Congratulations! Looks great.
Thank you Softimage! I feel sick again.
On 6/3/2014 8:00 PM, Matt Lind wrote:
I don't get to say this often, but I've finished a project using
Softimage which all can see. Well, it's not actually 'finished' as
it's an online game which is continuously maintained, updated, and
ongoing, but it's now live and I can talk about it beyond
generalizations. Yay! My last completed project was my previous
production --Barnyard the animated feature back in 2006. It's been a
long time coming, a relief, and refreshing to be able to refer to
something I did in the current decade.
Wildstar officially launched last Friday night at midnight for early
access, but opened up the flood gates today for everybody else. The
game is now running smoothly in North America and Europe for all to
see and experience. If you were part of the beta, let it be known
significant improvements have been made since on all fronts. If you
haven't tried the game yet, point your browser to
www.wildstar-online.com <http://www.wildstar-online.com> and click on
the shiny buttons. The first 30 days are free with initial purchase.
Production started in 2005 using Softimage XSI v3.5 and launched with
Softimage 2013 SP1 -- all of it in 32 bit land. Majority of the
content created in Softimage 7.5 which we used for roughly 5 years.
Softimage was used for a heavy majority of the 3D artwork including
characters, props, environments (other than the ground), buildings,
dungeons, and everything inside of them. We didn't use ICE at all
(but not for lack of trying, and we tested heavily), so this is a good
example of what the fundamental toolset can do. Heavy use of custom
properties, vertex colors, user normals, clusters, envelopes, UV
spaces, and hardware (real time) shaders to customize and iterate on
our content. What made these simple components really nice is they
were general and could be re-targeted for many uses outside of their
original intended purpose. Our particles were created and applied in
Softimage, but simulated only in engine. The SDK was used to write
500+ tools to assist artists to create their content include tools
like 'mimick' which is a command similar to GATOR which can transfer
attributes, but do so on select subcomponents instead of the entire
object, along with other bells and whistles. Often overlooked and
understated, but Softimage scaling was incredibly powerful for
controlling the squash and stretch scaling of deformers used in our
envelopes to animate characters with cartoon whimsy and without ugly
shearing often associated with other software. It is used on every
asset that moves. Relational views were used to create tools such as
a face editor to view and animate faces for our player characters, and
adjust face customizations to see how they'd appear in the game as
each of our characters have multiple faces and other components which
can plug in like a Mr. Potato head doll. It was important to see the
various components in context side-by-side for comparison while
creating the content so consistency could be maintained. This was
achieved using many 'object view' embedded into the relational view.
Under the hood the face editor drove the animation mixer to perform
face pose blending so artists could see the animation in real time on
their characters. Also, NURBS, that's right, NURBS surfaces were used
to transfer face poses and clothing between characters. The details
must remain a trade secret, but I just had to mention we used NURBS in
all their unfinished glory to get meaningful work done with
significant contributions to the end product. Render passes were used
to re-dress environments to allow artists to create geometry once,
then swap textures, shader settings, and other details many times for
each variant of the environment. Not only does it simplify the artist
workflow by centralizing all their interaction to a few clicks, but it
also allows assets to be packed into compact files for use in our
engine. Render passes are used in housing and dungeons. If we had to
do this in Maya, we'd probably have to break up each variant into its
own scene and have to figure out a way to merge all the scenes
together that shared the same geometry. These polished touches
matter. Softimage for the win.
So that said, while many 3D software could create the assets in their
own time and space vacuum, Softimage (in my opinion) was the only
software that could've tackled this project given our specific time,
resources, and budget as there were many close calls along the way. I
say Softimage because many of the aforementioned features came out of
the box with us ready to roll and not have to spend oodles of time
reinventing the wheel. Not having to write an animation mixer to do
face pose blending, or render pass systems to do texture/shader swaps
were incredible time savers and something we could lean on.
Spreadsheet queries and custom selection filters allowed us to quickly
and easily find our custom data in any scene with just a click, view
the data in a clean environment, and change it in bulk, if necessary
without worry of missing a spot -- highly important for finding and
fixing bugs. The elegant user experience was paramount to getting
work done on tight schedules at high quality with minimal development
resources available. Everybody says that, but in our case it couldn't
be more true. That user experience extends to the SDK as well. Not
having to relearn or rewrite code over many versions and upgrades over
the span of nearly a decade was quite important in maintaining
continuity and stability. The scripting object model was more than a
blessing to get under the hood and target only what we needed rather
than having to rely on combinations of commands which do more work
than necessary or don't do exactly what we need as is available in
most other 3D software. Backward compatibility with the API for C++
development was very important too. While today's OpenGL/DirectX
viewport may seem antiquated, at the time this project started it was
ahead of and more capable than any other in the industry, and fully
compatible with all the other tools such as render passes. That cannot
be overlooked.
Finally, I should thank all the hard work and contributions from the
Softimage developers and support, past and present, who put such an
application together to make it possible. Not just the foresight to
see and understand the artist's point of view, but also in the
continued listening and support when we needed help along the way
whether it be to fix bugs, augment existing features, or implement new
features to accommodate our needs. Building such an application is
more than just writing and compiling code -- it's about understanding
people. You cannot understand people without forming relationships
and maintaining those relationships over the long haul. Softimage
made the effort to establish and maintain those relationships
contributing help and advice along the way, and that is why so many
successful projects have resulted. As much as I've ragged on many
points, the bigger picture is not lost on the fact Softimage is a very
capable and strong swiss army knife of 3D software to tackle many
projects fearlessly. It's just a shame that in all my years of
working with Softimage|XSI, this is only the 2^nd long form project
I've been able to call complete (due to project durations) and will be
a shame that there will likely not be a 3^rd . One point of
satisfaction is of having worked on one of the first XSI projects in
'Panic Room', and now finishing one of the last in 'Wildstar'. Both
poetically apropos as Panic Room was a project fighting with a then
beta-quality release rushed to market full of many bugs while Wildstar
is a game about exploring and settling the planet Nexus much like the
old west of America's pioneer days of the 1800's with wagons, staking
claims to territory, gold rushes, and shootouts. Only fitting as I
must now look forward to a new destiny in uncharted territory as
Softimage has literally been part of half my life in the 21 years I've
used both Softimage|3D and Softimage|XSI....(and Eddie too!).
Thank you, Softimage.
Matt
