression kind of murdered the smoothness, but I
 assure you that any artifacts you see in these videos are from compression
 and not GI.

 http://youtu.be/3c0tHYdd-fg
 This video shows the dark side of a deforming gargoyle lit by physical sun
  sky.
 25 seconds per frame for 1280x720 on a Core i7 3.07Ghz, 12GB RAM w/ NVIDIA
 Geforce GTX 470.

 http://youtu.be/ySCockShxTQ
 This video shows the same gargoyle being lit *strictly *by light bouncing
 off the floor.  The setup is a white spot light shining onto the floor (off
 camera).  The red glow you see on the floor around the gargoyle is light
 that has bounced off the floor, then off the gargoyle.
 1 minute per frame for 1280x720 on a Core i7 3.07Ghz, 6GB RAM w/ NVIDIA
 Geforce GTX 670.

 We're still head-down fixing bugs and bringing new features online, but I
 plan to spend some time making more (and better) videos soon.

 -Nicolas


 On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 7:27 PM, Nicolas Burtnyk 
 nico...@redshift3d.comwrote:

Re: VS2012 and 3D Production

2013-03-27 Thread Eric Turman

Nice, I like how when you zoom in, it transitions into a 3D view. This is
only for Windows 8 then?

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 2:11 PM, Marc Brinkley
marc.brink...@microsoft.comwrote:

I know I am not supposed to evangelize other products here but I just
ran across this and had to share it.

** **

And I also know that Windows is the enemy and MS is evil blah blah blah…**
**

** **

Visual Studio 2012 has recently added a bunch of graphics tool. Including
the ability to open FBX files, view them in 3D and play back animations…and
it even has a node based shader designer to author and debug HLSL shaders.

** **

My TAD and I stumbled across this when we accidentally opened an FBX file
in Visual Studio 2012…and after some digging found a whole bunch of cool
stuff.

** **

I would imagine that its mostly game devs\TADs that are going to like this
stuff

** **
--

**· **Add, edit, and compile HLSL shaders more easily.

You can use syntax coloring, indenting, and outlining when you are coding
HLSL shaders, and MSBuild automatically supports the Microsoft HLSL
Compiler (fxc.exe).

**· **View and modify image assets more efficiently.

**· **Work with 3-D models.

You can use the Model Editor to inspect standard 3-D model formats (OBJ,
COLLADA, and Autodesk FBX). You can also use the built-in 3-D primitive
generation and materials to create placeholder art for 3-D games and apps,
thereby improving artist-developer workflow. For more information, see Model
Editor http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh315734.aspx.

**· **Create advanced pixel shaders.

You can use the Shader Designer, which is a graph-based shader creation
tool that provides a live preview of the effect, to create advanced pixel
shaders and export them as HLSL code that you can use in apps that are
based on DirectX. For more information, see Shader
Designerhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh315733.aspx
.

** **

Also there is this video on Channel 9 showing some of these features off.*
***

** **

http://channel9.msdn.com/(A(DIZWlv8LzQEkOTQ0NWI2ZTUtM2ZlYS00Yjg1LTg4NzMtNzJhZjA1MmUwZmMxAmqfHykWJRBKmZh75HL0--PjXeY1))/posts/Visual-Studio-3D-StarterKit

** **

Right around 12:30 mark you can see the shader designer in action.

** **

Fun stuff.

** **

Cheers!

** **

___

*Marc Brinkley*

GO GO GO

Microsoft Studios

[Fun]ction Studio

marc.brinkley [at] microsoft.com

** **

-=T=-

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

2013-03-27 Thread Nicolas Burtnyk

Yeah we'll switch to Vimeo once we do our next batch of videos.
Looks like we'll need a Pro account, which isn't free but the cost is
pretty reasonable.

-Nicolas


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 12:34 PM, Alan Fregtman alan.fregt...@gmail.comwrote:

 And Vimeo lets you allow people to download the video too, if you enable
 that option.



 On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:08 PM, Ahmidou.xsi ahmidou@gmail.comwrote:

 Hi Nicolas, you could maube consider vimeo as a better option.
 Cheers

 Le 27 mars 2013 à 13:43, Nicolas Burtnyk nico...@redshift3d.com a
 écrit :

 Hey guys,

 Just wanted to share a couple of very short videos we made that show the
 stability of the GI in Redshift.
 Unfortunately Youtube's compression kind of murdered the smoothness, but
 I assure you that any artifacts you see in these videos are from
 compression and not GI.

 http://youtu.be/3c0tHYdd-fg
 This video shows the dark side of a deforming gargoyle lit by physical
 sun  sky.
 25 seconds per frame for 1280x720 on a Core i7 3.07Ghz, 12GB RAM w/
 NVIDIA Geforce GTX 470.

 http://youtu.be/ySCockShxTQ
 This video shows the same gargoyle being lit *strictly *by light
 bouncing off the floor.  The setup is a white spot light shining onto the
 floor (off camera).  The red glow you see on the floor around the gargoyle
 is light that has bounced off the floor, then off the gargoyle.
 1 minute per frame for 1280x720 on a Core i7 3.07Ghz, 6GB RAM w/ NVIDIA
 Geforce GTX 670.

 We're still head-down fixing bugs and bringing new features online, but I
 plan to spend some time making more (and better) videos soon.

 -Nicolas


 On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 7:27 PM, Nicolas Burtnyk 
 nico...@redshift3d.comwrote:

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

2013-03-27 Thread Paul Doyle

We use a pro account for all of our stuff and it's a lot nicer than youtube
- faster to upload, easy to upload multiple videos. There's also a fair few
3D-focused groups and channels on there, so I find the exposure to
potential customers is much better.

On 27 March 2013 15:37, Nicolas Burtnyk nico...@redshift3d.com wrote:

 Yeah we'll switch to Vimeo once we do our next batch of videos.
 Looks like we'll need a Pro account, which isn't free but the cost is
 pretty reasonable.

 -Nicolas


 On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 12:34 PM, Alan Fregtman 
 alan.fregt...@gmail.comwrote:

 And Vimeo lets you allow people to download the video too, if you enable
 that option.



 On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:08 PM, Ahmidou.xsi ahmidou@gmail.comwrote:

 Hi Nicolas, you could maube consider vimeo as a better option.
 Cheers

 Le 27 mars 2013 à 13:43, Nicolas Burtnyk nico...@redshift3d.com a
 écrit :

 Hey guys,

 Just wanted to share a couple of very short videos we made that show the
 stability of the GI in Redshift.
 Unfortunately Youtube's compression kind of murdered the smoothness, but
 I assure you that any artifacts you see in these videos are from
 compression and not GI.

 http://youtu.be/3c0tHYdd-fg
 This video shows the dark side of a deforming gargoyle lit by physical
 sun  sky.
 25 seconds per frame for 1280x720 on a Core i7 3.07Ghz, 12GB RAM w/
 NVIDIA Geforce GTX 470.

 http://youtu.be/ySCockShxTQ
 This video shows the same gargoyle being lit *strictly *by light
 bouncing off the floor.  The setup is a white spot light shining onto the
 floor (off camera).  The red glow you see on the floor around the gargoyle
 is light that has bounced off the floor, then off the gargoyle.
 1 minute per frame for 1280x720 on a Core i7 3.07Ghz, 6GB RAM w/ NVIDIA
 Geforce GTX 670.

 We're still head-down fixing bugs and bringing new features online, but
 I plan to spend some time making more (and better) videos soon.

 -Nicolas


 On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 7:27 PM, Nicolas Burtnyk nico...@redshift3d.com
  wrote:

RE: VS2012 and 3D Production

2013-03-27 Thread Marc Brinkley

I dont know. Obviously we are running win8 here, but I would guess this works 
to Win7 too.

We use Team Foundation server here for version control and its really great 
having all our fbx files in TFS and now we can preview and edit FBX and sharers 
right in the Version control tool...same tool you do you code dev in.

Slick. And now with Python support in VS too. Nice set up.

Sent from my car while driving

From: Eric Turman
Sent: 3/27/2013 12:37 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: VS2012 and 3D Production

Nice, I like how when you zoom in, it transitions into a 3D view. This is only 
for Windows 8 then?


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 2:11 PM, Marc Brinkley 
marc.brink...@microsoft.commailto:marc.brink...@microsoft.com wrote:
I know I am not supposed to evangelize other products here but I just ran 
across this and had to share it.

And I also know that Windows is the enemy and MS is evil blah blah blah…

Visual Studio 2012 has recently added a bunch of graphics tool. Including the 
ability to open FBX files, view them in 3D and play back animations…and it even 
has a node based shader designer to author and debug HLSL shaders.

My TAD and I stumbled across this when we accidentally opened an FBX file in 
Visual Studio 2012…and after some digging found a whole bunch of cool stuff.

