Re: Midterm Exam

[Francois Lord]

That is one hard test!


On 2019-12-20 10:04 p.m., Matt Lind wrote:
> I used to give this to my students as the midterm exam for an Advanced
> XSI course which focused on the animation mixer and mental ray
> rendering.  It is a closed book exam which means no notes, no books,
> no computers, no reference materials.  You are only allowed a pencil,
> eraser, and one blank 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of scratch paper.
>  
> Each question must be answered with complete sentences to receive
> credit.  No points for bonus question until all other questions have
> been answered to completion.
>  
> Exam duration: 60 minutes.
>  
> The best score by my students was a 96.  The average score was 84. 
> Let’s see how you do.
>  
> NOTE: This exam was created when XSI v3.5 was the current release
> (2003).  Some behaviors / workflows may be different compared to what
> you use today.
>  
> ** 
> ** 
> *-*
> Name:   
> Date:   
>  
>  
> *PART I: Animation*
>  
> 1) What requirements must be met for two action clips to be able to
> blend their values within the Animation mixer?
>  
> 2) Name three advantages XSI constraints have over key frame
> techniques for animating objects:
>  
> 3) Name three advantages for using the animation mixer to animate
> scene elements (as opposed to setting key frames or applying
> constraints directly on the objects):
>  
> 4) How does a 'linked parameter' affect an object's animation
> differently from a constraint or FCurve?  What are the advantages of a
> linked parameter?
>  
> 5) A sphere is animated via an FCurve from the global origin to roll
> along the X-axis until it reaches X=10 at frame 50.  The key frames
> are applied to the sphere's global position and local orientation
> parameters.  From frames 51 through 100, the sphere is animated via a
> pose constraint from X=10 to another arbitrary point in 3D space
> designated by another object.  The sphere moves from X=10 to the
> designated target via an adjustment of the constraint's blending value
> from 0 to 1 (full off to full on).  If the constraint is then stored
> as a source and instanced onto the animation mixer as an action clip
> on frame 1 (thru 50), what happens to the sphere when the play button
> is pressed?
>  
> 6) Name two methods/tools for adjusting influence from one action clip
> to another on the animation mixer (i.e.: transfer full influence from
> 1st clip to the 2nd clip):
>  
> 7) What is the difference between an action 'source' and an action
> ‘clip’ in the animation mixer?  How can editing data within each
> affect the rest of the scene?
>  
> 8) How do you make an exact copy of an action clip in  the animation
> mixer (including clip effects and other adjustments)?
>  
> 9) What is an offset map?
>  
> 10) What are the restrictions of an offset map?  (i.e. pros and cons)
>  
> 11) Name 3 possible uses of an offset map:
>  
> 12) What is the difference between a pose clip and an action clip? 
> Name 3 reasons why you may need to use a pose clip:
>  
>  
> *PART II: General tools*
>  
>  
> 13) How does the explorer view differ from the schematic view?
>  
> 14) Name 3 things that can be performed in the explorer view that
> cannot be performed in the schematic view:
>  
> 15) What's the difference between the Match translation/rotation/scale
> tools and the position/orientation/scale constraints?
>  
> 16) What's the difference between a selected parameter and a marked
> parameter?  What's the purpose of each?
>  
> 17) What requirements must be met before a parameter can be marked?
>  
> 18) Name three possible methods for marking parameter(s) of scene
> elements:
>  
> 19) What is a proxy parameter?  What are possible uses of a proxy
> parameter?
>  
> 20) What is the Object viewer and what advantage(s) does it have over
> other viewers?
>  
> 21) What is a model and why should it be used?
>  
>  
> *BONUS:*
>  
> Name as many methods as you can for editing parameter values: (1 point
> each)
>  
>  
> ---
>  
>  
>  
>  
> Matt Lind
> Animator / Technical Director
> Softimage Certified Instructor:
>    Softimage|3D
>    Softimage|XSI
> matt(dot)lind(at)mantom(dot)net
>  
>  
>  
>
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Re: The Softimage mailing list

[Francois Lord]

Yes you can use it with you regular mail client as usual.

