Re: Merry Christmas everyone

[Alok Gandhi]

Merry Christmas all!

Sent from my iPhone

> On 11-Dec-2014, at 6:31 am, Greg Punchatz  wrote:
> 
> Merry Christmas Votch and everyone else too!
> 
> 
>> On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 10:25 PM, Votch  wrote:
>> 
> 

Re: Best graphic card for Softimage?

[phil harbath]

I went Redshift and have been very pleased.  I can get by using a lot less 
computers than before on most projects,  volume smoke is pretty much all I use 
MR for anymore.   I have several computers with a combination of 780TI, 770, 
and 970,  while I think the 780Ti give the best performance, it really makes 
more sense to buy the 970 as they are priced better or 980 if you have more 
cash.  The Redshift say go with the cards with the most ram (that would be 
Titan 6tb, if you got even more cash), depends on your needs of course.

From: David Rivera 
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2014 8:51 PM
To: Softimage Mailing List 
Subject: Best graphic card for Softimage?

I know this subject has been posted a lot over the years, but it happens that I 
read a benchmark performance between autodesk products on certain webpage. They 
tested Radeons vs Nvidias and turns out that Mudbox and Softimage ran better on 
AMD (Radeons) - this is mental ray render.


So I was wondering whether to go full on mental ray (CPU) or take my savings 
and put it on a GPU renderer? Either case, now a days, which is the middle 
ranked graphic card for softimage? (My budget is around 1k).


Thanks.

David Rivera
3D Compositor/Animator
LinkedIN
Behance
VFX Reel

Best graphic card for Softimage?

[David Rivera]

I know this subject has been posted a lot over the years, but it happens that I 
read a benchmark performance between autodesk products on certain webpage. They 
tested Radeons vs Nvidias and turns out that Mudbox and Softimage ran better on 
AMD (Radeons) - this is mental ray render.
So I was wondering whether to go full on mental ray (CPU) or take my savings 
and put it on a GPU renderer? Either case, now a days, which is the middle 
ranked graphic card for softimage? (My budget is around 1k).
Thanks. David Rivera
3D Compositor/Animator
LinkedIN
Behance
VFX Reel

Re: Merry Christmas everyone

[Greg Punchatz]

Merry Christmas Votch and everyone else too!


On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 10:25 PM, Votch  wrote:

>

Re: realistic hair shading SI-MR

[Christian Keller]

It's a long time ago that I did hair with mr, Arnold makes that a breeze now. 
But I did that always with the rasterizer. If the hair is not to long you could 
bake the final gathering into a texture and use that to mix it into the 
shading, which gives you a nice look without too much rendering time.
Cheers
Chris 

Von meinem iPhone gesendet

> Am 07.12.2014 um 09:17 schrieb pete...@skynet.be:
> 
> Thanks Matt -
> interesting - I've come across a custom hair normals shader that was giving a 
> better, more "tube" or "cone" feel - that gave some more "presence" to the 
> hairs. (More so at close up) - and in my understanding the flat vs 
> cylindrical normals was the explanation. But I stand corrected.
> Still I've found the crosswise gradient as a bump useful on hair (and grass) 
> to give them a less flat feel.
> 
> You're very right of course that flat ribbon is much more geometry efficient 
> than cylinder - with all the memory advantages - but when 3Delight renders 
> those beautiful hair 'tubes' without any geometric artifacts, much more 
> convincing looking and much faster and at a fraction of the memory overhead - 
> it's hard to complement MR on its very efficient choice of the flat ribbon. 
> (apples and oranges, I know)
> 
> Yes, I did my own digging in rendersettings for hair on Barnyard. Having a 
> screenful of unique characters, each with several patches of hair, with 
> wildly different styles and requirements, 8 years ago, on MR, with 
> requirement for a plethora of lights in the scene, all of them with 
> (soft)shadows. The default settings fall down quick, as in: results not good 
> enough plus too slow, but there is a lot to be got out MR in that respect 
> yet. (which was the main reason for my reply to OP) I recall rasterizer and 
> shadowmaps as two main ones for making it look better (also filtering and 
> sampling ofcourse) - and then all those little parameters to get the 
> rendertimes down. BSP, raydepth, and careful use of partitions and visibility 
> settings!
> And from that production (and others after) I've never had the feeling of 
> hair being a real bottleneck for lighting. Particles and effects much more so 
> in those pre-pre-ICE days.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> -Original Message- From: Matt Lind
> Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2014 2:03 AM
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: realistic hair shading SI-MR
> 
> @Peter
> 
> MR hair geometry is flat ribbon, but the normal is computed from a virtual
> cylinder like a normal map with full control over shaft radius and taper
> along the length.  For most practical purposes it should create the desired
> look.  Using the utility shaders (math/lookup nodes) available in the
> rendertree, you can read hair UV coords and surface normal yourself if you
> want to shade them differently than the provided hair shaders.  Mental ray
> stores hair information in the state which can be accessed by any shader
> which cares to dig into that information.
> 
> The reason for flat ribbon is to allow hair to be represented as physical
> geometry which can be styled and groomed, respond to dynamics, and use
> material/texture shaders for shading while keeping memory consumption
> low/reasonable (representing hair as geometry is hugely expensive).  Mental
> ray does offer true cylinder hair, but to get cylinder hair would require
> the hair shader to be implemented as a volume shader (which would have it's
> own set of issues).  I believe that was how the original softimage hair
> shader from 10 years ago was implemented.  It rendered hair convincingly for
> the basics such as highlights, but most people didn't like it because as a
> volume shader it did not permit styling and grooming (or at least not much
> control over it), and rendered quite slow with frequent crashing as mental
> ray volumes can be a bit finicky.
> 
> I experimented with hair rendering in mental ray for Barnyard all those
> years ago.  From a purely technical point of view, writing shaders for hair
> isn't too hard - it's just standard material/texture shader with additional
> metadata for the hair.  The key to getting results is being smart with your
> render settings.  You must be stringent on ray depth, recursion, shadow
> type, memory limits, and so on.  Setting them too generously will make your
> render times go through the roof as you're telling mental ray to wander and
> find things to do which probably aren't necessary.  the default render
> settings in Softimage are probably too generous for hair.
> 
> 
> Matt
> 

