Re: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft
Are you using MR? 2014/1/8 Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com Anyone has idea how to render ZBrush displacement correctly in Softimage? Times to times, I think I know, and the next time I can’t render detailed displacement… ___ 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: Facerobot - wrinkle maps and mouth smooth doesn't work
Not sure if FR needs to think about it for a bit, but today the brushes for wrinkles and mouth works I have no idea what happened but it works! 2014/1/6 Manny Papamanos manny.papama...@autodesk.com I think I had the same issue once. It may have been due to topo edits combined with a 'freeze/freezeM I may have done. I realized the problem and reverted to a previous scene. Manny Papamanos Product Support Specialist Americas Frontline Technical Support From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Nicolas Esposito Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 4:51 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Facerobot - wrinkle maps and mouth smooth doesn't work Hi having a strange issue with Facerobot I'm rigging the same face with both Gear and Facerobot to see which one is the best solution for my needs, I'm following the videotutorials on youtube from SoftimageHowsTo and I would like to paint the wrinkle maps As soon as I choose to do wrinkle paint or mouth paint basically the paint tool doesn't work at all On the Mouth paint option basically it doesn't affect the painted region ( nor delete or smooth, nor add ) On the wrinkle paint I cannot see at all the classic yellow lines that defines the wrinkle themselfat first I tought that was a graphic glitch, but even if I paint without seeing what I'm painting and I test the rig the wrinkle paint is not there at all The strangest thing is that the wrinkle paint and the mouth smoothing works with the other already supplied meshes ( RockFalcon, Mister Fitness ) but not with my mesh Did anyone had my same problem? Solution? Cheers
RE: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft
Yep. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Emilio Hernandez Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 9:00 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft Are you using MR? [http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/8965/erojamailpleca.jpg] 2014/1/8 Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.commailto:szabol...@crytek.com Anyone has idea how to render ZBrush displacement correctly in Softimage? Times to times, I think I know, and the next time I can't render detailed displacement... ___ 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: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft
I'm sure that I'm the source of the error, but I can't reproduce the level of detail in Softimage. It might be that I make the displacement in ZBrush wrong, but in PS the map looks good (I use 32bit 3channel OpenEXR), but the rendered version has very faint details. If I bump up the displacement with change range, the modell blows up... From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Szabolcs Matefy Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 9:12 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: RE: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft Yep. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Emilio Hernandez Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 9:00 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft Are you using MR? [http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/8965/erojamailpleca.jpg] 2014/1/8 Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.commailto:szabol...@crytek.com Anyone has idea how to render ZBrush displacement correctly in Softimage? Times to times, I think I know, and the next time I can't render detailed displacement... ___ 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 can totally confirm about Redshift. Actually I was saving for dual Xeon system as well but then tested Redshift and figured that for price of one Xeon CPU then I've got 2 titans... so at the end I built 4x Titan system and it eats through everything, and still with i7 3930k can do CPU rendering if / when needed. Still beta but works great for 99% of the tasks. One comp render farm :) On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 8:59 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Hair is coming soon as well as strands. For me Redshift is so fast that now I don't render without GI. Also lighting is delicious as Redshift has also a progressive mode. So you can adjust things easily and creativly. Before Redshift I was saving to buy a double Xeon to have at least 24 cores of pure render power. With my old GTX470 I was impressed with the speed and quality. Goodbye to flickering with HDRI using FG. Since Redshift all renders come without any flicker and noise in the blink of an eye compared to MR or even Arnold. I started using it for production even from its first alpha versions. Instead of expending big bucks to upgrade my machine, I bought a Titan and now I have the Titan and the GTX470 in my four year old i7. Goodbye to MB and DOF passes and then comp. Now from the beginning I have what I am looking for in terms of DOF and MB. Those two shots of the Coors can with pouring liquid were rendered with my PC in less than 5 hours in a single pass. The biggest added value for me besides of course the render speed, is that I can continue on other tasks while rendering with the same computer. I can start a render and still open Nuke or AE and do some other stuff while rendering. It had happended to me that I am doing other tasks and the render finished quiet ago. For a one man show, at least for me there is now no other render than Redshift. 2014/1/7 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com Hair is unfortunately a breaker for me at this particular point as i'd like to get some xp in that domain, but Redshift looks nice enough, how does it handle compared to MR ? the number of times i've past the 15 min mark with MR waiting for 1 bucket before calling the time of death never knowing what param killed it... I may eventually get it, also need to check my Nvidia card. On 8 January 2014 04:55, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Hey Sebastian have you tried Redshift. The beta is only 100USD and it works like a charm, it is full integrated into Softimage and unless you are going to do Hair or Strands it is worth every penny. Specially for a one man show. Forget about CPU and use the GPU. In my case I can continue working while I am rendering and that is surely a big added value. Faster than MR and faster than Arnold, and zero flickering with GI in animation. 2014/1/7 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com 9000€... it's going to be tough, but your worth it :) On 6 January 2014 13:34, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.dewrote: Maybe true but one thing to keep in mind is you don't have to spend extra money for mental ray (at least no significant amount). For one man shows like me mr is still useful. I use it on a small farm with 8 nodes plus the workstation. Switching to arnold will cost me 9000€ . Thats roughly the same cost that my whole DCC apps are about. I see mr like I see the FXTree...it's does not compete to nuke but it's integrated in soft and already there. I agree that there aren't any reasons to stay with mr except the the expense factor and legacy things. sven -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 12:12 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year Now while we are at it. I´m currently preparing assets that need to be free of 3rd party functionality. This means I have to set them up with a mR shading network to start folks off with. mental ray. The common thing between 3DSMax, Maya and Softimage. Please. Kill it. It´s not getting anyone anywhere anymore. I don´t want to discuss details or legacy reasons. Kill it. It´s over. It won´t come back. Selling three different DCC apps that actually share the fact that you will first have to invest in a 3rd party renderer to get something looking half way decent out of them can´t be the most ideal situation but a pretty nice way of creating an industry standard of wasting people´s life with forcing them in personal overtime. What a crap. Really. Provide a renderer that actually works as advertised. Or don´t make me pay for that mR crap. tim On 06.01.2014 11:38, Graham Bell wrote: Ah, the Dreamcast, a fine console but flawed form the beginning. The tech was ok, but really just a pc and essentially the predecessor to the Xbox.
Gear_mc and FaceRobot Facerig components - some advices
Hi guys, So I'm building both facial rigs using FaceRobot and Gear_mc and I would like to ask you some things regarding some features on both of them Gear_mc: I've built the eyes, mouth and eyebrow controllers and they work pretty good, now I need to build the eye directionality controller ( eyes look at ), the nose controllers and hopefully something that resemble the FaceRobot wrinkle tool, something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bJnvUZ0U88 @2.40 or if the envelope weights could easily solve the mouth/forhead/aread below the forhead wrinkles problem that allows the skin to compress and stretch which works very good in FR Since is the first time that I'm building a facial rig with Gear I would like to know what is the best approach to build my missing controllers, if there are guides within Gear itself suited for the nose and eye directionality...could be a dumb question, but I would like to avoid spending 2 days finding out the best solution for an eye directionality controller when there is already something buit-in inside Gear ;) Also since I have multiple humanoid characters I'll save the eyes/mouth/eyebrow and eventually eye directionality and nose guides as a model, in order to re-use the guides for another character without building everything from scratch again, but I was wondering if is possible to let Gear ( or just a python script ) build the entire guides all at once ( with all the parenting and setup ) Facerobot: I suppose because of the soft tissue every time I try to export the FR rig to a game engine the weights are completely f*cked up, and usually I can see both the FR head mesh and the mesh that FR generates with the soft tissue feature, which I'm not able to find where is it in the explorer I already solve that issue using the game export function, it works very nice and do not cause problems, but every time I have to re-merge the head with the body, adjust the envelope weights again on the neck, and then export the entire character, which is fine for a 30second animation, but if you have 300 facial mocap ane everytime you have to do the same re-merge/envelope adjustment it becomes really frustrating Except the FR point cache option ( the video is on vimeo ) is there a way to succesfully simplify the FR rig, be able to merge the FR head with the body and do not screw the facerig created with FR? I'm leaning towards Gear for my facial rigs, but I would like to know if FaceRobot could be the quick and dirty solution to my needs Cheers and sorry for the very long explanation :)
Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year
quick question, whats the powerdraw when graphics cards are idle? (purely used as gpgpu, since no monitors attached) On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 7:20 PM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote: I can totally confirm about Redshift. Actually I was saving for dual Xeon system as well but then tested Redshift and figured that for price of one Xeon CPU then I've got 2 titans... so at the end I built 4x Titan system and it eats through everything, and still with i7 3930k can do CPU rendering if / when needed. Still beta but works great for 99% of the tasks. One comp render farm :) On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 8:59 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.comwrote: Hair is coming soon as well as strands. For me Redshift is so fast that now I don't render without GI. Also lighting is delicious as Redshift has also a progressive mode. So you can adjust things easily and creativly. Before Redshift I was saving to buy a double Xeon to have at least 24 cores of pure render power. With my old GTX470 I was impressed with the speed and quality. Goodbye to flickering with HDRI using FG. Since Redshift all renders come without any flicker and noise in the blink of an eye compared to MR or even Arnold. I started using it for production even from its first alpha versions. Instead of expending big bucks to upgrade my machine, I bought a Titan and now I have the Titan and the GTX470 in my four year old i7. Goodbye to MB and DOF passes and then comp. Now from the beginning I have what I am looking for in terms of DOF and MB. Those two shots of the Coors can with pouring liquid were rendered with my PC in less than 5 hours in a single pass. The biggest added value for me besides of course the render speed, is that I can continue on other tasks while rendering with the same computer. I can start a render and still open Nuke or AE and do some other stuff while rendering. It had happended to me that I am doing other tasks and the render finished quiet ago. For a one man show, at least for me there is now no other render than Redshift. 2014/1/7 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com Hair is unfortunately a breaker for me at this particular point as i'd like to get some xp in that domain, but Redshift looks nice enough, how does it handle compared to MR ? the number of times i've past the 15 min mark with MR waiting for 1 bucket before calling the time of death never knowing what param killed it... I may eventually get it, also need to check my Nvidia card. On 8 January 2014 04:55, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Hey Sebastian have you tried Redshift. The beta is only 100USD and it works like a charm, it is full integrated into Softimage and unless you are going to do Hair or Strands it is worth every penny. Specially for a one man show. Forget about CPU and use the GPU. In my case I can continue working while I am rendering and that is surely a big added value. Faster than MR and faster than Arnold, and zero flickering with GI in animation. 2014/1/7 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com 9000€... it's going to be tough, but your worth it :) On 6 January 2014 13:34, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.dewrote: Maybe true but one thing to keep in mind is you don't have to spend extra money for mental ray (at least no significant amount). For one man shows like me mr is still useful. I use it on a small farm with 8 nodes plus the workstation. Switching to arnold will cost me 9000€ . Thats roughly the same cost that my whole DCC apps are about. I see mr like I see the FXTree...it's does not compete to nuke but it's integrated in soft and already there. I agree that there aren't any reasons to stay with mr except the the expense factor and legacy things. sven -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 12:12 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year Now while we are at it. I´m currently preparing assets that need to be free of 3rd party functionality. This means I have to set them up with a mR shading network to start folks off with. mental ray. The common thing between 3DSMax, Maya and Softimage. Please. Kill it. It´s not getting anyone anywhere anymore. I don´t want to discuss details or legacy reasons. Kill it. It´s over. It won´t come back. Selling three different DCC apps that actually share the fact that you will first have to invest in a 3rd party renderer to get something looking half way decent out of them can´t be the most ideal situation but a pretty nice way of creating an industry standard of wasting people´s life with forcing them in personal overtime. What a crap. Really. Provide a renderer that actually works as advertised. Or don´t make me pay for that mR crap.
RE: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft
Have you tried GoZ for softimage? I used it a lot recently and it works like a charm. With the click of a button you get your model imported into SI with all the maps attached and a change range node with the right values added to your displacement. It even flips the maps for you. I think you can download it from the pixologic site. Good Luck, Florian Am 08.01.2014 09:18 schrieb Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com: I’m sure that I’m the source of the error, but I can’t reproduce the level of detail in Softimage. It might be that I make the displacement in ZBrush wrong, but in PS the map looks good (I use 32bit 3channel OpenEXR), but the rendered version has very faint details. If I bump up the displacement with change range, the modell blows up… *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Szabolcs Matefy *Sent:* Wednesday, January 08, 2014 9:12 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft Yep. *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [ mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.comsoftimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Emilio Hernandez *Sent:* Wednesday, January 08, 2014 9:00 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft Are you using MR? 2014/1/8 Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com Anyone has idea how to render ZBrush displacement correctly in Softimage? Times to times, I think I know, and the next time I can’t render detailed displacement… ___ 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
There are lots of tests on the net that compare power consumption between different cards under load and idle conditions.Under load the Titan and cards with similar amounts of cores can draw up to 300 Watts peak, averaging in at 250 to 270 Watts.In idle mode I believe to have read that those cards consume around 15 watts only.Depending on your other components in your system (Number of CPUs, hard drives) you should buy a power unit that can handle the load.I only have a third generation 4 core i7 (90 Watts TDP) and one SSD (like 3 Watts max?) , and together with the power consumption of the mother board itself I get away with a 450Watts power supply as long as I only have 1 of those graphics cards installed. The picture changes with more cards and more CPUs accordingly.Atm I'm longing for hair/fur/strands support in RS too, it keeps me from using it on the current Job.quick question, whats the powerdraw when graphics cards are idle? (purely used as gpgpu, since no monitors attached)On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 7:20 PM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: I can totally confirm about Redshift.Actually I was saving for dual Xeon system as well but then tested Redshift and figured that for price of one Xeon CPU then I've got 2 titans... so at the end I built 4x Titan system and it eats through everything, and still with i7 3930k can do CPU rendering if / when needed. Still beta but works great for 99% of the tasks. One comp render farm :)On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 8:59 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Hair is coming soon as well as strands. For me Redshift is so fast that now I don't render without GI. Also lighting is delicious as Redshift has also a progressive mode. So you can adjust things easily and creativly. Before Redshift I was saving to buy a double Xeon to have at least 24 cores of pure render power. With my old GTX470 I was impressed with the speed and quality. Goodbye to flickering with HDRI using FG. Since Redshift all renders come without any flicker and noise in the blink of an eye compared to MR or even Arnold. I started using it for production even from its first alpha versions. Instead of expending big bucks to upgrade my machine, I bought a Titan and now I have the Titan and the GTX470 in my four year old i7. Goodbye to MB and DOF passes and then comp. Now from the beginning I have what I am looking for in terms of DOF and MB. Those two shots of the Coors can with pouring liquid were rendered with my PC in less than 5 hours in a single pass. The biggest added value for me besides of course the render speed, is that I can continue on other tasks while rendering with the same computer. I can start a render and still open Nuke or AE and do some other stuff while rendering. It had happended to me that I am doing other tasks and the render finished quiet ago.For a one man show, at least for me there is now no other render than Redshift. 2014/1/7 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com Hair is unfortunately a breaker for me at this particular point as i'd like to get some xp in that domain, but Redshift looks nice enough, how does it handle compared to MR ? the number of times i've past the 15 min mark with MR waiting for 1 bucket before calling the time of death never knowing what param killed it... I may eventually get it, also need to check my Nvidia card.On 8 January 2014 04:55, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Hey Sebastian have you tried Redshift. The beta is only 100USD and it works like a charm, it is full integrated into Softimage and unless you are going to do Hair or Strands it is worth every penny. Specially for a one man show. Forget about CPU and use the GPU. In my case I can continue working while I am rendering and that is surely a big added value.Faster than MR and faster than Arnold, and zero flickering with GI in animation. 2014/1/7 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com 9000€... it's going to be tough, but your worth it :)On 6 January 2014 13:34, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.de wrote: Maybe true but one thing to keep in mind is you don't have to spend extra money for mental ray (at least no significant amount). For one man shows like me mr is still useful. I use it on a small farm with 8 nodes plus the workstation. Switching to arnold will cost me 9000€ . Thats roughly the same cost that my whole DCC apps are about. I see mr like I see the FXTree...it's does not compete to nuke but it's integrated in soft and already there. I agree that there aren't any reasons to stay with mr except the the expense factor and legacy things. sven -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 12:12 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year Now while we are at it. I´m currently preparing assets that need to be
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
Insanity made acceptable... How is that possible? Reminds me of a great book about software Dev called the inmates running the asylum. Appropriate isn't it? Jb Sent from my iPhone On 8 Jan 2014, at 06:54, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: Like mentioend couple times before... working in Maya is like walking on glass legs. Expect every time that everything will collapse under you ;) On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 5:39 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: This is exactly what I am talking about of the weighing in Maya... I forgot to check the lock at some point and... KABOOM 2014/1/7 Meng-Yang Lu ntmon...@gmail.com Yup, and that slider that was mentioned earlier is a booby trap that does just that. Throws your weights around willy nilly. That's why there's a ancient workflow of adding influence only and never subtracting. -Lu On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 6:57 PM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com 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: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft
The trick is the scalar change range node in the render tree to match the displacement. So MR will know wich values go up and wich values go down. Take a look at the alpha value when exporting the displacement map from Zbrush. That value should be placed in the scalar change range node in the render tree. So let's say that the alpha value in Zbrush for the exported map is 0.054. You should plug the dm in the scalar change range node and place the minimum value to -0.054 ant the max to 0.054. That way MR will know where is 0.0 value and the max and min displacement. 2014/1/8 Florian Breg florian.b...@gmail.com Have you tried GoZ for softimage? I used it a lot recently and it works like a charm. With the click of a button you get your model imported into SI with all the maps attached and a change range node with the right values added to your displacement. It even flips the maps for you. I think you can download it from the pixologic site. Good Luck, Florian Am 08.01.2014 09:18 schrieb Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com: I’m sure that I’m the source of the error, but I can’t reproduce the level of detail in Softimage. It might be that I make the displacement in ZBrush wrong, but in PS the map looks good (I use 32bit 3channel OpenEXR), but the rendered version has very faint details. If I bump up the displacement with change range, the modell blows up… *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Szabolcs Matefy *Sent:* Wednesday, January 08, 2014 9:12 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft Yep. *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [ mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.comsoftimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Emilio Hernandez *Sent:* Wednesday, January 08, 2014 9:00 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft Are you using MR? 2014/1/8 Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com Anyone has idea how to render ZBrush displacement correctly in Softimage? Times to times, I think I know, and the next time I can’t render detailed displacement… ___ 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: rigging in xsi vs maya
To be fair, I weighted a fair amount of characters in Maya over the years but I never experienced anything like that.When exactly is this happening? The only hickup I ran into occasionally was when painting weights, and then undoing that operation, which in rare cases does what you describe, but I think they fixed that in version 2013 or 2014. I never locked the skin weights, workflow wise I always found that highly disruptive.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 pmpm.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 -- --- Stefan Kubicek--- keyvis digital imagery Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3 A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien Phone:+43/699/12614231 www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at-- This email and its attachments are confidential and for the recipient only--
Re: Facerobot - wrinkle maps and mouth smooth doesn't work
