Re: emPolygonizer5 release (Softimage, Modo, Fabric Engine, Maya, command line)
Stoked about the MODO news. This is awesome! - Sergio M. From: Eric Mootz Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2014 12:01 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: emPolygonizer5 release (Softimage, Modo, Fabric Engine, Maya,command line) Thanks, guys! No, haven't posted on the Modo forums yet, but will do that as soon as I have uploaded the first video tutorial for the beta of emPolygonizer5 for Modo. PS: Luxology7Foundry has been very supportive, by the way, for example next week I am meeting with one of the Modo devs and he will help me finish some last things. Am 28.10.2014 16:39, schrieb Sebastien Sterling: Have you put this up on the Modo forums Eric? doubtless you will get featured on their next product community shout out. On 28 October 2014 15:15, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote: I find this mapping feature (in particular) to be just amazing! Kudos!
Re: SoftImage Artists take on Maya @ Escape Studios
... And that the main blade sorta works but breaks off from time to time. For real heavy-handed work, you need to go find a 3rd-party one, which comes as an assemble yourself kit. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Sep 11, 2014, at 12:44 PM, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: Add to that it's diesel, pollute and give cancer... Le 11/09/2014 18:33, Sebastien Sterling a écrit : Yea! bury that analogy! ;) On 11 September 2014 17:11, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote: And capable (with the firm intent to) running over everyones jets while their paying for their milk (just waiting by the grocery store) , getting everyone to then get their own (pricey) big and heavy bulldozer after walking home just to get their milk later, cause the jet factory has also been run-over to the ground leaving only a bunch of bulldozers running around (and a few jets that are left for the lucky ones not particularly fond of big heavy slow moving vehicles with mind boggling arrays of levers, knobs and controls that always need servicing by their own team of mechanics which they also need to get for it to work) On 09/11/14 11:19, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] wrote: That’s a significantly appropriate metaphor to describe Maya actually. It’s a D14 bulldozer capable of moving mountains without flinching, but not very handy for jetting to the corner grocery for a gallon of milk. -- Joey __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party.
Re: OT Maya: Skinning
Depending on what kind of joint chains you have, and the kind of topology you're working on, you may find that the Weight Hammer works wonders. Just select the vertices you want to smooth, and hammer the sh*** outta them! (I love using it on things like fingers... Can get those deformations nailed in no time). Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Sep 3, 2014, at 4:20 PM, Will Sharkey willjshar...@gmail.com wrote: honestly I have a lot of joints in this character and Im finding it difficult to get even smoothing along many joints. The only way I can see to do this is to 'flood' the mesh, which isnt what i want, I was hoping just to paint the smooth but thats not giving me good results either. On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 4:12 PM, Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com wrote: What is the issue, speed of interaction with dense geometry or complexity of model hierarchies? On 3 Sep 2014 20:30, Will Sharkey willjshar...@gmail.com wrote: Im attempting to paint weights on a fairly complex creature and it is a bit of a pain. I seem to recall people saying that the built in weighting tools in Maya aren't great. What were other options? I think somebody mentioned ngSkinTools and that seems pretty cool. Is that still a top choice? At least the relax/smooth tool looks like it works in the ngSkinTools demo, the built in smooth tool in Maya frustrating. cheers
Re: Autodesk considering ditching perpetual licenses
It was just a matter of time until Autodesk figured out that software is not where the value is, but in the data created with it. Going rental-only has upsides and downsides, and the biggest downside I see is it becomes a very effective way to hold your data hostage. You're forced to pay just go access your data. In some cases, this may be irrelevant, in others, it won't be. Another thing to consider is that sometimes, we forget to see these maneuvers through Autodesk's eyes. Autodesk is much more than the ME division. Autodesk has figured that, like Adobe, it has the luxury of being not only the standard, but pretty much a monopoly (other CAD products are as much as an alternative to AutoCAD, as GIMP is an alternative to Photoshop). So, there's little to fear there in terms of user migration. Unfortunately for the ME division, their products do have very viable alternatives out there (many topics on this list are testament to that). I guess we'll have to wait and see (it wouldn't be the first time either that a given statement never comes to materialize itself). I don't think this would affect the big guys as it would the smaller shops and freelancers. I can see those walking away definitively. Does Autodesk care? I'm not really sure. They certainly didn't care for the entire user base of an entire product (in terms of asking the users what they thought if the idea). Anyway, don't wanna start the whole pain cycle all over again :-). It's Friday, and I got better things to do than being online. Like... Fallout 3!! :-D (maybe I can finish it in a few months... After... What? 4 years playing it?). Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Aug 29, 2014, at 6:41 PM, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote: From Si-Community, quoting 'jonmoore' at C4DCafe.com With upgrades due to be eliminated early next year, next up on Autodesk's chopping block is the perpetual license. Here is the exchange from a recent conference call with financial analysts (reproduced with permission of Seeking Alpha): Matt Hedberg (RBC Capital Markets): Carl, I'm wondering, when might you eliminate perpetual sales? And maybe more generically, what is the framework for eventually pulling this license option? Carl Bass (Autodesk): I'll ask you Matt, what do you think is a good timeframe to do that? Matt Hedberg: I would certainly probably depend on the products, but the market generally wants it-- seems to be wanting it sooner than later. Carl Bass: We’ve been looking at considering it seriously, and we’ll talk again a little bit more about this in October [at Autodesk's annual conference for financial analysts] what our plans are. Right now, we have a fair amount of transition going on in the business with the elimination of the upgrades and certainly inspiring people to action. But as we move into next year, we’ll have more to say on that. _ when might you eliminate perpetual sales? [...] the market generally wants it-- seems to be wanting it sooner than later. Now who the heck is this market? Is it a collection of users pressuring for this? (among other (wrong but legal) things?) Matt Hedberg is no user (RBC Capital Markets), he speaks on behalf of (all impersonal) investors and shareholders that each have stakes in the ADSK title, as one of their eggs in their varied baskets of eggs, all calling for one thing, -MORE- (with quite noticably (and quite unsurprisingly) very little concern for whatever implications to the end user if at all). Are there conference calls where users can say.. hey Carl, users cant access their old scenes unless they they commit with the flexible option. So when would you expect that to change? We've been waiting for that. Carl may be a CEO, but it's not like he, along with other executives don't answer to anyone. Responsibility is to shareholders first. (who quite normally, predictably and constantly couldn't care less) But here it's almost like their saying it's time! time for what? well.. the hegemony of the company is at a point where it's (yet) more complete, enough to take advantage of the fact that users (further) don't have much other choice other then to take what the company decides is good for them (once more) (which is actually only (very) 'good' for [ADSK].. and basically (very) bad for anyone else) quote from Carl Bass: Three years from now it will be surprising to me if anybody is really running very much perpetual desktop software. Another quote from Carl said that ideally everything would be on the (controlled) cloud by around that time, being when most of everyone would then essentially be had (by the balls) Three years from now, it will be surprising to me if anybody is really running Autodesk software. (unless the fairly high likelihood of everyone basically becoming screwed (further) comes to
Re: EOL and using older Softimages
Ah, right. Missed the older version part. Thanks for clarifying. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Aug 12, 2014, at 1:17 AM, Eric Turman i.anima...@gmail.com wrote: That was not the case earlier this year when we wanted to rent a 2013 Maya...we were told that only 2014 was available to us. On Aug 11, 2014 9:37 PM, Sergio Mucino sergio.muc...@gmail.com wrote: I guess you could also rent the Maya license for the duration of the project. Renting is a very attractive solution for that particular scenario. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Aug 11, 2014, at 7:59 PM, Martin furik...@gmail.com wrote: If rental is like subscription then you can use previous versions you have bought in the past, so for a newcomer it is as useless as buying it. So what if, hypothetically, I receive an offer to work in Maya 2012 which I don't own and the payment is good enough to invest on it. With the current system my only option is to reject the job so I don't see how Autodesk wins here. Well, another option would be to reject the job and buy Maya 2015 so maybe I can have another opportunity 3 years later. And 4 years later (2019) odds are I'll have a job offer to work in Maya 2015, which I bought but can't use unless my retailer does some special exception. The solution is simple. Don't restrict the previous versions (even if you haven't bought them), and don't give support to 3+ years old versions if that is what you are afraid of, support is not as important as being able to use the software. Autodesk won't lose money because we still need to buy the latest version and keep paying subscriptions. So Autodesk doesn't understand how the industry works, or they just don't give a shit. Martin Sent from my iPhone On 2014/08/12, at 4:07, Jill Ramsay (Contractor) jill.ram...@autodesk.com wrote: Just to be clear, rental is actually Desktop Subscription, which does include the right to use the previous version. Jill -Original Message- Yet the only version you can buy or rent is the latest one, which nobody uses and can't save in previous versions, so it is completely useless for work. winmail.dat
Re: Softimage to Modo
I'll do my best to help you with these... On Aug 6, 2014, at 4:50 PM, Paulo Cesar Duarte paulocdua...@gmail.com wrote: Hello everyone, I'm learning Modo and have some doubts and if anyone can help here goes: 1) How can I work with assets in Modo, Is there any format to work with, like the Models in XSI? Modo does have referencing. It was actually overhauled a lot in 801. I haven't used it at all, so I'm afraid that's as far as I can comment, but you may be able to find more info in the docs. The other way of working with assets is through Assemblies. They can be anything from a node you can use in the schematic, to a full sub-scene with some parameters exposed. They are quite powerful, although the workflow around them still has some wrinkles. They're similar to Houdini's assets. 2) Modo has its own format of particle and geometry cache? For geometry caches, Modo supports MDD caches. Particles can be cached to RAM or disk. The disk format is the same format Realflow uses, if I remember correctly. Alembic is also supported, although the implementation is quite limited at this point (TF decided to focus on FBX first, which they got for 801). 3) Is there a way create and work with animation clips, like in the animation mixer? Not natively at this point. Some 3rd party tools (like ACS) do have similar systems. 4) I don't see anyone using the sculpt system's, it is very limited compared to Zbrush? And can I paint textures in layers? Although not as comprehensive as Zbrush, I have used the sculpting tools in Modo, and have been happy with the results. I'm not a modeler though, so please take my comments with a grain of salt. The Shading Tree is built on a layer paradigm, so just create a new texture layer and paint away every time you need one. 5) In 801 I liked the shading node on the videos I saw, it is a complete system or is complementary to what already exists? It's complimentary to the Shader Tree. Both work quite nicely together, and the node system provides lower-level access to rendering-related functions that I would have expected. 6) Render Passes is complete and customizable or need implementations yet? I haven't used it, but I hear it's quite useful. 7) How many third party renders exist for Modo? At this point, I've only heard rumors of a VRay beta. I know these are many questions, but if anyone can answer some oh these already appreciate. Welcome to Modo, and ask away! I'm sure Tim and others can also offer valuable advice. Cheers! Thank you. Paulo Duarte Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad.
Re: Cinema 4D an option?
I'll be curious Sam. How do you find Modo messy for rigging? Genuine question. Cheers! Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Jul 30, 2014, at 10:18 PM, Sam Bowling sbowl...@cox.net wrote: I’m not so sure this guy is professional but it gives a decent overview of setting up a very basic rig. Looks much better than the mess that you have to deal with in Modo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs8AfIIy6HU From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sam Bowling Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2014 6:32 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: RE: Cinema 4D an option? Just wondering if anyone has done any real character animation in C4D. I bought version 9 when I dumped Lightwave and the character animation tools were pretty much crap (which is why I own Softimage now). I heard they updated them a while back, but I can’t really find any tutorials or even examples that look anything but amateur at best. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Cristobal Infante Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2014 9:26 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Cinema 4D an option? Arnold announced for C4D: http://www.maxon.net/en/news/press-releases/singleview/article/solid-angle-and-maxon-to-reveal-arnold-for-cinema-4d-at-siggraph.html On 16 March 2014 20:06, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Quite sure a lot of things are faster with 7 titans... On 16 March 2014 19:45, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: Another interesting demo with C4D, octane and 7 titans ;). How fast is that! https://vimeo.com/82836433 On Thursday, 13 March 2014, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, Tim Clapham from hellolux has been kind enough to share a code for 50% discount on some of this training in case anyone is interested: use code: softimagetv-c4d learn. Mastering Materials in Cinema4D learn. Idents for Cinema4D: TV learn. Cinema4D Dynamics On 13 March 2014 16:12, Paul Doyle technove...@gmail.com wrote: No idea on the temps - I was talking to them about Fabric stuff a few years back and they were great to work with. I'm sure if you approach them they'll have a formal eval program... On 13 March 2014 12:09, Ed Harriss ed.harr...@sas.com wrote: Regarding the free CC… You are right. But the free version in combination with their 42 day demo will be a good way to test the C4D waters to see if it will indeed be worth buying the full version to add to our pipeline. The plan would be to use the free version to get an understanding of how it works in our environment, then install the demo to see what we are missing. (Even though the demo does still have some limitations.) Good to hear that the C4D guys are passionate/willing to listen. I wonder if they give out temp licenses? ;) That way our evaluation won’t be restricted by the limitations of the demo or the free CC version. Ed From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Paul Doyle Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2014 11:27 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Cinema 4D an option? Just to chime in - I've met a lot of the C4D guys over the past few years and I have to say they are a really impressive, passionate bunch of guys that are investing heavily in their technology. Even if they don't have what you need today, it might be worth contacting them and asking about long-term plans and roadmap. On 13 March 2014 11:18, mark jones markjonescont...@gmail.com wrote: the free CC version doesnt have all the mograph features you'd want to be using. On 13 March 2014 15:1
Re: Softimage is not EOL
Does this even matter? Facts are... 1. Softimage is not available to anyone for purchase anymore 2. Softimage is not actively developed anymore Sure, if you freeze your hardware, OS, and drivers at this point, you'll be able to run Soft for the rest of your life. If that's what you want, be our guest (and I mean this in the best possible way). I'm sure many facilities will operate like that for a while, while looking for a viable alternative. Because at some point, if they intend to remain competitive, they'll have to jump on to something else. I'm still running combustion 4. Because I seldom need it, but it does what I need very well. But I have to deal with a lot of issues when I do. And because my living does not depend on it. If it did, I'd be crazy doing this. My $0.02. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Jul 28, 2014, at 6:05 PM, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.de wrote: There are companies working with Softimage 7.01 today. Thats before the adsk-aquisition in 2008. How many of your projects could potentially be done with a software 8 years ago if not using softimage? I would say none of them. For small or medium sized companies, using softimage maybe all of them. Autodesk keeps software running that is from the early nienties and it runs today. Not because they're developing it. They do not anything to keep it up to date. It's just how the windows platform works. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Alan Fregtman Sent: Monday, July 28, 2014 11:47 PM To: XSI Mailing List Subject: Re: Softimage is not EOL B is inevitable and only a matter of time... Better prepare to switch before the metaphorical door of incompatibility hits you in the face. My $0.02, -- Alan On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 5:35 PM, Jon Swindells jon_swinde...@fastmail.fm wrote: remind us again, what stage of grief is denial ? -- Jon Swindells jon_swinde...@fastmail.fm On Mon, Jul 28, 2014, at 11:55 PM, Sven Constable wrote: Hi list, Some people (Adsk) told me recently that Softimage is EOL. Well, one could argue that the word life in terms of software is ridicilous in the first place. But because I thought about what Softimage is currently as a product, I would like to dive deeper into the subject:) The question is: Is it EOL software or not? Answer: It's not EOL software. It's proprietary software! The definition of EOL software is: A: A software that doesn't fit current production needs. B: A software that doesn't run on todays hardware, so it's no longer usable on your hardware (like SGI or NT software). On the other hand the definition of proprietary software is: A: A software that can accomplish things that are not doable by common (or commercial software), out of the box or in the same timeframe or at the same cost. Companies developing their own inhouse tools to do just that. B: A software that is not available to the public. Think about it and decide on your own. Softimage ist not EOL at all. It'sproprietary software. sven
Re: Maya 2015 Node Editor
Yep, it's called the Node Editor (to make the difference with the Hypergraph and Hypershade). As to improved... Well, I guess you already found out for yourself. It's basically a new look with the same old workflows from 20 years ago (ok, not really... Now you can drag connection wires instead of using the Connection Editor... Yay). Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Jul 15, 2014, at 4:20 AM, Eric Mootz e...@mootzoid.com wrote: Hey guys, Just installed Maya 2015, because I need its SDK to compile some plugins. Out of curiosity I took a look at the new version, especially the node editor. A few weeks ago I heard or read that they had improved the node editor, but from what I saw it is the same unusable piece of crap as before... not even close to the ICE Tree editor in Softimage. Did I miss something?? Is there a new node editor in Maya 2015 or not? Thanks! Eric
Re: Is it realy ?
Max is to big to kill, even for Autodesk. It's the beaten-up, forgotten hen laying (still) the golden eggs. It is my impression Autodesk wants to move all ME accounts towards Maya (since several years ago, to different degrees of success), and make Max the 3D solution for their Archvis and CAD portfolio. It really makes no sense from an engineering/business perspective to have two overlapping applications covering the same space. And Autodesk is ALL about business (they've proved it repeatedly... And I don't mean this in a bad way. They're the most successful company in our industry for a reason, wether we like their methods or not). These efforts have been visible for quite some time. I guess we'll see if this actually happens. One thing is very clear... The message sent by Softimage's demise reached beyond the Softimage community. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Jul 15, 2014, at 8:17 AM, Rob Wuijster r...@casema.nl wrote: Freudian slip?? ;-P Rob \/-\/\/ On 15-7-2014 14:15, Raffaele Fragapane wrote: Parent, not patent, damn autocorrection On 15 Jul 2014 22:14, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Soft had about a tenth of the user base and was facing a market overlap with Maya of nearly 100%. Max has utter dominance in viz and a clear distinction in market and user base, and an obvious waning phase elsewhere. Soft was a product the patent company didn't understand or know how to manage, Max is something the patent company understands probably better than Maya itself. I still have money on it getting requalified and not killed, I don't think the parallel with soft stands. Mind, I have no love for Max and what it represents and I wish it got the axe instead of soft, I have no horse in this race :) On 15 Jul 2014 20:13, Nuno Conceicao nunoalexconcei...@gmail.com wrote: 2 or 3 years ago I was reading similar denial posts about the rumour Softimage demise. This company is profit driven, the signs are already out there, I could come up with arguments for each possibility, the thing is, it depends really on Autodesk plans, imho... On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 11:04 AM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote: I don't think Max offers any unique advantage for arch viz or games. All can be done anywhere else and in my opinion, more efficiently. As much as I'd want that to be true I need to disagree: Max still is hands down the single most efficient application for ArchViz. It comes with a ton of import options, great and fast Spline editing features, good enough proceduralism, a megaton of ready-made assets (Evermotion et al) already set up for different renderers, excellent Vray integration, and ease of use for simple scenes. I wouldn't want to do VFX with it (although some do), but for archviz it's _the_ most cost effective solution by miles. Sent from my iPhone On Jul 15, 2014, at 1:50 PM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: I agree with your Max view, Let's remember that is their core audience, architecture and engineering so killing the software that complements the key product in such a way would be foolish. A different story is that they keep putting VFX goodies on it… that may be very possible.. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 15 Jul 2014, at 08:33, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: The blogger has a really distorted perspective on market, apps and qualities. There's a distinct fanboi smell to the article. I don't think MAX will be terminated in the next couple years, but if I had to bet money, I'd gladly put it on it being massively requalified for viz, and maybe, just maybe, to see an LT version for the indie gaming platform if Maya won't successfully dig that inlet. When you read stuff like This definitely raised a few eyebrows because 3ds Max has typically been known as the go-to app for the game industry You know the guy, like most of DT has been for its entire existence, lives in a reality predating the actual calendar by more than a few years. I do have money with a friend on Mudbox and MoBu not seeing more than another Christmas or two tops though :) -- - Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at - Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3 A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231 www.keyvis.at This email and its attachments are confidential and for the recipient only No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4716 / Virus Database: 3986/7855 - Release Date: 07/15/14
Re: Is it realy ?
