Re: OT: Sorry for the shameless plug
Nice Work Ognjen! On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.netwrote: Very, very nice work! Extremely impressive. On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 12:49 AM, Martin furik...@gmail.com wrote: Nice reel ! I'm not a lighting expert but I liked it ! Thanks for sharing, specially in times like this. Martin Sent from my iPhone On 2014/03/22, at 12:29, Ognjen Vukovic ognj...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks Sylvain, Im glad you like it. just waiting for someone to rip on it now so i can go to sleep with no regrets. :) On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:19 AM, Sylvain Lebeau s...@shedmtl.com wrote: wow very cool stuffs Ognjen!! love it!!! sly *Sylvain Lebeau // SHED* V-P/Visual effects supervisor 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8 T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM http://www.shedmtl.com/ http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM http://www.shedmtl.com/ am.png VFX Curriculum 03: Compositing Basics mail to: s...@shedmtl.com On Mar 21, 2014, at 10:25 PM, Ognjen Vukovic ognj...@gmail.com wrote: Hi guys, I know this is probably really bad timing and i really hate it has come to this but i was always awful at doing the right thing at the right moment. I just completed my first show reel after three years of great fun in the industry and i would love to share it, and the masochist in me would love some feedback and a good ripping of criticism, anything and everything is welcomed :). Give it a shot. Lighting and shading 2014 https://vimeo.com/88660251 Pass : reel 2025 Im off tomorrow for a long awaited holiday that will last two days since i havent been anywhere in the last three years due to work, but if i come back and find at least three replays i will be overjoyed. P.s. Everything was done in xsi, Cheers. -- 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: OT: Sorry for the shameless plug
Really nice work! Love those fur animals. :D On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 1:07 AM, Alok Gandhi alok.gandhi2...@gmail.comwrote: Nice Work Ognjen! On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.net wrote: Very, very nice work! Extremely impressive. On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 12:49 AM, Martin furik...@gmail.com wrote: Nice reel ! I'm not a lighting expert but I liked it ! Thanks for sharing, specially in times like this. Martin Sent from my iPhone On 2014/03/22, at 12:29, Ognjen Vukovic ognj...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks Sylvain, Im glad you like it. just waiting for someone to rip on it now so i can go to sleep with no regrets. :) On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:19 AM, Sylvain Lebeau s...@shedmtl.com wrote: wow very cool stuffs Ognjen!! love it!!! sly *Sylvain Lebeau // SHED* V-P/Visual effects supervisor 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8 T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM http://www.shedmtl.com/ http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM http://www.shedmtl.com/ am.png VFX Curriculum 03: Compositing Basics mail to: s...@shedmtl.com On Mar 21, 2014, at 10:25 PM, Ognjen Vukovic ognj...@gmail.com wrote: Hi guys, I know this is probably really bad timing and i really hate it has come to this but i was always awful at doing the right thing at the right moment. I just completed my first show reel after three years of great fun in the industry and i would love to share it, and the masochist in me would love some feedback and a good ripping of criticism, anything and everything is welcomed :). Give it a shot. Lighting and shading 2014 https://vimeo.com/88660251 Pass : reel 2025 Im off tomorrow for a long awaited holiday that will last two days since i havent been anywhere in the last three years due to work, but if i come back and find at least three replays i will be overjoyed. P.s. Everything was done in xsi, Cheers. -- 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: A confession
The hyperrealmeshparent script does something similar, it average de vertices around the zone (trying to minimize flipping issues I guess), create a loft between the 2 closest parallel-ish edges and finally constraint the object to that surface. It's done in such a way that it never pass the calculated data to a shape node so you don't see the auxiliary geometry, but the low level nodes are there.
Re: OT: Sorry for the shameless plug
Great work, Ognjen. On 22.3.2014. 7:29, Tenshi S. wrote: Really nice work! Love those fur animals. :D On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 1:07 AM, Alok Gandhi alok.gandhi2...@gmail.com mailto:alok.gandhi2...@gmail.com wrote: Nice Work Ognjen! On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Stephen Davidson magic...@bellsouth.net mailto:magic...@bellsouth.net wrote: Very, very nice work! Extremely impressive. On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 12:49 AM, Martin furik...@gmail.com mailto:furik...@gmail.com wrote: Nice reel ! I'm not a lighting expert but I liked it ! Thanks for sharing, specially in times like this. Martin Sent from my iPhone On 2014/03/22, at 12:29, Ognjen Vukovic ognj...@gmail.com mailto:ognj...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks Sylvain, Im glad you like it. just waiting for someone to rip on it now so i can go to sleep with no regrets. :) On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:19 AM, Sylvain Lebeau s...@shedmtl.com mailto:s...@shedmtl.com wrote: wow very cool stuffs Ognjen!! love it!!! sly *Sylvain Lebeau // SHED** *V-P/Visual effects supervisor 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8 T 514 849-1555 tel:514%20849-1555 F 514 849-5025 tel:514%20849-5025WWW.SHEDMTL.COM http://www.shedmtl.com/ http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM http://www.shedmtl.com/ am.png VFX Curriculum 03: Compositing Basics mail to: s...@shedmtl.com mailto:s...@shedmtl.com On Mar 21, 2014, at 10:25 PM, Ognjen Vukovic ognj...@gmail.com mailto:ognj...@gmail.com wrote: Hi guys, I know this is probably really bad timing and i really hate it has come to this but i was always awful at doing the right thing at the right moment. I just completed my first show reel after three years of great fun in the industry and i would love to share it, and the masochist in me would love some feedback and a good ripping of criticism, anything and everything is welcomed :). Give it a shot. Lighting and shading 2014 https://vimeo.com/88660251 Pass : reel 2025 Im off tomorrow for a long awaited holiday that will last two days since i havent been anywhere in the last three years due to work, but if i come back and find at least three replays i will be overjoyed. P.s. Everything was done in xsi, Cheers. -- 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 --
Re: Softimage to Maya rendering requests
Exactly, they're here now, because they want to alienate us with new improvements thanks to softimage users, why they don't listen Maya users in their proper channels. They've been asking a lot of improvements over a decade; but asking Softimage users, it's like they're trying quietly to drag us to Maya. It's nice to see people from Autodesk magically appear here, but it's not a good time to do that and for this. :) In fact, they'll need to be here to give us news about Softimage, trying to help us in other ways, saying at least the transition period it's been extended or something. On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 1:16 PM, Rob Wuijster r...@casema.nl wrote: Hi Laurence, With all do respect to you personally, but I still don't understand why these kind of questions are being asked -now-. AD had SI for 5 years, and most of the SI team went to AD as well as part of the aquisition. With all this recent talk about making Maya better and looking to Softimage, one would expect that most of the good things in SI were already planned to be integrated into Maya. You have the SI team there to tell you how stuff works. Pick up the good things, and improve on the stuff that could be improved. Read up on years of forum posts and mailinglist what is to be improved. So please don't insult us by finally popping in after the kill to see how you can lure us in to start using Maya. my angry and depressed EURO 0.02 as start of the weekend. Rob \/-\/\/ On 21-3-2014 19:05, Laurence Cymet wrote: Hello, My name is Laurence Cymet, I am the product manager for lighting and rendering on Maya. In the past few weeks I've been out to talk to many Softimage customers, and I can certainly understand your frustration with the move to EOL Softimage, so we're doing what we can to improve things. I am not here to try and sell anyone on Maya. My goal is to improve Maya, so if you are interested in discussing what we need to do to make it a better place to render for you, feel free to post here or email me directly at laurence.cy...@autodesk.commailto:laurence.cy...@autodesk.com laurence.cy...@autodesk.com Also - I will happily answer any questions I can about rendering in Maya, don't hesitate to ask. Thanks, Laurence Cymet - No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4336 / Virus Database: 3722/7228 - Release Date: 03/21/14
Re: Demise of SI and what it means for fine arts work
+1. Well spoken :) On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 7:46 AM, pete...@skynet.be wrote: Well said, Nancy. I have no illusions about how much corporations (especially this one) care for the individual artist. You have developed your own, very individual workflow - it might well be impossible to translate to another software. Unfamiliarity with a new tool is a huge hindrance to any really creative work. Then again, challenging yourself with a new tool could be stimulating and enriching in itself. (no, I don't think M#% is going to be either) Remember, you are free, more than most, to choose your tool - cutting edge or outdated, simple or advanced, high or low tech. While your art supplier can suspend that range of papers or paints you grew so attached to, crippling you in the process, they can't suspend this tool. You can keep it alive for as long as you choose to use it. I refuse to call it the Demise of SI at this point. That will be somewhere in the future, when I retire my last computer with Softimage on and don't even bother installing it on a new one. I have done my share of artistic projects, making imagery for theatrical and performance arts, individually and in teams - from volunteering work up to a million dollar budget. This is the part of my activities that I believe will be the least affected by AD's decision. Clients often hardly understand what it is I do, let alone which software I run. For team work they have mostly been asking me to decide on the tools to use, and I've always opted for mixed software - providing the individuals with their software of choice. It has invariably been the results the individual could achieve which have been crucial - not what software they ran it on. That being said, there is no denying that Softimage is very well adapted for these projects - truly generalist and multidisciplinary, freestyle, unpredictable, radical changes, fast turnaround. The core qualities of Softimage - especially the non-linear non destructive bit - really make a difference here. It is often on artistic projects that I first use new tools and features, especially (surprising or not?) ICE - up to the point where ICE is used one way or other - often crucial - on every single project. Without considering myself to even know it all that well. As long as I have not outgrown this software (which I don't expect to do anywhere soon) what AD decides to do with it does not matter. And if I ever do - well, then it will be natural leaving it behind. So whatever you do, keep using it or go elsewhere - but make sure it's your decision - not AD's. *From:* Nancy Jacobs illus...@mip.net *Sent:* Thursday, March 20, 2014 9:30 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Demise of SI and what it means for fine arts work When I bought XSI years ago, I compared it with Maya, and the 3d software packages i had been using since the dawn of the phenomenon, and made my decision. I never looked back. I have been extremely happy with XSI -- the workflow, the interface, everything was geared toward ease of use and learning, and visualization of a project from beginning to end. It has been the one piece of software that I find myself saying, every time I use it, what a fantastic piece of software! A joy to learn and use. And I've barely delved into ICE. When Autodesk purchased XSI, I was crushed. People speak of AD acquiring XSI to use its technology, and Maurice Patel has stated, We also acquire tech, redesign and re-engineer it, even rewrite it entirely, to fit into our products and workflows and yes, if it is more efficient to do so, we just integrate it. So that is obviously one reason for them to acquire XSIright after ICE was introduced. But what I thought then, and sadly seems to be coming true... Is that AD acquired XSI in order to acquire and 'integrate' XSI's USER BASE. What better way for a company to dominate the user base of a software genre than to acquire software products in that genre, kill them, and then offer the stunned user base a cost-efficient (in the short term) entree into their preferred product. Plus they get to cannibalize the dead software and use it to pump up their 'chosen one'. But we are not seeing that latter tech application effect so much as we are seeing the hijacking of the user base of Softimage. And, as so many have pointed out, bringing Maya into a state where SI users will find their workflow and features emulated is only a vague promise for future application. Not likely to be realized, considering the track record of Autodesk. Does this remind anyone of the infamous corporate takeover mentality...? Applied to software, of course. Same principle. Only here, it is the user base which is the prize, the economic draw of an expanded user base over the years. Especially as Maya, and the expensive plugins and expansions needed to do comparable work that XSI does out of the box...
Re: OT: Sorry for the shameless plug
In my opinion it is high quality work. It denotes passion and dedication. Congratulations on your work! -- --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation.
Re: OT: Sorry for the shameless plug
Very nice works! On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 1:18 PM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: In my opinion it is high quality work. It denotes passion and dedication. Congratulations on your work! -- --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation.
