Re: Nest Mommentum, reversing animation

[Sebastien Sterling]

dude i just saw the .BE and thought "well it's Grid, WTD or Nwave :p and
Nwave doesn't use softimage :)...


On 4 June 2014 13:09,  wrote:

>   nope I’m freelancer.
> I have worked on a few jobs for them, but that’s been a while.
>
> nice people, if you were thinking of getting in touch with them – and
> their output is awesome.
>
>  *From:* Sebastien Sterling 
> *Sent:* Tuesday, June 03, 2014 10:35 PM
> *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> *Subject:* Re: Nest Mommentum, reversing animation
>
>  Do you work for digital golem ?
>
>
> On 3 June 2014 21:34, Sebastien Sterling 
> wrote:
>
>> Thank you Peter for taking the time to expand on this :), i am a
>> character artist, and even if this is not a character job, it is good to
>> know about such functionality its true that they really look like avid
>> layers :P
>>
>>
>> On 3 June 2014 21:03,  wrote:
>>
>>>   the animation mixer is for high level control over animation,
>>> including combining different types of animation. (fcurves, expressions,
>>> constraints, caches, plots,...)
>>>
>>> the most obvious use is to combine a number of animation cycles on a
>>> character into a little edit.
>>> Because it looks so much like a video editing timeline, one can easily
>>> overlook the usefulness of the mixer - on the surface it’s “just a timeline
>>> with video animationclips” – and many timing effects (including
>>> reversing animation: right click on a clip in the mixer –> time properties
>>> –> scale: -1) can be done with ease.
>>>
>>> it lives in the model, and connects to the model using namespaces –
>>> allowing for the sharing of animation between different models.
>>> there’s things like offsetting the animation (in space!) with clip
>>> effects, allowing to blend between different animation sources that weren’t
>>> made to blend.
>>> it can be useful for crowd animation, for instance by blending different
>>> animation cycles on the actors based on certain conditions.
>>>
>>> I know the mixer only on the surface, and don’t need it very often, but
>>> each time I do, I discover more of what it can do.
>>> Last time I needed it, I used it to turn a linear syflex simulation into
>>> timestretched, loopable + intro/outtro animations on a bunch of objects.
>>> The mixer handled with ease what amounts to manipulating thousands of
>>> shapes on quite dense geometry, without being restricted to frames. A total
>>> nightmare to do with fcurves.
>>>
>>> I think you’re a character artist, something which could be useful to
>>> you is setting up the restpose as well as a few animations and extreme
>>> poses in the mixer. This way you can easily stress test the skinning and
>>> topology.
>>>
>>> While it has seen some improvements over time, its another of those
>>> really unique tools that were in XSI from it’s very first version, and are
>>> still not really surpassed.
>>>
>>>
>>>  *From:* Sebastien Sterling 
>>> *Sent:* Tuesday, June 03, 2014 9:13 PM
>>> *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
>>> *Subject:* Re: Nest Mommentum, reversing animation
>>>
>>>   coming from different packages, never really got into the whole mixer
>>> system, i do get the appeal though. just would never really had a frame of
>>> reference for when to employ one.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3 June 2014 19:46,  wrote:
>>>
   usually it’s cache the dynamics first, then plot to the mixer, and
 then reverse the clip in the mixer.
 does this not work for you?


  *From:* Sebastien Sterling 
 *Sent:* Tuesday, June 03, 2014 8:30 PM
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Nest Mommentum, reversing animation

  i have a momentum simulationm i ploted, is it possible to reverse the
 animation ? i'd do it in post, but i'm hoping to use some motion blur on
 some text, i's like it not to be reversed


>>>
>>
>>
>
>

Re: Shameless plug

[Eric Thivierge]

You have a lot of patience Matt! I got bored of dinosaurs within a year!
Good job, glad to finally see it released.


Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com


On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 6:42 PM, Matt Lind  wrote:

> No, not WOW, they’re our competitor ;-)
>
>
>
>
>
> Matt
>

RE: Shameless plug

[Matt Lind]

No, not WOW, they’re our competitor ;-)


Matt




From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Francisco Criado
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2014 12:31 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Shameless plug

wooww! very nice job! congratulations
F:

2014-06-04 17:45 GMT+01:00 Emilio Hernandez 
mailto:emi...@e-roja.com>>:
Amazing job Matt!  Congratulations for you and all the ones involved!
I wish you big success with the game and more to come!
Cheers!


---
Emilio Hernández   VFX & 3D animation.

2014-06-04 11:40 GMT-05:00 Anthor mailto:ant...@mesmer.com>>:

Congrats, Matt!
Now I have a new game to play this summer!
ATR

On Wed, 4 Jun 2014 02:00:34 +, Matt Lind wrote:
> I don’t get to say this often, but I’ve finished a project using
> Softimage which all can see.  Well, it’s not actually ‘finished’
> as it’s an online game which is continuously maintained, updated,
> and ongoing, but it’s now live and I can talk about it beyond
> generalizations.  Yay!   My last completed project was my previous
> production –Barnyard the animated feature back in 2006.  It’s been
> a long time coming, a relief, and refreshing to be able to refer to
> something I did in the current decade.
>
> Wildstar officially launched last Friday night at midnight for early
> access, but opened up the flood gates today for everybody else.  The
> game is now running smoothly in North America and Europe for all to
> see and experience.  If you were part of the beta, let it be known
> significant improvements have been made since on all fronts.  If you
> haven’t tried the game yet, point your browser to
> www.wildstar-online.com and click on the 
> shiny buttons.  The first 30
> days are free with initial purchase.
>
> Production started in 2005 using Softimage XSI v3.5 and launched with
> Softimage 2013 SP1 – all of it in 32 bit land.  Majority of the
> content created in Softimage 7.5 which we used for roughly 5 years.
> Softimage was used for a heavy majority of the 3D artwork including
> characters, props, environments (other than the ground), buildings,
> dungeons, and everything inside of them.  We didn’t use ICE at all
> (but not for lack of trying, and we tested heavily), so this is a
> good example of what the fundamental toolset can do.  Heavy use of
> custom properties, vertex colors, user normals, clusters, envelopes,
> UV spaces, and hardware (real time) shaders to customize and iterate
> on our content.  What made these simple components really nice is
> they were general and could be re-targeted for many uses outside of
> their original intended purpose.  Our particles were created and
> applied in Softimage, but simulated only in engine.  The SDK was used
> to write 500+ tools to assist artists to create their content include
> tools like ‘mimick’ which is a command similar to GATOR which can
> transfer attributes, but do so on select subcomponents instead of the
> entire object, along with other bells and whistles.  Often overlooked
> and  understated, but Softimage scaling was incredibly powerful for
> controlling the squash and stretch scaling of deformers used in our
> envelopes to animate characters with cartoon whimsy and without ugly
> shearing often associated with other software.  It is used on every
> asset that moves.  Relational views were used to create tools such as
> a face editor to view and animate faces for our player characters,
> and adjust face customizations to see how they’d appear in the game
> as each of our characters have multiple faces and other components
> which can plug in like a Mr. Potato head doll.  It was important to
> see the various components in context side-by-side for comparison
> while creating the content so consistency could be maintained.  This
> was achieved using many ‘object view’ embedded into the relational
> view.  Under the hood the face editor drove the animation mixer to
> perform face pose blending so artists could see the animation in real
> time on their characters.  Also, NURBS, that’s right, NURBS surfaces
> were used to transfer face poses and clothing between characters.
> The details must remain a trade secret, but I just had to mention we
> used NURBS in all their unfinished glory to get meaningful work done
> with significant contributions to the end product.  Render passes
> were used to re-dress environments to allow artists to create
> geometry once, then swap textures, shader settings, and other details
> many times for each variant of the environment.  Not only does it
> simplify the artist workflow by centralizing all their interaction to
> a few clicks, but it also allows assets to be packed into compact
> files for use in our engine. Render passes are used in housing and
> dungeons.  If we had to do this in Maya, we’d probably have to break
> up each variant into its own scene and have to figu

Re: Shameless plug

[jentzen mooney]

Congrats Matt, killer job!
Not shameless we all need a pat on the back after an exhausting marathon.
I love all the clothing transfer stuff the that opened my eyes.
Jentzen
 On Jun 4, 2014 9:45 AM, "Emilio Hernandez"  wrote:

> Amazing job Matt!  Congratulations for you and all the ones involved!
>
> I wish you big success with the game and more to come!
>
> Cheers!
>
>
>
> ---
> Emilio Hernández   VFX & 3D animation.
>
>
> 2014-06-04 11:40 GMT-05:00 Anthor :
>
>> Congrats, Matt!
>> Now I have a new game to play this summer!
>> ATR
>>
>> On Wed, 4 Jun 2014 02:00:34 +, Matt Lind wrote:
>> > I don’t get to say this often, but I’ve finished a project using
>> > Softimage which all can see.  Well, it’s not actually ‘finished’
>> > as it’s an online game which is continuously maintained, updated,
>> > and ongoing, but it’s now live and I can talk about it beyond
>> > generalizations.  Yay!   My last completed project was my previous
>> > production –Barnyard the animated feature back in 2006.  It’s been
>> > a long time coming, a relief, and refreshing to be able to refer to
>> > something I did in the current decade.
>> >
>> > Wildstar officially launched last Friday night at midnight for early
>> > access, but opened up the flood gates today for everybody else.  The
>> > game is now running smoothly in North America and Europe for all to
>> > see and experience.  If you were part of the beta, let it be known
>> > significant improvements have been made since on all fronts.  If you
>> > haven’t tried the game yet, point your browser to
>> > www.wildstar-online.com and click on the shiny buttons.  The first 30
>> > days are free with initial purchase.
>> >
>> > Production started in 2005 using Softimage XSI v3.5 and launched with
>> > Softimage 2013 SP1 – all of it in 32 bit land.  Majority of the
>> > content created in Softimage 7.5 which we used for roughly 5 years.
>> > Softimage was used for a heavy majority of the 3D artwork including
>> > characters, props, environments (other than the ground), buildings,
>> > dungeons, and everything inside of them.  We didn’t use ICE at all
>> > (but not for lack of trying, and we tested heavily), so this is a
>> > good example of what the fundamental toolset can do.  Heavy use of
>> > custom properties, vertex colors, user normals, clusters, envelopes,
>> > UV spaces, and hardware (real time) shaders to customize and iterate
>> > on our content.  What made these simple components really nice is
>> > they were general and could be re-targeted for many uses outside of
>> > their original intended purpose.  Our particles were created and
>> > applied in Softimage, but simulated only in engine.  The SDK was used
>> > to write 500+ tools to assist artists to create their content include
>> > tools like ‘mimick’ which is a command similar to GATOR which can
>> > transfer attributes, but do so on select subcomponents instead of the
>> > entire object, along with other bells and whistles.  Often overlooked
>> > and  understated, but Softimage scaling was incredibly powerful for
>> > controlling the squash and stretch scaling of deformers used in our
>> > envelopes to animate characters with cartoon whimsy and without ugly
>> > shearing often associated with other software.  It is used on every
>> > asset that moves.  Relational views were used to create tools such as
>> > a face editor to view and animate faces for our player characters,
>> > and adjust face customizations to see how they’d appear in the game
>> > as each of our characters have multiple faces and other components
>> > which can plug in like a Mr. Potato head doll.  It was important to
>> > see the various components in context side-by-side for comparison
>> > while creating the content so consistency could be maintained.  This
>> > was achieved using many ‘object view’ embedded into the relational
>> > view.  Under the hood the face editor drove the animation mixer to
>> > perform face pose blending so artists could see the animation in real
>> > time on their characters.  Also, NURBS, that’s right, NURBS surfaces
>> > were used to transfer face poses and clothing between characters.
>> > The details must remain a trade secret, but I just had to mention we
>> > used NURBS in all their unfinished glory to get meaningful work done
>> > with significant contributions to the end product.  Render passes
>> > were used to re-dress environments to allow artists to create
>> > geometry once, then swap textures, shader settings, and other details
>> > many times for each variant of the environment.  Not only does it
>> > simplify the artist workflow by centralizing all their interaction to
>> > a few clicks, but it also allows assets to be packed into compact
>> > files for use in our engine. Render passes are used in housing and
>> > dungeons.  If we had to do this in Maya, we’d probably have to break
>> > up each variant into its own scene and have to figure ou

Re: OT: What strong features have you found in your new transition software that SI didn´t have?

[David Rivera]

Sergio knows his dealt cards on Modo, @Marco. He KNOWS. :)
BTW: I´m going pretty quick with modo. Last week I tackled Hair shading. It´s a 
blaze to see it perform on viewport.
What I definitely need an *intense course* it´s on schematic. I believe the 
whole power of Nexus is there.

Cheers.

 
David Rivera
3D Compositor/Animator
LinkedIN
Behance
VFX Reel


On Wednesday, June 4, 2014 8:12 AM, Sergio Mucino  
wrote:
 


Hey Marco. I'm curious... Where is Modo falling short for you? Cheers!

Sergio Muciño.
Sent from my iPad.