True. I know there has been the rare oddball doing Archvis/design with Maya, and few souls would endure such a test. Max is still the king when it comes to managing CAD data and being able to use more artist-friendly workflows on it to deliver visual imagery. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Jul 15, 2014, at 9:08 AM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote: Again I'd love to agree, but nope, it does not. We spent inordinate amounts of time (mostly Eugen) pimping Soft's curve editing features to the point where we felt almost as comfortable as in Max, and it was still not there, let alone raw performance (i.e. loading/displaying 20.000 curves and actually editing them without having to take a coffee break right before and after each edit). Maya is better in the performance compared to Soft, but feature wise, it's also behind Max (including ease of use). And you often need those features to clean up and extrude floor plans and what not, as we still get 2D data from clients, even these days. It comes with a ton of import options, great and fast Spline editing features, good enough proceduralism. Softimage has all of that. So does others like Maya, Modo, Houdini, Blender, C4D etc. As for VRay and Readymade assets I agree, but these are third party stuff not shipped with Max. So I guess you are right partly. -- - Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at - Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3 A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231 www.keyvis.at This email and its attachments are confidential and for the recipient only
Re: Maya 2015 Node Editor
I'm not sure what you mean by with a statement. Can you elaborate? Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Jul 15, 2014, at 3:46 PM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Ooo ! does it have a system for gathering a group of nodes with a statement and moving them around ?, On 15 July 2014 20:25, Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com wrote: Ah that's true! I forgot about that! Good reminder... On 7/15/2014 2:03 PM, Serch Mucino wrote: You can also assign colors to nodes directly in the schematic view (even non-item related nodes, such as math nodes). I would like Modo to color-code sockets by data type. That would be quite useful. Sergio Mucino On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 2:54 PM, Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com wrote: The color coding of nodes in Modo's is very different from ICE's: instead of coding by node type, they inherit the color assigned to the item they represent. So for example, in the Item List, if you select something, right-click, and set the 'Editor Color', the corresponding node(s) will be outlined in that color in the Schematic. It's not like ICE, but it's something at least, so you don't have to stare at a sea of light gray outlines. At the rate they've been improving Modo's schematic over the last couple of versions, I expect cool stuff in the future. -Tim On 7/15/2014 1:45 PM, Sebastien Sterling wrote: Modo's nodes are quite pretty, all they need is a bit of color to identify different components of a tree :), why is no one else doing this ? is it because an ICE trees layout is linear ? so its easier to identify where the beginning and end of things is happening and subsequent color coding ? --
Re: Visual Effects Giants Prime Focus World, Double Negative to Merge
I have to concur (from talks I've had with people that have dealt with PF). This is not good. PF is basically the Walmart of VFX production. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Jun 27, 2014, at 9:17 AM, Andi Farhall hack...@outlook.com wrote: Having been employed at PF for over a decade (until 18 months ago) I can safely say it's a sad day for Dneg. ... http://www.hackneyeffects.com/ https://vimeo.com/user4174293 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andi-farhall/b/496/b21 http://www.flickr.com/photos/lord_hackney/ http://spylon.tumblr.com/ This email and any attachments to it may be confidential and are intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Hackney Effects Ltd. If you are not the intended recipient of this email, you must neither take any action based upon its contents, nor copy or show it to anyone. Please contact the sender if you believe you have received this email in error. From: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 22:46:29 +0100 Subject: RE: Visual Effects Giants Prime Focus World, Double Negative to Merge I guess it makes them a pretty big outfit. Prime Focus are a massive company, but there was rumours it was in difficulties. They recently closed some of the London offices I believe, but someone here will know more - they used/still use Softimage in their commercials department. -Original Message- From: Sebastien Sterling [sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com] Received: Wednesday, 25 Jun 2014, 21:08 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com [softimage@listproc.autodesk.com] Subject: Re: Visual Effects Giants Prime Focus World, Double Negative to Merge Is this good ? I know next to nothing about Prim Focus. On 25 June 2014 20:38, Sofronis Efstathiou sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.ukmailto:sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk wrote: Seems like it’s a day for acquisitions/mergers - http://variety.com/2014/biz/news/prime-focus-double-negative-merge-1201246452/ Sofronis Efstathiou Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Competition Festival Director Computer Animation Academic Group National Centre for Computer Animation Email: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.ukmailto:sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk [http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/Images/QueensAwardLogo.jpg] BU is a Disability Two Ticks Employer and has signed up to the Mindful Employer charter. Information about the accessibility of University buildings can be found on the BU DisabledGo webpageshttp://www.disabledgo.com/en/org/bournemouth-university This email is intended only for the person to whom it is addressed and may contain confidential information. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this email, which must not be copied, distributed or disclosed to any other person. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Bournemouth University or its subsidiary companies. Nor can any contract be formed on behalf of the University or its subsidiary companies via email.
Re: Visual Effects Giants Prime Focus World, Double Negative to Merge
Haha. That would actually be nice, wouldn't it? :-) Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Jun 27, 2014, at 10:03 AM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@hybride.com wrote: So they have an old guy great you at the door every day with a smiley face sticker? On Friday, June 27, 2014 9:39:52 AM, Sergio Mucino wrote: I have to concur (from talks I've had with people that have dealt with PF). This is not good. PF is basically the Walmart of VFX production. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad.
Re: Friday Flashback #175
Oh, man... For some reason, I enjoyed that UI so much... :-) Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Jun 6, 2014, at 2:08 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: What version of Softimage was that – 3.7? Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Stephen Blair Sent: Friday, June 06, 2014 11:01 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Friday Flashback #175 Friday Flashback #175 Old SOFTIMAGE|3D screenshot from 1998 http://wp.me/powV4-32P
Re: Renderman price restructuring
It seems this impression has survived the test of time... This is, AFAIK, outdated. Renderman USED to be like that, but from what I hear (since I haven't used it), Pixar has invested quite a bit in the usability department in the past few years, so it seems to be closer to what other renderers offer out-of-the-box. This is what I hear, at least. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 30, 2014, at 10:45 AM, Manuel Huertas Marchena lito...@hotmail.com wrote: I have mostly experience with arnold mental ray... but I am kind of curious as to why renderman needs so many programmers to make it work smoothly, doesn't it come with a standard/arch shader like other renderers?, why is there that much a need in creating custom shaders for it. I do apologize these might sound obvious to some but I dont have experience with point based renderers as renderman besides a bit of 3dlight which I really liked, especially for disp maps, I only had the chance to use it briefly though... then its been arnold all the way for me.. ...that video looks pretty straight forward to me (meaning that the workflow looks artist friendly) ...but I am pretty there is something more to it that makes renderman complicate... cheers -Manu IMDB | Portfolio | Vimeo | Linkedin Date: Fri, 30 May 2014 16:21:30 +0200 From: hirazib...@live.nl To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Renderman price restructuring Indeed. solidangle could start by actually selling single licenses. This would only be of interest to smaller players, I know, but still The 5 license minimum still appears to be in place (according to their website): For permanent license sales there is a minimum order of 5. We will soon lift this restriction. That soon has been in place for a while now. Greetz Leendert -- Leendert A. Hartog AKA Hirazi Blue Administrator NOT the owner of si-community.com
Re: Maya strengts (anyone?)
+100. Maya has the WORST skinning system I've used in any application, bar none. It's a horrible nightmare to work with it. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 23, 2014, at 2:41 PM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Skinning, my god fix the skinning ! it's not reasonable to have to manually tick which bones you want or don't want to work on. On 23 May 2014 19:23, Mario Reitbauer cont...@marioreitbauer.at wrote: Luc you are still at AD right ? Would love to have an honest answer on that one. Is there any chance to get workflow improvement features actually beeing added into maya in a reasonable time if we report them ? Simple stuff: Flip muscle capsule (if you create your capsules out of a skinned mesh you gonna need that, no idea why it's not there) child- and constraint compensation viewport selection update (this is were maya rly feels clunky, when it comes to just selecting objects or components, if ur interested i would love to tell you why, but i guess you know) working with sets (remove object from set is only possible through diving into that hierachy in a graph ?) This and more are the things which drive me nuts. It's just the small things, not even features. So as long as artists are forced to write scripts for every single task (visibility toggle on a hotkey anyone ? who uses 2 different hotkeys for hiding and showing objects ?) I can't think of too many things which would make maya beeing faster in actual production. 2014-05-23 19:49 GMT+02:00 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com: is EmFluids also a fluids solver or more of a fire and smoke tool ? On 23 May 2014 18:29, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: Doesn't softimage have Lagoa fluids? Matt -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau Sent: Friday, May 23, 2014 7:54 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Maya strengts (anyone?) Fluid was missing from that list IMHO.. and it's not something we have in Softimage. On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 10:11 AM, Leendert A. Hartog hirazib...@live.nl wrote: Oh, I understand fully you can't compare without something to compare with. ;) My interpretation of many of the posts in this thread is that people understandably still primarily compare it to Softimage. My question was where its place was in this post-Softimage world. Which is a tough (maybe even a silly?) question, I understand that. But several posts have answered my question fully... Greetz Leendert
Re: Maya strengts (anyone?)
I'm gonna be with Sebastien on this one. Maya is not stronger than anything in a way worth mentioning. It is the winner if the race for historical reasons, and because the race was rigged (ha... See what I did there? ;-) ). If anything, it is a very open package, but that doesn't get you anything by itself. Maybe, as it was mentioned before, it is the most rounded package. It does everything, and it does it well but at the cost of making you pay in blood for it. Personally, after using Modo, I don't miss Maya for a single second (it was a package I never really liked, to start with... It just allowed me to get my work done much more efficiently than Max). Granted, there are still many things that Modo doesn't do yet, but some of these I can fake (I.e. Muscles), and others are changing rapidly. I'm happier there than having to deal with a package that after strutting for 3 minutes forces me to enter some arcane line of code from the lost books of the Ancients just to add a circle shape to my joint (are you for f real?.). There. Now, back to my usual happy part of the day (the rest of it, with no Maya included) :-) Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 22, 2014, at 6:59 AM, Leendert A. Hartog hirazib...@live.nl wrote: So, absolutely no strengths? Market leader on marketing voodoo alone? Somehow I doubt that... ;) -- Leendert A. Hartog AKA Hirazi Blue Administrator NOT the owner of si-community.com
Re: Maya strengts (anyone?)
I actually thought it was the worst node editor I've used in my life. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 22, 2014, at 8:30 AM, Mario Reitbauer cont...@marioreitbauer.at wrote: I would say after using it a bit. The node editor is acutally something worth using it. 2014-05-22 14:03 GMT+02:00 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com: Are you trying to attain a specific level of generalism ? On 22 May 2014 12:44, Leendert A. Hartog hirazib...@live.nl wrote: Thanks for that... -- Leendert A. Hartog AKA Hirazi Blue Administrator NOT the owner of si-community.com
Re: Maya strengts (anyone?)
BTW, just to clarify... I don't hate Maya per se (ok... I hate it throughout the day... Several times). It is actually a good package (it didn't become the standard in film just for no reason). However, to me, strengths reads as qualities that surpass anything else by an noticeable margin. In that sense, I can't pinpoint any. But then again, that's maybe just due to how I use the application (I'm just the rigging part of the chain). I guess a pipeline TD would maybe have a different opinion. I will add that Maya does scale well, and plays fairly with all the other pipeline apps. Dunno what else to say... There's a lot of available scripts/plugins out there that will help you live through its defects? ( but that can be said for pretty much any application ). Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 22, 2014, at 8:37 AM, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote: A robot a day keeps the doctor away? http://www.cgmeetup.net/home/making-of-the-amazing-spider-man-2-rhino/ blaa ? On 22 May 2014 13:11, Martin furik...@gmail.com wrote: Tough question. Modeling. Nothing really. A few tools that SI lacks like preserve uvs, lock sub components, sculpt tool, some tools that work better, but nothing special. Animation. Nothing either. nCloth, nHair, and muscles may be an strength point but I almost never use them so I can't talk about it. Viewport. Even the old Maya viewport is better than the newest SI one. And this is a big difference when you have to deal with alpha bitmaps, vertex colors and normal maps when you're modeling game assets. Coding. You have access to a lot more places than with SI. But writing in Mel is a nightmare if you write something big, and the Python experience isn't very pleasant but I don't have experience with Pymel. ASCII format. Ignore version option. You can open data in older versions, sometimes. I find this feature a little unreliable since 2012 (or 2013?, can't remember) I can't think about any other big strength, sorry. Oh wait. It isn't dead, and you can find a lot of jobs and users around the world. It isn't a Maya feature but that's the main reason why Maya is the leader. Martin Sent from my iPhone -- - Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at - Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3 A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231 www.keyvis.at This email and its attachments are confidential and for the recipient only
Re: OT: Now that the grief over softimage, how did you get over your it on your daily basis?
Max's tools are mostly built to be productive right out of the box. It's a right-to-the-point application that can also be quite flexible and procedural. The downside is that a lot of stuff in there is so neglected and broken, that it's just sad. You're going to spend some time finding workarounds to things, and learning what's broken and what's not. Also, Max relies a lot on third-party plugins to address lots of its limitations. Be ready to spend some cash on some of those if you want truly first-class quality tools. MAXScript is a very friendly language to learn. Very capable too. Scripting-wise, Max is not of the best applications I've used to date. The scripter is based on SCITE, so it is very nice, and has some great features. Max now also supports Python. I have not used it yet, so I cannot comment there. There is a humongous library of available scripts and tools for free out there. Keep these two links handy... www.scriptspot.com www.maxplugins.de If you want to look into ICE-like development, check out Ephere's Lab tool. It's headed in that direction. Let me know if you have more specific questions. Cheers! Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 22, 2014, at 3:07 PM, Ryan Maguire rpmagu...@gmail.com wrote: How come I don't hear anything about 3dsmax, I have just started learning it ... But I like it more and more each day. Are there huge cons that I should be aware of? Anyone who has extensive experience in max...
Re: Houdini Weaknesses
My personal experience it's that it's not an artist-friendly tool. It's incredibly powerful, but it requires quite a bit of technical knowledge and the learning curve is steep. I know many artists (modelers, animators, environment artists) that the moment you bring up a graph, they start bleeding from the nose. It's hard to avoid these workflows in Houdini. I'm not sure I would solely re a production in Houdini purely for this aspect. However, complimenting it with a more traditional DCC, it'd make up for a killer combo. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 21, 2014, at 3:01 PM, Ed Manning etmth...@gmail.com wrote: For NYC anyway, the main weakness is the small base of trained artists. Then there's the fact that most of them are fairly senior TD-types who charge justifiably high rates, and are either overqualified for most artist-level assignments, or just not character animators since most of the Houdini artists I know are focused on FX and sim work (assuming that Houdini's character animation tools are in fact up to the job). Then there's the relatively high cost of Houdini itself, the lack of Arnold support, the steep learning curve that makes it hard to train anyone but a dedicated staff artist in Houdini... Don't misunderstand -- it's an awesomely powerful tool in the right hands; I wish I had taken the time to learn it years ago. But just as I wouldn't want to run a woodshop that did all of its work using, say, CNC mills and lathes instead of hand tools, I wouldn't want to run a small commercial CG shop with just Houdini. I mean, you *could* do it, and the work could be done at awesome quality, but it would be pretty strange workflow at times and very expensive I think.
Re: Setting up Maya
Hehehehehe. Nice :-) Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 18, 2014, at 3:35 PM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Mel scripts are a great way to customize maya ! cause after spending 5000 grand nothing should make you happier then having to DIY the interface yourself :P More seriously, good Find and nice share Mario, if only for the warning about plugins :) On 17 May 2014 19:44, Leendert A. Hartog hirazib...@live.nl wrote: Okay, thanks. Something to take a closer look at then... Greetz Leendert -- Leendert A. Hartog AKA Hirazi Blue Administrator NOT the owner of si-community.com
Re: Any recent nice new projects using emWhatever?
Eric. I'm not a developer, and I've only been using Modo for less than a year, but it seems there has been some progress on that front. I'd check it out for sure. At least on the Python side of things, things are getting a lot nicer. 801 introduced some new user classes that make it easier to work with the Python API. There's still some holes left to cover, but I like how it's working. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 16, 2014, at 9:29 AM, Eric Mootz e...@mootzoid.com wrote: What kind of plugin do you have in mind? Since version 601 (I think) Modo has an SDK, but it is still lacking documentation and examples, which makes it very difficult to make plugins. I will have a look at the 801 SDK soon to see if it is better now. Am 16.05.2014 14:36, schrieb Sebastien Sterling: Think you might be able to author a plugin for Modo Eric ? or is there platform just not there yet ? On 16 May 2014 12:40, Eric Mootz e...@mootzoid.com wrote: Thanks, rob, that would be great if you could contact them. I will write them an email as well. have been in Maya Jail to pay the rent since then aw, man Am 16.05.2014 13:33, schrieb Rob Chapman: am sure it will be OK but I can fire them an email to double check its cool. emreader was used in Modo to transfer and render everything else except smoke / volume effects yes :) and nothing more recent sadly. have been in Maya Jail to pay the rent since then :( On 16 May 2014 12:13, Eric Mootz e...@mootzoid.com wrote: Hi Rob, Ha, ha, I had completely forgotten about that, shame on me :) emReader was used as well, wasn't it? Any way, will have to put it on my website right away! Do you think it is okay if I embed it on mootzoid.com or should I get back to Walk the Dog just to be sure? Best, Eric Am 16.05.2014 12:03, schrieb Rob Chapman: Hey Eric, did you ever get any credits for this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SovsR4t4_Gg pretty much every smoke effect is emfluid , also emtopolizer was used heavily in the freezing city sequences On 15 May 2014 15:57, Jens Lindgren jens.lindgren@gmail.com wrote: Well, nothing fancy :) RealFlow splashes meshed with emTopolizer and caches using emReader, rendered in Arnold. http://www.magoo3dstudios.com/work/valio/#92132882 /Jens On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 1:03 PM, Eric Mootz e...@mootzoid.com wrote: Hey list, just wanted to ask you guys if, by any chance, somebody made some cool stuff recently using one (or more) of the Mootzoid plugins. I'd like to add some new customer works to my website ;) Thanks! Eric -- Jens Lindgren -- Lead Technical Director Magoo 3D Studios
Re: Any recent nice new projects using emWhatever?
Yes, I know. That's why I mentioned I'm not a (C++) developer :-). I wish I could comment on the SDK, but I can't. I just thought that if the Python API has been seeing some improvements, maybe the SDK has too. In any case, there's quite a few users that seem to know it well in the Modo forums. Maybe they can be of help too. Cheers Eric! Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 16, 2014, at 11:00 AM, Eric Mootz e...@mootzoid.com wrote: Hey Sergio, Good to hear. However I am more interested in the C++ API. Hopefully they improved things there, too! Cheers, Eric Am 16.05.2014 16:44, schrieb Sergio Mucino: Eric. I'm not a developer, and I've only been using Modo for less than a year, but it seems there has been some progress on that front. I'd check it out for sure. At least on the Python side of things, things are getting a lot nicer. 801 introduced some new user classes that make it easier to work with the Python API. There's still some holes left to cover, but I like how it's working. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad.
Re: softimage to modo
Paul, the graph is not creating infinite loops. When I got started with Modo, I also got confused about these weird loops. They are actually not circular dependencies. Modo will not allow this to happen (if you ever accidentally create one, Modo will warn you and undo the action automatically). They're just a visual consequence of how certain tools work. I've actually never created one. All my rigging just goes through what you'd maybe call a more linear flow. I've learned to just accept them as part of Modo's internal referencing system, and let them be (as I said, they are created by some tools, so I just let those tools do what they have to do). No need to panic. Modo's schematic is actually one of the best node-based environments I've had to work with. It doesn't have the depth of ICE (yet), but everything related to dynamics, particles, rigging (Kinematics) and shading is available there. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 7, 2014, at 10:39 AM, Paul Griswold pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com wrote: I wasn't really talking about the example, but instead the way they've decided to set up their connections. It often ends up a spaghetti mess of wires that make circular connections with the wires running behind nodes. I don't see the logic in it. Maybe I just like clean layouts. :-) I'm open to new ideas and ways of doing things, but it just seemed weird that no other node-based system creates these looped connections because infinite loops are bad (I understand they're not really infinite loops, but they visually appear to be) and again, it makes for a very sloppy graph. -Paul ᐧ On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 10:29 AM, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za wrote: Ones mans circular is another mans intuitive. ;) To me I found the example easy to follow and to duplicate and understand what was going on. That begin said a lot of it is down to putting what you are used to on the shelf for a bit and really diving in. It was only once I did that did I understand just how flexible it is. Your never going to innovate if your always trying to put everything in the same container, or doing things the same way. From: Paul Griswold pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com Reply-To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Date: Wednesday 07 May 2014 at 4:22 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: softimage to modo What do you guys think of Modo's nodal deformer layout? I just looked at that growing vine tutorial page and the splash page for the video shows exactly what I personally dislike. Their node connections seem to be really sloppy and IMHO could lead to a confusing mess pretty quickly. They've got connections that make circular loops, so there's no left to right or top to bottom flow like you'd have in pretty much every other node-based system I've used. I mentioned it during Brad's webinar and he kind-of brushed it off, but I find it really distracting. -Paul ᐧ This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary.
