Re: Top List of ICE Nodes That Cover 80% of What You Do With The Toolset
ah, regarding things like crowdfx syflex, or the more comprehensive prebuilt ICE nodes, i think that's all very dependent on what people use ICE for. you have a lot of flexibility there. i've never used the syflex stuff beyond base setups, but i've never really done must cloth sim stuff recently. i do rigging and some crowd related things, so i've used some crowdfx, and cobbled bits of it that i liked together with other things, and lots of deformation related things for rigs and so forth. private compounds like the syflex nodes may have a lot of production value for people that do cloth sims, but crowdfx, for instance, whether it has production value or not (i have, myself, used it in production), it's a valuable learning tool for anyone curious about an approach to crowd simulation, or even how geometry duplication works, etc. so, if nothing else, it's a great example file, and the value of that is huge. (there are a many such compound nodes that i don't think i'd want gotten rid of even if i've never used them, because someday i may learn something from just deconstructing one). hth
Re: Top List of ICE Nodes That Cover 80% of What You Do With The Toolset
The functional programming throwback has officially pushed this conversation into the twilight zone and right out the other end of it into some unexplored surreal territory. Thanks to all involved, it'll stay with me for the rest of my life and make me giggle every time I'll think of it.
Re: A confession
You have both G and Y, but it's one tool, two if they end up in different buffers, in Soft if you have four or five things you're doing in a sequence you can literally middle click your way through a lot of stuff. It's not uncommon for operations that are equivalent in both apps to take three or four times the clicks in Maya. Very true. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 5:34 AM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Heat Mapping didn't get a lot of use because it generally sucked, and yeah, Maya skinning sucks, though it's more crappy and counter-intuitive than unpredictable if you know how it works (it's not terribly buggy, just downright crap). Getting decent initial weights isn't something to throw away completely, but yeah, it's a need that didn't need addressing anywhere as much as the skinning data and tools need addressing, not by a long shot. Soft's skinning has always been best of breed by an incredibly long shot, which paints a stark picture since it's not exactly mind blowing, just the rest out there is utter crap. It is a lot easier to put something like the new geodesic skin gen in than it is to revamp an entire subsystem that will need a re-do from scratch all the way down to the way it saves and interprets data I guess. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 3:25 PM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: What makes me laugh it the continued addition of new skinning solvers, without focusing on the main issue, the skinning tools themselves. Most riggers i've met using Maya Don't use heat mapping, they prefer to paint it all from scratch, cause they know that Maya's weight painting workflow is so unpredictable, it isn't worth initiating a workflow with a fancy new solver. Ironically we modellers got a lot more use out of it for fast previews and presentations, but we had to get a Rigger to script several bipases in order for it to be functional. On 20 March 2014 03:58, Manuel Huertas Marchena lito...@hotmail.comwrote: Ohh you really don't have to worry. Maya has a single state of the art button solution! Send to Softimage - ..ahahaha!!! that was good mate. IMDB http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4755969/ | Portfolio http://envmanu.com http://envmanu.carbonmade.com/| Vimeohttp://vimeo.com/manuelhuertasmarchena| Linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelhuertas -- Subject: Re: A confession From: furik...@gmail.com Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 12:25:08 +0900 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com And you have both repeat (unmapped) and middle click repeat in SI. Martin Sent from my iPhone On 2014/03/20, at 12:19, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: You have both G and Y, but it's one tool, two if they end up in different buffers, in Soft if you have four or five things you're doing in a sequence you can literally middle click your way through a lot of stuff. It's not uncommon for operations that are equivalent in both apps to take three or four times the clicks in Maya. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 2:12 PM, Ognjen Vukovic ognj...@gmail.comwrote: If i recall correctly , the g key is a repeat last tool shortcut. Not the same but its something. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 3:54 AM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: No, but if you think that's the worst wait until you see how selection highlighting and hierarchies are treated :p Middle mouse button in Maya is largely a non-ui thing and has impactful effects. Connecting things, changing the hierarchy in the outliner and so on. It's not a bad use for it actually, drag'n'drop hierarchies in the explorer are quick but I have on occasion cursed the feature (left click scrolling on the other hand is unacceptably missing in Maya, where they decided of all things to keep navigation consistent, so lots of alt middle mouse dragging to pan a 2D view when left dragging open areas would have been better). But yeah, middle click as a repeat last and toggle is immensely useful, I miss it badly whenever I use Maya, important keys are sacrificed to shading mode changes when in XSI you can just toggle the last two with a click and intuitively set them without learning a new mechanic (shaded and hidden line the two most common for me). This is the kind of things I meant when I said XSI confronts you with an extremely limited, consistent, yet non-restrictive set of things to learn to interact with it. Last time I bothered defining a category and counting when I was studying some UI and UE stuff Maya flagged at 16+ unique and arbitrary models vs XSI's 4 or 5 (couldn't decide the parameters enough to get a single number). On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 1:46 PM, Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.comwrote: Raffaele!! I am standing on my desk clapping... Does Maya have the middle mouse memory button on menus like softimage does? If not make that a top priority... there should be a law requiring that feature in
Re: Top List of ICE Nodes That Cover 80% of What You Do With The Toolset
+1 Both mentions to FE tech are a bit surreal.
Re: Top List of ICE Nodes That Cover 80% of What You Do With The Toolset
Now that I understand the history of ICE a little better, I can see that I was wrong to balk at naming the top ICE nodes I need. Here's my updated list: car cdr cons eq atom cons quote I suppose I won't really need defun, since Maya will let me just add the same nodes over and over again with a mel script. On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 11:56 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: The functional programming throwback has officially pushed this conversation into the twilight zone and right out the other end of it into some unexplored surreal territory. Thanks to all involved, it'll stay with me for the rest of my life and make me giggle every time I'll think of it.
RE: Mental ray volumetric shader errors
I don't think that worked in my scenario as I had numerous overlapping objects (was doing an x-ray shot) and I got the artifacts in the overlaps as well. Though this was easily fixed by splitting the scene in a couple of passes. o From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Gustavo Eggert Boehs Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 12:44 AM To: SI mailing list Subject: RE: Mental ray volumetric shader errors Hey Fabricio, i'be bumped onto that also, in my case it was the Mesh Splitting kicking in. It separates dense meshes into separate objects before passing them on to MR. Therefore, some shaders get artifacts, like volumetrics and bumpmapping also. Real headache but easy fix... Under MR Optimizations, look for Mesh Splitting Factor, increase the value up to infinity and be happy :D Em 19/03/2014 19:20, Ola Madsen ola.mad...@digitalcontext.se mailto:ola.mad...@digitalcontext.se escreveu: I can only confirm this nasty little bug as I experienced it a couple of years ago. If I remember correctly I managed to get rid of the artifacts on some objects by actually tessellating the geometry instead of using to + key. Some object still had the artifacts and I had to work around it by splitting the scene and rendering the objects in in different passes. Cheers Ola From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com ] On Behalf Of Fabricio Chamon Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 11:05 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Mental ray volumetric shader errors ...forgot to say that I'm using Particle_Volume_Cloud, which used to work fine on meshes since always. 2014-03-19 18:56 GMT-03:00 Fabricio Chamon xsiml...@gmail.com mailto:xsiml...@gmail.com : Hi, I'm trying to do some volumetrics in mray, but the shader is giving me all kinds of wierdness on heavy meshes. Have anyone experienced this before ? For the sake of simplicity, I have this test scene with only one default sphere. If I crank up the sphere U/V subd to 200, it starts to show some strange black areas. At subd 300, it renders all flat. I'm guessing it's not a lookup table cell size problem...tried very small values, and the volume renders almost completely solid (when it works). here's some images to illustrate: I really need dense meshes because I want the fine control over the volume silhouette to be on the mesh itself, not through shader trees. anyone ? image001.jpg
Re: Maya render region!
Another feature we've seen in the past, and guess what! it's in a product called Softimage, from Autode$k. Hope they don't buy that feature.., damn duct-taped things.. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 12:56 AM, Octavian Ureche okt...@gmail.com wrote: This is definitely going to show up soon as a revolutionary new feature in maya. I'm betting someone is already making an offer. Btw, houdini also has had a render region for a while now, that kind of works, when it does not offset itself for no apparent reason. But at least it's in there. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 6:06 AM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Nice digging Raff, seems like the tip of the ICE berg. :) On 20 March 2014 02:26, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.comwrote: Should be noted I -REALLY- don't know for sure what I'm talking about here, I don't even know if the event tracker in Google refers to the patent office events after they are published or to some Google service itself. Don't throw parties yet or anything :p On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 1:24 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Apparently it first lapsed and then expired because it wasn't maintained, at least according to Google patents. http://www.google.com/patents/US6091422?dq=avid+technology+render#v=onepageqf=false I have to admit not being entirely sure of how Google patents works (if the feed is accurate), and whether it can be revived, but yeah, there you have it. Autodesk apparently doesn't pay its bills ;) On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 11:01 AM, Gustavo Eggert Boehs gustav...@gmail.com wrote: thats great and all, but AD holds the patent for the renderregion now, so unless it has expired this would be... illegal? -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are! -- Octavian Ureche +40 732 774 313 (GMT+2) Animation Visual Effects www.okto.ro
Re: Why MAX is not option for me.
That's a joke right? I mean for the Most Requested Feature?... was another plugin? !!! On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 2:48 AM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Turns out the MOST REQUESTED FEATURE for Max 2015, was a 30$ plugin http://www.vg2max.spb.ru/edgechex.htm and looks like new Layer system and schematic nodel view was also third party tech https://vimeo.com/57075455 On 19 March 2014 07:26, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.comwrote: It's just slow, they may have improved the viewport performance but its just slow, the constraints are slow. On 19 March 2014 07:13, Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com wrote: Hehe my PC is in good condition, and frankly has no problem with any other software, but Max. Only with Max. *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Alexander Akbarov *Sent:* Monday, March 17, 2014 1:07 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Why MAX is not option for me. If Max crashes about 5 times in an hour there is definitely something wrong with your PC. Max is shitty, old and awkward especially after using XSI, but it's very good for archviz. And its is pretty universal because of myriads plug-ins many of them much better than Max itself... 2014-03-17 11:26 GMT+02:00 Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com: Max is a well known Frankenstein monster that's only survived this long because it has a ridiculous installed user base. I don't think anybody on this list would have ever have considered it. Even the game market has been trying as hard as they possibly can to move away from it despite a massive market pull. It's almost literally the exact opposite of soft in every regard, from its history to it's identity. Can't honestly blame AD for keeping that one alive though, it brings cash in with a ducking rake.
Re: A confession
Hi All So here's another ancient lurker suddenly rising from the depths. It's been a while... Alastair, it's definitely not you! For the last 3 years I have mostly worked in non XSI pipelines. They include Modo, Houdini and more often than not - Maya. Every now and then I get to work in XSI again... but sadly this is less and less. I had no trouble switching to Modo. I picked up Houdini very very quickly. But Maya... its been 2 years and I am simply uncomfortable. I'm definitely not an idiot (I tell myself this all the time) and I've been working in CG since 1995. Interestingly, even though I started with soft3D back in the early days I very quickly progressed to AW Power Animator. So I'm no stranger to 'the other side'. Yet some how very simple things in Maya allude me! And it's not helped by the shockingly poor documentation either. Last summer I worked for a short stint at Sky. First time back on XSI (and Arnold) in a couple of years. It was a really hard project, yet XSI made it feel like I was on holiday compared to what I'd been doing before that! I mostly work in pipeline these days and it amazes me how much work we have to do bring functionality to Maya which is already there in XSI and other packages. Of course, the fact that we *can* bring this functionality to Maya is one of it's strengths, but what's the point of spending loads of money on something that you can't really use without further modification? If you are a small studio or a single user it just doesn't make sense. I shall now return to the murky depths again... Denis-Jose Francois * Denis-Jose François Known to some as *@Hairytech* Known to others as *+Denis-Jose* Occasionally referred to as *Simon* Always *The Evil Hood* https://soundcloud.com/infiniversemedia On 19 March 2014 09:32, Alastair Hearsum hear...@glassworks.co.uk wrote: Folks Here is a confession. I've never used Maya! Not really. I've had a little poke every now and again but no more than make a sphere and spin round it. Now, the lack of Maya knowledge may diminish the value of my comments in some eyes but I think that , on the contrary, it puts me in quite a good position to appraise the software at a certain level. Here is an example of the trouble I'm having that may bring a smile to people's faces. But first just a couple of more sentences before I reveal my difficulty. I like to bill myself as the sensitive artist/animator who is technically all fingers and thumbs, like the woman by the side of her broken down car waiting on a big strong man to help her out. The truth is that its not true. I do have a degree in Fine Art but I also studied maths and physics at university and programmed extensively in Lisp in my first job. So I'm not stupid BUT: *I'm on my third night trying to adjust the resolution of a sphere after I have applied n-cloth to it!* Isn't that incredible? Its one example plucked from many experienced by people I work with who can and have used Maya. Its symptomatic of the all encompassing interface workflow issues that Maya has that I think are really fundamental problems and more important in some ways than headline large features. Admittedly I had had a couple of glasses of wine by that point and it was a casual , before bedtime attempt to try something out but I had already twice asked my colleague at work to explain what the procedure was and I followed what he was doing at the time. So there you have it. Is it me.? Alastair -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.glassworks.co.uk/ Glassworks Terms and Conditions of Sale can be found at glassworks.co.uk (Company registered in England with number 04759979. Registered office 25 Harley Street, London, W1G 9BR. VAT registration number: 86729) Please consider the environment before you print this email. DISCLAIMER: This e-mail and attachments are strictly privileged, private and confidential and are intended solely for the stated recipient(s). Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Company. If you are not the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this e-mail in error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If this transmission is received in error please kindly return it to the sender and delete this message from your system.
Re: CrowdFX texture confusion
I'm using an Arnold Standard shader I thought I'd tested this already but clearly not... It appears to be an Arnold issue. Whether it's a Phong, Standard or Constant shader when rendered through Arnold I get the triangle colour error. I'm going to look into this now but if anyone know's about this please shout and let me know. Cheers *-- * *Jonny Grew Ltd * *www.Jonnygrew.com http://www.Jonnygrew.com* *http://vimeo.com/jonnygrew/showreel2013*http://vimeo.com/jonnygrew/showreel2013 *07855 212722* Jonny Grew Limited is registered in England and Wales. Company number:07735521 VAT number: 122713057 This email and any attachments to it may be confidential and are intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Jonny Grew Ltd. If you are not the intended recipient of this email, you must neither take any action based upon its contents, nor copy or show it to anyone. Please contact the sender if you believe you have received this email in error. On 20 March 2014 08:07, Ho Chung Nguyen hochung.ngu...@autodesk.com wrote: Which shader did you use for the shirt? I use a Phong shader and the shirts are rendered fine [cid:image002.jpg@01CF4456.7D99EE70] Actor Copies mesh gets its materials from ICE attribute Materials. So to override that with a cluster/object material, I set the MaterialID of the shirt polygons to 0 [cid:image006.png@01CF4456.7D99EE70] From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Jonny Grew Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 2:23 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: CrowdFX texture confusion Hi List, I'm trying to get random materials on CrowdFX. I've got 2 questions in relation to this. Attached is an image of a setup. I'm creating a custom attribute (self.WORKDAMNYOU) on the actor copies mesh that is generating a random value between 0 and 7 based on the Copy Index. I'm then getting the Integer Attribute 'WORKDAMNYOU' in the render tree to drive a switch between colours in a Color Multi-Switch (This will eventually be different textures rather than colours). The render appears with odd triangulated colour variations - these triangles vary in size on different characters (the same actor copies mesh). [https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/images/cleardot.gif] [Inline images 1] In addition to this...When I'm trying to test this in a fresh scene I can't even get the custom attribute (WORKDAMNYOU) to show in the render tree unless it's in the scene material. Displaying the values (In the hope it forces the custom attribute to be visible) does nothing. Any suggestions? Cheers Jonny
Re: Digital Golem : Brillant and beautiful
Well done my friend! looks great. :-) Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 19 Mar 2014, at 11:50, Jean-Louis Billard jean-lo...@photon3.com wrote: Thanks for the kind comments. Yes all in Softimage, naturally! Our pipeline is Softimage-Arnold-Nuke and despite all the turmoil I can tell you I have no intention whatsoever to change that in the near future. It works, it works well, and nothing else right now can touch it. So Autodesk can shove their “innovation” right back up their collective arse and choke on it -- as far as I’m concerned they’ve just killed a member of my family. Cheers, Jean-Louis On 19 Mar 2014, at 04:39, Tenshi Sama tenshu...@gmail.com wrote: Nice! All in Softimage? On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 8:18 PM, Francisco Criado malcriad...@gmail.com wrote: Excelent work, so nice! On Tuesday, March 18, 2014, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: https://vimeo.com/groups/ice/videos/89426397 Kudos to Digital Golem !
Re: A confession
Maya seems to be more and more do-it yourself kit.. it's price should reflect that as well Buy starter kit - only Maya UI, you script everything else grade 1 kit - you have modeling plugins! etc... On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 9:45 AM, denis-jose francois denis...@gmail.comwrote: Hi All So here's another ancient lurker suddenly rising from the depths. It's been a while... Alastair, it's definitely not you! For the last 3 years I have mostly worked in non XSI pipelines. They include Modo, Houdini and more often than not - Maya. Every now and then I get to work in XSI again... but sadly this is less and less. I had no trouble switching to Modo. I picked up Houdini very very quickly. But Maya... its been 2 years and I am simply uncomfortable. I'm definitely not an idiot (I tell myself this all the time) and I've been working in CG since 1995. Interestingly, even though I started with soft3D back in the early days I very quickly progressed to AW Power Animator. So I'm no stranger to 'the other side'. Yet some how very simple things in Maya allude me! And it's not helped by the shockingly poor documentation either. Last summer I worked for a short stint at Sky. First time back on XSI (and Arnold) in a couple of years. It was a really hard project, yet XSI made it feel like I was on holiday compared to what I'd been doing before that! I mostly work in pipeline these days and it amazes me how much work we have to do bring functionality to Maya which is already there in XSI and other packages. Of course, the fact that we *can* bring this functionality to Maya is one of it's strengths, but what's the point of spending loads of money on something that you can't really use without further modification? If you are a small studio or a single user it just doesn't make sense. I shall now return to the murky depths again... Denis-Jose Francois * Denis-Jose François Known to some as *@Hairytech* Known to others as *+Denis-Jose* Occasionally referred to as *Simon* Always *The Evil Hood* https://soundcloud.com/infiniversemedia On 19 March 2014 09:32, Alastair Hearsum hear...@glassworks.co.uk wrote: Folks Here is a confession. I've never used Maya! Not really. I've had a little poke every now and again but no more than make a sphere and spin round it. Now, the lack of Maya knowledge may diminish the value of my comments in some eyes but I think that , on the contrary, it puts me in quite a good position to appraise the software at a certain level. Here is an example of the trouble I'm having that may bring a smile to people's faces. But first just a couple of more sentences before I reveal my difficulty. I like to bill myself as the sensitive artist/animator who is technically all fingers and thumbs, like the woman by the side of her broken down car waiting on a big strong man to help her out. The truth is that its not true. I do have a degree in Fine Art but I also studied maths and physics at university and programmed extensively in Lisp in my first job. So I'm not stupid BUT: *I'm on my third night trying to adjust the resolution of a sphere after I have applied n-cloth to it!* Isn't that incredible? Its one example plucked from many experienced by people I work with who can and have used Maya. Its symptomatic of the all encompassing interface workflow issues that Maya has that I think are really fundamental problems and more important in some ways than headline large features. Admittedly I had had a couple of glasses of wine by that point and it was a casual , before bedtime attempt to try something out but I had already twice asked my colleague at work to explain what the procedure was and I followed what he was doing at the time. So there you have it. Is it me.? Alastair -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.glassworks.co.uk/ Glassworks Terms and Conditions of Sale can be found at glassworks.co.uk (Company registered in England with number 04759979. Registered office 25 Harley Street, London, W1G 9BR. VAT registration number: 86729) Please consider the environment before you print this email. DISCLAIMER: This e-mail and attachments are strictly privileged, private and confidential and are intended solely for the stated recipient(s). Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Company. If you are not the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this e-mail in error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If this transmission is received in error please kindly return it to the sender and delete this message from your system.
