We just finished a massive TVC entirely in Soft, as soon as I am allowed to I will be publicising the fact. I also intend to work closely with Autodesk in Australia to promote this , I am sure they will want to approach it from the 'suites' angle, but I really want to push the Soft angle hard.
The good thing is that this was not a particle job, this was very much a series of photo-real environments, something I think will demonstrate that Soft can hold its own against Maya and Max. This job had a tight turnaround and it was a big deal for us to put the whole thing through a Softimage pipeline, as we are traditionally a Maya house. The big seller for me to do this was the rock solid referencing system and the unbreakable render pass/partitioning. If Autodesk were to drop Softimage (which I do not for a minute believe would happen) I would not scurry back to Maya at this point, but rather take on the daunting task of implementing a Houdini pipeline instead. The similarities between Soft and Houdini I find are that 'out of the box' they are almost a complete pipeline. We had to hire an extra lighter on this job as it was too big to handle with our current staff, the chance of finding a Softimage lighter in Australia is slim. we instead found the best lighter we could regardless of his software preference. In our case he was a Maya user, we simply switched him into Maya interaction mode and gave him a couple of days training (if that!) and he was on his way and lighting shots beautifully. It also helped that we were using Vray (which he was familiar with) and its settings are universal across all apps. He was extremely grateful for the chance to work on new software and while he certainly struggled with a couple of concepts that he preferred in Maya, he found many more that he clearly now prefers in Soft. So I guess for us the Suites are working well as we (like everyone here) are smart enough to get the best out of them. Oh and he is now totally hooked on ICE (the procedural particle system not the drug!!) The marketing does bother me to a certain extent, but as Maurice points out, even Flame suffers the same fate. The one trend I am noticing in larger studios is the take up of Houdini as a backbone for scene assembly/effects and rendering. Maybe this will change to a certain extent when Katana hits the ground in a bigger way, but either way this is an area I see being eroded from under Autodesk. The Foundry and Side FX are certainly able to react more quickly to customer requests and in general seem to have a better understanding of the wants and needs of the industry at the moment. Softimage is to my mind Autodesks best chance of tackling the erosion of Maya, and if that is best done through the Suites, then so be it... //Rant complete. N. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ciaran Moloney Sent: Friday, 14 September 2012 9:43 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: In case you missed it.. Very true. I went to 3D school in NYC and ditched the Maya curriculum, replacing it with XSI for whatever coursework I could and for my final project. Even though all the classes were Maya based - even my MEL class made me a better XSI artist in the end! Besides making me a much more productive student (I was part-time so didn't feel the need to waste what little time I had fighting with Maya), I knew that focusing on XSI could land hopefully me some really interesting work prospects in NYC. I don't know, maybe it gave me an edge? I don't regret that for a moment. And despite all the negative talk around Softimage these days, if I were talking to a student in NYC or London I would still recommend learning Soft for those same reasons and now since we have ICE, there are a few more! Ciaran On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 10:02 PM, john clausing <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: as a guy who brings on multiple interns every summer and hires some upon graduation, i can assure you that your incorrect. they have a shot at a job with me? often they are Maya guys......who transition at my shop to Softimage. my only regret is that the schools .....dont give em a head start to get a job here. there are multiple shops here in NYC that do the same. so you can give up if you want to Matt, but dont tell me kids cant get a job in Softimage, in NYC. ________________________________ From: Matt Lind <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> To: john clausing <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2012 4:54 PM Subject: RE: In case you missed it.. We've already had that discussion. Students only use what will provide the best opportunity for employment upon graduation. They'll only use other stuff if forced by curriculum or if they have an elective to burn. Universities stock whatever they can get cheap, but promote/teach what gets their students recognition and placement tin the workforce. Many of these decisions are decided by the adjunct staff as they are the ones teaching the software. They often recommend what they use in the day jobs. The only way to expand a product's viability is to increase it's market share in the studio ranks. To do that requires the product be completed so it can compete for that market share. The issue with softimage is they implement great ideas, but often don't finish them, or finish them so quickly there are a ton of bugs. While the developers are very aggressive in fixing bugs, the customer doesn't see that until the next release which is long after the impression is made. In some cases it's a game of whack-a-mole as new bugs pop up in different areas creating a perpetual cycle. Finish the product to give it real life marketing team can take that life and give it voice. As studios hear the voice, sales increase creating a wave Freelancers and outsources catch the wave and ride it passing the word onto the street Universities catch the word on the street from the studios and put the ideas into the air Students inherit ideas from thin air via osmosis to become the next generation of user.