Re: IK/FK Leg setup

[Eric Thivierge]

Just to chime in, yes the blend nodes are acceptable and that's how I 
learned to rig things in Maya. Multiply / Divide nodes work just find 
too and a few others that I frequented.


Eric T.

On Wednesday, December 10, 2014 7:48:40 AM, Sofronis Efstathiou wrote:

Thanks Eric, really appreciated! And thanks for the heads up about the
Unit Conversation nodes – I bet that was gonna bite me in a few days….

I’ll have a play and see what I come up with.

Love the link by the way – I may frame it in the classroom :0)

Cheers

Sofronis (Saf) Efstathiou

RE: IK/FK Leg setup

[Sofronis Efstathiou]

Thanks Eric, really appreciated! And thanks for the heads up about the Unit 
Conversation nodes – I bet that was gonna bite me in a few days….

I’ll have a play and see what I come up with.

Love the link by the way – I may frame it in the classroom :0)

Cheers

Sofronis (Saf) Efstathiou

Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Competition & Festival Director
Computer Animation Academic Group
National Centre for Computer Animation

Email: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk

Tel: +44 (0) 1202 965805

Profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sofronisefstathiou

Student Work:
http://www.youtube.com/NCCA3DAnimation
http://www.youtube.com/NCCADigitalFX
http://www.youtube.com/NCCAAnimation

[cid:image001.jpg@01D01477.9F6ED910]  
[cid:image002.png@01D01477.9F6ED910] 


[cid:image003.jpg@01D01477.9F6ED910]

Awarded for world-class computer animation teaching
with wide scientific and creative applications

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Eric Turman
Sent: 10 December 2014 12:32
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: IK/FK Leg setup

Hi Sofronis,

Yeah, its perfectly acceptable as far as Maya goes. Even for the conditional 
nodes, you'll need to compare colors--think of it as a triple scalar comparison 
node :P The nodes in Maya do evaluate much faster than constraints. Expressions 
should be a last resort; they are more often than not much slower (think scop 
in Soft). One thing to watch out for is the sometimes helpful, sometime not 
helpful automatically inserted Unit conversion node asMaya will put a value in 
that it thinks that you need. All of a sudden your graph will convert to 
radians when you still need to be working in degrees.

Provided that you are in a situation where you have to use a Maya only 
solution, a node based rig is worth it as it will evaluate faster--it is your 
best option. Unfortunately one side effect is that the channel bar becomes 
littered with useless node information. It frightens and confuses animators. 
That aside, I have made many Maya rigs with nodes as the primary "gloo." They 
are stable and work much faster.

If you do not have to stay purely inside of Maya, Fabric Splice may be much 
more palatable and sensible to work with.

Cheers,
-=Eric

P.S. On a Humorous note, I agree with you; there is a lot in Maya that is, as 
you say, "I just wished they would name it something sensible. No one would 
think this was the node they were looking for!" Maya is appropriately  named:
http://vaniquotes.org/wiki/Maya_means_insanity._Another_meaning_of_maya_means_insanity._Just_like_when_a_man_becomes_insane,_that_is_false._It_is_expected_that_he_should_not_be_insane._By_treatment_he_is_brought_again_to_his_original_consciousness




On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 5:53 AM, Sofronis Efstathiou 
mailto:sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk>> wrote:
Hi all,

I’m looking at some options and alternatives for creating a leg IK>FK rig setup 
with blending options in Maya. Has anyone seen and used this method - 
http://youtu.be/wDy6GQjPpp0?t=8m16s - they use a BlendColours node on each of 
the respective joints. It seems like it will work – but I have a real problem 
with using a node in Maya that was built for colour blending to control 
rotational blends…I guess it’s an adaptable node  (I just wished they would 
name it something sensible. No one would think this was the node they were 
looking for!)

