I like the idea, I was thinking along the same lines but much BIGGER. Let's kick the shit of Autodesk at their own game...3d development.
I think we should set up this has a PUBLIC challenge, us agasinst Autodesk Maya dev team, in a development death match. Thinking this would go much further in showing Autodesk what an incredible mistake it made by killing Softimage. Release after release... we will kick their fucking ass. Here is what I don't really think Autodesk really understands.... Softimage and particularly Ice allows you to develop features that are production ready to the public a much faster rate than you can in any of other full Dcc applications they own. I never understood why there wasn't a huge effort to create new tools with ice and after it had matured a bit. I was really hoping for an ice version of face robot, as it was not so linear... the idea of face robot is great.. but picking session is brilliant, but things can get terribly linear after that point on with no real way to fix what's under the hood. So this really is my challenge--- to the user base and developers. We set up a kickstarter campaign or something to raise money to help out develop Maya... Show it for what it is, an aging dinosaur that's about to become fossilized. First off is a kick starter the right way to go? How do we get the money from a single kickstarter into the hands of multiple developers ? Ideally I would like to see something that benefits all Softimage users to contribute to the user build... it could be a single workgroup that we all share. I know that there a lot of plug-ins already that are very useful, but sometimes getting organized workgroup of all the latest and greatest core tools is difficult . I have 1 million ideas of what needs to be done, but I have no idea what it's capable with the current SDK . I'm sure everybody else has their list as well. We need BIG shiny features... as well as taking care of anything we can that will keep Softimage viable for years to come. Is it possible that any of the big studios would consider releasing some of their tools to the Softimage community? I've heard and seen some of these tools in action , if we could get something going quick enough we would already have a far more impressive release and what is most likely coming from Maya. These tools for your competitive advantage, but not as much Softimage is. My suggestion is wherever it makes sense for us to share our scripts and plug-ins that have already been developed into the community for the greater good of Softimage. Softimage is definitely my competitive advantage, and as a community we can make it even more so. To the TDs and developers out there, would it be possible for us to implement UDIM support? Arnold seems to have no issues with it, but I really need to be able to see my multi-patched textures in OpenGL. I know there were no plans to port fabric engine's real-time viewport solution to Softimage , but I for one would love to see that implemented , and I am sure its extensible enough to handle multi-UV patch naming conventions. My dollars are on the table for FE anytime they develop a tool I can use. This one goes to Pooby, sir I think it is time for us all to send your money ... but you need start sharing that muscle technology you're working on.. I sent you 100 bucks for fuzz .... I will send you a lot more for your most... I know it's your competitive the advantage .. but so is Softimage . And that there is some folks out here on the development side that can turn your beautiful rigging development into easy to use tool sets and interfaces that could push it to the next level. Paul there are several things I would love for you to be in charge of development , a face robot that doesn't pollute your scene with the face robot virus ... one that is nonlinear . I have recently seen an amazing auto rigger from the good folks over at elementX... I would love to see this released the public as well, but we really should do side-by-side comparisons and release the best auto rigger of the bunch... and standardized around that one. I know Mill has the craziest feather system ever devised... I'm sure Psyop has many fantastic tools and shaders, my question to everybody is does it make sense to sit on these anymore? Or would it do each one of these companies more good to participate in creating a better product for the near future? Here are some other things that I know needs some work from where I sit... Paint effects type solutions.. with the interface to match . Scatter tools are great , but having something with a great set of presets . We need a marvelous designer type clothing simulator inside of Softimage.... but without the nonsense that comes with trying to work inside a silly program. City builders and terrain builders are two things that I desperately need... For love of god would someone add relative cycles to the mixer.... I know the work around...but this is softimage.. if I wanted to work around I would be a Maya user. There a lot of good hair solutions, but there's not a lot of great shaders at the out into the wild. I know that people are sitting on some of those on this very list. Not that the hair solutions are perfect in any way, I would love for somebody to come up with a best of both worlds solution for hair styling and simulation. It can be node based, but has to be able to be groomed by hand. Years ago I saw a Microsoft research video on or hierarchal hairstyling that blew me away. Ironically, to reach this part of the note I received a call from Autodesk, asking me to renew my suit support. I am still debating whether this makes sense.... I really think I would rather send all my developer friends money... plus a lot more if they develop the tools I need. I would not have known where to begin to make this happen... but wanted to start a conversation. Let's make our own Softimage 2015 - Userbuild. I am in at 1500 dollars TODAY if we can get such a thing going... I will also be happy to make demo content for our release videos that we release at the same time AD does there's...We need to blow them AWAY...and as I said before it needs to be HYPED in all the right places... If for the next few years we outshine AD internal dev teams by joing together as a unified force maybe a new regime will move into AD and see the light, if not we just gave ourselves a better program to get our jobs done. So apparently some of us are optimistic fools... but so was Walt Disney. No one believed to make the first animated feature movie... and he did. No one believed in his dream of building a Magic Kingdom California... and he did. everyone scoffed at the giant plans for Walt Disney World smack, dabb middle of a swamp.. and he did... he he spent his fortune and a lot of other peoples money to make these dreams come true... at first the investors were terrified , but this man was going to succeed. He just knew no other option... he knew he needed to make something great.'s make something great... We need to do the same... with or without Autodesk's help. We have a much better chance of making this happen if we join forces commit money and/or own personal time to make this thing happen. This song sums it up.. Written by Mike Peters of the Alarm from a hospital bed, with kemo flowing into his body.....not only beating cancer x2, but then going on to start the worlds biggest Rock and Roll cancer charity..and climbing MT Everest..among many others as fund raisers. If some one man can do that we can save our freaking software...even if we do it our selves. Fight back- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot26NBjxins