Re: softimage to modo
Actually, I find Modo's deformer stack as probably the most powerful I've used to date. Primarily because it's built on a concept that I don't think I've seen anywhere else. It's ability to mix-n-match normalized an Un-normalized deformers at will, and re-order them, is extremely liberating. I'd say its a lot easier to get things to work than within the constraints of a fully normalized system, where you're forced to sometimes really think about how to get thing to blend together to get the effect you need. Less need for coming up with masking mechanisms, blending systems, limiting selections, etc. I'm used to creating complex rigs to do stuff like that. Not having to do so in Modo was unsettling at first, surprising afterwards, a joy now. Modo still lacks a number of deformers I'd like to have. But if TF opens up meshes to the schematic in the same way they've done for transforms, I'll be able to build my own (Modo's schematic is already a sort of visual programming environment. Still in its infancy, but the foundation is solid). Then I don't have to rely on TF to give me more features (one of the reasons why I love Houdini/ICE). Can't wait... Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 7, 2014, at 9:40 AM, Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com wrote: The original question was whether Modo had any kind of modeling history. The answer there is no (not that I've ever needed it either). The bigger issue is that Modo doesn't have 'operators' at all in the Softimage sense. And believe me I miss this from Softimage. I still don't know how I would do something like apply an MDD (deformer), then add modeling operations on top of that (topo change), then add secondary animation on top of that (more deformers)... There are definite limitations. Especially with the demise of Soft, I've been trying to get the Modo devs to see exactly why people like it so much, and the op stack is a major player, not mention a good problem solver. That said Modo is not closed-minded to the notion of stacking operations in a way that lets you edit them later... Its deformer stack is a good example of this, and seems easier and more flexible to me than the equivalent in Softimage. Someone with feet in both apps will have to tell me if I'm wrong here (Sergio? Gideon?). -Tim On 5/6/2014 5:07 PM, Matt Lind wrote: Under general modelling conditions, you're right in that most people just freeze it anyway, but there are workflows that come into play where you must have a construction history to employ. For example, primitive retopology. You may need to do a primitive re-topologize. So you get a polygon mesh grid and shrinkwrap it to the object you want to retopo. Although the shrinkwrap operator has an option to use nearest vertices, you end up with situations where the vertices on the grid collapse and target one or more of the same vertices on the target mesh. No good. To fix the problem you must move the shrinkwrap operator up the stack into the animation region then use the movecomponent tool (or just translate subcomponent) to move the points on the grid until they snap to a different vertex on the target mesh. This works because your movecomponent operation evaluates first, then the shrinkwrap evaluates with the vertex in its current location to find the closest vertex on the target mesh. Simple example, but illustrates the point. Also comes into play with enveloping and corrective weighting. These are the kind of flexible workflows we lose by not having a construction history. Matt
Re: softimage to modo
Well, the growth animation is done in the shading context. I guess the hit could probably be seen in the replicator animation. I guess I'll try it out to see how well Modo handles it. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 7, 2014, at 11:48 AM, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: Mmm Look nice, just wondering how it will react with 3 strands. Le 07/05/2014 17:06, Angus Davidson a écrit : Was in my earlier post http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/tv/training/view.aspx?id=774 ;) From: olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr Reply-To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Date: Wednesday 07 May 2014 at 5:03 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: softimage to modo Hey Paul, can you point me to the video ? Just curious. Le 07/05/2014 16:22, Paul Griswold a écrit : What do you guys think of Modo's nodal deformer layout? I just looked at that growing vine tutorial page and the splash page for the video shows exactly what I personally dislike. Their node connections seem to be really sloppy and IMHO could lead to a confusing mess pretty quickly. They've got connections that make circular loops, so there's no left to right or top to bottom flow like you'd have in pretty much every other node-based system I've used. I mentioned it during Brad's webinar and he kind-of brushed it off, but I find it really distracting. -Paul ᐧ This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary.
Re: softimage to modo
I just discovered the other day that the Edge Bevel tool has some crazy preset profile shapes. My friends doing arch work would love them. Modo also has some very nice precision tools. Piping in Modo looks quite easy. I remember seeing a video somewhere that showed some pretty nice features for it. I'll see if I can dig it up. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 7, 2014, at 1:51 PM, Paul Griswold pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com wrote: NICE! I might buy Modo today just because of that video. I'm in the process of working on a bunch of furniture models I'm dealing with seams, piping, etc.. I've been working in 3D Coat because it's great for organic shapes, but I wasn't really happy with the seams piping (3D Coat's spline tools are clunky IMHO). Thanks for posting that! ᐧ On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 12:12 PM, Steffen Dünner steffen.duen...@gmail.com wrote: The schematic in Modo is becoming more and more powerful. But with great power comes great responsibility! What I mean is, that it's equally important to have tools to cleanup and organize your node graphs as it is to add more features / nodes. What I currently miss most is something like a group comment in ICE or backdrop in Nuke. As well as sticky notes and comments. Tools to easily align / sort multiple nodes at once, tools to get rid of unused nodes etc. But I have high hopes that the Modo dev team gets a hint from the Nuke dev team to help them sort it out. ;) Apart from that I'm already positively shocked by what the schematic can already do. Sometimes it really feels like using the SI Render Tree and ICE Tree in one single tree, where all kinds of nodes can talk to each other. I just discovered that procedural noise textures (and there are a lot of them in Modo) can be used to texture deformers / falloffs. Or take a look here: geometry lookups can directly control shader attributes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzBIO4PPUuInU1RmTEw5OWdYNGc/preview?pli=1 Something I wished for in Softimage for a long time. Cheers Steffen
Re: softimage to modo
I agree. Falloffs in Modo are pretty wild. I haven't done much modeling yet, but the small things I did, just made me realize I have to rethink my modeling methods. I've always been relying on soft selections for most things. Falloffs go way beyond that. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 7, 2014, at 2:27 PM, Steffen Dünner steffen.duen...@gmail.com wrote: 2014-05-07 20:10 GMT+02:00 Sergio Mucino sergio.muc...@gmail.com: I just discovered the other day that the Edge Bevel tool has some crazy preset profile shapes. And whilst talking about recent discoveries: I found that the modeling falloffs (and there are plenty of them, most with artist-friendly visual feedback) are working with all possible tools. This means you can e.g. first define a falloff along edges and then use the bevel tool to get a bevel with variable radius. Or you can use the Edge Weight Tool (for creating crease weights for Pixar SubDs) in combination with falloffs to create creases that slowly fade from hard to soft. Amazing. Especially if you can adjust both, the tool properties AND the falloffs interactively as long as the tool hasn't been dropped. Cheers Steffen -- PGP-ID(RSA): 0xD6E0CE93 Fingerprint: 879F 572C FEE4 9DE5 53A8 3C1C 22A9 C8DE D6E0 CE93
Re: softimage to modo
Modo has a too that I find better than clusters. They're called weight containers. They're basically an item that stores a set of components, and associates weights to them. If you're curious as to how they work, I have a small intro video you could check over here... https://vimeo.com/91349882 I can think of a couple of ways of getting a falloff in the initial weights for the vertices in the container: 1. Just add the vertices to the container, and do a smooth weights on them. 2. Use falloff items to affect the weights I assign to the container. I have not tried this yet, and it'd be a little more involved to set up, but allow a lot of control given the options one has when using falloff items in Modo. In my case, the weighting tools work pretty well for me. There are some things I wish worked better, but there's nothing stopping me yet from getting what I need from the system. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 7, 2014, at 2:57 PM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Can you make soft selection clusters ? like in maya ? for rigging and such ? On 7 May 2014 19:37, Sergio Mucino sergio.muc...@gmail.com wrote: I agree. Falloffs in Modo are pretty wild. I haven't done much modeling yet, but the small things I did, just made me realize I have to rethink my modeling methods. I've always been relying on soft selections for most things. Falloffs go way beyond that. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 7, 2014, at 2:27 PM, Steffen Dünner steffen.duen...@gmail.com wrote: 2014-05-07 20:10 GMT+02:00 Sergio Mucino sergio.muc...@gmail.com: I just discovered the other day that the Edge Bevel tool has some crazy preset profile shapes. And whilst talking about recent discoveries: I found that the modeling falloffs (and there are plenty of them, most with artist-friendly visual feedback) are working with all possible tools. This means you can e.g. first define a falloff along edges and then use the bevel tool to get a bevel with variable radius. Or you can use the Edge Weight Tool (for creating crease weights for Pixar SubDs) in combination with falloffs to create creases that slowly fade from hard to soft. Amazing. Especially if you can adjust both, the tool properties AND the falloffs interactively as long as the tool hasn't been dropped. Cheers Steffen -- PGP-ID(RSA): 0xD6E0CE93 Fingerprint: 879F 572C FEE4 9DE5 53A8 3C1C 22A9 C8DE D6E0 CE93
Re: softimage to modo
In the meantime, disabling Live Deformers in the Weighting tools panel should get weight painting to work in real time. The caveat of course is that the weight changes are only reflected when the mouse button is released. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 7, 2014, at 6:57 PM, Gideon Klindt gideon.kli...@gmail.com wrote: BTW- weight painting is known to be slow- but they are working on it getting much faster. Just something you'll notice coming from SI with it's awesome vector/weight painting tool set IMHO. On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 3:56 PM, Gideon Klindt gideon.kli...@gmail.com wrote: Yes- make sure to check out the vids here as even some of the old ones have good tips. Kind of like the Vast training was for XSI (came in shoe box on disks): http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/tv/training/ There is a searchable database version done by a user. Not sure how up to date it is but might help (along with his thread). http://eglomot.marc-albrecht.de/ http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/topic.aspx?f=36t=80320 I recommend Richard Yot's first video as well. Some of the lighting tips are probably known to many, but he has several videos that go into some depth about sampling etc. in Modo fairly well: http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/store/rendering/interiors/ The decoupled shading rate in MODO is actually a powerful feature in rendering if you know how to use it. Too many people turn first to AA and miss the point. On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 9:30 PM, activemotionpictu...@yahoo.com activemotionpictu...@yahoo.com wrote: I agree: you should start first with your mindset to: wrap head around concepts. Pivots and centers were kinda hard to digest (in xsi we just move center to vertices and voilá) but this jus an aspect to keep in mind... after a while of watching intro seminar to modo 701 and other 1hour videos, other references to the same tools will give you confidence. Then fire up the software and mingle around. Then texture, then light, then uvs, then materials, then render settings, then morphs, then weights, then particles, then hair, then constraints, then bones and binding, volume effects and then everything else..like drivers, channels, schematics and more cool in depth stuff... That's the order I've followed for the past 3 months. What really got me into modo is the community and the video stream presentations. I've thought: these guys are not talking like robots..they love what they do, just like us in softimage. But yes, living without a history stack makes your concious guilty sometimes. Hehheh. Cheers. David R. Enviado desde Yahoo Mail en Android From: Steffen Dünner steffen.duen...@gmail.com; To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com; Subject: Re: softimage to modo Sent: Tue, May 6, 2014 3:52:58 PM Yes, we have. And we're digging it more and more each day. My hint would be: Watch tutorials first! Especially about the shader tree, decoupled shading, the principle of items and the way you can copypaste polys, edges, vertices etc. in and out of them and the tool pipeline stuff. Don't open up Modo and start clicking around. You will likely be disturbed and disappointed, because many things work differently. But these are the things that will make you love Modo in a few days ;) Cheers Steffen 2014-05-06 17:40 GMT+02:00 Francisco Criado malcriad...@gmail.com: Hi guys, anyone already started using modo? first impressions or tips coming from soft? received our licenses today and soon starting to migrate...any tips from si users are more than welcome! F. -- PGP-ID(RSA): 0xD6E0CE93 Fingerprint: 879F 572C FEE4 9DE5 53A8 3C1C 22A9 C8DE D6E0 CE93 -- Gideon D. Klindt gideonklindt.com -- Gideon D. Klindt gideonklindt.com
Re: softimage to modo
No problem! Hopefully, this will be improved in the (near) future. Cheers! Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 7, 2014, at 10:40 PM, Gideon Klindt gideon.kli...@gmail.com wrote: Good to know on the weight painting Sergio, but too bad given that often you want to effect weights when a deformation is occurring on a joint. Still, it does work and brings back some speed so thank you very much for the tip! On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 5:38 PM, Sergio Mucino sergio.muc...@gmail.com wrote: In the meantime, disabling Live Deformers in the Weighting tools panel should get weight painting to work in real time. The caveat of course is that the weight changes are only reflected when the mouse button is released. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 7, 2014, at 6:57 PM, Gideon Klindt gideon.kli...@gmail.com wrote: BTW- weight painting is known to be slow- but they are working on it getting much faster. Just something you'll notice coming from SI with it's awesome vector/weight painting tool set IMHO. On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 3:56 PM, Gideon Klindt gideon.kli...@gmail.com wrote: Yes- make sure to check out the vids here as even some of the old ones have good tips. Kind of like the Vast training was for XSI (came in shoe box on disks): http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/tv/training/ There is a searchable database version done by a user. Not sure how up to date it is but might help (along with his thread). http://eglomot.marc-albrecht.de/ http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/topic.aspx?f=36t=80320 I recommend Richard Yot's first video as well. Some of the lighting tips are probably known to many, but he has several videos that go into some depth about sampling etc. in Modo fairly well: http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/store/rendering/interiors/ The decoupled shading rate in MODO is actually a powerful feature in rendering if you know how to use it. Too many people turn first to AA and miss the point. On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 9:30 PM, activemotionpictu...@yahoo.com activemotionpictu...@yahoo.com wrote: I agree: you should start first with your mindset to: wrap head around concepts. Pivots and centers were kinda hard to digest (in xsi we just move center to vertices and voilá) but this jus an aspect to keep in mind... after a while of watching intro seminar to modo 701 and other 1hour videos, other references to the same tools will give you confidence. Then fire up the software and mingle around. Then texture, then light, then uvs, then materials, then render settings, then morphs, then weights, then particles, then hair, then constraints, then bones and binding, volume effects and then everything else..like drivers, channels, schematics and more cool in depth stuff... That's the order I've followed for the past 3 months. What really got me into modo is the community and the video stream presentations. I've thought: these guys are not talking like robots..they love what they do, just like us in softimage. But yes, living without a history stack makes your concious guilty sometimes. Hehheh. Cheers. David R. Enviado desde Yahoo Mail en Android From: Steffen Dünner steffen.duen...@gmail.com; To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com; Subject: Re: softimage to modo Sent: Tue, May 6, 2014 3:52:58 PM Yes, we have. And we're digging it more and more each day. My hint would be: Watch tutorials first! Especially about the shader tree, decoupled shading, the principle of items and the way you can copypaste polys, edges, vertices etc. in and out of them and the tool pipeline stuff. Don't open up Modo and start clicking around. You will likely be disturbed and disappointed, because many things work differently. But these are the things that will make you love Modo in a few days ;) Cheers Steffen 2014-05-06 17:40 GMT+02:00 Francisco Criado malcriad...@gmail.com: Hi guys, anyone already started using modo? first impressions or tips coming from soft? received our licenses today and soon starting to migrate...any tips from si users are more than welcome! F. -- PGP-ID(RSA): 0xD6E0CE93 Fingerprint: 879F 572C FEE4 9DE5 53A8 3C1C 22A9 C8DE D6E0 CE93 -- Gideon D. Klindt gideonklindt.com -- Gideon D. Klindt gideonklindt.com -- Gideon D. Klindt gideonklindt.com
Re: softimage to modo
I've been using it for rigging for a while now. Are you particularly interested in something? Cheers! P.S. Start by going to your System/Preferences dialog, do perform the following... * In Defaults/Application, set Item Selection Type to Item. Set the Item Index Style to whatever you prefer to use (I use Item_2). * In Defaults/Auto-Save, set the Time Interval to whatever feels best for you (I've got it set to 15 minutes, but for more complex files I'd probably set it to 30), and the number of revisions to at least 3. * In the Display/OpenGL section, set Viewport Rotation/Trackball Rotation to Off (feel free to experiment with it on though... Some people like it, but I just felt like it forced me to drag the mouse more than I needed). * In the Input/Remapping section, set the Mouse Input Presets to Softimage XSI (I personally use the Maya preset, only because that's what I've used for a while now in many applications, including Softimage). * In the Input/Units section, set the Default Unit to whatever you'll need to use (keep in mind Modo uses real-world units for dynamics and rendering). If you're using 801, watch the following video to know how to set Modo's color preferences to work in linear space for different outputs. http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/tv/training/view.aspx?id=776 And get an account in the Modo forums so you can ask any questions you need. Everyone there is quite friendly, and there are several SI users already mingling around. Hope this helps! Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 6, 2014, at 11:40 AM, Francisco Criado malcriad...@gmail.com wrote: Hi guys, anyone already started using modo? first impressions or tips coming from soft? received our licenses today and soon starting to migrate...any tips from si users are more than welcome! F.
