changing the project structure
hey list, as I understand every file structure is valid, as long as softimage finds the dsprojectinfo file. so far so good, problem now is, that I need to move the backup directory some place else. is this posssible? cause there is no chance at all to switch that in the preferences.. -sebastian
Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer
testing it a bit and looks great! amazing work guys, grats. any ETA for production ready version? also reall shame again that it is nvidia only for now. Ati was tested over and over and showing a lot better viewport results in Softimage than nvidia... having this support openCL would be great! But everything in it's time. Grats! On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 9:15 PM, Stefan Andersson sander...@gmail.comwrote: That was pretty neat! :) I can't wait to see some more test! regards stefan On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 3:35 AM, Nicolas Burtnyk nico...@redshift3d.comwrote: Hey guys, I'm going to respond to the last few messages regarding the importance of speed later, but in the meantime here is a video of some live rendering in Softimage. http://youtu.be/fjCguRdSlV0 -Nicolas On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 1:17 PM, pete...@skynet.be wrote: you are right of course, as always. what is really needed is a fine balance between quality and speed, at a pricepoint that is affordable yet high enough to sustain development, and available before my retirement. *From:* Andy Moorer andymoo...@gmail.com *Sent:* Thursday, March 14, 2013 9:02 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer Well said, but speed is still important, deadlines are tight and particularly in the iterative direction phase often re-rendering takes much more time than making a directed change. Dailies reflect this... A series of several directed tweaks to a shot can stretch over several days in part to allow time to make changes and get them rendered... A major limitation to working with rendered VFX elements versus composite effects which can often be altered in near realtime. Sent from my iPad On Mar 14, 2013, at 4:21 AM, pete...@skynet.be wrote: Please also bear in mind that we're still just in alpha and constantly improving performance. We're kind of obsessed with speed :) speed is great of course – but IMO it’s not the most important factor. over the years we have all been doing productions with rather long rendertimes, running into hours per frame and more. The bottom line was rarely “it has to be rendered in X amount of time” – clients couldn’t care less. It has to be good enough first and rendered in time for delivery. it’s been a long time I’m looking forward for a viewport/GPU mental ray replacement in softimage. Hopefully staying below 5 minutes for complex HD images and within 1 minute for more simple stuff – but more importantly, it should have the bells and whistles of a modern raytracer, and deliver production quality rendering – that can be very precisely tweaked by the user. It’s very frustrating to get a promising image very fast, but not being able to make the image really final - some remaining artifacts, sampling problem or no ability to finetune this or that effect or simply lack of a feature you really require – so in turn you have to bite the bullet and go back to good old offline rendering – and the corresponding rendertimes will be twice as frustrating. Very extensive support for lighting features – not just GI / AO / softshadows / softreflections – but also SSS, raytraced refractions, motion blur, volumetrics, ICE support, instancing, hair – and a good set of shaders and support for the rendertree and as many of the factory shaders as possible. Mental ray never became the standard it was because of speed – but because of what one can achieve with it. (and then you have to turn off a few things left and right for final renders in order to make rendertimes acceptable) Obviously in this day and age it’s features are getting long in the tooth as well, which opens the door wide open for others – but it remains a reference for what a renderer should at least aspire to. just some thoughts and hints of what matters to me when considering a new renderer. -- *Stefan Andersson | Digital Janitor* blog http://sanders3d.wordpress.com | showreelhttp://vimeo.com/sanders3d| twitter http://twitter.com/sanders3d | LinkedInhttp://www.linkedin.com/in/sanders3d| cell: +46-73-6268850 | skype:sanders3d
Re: changing the project structure
No On 20/03/2013 6:31 AM, Sebastian Kowalski wrote: hey list, as I understand every file structure is valid, as long as softimage finds the dsprojectinfo file. so far so good, problem now is, that I need to move the backup directory some place else. is this posssible? cause there is no chance at all to switch that in the preferences.. -sebastian
Re: Service Packs and subscription
Yes. The service pack downloads are not behind the Subscription Center wall. The readme says they use the same license as the original release version (that is, 2013 SP1 uses the same license as 2013). On 20/03/2013 6:37 AM, ste dalton wrote: Apologies for the dullness of this question, but i if don't take out a subscription for softimage can i still install and run service pack as and when they are released? I've tried google but the answers aren't massively clear. i'd presume i can as service backs are just bug fixes for rushed to market software isn't it? thanks all. -- Stephen Dalton -- director www.ubik.tv http://www.ubik.tv
Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer
Ati was tested over and over and showing a lot better viewport results in Softimage than nvidia... Really? I don't remember anyone ever suggesting ATI was anything other than shit! DAN On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:32 PM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote: testing it a bit and looks great! amazing work guys, grats. any ETA for production ready version? also reall shame again that it is nvidia only for now. Ati was tested over and over and showing a lot better viewport results in Softimage than nvidia... having this support openCL would be great! But everything in it's time. Grats! On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 9:15 PM, Stefan Andersson sander...@gmail.comwrote: That was pretty neat! :) I can't wait to see some more test! regards stefan On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 3:35 AM, Nicolas Burtnyk nico...@redshift3d.comwrote: Hey guys, I'm going to respond to the last few messages regarding the importance of speed later, but in the meantime here is a video of some live rendering in Softimage. http://youtu.be/fjCguRdSlV0 -Nicolas On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 1:17 PM, pete...@skynet.be wrote: you are right of course, as always. what is really needed is a fine balance between quality and speed, at a pricepoint that is affordable yet high enough to sustain development, and available before my retirement. *From:* Andy Moorer andymoo...@gmail.com *Sent:* Thursday, March 14, 2013 9:02 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer Well said, but speed is still important, deadlines are tight and particularly in the iterative direction phase often re-rendering takes much more time than making a directed change. Dailies reflect this... A series of several directed tweaks to a shot can stretch over several days in part to allow time to make changes and get them rendered... A major limitation to working with rendered VFX elements versus composite effects which can often be altered in near realtime. Sent from my iPad On Mar 14, 2013, at 4:21 AM, pete...