I don't think I've -ever- seen more third party support for Softimage than there is these days to be honest.
Don't get me wrong, the general sentiment of the post I can agree with to some extent, more support and more choice is always a good sign, but saying there's no 3rd party support for Soft? There's never been so much and so frequently updated. All the Exocortex stuff, Fabric, 3Delight, VRay, Arnold, new and upcoming rendering engines soon, Mootz (emFluid, polygonizer etc)... At what point in post Softimage|3D history do you remember seeing more than this? It's also debatable whether there's all this 3rd party availability for Maya these days. If anything it's somewhat skimpier than it was in the past. These days most of the historical extensive and expensive plugins for Maya have all died or are about to. Yeti (not available in the US), and now Fabric are probably the only things of real notice outside of rendering engines I've seen in a while. Nex used to be a small but must-have one too, but that's been absorbed. You also seemed to have missed AD's exchange, where AD did exactly what you mentioned (offering a cheap, official, protected channel to distribute and all, like an App Store). There was a bit of a quiet commotion about Softimage not being an available choice. A few months in it looks like it's simply not picking up, and every developer I talked to insofar doesn't trust it one bit (how long will the current 0% fee hold, and what's the benefit of publishing there when all they offer is paypal payment and no promotion whatsoever). I appreciate what Fabric does and their (and Exo's, and Mootz's and so on) loyalty to the platform just as much as anybody else, but if you have some feelings of abandonment, which might or might not be legit, at least make sure the context is accurate. You're painting a picture that is statistically miles away from the reality of things. Splice has just yesterday become very, very interesting for me, but for its own good it'd better not be a loyalist software IMO. The Softimage community over the years has provided some great lip service for many developers, but very few toolsets/software saw any return whatsoever in investing into it. It'd be healtier for everybody if instead of a loyalist approach a more cool headed one was taken by all involved, developers and userbase alike. On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 10:40 AM, Sebastien Sterling < [email protected]> wrote: > "Call me whatever you want (sticks and stones.....etc) I fail to see what > is grande about Fabric Engine !" > > I think Chris that regardless off your doubts concerning the uses of > Fabric engine, surely even you can appreciate that they are taking the time > to develop this for softimage, i can't imagine this is easier then > integrating it into maya, In an age where there is almost no 3rd party > plug-ins for soft, why can't people understand that this is a good thing, > we need more hi quality third party releases for softimage, not just pieces > of ICE, these are what makes a package live. If you look at Maya's > development, the current trend for autodesk seems to be buying up third > party ware and offering it as a new feature, as much as this practice is > questionable... it makes sense, integrating adroit solutions you didn't > have to pay to develop that have already found a proofing ground among a > vast number of users, > > Maybe in the future autodesk will sees developing for max/maya/xsi opting > for a light maintenance and deebuging, and promoting a "third party App > system" where people can sell there plugins/addons. Hopefully such a shift > in business models would be accompanied with a full unchaining of the SDK > allowing more access to devs. > > But that is neither here nor there, > > Personally I find what Paul, Helge and the other FE people to be doing to > be quite exemplary, it demonstrates a profound appreciation and commitment > to Softimage, in an age where they could probably just develop for maya and > call it a day. > > it's really a choice of sticking with your principles over doing what is > easy. > > You ask why ? well (and this is speculation) but I'd say, it offers > licence, a framework to expand and grow what is currently denied or > hindered by the SDK and AD policies. A new canvas for devs, you see its not > their software its our software we the user brought it to where it is, and > maybe... don't you think its about time we took back our software ? > > (beg forgiveness for such a late response) > > > On 24 June 2013 15:23, Matt Morris <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Can see that's going to get people's attention. Seriously impressive >> stuff! Look forward to seeing it working with soft too. >> >> Would love to see a fight off, basic rig and splice rig framerates :) >> >> >> On 24 June 2013 13:34, Paul Doyle <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Hi guys – we’re pretty stoked to tell you that we have branch-based >>> multi-threading working in the Maya graph. Our expectation is that we will >>> also be able to do this in Softimage, so we're pretty excited - we have to >>> get through Siggraph before we can start on it, but it should only be a >>> week or two of work. >>> >>> https://vimeo.com/69000004 >>> >>> “This video demonstrates a feature of our Creation Core technology: >>> performing multi-threading across branches of graphs. Creation: Splice can >>> use this technology inside of Maya and perform multi-threading across >>> branches in the Maya dependency graph. This is extremely useful when the >>> computation per node is rather small, like in a character rig. Parts of the >>> rig can be computed in parallel using this approach, and the overall >>> performance of the graph is improved.” >>> >>> Very cool to see this working (in my unbiased opinion). >>> >>> Paul >>> >>> >>> On 22 June 2013 16:14, Paul Doyle <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> On 22 June 2013 15:08, Tim Leydecker <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>>> I guess the reason why the general plattform is less easy to sell >>>>> than the modules is that it needs a bit more abstraction to see >>>>> the benefit of investing into it in comparison to a module that >>>>> either already does solve a specific problem or seems like a good >>>>> basis to start modifications off from. >>>>> >>>>> It requires a lot of faith to start from scratch. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Agreed - the problem with a platform is you have to search for >>>> problems/justifications to start using it. What we found was the complexity >>>> of getting started was a bit much for people that initially take a look in >>>> their spare time - it's rare to get a studio that allocates time to >>>> investigating new technology, and when they do, you really need to get them >>>> somewhere valuable quickly. The challenge we had was that the investment >>>> required to get somewhere useful with Creation kind of meant that the value >>>> of the solutions had to be much more than just a simple tool, which meant >>>> more time was required, etc etc ad infinitum >>>> >>>> Our aim with Splice is to get people to see immediate value with our >>>> core - then they can either continue to exploit it within their existing >>>> tools, or they can move to Creation Platform and start building more >>>> complete applications. I think R&D teams are more likely to get sign off on >>>> something like this if they have already demonstrated the core performance >>>> capability elsewhere. It also helps establish trust in the company with >>>> relatively low risk - "let's try and write a KL deformer in Maya and see >>>> what we think" is a lot less involved than "let's implement our custom data >>>> type in their real time renderer". >>>> >>>> There are a few companies that immediately 'got' Creation Platform - >>>> generally because we either knew them well already, or they had a similar >>>> design philosophy with their existing tools. The cool thing is they are >>>> starting to push on Creation in interesting ways, so I'm looking forward to >>>> some case studies from them later this year. It's pretty awesome to see >>>> people building things we didn't even think of yet! >>>> >>>> If things continue to go well I promise to give Fabric dunce caps to >>>> those that want them :) >>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >> >> >> -- >> www.matinai.com >> > > -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