On 2019-11-20 12:33 p.m., Sven Constable wrote:
>
> There are no buttons yet because the google group works in archive
> mode, as I understand it.
>
> I never used google groups but I think it will be accessible the same
> way as a regular mail server. So you can use your email client as well?
>
>  
>
> Sven
>
>  
>
> *From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
> [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Pierre
> Schiller
> *Sent:* Tuesday, November 19, 2019 8:44 PM
> *To:* Official Softimage Users Mailing List.
> https://u9432639.ct.sendgrid.net/wf/click?upn=lIXdN6W56FnEjHCwrBXqOq0HQNpV0huvAGw1zu6Xp8eVQuk2cNZiNFjx2k-2FfTNchiLG9o7ECJDJ0Mw-2FRzSlfldhFWvv2G7M9xrogMv-2BiUgrG-2BmCVAfC2HxBWG0Czpbw8UUe9Xkbh68Twjp-2FiA-2FSErDaB0QMN6TZInAAMY3U5tTiO1pHL3fqc59MeZ53LOZG-2Fxgw7w1ET7NsZfhM1NrTIoU8e4itqB8an6cilichw7ugVnCs-2Bwed9bSquuodJl4wL3PlTXpIO5wcLvXRKdeVH97BMUROxYniT2GtLJUPNu1LrNQsGYZ3WNBqZIOk7iY-2Fu8TtVoHFu8L9NFQWth3nFn0LMfLsWSURJacykrKMtybTNVFzSKze6NpzlIEPnpq7BJPESz9Hy8IYgDkFprmK56Q-3D-3D_a6oQc7tnfcb0GKvoO27fPkrQ0ATQyF1SDBXJOg7-2FbuTI7jNFrhHpo4Oh8S2uuIfY0n5H0St8s5TRxbf5JfVO51103mUp1TYPjudWUWBgq8H0GixCIDb10sriTeOubtaqjAqPTN5pXyawCwb6mDM796tCo01dVDPr4O2TWMNrJhelNdstLuXfT5Axyb09ksP-2BK35uN1oB7ii-2BxXGuKDefGrTJdti8bLXHeSppd75hXfU-3D
>  
> *Subject:* Re: The Softimage mailing list
>
>  
>
> Awesome news! I am in for that change. What's the url?
>
> How does a google group with posting? (Where are the buttons?).
>
> ///
>
> What happened to softimage.tv
> <https://u9432639.ct.sendgrid.net/wf/click?upn=lIXdN6W56FnEjHCwrBXqOmMAKB8JGacZcowsK4IlqY8aQGPpnujEXNbmyey-2FEv7HGtoL-2BI-2FyFXaqM003GW6wYgVbvyfqUv5Ew-2FWrUPctyBxjqg5RbKGjTYCwhD5QntG2vLT-2BvSNeIfu7ETWshp-2BdSXB0xeLoiQtZdxwbZe4ZGaD3P2781LPHOuPwPgxJMXVF-2FruzB0O-2FT2Kli9lxhCEtmktd5-2FQz04HD-2B0rFp7Qis9zpXc6LTfESkSyRtrVZUuW2rptJMllOdS4gbnyB3JD4YCkhP4AcTpgHnvXiHam8rt0Pd69DkJhIgf8dX791jRl0Zr5ABs160dQzZw7bPEBwnZOZ4Dda26E4-2BW8lQcWz5Ie3ew-2BtLMUqXMh2vgOXfrcutOxEVH1bUy2P0cKrIjvcmmKg64Wc0iJxI-2FxDj05CISel1ZnjBARDT39l7sP33j6yXbPpGBiW-2FVKiDVzPQQIQsgBC-2FP2MtDjknXhH6KyqYqSF1j-2FtkgKzLwKWBe-2BVH0ccTF-2Fbyi7Er5ukqhW4bdZIsUB6U2WuBGLrsw-2FDuAXQuq0gI0KH0YcFlpA-2FFfH-2BT4eMbJnO5iwMQmCCYrNtI8VPBFKB-2F2xKp9Vs1QqOYHktP5L7lQV4Y-2BDruWrVYHNK00yVjY7DYWhYmp3ZtwgM7tE2IaLB627axucfBzy-2B4eGi2Zz6xdxT1hL21dDsn1iwBJ1xolN0EtlVjW8Nc8MZLcop-2FVz12biZRjUxFWEGVHyUirQPnEFANTZwZvS1xIM3atShgBQTaNpVU0Q8pbLUiSg7E33uyQScMwGeZvVBZmZq2GvpI2uIqwQpPdpAwvPklA7RUENqu04tMFAuGxsd-2B4C0JUtcNDHr4AzqXxuPyfrfAueTIzZakizveOG0n-2BxUQ5DmqWLwFqsM47XXAhm9W1chzH5qlu9KU-2FvdF1uKALH3J5mPVzqATOMoJSqQnRdI-2F6idAPmNKAhUHDWTNmfF0wHvB-2FUf9-2FgPDC-2FfGHe0aGtux3g0xvZHu8-2BBAT1OHAQNsCM8sajWbObQz0644dfJhnGfKB5AwBgdfC4yLSiIAYwQwpB-2F90g8-2FW3H6Y9Fh0GU-2FbCo9BfTqp-2BdLbDmajZ72pDULahjEP1fBGqydWmmg4vooZQg2Lks5-2F8rM4IFoCnzm5Vnkv9XRfj9WKfuwPBOvkY7RLUJq8EcUSYX19QS3j0gvHLiscMjKq4QNUpNKh1v6lYELFj8vMN8uBBZNkj27wx0jAo-2B85LDLLDuXHkwuQixJl-2BbMeDyAhyM5S8BBbpqH9mPxLitTrKbKbyWccEJjz6Ja4fHMGqR4LrbWdeOKCicJjYi8kI0baJ8BSQyJMWbV-2BwefOQNq-2FQF5pppNVWiI-2FR2lZZyen-2Fu1tn5su6ubLJ4Y2KT3tEI1wNkPcfSPCAr-2B9wqJo5rNLS9j6bPx7FB96l0QUwYblwzbD3YO7FInT-2BLV8IpPxNYHI0cTRfSEZO6vrnr8jDjvkG0l4iQHXMH7tGuxtderIlJy-2BV67L6iVfXzyjRLZE39LQ7FHQxHo359BKIHgUZs9PzU6JL27m5oVrdJlipguDHUI572xF4dfaP6MI-2FJMLbLG8Zhxg3BRaGcbrUu9ft7-2B-2Bth7IO7-2BBcDydpVsmKk8zmCwG5B4JRtiEKrTlJiBXP0W12523GmMA1dB-2BGoJL9SfIFKf84SBFr2APWO0DVntPiT1SxZoqSEwdorcKl54ntdc-2F3ccyZVmpuv6aWAl57lWr-2FdgcUHUb7YMQxmPNl3AGD1yvcGQri8Lo7QvY5sh3Nqde8mW3Hoa83K2IEvDnujN-2Bv3kZN2-2FvOKzTf-2FDenRIJ1aIGmIB6nbmn-2FgO1T3xcNNlZOH7VBqJH7BmRbuyVlXioQBj-2FCQZsVgexNLcGLlCpS-2FpsHP3EzPnWFmbmJPTSi-2BfwmPVCIaLDN7OUAsLbDjgGSjsMCCEgDuygK2buKXTaHMYTbTRlwtLVuWqzWjIuLeEW6HBvuOzZDk1GpYVDra77tTBlAyahUCmqLql0l4upt4-2Fw-2FJ-2FfYIVP5UecVaLolr3cdOHjyoT5ZCQcSMjnwS2jrr6BPcJO1cgY-2Fmo3OJonAs1wxgWF-2Fb0JU1h52iko3zoc6En-2BGR1fK50HJosrYXzOf6Kzyw3ztalHDhueHZSlhoBF0WHTaF2GOtWEAdXn4XlUq33kM35a25ePQut1PDHbutPp4GGE8D-2FZNyHNE0MLnGyQl1NUS3DbNm2WMXtrjjCdjQPCJLuENqvHM-2FxxKdKJB3oJgflFIAipawXw-3D-3D_a6oQc7tnfcb0GKvoO27fPkrQ0ATQyF1SDBXJOg7-2FbuTI7jNFrhHpo4Oh8S2uuIfY0n5H0St8s5TRxbf5JfVO55b8n-2BSVmD10xnQNECmAf4kC9HEWo9h6AVCI3w0fW1AeShepV1UytdL2PTyIYSG27rdupuyTrwTOtYdfFgPkb4L5qC8zgW3b8DdSBYzdMeix-2BG5syqlqa72EPvKE4OHgBHZDCg-2F4Ss-2BVksWFODX4Mbs-3D>?
> :)
>
>  
>
> On Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 8:48 PM Francois Lord  <mailto:li...@francoislord.com>> wrote:
>
> Well, that day has come.
>
> I am not watching this list as often as I used to. My Softimage
> days are behind me now. I used to open it up to present some
> example scenes I had for my Arnold class at NAD that I did not
> have the time to convert to Maya. But now all my scenes work in
> Maya so I don't need to open it anymore.
>
> I still miss Softimage. Maya simply doesn't have the elegant
> workflow to match. Houdini i

The Softimage mailing list

[Francois Lord]

Well, that day has come.

I am not watching this list as often as I used to. My Softimage days are
behind me now. I used to open it up to present some example scenes I had
for my Arnold class at NAD that I did not have the time to convert to
Maya. But now all my scenes work in Maya so I don't need to open it
anymore.

I still miss Softimage. Maya simply doesn't have the elegant workflow to
match. Houdini is better but not as simple and intuitive as Soft. I have
to admit though that I've had a lot of fun learning Solaris in the past
few months. It reminds me of when I first played with ICE. It reminds me
of the sheer power that is accessible at your fingertips but you don't
know how to harness it yet.

You guys keep talking about the end of a community. As Luc-Eric said, we
just need to move over to the google group, which currently server as
archive. It's been archiving the posts since many years now. It has 1328
registered members. I am the owner of that group and I can switch it
from an archive to a normal group at any time. We just need to decide on
a date.

It could be on January 1st.

Francois

On 2019-11-18 2:44 a.m., Enter Reality wrote:
> Hi all,
> I would like to thank all of you that contribute to extending my
> knowledge of XSI and showcasing some of the cool stuff I've seen
> around, so thank you beautiful people :D
>
> As for me, I've joined the dark side and switched to Maya, and beside
> hating all the constant crashes and all its fault, I also learned a
> bit of MEL scripting and developed some advanced stuff for character
> rigging, so this is a huge plus in my bookbut still hating every
> second :D
>
> It'll be nice to still get in contact, say using Linkedin, so that
> people can still see what they're doing and stay in contact.
>
> Has been a really fun ride, my heart is still with XSI, so long fellas!
>
> Nicolas
>
> Il giorno lun 18 nov 2019 alle ore 02:21 Alan Fregtman
> mailto:alan.fregt...@gmail.com>> ha scritto:
>
> Hi all! 👋
>
> I've barely said a word since the EOL, but I made many friends
> back in the day. I helped many and many helped me back when I was
> in need. You are a bunch of wonderful people and while I don't
> make a living with XSI anymore, I don't regret choosing to start
> my career with it. <3
>
> I also have to tip my virtual hat to Raffaele, whom I met here,
> for his "Python for XSI TDs" intro course that was the beginning
> of my falling in love with the Python language. After my
> professional XSI days ran out, I decided to pivot to a fulltime
> /Pipeline Developer/ role and it's been really fun so far. (You
> might even say.. /out of this world
> 
> 

Re: Any Dinosaurs Still Lurking?