Anyway, any advice appreciated – as well as any strong alternatives.

Cheers

Sofronis (Saf) Efstathiou

Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Competition & Festival Director
Computer Animation Academic Group
National Centre for Computer Animation

Email: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk



[http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/Images/QueensAwardLogo.jpg]

BU is a Disability Two Ticks Employer and has signed up to the Mindful Employer 
charter. Information about the accessibility of University buildings can be 
found on the BU DisabledGo 
webpages

This email is intended only for the person to whom it is addressed and may 
contain confidential information. If you have received this email in error, 
please notify the sender and delete this email, which must not be copied, 
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Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not 
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subsidiary companies via email.



--




-=T=-

Re: IK/FK Leg setup

[Eric Turman]

Hi Sofronis,

Yeah, its perfectly acceptable as far as Maya goes. Even for the
conditional nodes, you'll need to compare colors--think of it as a triple
scalar comparison node :P The nodes in Maya do evaluate much faster than
constraints. Expressions should be a last resort; they are more often than
not much slower (think scop in Soft). One thing to watch out for is the
sometimes helpful, sometime not helpful automatically inserted Unit
conversion node asMaya will put a value in that it thinks that you need.
All of a sudden your graph will convert to radians when you still need to
be working in degrees.

Provided that you are in a situation where you have to use a Maya only
solution, a node based rig is worth it as it will evaluate faster--it is
your best option. Unfortunately one side effect is that the channel bar
becomes littered with useless node information. It frightens and confuses
animators. That aside, I have made many Maya rigs with nodes as the primary
"gloo." They are stable and work much faster.

If you do not have to stay purely inside of Maya, Fabric Splice may be much
more palatable and sensible to work with.

Cheers,
-=Eric

P.S. On a Humorous note, I agree with you; there is a lot in Maya that is,
as you say, "I just wished they would name it something sensible. No one
would think this was the node they were looking for!" Maya is appropriately
 named:
http://vaniquotes.org/wiki/Maya_means_insanity._Another_meaning_of_maya_means_insanity._Just_like_when_a_man_becomes_insane,_that_is_false._It_is_expected_that_he_should_not_be_insane._By_treatment_he_is_brought_again_to_his_original_consciousness




On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 5:53 AM, Sofronis Efstathiou <
sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk> wrote:

>  Hi all,
>
>
>
> I’m looking at some options and alternatives for creating a leg IK>FK rig
> setup with blending options in Maya. Has anyone seen and used this method -
> http://youtu.be/wDy6GQjPpp0?t=8m16s - they use a BlendColours node on
> each of the respective joints. It seems like it will work – but I have a
> real problem with using a node in Maya that was built for colour blending
> to control rotational blends…I guess it’s an adaptable node  (I just wished
> they would name it something sensible. No one would think this was the node
> they were looking for!)
>
>
>
> Anyway, any advice appreciated – as well as any strong alternatives.
>
>
>
> Cheers
>
>
>
> Sofronis (Saf) Efstathiou
>
> Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Competition & Festival Director
>
> Computer Animation Academic Group
>
> *National Centre for Computer Animation*
>
>
> Email: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk
>
>
>
>   BU is a Disability Two Ticks Employer and has signed up to the Mindful
> Employer charter. Information about the accessibility of University
> buildings can be found on the BU DisabledGo webpages
> 
>
> This email is intended only for the person to whom it is addressed and may
> contain confidential information. If you have received this email in error,
> please notify the sender and delete this email, which must not be copied,
> distributed or disclosed to any other person.
>
> Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not
> necessarily represent those of Bournemouth University or its subsidiary
> companies. Nor can any contract be formed on behalf of the University or
> its subsidiary companies via email.
>
>


-- 




-=T=-

IK/FK Leg setup

[Sofronis Efstathiou]

Hi all,

I'm looking at some options and alternatives for creating a leg IK>FK rig setup 
with blending options in Maya. Has anyone seen and used this method - 
http://youtu.be/wDy6GQjPpp0?t=8m16s - they use a BlendColours node on each of 
the respective joints. It seems like it will work - but I have a real problem 
with using a node in Maya that was built for colour blending to control 
rotational blends...I guess it's an adaptable node  (I just wished they would 
name it something sensible. No one would think this was the node they were 
looking for!)