Just be sure not to feed it after midnight ;-) Rob \/-\/\/ On 8-1-2014 9:01, Nicolas Esposito wrote: Not sure if FR needs to think about it for a bit, but today the brushes for wrinkles and mouth works I have no idea what happened but it works! 2014/1/6 Manny Papamanos manny.papama...@autodesk.com mailto:manny.papama...@autodesk.com I think I had the same issue once. It may have been due to topo edits combined with a 'freeze/freezeM I may have done. I realized the problem and reverted to a previous scene. Manny Papamanos Product Support Specialist Americas Frontline Technical Support From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Nicolas Esposito Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 4:51 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Facerobot - wrinkle maps and mouth smooth doesn't work Hi having a strange issue with Facerobot I'm rigging the same face with both Gear and Facerobot to see which one is the best solution for my needs, I'm following the videotutorials on youtube from SoftimageHowsTo and I would like to paint the wrinkle maps As soon as I choose to do wrinkle paint or mouth paint basically the paint tool doesn't work at all On the Mouth paint option basically it doesn't affect the painted region ( nor delete or smooth, nor add ) On the wrinkle paint I cannot see at all the classic yellow lines that defines the wrinkle themselfat first I tought that was a graphic glitch, but even if I paint without seeing what I'm painting and I test the rig the wrinkle paint is not there at all The strangest thing is that the wrinkle paint and the mouth smoothing works with the other already supplied meshes ( RockFalcon, Mister Fitness ) but not with my mesh Did anyone had my same problem? Solution? Cheers No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com http://www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4259 / Virus Database: 3658/6983 - Release Date: 01/07/14
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
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 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
soft and Arnold i think
https://vimeo.com/83602545 https://vimeo.com/83602546 very nice Adrian Wyer Fluid Pictures 75-77 Margaret St. London W1W 8SY ++44(0) 207 580 0829 adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com blocked::blocked::blocked::mailto:adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com www.fluid-pictures.com blocked::blocked::blocked::http://www.fluid-pictures.com/ Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales. Company number:5657815 VAT number: 872 6893 71
Re: soft and Arnold i think
Nice work! 2014/1/8 adrian wyer adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com https://vimeo.com/83602545 https://vimeo.com/83602546 very nice Adrian Wyer Fluid Pictures 75-77 Margaret St. London W1W 8SY ++44(0) 207 580 0829 adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com www.fluid-pictures.com Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales. Company number:5657815 VAT number: 872 6893 71
Re: OT: Organizing files that belong together
Ugg Ascii art didn’t come out right A1 A2 A3 B1 B2 B3 C1 C2 C3 Hopefully this come out table width=100% border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 style=width:100%; tr td align=left style=text-align:justify;font face=arial,sans-serif size=1 color=#99span style=font-size:11px;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. /span/font/td /tr /table
Re: soft and Arnold i think
very nice how they interrelate From: Emilio Hernandez Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 11:24 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: soft and Arnold i think Nice work! 2014/1/8 adrian wyer adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com https://vimeo.com/83602545 https://vimeo.com/83602546 very nice Adrian Wyer Fluid Pictures 75-77 Margaret St. London W1W 8SY ++44(0) 207 580 0829 adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com www.fluid-pictures.com Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales. Company number:5657815 VAT number: 872 6893 71
Re: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft
GoZ for softimage all the way... On 8 January 2014 09:24, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: The trick is the scalar change range node in the render tree to match the displacement. So MR will know wich values go up and wich values go down. Take a look at the alpha value when exporting the displacement map from Zbrush. That value should be placed in the scalar change range node in the render tree. So let's say that the alpha value in Zbrush for the exported map is 0.054. You should plug the dm in the scalar change range node and place the minimum value to -0.054 ant the max to 0.054. That way MR will know where is 0.0 value and the max and min displacement. 2014/1/8 Florian Breg florian.b...@gmail.com Have you tried GoZ for softimage? I used it a lot recently and it works like a charm. With the click of a button you get your model imported into SI with all the maps attached and a change range node with the right values added to your displacement. It even flips the maps for you. I think you can download it from the pixologic site. Good Luck, Florian Am 08.01.2014 09:18 schrieb Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com: I’m sure that I’m the source of the error, but I can’t reproduce the level of detail in Softimage. It might be that I make the displacement in ZBrush wrong, but in PS the map looks good (I use 32bit 3channel OpenEXR), but the rendered version has very faint details. If I bump up the displacement with change range, the modell blows up… *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Szabolcs Matefy *Sent:* Wednesday, January 08, 2014 9:12 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft Yep. *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [ mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.comsoftimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Emilio Hernandez *Sent:* Wednesday, January 08, 2014 9:00 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft Are you using MR? 2014/1/8 Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com Anyone has idea how to render ZBrush displacement correctly in Softimage? Times to times, I think I know, and the next time I can’t render detailed displacement… ___ 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: soft and Arnold i think
*applause* lovely. On 8 January 2014 10:37, pete...@skynet.be wrote: very nice how they interrelate *From:* Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com *Sent:* Wednesday, January 08, 2014 11:24 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: soft and Arnold i think Nice work! 2014/1/8 adrian wyer adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com https://vimeo.com/83602545 https://vimeo.com/83602546 very nice Adrian Wyer Fluid Pictures 75-77 Margaret St. London W1W 8SY ++44(0) 207 580 0829 adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com www.fluid-pictures.com Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales. Company number:5657815 VAT number: 872 6893 71
Re: OT: Organizing files that belong together
Thank you for the input, Angus. I like your idea of tracking edges, that makes a lot of sense and is something that I'll definitely look into. Regarding a tool that might help with organizing this, I take it there may not be anything out there that applies to our needs. We use Perforce, and that seems to have a new utility called Git Fusion, but the whole thing scares me somewhat because it looks extremely complex (and none of us even have any clue about Git itself). Maybe I can write a little Python thingy that does what we need. Of course we could also just create some sort of spreadsheet, but the usability of a spreadsheet is crap. On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 11:40 AM, Angus Davidson angus.david...@wits.ac.zawrote: Ugg Ascii art didn’t come out right A1 A2 A3 B1 B2 B3 C1 C2 C3 Hopefully this come out 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: soft and Arnold i think
They are sweet :) - and nicely done too. MB Den 8. januar 2014 kl. 11:19 skrev adrian wyer adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com: https://vimeo.com/83602545 https://vimeo.com/83602545 https://vimeo.com/83602546 https://vimeo.com/83602546 very nice Adrian Wyer Fluid Pictures 75-77 Margaret St . London W1W 8SY ++44(0) 207 580 0829 adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com blocked::blocked::blocked::mailto:adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com www.fluid-pictures.com blocked::blocked::blocked::http://www.fluid-pictures.com/ Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales . Company number:5657815 VAT number: 872 6893 71
RE: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft
OK, next question. If you are working in linear workflow, how would you set up the displacement? At this moment I feed the displacement map as Linear, and scale it down with Change Range node. The displacement map is an OpenEXR 32 bit texture, and I am using the MILA mental Ray shaders. Cheers Szabolcs From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Cristobal Infante Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 12:08 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft GoZ for softimage all the way... On 8 January 2014 09:24, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.commailto:emi...@e-roja.com wrote: The trick is the scalar change range node in the render tree to match the displacement. So MR will know wich values go up and wich values go down. Take a look at the alpha value when exporting the displacement map from Zbrush. That value should be placed in the scalar change range node in the render tree. So let's say that the alpha value in Zbrush for the exported map is 0.054. You should plug the dm in the scalar change range node and place the minimum value to -0.054 ant the max to 0.054. That way MR will know where is 0.0 value and the max and min displacement. [http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/8965/erojamailpleca.jpg] 2014/1/8 Florian Breg florian.b...@gmail.commailto:florian.b...@gmail.com Have you tried GoZ for softimage? I used it a lot recently and it works like a charm. With the click of a button you get your model imported into SI with all the maps attached and a change range node with the right values added to your displacement. It even flips the maps for you. I think you can download it from the pixologic site. Good Luck, Florian Am 08.01.2014 09:18 schrieb Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.commailto:szabol...@crytek.com: I'm sure that I'm the source of the error, but I can't reproduce the level of detail in Softimage. It might be that I make the displacement in ZBrush wrong, but in PS the map looks good (I use 32bit 3channel OpenEXR), but the rendered version has very faint details. If I bump up the displacement with change range, the modell blows up... 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 Szabolcs Matefy Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 9:12 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: RE: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft Yep. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Emilio Hernandez Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 9:00 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft Are you using MR? [http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/8965/erojamailpleca.jpg] 2014/1/8 Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.commailto:szabol...@crytek.com Anyone has idea how to render ZBrush displacement correctly in Softimage? Times to times, I think I know, and the next time I can't render detailed displacement... ___ 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: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft
You read it linear for sure. What exactly is your problem, are you not getting enough detail?. If this is the problem it can also be the UVs are not big enough for each poly. To be honest the final shader doesn't really matter for the disp, in fact GoZ export with a phong. I personally only use Architectural materials when in MR though. On 8 January 2014 12:45, Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com wrote: OK, next question. If you are working in linear workflow, how would you set up the displacement? At this moment I feed the displacement map as Linear, and scale it down with Change Range node. The displacement map is an OpenEXR 32 bit texture, and I am using the MILA mental Ray shaders. Cheers Szabolcs *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Cristobal Infante *Sent:* Wednesday, January 08, 2014 12:08 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft GoZ for softimage all the way... On 8 January 2014 09:24, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: The trick is the scalar change range node in the render tree to match the displacement. So MR will know wich values go up and wich values go down. Take a look at the alpha value when exporting the displacement map from Zbrush. That value should be placed in the scalar change range node in the render tree. So let's say that the alpha value in Zbrush for the exported map is 0.054. You should plug the dm in the scalar change range node and place the minimum value to -0.054 ant the max to 0.054. That way MR will know where is 0.0 value and the max and min displacement. 2014/1/8 Florian Breg florian.b...@gmail.com Have you tried GoZ for softimage? I used it a lot recently and it works like a charm. With the click of a button you get your model imported into SI with all the maps attached and a change range node with the right values added to your displacement. It even flips the maps for you. I think you can download it from the pixologic site. Good Luck, Florian Am 08.01.2014 09:18 schrieb Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com: I’m sure that I’m the source of the error, but I can’t reproduce the level of detail in Softimage. It might be that I make the displacement in ZBrush wrong, but in PS the map looks good (I use 32bit 3channel OpenEXR), but the rendered version has very faint details. If I bump up the displacement with change range, the modell blows up… *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Szabolcs Matefy *Sent:* Wednesday, January 08, 2014 9:12 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft Yep. *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [ mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.comsoftimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Emilio Hernandez *Sent:* Wednesday, January 08, 2014 9:00 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft Are you using MR? 2014/1/8 Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com Anyone has idea how to render ZBrush displacement correctly in Softimage? Times to times, I think I know, and the next time I can’t render detailed displacement… ___ 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: rigging in xsi vs maya
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 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 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: soft and Arnold i think
Maybe these people should get an invite to the list :), its not the first time the words i think it might be softimage have appeared around here. On 8 January 2014 13:04, Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dk wrote: They are sweet :) - and nicely done too. MB Den 8. januar 2014 kl. 11:19 skrev adrian wyer adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com: https://vimeo.com/83602545 https://vimeo.com/83602546 very nice Adrian Wyer Fluid Pictures 75-77 Margaret St . London W1W 8SY ++44(0) 207 580 0829 adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com www.fluid-pictures.com Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales . Company number:5657815 VAT number: 872 6893 71
Stopping simulation!?
I have had the doubtful priviledge of having to do a variety of simulation lately in Soft, and if I remember correctly, in the fall I was able to stop simulations by mouse and pen input, but now I can't do that any longer - actually no matter how simple the sim is. I am on SI 2013 SP1 Win7 and the only thing I have installed in the meantime is Momentum. I have not tried removing it, and before doing that I just want to hear if anyone else has experienced something like this and know of a fix? Thanks Morten
Re: Stopping simulation!?
Now that you mention I am having the same issue. Any ideas? Thx 2014/1/8 Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dk I have had the doubtful priviledge of having to do a variety of simulation lately in Soft, and if I remember correctly, in the fall I was able to stop simulations by mouse and pen input, but now I can't do that any longer - actually no matter how simple the sim is. I am on SI 2013 SP1 Win7 and the only thing I have installed in the meantime is Momentum. I have not tried removing it, and before doing that I just want to hear if anyone else has experienced something like this and know of a fix? Thanks Morten
Linking a light (Sun) to a Physical sky ?
Very dumb question, I did it before, I'm sure... How do I link a light (infinite - sun) rotation to a vector (Sun direction) in a Physicla sky property page ? (So that my light is a sun...) I'm in redshift...
Re: soft and Arnold i think
Yes. They are synchronized and on the official site http://www.unahistoriaquedalavuelta.com/ there is this trick where you control the playback with your mobile phone to rotate between the happy and sad versions. On 1/8/2014 4:37 AM, pete...@skynet.be wrote: very nice how they interrelate *From:* Emilio Hernandez mailto:emi...@e-roja.com *Sent:* Wednesday, January 08, 2014 11:24 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: soft and Arnold i think Nice work! 2014/1/8 adrian wyer adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com mailto:adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com https://vimeo.com/83602545 https://vimeo.com/83602546 very nice Adrian Wyer Fluid Pictures 75-77 Margaret St. London W1W 8SY ++44(0) 207 580 0829 adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com www.fluid-pictures.com Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales. Company number:5657815 VAT number: 872 6893 71
Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year
+1 here. Redshift is faster on one machine than Mentalray on two of the same CPU (i7 950) and I am using a Nvidia Quadro FX 3800 (older card) I would imagine multiple CUDA cards would be lightning fast. Redshift is also so well integrated into Softimage. Very little learning to be up and running in a short time. Basically, just a few custom shaders, the rest are the existing shaders. Well worth the $100 Beta and then $300 more when the first release comes out. The tech support is outstanding. I was an Alpha user. Very happy. On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 10:55 PM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Hey Sebastian have you tried Redshift. The beta is only 100USD and it works like a charm, it is full integrated into Softimage and unless you are going to do Hair or Strands it is worth every penny. Specially for a one man show. Forget about CPU and use the GPU. In my case I can continue working while I am rendering and that is surely a big added value. Faster than MR and faster than Arnold, and zero flickering with GI in animation. 2014/1/7 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com 9000€... it's going to be tough, but your worth it :) On 6 January 2014 13:34, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.de wrote: Maybe true but one thing to keep in mind is you don't have to spend extra money for mental ray (at least no significant amount). For one man shows like me mr is still useful. I use it on a small farm with 8 nodes plus the workstation. Switching to arnold will cost me 9000€ . Thats roughly the same cost that my whole DCC apps are about. I see mr like I see the FXTree...it's does not compete to nuke but it's integrated in soft and already there. I agree that there aren't any reasons to stay with mr except the the expense factor and legacy things. sven -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 12:12 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year Now while we are at it. I´m currently preparing assets that need to be free of 3rd party functionality. This means I have to set them up with a mR shading network to start folks off with. mental ray. The common thing between 3DSMax, Maya and Softimage. Please. Kill it. It´s not getting anyone anywhere anymore. I don´t want to discuss details or legacy reasons. Kill it. It´s over. It won´t come back. Selling three different DCC apps that actually share the fact that you will first have to invest in a 3rd party renderer to get something looking half way decent out of them can´t be the most ideal situation but a pretty nice way of creating an industry standard of wasting people´s life with forcing them in personal overtime. What a crap. Really. Provide a renderer that actually works as advertised. Or don´t make me pay for that mR crap. tim On 06.01.2014 11:38, Graham Bell wrote: Ah, the Dreamcast, a fine console but flawed form the beginning. The tech was ok, but really just a pc and essentially the predecessor to the Xbox. The problem with the Dreamcast was that it launched right in the middle of when a lot of developers were looking to retool for the PS2. People were caught in the middle of whether to go short for the Dreamcast, or go long for the PS2. Most went with the PS2 and then eventually the Xbox. On the Soft and Maya usability front, personally I don't mind both, but then I've always been used to jumping between the two, even back in the Power Animator and Soft3d days. I've often heard that Maya is hard to learn, or its UI is tricky, but I think this is one of those myths. It's really no better, or worse than any other package to learn really. The one thing to remember about Maya, is that it's very open, it was designed that way. So there can be different (some would say to many) ways to do the same thing. Also, Maya has a lot of preferences, so you can actually change many things, including the UI. It's mastering those things, that can often be the trick. I still see people now, some experienced Maya vets, who aren't using the hotbox or marking menus correctly and they can be key to Maya's UI and usability. However I'd still like some Softimage fairy dust sprinkled on some of Maya's UI though. Now when it comes to Max, don't get me started...:-) From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Dan Yargici Sent: 06 January 2014 09:44 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year Softimage is the Dreamcast of DCC apps. Playstation had the slick marketing, Dreamcast had the tech but got chewed to pieces by the Playstation hype machine and Playstation won. When Sega finally gave up on the console business every man and his
Re: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft
I also use GoZ a lot, the only bug that happens for me is that if you send from Softimage to Zbrush, make an UV check before start sculpting. Sometimes they got screwed. So export an OBJ and import in Zbrush do your sculpt and sendback to SI. Make sure your UV's are consistent and flip the U before exporting from Zbrush or your map is going to come up flipped. upside down. Regularly I don't subd the mesh in Zbrush more than 4 subd. As you need to subd your mesh also inside SI the same amount to properly displace the geo when rendering. If you find that you need more subd in your sculpt. I willo go back, subd the mesh to get more polys and send it back to Zbrush, so you can go as high as 8 subd from the original mesh, that is a lot. As far as I remember you can use a 32bit depth image to plug that into the scalar change range node. But this depth in the bitmap has nothing to do with the linear workflow, as the linear workflow is related to gamma correct display and rendering, and this maps are to drive values of units to displace the geometry inwards and outwards and to be interpretated by the render engine Here is video that will help to understand the displacement in SI and MR. https://vimeo.com/29898426 . 2014/1/8 Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com You read it linear for sure. What exactly is your problem, are you not getting enough detail?. If this is the problem it can also be the UVs are not big enough for each poly. To be honest the final shader doesn't really matter for the disp, in fact GoZ export with a phong. I personally only use Architectural materials when in MR though. On 8 January 2014 12:45, Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com wrote: OK, next question. If you are working in linear workflow, how would you set up the displacement? At this moment I feed the displacement map as Linear, and scale it down with Change Range node. The displacement map is an OpenEXR 32 bit texture, and I am using the MILA mental Ray shaders. Cheers Szabolcs *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Cristobal Infante *Sent:* Wednesday, January 08, 2014 12:08 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft GoZ for softimage all the way... On 8 January 2014 09:24, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: The trick is the scalar change range node in the render tree to match the displacement. So MR will know wich values go up and wich values go down. Take a look at the alpha value when exporting the displacement map from Zbrush. That value should be placed in the scalar change range node in the render tree. So let's say that the alpha value in Zbrush for the exported map is 0.054. You should plug the dm in the scalar change range node and place the minimum value to -0.054 ant the max to 0.054. That way MR will know where is 0.0 value and the max and min displacement. 2014/1/8 Florian Breg florian.b...@gmail.com Have you tried GoZ for softimage? I used it a lot recently and it works like a charm. With the click of a button you get your model imported into SI with all the maps attached and a change range node with the right values added to your displacement. It even flips the maps for you. I think you can download it from the pixologic site. Good Luck, Florian Am 08.01.2014 09:18 schrieb Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com: I’m sure that I’m the source of the error, but I can’t reproduce the level of detail in Softimage. It might be that I make the displacement in ZBrush wrong, but in PS the map looks good (I use 32bit 3channel OpenEXR), but the rendered version has very faint details. If I bump up the displacement with change range, the modell blows up… *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Szabolcs Matefy *Sent:* Wednesday, January 08, 2014 9:12 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft Yep. *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [ mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.comsoftimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Emilio Hernandez *Sent:* Wednesday, January 08, 2014 9:00 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Rendering ZBrush displacement in Soft Are you using MR? 2014/1/8 Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.com Anyone has idea how to render ZBrush displacement correctly in Softimage? Times to times, I think I know, and the next time I can’t render detailed displacement… ___ 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.
Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year
Anyone tried using gpubox with Redshift? http://renegatt.com/ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:55 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.netwrote: +1 here. Redshift is faster on one machine than Mentalray on two of the same CPU (i7 950) and I am using a Nvidia Quadro FX 3800 (older card) I would imagine multiple CUDA cards would be lightning fast. Redshift is also so well integrated into Softimage. Very little learning to be up and running in a short time. Basically, just a few custom shaders, the rest are the existing shaders. Well worth the $100 Beta and then $300 more when the first release comes out. The tech support is outstanding. I was an Alpha user. Very happy. On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 10:55 PM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.comwrote: Hey Sebastian have you tried Redshift. The beta is only 100USD and it works like a charm, it is full integrated into Softimage and unless you are going to do Hair or Strands it is worth every penny. Specially for a one man show. Forget about CPU and use the GPU. In my case I can continue working while I am rendering and that is surely a big added value. Faster than MR and faster than Arnold, and zero flickering with GI in animation. 2014/1/7 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com 9000€... it's going to be tough, but your worth it :) On 6 January 2014 13:34, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.dewrote: Maybe true but one thing to keep in mind is you don't have to spend extra money for mental ray (at least no significant amount). For one man shows like me mr is still useful. I use it on a small farm with 8 nodes plus the workstation. Switching to arnold will cost me 9000€ . Thats roughly the same cost that my whole DCC apps are about. I see mr like I see the FXTree...it's does not compete to nuke but it's integrated in soft and already there. I agree that there aren't any reasons to stay with mr except the the expense factor and legacy things. sven -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 12:12 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year Now while we are at it. I´m currently preparing assets that need to be free of 3rd party functionality. This means I have to set them up with a mR shading network to start folks off with. mental ray. The common thing between 3DSMax, Maya and Softimage. Please. Kill it. It´s not getting anyone anywhere anymore. I don´t want to discuss details or legacy reasons. Kill it. It´s over. It won´t come back. Selling three different DCC apps that actually share the fact that you will first have to invest in a 3rd party renderer to get something looking half way decent out of them can´t be the most ideal situation but a pretty nice way of creating an industry standard of wasting people´s life with forcing them in personal overtime. What a crap. Really. Provide a renderer that actually works as advertised. Or don´t make me pay for that mR crap. tim On 06.01.2014 11:38, Graham Bell wrote: Ah, the Dreamcast, a fine console but flawed form the beginning. The tech was ok, but really just a pc and essentially the predecessor to the Xbox. The problem with the Dreamcast was that it launched right in the middle of when a lot of developers were looking to retool for the PS2. People were caught in the middle of whether to go short for the Dreamcast, or go long for the PS2. Most went with the PS2 and then eventually the Xbox. On the Soft and Maya usability front, personally I don't mind both, but then I've always been used to jumping between the two, even back in the Power Animator and Soft3d days. I've often heard that Maya is hard to learn, or its UI is tricky, but I think this is one of those myths. It's really no better, or worse than any other package to learn really. The one thing to remember about Maya, is that it's very open, it was designed that way. So there can be different (some would say to many) ways to do the same thing. Also, Maya has a lot of preferences, so you can actually change many things, including the UI. It's mastering those things, that can often be the trick. I still see people now, some experienced Maya vets, who aren't using the hotbox or marking menus correctly and they can be key to Maya's UI and usability. However I'd still like some Softimage fairy dust sprinkled on some of Maya's UI though. Now when it comes to Max, don't get me started...:-) From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Dan Yargici Sent: 06 January 2014 09:44 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year Softimage is the Dreamcast of DCC apps. Playstation had the slick marketing, Dreamcast had the
Re: Linking a light (Sun) to a Physical sky ?
Seems to work with Mia Phisical Sun .. I Le 08/01/2014 16:32, olivier jeannel a écrit : Very dumb question, I did it before, I'm sure... How do I link a light (infinite - sun) rotation to a vector (Sun direction) in a Physicla sky property page ? (So that my light is a sun...) I'm in redshift...
Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year
Someone said they were going to try Amazon EC2 but no results posted yet. On 1/8/2014 10:00 AM, Dan Yargici wrote: Anyone tried using gpubox with Redshift? http://renegatt.com/ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:55 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.net mailto:magic...@bellsouth.net wrote: +1 here. Redshift is faster on one machine than Mentalray on two of the same CPU (i7 950) and I am using a Nvidia Quadro FX 3800 (older card) I would imagine multiple CUDA cards would be lightning fast. Redshift is also so well integrated into Softimage. Very little learning to be up and running in a short time. Basically, just a few custom shaders, the rest are the existing shaders. Well worth the $100 Beta and then $300 more when the first release comes out. The tech support is outstanding. I was an Alpha user. Very happy. On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 10:55 PM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com mailto:emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Hey Sebastian have you tried Redshift. The beta is only 100USD and it works like a charm, it is full integrated into Softimage and unless you are going to do Hair or Strands it is worth every penny. Specially for a one man show. Forget about CPU and use the GPU. In my case I can continue working while I am rendering and that is surely a big added value. Faster than MR and faster than Arnold, and zero flickering with GI in animation. 2014/1/7 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com mailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com 9000€... it's going to be tough, but your worth it :) On 6 January 2014 13:34, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.de mailto:sixsi_l...@imagefront.de wrote: Maybe true but one thing to keep in mind is you don't have to spend extra money for mental ray (at least no significant amount). For one man shows like me mr is still useful. I use it on a small farm with 8 nodes plus the workstation. Switching to arnold will cost me 9000€ . Thats roughly the same cost that my whole DCC apps are about. I see mr like I see the FXTree...it's does not compete to nuke but it's integrated in soft and already there. I agree that there aren't any reasons to stay with mr except the the expense factor and legacy things. sven -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 12:12 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year Now while we are at it. I´m currently preparing assets that need to be free of 3rd party functionality. This means I have to set them up with a mR shading network to start folks off with. mental ray. The common thing between 3DSMax, Maya and Softimage. Please. Kill it. It´s not getting anyone anywhere anymore. I don´t want to discuss details or legacy reasons. Kill it. It´s over. It won´t come back. Selling three different DCC apps that actually share the fact that you will first have to invest in a 3rd party renderer to get something looking half way decent out of them can´t be the most ideal situation but a pretty nice way of creating an industry standard of wasting people´s life with forcing them in personal overtime. What a crap. Really. Provide a renderer that actually works as advertised. Or don´t make me pay for that mR crap. tim On 06.01.2014 11:38, Graham Bell wrote: Ah, the Dreamcast, a fine console but flawed form the beginning. The tech was ok, but really just a pc and essentially the predecessor to the Xbox. The problem with the Dreamcast was that it launched right in the middle of when a lot of developers were looking to retool for the PS2. People were caught in the middle of whether to go short for the Dreamcast, or go long for the PS2. Most went with the PS2 and
Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year
It sounds promising. I don't know. The funny thing is that Quadros actually render slower than GTX in my experience. As they have lower CUDA cores. My GTX470 alone rendered faster than a Quadro 3000. As the GTX is more focused to games and Quadros to faster video display processing, the Quadros have a lower memory bandwith and less CUDA cores. At least from the last comparisions I have doing in the Nvidia site. Actually I was planning to upgrade my GTX470 to a GTX 780Ti instead of the Titan. A few bucks off the price and it has excellent specs. GTX 780 Ti GPU Engine Specs: 2880CUDA Cores 875Base Clock (MHz) 928Boost Clock (MHz) 210Texture Fill Rate (GigaTexels/sec) GTX 780 Ti Memory Specs: 7.0 GbpsMemory Clock 3072 MBStandard Memory Config GDDR5Memory Interface 384-bitMemory Interface Width 336Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) From this numbers what you are looking for, is to see which GPU will perform faster are the number of CUDA Cores and the memory bandwith. The higher the better. As the memory bandwith is how fast the data can be transfered to memory to be processed by the CUDA cores. Some guys are already using Redshift with RoyalRender. I don't how fast they are rendering, but now you can have a render farm with cheap processors and a couple of this GPU inside. A quick example. The same scene in round numbers per frame in my machine. Arnold: 15 min Redhsfit: 4 min So you can expect at least a reduction of 73% in your render times. 2014/1/8 Dan Yargici danyarg...@gmail.com Anyone tried using gpubox with Redshift? http://renegatt.com/ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:55 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.netwrote: +1 here. Redshift is faster on one machine than Mentalray on two of the same CPU (i7 950) and I am using a Nvidia Quadro FX 3800 (older card) I would imagine multiple CUDA cards would be lightning fast. Redshift is also so well integrated into Softimage. Very little learning to be up and running in a short time. Basically, just a few custom shaders, the rest are the existing shaders. Well worth the $100 Beta and then $300 more when the first release comes out. The tech support is outstanding. I was an Alpha user. Very happy. On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 10:55 PM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.comwrote: Hey Sebastian have you tried Redshift. The beta is only 100USD and it works like a charm, it is full integrated into Softimage and unless you are going to do Hair or Strands it is worth every penny. Specially for a one man show. Forget about CPU and use the GPU. In my case I can continue working while I am rendering and that is surely a big added value. Faster than MR and faster than Arnold, and zero flickering with GI in animation. 2014/1/7 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com 9000€... it's going to be tough, but your worth it :) On 6 January 2014 13:34, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.dewrote: Maybe true but one thing to keep in mind is you don't have to spend extra money for mental ray (at least no significant amount). For one man shows like me mr is still useful. I use it on a small farm with 8 nodes plus the workstation. Switching to arnold will cost me 9000€ . Thats roughly the same cost that my whole DCC apps are about. I see mr like I see the FXTree...it's does not compete to nuke but it's integrated in soft and already there. I agree that there aren't any reasons to stay with mr except the the expense factor and legacy things. sven -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 12:12 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year Now while we are at it. I´m currently preparing assets that need to be free of 3rd party functionality. This means I have to set them up with a mR shading network to start folks off with. mental ray. The common thing between 3DSMax, Maya and Softimage. Please. Kill it. It´s not getting anyone anywhere anymore. I don´t want to discuss details or legacy reasons. Kill it. It´s over. It won´t come back. Selling three different DCC apps that actually share the fact that you will first have to invest in a 3rd party renderer to get something looking half way decent out of them can´t be the most ideal situation but a pretty nice way of creating an industry standard of wasting people´s life with forcing them in personal overtime. What a crap. Really. Provide a renderer that actually works as advertised. Or don´t make me pay for that mR crap. tim On 06.01.2014 11:38, Graham Bell wrote: Ah, the Dreamcast, a fine console but flawed form the beginning. The tech was ok, but really just a pc and essentially the predecessor to the Xbox. The problem with the Dreamcast was that it launched right in the middle of when a lot of developers were
Re: Stopping simulation!?
You can try this http://xsisupport.com/2011/03/11/softimage-blog-%C2%BB-work-around-to-problems-with-tablets-and-softimage/ If it still not working, try to stop playback with keyboard, down arrow. On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 4:28 PM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Now that you mention I am having the same issue. Any ideas? Thx 2014/1/8 Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dk I have had the doubtful priviledge of having to do a variety of simulation lately in Soft, and if I remember correctly, in the fall I was able to stop simulations by mouse and pen input, but now I can't do that any longer - actually no matter how simple the sim is. I am on SI 2013 SP1 Win7 and the only thing I have installed in the meantime is Momentum. I have not tried removing it, and before doing that I just want to hear if anyone else has experienced something like this and know of a fix? Thanks Morten
Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year
When switching over to Redshift, are you all typically redoing the shaders using the Redshift ones or trying to rely on the compatibility with standard ones? I'm interested to check it out but would like to approach it correctly. Thanks, Byron On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 11:41 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: It sounds promising. I don't know. The funny thing is that Quadros actually render slower than GTX in my experience. As they have lower CUDA cores. My GTX470 alone rendered faster than a Quadro 3000. As the GTX is more focused to games and Quadros to faster video display processing, the Quadros have a lower memory bandwith and less CUDA cores. At least from the last comparisions I have doing in the Nvidia site. Actually I was planning to upgrade my GTX470 to a GTX 780Ti instead of the Titan. A few bucks off the price and it has excellent specs. GTX 780 Ti GPU Engine Specs: 2880CUDA Cores 875Base Clock (MHz) 928Boost Clock (MHz) 210Texture Fill Rate (GigaTexels/sec) GTX 780 Ti Memory Specs: 7.0 GbpsMemory Clock 3072 MBStandard Memory Config GDDR5Memory Interface 384-bitMemory Interface Width 336Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) From this numbers what you are looking for, is to see which GPU will perform faster are the number of CUDA Cores and the memory bandwith. The higher the better. As the memory bandwith is how fast the data can be transfered to memory to be processed by the CUDA cores. Some guys are already using Redshift with RoyalRender. I don't how fast they are rendering, but now you can have a render farm with cheap processors and a couple of this GPU inside. A quick example. The same scene in round numbers per frame in my machine. Arnold: 15 min Redhsfit: 4 min So you can expect at least a reduction of 73% in your render times. 2014/1/8 Dan Yargici danyarg...@gmail.com Anyone tried using gpubox with Redshift? http://renegatt.com/ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:55 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.netwrote: +1 here. Redshift is faster on one machine than Mentalray on two of the same CPU (i7 950) and I am using a Nvidia Quadro FX 3800 (older card) I would imagine multiple CUDA cards would be lightning fast. Redshift is also so well integrated into Softimage. Very little learning to be up and running in a short time. Basically, just a few custom shaders, the rest are the existing shaders. Well worth the $100 Beta and then $300 more when the first release comes out. The tech support is outstanding. I was an Alpha user. Very happy. On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 10:55 PM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.comwrote: Hey Sebastian have you tried Redshift. The beta is only 100USD and it works like a charm, it is full integrated into Softimage and unless you are going to do Hair or Strands it is worth every penny. Specially for a one man show. Forget about CPU and use the GPU. In my case I can continue working while I am rendering and that is surely a big added value. Faster than MR and faster than Arnold, and zero flickering with GI in animation. 2014/1/7 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com 9000€... it's going to be tough, but your worth it :) On 6 January 2014 13:34, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.dewrote: Maybe true but one thing to keep in mind is you don't have to spend extra money for mental ray (at least no significant amount). For one man shows like me mr is still useful. I use it on a small farm with 8 nodes plus the workstation. Switching to arnold will cost me 9000€ . Thats roughly the same cost that my whole DCC apps are about. I see mr like I see the FXTree...it's does not compete to nuke but it's integrated in soft and already there. I agree that there aren't any reasons to stay with mr except the the expense factor and legacy things. sven -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 12:12 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year Now while we are at it. I´m currently preparing assets that need to be free of 3rd party functionality. This means I have to set them up with a mR shading network to start folks off with. mental ray. The common thing between 3DSMax, Maya and Softimage. Please. Kill it. It´s not getting anyone anywhere anymore. I don´t want to discuss details or legacy reasons. Kill it. It´s over. It won´t come back. Selling three different DCC apps that actually share the fact that you will first have to invest in a 3rd party renderer to get something looking half way decent out of them can´t be the most ideal situation but a pretty nice way of creating an industry standard of wasting people´s life with forcing them in personal overtime. What a crap. Really. Provide a renderer that actually works as advertised. Or
Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year
You can use the standard ones as they are compatible with Redshift or use the Redshift ones. Of course the redshift look almost the same as the standard ones, so you are not guessing or fooling around on what does what. But the difference is that the Redshift ones are physical accurate and you will get much better results. The Redshift Arch shader has for example an additional option to drive the fresnel effect. Dielectric or Conductor with a k coefficient, based on the IOR. Or you can manually dial in the 0° or 90°. Also you can use the default lights. But Redshift has its own also physical accurate. Let's put it this way. If Redshift didn't have lights or shaders, you can switch to Redshift and use all the default shaders and lights. I have Redshift to start as the default render engine and start working, drawing render regions etc, without changing anything. Not a single light or material. 2014/1/8 Byron Nash byronn...@gmail.com When switching over to Redshift, are you all typically redoing the shaders using the Redshift ones or trying to rely on the compatibility with standard ones? I'm interested to check it out but would like to approach it correctly. Thanks, Byron On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 11:41 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.comwrote: It sounds promising. I don't know. The funny thing is that Quadros actually render slower than GTX in my experience. As they have lower CUDA cores. My GTX470 alone rendered faster than a Quadro 3000. As the GTX is more focused to games and Quadros to faster video display processing, the Quadros have a lower memory bandwith and less CUDA cores. At least from the last comparisions I have doing in the Nvidia site. Actually I was planning to upgrade my GTX470 to a GTX 780Ti instead of the Titan. A few bucks off the price and it has excellent specs. GTX 780 Ti GPU Engine Specs: 2880CUDA Cores 875Base Clock (MHz) 928Boost Clock (MHz) 210Texture Fill Rate (GigaTexels/sec) GTX 780 Ti Memory Specs: 7.0 GbpsMemory Clock 3072 MBStandard Memory Config GDDR5Memory Interface 384-bitMemory Interface Width 336Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) From this numbers what you are looking for, is to see which GPU will perform faster are the number of CUDA Cores and the memory bandwith. The higher the better. As the memory bandwith is how fast the data can be transfered to memory to be processed by the CUDA cores. Some guys are already using Redshift with RoyalRender. I don't how fast they are rendering, but now you can have a render farm with cheap processors and a couple of this GPU inside. A quick example. The same scene in round numbers per frame in my machine. Arnold: 15 min Redhsfit: 4 min So you can expect at least a reduction of 73% in your render times. 2014/1/8 Dan Yargici danyarg...@gmail.com Anyone tried using gpubox with Redshift? http://renegatt.com/ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:55 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.net wrote: +1 here. Redshift is faster on one machine than Mentalray on two of the same CPU (i7 950) and I am using a Nvidia Quadro FX 3800 (older card) I would imagine multiple CUDA cards would be lightning fast. Redshift is also so well integrated into Softimage. Very little learning to be up and running in a short time. Basically, just a few custom shaders, the rest are the existing shaders. Well worth the $100 Beta and then $300 more when the first release comes out. The tech support is outstanding. I was an Alpha user. Very happy. On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 10:55 PM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.comwrote: Hey Sebastian have you tried Redshift. The beta is only 100USD and it works like a charm, it is full integrated into Softimage and unless you are going to do Hair or Strands it is worth every penny. Specially for a one man show. Forget about CPU and use the GPU. In my case I can continue working while I am rendering and that is surely a big added value. Faster than MR and faster than Arnold, and zero flickering with GI in animation. 2014/1/7 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com 9000€... it's going to be tough, but your worth it :) On 6 January 2014 13:34, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.dewrote: Maybe true but one thing to keep in mind is you don't have to spend extra money for mental ray (at least no significant amount). For one man shows like me mr is still useful. I use it on a small farm with 8 nodes plus the workstation. Switching to arnold will cost me 9000€ . Thats roughly the same cost that my whole DCC apps are about. I see mr like I see the FXTree...it's does not compete to nuke but it's integrated in soft and already there. I agree that there aren't any reasons to stay with mr except the the expense factor and legacy things. sven -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim
Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year
Right now I am rendering something nothing fancy, just a simple PS. But at the same time I am working on editing something in Media Composer full HD without any restrictions. 2014/1/8 Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com You can use the standard ones as they are compatible with Redshift or use the Redshift ones. Of course the redshift look almost the same as the standard ones, so you are not guessing or fooling around on what does what. But the difference is that the Redshift ones are physical accurate and you will get much better results. The Redshift Arch shader has for example an additional option to drive the fresnel effect. Dielectric or Conductor with a k coefficient, based on the IOR. Or you can manually dial in the 0° or 90°. Also you can use the default lights. But Redshift has its own also physical accurate. Let's put it this way. If Redshift didn't have lights or shaders, you can switch to Redshift and use all the default shaders and lights. I have Redshift to start as the default render engine and start working, drawing render regions etc, without changing anything. Not a single light or material. 2014/1/8 Byron Nash byronn...@gmail.com When switching over to Redshift, are you all typically redoing the shaders using the Redshift ones or trying to rely on the compatibility with standard ones? I'm interested to check it out but would like to approach it correctly. Thanks, Byron On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 11:41 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.comwrote: It sounds promising. I don't know. The funny thing is that Quadros actually render slower than GTX in my experience. As they have lower CUDA cores. My GTX470 alone rendered faster than a Quadro 3000. As the GTX is more focused to games and Quadros to faster video display processing, the Quadros have a lower memory bandwith and less CUDA cores. At least from the last comparisions I have doing in the Nvidia site. Actually I was planning to upgrade my GTX470 to a GTX 780Ti instead of the Titan. A few bucks off the price and it has excellent specs. GTX 780 Ti GPU Engine Specs: 2880CUDA Cores 875Base Clock (MHz) 928Boost Clock (MHz) 210Texture Fill Rate (GigaTexels/sec) GTX 780 Ti Memory Specs: 7.0 GbpsMemory Clock 3072 MBStandard Memory Config GDDR5Memory Interface 384-bitMemory Interface Width 336Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) From this numbers what you are looking for, is to see which GPU will perform faster are the number of CUDA Cores and the memory bandwith. The higher the better. As the memory bandwith is how fast the data can be transfered to memory to be processed by the CUDA cores. Some guys are already using Redshift with RoyalRender. I don't how fast they are rendering, but now you can have a render farm with cheap processors and a couple of this GPU inside. A quick example. The same scene in round numbers per frame in my machine. Arnold: 15 min Redhsfit: 4 min So you can expect at least a reduction of 73% in your render times. 2014/1/8 Dan Yargici danyarg...@gmail.com Anyone tried using gpubox with Redshift? http://renegatt.com/ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:55 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.net wrote: +1 here. Redshift is faster on one machine than Mentalray on two of the same CPU (i7 950) and I am using a Nvidia Quadro FX 3800 (older card) I would imagine multiple CUDA cards would be lightning fast. Redshift is also so well integrated into Softimage. Very little learning to be up and running in a short time. Basically, just a few custom shaders, the rest are the existing shaders. Well worth the $100 Beta and then $300 more when the first release comes out. The tech support is outstanding. I was an Alpha user. Very happy. On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 10:55 PM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.comwrote: Hey Sebastian have you tried Redshift. The beta is only 100USD and it works like a charm, it is full integrated into Softimage and unless you are going to do Hair or Strands it is worth every penny. Specially for a one man show. Forget about CPU and use the GPU. In my case I can continue working while I am rendering and that is surely a big added value. Faster than MR and faster than Arnold, and zero flickering with GI in animation. 2014/1/7 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com 9000€... it's going to be tough, but your worth it :) On 6 January 2014 13:34, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.dewrote: Maybe true but one thing to keep in mind is you don't have to spend extra money for mental ray (at least no significant amount). For one man shows like me mr is still useful. I use it on a small farm with 8 nodes plus the workstation. Switching to arnold will cost me 9000€ . Thats roughly the same cost that my whole DCC apps are about. I see mr like I see the FXTree...it's does not compete to nuke but it's integrated in soft and already there. I agree that
RE: Organizing files that belong together