[Francois Lord]

I must admit I lurk less and less. I look at the emails subjects from
time to time. This one called me. ;)


On 2018-05-11 01:53 PM, Bill Hinkson wrote:
> I still lurk.
>
> On Fri, May 11, 2018 at 1:05 PM, patrick nethercoat
> mailto:patr...@brandtanim.co.uk>> wrote:
>
> My hands are not yet cold and dead.
>
> On 11 May 2018 at 18:01, Sandy Sutherland
> mailto:sandy.mailli...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Yep still around as one of them 'from before'
>
> S.
>
> On 11 May 2018 at 17:23, Bradley Gabe  > wrote:
>
> Just curious?
>
> Now that I’m a resident in San Antonio, I was reminiscing
> about old SIGGRAPHs on the Riverwalk, and came to the
> realization that the Softimage mailing lists, for me at
> least, were my Facebook before there was official social
> media.
>
> San Antonio still owes me a camera! -- Softimage
> Mailing List. To unsubscribe, send a mail to
> softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com
>  with
> “unsubscribe” in the subject, and reply to confirm.
>
>
>
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>
>
>
> -- 
> Brandt Animation
> www.brandtanim.co.uk
> 
> 
> 020 7734 0196
> 07717 38 39 40
>
> --
> Softimage Mailing List.
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>  with
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>
>
>
>
> -- 
> bill hinkson
> animator & designer
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__billhinksondesign.com&d=DwIFaQ&c=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA&r=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA&m=nwOM08Pxs1TvxSWisoAwLsPSQzKvzM2uYL_4p1Pyepw&s=73AnC33h50EkIqHgghWHW-ltXI3CEhjugd78oibS9s0&e=
> 
>
>
> --
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Re: Softimage mailing 2016 year in review

[Francois Lord]

Wow, I'm no longer in the top 25 posters. Times change!


On 01/06/2017 01:33 PM, Stephen Blair wrote:

http://wp.me/powV4-3nR


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Re: SI|3D Flashback

[Francois Lord]

Ah yes the Grabber! It became the Volume Deform in XSI. I thought it 
worked better as a modeling tool in soft, but was a better deform tool 
in XSI.


Conscious also made the MetaMesh plugin if my memory serves me well. It 
was an implementation of subd in Soft|3D.



On 11/11/2016 01:31 PM, Sven Constable wrote:


Hey list,

a demo by Chinny and he's talking about some plugins. I remember many 
of them, like PhoenixTools, Arete and the Ray Rebels stuff but I never 
heard of "Conscious". They developed a plugin called Grabber, that 
seems it was incorporated in XSI later on, as "Volume Deform". Ha, 
didn't know that!


Quite entertaining demo btw. Great foleys ;)

sven

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVPawEVWDT8



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RE: testing list

[Francois Lord]

No no no. Look at his lack of capital letters. This is a clear sign of 
someone being afraid. ;)
(sorry, it's friday)

On 2016-09-02 16:51, Sven Constable wrote:
> I think he just wanted to test his new mail adress for the list. And 
> it
> worked :)
>
> -Original Message-
> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
> [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of 
> Francois Lord
> Sent: Friday, September 02, 2016 10:23 PM
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: Re: testing list
>
> This is is getting so quiet that people are afraid it's being shut 
> down.
>
> On 2016-09-02 14:09, L Rousseau wrote:
>> testing list
>> --
>> Softimage Mailing List.
>> To unsubscribe, send a mail to
>> softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with "unsubscribe" in the
>> subject, and reply to confirm.
>
> --
> Softimage Mailing List.
> To unsubscribe, send a mail to 
> softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with
> "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.
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> --
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Re: testing list

[Francois Lord]

This is is getting so quiet that people are afraid it's being shut 
down.

On 2016-09-02 14:09, L Rousseau wrote:
> testing list
> --
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Re: Wiki EOL soon

[Francois Lord]

 

Softimageblog.com is managed by Patrick Boucher. I know he thought
about closing this site several times in the past years. But I convinced
him not to. 

I sent him an email about the current matter. We'll see
how he reacts. 

F 

On 2016-08-19 08:35, Fabian Schnuer Gohde wrote:


> Speaking of backups, is there any way to make sure
http://www.softimageblog.com [11] can be viewed locally in the future?

> I still find myself there often enough. 
> Best regards,
> Fabian 
>

> On 19 August 2016 at 09:51, Morten Bartholdy  wrote:
> 
>> I have had HTTrack running for approximately 6,5
hours after which it reported: "06:32:53 Panic: Too many URLs, giving
up..(>10)"
>> 
>> I have got 2,43 GB worth of Wiki now and upon
brief inspection it works locally, but the error message and 1,3 GB
discrepancy (from the 3,7 GB Patrick mentions) indicates it might not be
complete...
>> 
>> I hope Maurice and the dev team can find a way to let
perhaps Matt host it onwards.
>> 
>> //Morten
>> 
>> > Den 18. august
2016 klokken 16:37 skrev Patrick Neese :
>>
>
>> >
>> > The wiki is over 3.7gigs with image/video/zips files. Expect
the server to
>> > be slow as everyone wgets the files :)
>> >
>> > On
Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 9:12 AM, Perry Harovas 
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > > Ironically, had we had notice that the same
thing was going to happen to
>> > > Softimage itself when Autodesk
bought it (the way they informed
>> > > everyone about Naiad ceasing to
continue as a product) there would have
>> > > been anger but it
possibly wouldn't have been quite as volatile,
>> > > since it would
have been honest.
>> > >
>> > > Plus, one can't help but find the
wording of the below notice as somewhat
>> > > of an unintended comment
on Softimage itself...
>> > >
>>> > *"therefore will cease to
exist."*
>>> >
>> > >
>> > > On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 1:51 PM, Olivier
Jeannel 
>> > > wrote:
>> > >
>> > >>
http://softimage.wiki.softimage.com/index.php?title=Main_Page [4]
>> >
>>
>> > >>
>> > >>
>>> >> --
>> > >> Softimage Mailing List.
>> > >>
To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com
[5]
>> > >> with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.
>>
> >>
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > --
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> >
>
>> > > Perry Harovas
>> > > Animation and Visual Effects
>> > >
>>> >
http://www.TheAfterImage.com [6] 
>>>
>
>> > > -26 Years Experience
>> > > -Member of the Visual Effects
Society (VES)
>> > >
>> > > --
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>> > >
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Re: Motion Tracking

[Francois Lord]

 

It's been a while since I worked with 3DE, but I always found it
slow to work with. If you have one shot to track it might not make a big
difference. But when you have tens of shots it starts to show. 

On
2016-07-20 11:01, Andy Nicholas wrote: 

> I know these things are often
down to personal preference and depth of knowledge of a package, but for
me, 3DEqualizer wins out in most situations. The only time I go to
PFTrack is for their mesh tracking and perspective alignment tool. I'm
not particularly a fan of PFTrack's node editor, as it doesn't provide
the sorts of workflows that I'd expect from it so I quickly get
frustrated. I find that it's too high level in terms of the data that
gets passed between nodes. I want more granularity.
> 
> With 3DE being
so (relatively) cheap with its rental pricing now, I'd find it hard to
justify using anything else. It's not the easiest of packages to pick up
when you're starting out, but for me that's about the only downside.
>

> On 20/07/2016 15:07, Alok Gandhi wrote: 
> 
>> Chiming in from VFX
Pipeline perspective on which I have a worked for quite a number of
years (though not in tracking), there are these 3 or 4 dccs as mentioned
above that I have seen the most experienced tracking artists using each
one of them for solving specific shot problems. In the end a solid
tracking artist would preferably have most of them in their arsenal to
track any shot thrown their way using a combination or one of them.
Sometimes tracking can be a brutal and needs some serious fire fighting.
So I would say all of them have their pros and cons but by a little
margin PF Track wins the race. 
>> 
>> On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 5:25 PM,
Chris Marshall  wrote:
>> 
>>> OK
Brilliant! I'll check out some of those options. Sounds like PF Track
might be my first point of contact. Thanks List!
>>> 
>>> On 20 July
2016 at 09:05, Olivier Jeannel  wrote:
>>>

>>>> I've seen some nice thing coming out of nuke tracking (I don't use
Nuke ..yet) 
>>>> Other than that PF track. 
>>>> 
>>>> On Tue, Jul 19,
2016 at 11:48 PM, Adam Sale  wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>>
PF Track all the way in my opinion. Node based interface for combining
all kinds of matchmove , object tracks, stabilization, undistortion,
redistortion etc. Its cheaper by a long shot than 3dEq, though I can't
speak for the rental aspect costs. 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at
10:30 AM, Francois Lord  wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>>
Syntheyes for low price, precision of 2D tracking and speed of 2D
tracking.
>>>>>> PFTrack for overall speed and versatility.
>>>>>>
3DEqualizer for difficult shots and precision of 3D track.
>>>>>> NukeX
for simple shots if you already have a license. 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> If you
need to choose just one, I would pick PFTrack. The node based workflow
is awesome, but the rest of the UI is awful. A good combination is to 2D
track in Syntheyes and 3D solve in PFTrack. 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On
2016-07-19 10:46, Rob Wuijster wrote: 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> There's PFTrack,
and SynthEyes is used a lot as well. SynthEyes has decent pricing too.