I would imagine that its mostly game devs\TADs that are going to like this stuff



• Add, edit, and compile HLSL shaders more easily.

You can use syntax coloring, indenting, and outlining when you are coding HLSL 
shaders, and MSBuild automatically supports the Microsoft HLSL Compiler 
(fxc.exe).

• View and modify image assets more efficiently.

You can use the Image Editor to create, inspect, and modify bitmap and 
compressed image formats (DDS, TGA, TIFF, PNG, JPG, GIF), and the editor 
supports transparency and mipmaps. For more information, see Image 
Editorhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh315744.aspx.

• Work with 3-D models.

You can use the Model Editor to inspect standard 3-D model formats (OBJ, 
COLLADA, and Autodesk FBX). You can also use the built-in 3-D primitive 
generation and materials to create placeholder art for 3-D games and apps, 
thereby improving artist-developer workflow. For more information, see Model 
Editorhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh315734.aspx.

• Create advanced pixel shaders.

You can use the Shader Designer, which is a graph-based shader creation tool 
that provides a live preview of the effect, to create advanced pixel shaders 
and export them as HLSL code that you can use in apps that are based on 
DirectX. For more information, see Shader 
Designerhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh315733.aspx.

Also there is this video on Channel 9 showing some of these features off.

http://channel9.msdn.com/(A(DIZWlv8LzQEkOTQ0NWI2ZTUtM2ZlYS00Yjg1LTg4NzMtNzJhZjA1MmUwZmMxAmqfHykWJRBKmZh75HL0--PjXeY1))/posts/Visual-Studio-3D-StarterKit

Right around 12:30 mark you can see the shader designer in action.

Fun stuff.

Cheers!


___
Marc Brinkley
GO GO GO
Microsoft Studios
[Fun]ction Studio
marc.brinkley [at] microsoft.comhttp://microsoft.com




--




-=T=-

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

2013-03-27 Thread Nicolas Burtnyk

Thanks Paul.  You guys are the kings of cool videos, so your advice is well
received!


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 12:49 PM, Paul Doyle technove...@gmail.com wrote:

 We use a pro account for all of our stuff and it's a lot nicer than
 youtube - faster to upload, easy to upload multiple videos. There's also a
 fair few 3D-focused groups and channels on there, so I find the exposure to
 potential customers is much better.


 On 27 March 2013 15:37, Nicolas Burtnyk nico...@redshift3d.com wrote:

 Yeah we'll switch to Vimeo once we do our next batch of videos.
 Looks like we'll need a Pro account, which isn't free but the cost is
 pretty reasonable.

 -Nicolas


 On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 12:34 PM, Alan Fregtman 
 alan.fregt...@gmail.comwrote:

 And Vimeo lets you allow people to download the video too, if you enable
 that option.



 On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:08 PM, Ahmidou.xsi ahmidou@gmail.comwrote:

 Hi Nicolas, you could maube consider vimeo as a better option.
 Cheers

 Le 27 mars 2013 à 13:43, Nicolas Burtnyk nico...@redshift3d.com a
 écrit :

 Hey guys,

 Just wanted to share a couple of very short videos we made that show
 the stability of the GI in Redshift.
 Unfortunately Youtube's compression kind of murdered the smoothness,
 but I assure you that any artifacts you see in these videos are from
 compression and not GI.

 http://youtu.be/3c0tHYdd-fg
 This video shows the dark side of a deforming gargoyle lit by physical
 sun  sky.
 25 seconds per frame for 1280x720 on a Core i7 3.07Ghz, 12GB RAM w/
 NVIDIA Geforce GTX 470.

 http://youtu.be/ySCockShxTQ
 This video shows the same gargoyle being lit *strictly *by light
 bouncing off the floor.  The setup is a white spot light shining onto the
 floor (off camera).  The red glow you see on the floor around the gargoyle
 is light that has bounced off the floor, then off the gargoyle.
 1 minute per frame for 1280x720 on a Core i7 3.07Ghz, 6GB RAM w/ NVIDIA
 Geforce GTX 670.

 We're still head-down fixing bugs and bringing new features online, but
 I plan to spend some time making more (and better) videos soon.

 -Nicolas


 On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 7:27 PM, Nicolas Burtnyk 
 nico...@redshift3d.com wrote:

RE: Softimage 2014

2013-03-27 Thread Matt Lind

Couple of problems with that:

1) It requires the TextureOp node to exist.  When modeling, that is often not 
the case because the construction history needs to be frozen from time to time 
from getting too large.

2) Freeze M removes the TextureOp node even if the TextureOp node is dragged 
onto a higher part of the construction history.


In short, not very useful because the user won't be able to take advantage of 
that feature outside of simple and limited situations.

Matt




From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Grahame Fuller
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 9:23 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Softimage 2014

About Preserve UVs, that has always been  available even with explicit 
projections. Just drag the TextureOp node above the Modeling region marker. 
When you hover the mouse over the TextureOp node, the popup should say reading 
just above Modeling.

gray

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Matt Lind
Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2013 07:56 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Softimage 2014

The issue with Softimage is the pieces are there, but don't play together nice 
enough.  The tools were adequate in the day years ago.  Production has evolved 
quite a bit since then but the Softimage modeling core has not.  Many of the 
tools I need to create for our artists cannot be done in the Softimage API due 
to lack of a developed core for things like being able to preserve textures and 
materials (clusters) when updating topology, or being able to control where 
operators appear in the construction history.

Example 1:  Mirror plane.

This is a tool from 3DSMax where the user is given an implicit plane and can 
place it to slice a mesh and have it symmetrized across the plane.  Softimage 
can do this much with the slice operator and symmetrize operator.  BUT the 
3DSMax version has the ability to continually read user input to update the 
mesh further (eg. Push/pull point positions on the original mesh and have the 
symmetrized half update in real time).  Basically it's symmetrical modeling 
across a user defined plane of symmetry.  The user can add as many planes as 
desired to build up organic geometry very, very quickly.  Softimage's modeling 
architecture is limited and cannot read further user input because it occurs 
higher on the construction history than the symmetry and slice operators.  
There is also no way to force those operators higher on the stack as they're 
bound to the modeling marker.  Softimage cannot support multiple planes either 
or else instability results.

Example 2: Preserve UVs

I'm always pounded for this one.  It's a tool which allows users to manipulate 
vertices in the 3D viewports while preserving the Texture UVs as they're moved. 
 Eg. When a vertex is translated in one direction, the UVs associated with that 
vertex are pushed in the opposite direction to allow the vertex to 'swim' 
through the projection.  Softimage has a 'swim' feature, but only for implicit 
projections which is useless in a games development pipeline as 99% of all 
assets use explicit UV projections.  Again, like with the mirror plane, 
Softimage is limited by how it's construction history is organized to read 
further input from the user once the operator is applied.

Example 3:Locking topology

In a games development environment, assets are usually created piecemeal.  A 
character isn't a solid seamless mesh.  The customizable features presented to 
the customer are often built as separate objects, but these objects must 
assemble together to appear like a seamless mesh.  This means any work to the 
vertex placement or sample data such as user normal, vertex colors, and texture 
UVs must be locked down along the seams to prevent artists from accidentally 
making modifications to these portions of the mesh.  Softimage provides no 
ability to do this.  The best option on the table is an ICE operator placed at 
the very top of the construction history to lock the user specified vertices.  
However, this falls short in that if the user clicks the 'freeze' button, the 
operator will be frozen and removed from construction history.  Again, 
limitation of the core architecture.

Example 4:  Paint.

The paint tools in Softimage are lacking.  They were designed for painting 
weight maps to alter envelope weights and deformers - that's it.  The paint 
brush for vertex colors is just an extension of that and not very robust.  
There is no color palette available to load/save colors to use in other scenes, 
or even the current scene beyond the palette borrowed from windows.  There is 
no ability to compare colors side-by-side on adjacent polygons without having 
to dig into user preferences to turn off selection highlights, then turn it on

RE: Softimage 2014

2013-03-27 Thread Matt Lind

No, what I am saying is the modeling core needs an adjustment, and that 
adjustment when implemented can be inherited by other systems such as paint.  
Until that adjustment is made, many efforts to integrate solutions are limited 
or not possible.

Matt




From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling
Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2013 11:03 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Softimage 2014

So what your saying Matt, is that a brush system would have to be built from 
the ground up, as its own independent operation set, that such a feature would 
involve considerable reworking of the SI core, something that only AD can 
really do, not something achievable and sustainable by isolated devs, in other 
words its up to AD...