You can skin this cat 1000 different ways, but it's essentially an asset management issue. One possible solution is to apply metadata to your squares as custom properties or userdata blobs to define what type of square it is. The square would likely be exported as an .emdl (or custom file format) and stored in a source control system like perforce, tank, alienbrain, etc... This metadata applied to the square would be entered into a database table recording the square's file name, coordinates in the city, what types of squares its compatible with, and some general data like when it was created, who created it, etc... A different table in the database would likely store the mappings of which squares are used in which scenes/projects. Custom tools would be used to load/save these squares in the various scenes by looking up the square metadata in the database tables and assembling them accordingly per user's specifications. Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Christian Gotzinger Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2014 2:56 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: OT: Organizing files that belong together Hi list, We have a digital city model that's divided up into several hundred squares. Our projects require us to make different versions of these squares for planning purposes. So for any given square, we may have 4 or 5 different versions. The more projects we do, the more complicated it gets for us to keep track of what belongs (and what fits) together. When we need to quickly prepare a file that contains City model with Project X + Project Y, we have two main problems: a) For squares with multiple versions we need to figure out which of these versions are part of Project X and which are Project Y. b) We need to figure out how squares may be combined. Let's say that the square F003_C belongs to Project X, but square G003 is not part of Project X. We now can't be sure which version(s) of G003 properly match(es) F003_C at the seam. I'm unsure how common a problem this is and whether I explained it properly. Does anybody have any pointers as to what may be a good way to tackle this? Maybe some kind of specialized software? Thank you Christian
Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year
It´s worth using the redshift3d shaders, the new blend material is really nice, normal map blending works nice and the conductor/dielectric option to drive reflection gives believable metal reflection behaviour results easily. You´ll also get better (lights/shadow) sampling compared to using default shaders. Imho, if you spent time with mR or VRay or Arnold shaders, you will have no problem transfering your knowledge to Redshift3D. In terms of benefiting from speed while tweaking, go and set the renderers threshold to 0.2 or even higher, I find that is good enough for judging light/color intensities and gives fast turnaround. Personally, I tend to push per light lightsamples higher than default, even if that is not neccessary in Redshift3D´s unified sampling aproach, to me it feels I have influence on the wheight of samples anyway. Enjoy. It´s really, really cool. Cheers, tim On 08.01.2014 19:08, Byron Nash wrote: When switching over to Redshift, are you all typically redoing the shaders using the Redshift ones or trying to rely on the compatibility with standard ones? I'm interested to check it out but would like to approach it correctly. Thanks, Byron On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 11:41 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com mailto:emi...@e-roja.com wrote: It sounds promising. I don't know. The funny thing is that Quadros actually render slower than GTX in my experience. As they have lower CUDA cores. My GTX470 alone rendered faster than a Quadro 3000. As the GTX is more focused to games and Quadros to faster video display processing, the Quadros have a lower memory bandwith and less CUDA cores. At least from the last comparisions I have doing in the Nvidia site. Actually I was planning to upgrade my GTX470 to a GTX 780Ti instead of the Titan. A few bucks off the price and it has excellent specs. GTX 780 Ti GPU Engine Specs: 2880CUDA Cores 875Base Clock (MHz) 928Boost Clock (MHz) 210Texture Fill Rate (GigaTexels/sec) GTX 780 Ti Memory Specs: 7.0 GbpsMemory Clock 3072 MBStandard Memory Config GDDR5Memory Interface 384-bitMemory Interface Width 336Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) From this numbers what you are looking for, is to see which GPU will perform faster are the number of CUDA Cores and the memory bandwith. The higher the better. As the memory bandwith is how fast the data can be transfered to memory to be processed by the CUDA cores. Some guys are already using Redshift with RoyalRender. I don't how fast they are rendering, but now you can have a render farm with cheap processors and a couple of this GPU inside. A quick example. The same scene in round numbers per frame in my machine. Arnold: 15 min Redhsfit: 4 min So you can expect at least a reduction of 73% in your render times. 2014/1/8 Dan Yargici danyarg...@gmail.com mailto:danyarg...@gmail.com Anyone tried using gpubox with Redshift? http://renegatt.com/ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:55 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.net mailto:magic...@bellsouth.net wrote: +1 here. Redshift is faster on one machine than Mentalray on two of the same CPU (i7 950) and I am using a Nvidia Quadro FX 3800 (older card) I would imagine multiple CUDA cards would be lightning fast. Redshift is also so well integrated into Softimage. Very little learning to be up and running in a short time. Basically, just a few custom shaders, the rest are the existing shaders. Well worth the $100 Beta and then $300 more when the first release comes out. The tech support is outstanding. I was an Alpha user. Very happy. On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 10:55 PM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com mailto:emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Hey Sebastian have you tried Redshift. The beta is only 100USD and it works like a charm, it is full integrated into Softimage and unless you are going to do Hair or Strands it is worth every penny. Specially for a one man show. Forget about CPU and use the GPU. In my case I can continue working while I am rendering and that is surely a big added value. Faster than MR and faster than Arnold, and zero flickering with GI in animation. 2014/1/7 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com mailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com 9000€... it's going to be tough, but your worth it :) On 6 January 2014 13:34, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.de mailto:sixsi_l...@imagefront.de wrote: Maybe true but one thing to keep in mind is you don't have to spend extra money for mental ray (at least no significant amount). For one man shows like me mr is still useful. I use it on a small farm with
Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year
Thank you Tim for jumping on this one! I would just add, that for $100 bucks you are not going to regret it at all! You will be all setup and ready to render I will say in one day at most of getting the hang of it. And there is always the forums. The Redshift team is amazing not only for the render, but also for the support and user requests. 2014/1/8 Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de It´s worth using the redshift3d shaders, the new blend material is really nice, normal map blending works nice and the conductor/dielectric option to drive reflection gives believable metal reflection behaviour results easily. You´ll also get better (lights/shadow) sampling compared to using default shaders. Imho, if you spent time with mR or VRay or Arnold shaders, you will have no problem transfering your knowledge to Redshift3D. In terms of benefiting from speed while tweaking, go and set the renderers threshold to 0.2 or even higher, I find that is good enough for judging light/color intensities and gives fast turnaround. Personally, I tend to push per light lightsamples higher than default, even if that is not neccessary in Redshift3D´s unified sampling aproach, to me it feels I have influence on the wheight of samples anyway. Enjoy. It´s really, really cool. Cheers, tim On 08.01.2014 19:08, Byron Nash wrote: When switching over to Redshift, are you all typically redoing the shaders using the Redshift ones or trying to rely on the compatibility with standard ones? I'm interested to check it out but would like to approach it correctly. Thanks, Byron On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 11:41 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.commailto: emi...@e-roja.com wrote: It sounds promising. I don't know. The funny thing is that Quadros actually render slower than GTX in my experience. As they have lower CUDA cores. My GTX470 alone rendered faster than a Quadro 3000. As the GTX is more focused to games and Quadros to faster video display processing, the Quadros have a lower memory bandwith and less CUDA cores. At least from the last comparisions I have doing in the Nvidia site. Actually I was planning to upgrade my GTX470 to a GTX 780Ti instead of the Titan. A few bucks off the price and it has excellent specs. GTX 780 Ti GPU Engine Specs: 2880CUDA Cores 875Base Clock (MHz) 928Boost Clock (MHz) 210Texture Fill Rate (GigaTexels/sec) GTX 780 Ti Memory Specs: 7.0 GbpsMemory Clock 3072 MBStandard Memory Config GDDR5Memory Interface 384-bitMemory Interface Width 336Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) From this numbers what you are looking for, is to see which GPU will perform faster are the number of CUDA Cores and the memory bandwith. The higher the better. As the memory bandwith is how fast the data can be transfered to memory to be processed by the CUDA cores. Some guys are already using Redshift with RoyalRender. I don't how fast they are rendering, but now you can have a render farm with cheap processors and a couple of this GPU inside. A quick example. The same scene in round numbers per frame in my machine. Arnold: 15 min Redhsfit: 4 min So you can expect at least a reduction of 73% in your render times. 2014/1/8 Dan Yargici danyarg...@gmail.com mailto: danyarg...@gmail.com Anyone tried using gpubox with Redshift? http://renegatt.com/ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:55 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.net mailto:magic...@bellsouth.net wrote: +1 here. Redshift is faster on one machine than Mentalray on two of the same CPU (i7 950) and I am using a Nvidia Quadro FX 3800 (older card) I would imagine multiple CUDA cards would be lightning fast. Redshift is also so well integrated into Softimage. Very little learning to be up and running in a short time. Basically, just a few custom shaders, the rest are the existing shaders. Well worth the $100 Beta and then $300 more when the first release comes out. The tech support is outstanding. I was an Alpha user. Very happy. On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 10:55 PM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com mailto:emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Hey Sebastian have you tried Redshift. The beta is only 100USD and it works like a charm, it is full integrated into Softimage and unless you are going to do Hair or Strands it is worth every penny. Specially for a one man show. Forget about CPU and use the GPU. In my case I can continue working while I am rendering and that is surely a big added value. Faster than MR and faster than Arnold, and zero flickering with GI in animation. 2014/1/7 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.commailto:
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
I'm going to hold back on expressing how I really feel about it, and leave it at: It's utter shit. I read/reviewed that a while ago as I was requested to (helping with training and cross training) and it's asinine and a plain display of incompetence in both softwares and of extremely inefficient and unrefined ways to operate them. I could write a long list of cookie point toss-ups between the two coming from using both extensively since their first version, probably none of it, and I do mean none of it literally, would align to that post. On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 7:10 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.comwrote: what do you guys think about this blog post: http://mayavxsi.blogspot.com/2011/09/rigging-m-22-x-15.html -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year
There is one situation, that happened to me, while using Redshift ... I got an out of memory error from Redshift, while using Chrome at the same time. This is most likely due to my Quadro FX300 card which is not the best card for GPU rendering. On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Byron Nash byronn...@gmail.com wrote: When switching over to Redshift, are you all typically redoing the shaders using the Redshift ones or trying to rely on the compatibility with standard ones? I'm interested to check it out but would like to approach it correctly. Thanks, Byron On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 11:41 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.comwrote: It sounds promising. I don't know. The funny thing is that Quadros actually render slower than GTX in my experience. As they have lower CUDA cores. My GTX470 alone rendered faster than a Quadro 3000. As the GTX is more focused to games and Quadros to faster video display processing, the Quadros have a lower memory bandwith and less CUDA cores. At least from the last comparisions I have doing in the Nvidia site. Actually I was planning to upgrade my GTX470 to a GTX 780Ti instead of the Titan. A few bucks off the price and it has excellent specs. GTX 780 Ti GPU Engine Specs: 2880CUDA Cores 875Base Clock (MHz) 928Boost Clock (MHz) 210Texture Fill Rate (GigaTexels/sec) GTX 780 Ti Memory Specs: 7.0 GbpsMemory Clock 3072 MBStandard Memory Config GDDR5Memory Interface 384-bitMemory Interface Width 336Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) From this numbers what you are looking for, is to see which GPU will perform faster are the number of CUDA Cores and the memory bandwith. The higher the better. As the memory bandwith is how fast the data can be transfered to memory to be processed by the CUDA cores. Some guys are already using Redshift with RoyalRender. I don't how fast they are rendering, but now you can have a render farm with cheap processors and a couple of this GPU inside. A quick example. The same scene in round numbers per frame in my machine. Arnold: 15 min Redhsfit: 4 min So you can expect at least a reduction of 73% in your render times. 2014/1/8 Dan Yargici danyarg...@gmail.com Anyone tried using gpubox with Redshift? http://renegatt.com/ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:55 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.net wrote: +1 here. Redshift is faster on one machine than Mentalray on two of the same CPU (i7 950) and I am using a Nvidia Quadro FX 3800 (older card) I would imagine multiple CUDA cards would be lightning fast. Redshift is also so well integrated into Softimage. Very little learning to be up and running in a short time. Basically, just a few custom shaders, the rest are the existing shaders. Well worth the $100 Beta and then $300 more when the first release comes out. The tech support is outstanding. I was an Alpha user. Very happy. On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 10:55 PM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.comwrote: Hey Sebastian have you tried Redshift. The beta is only 100USD and it works like a charm, it is full integrated into Softimage and unless you are going to do Hair or Strands it is worth every penny. Specially for a one man show. Forget about CPU and use the GPU. In my case I can continue working while I am rendering and that is surely a big added value. Faster than MR and faster than Arnold, and zero flickering with GI in animation. 2014/1/7 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com 9000€... it's going to be tough, but your worth it :) On 6 January 2014 13:34, Sven Constable sixsi_l...@imagefront.dewrote: Maybe true but one thing to keep in mind is you don't have to spend extra money for mental ray (at least no significant amount). For one man shows like me mr is still useful. I use it on a small farm with 8 nodes plus the workstation. Switching to arnold will cost me 9000€ . Thats roughly the same cost that my whole DCC apps are about. I see mr like I see the FXTree...it's does not compete to nuke but it's integrated in soft and already there. I agree that there aren't any reasons to stay with mr except the the expense factor and legacy things. sven -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 12:12 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: rumor, Soft dead within the next year Now while we are at it. I´m currently preparing assets that need to be free of 3rd party functionality. This means I have to set them up with a mR shading network to start folks off with. mental ray. The common thing between 3DSMax, Maya and Softimage. Please. Kill it. It´s not getting anyone anywhere anymore. I don´t want to discuss details or legacy reasons. Kill it. It´s over. It won´t come back. Selling three different DCC apps that actually share the fact that you will first have to
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
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 the model. After experimenting, you can freeze that part of the stack and continue on with that new shape, retaining almost every bit of work you've done. YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY. This difference is huge. You can work toward completion without fear of losing work. You can experiment freely--knowing it's fine if you want to make a major change. I'm never afraid of losing blendshape work. And if the changes are really significant, you can always Gator you're way out of a jam. -You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry, modelessly, instead of on a separate blendshape object. -There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes. In Softimage, you go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a few points. In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several plug-ins and scripts and HOPE that it works. If the scenario is simple enough, it might. Several people here tried to help a student make a single corrective blendshape on an elbow -- and we're all experienced Maya riggers. After hours of attempting, we threw up our hands. There was something in that object's history that was making the blendshape plug-in fail. The answer is what it often is: just start over. -EDITING corrective blendshapes. In Maya, heaven help you if you want to edit that blendshape later. Start the process again and make a new one. In Softimage, drag a few points and you're done in seconds. -For facial work, being able to make face shapes in conjunction with the mixer, working directly on the main geo. To see other shapes muted, soloed as you're working. This allows you to craft shapes that work for different scenarios, with just the right falloff. You can make correctives for shape combinations quickly. In face work, it's all about how the functions combine to make the range of expressive results. -The envelope weighting is far superior. The smoothing is just better, and more reliable. Negative weight painting actually works. Being able to make sophisticated weighting allows you to make lighter rigs, because fewer nodes and calculations are needed. I can't believe someone actually compared Maya's Component Editor to Softimage's Weight Editor. I'm stunned. Sometimes, demoing Maya's envelope weighting, it just stops working for no reason -- I have no idea why. (Mind you, I've been rigging in Maya since 1999.) -You can envelope/skin null objects, not just joints. (Yes, Maya will let you add other objects as deformers but it is limiting and causes problems.) -The tweak tool. You can grab anywhere and it will just get the nearest point/edge/poly and transform it precisely. Add the proportional editing and it's very sculptural without giving up precise transform control. I far prefer this workflow to the Zbrush approach geared toward paintstrokes. -In Softimage, you can change the wireframe on shaded opacity. You can change the point sizes. These mean I can visualize and work with the shape, not get visually stuck on the tech clutter like in Maya. -LinkWithOrientation. Does Maya have anything built-in yet? I know there are pose readers out there, but they are slow and 3rd party. -The smooth preview Geometry Approximation is better, faster, and more stable in Softimage. -Even with the army of tools and plug-ins we had at Blue Sky Studios, I would still much rather use off-the-shelf Softimage. -You can select controls without selecting (and highlighting) all its children. This makes it easier to animate the rig -- just drag selecting will get you the selectable controls. In Maya, drag-selecting gets a mixture of heirarchy parts. All this means that I can focus on the ART, the shaping of the rig, not jump through hoops all day. As a result, our characters are more flexible and expressive. On 1/8/2014 2:30 AM, Stefan Kubicek wrote: To be fair, I weighted a fair amount of characters in Maya over the years but I never experienced anything like that. When exactly is this happening? The only hickup I ran into occasionally was when painting weights, and then undoing that operation, which in rare cases does what you describe, but I think they fixed that in version 2013 or 2014. I never locked the skin weights, workflow wise I always found that highly disruptive. I was quite shocked to learn from
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
Dave that's a great summary, especially coming from someone with the proper credentials in both packages. This should find it's way up the ladder at AD. On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 2:45 PM, David Gallagher 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 the model. After experimenting, you can freeze that part of the stack and continue on with that new shape, retaining almost every bit of work you've done. YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY. This difference is huge. You can work toward completion without fear of losing work. You can experiment freely--knowing it's fine if you want to make a major change. I'm never afraid of losing blendshape work. And if the changes are really significant, you can always Gator you're way out of a jam. -You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry, modelessly, instead of on a separate blendshape object. -There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes. In Softimage, you go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a few points. In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several plug-ins and scripts and HOPE that it works. If the scenario is simple enough, it might. Several people here tried to help a student make a single corrective blendshape on an elbow -- and we're all experienced Maya riggers. After hours of attempting, we threw up our hands. There was something in that object's history that was making the blendshape plug-in fail. The answer is what it often is: just start over. -EDITING corrective blendshapes. In Maya, heaven help you if you want to edit that blendshape later. Start the process again and make a new one. In Softimage, drag a few points and you're done in seconds. -For facial work, being able to make face shapes in conjunction with the mixer, working directly on the main geo. To see other shapes muted, soloed as you're working. This allows you to craft shapes that work for different scenarios, with just the right falloff. You can make correctives for shape combinations quickly. In face work, it's all about how the functions combine to make the range of expressive results. -The envelope weighting is far superior. The smoothing is just better, and more reliable. Negative weight painting actually works. Being able to make sophisticated weighting allows you to make lighter rigs, because fewer nodes and calculations are needed. I can't believe someone actually compared Maya's Component Editor to Softimage's Weight Editor. I'm stunned. Sometimes, demoing Maya's envelope weighting, it just stops working for no reason -- I have no idea why. (Mind you, I've been rigging in Maya since 1999.) -You can envelope/skin null objects, not just joints. (Yes, Maya will let you add other objects as deformers but it is limiting and causes problems.) -The tweak tool. You can grab anywhere and it will just get the nearest point/edge/poly and transform it precisely. Add the proportional editing and it's very sculptural without giving up precise transform control. I far prefer this workflow to the Zbrush approach geared toward paintstrokes. -In Softimage, you can change the wireframe on shaded opacity. You can change the point sizes. These mean I can visualize and work with the shape, not get visually stuck on the tech clutter like in Maya. -LinkWithOrientation. Does Maya have anything built-in yet? I know there are pose readers out there, but they are slow and 3rd party. -The smooth preview Geometry Approximation is better, faster, and more stable in Softimage. -Even with the army of tools and plug-ins we had at Blue Sky Studios, I would still much rather use off-the-shelf Softimage. -You can select controls without selecting (and highlighting) all its children. This makes it easier to animate the rig -- just drag selecting will get you the selectable controls. In Maya, drag-selecting gets a mixture of heirarchy parts. All this means that I can focus on the ART, the shaping of the rig, not jump through hoops all day. As a result, our characters are more flexible and expressive. On 1/8/2014 2:30 AM, Stefan Kubicek wrote: To be fair, I weighted a fair amount of characters in Maya over the years but I never experienced anything like that. When exactly is this happening? The only hickup I ran into occasionally was when painting weights, and then
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
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 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 the model. After experimenting, you can freeze that part of the stack and continue on with that new shape, retaining almost every bit of work you've done. YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY. This difference is huge. You can work toward completion without fear of losing work. You can experiment freely--knowing it's fine if you want to make a major change. I'm never afraid of losing blendshape work. And if the changes are really significant, you can always Gator you're way out of a jam. -You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry, modelessly, instead of on a separate blendshape object. -There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes. In Softimage, you go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a few points. In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several plug-ins and scripts and HOPE that it works. If the scenario is simple enough, it might. Several people here tried to help a student make a single corrective blendshape on an elbow -- and we're all experienced Maya riggers. After hours of attempting, we threw up our hands. There was something in that object's history that was making the blendshape plug-in fail. The answer is what it often is: just start over. -EDITING corrective blendshapes. In Maya, heaven help you if you want to edit that blendshape later. Start the process again and make a new one. In Softimage, drag a few points and you're done in seconds. -For facial work, being able to make face shapes in conjunction with the mixer, working directly on the main geo. To see other shapes muted, soloed as you're working. This allows you to craft shapes that work for different scenarios, with just the right falloff. You can make correctives for shape combinations quickly. In face work, it's all about how the functions combine to make the range of expressive results. -The envelope weighting is far superior. The smoothing is just better, and more reliable. Negative weight painting actually works. Being able to make sophisticated weighting allows you to make lighter rigs, because fewer nodes and calculations are needed. I can't believe someone actually compared Maya's Component Editor to Softimage's Weight Editor. I'm stunned. Sometimes, demoing Maya's envelope weighting, it just stops working for no reason -- I have no idea why. (Mind you, I've been rigging in Maya since 1999.) -You can envelope/skin null objects, not just joints. (Yes, Maya will let you add other objects as deformers but it is limiting and causes problems.) -The tweak tool. You can grab anywhere and it will just get the nearest point/edge/poly and transform it precisely. Add the proportional editing and it's very sculptural without giving up precise transform control. I far prefer this workflow to the Zbrush approach geared toward paintstrokes. -In Softimage, you can change the wireframe on shaded opacity. You can change the point sizes. These mean I can visualize and work with the shape, not get visually stuck on the tech clutter like in Maya. -LinkWithOrientation. Does Maya have anything built-in yet? I know there are pose readers out there, but they are slow and 3rd party. -The smooth preview Geometry Approximation is better, faster, and more stable in Softimage. -Even with the army of tools and plug-ins we had at Blue Sky Studios, I would still much rather use off-the-shelf Softimage. -You can select controls without selecting (and highlighting) all its children. This makes it easier to animate the rig -- just drag selecting will get you the selectable controls. In Maya, drag-selecting gets a mixture of heirarchy parts. All this means that I can focus on the ART, the shaping of the rig, not jump through hoops all day. As a result, our characters are more flexible and expressive.