On Jun 4, 2014, at 6:12 AM, Marco Peixoto  wrote:


Fist thing you do in Modo is to remove the awfull (IMO) Trackball rotation... 
that and also the grid Plane they have, it might suits for Modeling but I keep 
finding it vey introsive and distracting, of course thats me that is not that 
used to Modo and im slowly trying to see if it fits my CA needs (so far it 
doesnt)
>
>
>
>
>On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 10:45 AM, Angus Davidson  
>wrote:
>
>HI Matt
>>
>>
>>This is the type of vertex maps that Modo supports
>>
>>
>>http://docs.luxology.com/modo/801/help/pages/modotoolbox/WorkingWithVmaps.html
>>
>>
>>Quick table to summarise the link
>>
>>
>>Weight Map   Weight Strength Values stored for Falloff and Texturing purposes 
>>SubD Weight Map   Weight Strength Value influences edge creasing in 
>>SubDivision Surface geometry 
>>UV Map   UV maps translates 3D vertex positions to flat 2D coordinates 
>>Relative Morph Map   Vertex position offset, relative to the base vertex 
>>position 
>>Absolute Morph Map   Vertex position offset to specific absolute position in 
>>3D space 
>>RGB Map   Vertex Color map defined by three R, G and B color values 
>>RGBA Map   Vertex Color map defined by three R, G and B color and an 
>>additional Alpha value 
>>Pick Map   Like a Selection Set, defines groupings of vertices 
>>Vertex Normal Map   Surface Normal direction (Smoothing) values stored as 
>>fixed value 
>>Edge Pick Map   Like a Selection Set, defines groupings of edges 
>>Particle Size Map   Determines scale values for individual particles 
>>Particle Dissolve Map   Determines transparency values for indvidual 
>>particles 
>>Transform Map   Determines transform amounts for individual 
>>vertices/particles 
>>
>>
>>If you click the Gear in the top right hand corner of your view in Modo you 
>>can change the mouse rotation style.
>>
>>
>>I tend to have  trackball rotation set to no , and orbit around selection 
>>checked. (oscillate I uncheck always that’s annoying ;) )
>>
>>
>>Kind regards
>>
>>
>>Angus
>>
>>
>>From: Matt Lind 
>>Reply-To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" 
>>Date: Tuesday 03 June 2014 at 4:49 AM
>>To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" 
>>Subject: RE: OT: What strong features have you found in your new transition 
>>software that SI didn´t have?
>>
>>
>>
>>Well, most people on this forum submitting their thoughts on C4D, Houdini, 
>>Modo, Maya, etc… tend to review it from a film/video perspective.  Many of 
>>the bullet points are not applicable to other market segments such as games.  
>>Examples: Alembic support, 3rd party renderers, render farm accessibility, 
>>etc…   All the transition guides I’ve seen to date, regardless of source, 
>>tend to omit the lower level features leaving many of us in the dark or only 
>>give us part of the picture.  To use an analogy, if art were math class where 
>>you have to work out a long multi-page problem, a film/video artist is mostly 
>>interested in the final result and can obtain it from any means necessary 
>>including a wild guess, whereas a game artist must use the correct process to 
>>get the answer.
>> 
>>I’m interested in the lower level control over manipulating objects and 
>>organizing them in intelligent data structures (assets) to abstract them or 
>>minimize their dependency on the host application.  We need to apply metadata 
>>onto assets so our engine can read that data and know how to process the 
>>asset in the context of the game.  Often metadata is applied as userdata 
>>blobs/maps, or re-purposed vertex colors, UV properties, user normals, etc.  
>>Many DCC applications have metadata and lower level features, but not all of 
>>them expose the functionality to the end user or do so in a user friendly 
>>way.  Sometimes you have to dig into the SDK to get at them at all.  
>>Softimage, for example, have had user normals since XSI v1.5, but you had to 
>>use the SDK via script/plugin to expose the capabilities to the end user.  
>>User normals and associated tools didn’t become available in the menus until 
>>Softimage 2011.
>> 
>>I’ve taken Modo, Maya, and Houdini for brief test drives to look at very 
>>specific features and intentionally did not look in the manuals to test how 
>>intuitive their implementations were.  In the case of vertex colors, I 
>>figured it out for Maya, but it was clunky.  Houdini was more intuitive to 
>>get started, but I couldn’t determine how to make multiple vertex color 
>>properties on the

Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

[Stephen Davidson]

this
http://3dprintingindustry.com/2013/09/16/3-sweep-sweeps-the-net-with-smart-2d-to-3d-conversion/

looks very promising, but still in development, I believe.


On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau <
marc-andre.carbonn...@ubisoft.com> wrote:

> Hello friends,
>
>
>
> I am currently investigating photogrammetry and would love to get your
> advices, opinions, experiences with such systems.
>
> What hardware do you use? Which software? Best practices?
>
>
>
> Thank you for any info!
>
> MAC
>
>
>
>
>
> [image: cid:image002.jpg@01CDBD94.314AAF40]
> 
>
> *Marc-André Carbonneau*
>
> Product Specialist
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>



-- 

Best Regards,
*  Stephen P. Davidson*

*(954) 552-7956*sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com

*Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic*


 - Arthur C. Clarke

Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

[Stephen Davidson]

I have used several. The latest was Autodesk's  123D Catch. I follow the
photographing instructions using a tripod
and a textured background. The problem lies in the reflected images and
distorted transparency (refraction) giving
the software false information about the 3D scene. Matt Lind also describes
this issue better than I am able to verbalize.
I have also tried adding dust or powder to my object that I am scanning,
which is fine for getting the shape, but then
I lose any surface texture maps.


On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 2:19 PM, Manuel Huertas Marchena  wrote:

> Hi Stephen,
>
> I am curious to why it does not work with transparent/shiny objects
> (havent really done any test with those kind of surfaces..). Do you mean
> that
> the calibration for the point cloud isn't accurate? what software &
> workflow are you using?
>
>
>
> --
> Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2014 14:13:28 -0400
>
> Subject: Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?
> From: magic...@bellsouth.net
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
>
>
> Be aware that there is no Photogrammetry solution, that I have found that
> will deal well with
> transparent and/or shiny objects. I do a lot of product modeling, from
> prototypes, and I have
> not found any Photogrammetry solution that works better than taking front,
> side, top, and 3/4
> view photos, and using the rotoscope function in my views. I have tried
> many.
>
> I am hoping that the new 3D scanning for ipad will be better, but it looks
> similar to other methods.
>
> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/occipital/structure-sensor-capture-the-world-in-3d
>
> I wish someone would come out with a 3D scanner that is based on sonar
> principles.
> Image based 3D scanning has so many issues. The laser scanners are nice,
> but have
> issues with undercuts as well as transparent and shiny surfaces.
>
> If you do find a solution, that works well, please post back here.
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau <
> marc-andre.carbonn...@ubisoft.com> wrote:
>
> Hello friends,
>
>
>
> I am currently investigating photogrammetry and would love to get your
> advices, opinions, experiences with such systems.
>
> What hardware do you use? Which software? Best practices?
>
>
>
> Thank you for any info!
>
> MAC
>
>
>
>
>
> [image: cid:image002.jpg@01CDBD94.314AAF40]
> 
>
> *Marc-André Carbonneau*
>
> Product Specialist
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> 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
>  
>
>


-- 

Best Regards,
*  Stephen P. Davidson*

*(954) 552-7956*sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com

*Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic*


 - Arthur C. Clarke

RE: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

[Graham Bell]

I’m just highlighting something that you might already have access to.


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Vladimir 
Jankijevic
Sent: 04 June 2014 17:09
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

and then you tell me how this is more convenient than having a desktop solution 
for this kind of stuff? please try to convince me ;)

cheers
vladimir

On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 11:31 AM, Graham Bell 
mailto:graham.b...@autodesk.com>> wrote:
If you have Maintenance Subscription or Desktop Subscription for Maya, Max, or 
Mudbox, you actually already have free access to ReCap 360. This includes the 
Photogrammetry service Photo on ReCap 360.

There is some limitation though, it’s capped at 50 images and export formats 
are limited, but it’s more than good enough for some things.
You can subscribe to the service for an annual of something like £45, then you 
can go up to 250 images and there’s more export formats.
The only things you’ll need are cloud credits for submitting data for 
generation.


G

<>

Re: Shameless plug

[Francisco Criado]

wooww! very nice job! congratulations

F:



2014-06-04 17:45 GMT+01:00 Emilio Hernandez :

> Amazing job Matt!  Congratulations for you and all the ones involved!
>
> I wish you big success with the game and more to come!
>
> Cheers!
>
>
>
> ---
> Emilio Hernández   VFX & 3D animation.
>
>
> 2014-06-04 11:40 GMT-05:00 Anthor :
>
> Congrats, Matt!
>> Now I have a new game to play this summer!
>> ATR
>>
>> On Wed, 4 Jun 2014 02:00:34 +, Matt Lind wrote:
>> > I don’t get to say this often, but I’ve finished a project using
>> > Softimage which all can see.  Well, it’s not actually ‘finished’
>> > as it’s an online game which is continuously maintained, updated,
>> > and ongoing, but it’s now live and I can talk about it beyond
>> > generalizations.  Yay!   My last completed project was my previous
>> > production –Barnyard the animated feature back in 2006.  It’s been
>> > a long time coming, a relief, and refreshing to be able to refer to
>> > something I did in the current decade.
>> >
>> > Wildstar officially launched last Friday night at midnight for early
>> > access, but opened up the flood gates today for everybody else.  The
>> > game is now running smoothly in North America and Europe for all to
>> > see and experience.  If you were part of the beta, let it be known
>> > significant improvements have been made since on all fronts.  If you
>> > haven’t tried the game yet, point your browser to
>> > www.wildstar-online.com and click on the shiny buttons.  The first 30
>> > days are free with initial purchase.
>> >
>> > Production started in 2005 using Softimage XSI v3.5 and launched with
>> > Softimage 2013 SP1 – all of it in 32 bit land.  Majority of the
>> > content created in Softimage 7.5 which we used for roughly 5 years.
>> > Softimage was used for a heavy majority of the 3D artwork including
>> > characters, props, environments (other than the ground), buildings,
>> > dungeons, and everything inside of them.  We didn’t use ICE at all
>> > (but not for lack of trying, and we tested heavily), so this is a
>> > good example of what the fundamental toolset can do.  Heavy use of
>> > custom properties, vertex colors, user normals, clusters, envelopes,
>> > UV spaces, and hardware (real time) shaders to customize and iterate
>> > on our content.  What made these simple components really nice is
>> > they were general and could be re-targeted for many uses outside of
>> > their original intended purpose.  Our particles were created and
>> > applied in Softimage, but simulated only in engine.  The SDK was used
>> > to write 500+ tools to assist artists to create their content include
>> > tools like ‘mimick’ which is a command similar to GATOR which can
>> > transfer attributes, but do so on select subcomponents instead of the
>> > entire object, along with other bells and whistles.  Often overlooked
>> > and  understated, but Softimage scaling was incredibly powerful for
>> > controlling the squash and stretch scaling of deformers used in our
>> > envelopes to animate characters with cartoon whimsy and without ugly
>> > shearing often associated with other software.  It is used on every
>> > asset that moves.  Relational views were used to create tools such as
>> > a face editor to view and animate faces for our player characters,
>> > and adjust face customizations to see how they’d appear in the game
>> > as each of our characters have multiple faces and other components
>> > which can plug in like a Mr. Potato head doll.  It was important to
>> > see the various components in context side-by-side for comparison
>> > while creating the content so consistency could be maintained.  This
>> > was achieved using many ‘object view’ embedded into the relational
>> > view.  Under the hood the face editor drove the animation mixer to
>> > perform face pose blending so artists could see the animation in real
>> > time on their characters.  Also, NURBS, that’s right, NURBS surfaces
>> > were used to transfer face poses and clothing between characters.
>> > The details must remain a trade secret, but I just had to mention we
>> > used NURBS in all their unfinished glory to get meaningful work done
>> > with significant contributions to the end product.  Render passes
>> > were used to re-dress environments to allow artists to create
>> > geometry once, then swap textures, shader settings, and other details
>> > many times for each variant of the environment.  Not only does it
>> > simplify the artist workflow by centralizing all their interaction to
>> > a few clicks, but it also allows assets to be packed into compact
>> > files for use in our engine. Render passes are used in housing and
>> > dungeons.  If we had to do this in Maya, we’d probably have to break
>> > up each variant into its own scene and have to figure out a way to
>> > merge all the scenes together that shared the same geometry.  These
>> > polished touches matter.  Softimage for the wi

RE: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

[Manuel Huertas Marchena]

Hi Matt,
Thanks for popping in, yeah it does makes sense I kind of had a feeling it was 
going on thatdirection.. (for shiny/transparent objects) but thanks for taking 
the time explaining in detail. 
I am very curious on to what technologies such as this structure sensor on 
kickstarter 
(https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/occipital/structure-sensor-capture-the-world-in-3d)or
 the tango project from google will bring to the table for us vfx artists and 
to what point it will change our current workflows... for environment 
creation..  
cheers

-Manu


IMDB | Portfolio | Vimeo
| Linkedin


From: ml...@carbinestudios.com
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2014 18:46:52 +
Subject: RE: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

Photogrammetry software needs to make assumptions when it has nothing more than 
color information. Specular highlights are going to be clipped/clamped to white 
or something similar.  Therefore, if the software sees white, how is it to know 
whether it is a specular highlight vs. just something colored white?  That is 
the problem.  In the case of transparency, how does it know the difference 
between a textile pattern vs. colors poking through multiple surfaces? 
Providing multiple angles of the same subject can help resolve those issues 
because the software can cross reference the details as perspective changes and 
see the parallax shift, but if the subject is highly reflective or glossy the 
specular highlight will travel around the surface as you change angles.  
Therefore, you may need to feed additional images to the software to give it 
more information to resolve the problems, and those problems may not be fully 
resolvable unless you make adjustments to lighting – or do what a lot of the 3D 
scanner companies do in their demos – apply dust/powder to the subject to 
remove glossiness and transparency.  At that point It’s not much different than 
making multiple passes with a 3D scanner and using registration points to align 
the geometry after the fact. These issues are less problematic with 3D scanners 
because the sensor has more information at its disposal from scanning the 
subject directly and can differentiate using alternate information such as 
intensity of light, by using different wavelengths such as infrared, or 
different technologies altogether such as sound waves.  Actual technique varies 
with the scanner.  Matt   From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Manuel Huertas 
Marchena
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2014 11:20 AM
To: softimage list
Subject: RE: Photogrammetry - what do you use? Hi Stephen, I am curious to why 
it does not work with transparent/shiny objects (havent really done any test 
with those kind of surfaces..). Do you mean thatthe calibration for the point 
cloud isn't accurate? what software & workflow are you using?  Date: Wed, 4 Jun 
2014 14:13:28 -0400
Subject: Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?
From: magic...@bellsouth.net
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.comBe aware that there is no Photogrammetry 
solution, that I have found that will deal well withtransparent and/or shiny 
objects. I do a lot of product modeling, from prototypes, and I havenot found 
any Photogrammetry solution that works better than taking front, side, top, and 
3/4view photos, and using the rotoscope function in my views. I have tried 
many. I am hoping that the new 3D scanning for ipad will be better, but it 
looks similar to other 
methods.https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/occipital/structure-sensor-capture-the-world-in-3d
 I wish someone would come out with a 3D scanner that is based on sonar 
principles.Image based 3D scanning has so many issues. The laser scanners are 
nice, but haveissues with undercuts as well as transparent and shiny surfaces. 
If you do find a solution, that works well, please post back here.   On Wed, 
Jan 29, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau 
 wrote:Hello friends, I am currently 
investigating photogrammetry and would love to get your advices, opinions, 
experiences with such systems.What hardware do you use? Which software? Best 
practices? Thank you for any info!MAC  Marc-André CarbonneauProduct Specialist  
  
 -- Best Regards,
  Stephen P. Davidson 
   (954) 552-7956
sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
 - 
Arthur C. Clarke
  

RE: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

[Matt Lind]

Photogrammetry software needs to make assumptions when it has nothing more than 
color information.