Non-destructive non-linearity
I don't like long-winded emotional eulogies. In the light of things, they are a waste of time. I'm trying to figure out in what shape those two abominations are now. I was watching this video https://vimeo.com/88391123 and although it was impressive, one moment in particular pierced right through my ears and exploded in my head. At around 20 minute mark he says: We had a bunch of UV errors, the shaders were wrong, so the night before delivery, i had to reconstruct the entire shot from scratch. Now, I remember a situation we had when a fully rigged, fully animated character in maya had to have some light modifications done to his topology and UV's replaced. It. Was. Hell. I don't know how we solved it. I think a person got involved, black magic was used, i clearly remember a goat missing, etc. Granted, this was long time ago - 2007ish i think. But for all its faults, i never recall a moment when i had to get up from XSI and flat out smash my head with a brick. I dread what lies ahead because non-destructiveness is a really low level paradigm. I don't feel the two alternatives we are being pushed into have the flexibility we got accustomed to. Am i wrong about this?
Re: Non-destructive non-linearity
Not wrong at all. I witness similar thing happened, replacing a bit of topology and UV on rigged character In a company full of Maya guys... it was nightmare they spent week on that... My bellowed Softimage... you are here to stay On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 12:52 PM, Aleksa Orlov aleksaor...@gmail.comwrote: I don't like long-winded emotional eulogies. In the light of things, they are a waste of time. I'm trying to figure out in what shape those two abominations are now. I was watching this video https://vimeo.com/88391123 and although it was impressive, one moment in particular pierced right through my ears and exploded in my head. At around 20 minute mark he says: We had a bunch of UV errors, the shaders were wrong, so the night before delivery, i had to reconstruct the entire shot from scratch. Now, I remember a situation we had when a fully rigged, fully animated character in maya had to have some light modifications done to his topology and UV's replaced. It. Was. Hell. I don't know how we solved it. I think a person got involved, black magic was used, i clearly remember a goat missing, etc. Granted, this was long time ago - 2007ish i think. But for all its faults, i never recall a moment when i had to get up from XSI and flat out smash my head with a brick. I dread what lies ahead because non-destructiveness is a really low level paradigm. I don't feel the two alternatives we are being pushed into have the flexibility we got accustomed to. Am i wrong about this?
Re: Non-destructive non-linearity
You are right, that has been pretty much my experience in every Maya project I have ever embarked on, Simon the ogre wasted so much time because Maya rigging issues it was unbelievable. Unless some sort of miracle I don't see any future with Maya or Max so effectively I am even more committed to finding better approaches to modelling and animation. It's a great opportunity too do let's see Jb Max is out of the question, so there is no option under AD roof. Sent from my iPhone On 22 Mar 2014, at 11:52, Aleksa Orlov aleksaor...@gmail.com wrote: I don't like long-winded emotional eulogies. In the light of things, they are a waste of time. I'm trying to figure out in what shape those two abominations are now. I was watching this video https://vimeo.com/88391123 and although it was impressive, one moment in particular pierced right through my ears and exploded in my head. At around 20 minute mark he says: We had a bunch of UV errors, the shaders were wrong, so the night before delivery, i had to reconstruct the entire shot from scratch. Now, I remember a situation we had when a fully rigged, fully animated character in maya had to have some light modifications done to his topology and UV's replaced. It. Was. Hell. I don't know how we solved it. I think a person got involved, black magic was used, i clearly remember a goat missing, etc. Granted, this was long time ago - 2007ish i think. But for all its faults, i never recall a moment when i had to get up from XSI and flat out smash my head with a brick. I dread what lies ahead because non-destructiveness is a really low level paradigm. I don't feel the two alternatives we are being pushed into have the flexibility we got accustomed to. Am i wrong about this?
Re: Non-destructive non-linearity
That's very hard to explain to people that are not in it. Every one will say, go Max, go Maya that's where the job is. But what about the pleasure of cleverness ? Using a complex progam, making things talking to each others, building rules... Ahhh Xsi :) Le 22/03/2014 13:46, Jordi Bares a écrit : You are right, that has been pretty much my experience in every Maya project I have ever embarked on, Simon the ogre wasted so much time because Maya rigging issues it was unbelievable. Unless some sort of miracle I don't see any future with Maya or Max so effectively I am even more committed to finding better approaches to modelling and animation. It's a great opportunity too do let's see Jb Max is out of the question, so there is no option under AD roof. Sent from my iPhone On 22 Mar 2014, at 11:52, Aleksa Orlov aleksaor...@gmail.com mailto:aleksaor...@gmail.com wrote: I don't like long-winded emotional eulogies. In the light of things, they are a waste of time. I'm trying to figure out in what shape those two abominations are now. I was watching this video https://vimeo.com/88391123 and although it was impressive, one moment in particular pierced right through my ears and exploded in my head. At around 20 minute mark he says: We had a bunch of UV errors, the shaders were wrong, so the night before delivery, i had to reconstruct the entire shot from scratch. Now, I remember a situation we had when a fully rigged, fully animated character in maya had to have some light modifications done to his topology and UV's replaced. It. Was. Hell. I don't know how we solved it. I think a person got involved, black magic was used, i clearly remember a goat missing, etc. Granted, this was long time ago - 2007ish i think. But for all its faults, i never recall a moment when i had to get up from XSI and flat out smash my head with a brick. I dread what lies ahead because non-destructiveness is a really low level paradigm. I don't feel the two alternatives we are being pushed into have the flexibility we got accustomed to. Am i wrong about this?
Re: Demise of SI and what it means for fine arts work
I agree with you Tenshi and Peter. I still use Truespace for my modelling and previz 5 years after Microsoft shut it down. Yes it still only uses viewport tech based on directX 9, yes it has none of the latest bells and whistles these days ... But it's the community, very small as is (you could count them on your hands and feet) that helps me keep it alive as my artistic tool of choice (and it still wowzers clients as I quickly slap together and modify on demand previz and models in a decent viewport today) . There still are some heros developing it and even doing unofficial updates, or compiling uncontinued plugins and tutorials together and keeping then shared. Even resurrecting old websites (www.Caligari.us) . And this last release of Truespace from 2009 was only beta. (though luckily they left it for free in its dying breaths) I agree with you both, and when I am able to purchase a right to softimage 2015, I can still see years of shelf life for such a professional and capable product like si, with so much room to expand on concepts I don't even know (ICE) that no matter how advanced it's competion will become, it still can be a competitive and perfect tool of choice for individuals or small studios - for years and years to come. And I hope the community, even after shifting software, will not drift apart and like TS, keep up the development how they can, the art, the products, and in the right time master other tools and share... But there will always be that first love on the side. I guess the Truespace forum www.united3dartists.com/forum had a fitting title when it was created right after the demise of its beloved software.. Stay United, stay a true 3d artist, love your software dead or alive, and keep mastering your skills with any tool! But yeah, autodesk... SI is not dead yet. --- Original Message --- From: Tenshi S. tenshu...@gmail.com Sent: March 22, 2014 1:54 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Demise of SI and what it means for fine arts work +1. Well spoken :) On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 7:46 AM, pete...@skynet.be wrote: Well said, Nancy. I have no illusions about how much corporations (especially this one) care for the individual artist. You have developed your own, very individual workflow - it might well be impossible to translate to another software. Unfamiliarity with a new tool is a huge hindrance to any really creative work. Then again, challenging yourself with a new tool could be stimulating and enriching in itself. (no, I don't think M#% is going to be either) Remember, you are free, more than most, to choose your tool - cutting edge or outdated, simple or advanced, high or low tech. While your art supplier can suspend that range of papers or paints you grew so attached to, crippling you in the process, they can't suspend this tool. You can keep it alive for as long as you choose to use it. I refuse to call it the Demise of SI at this point. That will be somewhere in the future, when I retire my last computer with Softimage on and don't even bother installing it on a new one. I have done my share of artistic projects, making imagery for theatrical and performance arts, individually and in teams - from volunteering work up to a million dollar budget. This is the part of my activities that I believe will be the least affected by AD's decision. Clients often hardly understand what it is I do, let alone which software I run. For team work they have mostly been asking me to decide on the tools to use, and I've always opted for mixed software - providing the individuals with their software of choice. It has invariably been the results the individual could achieve which have been crucial - not what software they ran it on. That being said, there is no denying that Softimage is very well adapted for these projects - truly generalist and multidisciplinary, freestyle, unpredictable, radical changes, fast turnaround. The core qualities of Softimage - especially the non-linear non destructive bit - really make a difference here. It is often on artistic projects that I first use new tools and features, especially (surprising or not?) ICE - up to the point where ICE is used one way or other - often crucial - on every single project. Without considering myself to even know it all that well. As long as I have not outgrown this software (which I don't expect to do anywhere soon) what AD decides to do with it does not matter. And if I ever do - well, then it will be natural leaving it behind. So whatever you do, keep using it or go elsewhere - but make sure it's your decision - not AD's. *From:* Nancy Jacobs illus...@mip.net *Sent:* Thursday, March 20, 2014 9:30 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Demise of SI and what it means for fine arts work When I bought XSI years ago, I compared it with Maya, and the 3d software packages i had been using since the dawn of the
Re: Non-destructive non-linearity
I sometimes think we, as an industry, are just a bunch of masochists. Even the guy on the video says he was stressed, sleep deprived but it's OK because he got to do it all by himself. How on earth is that ok? It's ok when you're doing some personal work, when a project is a journey as they say. It can't be ok when there are people depending on you delivering tomorrow morning! I do not detest hard work. I detest surprises. On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 1:56 PM, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.frwrote: That's very hard to explain to people that are not in it. Every one will say, go Max, go Maya that's where the job is. But what about the pleasure of cleverness ? Using a complex progam, making things talking to each others, building rules... Ahhh Xsi :) Le 22/03/2014 13:46, Jordi Bares a écrit : You are right, that has been pretty much my experience in every Maya project I have ever embarked on, Simon the ogre wasted so much time because Maya rigging issues it was unbelievable. Unless some sort of miracle I don't see any future with Maya or Max so effectively I am even more committed to finding better approaches to modelling and animation. It's a great opportunity too do let's see Jb Max is out of the question, so there is no option under AD roof. Sent from my iPhone On 22 Mar 2014, at 11:52, Aleksa Orlov aleksaor...@gmail.com wrote: I don't like long-winded emotional eulogies. In the light of things, they are a waste of time. I'm trying to figure out in what shape those two abominations are now. I was watching this video https://vimeo.com/88391123 and although it was impressive, one moment in particular pierced right through my ears and exploded in my head. At around 20 minute mark he says: We had a bunch of UV errors, the shaders were wrong, so the night before delivery, i had to reconstruct the entire shot from scratch. Now, I remember a situation we had when a fully rigged, fully animated character in maya had to have some light modifications done to his topology and UV's replaced. It. Was. Hell. I don't know how we solved it. I think a person got involved, black magic was used, i clearly remember a goat missing, etc. Granted, this was long time ago - 2007ish i think. But for all its faults, i never recall a moment when i had to get up from XSI and flat out smash my head with a brick. I dread what lies ahead because non-destructiveness is a really low level paradigm. I don't feel the two alternatives we are being pushed into have the flexibility we got accustomed to. Am i wrong about this?
Re: ICE - When will we have todays functionality in Maya?
Same here, I will not count on future promises by AutodesK; Their last promise one year ago: we won't kill XSI. Yeah right On 2014-03-21 22:03, Ognjen Vukovic wrote: I think you are absolutely correct on this.
