|
So we are looking for something that bridges the gap between the
technical and artistic side of CG?
What I personally find regretful is not so much the EOL
annoncement in itself, but how much credit we gave it.
Because what mostly discourages from SI usage, probably is and has
been both the reduction of available talent, and the reductions of
available positions.
(making for what could qualify as a -loop-)
"No support! Oh noooo! "
Since 2008, Did most of the development/support come from AD?
You know, ... it can super easily be said that the overwhelmingly
larger chunk of practical dev came from the continuous stream of
stuff popping-up on RRAy
(tools from you/us)
a stream of stuff which depends on usage continuance.
Saying Because For the next decade, Houdini will most likely
remain mostly like Houdini, except with a few enhancements,
which is totally fine, Houdini is great for it's own specific role
(while probably never qualify as an XSI replacement)
and Maya will most likely remain mostly like Maya, except with a
few enhancements,
which can also be totally fine, Maya can also have it's set of
advantages,
if it wasn't for the ever increasing amounts of bugs/consistencies
that comes with it, not unlike as much as it it has,
(arguably for lack of real love or passion)
or for with never ending surprise! policies, like upcoming
nullification (or merging) of traditional subs to regular rental
which were supposed to be upheld indefinitely.. not to mention the
cloud which will similarly going to eat us (if we similarly let
it).
And in the event of a new player making it's way
(filling the humogous gap between (over-)techical and
(over-)simplistic environments)
I would say hurray!
Yet I would not count on it, they don't make new software as they
use to (when 3D was still new)
"No Soft cause want to move away from AD"
I'd say that Soft arguably stopped being under AD the moment it
decided to "retire" it, like retiring a language .. how can you
do that.
(Either practically or Ethically, it doesn't make any sense.)
Which can be akin to suddenly declaring that the sky is now red!
(I would say "humm ... right" , would you say "oh well, I guess
the sky is red now!" ?)
Nevertheless, if using soft, no need to ever deal with any
corporate ridiculousness or be subject to any subsequent
'creative' policies.
And If we have have been letting big faceless orgs dictate our
lives, bending ourselves in 40 and using sublime text to author 3D
it may be because of these big faceless orgs
(or how the public shareholding system is, and not because of
people working for them like Daniel Tutilo),
but also because we LET ourselves, ... basically get had, if no
line is ever drawn, there would essentially never be a line or
limit to shareholder greed.
yep..
In any event, I hope soft stops working on windows 11, so that we
wouldn't feel as silly that we could have otherwise went along
with it for -at least- another decade, not only just fine, but
like in the relative heaven we didnt know we were in, basically
ignoring any "regretful" announcements.
(a decade... or more, considering that one is in no way lacking
anything if using an OS of a couple of versions back, not unlike
using win7 today, for the sake of using probably one of the most
all-encompassing digital content creation app out there.)
On 02/19/17 18:05, Cristobal Infante wrote:
In response to the OP questions, I
moved to using Houdini fulltime two years ago so have had a
good look at the market in London. By the way, thanks for
that Maya transition course Graham, it really showed me the
way forward :D
Not many companies are switching
completely to Houdini that I know of, but many mograph
companies have spotted the potential and added it to their
arsenal to use it along side C4D. (MVSM, FutureDeluxe,
Territory, Found, Analog, etc ) . This is a market softimage
never managed get hold of, which really was a shame.
In fact, it's very interesting to see
how the C4D / mograph community (entagma, etc) have
recognised the limitations of their current toolset and have
started adopting Houdini. Ask them, they are all learning
it, or wanting to. The trend has been set and there is
demand for more creative Houdini artists, so there is big
momentum in this area.
Sometimes I ask myself if I would have
learned Houdini if xsi was still alive or alive-ish and the
likely answer would have been no, life was too comfortable,
so kudos to this guys.
You then have the more obvious FX
route, that will offer you opportunities you never dreamed
of when using xsi. The demand on this field is greater than
ever and the demand is simply crazy. You will be able to
work in film (dneg, ilm, framestore, Cinesite, MPC, etc),
which personally I am finding a lot more dynamic than I was
expecting. This year will probably be the busiest ever for
FX people in London with movies like transformers, and
pacific Rim 2.
If commercials/TV is your thing, than
there is plenty of demand there as well for good FX TDs.
Companies like TheMill, framestore, MPC, ETC, Milk,
Glassworks use it actively on their pipelines.
Maya has lost some ground in some
areas, lighting and rendering being probably the most
notorious one. Film companies are now using Clarisse,
Katana and a bit of Houdini as their main lighting tool.
However the stronghold they have in rigging and animation is
just solid and not going anywhere any time soon.This
companies are heavily invested on their rigging frameworks
and so are their users.