Specular highlights are going to be clipped/clamped to white or something 
similar.  Therefore, if the software sees white, how is it to know whether it 
is a specular highlight vs. just something colored white?  That is the problem. 
 In the case of transparency, how does it know the difference between a textile 
pattern vs. colors poking through multiple surfaces?

Providing multiple angles of the same subject can help resolve those issues 
because the software can cross reference the details as perspective changes and 
see the parallax shift, but if the subject is highly reflective or glossy the 
specular highlight will travel around the surface as you change angles.  
Therefore, you may need to feed additional images to the software to give it 
more information to resolve the problems, and those problems may not be fully 
resolvable unless you make adjustments to lighting - or do what a lot of the 3D 
scanner companies do in their demos - apply dust/powder to the subject to 
remove glossiness and transparency.  At that point It's not much different than 
making multiple passes with a 3D scanner and using registration points to align 
the geometry after the fact.

These issues are less problematic with 3D scanners because the sensor has more 
information at its disposal from scanning the subject directly and can 
differentiate using alternate information such as intensity of light, by using 
different wavelengths such as infrared, or different technologies altogether 
such as sound waves.  Actual technique varies with the scanner.


Matt



From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Manuel Huertas 
Marchena
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2014 11:20 AM
To: softimage list
Subject: RE: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

Hi Stephen,

I am curious to why it does not work with transparent/shiny objects (havent 
really done any test with those kind of surfaces..). Do you mean that
the calibration for the point cloud isn't accurate? what software & workflow 
are you using?



Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2014 14:13:28 -0400
Subject: Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?
From: magic...@bellsouth.net
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Be aware that there is no Photogrammetry solution, that I have found that will 
deal well with
transparent and/or shiny objects. I do a lot of product modeling, from 
prototypes, and I have
not found any Photogrammetry solution that works better than taking front, 
side, top, and 3/4
view photos, and using the rotoscope function in my views. I have tried many.

I am hoping that the new 3D scanning for ipad will be better, but it looks 
similar to other methods.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/occipital/structure-sensor-capture-the-world-in-3d

I wish someone would come out with a 3D scanner that is based on sonar 
principles.
Image based 3D scanning has so many issues. The laser scanners are nice, but 
have
issues with undercuts as well as transparent and shiny surfaces.

If you do find a solution, that works well, please post back here.



On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau 
mailto:marc-andre.carbonn...@ubisoft.com>> 
wrote:
Hello friends,

I am currently investigating photogrammetry and would love to get your advices, 
opinions, experiences with such systems.
What hardware do you use? Which software? Best practices?

Thank you for any info!
MAC


[cid:image001.jpg@01CF7FE7.D8326CF0]

Marc-André Carbonneau
Product Specialist








--
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/3Danimation_magic_logo_sign.jpg]

RE: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

[Manuel Huertas Marchena]

Hi Stephen,
I am curious to why it does not work with transparent/shiny objects (havent 
really done any test with those kind of surfaces..). Do you mean thatthe 
calibration for the point cloud isn't accurate? what software & workflow are 
you using?


Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2014 14:13:28 -0400
Subject: Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?
From: magic...@bellsouth.net
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

Be aware that there is no Photogrammetry solution, that I have found that will 
deal well withtransparent and/or shiny objects. I do a lot of product modeling, 
from prototypes, and I havenot found any Photogrammetry solution that works 
better than taking front, side, top, and 3/4
view photos, and using the rotoscope function in my views. I have tried many.
I am hoping that the new 3D scanning for ipad will be better, but it looks 
similar to other 
methods.https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/occipital/structure-sensor-capture-the-world-in-3d


I wish someone would come out with a 3D scanner that is based on sonar 
principles.Image based 3D scanning has so many issues. The laser scanners are 
nice, but haveissues with undercuts as well as transparent and shiny surfaces.

If you do find a solution, that works well, please post back here.



On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau 
 wrote:

Hello friends,
 I am currently investigating photogrammetry and would love to get your 
advices, opinions, experiences with such systems.What hardware do you use? 
Which software? Best practices?
 Thank you for any info!MAC  


Marc-André Carbonneau
Product Specialist
   
 

-- 

Best Regards,
  Stephen P. Davidson 

   (954) 552-7956
sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
 - 
Arthur C. Clarke




  

Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

[Stephen Davidson]

Be aware that there is no Photogrammetry solution, that I have found that
will deal well with
transparent and/or shiny objects. I do a lot of product modeling, from
prototypes, and I have
not found any Photogrammetry solution that works better than taking front,
side, top, and 3/4
view photos, and using the rotoscope function in my views. I have tried
many.

I am hoping that the new 3D scanning for ipad will be better, but it looks
similar to other methods.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/occipital/structure-sensor-capture-the-world-in-3d

I wish someone would come out with a 3D scanner that is based on sonar
principles.
Image based 3D scanning has so many issues. The laser scanners are nice,
but have
issues with undercuts as well as transparent and shiny surfaces.

If you do find a solution, that works well, please post back here.




On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau <
marc-andre.carbonn...@ubisoft.com> wrote:

> Hello friends,
>
>
>
> I am currently investigating photogrammetry and would love to get your
> advices, opinions, experiences with such systems.
>
> What hardware do you use? Which software? Best practices?
>
>
>
> Thank you for any info!
>
> MAC
>
>
>
>
>
> [image: cid:image002.jpg@01CDBD94.314AAF40]
> 
>
> *Marc-André Carbonneau*
>
> Product Specialist
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>



-- 

Best Regards,
*  Stephen P. Davidson*

*(954) 552-7956*sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com

*Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic*


 - Arthur C. Clarke

Re: OT: What strong features have you found in your new transition software that SI didn´t have?

[Marco Peixoto]

I only touched briefly Modo for Character Animation, before that i bought
Modo long time ago and used for Modeling but then got so used to Softimage
that I forgot about Modo.

Top of my head things that I got used in Soft and now in Maya (where I now
animate):

- Slow Viewport...

- No Character Key Sets or a fast way to just select some or all
Controllers and drag and drop the Select Code to a Shelf. (maybe there is
but I could not find them)

- Pose Manager

- Way to have a Synoptic or a Picker

- Exporting Poses or Animation so we can re-use them on Another Character
(I dont use the Mixer in Maya but we use the super old DKAnim or sometimes
when its only for me I use PAIE script)


Like I said I only very very briefly took a look around, I need to devote
more time to it one of these days to really test it, but so far those where
the things that I encountered and they probably have a workaround or other
ways to achieve the same but of course I dont know about them. Going from
Soft to Maya just for CA is not that hard, somethings are different but
majority is basically the same since Soft copied and improved a lot of
Mayas way of working like Layers, Channel Box, Timeline.






On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 3:12 PM, Sergio Mucino 
wrote:

> Hey Marco. I'm curious... Where is Modo falling short for you? Cheers!
>
> Sergio Muciño.
> Sent from my iPad.
>
> On Jun 4, 2014, at 6:12 AM, Marco Peixoto  wrote:
>
> Fist thing you do in Modo is to remove the awfull (IMO) Trackball
> rotation... that and also the grid Plane they have, it might suits for
> Modeling but I keep finding it vey introsive and distracting, of course
> thats me that is not that used to Modo and im slowly trying to see if it
> fits my CA needs (so far it doesnt)
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 10:45 AM, Angus Davidson  > wrote:
>
>>  HI Matt
>>
>>  This is the type of vertex maps that Modo supports
>>
>>
>> http://docs.luxology.com/modo/801/help/pages/modotoolbox/WorkingWithVmaps.html
>>
>>  *Quick table to summarise the link*
>>
>>Weight Map   Weight Strength Values stored for Falloff and Texturing
>> purposes  SubD Weight Map   Weight Strength Value influences edge
>> creasing in SubDivision Surface geometry  UV Map   UV maps translates 3D
>> vertex positions to flat 2D coordinates  Relative Morph Map   Vertex
>> position offset, relative to the base vertex position  Absolute Morph Map
>>   Vertex position offset to specific absolute position in 3D space  RGB
>> Map   Vertex Color map defined by three R, G and B color values  RGBA Map
>>   Vertex Color map defined by three R, G and B color and an additional
>> Alpha value  Pick Map   Like a Selection Set, defines groupings of
>> vertices  Vertex Normal Map   Surface Normal direction (Smoothing)
>> values stored as fixed value  Edge Pick Map   Like a Selection Set,
>> defines groupings of edges  Particle Size Map   Determines scale values
>> for individual particles  Particle Dissolve Map   Determines
>> transparency values for indvidual particles  Transform Map   Determines
>> transform amounts for individual vertices/particles
>>
>>  If you click the Gear in the top right hand corner of your view in Modo
>> you can change the mouse rotation style.
>>
>>  I tend to have  trackball rotation set to no , and orbit around
>> selection checked. (oscillate I uncheck always that's annoying ;) )
>>
>>  Kind regards
>>
>>  Angus
>>
>>   From: Matt Lind 
>> Reply-To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" <
>> softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
>> Date: Tuesday 03 June 2014 at 4:49 AM
>> To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" 
>> Subject: RE: OT: What strong features have you found in your new
>> transition software that SI didn´t have?
>>
>>   Well, most people on this forum submitting their thoughts on C4D,
>> Houdini, Modo, Maya, etc... tend to review it from a film/video perspective.
>> Many of the bullet points are not applicable to other market segments such
>> as games.  Examples: Alembic support, 3rd party renderers, render farm
>> accessibility, etc...   All the transition guides I've seen to date,
>> regardless of source, tend to omit the lower level features leaving many of
>> us in the dark or only give us part of the picture.  To use an analogy, if
>> art were math class where you have to work out a long multi-page problem, a
>> film/video artist is mostly interested in the final result and can obtain
>> it from any means necessary including a wild guess, whereas a game artist
>> must use the correct process to get the answer.
>>
>>
>>
>> I'm interested in the lower level control over manipulating objects and
>> organizing them in intelligent data structures (assets) to abstract them or
>> minimize their dependency on the host application.  We need to apply
>> metadata onto assets so our engine can read that data and know how to
>> process the asset in the context of the game.  Often metadata is applied as
>> userdata blobs/maps, or re-purposed vertex colors, UV properties, user
>> normals, etc.  Ma

Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

[Jens Lindgren]

Thanks for the answers guys. I've just tried both Recap 360 and PhotoScan
Standard.
Got a little bit cleaner mesh from Recap (holes were caped automatically,
etc), but they were surprisingly similar. They both failed at the exact
same locations.
Recap spit out just one 8k texture which was only partially used (around
half of it). Anyone know if I can get a more / larger texture?

I used Ultra settings in both apps. Recap made a 500k mesh while PhotoScan
made a 2.6M mesh. So I can't really compare them time wise but I think
PhotoScan would be faster if I set it to use the same detail as Recap.

The image capture was to bad to call a winner, so tomorrow I will take new
(and more) photos in a better environment and (hopefully) get better
results.

/Jens




On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 6:09 PM, Vladimir Jankijevic 
wrote:

> and then you tell me how this is more convenient than having a desktop
> solution for this kind of stuff? please try to convince me ;)
>
> cheers
> vladimir
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 11:31 AM, Graham Bell 
> wrote:
>
>> If you have Maintenance Subscription or Desktop Subscription for Maya,
>> Max, or Mudbox, you actually already have free access to ReCap 360. This
>> includes the Photogrammetry service Photo on ReCap 360.
>>
>> There is some limitation though, it’s capped at 50 images and export
>> formats are limited, but it’s more than good enough for some things.
>> You can subscribe to the service for an annual of something like £45,
>> then you can go up to 250 images and there’s more export formats.
>> The only things you’ll need are cloud credits for submitting data for
>> generation.
>>
>>
>> G
>>
>>
>


-- 
Jens Lindgren
--
Lead Technical Director
Magoo 3D Studios 

Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

[Stefan Kubicek]

I see what you mean, but at least you don't need a beefy machine.

Here's another one I haven't heard much of yet:
http://www.3dflow.net/3df-zephyr-pro-3d-models-from-photos/



and then you tell me how this is more convenient than having a desktop  
solution for this kind of stuff? please try to convince me ;)


cheers
vladimir


On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 11:31 AM, Graham Bell   
wrote:
If you have Maintenance Subscription or Desktop Subscription for Maya,  
Max, or Mudbox, you actually already have free access to ReCap 360.  
>>This includes the Photogrammetry service Photo on ReCap 360.


There is some limitation though, it’s capped at 50 images and export  
formats are limited, but it’s more than good enough for some things.
You can subscribe to the service for an annual of something like £45,  
then you can go up to 250 images and there’s more export formats.
The only things you’ll need are cloud credits for submitting data for  
generation.



G







--
---
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: Shameless plug

[Emilio Hernandez]

Amazing job Matt!  Congratulations for you and all the ones involved!

I wish you big success with the game and more to come!

Cheers!



---
Emilio Hernández   VFX & 3D animation.