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
I just worked on a project in Maya that had some very complex facial rigs. I was flabbergasted to learn that we couldn't do *ANYTHING* at the artist level to make shape adjustments of even the most basic kind, until we got the rigger/TD (the excellent Lee Wolland) back in to build us a tool that would let us do it. This was considered normal by the Maya animators on the job -- they were surprised that I thought it would even be possible to, say, put a lattice deformer into the rig -- at any stage of the operator history. I now understand why the animator/artist vs. TD divide is much deeper in Maya than Soft. Basically, the animators are powerless to do anything but set keyframes on the controls they've been given. Anyone with enough knowledge to do anything else is going to be kept busy with TD or rigger tasks. I guess it does let the animators focus on animation, but outside of an industrial-scale assembly-line shop, it makes for some enormous headaches.
Redshift3D Render
I just wanted to start this thread so we can kill the Sofimage is dead thread. :) So..Redshift3D enthusiasts...post here. I think we will benefit the group, as a whole, if we spread the word on this amazing GPU rendering company. They have made my workflow SO much faster. -- Best Regards, * Stephen P. Davidson* *(954) 552-7956*sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com *Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic* - Arthur C. Clarke http://www.3danimationmagic.com
Re: Redshift3D Render
+1
Re: Redshift3D Render
I've been using it along side Arnold for quite a while now. I just finished a project for CES entirely in Redshift. I think Redshift falls more into the category of a VRay competitor rather than Arnold. Redshift isn't open the way Arnold is I don't think they intend it to be. I've found it to be extremely fast and stable in most cases, but being just out of alpha there are times when it's warts show. For $100, it's certainly worth a test drive. -Paul ᐧ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.netwrote: I just wanted to start this thread so we can kill the Sofimage is dead thread. :) So..Redshift3D enthusiasts...post here. I think we will benefit the group, as a whole, if we spread the word on this amazing GPU rendering company. They have made my workflow SO much faster. -- Best Regards, * Stephen P. Davidson* *(954) 552-7956 %28954%29%20552-7956 *sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com *Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic* - Arthur C. Clarke http://www.3danimationmagic.com
Re: Redshift3D Render
I used Redshift when it was alpha (it's beta now) I really loved it, but Redshift is developing few features that I always need like hair, ICE strand rendering, and better displacement map result. But still Redshift is incredibly fast than any other renderers (Arnold, V-Ray, MRay) and it's really stable. Once it supports those features well, I am going to use it with Arnold. Daniel --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 9:53 AM, Paul Griswold pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com wrote: I've been using it along side Arnold for quite a while now. I just finished a project for CES entirely in Redshift. I think Redshift falls more into the category of a VRay competitor rather than Arnold. Redshift isn't open the way Arnold is I don't think they intend it to be. I've found it to be extremely fast and stable in most cases, but being just out of alpha there are times when it's warts show. For $100, it's certainly worth a test drive. -Paul ᐧ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.netwrote: I just wanted to start this thread so we can kill the Sofimage is dead thread. :) So..Redshift3D enthusiasts...post here. I think we will benefit the group, as a whole, if we spread the word on this amazing GPU rendering company. They have made my workflow SO much faster. -- Best Regards, * Stephen P. Davidson* *(954) 552-7956 %28954%29%20552-7956 * sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com *Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic* - Arthur C. Clarke http://www.3danimationmagic.com
Re: Redshift3D Render
I'll repost what I said in the other thread We started using Redshift back in March and pretty much use it exclusively now. Of course it all depends on the needs of the project (and there are still some real limitations). The RS dev team is top notch though. I'm really excited to see how things will be at the end of this calendar year. Redshift development is progressing at a fantastic rate, and the pricing is very competitive. For facilities, even small ones, it does require that you spend some time considering your hardware and infrastructure, especially if you want to start converting CPU farms for GPU rendering, or augmenting them. Fortunately, Redshift isn't licensed per GPU, but per machine, and that should provide some breathing room. To be honest (and I realize we have many Arnold folks here), here at Magnetic we evaluated our rendering options (MR, vRay, 3Delight, Arnold). I even started working on a Soft-to-Modo pipeline. Among these Arnold was the clear winner. That said, we felt that to be useful for us in production, Arnold was too costly a solution for us, both financially and in render time, /considering the kinds of projects we do/ . Then Redshift came along and despite its infancy, really turned our heads. We cautiously began using it on productions, and it has since proven itself for us. Again, it all depends on what kind of project you're working on! You need to evaluate it for yourself of course, but for smaller houses like us, it allows us to produce better looking content faster, while staying in Softimage. And in this economy, we can't argue with that. -Tim On 1/8/2014 2:53 PM, Paul Griswold wrote: I've been using it along side Arnold for quite a while now. I just finished a project for CES entirely in Redshift. I think Redshift falls more into the category of a VRay competitor rather than Arnold. Redshift isn't open the way Arnold is I don't think they intend it to be. I've found it to be extremely fast and stable in most cases, but being just out of alpha there are times when it's warts show. For $100, it's certainly worth a test drive. -Paul ᐧ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.net mailto:magic...@bellsouth.net wrote: I just wanted to start this thread so we can kill the Sofimage is dead thread. :) So..Redshift3D enthusiasts...post here. I think we will benefit the group, as a whole, if we spread the word on this amazing GPU rendering company. They have made my workflow SO much faster. -- Best Regards, * Stephen P. Davidson** **(954) 552-7956 tel:%28954%29%20552-7956 * sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com /Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic/ - Arthur C. Clarke http://www.3danimationmagic.com -- Signature *Tim Crowson */Lead CG Artist/ *Magnetic Dreams, Inc. *2525 Lebanon Pike, Bldg C, Suite 101, Nashville, TN 37214 *Ph* 615.885.6801 | *Fax* 615.889.4768 | www.magneticdreams.com tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com /Confidentiality Notice: This email, including attachments, is confidential and should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient(s). If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage mechanism. Magnetic Dreams, Inc cannot accept liability for any statements made which are clearly the sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of Magnetic Dreams, Inc or one of its agents./
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
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 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 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 the model. After experimenting, you can freeze that part of the stack and continue on with that new shape, retaining almost every bit of work you've done. YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY. This difference is huge. You can work toward completion without fear of losing work. You can experiment freely--knowing it's fine if you want to make a major change. I'm never afraid of losing blendshape work. And if the changes are really significant, you can always Gator you're way out of a jam. -You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry, modelessly, instead of on a separate blendshape object. -There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes. In Softimage, you go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a few points. In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several plug-ins and scripts and HOPE that it works. If the scenario is simple enough, it might. Several people here tried to help a student make a single corrective blendshape on an elbow -- and we're all experienced Maya riggers. After hours of attempting, we threw up our hands. There was something in that object's history that was making the blendshape plug-in fail. The answer is what it often is: just start over. -EDITING corrective blendshapes. In Maya, heaven help you if you want to edit that blendshape later. Start the process again and make a new one. In Softimage, drag a few points and you're done in seconds. -For facial work, being able to make face shapes in conjunction with the mixer, working directly on the main geo. To see other shapes muted, soloed as you're working. This allows you to craft shapes that work for different scenarios, with just the right falloff. You can make correctives for shape combinations quickly. In face work, it's all about how the functions combine to make the range of expressive results. -The envelope weighting is far superior. The smoothing is just better, and more reliable. Negative weight painting actually works. Being able to make sophisticated weighting allows you to make lighter rigs, because fewer nodes and calculations are needed. I can't believe someone actually compared Maya's Component Editor to Softimage's Weight Editor. I'm stunned. Sometimes, demoing Maya's envelope weighting, it just stops working for no reason -- I have no idea why. (Mind you, I've been rigging in Maya since 1999.) -You can envelope/skin null objects, not just joints. (Yes, Maya will let you add other objects as deformers but it is limiting and causes problems.) -The tweak tool. You can grab anywhere and it will just get the nearest point/edge/poly and transform it precisely. Add the proportional editing and it's very sculptural without giving up precise transform control. I far prefer this workflow to the Zbrush approach geared toward paintstrokes. -In Softimage, you can change the wireframe on shaded opacity. You can change the point sizes. These mean I can visualize and work with the shape, not get visually stuck on the tech clutter like in Maya. -LinkWithOrientation. Does Maya have anything built-in yet? I know there are pose readers out there, but they are slow and 3rd party. -The smooth preview Geometry Approximation is better, faster, and more stable in Softimage. -Even with the army of tools and plug-ins we had at Blue Sky Studios, I would still much rather use off-the-shelf Softimage. -You can select controls without selecting (and highlighting) all its children. This makes it easier to animate the rig -- just drag selecting will get you the selectable controls. In Maya, drag-selecting gets a mixture of heirarchy parts. All this means that I can focus on the ART, the shaping of the rig, not jump through hoops all day. As a result, our characters are more flexible and
Re: Redshift3D Render
Displacement and bump map are there and they work beautiful. They event implement a scalar change range into the displacement node. 2014/1/8 Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com I'll repost what I said in the other thread We started using Redshift back in March and pretty much use it exclusively now. Of course it all depends on the needs of the project (and there are still some real limitations). The RS dev team is top notch though. I'm really excited to see how things will be at the end of this calendar year. Redshift development is progressing at a fantastic rate, and the pricing is very competitive. For facilities, even small ones, it does require that you spend some time considering your hardware and infrastructure, especially if you want to start converting CPU farms for GPU rendering, or augmenting them. Fortunately, Redshift isn't licensed per GPU, but per machine, and that should provide some breathing room. To be honest (and I realize we have many Arnold folks here), here at Magnetic we evaluated our rendering options (MR, vRay, 3Delight, Arnold). I even started working on a Soft-to-Modo pipeline. Among these Arnold was the clear winner. That said, we felt that to be useful for us in production, Arnold was too costly a solution for us, both financially and in render time, *considering the kinds of projects we do* . Then Redshift came along and despite its infancy, really turned our heads. We cautiously began using it on productions, and it has since proven itself for us. Again, it all depends on what kind of project you're working on! You need to evaluate it for yourself of course, but for smaller houses like us, it allows us to produce better looking content faster, while staying in Softimage. And in this economy, we can't argue with that. -Tim On 1/8/2014 2:53 PM, Paul Griswold wrote: I've been using it along side Arnold for quite a while now. I just finished a project for CES entirely in Redshift. I think Redshift falls more into the category of a VRay competitor rather than Arnold. Redshift isn't open the way Arnold is I don't think they intend it to be. I've found it to be extremely fast and stable in most cases, but being just out of alpha there are times when it's warts show. For $100, it's certainly worth a test drive. -Paul ᐧ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.netwrote: I just wanted to start this thread so we can kill the Sofimage is dead thread. :) So..Redshift3D enthusiasts...post here. I think we will benefit the group, as a whole, if we spread the word on this amazing GPU rendering company. They have made my workflow SO much faster. -- Best Regards, * Stephen P. Davidson* *(954) 552-7956 %28954%29%20552-7956 * sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com *Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic* - Arthur C. Clarke http://www.3danimationmagic.com -- *Tim Crowson **Lead CG Artist* *Magnetic Dreams, Inc. *2525 Lebanon Pike, Bldg C, Suite 101, Nashville, TN 37214 *Ph* 615.885.6801 | *Fax* 615.889.4768 | www.magneticdreams.com tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com *Confidentiality Notice: This email, including attachments, is confidential and should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient(s). If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage mechanism. Magnetic Dreams, Inc cannot accept liability for any statements made which are clearly the sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of Magnetic Dreams, Inc or one of its agents.*
Re: Redshift3D Render
I found some weird result of displacement map with Redshift. Elevation is okay, but sometimes I could see weird connection of UVM. All UVM boders wasn't smooth and I had no idea how to fix it. Arnold has that option though : / But more option I need is... hair @__@ and ICE strand --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 10:31 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Displacement and bump map are there and they work beautiful. They event implement a scalar change range into the displacement node. 2014/1/8 Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com I'll repost what I said in the other thread We started using Redshift back in March and pretty much use it exclusively now. Of course it all depends on the needs of the project (and there are still some real limitations). The RS dev team is top notch though. I'm really excited to see how things will be at the end of this calendar year. Redshift development is progressing at a fantastic rate, and the pricing is very competitive. For facilities, even small ones, it does require that you spend some time considering your hardware and infrastructure, especially if you want to start converting CPU farms for GPU rendering, or augmenting them. Fortunately, Redshift isn't licensed per GPU, but per machine, and that should provide some breathing room. To be honest (and I realize we have many Arnold folks here), here at Magnetic we evaluated our rendering options (MR, vRay, 3Delight, Arnold). I even started working on a Soft-to-Modo pipeline. Among these Arnold was the clear winner. That said, we felt that to be useful for us in production, Arnold was too costly a solution for us, both financially and in render time, *considering the kinds of projects we do* . Then Redshift came along and despite its infancy, really turned our heads. We cautiously began using it on productions, and it has since proven itself for us. Again, it all depends on what kind of project you're working on! You need to evaluate it for yourself of course, but for smaller houses like us, it allows us to produce better looking content faster, while staying in Softimage. And in this economy, we can't argue with that. -Tim On 1/8/2014 2:53 PM, Paul Griswold wrote: I've been using it along side Arnold for quite a while now. I just finished a project for CES entirely in Redshift. I think Redshift falls more into the category of a VRay competitor rather than Arnold. Redshift isn't open the way Arnold is I don't think they intend it to be. I've found it to be extremely fast and stable in most cases, but being just out of alpha there are times when it's warts show. For $100, it's certainly worth a test drive. -Paul ᐧ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.netwrote: I just wanted to start this thread so we can kill the Sofimage is dead thread. :) So..Redshift3D enthusiasts...post here. I think we will benefit the group, as a whole, if we spread the word on this amazing GPU rendering company. They have made my workflow SO much faster. -- Best Regards, * Stephen P. Davidson* *(954) 552-7956 %28954%29%20552-7956 * sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com *Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic* - Arthur C. Clarke http://www.3danimationmagic.com -- *Tim Crowson **Lead CG Artist* *Magnetic Dreams, Inc. *2525 Lebanon Pike, Bldg C, Suite 101, Nashville, TN 37214 *Ph* 615.885.6801 | *Fax* 615.889.4768 | www.magneticdreams.com tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com *Confidentiality Notice: This email, including attachments, is confidential and should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient(s). If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage mechanism. Magnetic Dreams, Inc cannot accept liability for any statements made which are clearly the sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of Magnetic Dreams, Inc or one of its agents.*
Re: Redshift3D Render
Sorry hit the send button... I was saying... Yes. They even implemented a scalar change range into the displacement node and they have an auto bump feature. It can render such fine detail, that really is amazing. The bump map by itself looks awsome. 2014/1/8 Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com Displacement and bump map are there and they work beautiful. They event implement a scalar change range into the displacement node. 2014/1/8 Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com I'll repost what I said in the other thread We started using Redshift back in March and pretty much use it exclusively now. Of course it all depends on the needs of the project (and there are still some real limitations). The RS dev team is top notch though. I'm really excited to see how things will be at the end of this calendar year. Redshift development is progressing at a fantastic rate, and the pricing is very competitive. For facilities, even small ones, it does require that you spend some time considering your hardware and infrastructure, especially if you want to start converting CPU farms for GPU rendering, or augmenting them. Fortunately, Redshift isn't licensed per GPU, but per machine, and that should provide some breathing room. To be honest (and I realize we have many Arnold folks here), here at Magnetic we evaluated our rendering options (MR, vRay, 3Delight, Arnold). I even started working on a Soft-to-Modo pipeline. Among these Arnold was the clear winner. That said, we felt that to be useful for us in production, Arnold was too costly a solution for us, both financially and in render time, *considering the kinds of projects we do* . Then Redshift came along and despite its infancy, really turned our heads. We cautiously began using it on productions, and it has since proven itself for us. Again, it all depends on what kind of project you're working on! You need to evaluate it for yourself of course, but for smaller houses like us, it allows us to produce better looking content faster, while staying in Softimage. And in this economy, we can't argue with that. -Tim On 1/8/2014 2:53 PM, Paul Griswold wrote: I've been using it along side Arnold for quite a while now. I just finished a project for CES entirely in Redshift. I think Redshift falls more into the category of a VRay competitor rather than Arnold. Redshift isn't open the way Arnold is I don't think they intend it to be. I've found it to be extremely fast and stable in most cases, but being just out of alpha there are times when it's warts show. For $100, it's certainly worth a test drive. -Paul ᐧ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.netwrote: I just wanted to start this thread so we can kill the Sofimage is dead thread. :) So..Redshift3D enthusiasts...post here. I think we will benefit the group, as a whole, if we spread the word on this amazing GPU rendering company. They have made my workflow SO much faster. -- Best Regards, * Stephen P. Davidson* *(954) 552-7956 %28954%29%20552-7956 * sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com *Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic* - Arthur C. Clarke http://www.3danimationmagic.com -- *Tim Crowson **Lead CG Artist* *Magnetic Dreams, Inc. *2525 Lebanon Pike, Bldg C, Suite 101, Nashville, TN 37214 *Ph* 615.885.6801 | *Fax* 615.889.4768 | www.magneticdreams.com tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com *Confidentiality Notice: This email, including attachments, is confidential and should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient(s). If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage mechanism. Magnetic Dreams, Inc cannot accept liability for any statements made which are clearly the sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of Magnetic Dreams, Inc or one of its agents.*