@skynet.be wrote: Please also bear in mind that we're still just in alpha and constantly improving performance. We're kind of obsessed with speed :) speed is great of course – but IMO it’s not the most important factor. over the years we have all been doing productions with rather long rendertimes, running into hours per frame and more. The bottom line was rarely “it has to be rendered in X amount of time” – clients couldn’t care less. It has to be good enough first and rendered in time for delivery. it’s been a long time I’m looking forward for a viewport/GPU mental ray replacement in softimage. Hopefully staying below 5 minutes for complex HD images and within 1 minute for more simple stuff – but more importantly, it should have the bells and whistles of a modern raytracer, and deliver production quality rendering – that can be very precisely tweaked by the user. It’s very frustrating to get a promising image very fast, but not being able to make the image really final - some remaining artifacts, sampling problem or no ability to finetune this or that effect or simply lack of a feature you really require – so in turn you have to bite the bullet and go back to good old offline rendering – and the corresponding rendertimes will be twice as frustrating. Very extensive support for lighting features – not just GI / AO / softshadows / softreflections – but also SSS, raytraced refractions, motion blur, volumetrics, ICE support, instancing, hair – and a good set of shaders and support for the rendertree and as many of the factory shaders as possible. Mental ray never became the standard it was because of speed – but because of what one can achieve with it. (and then you have to turn off a few things left and right for final renders in order to make rendertimes acceptable) Obviously in this day and age it’s features are getting long in the tooth as well, which opens the door wide open for others – but it remains a reference for what a renderer should at least aspire to. just some thoughts and hints of what matters to me when considering a new renderer. -- *Stefan Andersson | Digital Janitor* blog http://sanders3d.wordpress.com | showreelhttp://vimeo.com/sanders3d| twitter http://twitter.com/sanders3d | LinkedInhttp://www.linkedin.com/in/sanders3d| cell: +46-73-6268850 | skype:sanders3d
Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer
http://www.si-community.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=36t=3526 latest one. ati rigth now leaves nvidia in the dust On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 11:58 AM, Dan Yargici danyarg...@gmail.com wrote: Ati was tested over and over and showing a lot better viewport results in Softimage than nvidia... Really? I don't remember anyone ever suggesting ATI was anything other than shit! DAN On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:32 PM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: testing it a bit and looks great! amazing work guys, grats. any ETA for production ready version? also reall shame again that it is nvidia only for now. Ati was tested over and over and showing a lot better viewport results in Softimage than nvidia... having this support openCL would be great! But everything in it's time. Grats! On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 9:15 PM, Stefan Andersson sander...@gmail.comwrote: That was pretty neat! :) I can't wait to see some more test! regards stefan On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 3:35 AM, Nicolas Burtnyk nico...@redshift3d.com wrote: Hey guys, I'm going to respond to the last few messages regarding the importance of speed later, but in the meantime here is a video of some live rendering in Softimage. http://youtu.be/fjCguRdSlV0 -Nicolas On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 1:17 PM, pete...@skynet.be wrote: you are right of course, as always. what is really needed is a fine balance between quality and speed, at a pricepoint that is affordable yet high enough to sustain development, and available before my retirement. *From:* Andy Moorer andymoo...@gmail.com *Sent:* Thursday, March 14, 2013 9:02 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer Well said, but speed is still important, deadlines are tight and particularly in the iterative direction phase often re-rendering takes much more time than making a directed change. Dailies reflect this... A series of several directed tweaks to a shot can stretch over several days in part to allow time to make changes and get them rendered... A major limitation to working with rendered VFX elements versus composite effects which can often be altered in near realtime. Sent from my iPad On Mar 14, 2013, at 4:21 AM, pete...@skynet.be wrote: Please also bear in mind that we're still just in alpha and constantly improving performance. We're kind of obsessed with speed :) speed is great of course – but IMO it’s not the most important factor. over the years we have all been doing productions with rather long rendertimes, running into hours per frame and more. The bottom line was rarely “it has to be rendered in X amount of time” – clients couldn’t care less. It has to be good enough first and rendered in time for delivery. it’s been a long time I’m looking forward for a viewport/GPU mental ray replacement in softimage. Hopefully staying below 5 minutes for complex HD images and within 1 minute for more simple stuff – but more importantly, it should have the bells and whistles of a modern raytracer, and deliver production quality rendering – that can be very precisely tweaked by the user. It’s very frustrating to get a promising image very fast, but not being able to make the image really final - some remaining artifacts, sampling problem or no ability to finetune this or that effect or simply lack of a feature you really require – so in turn you have to bite the bullet and go back to good old offline rendering – and the corresponding rendertimes will be twice as frustrating. Very extensive support for lighting features – not just GI / AO / softshadows / softreflections – but also SSS, raytraced refractions, motion blur, volumetrics, ICE support, instancing, hair – and a good set of shaders and support for the rendertree and as many of the factory shaders as possible. Mental ray never became the standard it was because of speed – but because of what one can achieve with it. (and then you have to turn off a few things left and right for final renders in order to make rendertimes acceptable) Obviously in this day and age it’s features are getting long in the tooth as well, which opens the door wide open for others – but it remains a reference for what a renderer should at least aspire to. just some thoughts and hints of what matters to me when considering a new renderer. -- *Stefan Andersson | Digital Janitor* blog http://sanders3d.wordpress.com | showreelhttp://vimeo.com/sanders3d| twitter http://twitter.com/sanders3d | LinkedInhttp://www.linkedin.com/in/sanders3d| cell: +46-73-6268850 | skype:sanders3d
Re: Service Packs and subscription
Thanks Stephen. That's good to hear. On 20 Mar 2013 10:49, Stephen Blair stephenrbl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes. The service pack downloads are not behind the Subscription Center wall. The readme says they use the same license as the original release version (that is, 2013 SP1 uses the same license as 2013). On 20/03/2013 6:37 AM, ste dalton wrote: Apologies for the dullness of this question, but i if don't take out a subscription for softimage can i still install and run service pack as and when they are released? I've tried google but the answers aren't massively clear. i'd presume i can as service backs are just bug fixes for rushed to market software isn't it? thanks all. -- Stephen Dalton -- director www.ubik.tv
Re: changing the project structure
Maybe you can create a symbolic link to the new backup folder location? On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 6:45 AM, Sebastian Kowalski l...@sekow.com wrote: awesome! Am 20.03.2013 um 11:42 schrieb Stephen Blair stephenrbl...@gmail.com: No On 20/03/2013 6:31 AM, Sebastian Kowalski wrote: hey list, as I understand every file structure is valid, as long as softimage finds the dsprojectinfo file. so far so good, problem now is, that I need to move the backup directory some place else. is this posssible? cause there is no chance at all to switch that in the preferences.. -sebastian
Re: Technical Direction workshop available stand-alone (CGS TODs)
Problem solved. There was some problem with my account. I talked to Peter from Ballistic and he fixed my password. Now watching! =) 2013/3/19 Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com Thanks. As far as I know everything should be instantaneous. People who bought it already told me anywhere between right away and 5 minutes (probably depending on whether they had a CGS account or not). Even if you had been banned from the forums or something like that, the account for purchases is always valid, and I know of no blocks of sorts. Probably just a database glitch, we occasionally get those on other parts of the site as well, big rushes on anything can race the servers' load balancing occasionally. For any issues you can just write to cg...@cgsociety.org They are monitoring that address extra close since it's a new features and they are aware of potential bugs/issues still being present and undiscovered. On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 4:57 AM, Fabricio Chamon xsiml...@gmail.comwrote: Great news Raff ! I was hoping to get my hands on this course for a long time. Question: does anybody bought it already ? I've purchased some hours ago but I just can't log in. Don't know if its a site issue or my account being blocked by some reason. (already checked login credentials and stuff...) thanks