Anyway, any advice appreciated - as well as any strong alternatives.

Cheers

Sofronis (Saf) Efstathiou

Postgraduate Framework Leader and BFX Competition & Festival Director
Computer Animation Academic Group
National Centre for Computer Animation

Email: sefstath...@bournemouth.ac.uk



[http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/Images/QueensAwardLogo.jpg]

BU is a Disability Two Ticks Employer and has signed up to the Mindful Employer 
charter. Information about the accessibility of University buildings can be 
found on the BU DisabledGo 
webpages

This email is intended only for the person to whom it is addressed and may 
contain confidential information. If you have received this email in error, 
please notify the sender and delete this email, which must not be copied, 
distributed or disclosed to any other person.

Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not 
necessarily represent those of Bournemouth University or its subsidiary 
companies. Nor can any contract be formed on behalf of the University or its 
subsidiary companies via email.

Re: realistic hair shading SI-MR

[Leendert A. Hartog]

Well, I did a lot of reading on the subject (fascinating stuff) and ran 
some tests (with MR and 3delight both) and have come to the conclusion 
there just aren’t enough hours in my (hobbyist) days to ever get this 
right. In conclusion: my intended image will get the trusted NPR look. 
Thank you all, though, for helping to clear this up.

;)

Greetz
Leendert

--

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

Re: Need your opinion to improve Maya Outliner/ Attribute Editor

[Cristobal Infante]

Ok, sideways keys do the same thing, but surely up and down keys makes more
sense in this case?



On 9 December 2014 at 10:24, Cristobal Infante  wrote:

> Another request not sure if it's been mentioned.
> It would be great to traverse the node editor with the arrow keys (up and
> down).
>
> Is this already possible?
>
>
>
> On 3 December 2014 at 09:14, Marco Peixoto  wrote:
>
>> Make you icons bigger by using an external image, dont use the default
>> size from 1978 days 64*64. Its a hack...
>>
>> You can have a preset image button 128*64 for example and use it always,
>> it might not shown exact size when yuou add it to the shelf but going and
>> back to another shel gets it on normal size.
>>
>> Yes its a hack but
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 12:26 AM, Andy Nicholas 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Speaking of Maya icons… last time I looked, you could only have 4 or
>>> possibly 5 letters of text underneath each icon on the shelf.
>>>
>>> [WLFTB…]
>>>
>>> Sorry, try again…
>>>
>>> "Would love for
>>> that to be fixed."
>>>
>>> ;)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2 Dec 2014, at 18:37, Eric Turman  wrote:
>>>
>>> Fair enough...The quick help is a nice touch. F1 is still better IMHO;
>>> all these tiny radial menus on RMB that require precise maneuvering of the
>>> cursor slows workflow down...especially if your resolution is 3840 x 2040.
>>> Maya's right click/space bar menus just look like a spiderweb mess to
>>> me...I can't stand them. That and Maya's affinity for icons all over the
>>> place...feels like I'm using Truespace 3D or Real 3D from the 1990's
>>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 12:23 PM, Cesar Saez  wrote:
>>>
 If you right click on a command in the script editor you will find the
 link to the command documentation... Quick help is also very helpful in
 this regard.

 On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 2:02 PM, Eric Turman 
 wrote:

> Not being able to highlight a command in Maya and hit F1 like you can
> in Softimage
>

>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -=T=-
>>>
>>>
>>
>

Re: [Maya] Arnold Render Region

[Andy Goehler]

Yeah, there's a limit to the time and head aches I'm willing to spend on my 
tool chain.


> On 10.12.2014, at 09:56, Cristobal Infante  wrote:
> 
> All of this 3rd party tools, bring no joy to me. All it takes is for the 
> author to move onto something else and the plugin will die on a version of 
> Maya. Remember some plugins need to be recompiled with every new version.
> 
> 
> 
>> On Tuesday, 9 December 2014, Oscar Juarez  wrote:
>> They want to release it early next year, but it's not specified if it will 
>> be free or commercial. 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 3:24 PM, gareth bell  wrote:
>>> Of course it's third party - but a bonus for Maya none-the-less
>>> 
>>> https://vimeo.com/113739217

[Maya] Arnold Render Region

[Cristobal Infante]

All of this 3rd party tools, bring no joy to me. All it takes is for the
author to move onto something else and the plugin will die on a version of
Maya. Remember some plugins need to be recompiled with every new version.



On Tuesday, 9 December 2014, Oscar Juarez > wrote:

> They want to release it early next year, but it's not specified if it will
> be free or commercial.
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 3:24 PM, gareth bell 
> wrote:
>
>> Of course it's third party - but a bonus for Maya none-the-less
>>
>> https://vimeo.com/113739217
>>
>
>