Thanks for taking the time to be thorough, its good to know that despite what 
dreamworks would have us believe, Santa Claus is well and truly dead.
On 27 March 2013 00:56, Matt Lind 
ml...@carbinestudios.commailto:ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote:
The issue with Softimage is the pieces are there, but don't play together nice 
enough.  The tools were adequate in the day years ago.  Production has evolved 
quite a bit since then but the Softimage modeling core has not.  Many of the 
tools I need to create for our artists cannot be done in the Softimage API due 
to lack of a developed core for things like being able to preserve textures and 
materials (clusters) when updating topology, or being able to control where 
operators appear in the construction history.

Example 1:  Mirror plane.

This is a tool from 3DSMax where the user is given an implicit plane and can 
place it to slice a mesh and have it symmetrized across the plane.  Softimage 
can do this much with the slice operator and symmetrize operator.  BUT the 
3DSMax version has the ability to continually read user input to update the 
mesh further (eg. Push/pull point positions on the original mesh and have the 
symmetrized half update in real time).  Basically it's symmetrical modeling 
across a user defined plane of symmetry.  The user can add as many planes as 
desired to build up organic geometry very, very quickly.  Softimage's modeling 
architecture is limited and cannot read further user input because it occurs 
higher on the construction history than the symmetry and slice operators.  
There is also no way to force those operators higher on the stack as they're 
bound to the modelling marker.  Softimage cannot support multiple planes either 
or else instability results.

Example 2: Preserve UVs

I'm always pounded for this one.  It's a tool which allows users to manipulate 
vertices in the 3D viewports while preserving the Texture UVs as they're moved. 
 Eg. When a vertex is translated in one direction, the UVs associated with that 
vertex are pushed in the opposite direction to allow the vertex to 'swim' 
through the projection.  Softimage has a 'swim' feature, but only for implicit 
projections which is useless in a games development pipeline as 99% of all 
assets use explicit UV projections.  Again, like with the mirror plane, 
Softimage is limited by how it's construction history is organized to read 
further input from the user once the operator is applied.

Example 3:Locking topology

In a games development environment, assets are usually created piecemeal.  A 
character isn't a solid seamless mesh.  The customizable features presented to 
the customer are often built as separate objects, but these objects must 
assemble together to appear like a seamless mesh.  This means any work to the 
vertex placement or sample data such as user normal, vertex colors, and texture 
UVs must be locked down along the seams to prevent artists from accidentally 
making modifications to these portions of the mesh.  Softimage provides no 
ability to do this.  The best option on the table is an ICE operator placed at 
the very top of the construction history to lock the user specified vertices.  
However, this falls short in that if the user clicks the 'freeze' button, the 
operator will be frozen and removed from construction history.  Again, 
limitation of the core architecture.

Example 4:  Paint.

The paint tools in Softimage are lacking.  They were designed for painting 
weight maps to alter envelope weights and deformers - that's it.  The paint 
brush for vertex colors is just an extension of that and not very robust.  
There is no color palette available to load/save colors to use in other scenes, 
or even the current scene beyond the palette borrowed from windows.  There is 
no ability to compare colors side-by-side on adjacent polygons without having 
to dig into user preferences to turn off selection highlights, then turn it on 
again when you're done with your comparison.  Very clunky.  There are no tools 
available to modify topology via paint.  The best option available is pushing 
points via the push operator which is, back to

RE: Softimage 2014

2013-03-27 Thread Matt Lind

3) 99% of all texturing in Softimage for games development is pretty much 
forced to use Unfold to get any decent work done.  Unfold doesn't support the 
drag n' drop for preserve UVs.



Matt




From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Matt Lind
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 1:56 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Softimage 2014

Couple of problems with that:

1) It requires the TextureOp node to exist.  When modeling, that is often not 
the case because the construction history needs to be frozen from time to time 
from getting too large.

2) Freeze M removes the TextureOp node even if the TextureOp node is dragged 
onto a higher part of the construction history.


In short, not very useful because the user won't be able to take advantage of 
that feature outside of simple and limited situations.

Matt




From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Grahame Fuller
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 9:23 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Softimage 2014

About Preserve UVs, that has always been  available even with explicit 
projections. Just drag the TextureOp node above the Modeling region marker. 
When you hover the mouse over the TextureOp node, the popup should say reading 
just above Modeling.

gray

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Matt Lind
Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2013 07:56 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Softimage 2014

The issue with Softimage is the pieces are there, but don't play together nice 
enough.  The tools were adequate in the day years ago.  Production has evolved 
quite a bit since then but the Softimage modeling core has not.  Many of the 
tools I need to create for our artists cannot be done in the Softimage API due 
to lack of a developed core for things like being able to preserve textures and 
materials (clusters) when updating topology, or being able to control where 
operators appear in the construction history.

Example 1:  Mirror plane.

This is a tool from 3DSMax where the user is given an implicit plane and can 
place it to slice a mesh and have it symmetrized across the plane.  Softimage 
can do this much with the slice operator and symmetrize operator.  BUT the 
3DSMax version has the ability to continually read user input to update the 
mesh further (eg. Push/pull point positions on the original mesh and have the 
symmetrized half update in real time).  Basically it's symmetrical modeling 
across a user defined plane of symmetry.  The user can add as many planes as 
desired to build up organic geometry very, very quickly.  Softimage's modeling 
architecture is limited and cannot read further user input because it occurs 
higher on the construction history than the symmetry and slice operators.  
There is also no way to force those operators higher on the stack as they're 
bound to the modeling marker.  Softimage cannot support multiple planes either 
or else instability results.

Example 2: Preserve UVs

I'm always pounded for this one.  It's a tool which allows users to manipulate 
vertices in the 3D viewports while preserving the Texture UVs as they're moved. 
 Eg. When a vertex is translated in one direction, the UVs associated with that 
vertex are pushed in the opposite direction to allow the vertex to 'swim' 
through the projection.  Softimage has a 'swim' feature, but only for implicit 
projections which is useless in a games development pipeline as 99% of all 
assets use explicit UV projections.  Again, like with the mirror plane, 
Softimage is limited by how it's construction history is organized to read 
further input from the user once the operator is applied.

Example 3:Locking topology

In a games development environment, assets are usually created piecemeal.  A 
character isn't a solid seamless mesh.  The customizable features presented to 
the customer are often built as separate objects, but these objects must 
assemble together to appear like a seamless mesh.  This means any work to the 
vertex placement or sample data such as user normal, vertex colors, and texture 
UVs must be locked down along the seams to prevent artists from accidentally 
making modifications to these portions of the mesh.  Softimage provides no 
ability to do this.  The best option on the table is an ICE operator placed at 
the very top of the construction history to lock the user specified vertices.  
However, this falls short in that if the user clicks the 'freeze' button, the 
operator will be frozen and removed from construction history.  Again, 
limitation of the core architecture.

Example 4:  Paint.

The paint tools in Softimage are lacking.

RE: Moving objects using ICE and raycast?

2013-03-27 Thread Sam

Never mind, groups work now.

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sam
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 10:26 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Moving objects using ICE and raycast?

Thanks guys.  Using Get Data was the problem. I was just trying to plug the
location into the SRT. I tried to create a group of the objects I want to
raycast on and I couldn't get it to work, so I had to create a new raycast
for each object. Is there a way to get this to work on a group of objects?
It would really simplify things and make it easier to add or remove objects
from the scene.

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Eric Thivierge
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 8:52 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Moving objects using ICE and raycast?

Well locations contain tons of information about the location which is
being returned. If you raycast onto a polymesh you'll have a bunch of
information within that location you can use. One of which is
pointposition which you can plug into the translation of the matrix node.
If you plug the location output into a get data node you can then explore
and see all the available attributes you can use from that location.

Since you're dealing with particles, yes you should be using a simulated ICE
Tree and can use the Add Point node to create particles at each frame.

Raycast[Location]  Get Data[Point Position]  Add Point[positions]

Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 11:36 AM, Sam sbowl...@cox.net wrote:

I'm not sure that would work with what I'm trying to do. What I was thinking
was sort of a laser effect. I can move or rotate my null to aim it at
objects and it would leave a trail of particles behind which I will then
emit more particles from for smoke. My biggest problem is figuring out which
nodes I need to use to make it work. For example, raycast gives me a
location, but I cannot plug that into the translation on the SRT to matrix
node. So, once again I am stuck. This is what gets me stuck 99% of the time
with ICE. I know it's possible, but I can spend hours trying to figure out
something that seems like it should be very simple. It would be great if Ice
could be a little smarter about things like this.

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Alan Fregtman
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 7:00 AM
To: XSI Mailing List
Subject: Re: Moving objects using ICE and raycast?

Or you know... select your null, go to the ICE module, (below the Kinematics
label) go to Constrain-to Closest Surface and pick your mesh.

:)

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:46 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.com
wrote:

You don't need to use a simulated tree to do this.

You'll need to set the kine.global of the object with a matrix which you can
build from an SRT to Matrix node. Feed your position from your raycast into
the translation of the SRT to Matrix node.

Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:41 PM, Sam sbowl...@cox.net wrote:

First off, this is just a learning exercise, not an actual project. I'm
trying to set up an ice tree where I'm using a null to get a location on
another mesh (raycast) and then move an object along that mesh. I can get
the position on the mesh just fine, but I'm having trouble moving the
object. I can seem to set the object position through ICE, but I'm sure it
should be possible. Also I'm not completely sure how I would move the object
along the position. What I'm doing now is just getting the positions per
frame, but I'm not sure this would be the best way because I'm not sure this
will work correctly with motion blur. I thought about using the points to
create a curve and then moving the objects along the curve, but I'm not sure
this is completely possible to do through ICE. Any help is appreciated.

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

Don't call it a gimmick then (although it is with all the fashion and hype
elements around it), call it a singularity, but if you're looking at
benching and sorting videocards for performance and bang for buck you
should exclude it. Unless you also want to include that massive liquid
cooled asus radeon that is sold in a military grade carrying case and other
things like that :)

I've tried it btw as a friend's shop had a review return they kindly lent
me for a week (they work closely with GB since one of the partners is an ex
employee and another moonlights reviewing hardware).
It was hardly a noticeable improvement over the GB OC 680 4GB I had (and
still have) in there.

The practical performance gains are far, far inferior to 35%. Only the
added ram is nice, but nothing justifies a price tag that is more than
doubled compared to the 680. It's a gimmick because you need a serious
hardware fetish to justify forking out 1250-1400$ out for it compared to a
benched OC 680 with 4GB that you can have for 550$ and have chances to
trivially overclock and narrow the gap again.

I run a dell 2711 and an additional 1980x1200 monitor with it btw.

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 6:55 PM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:

 The GTX Titan is not a gimmick but uses the successor to the chip series
 used in the GTX 680, e.g. the GT(X) 6xx series uses the GK104, while
 the GTX Titan uses the GK110. You can find the GK110 in the Tesla K20, too.

 You could describe the GTX690 as a gimmick, as it uses two GK104 on one
 card
 to maximize performance at the cost of higher powerconsumption, noise and
 heat.

 The performance gain between a GTX680 and a GTX Titan is roughly 35%
 and can be felt nicely when using it with higher screenresolutions like
 1920x1200 or 2560x1440 and higher antialiasing in games.

 That´s where the 6GB VRAM of the GTX Titan come in handy, too.

 Cheers,

 tim






 On 27.03.2013 05:24, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:

 Benchmarking is more driver tuning than it's videocard performance, and if
 you want to look at number crunching you should look at the most recent
 gens.

 The 680 has brought nVIDIA back up top for number crunching (forgetting
 the
 silver editions or gimmicks like the titan), and close enough to bang for
 buck best, but AMD's response to that still has to come.

 Ironically, though, the 6xx gen is reported as a crippled, bad performer
 in
 DCC apps, although I can't say I noticed it myself. It sure as hell works
 admirably well in mudbox, mari, cuda work, and I've had no issues in maya
 or soft. I don't really benchmrak or obsess over numbers much though.

 When this will obsolesce, I will considering AMD again, probably in a
 couple years.

 For GPU rendering though, well, that's something you CAN bench reliably
 with the engine, and AMD might still win the FLOP per dollar run there, so
 it's not to be discounted.

 Would be good to know what the redshift guys have to say about it
 themselves though if they can spare the thought and can actually disclose.

 On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Mirko Jankovic
 mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com**wrote:

  well no idea about pro cards.. really never got financial justification
 to
 get one, quadro 4000 in old company didn;t really felt anything much
 better
 than gaming cards so...
 but in gaming segment..
 opengl scores in sinebench for example:
 gtx 580: ~55
 7970: ~90

 to start with
 not to mention annoying issue with high segment rotating cube in viewport
 in SI.
 7970 smooth at ~170 fps
 with gtx580 bfore that.. to point out that the rest of comp is identical
 only switched card... for the first 30-50sec frame rate was stuck at
 something like 17 fps... and after that it kinda jump to ~70-80fps...

 in any case with gaming cards ati vs nvidia there is no doubt. and if you
 are not using CUDA much then no need to even thing which way to go.
 Now redshift is game changer heheh but I'm still hoping that OpenCL will
 be supported and I'm looking forward to test it out with two of 7970 in
 crossfire :)

 btw I'm not much into programming waters but is it really
 OpenCL programming  that as I understood should work on ALL cards, is
 that
 much more complex than for CUDA which is limited to nvidia only? Wouldn't
 it be more logical to go with solution that is covering a lot more market
 than something limited to one manufacturer?


 On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Arvid Björn arvidbj...@gmail.com
 wrote:


 My beef with ATI last time I tried FirePro was that it had a hard time
 locking into 25fps playback in some apps, as if the refresh rate was
 locked
 to 30/60. Realtime playback in Softimage would stutter annoyingly IIRC.
 Plus it seemed to draw text slightly differently in some apps.

 Nvidia just feels.. comfy.



 On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 5:21 AM, Raffaele Fragapane 
 raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:

  These days if you hit the right combination of drivers and planet
 alignment they are OK.

 Performance wise they have been ahead of nVIDIA

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

2013-03-27 Thread Nicolas Burtnyk

The TITAN is not a gimmick with respect to Redshift.
It's almost twice as fast as a GTX 670 on all the tests we've run.  We
don't have a GTX 680 so I don't have the numbers to compare against.
 Pricing wise, there TITAN costs $1K and the 680 4GB is $550 so the 680
wins for price/performance ratio (but probably not by a whole lot).  For
performance/watt, the TITAN wins by a lot.


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 3:09 PM, Raffaele Fragapane 
raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:

 Don't call it a gimmick then (although it is with all the fashion and hype
 elements around it), call it a singularity, but if you're looking at
 benching and sorting videocards for performance and bang for buck you
 should exclude it. Unless you also want to include that massive liquid
 cooled asus radeon that is sold in a military grade carrying case and other
 things like that :)

 I've tried it btw as a friend's shop had a review return they kindly lent
 me for a week (they work closely with GB since one of the partners is an ex
 employee and another moonlights reviewing hardware).
 It was hardly a noticeable improvement over the GB OC 680 4GB I had (and
 still have) in there.

 The practical performance gains are far, far inferior to 35%. Only the
 added ram is nice, but nothing justifies a price tag that is more than
 doubled compared to the 680. It's a gimmick because you need a serious
 hardware fetish to justify forking out 1250-1400$ out for it compared to a
 benched OC 680 with 4GB that you can have for 550$ and have chances to
 trivially overclock and narrow the gap again.

 I run a dell 2711 and an additional 1980x1200 monitor with it btw.


 On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 6:55 PM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:

 The GTX Titan is not a gimmick but uses the successor to the chip series
 used in the GTX 680, e.g. the GT(X) 6xx series uses the GK104, while
 the GTX Titan uses the GK110. You can find the GK110 in the Tesla K20,
 too.

 You could describe the GTX690 as a gimmick, as it uses two GK104 on one
 card
 to maximize performance at the cost of higher powerconsumption, noise and
 heat.

 The performance gain between a GTX680 and a GTX Titan is roughly 35%
 and can be felt nicely when using it with higher screenresolutions like
 1920x1200 or 2560x1440 and higher antialiasing in games.

 That´s where the 6GB VRAM of the GTX Titan come in handy, too.

 Cheers,

 tim






 On 27.03.2013 05:24, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:

 Benchmarking is more driver tuning than it's videocard performance, and
 if
 you want to look at number crunching you should look at the most recent
 gens.

 The 680 has brought nVIDIA back up top for number crunching (forgetting
 the
 silver editions or gimmicks like the titan), and close enough to bang for
 buck best, but AMD's response to that still has to come.

 Ironically, though, the 6xx gen is reported as a crippled, bad performer
 in
 DCC apps, although I can't say I noticed it myself. It sure as hell works
 admirably well in mudbox, mari, cuda work, and I've had no issues in maya
 or soft. I don't really benchmrak or obsess over numbers much though.

 When this will obsolesce, I will considering AMD again, probably in a
 couple years.

 For GPU rendering though, well, that's something you CAN bench reliably
 with the engine, and AMD might still win the FLOP per dollar run there,
 so
 it's not to be discounted.

 Would be good to know what the redshift guys have to say about it
 themselves though if they can spare the thought and can actually
 disclose.