RE: test
...pinging From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Scott Lange Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 12:33 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: test yeasting
Re: Default Project
Thanks Stephen. I'm wanting to avoid having to use the Project Manager altogether, and it looks like I should be able to have my script write the prefs directly, since thankfully the prefs file isn't in a binary format. -Tim On 3/19/2013 3:53 PM, Stephen Blair wrote: And if that is not set...http://wp.me/powV4-2Dh On 19/03/2013 3:26 PM, Tim Crowson wrote: Yep, I see it now... okay thanks! -Tim On 3/19/2013 2:17 PM, Stephen Blair wrote: looks like it is in the prefs: xsiprivate_unclassified.DS_SZ_LOAD_DEFAULT_PROJECT= #STRI#C:\Users\SOLIDANGLE\Documents\Projects\My Project On 19/03/2013 3:01 PM, Tim Crowson wrote: How does Softimage know which of the projects in the 'default.xsiprojects' file is the Default one set by the Project Manager? Where is that stored? I'm wanting to automate setting the Default the project and I'm not finding the location where this is stored. -- Signature *Tim Crowson */Lead CG Artist/ *Magnetic Dreams, Inc. *2525 Lebanon Pike, Building C. Nashville, TN 37214 *Ph* 615.885.6801 | *Fax* 615.889.4768 | www.magneticdreams.com tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com /Confidentiality Notice: This email, including attachments, is confidential and should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient(s). If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage mechanism. Magnetic Dreams, Inc cannot accept liability for any statements made which are clearly the sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of Magnetic Dreams, Inc or one of its agents./ -- Signature
Re: changing the project structure
Your best bet is probably to disable automatic backups in your Soft prefs and write your own back system instead. Unfortunately. -Tim On 3/20/2013 7:34 AM, Ed Manning wrote: Maybe you can create a symbolic link to the new backup folder location? On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 6:45 AM, Sebastian Kowalski l...@sekow.com mailto:l...@sekow.com wrote: awesome! Am 20.03.2013 um 11:42 schrieb Stephen Blair stephenrbl...@gmail.com mailto:stephenrbl...@gmail.com: No On 20/03/2013 6:31 AM, Sebastian Kowalski wrote: hey list, as I understand every file structure is valid, as long as softimage finds the dsprojectinfo file. so far so good, problem now is, that I need to move the backup directory some place else. is this posssible? cause there is no chance at all to switch that in the preferences.. -sebastian
Re: pixel art textures
Oh yeh. There is one workaround that I did find. If I save the textures at double the resolution (256X256 instead of 128X128) then it looks ok in the XSI viewport. I'd rather not have to do that though. It would be nice if I can simply get XSI to display ALL the pixels... On 20 March 2013 15:58, Duncan Greenwood duncanroygreenw...@gmail.comwrote: Hello everyone, Long time. I've been working at an indie game studio for a while now, and there are a few things that have come up that I wasn't expecting to be a challenge. One thing I've been trying to solve for a long time, is displaying low resolution textures in XSI. It just doesn't seem to display the texture the way that it has been drawn, and I can't find the right settings to fix it. Basically, the best I can get it, XSI will display the texture in the viewport at half the resolution, ie: it will display 1 pixel for every 4 pixels in the texture image. I can't seem to get the render to stop filtering the textures either, so that comes out all blurry. Does anyone know how I could solve this problem (preferably without increasing the texture resolution? I am trying to do the UVs of 64 16X16 pixel squares that are cut out of a 128X128 texture image. A few things I tried: saving as png does not help (this is the format we're using for most things). saving as tiff of targa does not help. saving as jpg doesn't help (and is also just a very silly idea. Interestingly enough, cutting out a 16X16 square from the texture and using that as the diffuse input, instead of a 16X16 UV section of a 128X128 image, looks fine in the viewport (although still not in the render, but I don't really care too much about that). This does not help me though, because I specifically need to do the UVs on 16X16 squares, using a larger image as the texure. Here are some images showing what's happening: original 128X128 texture image: [image: Inline images 4] 16X16 sample block, and a 128X128 upscale: [image: Inline images 2][image: Inline images 3] texture as seen in the XSI viewport with texture filtering off): [image: Inline images 5] Texture as seen in XSI render (not that it really matters, but it's still annoying): -It's been scaled down in Photoshop to match other images, in case you were wondering. [image: Inline images 7] Thanks people :) Duncan Greenwood Animator at Free Lives Games image.pngimage.pngimage.pngimage.pngimage.png
Re: pixel art textures
Have you even opened the clip properties and took a look what is inside? - http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/softimage2013/en_us/userguide/files/property3509.htm#WS3ED399EEF2243144A8E6B3EEB78DEAF1-0044 you can set the minification and magnification to 'uninterpolated pixel'. this should fix all the filtering problems in the viewport. Cheers On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 3:07 PM, Duncan Greenwood duncanroygreenw...@gmail.com wrote: Oh yeh. There is one workaround that I did find. If I save the textures at double the resolution (256X256 instead of 128X128) then it looks ok in the XSI viewport. I'd rather not have to do that though. It would be nice if I can simply get XSI to display ALL the pixels... On 20 March 2013 15:58, Duncan Greenwood duncanroygreenw...@gmail.comwrote: Hello everyone, Long time. I've been working at an indie game studio for a while now, and there are a few things that have come up that I wasn't expecting to be a challenge. One thing I've been trying to solve for a long time, is displaying low resolution textures in XSI. It just doesn't seem to display the texture the way that it has been drawn, and I can't find the right settings to fix it. Basically, the best I can get it, XSI will display the texture in the viewport at half the resolution, ie: it will display 1 pixel for every 4 pixels in the texture image. I can't seem to get the render to stop filtering the textures either, so that comes out all blurry. Does anyone know how I could solve this problem (preferably without increasing the texture resolution? I am trying to do the UVs of 64 16X16 pixel squares that are cut out of a 128X128 texture image. A few things I tried: saving as png does not help (this is the format we're using for most things). saving as tiff of targa does not help. saving as jpg doesn't help (and is also just a very silly idea. Interestingly enough, cutting out a 16X16 square from the texture and using that as the diffuse input, instead of a 16X16 UV section of a 128X128 image, looks fine in the viewport (although still not in the render, but I don't really care too much about that). This does not help me though, because I specifically need to do the UVs on 16X16 squares, using a larger image as the texure. Here are some images showing what's happening: original 128X128 texture image: [image: Inline images 4] 16X16 sample block, and a 128X128 upscale: [image: Inline images 2][image: Inline images 3] texture as seen in the XSI viewport with texture filtering off): [image: Inline images 5] Texture as seen in XSI render (not that it really matters, but it's still annoying): -It's been scaled down in Photoshop to match other images, in case you were wondering. [image: Inline images 7] Thanks people :) Duncan Greenwood Animator at Free Lives Games -- --- Vladimir Jankijevic Technical Direction Elefant Studios AG Lessingstrasse 15 CH-8002 Zürich +41 44 500 48 20 www.elefantstudios.ch --- image.pngimage.pngimage.pngimage.pngimage.png