RE: ****** MAYA BETTER NOT SUCK *******
Just to add: For me it's also not possible to get subscription, because I'm on 2011? There this 365days limit with an extension called 'late attachment fee' or something. Not sure though. As an existing costumer and not beeing on sub, I can upgrade until February 1, 2015. Autodesk will discontinue any ugrades to every products by then. Other solo freelancers and one-man-shops should be aware of this and not missing the deadline (if using older versions or not beeing on sub). You don't have time until April 2016 but only until Feb2015... sven From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sven Constable Sent: Monday, March 17, 2014 8:21 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: RE: ** MAYA BETTER NOT SUCK *** I dont'really care :) I chose not to be on subscription and I will keep it that way. It's not about ADSK, other companies tried to establish these business models as well. Time based licensing, subscription advantage packs. Effectively its like going to your local car dealer, sayin: Hey I need a new car!.. Very well, sir. It costs 10.000 dollars. You'll have to pay me right now and I will deliver your car next year. I cannot say what model it will be, but it will be good! Of course no one would acccept that. In terms of software, people buy it. I don't get it. I'm on version2011 and it works out for me to upgrade every 4 or maybe 5 years. Regarding the upcoming 2015 release...I don't expect any SAP versions like 2015.5 or so. There will be hotfixes and one, maybe two service packs. These will be available to all costumers, even if not on subscription. I'm not sure how all this applies to the standalone version and the various suites. I'm using Softimage2011 NLM (floating license) sven From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Christoph Muetze Sent: Monday, March 17, 2014 7:35 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: ** MAYA BETTER NOT SUCK *** Hey Sven, ..buying another year of subscription would cost less than half of that afair... Still i'm not sure if it's worth it :/ Chris On 17/03/14 19:23, Sven Constable wrote: Of course I'm talking about the regular upgrade. Currently it's EUR 2,750 for the 2014 upgrade, available to costumers with version 2008 and up . Maybe more, maybe less for the next version upgrade... From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sven Constable Sent: Monday, March 17, 2014 7:11 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: RE: ** MAYA BETTER NOT SUCK *** I'm sure Maurice posted this statement on the list, but I didn't find it in the many posts right now. And it is what I'm expecting from a product, even I bought it from Autodesk. I'm a costumer, I can upgrade. :) There is the 'six version back limit', I think. So you can upgrade from version2009 and up. sven
Re: What use is ICE really?
Yes!! Ice crowd is very great!! I have a lot of ice crowd rd experiences on my jobs at MBC ( TV channel of South Korea ) about 10+ projects. https://vimeo.com/73429479 https://vimeo.com/52531138 https://vimeo.com/48785305 https://vimeo.com/40859520 https://vimeo.com/36810887 2014-03-23 1:19 GMT+09:00 Tom Kleinenberg zagan...@gmail.com: I worked on 2 films in Softimage, Zambezia and Khumba. We had some very talented people but we were a fairly small crew so we needed a very efficient pipeline. The second film we worked on, Khumba, used ICE for fur, feathers, foliage generation, plant distribution and general set dressing, dust effects, fire effects etc. There may have been some rigging stuff as well, I wasn't that involved with that side of things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhE9aR8Qwzc https://www.behance.net/gallery/Khumba-Plants-and-Distribution/6028177 http://www.popularmechanics.co.za/tech/triggerfish-animation-takes-cinema-audiences-by-storm/ On 21 March 2014 23:05, Ed Manning etmth...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 5:03 PM, Bk p...@bustykelp.com wrote: We should make an edit of all this ice work into a 2-3 mins showcase. That would really ram home the point.. Call it what is ice? Agree, but I think we'd need more like 20 minutes to even scratch the surface. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups Softimage Mailing List Archive group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/xsi_list/7aGyes8lBQE/unsubscribe. To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to xsi_list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- *Byungchul Kang* | MBC CG TEAM [http://imbc.com] http://cgndev.com
Re: Softimage to Maya rendering requests
As someone who uses both packages... I think Soft users underestimate Render Layers in Maya. Granted, the horror stories would turn anyone off... but like anything there are the workarounds to the minefield. #1 being, don't put materials on polygon faces. ( hey, in soft you don't put them on polygon clusters either! ) But other than that, they have been totally fine. ( other users have different experiences I'm sure. ) But as a Soft user, I'm here to say.. they're not AS BAD as you've heard. Room for improvement is needed of course. I think the biggest single improvement that'll give Maya's render-layers the Softimage workflow immediately, is Partitions, or RenderGroups. That, along with a way to visualize them in the outliner. You can already make overrides, ( some might argue even easier in Maya.. ) However, the issue is how to manage and quickly visualize the data. There is no concept of how to easily see what you've done in a layer. ( other than investigating objects and such ) Picking up a scene from another artist in Maya could potentially be a nightmare if they work or organize scenes differently than you. Where in Soft, you can easily at a glance see what's been done. Anyway...Partitions, or RenderGroups Add them. On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 2:46 AM, Tenshi S. tenshu...@gmail.com wrote: Exactly, they're here now, because they want to alienate us with new improvements thanks to softimage users, why they don't listen Maya users in their proper channels. They've been asking a lot of improvements over a decade; but asking Softimage users, it's like they're trying quietly to drag us to Maya. It's nice to see people from Autodesk magically appear here, but it's not a good time to do that and for this. :) In fact, they'll need to be here to give us news about Softimage, trying to help us in other ways, saying at least the transition period it's been extended or something. On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 1:16 PM, Rob Wuijster r...@casema.nl wrote: Hi Laurence, With all do respect to you personally, but I still don't understand why these kind of questions are being asked -now-. AD had SI for 5 years, and most of the SI team went to AD as well as part of the aquisition. With all this recent talk about making Maya better and looking to Softimage, one would expect that most of the good things in SI were already planned to be integrated into Maya. You have the SI team there to tell you how stuff works. Pick up the good things, and improve on the stuff that could be improved. Read up on years of forum posts and mailinglist what is to be improved. So please don't insult us by finally popping in after the kill to see how you can lure us in to start using Maya. my angry and depressed EURO 0.02 as start of the weekend. Rob \/-\/\/ On 21-3-2014 19:05, Laurence Cymet wrote: Hello, My name is Laurence Cymet, I am the product manager for lighting and rendering on Maya. In the past few weeks I've been out to talk to many Softimage customers, and I can certainly understand your frustration with the move to EOL Softimage, so we're doing what we can to improve things. I am not here to try and sell anyone on Maya. My goal is to improve Maya, so if you are interested in discussing what we need to do to make it a better place to render for you, feel free to post here or email me directly at laurence.cy...@autodesk.commailto:laurence.cy...@autodesk.com laurence.cy...@autodesk.com Also - I will happily answer any questions I can about rendering in Maya, don't hesitate to ask. Thanks, Laurence Cymet - No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4336 / Virus Database: 3722/7228 - Release Date: 03/21/14
Re: Softimage to Maya rendering requests
+1 on what Jeffrey said. Regarding whether this is a good thing to do now or not, I say it is (and I think you know that isn't easy for me if you my position on this entire situation). Hey, at least they ARE asking! Better late than never. Should it have been done earlier? Yes. Should we never even have to be doing this at all (meaning not EOL for Softimage)? Of course! Should we even consider helping them with Maya when they killed Softimage? That is up to you, but really, there is no harm in it, it will help the Maya users out there (many who we are friends with or work with). Maybe Autodesk will actually learn something about how to respect its customers. Of this I am very doubtful, but again, no harm in trying to help. We have nothing to lose, if we *chose* to do this, except our time (and if we CHOSE to, we can't complain about that). Some of us may be required to use maya on a gig (God help me when that happens, but it may). If you want to look at it selfishly, you are helping yourself or your fellow Soft user when we or they are forced to use Maya down the road. It may suck when that happens, but if we help, it can suck LESS. Marketing could be: Maya. Now with less suckage! On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 1:00 PM, Jeffrey Dates jda...@kungfukoi.com wrote: As someone who uses both packages... I think Soft users underestimate Render Layers in Maya. Granted, the horror stories would turn anyone off... but like anything there are the workarounds to the minefield. #1 being, don't put materials on polygon faces. ( hey, in soft you don't put them on polygon clusters either! ) But other than that, they have been totally fine. ( other users have different experiences I'm sure. ) But as a Soft user, I'm here to say.. they're not AS BAD as you've heard. Room for improvement is needed of course. I think the biggest single improvement that'll give Maya's render-layers the Softimage workflow immediately, is Partitions, or RenderGroups. That, along with a way to visualize them in the outliner. You can already make overrides, ( some might argue even easier in Maya.. ) However, the issue is how to manage and quickly visualize the data. There is no concept of how to easily see what you've done in a layer. ( other than investigating objects and such ) Picking up a scene from another artist in Maya could potentially be a nightmare if they work or organize scenes differently than you. Where in Soft, you can easily at a glance see what's been done. Anyway...Partitions, or RenderGroups Add them. On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 2:46 AM, Tenshi S. tenshu...@gmail.com wrote: Exactly, they're here now, because they want to alienate us with new improvements thanks to softimage users, why they don't listen Maya users in their proper channels. They've been asking a lot of improvements over a decade; but asking Softimage users, it's like they're trying quietly to drag us to Maya. It's nice to see people from Autodesk magically appear here, but it's not a good time to do that and for this. :) In fact, they'll need to be here to give us news about Softimage, trying to help us in other ways, saying at least the transition period it's been extended or something. On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 1:16 PM, Rob Wuijster r...@casema.nl wrote: Hi Laurence, With all do respect to you personally, but I still don't understand why these kind of questions are being asked -now-. AD had SI for 5 years, and most of the SI team went to AD as well as part of the aquisition. With all this recent talk about making Maya better and looking to Softimage, one would expect that most of the good things in SI were already planned to be integrated into Maya. You have the SI team there to tell you how stuff works. Pick up the good things, and improve on the stuff that could be improved. Read up on years of forum posts and mailinglist what is to be improved. So please don't insult us by finally popping in after the kill to see how you can lure us in to start using Maya. my angry and depressed EURO 0.02 as start of the weekend. Rob \/-\/\/ On 21-3-2014 19:05, Laurence Cymet wrote: Hello, My name is Laurence Cymet, I am the product manager for lighting and rendering on Maya. In the past few weeks I've been out to talk to many Softimage customers, and I can certainly understand your frustration with the move to EOL Softimage, so we're doing what we can to improve things. I am not here to try and sell anyone on Maya. My goal is to improve Maya, so if you are interested in discussing what we need to do to make it a better place to render for you, feel free to post here or email me directly at laurence.cy...@autodesk.commailto:laurence.cy...@autodesk.com laurence.cy...@autodesk.com Also - I will happily answer any questions I can about rendering in Maya, don't hesitate to ask. Thanks, Laurence Cymet - No virus found in
Re: new QA with AD
