My sympathies, Paul! The whole 3d business somewhat turned sour on me suddenly, and it will perhaps remain so for some time. Thank you, Autodesk! I could even quit the whole damn thing and just draw storyboards... yet I'm not quite ready to ditch 20 years of experience (whatever that sums up to).
Had a close look at Modo, too... you are right. It just lacks critical parts. Unbelievably, if you extrude a curve, that damn mesh is frozen afterwards! No modeling relation whatsoever. How retro is that??? What were these guys thinking back then when they laid it out? Thought they could dodge all the trouble or what. Been thinking about awkward workarounds with keeping originals, recording macros, and re-apply stuff if needed, but all this is nonsense. As much as I would like to see it as the path into the future, cool interface and all in place, this effectively disqualifies it for me, for now. C4D can do this, btw. It has this nice concept that booleans or extrusions are empty containers at first, and you can easily d&d input objects into them. There's more to evaluate. Not sure yet. It's pricing is a bit... munchy, and they ain't got no operator stack. Houdini is just too much for my simplicity-loving brain... .°[ Maya... let's look again in 2 years. Not in it's current state will I touch it. 3ds Max... heck, would even be an option, the more I think about it. Like that old washed out slippers... don't make you sexy, but keep the feet warm at least. After all, I already know it, and there must have been some improvements in the last 6 years, I reckon. Maybe that's where I will transition to, when the time comes. Not that it fills me with much enthusiasm whatsoever. ------ Originalnachricht ------ Von: "Paul Griswold" <[email protected]> An: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Gesendet: 20.03.2014 17:55:42 Betreff: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better
I had some time away from the office today and while I was driving down the highway I started thinking about the situation and I'm no less pissed off today than I was when they made the announcement. I've been watching as many Modo and Houdini intro videos, tutorials, etc., that I can find and what I've discovered is, neither of them can replace Softimage today. If you're a TD, then Houdini is probably a great way to go, but I'm another one of those people who don't like to script and want to keep things simple. Everything in Houdini seems to involve writing at least a little script here and there. Modo on the other hand looks very simple and straightforward, but it's lacking a LOT of power. I noticed in some demos on things like instancing, the viewport REALLY slowed down. It doesn't look like it's ready for prime-time when it comes to dense scenes. The way everything you do is "frozen" is crazy these days. I can't believe if you extrude along a curve the geometry doesn't stay stuck to the curve. Until Modo makes some major moves, I just think it's a step up from Lightwave. I'm leaving Maya out of the picture because in all honesty, Autodesk is totally delusional if they think Maya will be a good fit for small shops working on tight deadlines. Maybe in 5-8 years Maya will finally hit its stride, but I'm assuming by then the entire M&E division will have been shut down in favor of just licensing patents & technology. (seriously - mark my words - I am confident the entire M&E division will be shut down) I started thinking about most of the jobs I've done over the past few years, and I can honestly say I don't think I could do 90-95% of them in either Houdini or Modo as easily as in Softimage - if at all. So where I stand now is - totally screwed. I either have to put faith in The Foundry that they'll bring Modo up to Softimage's level in the next 2 years or I have to spend the next 2 years really digging in to Houdini to get myself up to speed again. In either case, I don't see a positive outcome. I'm not young and I have a family. I can't work all day, then spend the evenings learning new software. This BS about artists not putting all their eggs in one basket just is a slap in my face. I put my faith in Autodesk when they said "the future of Sofitmage is bright!" When I was told over and over again I was being a conspiracy nut when I said Autodesk was intentionally trying to destroy Softimage. Well, look where we are now. Murdering Softimage without having ANYTHING remotely close to replace it is like peeing on my face and telling me it's liquid sunshine! Maybe Autodesk is right. Maybe the all-in-one approach of Softimage is dead. Maybe I'm out of touch with how the world of animation & VFX works these days. In any event. I'm a very unhappy paying Autodesk customer. I do not feel like my money has gone to anything I paid for. -Paul
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