Re: A confession
I want to have a positive attitude regarding the switch to Maya, but watching some videotutorials on modeling, rigging, texturing, and so on, and reading what you guys are saying I'm kinda scared... Because what you're saying is that Maya out of the box is kind of crappy if you don't script what you want...and thats the bad part, I don't know sh*t about scripting, so my only option is to use it as it is...and then buy plugins... It's Max all over again :( 2014-03-20 10:09 GMT+01:00 Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com: Maya seems to be more and more do-it yourself kit.. it's price should reflect that as well Buy starter kit - only Maya UI, you script everything else grade 1 kit - you have modeling plugins! etc... On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 9:45 AM, denis-jose francois denis...@gmail.comwrote: Hi All So here's another ancient lurker suddenly rising from the depths. It's been a while... Alastair, it's definitely not you! For the last 3 years I have mostly worked in non XSI pipelines. They include Modo, Houdini and more often than not - Maya. Every now and then I get to work in XSI again... but sadly this is less and less. I had no trouble switching to Modo. I picked up Houdini very very quickly. But Maya... its been 2 years and I am simply uncomfortable. I'm definitely not an idiot (I tell myself this all the time) and I've been working in CG since 1995. Interestingly, even though I started with soft3D back in the early days I very quickly progressed to AW Power Animator. So I'm no stranger to 'the other side'. Yet some how very simple things in Maya allude me! And it's not helped by the shockingly poor documentation either. Last summer I worked for a short stint at Sky. First time back on XSI (and Arnold) in a couple of years. It was a really hard project, yet XSI made it feel like I was on holiday compared to what I'd been doing before that! I mostly work in pipeline these days and it amazes me how much work we have to do bring functionality to Maya which is already there in XSI and other packages. Of course, the fact that we *can* bring this functionality to Maya is one of it's strengths, but what's the point of spending loads of money on something that you can't really use without further modification? If you are a small studio or a single user it just doesn't make sense. I shall now return to the murky depths again... Denis-Jose Francois * Denis-Jose François Known to some as *@Hairytech* Known to others as *+Denis-Jose* Occasionally referred to as *Simon* Always *The Evil Hood* https://soundcloud.com/infiniversemedia On 19 March 2014 09:32, Alastair Hearsum hear...@glassworks.co.ukwrote: Folks Here is a confession. I've never used Maya! Not really. I've had a little poke every now and again but no more than make a sphere and spin round it. Now, the lack of Maya knowledge may diminish the value of my comments in some eyes but I think that , on the contrary, it puts me in quite a good position to appraise the software at a certain level. Here is an example of the trouble I'm having that may bring a smile to people's faces. But first just a couple of more sentences before I reveal my difficulty. I like to bill myself as the sensitive artist/animator who is technically all fingers and thumbs, like the woman by the side of her broken down car waiting on a big strong man to help her out. The truth is that its not true. I do have a degree in Fine Art but I also studied maths and physics at university and programmed extensively in Lisp in my first job. So I'm not stupid BUT: *I'm on my third night trying to adjust the resolution of a sphere after I have applied n-cloth to it!* Isn't that incredible? Its one example plucked from many experienced by people I work with who can and have used Maya. Its symptomatic of the all encompassing interface workflow issues that Maya has that I think are really fundamental problems and more important in some ways than headline large features. Admittedly I had had a couple of glasses of wine by that point and it was a casual , before bedtime attempt to try something out but I had already twice asked my colleague at work to explain what the procedure was and I followed what he was doing at the time. So there you have it. Is it me.? Alastair -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.glassworks.co.uk/ Glassworks Terms and Conditions of Sale can be found at glassworks.co.uk (Company registered in England with number 04759979. Registered office 25 Harley Street, London, W1G 9BR. VAT registration number: 86729) Please consider the environment before you print this email. DISCLAIMER: This e-mail and attachments are strictly privileged, private and confidential and are intended solely for the
Re: A confession
Learn how to script! never a bad skill to have. Get raffaels python tutorials from cgsociety... On Thursday, 20 March 2014, Nicolas Esposito 3dv...@gmail.com wrote: I want to have a positive attitude regarding the switch to Maya, but watching some videotutorials on modeling, rigging, texturing, and so on, and reading what you guys are saying I'm kinda scared... Because what you're saying is that Maya out of the box is kind of crappy if you don't script what you want...and thats the bad part, I don't know sh*t about scripting, so my only option is to use it as it is...and then buy plugins... It's Max all over again :( 2014-03-20 10:09 GMT+01:00 Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comjavascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com'); : Maya seems to be more and more do-it yourself kit.. it's price should reflect that as well Buy starter kit - only Maya UI, you script everything else grade 1 kit - you have modeling plugins! etc... On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 9:45 AM, denis-jose francois denis...@gmail.comwrote: Hi All So here's another ancient lurker suddenly rising from the depths. It's been a while... Alastair, it's definitely not you! For the last 3 years I have mostly worked in non XSI pipelines. They include Modo, Houdini and more often than not - Maya. Every now and then I get to work in XSI again... but sadly this is less and less. I had no trouble switching to Modo. I picked up Houdini very very quickly. But Maya... its been 2 years and I am simply uncomfortable. I'm definitely not an idiot (I tell myself this all the time) and I've been working in CG since 1995. Interestingly, even though I started with soft3D back in the early days I very quickly progressed to AW Power Animator. So I'm no stranger to 'the other side'. Yet some how very simple things in Maya allude me! And it's not helped by the shockingly poor documentation either. Last summer I worked for a short stint at Sky. First time back on XSI (and Arnold) in a couple of years. It was a really hard project, yet XSI made it feel like I was on holiday compared to what I'd been doing before that! I mostly work in pipeline these days and it amazes me how much work we have to do bring functionality to Maya which is already there in XSI and other packages. Of course, the fact that we *can* bring this functionality to Maya is one of it's strengths, but what's the point of spending loads of money on something that you can't really use without further modification? If you are a small studio or a single user it just doesn't make sense. I shall now return to the murky depths again... Denis-Jose Francois * Denis-Jose François Known to some as *@Hairytech* Known to others as *+Denis-Jose* Occasionally referred to as *Simon* Always *The Evil Hood* https://soundcloud.com/infiniversemedia On 19 March 2014 09:32, Alastair Hearsum hear...@glassworks.co.uk wrote: Folks Here is a confession. I've never used Maya! Not really. I've had a little poke every now and again but no more than make a sphere and spin round it. Now, the lack of Maya knowledge may diminish the value of my comments in some eyes but I think that , on the contrary, it puts me in quite a good position to appraise the software at a certain level. Here is an example of the trouble I'm having that may bring a smile to people's faces. But first just a couple of more sentences before I reveal my difficulty. I like to bill myself as the sensitive artist/animator who is technically all fingers and thumbs, like the woman by the side of her broken down car waiting on a big strong man to help her out. The truth is that its not true. I do have a degree in Fine Art but I also studied maths and physics at university and programmed extensively in Lisp in my first job. So I'm not stupid BUT: *I'm on my third night trying to adjust the resolution of a sphere after I have applied n-cloth to it!* Isn't that incredible? Its one example plucked from many experienced by people I work with who can and have used Maya. Its symptomatic of the all encompassing interface workflow issues that Maya has that I think are really fundamenta
Re: Digital Golem : Brillant and beautiful
Hi Jean-Louis, This is fantastic work. I love your resolve, too. Paul Thanks for the kind comments. Yes all in Softimage, naturally! Our pipeline is Softimage-Arnold-Nuke and despite all the turmoil I can tell you I have no intention whatsoever to change that in the near future. It works, it works well, and nothing else right now can touch it. So Autodesk can shove their “innovation” right back up their collective arse and choke on it -- as far as I’m concerned they’ve just killed a member of my family. Cheers, Jean-Louis
my first experiment with rigging in Houdini :-))))
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkdQyet1EN4#t=24 -- Max aka Summatr https://vimeo.com/user3098735/videos ---
Re: Maya render region!
Is this it: http://www.tasaa.com/adnproducts.htm Because if it is its not free... it cost 120 bucks On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 8:26 AM, Tenshi S. tenshu...@gmail.com wrote: Another feature we've seen in the past, and guess what! it's in a product called Softimage, from Autode$k. Hope they don't buy that feature.., damn duct-taped things.. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 12:56 AM, Octavian Ureche okt...@gmail.comwrote: This is definitely going to show up soon as a revolutionary new feature in maya. I'm betting someone is already making an offer. Btw, houdini also has had a render region for a while now, that kind of works, when it does not offset itself for no apparent reason. But at least it's in there. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 6:06 AM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Nice digging Raff, seems like the tip of the ICE berg. :) On 20 March 2014 02:26, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.comwrote: Should be noted I -REALLY- don't know for sure what I'm talking about here, I don't even know if the event tracker in Google refers to the patent office events after they are published or to some Google service itself. Don't throw parties yet or anything :p On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 1:24 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Apparently it first lapsed and then expired because it wasn't maintained, at least according to Google patents. http://www.google.com/patents/US6091422?dq=avid+technology+render#v=onepageqf=false I have to admit not being entirely sure of how Google patents works (if the feed is accurate), and whether it can be revived, but yeah, there you have it. Autodesk apparently doesn't pay its bills ;) On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 11:01 AM, Gustavo Eggert Boehs gustav...@gmail.com wrote: thats great and all, but AD holds the patent for the renderregion now, so unless it has expired this would be... illegal? -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are! -- Octavian Ureche +40 732 774 313 (GMT+2) Animation Visual Effects www.okto.ro
Re: A confession
I was tempted to buy Jeremie Passerin videos from cmiVFX and if I remember correctly I watched the tutorials by Raffaele...but to be honest I always hated coding...I know its always better to be able to script, but I really hate it What I want to do right now is to check if I'm able to translate my workflow from Softimage to Maya without too much effort, means that if Maya out of the box satisfy my needs I'll be happy enough Let me ask you guys a couple of focused questions related to Maya: - Animation mixer: equivalent in Maya? move on the timeline a clip, stretch a clip, mix the clips together? achievable in Maya? - Modeling: which tools in Softimage are NOT available in Maya? I usually work A LOT with proportional modeling and adding edge looping ( both features shown in the new Maya videos ), bridge poligons, shrink wrapping, smooth deform with weightmap, and so on... - Corrective shapes: usually I work with the standard shape manager, but the Paul Smith tutorial on corrective shape using ICE has become my standard...and I read that shapes in Maya are a bit a pain in the ass... - Epic released UE4 and with it there a pretty good rigging system which will replace Species, but what I'll miss will be Facerobot and Gear for facial rigging. What I would like to know is if I can build a facial rig in Maya which could be reused for multiple characters. Previously I used Gear and GATOR to quickly transfer the facial rig and the tweak everything afterward, I wonder if this is possible in Maya... - Simple python scripts: as said I always hated scripting, but I was quite surprised when I just did something within Softimage, then open the script editor, copy all the content, make minor changes and then save that as a script to use for other projects...something artist friendly python way to script is available in Maya? - Mel and Python...well...which one to use/learn? Sorry for the long post Cheers Nicolas 2014-03-20 10:27 GMT+01:00 Oscar Juarez tridi.animei...@gmail.com: Yes, scripting will make your life much easier in general. Even just a little bit here and there, and also can vouch for Raff's videos, they are great. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 10:23 AM, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.comwrote: Learn how to script! never a bad skill to have. Get raffaels python tutorials from cgsociety... On Thursday, 20 March 2014, Nicolas Esposito 3dv...@gmail.com wrote: I want to have a positive attitude regarding the switch to Maya, but watching some videotutorials on modeling, rigging, texturing, and so on, and reading what you guys are saying I'm kinda scared... Because what you're saying is that Maya out of the box is kind of crappy if you don't script what you want...and thats the bad part, I don't know sh*t about scripting, so my only option is to use it as it is...and then buy plugins... It's Max all over again :( 2014-03-20 10:09 GMT+01:00 Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com: Maya seems to be more and more do-it yourself kit.. it's price should reflect that as well Buy starter kit - only Maya UI, you script everything else grade 1 kit - you have modeling plugins! etc... On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 9:45 AM, denis-jose francois denis...@gmail.com wrote: Hi All So here's another ancient lurker suddenly rising from the depths. It's been a while... Alastair, it's definitely not you! For the last 3 years I have mostly worked in non XSI pipelines. They include Modo, Houdini and more often than not - Maya. Every now and then I get to work in XSI again... but sadly this is less and less. I had no trouble switching to Modo. I picked up Houdini very very quickly. But Maya... its been 2 years and I am simply uncomfortable. I'm definitely not an idiot (I tell myself this all the time) and I've been working in CG since 1995. Interestingly, even though I started with soft3D back in the early days I very quickly progressed to AW Power Animator. So I'm no stranger to 'the other side'. Yet some how very simple things in Maya allude me! And it's not helped by the shockingly poor documentation either. Last summer I worked for a short stint at Sky. First time back on XSI (and Arnold) in a couple of years. It was a really hard project, yet XSI made it feel like I was on holiday compared to what I'd been doing before that! I mostly work in pipeline these days and it amazes me how much work we have to do bring functionality to Maya which is already there in XSI and other packages. Of course, the fact that we *can* bring this functionality to Maya is one of it's strengths, but what's the point of spending loads of money on something that you can't really use without further modification? If you are a small studio or a single user it just doesn't make sense. I shall now return to the murky depths again... Denis-Jose Francois * Denis-Jose François Known to some as *@Hairytech* Known to others as *+Denis-Jose* Occasionally referred to as
Re: A confession
I've worked with Maya since alpha versions and I was also on the board of advisors for Sumatra, although I didn't use XSI until a few years later. I cut my teeth on VAX, TDI Explore, Wavefront and Soft 3D. I'm very familiar with proprietary software and in-house tools at large studios. I now spend some of my time teaching 3D computer animation through Maya at university. We had a tough time with the decisions that Maya developers made during it's alpha development. We drew their attention to the 180-axis-flipping of drawn bones to them immediately but they refused to change it because they didn't consider it broken as it was just the way the algorithm works. It had nothing to do with usability. Still to this day, users still write scripts to get around this shortcoming. On the other hand, the Maya devs jumped through hoops to re-create splineIK, a method I designed and implemented in Soft 3D. Personally, I'd prefer a stable set of small tools that work consistently, than a lot of 'powerful' tools that are only half implemented. Viewing it through this particular lens, I believe Maya was written with the computer in mind and not the user. Luc Eric has suggested that parenting and constraint selection makes sense and I do see his point of view. However, Maya at it's core, feels like it was written with a terse a syntax as unix's 'dc' (desk calculator). i.e. in reverse polish notation instead of the more human readable infix notation. 1) Reverse Polish Notation: 1 1 + = 2 value value operator select select command 2) Infix Notation: 1 + 1 = 2 value operator value select command select Watching the development of Maya over the next few years, the developers definitely had XSI in their rear view mirror. They tried to implement features from XSI into Maya. However, this was done extremely poorly and resulted in a tick box exercise. One result of this has been Trax. Trax's core issue is that it maps nodes to indices. i.e. it's version of Actions, Clips, isn't name-based but it's based on order of initial selection. So, it works immediately in a demo but doesn't in production when rigs are evolving. The work around for this is a lot of scripts... scripts to record and store selections and selection order. Scripts to rebuild clips, scripts to rebuild timelines etc. Trax, eventually went in for an overhaul and we were looking forward to it becoming a useful tool but alas it's core issue was never tackled and it remains under utilised. But more importantly, Maya users have never been exposed to a really great tool that actually works. They now all assume non-linear editing is a broken toy. Until, Maya devs focus on human usability, Maya will always be a struggle for a lot of users. -- *Greg Maguire* | Inlifesize Mobile: +44 7512 361462 | Phone: +44 2890 204739 g...@inlifesize.com | www.inlifesize.com
Re: A confession
As far as scripting is concerned I'd say go for Python. You can use what you learn in pretty much any other DCC software or even stand-alone,while MEL is a dead end.I was tempted to buy Jeremie Passerin videos from cmiVFX and if I remember correctly I watched the tutorials by Raffaele...but to be honest I always hated coding...I know its always better to be able to script, but I really hate it What I want to do right now is to check if I'm able to "translate" my workflow from Softimage to Maya without too much effort, means that if Maya out of the box satisfy my needs I'll be happy enough Let me ask you guys a couple of focused questions related to Maya:- Animation mixer: equivalent in Maya? move on the timeline a clip, stretch a clip, mix the clips together? achievable in Maya? - Modeling: which tools in Softimage are NOT available in Maya? I usually work A LOT with proportional modeling and adding edge looping ( both features shown in the new Maya videos ), bridge poligons, shrink wrapping, smooth deform with weightmap, and so on... - Corrective shapes: usually I work with the standard shape manager, but the Paul Smith tutorial on corrective shape using ICE has become my standard...and I read that shapes in Maya are a bit a pain in the ass... - Epic released UE4 and with it there a pretty good rigging system which will replace Species, but what I'll miss will be Facerobot and Gear for facial rigging. What I would like to know is if I can build a facial rig in Maya which could be reused for multiple characters. Previously I used Gear and GATOR to quickly transfer the facial rig and the tweak everything afterward, I wonder if this is possible in Maya... - Simple python scripts: as said I always hated scripting, but I was quite surprised when I just did something within Softimage, then open the script editor, copy all the content, make minor changes and then save that as a script to use for other projects...something "artist friendly python way to script" is available in Maya? - Mel and Python...well...which one to use/learn?Sorry for the long postCheersNicolas 2014-03-20 10:27 GMT+01:00 Oscar Juarez tridi.animei...@gmail.com: Yes, scripting will make your life much easier in general. Even just a little bit here and there, and also can vouch for Raff's videos, they are great. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 10:23 AM, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: Learn how to script!never a bad skill to have. Get raffaels pythontutorials from cgsociety...On Thursday, 20 March 2014, Nicolas Esposito 3dv...@gmail.com wrote: I want to have a positive attitude regarding the switch to Maya, but watching some videotutorials on modeling, rigging, texturing, and so on, and reading what you guys are saying I'm kinda scared... Because what you're saying is that Maya out of the box is kind of crappy if you don't script what you want...and thats the bad part, I don't know sh*t about scripting, so my only option is to use it as it is...and then buy plugins... It's Max all over again :(2014-03-20 10:09 GMT+01:00 Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com: Maya seems to be more and more do-it yourself kit.. it's price should reflect that as wellBuy starter kit - only Maya UI, you script everything else grade 1 kit - you have modeling plugins! etc... On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 9:45 AM, denis-jose francois denis...@gmail.com wrote: Hi AllSo here's another ancient lurker suddenly rising from the depths. It's been a while... Alastair, it's definitely not you! For the last 3 years I have mostly worked in non XSI pipelines. They include Modo, Houdini and more often than not - Maya. Every now and then I get to work in XSI again... but sadly this is less and less. I had no trouble switching to Modo. I picked up Houdini very very quickly. But Maya... its been 2 years and I am simply uncomfortable. I'm definitely not an idiot (I tell myself this all the time) and I've been working in CG since 1995. Interestingly, even though I started with soft3D back in the early days I very quickly progressed to AW Power Animator. So I'm no stranger to 'the other side'. Yet some how very simple things in Maya allude me! And it's not helped by the shockingly poor documentation either. Last summer I worked for a short stint at Sky. First time back on XSI (and Arnold) in a couple of years. It was a really hard project, yet XSI made it feel like I was on holiday compared to what I'd been doing before that! I mostly work in pipeline these days and it amazes me how much work we have to do bring functionality to Maya which is already there in XSI and other packages. Of course, the fact that we *can* bring this functionality to Maya is one of it's strengths, but what's the point of spending loads of money on something that you can't really use without further modification? If you are a small studio or a single user it just doesn't make sense. I shall now return to the murky depths again...Denis-Jose Francois *Denis-Jose
Re: Why MAX is not option for me.
That's why I call 3DMax as a Plugin Container, not a 3D package. ;) --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com ---
Re: Maya render region!
Ohh so there is two options... The first one you need to subscribe here http://therenderblog.com/ --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation. 2014-03-20 3:58 GMT-06:00 Marco Peixoto mpe...@gmail.com: Is this it: http://www.tasaa.com/adnproducts.htm Because if it is its not free... it cost 120 bucks On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 8:26 AM, Tenshi S. tenshu...@gmail.com wrote: Another feature we've seen in the past, and guess what! it's in a product called Softimage, from Autode$k. Hope they don't buy that feature.., damn duct-taped things.. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 12:56 AM, Octavian Ureche okt...@gmail.comwrote: This is definitely going to show up soon as a revolutionary new feature in maya. I'm betting someone is already making an offer. Btw, houdini also has had a render region for a while now, that kind of works, when it does not offset itself for no apparent reason. But at least it's in there. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 6:06 AM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Nice digging Raff, seems like the tip of the ICE berg. :) On 20 March 2014 02:26, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Should be noted I -REALLY- don't know for sure what I'm talking about here, I don't even know if the event tracker in Google refers to the patent office events after they are published or to some Google service itself. Don't throw parties yet or anything :p On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 1:24 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Apparently it first lapsed and then expired because it wasn't maintained, at least according to Google patents. http://www.google.com/patents/US6091422?dq=avid+technology+render#v=onepageqf=false I have to admit not being entirely sure of how Google patents works (if the feed is accurate), and whether it can be revived, but yeah, there you have it. Autodesk apparently doesn't pay its bills ;) On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 11:01 AM, Gustavo Eggert Boehs gustav...@gmail.com wrote: thats great and all, but AD holds the patent for the renderregion now, so unless it has expired this would be... illegal? -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are! -- Octavian Ureche +40 732 774 313 (GMT+2) Animation Visual Effects www.okto.ro
Re: Maya render region!