Exactly my point, yours is the question that has no answer because it is true. Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com On 21 Mar 2014, at 18:39, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: Touché? It’s a fair and honest question. Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Jordi Bares Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 2:19 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Cc: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: new QA with AD Touché Sent from my iPhone On 21 Mar 2014, at 00:16, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: After reviewing all the information available thus far, I have one question that hasn’t been answered: If Softimage development was outsourced in continue and maintain mode, and the product no better than passively promoted, how is it sapping development resources on Max, Maya, and other M+E products to reach the conclusion Softimage had to be EOL’d? Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf OfMaurice Patel Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 4:27 PM To: davidsa...@sfr.fr; softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: RE: new QA with AD No this is not what I am saying, I am starting to understand that every post begets a question and that probably the best way to discuss this face to face so I can answer questions properly. I keep seeing what I say taken out of context and twisted into things I don’t mean. Given the complexity of the situation this is understandable but it is getting unproductive. So if you are truly interested . Ping me off-forum letting me know where and where to call Maurice Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf OfDavid Saber Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 7:22 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: new QA with AD So if I understand correctly, Softimage is dead because of an AD mistake, right? AD buys Softimage, puts all its developers on this new technology called Skyline. They keep Softimage in life support, knowing it will be replaced some day by all this new tech. The community is worried with the lack of development and keeps asking what's the roadmap for Soft, to no avail. Then AD realizes Skyline wasn't a good idea. So they kill all these new tech plans. And as Softimage has no more future replacement, they just kill it as well. And now we all benefit from these superb strategies. if I didn't get this right, perhaps somebody at Autodesk could answer some very important questions asked by Arvid (they went unnoticed I guess): Maurice, could you explain this, either XSI was supposed to be part of the now failed project Skyline – or it was never meant to be kept alive, but only bought up for its resources to then be moved into project Skyline and other parts of AD ME. Which one is it? Follow-up question, if it was the first option, how come XSI was never heavily marketed anywhere for this purpose? If it was the second, would you agree that you were not completely open with your intentions 5 years ago? David On 2014-03-20 18:09, rs3d wrote: http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/autodesk-answers-your-questions-demise-softimage-31411069
Re: Demise of SI and what it means for fine arts work
These are great points Peter and Andres. Andres, I remember being in on the very first Truespace release... I loved the rendering engine, but couldn't stand the modeling. Interesting that you prefer it for modeling! I had many conversations with their tech support on why don't you have this or that simple modeling tool...but they insisted on their methodology, which to me was imprecise, though I can see how someone who preferred to model in another way would find it interesting. Did they change the modeling tools over the years? (I think I bailed at Truespace 3). I got well into Imagine around that time, and found it great for modeling... Even did a couple commercial projects with it if you can imagine that. A couple other software carcasses I don't remember the names of ;-).then settled on Lightwave for some time. Loved the modeling tools there, and the rendering, the process and the results...with some brilliant pluginsfrankly I still miss Lightwave there, it was easier to achieve my aesthetic with it. It's the (lack of) animation that broke Lightwave for me, and that dual modeling/rendering application situation. XSI was an absolute dream come true there. The most logical and intuitive piece of software I've ever used. With animation systems that are so much easier to work with and visualize. First time I've ever been able to do any successful rigging of a realistic human model was with XSI. And it's great for modeling too, once you get the hang of it. You are all so right, I'm sure SI as is will continue to provide the tools I need for a very long time. As long as the help files remain online...? And if they don't break the final release so it is unusable. And if it is still available to install on future computers and windows platforms. That's the scary part, really. I'm even kind of hesitant to mention these things because I'm afraid AD is listening and might see a way to break us of the SI habit here... Also, I've never really been able to get fully the results I want out of mental ray. I've had to put a lot of hours into studying it and experimenting, and still can't get a lot of the rendering effects I got with Lightwave. I loved their system of gradation effects you could put on anything, but somehow it doesn't translate to mental ray's system. Working with mental ray seems kind of like wrestling with an invisible bear sometimes... I've heard there is a passionate C4D community, and it is often touted as a tool for artists, and easy to use. But when I've looked at it, it seems limited compared with SI. Does anyone know the state of it now, has it improved in the area of animation and effects? How does it compare with SI? I just keep remembering FPrime in Lightwave, and how great an integrated renderer that was to use... Fast for GI effects too, which i sorely need. And KRay was coming along and looking good too. If only I could get the best of both worlds there...Lightwave rendering plugins with SI everything else... Nancy Jacobs http://www.childofillusion.net/ On Mar 22, 2014, at 9:54 AM, Andres Stephens drais...@outlook.com wrote: I agree with you Tenshi and Peter. I still use Truespace for my modelling and previz 5 years after Microsoft shut it down. Yes it still only uses viewport tech based on directX 9, yes it has none of the latest bells and whistles these days ... But it's the community, very small as is (you could count them on your hands and feet) that helps me keep it alive as my artistic tool of choice (and it still wowzers clients as I quickly slap together and modify on demand previz and models in a decent viewport today) . There still are some heros developing it and even doing unofficial updates, or compiling uncontinued plugins and tutorials together and keeping then shared. Even resurrecting old websites (www.Caligari.us) . And this last release of Truespace from 2009 was only beta. (though luckily they left it for free in its dying breaths) I agree with you both, and when I am able to purchase a right to softimage 2015, I can still see years of shelf life for such a professional and capable product like si, with so much room to expand on concepts I don't even know (ICE) that no matter how advanced it's competion will become, it still can be a competitive and perfect tool of choice for individuals or small studios - for years and years to come. And I hope the community, even after shifting software, will not drift apart and like TS, keep up the development how they can, the art, the products, and in the right time master other tools and share... But there will always be that first love on the side. I guess the Truespace forum www.united3dartists.com/forum had a fitting title when it was created right after the demise of its beloved software.. Stay United, stay a true 3d artist, love your software dead or alive, and keep mastering your skills with any
Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
Hello, I was beginning to ponder, in another thread, some rendering issues in SI. I've never really liked mental ray, tried to, spent a long time studying it, and could never get the kind of aesthetic I was able to achieve in Lightwave, with the Steve Worley plugin FPrime, or the newer Kray, which was beginning a promising development about when I left. Seems to have taken off now, too. I ported several projects over from Lightwave to XSI some years ago, and tried to reproduce the very nice rendering results I got in Lightwave. Totally different system of course. I figured it was one good approach to learning mental ray. Well, I couldn't get anywhere close, and it was a struggle, and I never really got acceptable results. Every other aspect of the projects went so much better, though, in XSI. And there was animation in XSI I couldn't even begin to do in Lightwave. I need fast GI effects, that's integral to what I do. A lot of interior architectural-like surfaces. Not necessarily total realism, just an aesthetic -- I need to really be able to get in there and tweak things and make them work. I use a lot of HDR lighting, I know how to hand tweak it in photoshop, or create it from scratch, and I like to use that to control my light and color. I've used FG quite a bit, and am not always happy how it translates things. GI is way too slow in my scenes. FPrime and Kray had a way of handling these GI lighting effects that was very efficient, and tweakable. That's the one thing from Lightwave that I REALLY miss. Anything comparable for Softimage? I remember I also could get some reflectivity and ray tracing in Lightwave at a fraction of the rendering time mental ray takes. I can't use it at all in mental ray, with GI (including FG) except on a single object basis. Not for animation on many frames, too costly. But I do like the nodal texturing system built into SI. Anyway, considering these factors, is there any rendering solution for SI that anyone can recommend that will give me what I'm looking for? That isn't too expensive... Thanks, Nancy Jacobs http://www.childofillusion.net/
Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
I'd say you should take a closer look at Redshift (www.redshift3d.com).Arnold is popular, tested, and very fast and stable, but it's also more expensive than Redshift.Vray will be officially discontinued (besides some last service pack, which won't feature VrayRT), and I don't know about Aghile's current plans for 3Delight. StefanHello,I was beginning to ponder, in another thread, some rendering issues in SI. I've never really liked mental ray, tried to, spent a long time studying it, and could never get the kind of aesthetic I was able to achieve in Lightwave, with the Steve Worley plugin FPrime, or the newer Kray, which was beginning a promising development about when I left. Seems to have taken off now, too.I ported several projects over from Lightwave to XSI some years ago, and tried to reproduce the very nice rendering results I got in Lightwave. Totally different system of course. I figured it was one good approach to learning mental ray. Well, I couldn't get anywhere close, and it was a struggle, and I never really got acceptable results. Every other aspect of the projects went so much better, though, in XSI. And there was animation in XSI I couldn't even begin to do in Lightwave.I need fast GI effects, that's integral to what I do. A lot of interior architectural-like surfaces. Not necessarily total realism, just an aesthetic -- I need to really be able to get in there and tweak things and make them work. I use a lot of HDR lighting, I know how to hand tweak it in photoshop, or create it from scratch, and I like to use that to control my light and color. I've used FG quite a bit, and am not always happy how it translates things. GI is way too slow in my scenes.FPrime and Kray had a way of handling these GI lighting effects that was very efficient, and tweakable. That's the one thing from Lightwave that I REALLY miss. Anything comparable for Softimage?I remember I also could get some reflectivity and ray tracing in Lightwave at a fraction of the rendering time mental ray takes. I can't use it at all in mental ray, with GI (including FG) except on a single object basis. Not for animation on many frames, too costly. But I do like the nodal texturing system built into SI.Anyway, considering these factors, is there any rendering solution for SI that anyone can recommend that will give me what I'm looking for? That isn't too expensive...Thanks,Nancy Jacobshttp://www.childofillusion.net/-- --- 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: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
Redshift is brilliant, and really a bargain in terms of price. It uses GPU, so you have to have a good graphics card, but it really works amazingly well. Delivered 3 projects in it already, one of them was while it was an alpha product! redshift3d.com On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Nancy Jacobs illus...@mip.net wrote: Hello, I was beginning to ponder, in another thread, some rendering issues in SI. I've never really liked mental ray, tried to, spent a long time studying it, and could never get the kind of aesthetic I was able to achieve in Lightwave, with the Steve Worley plugin FPrime, or the newer Kray, which was beginning a promising development about when I left. Seems to have taken off now, too. I ported several projects over from Lightwave to XSI some years ago, and tried to reproduce the very nice rendering results I got in Lightwave. Totally different system of course. I figured it was one good approach to learning mental ray. Well, I couldn't get anywhere close, and it was a struggle, and I never really got acceptable results. Every other aspect of the projects went so much better, though, in XSI. And there was animation in XSI I couldn't even begin to do in Lightwave. I need fast GI effects, that's integral to what I do. A lot of interior architectural-like surfaces. Not necessarily total realism, just an aesthetic -- I need to really be able to get in there and tweak things and make them work. I use a lot of HDR lighting, I know how to hand tweak it in photoshop, or create it from scratch, and I like to use that to control my light and color. I've used FG quite a bit, and am not always happy how it translates things. GI is way too slow in my scenes. FPrime and Kray had a way of handling these GI lighting effects that was very efficient, and tweakable. That's the one thing from Lightwave that I REALLY miss. Anything comparable for Softimage? I remember I also could get some reflectivity and ray tracing in Lightwave at a fraction of the rendering time mental ray takes. I can't use it at all in mental ray, with GI (including FG) except on a single object basis. Not for animation on many frames, too costly. But I do like the nodal texturing system built into SI. Anyway, considering these factors, is there any rendering solution for SI that anyone can recommend that will give me what I'm looking for? That isn't too expensive... Thanks, Nancy Jacobs http://www.childofillusion.net/ -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com http://www.theafterimage.com/ -25 Years Experience -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)
Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
Like Stefan, said. Check out Arnold, 3DLight, Vray and Redshift, nothing is perfect; but those are better than MR. :) On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 3:51 PM, Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.comwrote: Redshift is brilliant, and really a bargain in terms of price. It uses GPU, so you have to have a good graphics card, but it really works amazingly well. Delivered 3 projects in it already, one of them was while it was an alpha product! redshift3d.com On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Nancy Jacobs illus...@mip.net wrote: Hello, I was beginning to ponder, in another thread, some rendering issues in SI. I've never really liked mental ray, tried to, spent a long time studying it, and could never get the kind of aesthetic I was able to achieve in Lightwave, with the Steve Worley plugin FPrime, or the newer Kray, which was beginning a promising development about when I left. Seems to have taken off now, too. I ported several projects over from Lightwave to XSI some years ago, and tried to reproduce the very nice rendering results I got in Lightwave. Totally different system of course. I figured it was one good approach to learning mental ray. Well, I couldn't get anywhere close, and it was a struggle, and I never really got acceptable results. Every other aspect of the projects went so much better, though, in XSI. And there was animation in XSI I couldn't even begin to do in Lightwave. I need fast GI effects, that's integral to what I do. A lot of interior architectural-like surfaces. Not necessarily total realism, just an aesthetic -- I need to really be able to get in there and tweak things and make them work. I use a lot of HDR lighting, I know how to hand tweak it in photoshop, or create it from scratch, and I like to use that to control my light and color. I've used FG quite a bit, and am not always happy how it translates things. GI is way too slow in my scenes. FPrime and Kray had a way of handling these GI lighting effects that was very efficient, and tweakable. That's the one thing from Lightwave that I REALLY miss. Anything comparable for Softimage? I remember I also could get some reflectivity and ray tracing in Lightwave at a fraction of the rendering time mental ray takes. I can't use it at all in mental ray, with GI (including FG) except on a single object basis. Not for animation on many frames, too costly. But I do like the nodal texturing system built into SI. Anyway, considering these factors, is there any rendering solution for SI that anyone can recommend that will give me what I'm looking for? That isn't too expensive... Thanks, Nancy Jacobs http://www.childofillusion.net/ -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com http://www.theafterimage.com/ -25 Years Experience -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)
Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
Agree with Perry, we bought a license of Redshift last week, already delivered a project, and the next we are working on a project we were supposed to have a month for delivery and the client's feedback was that he needed it in two weeks and a half, and we could agree to those terms after some tests i did on RS to ensure the time for delivery. It has some limits but nothing. serious compared to what can do, and for sure in some time learning the new engine will apply for majority of projects. We wil buy more licenses next week. Highly recomended! F. On Saturday, March 22, 2014, Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.com wrote: Redshift is brilliant, and really a bargain in terms of price. It uses GPU, so you have to have a good graphics card, but it really works amazingly well. Delivered 3 projects in it already, one of them was while it was an alpha product! redshift3d.com On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Nancy Jacobs illus...@mip.netjavascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','illus...@mip.net'); wrote: Hello, I was beginning to ponder, in another thread, some rendering issues in SI. I've never really liked mental ray, tried to, spent a long time studying it, and could never get the kind of aesthetic I was able to achieve in Lightwave, with the Steve Worley plugin FPrime, or the newer Kray, which was beginning a promising development about when I left. Seems to have taken off now, too. I ported several projects over from Lightwave to XSI some years ago, and tried to reproduce the very nice rendering results I got in Lightwave. Totally different system of course. I figured it was one good approach to learning mental ray. Well, I couldn't get anywhere close, and it was a struggle, and I never really got acceptable results. Every other aspect of the projects went so much better, though, in XSI. And there was animation in XSI I couldn't even begin to do in Lightwave. I need fast GI effects, that's integral to what I do. A lot of interior architectural-like surfaces. Not necessarily total realism, just an aesthetic -- I need to really be able to get in there and tweak things and make them work. I use a lot of HDR lighting, I know how to hand tweak it in photoshop, or create it from scratch, and I like to use that to control my light and color. I've used FG quite a bit, and am not always happy how it translates things. GI is way too slow in my scenes. FPrime and Kray had a way of handling these GI lighting effects that was very efficient, and tweakable. That's the one thing from Lightwave that I REALLY miss. Anything comparable for Softimage? I remember I also could get some reflectivity and ray tracing in Lightwave at a fraction of the rendering time mental ray takes. I can't use it at all in mental ray, with GI (including FG) except on a single object basis. Not for animation on many frames, too costly. But I do like the nodal texturing system built into SI. Anyway, considering these factors, is there any rendering solution for SI that anyone can recommend that will give me what I'm looking for? That isn't too expensive... Thanks, Nancy Jacobs http://www.childofillusion.net/ -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com http://www.theafterimage.com/ -25 Years Experience -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)
Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
Will Arnold continue to be supported, you think ? On 22 March 2014 20:53, Tenshi S. tenshu...@gmail.com wrote: Like Stefan, said. Check out Arnold, 3DLight, Vray and Redshift, nothing is perfect; but those are better than MR. :) On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 3:51 PM, Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.comwrote: Redshift is brilliant, and really a bargain in terms of price. It uses GPU, so you have to have a good graphics card, but it really works amazingly well. Delivered 3 projects in it already, one of them was while it was an alpha product! redshift3d.com On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Nancy Jacobs illus...@mip.net wrote: Hello, I was beginning to ponder, in another thread, some rendering issues in SI. I've never really liked mental ray, tried to, spent a long time studying it, and could never get the kind of aesthetic I was able to achieve in Lightwave, with the Steve Worley plugin FPrime, or the newer Kray, which was beginning a promising development about when I left. Seems to have taken off now, too. I ported several projects over from Lightwave to XSI some years ago, and tried to reproduce the very nice rendering results I got in Lightwave. Totally different system of course. I figured it was one good approach to learning mental ray. Well, I couldn't get anywhere close, and it was a struggle, and I never really got acceptable results. Every other aspect of the projects went so much better, though, in XSI. And there was animation in XSI I couldn't even begin to do in Lightwave. I need fast GI effects, that's integral to what I do. A lot of interior architectural-like surfaces. Not necessarily total realism, just an aesthetic -- I need to really be able to get in there and tweak things and make them work. I use a lot of HDR lighting, I know how to hand tweak it in photoshop, or create it from scratch, and I like to use that to control my light and color. I've used FG quite a bit, and am not always happy how it translates things. GI is way too slow in my scenes. FPrime and Kray had a way of handling these GI lighting effects that was very efficient, and tweakable. That's the one thing from Lightwave that I REALLY miss. Anything comparable for Softimage? I remember I also could get some reflectivity and ray tracing in Lightwave at a fraction of the rendering time mental ray takes. I can't use it at all in mental ray, with GI (including FG) except on a single object basis. Not for animation on many frames, too costly. But I do like the nodal texturing system built into SI. Anyway, considering these factors, is there any rendering solution for SI that anyone can recommend that will give me what I'm looking for? That isn't too expensive... Thanks, Nancy Jacobs http://www.childofillusion.net/ -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com http://www.theafterimage.com/ -25 Years Experience -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)
Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
The response of the guys at Redshift is really amazing. They email back with answers or updates constantly. I really have never seen a more customer oriented bunch of people. The learning curve on the renderer is almost nonexistent, too, in my opinion. It really gives the results you expect very fast. It has an interactive (progressive mode) but I rarely need to use it because it is so fast and because it does what I expect when I hit RENDER. On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:58 PM, Francisco Criado malcriad...@gmail.comwrote: Agree with Perry, we bought a license of Redshift last week, already delivered a project, and the next we are working on a project we were supposed to have a month for delivery and the client's feedback was that he needed it in two weeks and a half, and we could agree to those terms after some tests i did on RS to ensure the time for delivery. It has some limits but nothing. serious compared to what can do, and for sure in some time learning the new engine will apply for majority of projects. We wil buy more licenses next week. Highly recomended! F. On Saturday, March 22, 2014, Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.com wrote: Redshift is brilliant, and really a bargain in terms of price. It uses GPU, so you have to have a good graphics card, but it really works amazingly well. Delivered 3 projects in it already, one of them was while it was an alpha product! redshift3d.com On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Nancy Jacobs illus...@mip.net wrote: Hello, I was beginning to ponder, in another thread, some rendering issues in SI. I've never really liked mental ray, tried to, spent a long time studying it, and could never get the kind of aesthetic I was able to achieve in Lightwave, with the Steve Worley plugin FPrime, or the newer Kray, which was beginning a promising development about when I left. Seems to have taken off now, too. I ported several projects over from Lightwave to XSI some years ago, and tried to reproduce the very nice rendering results I got in Lightwave. Totally different system of course. I figured it was one good approach to learning mental ray. Well, I couldn't get anywhere close, and it was a struggle, and I never really got acceptable results. Every other aspect of the projects went so much better, though, in XSI. And there was animation in XSI I couldn't even begin to do in Lightwave. I need fast GI effects, that's integral to what I do. A lot of interior architectural-like surfaces. Not necessarily total realism, just an aesthetic -- I need to really be able to get in there and tweak things and make them work. I use a lot of HDR lighting, I know how to hand tweak it in photoshop, or create it from scratch, and I like to use that to control my light and color. I've used FG quite a bit, and am not always happy how it translates things. GI is way too slow in my scenes. FPrime and Kray had a way of handling these GI lighting effects that was very efficient, and tweakable. That's the one thing from Lightwave that I REALLY miss. Anything comparable for Softimage? I remember I also could get some reflectivity and ray tracing in Lightwave at a fraction of the rendering time mental ray takes. I can't use it at all in mental ray, with GI (including FG) except on a single object basis. Not for animation on many frames, too costly. But I do like the nodal texturing system built into SI. Anyway, considering these factors, is there any rendering solution for SI that anyone can recommend that will give me what I'm looking for? That isn't too expensive... Thanks, Nancy Jacobs http://www.childofillusion.net/ -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com http://www.theafterimage.com/ -25 Years Experience -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES) -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com http://www.theafterimage.com/ -25 Years Experience -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)
Re: What use is ICE really?