>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Rob
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>
/-//
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On 19-7-2016 16:18,
Cristobal Infante wrote: 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> I would recommend
3DEqualizer, it's probably the best one out there. You can now rent it.

>>>>>>>> FXPHD have some good intro courses I believe. 
>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>> On 19 July 2016 at 10:47, Chris Marshall
 wrote:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Hi All, What
are people using for motion tracking / match moving these days? I
haven't needed to do it for a while.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>
Cheers
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Chris
>>>>>>>>> 
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softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com [1] with "unsubscribe" in the
subject, and reply to confirm.
>>>>>>>> 
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>>>>>>>>
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s

Re: Motion Tracking

[Francois Lord]

 

Syntheyes for low price, precision of 2D tracking and speed of 2D
tracking.
PFTrack for overall speed and versatility.
3DEqualizer for
difficult shots and precision of 3D track.
NukeX for simple shots if you
already have a license. 

If you need to choose just one, I would pick
PFTrack. The node based workflow is awesome, but the rest of the UI is
awful. A good combination is to 2D track in Syntheyes and 3D solve in
PFTrack. 

On 2016-07-19 10:46, Rob Wuijster wrote: 

> There's PFTrack,
and SynthEyes is used a lot as well. SynthEyes has decent pricing too.

> 
> Rob
> 
> /-//
> 
> On 19-7-2016 16:18,
Cristobal Infante wrote: 
> 
>> I would recommend 3DEqualizer, it's
probably the best one out there. You can now rent it. 
>> FXPHD have
some good intro courses I believe. 
>> 
>> On 19 July 2016 at 10:47,
Chris Marshall  wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi All,
What are people using for motion tracking / match moving these days? I
haven't needed to do it for a while.
>>> 
>>> Cheers
>>> 
>>> Chris
>>>

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Re: Camera export - converting camera axis orientation?

[Francois Lord]

 

Yep, That's what I would do. 

On 2016-06-09 11:18, Thomas Volkmann
wrote: 

> You could try to create a new camera, change the
rotation-order in kinematics-localtransform, constrain it to the
original camera and use it for export (plotting first maybe?). 
> 
>
good luck, 
> Thomas 
> 
>> Morten Bartholdy hat am 9. Juni 2016 um
14:44 geschrieben:
>> 
>> 
>> I have a 3D track from which I need to
export the camera motion for driving a TechnoDolly move. The tracking
and size calibration is in place and the TD can import fbx so we are
almost set, but the TD wants axis rotaion order to be ZXY and my fbx is
most likely XYZ. In XSI fbx export there are no options for even y or z
up, but in Maya I can do that, plus I can seemingly do some sort of
Quaternian Interpolation mode. I have no idea what exactly that will do
for me though.
>> 
>> Has anyone here tried this succesfully and know
how to do it, or can perhaps offer some insight on how to change Axis
orientation order?
>> 
>> I have XSI and Maya available.
>> 
>>
Thanks!
>> 
>> //Morten
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Re: New render layers in maya

[Francois Lord]

Ok I just watched the video and I must admit this is pretty cool!
Expressions for collection members, relative overrides with multiplier
and offset, overrides that can be deactivated...

It looks like Autodesk got some hints from studios that were using
Softimage.

We'll see how it behaves in production, but I say it's promising.

F

On 2016-04-19 02:58 PM, Francois Lord wrote:
> This is the key to success. It made it very simple to work with
> overrides in XSI but it didn't deal well (at all) with references that
> change all the time. Using expressions is the way forward. Houdini is
> using expressions in its stylesheets, Katana is using the equivalent
> with nodes, we are using expressions in our in-house tool at Framestore.
>
> I remember we had to use very precise workflow rules in XSI to keep
> scenes clean (back objects partitions always being hidden, foreground
> partitions always being visible, object matte partitions being called
> MATTE, etc.)
>
> When you deal with expressions, you need even more rigid rules.
> Otherwise it quickly become an unusable mess. Also, all objects must
> respect the naming conventions. And artists who don't follow them must
> be executed.
>
> F
>
> On 2016-04-18 17:47, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote:
>
> >  Overrides are procedural in XSI (i.e. string-based) but in this
> > everything else is expression-based and late-bound, which means it can
> > deal with references and changing scenes.
>  

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Re: New render layers in maya

[Francois Lord]

 

This is the key to success. It made it very simple to work with
overrides in XSI but it didn't deal well (at all) with references that
change all the time. Using expressions is the way forward. Houdini is
using expressions in its stylesheets, Katana is using the equivalent
with nodes, we are using expressions in our in-house tool at Framestore.


I remember we had to use very precise workflow rules in XSI to keep
scenes clean (back objects partitions always being hidden, foreground
partitions always being visible, object matte partitions being called
MATTE, etc.) 

When you deal with expressions, you need even more rigid
rules. Otherwise it quickly become an unusable mess. Also, all objects
must respect the naming conventions. And artists who don't follow them
must be executed. 

F 

On 2016-04-18 17:47, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote:


> Overrides are procedural in XSI (i.e. string-based) but in this
everything else is expression-based and late-bound, which means it can
deal with references and changing scenes.

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Re: Growth in ICE

[Francois Lord]

Here is something I did a few years back to reveal a map.
https://vimeo.com/26487726

It's a simulated weightmap. You take an irregular geo (polygon reduction
is perfect to create these) and apply a fractal weightmap to it. Then
you create a new weightmap and add a simulated ICE tree to it. For each
point, check the value of the simulated weightmap on the neighbors. If
it's 1, add the value of the first weightmap to yourself.

This way, each point gets contaminated by its neighbors at different
speeds.

You only need to trigger the first point manually.

F

On 2016-04-01 06:27 AM, Thomas Volkmann wrote:
> Hi Morten,
>  
> maybe you could tweak this a bit to your liking: https://vimeo.com/21223643
>  
> cheers,
> Thomas
> 
>> Morten Bartholdy  hat am 1. April 2016 um 12:11
> geschrieben:
>>
>>
>> I am doing some RnD on creating a frosty growth effect in ICE. I have
> looked at
>> Andy Moorers DLA which looks promising and tinkered with using
> animated mattes
>> for emitting particles with frostlike instances, but would like to
> perhaps use
>> fractal patterns og procedurals to control the growth, so I would like
> to ask
>> here if someone could point me to some useful tools or tutorials
> regarding this?
>>
>> Thanks - Morten
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Re: City generator?

[Francois Lord]

CityEngine is amazing, but very expensive. We've used it several times
in the past. I think it now has some sort of link to Houdini to be able
to work procedurally directly in Houdini.

