Tim in my eyes you are one of the true artists of 3-D, I find you work consistently inspirational.
Thanks for lending your voice to our cause. Sent from my iPhone > On Mar 11, 2014, at 11:21 AM, Tim Borgmann <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi, > unfortunately my english is not good enough to express my feelings and > thoughts about all this in a good and polite way and I think some mails like > the open letter from Alastair or the mails from Greg, Peter, Jean, Sly, > Daniel and so on express them much better than I could do. > > I'm just an artist, a simple freelancer, so my opinion will not be from > interest for AD I'm sure. But nonetheless here are just some additional > thoughts from my side: > > The main thing that surprises me about the decision from AD right now is that > they make this step (stopping SI) even before they can offer any kind of > alternative. > > A personal view from the artist point of view: > A lot of my work is based on ICE and at the moment I'm simply not able to see > a real alternative. Will I take a look at Houdini? Sure. Will I take a look > at Modo? Sure. Blender? Sure. ... I will take a look at a lot of software > within the next months, maybe years, to hopefully find something that will > fit again like SI did until now. ICE gives me the ability to create things I > would not be able to do before. I'm not a TD, I'm not able to write my own > tools, I'm just a plain artist and so what ICE was a pure revolution for me > and still is a joy to work with. As some of you maybe know I did some > advertising material for the launch of XSI 7. Although I didn't use ICE for > these images because of the fact that I didn't know ICE at all at this time I > very quickly realised the enormous power of it. Today I would do it with ICE > for sure and it would be much faster and more flexible and so I would have > much more time to work on the design and content and would also get more > sleep during production. > > As an artist you spend a lot of time in finding and learning the tools which > maybe fit best to you or better said to your work. At a certain point you > than hopefully reach a level with the tools where you can care more about > design or creativity than about technical issues. But it's maybe a very long > and hard way to get there and if you are there, if you can work with a tool > without too much thinking about technical issues (some will be there always > and you never stop learning for sure) you are very happy about this (at least > I am). You are happy that you can focus on the creative side of the work and > not only on solving technical problems. > > For sure you can learn a lot of things in another software rather fast since > the concepts are similar, but to get at a point where you are really familar > with a tool, where you really have a good feeling about what you can do and > what you better avoid is a long way. Moving a spotlight around is one thing > but finding the reason why your are getting unexpected results for example is > often a complete different story. > > Who knows, maybe I will find a new tool which even fits better, maybe not, > but just at the moment I feel like downgraded from a senior to a junior > artist within some days. And what's even more important I'm afraid that I > have to spend my time again on just solving technical issues instead on > creating images. > > I simply feel like an artist who get told that there will be no canvas, > brushes, oil colours any more soon and that I have to take a ball pen and > some finger colours instead to do the work I did before. But that's just my > personal point of view and it's for sure not from interest for AD. > > A more profesional view from the freelancer point of view and maybe a thought > worth for AD: > In my opinion the reason why SI does so well in particular in the advertising > area is simply because it provides a solid toolset out of the box but even > more important: it's flexible and fast. And that is was working in the > advertising area is about. Flexibility and speed. You have a lot of different > tasks, changes, corrections whatever to solve in sometimes extremly short > timeframes. Often there is simply no time and also no budget for a big TD > team which provides you the basic tools you need to do the work. It has to be > right out of the box. And this is what AD does not offer with maya right at > the moment. It's maybe a good tool for big pipelines/movie productions or > whatever, it's maybe a good framework for custom tools, I don't know, but I > doubt it is a good solution for doing quick and creative productions where > you maybe have to rethink or rebuild a concept within an evening. Correct me > if I'm wrong. > Alone the passes and partions system from SI is pure gold in these kind of > advertising productions. ICE is an option to create stuff where you normally > would need a bigger TD team and the accordingly time for development. Or you > can just use it to fix some smaller issues in the last moment on top of your > operator stack. The overall workflow of SI simply fits in many areas of these > kind of productions. So I'm really afraid for all these innovative and great > shops which deliver outstanding work in short turnarounds and within a heavy > competetion situation. During the last years and due to for example > additional tools like Arnold or the ones from Eric, Helge and so on the > quality of advertising productions done with SI reaches a very high level in > my opinion. Small shops or small teams are able to create really outstanding > work. > > As Daniel from Sehsucht stated out: "How can Autodesk get the timing so > wrong?" > You simply leave them with a big gap and no solution to fill it at the moment. > > So in the end, I will use SI for as long as possible (at least as an artist) > and hope others will do so also. It's one of the best and most productive > tools I've ever used for my work and maybe will still be within the next > years. > > Best regards > Tim Borgmann