Re: softimage to modo
Unfortunately, my time with Softimage was rather brief, and is only got to know well the rigging tools and ICE. I'm not sure I could be of help for anything else. However, I'll definitely keep this in mind for those areas. Thanks for the vote of confidence! Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 6, 2014, at 12:10 PM, Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com wrote: Sergio, you should do a video, or a series of videos, on this and other workflows... -Tim On 5/6/2014 10:55 AM, Sergio Mucino wrote: I've been using it for rigging for a while now. Are you particularly interested in something? Cheers! P.S. Start by going to your System/Preferences dialog, do perform the following... * In Defaults/Application, set Item Selection Type to Item. Set the Item Index Style to whatever you prefer to use (I use Item_2). * In Defaults/Auto-Save, set the Time Interval to whatever feels best for you (I've got it set to 15 minutes, but for more complex files I'd probably set it to 30), and the number of revisions to at least 3. * In the Display/OpenGL section, set Viewport Rotation/Trackball Rotation to Off (feel free to experiment with it on though... Some people like it, but I just felt like it forced me to drag the mouse more than I needed). * In the Input/Remapping section, set the Mouse Input Presets to Softimage XSI (I personally use the Maya preset, only because that's what I've used for a while now in many applications, including Softimage). * In the Input/Units section, set the Default Unit to whatever you'll need to use (keep in mind Modo uses real-world units for dynamics and rendering). If you're using 801, watch the following video to know how to set Modo's color preferences to work in linear space for different outputs. http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/tv/training/view.aspx?id=776 And get an account in the Modo forums so you can ask any questions you need. Everyone there is quite friendly, and there are several SI users already mingling around. Hope this helps! Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 6, 2014, at 11:40 AM, Francisco Criado malcriad...@gmail.com wrote: Hi guys, anyone already started using modo? first impressions or tips coming from soft? received our licenses today and soon starting to migrate...any tips from si users are more than welcome! F. --
Re: softimage to modo
P.S. Maybe I can do something about general application concepts and stuff like that... Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 6, 2014, at 12:10 PM, Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com wrote: Sergio, you should do a video, or a series of videos, on this and other workflows... -Tim On 5/6/2014 10:55 AM, Sergio Mucino wrote: I've been using it for rigging for a while now. Are you particularly interested in something? Cheers! P.S. Start by going to your System/Preferences dialog, do perform the following... * In Defaults/Application, set Item Selection Type to Item. Set the Item Index Style to whatever you prefer to use (I use Item_2). * In Defaults/Auto-Save, set the Time Interval to whatever feels best for you (I've got it set to 15 minutes, but for more complex files I'd probably set it to 30), and the number of revisions to at least 3. * In the Display/OpenGL section, set Viewport Rotation/Trackball Rotation to Off (feel free to experiment with it on though... Some people like it, but I just felt like it forced me to drag the mouse more than I needed). * In the Input/Remapping section, set the Mouse Input Presets to Softimage XSI (I personally use the Maya preset, only because that's what I've used for a while now in many applications, including Softimage). * In the Input/Units section, set the Default Unit to whatever you'll need to use (keep in mind Modo uses real-world units for dynamics and rendering). If you're using 801, watch the following video to know how to set Modo's color preferences to work in linear space for different outputs. http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/tv/training/view.aspx?id=776 And get an account in the Modo forums so you can ask any questions you need. Everyone there is quite friendly, and there are several SI users already mingling around. Hope this helps! Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 6, 2014, at 11:40 AM, Francisco Criado malcriad...@gmail.com wrote: Hi guys, anyone already started using modo? first impressions or tips coming from soft? received our licenses today and soon starting to migrate...any tips from si users are more than welcome! F. --
Re: softimage to modo
Honestly, I hasn't been a deal breaker for me. I found that I used the history during modeling a lot less than I initially thought so (in applications that have it), and always end up deleting it. For animation, I do think I'd need it, but if Modo has been capable of delivering animations without it, it must just mean that it's done in a different way. So far, I've just been rigging with it, but I'll jump into more stuff soon, so I'll see how much I actually need it. I'm not closed to re-learning how to do things. It's just a matter of seeing how difficult they actually become, I guess. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 6, 2014, at 5:23 PM, David Saber davidsa...@sfr.fr wrote: Ouch Deal breaker. No history in Modo, no history in C4D, that leaves us... On 2014-05-06 21:16, Tim Crowson wrote: Nope, you're not doing anything wrong... there is no modeling history of any kind in Modo. -Tim
Re: softimage to modo
I understand what you're saying Matt. My point is, though, that there may be ways in Modo of accomplishing the same tasks that do not rely on the existence of a modeling history I'm not undervaluing its presence, just merely stating that there might be other ways of getting there. After switching applications quite a few times, I've stopped thinking about tools, and focusing mostly on tasks. Of course, I have come to roadblocks from time to time, but you learn to drive (or sometimes, chew) your way around/through them. My $0.02... Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 6, 2014, at 6:07 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: Under general modelling conditions, you're right in that most people just freeze it anyway, but there are workflows that come into play where you must have a construction history to employ. For example, primitive retopology. You may need to do a primitive re-topologize. So you get a polygon mesh grid and shrinkwrap it to the object you want to retopo. Although the shrinkwrap operator has an option to use nearest vertices, you end up with situations where the vertices on the grid collapse and target one or more of the same vertices on the target mesh. No good. To fix the problem you must move the shrinkwrap operator up the stack into the animation region then use the movecomponent tool (or just translate subcomponent) to move the points on the grid until they snap to a different vertex on the target mesh. This works because your movecomponent operation evaluates first, then the shrinkwrap evaluates with the vertex in its current location to find the closest vertex on the target mesh. Simple example, but illustrates the point. Also comes into play with enveloping and corrective weighting. These are the kind of flexible workflows we lose by not having a construction history. Matt -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sergio Mucino Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2014 2:57 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: softimage to modo Honestly, I hasn't been a deal breaker for me. I found that I used the history during modeling a lot less than I initially thought so (in applications that have it), and always end up deleting it. For animation, I do think I'd need it, but if Modo has been capable of delivering animations without it, it must just mean that it's done in a different way. So far, I've just been rigging with it, but I'll jump into more stuff soon, so I'll see how much I actually need it. I'm not closed to re-learning how to do things. It's just a matter of seeing how difficult they actually become, I guess. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 6, 2014, at 5:23 PM, David Saber davidsa...@sfr.fr wrote: Ouch Deal breaker. No history in Modo, no history in C4D, that leaves us... On 2014-05-06 21:16, Tim Crowson wrote: Nope, you're not doing anything wrong... there is no modeling history of any kind in Modo. -Tim
Re: Torn
that eventually made me stop using Lightwave in the first place. It’s also inconsistent, for example if you select an edge and chose bevel, it bevels it, but if you select a polygon and chose bevel it does and extrude with an inset… Completely different behavior. Then there are redundant tools like scale and uniform scale, which seem to do the exact same thing. And rotate and axis rotate, which seems to be pretty much the same thing, except the axis rotate only work son one axis and rotates around wherever you click. Why not just move your center and use the rotate tool? I also noticed while messing with bevels and rounded edges is that dragging on the numeric entry arrows (you know, the little arrows you drag to increase the numbers instead of typing them in), is terrible. There is ZERO feedback on how many edges you have added until you let go. I did this on a model that couldn’t have had more than 100 edges, but because there was no feedback on the round level as I drug the little arrow thing around when I let go I had a value of 80 for the round level and it completely locked the program up for so long I finally had to kill it. On many of the tools, there is ZERO visual feedback when using the number arrow things (on tools such as extrude) until you hit apply. Select a polygon and hit extrude and when you drag on the little arrow widget thing the numbers increase of decrease, but nothing moves un the viewport until you hit apply! What is this 1990? Why can’t this program display the changes that are happening when I adjust the numeric values for the extrude? To make things even worse, when switching between quad view and a single view of any of the viewports the framing changes. Frame up and object while in quad view so it fills all the viewports and then switch any of them to a single view (0 on the num pad) and you now have tons of room around the objects. If you frame it up in a single view and switch to quad, the everything that was near the edge of the viewport is now outside of the view. It gets even worse though, because your zoom setting for all the iso views are connected. Zoom in in the top and you are zooming in in the front and side view.. Why? Oh, and I just noticed it does the same when panning in the ISO views… WHY? This is terrible! While I’m talking about views, is it just me or is there way too much lens distortion/fisheye in the perspective views compared to … pretty much every other 3d program out there? Maybe It’s accurate for a camera, but it really suck when you are trying to model something like a human head when the perspective seems to change as you get closer to the model. I’ve never had an issue with this in any other 3d programs, but I remember having issues with it when I used the program years ago and I noticed it right away when using 701 and it’s really bugging me again. I am seriously getting angry about this. This is one of the youngest 3d programs out, these guys had the opportunity to look at all the existing programs like XSI, Maya and MAX and what did they do? They made a slightly better version of the Lightwave interface. They based this new Next-Gen 3d program off of one of the WORST UI’s in the 3d industry and from what I can see didn’t even bother looking at any of the other programs out there other than maybe a feature list. Sure that have all these gee-whiz features, but the part of the program you deal with to get anything done is just crap. I am completely disgusted by how poorly thought out this program really is. It’s really sickening. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sergio Mucino Sent: Friday, May 02, 2014 6:58 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Torn Hi Sam. In the spirit of fairness, I just wanted to add some info to your observations regarding Modo. You can snap your rotations by holding down the CTRL key. This should help you achieve precise values. Snaps are turned on and off using F11. No need to fool around with menus. You can change the snap type from the snaps popup, but that's only required when changing what you're snapping to. You can also map your favorite snaps to hotkeys using commands. Granted, it's not as out-of-the-box as SI or Maya, but it can be done. I, for one, prefer the different layouts. It's nice for me to be able to focus on different things and have the tools I need at hand. There's someone who developed an alternate UI (google Cadjunkie Zen)... I have yet to try it, but it looks extremely clean and focused. I'll give it a shot soon. Regarding bones, I guess the main difference is that Modo doesn't use bones (like SI)... It uses joints (like Maya). There are fundamental differences between both, so proper joint orientation is paramount. The same has to be done in Maya (actually, Michael Comet's
Re: Torn
Hi Sam. In the spirit of fairness, I just wanted to add some info to your observations regarding Modo. You can snap your rotations by holding down the CTRL key. This should help you achieve precise values. Snaps are turned on and off using F11. No need to fool around with menus. You can change the snap type from the snaps popup, but that's only required when changing what you're snapping to. You can also map your favorite snaps to hotkeys using commands. Granted, it's not as out-of-the-box as SI or Maya, but it can be done. I, for one, prefer the different layouts. It's nice for me to be able to focus on different things and have the tools I need at hand. There's someone who developed an alternate UI (google Cadjunkie Zen)... I have yet to try it, but it looks extremely clean and focused. I'll give it a shot soon. Regarding bones, I guess the main difference is that Modo doesn't use bones (like SI)... It uses joints (like Maya). There are fundamental differences between both, so proper joint orientation is paramount. The same has to be done in Maya (actually, Michael Comet's tools come in really handy for these tasks). It's fine if you didn't agree with Modo. We all have our preferred way of working (I didn't agree with Lightwave at the time I tried it, which was like 18 years ago). I just wanted to add this info for the benefit of those looking around at options and thinking of giving Modo a go. I can't comment on Blender, since I have yet to get my hands dirty with it. Cheers! Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 2, 2014, at 1:24 AM, Sam Bowling sbowl...@cox.net wrote: I’ve been looking around at alternatives to Softimage and not having any luck. Modo have some great features, but the interface is just crap. There are way too many different layouts for things that should mostly be done in one or maybe 2 different layouts. Things like snapping rotations (or snapping in general) seem to require you to click checkboxes or be enabled in other menus where in Softimage, you can just hold down a modifier key to enable most of those functions without dropping your current tool. Modo seems full of tons of one use tools, whereas in Softimage I have a few tools that I use most of the time that cover 99% of what I need to do. I was looking up rigging in Modo the other day and it’s a mess. After you draw out you bones you have to go in manually and correct all your individual joint rotations so they work correctly. In the amount of time the guy built a basic spine I could have had the entire character skeleton done in Softimage with working IK. After massing with Modo for a short time I usually give up in frustration at the terribly slow and clunky interface. Sure I could probably get used to it in time and be productive, but why should I have to settle for such and inferior and slow UI and workflow. The whole layer based approach to modeling makes me want to punch kittens. I also tried Blender which seems to get a lot of praise because it is free and has all these gee-whiz features, but again, the interface on that program is horrid. Sure it’s better than the old one, but it’s still terrible. Also, all the development seems to be on these qee-whiz features and some things like beveling are mostly useless. This is one of the problems with open source programs, no one wants to write the simple mundane features, they would rather write the big flashy features so they can brag about them and the simple tools get left unfinished, on never even added. When I initially switched from lightwave to Softimage, everything was just amazing. The workflow was amazing, the documentation and tutorials were some of the best I’d ever seen at the time (these have both declined since Autodesk took over). Being able to get help with a tool by hitting F1 while in the tool and having the help open to the information for that tool was just amazing. Being able to crate basic tools or automat repetitive tasks by just copying from the history to the script editor was great and allowed me to do things I could never have done with my meager scripting abilities. All the things that make Softimage a great tool have been in there for years most of them since V4 or 5 which was the time I started using it. It’s just mind boggling that there really isn’t another program out there that even comes close to workflow and ease of use that Softimage has had for years. Where I work I do 3d animation part time, sometimes not using Softimage for weeks, and it’s great that Softimage has such a great interface where I can still find even the most rarely used tool without spending tons of time searching for it. With Modo I have trouble finding tools I used 5 minutes ago. So I’m probably going to be sticking with Softimage for quite some time. On a side note, it looks like Autodesk is putting even less effort into developing Mudbox than it
Re: Torn
This is quite true. Depending on what you actually intend to achieve, it may affect your decision. Even though I lean a lot more towards the technical side of things, I needed a software package that would be able to do pretty much everything. I jumped on Modo several months ago, and I've been quite comfortable with it. I've actually started duplicating in Modo some ICE compounds and nodes I used often. I think I'm pretty much set with Modo at this point. I also do some stuff in Houdini, and will eventually get into Blender and see what I can do with it. Looks like this would be the solution for me. I do expect tighter integration between Modo and the rest of The Foundry's portfolio to make things nicer in the future. I've also heard great things about C4D. I guess downloading the demos for all the apps that interest you and doing some tutorials will give you a better idea of how they feel. After all, you've still got two years to figure out where to go. Good luck! Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On May 1, 2014, at 7:54 AM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: the question is what is your area of expretese what do you wanna do, are you cahracter animator, effects guy, simulations cloth, lighting rendering.. al full generalist and wanna deliver final product from modeling to final rendering. that can help out choosing On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 1:07 PM, Chris Marshall chrismarshal...@gmail.com wrote: I'm still struggling. There's a lot to take on board.
Re: Modo 801 Reveal
The new feature videos are up at TF's website. There's so much that was not shown, due to time restrictions... Oh, well... Enjoy! Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Apr 25, 2014, at 9:34 AM, Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com wrote: AWESOME. I am very impressed with what I have seen so far. On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 3:04 AM, Jon Swindells jon_swinde...@fastmail.fm wrote: Stream is on replay for those that missed it - needs a foundry login http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/modo801live/stream/ -- Jon Swindells jon_swinde...@fastmail.fm On Fri, Apr 25, 2014, at 09:03 AM, Angus Davidson wrote: Firstly it was definitely worth waking up at 3:45am to see. Brad doing a captain america live action improv while waiting for the screen to be sorted out was great. For me the two things of interest are time spacing bar. That is such an amazing teaching tool right there. One of my bugbears in Modo 701 is the shader system. I don’t like it. 5 Minutes of playing with the new Node based shader tree in 801 and I am in heaven ;) Have a look at http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/modo/latest-version/ This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary.
Re: Softimage to Modo - Modo 801 global Launch
I haven't put it through its paces, but I do know the Modo renderer is more than capable. I think most requests of this kind come from familiarity. VRay users want to keep using VRay, because they're familiar with it, and want to hit the ground up and running. I totally understand that. However, for those working OOTB, I think Modo will prove up to the task. I'll have to try it out myself... Soon :-). Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Apr 25, 2014, at 3:47 PM, Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com wrote: I hear a lot of requests for 3rd party rendering in modo, what are the limitations of modo's render engine that have people looking for other render engines? Does it not scale well? I would love to know its drawbacks. I have seen nothing but impressive images and demos from modo, but the only thing keeping me from digging into it was the lack of nodes. I love me some Arnold, but I also like the the idea of filling up our farm with modo licenses for a fraction of the cost. On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 2:38 PM, David Rivera activemotionpictu...@yahoo.com wrote: Yes you can. Basically anyone comming from the 2d animation world would be glad with this. I keep saying: Southpark with revamp worflow for 3D. David Rivera 3D Compositor/Animator LinkedIN Behance VFX Reel On Friday, April 25, 2014 2:23 PM, Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com wrote: I am assuming you can off set keys afterward? If not, it would be too limiting. On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 1:17 PM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: But is it a completely parallel system to curves ? or can you tweak curves later ? not sure how this would work with gimble otherwise, unless you keyframe it into the ground. On 25 April 2014 18:40, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: The difference imho is equivalent to modelling pulling vertices to zbrush sculpting. It is the state of mind in which you start thinking about poses, blocking, refinement of animation as a sequence of clear steps rather than a soup of keyframes. In the sense that an animator does not need to open an curve and worry about slopes but only timing and pose, this is imho a completely revamp of how things should be done and I would bet money if you put a true animator (2d trained with years of experience) the result till blow you mind. My God I have been waiting for this… Finally! It is clear the combination for me is modo+houdini… Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 25 Apr 2014, at 18:20, Norbert Kiehne softim...@norbert-kiehne.de wrote: Hmmm, maybe I am missing something here, but what is the difference to selecting all your controls and using the dopesheet or meta curve region/ animation editor to change the timing and spacing of your animation? On 25.04.2014 18:56, Jordi Bares wrote: I would say this is a game changer, just give it to a _real_ character animator (traditionally trained) and I would bet you the output will be amazing. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 25 Apr 2014, at 17:43, David Rivera activemotionpictu...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi, I recorded some of the webinar launch. Around minute 7 you´ll see the new animation worflow in Modo 801. IMHO, this is what I´ve always wanted as 2D/3D animator. Anyone thinking south park 2D and regular 3D animation with this workflow? Modo801 - New Animation worflow ps: video is just uploading. Should be up around 15 more mins. Modo801 - New Animation worflow View on youtu.be Preview by Yahoo David Rivera 3D Compositor/Animator LinkedIN Behance VFX Reel -- Norbert Kiehne Senior 3D Artist
Re: Softimage to MODO - Forum participation?
Saw your post in the Modo forums. Mine is located here...
C:\Users\{userName}\AppData\Roaming\Luxology
Should be called MODO701.CFG. Just trash it and you should be good to go.
Sergio Muciño.
Sent from my iPad.
On Apr 23, 2014, at 11:47 PM, Sebastien Sterling
sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote:
i'm trying to reset mine to factory default but there is no
\AppData\Roaming\Luxology\ and no MODO701.CFG (the equivalent of maya
presets) to be found, i don't understand :(
On 24 April 2014 04:35, Sergio Mucino sergio.muc...@gmail.com wrote:
I've been rigging in Modo quite a bit lately. Let me know if I can help you
with anything. And yes, you can just create an account for the forums
without a license.
Sergio Muciño.
Sent from my iPad.
On Apr 23, 2014, at 10:47 PM, Ben Rogall xsi_l...@shaders.moederogall.com
wrote:
I think you can just go to the main forum page and click Create Account
at the upper right. I've used Modo, but not for character animation.
Ben
On 4/23/2014 8:35 PM, David Rivera wrote:
Hello, Ï´m curious if anyone has had already downloaded the Modo-15-day
trial?
I´d like to ask some questions regarding all the videos around youtube
about character setup / joints to modo.
So I don´t know if there´s a way to register as a Foundry community user
of the forum without a modo serial?
To my understanding one must buy a Modo licence in order to partcipate in
the forums.
Anyone knows how one can register to the Modo forums at the Foundry
community?
Thanks.
David Rivera
3D Compositor/Animator
LinkedIN
Behance
VFX Reel
Re: my first experiment with rigging in Houdini :-))))
There are some of us that do know Modo, so if there's anything you'd like to know, just shoot. Will do our best to provide answers. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Apr 23, 2014, at 5:26 PM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: I hope I am not boring anyone, at the end of the day my intention is to demystify what so many people have come to learn Houdini is, if I knew more Modo I would be in a position to comment but unfortunately that is not he case. In the meantime I am more than happy to help if you have questions. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 23 Apr 2014, at 21:40, David Saber davidsa...@sfr.fr wrote: Thanks Jordi, I didn't have time to try Houdini yet, but I'm already enthusiast thanks to your posts!
Re: my first experiment with rigging in Houdini :-))))
I agree. Awesome work man. Really. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Apr 23, 2014, at 6:27 PM, Sylvain Lebeau s...@shedmtl.com wrote: Please! Keep hem comming Jordi! ... thanks for sharring sly Sylvain Lebeau // SHED V-P/Visual effects supervisor 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8 T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM am.png VFX Curriculum 03: Compositing Basics mail to: s...@shedmtl.com On Apr 23, 2014, at 5:26 PM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: I hope I am not boring anyone, at the end of the day my intention is to demystify what so many people have come to learn Houdini is, if I knew more Modo I would be in a position to comment but unfortunately that is not he case. In the meantime I am more than happy to help if you have questions. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 23 Apr 2014, at 21:40, David Saber davidsa...@sfr.fr wrote: Thanks Jordi, I didn't have time to try Houdini yet, but I'm already enthusiast thanks to your posts!
Re: Softimage to MODO - Forum participation?
I've been rigging in Modo quite a bit lately. Let me know if I can help you with anything. And yes, you can just create an account for the forums without a license. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Apr 23, 2014, at 10:47 PM, Ben Rogall xsi_l...@shaders.moederogall.com wrote: I think you can just go to the main forum page and click Create Account at the upper right. I've used Modo, but not for character animation. Ben On 4/23/2014 8:35 PM, David Rivera wrote: Hello, Ï´m curious if anyone has had already downloaded the Modo-15-day trial? I´d like to ask some questions regarding all the videos around youtube about character setup / joints to modo. So I don´t know if there´s a way to register as a Foundry community user of the forum without a modo serial? To my understanding one must buy a Modo licence in order to partcipate in the forums. Anyone knows how one can register to the Modo forums at the Foundry community? Thanks. David Rivera 3D Compositor/Animator LinkedIN Behance VFX Reel
Re: MODO webinar for Softimage Users - tomorrow, April 3 - Register here...
I think Tim mentioned it may be offered again at a later date. I hope they'd try to accommodate those who couldn't make it due to scheduling reasons. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Apr 3, 2014, at 10:54 AM, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.com wrote: I see, thanks for answering. I can't really understand the decisions software companies are taking lately. Well, I guess I'll miss this webinar. Martin On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 11:46 PM, Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com wrote: Not my call... just passing along the answer to the question... On 4/3/2014 9:35 AM, Martin Yara wrote: I understand if they don't want to use their bandwidth to offer a recorded version. But what is the problem in being re-brocasted? It could reach more users specially for those who can't watch it live for N reasons, and increment the chances of having new modo users. If it isn't a paid webinar then I don't really get this transparency ? . If the point is to gain modo users and sell more seats, The Foundry should be more than glad if this seminar is rebrocasted all around the globe without using their bandwidth. Martin
Re: MODO webinar for Softimage Users - tomorrow, April 3 - Register here...
In the spirit of not leaving the rest in the blank, Brad showed lots of features of Modo that a lot of people were not aware of. He demoed some of the modeling tools, Mesh Fusion, texturing, some rigging, talked about pipeline, referencing, particles, etc. It was an overview of Modo, showing how Modo can do a lot more than just model and render (which is the general notion of what Modo is). Long presentation too, but I don't think anyone wanted to leave. :-) Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Apr 3, 2014, at 4:57 PM, Artur Woźniak artur.w...@gmail.com wrote: Seriously, Brad asked to keep some of the things quiet for now, so please honor it. 2014-04-03 22:56 GMT+02:00 Artur Woźniak artur.w...@gmail.com: Well, maybe not 801 cause it will be a feature installment so some bugs will be expected but later on. Oh my. Artur 2014-04-03 22:53 GMT+02:00 Ognjen Vukovic ognj...@gmail.com: After watching the webinar, im quite certain that 801 will probably blast people out of their shoes. On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 10:48 PM, Artur Woźniak artur.w...@gmail.com wrote: Brad is a great guy. I wish they already had all of this stuff. Artur 2014-04-03 22:45 GMT+02:00 Eric Turman i.anima...@gmail.com: Wow, that went long and I still wanted to see more :) -=T=-
Re: A Good Read!