Re: symmetry template fail
Sorry...forgot about this thread! I'm using Soft 2013 SP1. Yes..I get that error or something similar: ERROR : Invalid procedure call or argument: 'CreateSymmetryMappingTemplate' It points to a line of code. Using Gear to rebuild the envelope fixes the problem. But it would be nice to have this fixed in future versions. Kris On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 4:00 AM, ivan tay ivansoftim...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for the explanation. For the Maya to Softimage envelope issue, we have filed this sometime back as SOFT-1717. But please bring up any issue to us. Thanks again! -Ivan Email : ivan@nospam.autodesk.com (please remove nospam from email address) On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 10:37 PM, Martin furik...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Ivan, I had this problem some time ago. I don't remember exactly which version I was using but I think it was 2011. I'm not sure what FBX version was used but the problem was from an outsource that was using Maya and converting it to SI through FBX before sending it to me. I had a few errors with symmetry template and discovered that the problem was in the envelope/weights. Wrote a few simple scrips to detect 100% weights, and round weights to fix them and everything went fine. M.Yara
Re: pixel art textures
I did do that. Yes. Taking filtering off removes the blur, but it still only displays in the viewport at half resolution. It's as if the setting 'uninterpolated pixel' is not actually uninterpolated. It's actually interpolating using nearest neighbour instead of bilinear or cubic interpolation. On 20 March 2013 16:21, Vladimir Jankijevic vladi...@elefantstudios.chwrote: Have you even opened the clip properties and took a look what is inside? - http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/softimage2013/en_us/userguide/files/property3509.htm#WS3ED399EEF2243144A8E6B3EEB78DEAF1-0044 you can set the minification and magnification to 'uninterpolated pixel'. this should fix all the filtering problems in the viewport. Cheers On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 3:07 PM, Duncan Greenwood duncanroygreenw...@gmail.com wrote: Oh yeh. There is one workaround that I did find. If I save the textures at double the resolution (256X256 instead of 128X128) then it looks ok in the XSI viewport. I'd rather not have to do that though. It would be nice if I can simply get XSI to display ALL the pixels... On 20 March 2013 15:58, Duncan Greenwood duncanroygreenw...@gmail.comwrote: Hello everyone, Long time. I've been working at an indie game studio for a while now, and there are a few things that have come up that I wasn't expecting to be a challenge. One thing I've been trying to solve for a long time, is displaying low resolution textures in XSI. It just doesn't seem to display the texture the way that it has been drawn, and I can't find the right settings to fix it. Basically, the best I can get it, XSI will display the texture in the viewport at half the resolution, ie: it will display 1 pixel for every 4 pixels in the texture image. I can't seem to get the render to stop filtering the textures either, so that comes out all blurry. Does anyone know how I could solve this problem (preferably without increasing the texture resolution? I am trying to do the UVs of 64 16X16 pixel squares that are cut out of a 128X128 texture image. A few things I tried: saving as png does not help (this is the format we're using for most things). saving as tiff of targa does not help. saving as jpg doesn't help (and is also just a very silly idea. Interestingly enough, cutting out a 16X16 square from the texture and using that as the diffuse input, instead of a 16X16 UV section of a 128X128 image, looks fine in the viewport (although still not in the render, but I don't really care too much about that). This does not help me though, because I specifically need to do the UVs on 16X16 squares, using a larger image as the texure. Here are some images showing what's happening: original 128X128 texture image: [image: Inline images 4] 16X16 sample block, and a 128X128 upscale: [image: Inline images 2][image: Inline images 3] texture as seen in the XSI viewport with texture filtering off): [image: Inline images 5] Texture as seen in XSI render (not that it really matters, but it's still annoying): -It's been scaled down in Photoshop to match other images, in case you were wondering. [image: Inline images 7] Thanks people :) Duncan Greenwood Animator at Free Lives Games -- --- Vladimir Jankijevic Technical Direction Elefant Studios AG Lessingstrasse 15 CH-8002 Zürich +41 44 500 48 20 www.elefantstudios.ch --- image.pngimage.pngimage.pngimage.pngimage.png
RE: pixel art textures
For the viewport : Under preferences--Display, turn on 'scale textures up to nearest power of two' For rendering: turn on elliptical filtering and turn off bilinear interpolation. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Duncan Greenwood Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 14:58 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: pixel art textures Hello everyone, Long time. I've been working at an indie game studio for a while now, and there are a few things that have come up that I wasn't expecting to be a challenge. One thing I've been trying to solve for a long time, is displaying low resolution textures in XSI. It just doesn't seem to display the texture the way that it has been drawn, and I can't find the right settings to fix it. Basically, the best I can get it, XSI will display the texture in the viewport at half the resolution, ie: it will display 1 pixel for every 4 pixels in the texture image. I can't seem to get the render to stop filtering the textures either, so that comes out all blurry. Does anyone know how I could solve this problem (preferably without increasing the texture resolution? I am trying to do the UVs of 64 16X16 pixel squares that are cut out of a 128X128 texture image. A few things I tried: saving as png does not help (this is the format we're using for most things). saving as tiff of targa does not help. saving as jpg doesn't help (and is also just a very silly idea. Interestingly enough, cutting out a 16X16 square from the texture and using that as the diffuse input, instead of a 16X16 UV section of a 128X128 image, looks fine in the viewport (although still not in the render, but I don't really care too much about that). This does not help me though, because I specifically need to do the UVs on 16X16 squares, using a larger image as the texure. Here are some images showing what's happening: original 128X128 texture image: Inline images 4 16X16 sample block, and a 128X128 upscale: Inline images 2Inline images 3 texture as seen in the XSI viewport with texture filtering off): Inline images 5 Texture as seen in XSI render (not that it really matters, but it's still annoying): -It's been scaled down in Photoshop to match other images, in case you were wondering. Inline images 7 Thanks people :) Duncan Greenwood Animator at Free Lives Games image001.pngimage002.pngimage003.pngimage004.pngimage005.png
RE: pixel art textures