Here some of my stuff done with ICE: https://vimeo.com/80227846 Simple example of the custom ICE crowd system I've done based on Craig Reynolds Steering Behaviors paper. https://vimeo.com/75137589 Impact compound https://vimeo.com/41321274 ICE FeatherGenerator https://vimeo.com/14156380 This one was done with XSI 7 long time ago.As I remember I done it all in one point cloud without any comp tricks and at that time there wasn't any other software except Houdini maybe that can do that so easily . https://vimeo.com/17346298 https://vimeo.com/17347655 Just playing with ICE https://vimeo.com/14153302 Dynamic ComputerMouse Rig You can ignore the text below because most of it was said already in other threads but I am too emotional right now after looking at this great work with ICE and I felt I have to write it . Please excuse my English . This is the worst decision Autodesk did, and I am sure will have big impact for them as a company !I am pretty sure that they are going to loose ME industry in 3 to 4 years if they don't change their moves and reconsider some of their decisions...They lost and keep losing the most important think for them as a company the trust of their customers and this is something that they won't be able to win back easily. Because they are so big and greedy they forget to look down to their basis and see that what keeps them up there are humans and not toys with which they can play their corporate games and shift them around. Autodesk, It is true the Softimage community is small but you don't see the big picture hereyou don't pissed only us but the entire CG industry. And BTW the bad word and the bad news is something that spreads really fast . Autodesk in case you are not aware what you are killing right now it's called ICE and is great and innovative technology, which I am sure that you won't be able to recreate in the next 2-3 years,and after that will be too late for you!You have it now and the big question is why don't use it as it is ?I think because the people that take the decision in this company are not aware what they have or worst they don't care. I have a feeling also that you want to sell us only black boxes that are managed only by you, but I am telling you this won't work for you in the long term...By buying plugins and trying to put them together as a black boxes you don't realize that what you are creating in the end is ugly frankenstein monster that nobody really likes.And now you are trying to force us to stare at this boxy monster Maya every day. No thanks, I prefer to work with the elegant dude called Houdini! (BTW Not long after the acquisition I knew and many of us knew that Autodesk will make Softimage to fade out and then kill it. Actually Autodesk is very predictable company for me they proved many times in the past that you can't trust them ! So not long after acquisition I started to focus more on Houdini and now I am very happy about my decision at that time . SideFX is a company that makes their product with passion and love, they are first to implement the latest technology and always listen to their customers.) Autodesk, ICE is great technology that opens the artistic creativity to go much further than any other solution you are offering. It is open enough to create your art in the way you want it to be created and is not dictated by the black box boundaries. The Result of this freedom you can find it in the most beautiful and visually rich project done last 5 - 6 years ,all done by a great artists using the most artistic friendly and technically deep application that you have to offer Softimage . And you are ready to loose all of that including the artists as your customers...and maybe at some point some of the studios ? here are some examples : http://www.subaru-global.com/news2011n001100.html https://vimeo.com/4060100 https://vimeo.com/24069938 https://vimeo.com/44672943 https://vimeo.com/23902379 for more check here : http://www.si-community.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=25t=2739start=180 I really hope Autodesk reconsider their decision .Hope dies last... But if they don't I have where to go. A On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:28 PM, Byungchul Kang k...@cgndev.com wrote: Yes!! Ice crowd is very great!! I have a lot of ice crowd rd experiences on my jobs at MBC ( TV channel of South Korea ) about 10+ projects. https://vimeo.com/73429479 https://vimeo.com/52531138 https://vimeo.com/48785305 https://vimeo.com/40859520 https://vimeo.com/36810887 2014-03-23 1:19 GMT+09:00 Tom Kleinenberg zagan...@gmail.com: I worked on 2 films in Softimage, Zambezia and Khumba. We had some very talented people but we were a fairly small crew so we needed a very efficient pipeline. The second film we worked on, Khumba, used ICE for fur, feathers, foliage generation, plant distribution and general set dressing, dust effects, fire effects etc. There may have been some rigging stuff as well, I wasn't that involved with that
Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
Definetly check Redshift. Not only great renderer but team behind it amazing as well. There is trial demo and if you have any geforce card be sure to check it out On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 10:05 PM, Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.comwrote: The response of the guys at Redshift is really amazing. They email back with answers or updates constantly. I really have never seen a more customer oriented bunch of people. The learning curve on the renderer is almost nonexistent, too, in my opinion. It really gives the results you expect very fast. It has an interactive (progressive mode) but I rarely need to use it because it is so fast and because it does what I expect when I hit RENDER. On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:58 PM, Francisco Criado malcriad...@gmail.comwrote: Agree with Perry, we bought a license of Redshift last week, already delivered a project, and the next we are working on a project we were supposed to have a month for delivery and the client's feedback was that he needed it in two weeks and a half, and we could agree to those terms after some tests i did on RS to ensure the time for delivery. It has some limits but nothing. serious compared to what can do, and for sure in some time learning the new engine will apply for majority of projects. We wil buy more licenses next week. Highly recomended! F. On Saturday, March 22, 2014, Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.com wrote: Redshift is brilliant, and really a bargain in terms of price. It uses GPU, so you have to have a good graphics card, but it really works amazingly well. Delivered 3 projects in it already, one of them was while it was an alpha product! redshift3d.com On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Nancy Jacobs illus...@mip.net wrote: Hello, I was beginning to ponder, in another thread, some rendering issues in SI. I've never really liked mental ray, tried to, spent a long time studying it, and could never get the kind of aesthetic I was able to achieve in Lightwave, with the Steve Worley plugin FPrime, or the newer Kray, which was beginning a promising development about when I left. Seems to have taken off now, too. I ported several projects over from Lightwave to XSI some years ago, and tried to reproduce the very nice rendering results I got in Lightwave. Totally different system of course. I figured it was one good approach to learning mental ray. Well, I couldn't get anywhere close, and it was a struggle, and I never really got acceptable results. Every other aspect of the projects went so much better, though, in XSI. And there was animation in XSI I couldn't even begin to do in Lightwave. I need fast GI effects, that's integral to what I do. A lot of interior architectural-like surfaces. Not necessarily total realism, just an aesthetic -- I need to really be able to get in there and tweak things and make them work. I use a lot of HDR lighting, I know how to hand tweak it in photoshop, or create it from scratch, and I like to use that to control my light and color. I've used FG quite a bit, and am not always happy how it translates things. GI is way too slow in my scenes. FPrime and Kray had a way of handling these GI lighting effects that was very efficient, and tweakable. That's the one thing from Lightwave that I REALLY miss. Anything comparable for Softimage? I remember I also could get some reflectivity and ray tracing in Lightwave at a fraction of the rendering time mental ray takes. I can't use it at all in mental ray, with GI (including FG) except on a single object basis. Not for animation on many frames, too costly. But I do like the nodal texturing system built into SI. Anyway, considering these factors, is there any rendering solution for SI that anyone can recommend that will give me what I'm looking for? That isn't too expensive... Thanks, Nancy Jacobs http://www.childofillusion.net/ -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com http://www.theafterimage.com/ -25 Years Experience -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES) -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com http://www.theafterimage.com/ -25 Years Experience -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)
Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
they have fixed ever bug I sent to them within a day. From: Mirko Jankovic Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2014 5:12 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed.. Definetly check Redshift. Not only great renderer but team behind it amazing as well. There is trial demo and if you have any geforce card be sure to check it out On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 10:05 PM, Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.com wrote: The response of the guys at Redshift is really amazing. They email back with answers or updates constantly. I really have never seen a more customer oriented bunch of people. The learning curve on the renderer is almost nonexistent, too, in my opinion. It really gives the results you expect very fast. It has an interactive (progressive mode) but I rarely need to use it because it is so fast and because it does what I expect when I hit RENDER. On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:58 PM, Francisco Criado malcriad...@gmail.com wrote: Agree with Perry, we bought a license of Redshift last week, already delivered a project, and the next we are working on a project we were supposed to have a month for delivery and the client's feedback was that he needed it in two weeks and a half, and we could agree to those terms after some tests i did on RS to ensure the time for delivery. It has some limits but nothing. serious compared to what can do, and for sure in some time learning the new engine will apply for majority of projects. We wil buy more licenses next week. Highly recomended! F. On Saturday, March 22, 2014, Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.com wrote: Redshift is brilliant, and really a bargain in terms of price. It uses GPU, so you have to have a good graphics card, but it really works amazingly well. Delivered 3 projects in it already, one of them was while it was an alpha product! redshift3d.com On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Nancy Jacobs illus...@mip.net wrote: Hello, I was beginning to ponder, in another thread, some rendering issues in SI. I've never really liked mental ray, tried to, spent a long time studying it, and could never get the kind of aesthetic I was able to achieve in Lightwave, with the Steve Worley plugin FPrime, or the newer Kray, which was beginning a promising development about when I left. Seems to have taken off now, too. I ported several projects over from Lightwave to XSI some years ago, and tried to reproduce the very nice rendering results I got in Lightwave. Totally different system of course. I figured it was one good approach to learning mental ray. Well, I couldn't get anywhere close, and it was a struggle, and I never really got acceptable results. Every other aspect of the projects went so much better, though, in XSI. And there was animation in XSI I couldn't even begin to do in Lightwave. I need fast GI effects, that's integral to what I do. A lot of interior architectural-like surfaces. Not necessarily total realism, just an aesthetic -- I need to really be able to get in there and tweak things and make them work. I use a lot of HDR lighting, I know how to hand tweak it in photoshop, or create it from scratch, and I like to use that to control my light and color. I've used FG quite a bit, and am not always happy how it translates things. GI is way too slow in my scenes. FPrime and Kray had a way of handling these GI lighting effects that was very efficient, and tweakable. That's the one thing from Lightwave that I REALLY miss. Anything comparable for Softimage? I remember I also could get some reflectivity and ray tracing in Lightwave at a fraction of the rendering time mental ray takes. I can't use it at all in mental ray, with GI (including FG) except on a single object basis. Not for animation on many frames, too costly. But I do like the nodal texturing system built into SI. Anyway, considering these factors, is there any rendering solution for SI that anyone can recommend that will give me what I'm looking for? That isn't too expensive... Thanks, Nancy Jacobs http://www.childofillusion.net/ -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com -25 Years Experience -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES) -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com -25 Years Experience -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)
Final Call for April validation webinars
Hi Everyone, Thanks to everyone who reached out to me. If I have not reached out back to you to schedule dates please resend your request. We have over 60 requests which is great but have a few more slots available for April if you are interested just send me a private mail before end of day Monday. thx. cv/ attachment: winmail.dat
RE: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
What amazes me the most when testing Redshift was the similarity to mentalray. The shaders are very close to the shaders I used in all the years using mental ray in softimage. The illumination models are also very close, but on steroids :) It's really like using mental ray in Softimage but without waiting for render times or fighting against artifacts. I also have to say that (giving respect to mental ray and its capabilities), that the upcoming version of mental ray 3.12 (implemented in Softimage2015) will have GPU accelerated GI. I was not on the beta for MR3.12 and I have no clue what the speed improvements or quality will be, but I 'm very curious to see mental ray in action with 2015. sven From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Nancy Jacobs Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2014 9:42 PM To: Softimage Listserve Subject: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed.. Hello, I was beginning to ponder, in another thread, some rendering issues in SI. I've never really liked mental ray, tried to, spent a long time studying it, and could never get the kind of aesthetic I was able to achieve in Lightwave, with the Steve Worley plugin FPrime, or the newer Kray, which was beginning a promising development about when I left. Seems to have taken off now, too. I ported several projects over from Lightwave to XSI some years ago, and tried to reproduce the very nice rendering results I got in Lightwave. Totally different system of course. I figured it was one good approach to learning mental ray. Well, I couldn't get anywhere close, and it was a struggle, and I never really got acceptable results. Every other aspect of the projects went so much better, though, in XSI. And there was animation in XSI I couldn't even begin to do in Lightwave. I need fast GI effects, that's integral to what I do. A lot of interior architectural-like surfaces. Not necessarily total realism, just an aesthetic -- I need to really be able to get in there and tweak things and make them work. I use a lot of HDR lighting, I know how to hand tweak it in photoshop, or create it from scratch, and I like to use that to control my light and color. I've used FG quite a bit, and am not always happy how it translates things. GI is way too slow in my scenes. FPrime and Kray had a way of handling these GI lighting effects that was very efficient, and tweakable. That's the one thing from Lightwave that I REALLY miss. Anything comparable for Softimage? I remember I also could get some reflectivity and ray tracing in Lightwave at a fraction of the rendering time mental ray takes. I can't use it at all in mental ray, with GI (including FG) except on a single object basis. Not for animation on many frames, too costly. But I do like the nodal texturing system built into SI. Anyway, considering these factors, is there any rendering solution for SI that anyone can recommend that will give me what I'm looking for? That isn't too expensive... Thanks, Nancy Jacobs http://www.childofillusion.net/
Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
they will *written with my thumbs On Mar 22, 2014, at 1:59 PM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Will Arnold continue to be supported, you think ? On 22 March 2014 20:53, Tenshi S. tenshu...@gmail.com wrote: Like Stefan, said. Check out Arnold, 3DLight, Vray and Redshift, nothing is perfect; but those are better than MR. :) On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 3:51 PM, Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.com wrote: Redshift is brilliant, and really a bargain in terms of price. It uses GPU, so you have to have a good graphics card, but it really works amazingly well. Delivered 3 projects in it already, one of them was while it was an alpha product! redshift3d.com On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Nancy Jacobs illus...@mip.net wrote: Hello, I was beginning to ponder, in another thread, some rendering issues in SI. I've never really liked mental ray, tried to, spent a long time studying it, and could never get the kind of aesthetic I was able to achieve in Lightwave, with the Steve Worley plugin FPrime, or the newer Kray, which was beginning a promising development about when I left. Seems to have taken off now, too. I ported several projects over from Lightwave to XSI some years ago, and tried to reproduce the very nice rendering results I got in Lightwave. Totally different system of course. I figured it was one good approach to learning mental ray. Well, I couldn't get anywhere close, and it was a struggle, and I never really got acceptable results. Every other aspect of the projects went so much better, though, in XSI. And there was animation in XSI I couldn't even begin to do in Lightwave. I need fast GI effects, that's integral to what I do. A lot of interior architectural-like surfaces. Not necessarily total realism, just an aesthetic -- I need to really be able to get in there and tweak things and make them work. I use a lot of HDR lighting, I know how to hand tweak it in photoshop, or create it from scratch, and I like to use that to control my light and color. I've used FG quite a bit, and am not always happy how it translates things. GI is way too slow in my scenes. FPrime and Kray had a way of handling these GI lighting effects that was very efficient, and tweakable. That's the one thing from Lightwave that I REALLY miss. Anything comparable for Softimage? I remember I also could get some reflectivity and ray tracing in Lightwave at a fraction of the rendering time mental ray takes. I can't use it at all in mental ray, with GI (including FG) except on a single object basis. Not for animation on many frames, too costly. But I do like the nodal texturing system built into SI. Anyway, considering these factors, is there any rendering solution for SI that anyone can recommend that will give me what I'm looking for? That isn't too expensive... Thanks, Nancy Jacobs http://www.childofillusion.net/ -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com -25 Years Experience -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)
Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
Definitevely IMHO the new kid on the block AKA Redshift on daily's base is the winner for me. Except for volumetric rendering and shading which are still on developing, Redshift beats Arnold in price and speed. The quality and integration in Softimage, gets an A+ With Redshift I have obtained for the first time in my life, the desired result from the beggining, without post render suprises like flickering, noise, jittering, nor fireflies. Second in my list iist is Arnold. Since Redshift I only go for it when doing volumetrics. V-ray I never considered it as a real option although I was in the Beta test team, for our pipeline. Great quality, but not so easy to setup to get noiseless renders for animation If your work is more oriented to single frames might be worth to take a look at it. Maxwell. Amazing results but extremly slow. If you don't care about render times then Maxwell is also a winner. Cheers!
