Daniel, welcome!
You might at first consider simplifying your workflow by using as few
applications as possible. Data exchange can easily introduce trouble.
- What can Houdini do for you that cannot be done in ICE?
This might of course be subject to thorough research and debate, since
there might be things Houdini still can do better than SI, but it's
almost a neck-and-neck race, I would say.
- You know that VRay for Softimage is available since a few months?
I am particularly happy about that fact, because it takes away the sole
reason anyone might want to use 3ds max anymore (more or less...).
Chaosgroup support is really serious about making VRay for SI rock
solid. I logged a bug 2 days ago, and in the next nightly build
yesterday, it was fixed.
Biased we are, but like most people around here, after years there's
still enough enthusiasm to stick with Softimage.
The grass is not always green, of course, but all in all it's well worth
going down this road.
As Mirko said, SI is a very good choice for generalists (like me), but
don't tackle everything at once. Depends on how fast a learner you are
and what your frustration limit is...
Good luck!
Eugen
Am 15.08.2012 05:41, schrieb Daniel Dye:
Hi all,
First time posting on this mailing list.
I'm a student who will be diving into my first animated short and I am
trying to establish my pipeline. I'm primarily a VFX guy and as such
this will be relatively new ground for me.
I primarily use a combination of 3ds Max and Houdini for my VFX work.
I have been looking towards Softimage for the animation side of my
project. The inclusion of FaceRobot is very appealing, and something I
would love to put into practice. I will be using iPiSoft for body
motion capture and I'm tossing up between Zigntrack or Syntheyes
(already own) for facial motion capture. The facial motion capture is
where I feel FaceRobot would excel.
I'm curious about the general rigging, animation layering and mocap
retargeting avaliable in Softimage for body animation. Because I want
to utilize FaceRobot, I assume it would be an easier workflow to also
animate the body in Softimage.
The animation will then be brought back to 3ds Max and combined with
assests from Houdini for final rendering with Vray.
I understand being the Softimage Mailing List, opinions may be biased
:P Just curious if anyone knows of any pros/cons or issues I may run
into?
Thank you in advanced for any help,
Cheers,
Daniel Dye.