forgot to add, you have to restart softimage to make the display change work. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sven Constable Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 16:15 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: RE: pixel art textures For the viewport : Under preferences--Display, turn on 'scale textures up to nearest power of two' For rendering: turn on elliptical filtering and turn off bilinear interpolation. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Duncan Greenwood Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 14:58 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: pixel art textures Hello everyone, Long time. I've been working at an indie game studio for a while now, and there are a few things that have come up that I wasn't expecting to be a challenge. One thing I've been trying to solve for a long time, is displaying low resolution textures in XSI. It just doesn't seem to display the texture the way that it has been drawn, and I can't find the right settings to fix it. Basically, the best I can get it, XSI will display the texture in the viewport at half the resolution, ie: it will display 1 pixel for every 4 pixels in the texture image. I can't seem to get the render to stop filtering the textures either, so that comes out all blurry. Does anyone know how I could solve this problem (preferably without increasing the texture resolution? I am trying to do the UVs of 64 16X16 pixel squares that are cut out of a 128X128 texture image. A few things I tried: saving as png does not help (this is the format we're using for most things). saving as tiff of targa does not help. saving as jpg doesn't help (and is also just a very silly idea. Interestingly enough, cutting out a 16X16 square from the texture and using that as the diffuse input, instead of a 16X16 UV section of a 128X128 image, looks fine in the viewport (although still not in the render, but I don't really care too much about that). This does not help me though, because I specifically need to do the UVs on 16X16 squares, using a larger image as the texure. Here are some images showing what's happening: original 128X128 texture image: Inline images 4 16X16 sample block, and a 128X128 upscale: Inline images 2Inline images 3 texture as seen in the XSI viewport with texture filtering off): Inline images 5 Texture as seen in XSI render (not that it really matters, but it's still annoying): -It's been scaled down in Photoshop to match other images, in case you were wondering. Inline images 7 Thanks people :) Duncan Greenwood Animator at Free Lives Games image001.pngimage002.pngimage003.pngimage004.pngimage005.png
Re: pixel art textures
oh, that's why it worked for me. I have this setting OFF. thanks On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 4:15 PM, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.dewrote: For the viewport : Under preferences--Display, turn on 'scale textures up to nearest power of two' ** ** For rendering: turn on elliptical filtering and turn off bilinear interpolation. ** ** ** ** *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Duncan Greenwood *Sent:* Wednesday, March 20, 2013 14:58 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* pixel art textures ** ** Hello everyone, Long time. I've been working at an indie game studio for a while now, and there are a few things that have come up that I wasn't expecting to be a challenge. One thing I've been trying to solve for a long time, is displaying low resolution textures in XSI. It just doesn't seem to display the texture the way that it has been drawn, and I can't find the right settings to fix it. Basically, the best I can get it, XSI will display the texture in the viewport at half the resolution, ie: it will display 1 pixel for every 4 pixels in the texture image. I can't seem to get the render to stop filtering the textures either, so that comes out all blurry. Does anyone know how I could solve this problem (preferably without increasing the texture resolution? I am trying to do the UVs of 64 16X16 pixel squares that are cut out of a 128X128 texture image. A few things I tried: saving as png does not help (this is the format we're using for most things). saving as tiff of targa does not help. saving as jpg doesn't help (and is also just a very silly idea. Interestingly enough, cutting out a 16X16 square from the texture and using that as the diffuse input, instead of a 16X16 UV section of a 128X128 image, looks fine in the viewport (although still not in the render, but I don't really care too much about that). This does not help me though, because I specifically need to do the UVs on 16X16 squares, using a larger image as the texure. Here are some images showing what's happening: original 128X128 texture image: [image: Inline images 4] 16X16 sample block, and a 128X128 upscale: [image: Inline images 2][image: Inline images 3] texture as seen in the XSI viewport with texture filtering off): [image: Inline images 5] Texture as seen in XSI render (not that it really matters, but it's still annoying): -It's been scaled down in Photoshop to match other images, in case you were wondering. [image: Inline images 7] Thanks people :) Duncan Greenwood Animator at Free Lives Games -- --- Vladimir Jankijevic Technical Direction Elefant Studios AG Lessingstrasse 15 CH-8002 Zürich +41 44 500 48 20 www.elefantstudios.ch --- image001.pngimage003.pngimage005.pngimage004.pngimage002.png
Re: pixel art textures
Sweet :) The 'scale textures up to nearest power of two' thing worked. I'm not sure where to find the elliptical filtering and bilinear interpolation settings though. On 20 March 2013 17:24, Vladimir Jankijevic vladi...@elefantstudios.chwrote: oh, that's why it worked for me. I have this setting OFF. thanks On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 4:15 PM, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.dewrote: For the viewport : Under preferences--Display, turn on 'scale textures up to nearest power of two' ** ** For rendering: turn on elliptical filtering and turn off bilinear interpolation. ** ** ** ** *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Duncan Greenwood *Sent:* Wednesday, March 20, 2013 14:58 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* pixel art textures ** ** Hello everyone, Long time. I've been working at an indie game studio for a while now, and there are a few things that have come up that I wasn't expecting to be a challenge. One thing I've been trying to solve for a long time, is displaying low resolution textures in XSI. It just doesn't seem to display the texture the way that it has been drawn, and I can't find the right settings to fix it. Basically, the best I can get it, XSI will display the texture in the viewport at half the resolution, ie: it will display 1 pixel for every 4 pixels in the texture image. I can't seem to get the render to stop filtering the textures either, so that comes out all blurry. Does anyone know how I could solve this problem (preferably without increasing the texture resolution? I am trying to do the UVs of 64 16X16 pixel squares that are cut out of a 128X128 texture image. A few things I tried: saving as png does not help (this is the format we're using for most things). saving as tiff of targa does not help. saving as jpg doesn't help (and is also just a very silly idea. Interestingly enough, cutting out a 16X16 square from the texture and using that as the diffuse input, instead of a 16X16 UV section of a 128X128 image, looks fine in the viewport (although still not in the render, but I don't really care too much about that). This does not help me though, because I specifically need to do the UVs on 16X16 squares, using a larger image as the texure. Here are some images showing what's happening: original 128X128 texture image: [image: Inline images 4] 16X16 sample block, and a 128X128 upscale: [image: Inline images 2][image: Inline images 3] texture as seen in the XSI viewport with texture filtering off): [image: Inline images 5] Texture as seen in XSI render (not that it really matters, but it's still annoying): -It's been scaled down in Photoshop to match other images, in case you were wondering. [image: Inline images 7] Thanks people :) Duncan Greenwood Animator at Free Lives Games -- --- Vladimir Jankijevic Technical Direction Elefant Studios AG Lessingstrasse 15 CH-8002 Zürich +41 44 500 48 20 www.elefantstudios.ch --- image004.pngimage002.pngimage005.pngimage003.pngimage001.png
Re: pixel art textures