I don't know how that will work out, but if you found ICE troublesome, Maya is going to kill you (or maybe not... Who knows!). I actually never had much problems with the Maya UI. I think the biggest issue people have is with the workflow behind it. I also got used to that. What I found very difficult to deal with is getting changes to work (once you get into complex stuff). For example, there are certain things that cannot be reordered unless you do it manually, and doing so is extremely tricky, given the relationships that exist within the DAG. To make matters worse, Maya has to have the most unintuitive and anti-user friendly node editor from all the ones I've tried, to the point where I preferred to work with the Hypergraph (I just got the hang of it a few months ago after fiddling with it a bit, and then it was ok, but a lot of thing are still not user friendly. It's basically a nicer-looking Hypergraph. Nothing else changed). Maya does need quite a bit of work in the usability area. Some things are easy once you're familiar with them, but getting to that point can be painful. Others are kinda ridiculous, actually (like its weights painting system. It's horrible). Of course, it has nice things too. I like the rigging tools. Can't speak much for the rest of the applications, since I just rig. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Apr 2, 2014, at 6:03 AM, Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dk wrote: Like Sebastien wrote: It's about enabling an individual's, and giving them peace of mind. I understand the part about 3D having become immensely more complex throught the pat decade, requiring more advanced tools and subsequently more skills from the artist, but I really also think the software devs put way too little effort into making these tools userfriendly and easily accessible, so the artist can concentrate on the task at hand rather than how to stick it together at all. Maya is a great example here - lots of power but fairly poor UI makes it difficult for a non technically inclined artist to do quite advanced stuff. Softimage is much better in this respect, but also here there is a lot of room for improvement. I have spent countless hours trying to figure out how to make simple stuff work in ICE which ought to be really simple to do and just get on with it. Context mismatches and lack of high level nodes for everyday nuts and bolts stuff makes ICE hard at times for a guy like me. I do like learning and think it is good since, as Olivier say, it empowers you when you unlock more of the tech under the hood, but most of the time, I can't find the time to do this - I just need to produce. Don't get me wrong - I love ICE too, and use it on probably 80-90% of my productions (mostly simple stuff and that which can be done with the excellent tools by Mootzoid, Exocortex and others), but I would love to spend much less time trying to figure out the how-to, so I can focus on making it look great. Mind you, I am not asking for a Kais Power Tools for 3D, but there is no reason why advanced stuff shouldn't be easier to do - it would make a lot more people do great work, and thus boost the industry. It will be interesting to see how far the Humanize Maya will go in this respect. Given that the devs are on a path to provide as much functionality as possible in a short timeframe I am afraid real UI improvements will not be prioritized enough. Morten Den 1. april 2014 kl. 20:55 skrev Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za: I think we have had this discussion before that things should have been further along by now ;) I just said that Softimage was very good at allowing the very skilled and the very new to easily achieve great things. Having taught Maya and Softimage to people new to 3D its very easy to see the difference between an application that can do that well and one that cant. When you are in education you see that learning curve being tackled over and over again. I think Sebastiens race car analogy and conclusions put it far better then I did. From: Luc-Eric Rousseau [luceri...@gmail.com] Sent: 01 April 2014 08:04 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: A Good Read! it's interesting blog but I don't think that guy is saying anything that would suggest Softimage is doing any better... (if you read the bit about rigging having not evolved)... On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 1:10 PM, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za wrote: I think the original author does have a point but I dont think he expressed it the way he wanted to. I can feel his frustration. If you think of where we are and its been 20 years or so, shouldn't things be simpler? Zbrush is a good example , immensely powerful program but such an uphill battle to get used to the interface to do anything useful. HeadUs and their unwrap interface is another one. yes you can get
Re: A Good Read!
Modo's rigging capabilities are fairly underrated, IMO. It's not yet at the level of Soft or Maya, but it's pretty capable and I'm hopeful it'll get better. I'm in the process of porting over to Modo some ICE nodes that I've used quite a bit as Assemblies (Modo's version of an ICE Compound), and I'm happy about having them back. Mostly math-related. Modo's schematic environment will let you do the equivalent to ICE Kinematics, and it's particle system is node-based too, but there's not way yet to access mesh data, so don't expect to go as crazy as you can with ICE. Still, I've already delivered a few rigs in Modo over to clients, and I'm happy about them. Looks like Modo + Houdini will keep me cozy and warm (and I do need to start looking into Blender more seriously). Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Apr 1, 2014, at 10:49 PM, Eugene Flormata eug...@flormata.com wrote: wow I've never touched modo but that modo zen thing looks amazing. that mixed with non-linear weighting/rigging from XSI would be awesome in any program On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 2:13 PM, Maurice Patel maurice.pa...@autodesk.com wrote: No I had not, thanks for sharing Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2014 3:56 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: A Good Read! Maurice, did you see the CAD Junky Zen slim UI presentation ? that is your solution right there. show people what it could be like, give them the option, doesn't have to be compulsory, Maya has that one thing going, that you can completely reshape the interface, every palette, role out menu, viewport. this would not be an expensive endeavor. and would give you a lot of good press. like it did for modo. http://cadjunkie.com/zen On 1 April 2014 20:39, Maurice Patel maurice.pa...@autodesk.commailto:maurice.pa...@autodesk.com wrote: That article was a very interesting read. IMO (and I stress that is my opinion only): the one big challenge in the entertainment industry is the constant need to be creative which means that as soon as you have perfected your formula 1 race car, someone now wants it to fly to the moon, or to dive into the Marianas trench or do the Paris-Dakar or do something else it the designers never imagined doing in the first place - whereas in racing, any given track is a pretty fixed entity and the skill is indeed about optimization. This is also where ME differs from many other production processes such as manufacturing. While it is feasible these days to program robots to build cars it is not even remotely possible to do the same thing for VFX. I also agree that usability is THE big barrier in 3D. My wife is a jewellery designer and metalsmith who just started her first foray into Rhino and is not enjoying it (in her craft it is the industry standard). I have not had to replace any monitors yet but I soon might be :). We often discuss this problem here. The Mudbox team went all out to focus on usability but there is this unfortunate damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't problem in our industry. Everyone wants more in the product and they are all doing different things, have different pipelines, different ways of working before you know it you have several ways of doing the same thing. And deep down people want more features - it is the only thing they really want to pay for. While everyone will argue that stability and usability are important they don't want to pay for it (and these things are complex and costly to solve). 3ds Max 2015 focused heavily on these aspects - making five clicks two, cleaning up key problem areas of UI such as the scene navigator and we took a beating for it. And we know we have to do this for Maya too. The usability 'issue' is a very, very real one for all 3D applications and one that I don't think anyone has figured out a perfect solution for yet. The curve the author describes is pretty accurate. The problem is that you cannot easily keep things at that optimal point. maurice Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134tel:514%20954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2014 2:25 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: A Good Read! Here is a better race related analogy You are a race car driver, you've spent a career diligently homing your skills and natural talent, you know instinctively how to calculate angles, torque, speed, drifting, terrain, weather, pressure you can read other drivers movements and anticipate their decisions. When you go down into the
Re: Side Effects, Foundry watching this?
Jordi, if you have any Modo questions, don't hesitate to come over to The Foundry community forums and ask away. You'll get lots of help there, and some users are familiar (or quite familiar) with Softimage too. Sergio Muciño. Sent from my iPad. On Mar 26, 2014, at 9:46 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: I am very keen on putting some serious time with Modo as a complement to Houdini as I believe there are real benefits on the potential future between Modo+Nuke+Mari… Exciting times although we are going to learn two packages now. :-P Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 26 Mar 2014, at 13:21, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: In terms of the foundry, they are cooking something that will be announced in NAB 7th of April. http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/nablive/ With out having too much of an insight I believe it could be some sort of Nuke/Modo bridge. Anyone know a bit more?
Re: new upgrade policy
Freelancers have the option to rent ADESK software as needed (Maya and Max, at least), which makes sense. It's fairly affordable, and I'm sure it's an option that will work just fine. As for other apps, I've already done 2 contracts rigging for customers in Modo. Yep, there's not much work like that yet (most of the freelance work happening for Modo seems to be related to modeling and rendering), but there's some already happening. And I was very surprised with what I was able to achieve with it. Sergio Mucino Freelance Rigger/TD On 27/02/2014 4:59 AM, Cristobal Infante wrote: What about freelancers though? Surely you will want access to healthy freelance pool of people. So good luck finding a Modo lighter or a Houdini Rigger. My guess is Maya is a more sensible option only for that looking from a production/managment perspective. On 27 February 2014 09:43, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com wrote: would you give more money to Autodesk after what they are doing to pretty much *every package* ? Let's recap Image Modeller = dead Stitcher = dead Matchmover = dead Combustion = dead Toxik = dead Naiad = dead until further notice Softimage = still developed but tiny tiny increments Motion builder = still developed but tiny tiny increments Motion builder for mac = stopped development FBX converter for mac = stopped development Mudbox = still developed but tiny tiny increments The only good news is that Flame v2014 has been a major effort on their side and gave me the confidence to give Autodesk one more year, lots of people angry with the changes but at least there was some vision although my fear is that they will enter now a marketing stage to help boost sales and engage again and push sales after the debacle of their change in the library which made pretty much every flame artist angry. Now, what are the alternatives? Well, I leant something last year when Apple decision regarding Final Cut Pro (I am sure nobody needs reminding)... and what I learnt is that Apple's core market is not pro software, its market is hardware, specially mobile hardware (laptops, phones, tablets...) If you apply the same thinking with Autodesk everything becomes clear... Autodesk core market is not entertainment, it's architecture and engineering and they don't really give a $@^$£% about us as the list above demonstrates clearly. The new version of Softimage, Mudbox and Motion Builder will tell exactly where they stand for third year in a row so eyes open... in the meantime I chose to focus on those companies that pro software is their core business and have market share to gain, and these are the ones SideEffects (via Houdini) Foundry (via Modo) MassiveSoftware (via Massive) So my approach is simple, force myself to transition in an abrupt way (nothing better than full inversion) and help these companies to polish their software as much as possible by being in the beta process, report all bugs, new ideas, pass them information of which things work from other packages... Exactly what I did with XSI. And one more thing, after diving in Houdini I consider it *impossible* for any software manufacturer to put the necessary resources to compete with them (I will repeat it... IMPOSSIBLE), the architecture is so advanced and so well designed it is a marvel of software engineering (and expensive to build of course)... this is here to stay my friends. and its getting easier by the day. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com On 27 Feb 2014, at 08:42, Nicolas Esposito 3dv...@gmail.com http://gmail.com wrote: Quick question regadring the switch to another software: I saw that quite few people are considering Modo or Houdini as an alternative to Softimage. This is due to the fact that you want to completely leave Autodesk for good, or because an alternative like Maya wont suite your needs? I'm asking because I'm not familiar nor with Maya or Modo, so I was just wondering what is the main reason 2014-02-27 9:21 GMT+01:00 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com mailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com: It's a system that seems to favour massive company's that can afford to routinely upgrade their packages, and screws the individual user for any sort of brand fidelity they may attempt to maintain; if you know you are going to get a discount (where it even 10%) on your next upgrade as a token to your brand loyalty, you would feel incentivisedto perches upgrades, its marketing 101 no different then a loyalty card at your supermarket. The only reason for doing this is to intentionally loose a demographic. In the short term maybe
Re: new upgrade policy
Yep. There's a lot of work being done (especially in Europe) with C4D. I hear great things about it too. Sergio Mucino Freelance Rigger/TD On 27/02/2014 11:14 AM, olivier jeannel wrote: There seem to be tons of people making a living with C4D no ? Le 27/02/2014 17:10, Eric Thivierge a écrit : Fabric Engine is an option for rigging / anim, though you'd still have to use Maya as your application for editing your animation and building your control structures but all your solvers would be in KL. When Fabric Engine comes out with more integrations (Max, Houdini?) the tech will port over pretty much 1 to 1. Eventually you'll be able to roll your own full application (it's even an option now) you just need the time and money to do it. Eric T. On Thursday, February 27, 2014 11:02:10 AM, Andy Nicholas wrote: I notice that no one's mentioned Fabric Engine yet. I'm wondering what their future plans are at the moment. Yep, I would love Houdini to develop to a place where it's capable of dealing with modelling, rigging, and animation in an artist friendly way. All credit to you Jordi in trying to push SideFX in the right direction. Honestly, you seem to have boundless energy to drive these revolutions! IMHO, in order for Houdini to succeed, I think they need to split their interface into two. The dev interface where you deal with nodes, etc. to build rigs, procedural modelling, tools, FX, etc. and then have an artist interface where they get to model stuff in a conventional way, animate rigs, etc. Only then will it really take off. Nodes are great, but only in certain situations. Until then, I think Maya + Houdini is the way to go. There's too much artist availability out there at the moment to go any other way, but I wish it wasn't so. A On 27 February 2014 at 15:39 Sergio Mucino sergio.muc...@modusfx.com wrote: Just in case it helps... anyone looking into rigging and animation in Modo, needs to look at ACS ( http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/modo/kits/acs/ http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/modo/kits/acs/ ) It's the best auto-rigger system I've had the pleasure of using. It's currently limited to bipeds, but I don't think it'll take too long before its made modular. This thing is worth every penny... twice. I know it's a bit OT, but I thought some people looking into alternatives in this department would like to be aware of the available options. Cheers! Sergio Mucino Freelance Rigger/TD On 27/02/2014 10:23 AM, Angus Davidson wrote: Hi there Always great to meet a fellow educator. We are precisely in the same boat as you. We originally started in Maya (was the choice before | started working there) and moved to Softimage after many issues with Maya. We saw an immediate increase in the quality of the student work and use it to this day. We however have the same concerns as you about the lack of development. We also now have a games design course (which is now in its third year) and we need to get them started on a 3d App as well in their forth year. If you already have Houdini in your pipeline my advise would be to use that more and augment it with something like Modo. For student work both are rock solid (especially on Mac OS X) We dont have massive studios like in the UK and the States. Our Biggest did Zambezia and that was mostly on softimage. From a teaching point of view what we loved about Softimage was the results were always consistent. On Maya it was never the case and depending on when or if they deleted history it was incredibly difficult to trouble shoot when things went south. Dear God I spent so many hours editing Maya. ma files to try and salavge projects. with Softimage never had to do that. I am really enjoying the Modo Rigging and animating process. The mindset is a bit different but then again sadly no process will be the same as Softimage. At least my rigs dont break in Modo which happened to me all the time in maya (rigging is not my strength ;) ) Luckily our teaching year just started so we only need to decide sometime before Jan Next year (sticking to Softimage definitely for this year) Maya LT due to its game focus is also a possibility. I need to do some more testing from going between Maya LT / Modo and Unity as threat will weigh heavily on the decision kind regards Angus
Re: new upgrade policy
I guess the part you won't like is when 3rd parties stop supporting Soft. After all, 3rd party developers are there to make money. It makes little sense to invest dev resources in something that has no future (unless the effort involved is quite trivial). I'm not saying Soft is dead... I'm saying the landscape could quickly change once that perception sets in (based on facts or not). P.S. Not trying to be doomy/gloomy about it. Just stating facts. Sergio Mucino Freelance Rigger/TD On 27/02/2014 1:21 PM, Emilio Hernandez wrote: Well for me and for what I do is alive and kicking and as long as third party devs continue to bring us wonderful things, I now don't have to think about stupid subscritpions or ADSK client oriented policies. Now all my money is destinated to third party devs that will continue to support Softimage no matter what. Thanks ADSK for relieving the pain of being tied to a stupid and imbecil lack of vision and support. Welcome Fabric Engine, Mootz, Fuzz, Exocortex, Redshift, etc. You will still have my money with great pleasure. 2014-02-27 12:15 GMT-06:00 Kris Rivel krisri...@gmail.com mailto:krisri...@gmail.com: Oh its real...its dead...going to be soon...I assure you. Wish we could just take the entire thing and privately take over. But no...all its secrets, power and coolness is locked tight in a damn Autodesk vault. Very sad. Kris
Attaching curves
Here's a simple question for something we have not found how to do in Softimage. I have two curve objects... a closed square, and a closed circle. I want to join them into a single object without stitching them together or changing their shapes. I just want to have an object that has both curves inside. How can I do this? I've been looking around, and there are ways to blend/merge/stitch curves together, but apparently, not to just attach them into a single object. Anyone knows? Thanks! --
Re: Survey - how would you do this?
I think that what Matt meant is that ICE is fairly young tech, and therefore, still prone to possible changes, whereas constraints, using his example, are very old tech that is pretty much not going to change... ever. I can understand his point, but on the flip side, I'm also aware that nothing lasts forever. But policies governing how assets are handled I'm sure are not Matt's to set up, so anyway... I'm starting to ramble, but I think I made my point. Now, back to your original programming :-) . On 13/02/2014 11:25 AM, Emilio Hernandez wrote: I will drink that beer in this one with Eric. I am not on the game side but on the film and advertising, so I only know the basics of a gaming engine and I found your survey challenge just to take a look back at the legacy tools and solve the problem, because as the rest of us I believe ICE is the word and the way to think how to solve a "simple" task as the one you describe. I use ICE for a lot of things, not only particles fx. And I am no erudit as Mr. Mootz, Thiago, Paul Smith, Ola Madsen, etc. I will say I am an average ICE user more on the artist side. And really ICE never stops surprising me. I find it very stable, and I use it very often, even for very simple projects. And it allows me to change things as a line of shopping bags vanishing to the horizon in a breeze with client's request such as "No, let's make the bags bigger. More bags, less bags. Can we see two rows of bags, perhpas three?..." I can hardly imagine the 2020 release of Softimage, ICE dissapears out of nowhere. For me, it is like saying the render tree will vanish. Porting to a game engine from Softimage, is something that I can't speak a word. But in my regular workflow ICE rules! Cheers! 2014-02-13 8:19 GMT-06:00 Eric Thivierge ethivie...@hybride.com: So you need to hire robots then cause all workflows involving humans are prone to error, you just have to reduce it as much as possible. I'm with Brad regarding ICE. It's stable and mature for the bread and butter work that is done with it (an example is your asteroid task). Otherwise, how is real work getting done with it? Eric T. On 2/12/2014 6:01 PM, Matt Lind wrote: The point is we cannot subscribe to workflows which are prone to human error. --
Re: Survey - how would you do this?