2014-06-04 11:40 GMT-05:00 Anthor :

> Congrats, Matt!
> Now I have a new game to play this summer!
> ATR
>
> On Wed, 4 Jun 2014 02:00:34 +, Matt Lind wrote:
> > I don’t get to say this often, but I’ve finished a project using
> > Softimage which all can see.  Well, it’s not actually ‘finished’
> > as it’s an online game which is continuously maintained, updated,
> > and ongoing, but it’s now live and I can talk about it beyond
> > generalizations.  Yay!   My last completed project was my previous
> > production –Barnyard the animated feature back in 2006.  It’s been
> > a long time coming, a relief, and refreshing to be able to refer to
> > something I did in the current decade.
> >
> > Wildstar officially launched last Friday night at midnight for early
> > access, but opened up the flood gates today for everybody else.  The
> > game is now running smoothly in North America and Europe for all to
> > see and experience.  If you were part of the beta, let it be known
> > significant improvements have been made since on all fronts.  If you
> > haven’t tried the game yet, point your browser to
> > www.wildstar-online.com and click on the shiny buttons.  The first 30
> > days are free with initial purchase.
> >
> > Production started in 2005 using Softimage XSI v3.5 and launched with
> > Softimage 2013 SP1 – all of it in 32 bit land.  Majority of the
> > content created in Softimage 7.5 which we used for roughly 5 years.
> > Softimage was used for a heavy majority of the 3D artwork including
> > characters, props, environments (other than the ground), buildings,
> > dungeons, and everything inside of them.  We didn’t use ICE at all
> > (but not for lack of trying, and we tested heavily), so this is a
> > good example of what the fundamental toolset can do.  Heavy use of
> > custom properties, vertex colors, user normals, clusters, envelopes,
> > UV spaces, and hardware (real time) shaders to customize and iterate
> > on our content.  What made these simple components really nice is
> > they were general and could be re-targeted for many uses outside of
> > their original intended purpose.  Our particles were created and
> > applied in Softimage, but simulated only in engine.  The SDK was used
> > to write 500+ tools to assist artists to create their content include
> > tools like ‘mimick’ which is a command similar to GATOR which can
> > transfer attributes, but do so on select subcomponents instead of the
> > entire object, along with other bells and whistles.  Often overlooked
> > and  understated, but Softimage scaling was incredibly powerful for
> > controlling the squash and stretch scaling of deformers used in our
> > envelopes to animate characters with cartoon whimsy and without ugly
> > shearing often associated with other software.  It is used on every
> > asset that moves.  Relational views were used to create tools such as
> > a face editor to view and animate faces for our player characters,
> > and adjust face customizations to see how they’d appear in the game
> > as each of our characters have multiple faces and other components
> > which can plug in like a Mr. Potato head doll.  It was important to
> > see the various components in context side-by-side for comparison
> > while creating the content so consistency could be maintained.  This
> > was achieved using many ‘object view’ embedded into the relational
> > view.  Under the hood the face editor drove the animation mixer to
> > perform face pose blending so artists could see the animation in real
> > time on their characters.  Also, NURBS, that’s right, NURBS surfaces
> > were used to transfer face poses and clothing between characters.
> > The details must remain a trade secret, but I just had to mention we
> > used NURBS in all their unfinished glory to get meaningful work done
> > with significant contributions to the end product.  Render passes
> > were used to re-dress environments to allow artists to create
> > geometry once, then swap textures, shader settings, and other details
> > many times for each variant of the environment.  Not only does it
> > simplify the artist workflow by centralizing all their interaction to
> > a few clicks, but it also allows assets to be packed into compact
> > files for use in our engine. Render passes are used in housing and
> > dungeons.  If we had to do this in Maya, we’d probably have to break
> > up each variant into its own scene and have to figure out a way to
> > merge all the scenes together that shared the same geometry.  These
> > polished touches matter.  Softimage for the win.
> >
> > So that said, while many 3D software could create the assets in their
> > own time and space vacuum, Softimage (in my opinion) was the only
> > software that could’ve tac

Re: Shameless plug

[Stefan Kubicek]

That reminds me of the old trailer from 2011:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtlFw15tj1k&feature=kp

Still one of my favorite blur pieces.


i can see the love that went into this project, it shines out from every  
frame

http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/media/videos/flicks/
congrats!

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com  
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Crowson

Sent: 04 June 2014 16:35
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Shameless plug

Way to go Matt! Hat's off to you and the rest of the team!
-Tim

On 6/4/2014 9:39 AM, Chris Johnson wrote:

Looks Amazing!
Can't believe you've been working on just this since Barnyard!!! It  
shows.


Congratulations!


On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 10:00 PM, Matt Lind   
wrote:


I don’t get to say this often, but I’ve finished a project using  
Softimage which all can see.  Well, it’s not actually ‘finished’ as  
it’s >>>an online game which is continuously maintained, updated, and  
ongoing, but it’s now live and I can talk about it beyond  
>>>generalizations.  Yay!   My last completed project was my previous  
production –Barnyard the animated feature back in 2006.  It’s >>>been  
a long time coming, a relief, and refreshing to be able to refer to  
something I did in the current decade.



Wildstar officially launched last Friday night at midnight for early  
access, but opened up the flood gates today for everybody >>>else.   
The game is now running smoothly in North America and Europe for all  
to see and experience.  If you were part of the beta, >>>let it be  
known significant improvements have been made since on all fronts.  If  
you haven’t tried the game yet, point your >>>browser to  
www.wildstar-online.com and click on the shiny buttons.  The first 30  
days are free with initial purchase.



Production started in 2005 using Softimage XSI v3.5 and launched with  
Softimage 2013 SP1 – all of it in 32 bit land.  Majority of >>>the  
content created in Softimage 7.5 which we used for roughly 5 years.   
Softimage was used for a heavy majority of the 3D >>>artwork including  
characters, props, environments (other than the ground), buildings,  
dungeons, and everything inside of them.  >>>We didn’t use ICE at all  
(but not for lack of trying, and we tested heavily), so this is a good  
example of what the fundamental >>>toolset can do.  Heavy use of  
custom properties, vertex colors, user normals, clusters, envelopes,  
UV spaces, and hardware (real >>>time) shaders to customize and  
iterate on our content.  What made these simple components really nice  
is they were general and >>>could be re-targeted for many uses outside  
of their original intended purpose.  Our particles were created and  
applied in >>>Softimage, but simulated only in engine.  The SDK was  
used to write 500+ tools to assist artists to create their content  
include >>>tools like ‘mimick’ which is a command similar to GATOR  
which can transfer attributes, but do so on select subcomponents  
>>>instead of the entire object, along with other bells and whistles.   
Often overlooked and  understated, but Softimage scaling was  
>>>incredibly powerful for controlling the squash and stretch scaling  
of deformers used in our envelopes to animate characters with  
>>>cartoon whimsy and without ugly shearing often associated with  
other software.  It is used on every asset that moves.  >>>Relational  
views were used to create tools such as a face editor to view and  
animate faces for our player characters, and adjust >>>face  
customizations to see how they’d appear in the game as each of our  
characters have multiple faces and other components >>>which can plug  
in like a Mr. Potato head doll.  It was important to see the various  
components in context side-by-side for >>>comparison while creating  
the content so consistency could be maintained.  This was achieved  
using many ‘object view’ >>>embedded into the relational view.  Under  
the hood the face editor drove the animation mixer to perform face  
pose blending so >>>artists could see the animation in real time on  
their characters.  Also, NURBS, that’s right, NURBS surfaces were used  
to transfer >>>face poses and clothing between characters.  The  
details must remain a trade secret, but I just had to mention we used  
NURBS in >>>all their unfinished glory to get meaningful work done  
with significant contributions to the end product.  Render passes were  
>>>used to re-dress environments to allow artists to create geometry  
once, then swap textures, shader settings, and other details >>>many  
times for each variant of the environment.  Not only does it simplify  
the artist workflow by centralizing all their interaction >>>to a few  
clicks, but it also allows assets to be packed into compact files for  
use in our engine. Render passes are used in housing >>>and dungeons.   
If we had to do this in Maya, we’d probably have to break up each  
variant into its o

Re: Shameless plug

[Anthor]

Congrats, Matt!
Now I have a new game to play this summer!
ATR

On Wed, 4 Jun 2014 02:00:34 +, Matt Lind wrote:
> I don’t get to say this often, but I’ve finished a project using 
> Softimage which all can see.  Well, it’s not actually ‘finished’ 
> as it’s an online game which is continuously maintained, updated, 
> and ongoing, but it’s now live and I can talk about it beyond 
> generalizations.  Yay!   My last completed project was my previous 
> production –Barnyard the animated feature back in 2006.  It’s been 
> a long time coming, a relief, and refreshing to be able to refer to 
> something I did in the current decade.
>  
> Wildstar officially launched last Friday night at midnight for early 
> access, but opened up the flood gates today for everybody else.  The 
> game is now running smoothly in North America and Europe for all to 
> see and experience.  If you were part of the beta, let it be known 
> significant improvements have been made since on all fronts.  If you 
> haven’t tried the game yet, point your browser to 
> www.wildstar-online.com and click on the shiny buttons.  The first 30 
> days are free with initial purchase.
>  
> Production started in 2005 using Softimage XSI v3.5 and launched with 
> Softimage 2013 SP1 – all of it in 32 bit land.  Majority of the 
> content created in Softimage 7.5 which we used for roughly 5 years.  
> Softimage was used for a heavy majority of the 3D artwork including 
> characters, props, environments (other than the ground), buildings, 
> dungeons, and everything inside of them.  We didn’t use ICE at all 
> (but not for lack of trying, and we tested heavily), so this is a 
> good example of what the fundamental toolset can do.  Heavy use of 
> custom properties, vertex colors, user normals, clusters, envelopes, 
> UV spaces, and hardware (real time) shaders to customize and iterate 
> on our content.  What made these simple components really nice is 
> they were general and could be re-targeted for many uses outside of 
> their original intended purpose.  Our particles were created and 
> applied in Softimage, but simulated only in engine.  The SDK was used 
> to write 500+ tools to assist artists to create their content include 
> tools like ‘mimick’ which is a command similar to GATOR which can 
> transfer attributes, but do so on select subcomponents instead of the 
> entire object, along with other bells and whistles.  Often overlooked 
> and  understated, but Softimage scaling was incredibly powerful for 
> controlling the squash and stretch scaling of deformers used in our 
> envelopes to animate characters with cartoon whimsy and without ugly 
> shearing often associated with other software.  It is used on every 
> asset that moves.  Relational views were used to create tools such as 
> a face editor to view and animate faces for our player characters, 
> and adjust face customizations to see how they’d appear in the game 
> as each of our characters have multiple faces and other components 
> which can plug in like a Mr. Potato head doll.  It was important to 
> see the various components in context side-by-side for comparison 
> while creating the content so consistency could be maintained.  This 
> was achieved using many ‘object view’ embedded into the relational 
> view.  Under the hood the face editor drove the animation mixer to 
> perform face pose blending so artists could see the animation in real 
> time on their characters.  Also, NURBS, that’s right, NURBS surfaces 
> were used to transfer face poses and clothing between characters.  
> The details must remain a trade secret, but I just had to mention we 
> used NURBS in all their unfinished glory to get meaningful work done 
> with significant contributions to the end product.  Render passes 
> were used to re-dress environments to allow artists to create 
> geometry once, then swap textures, shader settings, and other details 
> many times for each variant of the environment.  Not only does it 
> simplify the artist workflow by centralizing all their interaction to 
> a few clicks, but it also allows assets to be packed into compact 
> files for use in our engine. Render passes are used in housing and 
> dungeons.  If we had to do this in Maya, we’d probably have to break 
> up each variant into its own scene and have to figure out a way to 
> merge all the scenes together that shared the same geometry.  These 
> polished touches matter.  Softimage for the win.
>  
> So that said, while many 3D software could create the assets in their 
> own time and space vacuum, Softimage (in my opinion) was the only 
> software that could’ve tackled this project given our specific time, 
> resources, and budget as there were many close calls along the way.  
> I say Softimage because many of the aforementioned features came out 
> of the box with us ready to roll and not have to spend oodles of time 
> reinventing the wheel.  Not having to write an animation mixer to do 
> face pose blen

Re: Camera addon for use with Redshift

[Emilio Hernandez]

Thank you very much for your kind words Ivan.  I'll hope it servers you
well!

Cheers!



---
Emilio Hernández   VFX & 3D animation.


2014-06-04 4:16 GMT-05:00 Ivan Vasiljevic :

> Not only that it works, but it's really great piece of plugin you have
> there! Easy to work with, understand and push up the level of quality with
> photograph approach!!!
> Thanks for doing this! :)
>
> Ivan
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 6:47 PM, Emilio Hernandez 
> wrote:
>
>> Glad to hear it is working Ivan
>>
>> ---
>> Emilio Hernández   VFX & 3D animation.
>>
>>
>> 2014-06-03 7:19 GMT-05:00 Ivan Vasiljevic :
>>
>> That helped, thanks!
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 2:14 PM, Toonafish  wrote:
>>>
  check the file size of the addon you downloaded, if it's too small,
 try using the Dropbox download menu.

 -Ronald



 On 6/3/2014 13:22, Ivan Vasiljevic wrote:

   Hmm... No luck installing it here.
 SI 2014 SP2, win 7 x64.
  Installation goes fine but no menu nor in View->Toolbars->ehRSCamera...
  Anyone had similar experience?

  Ivan


 On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 1:05 PM, Ivan Vasiljevic 
 wrote:

>  Great stuff, thanks for sharing. I'll give it a go!
>
>  Cheers.
> Ivan
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 12:46 PM, Toonafish 
> wrote:
>
>>  Great stuff !! Thanks Emilio.
>>
>> -Ronald
>>
>>
>> On 6/3/2014 02:39, Emilio Hernandez wrote:
>>
>>  Hello list.
>>
>>  I want to share with you the ehRSCamera addon  for use with Redshift.
>>
>>  In the link you will find a pdf file with the documentation
>> describing its features and use, as well as the xsiaddon in case you want
>> to use it.
>>
>>  The plugin is free for any purpose.
>>
>>  Cheers and thank you all.
>>
>>
>> https://www.dropbox.com/sh/unk9jbeyrxyq6m1/AABbki4OHNTbvNpxLL3GKFe8a/ehRSCamera
>>  ---
>> Emilio Hernández   VFX & 3D animation.
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>  --
>Ivan Vasiljevic
> -
>  Lighting TD
>  Founder, Digital Asset Tailors
> -
>  reel:https://vimeo.com/72183649
> web:www.ivasiljevic.com
>  email:  i...@digitalassettailors.com
> ivan_vasilje...@hotmail.com
>
>
>


 --
Ivan Vasiljevic
 -
  Lighting TD
  Founder, Digital Asset Tailors
 -
  reel:https://vimeo.com/72183649
 web:www.ivasiljevic.com
  email:  i...@digitalassettailors.com
 ivan_vasilje...@hotmail.com




>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Ivan Vasiljevic
>>> -
>>> Lighting TD
>>> Founder, Digital Asset Tailors
>>> -
>>> reel:https://vimeo.com/72183649
>>> web:www.ivasiljevic.com
>>> email:  i...@digitalassettailors.com
>>>ivan_vasilje...@hotmail.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Ivan Vasiljevic
> -
> Lighting TD
> Founder, Digital Asset Tailors
> -
> reel:https://vimeo.com/72183649
> web:www.ivasiljevic.com
> email:  i...@digitalassettailors.com
>ivan_vasilje...@hotmail.com
>
>
>

Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

[Vladimir Jankijevic]

and then you tell me how this is more convenient than having a desktop
solution for this kind of stuff? please try to convince me ;)

cheers
vladimir


On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 11:31 AM, Graham Bell 
wrote:

> If you have Maintenance Subscription or Desktop Subscription for Maya,
> Max, or Mudbox, you actually already have free access to ReCap 360. This
> includes the Photogrammetry service Photo on ReCap 360.
>
> There is some limitation though, it’s capped at 50 images and export
> formats are limited, but it’s more than good enough for some things.
> You can subscribe to the service for an annual of something like £45, then
> you can go up to 250 images and there’s more export formats.
> The only things you’ll need are cloud credits for submitting data for
> generation.
>
>
> G
>
>

RE: Shameless plug

[adrian wyer]

i can see the love that went into this project, it shines out from every
frame
 
http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/media/videos/flicks/
 
congrats!