open your render tree. select the image and in the ppg select the Texturing tab. under OpenGL Texturing settings up the maxium resolution. does that fix it? On 20 March 2013 16:32, Duncan Greenwood duncanroygreenw...@gmail.comwrote: Sweet :) The 'scale textures up to nearest power of two' thing worked. I'm not sure where to find the elliptical filtering and bilinear interpolation settings though. On 20 March 2013 17:24, Vladimir Jankijevic vladi...@elefantstudios.chwrote: oh, that's why it worked for me. I have this setting OFF. thanks On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 4:15 PM, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.de wrote: For the viewport : Under preferences--Display, turn on 'scale textures up to nearest power of two' ** ** For rendering: turn on elliptical filtering and turn off bilinear interpolation. ** ** ** ** *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Duncan Greenwood *Sent:* Wednesday, March 20, 2013 14:58 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* pixel art textures ** ** Hello everyone, Long time. I've been working at an indie game studio for a while now, and there are a few things that have come up that I wasn't expecting to be a challenge. One thing I've been trying to solve for a long time, is displaying low resolution textures in XSI. It just doesn't seem to display the texture the way that it has been drawn, and I can't find the right settings to fix it. Basically, the best I can get it, XSI will display the texture in the viewport at half the resolution, ie: it will display 1 pixel for every 4 pixels in the texture image. I can't seem to get the render to stop filtering the textures either, so that comes out all blurry. Does anyone know how I could solve this problem (preferably without increasing the texture resolution? I am trying to do the UVs of 64 16X16 pixel squares that are cut out of a 128X128 texture image. A few things I tried: saving as png does not help (this is the format we're using for most things). saving as tiff of targa does not help. saving as jpg doesn't help (and is also just a very silly idea. Interestingly enough, cutting out a 16X16 square from the texture and using that as the diffuse input, instead of a 16X16 UV section of a 128X128 image, looks fine in the viewport (although still not in the render, but I don't really care too much about that). This does not help me though, because I specifically need to do the UVs on 16X16 squares, using a larger image as the texure. Here are some images showing what's happening: original 128X128 texture image: [image: Inline images 4] 16X16 sample block, and a 128X128 upscale: [image: Inline images 2][image: Inline images 3] texture as seen in the XSI viewport with texture filtering off): [image: Inline images 5] Texture as seen in XSI render (not that it really matters, but it's still annoying): -It's been scaled down in Photoshop to match other images, in case you were wondering. [image: Inline images 7] Thanks people :) Duncan Greenwood Animator at Free Lives Games -- --- Vladimir Jankijevic Technical Direction Elefant Studios AG Lessingstrasse 15 CH-8002 Zürich +41 44 500 48 20 www.elefantstudios.ch --- image002.pngimage003.pngimage001.pngimage005.pngimage004.png
RE: pixel art textures
in the rendertree, open the image node. There you will find 'Image Filtering' From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Duncan Greenwood Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 17:32 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: pixel art textures Sweet :) The 'scale textures up to nearest power of two' thing worked. I'm not sure where to find the elliptical filtering and bilinear interpolation settings though. On 20 March 2013 17:24, Vladimir Jankijevic vladi...@elefantstudios.ch wrote: oh, that's why it worked for me. I have this setting OFF. thanks On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 4:15 PM, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.de wrote: For the viewport : Under preferences--Display, turn on 'scale textures up to nearest power of two' For rendering: turn on elliptical filtering and turn off bilinear interpolation. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Duncan Greenwood Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 14:58 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: pixel art textures Hello everyone, Long time. I've been working at an indie game studio for a while now, and there are a few things that have come up that I wasn't expecting to be a challenge. One thing I've been trying to solve for a long time, is displaying low resolution textures in XSI. It just doesn't seem to display the texture the way that it has been drawn, and I can't find the right settings to fix it. Basically, the best I can get it, XSI will display the texture in the viewport at half the resolution, ie: it will display 1 pixel for every 4 pixels in the texture image. I can't seem to get the render to stop filtering the textures either, so that comes out all blurry. Does anyone know how I could solve this problem (preferably without increasing the texture resolution? I am trying to do the UVs of 64 16X16 pixel squares that are cut out of a 128X128 texture image. A few things I tried: saving as png does not help (this is the format we're using for most things). saving as tiff of targa does not help. saving as jpg doesn't help (and is also just a very silly idea. Interestingly enough, cutting out a 16X16 square from the texture and using that as the diffuse input, instead of a 16X16 UV section of a 128X128 image, looks fine in the viewport (although still not in the render, but I don't really care too much about that). This does not help me though, because I specifically need to do the UVs on 16X16 squares, using a larger image as the texure. Here are some images showing what's happening: original 128X128 texture image: Inline images 4 16X16 sample block, and a 128X128 upscale: Inline images 2Inline images 3 texture as seen in the XSI viewport with texture filtering off): Inline images 5 Texture as seen in XSI render (not that it really matters, but it's still annoying): -It's been scaled down in Photoshop to match other images, in case you were wondering. Inline images 7 Thanks people :) Duncan Greenwood Animator at Free Lives Games -- --- Vladimir Jankijevic Technical Direction Elefant Studios AG Lessingstrasse 15 CH-8002 Zürich +41 44 500 48 20 tel:%2B41%2044%20500%2048%2020 www.elefantstudios.ch --- image001.pngimage002.pngimage003.pngimage004.pngimage005.png
Re: changing the project structure
jep, thanks for the suggestions.. i am gonna sleep over it and probably write my own . . . Am 20.03.2013 um 14:52 schrieb Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com: Your best bet is probably to disable automatic backups in your Soft prefs and write your own back system instead. Unfortunately. -Tim On 3/20/2013 7:34 AM, Ed Manning wrote: Maybe you can create a symbolic link to the new backup folder location? On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 6:45 AM, Sebastian Kowalski l...@sekow.com wrote: awesome! Am 20.03.2013 um 11:42 schrieb Stephen Blair stephenrbl...@gmail.com: No On 20/03/2013 6:31 AM, Sebastian Kowalski wrote: hey list, as I understand every file structure is valid, as long as softimage finds the dsprojectinfo file. so far so good, problem now is, that I need to move the backup directory some place else. is this posssible? cause there is no chance at all to switch that in the preferences.. -sebastian
Re: Adobe Maxon join forces
I think the point is that it would not take much effort at all for AD to add minimal export functions to export camera and nulls to AE. We don't need the kitchen sink, just a reliable camera and some nulls. On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 7:04 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Have you seen C4D's integration though? It is by far one of their strongest points, and unlikely to be beaten anytime soon. It's only natural though, they made a huge impact in the motion graphics market, and that's a core feature for them that sees both time invested in dev and a lot of user feedback and interest. But yeah, you should have a look :) It has a very extensive I/O for scene elements, names, edl-like entry points, timeline, passes and settings. I don't think AD will ever have the reason to, or the userbase rolling things around, Maxon does in those regards. On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 3:59 AM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.netwrote: I have been using Softimage/XSI with After Effects for over 20 years and find them to be quite compatible. What do you want to work better? Maybe I can help. On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 12:04 PM, Paul Griswold pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com wrote: I really wish Softimage worked better with After Effects. http://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2013/03/and-now-for-something-slightly-different-ae-and-cinema-4d.html#comments -Paul -- Best Regards, * Stephen P. Davidson** **(954) 552-7956 *sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com *Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic* - Arthur C. Clarke http://www.3danimationmagic.com -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
Re: Adobe Maxon join forces
hang on a minute... thats a bullet point... months of work, minimum! On 20 March 2013 22:01, Byron Nash byronn...@gmail.com wrote: I think the point is that it would not take much effort at all for AD to add minimal export functions to export camera and nulls to AE. We don't need the kitchen sink, just a reliable camera and some nulls.