Probably, but... you get the idea :-) On 13/02/2014 3:09 PM, Paul wrote: "I think that what Matt meant is that ICE is fairly young tech, and therefore, still prone to possible changes" Wishful thinking I fear. On 13 Feb 2014, at 20:05, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: I think that what Matt meant is that ICE is fairly young tech, and therefore, still prone to possible changes --
Re: Mesh jiggle (secondary motion)
Thanks a lot guys! @Noel: Thanks a bunch! We're running 2012 here though... I'm not sure I can open those files. I'll give it a shot. @Alan: Thanks Alan! Sounds like the ticket for me. I want to keep this as lightweight as possible. All I need is exactly that... to be able to paint weightmaps for the jiggly parts, that's all. The jiggle will be damped quite a bit, I just need to see the motion there. I'll echk out your scene. Thanks all again! On 06/02/2014 3:09 AM, Andreas Binghoff wrote: Nice Example Alan! On 2/6/2014 1:26 AM, Alan Fregtman wrote: Haven't looked at Noel's take on this, but here's a dumb jiggly sphere demo scene I did long ago for a friend who asked me about a Verlet-based setup: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/441883/xsi/ICE_verletJigglyBits_alan.scn Hit Play and drag the null around, rotate or scale it. sphere_jiggly has a sim and a weightmap to define the jiggly zones. Play with the VerletFramework compound's Iterations slider (for stiffness) and with gravity, damping and restitution force intensities to adjust the "feel" of it. You can take off the gravity force if you want, but I like it because when the character leans the fat still droops downward. sphere_rigged has an envelope with one deformer to the controlling null, meant to represent a rigged character. (If it's not obvious: topo of both rigged and jiggly meshes must be identical in this setup.) FYI, the more Iterations in the VerletFramework compound, the stiffer the effect BUT also the slower the computation will be. It could be more polished of course, but hey, it's pretty fast and it works. :p Cheers, -- Alan ps: I'll probably make this a TDSurvival tutorial at some point, also. On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 6:11 PM, Noel FROGER nnois...@gmail.com wrote: So here is a 2014 model working, just press play. In fact i'm sorry i totally forgotted, i've altered the Andy compounds to work with a moving object and a weight map. you'll find the weight map part on the unsimulated animated mesh... yes you need 2 mesh... https://www.dropbox.com/s/qk9cn41v5ye4jlf/nnVerletDemo.emdl A+ Nol On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 9:46 PM, Noel FROGER nnois...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, Because i found the softimage verlet integration don't really preserve volume, I recently used as a basis theses coumpounds linked bellow. This is verlet but simplified with a working volume preservation as a simple spring system. If you disconnect the collision part you'll normally end up with a simple spring verlet system ;-) http://www.si-community.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=15t=1648p=12195hilit=+ripple#p12195 A+ Nol -- ANDREAS BINGHOFF 3D Artist
Re: Mesh jiggle (secondary motion)
Damn... Alan, which version are you using? I can't open your file. Thanks! On 06/02/2014 9:58 AM, Sergio Mucino wrote: Thanks a lot guys! @Noel: Thanks a bunch! We're running 2012 here though... I'm not sure I can open those files. I'll give it a shot. @Alan: Thanks Alan! Sounds like the ticket for me. I want to keep this as lightweight as possible. All I need is exactly that... to be able to paint weightmaps for the jiggly parts, that's all. The jiggle will be damped quite a bit, I just need to see the motion there. I'll echk out your scene. Thanks all again! On 06/02/2014 3:09 AM, Andreas Binghoff wrote: Nice Example Alan! On 2/6/2014 1:26 AM, Alan Fregtman wrote: Haven't looked at Noel's take on this, but here's a dumb jiggly sphere demo scene I did long ago for a friend who asked me about a Verlet-based setup: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/441883/xsi/ICE_verletJigglyBits_alan.scn Hit Play and drag the null around, rotate or scale it. sphere_jiggly has a sim and a weightmap to define the jiggly zones. Play with the VerletFramework compound's Iterations slider (for stiffness) and with gravity, damping and restitution force intensities to adjust the "feel" of it. You can take off the gravity force if you want, but I like it because when the character leans the fat still droops downward. sphere_rigged has an envelope with one deformer to the controlling null, meant to represent a rigged character. (If it's not obvious: topo of both rigged and jiggly meshes must be identical in this setup.) FYI, the more Iterations in the VerletFramework compound, the stiffer the effect BUT also the slower the computation will be. It could be more polished of course, but hey, it's pretty fast and it works. :p Cheers, -- Alan ps: I'll probably make this a TDSurvival tutorial at some point, also. On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 6:11 PM, Noel FROGER nnois...@gmail.com wrote: So here is a 2014 model working, just press play. In fact i'm sorry i totally forgotted, i've altered the Andy compounds to work with a moving object and a weight map. you'll find the weight map part on the unsimulated animated mesh... yes you need 2 mesh... https://www.dropbox.com/s/qk9cn41v5ye4jlf/nnVerletDemo.emdl A+ Nol On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 9:46 PM, Noel FROGER nnois...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, Because i found the softimage verlet integration don't really preserve volume, I recently used as a basis theses coumpounds linked bellow. This is verlet but simplified with a working volume preservation as a simple spring system. If you disconnect the collision part you'll normally end up with a simple spring verlet system ;-) http://www.si-community.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=15t=1648p=12195hilit=+ripple#p12195 A+
Re: Mesh jiggle (secondary motion)
Well, the thing is that we're on 2012... I can't open it, or merge it, it seems (so I have no way of inspecting what's inside, unless you know of some black magic I can use). Kinda screwed, I guess... but thanks for the effort man. I'll keep trying stuff out. On 06/02/2014 10:42 AM, Alan Fregtman wrote: 2013, but it's all factory compounds which you could reproduce in a previous version. You might even be able to copy and paste the icetrees between two open Softimage sessions. It works within the same version, but maybe also between generations? On Thu, Feb 06, 2014 at 10:34 AM, Sergio Mucino sergio.muc...@modusfx.com wrote: Damn... Alan, which version are you using? I can't open your file. Thanks! On 06/02/2014 9:58 AM, Sergio Mucino wrote: Thanks a lot guys! @Noel: Thanks a bunch! We're running 2012 here though... I'm not sure I can open those files. I'll give it a shot. @Alan: Thanks Alan! Sounds like the ticket for me. I want to keep this as lightweight as possible. All I need is exactly that... to be able to paint weightmaps for the jiggly parts, that's all. The jiggle will be damped quite a bit, I just need to see the motion there. I'll echk out your scene. Thanks all again! On 06/02/2014 3:09 AM, Andreas Böinghoff wrote: Nice Example Alan! On 2/6/2014 1:26 AM, Alan Fregtman wrote: Haven't looked at Noel's take on this, but here's a dumb jiggly sphere demo scene I did long ago for a friend who asked me about a Verlet-based setup: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/441883/xsi/ICE_verletJigglyBits_alan.scn Hit Play and drag the null around, rotate or scale it. sphere_jiggly has a sim and a weightmap to define the jiggly zones. Play with the VerletFramework compound's Iterations slider (for stiffness) and with gravity, damping and restitution force intensities to adjust the "feel" of it. — You can take off the gravity force if you want, but I like it because when the character leans the fat still droops downward. sphere_rigged has an envelope with one deformer to the controlling null, meant to represent a rigged character. (If it's not obvious: topo of both rigged and jiggly meshes must be identical in this setup.) FYI, the more Iterations in the VerletFramework compound, the stiffer the effect BUT also the slower the computation will be. It could be more polished of course, but hey, it's pretty fast and it works. :p Cheers, -- Alan ps: I'll probably make this a TDSurvival tutorial at some point, also. On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 6:11 PM, Noel FROGER nnois...@gmail.com wrote: So here is a 2014 model working, just press play. In fact i'm sorry i totally forgotted, i've altered the Andy compounds to work with a moving object and a weight map. you'll find the weight map part on the unsimulated animated mesh... yes you need 2 mesh... https://www.dropbox.com/s/qk9cn
Re: Mesh jiggle (secondary motion)
Alan, I definitely owe you a beer :-) . Really. Thanks a lot man!! On 06/02/2014 11:31 AM, Eric Thivierge wrote: You're hoping for beer as a reward, and to this day no one has fulfilled their pledge to send someone beer on the list... but you still hold out hope. - Eric T. On Thursday, February 06, 2014 11:26:26 AM, Alan Fregtman wrote: I don't know why I'm so nice, but... --
Re: Mesh jiggle (secondary motion)
As much as it is a better option, for some reason, saying "Alan, I owe you some bacon slices" just doesn't sound right... ;-) On 06/02/2014 11:39 AM, Alan Fregtman wrote: Let's just say if I had a beer for every time I've helped someone with Softimage... I'd probably be a raging alcoholic. :p Nonetheless I can still dream though, right? right?? lolI'll settle for raging optimist. On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 11:31 AM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@hybride.com wrote: You're hoping for beer as a reward, and to this day no one has fulfilled their pledge to send someone beer on the list... but you still hold out hope. - Eric T. On Thursday, February 06, 2014 11:26:26 AM, Alan Fregtman wrote: I don't know why I'm so nice, but... --
Re: Mesh jiggle (secondary motion)
A Sapporo it is then! Alan... you made a grammatical mistake there... one cannot use "bacon" and "in moderation" in the same sentence. The sentence makes no sense at all anymore. There. Just so you know... ;-) On 06/02/2014 1:24 PM, Alan Fregtman wrote: Blasphemy! I like bacon as much as the next guy, but in moderation. I much prefer a refreshing beer; Sapporo preferably. On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 12:11 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@hybride.com wrote: Don't worry, Alan hates bacon anyway. On Thursday, February 06, 2014 11:57:33 AM, Sergio Mucino wrote: As much as it is a better option, for some reason, saying "Alan, I owe you some bacon slices" just doesn't sound right... ;-) On 06/02/2014 11:39 AM, Alan Fregtman wrote: Let's just say if I had a beer for every time I've helped someone with Softimage... I'd probably be a raging alcoholic. :p Nonetheless I can still dream though, right? right?? lol I'll settle for /raging optimist/. On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 11:31 AM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@hybride.com mailto:ethivie...@hybride.com wrote: You're hoping for beer as a reward, and to this day no one has fulfilled their pledge to send someone beer on the list... but you still hold out hope. - Eric T. On Thursday, February 06, 2014 11:26:26 AM, Alan Fregtman wrote: I don't know why I'm so nice, but... -- --
Mesh jiggle (secondary motion)
Hey there. I could use some recommendations here. I'm trying to add some jiggle as secondary motion to a mesh I have. I just need it in certain parts of the mesh. So, I did some research, and decided to use this guy's compound... http://vimeo.com/41299656 I got it running, but it's INSANELY slow (I have no idea how he got it to run like that in his video. My mesh is more complex, but nothing extraordinary... and it's just a stand-in! The real model will definitely be higher-res). So, before I run down the road of using proxies, shrink-wraps, etc. does anyone have any suggestions around creating this kind of effect on an object in a more efficient manner? I'm all ears. It doesn't have to be incredibly accurate. Just need to see some motion going on there (I need it to 'simulate' fat on a character, but nothing massive). Thanks for any suggestions! --
Re: Mesh jiggle (secondary motion)
Will do. Thanks Eric! On 05/02/2014 3:57 PM, Eric Thivierge wrote: Look at the docs for the Verlet integration I believe they have an example in there. Eric T. On Wednesday, February 05, 2014 3:53:56 PM, Sergio Mucino wrote: Hey there. I could use some recommendations here. I'm trying to add some jiggle as secondary motion to a mesh I have. I just need it in certain parts of the mesh. So, I did some research, and decided to use this guy's compound... http://vimeo.com/41299656 I got it running, but it's INSANELY slow (I have no idea how he got it to run like that in his video. My mesh is more complex, but nothing extraordinary... and it's just a stand-in! The real model will definitely be higher-res). So, before I run down the road of using proxies, shrink-wraps, etc. does anyone have any suggestions around creating this kind of effect on an object in a more efficient manner? I'm all ears. It doesn't have to be incredibly accurate. Just need to see some motion going on there (I need it to 'simulate' fat on a character, but nothing massive). Thanks for any suggestions! -- --
Re: Mesh jiggle (secondary motion)
Okay. I must be missing something simple, but I cannot get this to work. I've followed the instructions here: http://softimage.wiki.softimage.com/xsidocs/idef_deforms_VerletIntegration.htm I'm even working with a simpler example. No forces or anything. Just the framework (and the init node of course) and a weight map. And when I play back the scene... nothing. The mesh is not moving at all. Even the envelope in the Anim context is not working either. Have I missed something? Thanks! On 05/02/2014 3:58 PM, Sergio Mucino wrote: Will do. Thanks Eric! On 05/02/2014 3:57 PM, Eric Thivierge wrote: Look at the docs for the Verlet integration I believe they have an example in there. Eric T. On Wednesday, February 05, 2014 3:53:56 PM, Sergio Mucino wrote: Hey there. I could use some recommendations here. I'm trying to add some jiggle as secondary motion to a mesh I have. I just need it in certain parts of the mesh. So, I did some research, and decided to use this guy's compound... http://vimeo.com/41299656 I got it running, but it's INSANELY slow (I have no idea how he got it to run like that in his video. My mesh is more complex, but nothing extraordinary... and it's just a stand-in! The real model will definitely be higher-res). So, before I run down the road of using proxies, shrink-wraps, etc. does anyone have any suggestions around creating this kind of effect on an object in a more efficient manner? I'm all ears. It doesn't have to be incredibly accurate. Just need to see some motion going on there (I need it to 'simulate' fat on a character, but nothing massive). Thanks for any suggestions! -- -- --
Re: Mesh jiggle (secondary motion)
Thanks Noel. It seems I can't get this to work. I plugged the Init Verlet Deformation compound in my Init tree, and the BasicVerletSpringDeformation compound in my simulation tree, but the latter stays red. I don't need collisions, so I'm not sure what I'm missing to get it to work. Any ideas? Thanks! On 05/02/2014 4:46 PM, Noel FROGER wrote: Hi, Because i found the softimage verlet integration don't really preserve volume, I recently used as a basis theses coumpounds linked bellow. This is verlet but simplified with a working volume preservation as a simple spring system. If you disconnect the collision part you'll normally end up with a simple spring verlet system ;-) http://www.si-community.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=15t=1648p=12195hilit=+ripple#p12195 A+ Noël --
Re: Mesh jiggle (secondary motion)
Okay. I needed to reference the mesh in the Deformation compound to get it to work. It's technically working, but the mesh is still not moving at all. It just seems to be broken. I assume that given the previous compound doing the same, I'm missing something that would get Softimage to actually simulate, or something (according to the docs, I just need to hit play, but seems not to be the case). Am I missing something I need to enable for the sim to run, or something similar? Thanks! On 05/02/2014 4:46 PM, Noel FROGER wrote: Hi, Because i found the softimage verlet integration don't really preserve volume, I recently used as a basis theses coumpounds linked bellow. This is verlet but simplified with a working volume preservation as a simple spring system. If you disconnect the collision part you'll normally end up with a simple spring verlet system ;-) http://www.si-community.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=15t=1648p=12195hilit=+ripple#p12195 A+ Noël --
Re: Mesh jiggle (secondary motion)
It works, but I don't see anything particular about what this scene is doing compared to mine... I'll have to look further... On 05/02/2014 5:15 PM, Grahame Fuller wrote: Try the Deformation_Verlet_Cloth sample in the XSI_SAMPLES project. Does it work for you? It does for me. I’m thinking there’s something about how you are setting up the tree but I’m not sure what. gray P.S. Documenting “jiggly bits” was one of the highlights of my career at Softimage. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sergio Mucino Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2014 5:06 PM To: Noel FROGER; softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Mesh jiggle (secondary motion) Okay. I needed to reference the mesh in the Deformation compound to get it to work. It's technically working, but the mesh is still not moving at all. It just seems to be broken. I assume that given the previous compound doing the same, I'm missing something that would get Softimage to actually simulate, or something (according to the docs, I just need to hit play, but seems not to be the case). Am I missing something I need to enable for the sim to run, or something similar? Thanks! [cid:image001.gif@01CF2295.E8870CF0] On 05/02/2014 4:46 PM, Noel FROGER wrote: Hi, Because i found the softimage verlet integration don't really preserve volume, I recently used as a basis theses coumpounds linked bellow. This is verlet but simplified with a working volume preservation as a simple spring system. If you disconnect the collision part you'll normally end up with a simple spring verlet system ;-) http://www.si-community.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=15t=1648p=12195hilit=+ripple#p12195 A+ Noël -- --
Re: Getting weight values for given points...
Thanks all. Sorry for the late replies. We've been having email problems all morning. Yes, that was the problem I found earlier today. I just had to parent everything to a new object and subtract this parent's global position from each null's object position, and it works. I don't think that's the way I'll set it up in the rig, but at least, now I know what I'm dealing with. Thanks all! On 30/01/2014 12:48 PM, Alok Gandhi wrote: Hi Sergio, This works for me. To clarify on the position attribute position of the Get Closest Location, it is the position within "Object Space" or local from where you want the find the location data on the geometry. Since in your case, it is a null, hence the position on the null in the local space is always (0, 0, 0) as there is only one position which is the null itself. Please check this image for my setup: http://imgur.com/e88KKx2 On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 12:25 PM, Kostas Strevlos kst...@gmail.com wrote: now it makes sense then! I've read/know that the closest location returns values in global space, I assumed that the feeding positions should be in global space as well. Thanks Gray, this cleared up things! On 30 January 2014 17:17, Grahame Fuller grahame.ful...@autodesk.com wrote: Position inputs for geo queries like Get Closest Location are local to the object with the ICE tree. (Ditto for positions returned from locations.) So if the ICE tree is on the null and you want the closest location to the null, then (0, 0, 0) is indeed the input position you should use. gray From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Kostas Strevlos Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2014 12:06 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Getting weight values for given points... Hi, I had a quick test as well and I got the same issue. The only way I could get it to work is by leaving the position input at 0,0,0 (on the closest location node). This is probably due to what Stephen suggested? Although since the ice tree is on the null I don't think is possible to convert the grids points to a global space, cause the closest location is only asking for a geometry. Now I don't want to confuse you so try leaving the position 0,0,0 on the closest location (even though it doesn't make much sense) and see if you are getting the correct result. Otherwise there must be a more sensible way to approach it. I'll leave that to the experts :) Kostas On 29 January 2014 23:11, Stephen Blair stephenrbl...@gmail.commailto:stephenrbl...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Show the locations as points. Maybe you are mixing up global/local positions? On 29/01/2014 5:59 PM, Sergio Mucino wrote: Thanks a lot Alan! Seems to be working, but I don't seem to be getting the right values. As a test, I created a grid object and painted a brush stroke on a weight map on it. I then created 3 nulls and positioned them in space floating over the grid. I know which ones are floating over an area where there are no weights, and which ones are over an area with weights. I've enabled Show Values
Re: The Lego Movie: Behind the Scenes and How They Made the Movie
Except for the old Marvel cartoons from the 70's... those were like... 12's... :-D On 30/01/2014 1:33 PM, Matt Lind wrote: I used to be a cel animator, Im pretty sure its on 2s for the general case. Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Ahmidou Lyazidi Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2014 3:07 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: The Lego Movie: Behind the Scenes and How They Made the Movie Cell animation isn't 2's, it's just a varying rate depending of the motion speed, it can be 1,2,3's sometimes more. And for stop motion, it really depends, for example when aardman and dreamworks did Flushed Away, they freeze 1 frame every 4 frames to mimic their stop motion look. It might also be an economic choice. --- Ahmidou Lyazidi Director | TD | CG artist http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos http://www.cappuccino-films.com 2014-01-29 Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com Stop motion is typically shot on 1's, cel animation on 2's. Haven't seen the Lego movie, but what usually gives stop motion that jerky quality is the lack of motion blur, and the depth of field not quite mimicking the real world. Matt -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Eric Thivierge Sent: Monday, January 27, 2014 10:11 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: The Lego Movie: Behind the Scenes and How They Made the Movie I left Animal probably 1/3 of the way into Lego after I finished on WWD and I didn't see any stop motion going on from that side of the studio. Not sure what was done after I left. If you wait like 3-4 hours Raf should be awake and have downed a nice Australian coffee and will be able to shed more light. I do remember them animating on 2's at one point to give that stop-mo look though. Eric T. On Monday, January 27, 2014 1:05:11 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote: From what I've seen around the web, the director has been going around saying it's a mixed of stop-motion and CGI. Are there any frames that are actually stop motion? On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 10:13 AM, Alan Fregtman alan.fregt...@gmail.com wrote: Nice!! Great work, animals. :) --
Getting weight values for given points...
This is probably not that hard to do, but I haven't really worked with arrays in ICE, so I'm kinda stuck here. I have a bunch of nulls near a poly surface. This surface has a weight map painted on it. I'm trying to get the weight map's value for the closest point to each null. I've already got a Get Closest Points node for each null connected to the poly surface I'm sampling for, and I'm also getting the weight values for the weight maps. However, I don't know how to connect one to the other, so that I could say "For each point returned by the Get Closest Points node, give me the weight from this weight map, average them, and return to me the resulting value" (this part I can do... I'll just set it on an attribute on each null). This sure looks to me pretty straightforward (in my optimistic mind). Any help is appreciated. Cheers! --
Re: Getting weight values for given points...
Thanks a lot Alan!
Seems to be working, but I don't seem to be getting the right
values. As a test, I created a grid object and painted a brush
stroke on a weight map on it.
I then created 3 nulls and positioned them in space floating over
the grid. I know which ones are floating over an area where there
are no weights, and which ones are over an area with weights. I've
enabled Show Values in the ICE tree to see which values I'm getting,
and the numerical values reported do not match the value of the
weight map area directly under each null. Am I going all wrong about
this?
Thanks again for your help!
On 29/01/2014 5:28 PM, Alan Fregtman
wrote:
First of all, you probably wanna use a "Get Closest
Location" instead of "Get Closest Points"; that way you can get
locations between points (say inside a polygon) and expect a
useful interpolated result instead of the closest vertex
specifically.
ICE locations are based on barycentric coordinates and they
magically interpolate the values of the nearest triangle's
points that the location location is inside of. So say if you
have an equidistant triangle with two points at 100% and one
at 0%, if you get the location lookup at the perfect center of
it, it should return a weight of 50%.
Anyway, from the location "Get Closest Location" gives
you, plug it to the Source input of a GetData node set to
"cls.WeightMapCls.Weight_Map.weights" -- which assumes
your cluster is the default name of "WeightMapCls" and
your map the default name of "Weight_Map". Change
accordingly if not.