 On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Mirko Jankovic
 mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com**wrote:

  well no idea about pro cards.. really never got financial justification
 to
 get one, quadro 4000 in old company didn;t really felt anything much
 better
 than gaming cards so...
 but in gaming segment..
 opengl scores in sinebench for example:
 gtx 580: ~55
 7970: ~90

 to start with
 not to mention annoying issue with high segment rotating cube in
 viewport
 in SI.
 7970 smooth at ~170 fps
 with gtx580 bfore that.. to point out that the rest of comp is identical
 only switched card... for the first 30-50sec frame rate was stuck at
 something like 17 fps... and after that it kinda jump to ~70-80fps...

 in any case with gaming cards ati vs nvidia there is no doubt. and if
 you
 are not using CUDA much then no need to even thing which way to go.
 Now redshift is game changer heheh but I'm still hoping that OpenCL will
 be supported and I'm looking forward to test it out with two of 7970 in
 crossfire :)

 btw I'm not much into programming waters but is it really
 OpenCL programming  that as I understood should work on ALL cards, is
 that
 much more complex than for CUDA which is limited to nvidia only?
 Wouldn't
 it be more logical to go with solution that is covering a lot more
 market
 than something limited to one manufacturer?


 On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Arvid Björn arvidbj...@gmail.com
 wrote:


 My beef with ATI last time I tried FirePro was that

Softimage 2013/2014 Irradiance Particles - IP Optimize still single threaded?


I´m using xsi2012sap here and find it brutally anoying
to see the Irradiance Particle calculation´s IP Optimize
use a single CPU thread only, especially for settings
with Importons Density dialed above 1.

At least I can´t tell a quality increase between a setting of
1 to 2, just the way you´d want things to turn out...

Irradiance Particles are really nice otherwise,
seem to even be energy conserving actually.

If you compare Iparticles to how the Fallof Start Stop option
works for good old FinalGathering, that is neither desireable
nor nice to make use of it...

Any info on reworked mR satellite support with Softimage 2014?

All that is boring me to the brink of buying a personal V-Ray 2.0
license and even thinking about how much hassle Maya would be anyway...


Cheers,


tim


P.S: I would have thought nVidia Corp. is clever enough to realize
they have the fastest GPUs to make mR rendering at least seem nice...

RE: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

2013-03-27 Thread Jeff McFall

I have been following this thread and have been wondering if the fact that the 
K6X0 and Quadro K5000 are more tuned for single precision is making the 
difference between them and Titan which from what I understand is more tuned 
for double precision?   Or does that even matter for this or other renderers?  
I admit my knowledge in this area is pretty scarce.

We just got some K5000's and were trying to get a handle on all of this before 
we purchased them.  We never sorted it out so we went ahead with the K5000 
which seem to be fine so far but I admit they have not yet been pushed for 
compute or rendering.


jeff




From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Nicolas Burtnyk
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 6:20 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

The TITAN is not a gimmick with respect to Redshift.
It's almost twice as fast as a GTX 670 on all the tests we've run.  We don't 
have a GTX 680 so I don't have the numbers to compare against.  Pricing wise, 
there TITAN costs $1K and the 680 4GB is $550 so the 680 wins for 
price/performance ratio (but probably not by a whole lot).  For 
performance/watt, the TITAN wins by a lot.

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 3:09 PM, Raffaele Fragapane 
raffsxsil...@googlemail.commailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:
Don't call it a gimmick then (although it is with all the fashion and hype 
elements around it), call it a singularity, but if you're looking at benching 
and sorting videocards for performance and bang for buck you should exclude it. 
Unless you also want to include that massive liquid cooled asus radeon that is 
sold in a military grade carrying case and other things like that :)

I've tried it btw as a friend's shop had a review return they kindly lent me 
for a week (they work closely with GB since one of the partners is an ex 
employee and another moonlights reviewing hardware).
It was hardly a noticeable improvement over the GB OC 680 4GB I had (and still 
have) in there.

The practical performance gains are far, far inferior to 35%. Only the added 
ram is nice, but nothing justifies a price tag that is more than doubled 
compared to the 680. It's a gimmick because you need a serious hardware fetish 
to justify forking out 1250-1400$ out for it compared to a benched OC 680 with 
4GB that you can have for 550$ and have chances to trivially overclock and 
narrow the gap again.

I run a dell 2711 and an additional 1980x1200 monitor with it btw.

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 6:55 PM, Tim Leydecker 
bauero...@gmx.demailto:bauero...@gmx.de wrote:
The GTX Titan is not a gimmick but uses the successor to the chip series
used in the GTX 680, e.g. the GT(X) 6xx series uses the GK104, while
the GTX Titan uses the GK110. You can find the GK110 in the Tesla K20, too.

You could describe the GTX690 as a gimmick, as it uses two GK104 on one card
to maximize performance at the cost of higher powerconsumption, noise and heat.

The performance gain between a GTX680 and a GTX Titan is roughly 35%
and can be felt nicely when using it with higher screenresolutions like
1920x1200 or 2560x1440 and higher antialiasing in games.

That´s where the 6GB VRAM of the GTX Titan come in handy, too.

Cheers,

tim






On 27.03.2013 05tel:27.03.2013%2005:24, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:
Benchmarking is more driver tuning than it's videocard performance, and if
you want to look at number crunching you should look at the most recent
gens.

The 680 has brought nVIDIA back up top for number crunching (forgetting the
silver editions or gimmicks like the titan), and close enough to bang for
buck best, but AMD's response to that still has to come.

Ironically, though, the 6xx gen is reported as a crippled, bad performer in
DCC apps, although I can't say I noticed it myself. It sure as hell works
admirably well in mudbox, mari, cuda work, and I've had no issues in maya
or soft. I don't really benchmrak or obsess over numbers much though.

When this will obsolesce, I will considering AMD again, probably in a
couple years.

For GPU rendering though, well, that's something you CAN bench reliably
with the engine, and AMD might still win the FLOP per dollar run there, so
it's not to be discounted.

Would be good to know what the redshift guys have to say about it
themselves though if they can spare the thought and can actually disclose.

On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Mirko Jankovic
mirkoj.anima...@gmail.commailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote:
well no idea about pro cards.. really never got financial justification to
get one, quadro 4000 in old company didn;t really felt anything much better
than gaming cards so...
but in gaming segment..
opengl scores in sinebench for example:
gtx 580: ~55
7970: ~90

to start with
not to mention annoying issue with high segment rotating cube in viewport
in SI.
7970 smooth at ~170 fps
with gtx580 bfore that.. to point out that the rest of comp

Re: Softimage 2013/2014 Irradiance Particles - IP Optimize still single threaded?

2013-03-27 Thread Stephen Blair


On 27/03/2013 6:56 PM, Tim Leydecker wrote:
Any info on reworked mR satellite support with Softimage 2014? 

Nope. The word satellite was never mentioned by anybody.

Re: Softimage 2013/2014 Irradiance Particles - IP Optimize still single threaded?


Wait, I´ll just checked my spelling.
f***. satellite. no typo.

I´m bored of this mental crap.

But thanks for the info, Stephen.

It´s welcome as always, helps making a decision.

Cheers,

tim






On 28.03.2013 00:18, Stephen Blair wrote:

On 27/03/2013 6:56 PM, Tim Leydecker wrote:

Any info on reworked mR satellite support with Softimage 2014?

Nope. The word satellite was never mentioned by anybody.

Re: Softimage 2014

2013-03-27 Thread Ahmidou Lyazidi

Hi Matt, as you moved to 2013 lately, there might be workarounds for some
of you problems.*
*
*
Preserve UVs*: I think it's not publicly available, but piotrek did a swim
UVs for explicit using the custom tool SDK, so it's doable.

*Pain*t: A Maya Artisan like paint tool is also possible, I have an
unfinished one, it's only doing push and smooth, but working, I also never
found the time to implement undo/redo.
Also I'm not sure that maya and max have a brush to modify topology.

*Locking topology*: Since 2012 there is a pin UVs that survive to freeze.
I'm surprise that a all levels locked ICE tree can be freezed (bug?!), but
you ca still make an operator that will lock a point and all it's attached
properties.
Locked operators are not freezable.

Cheers
---
Ahmidou Lyazidi
Director | TD | CG artist
http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos

Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

While I'm not a huge fan of Anand, they do occasionally have a good article
out.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6774/nvidias-geforce-gtx-titan-part-2-titans-performance-unveiled/3

This sheds some light on what you might be asking about, and on why some
times you hear that the 580s are doing better than the 680s and why the
latter is considered a crippled card for professional use.

It does omit the fact that the (factory) OCed premium 680s, especially with
the memory clocked higher, actually go up a fair chunk, and that if you
have a 680 that hits 1400 then some of those tests, especially short span
ones where Titan's turbo doesn't have the time to kick in, will actually
see the 680 taking the lead over the titan in both numbers and power usage.

Only benching I've done was CUDA and number crunching related because I've
taken an interest in it a while ago and still toy with it on and off, and
that includes the generic GEMM and FFT tests.