  _  

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Crowson
Sent: 04 June 2014 16:35
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Shameless plug


Way to go Matt! Hat's off to you and the rest of the team!
-Tim


On 6/4/2014 9:39 AM, Chris Johnson wrote:


Looks Amazing! 

Can't believe you've been working on just this since Barnyard!!! It shows.

Congratulations!


On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 10:00 PM, Matt Lind  wrote:


I don't get to say this often, but I've finished a project using Softimage
which all can see.  Well, it's not actually 'finished' as it's an online
game which is continuously maintained, updated, and ongoing, but it's now
live and I can talk about it beyond generalizations.  Yay!   My last
completed project was my previous production -Barnyard the animated feature
back in 2006.  It's been a long time coming, a relief, and refreshing to be
able to refer to something I did in the current decade.

 

Wildstar officially launched last Friday night at midnight for early access,
but opened up the flood gates today for everybody else.  The game is now
running smoothly in North America and Europe for all to see and experience.
If you were part of the beta, let it be known significant improvements have
been made since on all fronts.  If you haven't tried the game yet, point
your browser to www.wildstar-online.com and click on the shiny buttons.  The
first 30 days are free with initial purchase.

 

Production started in 2005 using Softimage XSI v3.5 and launched with
Softimage 2013 SP1 - all of it in 32 bit land.  Majority of the content
created in Softimage 7.5 which we used for roughly 5 years.  Softimage was
used for a heavy majority of the 3D artwork including characters, props,
environments (other than the ground), buildings, dungeons, and everything
inside of them.  We didn't use ICE at all (but not for lack of trying, and
we tested heavily), so this is a good example of what the fundamental
toolset can do.  Heavy use of custom properties, vertex colors, user
normals, clusters, envelopes, UV spaces, and hardware (real time) shaders to
customize and iterate on our content.  What made these simple components
really nice is they were general and could be re-targeted for many uses
outside of their original intended purpose.  Our particles were created and
applied in Softimage, but simulated only in engine.  The SDK was used to
write 500+ tools to assist artists to create their content include tools
like 'mimick' which is a command similar to GATOR which can transfer
attributes, but do so on select subcomponents instead of the entire object,
along with other bells and whistles.  Often overlooked and  understated, but
Softimage scaling was incredibly powerful for controlling the squash and
stretch scaling of deformers used in our envelopes to animate characters
with cartoon whimsy and without ugly shearing often associated with other
software.  It is used on every asset that moves.  Relational views were used
to create tools such as a face editor to view and animate faces for our
player characters, and adjust face customizations to see how they'd appear
in the game as each of our characters have multiple faces and other
components which can plug in like a Mr. Potato head doll.  It was important
to see the various components in context side-by-side for comparison while
creating the content so consistency could be maintained.  This was achieved
using many 'object view' embedded into the relational view.  Under the hood
the face editor drove the animation mixer to perform face pose blending so
artists could see the animation in real time on their characters.  Also,
NURBS, that's right, NURBS surfaces were used to transfer face poses and
clothing between characters.  The details must remain a trade secret, but I
just had to mention we used NURBS in all their unfinished glory to get
meaningful work done with significant contributions to the end product.
Render passes were used to re-dress environments to allow artists to create
geometry once, then swap textures, shader settings, and other details many
times for each variant of the environment.  Not only does it simplify the
artist workflow by centralizing all their interaction to a few clicks, but
it also allows assets to be packed into compact files for use in our engine.
Render passes are used in housing and dungeons.  If we had to do this in
Maya, we'd probably have to break up each variant into its own scene and
have to figure out a way to merge all the scenes together that shared the
same geometry.  These polished touches matter.  Softimage for the win.

 

So that said, while many 3D software could create the assets in their own
time and space vacuum, Softimage (in my opinion) was the only software that
could've tackled this proje

Re: Shameless plug

[Tim Crowson]

Way to go Matt! Hat's off to you and the rest of the team!
-Tim

On 6/4/2014 9:39 AM, Chris Johnson wrote:

Looks Amazing!

Can't believe you've been working on just this since Barnyard!!! It shows.

Congratulations!


On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 10:00 PM, Matt Lind > wrote:


I don’t get to say this often, but I’ve finished a project using
Softimage which all can see.  Well, it’s not actually ‘finished’
as it’s an online game which is continuously maintained, updated,
and ongoing, but it’s now live and I can talk about it beyond
generalizations.  Yay!   My last completed project was my previous
production –Barnyard the animated feature back in 2006.  It’s been
a long time coming, a relief, and refreshing to be able to refer
to something I did in the current decade.

Wildstar officially launched last Friday night at midnight for
early access, but opened up the flood gates today for everybody
else.  The game is now running smoothly in North America and
Europe for all to see and experience.  If you were part of the
beta, let it be known significant improvements have been made
since on all fronts.  If you haven’t tried the game yet, point
your browser to www.wildstar-online.com
 and click on the shiny buttons. 
The first 30 days are free with initial purchase.


Production started in 2005 using Softimage XSI v3.5 and launched
with Softimage 2013 SP1 – all of it in 32 bit land.  Majority of
the content created in Softimage 7.5 which we used for roughly 5
years.  Softimage was used for a heavy majority of the 3D artwork
including characters, props, environments (other than the ground),
buildings, dungeons, and everything inside of them. We didn’t use
ICE at all (but not for lack of trying, and we tested heavily), so
this is a good example of what the fundamental toolset can do. 
Heavy use of custom properties, vertex colors, user normals,

clusters, envelopes, UV spaces, and hardware (real time) shaders
to customize and iterate on our content.  What made these simple
components really nice is they were general and could be
re-targeted for many uses outside of their original intended
purpose. Our particles were created and applied in Softimage, but
simulated only in engine.  The SDK was used to write 500+ tools to
assist artists to create their content include tools like ‘mimick’
which is a command similar to GATOR which can transfer attributes,
but do so on select subcomponents instead of the entire object,
along with other bells and whistles.  Often overlooked and 
understated, but Softimage scaling was incredibly powerful for

controlling the squash and stretch scaling of deformers used in
our envelopes to animate characters with cartoon whimsy and
without ugly shearing often associated with other software. It is
used on every asset that moves.  Relational views were used to
create tools such as a face editor to view and animate faces for
our player characters, and adjust face customizations to see how
they’d appear in the game as each of our characters have multiple
faces and other components which can plug in like a Mr. Potato
head doll.  It was important to see the various components in
context side-by-side for comparison while creating the content so
consistency could be maintained.  This was achieved using many
‘object view’ embedded into the relational view. Under the hood
the face editor drove the animation mixer to perform face pose
blending so artists could see the animation in real time on their
characters. Also, NURBS, that’s right, NURBS surfaces were used to
transfer face poses and clothing between characters. The details
must remain a trade secret, but I just had to mention we used
NURBS in all their unfinished glory to get meaningful work done
with significant contributions to the end product.  Render passes
were used to re-dress environments to allow artists to create
geometry once, then swap textures, shader settings, and other
details many times for each variant of the environment.  Not only
does it simplify the artist workflow by centralizing all their
interaction to a few clicks, but it also allows assets to be
packed into compact files for use in our engine. Render passes are
used in housing and dungeons.  If we had to do this in Maya, we’d
probably have to break up each variant into its own scene and have
to figure out a way to merge all the scenes together that shared
the same geometry.  These polished touches matter. Softimage for
the win.

So that said, while many 3D software could create the assets in
their own time and space vacuum, Softimage (in my opinion) was the
only software that could’ve tackled this project given our
specific time, resou

RE: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

[Graham Bell]

If you have Maintenance Subscription or Desktop Subscription for Maya, Max, or 
Mudbox, you actually already have free access to ReCap 360. This includes the 
Photogrammetry service Photo on ReCap 360.

There is some limitation though, it’s capped at 50 images and export formats 
are limited, but it’s more than good enough for some things.
You can subscribe to the service for an annual of something like £45, then you 
can go up to 250 images and there’s more export formats.
The only things you’ll need are cloud credits for submitting data for 
generation.


G



From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Nicolas Esposito
Sent: 04 June 2014 16:10
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

I'm using it for scans of my face for some reference, since its more precise 
then scanning with Kinect, and it does a pretty good job with 60 jpgs ( 
turntable, using a 1100D reflex ), even with my crappy 4 years old i7 2.7 Ghz 
in 15 minutes I have the scan ready, without any masking on the pictures, then 
directly into Zbrush for Zremesher and export :)

2014-06-04 16:36 GMT+02:00 Manuel Huertas Marchena 
mailto:lito...@hotmail.com>>:
hope this link works:
http://www.zbrushworkshops.com/content/jeffrey-wilsons-photogrammetry-webinar-replay?inf_contact_key=50b547bc23da9a70a5bec51783577fe7e0f16b49c92c9a6e534db770494136fd

is an agisoft webinar, jeff wilson goes in detail into the difference betwen 
versions if I am not wrong,
I am big fan of photogrammetry for environment creation but a bit new to 
photoscan that video helped me
understand the process.

you could also use 3dequalizer to generate a point cloud from stills or even 
nuke 8 with the still solver/model builder
although I have yet to try that.

The workflow I was used to is with image modeler but unfortunately its not 
available anymore, although if you have access
to it with your autodesk subscription I would defintetly give it a try it still 
does the job well.

Regards


-Manu




IMDB | Portfolio  | 
Vimeo | 
Linkedin


Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2014 16:14:48 +0200

Subject: Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?
From: m...@vincentlanger.com
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

depends on what you want to do.
I think the main difference to the professional version is the ability to 
orient the scene and to do 4D mesh generation (from video input).
cheers,
vincent


2014-06-04 16:02 GMT+02:00 Jens Lindgren 
mailto:jens.lindgren@gmail.com>>:
Thread resurrection time!
So I got a project that needs some photogrammetry and I'm looking at Agisoft 
PhotosScan right now. Only have one question: Standard or Professional? The 
price difference is huge!

/Jens

On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 5:00 AM, Francisco Criado 
mailto:malcriad...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Octavian, i used a couple of times skanect for people or indoor sets and 
must say its a time saver. If you can, give it a try!

Francisco.


On Wednesday, January 29, 2014, Octavian Ureche 
mailto:okt...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Interesting topic here.
Was just testing agisoft photoscan for some non commercial related work, and it 
seems to give pretty nice results with minimal user input.
Has anyone tried to compare a kinekt based approach such as skanect 
(http://skanect.manctl.com) with a photogrammetrical approach for object 
scanning?

I am curious about the pros and cons of both.

Cheers,
O

On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 7:36 PM, Ed Manning 
mailto:etmth...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Recap and 123D Catch from Autodesk do very well with some subject matter.

NukeX also has camera tracking, point-could generation and meshing, and can 
export geo and camera.

On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau 
mailto:marc-andre.carbonn...@ubisoft.com>> 
wrote:

Hello friends,



I am currently investigating photogrammetry and would love to get your advices, 
opinions, experiences with such systems.

What hardware do you use? Which software? Best practices?



Thank you for any info!

MAC





[cid:image002.jpg@01CDBD94.314AAF40]


Marc-André Carbonneau

Product Specialist













--
Octavian Ureche
 +40 732 774 313 (GMT+2)
 Animation & Visual Effects
  www.okto.ro


--
Jens Lindgren
--
Lead Technical Director
Magoo 3D Studios



--
Vincent Langer
Uhlandstr. 29
71638 Ludwigsburg
+49 176 965 177 61
www.vincentlanger.com

<>

Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

[Nicolas Esposito]

I'm using it for scans of my face for some reference, since its more
precise then scanning with Kinect, and it does a pretty good job with 60
jpgs ( turntable, using a 1100D reflex ), even with my crappy 4 years old
i7 2.7 Ghz in 15 minutes I have the scan ready, without any masking on the
pictures, then directly into Zbrush for Zremesher and export :)


2014-06-04 16:36 GMT+02:00 Manuel Huertas Marchena :

> hope this link works:
>
> http://www.zbrushworkshops.com/content/jeffrey-wilsons-photogrammetry-webinar-replay?inf_contact_key=50b547bc23da9a70a5bec51783577fe7e0f16b49c92c9a6e534db770494136fd
>
> is an agisoft webinar, jeff wilson goes in detail into the difference
> betwen versions if I am not wrong,
> I am big fan of photogrammetry for environment creation but a bit new to
> photoscan that video helped me
> understand the process.
>
> you could also use 3dequalizer to generate a point cloud from stills or
> even nuke 8 with the still solver/model builder
> although I have yet to try that.
>
> The workflow I was used to is with image modeler but unfortunately its not
> available anymore, although if you have access
> to it with your autodesk subscription I would defintetly give it a try it
> still does the job well.
>
> Regards
>
>
> -Manu
>
>
>
>
> IMDB  | Portfolio
>  | Vimeo
>  | Linkedin
> 
>
>
> --
> Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2014 16:14:48 +0200
>
> Subject: Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?
> From: m...@vincentlanger.com
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
>
>
> depends on what you want to do.
>
> I think the main difference to the professional version is the ability to
> orient the scene and to do 4D mesh generation (from video input).
>
> cheers,
> vincent
>
>
>
> 2014-06-04 16:02 GMT+02:00 Jens Lindgren :
>
> Thread resurrection time!
> So I got a project that needs some photogrammetry and I'm looking at
> Agisoft PhotosScan right now. Only have one question: Standard or
> Professional? The price difference is huge!
>
> /Jens
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 5:00 AM, Francisco Criado 
> wrote:
>
> Hi Octavian, i used a couple of times skanect for people or indoor sets
> and must say its a time saver. If you can, give it a try!
>
> Francisco.
>
>
> On Wednesday, January 29, 2014, Octavian Ureche  wrote:
>
> Interesting topic here.
> Was just testing agisoft photoscan for some non commercial related work,
> and it seems to give pretty nice results with minimal user input.
> Has anyone tried to compare a kinekt based approach such as skanect (
> http://skanect.manctl.com) with a photogrammetrical approach for object
> scanning?
>
> I am curious about the pros and cons of both.
>
> Cheers,
> O
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 7:36 PM, Ed Manning  wrote:
>
> Recap and 123D Catch from Autodesk do very well with some subject matter.
>
> NukeX also has camera tracking, point-could generation and meshing, and
> can export geo and camera.
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau <
> marc-andre.carbonn...@ubisoft.com> wrote:
>
> Hello friends,
>
>
>
> I am currently investigating photogrammetry and would love to get your
> advices, opinions, experiences with such systems.
>
> What hardware do you use? Which software? Best practices?
>
>
>
> Thank you for any info!
>
> MAC
>
>
>
>
>
> [image: cid:image002.jpg@01CDBD94.314AAF40]
> 
>
> *Marc-André Carbonneau*
>
> Product Specialist
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Octavian Ureche
>  +40 732 774 313 (GMT+2)
>  Animation & Visual Effects
>   www.okto.ro
>
>
>
>
> --
> Jens Lindgren
> --
> Lead Technical Director
> Magoo 3D Studios 
>
>
>
>
> --
> Vincent Langer
> Uhlandstr. 29
> 71638 Ludwigsburg
> +49 176 965 177 61
> www.vincentlanger.com
>

Re: Shameless plug

[Chris Johnson]

Looks Amazing!