That should return you the correct weight
value.
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 4:50 PM, Sergio
Mucino sergio.muc...@modusfx.com
wrote:
This is probably not
that hard to do, but I haven't really worked with arrays
in ICE, so I'm kinda stuck here.
I have a bunch of nulls near a poly surface. This surface
has a weight map painted on it. I'm trying to get the
weight map's value for the closest point to each null.
I've already got a Get Closest Points node for each null
connected to the poly surface I'm sampling for, and I'm
also getting the weight values for the weight maps.
However, I don't know how to connect one to the other, so
that I could say "For each point returned by the Get
Closest Points node, give me the weight from this weight
map, average them, and return to me the resulting value"
(this part I can do... I'll just set it on an attribute on
each null).
This sure looks to me pretty straightforward (in my
optimistic mind). Any help is appreciated. Cheers!
--
--
Re: Expression For Shape Blend
I'm guessing you need the rest of the values to be interpolated? (As in... what if Slider == .6?) On 27/01/2014 10:34 AM, Will Sharkey wrote: Hello, I have very basic scripting knowledge and need a little help. I have an Eye Fix shape that I would like to blend on and off as another controller reaches a value of 1. I'd prefer to use an _expression_ instead of a 'link with' as I would like to multiply the result by another condition. But I'm not sure how to go about it. Here is what I'd love to express: If Slider is 0 then eye fix 0, If Slider .2then eye fix 1, If Slider 1 then eye fix 0 Is this possible with an _expression_ or should it be a scripted operator or something? Cheers. Will. --
Re: Expression For Shape Blend
That won't be a simple _expression_, but it is possible. You would need two linear interpolations as expressions. I believe Emilio already proposed something. On 27/01/2014 11:09 AM, Will Sharkey wrote: Yeah, I would need the values interpolated. I could do it in ICE but I thought it would be nice to keep it as a simple _expression_. Thanks for the help. On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 3:47 PM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Yes you can do it with expressions. It is a nested conditional. cond (slider=0,eyefix=0,cond(slider=.2,eyefix=1,cond(slider=1,eyefix=0,0))). But I wouldn't suggest this approach. There is an easiest way to do it in ICE. https://vimeo.com/84282621 --
Blast from the past
Oh, man... this brought up so many memories... I always loved the Soft UI!! (Call me grandpa) :-D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlxVJXXyPiY --
Re: Friday Flashback #155
Technically incorrect :-) . The Mayans never predicted the end of the world (which seems to be a global misconception). They predicted the end of an "era" or a cycle (which in Mayan is called a Baktun). Sore disappointment for those who eagerly awaited the final Armageddon, but we don't always get what we want for Christmas :-D . Just sayin'... On 18/01/2014 12:57 PM, Tim Leydecker wrote: But maybe we could get at least an Autodesk Advertisement here: http://www.3dwillneverbethesame.com Or even a next-gen app, next year? Because technically, speaking strictly mayan, we reached the end of the world on Dec. 21. 2012 already. I didnt even bother to buy any more support/supscription... On 17.01.2014 22:00, Stephen Blair wrote: Friday Flashback #155 The future of 3d animation began 14 years ago on this day, Jan 17th. Was it worth the wait? http://wp.me/powV4-2XA --
Re: Gear installation question
What I did was to manually copy the "gear" libs folder into my Python26/Lib/ folder. It worked like a charm. On 20/01/2014 11:01 AM, Szabolcs Matefy wrote: Hey folks, Does anybody have an idea how can I install Gear without changing the Environment variable on the computer? Our head of IT was a bit nervous when I told, I wanted to change that Cheers Szabolcs ___ This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. If verification is required please request a hard-copy version. Crytek GmbH - http://www.crytek.com - Grneburgweg 16-18, 60322 Frankfurt - HRB77322 Amtsgericht Frankfurt a. Main- UST IdentNr.: DE20432461 - Geschaeftsfuehrer: Avni Yerli, Cevat Yerli, Faruk Yerli --
Re: Friday Flashback #155
Based on how things went for them, it seems more like they went for a full reboot... :-X On 20/01/2014 12:05 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote: The Mayan saw random things starting to go wrong in their world, but they deleted their user pref and everything went back to normal. On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Grahame Fuller grahame.ful...@autodesk.com wrote: It wasn't really a prediction either, it's just the way their calendar was divided. I predict that the end of the month will happen at midnight, Jan. 31. gray -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker Sent: Monday, January 20, 2014 10:56 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Friday Flashback #155 I stand corrected. The Mayans predicted the end of an era. --
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
Hey Angus. As Juhani pointed out earlier, I actually got Rich's
course to get me started. After that, it was just a matter of
translating my knowledge to Modo-world (which I must say, was not a
straight-forward experience, but that doesn't mean bad at all.
Actually, I am very pleased with the things I've been able to do in
Modo so far).
The thing with Modo is that it handles deformations in a very
particular way that I had not encountered in any other application.
In all applications I've used, deformations are usually normalized.
In Modo, this is a choice. Modo relies in what it calls "order of
operations" to figure out how an object should deform, ordering them
in a deformation stack. I know you'll say "Ah, but Soft and Max do
have a deformation stack"... but it's nothing like that, really. You
need to use it to understand how it works. It's a very open
deformation system, that once you figure it out, it enables you to
create some very fancy effects. I'm very pleased with what Modo
brings to the table.
That being said, Modo still has some way to go in regards to certain
tools and workflows. But I'm quite optimistic about what 801 will
bring to the table.
If you think you'll be doing bipedal characters quite a bit, do
yourself a favor and get ACS
(http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/store/kits/acs/). It's a kit for
Modo that creates ready-to-animate bipedal characters. From all the
"auto-rig" systems I've used before, this one is one of the best
designed and easiest to understand I've come across. It's quite
flexible too. And the developer is extremely friendly and open to
suggestions (I'm in constant contact with him). It's really worth
the asking price (and more). And the best part is that you can even
share your rigs with animators that don't have the kit installed.
They will only be missing the nice animation workflows and features
in ACS, but the rig remains fully functional.
I recently used it to rig a character for a client onto which I
added a fake muscle system to create more realistic deformations.
I'm adding some Modo rigging material to my Vimeo channel as time
permits. I have a couple of videos up, and will be adding more
advanced stuff as time allows. I already have a couple of things in
mind. You can find it here...
http://vimeo.com/channels/336554
I hope this helps a little when it comes to getting grips with
rigging in Modo. You can thrown me a PM if you have any further
questions. Cheers!
On 11/01/2014 4:26 PM, Paul wrote:
And I think he's pretty much modo's only rigger.
On 11 Jan 2014, at 13:30, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za
wrote:
Lotta money for a course for modo
version 501. Then again he is the guy who helped Modo
develop their rigging tools. Any one seen this and can say
if its worthwhile ?
From:
Juhani Karlsson [juhani.karls...@talvi.com]
Sent: 11 January 2014 02:49 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
Get the Richard Hurreys rigging master course
http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/store/riggingmastercourse/
Haven`t seen it myself but it should be ok.
On 11 January 2014 13:31,
Angus Davidson
angus.david...@wits.ac.za
wrote:
Hi Sergio
Might I ask what learning materials you
use to get to grips with modo rigging or
did you figure it out your self.
I see DT has just release a new Intro
to rigging so it seems to be a more
requested subject ;)
Kind regards
Angus
From:
Sergio Mucino [sergio.muc...@modusfx.com]
Sent: 09 January 2014 05:34
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
Hey Angus. As Juhani pointed out earlier, I actually got Rich's
course to get me started. After that, it was just a matter of
translating my knowledge to Modo-world (which I must say, was not a
straight-forward experience, but that doesn't mean bad at all.
Actually, I am very pleased with the things I've been able to do in
Modo so far).
The thing with Modo is that it handles deformations in a very
particular way that I had not encountered in any other application.
In all applications I've used, deformations are usually normalized.
In Modo, this is a choice. Modo relies in what it calls "order of
operations" to figure out how an object should deform, ordering them
in a deformation stack. I know you'll say "Ah, but Soft and Max do
have a deformation stack"... but it's nothing like that, really. You
need to use it to understand how it works. It's a very open
deformation system, that once you figure it out, it enables you to
create some very fancy effects. I'm very pleased with what Modo
brings to the table.
That being said, Modo still has some way to go in regards to certain
tools and workflows. But I'm quite optimistic about what 801 will
bring to the table.
If you think you'll be doing bipedal characters quite a bit, do
yourself a favor and get ACS (http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/store/kits/acs/).
It's a kit for Modo that creates ready-to-animate bipedal
characters. From all the "auto-rig" systems I've used before, this
one is one of the best designed and easiest to understand I've come
across. It's quite flexible too. And the developer is extremely
friendly and open to suggestions (I'm in constant contact with him).
It's really worth the asking price (and more). And the best part is
that you can even share your rigs with animators that don't have the
kit installed. They will only be missing the nice animation
workflows and features in ACS, but the rig remains fully functional.
I recently used it to rig a character for a client onto which I
added a fake muscle system to create more realistic deformations.
I'm adding some Modo rigging material to my Vimeo channel as time
permits. I have a couple of videos up, and will be adding more
advanced stuff as time allows. I already have a couple of things in
mind. You can find it here...
http://vimeo.com/channels/336554
I hope this helps a little when it comes to getting grips with
rigging in Modo. You can thrown me a PM if you have any further
questions. Cheers!
On 11/01/2014 4:26 PM, Paul wrote:
And I think he's pretty much modo's only rigger.
On 11 Jan 2014, at 13:30, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.za
wrote:
Lotta money for a course for modo
version 501. Then again he is the guy who helped Modo
develop their rigging tools. Any one seen this and can say
if its worthwhile ?
From:
Juhani Karlsson [juhani.karls...@talvi.com]
Sent: 11 January 2014 02:49 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
Get the Richard Hurreys rigging master course
http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/store/riggingmastercourse/
Haven`t seen it myself but it should be ok.
On 11 January 2014 13:31,
Angus Davidson
angus.david...@wits.ac.za
wrote:
Hi Sergio
Might I ask what learning materials you
use to get to grips with modo rigging or
did you figure it out your self.
I see DT has just release a new Intro
to rigging so it seems to be a more
requested subject ;)
Kind regards
Angus
From:
Sergio Mucino [sergio.muc...@modusfx.com]
Sent: 09 January 2014 05:34
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
I've been doing quite a bit of rigging in Modo lately, and I have been very surprised by its capabilities. One thing they do support is heat mapping. It's quite nice to use, but there are several requirement that need to be met for a mesh to be acceptable for heat binding. I don't know if all heat mapping implementations are based on the same algo(s), and therefore, inherit the same requirements, but here they go (copying/pasting from the docs): --Mesh must form a volume, though holes are supported (such as eye sockets). --Target mesh must be only polygonal, no single vertices, floating edges or curves can be present. --No shared vertices, edges or polygons (non-manifold surfaces) allowed between multiple components. --All joints must be contained within the volume of the mesh. Otherwise, you can still use the available smooth or rigid binding methods. I don't know if any problems you ran into could be due to some of these conditions, but there... just in case. On 08/01/2014 8:31 AM, Sebastien Sterling wrote: One feature i would have loved to see implemented across the board of autodesk products (apart from Alembic which should really just be a new standard by now...) is the heat map algorithm. in theory, is this that difficult to implement in Soft and Max ? apparently it was made by a bunch of students checking up on heat distribution algorithm papers for designing old radiators. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCBx8MjEvvo On paper it looks like the best shit ever, so we of the CHR Dep wanted to use it to test characters for deformation in maya pre rigging. trouble was, apparently its extremely susceptible, and i'm not quite sure to what, topology, mesh density... but in any case a Lead at rigging scripted a small ui allowing us to just bypass most of the checks, making the tech actually usable, and it worked great... until we realised that it actually pops vertices slightly away from their initial position... in fairness we used a script to access these capabilities so maybe that caused the problem, i doubt it but there was tampering, maybe someone else has had more controled experiences with Heat mapping, like i said before it still seems like a really useful addition, On 8 January 2014 10:52, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote: Using a 3DSMax rigged sample character scene from the UDK docs, I made a roundtrip through Maya and Softimage using the *.fbx format. I didnt try to export any rig controls, just a "human" rig. Its worth checking to have the latest *.fbx version installed and using an export preset that seems applicable, I think I resorted to "Autodesk Media Entertainment 2012 bla" (im on 2012s). I cant say if that was the best way but that roundtrip worked. I ended up with Maya/3DSMax/Softimage each having the rigged, animated character in a scene. In my case, there was some nuisance with the BIPED rig getting interpreted as a second rig the character is rigged to in Softimage, I had to delete that biped in XSI to get back to similar results as in 3DSMax, leaving only the rig meant for export - it is likely that was my export settings or selection settings. I had straight results going from Maya to Softimage. Cheers, tim On 07.01.2014 23:58, Steven Caron wrote: this thread is some what well timed... i am in maya right now. i need to get a mesh and its skin/envelope into softimage. i did not rig this object and i don't know enough about maya to try and understand it through inspection. in softimage i would select the mesh, then select the deformers from envelope, then key frame those objects and remove the constraints on them in mass with 'remove all constraints' is NONE of that doable in maya? cause i am having a hell of a time figuring it out. s
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
I saw that video a while ago. I would expect to see this show up in Maya sometime 'soon' (hopefully).' On 09/01/2014 10:38 AM, Eric Thivierge wrote: I posted this on the Softimage User Voice but I really really want to try this Geodesic Voxel Binding: https://vimeo.com/69268846 On Thursday, January 09, 2014 10:34:36 AM, Sergio Mucino wrote: I've been doing quite a bit of rigging in Modo lately, and I have been very surprised by its capabilities. One thing they do support is heat mapping. It's quite nice to use, but there are several requirement that need to be met for a mesh to be acceptable for heat binding. I don't know if all heat mapping implementations are based on the same algo(s), and therefore, inherit the same requirements, but here they go (copying/pasting from the docs): /--//Mesh must form a volume, though holes are supported (such as eye sockets).// --//Target mesh must be //only//polygonal, no single vertices, floating edges or curves can be present.// --//No shared vertices, edges or polygons (non-manifold surfaces) allowed between multiple components. // --//All joints must be contained within the volume of the mesh. / Otherwise, you can still use the available smooth or rigid binding methods. I don't know if any problems you ran into could be due to some of these conditions, but there... just in case. On 08/01/2014 8:31 AM, Sebastien Sterling wrote: One feature i would have loved to see implemented across the board of autodesk products (apart from Alembic which should really just be a new standard by now...) is the heat map algorithm. in theory, is this that difficult to implement in Soft and Max ? apparently it was made by a bunch of students checking up on heat distribution algorithm papers for designing old radiators. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCBx8MjEvvo On paper it looks like the best shit ever, so we of the CHR Dep wanted to use it to test characters for deformation in maya pre rigging. trouble was, apparently its extremely susceptible, and i'm not quite sure to what, topology, mesh density... but in any case a Lead at rigging scripted a small ui allowing us to just bypass most of the checks, making the tech actually usable, and it worked great... until we realised that it actually pops vertices slightly away from their initial position... in fairness we used a script to access these capabilities so maybe that caused the problem, i doubt it but there was tampering, maybe someone else has had more controled experiences with Heat mapping, like i said before it still seems like a really useful addition, On 8 January 2014 10:52, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de mailto:bauero...@gmx.de wrote: Using a 3DSMax rigged sample character scene from the UDK docs, I made a roundtrip through Maya and Softimage using the *.fbx format. I didn´t try to export any rig controls, just a "human" rig. It´s worth checking to have the latest *.fbx version installed and using an export preset that seems applicable, I think I resorted to "Autodesk Media Entertainment 2012 bla" (im on 2012´s). I can´t say if that was the best way but that roundtrip worked. I ended up with Maya/3DSMax/Softimage each having the rigged, animated character in a scene. In my case, there was some nuisance with the BIPED rig getting interpreted as a second rig the character is rigged to in Softim
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
This has been pretty much my only "um..." regarding ICE. It seems to be like a (powerful) local black box that is related to one object. I know that an ICE graph can actually get and set data to multiple locations, but in some cases, one needs to jump through hoops (for example, it's difficult to read-write data from other ICE graphs... or at least, not straight-forward). In Maya, everything is part of the scene graph, so its a lot easier to read/write data, and find all related operations to a certain node. However, Maya has to have the worst node editor I've ever had to touch. I would definitely not want to see something like that in Softimage (or anywhere else for that matter). Every time I try to use it, it makes me want to kick puppies, and come back flying to the Hypergraph. I much prefer the ICE UI/workflow (I'd just like it more if it was "global") and Modo's Schematic View (by orders of magnitude). On 08/01/2014 5:00 PM, Eric Thivierge wrote: Yeah, ICE could do that if they keep pushing it... maybe? Though I think it's pretty black boxed in terms of just having the high level access to objects, not the underlying nodes. A Node Editor like Maya plus exposing more of the internals in the Scene Explorer would be something to look at if this ever gets any attention. @Emilio, we need this in Softimage as well! On Wednesday, January 08, 2014 4:58:03 PM, Emilio Hernandez wrote: Haha. Maybe because Maya needs it, so you can dig in there and get it working properly. While in Softimage not ;) Just fueling the fire! 2014/1/8 Eric Thivierge ethivie...@hybride.com mailto:ethivie...@hybride.com Just because I want to fuel the fire, I'll toss in that while the workflow in Maya is quite flawed out of the box, you can get to more internals of the scene graph and manipulate it than we have in Softimage. On Wednesday, January 08, 2014 4:15:04 PM, Alan Fregtman wrote: Bravo! Bravo!! :) I echo your exact sentiments, David (though my own credentials are puny by comparison.) The operator stack should be permanently on the box as a "hot feature". We all take it for granted all the time, but seriously it's one of the best features in Soft. On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:10 PM, Steven Caron car...@gmail.com mailto:car...@gmail.com mailto:car...@gmail.com mailto:car...@gmail.com wrote: thank you! thank you! thank you!... i knew i wasn't crazy thinking rigging in maya is a PITA! On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 11:45 AM, David Gallagher davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com mailto:davegsoftimagelist@__gmail.com mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com wrote: I rigged on quite a few characters in Maya at Blue Sky Studios and now (Softimage) AnimSchool. We offer the well-known "Malcolm" rig for free. There is no comparison to rigging in Softimage and Maya--not the kind of rigging I do. I often assume by now they have better workflows in Maya, but I'm often surprised to find how convoluted and limiting the workflows are to this day. Most Maya people must not know there are better ways of working or aren't doing the kinds of things I am, because the difference is profound. -At any point in the rigging process, you can make edits in the model stack to change the shape and topology of
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
I absolutely hate this behavior in Maya. It's, frankly, ridiculous. Maya's weighting tools are totally sub-par compared to any other 3d application I've used (including Max). Why it is this way, I don't know, but as a user, it's incredibly frustrating to have to focus on not shooting yourself in the foot (as daring to perform a smooth weights operation with all bones unlocked) more than getting actual work done. Maya has great things for it, but binding and weighting is definitely not one of them. It's pretty bad, actually. Ok, rant off. :-) On 07/01/2014 9:57 PM, Sebastien Sterling wrote: I was quite shocked to learn from riggers in my last job, that in maya you have to "lock all bones but the ones you want to weight to via small tick boxes" failure to do so aparently causing maya to through random influences around... On 8 January 2014 02:22, Alan Fregtman alan.fregt...@gmail.com wrote: Last time I had to use Maya I would use Crosswalk to transfer the skinned mesh from Maya to Soft, do my weighting in home sweet home, then I wrote an exporter that saved out my weights in the "cometSaveWeights" format. Life saver! On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 6:15 PM, Steven Caron car...@gmail.com wrote: arg, figured it out. import pymel.core as pm pm.select(pm.skinCluster(pm.selected()[0], query=True, influence=True)) best UI ever! On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 2:58 PM, Steven Caron car...@gmail.com wrote: this thread is some what well timed... i am in maya right now. i need to get a mesh and its skin/envelope into softimage. i did not rig this object and i don't know enough about maya to try and understand it through inspection. in softimage i would select the mesh, then select the deformers from envelope, then key frame those objects and remove the constraints on them in mass with 'remove all constraints' is NONE of that doable in maya? cause i am having a hell of a time figuring it out. s --
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
You can also slide weight values in the component editor using the slider at the bottom of the UI. I'm not sure if that's what you were referring to, though. On 06/01/2014 6:42 PM, Meng-Yang Lu wrote: It's called the Component Editor. Does the same thing. However, XSI lets you slide the weights around until it feels right. Beats typing it in. I just remembered a pretty silly conversation involving a rigging supe and an XSI developer regarding locking weights. It was like the only crutch to hang onto for a Maya user. Then afterward it was implemented and I think the weighting system in XSI has been far superior since then. I really do thing volumetric ideas like OpenVDB is something to explore. Not only would you have your classic joint/influence relationship, but also add in psuedo collision evalualtion around those nasty parts like armpits, elbow crooks, and the backs of legs. -Lu On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 3:33 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.com wrote: I think different ways of calculating the influence is probably the highest hurdle right now. The default calculations get you a good starting point but there are the other heat map methods and another voxel based one I saw a vimeo video on that are going to get you much closer than our current option of the default influence calculations. Having the new feature in Maya to place bones in the middle of a volume I think would help a bit as well. Right now we're just stuck with creating a cluster, null cluster constraint. Snap to null. Delete null and cluster. I find weight painting much better in Softimage than Maya. The weight editor is a really good feature that I think Maya should have (Admitting my ignorance on the topic if there is such editor and I've missed it, unlike some blog posters out there). Eric Thivierge http://www.ethivierge.com On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 5:36 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: Let me narrow down the question to the specific task of applying an envelope or weighting/re-weighting an envelope. Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Matt Lind Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 2:27 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: RE: rigging in xsi vs maya Open question to anybody with significant experience in both Softimage and maya. I have to address some envelope and rigging tools internally pretty soon. Having this discussion now is convenience for me. Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Steven Caron
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
That's funny. A few months ago, when I started rigging in Soft, I was googling a lot of information and pestering this list (trying to keep the hair loss to a minimum, you know...), and I landed on this article. I read it through and through and thought some things were missed. Honestly, it's really hard to come through a real expert on several applications, even if for a single purpose. I don't blame this guys for missing solutions to different problems in his article. My own personal experience is that there are things I love in Soft that I wish Maya had, and there are things in Maya that I definitely miss in Soft (to different degrees of "needing"... from "it'd be nice if", to "Are you f***ing kidding me???!") :-) . All in all, I believe I could deliver any kind of rig in any application (and I'll include Max and Modo in the list), but there would be definitely be pain involved (and brain-picking). And the use of 3rd-party scripts and tools, for sure. There is no greener grass. Live fast, die young. There is no rest for the wicked. Eat fruits and vegetables. Peace! On 06/01/2014 3:10 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote: what do you guys think about this blog post: http://mayavxsi.blogspot.com/2011/09/rigging-m-22-x-15.html --
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
I'll definitely get back to you on this one tomorrow. On 06/01/2014 5:36 PM, Matt Lind wrote: Let me narrow down the question to the specific task of applying an envelope or weighting/re-weighting an envelope. Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Matt Lind Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 2:27 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: RE: rigging in xsi vs maya Open question to anybody with significant experience in both Softimage and maya. I have to address some envelope and rigging tools internally pretty soon. Having this discussion now is convenience for me. Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Steven Caron Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 2:21 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: rigging in xsi vs maya are you asking me personally? i think some studios might favor the dependency graph structure of maya for custom nodes and behaviors. they would choose that over the better initially organized softimage environment which lacks some customization options that maya has. a topic discussed to death already, maya's dominance is because of timing (of their release years ago) and it's extensibility. s On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 2:03 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: So what does maya rigging tools have that Softimage doesnt that makes a significant difference at the end of the day? Matt --
Re: Last workday!
