yes jonah! i am going to skip to number 4 personally, i think it is the best place for me to start using fabric engine. even though softimage is awesome at scene assembly and lighting with their pass management, truth is some workflows are still out of our reach. i am talking specifically with regards to arnold renderer.
i am already participating and open sourcing my work in this area... https://github.com/caron/FabricArnold you can create arnold scenes with the kl language! this is a step toward my own scene assembly tool. i am imagining something between softimage and katana. steven On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 10:43 AM, Jonah Friedman <[email protected]> wrote: > I think a united Softimage community could be kingmaker. I nominate Fabric > Engine as King. > > Here's some facts as I see them: Some of us will continue to use Softimage > for the next few years, others of us will unhappily be forced to use Maya. > The realities of production, studios, and freelancers will dictate this. > > Softimage gave us ICE. ICE has made us smart, because ICE is a ladder. ICE > is a magical place where the slightest bit of linear algebra is immediately > useful. If you can add two vectors together you can make useful things in > ICE. And if you learn a little more, it's a little more useful. And in so > doing, ICE has elevated many us from people who use 3D applications to > people who create our own tools in 3D applications. Our community is not > totally unique in this matter, but I think our community is remarkable in > its knowledge of the core math of CG. That combined with our formidable > production experience, self-sufficiency, and early-adopter fearlessness is > unique. It makes us mighty. > > I think Fabric engine is the way out. That's because Fabric Engine is also > a ladder. For the moment, nothing changes. We may continue to use > Softimage, or we may be forced to use Maya, depending on each of our > circumstance, but the important thing is getting behind Fabric and trying > to get as many of our tools as possible into it. There's no giant painful > leap that's needed, we can start small without breaking existing workflows. > As a bonus, if we open up our tools as much as possible, this will go > exponentially faster. Softimage will remain frozen in time and Maya will > continue to crumble under the weight of its terrible design, and all the > while Fabric Engine will be eating. > > Here's how I see this playing out. > > 1. First Fabric Engine replaces what we used to do in ICE. There's a > lot of work to do to make this a reality, but this one seems like a > no-brainer to me. > 2. The next lowest hanging fruit is rigging. Fabric Engine creations > eat the deformers used in rigging, and then become the rigs themselves. > 3. Once the native rigging in these programs is eaten, Fabric Engine > also eats animation as a natural progression. The animators must go where > the rigs are, and will be happiest where the rigs play back the fastest. > 4. Lighting and rendering is a tough one, but it won't take very much > to be better than Maya here. Being competent at scene assembly and having a > pass system that isn't obviously terrible is enough. > 5. We unceremoniously kick the desiccated husk of Maya into a storm > drain. > > Honestly if we do nothing, I think this might happen anyway. But I think > together can make it go much faster. > > 1. Embrace open source and put as many of our tools as we can out > there. > 2. Keep making stuff- this is natural for us, as we have, after all, > all become toolmakers. > > No giant painful leap is needed. We liberate ourselves, and empower > developers who have passion and care about the right things. > > This is the only road I see that leads somewhere that I actually want to > be. > > -Jonah >