Can't believe you've been working on just this since Barnyard!!! It shows.

Congratulations!


On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 10:00 PM, Matt Lind  wrote:

> I don’t get to say this often, but I’ve finished a project using Softimage
> which all can see.  Well, it’s not actually ‘finished’ as it’s an online
> game which is continuously maintained, updated, and ongoing, but it’s now
> live and I can talk about it beyond generalizations.  Yay!   My last
> completed project was my previous production –Barnyard the animated feature
> back in 2006.  It’s been a long time coming, a relief, and refreshing to be
> able to refer to something I did in the current decade.
>
>
>
> Wildstar officially launched last Friday night at midnight for early
> access, but opened up the flood gates today for everybody else.  The game
> is now running smoothly in North America and Europe for all to see and
> experience.  If you were part of the beta, let it be known significant
> improvements have been made since on all fronts.  If you haven’t tried the
> game yet, point your browser to www.wildstar-online.com and click on the
> shiny buttons.  The first 30 days are free with initial purchase.
>
>
>
> Production started in 2005 using Softimage XSI v3.5 and launched with
> Softimage 2013 SP1 – all of it in 32 bit land.  Majority of the content
> created in Softimage 7.5 which we used for roughly 5 years.  Softimage was
> used for a heavy majority of the 3D artwork including characters, props,
> environments (other than the ground), buildings, dungeons, and everything
> inside of them.  We didn’t use ICE at all (but not for lack of trying, and
> we tested heavily), so this is a good example of what the fundamental
> toolset can do.  Heavy use of custom properties, vertex colors, user
> normals, clusters, envelopes, UV spaces, and hardware (real time) shaders
> to customize and iterate on our content.  What made these simple components
> really nice is they were general and could be re-targeted for many uses
> outside of their original intended purpose.  Our particles were created and
> applied in Softimage, but simulated only in engine.  The SDK was used to
> write 500+ tools to assist artists to create their content include tools
> like ‘mimick’ which is a command similar to GATOR which can transfer
> attributes, but do so on select subcomponents instead of the entire object,
> along with other bells and whistles.  Often overlooked and  understated,
> but Softimage scaling was incredibly powerful for controlling the squash
> and stretch scaling of deformers used in our envelopes to animate
> characters with cartoon whimsy and without ugly shearing often associated
> with other software.  It is used on every asset that moves.  Relational
> views were used to create tools such as a face editor to view and animate
> faces for our player characters, and adjust face customizations to see how
> they’d appear in the game as each of our characters have multiple faces and
> other components which can plug in like a Mr. Potato head doll.  It was
> important to see the various components in context side-by-side for
> comparison while creating the content so consistency could be maintained.
> This was achieved using many ‘object view’ embedded into the relational
> view.  Under the hood the face editor drove the animation mixer to perform
> face pose blending so artists could see the animation in real time on their
> characters.  Also, NURBS, that’s right, NURBS surfaces were used to
> transfer face poses and clothing between characters.  The details must
> remain a trade secret, but I just had to mention we used NURBS in all their
> unfinished glory to get meaningful work done with significant contributions
> to the end product.  Render passes were used to re-dress environments to
> allow artists to create geometry once, then swap textures, shader settings,
> and other details many times for each variant of the environment.  Not only
> does it simplify the artist workflow by centralizing all their interaction
> to a few clicks, but it also allows assets to be packed into compact files
> for use in our engine. Render passes are used in housing and dungeons.  If
> we had to do this in Maya, we’d probably have to break up each variant into
> its own scene and have to figure out a way to merge all the scenes together
> that shared the same geometry.  These polished touches matter.  Softimage
> for the win.
>
>
>
> So that said, while many 3D software could create the assets in their own
> time and space vacuum, Softimage (in my opinion) was the only software that
> could’ve tackled this project given our specific time, resources, and
> budget as there were many close calls along the way.  I say Softimage
> because many of the aforementioned features came out of the box with us
> ready to roll and not have to spend oodles of time reinventing the wheel.
> Not having to write an animation mixer to do face pose blending, or render
> pass syste

RE: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

[Manuel Huertas Marchena]

hope this link 
works:http://www.zbrushworkshops.com/content/jeffrey-wilsons-photogrammetry-webinar-replay?inf_contact_key=50b547bc23da9a70a5bec51783577fe7e0f16b49c92c9a6e534db770494136fd
is an agisoft webinar, jeff wilson goes in detail into the difference betwen 
versions if I am not wrong, I am big fan of photogrammetry for environment 
creation but a bit new to photoscan that video helped me understand the process.
you could also use 3dequalizer to generate a point cloud from stills or even 
nuke 8 with the still solver/model builderalthough I have yet to try that.
The workflow I was used to is with image modeler but unfortunately its not 
available anymore, although if you have access to it with your autodesk 
subscription I would defintetly give it a try it still does the job well.
Regards

-Manu



IMDB | Portfolio | Vimeo
| Linkedin


Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2014 16:14:48 +0200
Subject: Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?
From: m...@vincentlanger.com
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

depends on what you want to do.

I think the main difference to the professional version is the ability to 
orient the scene and to do 4D mesh generation (from video input).


cheers,
vincent



2014-06-04 16:02 GMT+02:00 Jens Lindgren :

Thread resurrection time!So I got a project that needs some photogrammetry and 
I'm looking at Agisoft PhotosScan right now. Only have one question: Standard 
or Professional? The price difference is huge!


/Jens

On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 5:00 AM, Francisco Criado  wrote:


Hi Octavian, i used a couple of times skanect for people or indoor sets and 
must say its a time saver. If you can, give it a try!


Francisco.

On Wednesday, January 29, 2014, Octavian Ureche  wrote:


Interesting topic here.Was just testing agisoft photoscan for some non 
commercial related work, and it seems to give pretty nice results with minimal 
user input.



Has anyone tried to compare a kinekt based approach such as skanect 
(http://skanect.manctl.com) with a photogrammetrical approach for object 
scanning?







I am curious about the pros and cons of both.
Cheers,O



On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 7:36 PM, Ed Manning  wrote:



Recap and 123D Catch from Autodesk do very well with some subject matter. 


NukeX also has camera tracking, point-could generation and meshing, and can 
export geo and camera.





On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau 
 wrote:






Hello friends,



 I am currently investigating photogrammetry and would love to get your 
advices, opinions, experiences with such systems.What hardware do you use? 
Which software? Best practices?





 Thank you for any info!MAC  

















Marc-André Carbonneau





Product Specialist





   





 



-- 
Octavian Ureche
 +40 732 774 313 (GMT+2)


 Animation & Visual Effects
  www.okto.ro







-- 
Jens Lindgren
--
Lead Technical Director
Magoo 3D Studios



-- 
Vincent Langer
Uhlandstr. 29
71638 Ludwigsburg
+49 176 965 177 61
www.vincentlanger.com


  

Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

[Vincent Langer]

depends on what you want to do.

I think the main difference to the professional version is the ability to
orient the scene and to do 4D mesh generation (from video input).

cheers,
vincent



2014-06-04 16:02 GMT+02:00 Jens Lindgren :

> Thread resurrection time!
> So I got a project that needs some photogrammetry and I'm looking at
> Agisoft PhotosScan right now. Only have one question: Standard or
> Professional? The price difference is huge!
>
> /Jens
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 5:00 AM, Francisco Criado 
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Octavian, i used a couple of times skanect for people or indoor sets
>> and must say its a time saver. If you can, give it a try!
>>
>> Francisco.
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, January 29, 2014, Octavian Ureche  wrote:
>>
>>> Interesting topic here.
>>> Was just testing agisoft photoscan for some non commercial related work,
>>> and it seems to give pretty nice results with minimal user input.
>>> Has anyone tried to compare a kinekt based approach such as skanect (
>>> http://skanect.manctl.com) with a photogrammetrical approach for object
>>> scanning?
>>>
>>> I am curious about the pros and cons of both.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> O
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 7:36 PM, Ed Manning  wrote:
>>>
 Recap and 123D Catch from Autodesk do very well with some subject
 matter.

 NukeX also has camera tracking, point-could generation and meshing, and
 can export geo and camera.


 On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau <
 marc-andre.carbonn...@ubisoft.com> wrote:

> Hello friends,
>
>
>
> I am currently investigating photogrammetry and would love to get your
> advices, opinions, experiences with such systems.
>
> What hardware do you use? Which software? Best practices?
>
>
>
> Thank you for any info!
>
> MAC
>
>
>
>
>
> [image: cid:image002.jpg@01CDBD94.314AAF40]
> 
>
> *Marc-André Carbonneau*
>
> Product Specialist
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Octavian Ureche
>>>  +40 732 774 313 (GMT+2)
>>>  Animation & Visual Effects
>>>   www.okto.ro
>>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Jens Lindgren
> --
> Lead Technical Director
> Magoo 3D Studios 
>



-- 
Vincent Langer
Uhlandstr. 29
71638 Ludwigsburg
+49 176 965 177 61
www.vincentlanger.com

RE: Shameless plug

[Matthew Carpenter]

Congratulations Matt.

Happy that we were a part of this.

Cheers,

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Matt Lind
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2014 10:01 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Shameless plug

I don't get to say this often, but I've finished a project using Softimage 
which all can see.  Well, it's not actually 'finished' as it's an online game 
which is continuously maintained, updated, and ongoing, but it's now live and I 
can talk about it beyond generalizations.  Yay!   My last completed project was 
my previous production -Barnyard the animated feature back in 2006.  It's been 
a long time coming, a relief, and refreshing to be able to refer to something I 
did in the current decade.

Wildstar officially launched last Friday night at midnight for early access, 
but opened up the flood gates today for everybody else.  The game is now 
running smoothly in North America and Europe for all to see and experience.  If 
you were part of the beta, let it be known significant improvements have been 
made since on all fronts.  If you haven't tried the game yet, point your 
browser to www.wildstar-online.com and click on 
the shiny buttons.  The first 30 days are free with initial purchase.

Production started in 2005 using Softimage XSI v3.5 and launched with Softimage 
2013 SP1 - all of it in 32 bit land.  Majority of the content created in 
Softimage 7.5 which we used for roughly 5 years.  Softimage was used for a 
heavy majority of the 3D artwork including characters, props, environments 
(other than the ground), buildings, dungeons, and everything inside of them.  
We didn't use ICE at all (but not for lack of trying, and we tested heavily), 
so this is a good example of what the fundamental toolset can do.  Heavy use of 
custom properties, vertex colors, user normals, clusters, envelopes, UV spaces, 
and hardware (real time) shaders to customize and iterate on our content.  What 
made these simple components really nice is they were general and could be 
re-targeted for many uses outside of their original intended purpose.  Our 
particles were created and applied in Softimage, but simulated only in engine.  
The SDK was used to write 500+ tools to assist artists to create their content 
include tools like 'mimick' which is a command similar to GATOR which can 
transfer attributes, but do so on select subcomponents instead of the entire 
object, along with other bells and whistles.  Often overlooked and  
understated, but Softimage scaling was incredibly powerful for controlling the 
squash and stretch scaling of deformers used in our envelopes to animate 
characters with cartoon whimsy and without ugly shearing often associated with 
other software.  It is used on every asset that moves.  Relational views were 
used to create tools such as a face editor to view and animate faces for our 
player characters, and adjust face customizations to see how they'd appear in 
the game as each of our characters have multiple faces and other components 
which can plug in like a Mr. Potato head doll.  It was important to see the 
various components in context side-by-side for comparison while creating the 
content so consistency could be maintained.  This was achieved using many 
'object view' embedded into the relational view.  Under the hood the face 
editor drove the animation mixer to perform face pose blending so artists could 
see the animation in real time on their characters.  Also, NURBS, that's right, 
NURBS surfaces were used to transfer face poses and clothing between 
characters.  The details must remain a trade secret, but I just had to mention 
we used NURBS in all their unfinished glory to get meaningful work done with 
significant contributions to the end product.  Render passes were used to 
re-dress environments to allow artists to create geometry once, then swap 
textures, shader settings, and other details many times for each variant of the 
environment.  Not only does it simplify the artist workflow by centralizing all 
their interaction to a few clicks, but it also allows assets to be packed into 
compact files for use in our engine. Render passes are used in housing and 
dungeons.  If we had to do this in Maya, we'd probably have to break up each 
variant into its own scene and have to figure out a way to merge all the scenes 
together that shared the same geometry.  These polished touches matter.  
Softimage for the win.

So that said, while many 3D software could create the assets in their own time 
and space vacuum, Softimage (in my opinion) was the only software that could've 
tackled this project given our specific time, resources, and budget as there 
were many close calls along the way.  I say Softimage because many of the 
aforementioned features came out of the box with us ready to roll and not have 
to spend oodles of time reinventing the wheel.  Not having to wri

Re: Photogrammetry - what do you use?

[Jens Lindgren]

Thread resurrection time!
So I got a project that needs some photogrammetry and I'm looking at
Agisoft PhotosScan right now. Only have one question: Standard or
Professional? The price difference is huge!