I wonder now which one of the two Autodesk is going to buy and say it is part of the new tools they are developing... Well maybe they will buy both and just kill one. --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation. 2014-03-20 4:36 GMT-06:00 Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com: Ohh so there is two options... The first one you need to subscribe here http://therenderblog.com/ --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation. 2014-03-20 3:58 GMT-06:00 Marco Peixoto mpe...@gmail.com: Is this it: http://www.tasaa.com/adnproducts.htm Because if it is its not free... it cost 120 bucks On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 8:26 AM, Tenshi S. tenshu...@gmail.com wrote: Another feature we've seen in the past, and guess what! it's in a product called Softimage, from Autode$k. Hope they don't buy that feature.., damn duct-taped things.. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 12:56 AM, Octavian Ureche okt...@gmail.comwrote: This is definitely going to show up soon as a revolutionary new feature in maya. I'm betting someone is already making an offer. Btw, houdini also has had a render region for a while now, that kind of works, when it does not offset itself for no apparent reason. But at least it's in there. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 6:06 AM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Nice digging Raff, seems like the tip of the ICE berg. :) On 20 March 2014 02:26, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Should be noted I -REALLY- don't know for sure what I'm talking about here, I don't even know if the event tracker in Google refers to the patent office events after they are published or to some Google service itself. Don't throw parties yet or anything :p On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 1:24 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Apparently it first lapsed and then expired because it wasn't maintained, at least according to Google patents. http://www.google.com/patents/US6091422?dq=avid+technology+render#v=onepageqf=false I have to admit not being entirely sure of how Google patents works (if the feed is accurate), and whether it can be revived, but yeah, there you have it. Autodesk apparently doesn't pay its bills ;) On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 11:01 AM, Gustavo Eggert Boehs gustav...@gmail.com wrote: thats great and all, but AD holds the patent for the renderregion now, so unless it has expired this would be... illegal? -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are! -- Octavian Ureche +40 732 774 313 (GMT+2) Animation Visual Effects www.okto.ro
Re: Maya render region!
lol :p On 03/20/14 6:38, Emilio Hernandez wrote: I wonder now which one of the two Autodesk is going to buy and say it is part of the new tools they are developing... Well maybe they will buy both and just kill one. --- Emilio Hernndez VFX 3D animation. 2014-03-20 4:36 GMT-06:00 Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com: Ohh so there is two options... The first one you need to subscribe here http://therenderblog.com/ --- Emilio Hernndez VFX 3D animation. 2014-03-20 3:58 GMT-06:00 Marco Peixoto mpe...@gmail.com: Is this it: http://www.tasaa.com/adnproducts.htm Because if it is its not free... it cost 120 bucks On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 8:26 AM, Tenshi S. tenshu...@gmail.com wrote: Another "feature" we've seen in the past, and guess what! it's in a product called Softimage, from Autode$k. Hope they don't buy that "feature".., damn duct-taped things.. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 12:56 AM, Octavian Ureche okt...@gmail.com wrote: This is definitely going to show up soon as a revolutionary new feature in maya. I'm betting someone is already making an offer. Btw, houdini also has had a render region for a while now, that kind of works, when it does not offset itself for no apparent reason. But at least it's in there. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 6:06 AM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Nice digging Raff, seems like the tip of the ICE berg. :) On 20 March 2014 02:26, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Should be noted I -REALLY- don't know for sure what I'm talking about here, I don't even know if the event tracker in Google refers to the patent office events after they are published or to some Google service itself. Don't throw parties yet or anything :p On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 1:24 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Apparently it first lapsed and then expired because it wasn't maintained, at least according to Google patents. http://www.google.com/patents/US6091422?dq=avid+technology+render#v=onepageqf=false I have to admit not being entirely sure of how Google patents works (if the feed is accurate), and whether it can be revived, but yeah, there you have it. Autodesk apparently doesn't pay its bills ;) On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 11:01 AM, Gustavo Eggert Boehs gustav...@gmail.com wrote: thats great and all, but AD holds the patent for the renderregion now, so unless it has expired this would be... illegal? -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are! -- Octavian Ureche +40 732 774 313 (GMT+2) Animation Visual Effects www.okto.ro
Re: Maya render region!
probably they’ll kill the commercial one, just to screw it’s users. From: Jason S Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 11:40 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Maya render region! lol :p On 03/20/14 6:38, Emilio Hernandez wrote: I wonder now which one of the two Autodesk is going to buy and say it is part of the new tools they are developing... Well maybe they will buy both and just kill one. --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation. 2014-03-20 4:36 GMT-06:00 Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com: Ohh so there is two options... The first one you need to subscribe here http://therenderblog.com/ --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation. 2014-03-20 3:58 GMT-06:00 Marco Peixoto mpe...@gmail.com: Is this it: http://www.tasaa.com/adnproducts.htm Because if it is its not free... it cost 120 bucks On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 8:26 AM, Tenshi S. tenshu...@gmail.com wrote: Another feature we've seen in the past, and guess what! it's in a product called Softimage, from Autode$k. Hope they don't buy that feature.., damn duct-taped things.. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 12:56 AM, Octavian Ureche okt...@gmail.com wrote: This is definitely going to show up soon as a revolutionary new feature in maya. I'm betting someone is already making an offer. Btw, houdini also has had a render region for a while now, that kind of works, when it does not offset itself for no apparent reason. But at least it's in there. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 6:06 AM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Nice digging Raff, seems like the tip of the ICE berg. :) On 20 March 2014 02:26, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Should be noted I -REALLY- don't know for sure what I'm talking about here, I don't even know if the event tracker in Google refers to the patent office events after they are published or to some Google service itself. Don't throw parties yet or anything :p On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 1:24 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Apparently it first lapsed and then expired because it wasn't maintained, at least according to Google patents. http://www.google.com/patents/US6091422?dq=avid+technology+render#v=onepageqf=false I have to admit not being entirely sure of how Google patents works (if the feed is accurate), and whether it can be revived, but yeah, there you have it. Autodesk apparently doesn't pay its bills ;) On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 11:01 AM, Gustavo Eggert Boehs gustav...@gmail.com wrote: thats great and all, but AD holds the patent for the renderregion now, so unless it has expired this would be... illegal? -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are! -- Octavian Ureche +40 732 774 313 (GMT+2) Animation Visual Effects www.okto.ro
Re: Siggraph in Vancouver this year
Hey Greg, Not vegan. I love cheese and milk too much. :D I'm just vegetarian. Actually flexitarian. I only eat local, free range, hormone free meat. Not so easy to find all the time and sometimes go months without meat. I appreciate your efforts Adam. Thanks, Eric T. On Mar 19, 2014 10:53 PM, Adam Sale adamfs...@gmail.com wrote: Fortunately, there are lots of vegan and veggie places and hybrids in the city. I can do a little scouting to find somewhere inclusive that serves a decent number of people. Good to get on it early too, because the convention season and bookings will be in full swing in a month or so. On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 7:30 PM, Paul Doyle technove...@gmail.com wrote: We went to lunch recently and that was the only vegetarian option. I was not sympathetic :) Congrats on the weight loss! On 19 March 2014 22:17, Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com wrote: OT- While I do eat meat... the last half of this year I have gone to a 15 percent meat , 80 percent veggies (nocarb veggies) and 5 percent carb... I still have a few pounds to go but I am leaner and meaner by over 45 pounds 38 inch waist to I think 32... my 34s are falling off me and just have not tried a pair of 32s on...which is my goal. Eric- I am presuming vegan?? or do you delve into the fishies? I presuming the reasons for Paul's suggestion is a lot of people are surprised that ceasar salads are chalk full of Anchovies On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 7:24 PM, Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com wrote: Adam... BC style it is... I think that is a reason alone to come to siggraph this year... after this year I could use a little northern lights SOFTIMAGE STYLE!! On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 7:03 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.com wrote: Just one request for a Veggie friendly place if possible. :) Even if it's just one dish. Eric T. Eric Thivierge http://www.ethivierge.com On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 8:00 PM, Adam Sale adamfs...@gmail.com wrote: For sure Matt. Keep me in the loop as to your plans... I was ok with the Brazilian food last time around, but could have done without the chicken hearts. Maybe we can all do an outing to the Amsterdam Cafe / vapor lounge , and then really chow down afterwards... lol. BC Style On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 2:48 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: Not sure if I'm going or not as it'll be on the heels of us releasing our game, but I was planning to hold my annual dinner should I attend. If you want, we can work together to share duties. Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Adam Sale Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 12:55 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Siggraph in Vancouver this year Hey All.. Sigg is in my neck of the woods this year. Anyone planning to attend this year. Dinner and drinks, or other such debauchery? Adam
Re: A confession
Hi Nicolas, - it's there, but not a powerful as in SI imho - NEX tools are getting there, but some handy stuff is still MIA - no, prepare for a world of pain and frustration. No quick adjusting/adding to a fully rigged character - kind of, but not without extensive scripting or plugins. Mind you I haven't rigged anything in Maya for years ;-) - kind of, copy/paste into snippets of code will work on both. - both, but use Python as the preferred language. I've worked with Maya in the past for almost two years. It never really grew on me. Especially coming from SI|3D / 3DS Max first and XSI later. So much stuff that just didn't click A couple of weeks ago I did a lighting job (Arnold) in Maya 2014, and although it has improved over the years, it still feels like working with boxing gloves on. Rendering is a huge pain in the behind. For Maya users, I truly hope that project H is getting somewhere... Rob \/-\/\/ On 20-3-2014 11:05, Nicolas Esposito wrote: I was tempted to buy Jeremie Passerin videos from cmiVFX and if I remember correctly I watched the tutorials by Raffaele...but to be honest I always hated coding...I know its always better to be able to script, but I really hate it What I want to do right now is to check if I'm able to translate my workflow from Softimage to Maya without too much effort, means that if Maya out of the box satisfy my needs I'll be happy enough Let me ask you guys a couple of focused questions related to Maya: - Animation mixer: equivalent in Maya? move on the timeline a clip, stretch a clip, mix the clips together? achievable in Maya? - Modeling: which tools in Softimage are NOT available in Maya? I usually work A LOT with proportional modeling and adding edge looping ( both features shown in the new Maya videos ), bridge poligons, shrink wrapping, smooth deform with weightmap, and so on... - Corrective shapes: usually I work with the standard shape manager, but the Paul Smith tutorial on corrective shape using ICE has become my standard...and I read that shapes in Maya are a bit a pain in the ass... - Epic released UE4 and with it there a pretty good rigging system which will replace Species, but what I'll miss will be Facerobot and Gear for facial rigging. What I would like to know is if I can build a facial rig in Maya which could be reused for multiple characters. Previously I used Gear and GATOR to quickly transfer the facial rig and the tweak everything afterward, I wonder if this is possible in Maya... - Simple python scripts: as said I always hated scripting, but I was quite surprised when I just did something within Softimage, then open the script editor, copy all the content, make minor changes and then save that as a script to use for other projects...something artist friendly python way to script is available in Maya? - Mel and Python...well...which one to use/learn? Sorry for the long post Cheers Nicolas 2014-03-20 10:27 GMT+01:00 Oscar Juarez tridi.animei...@gmail.com mailto:tridi.animei...@gmail.com: Yes, scripting will make your life much easier in general. Even just a little bit here and there, and also can vouch for Raff's videos, they are great. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 10:23 AM, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com mailto:cgc...@gmail.com wrote: Learn how to script! never a bad skill to have. Get raffaels python tutorials from cgsociety... On Thursday, 20 March 2014, Nicolas Esposito 3dv...@gmail.com mailto:3dv...@gmail.com wrote: I want to have a positive attitude regarding the switch to Maya, but watching some videotutorials on modeling, rigging, texturing, and so on, and reading what you guys are saying I'm kinda scared... Because what you're saying is that Maya out of the box is kind of crappy if you don't script what you want...and thats the bad part, I don't know sh*t about scripting, so my only option is to use it as it is...and then buy plugins... It's Max all over again :( 2014-03-20 10:09 GMT+01:00 Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com: Maya seems to be more and more do-it yourself kit.. it's price should reflect that as well Buy starter kit - only Maya UI, you script everything else grade 1 kit - you have modeling plugins! etc... On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 9:45 AM, denis-jose francois denis...@gmail.com wrote: Hi All So here's another ancient lurker suddenly rising from the depths. It's been a while... Alastair, it's definitely not you! For the last 3 years I have mostly worked in non XSI pipelines. They include Modo, Houdini and more
Re: Siggraph in Vancouver this year
Wish I could make it this year but am unable to. Vancouver was my last SIGGRAPH and I really enjoyed the location. Have fun! On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 6:54 AM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.comwrote: Hey Greg, Not vegan. I love cheese and milk too much. :D I'm just vegetarian. Actually flexitarian. I only eat local, free range, hormone free meat. Not so easy to find all the time and sometimes go months without meat. I appreciate your efforts Adam. Thanks, Eric T. On Mar 19, 2014 10:53 PM, Adam Sale adamfs...@gmail.com wrote: Fortunately, there are lots of vegan and veggie places and hybrids in the city. I can do a little scouting to find somewhere inclusive that serves a decent number of people. Good to get on it early too, because the convention season and bookings will be in full swing in a month or so. On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 7:30 PM, Paul Doyle technove...@gmail.comwrote: We went to lunch recently and that was the only vegetarian option. I was not sympathetic :) Congrats on the weight loss! On 19 March 2014 22:17, Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com wrote: OT- While I do eat meat... the last half of this year I have gone to a 15 percent meat , 80 percent veggies (nocarb veggies) and 5 percent carb... I still have a few pounds to go but I am leaner and meaner by over 45 pounds 38 inch waist to I think 32... my 34s are falling off me and just have not tried a pair of 32s on...which is my goal. Eric- I am presuming vegan?? or do you delve into the fishies? I presuming the reasons for Paul's suggestion is a lot of people are surprised that ceasar salads are chalk full of Anchovies On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 7:24 PM, Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com wrote: Adam... BC style it is... I think that is a reason alone to come to siggraph this year... after this year I could use a little northern lights SOFTIMAGE STYLE!! On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 7:03 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.com wrote: Just one request for a Veggie friendly place if possible. :) Even if it's just one dish. Eric T. Eric Thivierge http://www.ethivierge.com On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 8:00 PM, Adam Sale adamfs...@gmail.com wrote: For sure Matt. Keep me in the loop as to your plans... I was ok with the Brazilian food last time around, but could have done without the chicken hearts. Maybe we can all do an outing to the Amsterdam Cafe / vapor lounge , and then really chow down afterwards... lol. BC Style On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 2:48 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: Not sure if I'm going or not as it'll be on the heels of us releasing our game, but I was planning to hold my annual dinner should I attend. If you want, we can work together to share duties. Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Adam Sale Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 12:55 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Siggraph in Vancouver this year Hey All.. Sigg is in my neck of the woods this year. Anyone planning to attend this year. Dinner and drinks, or other such debauchery? Adam
Re: A confession
thankyou Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d GLASSWORKS 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.glassworks.co.uk/ Glassworks Terms and Conditions of Sale can be found at glassworks.co.uk (Company registered in England with number 04759979. Registered office 25 Harley Street, London, W1G 9BR. VAT registration number: 86729) Please consider the environment before you print this email. DISCLAIMER: This e-mail and attachments are strictly privileged, private and confidential and are intended solely for the stated recipient(s). Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Company. If you are not the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this e-mail in error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If this transmission is received in error please kindly return it to the sender and delete this message from your system. On 19/03/2014 22:32, Raffaele Fragapane wrote: Sorry Luce-Eric, I have to disagree with this, and I find your examples defeat your own argument. I have had years to develop muscle memory in Maya, and I'm comfortable nearly anywhere in the software, at least everywhere I might need to be, and it's still very frequently an uphill struggle. Maya is hugely inconsistent, especially in the views you mention, compared to Softimage. You can get to decent operational speed in Maya, but a double digit number of years in I still have to write a script for something at least once a week... when it can be written at all. The main problem is twofold. The first part is that Maya absolutely requires you become a power user with an intimate understanding of the choices and modes of operation to be fluid when working. There is no hints to shortcuts, the shortcut editor is a mess, A LOT of absolutely key day one stuff is simply not available in the interface (if you don't watch a tutorial you will never find you need insert and x,c,v on a constant basis), and in general it actively discourages exploration by being punishing of any single mistake. Comparatively speaking Soft is a lot more in your face and immediate. Even if you don't know the software you can usually bumble your way around into finding what you need and first develop knowledge of what's available, and then developing muscle memory through simple repetition. The second part is developing muscle memory itself. You're a UI guy, I'm sure you've read your literature on user experience, learning patterns, conditioning and so on. XSI will generally confront you with about four or five key interaction models, and it hardly ever excepts them. Everything is a sticky key, every menu unfolds and works the same way, every panel toggles and offers options the same way and has functionality aggregated nearby that is generally understandable and correlated by similar rules. Conversely, Maya requires constant exceptions to learning. Altering interaction, which should all be part of the same learning group, is inconsistent. Some modifiers are sticky. Snapping is semi-sticky, as in it sticks only if you enter snapping before you draw/drag, whereas some things are completely non sticky, such as moving a pivot. Menus are generally click through, unless you access them from the hotbox, in which case they are, uselessly, hold-to-traverse. I could write you a long list, but my point is that while I do find people being excessively contrary and biased, but can't blame them for it given the situation, lets not pretend Maya's user experience is comparable but different: it simply isn't, and there's work to do. Hopefully H-Maya will go part or all the way to address it, but there are some very, very fundamental issues that worked their way backwards into the actual functional guts of Maya coming from its extremely poor, inconsistent, frustratingly fragmented and arbitrary interaction model. The GUI itself is probably not even worth discussing in depth. I mean, no arbitrary viewport arrangement after 16 years? F'in Seriously? And if you want me to use the stupid buttons on the left you're not even providing one with the left view vertical and a horizontal split on the right? Only the opposite. Come on, Luc, get on it and fix that shit already :p You did infinitely better work than this on XSI, bring it to Maya if you want people to use and don't be dismissive of people's opinions by saying you can only compare power-user experiences (beside the fact a Soft Power User will run circles around a Maya one in nearly any task when it comes to interaction). On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 1:45 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com mailto:luceri...@gmail.com wrote: None of these products are for newbies; we spent years learning Softimage. Sounds like you wanted to edit a history node, doing a procedural modification.
Re: Autodesk webinar
Sorry but was that an answer to my question about moving an edge loop with Move Tool with magnet and MMB drag ? Because I can't get the same result in Maya. Martin On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 3:32 AM, John Richard Sanchez youngupstar...@gmail.com wrote: If you hold down W (short cut key for move) and click it will bring up a menu and you can change the setting to Normal Average On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Brent, Thanks for your detailed explanation. from a SI user POV yeah that isn't very impressive, but being a partial Maya user, that sounds pretty cool. Not enough to make me want to model in Maya but I may not need to move back to SI when tweaking models for a Maya based project. BTW, One of the model tools I miss in Maya is the old SI Move Tool with Magnet. Moving edge loops almost without affecting the object form is something I can't live without. I remember how excited I was when learned MMB + drag + Magnet to move edge loops. I couldn't stop moving edges :D Is there anything close to that in Maya? If not, you should add it. Martin
RE: REAL innovation
i spent ages dicking about with procedural ways of getting worn and scratched edges in the rendertree, got some pretty good results too, just as we switched to arnold :o/ haven't bothered trying again, but with quixel or substance designer, i won't have to! a _ From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Greg Punchatz Sent: 19 March 2014 21:34 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: REAL innovation All cg will now look too dirty...as opposed too all looking too clean... every car will be rusty from this moment out I am so buying all these products.. _ Greg Punchatz Sr. Creative Director Janimation 214.823.7760 www.janimation.com On 3/19/2014 3:09 PM, Eugene Flormata wrote: damn.. definately affordable.. and I just bought allegorithmic's stuff http://store.steampowered.com/app/273390/ http://www.allegorithmic.com/products/substance-designer-4 On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 7:11 AM, Nicolas Esposito 3dv...@gmail.com wrote: nDo was a huge surprise for me, DDO and 3DO are just absolutely stunning!!! And very affordable too! 2014-03-19 15:05 GMT+01:00 Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.com: H.O.L.Y. C.R.A.P. On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 9:44 AM, adrian wyer adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com wrote: http://dev.quixel.se/ddo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyJJAp17K-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyJJAp17K-Yfeature=youtu.be feature=youtu.be stunning workflow, technically app agnostic a Adrian Wyer Fluid Pictures 75-77 Margaret St. London W1W 8SY ++44(0) 207 580 0829 tel:%2B%2B44%280%29%20207%20580%200829 adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com www.fluid-pictures.com Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales. Company number:5657815 VAT number: 872 6893 71 -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.theafterimage.com/ http://www.TheAfterImage.com
RE: Mental ray volumetric shader errors
Gustavo is correct, crank your Mesh Splitting Factor in the MR options to something high, problem solved a _ From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Ola Madsen Sent: 20 March 2014 08:11 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: RE: Mental ray volumetric shader errors I don't think that worked in my scenario as I had numerous overlapping objects (was doing an x-ray shot) and I got the artifacts in the overlaps as well. Though this was easily fixed by splitting the scene in a couple of passes. o From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Gustavo Eggert Boehs Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 12:44 AM To: SI mailing list Subject: RE: Mental ray volumetric shader errors Hey Fabricio, i'be bumped onto that also, in my case it was the Mesh Splitting kicking in. It separates dense meshes into separate objects before passing them on to MR. Therefore, some shaders get artifacts, like volumetrics and bumpmapping also. Real headache but easy fix... Under MR Optimizations, look for Mesh Splitting Factor, increase the value up to infinity and be happy :D Em 19/03/2014 19:20, Ola Madsen ola.mad...@digitalcontext.se escreveu: I can only confirm this nasty little bug as I experienced it a couple of years ago. If I remember correctly I managed to get rid of the artifacts on some objects by actually tessellating the geometry instead of using to + key. Some object still had the artifacts and I had to work around it by splitting the scene and rendering the objects in in different passes. Cheers Ola From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Fabricio Chamon Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 11:05 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Mental ray volumetric shader errors ...forgot to say that I'm using Particle_Volume_Cloud, which used to work fine on meshes since always. 2014-03-19 18:56 GMT-03:00 Fabricio Chamon xsiml...@gmail.com: Hi, I'm trying to do some volumetrics in mray, but the shader is giving me all kinds of wierdness on heavy meshes. Have anyone experienced this before ? For the sake of simplicity, I have this test scene with only one default sphere. If I crank up the sphere U/V subd to 200, it starts to show some strange black areas. At subd 300, it renders all flat. I'm guessing it's not a lookup table cell size problem...tried very small values, and the volume renders almost completely solid (when it works). here's some images to illustrate: Imagem inline 1 I really need dense meshes because I want the fine control over the volume silhouette to be on the mesh itself, not through shader trees. anyone ? image001.jpg
Re: Maya render region!