Happy holidays to everyone! Have a great time off! On 20/12/2013 10:11 AM, Rob Chapman wrote: likewise, all the best for 2014 fellow softimagers ! On 20 December 2013 15:09, Simon Reeves si...@simonreeves.com wrote: Last day at the office here too, hope everyone has a nice xmas and new years! Simon Reeves London, UK si...@simonreeves.com www.simonreeves.com www.analogstudio.co.uk On 20 December 2013 14:28, Leonard Koch leonardkoch...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks. To you and the rest of the list as well! On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 3:27 PM, Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com wrote: Hey folks! This is my last workday, so it’s time to wish all of you Merry X(SI)Mas and Happy New Year! Cheers Szabolcs ___ This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. If verification is required please request a hard-copy version. Crytek GmbH - http://www.crytek.com - Grüneburgweg 16-18, 60322 Frankfurt - HRB77322 Amtsgericht Frankfurt a. Main- UST IdentNr.: DE20432461 - Geschaeftsfuehrer: Avni Yerli, Cevat Yerli, Faruk Yerli --
Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year
I'm sorry, all you guys have bogus information. I'm not supposed to disclose this, but in the name of transparency, it has to be done. Autodesk has hired an ex-Tonka manager to run Softimage as PM. This new manager assembled a team of Austronesians to re-write the application from scratch. The entire app will be done in COBOL. ICE will now have access to punch cards (via a custom I/O module), and the product will come with actual printed manuals on 100% recycled newspaper, and silver-plated binding. Oh, and the program will sport learning incentives... modeling an object with more than 10,000 polys will unlock new modeling tools, for example. And of course, everything runs from the cloud (it's COBOL, remember?). Exciting times ahead. ;-) Merry christmas people! On 20/12/2013 1:06 PM, Eric Thivierge wrote: Rumors should stay rumors and not get sent around on channels like this unless 90% verified... my opinion at least. Eric T. --
Re: positivity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64 During '82-'83, I think. Programmed graphics in Basic reading a bunch of Data statements and feeding those to draw calls. Ah, painting 1 pixel at the time... (not missing it, really... but at the time, it felt like magic). On 20/12/2013 5:08 PM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] wrote: I can say I miss the cheese and monkeys humor and do wonder what Porl is up to these days. But as for old…. Maybe we should have a contest. What’s the oldest computer graphics system you worked on, and the year? It doesn’t have to be 3D, it can be 2d, print, video, layout, etc. It just had to be a computer than did any kind of graphics. Takers? -- Joey Ponthieux __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of sc...@turbulenceffects.com Sent: Friday, December 20, 2013 2:24 PM To: softimage@listproc. autodesk. com Subject: Re: positivity Ha ha yeah Ed, you're old. But dang, so am I. Sent from my HTC EVO 4G LTE exclusively from Sprint - Reply message - From: "Ed Harriss" ed.harr...@sas.com To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: positivity Date: Fri, Dec 20, 2013 2:07 PM Maybe we need to go back to a multi-address list system like we had in the old days. There was the discussion list, which was all fun/monkeys/cheese/Porl and there was the Softimage list, which is pretty much what we are using now. There were even other lists like eddie, particle, etc.. (Yea, I’m old..) Anyway, we could have this list stay a Softimage list and create another one for all the gloom and doom. Perfect! Now get to work Autodesk listproc person! ;) Thanks! Happy Holidays! Ed “cheese and monkeys” Harriss From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Kris Rivel Sent: Friday, December 20, 2013 1:33 PM To: Softimage List Subject: Re: positivity Ha ha...Merry Christmas to all!! LOL. I'm not trying to start anything...just want to see if I'm the only one hearing this. I told the guys that told me to go tell the people that said this to go F themselves for what its worth. It does piss me off to see rumors like this butI do sit at home mostly working all day and night. I don't get to mingle with my peers as much as I used to so I didn't know if this may be old news or something new. Sounds bunk so I'll leave it at that :-) Kris On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 1:11 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@hybride.com wrote: Only thing I have beef with myself is the thread hijacking that snowballs into a long slog of boohooism. I'm tired of it. In recent times I have to think twice about posting to the list because I'm afraid my thread will get pulled into the black hole of negativity and what could have been a helpful / informative thread will be turned into a bitch-fest. The emPolygonizer thread yesterday that was heading in that direction seriously almost made me unsubscribe. If you want to complain about the demise of a software, have at it. Just stop hijacking threads with it (not aimed specifically Mr. Lampi, in general).. - Eric T.
Problems with weighted constraints
I'm running into an interesting problem with weighted constraints. I have a feeling of what's causing it, but I wanted to see if anyone has ran into it before. I've got a fairly straightforward 3-arm animation setup. One chain is the IK arm, another chain is the FK arm, and the third chain is the deformation arm. Each joint on the deformation arm has two orientation constraints, targeting its corresponding joint in both the IK arm and FK arm. The weights on the constraints are controlled by a single Custom Parameter, so I can blend with a single control. There are some Offset controls parented to each joint of the Deformation arm. And there are a bunch of little nulls sitting on the deformation arm. These nulls are position constrained to two of these offsets each. Say, one of the nulls sits midway between offset1 and offset2, then its constrained to both, with a 0.5 weight on each constraint. The problem I'm seeing is that each time I move the arm(s) (either), be it by manually moving the animation controls I have for them, or by playing with my blending slider, these small nulls seem to not return precisely to their original locations. They land somewhere in the vicinity, but they have a hard time returning to their original place. This is more notorious when I perform fast movements (for example, by quickly dragging side by side on the blending slider I have for my Custom Parameter). If I drag said slider very slowly, they stand a much better chance of coming back to their original position. My feeling is that it's somewhat related to the fact that all the objects constrained in all cases, were constrained with Constraint Compensation on. Looks like all these offsets added together are causing rounding errors during the solve. Of course, this is just my gut feeling, but I wanted to see if anyone has ever seen a problem such as this. I'm kinda surprised SI would have problems with such a simple setup... there's a bit of stuff going on (I actually over-simplified it for the purpose of this explanation, but it's nothing crazy really), but nothing that should break like this. We're on SI 2012. Any pointers are welcome. Thanks! --
Re: Problems with weighted constraints
Okay. I wasn't aware of this. How would you do this in a setting where you want the object constrained 80-20, for example? You don't want the constraint to be 100, because it means the object would move all the way with it with the constraining object, and you want it to move 80 percent only... Can I do 'hard' constraints in Softimage? Thanks! On 13/12/2013 4:21 PM, David Barosin wrote: offset1 and offset2, then its constrained to both, with a 0.5 weight on each constraint. Soft constraints are layered, meaning that the order the constraints are applied is important. The last applied constraint trumps the previous one. So if you want to blend a 50/50 amount you have to leave the first constraint at 100% and the second at 50% Think of it as the if last constraint reveals to the previous ones. Hope that makes sense. On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Sergio Mucino sergio.muc...@modusfx.com wrote: I'm running into an interesting problem with weighted constraints. I have a feeling of what's causing it, but I wanted to see if anyone has ran into it before. I've got a fairly straightforward 3-arm animation setup. One chain is the IK arm, another chain is the FK arm, and the third chain is the deformation arm. Each joint on the deformation arm has two orientation constraints, targeting its corresponding joint in both the IK arm and FK arm. The weights on the constraints are controlled by a single Custom Parameter, so I can blend with a single control. There are some Offset controls parented to each joint of the Deformation arm. And there are a bunch of little nulls sitting on the deformation arm. These nulls are position constrained to two of these offsets each. Say, one of the nulls sits midway between offset1 and offset2, then its constrained to both, with a 0.5 weight on each constraint. The problem I'm seeing is that each time I move the arm(s) (either), be it by manually moving the animation controls I have for them, or by playing with my blending slider, these small nulls seem to not return precisely to their original locations. They land somewhere in the vicinity, but they have a hard time returning to their original place. This is more notorious when I perform fast movements (for example, by quickly dragging side by side on the blending slider I have for my Custom Parameter). If I drag said slider very slowly, they stand a much better chance of coming back to their original position. My feeling is that it's somewhat related to the fact that all the objects constrained in all cases, were constrained with Constraint Compensation on. Looks like all these offsets added together are causing rounding errors during the solve. Of course, this is just my gut feeling, but I wanted to see if anyone has ever seen a problem such as this. I'm kinda surprised SI would have problems with such a simple setup... there's a bit of stuff going on (I actually over-simplified it for the purpose of this explanation, but it's nothing crazy really), but nothing that should break like this. We're on SI 2012. Any pointers are welcome. Thanks! -- --
Re: Problems with weighted constraints
Okay, I just read a bit about Rigid vs Soft coupling. That clears that up. The thing is that all my constrained objects are using Rigid coupling, so in theory, this should not be the source of the problem. Right? Sergio M. On 13/12/2013 4:32 PM, Sergio Mucino wrote: Okay. I wasn't aware of this. How would you do this in a setting where you want the object constrained 80-20, for example? You don't want the constraint to be 100, because it means the object would move all the way with it with the constraining object, and you want it to move 80 percent only... Can I do 'hard' constraints in Softimage? Thanks! On 13/12/2013 4:21 PM, David Barosin wrote: offset1 and offset2, then its constrained to both, with a 0.5 weight on each constraint. Soft constraints are layered, meaning that the order the constraints are applied is important. The last applied constraint trumps the previous one. So if you want to blend a 50/50 amount you have to leave the first constraint at 100% and the second at 50% Think of it as the if last constraint reveals to the previous ones. Hope that makes sense. On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Sergio Mucino sergio.muc...@modusfx.com wrote: I'm running into an interesting problem with weighted constraints. I have a feeling of what's causing it, but I wanted to see if anyone has ran into it before. I've got a fairly straightforward 3-arm animation setup. One chain is the IK arm, another chain is the FK arm, and the third chain is the deformation arm. Each joint on the deformation arm has two orientation constraints, targeting its corresponding joint in both the IK arm and FK arm. The weights on the constraints are controlled by a single Custom Parameter, so I can blend with a single control. There are some Offset controls parented to each joint of the Deformation arm. And there are a bunch of little nulls sitting on the deformation arm. These nulls are position constrained to two of these offsets each. Say, one of the nulls sits midway between offset1 and offset2, then its constrained to both, with a 0.5 weight on each constraint. The problem I'm seeing is that each time I move the arm(s) (either), be it by manually moving the animation controls I have for them, or by playing with my blending slider, these small nulls seem to not return precisely to their original locations. They land somewhere in the vicinity, but they have a hard time returning to their original place. This is more notorious when I perform fast movements (for example, by quickly dragging side by side on the blending slider I have for my Custom Parameter). If I drag said slider very slowly, they stand a much better chance of coming back to their original position. My feeling is that it's somewhat related to the fact that all the objects constrained in all cases, were constrained with Constraint Compensation on. Looks like all these offsets added together are causing rounding errors during the solve. Of course, this is just my gut feeling, but I wanted to see if anyone has ever seen a problem such as this. I'm kinda surprised SI would have problems with such a simple setup... there's a bit of stuff going on (I actually over-simplified it for the purpose of this explanation, but it's nothing crazy really), but nothing that should break like this. We're on SI 2012. Any pointers are welcome. Thanks! -- -- --
Re: Problems with weighted constraints
Thanks a lot! I will look into all suggestions offered. Cheers people! (It's Friday! :-) ... cue Rebeca Black... * duck*) On 13/12/2013 4:38 PM, Eric Thivierge wrote: look at the 2 point constraints for this type of stuff. It gives you control of what axis points down the joint and also to set an object as an up vector to stabilize them. Might get rid of the need for the 2 constraints. If you're sticking with the 2 constraints, you'd set the first constraint to 100% and the second one to 20% and that should get you the 80%/20% you're looking for. The last resort would be to set keys on them but I've heard that this can sometimes cause motion blur issues as it spins or moves a good amount in the one frame it evals... do some tests. On Friday, December 13, 2013 4:32:19 PM, Sergio Mucino wrote: Okay. I wasn't aware of this. How would you do this in a setting where you want the object constrained 80-20, for example? You don't want the constraint to be 100, because it means the object would move all the way with it with the constraining object, and you want it to move 80 percent only... Can I do 'hard' constraints in Softimage? Thanks! On 13/12/2013 4:21 PM, David Barosin wrote: offset1 and offset2, then its constrained to both, with a 0.5 weight on each constraint. Soft constraints are layered, meaning that the order the constraints are applied is important. The last applied constraint trumps the previous one. So if you want to blend a 50/50 amount you have to leave the first constraint at 100% and the second at 50% Think of it as the if last constraint reveals to the previous ones. Hope that makes sense. On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Sergio Mucino sergio.muc...@modusfx.com mailto:sergio.muc...@modusfx.com wrote: I'm running into an interesting problem with weighted constraints. I have a feeling of what's causing it, but I wanted to see if anyone has ran into it before. I've got a fairly straightforward 3-arm animation setup. One chain is the IK arm, another chain is the FK arm, and the third chain is the deformation arm. Each joint on the deformation arm has two orientation constraints, targeting its corresponding joint in both the IK arm and FK arm. The weights on the constraints are controlled by a single Custom Parameter, so I can blend with a single control. There are some Offset controls parented to each joint of the Deformation arm. And there are a bunch of little nulls sitting on the deformation arm. These nulls are position constrained to two of these offsets each. Say, one of the nulls sits midway between offset1 and offset2, then its constrained to both, with a 0.5 weight on each constraint. The problem I'm seeing is that each time I move the arm(s) (either), be it by manually moving the animation controls I have for them, or by playing with my blending slider, these small nulls seem to not return precisely to their original locations. They land somewhere in the vicinity, but they have a hard time returning to their original place. This is more notorious when I perform fast movements (for example, by quickly dragging side by side on the blending slider I have for my Custom Parameter). If I drag said slider very slowly, they stand a much better chance of coming back to their original position. My feeling is that it's somewhat related to the fact that all the objects constrained in all cases, were constrained with Constraint Compensation
Re: The Autodesk folder - what goes and what stays?
I think it's just where all installation files are uncompressed. On 09/12/2013 3:48 PM, Rob Wuijster wrote: Isn't that just the default temp install folder? Rob \/-\/\/ On 9-12-2013 21:34, Paul Griswold wrote: Is there a FAQ or any documentation anywhere that can explain what can and cannot be deleted from the C:\Autodesk folder? I'm in the process of cloning a system drive over to a 1TB SSD and noticed the C:\Autodesk folder contained around 31GB worth of files going back to Softimage 2010. I don't want to break anything, but I'd love to free up space. On top of that folder, are there other folders that can be occasionally swept clean? Thanks, Paul ᐧ No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4259 / Virus Database: 3658/6904 - Release Date: 12/09/13 --
Re: Tim Borgmann's emTopolizer2 Experiments
Wow... if only other software companies had the flexibility of doing this... :-) On 05/12/2013 11:20 AM, olivier jeannel wrote: Lol ! No seriously, you should go out, breath into nature, do normal stuff on the weekend... Le 05/12/2013 16:23, Eric Mootz a écrit : Roger that, Olivier! I'll post here again when it is implemented. --
Re: Progressbar in scripting
If you divide the process into smaller sub-processes and update accordingly as Alok suggests, you could add a small descriptive text line that would let the user know what the script is currently doing... Sergio M. On 04/12/2013 8:40 AM, Alok Gandhi wrote: It depends on how the progress bar is implemented. If there is a long process with just one update to progress bar then it will not have any effect. You need to increment or update the progress caption or something similar at some frequency. Sent from my iPhone On Dec 4, 2013, at 2:56 AM, Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com wrote: Thanks folks, however the progress bar is driven by the script, yet it is in not responding state, and I cannot do anything, however it should be quite important to have the feedback of what's happening. I turned off the logging, because I gain at least double speed. Now the user who should run the script will have no clue if XSI is running or hung. -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2013 1:56 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Progressbar in scripting no, the problem is not that the ui is not redrawing. it's Windows' desktop compositor that's graying out the window by drawing on top of it. On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 6:59 PM, Jack Kao jack@grapecity.com wrote: You may also try sprinkle some Desktop.RedrawUI() in your script to force UI update. Use it with caution though as it will slow you down. :/ From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Alok Gandhi Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2013 2:02 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Progressbar in scripting Yes I agree with Luc-Eric, if you implement an increment in progress bar, even with the cancel button disabled, this should keep the freezing away. On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 11:50 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com wrote: This is not something that XSI does and calling Refresh will have no effect. Windows starts to fade out applications that stop responding to messages after a few seconds, and then eventually will show a message saying the application has stopped responding (which is true, although it doesn't mean it's hung).If you're driving a progress bar yourself, you need to do poll for the cancel button more often to let softimage breathe and pump messages. I think incrementing the value also does it but I cannot recall. On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 10:20 AM, Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com wrote: OK, I'm doing a script, that reads plenty of data from different files, etc. After a few seconds, the screen fades into white, the progressbar is white, and it looks like XSI is hang (however it works). I tried the Refresh command to make sure that the views and everything is refreshed, in vain. Any idea on this issue? -- Error! Filename not specified. --
GATOR transfer to cluster
Does anyone know if it's possible to transfer attributes only to selected verts (or a verts cluster) using GATOR? I have a mesh that was already weighted (envelope deformer), and now I need a certain area of it to follow a different mesh, but I can't seem to transfer weights to only the selected vertices. I tried setting the GATOR attrib while in vertex mode (no go), and also with the vertex cluster selected (no go either). Any other ideas? Thanks! --