Re: What use is ICE really?
+ 1 On 23 Mar 2014, at 8:09 am, Tim Marinov tim.mari...@gmail.com wrote: Here some of my stuff done with ICE: https://vimeo.com/80227846 Simple example of the custom ICE crowd system I've done based on Craig Reynolds Steering Behaviors paper. https://vimeo.com/75137589 Impact compound https://vimeo.com/41321274 ICE FeatherGenerator https://vimeo.com/14156380 This one was done with XSI 7 long time ago.As I remember I done it all in one point cloud without any comp tricks and at that time there wasn't any other software except Houdini maybe that can do that so easily . https://vimeo.com/17346298 https://vimeo.com/17347655 Just playing with ICE https://vimeo.com/14153302 Dynamic ComputerMouse Rig You can ignore the text below because most of it was said already in other threads but I am too emotional right now after looking at this great work with ICE and I felt I have to write it . Please excuse my English . This is the worst decision Autodesk did, and I am sure will have big impact for them as a company !I am pretty sure that they are going to loose ME industry in 3 to 4 years if they don't change their moves and reconsider some of their decisions...They lost and keep losing the most important think for them as a company the trust of their customers and this is something that they won't be able to win back easily. Because they are so big and greedy they forget to look down to their basis and see that what keeps them up there are humans and not toys with which they can play their corporate games and shift them around. Autodesk, It is true the Softimage community is small but you don't see the big picture hereyou don't pissed only us but the entire CG industry. And BTW the bad word and the bad news is something that spreads really fast . Autodesk in case you are not aware what you are killing right now it's called ICE and is great and innovative technology, which I am sure that you won't be able to recreate in the next 2-3 years,and after that will be too late for you!You have it now and the big question is why don't use it as it is ?I think because the people that take the decision in this company are not aware what they have or worst they don't care. I have a feeling also that you want to sell us only black boxes that are managed only by you, but I am telling you this won't work for you in the long term...By buying plugins and trying to put them together as a black boxes you don't realize that what you are creating in the end is ugly frankenstein monster that nobody really likes.And now you are trying to force us to stare at this boxy monster Maya every day. No thanks, I prefer to work with the elegant dude called Houdini! (BTW Not long after the acquisition I knew and many of us knew that Autodesk will make Softimage to fade out and then kill it. Actually Autodesk is very predictable company for me they proved many times in the past that you can't trust them ! So not long after acquisition I started to focus more on Houdini and now I am very happy about my decision at that time . SideFX is a company that makes their product with passion and love, they are first to implement the latest technology and always listen to their customers.) Autodesk, ICE is great technology that opens the artistic creativity to go much further than any other solution you are offering. It is open enough to create your art in the way you want it to be created and is not dictated by the black box boundaries. The Result of this freedom you can find it in the most beautiful and visually rich project done last 5 - 6 years ,all done by a great artists using the most artistic friendly and technically deep application that you have to offer Softimage . And you are ready to loose all of that including the artists as your customers...and maybe at some point some of the studios ? here are some examples : http://www.subaru-global.com/news2011n001100.html https://vimeo.com/4060100 https://vimeo.com/24069938 https://vimeo.com/44672943 https://vimeo.com/23902379 for more check here : http://www.si-community.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=25t=2739start=180 I really hope Autodesk reconsider their decision .Hope dies last... But if they don't I have where to go. A On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:28 PM, Byungchul Kang k...@cgndev.com wrote: Yes!! Ice crowd is very great!! I have a lot of ice crowd rd experiences on my jobs at MBC ( TV channel of South Korea ) about 10+ projects. https://vimeo.com/73429479 https://vimeo.com/52531138 https://vimeo.com/48785305 https://vimeo.com/40859520 https://vimeo.com/36810887 2014-03-23 1:19 GMT+09:00 Tom Kleinenberg zagan...@gmail.com: I worked on 2 films in Softimage, Zambezia and Khumba. We had some very talented people but we were a fairly small crew so we needed a very efficient pipeline. The second film we
Re: Softimage to Maya rendering requests
4. Please dont forget drag n drop funcionality! Dragging objects to partitions, shaders to partitions, overrides from partition to partition, partitions from passes to another pass, and probably a few more I dont remember now... 5. Light Partitions that work pretty much like the object partitions do On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 10:05 PM, Laurence Cymet laurence.cy...@autodesk.com wrote: Thanks for the input guys. The timing of my inquiry is not ideal, but in the interests of moving forward I appreciate you taking the time to speak up. So here's what I'm hearing is missing from Maya re: render layers: 1) Stability is critical, no more error parsing argument broken layers, setups must be stable, and clear indications of missing dependencies are needed with the ability to address without breaking setups 2) Layer overrides (shader assignments, attr changes) need to be made on a sub-set of the layer contents (a partition) - not directly on the object/attr itself. So that you just have to pop an item into that partition to inherit the override. Changes to referenced input scene data should clearly indicate what is not included in a partition so that new stuff can be easily identified and just be popped into the original partition to receive the same overrides. 3) All overrides and memberships within a layer need to be clearly indicated in one UI (without the requirement to enter the layer) Don't hesitate to call me out if I'm not getting something - this list is to ensure I understand what's missing, don't let me put words in your mouth. Is there a way we can actually improve on the process? Perhaps overrides and assignments could be done conditionally with a dynamic rule? Is a stack better than a node graph? Let me know if you have had any wishes in the past. As to the questions raised: Yes - you can manage overrides with the attribute spreadsheet, which does include a newly added filter search function. But as you say, it does not clearly indicate what is happening in the layer specifically. Why are we doing this now and not years ago? A good question that deserves an answer. Maya is as much an OS for CGI as it is an out of box DCC (in many ways more so), and many Maya customers have built their own scene segmentation tools in Maya to accommodate their specific pipeline - so improving render layers was not a priority for these customers and the focus went elsewhere. Focus has turned back on the out-of-box experience, so we are exploring all options for improving this area. Thanks, Laurence From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Ed Manning Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 3:22 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Softimage to Maya rendering requests Thanks for speaking up, Laurence. I'm sure your intentions are good, and the effort is appreciated. We are however, very upset with your bosses' decision-making and how it has played out so far. Please don't take it personally. It is rather a bitter pill that you guys are only speaking to us now about this. Lighting and rendering has been my area of specialization for nearly 20 years of Softimage use and a bit less than 3 years in Maya. I would very much like to participate in any discussion you'd like to have about possible improvements to Maya's LR workflow, as I am clearly going to have to deal with it more and more. The primary issue to me, other than render layers simply breaking for mysterious reasons (a complaint I hear far often from Maya-only artists than my limited Maya experience would have suggested to me), is the workflow and organizational overhead required of the user. For example: if I want to make a pass in which, say, primary visibility is turned off for a variety of objects, regardless of their parenting, in Softimage the workflow is: 1. make new pass (1 click) 2. select n objects (some # of clicks, possibly some rectangle drags, worst case is n clicks) 3. put them in a partition (1 click) 4. put a visibility property onto the partition (one middle-click dragdrop) 5. open the visibility property, uncheck primary ray visibility (2 clicks) A total of 6 to (n+5) clicks, with the range heavily biased toward the low end. In Maya, the workflow as I've learned it would be more like: 1. select everything (probably one click, maybe with a rectangle drag, or one hotkey combination) 2. make a new render layer (1 click) 3. select object #1 (1 click) 4. go to the attribute editor, select the render stats rollout, right-click to make a layer override, uncheck primary ray visibility (3 clicks minimum) 5. repeat steps 3 4 (n-1) times A total of 2 + (n*4) clicks. For any number of objects over 1 (!) the Softimage workflow is much easier and faster. More importantly, by simply looking at the partition contents in an explorer
Re: What use is ICE really?
Yes it's very nice, does it exist online?
Re: What use is ICE really?
It looks like http://rray.de/xsi/ Yes it's very nice, does it exist online? -- --- 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: What use is ICE really?
Frozen, snow Tech Demo, can anyone think of a reason why these sorts of behaviours, could not be reproduced in ICE ? That would be a fun one to demonstrate at SIGGRAPH, funny to think, the technology existed several years before frozen was even in production. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/video-disney-reveal-frozen-snow-2852130 On 22 March 2014 22:59, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote: It looks like http://rray.de/xsi/ Yes it's very nice, does it exist online? -- --- 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: What use is ICE really?
For one, ICE does not have a built in volume grid context. Gustavo E Boehs Dpto. de Expressão Gráfica | Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina | http://www.gustavoeb.com.br/ 2014-03-22 20:17 GMT-03:00 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com : Frozen, snow Tech Demo, can anyone think of a reason why these sorts of behaviours, could not be reproduced in ICE ? That would be a fun one to demonstrate at SIGGRAPH, funny to think, the technology existed several years before frozen was even in production. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/video-disney-reveal-frozen-snow-2852130 On 22 March 2014 22:59, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote: It looks like http://rray.de/xsi/ Yes it's very nice, does it exist online? -- --- 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: What use is ICE really?
You might have some chance with Lagoa, but nowhere near the same scale and cross-shot consistency. Things done for a test or one shot is one thing, having them happen over hundreds is a completely different challenge. Stuff like that is a lot more down to the solvers than it is to anything else, but you could get close enough with Lagoa still, I'm sure. On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 10:17 AM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Frozen, snow Tech Demo, can anyone think of a reason why these sorts of behaviours, could not be reproduced in ICE ? That would be a fun one to demonstrate at SIGGRAPH, funny to think, the technology existed several years before frozen was even in production. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/video-disney-reveal-frozen-snow-2852130 On 22 March 2014 22:59, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote: It looks like http://rray.de/xsi/ Yes it's very nice, does it exist online? -- --- 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-- -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
Redshift. I've done lots of work for fine artists using it. Never let me down and very economical. On Saturday, March 22, 2014, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.com wrote: Definitevely IMHO the new kid on the block AKA Redshift on daily's base is the winner for me. Except for volumetric rendering and shading which are still on developing, Redshift beats Arnold in price and speed. The quality and integration in Softimage, gets an A+ With Redshift I have obtained for the first time in my life, the desired result from the beggining, without post render suprises like flickering, noise, jittering, nor fireflies. Second in my list iist is Arnold. Since Redshift I only go for it when doing volumetrics. V-ray I never considered it as a real option although I was in the Beta test team, for our pipeline. Great quality, but not so easy to setup to get noiseless renders for animation If your work is more oriented to single frames might be worth to take a look at it. Maxwell. Amazing results but extremly slow. If you don't care about render times then Maxwell is also a winner. Cheers!