Shading comparision mia material vs mantrasurface http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forumItemid=172page=viewtopicp=144207#144207 Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 20 Mar 2014, at 10:48, pete...@skynet.be wrote: probably they’ll kill the commercial one, just to screw it’s users. From: Jason S Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 11:40 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Maya render region! lol :p On 03/20/14 6:38, Emilio Hernandez wrote: I wonder now which one of the two Autodesk is going to buy and say it is part of the new tools they are developing... Well maybe they will buy both and just kill one. --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation. 2014-03-20 4:36 GMT-06:00 Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com: Ohh so there is two options... The first one you need to subscribe here http://therenderblog.com/ --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation. 2014-03-20 3:58 GMT-06:00 Marco Peixoto mpe...@gmail.com: Is this it: http://www.tasaa.com/adnproducts.htm Because if it is its not free... it cost 120 bucks On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 8:26 AM, Tenshi S. tenshu...@gmail.com wrote: Another feature we've seen in the past, and guess what! it's in a product called Softimage, from Autode$k. Hope they don't buy that feature.., damn duct-taped things.. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 12:56 AM, Octavian Ureche okt...@gmail.com wrote: This is definitely going to show up soon as a revolutionary new feature in maya. I'm betting someone is already making an offer. Btw, houdini also has had a render region for a while now, that kind of works, when it does not offset itself for no apparent reason. But at least it's in there. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 6:06 AM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Nice digging Raff, seems like the tip of the ICE berg. :) On 20 March 2014 02:26, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Should be noted I -REALLY- don't know for sure what I'm talking about here, I don't even know if the event tracker in Google refers to the patent office events after they are published or to some Google service itself. Don't throw parties yet or anything :p On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 1:24 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Apparently it first lapsed and then expired because it wasn't maintained, at least according to Google patents. http://www.google.com/patents/US6091422?dq=avid+technology+render#v=onepageqf=false I have to admit not being entirely sure of how Google patents works (if the feed is accurate), and whether it can be revived, but yeah, there you have it. Autodesk apparently doesn't pay its bills ;) On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 11:01 AM, Gustavo Eggert Boehs gustav...@gmail.com wrote: thats great and all, but AD holds the patent for the renderregion now, so unless it has expired this would be... illegal? -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are! -- Octavian Ureche +40 732 774 313 (GMT+2) Animation Visual Effects www.okto.ro
Re: SI and Houdini
Shading comparision mia material vs mantrasurface http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forumItemid=172page=viewtopicp=144207#144207 I am sure you guys are going to like this one. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 7 Mar 2014, at 16:59, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: For those that are looking at Houdini for rigging and animation… some tiny examples http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOTBdRdClFE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-cKnahxkUo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCjsaut_XKk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo6Lue1TMZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9gHw3jsGMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR1gt9BkIw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_YVx69zub0 Sure, the animation toolset is not great yet but the rigging toolset is very very very powerful (imho much Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 7 Mar 2014, at 16:34, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: I have prepared already 2 big ones, will finish them tomorrow and post… stay put. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 7 Mar 2014, at 16:16, Arvid Björn arvidbj...@gmail.com wrote: Fantastic work Jordi, this is exactly the perspective we need! On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 4:47 PM, Gustavo Eggert Boehs gustav...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for your generosity Mr. Bares. Great homework for the weekend! Gustavo E Boehs Dpto. de Expressão Gráfica | Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina | http://www.gustavoeb.com.br/ 2014-03-07 7:30 GMT-03:00 MauricioPC (gonebadfx) goneba...@gmail.com: You até fast. Will take a look. Thanls for the efforts. From: Jordi Bares Sent: 07/03/2014 06:57 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: SI and Houdini The wheels are moving… if you go to the forum http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forumItemid=172page=viewtopict=31012start=25 you will have access to my dropbox PDFs so you can download them.. More to come. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 6 Mar 2014, at 23:40, Javier El Elástico javierelas...@gmail.com wrote: That it is very interesting. Jordi, where you will putting this basic guides? In the Houdini Forums? El 06/03/2014 20:22, olivier jeannel escribió: Please, drop a line here when you have something ready. Le 06/03/2014 11:52, Morten Bartholdy a écrit : Wow, that is very geerous of you Jordi - much appreciated. Morten Den 6. marts 2014 kl. 10:18 skrev Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com: for those who have not read what is going on in the Houdini forums, I will be putting together some basic guides to transition to Houdini easily and maintain your workflows under the new philosophy, from partitions, to overrides, to… I may need help so guys so don't hesitate to pop and drop a line, specially if you have already done the transition. see you very soon! Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 6 Mar 2014, at 02:33, Francisco Criado malcriad...@gmail.com wrote: Already signed in, and must say it feels very comfortable how sidefx is receiving ex-si users! Thanks a lot! F. On Wednesday, March 5, 2014, Halfdan Ingvarsson half...@sidefx.com wrote: I was young and I needed the money! And the beer. Mmm... beer. - ½ On 14-03-05 06:55 PM, Raffaele Fragapane wrote: On account of having furthered something like Mental Ray in the past, even if with the best intentions, I reckon all beer debt is forfeit. He's lucky he's getting away lightly with just a beer forfeiting. At least he seems to be working on something that's not qualified as a crime against humanity these days. On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Meng-Yang Lu ntmon...@gmail.com wrote: So what's the deal? Do we still owe him beers or are we absolved? :P Good to see you Halfy! -Lu On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 2:07 PM, Halfdan Ingvarsson half...@sidefx.com wrote: Hello there It's been a while. I thought I'd post here and let you know, since there's been a lot of interest in Houdini, that we've created a dedicated forum for SI users on the SideFX site. ( http://goo.gl/cixz4s ). Feel free to swing by and ask any questions you'd like about Houdini and SideFX. I know this is a pretty tough time for everyone, but I just wanted to let you know that you're all welcome in our community. Hope to see you there! All the best, - ½ -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
Re: A confession
Hi Rob, Thank you very much for the answer...I guess it'll be plugins until I learn to script and customize Maya the way I want unfortunately 2014-03-20 12:04 GMT+01:00 Alastair Hearsum hear...@glassworks.co.uk: thankyou Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [image: GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.uk http://www.glassworks.co.uk/ Glassworks Terms and Conditions of Sale can be found at glassworks.co.uk (Company registered in England with number 04759979. Registered office 25 Harley Street, London, W1G 9BR. VAT registration number: 86729) Please consider the environment before you print this email. DISCLAIMER: This e-mail and attachments are strictly privileged, private and confidential and are intended solely for the stated recipient(s). Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Company. If you are not the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this e-mail in error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If this transmission is received in error please kindly return it to the sender and delete this message from your system. On 19/03/2014 22:32, Raffaele Fragapane wrote: Sorry Luce-Eric, I have to disagree with this, and I find your examples defeat your own argument. I have had years to develop muscle memory in Maya, and I'm comfortable nearly anywhere in the software, at least everywhere I might need to be, and it's still very frequently an uphill struggle. Maya is hugely inconsistent, especially in the views you mention, compared to Softimage. You can get to decent operational speed in Maya, but a double digit number of years in I still have to write a script for something at least once a week... when it can be written at all. The main problem is twofold. The first part is that Maya absolutely requires you become a power user with an intimate understanding of the choices and modes of operation to be fluid when working. There is no hints to shortcuts, the shortcut editor is a mess, A LOT of absolutely key day one stuff is simply not available in the interface (if you don't watch a tutorial you will never find you need insert and x,c,v on a constant basis), and in general it actively discourages exploration by being punishing of any single mistake. Comparatively speaking Soft is a lot more in your face and immediate. Even if you don't know the software you can usually bumble your way around into finding what you need and first develop knowledge of what's available, and then developing muscle memory through simple repetition. The second part is developing muscle memory itself. You're a UI guy, I'm sure you've read your literature on user experience, learning patterns, conditioning and so on. XSI will generally confront you with about four or five key interaction models, and it hardly ever excepts them. Everything is a sticky key, every menu unfolds and works the same way, every panel toggles and offers options the same way and has functionality aggregated nearby that is generally understandable and correlated by similar rules. Conversely, Maya requires constant exceptions to learning. Altering interaction, which should all be part of the same learning group, is inconsistent. Some modifiers are sticky. Snapping is semi-sticky, as in it sticks only if you enter snapping before you draw/drag, whereas some things are completely non sticky, such as moving a pivot. Menus are generally click through, unless you access them from the hotbox, in which case they are, uselessly, hold-to-traverse. I could write you a long list, but my point is that while I do find people being excessively contrary and biased, but can't blame them for it given the situation, lets not pretend Maya's user experience is comparable but different: it simply isn't, and there's work to do. Hopefully H-Maya will go part or all the way to address it, but there are some very, very fundamental issues that worked their way backwards into the actual functional guts of Maya coming from its extremely poor, inconsistent, frustratingly fragmented and arbitrary interaction model. The GUI itself is probably not even worth discussing in depth. I mean, no arbitrary viewport arrangement after 16 years? F'in Seriously? And if you want me to use the stupid buttons on the left you're not even providing one with the left view vertical and a horizontal split on the right? Only the opposite. Come on, Luc, get on it and fix that shit already :p You did infinitely better work than this on XSI, bring it to Maya if you want people to use and don't be dismissive of people's opinions by saying you can only compare power-user experiences (beside the fact a Soft Power User will run circles around a Maya one in nearly any task when it comes to interaction). On Thu, Mar 20,
Mayas Render Layers Can Really Kill a job
If your not working on the master layer, there lot of pain to be endured. Working with Maya's render layers is like working with a red hot poker up ya bum! It lts like a child you need to have eyes in the back of your head to make sure it does not screw up. If I owned a small studio and wanted to waste a lot of time redoing shading I would use maya. What can we do about render layers, nothing!, because autodesk has done nothing about fixing it since some wonky person over at mental ray added them. Heck the words pass *contribution*https://www.google.co.uk/search?client=firefox-ahs=cLIrls=org.mozilla:en-GB:officialchannel=rcsq=contributionspell=1sa=Xei=pdMqU5GFDoSihgfBjIBoved=0CCoQvwUoAAbiw=1606bih=678maps puts the shiver through me. Ben
Re: A confession
Hi Nicolas: I'm just a student but I'll try to tackle these set of questions a little more in-depth... - Animation mixer: equivalent in Maya? move on the timeline a clip, stretch a clip, mix the clips together? achievable in Maya? Yes, it's called the Trax editor. However it requires you make your rigs into character sets and those modified attrs are stored as clips, which may/may not work depending on the rig setup you have. I personally prefer XSI's actions/clips and the Mixer UI in this regard hands down, but it's not impossible to do in Maya. Just might not be as simple as you're used to...Most of the Trax UI is very similar to the Mixer in XSI, though, so there's that. :) - - Modeling: which tools in Softimage are NOT available in Maya? I usually work A LOT with proportional modeling and adding edge looping ( both features shown in the new Maya videos ), bridge poligons, shrink wrapping, smooth deform with weightmap, and so on... Maya suffers from not having a proper tool for sliding components along meshes while preserving volume until 2014 when NEX tools are finally in it by default. I still use Diamant Tools (because I don't like the slow interaction in NEX), but as of right now I feel XSI is still stronger for modeling simply because of the non-destructive/procedural nature and the way the UI supports really fast interaction. Maya has some cool tools here and there (and combined with Diamant Tools, I feel like I'm working in Mudbox) but overall I think while XSI is faster, you shouldn't have any problems here. - Corrective shapes: usually I work with the standard shape manager, but the Paul Smith tutorial on corrective shape using ICE has become my standard...and I read that shapes in Maya are a bit a pain in the ass... There is no way to handle pose-space deformation OOTB in Maya, unfortunately. However, I use Daniel S. Lima's corrective blendshape manager, and as mentioned before there's the Rabbit Shapes plugin for this specific purpose. You can make your own poseReaders/angleReaders as well in Maya, but usually I just use the Michael Comet tools. And yes, blendshapes are not as straightforward to work with in Maya, but I would say that XSI has some quirks of its own in this regard as well...though not as much as Maya. :P - Epic released UE4 and with it there a pretty good rigging system which will replace Species, but what I'll miss will be Facerobot and Gear for facial rigging. What I would like to know is if I can build a facial rig in Maya which coiould be reused for multiple characters. Previously I used Gear and GATOR to quickly transfer the facial rig and the tweak everything afterward, I wonder if this is possible in Maya... I would say it depends. Of course you could make your own python modular facial rig or use something like advancedSkeleton to handle this sort of stuff, but for the most part the answer I would say is no, unless you're doing a REALLY generic facial rig based off volume enveloping or something similar. I've seen some really cool stuff in ICE where rigs are done that way and weightmaps control the falloff of envelopes and such...not as straightforward to achieve in Maya (there is no concept of user-definable weightmaps being able to be connected to other attributes willy-nilly via the GUI), and in some cases impossible afaik. The closest thing to GEAR that I've found (modular autorigging) is creatureRigs. As far as GATOR goes, there is Transfer Attributes that will cover some of GATOR's more important functions (UVs, skinClusters etc.), but it's not perfect... - Simple python scripts: as said I always hated scripting, but I was quite surprised when I just did something within Softimage, then open the script editor, copy all the content, make minor changes and then save that as a script to use for other projects...something artist friendly python way to script is available in Maya? Personally I find Maya's API a lot less intimidating than XSI's, as far as Python is concerned. If you've never done scripting before, you should have less trouble learning Python with Maya than with (I did :P ) XSI imho due to a few hoops you have to jump through in XSI. Plus the fact that XSI has its scripting name/actual name distinction is a little annoying, and that the Maya docs are (not surprisingly, since their team is probably bigger) more comprehensive and detailed with more examples. Bad things, though, is that the more you deal with scripting in Maya, the more you'll understand why the question of whether to learn MEL/Python becomes a bit convoluted...there's straight-up MEL, maya.cmds, pyMEL (two flavours O__o ), OpenMaya etc...but PyMEL is a good place to start if you're completely new to scripting in general. Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 3/20/2014 3:05 AM, Nicolas Esposito wrote: I was tempted to buy Jeremie Passerin videos from cmiVFX and if I remember correctly I watched the
Re: Digital Golem : Brillant and beautiful
On 03/19/14 16:44, Sven Constable wrote: What I really want to say is, that words do the damage to us. Words like 'EOL'. It's a killer! Its like telling someone he has bad breath. We were able to produce top notch 3D-animation four weeks ago. Now someone says a software is EOL and that should be the reason no one can produce anything with it? On 03/19/14 17:47, Matt Lind wrote: .. but if they handled it far different (meaning with humility and care), this may not have become such a shit storm. On 03/19/14 19:18, pete...@skynet.be wrote: its not only about the art - this is also a job, and thats where I see the major issue. This decision will hurt business. Less studios using it, less job opportunities, outsourcing possibilities, demand for Softimage specific assets, available talent, clients losing confidence since you use old tools, perhaps driving down budget because of it, less willingness to start long term, large projects with it. Stopping dev to concentrate on something else is one thing. But that (the mere official labeling) is exactly what would have been the -easiest- thing to not do, and what did do the most (quite unnecessary) damage. While labels don't actually change anything, it's like a psychological thing (not unlike a manipulation) And was exactly the (very much shameful) point of doing exactly that. The cheapest way to improve a product's capability/workability, (or the impression of it) is to choke it's nearest comparative reference (as completely as possible) (especially easy if you also own it) at (seemingly) whatever collateral damage it may entail. Quite shameful indeed.
Re: Mayas Render Layers Can Really Kill a job
This is by me probably the worst thing in maya, its just plain awful. On more than one occasion i remember the render layer system managing to break in more ways than one could imagine, nothing could be completed on time or with ease. If anything its probably the sole reason on why i dont plan on working in a studio that have their lighting done in maya, i know its a bold statement, but i really just want to avoid it. After that whole experience when i was introduced to xsi's pass system i think i went home and cried for a couple of days for all the overtime i endured just to get things out on time On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 12:42 PM, Ben Beckett nebbeck...@gmail.com wrote: If your not working on the master layer, there lot of pain to be endured. Working with Maya's render layers is like working with a red hot poker up ya bum! It lts like a child you need to have eyes in the back of your head to make sure it does not screw up. If I owned a small studio and wanted to waste a lot of time redoing shading I would use maya. What can we do about render layers, nothing!, because autodesk has done nothing about fixing it since some wonky person over at mental ray added them. Heck the words pass *contribution*https://www.google.co.uk/search?client=firefox-ahs=cLIrls=org.mozilla:en-GB:officialchannel=rcsq=contributionspell=1sa=Xei=pdMqU5GFDoSihgfBjIBoved=0CCoQvwUoAAbiw=1606bih=678maps puts the shiver through me. Ben
Re: Autodesk webinar
Hi Martin: The Edge Slide tool (pre-2014) is exactly for this purpose, and with vertices you can use hold down C+Move (though YMMV since it's constrained to only one axis of movement). 2014 and onwards you can use the integrated NEX tools edge/surface slide options to achieve this. Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 3/20/2014 4:08 AM, Martin Yara wrote: Sorry but was that an answer to my question about moving an edge loop with Move Tool with magnet and MMB drag ? Because I can't get the same result in Maya. Martin On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 3:32 AM, John Richard Sanchez youngupstar...@gmail.com mailto:youngupstar...@gmail.com wrote: If you hold down W (short cut key for move) and click it will bring up a menu and you can change the setting to Normal Average On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.com mailto:furik...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Brent, Thanks for your detailed explanation. from a SI user POV yeah that isn't very impressive, but being a partial Maya user, that sounds pretty cool. Not enough to make me want to model in Maya but I may not need to move back to SI when tweaking models for a Maya based project. BTW, One of the model tools I miss in Maya is the old SI Move Tool with Magnet. Moving edge loops almost without affecting the object form is something I can't live without. I remember how excited I was when learned MMB + drag + Magnet to move edge loops. I couldn't stop moving edges :D Is there anything close to that in Maya? If not, you should add it. Martin
Re: Digital Golem : Brillant and beautiful
The way it was announced had a major impact in the education sphere ;( From: Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.commailto:jasonsta...@gmail.com Reply-To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Date: Thursday 20 March 2014 at 1:51 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Digital Golem : Brillant and beautiful On 03/19/14 16:44, Sven Constable wrote: What I really want to say is, that words do the damage to us. Words like 'EOL'. It's a killer! Its like telling someone he has bad breath. We were able to produce top notch 3D-animation four weeks ago. Now someone says a software is EOL and that should be the reason no one can produce anything with it? On 03/19/14 17:47, Matt Lind wrote: .. but if they handled it far different (meaning with humility and care), this may not have become such a shit storm. On 03/19/14 19:18, pete...@skynet.bemailto:pete...@skynet.be wrote: it’s not only about the art - this is also a job, and that’s where I see the major issue. This decision will hurt business. Less studios using it, less job opportunities, outsourcing possibilities, demand for Softimage specific assets, available talent, clients losing confidence since you use old tools, perhaps driving down budget because of it, less willingness to start long term, large projects with it. Stopping dev to concentrate on something else is one thing. But that (the mere official labeling) is exactly what would have been the -easiest- thing to not do, and what did do the most (quite unnecessary) damage. While labels don't actually change anything, it's like a psychological thing (not unlike a manipulation) And was exactly the (very much shameful) point of doing exactly that. The cheapest way to improve a product's capability/workability, (or the impression of it) is to choke it's nearest comparative reference (as completely as possible) (especially easy if you also own it) at (seemingly) whatever collateral damage it may entail. Quite shameful indeed. table width=100% border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 style=width:100%; tr td align=left style=text-align:justify;font face=arial,sans-serif size=1 color=#99span style=font-size:11px;This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary. /span/font/td /tr /table
Re: Digital Golem : Brillant and beautiful
If not all spheres.. Yet on a more positive note, it is also quite possible (if not similarly easy) to see through (mere) labels :) On 03/20/14 8:11, Angus Davidson wrote: The way it was announced had a major impact in the education sphere ;( From: Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com Reply-To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Date: Thursday 20 March 2014 at 1:51 PM To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Digital Golem : Brillant and beautiful On 03/19/14 16:44, Sven Constable wrote: What I really want to say is, that words do the damage to us. Words like 'EOL'. It's a killer! Its like telling someone he has bad breath. We were able to produce top notch 3D-animation four weeks ago. Now someone says a software is EOL and that should be the reason no one can produce anything with it? On 03/19/14 17:47, Matt Lind wrote: .. but if they handled it far different (meaning with humility and care), this may not have become such a shit storm. On 03/19/14 19:18, pete...@skynet.be wrote: it’s not only about the art - this is also a job, and that’s where I see the major issue. This decision will hurt business. Less studios using it, less job opportunities, outsourcing possibilities, demand for Softimage specific assets, available talent, clients losing confidence since you use old tools, perhaps driving down budget because of it, less willingness to start long term, large projects with it. Stopping dev to concentrate on something else is one thing. But that (the mere official labeling) is exactly what would have been the -easiest- thing to not do, and what did do the most (quite unnecessary) damage. While labels don't actually change anything, it's like a psychological thing (not unlike a manipulation) And was exactly the (very much shameful) point of doing exactly that. The cheapest way to improve a product's capability/workability, (or the impression of it) is to choke it's nearest comparative reference (as completely as possible) (especially easy if you also own it) at (seemingly) whatever collateral damage it may entail. Quite shameful indeed. This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary.
Re: Why MAX is not option for me.