I don't bother with game benchmarks or 3DMark or cinebench, but single
precision the 680 stock cooled but OCed was constantly bang-on on par with
the titan for a lower power draw.
Double precision even OCed it (680) will fall back a fair chunk, and water
cooled OCed 580s actually take the lead in bang for buck by a mile, but
have horrible (high) power draw.

You can consider the k5000 somewhat closer to the titan than to the 680.

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 10:16 AM, Jeff McFall jeff.mcf...@sas.com wrote:

I have been following this thread and have been wondering if the fact
that the K6X0 and Quadro K5000 are more tuned for single precision is
making the difference between them and Titan which from what I understand
is more tuned for double precision? Or does that even matter for this or
other renderers? I admit my knowledge in this area is pretty scarce.

** **

We just got some K5000’s and were trying to get a handle on all of this
before we purchased them. We never sorted it out so we went ahead with the
K5000 which seem to be fine so far but I admit they have not yet been
pushed for compute or rendering.

** **

jeff

** **

*From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Nicolas Burtnyk
*Sent:* Wednesday, March 27, 2013 6:20 PM
*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
*Subject:* Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer

** **

The TITAN is not a gimmick with respect to Redshift.

It's almost twice as fast as a GTX 670 on all the tests we've run. We
don't have a GTX 680 so I don't have the numbers to compare against.
Pricing wise, there TITAN costs $1K and the 680 4GB is $550 so the 680
wins for price/performance ratio (but probably not by a whole lot). For
performance/watt, the TITAN wins by a lot.

** **

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 3:09 PM, Raffaele Fragapane
raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:

Don't call it a gimmick then (although it is with all the fashion and hype
elements around it), call it a singularity, but if you're looking at
benching and sorting videocards for performance and bang for buck you
should exclude it. Unless you also want to include that massive liquid
cooled asus radeon that is sold in a military grade carrying case and other
things like that :)

I've tried it btw as a friend's shop had a review return they kindly lent
me for a week (they work closely with GB since one of the partners is an ex
employee and another moonlights reviewing hardware).
It was hardly a noticeable improvement over the GB OC 680 4GB I had (and
still have) in there.

The practical performance gains are far, far inferior to 35%. Only the
added ram is nice, but nothing justifies a price tag that is more than
doubled compared to the 680. It's a gimmick because you need a serious
hardware fetish to justify forking out 1250-1400$ out for it compared to a
benched OC 680 with 4GB that you can have for 550$ and have chances to
trivially overclock and narrow the gap again.

I run a dell 2711 and an additional 1980x1200 monitor with it btw.

** **

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 6:55 PM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:**
**

The GTX Titan is not a gimmick but uses the successor to the chip series
used in the GTX 680, e.g. the GT(X) 6xx series uses the GK104, while
the GTX Titan uses the GK110. You can find the GK110 in the Tesla K20, too.

You could describe the GTX690 as a gimmick, as it uses two GK104 on one
card
to maximize performance at the cost of higher powerconsumption, noise and
heat.

The performance gain between a GTX680 and a GTX Titan is roughly 35%
and can be felt nicely when using it with higher screenresolutions like
1920x1200 or 2560x1440 and higher antialiasing in games.

That´s where the 6GB VRAM of the GTX Titan come in handy, too.

Cheers,

tim

On 27.03.2013 05:24, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:

Benchmarking is more driver tuning than it's videocard

Moving a rigged character and animation from Softimage into Maya.

2013-03-27 Thread Simon Pickard

Are we at a stage yet where we can move characters that are rigged with
animation from one package to another?

Or am I dreaming.

Regards,
Simon

RE: Softimage 2013/2014 Irradiance Particles - IP Optimize still single threaded?

2013-03-27 Thread Sven Constable

Be very careful with the importons density, because the slider range in SI
is totally off scale. Value of one means one importon ray per pixel, thats
a *very* high quality setting.
I use values down to 0.05 for (ultra)fast previews and ramp it up to 1 for
high quality (overnight) renders... so value of 2 or above is like rendering
with AA of min5max5 as a comparison.:)
Better factory scale for the slider would have been 0.01 to 2 I think.

sven

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 23:56
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Softimage 2013/2014 Irradiance Particles - IP Optimize still single
threaded?

I´m using xsi2012sap here and find it brutally anoying to see the Irradiance
Particle calculation´s IP Optimize use a single CPU thread only, especially
for settings with Importons Density dialed above 1.

At least I can´t tell a quality increase between a setting of
1 to 2, just the way you´d want things to turn out...

Irradiance Particles are really nice otherwise, seem to even be energy
conserving actually.

If you compare Iparticles to how the Fallof Start Stop option works for
good old FinalGathering, that is neither desireable nor nice to make use of
it...

Any info on reworked mR satellite support with Softimage 2014?

All that is boring me to the brink of buying a personal V-Ray 2.0 license
and even thinking about how much hassle Maya would be anyway...


Cheers,


tim


P.S: I would have thought nVidia Corp. is clever enough to realize they have
the fastest GPUs to make mR rendering at least seem nice...

Re: Moving a rigged character and animation from Softimage into Maya.

With 2014 versions I believe you have a better chance since they now say
that simple constraints are able to transfer. I'm going to say that it
won't be 100% but it's getting better.

Let's just say you're in one of those drunken hazes after a good Friday
night at the pub.


Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Simon Pickard m...@simonpickard.comwrote:

 Are we at a stage yet where we can move characters that are rigged with
 animation from one package to another?

 Or am I dreaming.

 Regards,
 Simon

Re: Softimage 2013/2014 Irradiance Particles - IP Optimize still single threaded?

2013-03-27 Thread Emilio Hernandez

I wouldn't recommend changing from Softimage to Maya.  I've been there and
back.  But if you dare to give it a try, start browsing the web for Maya
scripts.  You will need a lot of them to have something that will perhaps
perform like Softimage.  Not to mention to take a deep breath before diving
into the hypershade node, maya nodes and where is the connection that you
are looking.


2013/3/27 Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de

 Wait, I惻l just checked my spelling.
 f***. satellite. no typo.

 I惴 bored of this mental crap.

 But thanks for the info, Stephen.

 It愀 welcome as always, helps making a decision.

 Cheers,

 tim







 On 28.03.2013 00:18, Stephen Blair wrote:

 On 27/03/2013 6:56 PM, Tim Leydecker wrote:

 Any info on reworked mR satellite support with Softimage 2014?

 Nope. The word satellite was never mentioned by anybody.




--

Re: Moving a rigged character and animation from Softimage into Maya.


How about pointcaching/alembifying/plotting your character asset?

That stuff is supposed to be supported out of the 2012/2013 box via *.fbx, 
pointcache
and alembic.

alembic Crate, a 3rd party wrapper tool you might like to look into can be 
found here:

http://exocortex.com/products/crate/

It is really nice to have just the mesh(es) in the viewport and
don´t bother about anything but texturingshadinglighting them.

Especially if the layeris locked from accidentially nudging them, ahem...

But maybe I´m biased. I hate rigging because I suck grande at it.

Cheers,


tim



On 28.03.2013 00:51, Simon Pickard wrote:

Are we at a stage yet where we can move characters that are rigged with
animation from one package to another?

Or am I dreaming.

Regards,
Simon

Re: Softimage 2013/2014 Irradiance Particles - IP Optimize still single threaded?


Hey Sven,

thanks for the info.

I am range testing lowering Irradiance rays against density.

I had hoped that I could use a higher density to keep the rays closer to 
128-256.

(I´m pushing the classroom scene, loads of nasty noise)

Irradiance Particles feel very slow, mostly because of the lack of visual 
feedback,
that sucks when tweaking but once that damn preprocessing is done.

Am now at 256-350 rays and density 2

My frametimes are all around 01:30:00 - 02:45:00, yes 1 1/2 hours and up at
HD720 w/DOF.

Clean, presentable frames, using unified sampling (which is really nice)

The Automatic FinalGather alternative is similarly fast/slow with 1536-2048 
rays.

All that is mR 3.9.x, so I lack a few optimizations and yes, it hurts.

Cheers,


tim



On 28.03.2013 00:53, Sven Constable wrote:

Be very careful with the importons density, because the slider range in SI
is totally off scale. Value of one means one importon ray per pixel, that’s
a *very* high quality setting.
I use values down to 0.05 for (ultra)fast previews and ramp it up to 1 for
high quality (overnight) renders... so value of 2 or above is like rendering
with AA of min5max5 as a comparison.:)
Better factory scale for the slider would have been 0.01 to 2 I think.

sven

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 23:56
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Softimage 2013/2014 Irradiance Particles - IP Optimize still single
threaded?

I´m using xsi2012sap here and find it brutally anoying to see the Irradiance
Particle calculation´s IP Optimize use a single CPU thread only, especially
for settings with Importons Density dialed above 1.

At least I can´t tell a quality increase between a setting of
1 to 2, just the way you´d want things to turn out...