Re: What use is ICE really?
I'm not a Tech Virtuoso so please indulge me, Is this volume grid context something that ICE can't deal with. or is it just a matter of their not being a specific solver written to demonstrate this behaviour, like Raff is saying for Lagoa. Is it an inbuilt limitation, or just that such a compound hasn't ever been built ? I'm just asking cause, as Raff pointed out, and from the Lagoa 1.0 demo, a lot of things LOOK similar (not suggesting their are solved the same way). https://vimeo.com/13457383 On 22 March 2014 23:27, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.comwrote: You might have some chance with Lagoa, but nowhere near the same scale and cross-shot consistency. Things done for a test or one shot is one thing, having them happen over hundreds is a completely different challenge. Stuff like that is a lot more down to the solvers than it is to anything else, but you could get close enough with Lagoa still, I'm sure. On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 10:17 AM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Frozen, snow Tech Demo, can anyone think of a reason why these sorts of behaviours, could not be reproduced in ICE ? That would be a fun one to demonstrate at SIGGRAPH, funny to think, the technology existed several years before frozen was even in production. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/video-disney-reveal-frozen-snow-2852130 On 22 March 2014 22:59, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote: It looks like http://rray.de/xsi/ Yes it's very nice, does it exist online? -- --- 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-- -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
Re: What use is ICE really?
For that kind of solution for bigger fluid volumes, you can go with a RealFlow/Softimage option. You can read the solved cached grid fluid domain from Realflow into the ICE tree with all its attributes like, particle speed, etc. I am not so sure, but I believe that latest emPoligonyzer can read those attributes and mesh it accordingly and generate UV. The workflow we have been using with Softimage/Realflow, looks like the Maya/Bifrost from the webinar video. The advantage of having the solution of the grid domain in ICE is that you can still intereact with it further more. From what I watched at that video, I believe that it is totally feasible to have a Softimage/Realflow solution just like Maya/Bifrost if someone could write the bridge as Realflow can be launched by command line in the background and python scripted as well. You will get the grid fluid domain solved in realflow running in the background and get back the solution into the ICE tree. With the additional splash and foam. Cheers! --- Emilio Hernández VFX 3D animation. 2014-03-22 17:27 GMT-06:00 Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com: You might have some chance with Lagoa, but nowhere near the same scale and cross-shot consistency. Things done for a test or one shot is one thing, having them happen over hundreds is a completely different challenge. Stuff like that is a lot more down to the solvers than it is to anything else, but you could get close enough with Lagoa still, I'm sure. On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 10:17 AM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Frozen, snow Tech Demo, can anyone think of a reason why these sorts of behaviours, could not be reproduced in ICE ? That would be a fun one to demonstrate at SIGGRAPH, funny to think, the technology existed several years before frozen was even in production. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/video-disney-reveal-frozen-snow-2852130 On 22 March 2014 22:59, Stefan Kubicek s...@tidbit-images.com wrote: It looks like http://rray.de/xsi/ Yes it's very nice, does it exist online? -- --- 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-- -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
Re: What use is ICE really?
2014-03-22 20:47 GMT-03:00 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com : Is this volume grid context something that ICE can't deal with. or is it just a matter of their not being a specific solver written to demonstrate this behaviour, like Raff is saying for Lagoa. I'm not saying you cant do ice with ICE (:p). It is just that in the specific video you pointed to the guy specifically explains that they use particles to define the mass, but velocity and collision calculation happens on grids. ICE is great at dealing with particles, you can even build a grid with particles, but you dont have many tools for dealing with grids (which are often used in smoke simulatores) specifically, nor a native grid context (ie: no self.VolumePosition or GridPosition like we have PointPosition, VertexPosition, PolyPosition and so on...). I have no experience in trying to recreate such a thing in ICE, but I assume it is not easy to implement the nicest papers out there which describe dynamic and even adaptive ways to do this... emFluid5, for example, is a not only a nice fluid solver but also a tool for creating and messing with such grids. but vanilla ICE does not have that.
Re: What use is ICE really?
Fair point, but really, doesn't the very fact that emFluid5 exists and has been so elegantly implemented into ICE serve to illustrate the power and flexibility of ICE? In fact, emFluid5 in ICE looks like a far more elegant and integrated solution than a stand alone app like Bifrost importing caches from Maya. From what we've seen, Bifrost does one thing and one thing only, and furthermore, in it's present state it appears it could interact with Softimage just as effectively as it does with Maya. On 23 Mar 2014, at 11:20 am, Gustavo Eggert Boehs gustav...@gmail.com wrote: 2014-03-22 20:47 GMT-03:00 Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com: Is this volume grid context something that ICE can't deal with. or is it just a matter of their not being a specific solver written to demonstrate this behaviour, like Raff is saying for Lagoa. I'm not saying you cant do ice with ICE (:p). It is just that in the specific video you pointed to the guy specifically explains that they use particles to define the mass, but velocity and collision calculation happens on grids. ICE is great at dealing with particles, you can even build a grid with particles, but you dont have many tools for dealing with grids (which are often used in smoke simulatores) specifically, nor a native grid context (ie: no self.VolumePosition or GridPosition like we have PointPosition, VertexPosition, PolyPosition and so on...). I have no experience in trying to recreate such a thing in ICE, but I assume it is not easy to implement the nicest papers out there which describe dynamic and even adaptive ways to do this... emFluid5, for example, is a not only a nice fluid solver but also a tool for creating and messing with such grids. but vanilla ICE does not have that.
Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
A day? You mean one day? On 2014-03-22 22:16, phil harbath wrote: they have fixed ever bug I sent to them within a day.
Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
I work with paticles a lot, and they have just added support recently for particle attributes, I have come across several instances where situations did not render correctly (as they would in a mental ray scene). I reported the problem along with a scene, in each case, the problem was fixed within 24 hours. fun people to work with. From: David Saber Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2014 8:48 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed.. A day? You mean one day? On 2014-03-22 22:16, phil harbath wrote: they have fixed ever bug I sent to them within a day.
Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
Totally agree. with Phil. Turnaround times on fixers are nearly super human. On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 8:47 PM, phil harbath phil.harb...@jamination.comwrote: I work with paticles a lot, and they have just added support recently for particle attributes, I have come across several instances where situations did not render correctly (as they would in a mental ray scene). I reported the problem along with a scene, in each case, the problem was fixed within 24 hours. fun people to work with. *From:* David Saber davidsa...@sfr.fr *Sent:* Saturday, March 22, 2014 8:48 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed.. A day? You mean one day? On 2014-03-22 22:16, phil harbath wrote: they have fixed ever bug I sent to them within a day. -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com http://www.theafterimage.com/ -25 Years Experience -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)
Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
+1 for Redshift. Can't say enough kind words to do it justice. The speed is just incredible, and support is super human. $100 for paid Beta $500 when it officially releases next month, I believe. You can still sign up for open Beta for free (has watermark) https://www.redshift3d.com/get-redshift On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Nancy Jacobs illus...@mip.net wrote: Hello, I was beginning to ponder, in another thread, some rendering issues in SI. I've never really liked mental ray, tried to, spent a long time studying it, and could never get the kind of aesthetic I was able to achieve in Lightwave, with the Steve Worley plugin FPrime, or the newer Kray, which was beginning a promising development about when I left. Seems to have taken off now, too. I ported several projects over from Lightwave to XSI some years ago, and tried to reproduce the very nice rendering results I got in Lightwave. Totally different system of course. I figured it was one good approach to learning mental ray. Well, I couldn't get anywhere close, and it was a struggle, and I never really got acceptable results. Every other aspect of the projects went so much better, though, in XSI. And there was animation in XSI I couldn't even begin to do in Lightwave. I need fast GI effects, that's integral to what I do. A lot of interior architectural-like surfaces. Not necessarily total realism, just an aesthetic -- I need to really be able to get in there and tweak things and make them work. I use a lot of HDR lighting, I know how to hand tweak it in photoshop, or create it from scratch, and I like to use that to control my light and color. I've used FG quite a bit, and am not always happy how it translates things. GI is way too slow in my scenes. FPrime and Kray had a way of handling these GI lighting effects that was very efficient, and tweakable. That's the one thing from Lightwave that I REALLY miss. Anything comparable for Softimage? I remember I also could get some reflectivity and ray tracing in Lightwave at a fraction of the rendering time mental ray takes. I can't use it at all in mental ray, with GI (including FG) except on a single object basis. Not for animation on many frames, too costly. But I do like the nodal texturing system built into SI. Anyway, considering these factors, is there any rendering solution for SI that anyone can recommend that will give me what I'm looking for? That isn't too expensive... Thanks, Nancy Jacobs http://www.childofillusion.net/ -- Best Regards, * Stephen P. Davidson* *(954) 552-7956*sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com *Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic* - Arthur C. Clarke http://www.3danimationmagic.com
Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
On the economic advantages of redshift or other gpu renderers. My current workstations are Mac Pro 3.1s which are left over from the company I shut down in 2009 (bootcamped into Windows). Essentially worthless from a CPU standpoint. Putting a single $1000 titan gpu into one of them makes it more efficient at rendering than any modern 16-core $8,000 workstation running any CPU ray tracer. Putting 2 titans in them is like having my old 162-core blade server renderfarm without the $5000/month electric bill. Not to mention all the IT overhead and license costs. I have never seen a single piece of software (in concert with the astonishing graphics hardware that is now so cheap and still getting cheaper) have such a cost-reducing impact. Plus they are fanatically hard workers and great communicators.
Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
perhaps this is derailing the thread a bit.. but lets think about cost reduction for a second, if you can produce say a commercial for 50% less now compared to years ago, just as an example, will that reduction in software/hardware cost equal more money in your pocket? probably not. in other words, perhaps it's a good idea to at least tell your clients you are still stuck with a 5000$ a month electricity bill to do your rendering, when in reality you are just running a single box with 2 titans ;) On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 5:05 PM, Ed Manning etmth...@gmail.com wrote: On the economic advantages of redshift or other gpu renderers. My current workstations are Mac Pro 3.1s which are left over from the company I shut down in 2009 (bootcamped into Windows). Essentially worthless from a CPU standpoint. Putting a single $1000 titan gpu into one of them makes it more efficient at rendering than any modern 16-core $8,000 workstation running any CPU ray tracer. Putting 2 titans in them is like having my old 162-core blade server renderfarm without the $5000/month electric bill. Not to mention all the IT overhead and license costs. I have never seen a single piece of software (in concert with the astonishing graphics hardware that is now so cheap and still getting cheaper) have such a cost-reducing impact. Plus they are fanatically hard workers and great communicators. -- Andreas Byström Weta Digital
Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed..
I don’t know much about mac pros, is that a pci-e 2 slot (or less?), so even though you are putting pci-e 3 cards in an older slot you are still getting that kind result? I have an computer about that age, if that works, that would be a no brainer. From: Ed Manning Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 12:05 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Rendering alternative to mental ray needed.. On the economic advantages of redshift or other gpu renderers. My current workstations are Mac Pro 3.1s which are left over from the company I shut down in 2009 (bootcamped into Windows). Essentially worthless from a CPU standpoint. Putting a single $1000 titan gpu into one of them makes it more efficient at rendering than any modern 16-core $8,000 workstation running any CPU ray tracer. Putting 2 titans in them is like having my old 162-core blade server renderfarm without the $5000/month electric bill. Not to mention all the IT overhead and license costs. I have never seen a single piece of software (in concert with the astonishing graphics hardware that is now so cheap and still getting cheaper) have such a cost-reducing impact. Plus they are fanatically hard workers and great communicators.