Re: Rendering to video and formats
Most of the stuff we work with on the commercial side is 1920x1080 - 23.976fps because that is the resolution and frame rate most commercials are shot with. On rare occasions we work in 29.97 and 1280x720. Youtube and Vimeo support 1920x1080 these days so I just prefer to go full raster even if the target is web use. On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 12:57 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.netwrote: Hi Joey, Most of my stuff ends up in broadcast. I use 1280 x 1080 1.5 pixel aspect ratio and 1.7778 picture aspect ratio (16x9) I use this because it conforms to DVCPRO 100 specs. I use After Effects to composite my animation layers so I can dial up the final output format there, depending on what edit system is being used for the final edit. I also stick to 29.97 unless strobing motion is an issue. If it is an issue, then I render 60fps and deal with either the motion blur or field interlacing in After Effects. I hope this helps. On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 12:31 PM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: Hi folks, ** ** Its been several years since I’ve had to deal with this so I thought I would ask what the current practice is for most folks now that HD has really taken hold. ** ** For the record I have experience with standard def video going back to 1 inch type C and U-matic almost 30 years ago. In recent time we had a fairly decent workflow rendering to D1/DV resolution and compositing to DV QT/AVI for efficient video output. ** ** However, I’m not sure what the standard practice is today regarding a similar workflow with HD. Further I’m finding the high end 1080 formats to be quite expensive regarding render time, disk capacity, and playback efficiency. ** ** So the questions I have are: ** ** **1. **What is the most common rendering resolution you use for 3D? ** ** **2. **What video format/hertz are you targeting/using? ** ** **3. **What is the best or most efficient HD format for compositing/rendering straight to a video playback file which can then be read into a non-linear editor, in my case Premiere Pro or Final Cut? ** ** In general I’m looking for a silver bullet approach similar to the old: * *** 720x480-QuicktimeDV-Final Cut approach. (720x480-MS DV AVI-Premiere Pro for the Adobe folks). ** ** I expect everyone is using 16:9 today and 4:3 is obsolete so how does this translate to a modern HD format and for that matter which HD format. ** ** I realize all of this today is dependent on whether your focused on 720 or 1080 and may also be dependent upon the broadcast production equipment you are using. What I’m mostly interested in is what is the most efficient render format to quickly get me to a native non-linear editing file and maintain long term viability. ** ** I’m also interested in anyone thoughts regarding hertz as well. As an OLD video guy, I’m inclined to gravitate towards the 30/29.97 fps. But frankly don’t have a clue what the accepted standard is these days in HD since at one time 60p was the holy grail. ** ** I’m not currently limited to a specific video hardware platform as we have no specific dedicated broadcast equipment. Everything is delivered via multimedia at the moment, however, there may come a time when editing in a dedicated editing suite may become necessary. ** ** Thanks ** ** -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. ** ** -- Best Regards, * Stephen P. Davidson** **(954) 552-7956 *sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com *Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic* - Arthur C. Clarke http://www.3danimationmagic.com
Re: Rendering to video and formats
Hi Joey I won’t comment too much about frame-rates, other than saying I’m lucky we have 24p / 25p / 50i in Europe – North American frame rates are such a mess. For resolution, 1920by1080 (=full HD) is really the defacto standard. It is quite effective as a universal master format, covering pretty much anything broadcast, as well as 35mm film and BlueRay transfer. If you don’t need 2k or up, you can’t go wrong with 1920x1080 – and it has beautiful square pixels. I haven’t done standard definition in a decade now – but at the time, I always preferred rendering/compositing at 768x576 square pixels PAL, and converting to 720x576 non square pixels after finishing. Yes, at first full HD can be quite expensive for rendering compared to standard definition at ~6 times the amount of pixels – but you can compensate some in the sampling settings: Standard definition, with non square pixels and interlacing is quite problematic for small details, and requires decent sampling – eg. in mental ray terms min1 max3 was standard for me – and sometimes 2 / 3 or double res rendering. I find that full HD / progressive frames alleviated the sampling requirements – and for me standard sampling is now min 0 max 2 contrast 0.05 mitchell 4 or gauss 3 – the need for double res never occurred for me (in software rendering), very occasionally 1.5 times the res. On the opposite, I find that sometimes you can get away with lower sampling as well: –1 / 2 / 0.075 for example – something that would look quite bad on SD / interlaced. This, together with inevitable progress in hardware, makes that I don’t find full HD rendering today any slower than rendering SD was in the past. IMO, longer rendertimes today come from higher expectations put on content. Your mileage may vary – and 1280x720 (=HD ready) may be adequate – it is a big improvement over SD – but personally, I would find it a shame not to go full HD anno 2013. For playback – depends on the situation. When doing CGI, I’m used to playing less than a minute at a time - from a local non raid disk or from a server – playback software like RV or Framecycler handles this very well, and flipbook is no slouch either. For more critical situations, such as monitored playback, and editing with a client - get a turnkey NLE station, with decicated graphics, video I/O and raid array and most importantly software that offers guaranteed performance at full HD (oh how I liked flame and DSHD way back when... ) If you put consumer software on a regular PC, don’t expect the performance of a high end NLE station – even if things have certainly come a long way. Just my 2 cent and random thoughts. From: Byron Nash Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 10:16 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Rendering to video and formats Most of the stuff we work with on the commercial side is 1920x1080 - 23.976fps because that is the resolution and frame rate most commercials are shot with. On rare occasions we work in 29.97 and 1280x720. Youtube and Vimeo support 1920x1080 these days so I just prefer to go full raster even if the target is web use. On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 12:57 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.net wrote: Hi Joey, Most of my stuff ends up in broadcast. I use 1280 x 1080 1.5 pixel aspect ratio and 1.7778 picture aspect ratio (16x9) I use this because it conforms to DVCPRO 100 specs. I use After Effects to composite my animation layers so I can dial up the final output format there, depending on what edit system is being used for the final edit. I also stick to 29.97 unless strobing motion is an issue. If it is an issue, then I render 60fps and deal with either the motion blur or field interlacing in After Effects. I hope this helps. On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 12:31 PM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: Hi folks, Its been several years since I’ve had to deal with this so I thought I would ask what the current practice is for most folks now that HD has really taken hold. For the record I have experience with standard def video going back to 1 inch type C and U-matic almost 30 years ago. In recent time we had a fairly decent workflow rendering to D1/DV resolution and compositing to DV QT/AVI for efficient video output. However, I’m not sure what the standard practice is today regarding a similar workflow with HD. Further I’m finding the high end 1080 formats to be quite expensive regarding render time, disk capacity, and playback efficiency. So the questions I have are: 1. What is the most common rendering resolution you use for 3D? 2. What video format/hertz are you targeting/using? 3. What is the best or most efficient HD format for compositing/rendering straight to a video playback file which can then be read into a non-linear editor, in my case Premiere Pro or Final Cut? In general I’m