/Jens


On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 5:00 AM, Francisco Criado 
wrote:

> Hi Octavian, i used a couple of times skanect for people or indoor sets
> and must say its a time saver. If you can, give it a try!
>
> Francisco.
>
>
> On Wednesday, January 29, 2014, Octavian Ureche  wrote:
>
>> Interesting topic here.
>> Was just testing agisoft photoscan for some non commercial related work,
>> and it seems to give pretty nice results with minimal user input.
>> Has anyone tried to compare a kinekt based approach such as skanect (
>> http://skanect.manctl.com) with a photogrammetrical approach for object
>> scanning?
>>
>> I am curious about the pros and cons of both.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> O
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 7:36 PM, Ed Manning  wrote:
>>
>>> Recap and 123D Catch from Autodesk do very well with some subject
>>> matter.
>>>
>>> NukeX also has camera tracking, point-could generation and meshing, and
>>> can export geo and camera.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau <
>>> marc-andre.carbonn...@ubisoft.com> wrote:
>>>
 Hello friends,



 I am currently investigating photogrammetry and would love to get your
 advices, opinions, experiences with such systems.

 What hardware do you use? Which software? Best practices?



 Thank you for any info!

 MAC





 [image: cid:image002.jpg@01CDBD94.314AAF40]
 

 *Marc-André Carbonneau*

 Product Specialist









>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Octavian Ureche
>>  +40 732 774 313 (GMT+2)
>>  Animation & Visual Effects
>>   www.okto.ro
>>
>


-- 
Jens Lindgren
--
Lead Technical Director
Magoo 3D Studios 

Re: OT: What strong features have you found in your new transition software that SI didn´t have?

[Sergio Mucino]

Hey Marco. I'm curious... Where is Modo falling short for you? Cheers!

Sergio Muciño.
Sent from my iPad.

> On Jun 4, 2014, at 6:12 AM, Marco Peixoto  wrote:
> 
> Fist thing you do in Modo is to remove the awfull (IMO) Trackball rotation... 
> that and also the grid Plane they have, it might suits for Modeling but I 
> keep finding it vey introsive and distracting, of course thats me that is not 
> that used to Modo and im slowly trying to see if it fits my CA needs (so far 
> it doesnt)
> 
> 
>> On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 10:45 AM, Angus Davidson  
>> wrote:
>> HI Matt
>> 
>> This is the type of vertex maps that Modo supports
>> 
>> http://docs.luxology.com/modo/801/help/pages/modotoolbox/WorkingWithVmaps.html
>> 
>> Quick table to summarise the link
>> 
>> Weight Map   Weight Strength Values stored for Falloff and Texturing 
>> purposes
>> SubD Weight Map  Weight Strength Value influences edge creasing 
>> in SubDivision Surface geometry
>> UV Map   UV maps translates 3D vertex positions to flat 2D 
>> coordinates
>> Relative Morph Map   Vertex position offset, relative to the base 
>> vertex position
>> Absolute Morph Map   Vertex position offset to specific absolute 
>> position in 3D space
>> RGB Map  Vertex Color map defined by three R, G and B color 
>> values
>> RGBA Map Vertex Color map defined by three R, G and B color and 
>> an additional Alpha value
>> Pick Map Like a Selection Set, defines groupings of vertices
>> Vertex Normal MapSurface Normal direction (Smoothing) values 
>> stored as fixed value
>> Edge Pick MapLike a Selection Set, defines groupings of edges
>> Particle Size MapDetermines scale values for individual particles
>> Particle Dissolve MapDetermines transparency values for 
>> indvidual particles
>> Transform MapDetermines transform amounts for individual 
>> vertices/particles
>> 
>> If you click the Gear in the top right hand corner of your view in Modo you 
>> can change the mouse rotation style.
>> 
>> I tend to have  trackball rotation set to no , and orbit around selection 
>> checked. (oscillate I uncheck always that’s annoying ;) )
>> 
>> Kind regards
>> 
>> Angus
>> 
>> From: Matt Lind 
>> Reply-To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" 
>> Date: Tuesday 03 June 2014 at 4:49 AM
>> To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" 
>> Subject: RE: OT: What strong features have you found in your new transition 
>> software that SI didn´t have?
>> 
>> Well, most people on this forum submitting their thoughts on C4D, Houdini, 
>> Modo, Maya, etc… tend to review it from a film/video perspective.  Many of 
>> the bullet points are not applicable to other market segments such as games. 
>>  Examples: Alembic support, 3rd party renderers, render farm accessibility, 
>> etc…   All the transition guides I’ve seen to date, regardless of source, 
>> tend to omit the lower level features leaving many of us in the dark or only 
>> give us part of the picture.  To use an analogy, if art were math class 
>> where you have to work out a long multi-page problem, a film/video artist is 
>> mostly interested in the final result and can obtain it from any means 
>> necessary including a wild guess, whereas a game artist must use the correct 
>> process to get the answer.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> I’m interested in the lower level control over manipulating objects and 
>> organizing them in intelligent data structures (assets) to abstract them or 
>> minimize their dependency on the host application.  We need to apply 
>> metadata onto assets so our engine can read that data and know how to 
>> process the asset in the context of the game.  Often metadata is applied as 
>> userdata blobs/maps, or re-purposed vertex colors, UV properties, user 
>> normals, etc.  Many DCC applications have metadata and lower level features, 
>> but not all of them expose the functionality to the end user or do so in a 
>> user friendly way.  Sometimes you have to dig into the SDK to get at them at 
>> all.  Softimage, for example, have had user normals since XSI v1.5, but you 
>> had to use the SDK via script/plugin to expose the capabilities to the end 
>> user.  User normals and associated tools didn’t become available in the 
>> menus until Softimage 2011.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> I’ve taken Modo, Maya, and Houdini for brief test drives to look at very 
>> specific features and intentionally did not look in the manuals to test how 
>> intuitive their implementations were.  In the case of vertex colors, I 
>> figured it out for Maya, but it was clunky.  Houdini was more intuitive to 
>> get started, but I couldn’t determine how to make multiple vertex color 
>> properties on the same object and specify which one to paint.  Modo…never 
>> did find the vertex color tools.  Probably spent more time cursing at the 
>> screen because the camera kept rolling on its side each time I 
>> orbited/tu

Any freelance work?

[Szabolcs Matefy]

Hey guys,

Does anybody aware of freelance opportunities? I seem to have some free time to 
improve my portfolio, and earn some money too...

Cheers


Szabolcs


PS. The best if you can send any ideas to my personal mail: szmat...@gmail.com

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Re: Shameless plug

[peter_b]

wow – you’ve been at this since Barnyard?
that’s epic in itself.
I’m not much of a gamer, let alone online gaming – but I sure hope this one’s a 
success.
All the artwork I’ve seen is very appealing and different – and let’s not 
forget the teaser by Blur, which is just awesome.
Kudos for having the patience to see this through.



From: Matt Lind 
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2014 4:00 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com 
Subject: Shameless plug

I don’t get to say this often, but I’ve finished a project using Softimage 
which all can see.  Well, it’s not actually ‘finished’ as it’s an online game 
which is continuously maintained, updated, and ongoing, but it’s now live and I 
can talk about it beyond generalizations.  Yay!   My last completed project was 
my previous production –Barnyard the animated feature back in 2006.  It’s been 
a long time coming, a relief, and refreshing to be able to refer to something I 
did in the current decade.

 

Wildstar officially launched last Friday night at midnight for early access, 
but opened up the flood gates today for everybody else.  The game is now 
running smoothly in North America and Europe for all to see and experience.  If 
you were part of the beta, let it be known significant improvements have been 
made since on all fronts.  If you haven’t tried the game yet, point your 
browser to www.wildstar-online.com and click on the shiny buttons.  The first 
30 days are free with initial purchase.

 

Production started in 2005 using Softimage XSI v3.5 and launched with Softimage 
2013 SP1 – all of it in 32 bit land.  Majority of the content created in 
Softimage 7.5 which we used for roughly 5 years.  Softimage was used for a 
heavy majority of the 3D artwork including characters, props, environments 
(other than the ground), buildings, dungeons, and everything inside of them.  
We didn’t use ICE at all (but not for lack of trying, and we tested heavily), 
so this is a good example of what the fundamental toolset can do.  Heavy use of 
custom properties, vertex colors, user normals, clusters, envelopes, UV spaces, 
and hardware (real time) shaders to customize and iterate on our content.  What 
made these simple components really nice is they were general and could be 
re-targeted for many uses outside of their original intended purpose.  Our 
particles were created and applied in Softimage, but simulated only in engine.  
The SDK was used to write 500+ tools to assist artists to create their content 
include tools like ‘mimick’ which is a command similar to GATOR which can 
transfer attributes, but do so on select subcomponents instead of the entire 
object, along with other bells and whistles.  Often overlooked and  
understated, but Softimage scaling was incredibly powerful for controlling the 
squash and stretch scaling of deformers used in our envelopes to animate 
characters with cartoon whimsy and without ugly shearing often associated with 
other software.  It is used on every asset that moves.  Relational views were 
used to create tools such as a face editor to view and animate faces for our 
player characters, and adjust face customizations to see how they’d appear in 
the game as each of our characters have multiple faces and other components 
which can plug in like a Mr. Potato head doll.  It was important to see the 
various components in context side-by-side for comparison while creating the 
content so consistency could be maintained.  This was achieved using many 
‘object view’ embedded into the relational view.  Under the hood the face 
editor drove the animation mixer to perform face pose blending so artists could 
see the animation in real time on their characters.  Also, NURBS, that’s right, 
NURBS surfaces were used to transfer face poses and clothing between 
characters.  The details must remain a trade secret, but I just had to mention 
we used NURBS in all their unfinished glory to get meaningful work done with 
significant contributions to the end product.  Render passes were used to 
re-dress environments to allow artists to create geometry once, then swap 
textures, shader settings, and other details many times for each variant of the 
environment.  Not only does it simplify the artist workflow by centralizing all 
their interaction to a few clicks, but it also allows assets to be packed into 
compact files for use in our engine. Render passes are used in housing and 
dungeons.  If we had to do this in Maya, we’d probably have to break up each 
variant into its own scene and have to figure out a way to merge all the scenes 
together that shared the same geometry.  These polished touches matter.  
Softimage for the win.

 

So that said, while many 3D software could create the assets in their own time 
and space vacuum, Softimage (in my opinion) was the only software that could’ve 
tackled this project given our specific time, resources, and budget as there 
were many close calls along the way.  I say Softimage because many of the 
af

Re: Nest Mommentum, reversing animation

[peter_b]

nope I’m freelancer.
I have worked on a few jobs for them, but that’s been a while.

nice people, if you were thinking of getting in touch with them – and their 
output is awesome.

From: Sebastien Sterling 
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2014 10:35 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com 
Subject: Re: Nest Mommentum, reversing animation

Do you work for digital golem ?




On 3 June 2014 21:34, Sebastien Sterling  wrote:

  Thank you Peter for taking the time to expand on this :), i am a character 
artist, and even if this is not a character job, it is good to know about such 
functionality its true that they really look like avid layers :P 




  On 3 June 2014 21:03,  wrote:

the animation mixer is for high level control over animation, including 
combining different types of animation. (fcurves, expressions, constraints, 
caches, plots,...)

the most obvious use is to combine a number of animation cycles on a 
character into a little edit.
Because it looks so much like a video editing timeline, one can easily 
overlook the usefulness of the mixer - on the surface it’s “just a timeline 
with video animationclips” – and many timing effects (including reversing 
animation: right click on a clip in the mixer –> time properties –> scale: -1) 
can be done with ease.

it lives in the model, and connects to the model using namespaces – 
allowing for the sharing of animation between different models. 
there’s things like offsetting the animation (in space!) with clip effects, 
allowing to blend between different animation sources that weren’t made to 
blend.
it can be useful for crowd animation, for instance by blending different 
animation cycles on the actors based on certain conditions.

I know the mixer only on the surface, and don’t need it very often, but 
each time I do, I discover more of what it can do.
Last time I needed it, I used it to turn a linear syflex simulation into 
timestretched, loopable + intro/outtro animations on a bunch of objects.
The mixer handled with ease what amounts to manipulating thousands of 
shapes on quite dense geometry, without being restricted to frames. A total 
nightmare to do with fcurves.

I think you’re a character artist, something which could be useful to you 
is setting up the restpose as well as a few animations and extreme poses in the 
mixer. This way you can easily stress test the skinning and topology. 

While it has seen some improvements over time, its another of those really 
unique tools that were in XSI from it’s very first version, and are still not 
really surpassed.


From: Sebastien Sterling 
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2014 9:13 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com 
Subject: Re: Nest Mommentum, reversing animation

coming from different packages, never really got into the whole mixer 
system, i do get the appeal though. just would never really had a frame of 
reference for when to employ one.




On 3 June 2014 19:46,  wrote:

  usually it’s cache the dynamics first, then plot to the mixer, and then 
reverse the clip in the mixer.
  does this not work for you?


  From: Sebastien Sterling 
  Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2014 8:30 PM
  To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com 
  Subject: Nest Mommentum, reversing animation

  i have a momentum simulationm i ploted, is it possible to reverse the 
animation ? i'd do it in post, but i'm hoping to use some motion blur on some 
text, i's like it not to be reversed

Re: Shameless plug

[Leendert A. Hartog]

Looks stunning. Almost makes me wish I were still a "gamer" myself...
I've "plugged" your efforts on the si-community as well.

Greetz
Leendert

--

Leendert A. Hartog AKA Hirazi Blue
Administrator NOT the owner of si-community.com

Re: Renderman price restructuring

[Stefan Kubicek]

Hi Matt,

I understand how markets work and prices are formed, I should have phrased  
it differently:
I'm surprised this relatively small market supports so many products doing  
more or less the same thing.


As for realtime renderers, having worked in games for half of my career,  
I've seen this coming
too for the last ten years. So far I see the problems that make people not  
adopt realtime renderes for everything in the lack of flexibility -  
usually there are additional techical prerequisites that need to be met by  
assets in order to be usable by the render engine, and that creates  
additional cost on the artist side (the expensive end of the pipe),  
whereas CPU compute time is relatively cheap. I think the image quality  
can already be right for many things, not just the classic realtime  
applications/games.


Congrats on Wildstar going gold btw, it looks totally awesome!

Stefan





Prices are coming down because it's a nearly fixed-size market.  If you  
price yourself too high, you won't get a cut of the pie.


There's also a shift in moving towards real time renderers and away from  
software renderers.  Real time isn't quite ready for full prime time for  
film/video, but it is proving capable for many scenarios.  This is  
probably the main instigator of price reductions from the likes of  
Renderman as the writing is on the wall how much longer it will remain  
relevant in the general consumer space outside of large film productions  
that have established pipelines around it.