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
Great analysis, thanks for putting the time to do it and share it with the community. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Jan 2014, at 19:45, David Gallagher 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 the model. After experimenting, you can freeze that part of the stack and continue on with that new shape, retaining almost every bit of work you've done. YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY. This difference is huge. You can work toward completion without fear of losing work. You can experiment freely--knowing it's fine if you want to make a major change. I'm never afraid of losing blendshape work. And if the changes are really significant, you can always Gator you're way out of a jam. -You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry, modelessly, instead of on a separate blendshape object. -There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes. In Softimage, you go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a few points. In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several plug-ins and scripts and HOPE that it works. If the scenario is simple enough, it might. Several people here tried to help a student make a single corrective blendshape on an elbow -- and we're all experienced Maya riggers. After hours of attempting, we threw up our hands. There was something in that object's history that was making the blendshape plug-in fail. The answer is what it often is: just start over. -EDITING corrective blendshapes. In Maya, heaven help you if you want to edit that blendshape later. Start the process again and make a new one. In Softimage, drag a few points and you're done in seconds. -For facial work, being able to make face shapes in conjunction with the mixer, working directly on the main geo. To see other shapes muted, soloed as you're working. This allows you to craft shapes that work for different scenarios, with just the right falloff. You can make correctives for shape combinations quickly. In face work, it's all about how the functions combine to make the range of expressive results. -The envelope weighting is far superior. The smoothing is just better, and more reliable. Negative weight painting actually works. Being able to make sophisticated weighting allows you to make lighter rigs, because fewer nodes and calculations are needed. I can't believe someone actually compared Maya's Component Editor to Softimage's Weight Editor. I'm stunned. Sometimes, demoing Maya's envelope weighting, it just stops working for no reason -- I have no idea why. (Mind you, I've been rigging in Maya since 1999.) -You can envelope/skin null objects, not just joints. (Yes, Maya will let you add other objects as deformers but it is limiting and causes problems.) -The tweak tool. You can grab anywhere and it will just get the nearest point/edge/poly and transform it precisely. Add the proportional editing and it's very sculptural without giving up precise transform control. I far prefer this workflow to the Zbrush approach geared toward paintstrokes. -In Softimage, you can change the wireframe on shaded opacity. You can change the point sizes. These mean I can visualize and work with the shape, not get visually stuck on the tech clutter like in Maya. -LinkWithOrientation. Does Maya have anything built-in yet? I know there are pose readers out there, but they are slow and 3rd party. -The smooth preview Geometry Approximation is better, faster, and more stable in Softimage. -Even with the army of tools and plug-ins we had at Blue Sky Studios, I would still much rather use off-the-shelf Softimage. -You can select controls without selecting (and highlighting) all its children. This makes it easier to animate the rig -- just drag selecting will get you the selectable controls. In Maya, drag-selecting gets a mixture of heirarchy parts. All this means that I can focus on the ART, the shaping of the rig, not jump through hoops all day. As a result, our characters are more flexible and expressive. On 1/8/2014 2:30 AM, Stefan Kubicek wrote: To be fair, I weighted a fair amount of characters in Maya over the years but I never experienced anything like that. When exactly is this happening? The only hickup I ran into occasionally was when painting
Re: Redshift3D Render
They've stated pretty clearly that Hair and Strand support is the next big thing to come... shouldn't be too long now... -Tim On 1/8/2014 3:36 PM, Daniel Kim wrote: I found some weird result of displacement map with Redshift. Elevation is okay, but sometimes I could see weird connection of UVM. All UVM boders wasn't smooth and I had no idea how to fix it. Arnold has that option though : / But more option I need is... hair @__@ and ICE strand --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 10:31 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com mailto:emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Displacement and bump map are there and they work beautiful. They event implement a scalar change range into the displacement node. 2014/1/8 Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com mailto:tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com I'll repost what I said in the other thread We started using Redshift back in March and pretty much use it exclusively now. Of course it all depends on the needs of the project (and there are still some real limitations). The RS dev team is top notch though. I'm really excited to see how things will be at the end of this calendar year. Redshift development is progressing at a fantastic rate, and the pricing is very competitive. For facilities, even small ones, it does require that you spend some time considering your hardware and infrastructure, especially if you want to start converting CPU farms for GPU rendering, or augmenting them. Fortunately, Redshift isn't licensed per GPU, but per machine, and that should provide some breathing room. To be honest (and I realize we have many Arnold folks here), here at Magnetic we evaluated our rendering options (MR, vRay, 3Delight, Arnold). I even started working on a Soft-to-Modo pipeline. Among these Arnold was the clear winner. That said, we felt that to be useful for us in production, Arnold was too costly a solution for us, both financially and in render time, /considering the kinds of projects we do/ . Then Redshift came along and despite its infancy, really turned our heads. We cautiously began using it on productions, and it has since proven itself for us. Again, it all depends on what kind of project you're working on! You need to evaluate it for yourself of course, but for smaller houses like us, it allows us to produce better looking content faster, while staying in Softimage. And in this economy, we can't argue with that. -Tim On 1/8/2014 2:53 PM, Paul Griswold wrote: I've been using it along side Arnold for quite a while now. I just finished a project for CES entirely in Redshift. I think Redshift falls more into the category of a VRay competitor rather than Arnold. Redshift isn't open the way Arnold is I don't think they intend it to be. I've found it to be extremely fast and stable in most cases, but being just out of alpha there are times when it's warts show. For $100, it's certainly worth a test drive. -Paul ᐧ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.net mailto:magic...@bellsouth.net wrote: I just wanted to start this thread so we can kill the Sofimage is dead thread. :) So..Redshift3D enthusiasts...post here. I think we will benefit the group, as a whole, if we spread the word on this amazing GPU rendering company. They have made my workflow SO much faster. -- Best Regards, * Stephen P. Davidson** **(954) 552-7956 tel:%28954%29%20552-7956 * sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com mailto:sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com /Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic/ - Arthur C. Clarke http://www.3danimationmagic.com -- *Tim Crowson */Lead CG Artist/ *Magnetic Dreams, Inc. *2525 Lebanon Pike, Bldg C, Suite 101, Nashville, TN 37214 *Ph* 615.885.6801 tel:615.885.6801 | *Fax* 615.889.4768 tel:615.889.4768 | www.magneticdreams.com http://www.magneticdreams.com tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com mailto:tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com /Confidentiality Notice: This email, including attachments, is confidential and should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient(s). If you have received
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
Well Dave just said it. And as I said before... maybe the guy who wrote the post in the blog that didn't sign it properly was rigging a sphere and cylinder... Some one that makes such statements and does not leave his name... or allow to reply 2014/1/8 Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com Great analysis, thanks for putting the time to do it and share it with the community. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 8 Jan 2014, at 19:45, David Gallagher 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 the model. After experimenting, you can freeze that part of the stack and continue on with that new shape, retaining almost every bit of work you've done. YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY. This difference is huge. You can work toward completion without fear of losing work. You can experiment freely--knowing it's fine if you want to make a major change. I'm never afraid of losing blendshape work. And if the changes are really significant, you can always Gator you're way out of a jam. -You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry, modelessly, instead of on a separate blendshape object. -There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes. In Softimage, you go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a few points. In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several plug-ins and scripts and HOPE that it works. If the scenario is simple enough, it might. Several people here tried to help a student make a single corrective blendshape on an elbow -- and we're all experienced Maya riggers. After hours of attempting, we threw up our hands. There was something in that object's history that was making the blendshape plug-in fail. The answer is what it often is: just start over. -EDITING corrective blendshapes. In Maya, heaven help you if you want to edit that blendshape later. Start the process again and make a new one. In Softimage, drag a few points and you're done in seconds. -For facial work, being able to make face shapes in conjunction with the mixer, working directly on the main geo. To see other shapes muted, soloed as you're working. This allows you to craft shapes that work for different scenarios, with just the right falloff. You can make correctives for shape combinations quickly. In face work, it's all about how the functions combine to make the range of expressive results. -The envelope weighting is far superior. The smoothing is just better, and more reliable. Negative weight painting actually works. Being able to make sophisticated weighting allows you to make lighter rigs, because fewer nodes and calculations are needed. I can't believe someone actually compared Maya's Component Editor to Softimage's Weight Editor. I'm stunned. Sometimes, demoing Maya's envelope weighting, it just stops working for no reason -- I have no idea why. (Mind you, I've been rigging in Maya since 1999.) -You can envelope/skin null objects, not just joints. (Yes, Maya will let you add other objects as deformers but it is limiting and causes problems.) -The tweak tool. You can grab anywhere and it will just get the nearest point/edge/poly and transform it precisely. Add the proportional editing and it's very sculptural without giving up precise transform control. I far prefer this workflow to the Zbrush approach geared toward paintstrokes. -In Softimage, you can change the wireframe on shaded opacity. You can change the point sizes. These mean I can visualize and work with the shape, not get visually stuck on the tech clutter like in Maya. -LinkWithOrientation. Does Maya have anything built-in yet? I know there are pose readers out there, but they are slow and 3rd party. -The smooth preview Geometry Approximation is better, faster, and more stable in Softimage. -Even with the army of tools and plug-ins we had at Blue Sky Studios, I would still much rather use off-the-shelf Softimage. -You can select controls without selecting (and highlighting) all its children. This makes it easier to animate the rig -- just drag selecting will get you the selectable controls. In Maya, drag-selecting gets a mixture of heirarchy parts. All this means that I can focus on the ART, the shaping of the rig, not jump through hoops all day. As a result, our characters are more flexible and expressive. On 1/8/2014 2:30
Re: Redshift3D Render
Yep. I see that's coming. I can't wait to use paid beta version --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 10:42 AM, Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com wrote: They've stated pretty clearly that Hair and Strand support is the next big thing to come... shouldn't be too long now... -Tim On 1/8/2014 3:36 PM, Daniel Kim wrote: I found some weird result of displacement map with Redshift. Elevation is okay, but sometimes I could see weird connection of UVM. All UVM boders wasn't smooth and I had no idea how to fix it. Arnold has that option though : / But more option I need is... hair @__@ and ICE strand --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 10:31 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.comwrote: Displacement and bump map are there and they work beautiful. They event implement a scalar change range into the displacement node. 2014/1/8 Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com I'll repost what I said in the other thread We started using Redshift back in March and pretty much use it exclusively now. Of course it all depends on the needs of the project (and there are still some real limitations). The RS dev team is top notch though. I'm really excited to see how things will be at the end of this calendar year. Redshift development is progressing at a fantastic rate, and the pricing is very competitive. For facilities, even small ones, it does require that you spend some time considering your hardware and infrastructure, especially if you want to start converting CPU farms for GPU rendering, or augmenting them. Fortunately, Redshift isn't licensed per GPU, but per machine, and that should provide some breathing room. To be honest (and I realize we have many Arnold folks here), here at Magnetic we evaluated our rendering options (MR, vRay, 3Delight, Arnold). I even started working on a Soft-to-Modo pipeline. Among these Arnold was the clear winner. That said, we felt that to be useful for us in production, Arnold was too costly a solution for us, both financially and in render time, *considering the kinds of projects we do* . Then Redshift came along and despite its infancy, really turned our heads. We cautiously began using it on productions, and it has since proven itself for us. Again, it all depends on what kind of project you're working on! You need to evaluate it for yourself of course, but for smaller houses like us, it allows us to produce better looking content faster, while staying in Softimage. And in this economy, we can't argue with that. -Tim On 1/8/2014 2:53 PM, Paul Griswold wrote: I've been using it along side Arnold for quite a while now. I just finished a project for CES entirely in Redshift. I think Redshift falls more into the category of a VRay competitor rather than Arnold. Redshift isn't open the way Arnold is I don't think they intend it to be. I've found it to be extremely fast and stable in most cases, but being just out of alpha there are times when it's warts show. For $100, it's certainly worth a test drive. -Paul ᐧ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.net wrote: I just wanted to start this thread so we can kill the Sofimage is dead thread. :) So..Redshift3D enthusiasts...post here. I think we will benefit the group, as a whole, if we spread the word on this amazing GPU rendering company. They have made my workflow SO much faster. -- Best Regards, * Stephen P. Davidson* *(954) 552-7956 %28954%29%20552-7956 * sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com *Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic* - Arthur C. Clarke http://www.3danimationmagic.com -- *Tim Crowson **Lead CG Artist* *Magnetic Dreams, Inc. *2525 Lebanon Pike, Bldg C, Suite 101, Nashville, TN 37214 *Ph* 615.885.6801 | *Fax* 615.889.4768 | www.magneticdreams.com tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com *Confidentiality Notice: This email, including attachments, is confidential and should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient(s). If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage mechanism. Magnetic Dreams, Inc cannot accept liability for any statements made which are clearly the sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of Magnetic Dreams, Inc or one of its agents.* --
Re: Redshift3D Render
Backing up Tim, in the forums there is actually a hair test in Softimage with a simple phong shader. And IMHO it looks nice. 2014/1/8 Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com They've stated pretty clearly that Hair and Strand support is the next big thing to come... shouldn't be too long now... -Tim On 1/8/2014 3:36 PM, Daniel Kim wrote: I found some weird result of displacement map with Redshift. Elevation is okay, but sometimes I could see weird connection of UVM. All UVM boders wasn't smooth and I had no idea how to fix it. Arnold has that option though : / But more option I need is... hair @__@ and ICE strand --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 10:31 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.comwrote: Displacement and bump map are there and they work beautiful. They event implement a scalar change range into the displacement node. 2014/1/8 Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com I'll repost what I said in the other thread We started using Redshift back in March and pretty much use it exclusively now. Of course it all depends on the needs of the project (and there are still some real limitations). The RS dev team is top notch though. I'm really excited to see how things will be at the end of this calendar year. Redshift development is progressing at a fantastic rate, and the pricing is very competitive. For facilities, even small ones, it does require that you spend some time considering your hardware and infrastructure, especially if you want to start converting CPU farms for GPU rendering, or augmenting them. Fortunately, Redshift isn't licensed per GPU, but per machine, and that should provide some breathing room. To be honest (and I realize we have many Arnold folks here), here at Magnetic we evaluated our rendering options (MR, vRay, 3Delight, Arnold). I even started working on a Soft-to-Modo pipeline. Among these Arnold was the clear winner. That said, we felt that to be useful for us in production, Arnold was too costly a solution for us, both financially and in render time, *considering the kinds of projects we do* . Then Redshift came along and despite its infancy, really turned our heads. We cautiously began using it on productions, and it has since proven itself for us. Again, it all depends on what kind of project you're working on! You need to evaluate it for yourself of course, but for smaller houses like us, it allows us to produce better looking content faster, while staying in Softimage. And in this economy, we can't argue with that. -Tim On 1/8/2014 2:53 PM, Paul Griswold wrote: I've been using it along side Arnold for quite a while now. I just finished a project for CES entirely in Redshift. I think Redshift falls more into the category of a VRay competitor rather than Arnold. Redshift isn't open the way Arnold is I don't think they intend it to be. I've found it to be extremely fast and stable in most cases, but being just out of alpha there are times when it's warts show. For $100, it's certainly worth a test drive. -Paul ᐧ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.net wrote: I just wanted to start this thread so we can kill the Sofimage is dead thread. :) So..Redshift3D enthusiasts...post here. I think we will benefit the group, as a whole, if we spread the word on this amazing GPU rendering company. They have made my workflow SO much faster. -- Best Regards, * Stephen P. Davidson* *(954) 552-7956 %28954%29%20552-7956 * sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com *Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic* - Arthur C. Clarke http://www.3danimationmagic.com -- *Tim Crowson **Lead CG Artist* *Magnetic Dreams, Inc. *2525 Lebanon Pike, Bldg C, Suite 101, Nashville, TN 37214 *Ph* 615.885.6801 | *Fax* 615.889.4768 | www.magneticdreams.com tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com *Confidentiality Notice: This email, including attachments, is confidential and should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient(s). If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage mechanism. Magnetic Dreams, Inc cannot accept liability for any statements made which are clearly the sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of Magnetic Dreams, Inc or one of its agents.* --
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