On 2016-02-25 10:11 AM, Morten Bartholdy wrote:
> Thanks Chris, but I am looking for something that allows for more
> irregular and
> organic looking cityscapes. I found the tool I was thinking of -
> unfortunately
> it was not ICE based:
>
> http://www.esri.com/software/cityengine
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFRqSJFp-I0
>
>
> Morten
>
>
>
> > Den 25. februar 2016 klokken 15:31 skrev Chris Marshall
> > :
> >
> >
> > I did this really simple one:-
> >
> > https://vimeo.com/5200892
> >
> >
> >
> > On 22 February 2016 at 13:00, Morten Bartholdy 
> wrote:
> >
> >> Thanks Sven - I will check that one out :)
> >>
> >> MB
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> Den 22. februar 2016 klokken 13:51 skrev Sven Constable
> >>> :
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Theres also CityEngine. I have no clue about pricing.
> >>> http://www.esri.com/software/cityengine
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> -Original Message-
> >>> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
> >>> [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Morten
> >>> Bartholdy
> >>> Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 11:07 AM
> >>> To: Userlist, Softimage
> >>> Subject: City generator?
> >>>
> >>> I thought I once saw an ICE based City Generator system for XSI, but I
> >> might
> >>> be mistaken. I found two systems on rray.de/xsi which look a bit
> >> rudimentary
> >>> - I am looking for something that allow you to do road and cityblock
> >> layout
> >>> and position buildings procedurally based on that. Do any of you
> know of
> >> a
> >>> good system, even if not xsi based?
> >>>
> >>> Cheers
> >>> Morten
> >>> --
> >>> Softimage Mailing List.
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> >> with
> >>> "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.
> >>>
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> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Chris Marshall
> > Mint Motion Limited
> > 029 20 37 27 57
> > 07730 533 115
> > www.mintmotion.co.uk
> > www.dot3d.com
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The future of this list (was: Goodbyes)

[Francois Lord]

Hi everybody!

This list is managed by Autodesk and they can close it at any time they
wish. However, there is already a solution in place in case this happens.

The archives are located in a Google group, and I am the owner of that
group. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list

In the event the official list stops working, I can convert the Google
group from an archive to a normal group. This way, everything stays in
the same place. You just need to subscribe to the group when it happens.

I am no longer a Softimage user as I have recently changed company where
we use only Maya, but I still lurk on the xsi list from time to time.

If you ever notice the official Autodesk list stops working, send me an
email.

But I highly doubt Luc-Eric would allow this list to be terminated
without notifying us beforehand.

Cheers,

Francois

Re: Arnold (SiToA) for toon shading?

[Francois Lord]

Yes.
http://s3aws.obliquefx.com/public/shaders/help_files/Obq_Toon.html

On 01/21/16 17:52, Pierre Schiller wrote:
Hello. I was looking at Transformers Devastation videogame and I got 
across this article:

http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/29176/article/transformers-devastation-director-used-special-shading-to-recreate-80s-anime-look/

I was also looking if by any means was possible for Arnold to recreate 
the shader. I know it´s a professional secret from their company, but 
I haven´t recalled any works for cell shadig (toon render) from Arnold 
(I know it takes advantage of physical calcs for light+materials) but 
how about Toon shading?


Thanks. :)

--
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Cinema & TV production
Video Reel 

Re: Can't be more OT than this!: The Science of choosing the Perfect Job

[Francois Lord]

Alok, you rock!

This is the kind of thing I always wanted to do when I had a big 
personal decision to make, but never took the time to clarify my ideas 
about it enough and actually do it.
Your criterias are a good starting point for anyone. I added "Stress" 
and "Doing what I love" in the Work Pleasure category.


I'm going to show that to my students.

Thanks a bunch!

Francois

On 2015-11-06 06:51, Alok Gandhi wrote:

Hi All,

Not the slightest intention of self-promotion. Just wanted to share 
this with you fellow softies(that we still are and will always be) in 
the interest of general career benefit.

The Science of choosing the Perfect Job 

--

Re: Please explain Maya pivot points to a Softimage thinker

[Francois Lord]

Does this help?
https://youtu.be/Z8zVjLoHWjk?list=PLP5KnnScX57byOldVy9rQlBRARrX6gy4b

On 2015-11-04 09:34, Byron Nash wrote:
I'm trying to get some objects zero-ed out in Maya but keep running 
into what I assume is a paradigm difference between how Maya and Soft 
handle center points and transforms. In Soft, I can move the 
center/pivot and it will change the transform values. So, I can reset 
the center to be in the middle of the geometry and then zero the 
position to get the object to snap back to the world center or parent 
center. In Maya, moving the pivot does not seem to change the 
transform of the object when you move the pivot. So I can't then zero 
the values and get the objects to return to zero. Sometimes, the 
object and it's center are clearly NOT at zero but that's what the 
values say. There are some Local Space/World space values in the 
attribute editor, but I can't figure out how to get things reset 
properly.


Any help from a Softimage perspective is appreciated.

Re: OT:Houdini indie render solution

[Francois Lord]

Hi Gerbrand.
Did you consider the cloud rendering solution that's integrated in 
Houdini Indie? It's not free, but it's very easy to use. I have used it 
last summer for a personal project and i could use 13 machines to render 
the 13 frames I needed. The only problems I found was that I had to fix 
a file for it to work with Ubuntu, and the machines preset don't work 
except for the default one, which is the one I used.


On 2015-10-26 03:11, Gerbrand Nel wrote:

Hi guys.
I have been doing most of my jobs in houdini since the start of 2015, 
and I'm loving the work flow.
Most things just work, and although I have to re-learn allot of 
skills, I feel like this is an upgrade to my skill set.

There is one huge problem though.
Everything needs to get rendered at the end of the day.
Mantra is beautiful, and amazingly powerful, and can get the job done, 
but its kinda slow.

Well slow in my incapable hands.
I've done a few tutorials on rendering, but no matter how much I 
tweak, a render still takes around 15 to 20 min per frame.
As far as cpu renders go, this is not so bad, but I'm a freelancer, 
and most of the other freelancers around me have switched to redshift.
I've done a few comparisons, and most of the times redshift will give 
you the same results in 1/5 of the time.
Rendering normal geometry via alembic in soft or maya is not the end 
of the world, but how would I render fur or volumes?
I'm using houdini indie, so 3rd party renders in houdini are out of 
the question for me.
Do you guys know of a way to get fur or volumes from houdini into 
maya/softimage?
I would like to give Blender/Cycles a go, but I have never used 
blender for anything other than camera tracking.
Cycles seems like it is up for the task, but without alembic, how 
would this work?

Any input on this matter would rock!!
Thanks guys
Gerbrand

Re: Rendering Vertex color - Uvs are present

[Francois Lord]

You can use a Vertex_Color node in the render tree to make the 
ColorAtVerticesMap visible on the object and then just do a normal 
rendermap.


On 2015-09-30 10:04, Pierre Schiller wrote:


Hi, good day.
I´ve done a little test quickly modeling a face and I did:
1. Applied property->Color at vertices map
2. Ctrl+W (palette, and select color)
3. Shift+W start painting the mesh.

I like the result, now I want to set that as my starting point for texture
painting. So, I go to:

1. Property->Texture projection->unique Uvs (I really just want to 
test the

face colors)
2. Property->Rendermap and select: Sampling -> Vertives only 
(RenderVertex)

3. I enable "Color"
4. Map: Surface color and illumination.

I hit regenerate maps but there´s no output. No render.

What else do I need to setup to get a vertex map baked as texture?
Thanks.

David.
--
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Re: Continued use of Softimage question

[Francois Lord]

Yeah I tested that last night at home. It's even better than Delayed 
Load shaders because you see the geo in the viewport and you can assign 
materials.
This is a huge advantage over Arnold. In fact, I'm surprised SolidAngle 
doesn't provide an Alembic procedural.



On 2015-08-20 17:22, Andy Goehler wrote:
Yes, when using packed Alembics (default) only the object declaration 
is written to the IFD. The actual geometry is referenced to the 
Alembic file on disk, hence IFDs stay reasonably small.


On Aug 20, 2015, at 16:46, Francois Lord <mailto:flordli...@gmail.com>> wrote:


What about disk space?
Can you, in Mantra, reference alembic deforming geometry directly so 
it doesn't have to be part of the ifd file at each frame?


On 2015-08-20 10:40, Sandy Sutherland wrote:
At Sunrise we had 5 IFD generating machines (Engine lics), and I 
wrote a tool to submit renders from Houdini to RR that had the main 
render job wait for the IFD job to finish, before starting - easy to 
do.  The IFD generating was pretty quick, so we did not really have 
machines waiting to render.


On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 3:30 PM, Ciaran Moloney 
mailto:moloney.cia...@gmail.com>> wrote:


Pretty sure that applies also to Mantra renders. But, most
places have a smaller pool of engine licenses and export all
frames to .ass or .ifd for rendering. Since export times are
usually shorter than render times, it works out quite
efficiently. But yeah, definitely another expense to consider.