Irradiance Particles are really nice otherwise, seem to even be energy
conserving actually.

If you compare Iparticles to how the Fallof Start Stop option works for
good old FinalGathering, that is neither desireable nor nice to make use of
it...

Any info on reworked mR satellite support with Softimage 2014?

All that is boring me to the brink of buying a personal V-Ray 2.0 license
and even thinking about how much hassle Maya would be anyway...


Cheers,


tim


P.S: I would have thought nVidia Corp. is clever enough to realize they have
the fastest GPUs to make mR rendering at least seem nice...

Re: Moving a rigged character and animation from Softimage into Maya.

Knowing Simon, he wants to rig something in Soft and get it over to Maya
with the whole rig intact not just the point caching. He wants controls,
skinning, constraints, the whole shebang!


Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 8:03 PM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:

 How about pointcaching/alembifying/**plotting your character asset?

 That stuff is supposed to be supported out of the 2012/2013 box via *.fbx,
 pointcache
 and alembic.

 alembic Crate, a 3rd party wrapper tool you might like to look into can be
 found here:

 http://exocortex.com/products/**crate/http://exocortex.com/products/crate/

 It is really nice to have just the mesh(es) in the viewport and
 don´t bother about anything but texturingshadinglighting them.

 Especially if the layeris locked from accidentially nudging them, ahem...

 But maybe I´m biased. I hate rigging because I suck grande at it.

 Cheers,


 tim




 On 28.03.2013 00:51, Simon Pickard wrote:

 Are we at a stage yet where we can move characters that are rigged with
 animation from one package to another?

 Or am I dreaming.

 Regards,
 Simon

Re: Moving a rigged character and animation from Softimage into Maya.

2013-03-27 Thread Ahmidou Lyazidi

AKAIK, you can't transfer bones and IK

---
Ahmidou Lyazidi
Director | TD | CG artist
http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos


2013/3/28 Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.com

 Knowing Simon, he wants to rig something in Soft and get it over to Maya
 with the whole rig intact not just the point caching. He wants controls,
 skinning, constraints, the whole shebang!

 
 Eric Thivierge
 http://www.ethivierge.com


 On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 8:03 PM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:

 How about pointcaching/alembifying/**plotting your character asset?

 That stuff is supposed to be supported out of the 2012/2013 box via
 *.fbx, pointcache
 and alembic.

 alembic Crate, a 3rd party wrapper tool you might like to look into can
 be found here:

 http://exocortex.com/products/**crate/http://exocortex.com/products/crate/

 It is really nice to have just the mesh(es) in the viewport and
 don´t bother about anything but texturingshadinglighting them.

 Especially if the layeris locked from accidentially nudging them, ahem...

 But maybe I´m biased. I hate rigging because I suck grande at it.

 Cheers,


 tim




 On 28.03.2013 00:51, Simon Pickard wrote:

 Are we at a stage yet where we can move characters that are rigged with
 animation from one package to another?

 Or am I dreaming.

 Regards,
 Simon

Re: Moving a rigged character and animation from Softimage into Maya.

2013-03-27 Thread Ahmidou Lyazidi

AFAIK

---
Ahmidou Lyazidi
Director | TD | CG artist
http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos


2013/3/28 Ahmidou Lyazidi ahmidou@gmail.com

 AKAIK, you can't transfer bones and IK

 ---
 Ahmidou Lyazidi
 Director | TD | CG artist
 http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos


 2013/3/28 Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.com

 Knowing Simon, he wants to rig something in Soft and get it over to Maya
 with the whole rig intact not just the point caching. He wants controls,
 skinning, constraints, the whole shebang!

 
 Eric Thivierge
 http://www.ethivierge.com


 On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 8:03 PM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:

 How about pointcaching/alembifying/**plotting your character asset?

 That stuff is supposed to be supported out of the 2012/2013 box via
 *.fbx, pointcache
 and alembic.

 alembic Crate, a 3rd party wrapper tool you might like to look into can
 be found here:

 http://exocortex.com/products/**crate/http://exocortex.com/products/crate/

 It is really nice to have just the mesh(es) in the viewport and
 don´t bother about anything but texturingshadinglighting them.

 Especially if the layeris locked from accidentially nudging them, ahem...

 But maybe I´m biased. I hate rigging because I suck grande at it.

 Cheers,


 tim




 On 28.03.2013 00:51, Simon Pickard wrote:

 Are we at a stage yet where we can move characters that are rigged with
 animation from one package to another?

 Or am I dreaming.

 Regards,
 Simon

Re: Moving a rigged character and animation from Softimage into Maya.




On 28.03.2013 01:19, Eric Thivierge wrote:

Knowing Simon, he wants to rig something in Soft and get it over to Maya
with the whole rig intact not just the point caching. He wants controls,
skinning, constraints, the whole shebang!


*shudder*

constraints

*shudder*

What next? Nested references?

I´d need a beer now but milk and a cookie will have to do...

Have a good night.

Cheers,

tim

Re: Moving a rigged character and animation from Softimage into Maya.

2013-03-27 Thread Simon Pickard

Eric Thivierge wrote:
Knowing Simon, he wants to rig something in Soft and get it over to Maya
with the whole rig intact not just the point caching. He wants controls,
skinning, constraints, the whole shebang!

Not only that, I want you to do it for me for free over Easter.
Shall I email over the scene?

Re: Moving a rigged character and animation from Softimage into Maya.

Theoretically, sort of, practically, not really.
You can get a linearly skinned mesh bound to a hierarchy of nulls with
simple relationships across relativelly well, which moves the transfer
threshold from pure geo caches one step upstream to the distinction between
animation and deformation rig, assuming the deformation rig is simple.

Sparsely keyed animation on a rig of any complexity, no, not really, and
even if you could it's tantamount felony to rig exactly the same way in
Maya and XSI as you pay hefty price, or can comfortably do things, in each
that are almost diametrically opposite on the performance scale.

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 10:51 AM, Simon Pickard m...@simonpickard.comwrote:

 Are we at a stage yet where we can move characters that are rigged with
 animation from one package to another?

 Or am I dreaming.

 Regards,
 Simon




-- 
Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it
and let them flee like the dogs they are!

Re: Moving a rigged character and animation from Softimage into Maya.

You clearly don't know Simon. You left out it should automatically
background cache, run at no less than 120fps (because those 120hz 2.5k
monitors are coming) in a crowd setting, and use full DX11 shading
transferred across platforms with no need for UVs.
That would, of course, be the high res deformation rig, because the anim
proxy is for pussies!

He'll most likely want your wallet too, but you won't notice until he
leaves your desk.

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 11:19 AM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.comwrote:

 Knowing Simon, he wants to rig something in Soft and get it over to Maya
 with the whole rig intact not just the point caching. He wants controls,
 skinning, constraints, the whole shebang!

 
 Eric Thivierge
 http://www.ethivierge.com


 On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 8:03 PM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:

 How about pointcaching/alembifying/**plotting your character asset?

 That stuff is supposed to be supported out of the 2012/2013 box via
 *.fbx, pointcache
 and alembic.

 alembic Crate, a 3rd party wrapper tool you might like to look into can
 be found here:

 http://exocortex.com/products/**crate/http://exocortex.com/products/crate/

 It is really nice to have just the mesh(es) in the viewport and
 don´t bother about anything but texturingshadinglighting them.

 Especially if the layeris locked from accidentially nudging them, ahem...

 But maybe I´m biased. I hate rigging because I suck grande at it.

 Cheers,


 tim




 On 28.03.2013 00:51, Simon Pickard wrote:

 Are we at a stage yet where we can move characters that are rigged with
 animation from one package to another?

 Or am I dreaming.

 Regards,
 Simon





-- 
Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it
and let them flee like the dogs they are!

Re: Moving a rigged character and animation from Softimage into Maya.

Sure but also send a case of beer. I'll have to get the beer prior
to commencing the rigging job as I need to be terribly drunk to take one of
your crazy projects. :P


Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 9:09 PM, Raffaele Fragapane 
raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:

 You clearly don't know Simon. You left out it should automatically
 background cache, run at no less than 120fps (because those 120hz 2.5k
 monitors are coming) in a crowd setting, and use full DX11 shading
 transferred across platforms with no need for UVs.
 That would, of course, be the high res deformation rig, because the anim
 proxy is for pussies!

 He'll most likely want your wallet too, but you won't notice until he
 leaves your desk.


 On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 11:19 AM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.comwrote:

 Knowing Simon, he wants to rig something in Soft and get it over to Maya
 with the whole rig intact not just the point caching. He wants controls,
 skinning, constraints, the whole shebang!

 
 Eric Thivierge
 http://www.ethivierge.com


 On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 8:03 PM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote:

 How about pointcaching/alembifying/**plotting your character asset?