That's why I call 3DMax a Plugin Container That not really the issue, maya is pretty much wall to wall third party as well by nature. This is AD not being arsed with developing content, so it looks around for pre existing solutions, snaps them up, adds them in, Then they market them as New features... It's not so much that they buy pre-made solutions, there are some really smart third party people out there, its the fact they through them in with minimal integration and little regard for workflow, that and having a 30 euros operator, being your highlight... In all fairness the max people walked right into that one, they presented AD with the easy option. , minimal effort required. I mean what the hell can the AD dev's do, do they just re-purpose and integrate all day ? On 20 March 2014 10:33, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.com wrote: That's why I call 3DMax as a Plugin Container, not a 3D package. ;) --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com ---
Re: A confession
Just learn to script It's not that easy for every one... My brain simply does not work that way, I would rather keep polishing my art skills and learn all the amazing new painting tools than learn to script. Being person with dyslexia makes its more than a bit difficult for me to jump on the scripting train. All this talk of the reality of the need for constant scripting as part of your daily work flows in Maya makes me literally sick to my stomach Sent from my iPhone
RE: Top List of ICE Nodes That Cover 80% of What You Do With The Toolset
Fun fact: Do you know Maya started out using scheme as its scripting language? -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andy Jones Sent: 20 March 2014 07:47 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Top List of ICE Nodes That Cover 80% of What You Do With The Toolset Now that I understand the history of ICE a little better, I can see that I was wrong to balk at naming the top ICE nodes I need. Here's my updated list: car cdr cons eq atom cons quote I suppose I won't really need defun, since Maya will let me just add the same nodes over and over again with a mel script. On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 11:56 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.commailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: The functional programming throwback has officially pushed this conversation into the twilight zone and right out the other end of it into some unexplored surreal territory. Thanks to all involved, it'll stay with me for the rest of my life and make me giggle every time I'll think of it. attachment: winmail.dat
RE: my first experiment with rigging in Houdini :-))))
Damn, I wish you had posted this. ;-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRZ2Sh5-XuM From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Max Evgrafov Sent: 20 March 2014 09:30 To: softimage Subject: my first experiment with rigging in Houdini :- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkdQyet1EN4#t=24 -- Max aka Summatr https://vimeo.com/user3098735/videos --- attachment: winmail.dat
Re: Maya render region!
I'm sure they'll buy both and kill 'm, because they are certrain they can come up with something much more innovative. -Ronald On 3/20/2014 11:48, pete...@skynet.be wrote: probably they’ll kill the commercial one, just to screw it’s users. *From:* Jason S mailto:jasonsta...@gmail.com *Sent:* Thursday, March 20, 2014 11:40 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Maya render region! lol :p On 03/20/14 6:38, Emilio Hernandez wrote: I wonder now which one of the two Autodesk is going to buy and say it is part of the new tools they are developing... Well maybe they will buy both and just kill one. --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation. 2014-03-20 4:36 GMT-06:00 Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com mailto:emi...@e-roja.com: Ohh so there is two options... The first one you need to subscribe here http://therenderblog.com/ --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation. 2014-03-20 3:58 GMT-06:00 Marco Peixoto mpe...@gmail.com mailto:mpe...@gmail.com: Is this it: http://www.tasaa.com/adnproducts.htm Because if it is its not free... it cost 120 bucks On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 8:26 AM, Tenshi S. tenshu...@gmail.com mailto:tenshu...@gmail.com wrote: Another feature we've seen in the past, and guess what! it's in a product called Softimage, from Autode$k. Hope they don't buy that feature.., damn duct-taped things.. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 12:56 AM, Octavian Ureche okt...@gmail.com mailto:okt...@gmail.com wrote: This is definitely going to show up soon as a revolutionary new feature in maya. I'm betting someone is already making an offer. Btw, houdini also has had a render region for a while now, that kind of works, when it does not offset itself for no apparent reason. But at least it's in there. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 6:06 AM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com mailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Nice digging Raff, seems like the tip of the ICE berg. :) On 20 March 2014 02:26, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com mailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Should be noted I -REALLY- don't know for sure what I'm talking about here, I don't even know if the event tracker in Google refers to the patent office events after they are published or to some Google service itself. Don't throw parties yet or anything :p On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 1:24 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com mailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Apparently it first lapsed and then expired because it wasn't maintained, at least according to Google patents. http://www.google.com/patents/US6091422?dq=avid+technology+render#v=onepageqf=false I have to admit not being entirely sure of how Google patents works (if the feed is accurate), and whether it can be revived, but yeah, there you have it. Autodesk apparently doesn't pay its bills ;) On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 11:01 AM, Gustavo Eggert Boehs gustav...@gmail.com mailto:gustav...@gmail.com wrote: thats great and all, but AD holds the patent for the renderregion now, so unless it has expired this would be... illegal? -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are! -- Octavian Ureche +40 732 774 313 tel:%2B40%20732%20774%20313 (GMT+2) Animation Visual Effects www.okto.ro http://www.okto.ro
Re: A confession
Which is, in no small way, part of the reason I left Maya in the first place. Yes, scripting would be great to know (and my brain doesn't work that way, either), but how about a DCC that doesn't require you to know how to script to be productive (hell, forget productive, to even DO some things at all)!? So that, and the constant crashes with rendering, the inconsistent workflow (pick this first, or that first???) and the utter lack of regard for the user who doesn't fit the profile of a large client are large parts of why I stopped using Maya. I am totally with you on this one Greg. I have been sick since this whole thing started. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 8:42 AM, Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com wrote: Just learn to script It's not that easy for every one... My brain simply does not work that way, I would rather keep polishing my art skills and learn all the amazing new painting tools than learn to script. Being person with dyslexia makes its more than a bit difficult for me to jump on the scripting train. All this talk of the reality of the need for constant scripting as part of your daily work flows in Maya makes me literally sick to my stomach Sent from my iPhone -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com http://www.theafterimage.com/
RE: Autodesk webinar
Yes, In NEX (internally we refer to the evolution of the NEX plugin as MTK - Modeling Tool Kit) Modeling Panel Transform Constraint Surface slide + Double-click edge loop selection etc. Also, when I say old SI move tool I mean the M tool without any manips that predated Tweak - click drag points. ;-) That is what Maya's tweak mode is like. (except it works on all component types) -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Martin Yara Sent: 19 March 2014 16:35 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Autodesk webinar Hi Brent, Thanks for your detailed explanation. from a SI user POV yeah that isn't very impressive, but being a partial Maya user, that sounds pretty cool. Not enough to make me want to model in Maya but I may not need to move back to SI when tweaking models for a Maya based project. BTW, One of the model tools I miss in Maya is the old SI Move Tool with Magnet. Moving edge loops almost without affecting the object form is something I can't live without. I remember how excited I was when learned MMB + drag + Magnet to move edge loops. I couldn't stop moving edges :D Is there anything close to that in Maya? If not, you should add it. Martin On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 12:07 AM, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote: Hi Martin, Since I work on modeling I can comment directly on the NEX integration in 2015 and how modeling toolkit features have made their way into the native Maya selection tool. (as the other bigger features are covered in the what's new videos) Maya's native selection tool now has lazy preselection highlighting just like NEX that selects the closest component on the poly under the cursor. (like Soft's tweak tool) Sub-pixel picking precision no longer required. ;-) It also respects the highlight backfacing toggle in the modeling toolkit panel and is smart enough to ignore occluded components in shaded mode etc. We have also revamped the Drag (Tab key) and Tweak (` backtick key) modes in Maya's select tool. Drag is a raycast selection mode that you activate by holding Tab and again makes use of lazy preselection. So just hold Tab and raycast away from your current selection tool. If you start dragging on an unselected component the tool adds to the selection but if you start on a selected component it removes so no need for keyboard modifier calisthenics! Tweak (` backtick key) is a quick (manip-free) way of adjusting components (like the *old* Soft move tool) and has a nice big tolerance when outside the object so it can be used to tweak components on the silhouette of your mesh. Maya's multi selection mode (RMB menu) is also a nice way to work with points/edges/polys without switching selection modes. Speaking of RMB menus in Maya you can activate RMB radial menu items by RMB dragging quickly - so a RMB-left-swipe will put you in vertex mode without displaying the menu. Maya's loop selection has also been updated to the same level of functionality in NEX/Soft so you can make ring or partial loop selections by clicking an edge and the shift-double-clicking another edge in the loop/ring. (so for those familiar with Maya you don't need to switch to the special purpose ring selection tool anymore) Symmetry in Maya has been completely re-written and integrated between Maya and NEX. When symmetry is enabled your selections are fully symmetrical so most non-interactive modeling ops will basically work in 2015. It also supports NEX's topological symmetry which works off the mesh topology and can work on a posed/deformed character as long as the mesh is symmetrical. Maya and NEX soft selection settings have also been unified in 2015. In this instance we went with the Maya tech because it has some really nice features. You tap B to toggle soft select or hold B and LMB drag to adjust soft select. My favorite feature here is how the current weights are locked until you change your selection so you can tweak the same selection multiple times without having your soft selection recalculated each time you release the mouse. Undo also restores your soft selection weights which is a nice added touch. (Unfortunately the NEX tools don't have this weight preserving feature though they use same soft-select falloff settings in 2015) Anyway those are just a few of the ways we have started to integrate NEX into Maya in 2015. Maybe it doesn't sound that impressive to Soft users but we are making progress. -- Brent attachment: winmail.dat
Re: A confession
Plenty people manage without or with primitive copy and paste macro style hacks and downloads, it's not strictly necessary. It is true though that while in XSI it's a nice skill to have but not strictly necessary for most trivial talks, Maya has some areas convoluted enough that you really want to hook a few bits together or automate some clicks to not go insane. Again, it's not strictly necessary, don't worry, it just makes a more appreciable difference at a much earlier parts of the toolset you've come to take for granted in Soft. No tool out there, sadly, matches that level of completeness without sacrificing power, and likely none ever will until the game will have changed considerably and software and process will be different. XSI was unarguably the last real end to end app. On 20 Mar 2014 23:43, Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com wrote: Just learn to script It's not that easy for every one... My brain simply does not work that way, I would rather keep polishing my art skills and learn all the amazing new painting tools than learn to script. Being person with dyslexia makes its more than a bit difficult for me to jump on the scripting train. All this talk of the reality of the need for constant scripting as part of your daily work flows in Maya makes me literally sick to my stomach Sent from my iPhone
Re: Top List of ICE Nodes That Cover 80% of What You Do With The Toolset
The original Softimage 3D developers loved LISP so much, they lobbied Daniel Langlois to write the software in LISP. The people behing Mirai probably think they dodge a bullet. The Softimage|3D expression language, also in XSI, is based on LISP.. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 3:47 AM, Andy Jones andy.jo...@gmail.com wrote: Now that I understand the history of ICE a little better, I can see that I was wrong to balk at naming the top ICE nodes I need. Here's my updated list: car cdr cons eq atom cons quote I suppose I won't really need defun, since Maya will let me just add the same nodes over and over again with a mel script.
Re: Autodesk webinar
As a lefty, I learned quick that it wasn't going to be a pleasant experience using a computer if I had to switch settings along with the keyboard and mouse positions each time I sat down at a computer. Thus, I'm a lefty using the mouse and keyboard like a righty. Only way to stay productive when going to other people's machines in my opinion. I feel sorry for the rest of the lefties out there who have to struggle along. :( Eric T.
Re: Top List of ICE Nodes That Cover 80% of What You Do With The Toolset
On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 2:56 AM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: The functional programming throwback has officially pushed this conversation into the twilight zone and right out the other end of it into some unexplored surreal territory. Thanks to all involved, it'll stay with me for the rest of my life and make me giggle every time I'll think of it. This functional programming language and ICE diversion sounds like b.s., but it is not. You can talk to Andre Foisy, or even Ronald if he's around, and he can explain it. Personally these conversation have a way of reminding me to stick to UI. ;) Andre is our resident softimage scientist.
Re: Softimage user migrating to Maya
Wow. That about sums it up! Hysterical! Sent from my iPhone Please excuse typos and brief replies. Thank you! On Mar 20, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: índice.jpg --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation.
Re: Softimage user migrating to Maya
He was a good chap, but do not despair, as surely we of the list know heaven, is XSI compatible ! On 20 March 2014 13:46, Perryharovas perryharo...@gmail.com wrote: Wow. That about sums it up! Hysterical! Sent from my iPhone Please excuse typos and brief replies. Thank you! On Mar 20, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: índice.jpg --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation.
Re: A confession
Big Studios use Maya because they have an RD department to create their own tools and build a solid pipeline around Maya. Small guy uses Maya is because Big Studios does, with the difference that he doesn't have a RD department so he works slow and clunky. The reason may be because he can work with / for big studios, or he just though he could create his own avengers movie like ILM when he learned the software, and he just doesn't know better. And since he doesn't know better he thinks it is normal to have to look for a script in creativecrash, so he can save weights by location, freeze, edit the topology, add polygons, re-skin, load weights, tweak weights if necessary. All of this so he can edit a weighted character, and in SI we just edit the topology. Maya is getting a little better though. I mean it was awful a few years ago, now it is getting a little decent at least for modeling. But I still wouldn't model in Maya. I would prefer to deal with FBX or send to Maya problems and work in SI. BTW, most Maya modelers I know, can't script more than copy paste from the log. And it is good enough to work. But to work almost at the same speed than SI (without ICE) you'll need to learn scripting, or spend a few hours in creativecrash looking for free plugins every now and then. Martin On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 10:16 PM, Nicolas Esposito 3dv...@gmail.com wrote: What surprises me is that Maya, as far as I know, has a quite large user base, from small guy at home to big studios, and honestly I thought that Maya ( out of the box ) was more friendly and not so clunky to work with...but I guess compare the workflow between SI and Maya is not so fair at this point, since the non-linear workflow has proven to be way more efficient then the traditional workflow 2014-03-20 14:09 GMT+01:00 Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.com: Which is, in no small way, part of the reason I left Maya in the first place. Yes, scripting would be great to know (and my brain doesn't work that way, either), but how about a DCC that doesn't require you to know how to script to be productive (hell, forget productive, to even DO some things at all)!? So that, and the constant crashes with rendering, the inconsistent workflow (pick this first, or that first???) and the utter lack of regard for the user who doesn't fit the profile of a large client are large parts of why I stopped using Maya. I am totally with you on this one Greg. I have been sick since this whole thing started. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 8:42 AM, Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.comwrote: Just learn to script It's not that easy for every one... My brain simply does not work that way, I would rather keep polishing my art skills and learn all the amazing new painting tools than learn to script. Being person with dyslexia makes its more than a bit difficult for me to jump on the scripting train. All this talk of the reality of the need for constant scripting as part of your daily work flows in Maya makes me literally sick to my stomach Sent from my iPhone -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com http://www.theafterimage.com/
Re: Autodesk webinar
whew... *Greg Punchatz* *Sr. Creative Director* Janimation 214.823.7760 www.janimation.com http://www.janimation.com On 3/19/2014 11:19 AM, Martin Yara wrote: Maya 2014 remember component selection per object. 2013 and older, doesn't. Martin On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com mailto:g...@janimation.com wrote: switching between objects? if not these are needed for sure... add those feature requests to the how to make maya not suck ;) list!
Re: Mental ray volumetric shader errors
many thanks Gustavo!! that was it. 2014-03-20 8:15 GMT-03:00 adrian wyer adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com: Gustavo is correct, crank your Mesh Splitting Factor in the MR options to something high, problem solved a -- *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Ola Madsen *Sent:* 20 March 2014 08:11 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Mental ray volumetric shader errors I don't think that worked in my scenario as I had numerous overlapping objects (was doing an x-ray shot) and I got the artifacts in the overlaps as well. Though this was easily fixed by splitting the scene in a couple of passes. o *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Gustavo Eggert Boehs *Sent:* Thursday, March 20, 2014 12:44 AM *To:* SI mailing list *Subject:* RE: Mental ray volumetric shader errors Hey Fabricio, i'be bumped onto that also, in my case it was the Mesh Splitting kicking in. It separates dense meshes into separate objects before passing them on to MR. Therefore, some shaders get artifacts, like volumetrics and bumpmapping also. Real headache but easy fix... Under MR Optimizations, look for Mesh Splitting Factor, increase the value up to infinity and be happy :D Em 19/03/2014 19:20, Ola Madsen ola.mad...@digitalcontext.se escreveu: I can only confirm this nasty little bug as I experienced it a couple of years ago. If I remember correctly I managed to get rid of the artifacts on some objects by actually tessellating the geometry instead of using to + key. Some object still had the artifacts and I had to work around it by splitting the scene and rendering the objects in in different passes... Cheers Ola *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Fabricio Chamon *Sent:* Wednesday, March 19, 2014 11:05 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Mental ray volumetric shader errors ...forgot to say that I'm using Particle_Volume_Cloud, which used to work fine on meshes since always. 2014-03-19 18:56 GMT-03:00 Fabricio Chamon xsiml...@gmail.com: Hi, I'm trying to do some volumetrics in mray, but the shader is giving me all kinds of wierdness on heavy meshes. Have anyone experienced this before ? For the sake of simplicity, I have this test scene with only one default sphere. If I crank up the sphere U/V subd to 200, it starts to show some strange black areas. At subd 300, it renders all flat. I'm guessing it's not a lookup table cell size problem...tried very small values, and the volume renders almost completely solid (when it works). here's some images to illustrate: [image: Imagem inline 1] I really need dense meshes because I want the fine control over the volume silhouette to be on the mesh itself, not through shader trees. anyone ? inline: image001.jpg
Re: Maya feature request from Softimage users
Not sure if this has been touched upon but I would love to lock the property page um I mean attribute editor. And I would love to have different attribute editors open for different objects. But what would really be boss is if I could drag and drop animation from one objects channel to anothers the way we drag the green divot of one parameter to another objects parameter in XSI. On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 4:36 AM, Rob Wuijster r...@casema.nl wrote: those screenshots are making my eyes bleed ;-) Rob \/-\/\/ On 7-3-2014 21:23, Halim Negadi wrote: As for shapes, I've never felt good with soft workflow. A few years ago we asked stargrav to develop us a soft version of BCS. It now works on both platforms and I can't live without it: http://www.stargrav.com/bcs.php On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 9:08 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: while a lot of those things can be worked around or simply written, the lack of a property and parameter entity in Maya will have you up walls. Attributes can only be owned by nodes, and the sort-of-quasi-workaround of character set will cuase early baldness in any person trying to use it. BTW, if you plan to use Maya go on the small annoying things site RIGHT NOW and start up-voting the Softimage sensitive issues (proxy params is there, as is the lack of some fundamental nodes etc.). On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 7:05 AM, Eric Turman i.anima...@gmail.com wrote: **Workgroups *(Maya's plugin manager..ugh what a mess) **GATOR *(I've had Maya users nearly go into a seizure of disbelief when I've shown them GATOR in the past) **Stacks: Model, Shape, Animate, Secondary shape etc *(so useful to be able to partition operations for freezing etc.) **non-destructive adaption of modeling work through shapes weights etc.* (when a client wans a changeman this has been a lifesaver in Soft all these years) **non-layer approach to dealing with hierarchical inheritance of visibility etc* (hide parent in Maya, the whole branch get hidden...wait, whut? dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb...yes I know layers...not clean when temporarily hiding things while working) **Delta referencing with internal and external aspects *(the ability to spit aspects of internal and external referencing is amazingly powerful) **Constraint Comp *(Maya, why you hide your offset after initial constraint?!?!) **Neutral pose *(I know that I'm going to get some flak for this one and that buffer nulls...erm locators...work but Neutral pose when used correctly is wonderful) **Proxy Parameters* (so nice for the animators not to have to hunt and peck like on Maya rigs) **Pass partition* (instead of the ridiculous render layers) I know that I'm missing a bunch, but that's a quick fire off the top of my head. I am not looking forward to using it again. I spent 5 years trying to embrace it and it was like cuddling with a porcupine back in the stone ages. But I will have to deal with it once more. On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 1:59 PM, Meng-Yang Lu ntmon...@gmail.com wrote: This is a possibility with Fabric Engine in the mix for super speed. Here's hoping. On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 11:55 AM, Francisco Criado malcriad...@gmail.com wrote: Why not to rename xsi.exe to maya.exe and change the starting screen? that could be very easy implemented, and voila! all softimage tools and ui in maya :) 2014-03-07 16:50 GMT-03:00 Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com: I think the core issue here isn't as much whether Maya can be patched or not, it surely can, the core is still functional and respectably open, if not without issues (and stability has been degrading compared to the past IME). The problem for a lot of people used to Soft is how much scavenging and patching they will HAVE TO do before they are even remotely close to having previous functionality. For the small scale Maya user, so leave us engineers and big shops out, having to scavenge for scripts and tools and hacking together horrible copy'n'paste MEL macros is part of the day to day routine, even for things such as opening more than one outliner. That's why it's perceived as inferior by a lot of Soft users. We can discuss potential all day, and there are certainly things I can do in Maya that Soft will simply not allow me to do, but in terms of OOTB experience it is pretty F'in disgraceful with all the missing bits. Rabbit's Shapes plugin and ngSkinTools are bare minimum additions to even be able to use it, along side a handful of shelves (Maya's layout is another disgrace that requires a lot of old school hacking) that you'll have to scavenge from all over the place. You also have to toe the line between what you can rely on and what you can't. Maya has a binary lock on versions, so any new major release, and in two recorded cases even the .5s, it breaks binary compatibility. Soft users take for granted that
anim layers, how to collapse without adding extra keys
Hi, I'm far from an expert user in softimage so I've probably got a pretty basic question, but any advice is much appreciated.. I've got some animation on an anim layer, I want to be able to collapse it all to the base layer with out adding extra keys to my timeline. The settings I've tried are start/end frames 1 - 44 Step value = 1 fit plotted values with an fcurve = on fit tolerance = 1.0 I have keys set on both layers on frames 1 and 44 when I collapse the layers with the above settings, soft adds a key at 22. So even with fit tolerance set to 1.0 it still seems to be trying to ad a key to keep the curve fit With more key poses set it adds even more additional keys to the time line, which quickly makes your timing a mess if you use layers a lot and collapse them frequently (like I do)... I am probably missing something but is it possible to bake hte layers down and keep only the keys you've created? thanks in advance, Daniel
Re: A confession
