I have to agree with Emilio. I have over 10 years of
experience with the present interface, and I remember
postponing the transition from Softimage 3D to XS,I in 2000,
for almost 3 years. I'm glad I did it now, but it was
painful. Now that I have a snappy render from Redshift 3D,
and I'm finally starting to play around with ICE
compounds, I really don't want to start that process all over
again.
One of the reason that I have stuck with Softimage is because
I have tried to learn other 3D Apps and
the path is so painfully slow, and I need to get work done
quickly, as I am a freelancer and not on
corporate welfare (my term for being able to educate yourself
while on the corporate dime)
It is so much easier to add new tools (plugins and ICE
compounds) a bit at a time, as needed for
projects.
I will give a simple example. I needed to animate grass
growing and blowing in the wind for a commercial.
I already knew that strands might be a good way to accomplish
the basics of the scene. I did a little
research and found Zybrand Grass 3.0
<http://vimeo.com/48832905> . Now, through the kindness of
Zybrand Jacobs, I has a nice set of
compounds that helped me design something more custom to the
job. Plug and play around a little, as
opposed to reinventing the wheel.
I also know where all the "knobs and switches" are I am
"comfortable" in the cockpit of Softimage.
Maybe it is just a case of an old dog refusing to learn new
tricks, but it is invested time, that I
am not producing animation and making money. How bad can the
SDK be, anyway? I must
admit, I am clueless to that aspect, as I am not even a good TD.
Alok, I like you attitude. working with what we already have
and not starting all over again.
Just my 2 (not TD) cents.
On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 10:24 PM, Emilio Hernandez
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Not really Raffaele.
There are a lot of us that switching to other tool will
mean loss of time and be less competitive by using other
software. Specially Maya. And that in my particular case
I can hold up at Softimage as long as there is an OS that
runs it.
How far can you improve your workflow with other DCC
tools compared to Softimage, if Softimage is still the
best tool there, even if it is dead?
How much development are you expecting of Maya to behave
the way Softimage does.
A fresh toolset will make a "dead" software even more
efficient. So there is a market IMHO that will get this
tools.
The problem with Combustion is not that it was dumped or
stopped running, It still runs very good. The problem
was the lack of plugins that will actually will make me
work faster.
That is why I turned into other comp apps. Not because
it is out of date or useless now.
Just a thought.
Cheers!
-------------------------------------------------------
Emilio Hernández VFX & 3D animation.
2014-03-05 21:18 GMT-06:00 Raffaele Fragapane
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>:
Can I humbly suggest TDs spend their time more
productively instead, for both themselves and the
community, and start looking at other vendors?
We can wish upon a star all we want, but, as hurtful
as it might be, Soft is dead and will not be brought
back to life. You can tazer the corpse until it
spasms, but it won't be life.
What you COULD do, however, for the sake of the same
people that made Soft what you loved as a software
and as a community, is make good use of your time to
diversify your skills and give support to platforms
such as Fabric.
Hopefully I won't get flamed or misunderstood for
this, but honestly, there'd be no worse thing to see
than seeing people doing further damage to themselves
by clinging to a corpse after the damage done to the
app and its history.
Look at LW to see the depth of sadness this can get
to. I'd rather the people I've come to know and
respect on this list don't devolve into what's left
of its userbase.
You also get to make more of a difference for the
future of industry and vendors if you spend your time
on a project that has a chance to live, and you get
to learn a lot of things that Soft is entirely too
far behind on for you to properly learn on.
Sorry, might sound cold, but it's a helluva lot more
practical.
On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 2:05 PM, Alok Gandhi
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hey Guys,
Calling out all the Soft Tool developers/ TDs out
there. I know there are lots of awesome out there
for Soft but let's create more tools for the
community.
I am willing to devote my time to develop more
tools and will ask the same of other developers.
If anyone has a request / idea for a Tool from
Soft that they need, please post it here.
Developers please feel free to take on this projects.
If anyone likes this idea and can quickly setup a
web page (like redmine ticket system), it will be
great.
Cheers !
--
Our users will know fear and cower before our
software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the
dogs they are!
--
Best Regards,
* Stephen P. Davidson**
**(954) 552-7956
* [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
/Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic/
- Arthur C. Clarke
<http://www.3danimationmagic.com>