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 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 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 the model. After experimenting, you can freeze that part of the stack and continue on with that new shape, retaining almost every bit of work you've done. YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY. This difference is huge. You can work toward completion without fear of losing work. You can experiment freely--knowing it's fine if you want to make a major change. I'm never afraid of losing blendshape work. And if the changes are really significant, you can always Gator you're way out of a jam. -You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry, modelessly, instead of on a separate blendshape object. -There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes. In Softimage, you go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a few points. In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several plug-ins and scripts and HOPE that it works. If the scenario is simple enough, it might. Several people here tried to help a student make a single corrective blendshape on an elbow -- and we're all experienced Maya riggers. After hours of attempting, we threw up our hands. There was something in that object's history that was making the blendshape plug-in fail. The answer is what it often is: just start over. -EDITING corrective blendshapes. In Maya, heaven help you if you want to edit that blendshape later. Start the process again and make a new one. In Softimage, drag a few points and you're done in seconds. -For facial work, being able to make face shapes in conjunction with the mixer, working directly on the main geo. To see other shapes muted, soloed as you're working. This allows you to craft shapes that work for different scenarios, with just the right falloff. You can make correctives for shape combinations quickly. In face work, it's all about how the functions combine to make the range of expressive results. -The envelope weighting is far superior. The smoothing is just better, and more reliable. Negative weight painting actually works. Being able to make sophisticated weighting allows you to make lighter rigs, because fewer nodes and calculations are needed. I can't believe someone actually compared Maya's Component Editor to Softimage's Weight Editor. I'm stunned. Sometimes, demoing Maya's envelope weighting, it just stops working for no reason -- I have no idea why. (Mind you, I've been rigging in Maya since 1999.) -You can envelope/skin null objects, not just joints. (Yes, Maya will let you add other objects as deformers but it is limiting and causes problems.) -The tweak tool. You can grab anywhere and it will just get the nearest point/edge/poly and transform it precisely. Add the proportional editing and it's very sculptural without giving up precise transform control. I far prefer this workflow to the Zbrush approach geared toward paintstrokes. -In Softimage, you can change the wireframe on shaded opacity. You can change the point sizes. These mean I can visualize and work
RE: rigging in xsi vs maya
Butbut.buteverybody said ICE can do oh so much more. Say it ain't so. -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Eric Thivierge Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 1:50 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: rigging in xsi vs maya 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 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 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 the model. After experimenting, you can freeze that part of the stack and continue on with that new shape, retaining almost every bit of work you've done. YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY. This difference is huge. You can work toward completion without fear of losing work. You can experiment freely--knowing it's fine if you want to make a major change. I'm never afraid of losing blendshape work. And if the changes are really significant, you can always Gator you're way out of a jam. -You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry, modelessly, instead of on a separate blendshape object. -There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes. In Softimage, you go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a few points. In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several plug-ins and scripts and HOPE that it works. If the scenario is simple enough, it might. Several people here tried to help a student make a single corrective blendshape on an elbow -- and we're all experienced Maya riggers. After hours of attempting, we threw up our hands. There was something in that object's history that was making the blendshape plug-in fail. The answer is what it often is: just start over. -EDITING corrective blendshapes. In Maya, heaven help you if you want to edit that blendshape later. Start the process again and make a new one. In Softimage, drag a few points and you're done in seconds. -For facial work, being able to make face shapes in conjunction with the mixer, working directly on the main geo. To see other shapes muted, soloed as you're working. This allows you to craft shapes that work for different scenarios, with just the right falloff. You can make correctives for shape combinations quickly. In face work, it's all about how the functions combine to make the range of expressive results. -The envelope weighting is far superior. The smoothing is just better, and more reliable. Negative weight painting actually works. Being able to make sophisticated weighting allows you to make lighter rigs, because fewer nodes and calculations are needed. I can't believe someone actually compared Maya's Component Editor to Softimage's Weight Editor. I'm stunned. Sometimes, demoing Maya's envelope weighting, it just stops working for no reason -- I have no idea why. (Mind you, I've been rigging in Maya since 1999.) -You can envelope/skin null objects, not just joints. (Yes, Maya will let you add other objects as deformers but it is limiting and causes problems.) -The tweak tool. You can grab anywhere and it will just
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
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 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 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 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 the model. After experimenting, you can freeze that part of the stack and continue on with that new shape, retaining almost every bit of work you've done. YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY. This difference is huge. You can work toward completion without fear of losing work. You can experiment freely--knowing it's fine if you want to make a major change. I'm never afraid of losing blendshape work. And if the changes are really significant, you can always Gator you're way out of a jam. -You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry, modelessly, instead of on a separate blendshape object. -There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes. In Softimage, you go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a few points. In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several plug-ins and scripts and HOPE that it works. If the scenario is simple enough, it might. Several people here tried to help a student make a single corrective blendshape on an elbow -- and we're all experienced Maya riggers. After hours of attempting, we threw up our hands. There was something in that object's history that was making the blendshape plug-in fail. The answer is what it often is: just start over. -EDITING corrective blendshapes. In Maya, heaven help you if you want to edit that blendshape later. Start the process again and make a new one. In Softimage, drag a few points and you're done in seconds. -For facial work, being able to make face shapes in conjunction with the mixer, working directly on the main geo. To see other shapes muted, soloed as you're working. This allows you to craft shapes that work for different scenarios, with just the right falloff. You can make correctives for shape combinations quickly. In face work, it's all about how the functions combine to make the range of expressive results. -The envelope weighting is far superior. The smoothing is just better, and more reliable. Negative weight painting actually works. Being able to make sophisticated weighting allows you to make lighter rigs, because fewer nodes and calculations are needed. I can't believe someone actually compared Maya's Component Editor to Softimage's Weight Editor. I'm stunned. Sometimes, demoing Maya's envelope weighting, it just stops working for no reason -- I have no idea why. (Mind you, I've been rigging in Maya since 1999.) -You can envelope/skin null objects, not just joints. (Yes, Maya will let you add other objects as deformers but it is limiting and causes problems.) -The tweak tool. You can grab anywhere and it will just get the nearest point/edge/poly and transform it precisely. Add the proportional editing and it's very sculptural without giving up
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
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 the model. After experimenting, you can freeze that part of the stack and continue on with that new shape, retaining almost every bit of work you've done. YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY. This difference is huge. You can work toward completion without fear of losing work. You can experiment freely--knowing it's fine if you want to make a major change. I'm never afraid of losing blendshape work. And if the changes are really significant, you can always Gator you're way out of a jam. -You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry, modelessly, instead of on a separate blendshape object. -There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes. In Softimage, you go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a few points. In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several plug-ins and scripts and HOPE that it works. If the scenario is simple enough, it might. Several people here tried to help a student make a single corrective blendshape on an elbow -- and we're all experienced Maya riggers. After hours of attempting, we threw up our hands. There was something in that object's history that was making the blendshape plug-in fail. The answer is what it often is: just start over. -EDITING corrective blendshapes. In Maya, heaven help you if you want to edit that blendshape later. Start the process again and make a new one. In Softimage, drag a few points and you're done in seconds. -For facial work, being able to make face shapes in conjunction with the mixer, working directly on the main geo. To see other shapes muted, soloed as you're working. This allows you to craft shapes that work for different scenarios,
Re: Redshift3D Render
For a current list of features available as well as a roadmap, I would like to suggest to just go and give it a free try: https://www.redshift3d.com/get-redshift Yes, actually you don´t even have to commit to spending $100 directly, the Free Beta Trial gives you 30 days of full access to Redshift. A special benefit of this free trial option is that you could actually try out how a bunch of machines would run using redshift in a farm or knot. Reading the docs doesn´t require a login: http://docs.redshift3d.com/Default.html Redshift is a really well balanced renderer and I wholehartedly trust in it´s success. With the above opportunity available it is a good time to test it in your production scenario and wheight it against VRay and Arnold, which are also both very nice plattforms with enough momentum to also be around for quite a while. I am sure Redshift is a valuable addition to that arsenal. Cheers, tim On 08.01.2014 22:44, Emilio Hernandez wrote: Backing up Tim, in the forums there is actually a hair test in Softimage with a simple phong shader. And IMHO it looks nice. 2014/1/8 Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com mailto:tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com They've stated pretty clearly that Hair and Strand support is the next big thing to come... shouldn't be too long now... -Tim On 1/8/2014 3:36 PM, Daniel Kim wrote: I found some weird result of displacement map with Redshift. Elevation is okay, but sometimes I could see weird connection of UVM. All UVM boders wasn't smooth and I had no idea how to fix it. Arnold has that option though : / But more option I need is... hair @__@ and ICE strand --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 10:31 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com mailto:emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Displacement and bump map are there and they work beautiful. They event implement a scalar change range into the displacement node. 2014/1/8 Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com mailto:tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com I'll repost what I said in the other thread We started using Redshift back in March and pretty much use it exclusively now. Of course it all depends on the needs of the project (and there are still some real limitations). The RS dev team is top notch though. I'm really excited to see how things will be at the end of this calendar year. Redshift development is progressing at a fantastic rate, and the pricing is very competitive. For facilities, even small ones, it does require that you spend some time considering your hardware and infrastructure, especially if you want to start converting CPU farms for GPU rendering, or augmenting them. Fortunately, Redshift isn't licensed per GPU, but per machine, and that should provide some breathing room. To be honest (and I realize we have many Arnold folks here), here at Magnetic we evaluated our rendering options (MR, vRay, 3Delight, Arnold). I even started working on a Soft-to-Modo pipeline. Among these Arnold was the clear winner. That said, we felt that to be useful for us in production, Arnold was too costly a solution for us, both financially and in render time, /considering the kinds of projects we do/ . Then Redshift came along and despite its infancy, really turned our heads. We cautiously began using it on productions, and it has since proven itself for us. Again, it all depends on what kind of project you're working on! You need to evaluate it for yourself of course, but for smaller houses like us, it allows us to produce better looking content faster, while staying in Softimage. And in this economy, we can't argue with that. -Tim On 1/8/2014 2:53 PM, Paul Griswold wrote: I've been using it along side Arnold for quite a while now. I just finished a project for CES entirely in Redshift. I think Redshift falls more into the category of a VRay competitor rather than Arnold. Redshift isn't open the way Arnold is I don't think they intend it to be. I've found it to be extremely fast and stable in most cases, but being just out of alpha there are times when it's warts show. For $100, it's certainly worth a test drive. -Paul ᐧ On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.net mailto:magic...@bellsouth.net wrote: I just wanted to start this thread so we can kill the Sofimage is dead thread. :) So..Redshift3D enthusiasts...post here. I think we will benefit
Batch function for Ultimapper and Render Map
I remember there was backburner for Softimage once but I suppose has been removed... So, I need to use ultimapper and render map to render out each frame of my animation, and if I remember correctly this was doable with backburner With Soft 2013 there is a way to achieve that? I'm trying to replicate the effect done by Blur in this video @1.59 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38wh5Fn4WEs The system or the dynamic tassellation/normal map is what I'm trying to achieve, but I will need the maps in order to test something else Cheers
RE: Batch function for Ultimapper and Render Map
Set up the rendermap property as usual, then write a few lines of script to execute rendermap every frame while updating the output file path. Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Nicolas Esposito Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 2:40 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Batch function for Ultimapper and Render Map I remember there was backburner for Softimage once but I suppose has been removed... So, I need to use ultimapper and render map to render out each frame of my animation, and if I remember correctly this was doable with backburner With Soft 2013 there is a way to achieve that? I'm trying to replicate the effect done by Blur in this video @1.59 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38wh5Fn4WEs The system or the dynamic tassellation/normal map is what I'm trying to achieve, but I will need the maps in order to test something else Cheers
Re: Batch function for Ultimapper and Render Map
This is gold! Thanks Matt and Alan ;) 2014/1/8 Alan Fregtman alan.fregt...@gmail.com You might find Sajjad's *Mapify* plugin useful as it can rendermap a sequence: http://www.sajjadamjad.com/plugins.html#Mapify On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 5:42 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.comwrote: Set up the rendermap property as usual, then write a few lines of script to execute rendermap every frame while updating the output file path. Matt *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Nicolas Esposito *Sent:* Wednesday, January 08, 2014 2:40 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Batch function for Ultimapper and Render Map I remember there was backburner for Softimage once but I suppose has been removed... So, I need to use ultimapper and render map to render out each frame of my animation, and if I remember correctly this was doable with backburner With Soft 2013 there is a way to achieve that? I'm trying to replicate the effect done by Blur in this video @1.59 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38wh5Fn4WEs The system or the dynamic tassellation/normal map is what I'm trying to achieve, but I will need the maps in order to test something else Cheers
Re: Batch function for Ultimapper and Render Map
The same script functionality to execute every frame and update the output file could be applied to Ultimapper as well, am I correct? Sorry but I'm not too familiar with scripting, but looking at the manual looks nothing super-complicated ;) 2014/1/9 Nicolas Esposito 3dv...@gmail.com This is gold! Thanks Matt and Alan ;) 2014/1/8 Alan Fregtman alan.fregt...@gmail.com You might find Sajjad's *Mapify* plugin useful as it can rendermap a sequence: http://www.sajjadamjad.com/plugins.html#Mapify On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 5:42 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.comwrote: Set up the rendermap property as usual, then write a few lines of script to execute rendermap every frame while updating the output file path. Matt *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Nicolas Esposito *Sent:* Wednesday, January 08, 2014 2:40 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Batch function for Ultimapper and Render Map I remember there was backburner for Softimage once but I suppose has been removed... So, I need to use ultimapper and render map to render out each frame of my animation, and if I remember correctly this was doable with backburner With Soft 2013 there is a way to achieve that? I'm trying to replicate the effect done by Blur in this video @1.59 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38wh5Fn4WEs The system or the dynamic tassellation/normal map is what I'm trying to achieve, but I will need the maps in order to test something else Cheers
RE: Batch function for Ultimapper and Render Map
// Jscript - will need some tweaking to be functional
RenderMapSequence( 1, 100, C:\\tmp\\my_sequence.CURRENTFRAME.tga );
function RenderMapSequence( FrameStart, FrameEnd, FileName )
{
var oPlayControl = Dictionary.GetObject( PlayControl );
// get eligible objects from selection
var aFilterNames = new Array( siPolyMeshFilter, siSurfaceMeshFilter );
var oObjects = SIFilter( null, aFilterNames.join(,), true, siQuickSearch );
If ( !oObjects || oObjects.Count =0 ) {
LogMessage( nothing selected, siError );
}
for ( var i = 0; i oObjects.Count; i++ ) {
var oObject = oObjects(i);
var oProperties = oObject.Properties.Filter( rendermap );
if ( oProperties.Count = 0 ) {
// rendermap property not found
continue;
}
var oRenderMapProperty = oProperties(0);
for ( var j = FrameStart; j = FrameEnd; j++ ) {
var FrameCurrent = j;
// advance timeline
oPlayControl.Parameters( Current ).value = FrameCurrent;
// update the parameter defining output image file name
var ImageFileName = FileName.replace( /CURRENTFRAME/,
FrameCurrent );
oRenderMapProperty.Parameters( imagefilepath ).value =
ImageFileName;
// execute specified rendermap property
RegenerateMaps ( oRenderMapProperty.FullName );
}
}
}
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Nicolas Esposito
Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 3:19 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Batch function for Ultimapper and Render Map
The same script functionality to execute every frame and update the output file
could be applied to Ultimapper as well, am I correct?
Sorry but I'm not too familiar with scripting, but looking at the manual looks
nothing super-complicated ;)
2014/1/9 Nicolas Esposito 3dv...@gmail.commailto:3dv...@gmail.com
This is gold!
Thanks Matt and Alan ;)
2014/1/8 Alan Fregtman alan.fregt...@gmail.commailto:alan.fregt...@gmail.com
You might find Sajjad's Mapify plugin useful as it can rendermap a sequence:
http://www.sajjadamjad.com/plugins.html#Mapify
On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 5:42 PM, Matt Lind
ml...@carbinestudios.commailto:ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote:
Set up the rendermap property as usual, then write a few lines of script to
execute rendermap every frame while updating the output file path.
Matt
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 Nicolas Esposito
Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 2:40 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Batch function for Ultimapper and Render Map
I remember there was backburner for Softimage once but I suppose has been
removed...
So, I need to use ultimapper and render map to render out each frame of my
animation, and if I remember correctly this was doable with backburner
With Soft 2013 there is a way to achieve that?