+1 IMHO scripting is for making crappy software work at all (Maya) and for creating something special with good software that has buttons for all the ordinary stuff (XSI). I simply don't have time to learn scripting, not least because my mind doesn't lend itself to that kind of thinking and remembering syntax etc. My time is better spent figuring out how to do great stuff with ICE. The only scripting I do is some half arsed copy pasting from the script editor to facilitate unified pass setups across multiple shots and similar stuff on that level. That I can do :) Morten Den 20. marts 2014 kl. 13:42 skrev Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com: Just learn to script It's not that easy for every one... My brain simply does not work that way, I would rather keep polishing my art skills and learn all the amazing new painting tools than learn to script. Being person with dyslexia makes its more than a bit difficult for me to jump on the scripting train. All this talk of the reality of the need for constant scripting as part of your daily work flows in Maya makes me literally sick to my stomach Sent from my iPhone
Re: my first experiment with rigging in Houdini :-))))
nr.Brent, thank you a lot. But I see that Hudini can do something ;-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embeddedv=I-cKnahxkUo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rE9UrjYBLo 2014-03-20 17:06 GMT+04:00 Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com: Damn, I wish you had posted this. ;-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRZ2Sh5-XuM From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Max Evgrafov Sent: 20 March 2014 09:30 To: softimage Subject: my first experiment with rigging in Houdini :- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkdQyet1EN4#t=24 -- Max aka Summatr https://vimeo.com/user3098735/videos --- -- Евграфов Максим.(Summatr) https://vimeo.com/user3098735/videos --- Хорошего Вам настроения !!! :-)
Re: A confession
but why scripting is new artist tool! REAL artist model in full screen text editor! who needs viewport at all start notepad, and begin typing coordinates for each vertex... that is how REAL hardcore stuff is done. buttons are for p... On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 4:34 PM, Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dkwrote: +1 IMHO scripting is for making crappy software work at all (Maya) and for creating something special with good software that has buttons for all the ordinary stuff (XSI). I simply don't have time to learn scripting, not least because my mind doesn't lend itself to that kind of thinking and remembering syntax etc. My time is better spent figuring out how to do great stuff with ICE. The only scripting I do is some half arsed copy pasting from the script editor to facilitate unified pass setups across multiple shots and similar stuff on that level. That I can do :) Morten Den 20. marts 2014 kl. 13:42 skrev Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com: Just learn to script It's not that easy for every one... My brain simply does not work that way, I would rather keep polishing my art skills and learn all the amazing new painting tools than learn to script. Being person with dyslexia makes its more than a bit difficult for me to jump on the scripting train. All this talk of the reality of the need for constant scripting as part of your daily work flows in Maya makes me literally sick to my stomach Sent from my iPhone
Re: REAL innovation
now I could get into that. Amazing interface, looks so simple to get really great results. Definitely one of my next pickups. On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 2:33 PM, Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com wrote: All cg will now look too dirty...as opposed too all looking too clean... every car will be rusty from this moment out I am so buying all these products.. -- *Greg Punchatz* *Sr. Creative Director* Janimation 214.823.7760 www.janimation.com On 3/19/2014 3:09 PM, Eugene Flormata wrote: damn.. definately affordable.. and I just bought allegorithmic's stuff http://store.steampowered.com/app/273390/ http://www.allegorithmic.com/products/substance-designer-4 On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 7:11 AM, Nicolas Esposito 3dv...@gmail.comwrote: nDo was a huge surprise for me, DDO and 3DO are just absolutely stunning!!! And very affordable too! 2014-03-19 15:05 GMT+01:00 Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.com: H.O.L.Y. C.R.A.P. On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 9:44 AM, adrian wyer adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com wrote: http://dev.quixel.se/ddo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyJJAp17K-Yfeature=youtu.be stunning workflow, technically app agnostic a Adrian Wyer Fluid Pictures 75-77 Margaret St. London W1W 8SY ++44(0) 207 580 0829 %2B%2B44%280%29%20207%20580%200829 adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com www.fluid-pictures.com Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales. Company number:5657815 VAT number: 872 6893 71 -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com http://www.theafterimage.com/
Re: Open Letter to Carl Bass
yet Autodesk fails again... 2014-03-18 17:35 GMT+01:00 Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.com: Chris? I am still waiting. I know Carl must be busy, but... Perhaps with the massive PR issues, especially over the last two days, some sort of update to when/if Carl will be responding might be in order? Thank you, Perry On Sun, Mar 16, 2014 at 1:24 PM, Chris Vienneau chris.vienn...@autodesk.com wrote: Just to let everyone know Carl got the letter and is asking questions and will write back when he gets into the office on Monday. cv/ From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [ softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Leoung O'Young [ digim...@digimata.com] Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 5:13 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Open Letter to Carl Bass Thanks for taking the time out to write this. Leoung On 15/03/2014 5:08 PM, Arvid Björn wrote: Powerful stuff Perry. If there's one thing this debacle has proved, it's that this community is really is as strong and passionate as I've always perceived it to be. On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 4:13 PM, Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.com mailto:perryharo...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Mr. Bass My name is Perry Harovas. You don't know me, but I am a 10 year Softimage user. 10 years is actually a small amount of time when compared to my peers who having been using Softimage for up to 20 years. I am writing to you because I cannot be silent on this. I have been in this business for 25 years. I started out using Lightwave in Video Toaster V1 on an Amiga computer. I then moved on to Alias PowerAnimator and took the new abilities of that software (over Lightwave) into feature films out of a small studio in (of all places) Newark, NJ. I was an Alpha tester of Maya, before it was even announced publicly. I put up with no docs, breaking code, a renderer that was written only months earlier and barely worked, changing workflows, etc. I learned everything I could about the software, and eventually co-authored the first book about Maya, Mastering Maya Complete 2. I was the loudest, most exuberant fan of Maya on the face of the planet. I couldn't get enough. I worked myself into bouts of sleeplessness in an effort to know more about this seemingly magical application that would allow me to create anything I could dream of. Except, in reality, the word 'dream' is appropriate, because as I took on larger projects and tried to do more work with it, I found one of the largest obstacles with Maya was (and is) that it needs a support team behind it to code tools into either working together, or sometimes, working at all. A good example of this is when I was directing two 30 minute CG children's shows with me and my small crew of 4 other people. We had 6 months to create 60 minutes of animation, including building the characters, rigging them, animating them, texturing, lighting, etc. An insane task given the budget, crew size and amount of animation. But we plunged head on into doing it. Then, after many, many minutes of animation had been done, we found that our characters were coming into our scenes with no animation except their mouth lip sync. Where had all the animation we did gone? Our one technical guy on staff looked into it and happened to find that the animation curves were still there, but had detached themselves from the character rig (his skeleton, if you will). Fortunately, he was able to code up a way to automatically reconnect the animation curves to the rig, saving months of work. We then realized we were not going to be the only people to have this issue. We spoke with Support, and they acknowledged this was a known issue. We even offered to give them our script to help others who were having similar issues. They refused to let us help. We then started experiencing render problems, referencing issues, and a list of other things so long that I can't remember it now. Needless to say, it was frustrating, it prevented the quality from being consistent, and endangered our whole company. We soldiered on, finishing the two shows on schedule, barely, and vowing to NEVER use Maya again. We eventually decided on Softimage|XSI. Sure it was rough re-learning a new application, but it was rewarding in that it worked, didn't fail us, and didn't need a dedicated team to produce work that was better than what we could produce in Maya. This was astonishing to me! Thoughts of Why did we not do this earlier? ran through my head. The power in one application seemed to be nearly limitless. Limitless, that is, until I started Alpha testing Moondust, which eventually became ICE. This was an area I knew nothing about, coding, and suddenly I was doing things that I could not believe. I created a way to have fur just appear on the silhouette of my cartoon dog, in literally 20 minutes of fiddling around with ICE. Even
Re: A confession
Something I have found in the last couple weeks, which I personally find mind numbing is how tied to UVs some tools are. Hair work... try and groom something, and then realize you need to tweak your UVs. Gotta start over Painting weights. Gotta have UV's to do smoothing. - Edit the Uv's.. start over. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 9:02 AM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote: but why scripting is new artist tool! REAL artist model in full screen text editor! who needs viewport at all start notepad, and begin typing coordinates for each vertex... that is how REAL hardcore stuff is done. buttons are for p... On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 4:34 PM, Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dkwrote: +1 IMHO scripting is for making crappy software work at all (Maya) and for creating something special with good software that has buttons for all the ordinary stuff (XSI). I simply don't have time to learn scripting, not least because my mind doesn't lend itself to that kind of thinking and remembering syntax etc. My time is better spent figuring out how to do great stuff with ICE. The only scripting I do is some half arsed copy pasting from the script editor to facilitate unified pass setups across multiple shots and similar stuff on that level. That I can do :) Morten Den 20. marts 2014 kl. 13:42 skrev Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com: Just learn to script It's not that easy for every one... My brain simply does not work that way, I would rather keep polishing my art skills and learn all the amazing new painting tools than learn to script. Being person with dyslexia makes its more than a bit difficult for me to jump on the scripting train. All this talk of the reality of the need for constant scripting as part of your daily work flows in Maya makes me literally sick to my stomach Sent from my iPhone
Re: Open Letter to Carl Bass
Maybe he is having technical issues...
Re: Softimage transition webinar is starting in 10 minutes
Reminder - Don't forget to join us for a few beers! Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 17 Mar 2014, at 18:42, Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 2:30 PM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: For those of you in London this Thursday, just to let know now the London Houdini User Group are meeting 6.30 Jerusalem bar, on Rathbone place Feel free to come and drink with us, if you have questions bring them along, you will have some of the best Houdini minds there to fire left right and centre. cheers
Re: anim layers, how to collapse without adding extra keys
Have you tried replace keys rather than fit to curve? I believe an animation curve needs a minimum of 3 points. Not at my system, right now, so I can't test it out. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 11:15 AM, Sil of Galatron fend...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I'm far from an expert user in softimage so I've probably got a pretty basic question, but any advice is much appreciated.. I've got some animation on an anim layer, I want to be able to collapse it all to the base layer with out adding extra keys to my timeline. The settings I've tried are start/end frames 1 - 44 Step value = 1 fit plotted values with an fcurve = on fit tolerance = 1.0 I have keys set on both layers on frames 1 and 44 when I collapse the layers with the above settings, soft adds a key at 22. So even with fit tolerance set to 1.0 it still seems to be trying to ad a key to keep the curve fit With more key poses set it adds even more additional keys to the time line, which quickly makes your timing a mess if you use layers a lot and collapse them frequently (like I do)... I am probably missing something but is it possible to bake hte layers down and keep only the keys you've created? thanks in advance, Daniel -- Best Regards, * Stephen P. Davidson* *(954) 552-7956*sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com *Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic* - Arthur C. Clarke http://www.3danimationmagic.com
Re: Open Letter to Carl Bass
No, he's too busy going on CNBC touting how great and innovative AD is (3d printing). Probably a campaign to make the stockholders feel everything is roses in the land of AD. Maybe we should all let the financial reporters know how AD handles the ME division and the poor PR instead of being swept under the rug or hidden away in the maillist. ME, and more specifically Softimage, I'm sure isn't anywhere near his radar. On 3/20/2014 12:24 PM, Emilio Hernandez wrote: Maybe he is having technical issues... -- Dan Pejril Upbeat Unique Entertainment www.UpbeatUnique.com
Re: A confession
Exactly. For example, in Maya there is no object to cluster constraint, so you have to use a 3rd party tool Rivet to attach things to geometry. But if you need to apply a Smooth to render it in the Maya renderer, it explodes. So, don't use the Maya renderer, or... You can use djRivet, which uses follicles intead of edges, but which relies on UV's being present. Works great.. until you change the UVs in any way. Not really a non-linear workflow. It's more like a circular workflow. On 3/20/2014 10:22 AM, Adam Sale wrote: Something I have found in the last couple weeks, which I personally find mind numbing is how tied to UVs some tools are. Hair work... try and groom something, and then realize you need to tweak your UVs. Gotta start over Painting weights. Gotta have UV's to do smoothing. - Edit the Uv's.. start over. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 9:02 AM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: but why scripting is new artist tool! REAL artist model in full screen text editor! who needs viewport at all start notepad, and begin typing coordinates for each vertex... that is how REAL hardcore stuff is done. buttons are for p... On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 4:34 PM, Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dk mailto:x...@colorshopvfx.dk wrote: +1 IMHO scripting is for making crappy software work at all (Maya) and for creating something special with good software that has buttons for all the ordinary stuff (XSI). I simply don't have time to learn scripting, not least because my mind doesn't lend itself to that kind of thinking and remembering syntax etc. My time is better spent figuring out how to do great stuff with ICE. The only scripting I do is some half arsed copy pasting from the script editor to facilitate unified pass setups across multiple shots and similar stuff on that level. That I can do :) Morten Den 20. marts 2014 kl. 13:42 skrev Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com mailto:g...@janimation.com: Just learn to script It's not that easy for every one... My brain simply does not work that way, I would rather keep polishing my art skills and learn all the amazing new painting tools than learn to script. Being person with dyslexia makes its more than a bit difficult for me to jump on the scripting train. All this talk of the reality of the need for constant scripting as part of your daily work flows in Maya makes me literally sick to my stomach Sent from my iPhone
I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better
I had some time away from the office today and while I was driving down the highway I started thinking about the situation and I'm no less pissed off today than I was when they made the announcement. I've been watching as many Modo and Houdini intro videos, tutorials, etc., that I can find and what I've discovered is, neither of them can replace Softimage today. If you're a TD, then Houdini is probably a great way to go, but I'm another one of those people who don't like to script and want to keep things simple. Everything in Houdini seems to involve writing at least a little script here and there. Modo on the other hand looks very simple and straightforward, but it's lacking a LOT of power. I noticed in some demos on things like instancing, the viewport REALLY slowed down. It doesn't look like it's ready for prime-time when it comes to dense scenes. The way everything you do is frozen is crazy these days. I can't believe if you extrude along a curve the geometry doesn't stay stuck to the curve. Until Modo makes some major moves, I just think it's a step up from Lightwave. I'm leaving Maya out of the picture because in all honesty, Autodesk is totally delusional if they think Maya will be a good fit for small shops working on tight deadlines. Maybe in 5-8 years Maya will finally hit its stride, but I'm assuming by then the entire ME division will have been shut down in favor of just licensing patents technology. (seriously - mark my words - I am confident the entire ME division will be shut down) I started thinking about most of the jobs I've done over the past few years, and I can honestly say I don't think I could do 90-95% of them in either Houdini or Modo as easily as in Softimage - if at all. So where I stand now is - totally screwed. I either have to put faith in The Foundry that they'll bring Modo up to Softimage's level in the next 2 years or I have to spend the next 2 years really digging in to Houdini to get myself up to speed again. In either case, I don't see a positive outcome. I'm not young and I have a family. I can't work all day, then spend the evenings learning new software. This BS about artists not putting all their eggs in one basket just is a slap in my face. I put my faith in Autodesk when they said the future of Sofitmage is bright! When I was told over and over again I was being a conspiracy nut when I said Autodesk was intentionally trying to destroy Softimage. Well, look where we are now. Murdering Softimage without having ANYTHING remotely close to replace it is like peeing on my face and telling me it's liquid sunshine! Maybe Autodesk is right. Maybe the all-in-one approach of Softimage is dead. Maybe I'm out of touch with how the world of animation VFX works these days. In any event. I'm a very unhappy paying Autodesk customer. I do not feel like my money has gone to anything I paid for. -Paul
Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better
Then I have a simple solution for you. Stick with Softimage for the time being. We stuck with Shake for 6 years after it was killed on Windows before something better came up. There was Digital Fusion, but we didn't feel it was better so we didn't switch. 6 long years without a single new feature or bug fix. But Shake rocked, and we loved it. Now we have Nuke, and we love it even better. You have been sticking with Softimage for the last 2 years and you can't say development was rocket fast. The only thing that will force me out of Softimage is the day Solid Angle will stop releasing Arnold for it. Then I will use another solution for shading-rendering only. In the mean time, I will slowly look for alternatives, including Maya. When I say slowly, I mean in the down times, which are not so frequent these days. On 20-Mar-14 12:55, Paul Griswold wrote: I had some time away from the office today and while I was driving down the highway I started thinking about the situation and I'm no less pissed off today than I was when they made the announcement. I've been watching as many Modo and Houdini intro videos, tutorials, etc., that I can find and what I've discovered is, neither of them can replace Softimage today. If you're a TD, then Houdini is probably a great way to go, but I'm another one of those people who don't like to script and want to keep things simple. Everything in Houdini seems to involve writing at least a little script here and there. Modo on the other hand looks very simple and straightforward, but it's lacking a LOT of power. I noticed in some demos on things like instancing, the viewport REALLY slowed down. It doesn't look like it's ready for prime-time when it comes to dense scenes. The way everything you do is frozen is crazy these days. I can't believe if you extrude along a curve the geometry doesn't stay stuck to the curve. Until Modo makes some major moves, I just think it's a step up from Lightwave. I'm leaving Maya out of the picture because in all honesty, Autodesk is totally delusional if they think Maya will be a good fit for small shops working on tight deadlines. Maybe in 5-8 years Maya will finally hit its stride, but I'm assuming by then the entire ME division will have been shut down in favor of just licensing patents technology. (seriously - mark my words - I am confident the entire ME division will be shut down) I started thinking about most of the jobs I've done over the past few years, and I can honestly say I don't think I could do 90-95% of them in either Houdini or Modo as easily as in Softimage - if at all. So where I stand now is - totally screwed. I either have to put faith in The Foundry that they'll bring Modo up to Softimage's level in the next 2 years or I have to spend the next 2 years really digging in to Houdini to get myself up to speed again. In either case, I don't see a positive outcome. I'm not young and I have a family. I can't work all day, then spend the evenings learning new software. This BS about artists not putting all their eggs in one basket just is a slap in my face. I put my faith in Autodesk when they said the future of Sofitmage is bright! When I was told over and over again I was being a conspiracy nut when I said Autodesk was intentionally trying to destroy Softimage. Well, look where we are now. Murdering Softimage without having ANYTHING remotely close to replace it is like peeing on my face and telling me it's liquid sunshine! Maybe Autodesk is right. Maybe the all-in-one approach of Softimage is dead. Maybe I'm out of touch with how the world of animation VFX works these days. In any event. I'm a very unhappy paying Autodesk customer. I do not feel like my money has gone to anything I paid for. -Paul
Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better
Not only I agree with you but I feel the same. But I am not transitioning migrating at the moment nor I see a near future to do so. The kind of work I do in advertising is not going anywhere away from Softimage. Autodesk can do whatever they want with their innovative tools. I have what I need to continue my work for years. I am about to start a new project and it is again with Softimage. I delivered yesterday another one again with Softimage. So Softimage forever until some Dcc captures my love again as it happened when I fell in love at first sight with Softimage 3D and then XSI but until 3.0
Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better
All I can say is I feel your pain man, and since the announcement I have as well looked at all the other options out there. The one thing you have to do, is remain positive. You are not the software, and from now on just make sure you are not about the software soo much. I know it's easy to say, but that's the only way we will survive the death of a software. Because this will happen to us again, and you better be prepared then. The positives I've seen: *Houdini: *A friend of mine came and gave us a demo, and I can tell you that thing is powerful. Maybe even to clever for it's own good! But if we remain together as a community XSI2HOUDINI I believe we can get there. It will be hard and not the tool for every job, but it will give you a cutting edge. Let's build that bridge a step a time. The way to do that is to create simple transition video on how you would do a daily xsi task in Houdini. *C4D: *One of the strongest community out there and some cool rendering integration like octane. There are also plenty of already made assets out there HDR setups, rigged models, etc. So if time is a problem for you than this is an option. But overall just take it easy man, I know it's stressfull times but we have 2-4 years to get there.. On 20 March 2014 16:55, Paul Griswold pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com wrote: I had some time away from the office today and while I was driving down the highway I started thinking about the situation and I'm no less pissed off today than I was when they made the announcement. I've been watching as many Modo and Houdini intro videos, tutorials, etc., that I can find and what I've discovered is, neither of them can replace Softimage today. If you're a TD, then Houdini is probably a great way to go, but I'm another one of those people who don't like to script and want to keep things simple. Everything in Houdini seems to involve writing at least a little script here and there. Modo on the other hand looks very simple and straightforward, but it's lacking a LOT of power. I noticed in some demos on things like instancing, the viewport REALLY slowed down. It doesn't look like it's ready for prime-time when it comes to dense scenes. The way everything you do is frozen is crazy these days. I can't believe if you extrude along a curve the geometry doesn't stay stuck to the curve. Until Modo makes some major moves, I just think it's a step up from Lightwave. I'm leaving Maya out of the picture because in all honesty, Autodesk is totally delusional if they think Maya will be a good fit for small shops working on tight deadlines. Maybe in 5-8 years Maya will finally hit its stride, but I'm assuming by then the entire ME division will have been shut down in favor of just licensing patents technology. (seriously - mark my words - I am confident the entire ME division will be shut down) I started thinking about most of the jobs I've done over the past few years, and I can honestly say I don't think I could do 90-95% of them in either Houdini or Modo as easily as in Softimage - if at all. So where I stand now is - totally screwed. I either have to put faith in The Foundry that they'll bring Modo up to Softimage's level in the next 2 years or I have to spend the next 2 years really digging in to Houdini to get myself up to speed again. In either case, I don't see a positive outcome. I'm not young and I have a family. I can't work all day, then spend the evenings learning new software. This BS about artists not putting all their eggs in one basket just is a slap in my face. I put my faith in Autodesk when they said the future of Sofitmage is bright! When I was told over and over again I was being a conspiracy nut when I said Autodesk was intentionally trying to destroy Softimage. Well, look where we are now. Murdering Softimage without having ANYTHING remotely close to replace it is like peeing on my face and telling me it's liquid sunshine! Maybe Autodesk is right. Maybe the all-in-one approach of Softimage is dead. Maybe I'm out of touch with how the world of animation VFX works these days. In any event. I'm a very unhappy paying Autodesk customer. I do not feel like my money has gone to anything I paid for. -Paul
RE: Why MAX is not option for me.