They have been perfecting this
workflows for decades so can't see this changing anytime
soon doesn't matter what sidefx does. It's probably as
unlikely as Houdini artists converting to Maya because of
bifrost...
Now, software can die as we know it, so
there really is no safe bet. However Houdini has a much
bigger market than xsi ever did,
so that's probably a good sign. Also
the pace of the development is very agile, which makes you
think they guys really care about this software and know how
to look after it. The investment in marketing, new website
and forum are also good signs for me.
Best of luck, and enjoy your
transition.
And you will find
hundreds of examples that showcase how good
Zbrush is on the hard surface modelling.
- I’m still not completely
convinced tbh. It’s great what people do, but
for automotive you wouldn’t really do that. We
couldn’t work like that and it’s actually
easier to retopo from the CAD anyway.
True, Retopo has
been improved a lot with the addition of the new
tools but UV work in Maya was broken last time
we used it…
...that was 6
months ago so there wasn’t a lot to celebrate on
my corner.
I may be missing
something… what I have seen so far is small
improvements over old toolsets but I would love
to see advanced bevelling, complex boleans and
in Maya that prove me wrong.
- I would say the improvements
have been significant, but might depend on the
benchmark they’re marked against. NEX was
implemented, then build upon, then old legacy
removed. Broken is a strong word and not 100%
true, but I agree UVs still need work, but the
nips and tucks they’ve done have been good.
Feedback from Maya users was generally positive.
I haven’t fully looked at Maya 2017 yet, but
comments haven’t been great.
IMHO I am afraid Modo
is on a league on its own on all things modelling.
- I would agree a lot with
that, but my comparison was against more
general usage. And for all of Modo’s power,
personally I don’t see more widespread
adoption. I always here of this mass migration
away from Max/Maya, but I’ve yet to see it.
The Foundry have to press a lot harder here. I
think many just seem to default to Maya or
Max.
Different context,
AD has made sure we have to choose.
For the studios
using Softimage the burden is unavoidable and
the costs are now with H16 not too dissimilar so
I can see a good scenario unfolding.
For those using
Maya I am not sure, I am inclined to think it
would probably depend on the work they do vs the
costs to produce that work, that will be the
trigger.
Said that, the
costs of freelancers, training and adaptation
are different so as long as there is talent
available, this things in on.
- I agree in terms of Soft
users and studios, your hand was forced. For
others, the factors you mention do have a
baring and the biggest influence. We use
mainly Max, which I Ioathe, but it gets the
job done and does what we ask of it for what
we do. In our context, Houdini unfortunately
offers us little or nothing. I’d gladly take
Fabric as a tools framework though.
I
think the problem Houdini has is
penetrating the more ‘traditional’
modelling, UV, and animation
workflows. Maya/Max still dominate
here. C4D and Modo are trying hard
but the former still seem to rule
the roost.
This is
already happening, Modelling tends to
happen in Zbrush, UV tends to happen in
UVlayout and you may only use Maya to do
basic modelling and basic UV stuff..
although imperfect, that is easy to do in
Houdini with today’s toolset, let alone
H16 toolset.
Rigging and
Animation are the two parts of this
pipeline Maya has a stronghold, but IMHO
it is only a matter of time to see a shift
in that area too.
Is
there a swing towards Houdini in
this area? Or is it still an
augmented option in a Maya/Max/Modo
pipeline. That would be the
interesting thing for me.
I have been
long advocating to use Houdini as the
backbone of the pipeline to avoid software
fragmentation and the enourmous amount of
glue, support, plugins, hidden costs that
such approach brings… Just list the number
of applications you would use if you
didn’t have Softimage by your side.
Zbrush,
Topogun, UVlayout, Marvelous Designer,
Mari, Photoshop, Maya for Rig and
Animation, Maya for Cloth sims, Arnold,
Massive, Real flow… the list is insane!!!
I use this
other approach;
Zbrush, Mari,
Photoshop, Marvelous Designer and finally,
Houdini for everything else.
Less glue,
less going back and forth...
Plus let’s
face it… an animator needs only very few
tools and normally have the easiest
transition in any pipeline to new
packages. I can train an animator to do
his job in Houdini in barely a day and in
a week is pretty much as productive with
Houdini as he is with Maya (and I have
tested this in the past)
I had
hoped to make the recent Houdini
event but client deadlines
intervened. I echo Andy’s comments
though about the number of Soft
users. For me Houdini is a
no-brainer when looking for an ICE
replacement, perhaps with some
Fabric thrown in there for good
measure.
Have a look
at the screencast they did.. you will see
why the excitement.
------
Softimage Mailing List.
To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with "unsubscribe" in the
subject, and reply to confirm.
------
Softimage Mailing List.
To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com
with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.
------
Softimage Mailing List.
To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.
|