On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Mike Donovan
 wrote:

 One thing that is a bummer with HTOA is that you will need
to purchase a Houdini Engine license for every node on your
farm unless all the geometry creation is done before rendering.


This cost be quite steep … essentially a $500 additional
cost to each Arnold license.

Re: Continued use of Softimage question

[Francois Lord]

What about disk space?
Can you, in Mantra, reference alembic deforming geometry directly so it 
doesn't have to be part of the ifd file at each frame?


On 2015-08-20 10:40, Sandy Sutherland wrote:
At Sunrise we had 5 IFD generating machines (Engine lics), and I wrote 
a tool to submit renders from Houdini to RR that had the main render 
job wait for the IFD job to finish, before starting - easy to do.  The 
IFD generating was pretty quick, so we did not really have machines 
waiting to render.


On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 3:30 PM, Ciaran Moloney 
mailto:moloney.cia...@gmail.com>> wrote:


Pretty sure that applies also to Mantra renders. But, most places
have a smaller pool of engine licenses and export all frames to
.ass or .ifd for rendering. Since export times are usually shorter
than render times, it works out quite efficiently. But yeah,
definitely another expense to consider.


On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Mike Donovan
mailto:m...@smoke-mirrors.com>> wrote:

 One thing that is a bummer with HTOA is that you will need to
purchase a Houdini Engine license for every node on your farm
unless all the geometry creation is done before rendering.

This cost be quite steep … essentially a $500 additional cost
to each Arnold license.

Re: Continued use of Softimage question

[Francois Lord]

Yes, however the development speed is impressive.

On 19-Aug-15 16:51, Juhani Karlsson wrote:

Floating license price is just "bit" too much...

Re: Continued use of Softimage question

[Francois Lord]

Hi Andy.

Did you move to Mantra, or stayed with Arnold?

Softimage crashing too often in lookdev is the #1 reason why I'm 
actively looking elsewhere.


On 19-Aug-15 10:35, Andy Goehler wrote:

We at Fiftyeight moved on from Softimage to Houdini for scene assembly and 
rendering. While Houdini’s offerings may not be the designed/perfect pass 
system currently, we’ve managed to adjust to a level of comfort. Shading and 
lighting productivity has gone way up. Houdini has proven to be very stable 
during shading and lighting, contrary to my frustration with Soft crashing 
unacceptably often.

We were not looking for the best solution currently available either, we were 
looking for a platform to build upon. And are very happy with Side Effects as a 
software vendor. Licensing, Bugs reports and fixes, feature requests and 
implementation and daily builds make us a satisfied customer.

Andy

Re: Continued use of Softimage question

[Francois Lord]

And I must add that using takes to control passes in Houdini is not that 
bad. You can do pretty much anything you want, but the workflow is 
painful. Houdini has a Main take, and all other takes are modifications 
on the Main one. Everytime you are inside a take, and you want to change 
something in the scene that you want to affect all takes (like moving en 
object), you have to go in the Main take, make the edit, and go back to 
the take you were editing to see the effect.


But takes allow you to override about anything, which is good.

On 19-Aug-15 10:09, Francois Lord wrote:

Well, it shouldn't discourage you.
Houdini is still better than Maya (yet) in that respect. I want to try 
a small project in Houdini to see how I can bend it to my needs. I 
know I will lose some things in there, but I will gain others. The 
digital assets (ref-models) in Houdini are amazing.


To me, it's still the best bet.

On 19-Aug-15 09:41, Stefan Kubicek wrote:

Hi Francis,

thanks for your insights into Renderpass-alike mechanisms in Houdini.
I was about to investigate those in hope to find a viable alternative 
to Softimage for scene assembly _and_ rendering, but what you wrote 
about Material Style Sheets and Takes has discouraged me enough to 
hold it off for now.


S



I know some companies in Montreal are still using Softimage, while
preparing their exit. In our case (Oblique), we are moving more slowly
than I was expecting. There are several reasons for this. Change
resistance from the artists is one. But also the lack of a good pass
system in the other softwares makes it difficult to use them as a 
hub to

gather the assets and finish the shots. The Maya guys said they were
working on it 2 years ago and we're still waiting. The Houdini guys
released the material style sheets which doesn't do half the job, and
wasn't even designed as a pass system. Don't get me started on Takes in
Houdini, it's almost there but it's not what we need. It wasn't 
designed

as a pass system either.

We've taken the awesome Sort Controller plugin from Andy Jones and 
Jonah

Friedman and modified it extensively. This has catapulted Softimage far
ahead of any competitors (except Katana) in terms of pass management
when using ref models. So I guess we will continue to use Softimage as
our main hub until someone comes with a nice solution. I'm eyeing 
Katana

even though it's overpriced.

By the way, I do plan to release our version of the Sort Controller, 
but

I need to fix a few things in it before.

F

On 19-Aug-15 06:08, Sandy Sutherland wrote:

Hi all,

After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a
Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis
animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for
this -

Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage?  Who might still be
on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...?

Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family.

Thanks

Sandy

Re: Continued use of Softimage question

[Francois Lord]

Well, it shouldn't discourage you.
Houdini is still better than Maya (yet) in that respect. I want to try a 
small project in Houdini to see how I can bend it to my needs. I know I 
will lose some things in there, but I will gain others. The digital 
assets (ref-models) in Houdini are amazing.


To me, it's still the best bet.

On 19-Aug-15 09:41, Stefan Kubicek wrote:

Hi Francis,

thanks for your insights into Renderpass-alike mechanisms in Houdini.
I was about to investigate those in hope to find a viable alternative 
to Softimage for scene assembly _and_ rendering, but what you wrote 
about Material Style Sheets and Takes has discouraged me enough to 
hold it off for now.


S



I know some companies in Montreal are still using Softimage, while
preparing their exit. In our case (Oblique), we are moving more slowly
than I was expecting. There are several reasons for this. Change
resistance from the artists is one. But also the lack of a good pass
system in the other softwares makes it difficult to use them as a hub to
gather the assets and finish the shots. The Maya guys said they were
working on it 2 years ago and we're still waiting. The Houdini guys
released the material style sheets which doesn't do half the job, and
wasn't even designed as a pass system. Don't get me started on Takes in
Houdini, it's almost there but it's not what we need. It wasn't designed
as a pass system either.

We've taken the awesome Sort Controller plugin from Andy Jones and Jonah
Friedman and modified it extensively. This has catapulted Softimage far
ahead of any competitors (except Katana) in terms of pass management
when using ref models. So I guess we will continue to use Softimage as
our main hub until someone comes with a nice solution. I'm eyeing Katana
even though it's overpriced.

By the way, I do plan to release our version of the Sort Controller, but
I need to fix a few things in it before.

F

On 19-Aug-15 06:08, Sandy Sutherland wrote:

Hi all,

After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a
Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis
animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for
this -

Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage?  Who might still be
on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...?

Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family.

Thanks

Sandy

Re: Continued use of Softimage question

[Francois Lord]

I know some companies in Montreal are still using Softimage, while 
preparing their exit. In our case (Oblique), we are moving more slowly 
than I was expecting. There are several reasons for this. Change 
resistance from the artists is one. But also the lack of a good pass 
system in the other softwares makes it difficult to use them as a hub to 
gather the assets and finish the shots. The Maya guys said they were 
working on it 2 years ago and we're still waiting. The Houdini guys 
released the material style sheets which doesn't do half the job, and 
wasn't even designed as a pass system. Don't get me started on Takes in 
Houdini, it's almost there but it's not what we need. It wasn't designed 
as a pass system either.


We've taken the awesome Sort Controller plugin from Andy Jones and Jonah 
Friedman and modified it extensively. This has catapulted Softimage far 
ahead of any competitors (except Katana) in terms of pass management 
when using ref models. So I guess we will continue to use Softimage as 
our main hub until someone comes with a nice solution. I'm eyeing Katana 
even though it's overpriced.


By the way, I do plan to release our version of the Sort Controller, but 
I need to fix a few things in it before.