 That stuff is supposed to be supported out of the 2012/2013 box via
 *.fbx, pointcache
 and alembic.

 alembic Crate, a 3rd party wrapper tool you might like to look into can
 be found here:

 http://exocortex.com/products/**crate/http://exocortex.com/products/crate/

 It is really nice to have just the mesh(es) in the viewport and
 don´t bother about anything but texturingshadinglighting them.

 Especially if the layeris locked from accidentially nudging them, ahem...

 But maybe I´m biased. I hate rigging because I suck grande at it.

 Cheers,


 tim




 On 28.03.2013 00:51, Simon Pickard wrote:

 Are we at a stage yet where we can move characters that are rigged with
 animation from one package to another?

 Or am I dreaming.

 Regards,
 Simon





 --
 Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it
 and let them flee like the dogs they are!

Re: Softimage 2014

2013-03-27 Thread Sebastien Sterling

Hey Ahmidou, i really like your 720 ice interpolation cns

It's nice to hear that options aren't as limited as that for XSI

Do you think you might ever flesh out your Paint tool to include a Relax op
? i'm sure a lot of people would be very interested and willing to purchase
such a plugin. i know i would :)

On 28 March 2013 00:31, Ahmidou Lyazidi ahmidou@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi Matt, as you moved to 2013 lately, there might be workarounds for some
 of you problems.*
 *
 *
 Preserve UVs*: I think it's not publicly available, but piotrek did a
 swim UVs for explicit using the custom tool SDK, so it's doable.

 *Pain*t: A Maya Artisan like paint tool is also possible, I have an
 unfinished one, it's only doing push and smooth, but working, I also
 never found the time to implement undo/redo.
 Also I'm not sure that maya and max have a brush to modify topology.

 *Locking topology*: Since 2012 there is a pin UVs that survive to freeze.
 I'm surprise that a all levels locked ICE tree can be freezed (bug?!),
 but you ca still make an operator that will lock a point and all it's
 attached properties.
 Locked operators are not freezable.

 Cheers
 ---
 Ahmidou Lyazidi
 Director | TD | CG artist
 http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos

Re: Moving a rigged character and animation from Softimage into Maya.

As long as I don't have to implement it, I can think any scale you can
possibly wish for :)

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 3:18 PM, Simon Pickard m...@simonpickard.comwrote:

 What is this? 2009?
 You have to think bigger Raf.

Softimage Jedi Training

2013-03-27 Thread Bradley Gabe

Hi Softimage Users!

I have only a few more months before I'm off to grad school full time and
thought it might be mutually beneficial for our community to come up with
some sort of Softimage Jedi training regimen in order to impart some
wisdom, while at the same time helping me stash away some funds to pay for
cappuccinos when I have to pull all-nighters  for my exams.

Something I was thinking about, (in an effort not to overlap any of
Raffaele's excellent training work) rather than creating a bunch of videos,
was to set up a class using GoToMeeting where we can distribute scene data
and solve problems interactively. This would allow real time questions and
feedback, but more importantly,  provide insight into the problem solving
process, and how decisions are made along the way, which is something the
video course format doesn't provide. For all students, I would provide an
extensive package of custom tools to add to the problem solving arsenal.

What I'm curious to learn is, what areas of technical animation in
Softimage would users be most interested in learning? For example:

   - Basic rigging (fundamentals)
   - Advanced rigging (secondary and tertiary animation control)
   - Designing custom deformers using ICE (facial animation, volume
   retention, etc)
   - Adding secondary effects under short deadline (flesh jiggle, springs,
   muscle effects)
   - Using scripting for problem solving
   - Developing custom tools using the Softimage UI
   - Developing custom tools using PySide UI
   - Understanding ICE (fundamentals)
   - Other

-Bradley

Re: Moving a rigged character and animation from Softimage into Maya.

2013-03-27 Thread Edy Susanto Lim

Go for it Simon. You can squeeze lots of things out of eric when he is
drunk. surely rigging would be a no problemo :D

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 3:32 PM, Raffaele Fragapane 
raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:

 As long as I don't have to implement it, I can think any scale you can
 possibly wish for :)


 On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 3:18 PM, Simon Pickard m...@simonpickard.comwrote:

 What is this? 2009?
 You have to think bigger Raf.





-- 
Edy Susanto Lim
TD
http://sawamura.neorack.com

Re: Softimage Jedi Training

2013-03-27 Thread Sebastien Sterling

Those are all cuul !

On 28 March 2013 05:53, Bradley Gabe witha...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi Softimage Users!

 I have only a few more months before I'm off to grad school full time and
 thought it might be mutually beneficial for our community to come up with
 some sort of Softimage Jedi training regimen in order to impart some
 wisdom, while at the same time helping me stash away some funds to pay for
 cappuccinos when I have to pull all-nighters  for my exams.

 Something I was thinking about, (in an effort not to overlap any of
 Raffaele's excellent training work) rather than creating a bunch of videos,
 was to set up a class using GoToMeeting where we can distribute scene data
 and solve problems interactively. This would allow real time questions and
 feedback, but more importantly,  provide insight into the problem solving
 process, and how decisions are made along the way, which is something the
 video course format doesn't provide. For all students, I would provide an
 extensive package of custom tools to add to the problem solving arsenal.

 What I'm curious to learn is, what areas of technical animation in
 Softimage would users be most interested in learning? For example:

- Basic rigging (fundamentals)
- Advanced rigging (secondary and tertiary animation control)
- Designing custom deformers using ICE (facial animation, volume
retention, etc)
- Adding secondary effects under short deadline (flesh jiggle,
springs, muscle effects)
- Using scripting for problem solving
- Developing custom tools using the Softimage UI
- Developing custom tools using PySide UI
- Understanding ICE (fundamentals)
- Other

 -Bradley

Re: Softimage Jedi Training

I'm in for 2-4!
On Mar 28, 2013 12:55 AM, Bradley Gabe witha...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi Softimage Users!

 I have only a few more months before I'm off to grad school full time and
 thought it might be mutually beneficial for our community to come up with
 some sort of Softimage Jedi training regimen in order to impart some
 wisdom, while at the same time helping me stash away some funds to pay for
 cappuccinos when I have to pull all-nighters  for my exams.

 Something I was thinking about, (in an effort not to overlap any of
 Raffaele's excellent training work) rather than creating a bunch of videos,
 was to set up a class using GoToMeeting where we can distribute scene data
 and solve problems interactively. This would allow real time questions and
 feedback, but more importantly,  provide insight into the problem solving
 process, and how decisions are made along the way, which is something the
 video course format doesn't provide. For all students, I would provide an
 extensive package of custom tools to add to the problem solving arsenal.

 What I'm curious to learn is, what areas of technical animation in
 Softimage would users be most interested in learning? For example:

- Basic rigging (fundamentals)
- Advanced rigging (secondary and tertiary animation control)
- Designing custom deformers using ICE (facial animation, volume
retention, etc)
- Adding secondary effects under short deadline (flesh jiggle,
springs, muscle effects)
- Using scripting for problem solving
- Developing custom tools using the Softimage UI
- Developing custom tools using PySide UI
- Understanding ICE (fundamentals)
- Other

 -Bradley

Re: Softimage Jedi Training

2013-03-27 Thread Luca!!!!

in order, I'm attracted by the  number 2, 3 and 4.


2013/3/28 Bradley Gabe witha...@gmail.com

 Hi Softimage Users!

 I have only a few more months before I'm off to grad school full time and
 thought it might be mutually beneficial for our community to come up with
 some sort of Softimage Jedi training regimen in order to impart some
 wisdom, while at the same time helping me stash away some funds to pay for
 cappuccinos when I have to pull all-nighters  for my exams.

 Something I was thinking about, (in an effort not to overlap any of
 Raffaele's excellent training work) rather than creating a bunch of videos,
 was to set up a class using GoToMeeting where we can distribute scene data
 and solve problems interactively. This would allow real time questions and
 feedback, but more importantly,  provide insight into the problem solving
 process, and how decisions are made along the way, which is something the
 video course format doesn't provide. For all students, I would provide an
 extensive package of custom tools to add to the problem solving arsenal.

 What I'm curious to learn is, what areas of technical animation in
 Softimage would users be most interested in learning? For example:

- Basic rigging (fundamentals)
- Advanced rigging (secondary and tertiary animation control)
- Designing custom deformers using ICE (facial animation, volume
retention, etc)
- Adding secondary effects under short deadline (flesh jiggle,
springs, muscle effects)
- Using scripting for problem solving
- Developing custom tools using the Softimage UI
- Developing custom tools using PySide UI
- Understanding ICE (fundamentals)
- Other

 -Bradley




-- 
...superpositiviii...qualunque cosa accada!...

Re: Moving a rigged character and animation from Softimage into Maya.