In general, industry is producing more real time applications instead of  
linear format.  Expect to see less need for 3rd party renderers in  
general, and more demand for real time engines and editing environments.



Matt




-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com  
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Stefan  
Kubicek

Sent: Friday, May 30, 2014 9:18 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Renderman price restructuring

This was my impression too, when it comes for ootb shaders Arnold leaves  
a lot to be desired.
I'd even go as far as saying that is more so with Arnold than with any  
other third party renderer I've used so far - if it wasn't for third  
party shaders generously made available you wouldn't get too far with it.


It's been interesting to see entry price levels coming so much down in  
recent years. Vray used to be the cheapest, production-ready renderer  
one could buy 12 years ago (and you got unlimited render nodes per  
license), today, like Arnold, it's amongst the more expensive ones, with  
Redshift and even PRMan being more affordable, let alone 3Delight, which  
was always zero $ for the the first license (and supports practically  
any shader in Softimage). In any way, I never expected to see complex,  
"niche" software products to come down in price that much. Just cut  
throat competition, or is there really so much money to be made that it  
still pays off to sell so cheap? At least I think the price cut and free  
for non-com use of PRMan is an attempt to keep what's left of their  
market share, they must have lost a lot of ground to Arnold in recent  
years.








Arnold you get

While I’m still on honeymoon with Arnold I have to say that its ‘out
of the box’ shaders leave quite some room for improvement.

Examples:

Standard shader: lacks a second specular layer (quite the standard
these days), back facing is not textureable Fur shader: you only get
'Kajija-Kay’ (very old school) shading, no indirect specular, no
translucency, no glints Single scatter SSS is only a function in the
API and currently does not implement indirect lighting.

While some of these deficits can be solved in the render tree, others
are simply not accessible without coding them yourself or relying on
community generosity. Which has been the situation for the past four
years.

That being said, Anders Langlands is now working at Solid Angle as a
shader developer. He has previously shared shaders that address a lot
of the above and beyond. I see a bright future ;-)

Happy Rendering,

Andy

On May 30, 2014, at 14:19, Marc-Andre Carbonneau
 wrote:


Ya...what they don't tell you is the hidden cost of programmers you
have to pay to get it working afterwards...

Viva Arnold!


-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of
Leendert A. Hartog
Sent: 30 mai 2014 07:41
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Renderman price restructuring

Some industry nice that might interest some of you (I hope):
"Pixar has announced a radical price restructuring of its RenderMan
3D and animation technology. With the upcoming version, the software
will be free to non-commercial customers, and will cost $495 for
individual licenses"
Quoted from here: http://waa.ai/4jn8

Or better yet: go to the appropriate page on the Renderman website
directly http://tinyur

Re: OT: What strong features have you found in your new transition software that SI didn´t have?

[Marco Peixoto]

Fist thing you do in Modo is to remove the awfull (IMO) Trackball
rotation... that and also the grid Plane they have, it might suits for
Modeling but I keep finding it vey introsive and distracting, of course
thats me that is not that used to Modo and im slowly trying to see if it
fits my CA needs (so far it doesnt)


On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 10:45 AM, Angus Davidson 
wrote:

>  HI Matt
>
>  This is the type of vertex maps that Modo supports
>
>
> http://docs.luxology.com/modo/801/help/pages/modotoolbox/WorkingWithVmaps.html
>
>  *Quick table to summarise the link*
>
>Weight Map   Weight Strength Values stored for Falloff and Texturing
> purposes  SubD Weight Map   Weight Strength Value influences edge
> creasing in SubDivision Surface geometry  UV Map   UV maps translates 3D
> vertex positions to flat 2D coordinates  Relative Morph Map   Vertex
> position offset, relative to the base vertex position  Absolute Morph Map
>   Vertex position offset to specific absolute position in 3D space  RGB
> Map   Vertex Color map defined by three R, G and B color values  RGBA Map
>   Vertex Color map defined by three R, G and B color and an additional
> Alpha value  Pick Map   Like a Selection Set, defines groupings of
> vertices  Vertex Normal Map   Surface Normal direction (Smoothing) values
> stored as fixed value  Edge Pick Map   Like a Selection Set, defines
> groupings of edges  Particle Size Map   Determines scale values for
> individual particles  Particle Dissolve Map   Determines transparency
> values for indvidual particles  Transform Map   Determines transform
> amounts for individual vertices/particles
>
>  If you click the Gear in the top right hand corner of your view in Modo
> you can change the mouse rotation style.
>
>  I tend to have  trackball rotation set to no , and orbit around
> selection checked. (oscillate I uncheck always that's annoying ;) )
>
>  Kind regards
>
>  Angus
>
>   From: Matt Lind 
> Reply-To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" <
> softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
> Date: Tuesday 03 June 2014 at 4:49 AM
> To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" 
> Subject: RE: OT: What strong features have you found in your new
> transition software that SI didn´t have?
>
>   Well, most people on this forum submitting their thoughts on C4D,
> Houdini, Modo, Maya, etc... tend to review it from a film/video perspective.
> Many of the bullet points are not applicable to other market segments such
> as games.  Examples: Alembic support, 3rd party renderers, render farm
> accessibility, etc...   All the transition guides I've seen to date,
> regardless of source, tend to omit the lower level features leaving many of
> us in the dark or only give us part of the picture.  To use an analogy, if
> art were math class where you have to work out a long multi-page problem, a
> film/video artist is mostly interested in the final result and can obtain
> it from any means necessary including a wild guess, whereas a game artist
> must use the correct process to get the answer.
>
>
>
> I'm interested in the lower level control over manipulating objects and
> organizing them in intelligent data structures (assets) to abstract them or
> minimize their dependency on the host application.  We need to apply
> metadata onto assets so our engine can read that data and know how to
> process the asset in the context of the game.  Often metadata is applied as
> userdata blobs/maps, or re-purposed vertex colors, UV properties, user
> normals, etc.  Many DCC applications have metadata and lower level
> features, but not all of them expose the functionality to the end user or
> do so in a user friendly way.  Sometimes you have to dig into the SDK to
> get at them at all.  Softimage, for example, have had user normals since
> XSI v1.5, but you had to use the SDK via script/plugin to expose the
> capabilities to the end user.  User normals and associated tools didn't
> become available in the menus until Softimage 2011.
>
>
>
> I've taken Modo, Maya, and Houdini for brief test drives to look at very
> specific features and intentionally did not look in the manuals to test how
> intuitive their implementations were.  In the case of vertex colors, I
> figured it out for Maya, but it was clunky.  Houdini was more intuitive to
> get started, but I couldn't determine how to make multiple vertex color
> properties on the same object and specify which one to paint.  Modo...never
> did find the vertex color tools.  Probably spent more time cursing at the
> screen because the camera kept rolling on its side each time I
> orbited/tumbled the camera.
>
>
>
> Anyway, working with lower level functions is what I'm interested in
> regardless of DCC app being reviewed.
>
>
>
>
>
> Matt
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [
> mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
> ] *On Behalf Of *Perry Harovas
> *Sent:* Monday, June 02, 2014 5:04 PM
> *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> *Subject:* Re: OT: What strong fe

Re: Shameless plug

[Angus Davidson]

Hi Matt

Firstly as an avid gamer myself  you should be be very proud of your endeavours 
on Wildstar. I spent some time with on in the beta weekends and was really 
blown away by the visuals. Really amazing work.

Kind regards

Angus

From: Matt Lind mailto:ml...@carbinestudios.com>>
Reply-To: 
"softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" 
mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>>
Date: Wednesday 04 June 2014 at 4:00 AM
To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" 
mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>>
Subject: Shameless plug

I don’t get to say this often, but I’ve finished a project using Softimage 
which all can see.  Well, it’s not actually ‘finished’ as it’s an online game 
which is continuously maintained, updated, and ongoing, but it’s now live and I 
can talk about it beyond generalizations.  Yay!   My last completed project was 
my previous production –Barnyard the animated feature back in 2006.  It’s been 
a long time coming, a relief, and refreshing to be able to refer to something I 
did in the current decade.

Wildstar officially launched last Friday night at midnight for early access, 
but opened up the flood gates today for everybody else.  The game is now 
running smoothly in North America and Europe for all to see and experience.  If 
you were part of the beta, let it be known significant improvements have been 
made since on all fronts.  If you haven’t tried the game yet, point your 
browser to www.wildstar-online.com and click on 
the shiny buttons.  The first 30 days are free with initial purchase.

Production started in 2005 using Softimage XSI v3.5 and launched with Softimage 
2013 SP1 – all of it in 32 bit land.  Majority of the content created in 
Softimage 7.5 which we used for roughly 5 years.  Softimage was used for a 
heavy majority of the 3D artwork including characters, props, environments 
(other than the ground), buildings, dungeons, and everything inside of them.  
We didn’t use ICE at all (but not for lack of trying, and we tested heavily), 
so this is a good example of what the fundamental toolset can do.  Heavy use of 
custom properties, vertex colors, user normals, clusters, envelopes, UV spaces, 
and hardware (real time) shaders to customize and iterate on our content.  What 
made these simple components really nice is they were general and could be 
re-targeted for many uses outside of their original intended purpose.  Our 
particles were created and applied in Softimage, but simulated only in engine.  
The SDK was used to write 500+ tools to assist artists to create their content 
include tools like ‘mimick’ which is a command similar to GATOR which can 
transfer attributes, but do so on select subcomponents instead of the entire 
object, along with other bells and whistles.  Often overlooked and  
understated, but Softimage scaling was incredibly powerful for controlling the 
squash and stretch scaling of deformers used in our envelopes to animate 
characters with cartoon whimsy and without ugly shearing often associated with 
other software.  It is used on every asset that moves.  Relational views were 
used to create tools such as a face editor to view and animate faces for our 
player characters, and adjust face customizations to see how they’d appear in 
the game as each of our characters have multiple faces and other components 
which can plug in like a Mr. Potato head doll.  It was important to see the 
various components in context side-by-side for comparison while creating the 
content so consistency could be maintained.  This was achieved using many 
‘object view’ embedded into the relational view.  Under the hood the face 
editor drove the animation mixer to perform face pose blending so artists could 
see the animation in real time on their characters.  Also, NURBS, that’s right, 
NURBS surfaces were used to transfer face poses and clothing between 
characters.  The details must remain a trade secret, but I just had to mention 
we used NURBS in all their unfinished glory to get meaningful work done with 
significant contributions to the end product.  Render passes were used to 
re-dress environments to allow artists to create geometry once, then swap 
textures, shader settings, and other details many times for each variant of the 
environment.  Not only does it simplify the artist workflow by centralizing all 
their interaction to a few clicks, but it also allows assets to be packed into 
compact files for use in our engine. Render passes are used in housing and 
dungeons.  If we had to do this in Maya, we’d probably have to break up each 
variant into its own scene and have to figure out a way to merge all the scenes 
together that shared the same geometry.  These polished touches matter.  
Softimage for the win.

So that said, while many 3D software could create the assets in their own time 
and space vacuum, Softimage (in my opinion) was the only software t

Re: Camera addon for use with Redshift

[Ivan Vasiljevic]

Not only that it works, but it's really great piece of plugin you have
there! Easy to work with, understand and push up the level of quality with
photograph approach!!!
Thanks for doing this! :)

Ivan


On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 6:47 PM, Emilio Hernandez  wrote:

> Glad to hear it is working Ivan
>
> ---
> Emilio Hernández   VFX & 3D animation.
>
>
> 2014-06-03 7:19 GMT-05:00 Ivan Vasiljevic :
>
> That helped, thanks!
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 2:14 PM, Toonafish  wrote:
>>
>>>  check the file size of the addon you downloaded, if it's too small,
>>> try using the Dropbox download menu.
>>>
>>> -Ronald
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 6/3/2014 13:22, Ivan Vasiljevic wrote:
>>>
>>>   Hmm... No luck installing it here.
>>> SI 2014 SP2, win 7 x64.
>>>  Installation goes fine but no menu nor in View->Toolbars->ehRSCamera...
>>>  Anyone had similar experience?
>>>
>>>  Ivan
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 1:05 PM, Ivan Vasiljevic 
>>> wrote:
>>>
  Great stuff, thanks for sharing. I'll give it a go!

  Cheers.
 Ivan


 On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 12:46 PM, Toonafish  wrote:

>  Great stuff !! Thanks Emilio.
>
> -Ronald
>
>
> On 6/3/2014 02:39, Emilio Hernandez wrote:
>
>  Hello list.
>
>  I want to share with you the ehRSCamera addon  for use with Redshift.
>
>  In the link you will find a pdf file with the documentation
> describing its features and use, as well as the xsiaddon in case you want
> to use it.
>
>  The plugin is free for any purpose.
>
>  Cheers and thank you all.
>
>
> https://www.dropbox.com/sh/unk9jbeyrxyq6m1/AABbki4OHNTbvNpxLL3GKFe8a/ehRSCamera
>  ---
> Emilio Hernández   VFX & 3D animation.
>
>
>


  --
Ivan Vasiljevic
 -
  Lighting TD
  Founder, Digital Asset Tailors
 -
  reel:https://vimeo.com/72183649
 web:www.ivasiljevic.com
  email:  i...@digitalassettailors.com
 ivan_vasilje...@hotmail.com



>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>Ivan Vasiljevic
>>> -
>>>  Lighting TD
>>>  Founder, Digital Asset Tailors
>>> -
>>>  reel:https://vimeo.com/72183649
>>> web:www.ivasiljevic.com
>>>  email:  i...@digitalassettailors.com
>>> ivan_vasilje...@hotmail.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Ivan Vasiljevic
>> -
>> Lighting TD
>> Founder, Digital Asset Tailors
>> -
>> reel:https://vimeo.com/72183649
>> web:www.ivasiljevic.com
>> email:  i...@digitalassettailors.com
>>ivan_vasilje...@hotmail.com
>>
>>
>>
>


-- 
Ivan Vasiljevic
-
Lighting TD
Founder, Digital Asset Tailors
-
reel:https://vimeo.com/72183649
web:www.ivasiljevic.com
email:  i...@digitalassettailors.com
   ivan_vasilje...@hotmail.com

Re: Shameless plug

[Matt Morris]

Congratulations Matt, its great to see what you've been working on all
these years finally. Love the style, hope it does well!

Re: Shameless plug

[David Saber]

Very interesting account Matt! It's interesting to see how Soft was used 
for a video game.

Is your company considering another app for its future?
I have watched the videos on the game's website, it's VERY good looking!!!
Congrats!
David