F

On 19-Aug-15 06:08, Sandy Sutherland wrote:

Hi all,

After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a 
Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis 
animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for 
this -


Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage?  Who might still be 
on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...?


Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family.

Thanks

Sandy

Re: Momentum setup ?

[Francois Lord]

I did that just yesterday and indeed... it gives you lots of control and 
speed. You have no collisions, but sometimes it's enough. For 
destruction stuff however, I doubt it.
I used the same technique on this shot 2 years ago. 
https://vimeo.com/55545305
The length of the shot and the deadline didn't allow for RBD simulation. 
I needed something quicker.


Olivier, you can always have a look at this tutorial. 
http://vimeo.com/50751483
You need emTopolizer and the workflow is a bit convoluted, but it's true 
you can work faster this way. Maybe it's possible to use Simulate Bullet 
RigidBody on the particles at the end and set the particles sizes to 
match the poly chunks. That could work for real simple stuff.


Don't give up on Houdini. For destruction stuff, that's where the fun is.

On 07-Aug-15 05:34, Simon Reeves wrote:
I think it's simpler to not involve ICE if you just want rigid bodies 
with momentum (just simulation I mean).


Recently though I used a setup which was non-simulated, cracking geo 
with implosia and then using emtools of some variety (I think from a 
mootzoid video) - creating a pointcloud from polygon islands, 
manipulating the pointcloud, and then that drives another copy of the 
original mesh, worked well! Lots of control.




Simon Reeves
London, UK
/si...@simonreeves.com /
/www.simonreeves.com /
/www.analogstudio.co.uk //
/

On 7 August 2015 at 10:18, Olivier Jeannel > wrote:


You are killing me with answer like that, but yes, it seems deeply
bugged, some demo scene makes xsi crash. That's really a shame.

So far I've found a working solution : Pimping the "Mom Emit
Deform Control" and setting the Mass to 0 (passive RBD)  when
inside an Geometry and back to 1 (active RBD) when outside seems
workable.
Wish I could play with some states, will try later.

I'll rely on ice magic. I gave up on Houdini, Maybe I'll look at
some more tutorials during hollydays...

On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 1:04 AM, Christian Keller mailto:chris3...@me.com>> wrote:

Try another software package like Houdini for that, or be
prepared for maybe more pain than you'd expect.
Momentum is a bit p.i.t.a dir complex Thinges
Sorry couldn't resist ;)
Every second time you playback it works.
Sim is never the same you press the button, always cache it,
otherwise you'll never get the same result. The sim engine
itself is pretty cool if you use it in another package, but
the soft implementation is half baked and feels dirty. No
offense to the developers, if it's a softimage problem or what
else ...

--
Christian Keller
Visual effects|direction
m +49 179 69 36 248 

chris3...@me.com 
Vimeo.com/channels/96149

> Am 06.08.2015 um 22:02 schrieb olivier jeannel
mailto:olivier.jean...@noos.fr>>:
>
> Hi gang,
>
> I'm doing simple tests for an upcoming job that should
involve destruction stuff, like walls and houses.
> So, I gave a try to Momentum and Implosia.
> I remember there was an old Momentum + ice setup or a
tutorial, I think by Yujaheo on vimeo. It was a cracking
ground that was gradualy cracking.
> Atm, I'm having trouble having something better than an
ON/OFF start for the whole simulation.
>
> Does anyone remember this ?
>
> Thank you !
>
> Olivier

Re: I'm back !

[Francois Lord]

oh, hi Gmail!

On 06-Aug-15 18:20, Gmail wrote:

:)
Olivier

Re: Color at Vertices from Clusters

[Francois Lord]

Here is the file you need for line 15 to work. Put somewhere in your 
PYTHONPATH.


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/399522/TEMP/progressBar.py

On 04-Aug-15 11:55, Francois Lord wrote:

uhhh... right...
it needs tools from the library.
line 14 can be replaced with those 4 lines:

from win32com.client import Dispatch
from win32com.client import constants as c
xsi = Dispatch('XSI.Application').Application
log = xsi.LogMessage


but line 15 cannot be replaced easily. It needs a package from our 
library.


Sorry.

On 04-Aug-15 10:03, Francisco Criado wrote:

Hi Francois,

tried your script but drops error at line 14.

F.


2015-08-04 10:23 GMT-03:00 Francois Lord <mailto:flordli...@gmail.com>>:


Try this plugin. It's very old but still works.


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/399522/TEMP/PB_ColorAtVerticesFromClusters.py



On 04-Aug-15 00:33, Francisco Criado wrote:

Hi list!

As i never used vertex colors (shame on me) and now being in
the situation of starting to use them frequently in our
pipeline, got to ask, if there is any chance to create color
at vertices from polygon clusters.
Any tip is more than welcome.

Francisco.



-- 
Sent from Gmail Mobile






--

Re: Color at Vertices from Clusters

[Francois Lord]

uhhh... right...
it needs tools from the library.
line 14 can be replaced with those 4 lines:

from win32com.client import Dispatch
from win32com.client import constants as c
xsi = Dispatch('XSI.Application').Application
log = xsi.LogMessage


but line 15 cannot be replaced easily. It needs a package from our library.

Sorry.

On 04-Aug-15 10:03, Francisco Criado wrote:

Hi Francois,

tried your script but drops error at line 14.

F.


2015-08-04 10:23 GMT-03:00 Francois Lord <mailto:flordli...@gmail.com>>:


Try this plugin. It's very old but still works.


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/399522/TEMP/PB_ColorAtVerticesFromClusters.py



On 04-Aug-15 00:33, Francisco Criado wrote:

Hi list!

As i never used vertex colors (shame on me) and now being in
the situation of starting to use them frequently in our
pipeline, got to ask, if there is any chance to create color
at vertices from polygon clusters.
Any tip is more than welcome.

Francisco.



-- 
Sent from Gmail Mobile






--

Re: Color at Vertices from Clusters

[Francois Lord]

Try this plugin. It's very old but still works.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/399522/TEMP/PB_ColorAtVerticesFromClusters.py

On 04-Aug-15 00:33, Francisco Criado wrote:

Hi list!

As i never used vertex colors (shame on me) and now being in the 
situation of starting to use them frequently in our pipeline, got to 
ask, if there is any chance to create color at vertices from polygon 
clusters.

Any tip is more than welcome.

Francisco.



--
Sent from Gmail Mobile

Re: SI 2014

[Francois Lord]

We switched from 2013SP1 to 2015 last fall but stepped back to 2014SP2 
this winter because there were too many bugs in 2015. But now we 
realized that the display LUT in 2014SP2 doesn't support the full 
dynamic range of the region. So we are thinking to go back to 2015 just 
because of that.


On 01-Jul-15 06:18, adrian wyer wrote:

Mostly running 2014SP2 here (have 2015, but only used for smaller projects,
current job approaching 19 months in production so far!)

Only problems we've had are Arnold constantly crashing soft when you fiddle
with shader settings, whilst the region is live

A Solid Angle issue I guess

Although I agree with Matt, sounds like there's some corrupt shader/geometry
in the scene.

a

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Matt Lind
Sent: 01 July 2015 10:49
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: SI 2014

When mental ray is disabled, it's usually a sign something is wrong with the

scene.  Changing versions of Softimage won't fix that problem.   You'd be
best advised to investigate the problem and fix it.

That said, latest service pack for any version is generally the most solid
release.  I would go with 2014 SP2 as 2015 had some regressions.


Matt




Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2015 19:13:07 +
From: "Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES]" 
Subject: SI 2014
To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com"

I'm running Soft 2014. I am experiencing a lot of render crashes where
Mental Ray is being purposely disabled by the software.


I can update to:

2014 SP1
2014 SP2
2015
2016

Whats the best choice? What is everyone having the least issues with?


Thanks

--
Joey Ponthieux
LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES)
MYMIC Technical Services
NASA Langley Research Center
__
Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not
represent the opinions of NASA or any other party.

Re: Play forwards from "current time"?

[Francois Lord]

Middle-click on the play button.

On 27-May-15 15:30, Pierre Schiller wrote:
Hi. I´ve been looking all around for an option to play the timeline 
from the current time.
Say if my play head is on frame 80 and timeline is only 100 frames, if 
I push the play

button it goes back from frame 1.