I'm trying to replicate the effect done by Blur in this video @1.59
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38wh5Fn4WEs
The system or the dynamic tassellation/normal map is what I'm trying to
achieve, but I will need the maps in order to test something else
Cheers
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
how many years ago was the BlueSky rigging experience and how much was it? I remember seeing you as a Softimage fan since very early XSI - perhaps a Softimage 3D user before that as well? I might be confusing you with another user. The topology updates in Softimage is its best and most unique feature, along with render passes (property propagation). I think no other app will ever have this. There are architecture overhead and performance issue associated with that, though. can't talk about animation without talking about performance, and referencing. Le mercredi 8 janvier 2014, David Gallagher a écrit : 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 the model. After experimenting, you can freeze that part of the stack and continue on with that new shape, retaining almost every bit of work you've done. YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY. This difference is huge. You can work toward completion without fear of losing work. You can experiment freely--knowing it's fine if you want to make a major change. I'm never afraid of losing blendshape work. And if the changes are really significant, you can always Gator you're way out of a jam. -You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry, modelessly, instead of on a separate blendshape object. Ith -There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes. In Softimage, you go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a few points. In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several plug-ins and scripts and HOPE that it works. If the scenario is simple enough, it might. Several people here tried to help a student make a single corrective blendshape on an elbow -- and we're all experienced Maya riggers. After hours of attempting, we threw up our hands. There was something in that object's history that was making the blendshape plug-in fail. The answer is what it often is: just start over. -EDITING corrective blendshapes. In Maya, heaven help you if you want to edit that blendshape later. Start the process again and make a new one. In Softimage, drag a few points and you're done in seconds. -For facial work, being able to make face shapes in conjunction with the mixer, working directly on the main geo. To see other shapes muted, soloed as you're working. This allows you to craft shapes that work for different scenarios, with just the right falloff. You can make correctives for shape combinations quickly. In face work, it's all about how the functions combine to make the range of expressive results. -The envelope weighting is far superior. The smoothing is just better, and more reliable. Negative weight painting actually works. Being able to make sophisticated weighting allows you to make lighter rigs, because fewer nodes and calculations are needed. I can't believe someone actually compared Maya's Component Editor to Softimage's Weight Editor. I'm stunned. Sometimes, demoing Maya's envelope weighting, it just stops working for no reason -- I have no idea why. (Mind you, I've been rigging in Maya since 1999.) -You can envelope/skin null objects, not just joints. (Yes, Maya will let you add other objects as deformers but it is limiting and causes problems.) -The tweak tool. You can grab anywhere and it will just get the nearest point/edge/poly and transform it precisely. Add the proportional editing and it's very sculptural without giving up precise transform control. I far prefer this workflow to the Zbrush approach geared toward paintstrokes. -In Softimage, you can change the wireframe on shaded opacity. You can change the point sizes. These mean I can visualize and work with the shape, not get visually stuck on the tech clutter like in Maya. -LinkWithOrientation. Does Maya have anything built-in yet? I know there are pose readers out there, but they are slow and 3rd party. -The smooth preview Geometry Approximation is better, faster, and more stable in Softimage. -Even with the army of tools and plug-ins we had at Blue Sky Studios, I would still much rather use off-the-shelf Softimage. -You can select controls without selecting (and highlighting) all its children. This makes it easier to animate the rig -- just drag selecting will get you the selectable controls. In Maya, drag-selecting gets a mixture of heirarchy parts. All this means that I can focus on the ART, the shaping of the
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
On 1/8/2014 4:42 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote: how many years ago was the BlueSky rigging experience and how much was it? I remember seeing you as a Softimage fan since very early XSI - perhaps a Softimage 3D user before that as well? I might be confusing you with another user. The topology updates in Softimage is its best and most unique feature, along with render passes (property propagation). I think no other app will ever have this. There are architecture overhead and performance issue associated with that, though. can't talk about animation without talking about performance, and referencing. Oh, I hope you're wrong and whatever product comes out of the marriage of Maya/Softimage/Max has that! Yes, I worked on all the Blue Sky movies from Ice Age 1. I rigged for a few films, then animated, then oversaw the rigs from the animation side. Yes, I used Softimage 3D as well. Le mercredi 8 janvier 2014, David Gallagher a écrit : 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 the model. After experimenting, you can freeze that part of the stack and continue on with that new shape, retaining almost every bit of work you've done. YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY. This difference is huge. You can work toward completion without fear of losing work. You can experiment freely--knowing it's fine if you want to make a major change. I'm never afraid of losing blendshape work. And if the changes are really significant, you can always Gator you're way out of a jam. -You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry, modelessly, instead of on a separate blendshape object. Ith -There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes. In Softimage, you go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a few points. In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several plug-ins and scripts and HOPE that it works. If the scenario is simple enough, it might. Several people here tried to help a student make a single corrective blendshape on an elbow -- and we're all experienced Maya riggers. After hours of attempting, we threw up our hands. There was something in that object's history that was making the blendshape plug-in fail. The answer is what it often is: just start over. -EDITING corrective blendshapes. In Maya, heaven help you if you want to edit that blendshape later. Start the process again and make a new one. In Softimage, drag a few points and you're done in seconds. -For facial work, being able to make face shapes in conjunction with the mixer, working directly on the main geo. To see other shapes muted, soloed as you're working. This allows you to craft shapes that work for different scenarios, with just the right falloff. You can make correctives for shape combinations quickly. In face work, it's all about how the functions combine to make the range of expressive results. -The envelope weighting is far superior. The smoothing is just better, and more reliable. Negative weight painting actually works. Being able to make sophisticated weighting allows you to make lighter rigs, because fewer nodes and calculations are needed. I can't believe someone actually compared Maya's Component Editor to Softimage's Weight Editor. I'm stunned. Sometimes, demoing Maya's envelope weighting, it just stops working for no reason -- I have no idea why. (Mind you, I've been rigging in Maya since 1999.) -You can envelope/skin null objects, not just joints. (Yes, Maya will let you add other objects as deformers but it is limiting and causes problems.) -The tweak tool. You can grab anywhere and it will just get the nearest point/edge/poly and transform it precisely. Add the proportional editing and it's very sculptural without giving up precise transform control. I far prefer this workflow to the Zbrush approach geared toward paintstrokes. -In Softimage, you can change the wireframe on shaded opacity. You can change the point sizes. These mean I can visualize and work with the shape, not get visually stuck on the tech clutter like in Maya. -LinkWithOrientation. Does Maya have anything built-in yet? I know there are pose readers out there,
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
Aren't you the guy who made the 3D Cat in the Hat animation I saw on the ride at Universal Studios? I also remember some training tutorial videos and a UV mapping tool. ;-) I'm not sure, but as a casual outside observer this entire thread seems like a trolling job. Nice to see Luc-Eric is still playing the role of agent provocateur. On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 5:52 PM, David Gallagher davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com wrote: On 1/8/2014 4:42 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote: how many years ago was the BlueSky rigging experience and how much was it? I remember seeing you as a Softimage fan since very early XSI - perhaps a Softimage 3D user before that as well? I might be confusing you with another user. The topology updates in Softimage is its best and most unique feature, along with render passes (property propagation). I think no other app will ever have this. There are architecture overhead and performance issue associated with that, though. can't talk about animation without talking about performance, and referencing. Oh, I hope you're wrong and whatever product comes out of the marriage of Maya/Softimage/Max has that! Yes, I worked on all the Blue Sky movies from Ice Age 1. I rigged for a few films, then animated, then oversaw the rigs from the animation side. Yes, I used Softimage 3D as well. Le mercredi 8 janvier 2014, David Gallagher a écrit : 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 the model. After experimenting, you can freeze that part of the stack and continue on with that new shape, retaining almost every bit of work you've done. YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY. This difference is huge. You can work toward completion without fear of losing work. You can experiment freely--knowing it's fine if you want to make a major change. I'm never afraid of losing blendshape work. And if the changes are really significant, you can always Gator you're way out of a jam. -You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry, modelessly, instead of on a separate blendshape object. Ith -There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes. In Softimage, you go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a few points. In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several plug-ins and scripts and HOPE that it works. If the scenario is simple enough, it might. Several people here tried to help a student make a single corrective blendshape on an elbow -- and we're all experienced Maya riggers. After hours of attempting, we threw up our hands. There was something in that object's history that was making the blendshape plug-in fail. The answer is what it often is: just start over. -EDITING corrective blendshapes. In Maya, heaven help you if you want to edit that blendshape later. Start the process again and make a new one. In Softimage, drag a few points and you're done in seconds. -For facial work, being able to make face shapes in conjunction with the mixer, working directly on the main geo. To see other shapes muted, soloed as you're working. This allows you to craft shapes that work for different scenarios, with just the right falloff. You can make correctives for shape combinations quickly. In face work, it's all about how the functions combine to make the range of expressive results. -The envelope weighting is far superior. The smoothing is just better, and more reliable. Negative weight painting actually works. Being able to make sophisticated weighting allows you to make lighter rigs, because fewer nodes and calculations are needed. I can't believe someone actually compared Maya's Component Editor to Softimage's Weight Editor. I'm stunned. Sometimes, demoing Maya's envelope weighting, it just stops working for no reason -- I have no idea why. (Mind you, I've been rigging in Maya since 1999.) -You can envelope/skin null objects, not just joints. (Yes, Maya will let you add other objects as deformers but it is limiting and causes problems.) -The tweak tool. You can grab anywhere and it will just get the nearest point/edge/poly and transform it precisely. Add the proportional editing and it's very sculptural without giving up precise transform control. I far prefer this workflow to the Zbrush approach geared toward paintstrokes. -In Softimage, you can change the wireframe on shaded opacity. You can change the point sizes.
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
On 1/8/2014 5:12 PM, Bradley Gabe wrote: Aren't you the guy who made the 3D Cat in the Hat animation I saw on the ride at Universal Studios? I also remember some training tutorial videos and a UV mapping tool. ;-) I'm not sure, but as a casual outside observer this entire thread seems like a trolling job. Nice to see Luc-Eric is still playing the role of agent provocateur. Ha! Yes. On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 5:52 PM, David Gallagher davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com mailto:davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com wrote: On 1/8/2014 4:42 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote: how many years ago was the BlueSky rigging experience and how much was it? I remember seeing you as a Softimage fan since very early XSI - perhaps a Softimage 3D user before that as well? I might be confusing you with another user. The topology updates in Softimage is its best and most unique feature, along with render passes (property propagation). I think no other app will ever have this. There are architecture overhead and performance issue associated with that, though. can't talk about animation without talking about performance, and referencing. Oh, I hope you're wrong and whatever product comes out of the marriage of Maya/Softimage/Max has that! Yes, I worked on all the Blue Sky movies from Ice Age 1. I rigged for a few films, then animated, then oversaw the rigs from the animation side. Yes, I used Softimage 3D as well. Le mercredi 8 janvier 2014, David Gallagher a écrit : 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 the model. After experimenting, you can freeze that part of the stack and continue on with that new shape, retaining almost every bit of work you've done. YOU CAN CHANGE THE TOPOLOGY. YOU CAN CHANGE THE SHAPE FREELY. This difference is huge. You can work toward completion without fear of losing work. You can experiment freely--knowing it's fine if you want to make a major change. I'm never afraid of losing blendshape work. And if the changes are really significant, you can always Gator you're way out of a jam. -You can do blendshape edits directly on the geometry, modelessly, instead of on a separate blendshape object. Ith -There is no comparison with corrective blendshapes. In Softimage, you go to Secondary Shape mode and drag a few points. In Maya, I wish you luck. You can install one of several plug-ins and scripts and HOPE that it works. If the scenario is simple enough, it might. Several people here tried to help a student make a single corrective blendshape on an elbow -- and we're all experienced Maya riggers. After hours of attempting, we threw up our hands. There was something in that object's history that was making the blendshape plug-in fail. The answer is what it often is: just start over. -EDITING corrective blendshapes. In Maya, heaven help you if you want to edit that blendshape later. Start the process again and make a new one. In Softimage, drag a few points and you're done in seconds. -For facial work, being able to make face shapes in conjunction with the mixer, working directly on the main geo. To see other shapes muted, soloed as you're working. This allows you to craft shapes that work for different scenarios, with just the right falloff. You can make correctives for shape combinations quickly. In face work, it's all about how the functions combine to make the range of expressive results. -The envelope weighting is far superior. The smoothing is just better, and more reliable. Negative weight painting actually works. Being able to make sophisticated weighting allows you to make lighter rigs, because fewer nodes and calculations are needed. I can't believe someone actually compared Maya's Component Editor to Softimage's Weight Editor. I'm stunned. Sometimes, demoing Maya's envelope weighting, it just stops working for no reason -- I have no idea why. (Mind you, I've been rigging in Maya
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 6:52 PM, David Gallagher davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com wrote: On 1/8/2014 4:42 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote: The topology updates in Softimage is its best and most unique feature, along with render passes (property propagation). I think no other app will ever have this. There are architecture overhead and performance issue associated with that, though. can't talk about animation without talking about performance, and referencing. Oh, I hope you're wrong and whatever product comes out of the marriage of Maya/Softimage/Max has that! In the new future ( not talking about autodesk here) I think workflows will standards will be Gator-like tools to deal with topo changes (point clouds tools as necessary also ptex-based workflows) and katana-like proceduralism for render passes-like workflow.
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
That was incomprehensible; I meant (point clouds tools are necessary also for ptex-based workflows) On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 7:55 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 6:52 PM, David Gallagher davegsoftimagel...@gmail.com wrote: On 1/8/2014 4:42 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote: The topology updates in Softimage is its best and most unique feature, along with render passes (property propagation). I think no other app will ever have this. There are architecture overhead and performance issue associated with that, though. can't talk about animation without talking about performance, and referencing. Oh, I hope you're wrong and whatever product comes out of the marriage of Maya/Softimage/Max has that! In the new future ( not talking about autodesk here) I think workflows will standards will be Gator-like tools to deal with topo changes (point clouds tools as necessary also ptex-based workflows) and katana-like proceduralism for render passes-like workflow.
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 7:55 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.comwrote: In the new future ( not talking about autodesk here) I think workflows will standards will be Gator-like tools to deal with topo changes (point clouds tools as necessary also ptex-based workflows) and katana-like proceduralism for render passes-like workflow. I'm still wondering if a company ( not talking about Autodesk here ) will do anything new like that for our little world. Money for such large dev projects is just not in the animation/vfx world anymore. I'm not sarcastic, just realist. So lets embrace old techs like Maya or XSI. They won't evolve too much but won't disappear before many (many) years. Btw, Katana is not the futur, it is now :).
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
+1 David.G,(single tear) Another beautiful feature of softimage, which must get taken for granted, as i've never seen it brought up in comparison: isn't it nice... to be able to hide components (poly's,islands)? just select a group of faces and H its gone !!! but you get to keep the other stuff in the scene ?! to be able to hide elements when you're modelling or skinning (e.g mouth interior) or even animating ?!, in Soft this is really intuitive, and dare i say it...Fun? it seems like such a small thing i know, but i really feel its done well: I like the fact that other selection do not affect hidden faces, unless i use Proportional modelling. I like the fact that when i DO use prop modelling it gives me a nice visual representation of the verts in the hidden area I'm about to modify. I like the fact I can't accidentally select hidden faces. I like the fact I can select through hidden faces as if i had deleted them. I like the fact I can hide clusters I like the fact I can hide things at any moment during workflow. I like the fact it's all as simple as pressing H and SHIFT/CTRL H out of the box. I'm aware this may seem like a really dumb thing to like in a DCC, in spite of none of this being available in Maya. I'm sure Maya users have learned to cope with what they have in this area. key word being cope. People can flaunt the merits of node based workflows, and fully customisable gui's till the cows come home. But if you can't even get this tiny infinitesimal shard of user experience right then good lord, I'm at a loss for a punchline.
Re: rigging in xsi vs maya
+1 2014/1/8 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com +1 David.G,(single tear) Another beautiful feature of softimage, which must get taken for granted, as i've never seen it brought up in comparison: isn't it nice... to be able to hide components (poly's,islands)? just select a group of faces and H its gone !!! but you get to keep the other stuff in the scene ?! to be able to hide elements when you're modelling or skinning (e.g mouth interior) or even animating ?!, in Soft this is really intuitive, and dare i say it...Fun? it seems like such a small thing i know, but i really feel its done well: I like the fact that other selection do not affect hidden faces, unless i use Proportional modelling. I like the fact that when i DO use prop modelling it gives me a nice visual representation of the verts in the hidden area I'm about to modify. I like the fact I can't accidentally select hidden faces. I like the fact I can select through hidden faces as if i had deleted them. I like the fact I can hide clusters I like the fact I can hide things at any moment during workflow. I like the fact it's all as simple as pressing H and SHIFT/CTRL H out of the box. I'm aware this may seem like a really dumb thing to like in a DCC, in spite of none of this being available in Maya. I'm sure Maya users have learned to cope with what they have in this area. key word being cope. People can flaunt the merits of node based workflows, and fully customisable gui's till the cows come home. But if you can't even get this tiny infinitesimal shard of user experience right then good lord, I'm at a loss for a punchline.
Re: Redshift3D Render
I'm pretty excited about GPU rendering as a concept and this is the first time I've tried it in a DCC app. I have to say it's really nice to be doing Render Region renders and never peg out the CPU. I typically have a lot of things open and switch around a lot and having the CPU free to run other things is a big plus. On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 5:13 PM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote: For a current list of features available as well as a roadmap, I would like to suggest to just go and give it a free try: https://www.redshift3d.com/get-redshift Yes, actually you don´t even have to commit to spending $100 directly, the Free Beta Trial gives you 30 days of full access to Redshift. A special benefit of this free trial option is that you could actually try out how a bunch of machines would run using redshift in a farm or knot. Reading the docs doesn´t require a login: http://docs.redshift3d.com/Default.html Redshift is a really well balanced renderer and I wholehartedly trust in it´s success. With the above opportunity available it is a good time to test it in your production scenario and wheight it against VRay and Arnold, which are also both very nice plattforms with enough momentum to also be around for quite a while. I am sure Redshift is a valuable addition to that arsenal. Cheers, tim On 08.01.2014 22:44, Emilio Hernandez wrote: Backing up Tim, in the forums there is actually a hair test in Softimage with a simple phong shader. And IMHO it looks nice. 2014/1/8 Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com mailto:tim.crowson@ magneticdreams.com They've stated pretty clearly that Hair and Strand support is the next big thing to come... shouldn't be too long now... -Tim On 1/8/2014 3:36 PM, Daniel Kim wrote: I found some weird result of displacement map with Redshift. Elevation is okay, but sometimes I could see weird connection of UVM. All UVM boders wasn't smooth and I had no idea how to fix it. Arnold has that option though : / But more option I need is... hair @__@ and ICE strand --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 10:31 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.commailto: emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Displacement and bump map are there and they work beautiful. They event implement a scalar change range into the displacement node. 2014/1/8 Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com mailto: tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com I'll repost what I said in the other thread We started using Redshift back in March and pretty much use it exclusively now. Of course it all depends on the needs of the project (and there are still some real limitations). The RS dev team is top notch though. I'm really excited to see how things will be at the end of this calendar year. Redshift development is progressing at a fantastic rate, and the pricing is very competitive. For facilities, even small ones, it does require that you spend some time considering your hardware and infrastructure, especially if you want to start converting CPU farms for GPU rendering, or augmenting them. Fortunately, Redshift isn't licensed per GPU, but per machine, and that should provide some breathing room. To be honest (and I realize we have many Arnold folks here), here at Magnetic we evaluated our rendering options (MR, vRay, 3Delight, Arnold). I even started working on a Soft-to-Modo pipeline. Among these Arnold was the clear winner. That said, we felt that to be useful for us in production, Arnold was too costly a solution for us, both financially and in render time, /considering the kinds of projects we do/ . Then Redshift came along and despite its infancy, really turned our heads. We cautiously began using it on productions, and it has since proven itself for us. Again, it all depends on what kind of project you're working on! You need to evaluate it for yourself of course, but for smaller houses like us, it allows us to produce better looking content faster, while staying in Softimage. And in this economy, we can't argue with that. -Tim On 1/8/2014 2:53 PM, Paul Griswold wrote: I've been using it along side Arnold for quite a while now. I just finished a project for CES entirely in Redshift. I think Redshift falls more into the category of a VRay competitor rather than Arnold. Redshift isn't open the way Arnold is I don't think they intend it to be. I've found it to be extremely fast and stable in most cases, but being just out of alpha there
Re: Redshift3D Render
Call me immature, but i kind of love the idea of my gaming pc also being my render farm :P Sod of Nvidia and your flaby Quadro cards there expensive as fuck and you can't play Crysis on them :) On 8 January 2014 23:13, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote: For a current list of features available as well as a roadmap, I would like to suggest to just go and give it a free try: https://www.redshift3d.com/get-redshift Yes, actually you don´t even have to commit to spending $100 directly, the Free Beta Trial gives you 30 days of full access to Redshift. A special benefit of this free trial option is that you could actually try out how a bunch of machines would run using redshift in a farm or knot. Reading the docs doesn´t require a login: http://docs.redshift3d.com/Default.html Redshift is a really well balanced renderer and I wholehartedly trust in it´s success. With the above opportunity available it is a good time to test it in your production scenario and wheight it against VRay and Arnold, which are also both very nice plattforms with enough momentum to also be around for quite a while. I am sure Redshift is a valuable addition to that arsenal. Cheers, tim On 08.01.2014 22:44, Emilio Hernandez wrote: Backing up Tim, in the forums there is actually a hair test in Softimage with a simple phong shader. And IMHO it looks nice. 2014/1/8 Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com mailto:tim.crowson@ magneticdreams.com They've stated pretty clearly that Hair and Strand support is the next big thing to come... shouldn't be too long now... -Tim On 1/8/2014 3:36 PM, Daniel Kim wrote: I found some weird result of displacement map with Redshift. Elevation is okay, but sometimes I could see weird connection of UVM. All UVM boders wasn't smooth and I had no idea how to fix it. Arnold has that option though : / But more option I need is... hair @__@ and ICE strand --- Daniel Kim Animation Director Professional 3D Generalist http://www.danielkim3d.com --- On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 10:31 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.commailto: emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Displacement and bump map are there and they work beautiful. They event implement a scalar change range into the displacement node. 2014/1/8 Tim Crowson tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com mailto: tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com I'll repost what I said in the other thread We started using Redshift back in March and pretty much use it exclusively now. Of course it all depends on the needs of the project (and there are still some real limitations). The RS dev team is top notch though. I'm really excited to see how things will be at the end of this calendar year. Redshift development is progressing at a fantastic rate, and the pricing is very competitive. For facilities, even small ones, it does require that you spend some time considering your hardware and infrastructure, especially if you want to start converting CPU farms for GPU rendering, or augmenting them. Fortunately, Redshift isn't licensed per GPU, but per machine, and that should provide some breathing room. To be honest (and I realize we have many Arnold folks here), here at Magnetic we evaluated our rendering options (MR, vRay, 3Delight, Arnold). I even started working on a Soft-to-Modo pipeline. Among these Arnold was the clear winner. That said, we felt that to be useful for us in production, Arnold was too costly a solution for us, both financially and in render time, /considering the kinds of projects we do/ . Then Redshift came along and despite its infancy, really turned our heads. We cautiously began using it on productions, and it has since proven itself for us. Again, it all depends on what kind of project you're working on! You need to evaluate it for yourself of course, but for smaller houses like us, it allows us to produce better looking content faster, while staying in Softimage. And in this economy, we can't argue with that. -Tim On 1/8/2014 2:53 PM, Paul Griswold wrote: I've been using it along side Arnold for quite a while now. I just finished a project for CES entirely in Redshift. I think Redshift falls more into the category of a VRay competitor rather than Arnold. Redshift isn't open the way Arnold is I don't think they intend it to be. I've found it to be extremely fast and stable in most cases, but being just out of alpha there are times when it's warts show. For $100, it's certainly worth a test drive. -Paul ᐧ