Hi Sebastien, Tenshi Just for the record. Those features are NOT third party tech that we integrated, They are features we built into the product because a lot of users have been asking for them. Just because plug-ins exist does not mean the tech is a plug-in Maurice Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tenshi S. Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 4:41 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Why MAX is not option for me. That's a joke right? I mean for the Most Requested Feature?... was another plugin? !!! On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 2:48 AM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.commailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Turns out the MOST REQUESTED FEATURE for Max 2015, was a 30$ plugin http://www.vg2max.spb.ru/edgechex.htm and looks like new Layer system and schematic nodel view was also third party tech https://vimeo.com/57075455 On 19 March 2014 07:26, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.commailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: It's just slow, they may have improved the viewport performance but its just slow, the constraints are slow. On 19 March 2014 07:13, Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.commailto:szabol...@crytek.com wrote: Hehe my PC is in good condition, and frankly has no problem with any other software, but Max. Only with Max. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Alexander Akbarov Sent: Monday, March 17, 2014 1:07 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Why MAX is not option for me. If Max crashes about 5 times in an hour there is definitely something wrong with your PC. Max is shitty, old and awkward especially after using XSI, but it's very good for archviz. And its is pretty universal because of myriads plug-ins many of them much better than Max itself... 2014-03-17 11:26 GMT+02:00 Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.commailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com: Max is a well known Frankenstein monster that's only survived this long because it has a ridiculous installed user base. I don't think anybody on this list would have ever have considered it. Even the game market has been trying as hard as they possibly can to move away from it despite a massive market pull. It's almost literally the exact opposite of soft in every regard, from its history to it's identity. Can't honestly blame AD for keeping that one alive though, it brings cash in with a ducking rake. attachment: winmail.dat
Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better
I will add. My battles are to continue to win projects in a more demanding and each time lower budget projects, while I deliver with quick response during the process, at final , and with big studio quality. The only loser in this war is Autodesk who just had its Waterloo. The only thing is that they still don't know yet. When they realise it, it will be too late. But you know what? I really don't care. I have the best tool ever for what I do and the way I do. Even if it stays like it is now. And that tool is Softimage. I am going to the Tatoo parlor for an XSI in my butt.
RE: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better
I sincerely hope you meant on your butt. ;) From: Emilio Hernandez [emi...@e-roja.com] Sent: 20 March 2014 07:30 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better I will add. My battles are to continue to win projects in a more demanding and each time lower budget projects, while I deliver with quick response during the process, at final , and with big studio quality. The only loser in this war is Autodesk who just had its Waterloo. The only thing is that they still don't know yet. When they realise it, it will be too late. But you know what? I really don't care. I have the best tool ever for what I do and the way I do. Even if it stays like it is now. And that tool is Softimage. I am going to the Tatoo parlor for an XSI in my butt. table width=100% border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 style=width:100%; tr td align=left style=text-align:justify;font face=arial,sans-serif size=1 color=#99span style=font-size:11px;This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary. /span/font/td /tr /table
Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better
No no no - he's a DIE HARD Softimage fan. He meant what he wrote! On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 1:32 PM, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.zawrote: I sincerely hope you meant on your butt. ;) -- *From:* Emilio Hernandez [emi...@e-roja.com] *Sent:* 20 March 2014 07:30 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better I will add. My battles are to continue to win projects in a more demanding and each time lower budget projects, while I deliver with quick response during the process, at final , and with big studio quality. The only loser in this war is Autodesk who just had its Waterloo. The only thing is that they still don't know yet. When they realise it, it will be too late. But you know what? I really don't care. I have the best tool ever for what I do and the way I do. Even if it stays like it is now. And that tool is Softimage. I am going to the Tatoo parlor for an XSI in my butt. This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary.
Re: new QA with AD
I don't know if this article was posted here before,it's been hard to keep up with the sheer number of posts on the list nowadays... anyways...QA with AD: http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/autodesk-answers-your-questions-demise-softimage-31411069 later, Rui www.ruisantos3d.com ping? --- Este email está liivre de vírus e malware porque a proteção avast! Antivirus está ativa. http://www.avast.com
Re: new QA with AD
P What is the point. To hear more of the same... I feel sorry for Maurice having to repeat the same script all the time. Lets drop this and back to business. As I said choose your poison. I already chose mine and I am still alive and Softimaginning.
Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better
exactly what mr Lord said. until there is a viable alternative for you then stick with Soft. I dropped subscription with Autodesk *because* of a percieved lack of development (compared to the past) but am now negotiating with the reseller so that I can catch up with subscription so as I can gain access to the final version. am looking at houdini and Maya but am in no hurry. as a freelancer the amount of work in softimage will gradually dry up - whilst am learning Houdini and Maya to stay competative in the market On 20 March 2014 17:09, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Not only I agree with you but I feel the same. But I am not transitioning migrating at the moment nor I see a near future to do so. The kind of work I do in advertising is not going anywhere away from Softimage. Autodesk can do whatever they want with their innovative tools. I have what I need to continue my work for years. I am about to start a new project and it is again with Softimage. I delivered yesterday another one again with Softimage. So Softimage forever until some Dcc captures my love again as it happened when I fell in love at first sight with Softimage 3D and then XSI but until 3.0
Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better
I feel it also, Paul. I've been trying to look ahead over the past few days, even trying to muster some enthusiasm for Maya; but every time I look back at what we are losing in Softimage, it feels like a kick in the gut. I am sort of settling back in to reality here. I will probably use Softimage until things start to break, or until a better option arises. Funny thing is that I have been on maintenance all these years. Once 2015 ships, I have to decide whether Maya is worth paying maintenance on, or if I need to bail on AD altogether. My contract is up in December, and I don't expect the signs to be all that clear by then. I would imagine there are a number of people in the same boat. If by December I don't see a coherent roadmap for Maya that suits me, I guess ADSK will lose a paying customer. It's a quandary. It flat out sucks. On Mar 20, 2014, at 11:55 AM, Paul Griswold pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com wrote: I had some time away from the office today and while I was driving down the highway I started thinking about the situation and I'm no less pissed off today than I was when they made the announcement. I've been watching as many Modo and Houdini intro videos, tutorials, etc., that I can find and what I've discovered is, neither of them can replace Softimage today. If you're a TD, then Houdini is probably a great way to go, but I'm another one of those people who don't like to script and want to keep things simple. Everything in Houdini seems to involve writing at least a little script here and there. Modo on the other hand looks very simple and straightforward, but it's lacking a LOT of power. I noticed in some demos on things like instancing, the viewport REALLY slowed down. It doesn't look like it's ready for prime-time when it comes to dense scenes. The way everything you do is frozen is crazy these days. I can't believe if you extrude along a curve the geometry doesn't stay stuck to the curve. Until Modo makes some major moves, I just think it's a step up from Lightwave. I'm leaving Maya out of the picture because in all honesty, Autodesk is totally delusional if they think Maya will be a good fit for small shops working on tight deadlines. Maybe in 5-8 years Maya will finally hit its stride, but I'm assuming by then the entire ME division will have been shut down in favor of just licensing patents technology. (seriously - mark my words - I am confident the entire ME division will be shut down) I started thinking about most of the jobs I've done over the past few years, and I can honestly say I don't think I could do 90-95% of them in either Houdini or Modo as easily as in Softimage - if at all. So where I stand now is - totally screwed. I either have to put faith in The Foundry that they'll bring Modo up to Softimage's level in the next 2 years or I have to spend the next 2 years really digging in to Houdini to get myself up to speed again. In either case, I don't see a positive outcome. I'm not young and I have a family. I can't work all day, then spend the evenings learning new software. This BS about artists not putting all their eggs in one basket just is a slap in my face. I put my faith in Autodesk when they said the future of Sofitmage is bright! When I was told over and over again I was being a conspiracy nut when I said Autodesk was intentionally trying to destroy Softimage. Well, look where we are now. Murdering Softimage without having ANYTHING remotely close to replace it is like peeing on my face and telling me it's liquid sunshine! Maybe Autodesk is right. Maybe the all-in-one approach of Softimage is dead. Maybe I'm out of touch with how the world of animation VFX works these days. In any event. I'm a very unhappy paying Autodesk customer. I do not feel like my money has gone to anything I paid for. -Paul Michael Clarke Design Blue C Studios 713-927-9835
RE: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better
Damn. Balls of tastefully rendered quantonium then! From: Paul Griswold [pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com] Sent: 20 March 2014 07:35 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better No no no - he's a DIE HARD Softimage fan. He meant what he wrote! On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 1:32 PM, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.zamailto:angus.david...@wits.ac.za wrote: I sincerely hope you meant on your butt. ;) From: Emilio Hernandez [emi...@e-roja.commailto:emi...@e-roja.com] Sent: 20 March 2014 07:30 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better I will add. My battles are to continue to win projects in a more demanding and each time lower budget projects, while I deliver with quick response during the process, at final , and with big studio quality. The only loser in this war is Autodesk who just had its Waterloo. The only thing is that they still don't know yet. When they realise it, it will be too late. But you know what? I really don't care. I have the best tool ever for what I do and the way I do. Even if it stays like it is now. And that tool is Softimage. I am going to the Tatoo parlor for an XSI in my butt. This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary. table width=100% border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 style=width:100%; tr td align=left style=text-align:justify;font face=arial,sans-serif size=1 color=#99span style=font-size:11px;This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary. /span/font/td /tr /table
Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better
My contract will be up in January 2015. Unless Autodesk produces a miracle, there's no way I'll be giving them another dime. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 1:33 PM, Michael Clarke m...@bluecstudios.com wrote: I feel it also, Paul. I've been trying to look ahead over the past few days, even trying to muster some enthusiasm for Maya; but every time I look back at what we are losing in Softimage, it feels like a kick in the gut. I am sort of settling back in to reality here. I will probably use Softimage until things start to break, or until a better option arises. Funny thing is that I have been on maintenance all these years. Once 2015 ships, I have to decide whether Maya is worth paying maintenance on, or if I need to bail on AD altogether. My contract is up in December, and I don't expect the signs to be all that clear by then. I would imagine there are a number of people in the same boat. If by December I don't see a coherent roadmap for Maya that suits me, I guess ADSK will lose a paying customer. It's a quandary. It flat out sucks. On Mar 20, 2014, at 11:55 AM, Paul Griswold pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com wrote: I had some time away from the office today and while I was driving down the highway I started thinking about the situation and I'm no less pissed off today than I was when they made the announcement. I've been watching as many Modo and Houdini intro videos, tutorials, etc., that I can find and what I've discovered is, neither of them can replace Softimage today. If you're a TD, then Houdini is probably a great way to go, but I'm another one of those people who don't like to script and want to keep things simple. Everything in Houdini seems to involve writing at least a little script here and there. Modo on the other hand looks very simple and straightforward, but it's lacking a LOT of power. I noticed in some demos on things like instancing, the viewport REALLY slowed down. It doesn't look like it's ready for prime-time when it comes to dense scenes. The way everything you do is frozen is crazy these days. I can't believe if you extrude along a curve the geometry doesn't stay stuck to the curve. Until Modo makes some major moves, I just think it's a step up from Lightwave. I'm leaving Maya out of the picture because in all honesty, Autodesk is totally delusional if they think Maya will be a good fit for small shops working on tight deadlines. Maybe in 5-8 years Maya will finally hit its stride, but I'm assuming by then the entire ME division will have been shut down in favor of just licensing patents technology. (seriously - mark my words - I am confident the entire ME division will be shut down) I started thinking about most of the jobs I've done over the past few years, and I can honestly say I don't think I could do 90-95% of them in either Houdini or Modo as easily as in Softimage - if at all. So where I stand now is - totally screwed. I either have to put faith in The Foundry that they'll bring Modo up to Softimage's level in the next 2 years or I have to spend the next 2 years really digging in to Houdini to get myself up to speed again. In either case, I don't see a positive outcome. I'm not young and I have a family. I can't work all day, then spend the evenings learning new software. This BS about artists not putting all their eggs in one basket just is a slap in my face. I put my faith in Autodesk when they said the future of Sofitmage is bright! When I was told over and over again I was being a conspiracy nut when I said Autodesk was intentionally trying to destroy Softimage. Well, look where we are now. Murdering Softimage without having ANYTHING remotely close to replace it is like peeing on my face and telling me it's liquid sunshine! Maybe Autodesk is right. Maybe the all-in-one approach of Softimage is dead. Maybe I'm out of touch with how the world of animation VFX works these days. In any event. I'm a very unhappy paying Autodesk customer. I do not feel like my money has gone to anything I paid for. -Paul Michael Clarke Design Blue C Studios 713-927-9835
Re: new QA with AD
When you think they just threw 17 years worth of work of so many talented people... very sad Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 20 Mar 2014, at 17:35, rs3d r...@sapo.pt wrote: I don't know if this article was posted here before,it's been hard to keep up with the sheer number of posts on the list nowadays... anyways...QA with AD: http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/autodesk-answers-your-questions-demise-softimage-31411069 later, Rui www.ruisantos3d.com ...ping? Este email está liivre de vírus e malware porque a proteção avast! Antivirus está ativa.
RE: Why MAX is not option for me.
The interesting thing is that the ME industry is full of custom and specialized tech created to solve specific production problems. That is not going to change any time soon because people are always trying to do push boundaries (whether in games or VFX) and so build interesting solutions to their problems. Taking proven technology and productizing it, whether as individual products, (like the Foundry) or as features (like Autodesk) is not really a bad thing a-priori - you could argue it is actually a very good thing as it benefits a lot more people if you do (assuming you do it well). Now you may question our execution, but it is incorrect to think that (1) this is not an effective thing to do to ensure the best production technology can be accessed by more people or (2) to think that only Autodesk is interested in acquiring and productizing proven production solutions and (3) to think that Autodesk is only interested in acquiring technology. We develop a lot of features in-house including major architectural work which is complex, difficult to do and doesn't always reward you with a new 'shiny feature' that is easy to demo. We also acquire tech, redesign and re-engineer it, even rewrite it entirely, to fit into our products and workflows and yes, if it is more efficient to do so, we just integrate it. But that is not all we do and there seem to be some popular misconceptions - such as the fact that the 'plug-ins' that referred to in the links are nothing to do with the features that were being described in 3ds Max 2015. Not that 3ds Max is Softimage - but it is not just a bunch of plug-ins either. maurice Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 8:40 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Why MAX is not option for me. That's why I call 3DMax a Plugin Container That not really the issue, maya is pretty much wall to wall third party as well by nature. This is AD not being arsed with developing content, so it looks around for pre existing solutions, snaps them up, adds them in, Then they market them as New features... It's not so much that they buy pre-made solutions, there are some really smart third party people out there, its the fact they through them in with minimal integration and little regard for workflow, that and having a 30 euros operator, being your highlight... In all fairness the max people walked right into that one, they presented AD with the easy option. , minimal effort required. I mean what the hell can the AD dev's do, do they just re-purpose and integrate all day ? On 20 March 2014 10:33, Daniel Kim danielki...@gmail.commailto:danielki...@gmail.com wrote: That's why I call 3DMax as a Plugin Container, not a 3D package. ;) --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- attachment: winmail.dat
Re: new QA with AD
17 years? Softimage is from 1988 if i'm correct. 2014-03-20 18:43 GMT+01:00 Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com: When you think they just threw 17 years worth of work of so many talented people... very sad Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 20 Mar 2014, at 17:35, rs3d r...@sapo.pt wrote: I don't know if this article was posted here before,it's been hard to keep up with the sheer number of posts on the list nowadays... anyways...QA with AD: http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/autodesk-answers-your-questions-demise-softimage-31411069 later, Rui www.ruisantos3d.com ...ping? -- http://www.avast.com/ Este email está liivre de vírus e malware porque a proteção avast! Antivirus http://www.avast.com/ está ativa.
Re: new QA with AD
more innovation from autodesk: http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/19/autodesk-buys-creative-market-jumping-into-maker-marketplace/ On 20 March 2014 17:54, Doeke Wartena clankil...@gmail.com wrote: 17 years? Softimage is from 1988 if i'm correct. 2014-03-20 18:43 GMT+01:00 Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com: When you think they just threw 17 years worth of work of so many talented people... very sad Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 20 Mar 2014, at 17:35, rs3d r...@sapo.pt wrote: I don't know if this article was posted here before,it's been hard to keep up with the sheer number of posts on the list nowadays... anyways...QA with AD: http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/autodesk-answers-your-questions-demise-softimage-31411069 later, Rui www.ruisantos3d.com ...ping? -- http://www.avast.com/ Este email está liivre de vírus e malware porque a proteção avast! Antivirus http://www.avast.com/ está ativa.
Re: Digital Golem : Brillant and beautiful
Cool work! I'd like to comment on Jean-Louis' idea... There clearly are benefits for studios to keep Softimage in their tool box a few more years, as expressed by many users here. And I hope to see it happen instead of watching this community burst. But for those willing to go that route, *collaboration* must play its part in order to - stop the whining. - gather numbers: how many active seats? Can we borrow/buy licenses from other studios? Share assets. - define what's needed to keep SI up-to-date in the market as long as possible. - and like Jean-Louis suggests, gather money and put developers under contract. I have no idea if 750,000$/year is possible (i doubt) but I'd put it all in the hands of *Fabric Engine*. They represent your best way to extend the functionality of your beloved software as well as make your investment fructify beyond Softimage's *real*lifespan. Because it *will* become obsolete one day or the other. If Fabric Engine are interested in the amount brought to the table, then you can figure-out a plan that will be beneficial to both parties for the upcoming years. Imagine hiring someone like Eric Mootz full time to develop both FE and SI. But in order for this to work properly, people will need to organize even if this means adopting some minimally legal convention, obviously depending how far you want the collaboration to go. This tightly knit community has always played a major role in the success of Softimage and the studios exploiting it. For me, the only way for those studios to continue to excel (read survive) despite the circumstances is to build stronger links between each other and make clever moves. my 0.02c On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 7:57 PM, Jean-Louis Billard jean-lo...@photon3.comwrote: Hi Peter, No - subscription hasn't gotten us much in the past few years. I would, however, be happy to put the subscription money into funding a dev team, as was suggested in another thread. For the sake of argument: if there were just the equivalent of 1000 Softimage licenses worldwide for which individuals or companies were prepared, like me, to pay their subscription money to keep developing Softimage addons/tools/plugins, you would have (assuming $750/year/seat) $75/year, which is 7 or 8 full time developers + administrative costs. Makes you think... Jean-Louis On 20 Mar 2014, at 00:18, pete...@skynet.be wrote: It's a good lesson for the future - if paying subscription does not guarantee the survival and future of a software - do you really want to pay subscription?
Re: Why MAX is not option for me.
I would really like to have that bevel tool in SI. I don't care if it's a plugin. I'd never model in Max though. Martin Sent from my iPhone On 2014/03/21, at 2:30, Maurice Patel maurice.pa...@autodesk.com wrote: Hi Sebastien, Tenshi Just for the record. Those features are NOT third party tech that we integrated, They are features we built into the product because a lot of users have been asking for them. Just because plug-ins exist does not mean the tech is a plug-in Maurice Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tenshi S. Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 4:41 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Why MAX is not option for me. That's a joke right? I mean for the Most Requested Feature?... was another plugin? !!! On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 2:48 AM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.commailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Turns out the MOST REQUESTED FEATURE for Max 2015, was a 30$ plugin http://www.vg2max.spb.ru/edgechex.htm and looks like new Layer system and schematic nodel view was also third party tech https://vimeo.com/57075455 On 19 March 2014 07:26, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.commailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: It's just slow, they may have improved the viewport performance but its just slow, the constraints are slow. On 19 March 2014 07:13, Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.commailto:szabol...@crytek.com wrote: Hehe my PC is in good condition, and frankly has no problem with any other software, but Max. Only with Max. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Alexander Akbarov Sent: Monday, March 17, 2014 1:07 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Why MAX is not option for me. If Max crashes about 5 times in an hour there is definitely something wrong with your PC. Max is shitty, old and awkward especially after using XSI, but it's very good for archviz. And its is pretty universal because of myriads plug-ins many of them much better than Max itself... 2014-03-17 11:26 GMT+02:00 Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.commailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com: Max is a well known Frankenstein monster that's only survived this long because it has a ridiculous installed user base. I don't think anybody on this list would have ever have considered it. Even the game market has been trying as hard as they possibly can to move away from it despite a massive market pull. It's almost literally the exact opposite of soft in every regard, from its history to it's identity. Can't honestly blame AD for keeping that one alive though, it brings cash in with a ducking rake. winmail.dat
Re: Digital Golem : Brillant and beautiful
Hi Vincent, I’m glad someone’s picked up on this. I’m dead serious about it - I am willing to put my money where my mouth is, but of course strength will be in numbers, and I too am curious to know how many people/seats would be ready to invest. I have 8 Softimage seats here at Digital Golem. I’ll gladly put their yearly maintenance into something more worthwhile. Fabric Engine would be the safest bet, since it seems to offer future portability. Needs to be discussed but I’d be curious to hear other voices. Cheers, Jean-Louis On 20 Mar 2014, at 18:57, Vincent Fortin vfor...@gmail.com wrote: Cool work! I'd like to comment on Jean-Louis' idea... There clearly are benefits for studios to keep Softimage in their tool box a few more years, as expressed by many users here. And I hope to see it happen instead of watching this community burst. But for those willing to go that route, collaboration must play its part in order to - stop the whining. - gather numbers: how many active seats? Can we borrow/buy licenses from other studios? Share assets. - define what's needed to keep SI up-to-date in the market as long as possible. - and like Jean-Louis suggests, gather money and put developers under contract. I have no idea if 750,000$/year is possible (i doubt) but I'd put it all in the hands of Fabric Engine. They represent your best way to extend the functionality of your beloved software as well as make your investment fructify beyond Softimage's real lifespan. Because it will become obsolete one day or the other. If Fabric Engine are interested in the amount brought to the table, then you can figure-out a plan that will be beneficial to both parties for the upcoming years. Imagine hiring someone like Eric Mootz full time to develop both FE and SI. But in order for this to work properly, people will need to organize even if this means adopting some minimally legal convention, obviously depending how far you want the collaboration to go. This tightly knit community has always played a major role in the success of Softimage and the studios exploiting it. For me, the only way for those studios to continue to excel (read survive) despite the circumstances is to build stronger links between each other and make clever moves. my 0.02c On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 7:57 PM, Jean-Louis Billard jean-lo...@photon3.com wrote: Hi Peter, No - subscription hasn’t gotten us much in the past few years. I would, however, be happy to put the subscription money into funding a dev team, as was suggested in another thread. For the sake of argument: if there were just the equivalent of 1000 Softimage licenses worldwide for which individuals or companies were prepared, like me, to pay their subscription money to keep developing Softimage addons/tools/plugins, you would have (assuming $750/year/seat) $75/year, which is 7 or 8 full time developers + administrative costs. Makes you think… Jean-Louis On 20 Mar 2014, at 00:18, pete...@skynet.be wrote: It’s a good lesson for the future – if paying subscription does not guarantee the survival and future of a software - do you really want to pay subscription?
Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better
i feel the same pain here... i plan to continue to use Softimage for sometime,but i'll most probably go to Max camp...yeah...why?...because in Portugal most of the studios use Max and to lesser extent Maya..the new guys don't even know what Softimage is! Just sad... I've had many situations were production houses ask me to join a team to produce a comercial,and i say...well,i use softimage.. and they go ohh yeah right...Softimage...Maybe on another project.. It's tough being almost alone on this... I also have a family...and a ton of diapers to change,meals and baths to deal with...so not many nights to study Max,or Maya..or whatever...at the end of the day i'm exausted. I'll have to make a slow transition...in the spare time between work. i REALLY didn't need this now... wellit's time to go and get my kids... Rui - Original Message - From: Paul Griswold To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 5:42 PM Subject: Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better My contract will be up in January 2015. Unless Autodesk produces a miracle, there's no way I'll be giving them another dime. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 1:33 PM, Michael Clarke m...@bluecstudios.com wrote: I feel it also, Paul. I've been trying to look ahead over the past few days, even trying to muster some enthusiasm for Maya; but every time I look back at what we are losing in Softimage, it feels like a kick in the gut. I am sort of settling back in to reality here. I will probably use Softimage until things start to break, or until a better option arises. Funny thing is that I have been on maintenance all these years. Once 2015 ships, I have to decide whether Maya is worth paying maintenance on, or if I need to bail on AD altogether. My contract is up in December, and I don't expect the signs to be all that clear by then. I would imagine there are a number of people in the same boat. If by December I don't see a coherent roadmap for Maya that suits me, I guess ADSK will lose a paying customer. It's a quandary. It flat out sucks. On Mar 20, 2014, at 11:55 AM, Paul Griswold pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com wrote: I had some time away from the office today and while I was driving down the highway I started thinking about the situation and I'm no less pissed off today than I was when they made the announcement. I've been watching as many Modo and Houdini intro videos, tutorials, etc., that I can find and what I've discovered is, neither of them can replace Softimage today. If you're a TD, then Houdini is probably a great way to go, but I'm another one of those people who don't like to script and want to keep things simple. Everything in Houdini seems to involve writing at least a little script here and there. Modo on the other hand looks very simple and straightforward, but it's lacking a LOT of power. I noticed in some demos on things like instancing, the viewport REALLY slowed down. It doesn't look like it's ready for prime-time when it comes to dense scenes. The way everything you do is frozen is crazy these days. I can't believe if you extrude along a curve the geometry doesn't stay stuck to the curve. Until Modo makes some major moves, I just think it's a step up from Lightwave. I'm leaving Maya out of the picture because in all honesty, Autodesk is totally delusional if they think Maya will be a good fit for small shops working on tight deadlines. Maybe in 5-8 years Maya will finally hit its stride, but I'm assuming by then the entire ME division will have been shut down in favor of just licensing patents technology. (seriously - mark my words - I am confident the entire ME division will be shut down) I started thinking about most of the jobs I've done over the past few years, and I can honestly say I don't think I could do 90-95% of them in either Houdini or Modo as easily as in Softimage - if at all. So where I stand now is - totally screwed. I either have to put faith in The Foundry that they'll bring Modo up to Softimage's level in the next 2 years or I have to spend the next 2 years really digging in to Houdini to get myself up to speed again. In either case, I don't see a positive outcome. I'm not young and I have a family. I can't work all day, then spend the evenings learning new software. This BS about artists not putting all their eggs in one basket just is a slap in my face. I put my faith in Autodesk when they said the future of Sofitmage is bright! When I was told over and over again I was being a conspiracy nut when I said Autodesk was intentionally trying to destroy Softimage. Well, look where we are now. Murdering Softimage without having ANYTHING remotely close to replace it is like peeing on my face and telling me it's liquid sunshine! Maybe Autodesk is
Re: REAL innovation
This has been around for some time now primarily for game artists. It's a huge time saver in texture map material setup and iteration for sure. And being able to preview results in photoshop is real nice. Now if we would have a ddo material manager similar to the max and maya equivalent (shown here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BboBgjGARc, max at start and maya at 23min in) for softimage, we'd be set. On 3/19/2014 4:33 PM, Greg Punchatz wrote: All cg will now look too dirty...as opposed too all looking too clean... every car will be rusty from this moment out I am so buying all these products.. *Greg Punchatz* *Sr. Creative Director* Janimation 214.823.7760 www.janimation.com http://www.janimation.com On 3/19/2014 3:09 PM, Eugene Flormata wrote: damn.. definately affordable.. and I just bought allegorithmic's stuff http://store.steampowered.com/app/273390/ http://www.allegorithmic.com/products/substance-designer-4 On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 7:11 AM, Nicolas Esposito 3dv...@gmail.com mailto:3dv...@gmail.com wrote: nDo was a huge surprise for me, DDO and 3DO are just absolutely stunning!!! And very affordable too! 2014-03-19 15:05 GMT+01:00 Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.com mailto:perryharo...@gmail.com: H.O.L.Y. C.R.A.P. On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 9:44 AM, adrian wyer adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com mailto:adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com wrote: http://dev.quixel.se/ddo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyJJAp17K-Yfeature=youtu.be stunning workflow, technically app agnostic a Adrian Wyer Fluid Pictures 75-77 Margaret St. London W1W 8SY ++44(0) 207 580 0829 tel:%2B%2B44%280%29%20207%20580%200829 adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com www.fluid-pictures.com Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales. Company number:5657815 VAT number: 872 6893 71 -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com http://www.theafterimage.com/ -- *Rares Halmagean ___ *visual development and 3d character content creation. *rarebrush.com* http://rarebrush.com/
Re: my first experiment with rigging in Houdini :-))))
Wait once you realise is better rigging system.. http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=2193Itemid=68 Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 20 Mar 2014, at 15:52, Max Evgrafov summ...@gmail.com wrote: nr.Brent, thank you a lot. But I see that Hudini can do something ;-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embeddedv=I-cKnahxkUo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rE9UrjYBLo 2014-03-20 17:06 GMT+04:00 Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com: Damn, I wish you had posted this. ;-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRZ2Sh5-XuM From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Max Evgrafov Sent: 20 March 2014 09:30 To: softimage Subject: my first experiment with rigging in Houdini :- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkdQyet1EN4#t=24 -- Max aka Summatr https://vimeo.com/user3098735/videos --- -- Евграфов Максим.(Summatr) https://vimeo.com/user3098735/videos --- Хорошего Вам настроения !!! :-)
Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better
Just to draw a real world parallel about stretching the use of discontinued software I originally started 3D animation on a Cubicomp PictureMaker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1FLlcAVy14 in 1987. It was not the easiest system to learn, but it was affordable and relied on an actual hardware frame-buffer to output the final render (frame by frame) using a videotape recorder driver card (single insert edits with incrementing time-code in-points) ok enough nostalgia... When Cubicomp closed it's doors in sometime near 1990, I was involved with several clients that owned this software/hardware 3D animation system. I also was involved with a company that would take over support for the hardware (frame buffer / tape deck controller unit) that was essential to the software all running on a PC (DOS). I managed to keep working and supporting this system for over 5 years, while I learned another 3D animation program (ironically 3D Studio) to support my freelance and educational work. I ended up with version 1 of Softimage and never looked back. The point of this story? Use what works for you now, and always look to other tools that can improve your creative process for your clients. I don't look forward to learning new software, but it is a part of the world of the ever changing 3D animation / SFX freelance work. Heck... there are processes, in rotoscoping, motion tracking, etc. that didn't even exist when I started. I understand the nice comfortable feeling of a great software, with which you are totally comfortable, but it is an illusion. Things, in our business, never stay the same. On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 1:34 PM, Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com wrote: exactly what mr Lord said. until there is a viable alternative for you then stick with Soft. I dropped subscription with Autodesk *because* of a percieved lack of development (compared to the past) but am now negotiating with the reseller so that I can catch up with subscription so as I can gain access to the final version. am looking at houdini and Maya but am in no hurry. as a freelancer the amount of work in softimage will gradually dry up - whilst am learning Houdini and Maya to stay competative in the market On 20 March 2014 17:09, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Not only I agree with you but I feel the same. But I am not transitioning migrating at the moment nor I see a near future to do so. The kind of work I do in advertising is not going anywhere away from Softimage. Autodesk can do whatever they want with their innovative tools. I have what I need to continue my work for years. I am about to start a new project and it is again with Softimage. I delivered yesterday another one again with Softimage. So Softimage forever until some Dcc captures my love again as it happened when I fell in love at first sight with Softimage 3D and then XSI but until 3.0 -- Best Regards, * Stephen P. Davidson* *(954) 552-7956*sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com *Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic* - Arthur C. Clarke http://www.3danimationmagic.com
Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better
I just wrote at Solidangle asking their plans ( if there are ) for the SitoA development. I'll post the answer asa they send it. .:. Christian Lattuada tel +39 3331277475 ... On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 6:09 PM, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com wrote: Then I have a simple solution for you. Stick with Softimage for the time being. We stuck with Shake for 6 years after it was killed on Windows before something better came up. There was Digital Fusion, but we didn't feel it was better so we didn't switch. 6 long years without a single new feature or bug fix. But Shake rocked, and we loved it. Now we have Nuke, and we love it even better. You have been sticking with Softimage for the last 2 years and you can't say development was rocket fast. The only thing that will force me out of Softimage is the day Solid Angle will stop releasing Arnold for it. Then I will use another solution for shading-rendering only. In the mean time, I will slowly look for alternatives, including Maya. When I say slowly, I mean in the down times, which are not so frequent these days. On 20-Mar-14 12:55, Paul Griswold wrote: I had some time away from the office today and while I was driving down the highway I started thinking about the situation and I'm no less pissed off today than I was when they made the announcement. I've been watching as many Modo and Houdini intro videos, tutorials, etc., that I can find and what I've discovered is, neither of them can replace Softimage today. If you're a TD, then Houdini is probably a great way to go, but I'm another one of those people who don't like to script and want to keep things simple. Everything in Houdini seems to involve writing at least a little script here and there. Modo on the other hand looks very simple and straightforward, but it's lacking a LOT of power. I noticed in some demos on things like instancing, the viewport REALLY slowed down. It doesn't look like it's ready for prime-time when it comes to dense scenes. The way everything you do is frozen is crazy these days. I can't believe if you extrude along a curve the geometry doesn't stay stuck to the curve. Until Modo makes some major moves, I just think it's a step up from Lightwave. I'm leaving Maya out of the picture because in all honesty, Autodesk is totally delusional if they think Maya will be a good fit for small shops working on tight deadlines. Maybe in 5-8 years Maya will finally hit its stride, but I'm assuming by then the entire ME division will have been shut down in favor of just licensing patents technology. (seriously - mark my words - I am confident the entire ME division will be shut down) I started thinking about most of the jobs I've done over the past few years, and I can honestly say I don't think I could do 90-95% of them in either Houdini or Modo as easily as in Softimage - if at all. So where I stand now is - totally screwed. I either have to put faith in The Foundry that they'll bring Modo up to Softimage's level in the next 2 years or I have to spend the next 2 years really digging in to Houdini to get myself up to speed again. In either case, I don't see a positive outcome. I'm not young and I have a family. I can't work all day, then spend the evenings learning new software. This BS about artists not putting all their eggs in one basket just is a slap in my face. I put my faith in Autodesk when they said the future of Sofitmage is bright! When I was told over and over again I was being a conspiracy nut when I said Autodesk was intentionally trying to destroy Softimage. Well, look where we are now. Murdering Softimage without having ANYTHING remotely close to replace it is like peeing on my face and telling me it's liquid sunshine! Maybe Autodesk is right. Maybe the all-in-one approach of Softimage is dead. Maybe I'm out of touch with how the world of animation VFX works these days. In any event. I'm a very unhappy paying Autodesk customer. I do not feel like my money has gone to anything I paid for. -Paul
RE: How long will it take (?)
Hello David Gallagher, I would first like to thank you for sharing all this. As many of us at Autodesk, I honestly think you have some very strong points here and please rest assured that we are listening. I will be discussing these points in detail internally to see what could be done, sooner rather than later. Animation workflows, which for me includes rigging, is very important and will be an area of focus for Maya over the up-coming releases. The out-of-the-box workflows and the artist friendly mentality that Softimage has, are definitely areas that Maya would benefit from. We do want to bring some of these workflows into Maya. We simply need to make sure we properly understand, design and implement them, that is… in a meaningful/useful manner… basically respecting the workflows. This will be part of our thought process and plans for Maya moving forward. This is why this feedback is so important, so again, thank you. We are also getting a lot of similar feedback from many channels and need to respectfully take the time to listen, understand and compile that feedback. I “will” follow-up to this thread in a more detailed manner, but please do expect the detailed feedback to take some time, as I want to be confident about what can or cannot be addressed in a timely manner. Again, I know I’m not the only one to agree with your point of view and feedback, so thank you for sharing this in detail. Regards, Yang-hai Autodesk Designer From: David Gallagher Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 5:34 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com, davegsoftimagel...@gmail.commailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com Thanks for posting that Jason. I'll keep using Softimage for AnimSchool's rigs. Over the next few years, I'll be looking for some software that allows me to do those things. On 3/19/2014 3:01 PM, Jason S wrote: (previously posted, yet I think it's worth a new thread with alink to the original Maya / XSI article) Here is a notable ( comprehensive) post on rigging from David Gallagher in response to the super long and (seemingly purposefully) diluted articlehttp://mayavxsi.blogspot.com/2011/09/rigging-m-22-x-15.html comparing SI / Maya rigging (concerning rigging workflow -alone-) weighing pro cons, while overweighing pros, underweighing cons, overlooking a bunch of things (most of which outlined below) identifying things like the ability to use locators as rig components as a con and ending with ; The time that Maya saves with its rigging technology and superior workflow, outweighs the additional cost. So how long will it take to get there? David Gallagher image001.gif Jan 8 I rigged on quite a few characters in Maya at Blue Sky Studios and now (Softimage) AnimSchool. We offer the well-known Malcolm rig for free. There is no comparison to rigging in Softimage and Maya--not the kind of rigging I do. I often assume by now they have better workflows in Maya, but I'm often surprised to find how convoluted and limiting the workflows are to this day. Most Maya people must not know there are better ways of working or aren't doing the kinds of things I am, because the difference is profound. - At any point in the rigging process, you can make edits in the model stack to change the shape and topology of the model. After experimenting, you can freeze that part of the stack and continue on with that new shape, retaining almost every bit of work you've done. YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY. This difference is huge. You can work toward completion without fear of losing work. You can experiment freely--knowing it's fine if you want to make a major change. I'm never afraid of losing blendshape work. And if the changes are really significant, you can always Gator your way out of a jam. - You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry, modelessly, instead of on a separate blendshape object. - There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes. In Softimage, you go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a few points. In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several plug-ins and scripts and HOPE that it works. If the scenario is simple enough, it might. Several people here tried to help a student make a single corrective blendshape on an elbow -- and we're all experienced Maya riggers--, after hours of attempting, we threw up our hands. There was something in that object's history that was making the blendshape plug-in fail. The answer is what it often is: just start over. - EDITING corrective blendshapes. In Maya, heaven help you if you want to edit that blendshape later. Start the process again and make a new one. In Softimage, drag a few points and you're done in seconds. - For facial work, being able to make face shapes in conjunction with the mixer, working directly on the main geo. To see other shapes muted, soloed as you're working. This allows you to craft
Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better
On 20/03/14 18:33, Michael Clarke wrote: If by December I don't see a coherent roadmap for Maya that suits me, I guess ADSK will lose a paying customer. They already lost me. And I was on subscription from Softimage|3d days on (over 16 years).. but I'm so fed up with all this $+%! that my last version will be Softimage 2014 forever as my subscription will end in 4 days and i 'd rather use Soft with a one-button mouse than giving Autodesk any more money at this point... Besides, we are still using 2013 anyway because of the Linux window manager bug in 2014... (i doubt it will be fixed in 2015...) Chris
Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better
My sympathies, Paul! The whole 3d business somewhat turned sour on me suddenly, and it will perhaps remain so for some time. Thank you, Autodesk! I could even quit the whole damn thing and just draw storyboards... yet I'm not quite ready to ditch 20 years of experience (whatever that sums up to). Had a close look at Modo, too... you are right. It just lacks critical parts. Unbelievably, if you extrude a curve, that damn mesh is frozen afterwards! No modeling relation whatsoever. How retro is that??? What were these guys thinking back then when they laid it out? Thought they could dodge all the trouble or what. Been thinking about awkward workarounds with keeping originals, recording macros, and re-apply stuff if needed, but all this is nonsense. As much as I would like to see it as the path into the future, cool interface and all in place, this effectively disqualifies it for me, for now. C4D can do this, btw. It has this nice concept that booleans or extrusions are empty containers at first, and you can easily dd input objects into them. There's more to evaluate. Not sure yet. It's pricing is a bit... munchy, and they ain't got no operator stack. Houdini is just too much for my simplicity-loving brain... .°[ Maya... let's look again in 2 years. Not in it's current state will I touch it. 3ds Max... heck, would even be an option, the more I think about it. Like that old washed out slippers... don't make you sexy, but keep the feet warm at least. After all, I already know it, and there must have been some improvements in the last 6 years, I reckon. Maybe that's where I will transition to, when the time comes. Not that it fills me with much enthusiasm whatsoever. -- Originalnachricht -- Von: Paul Griswold pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com An: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Gesendet: 20.03.2014 17:55:42 Betreff: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better I had some time away from the office today and while I was driving down the highway I started thinking about the situation and I'm no less pissed off today than I was when they made the announcement. I've been watching as many Modo and Houdini intro videos, tutorials, etc., that I can find and what I've discovered is, neither of them can replace Softimage today. If you're a TD, then Houdini is probably a great way to go, but I'm another one of those people who don't like to script and want to keep things simple. Everything in Houdini seems to involve writing at least a little script here and there. Modo on the other hand looks very simple and straightforward, but it's lacking a LOT of power. I noticed in some demos on things like instancing, the viewport REALLY slowed down. It doesn't look like it's ready for prime-time when it comes to dense scenes. The way everything you do is frozen is crazy these days. I can't believe if you extrude along a curve the geometry doesn't stay stuck to the curve. Until Modo makes some major moves, I just think it's a step up from Lightwave. I'm leaving Maya out of the picture because in all honesty, Autodesk is totally delusional if they think Maya will be a good fit for small shops working on tight deadlines. Maybe in 5-8 years Maya will finally hit its stride, but I'm assuming by then the entire ME division will have been shut down in favor of just licensing patents technology. (seriously - mark my words - I am confident the entire ME division will be shut down) I started thinking about most of the jobs I've done over the past few years, and I can honestly say I don't think I could do 90-95% of them in either Houdini or Modo as easily as in Softimage - if at all. So where I stand now is - totally screwed. I either have to put faith in The Foundry that they'll bring Modo up to Softimage's level in the next 2 years or I have to spend the next 2 years really digging in to Houdini to get myself up to speed again. In either case, I don't see a positive outcome. I'm not young and I have a family. I can't work all day, then spend the evenings learning new software. This BS about artists not putting all their eggs in one basket just is a slap in my face. I put my faith in Autodesk when they said the future of Sofitmage is bright! When I was told over and over again I was being a conspiracy nut when I said Autodesk was intentionally trying to destroy Softimage. Well, look where we are now. Murdering Softimage without having ANYTHING remotely close to replace it is like peeing on my face and telling me it's liquid sunshine! Maybe Autodesk is right. Maybe the all-in-one approach of Softimage is dead. Maybe I'm out of touch with how the world of animation VFX works these days. In any event. I'm a very unhappy paying Autodesk customer. I do not feel like my money has gone to anything I paid for. -Paul --- Diese E-Mail ist frei von Viren und Malware, denn der avast! Antivirus Schutz ist aktiv. http://www.avast.com