Re: Rendering to video and formats
Hey Joey, I have to say the one program that has hands down beaten every other app to encode video is Adobe Media Encoder. It's very straightforward to use, and all it does is convert and encode video. It comes with a whole list of presets for every flavor of HD, various devices, formats, broadcast and web standards, mobile devices like iPhones and various tablets, presets optimized for web video services like Vimeo or Youtube. Of course, you are free to make as many custom encoding presets as you need. Drag and drop all your files, select the output format and hit render. It has made the headache of encoding a lot simpler and I really can't praise it highly enough. Most important, it gives you really great looking video. I am not sure what you're planning to do, but if you need a application to take a stack of renders and convert them into multiple formats for different uses, say for broadcast TV, the web, optimized for mobile devices, you really can't beat it. If you don't already have it, Adobe offers a 30-day free trial. Eric On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 6:38 PM, pete...@skynet.be wrote: Hi Joey I won’t comment too much about frame-rates, other than saying I’m lucky we have 24p / 25p / 50i in Europe – North American frame rates are such a mess. For resolution, 1920by1080 (=full HD) is really the defacto standard. It is quite effective as a universal master format, covering pretty much anything broadcast, as well as 35mm film and BlueRay transfer. If you don’t need 2k or up, you can’t go wrong with 1920x1080 – and it has beautiful square pixels. I haven’t done standard definition in a decade now – but at the time, I always preferred rendering/compositing at 768x576 square pixels PAL, and converting to 720x576 non square pixels after finishing. Yes, at first full HD can be quite expensive for rendering compared to standard definition at ~6 times the amount of pixels – but you can compensate some in the sampling settings: Standard definition, with non square pixels and interlacing is quite problematic for small details, and requires decent sampling – eg. in mental ray terms min1 max3 was standard for me – and sometimes 2 / 3 or double res rendering. I find that full HD / progressive frames alleviated the sampling requirements – and for me standard sampling is now min 0 max 2 contrast 0.05 mitchell 4 or gauss 3 – the need for double res never occurred for me (in software rendering), very occasionally 1.5 times the res. On the opposite, I find that sometimes you can get away with lower sampling as well: –1 / 2 / 0.075 for example – something that would look quite bad on SD / interlaced. This, together with inevitable progress in hardware, makes that I don’t find full HD rendering today any slower than rendering SD was in the past. IMO, longer rendertimes today come from higher expectations put on content. Your mileage may vary – and 1280x720 (=HD ready) may be adequate – it is a big improvement over SD – but personally, I would find it a shame not to go full HD anno 2013. For playback – depends on the situation. When doing CGI, I’m used to playing less than a minute at a time - from a local non raid disk or from a server – playback software like RV or Framecycler handles this very well, and flipbook is no slouch either. For more critical situations, such as monitored playback, and editing with a client - get a turnkey NLE station, with decicated graphics, video I/O and raid array and most importantly software that offers guaranteed performance at full HD (oh how I liked flame and DSHD way back when... ) If you put consumer software on a regular PC, don’t expect the performance of a high end NLE station – even if things have certainly come a long way. Just my 2 cent and random thoughts. *From:* Byron Nash byronn...@gmail.com *Sent:* Wednesday, March 20, 2013 10:16 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Rendering to video and formats Most of the stuff we work with on the commercial side is 1920x1080 - 23.976fps because that is the resolution and frame rate most commercials are shot with. On rare occasions we work in 29.97 and 1280x720. Youtube and Vimeo support 1920x1080 these days so I just prefer to go full raster even if the target is web use. On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 12:57 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.net wrote: Hi Joey, Most of my stuff ends up in broadcast. I use 1280 x 1080 1.5 pixel aspect ratio and 1.7778 picture aspect ratio (16x9) I use this because it conforms to DVCPRO 100 specs. I use After Effects to composite my animation layers so I can dial up the final output format there, depending on what edit system is being used for the final edit. I also stick to 29.97 unless strobing motion is an issue. If it is an issue, then I render 60fps and deal with either the motion blur or field interlacing in After Effects. I hope this helps. On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 12:31 PM, Ponthieux,
Re: symmetry template fail
This has happened to me before, it usually stems from old geometry that somehow got corrupted. I usually export as OBJ and reimport and its fixed. Some of our geo here was made 3 years ago in older versions of softimage, have been passed back and forth between users and eventually just got nasty. Hopefully u can gator your work back onto it just fine On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 10:32 PM, Kris Rivel krisri...@gmail.com wrote: Sorry...forgot about this thread! I'm using Soft 2013 SP1. Yes..I get that error or something similar: ERROR : Invalid procedure call or argument: 'CreateSymmetryMappingTemplate' It points to a line of code. Using Gear to rebuild the envelope fixes the problem. But it would be nice to have this fixed in future versions. Kris On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 4:00 AM, ivan tay ivansoftim...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for the explanation. For the Maya to Softimage envelope issue, we have filed this sometime back as SOFT-1717. But please bring up any issue to us. Thanks again! -Ivan Email : ivan@nospam.autodesk.com (please remove nospam from email address) On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 10:37 PM, Martin furik...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Ivan, I had this problem some time ago. I don't remember exactly which version I was using but I think it was 2011. I'm not sure what FBX version was used but the problem was from an outsource that was using Maya and converting it to SI through FBX before sending it to me. I had a few errors with symmetry template and discovered that the problem was in the envelope/weights. Wrote a few simple scrips to detect 100% weights, and round weights to fix them and everything went fine. M.Yara
Re: symmetry template fail
Hi , Just to be sure that it is the same as SOFT-7399, could you send me a scene file so that we can investigate it ? Thanks Ivan Email : ivan@nospam.autodesk.com (please remove nospam from email address) On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 4:50 AM, Kris Rivel krisri...@gmail.com wrote: Any idea why creating a symmetry mapping template just fails? I have a mesh it will not initiate for. The ppg pops up but I get errors. But another mesh is fine. What gives? Kris