Is there a .py script that can help me on this? or a way to configure 
preferences?

Thanks.

Cheers.
David R.

--
Portfolio 2013 
Cinema & TV production
Video Reel 

Re: Is purchasing a new softimage license impossible?

[Francois Lord]

If Blender can do stuff at the same level than commercial DCCs, or if it 
can do better in some areas, I want to hear about it. And I want to hear 
about it here, where everybody is looking for alternatives.



On 14-May-15 18:17, Sven Constable wrote:


Then I'd like change "we"with "me" in my statement if you feel more 
comfortable with it. I do respect you the same way as I respect the 
list. This list is the most proficient source of information in a same 
way a platform for professionals is meant to discuss even everything 
else. That’s my point.  This is the softimage mailing list. I read 
maya topics all the time. 3Dsmax, for gods sake and will tolerate it. 
And Houdini? Well, it's very welcome and Modo for sure. But discusing 
freeware? C'mon!


Well the problem I had was not actually arguing with specific modeling 
in Blender but the promotion of it in this list. I do not think this 
is the right place to promote software.


sven

*From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] 
*On Behalf Of *Eric Thivierge

*Sent:* Thursday, May 14, 2015 11:19 PM
*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com 


*Subject:* Re: Is purchasing a new softimage license impossible?

Hey Sven,

I'm not sure you have the right to police this list like that. I don't 
mind if this kind of stuff is posted here. So when you use the word 
"we" I'm not sure who you're speaking for but it certainly isn't the 
whole of this list.


Anyone wanting to share new ways of working and tools should be able 
to. This wasn't forbidden before the EOL for Softimage so it shouldn't 
be now. Especially since the EOL.


Eric T.

On 5/14/2015 5:10 PM, Sven Constable wrote:

Hey Chris, we have some problem if people want to promote their
software in a inappropriate way. ADSK did this this on the list.
Newtek an SideFX did it as well. It's alright. But please keep in
mind, this is the softimage mailing list.

If I want to model with hobbyist software, controlled by hobbyists
I will choose Blender. If you want to promote a software for
hobbyists, you should use the appropiate forums.

sven

Re: OT: Hypershade changes in Maya 2016

[Francois Lord]

Or in another software.

On 14-Apr-15 11:50, Christoph Muetze wrote:

Everything I would want to do in Maya I can do better
and easier in Soft... I'm waiting for that to change.. Maybe in a couple
of years?

Cheers!
Chris

Re: Renderman

[Francois Lord]

Well... the non-commercial version is a damn good reason to use it. I 
sure will try it once it's available for Houdini.


On 23-Mar-15 17:47, Andreas Bystrom wrote:
I think the old XSIMan by graphicprimitves was the closest you could 
get to a prman bridge, sadly the product was discontinued a long time 
ago.. I tested it quite a bit when it came out, nice little plugin but 
the implementation was rather basic in a way, no render-region support 
etc.


there is also the opensource affogato: 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/affogato/



anyway, with all the renderers out there I don't see much reason to 
use prman anymore..


-Andreas


On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 10:35 AM, Rob Chapman > wrote:


cmd line renderman is available but not sure how you would make a rib
with all the new shader parameters etc straight outa softimage :(

On 23 March 2015 at 21:32, Daniel Brassard mailto:dbrassar...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> Just received notice from Pixar that Renderman free for
non-commercial use
> is now available.
>
> Does anybody have used Renderman before with Softimage and is
their a bridge
> between Softimage and Renderman available?
>
> (yes, I have Maya too, so I can use it with Maya but I would
like to test
> Renderman with Softimage)
>
> Cheers!
>
> Dan
>
>

Re: Self installing Prop survive New Scene

[Francois Lord]

I never got it to work, but you can try this.
http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/softimage2013/en_us/sdkguide/si_cmds/SetGlobal.html


On 23-Mar-15 11:07, Eric Thivierge wrote:

Hello,

Was wondering if there is a way to have a self installing property 
survive a New Scene call. Typically I attach it to the Scene Root but 
that won't survive a New Scene call.


I have a UI that I would like to save the state of over a new scene call.

Anyone have a trick for this?

Eric T.

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Francois Lord]

If you are a Softimage power user, it will take a lot of time to get 
back to that level in Houdini. However, you don't need to be a Houdini 
power user to use Houdini. Learn the basics (basic modeling, basic UVs, 
basinc animation, etc) and then choose an area where you want to dive 
first. Most people choose simulation because it's where Houdini really 
excels, but you don't have to do like everyone. If you choose lookdev, 
you will quickly realize that Mantra is very much like Arnold. You end 
up being up and running very quickly, and can work on production shots.


Houdini is a lot more fun to learn and work with than all the rumors I 
heard about it over the years. And no, it's not just for technical people.


On 18-Mar-15 08:51, Leendert A. Hartog wrote:
I might have quoted too much in my previous post. The idea that you're 
thrown back to (almost) entry-level skill set, competing "against 
people straight out of collage" is a plight,
one would imagine, every Softimage user will have to suffer as it 
takes time to get back on track (on a "serious" level with new 
software regardless of which software he or she choses.
I just expressed my concerns that "in the end" this wouldn't take any 
less long with Houdini (although the "ride" would undoubtedly be more 
enjoyable, one would think).

And the sentiments towards Autodesk go without saying, I guess... ;)

Greetz
Leendert

Gerbrand Nel schreef op 18-3-2015 om 13:23:
and got to a point where I can compete against people straight out of 
collage.

Re: Softimage to render on alexa raw (log C?) curve?

[Francois Lord]

Try this LUT with preconditioning set to Cineon. It will give you the 
extended dynamic range that a log file can provide.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/399522/TEMP/Lin709_to_LogCWidegamut.csp
Cheers.


On 27-Feb-15 21:14, Pierre Schiller wrote:
Hi everyone. My usual workflow is to recieve a REC709 live video to 
match my cg elements from softimage (all good, I grade, compose, 
voilá). Editor gets his material all colors are there for him to play.


This time, director and cameraman want to see their LOG C (raw  
quicktime clips with no color correction) composed against my cg 
elements on SET.


Question:
What´s the workflow to approach this?
I can think of asking the Rec709 on set, but that would mean an extra 
step of reconverting the material. Thus delaying their work to film.


Is there a way to render out a LUT corrected as ALEXA raw directly 
from softimage?
Modo does it. And it´s incrédible to work in SRGB or Linear , then 
just select the ARRI RAW preset (or LOG C) and watch them both 
monitors: editor´s and 3d compositor side by side. No difference on 
colors.


Does anyone have a workflow for this that could help us out on set?
Thanks.

David.
ps: I placed: AlexaV3_K1S1_LogC2Video_Rec709_EE_aftereffects3d.cube
on the
$default\Data\Preferences\Default\ColorManagement
folder. But I don´t know how to take it from there (I see the color 
correction being applied on the render region).


--
Portfolio 2013 
Cinema & TV production
Video Reel 

Re: Maya thinks they're clever....and that's the problem

[Francois Lord]

"Shader Designer Plus 2000"

On 17-Feb-15 13:16, Rob Wuijster wrote:

Should have been 'Render Schematic View" ;-P
Rob

\/-\/\/
On 17-2-2015 19:10, Simon Reeves wrote:

"render tree" isn't the best!



Simon Reeves
London, UK
/si...@simonreeves.com /
/www.simonreeves.com /
/www.analogstudio.co.uk //
/

On 17 February 2015 at 17:21, Greg Punchatz > wrote:


and in Maya's defense Soft got a lot of names goofy too...
Envelopes should be called skinning

Thats about the nicest thing I have to say about maya at this
point ;)

Re: H14 is out !

[Francois Lord]

Yes, indie version is per year, as well as Houdini Engine indie and 
commercial.
I think SideFX can do a one time conversion of your scenes if you need 
to go from indie to commercial.




On 16-Jan-15 11:15, Patrick Neese wrote:

Question, I saw the "term" of the indie version is 365 days from
purchase, is the Houdini/Houdini FX licensing annual as well or
perpetual?

Not that I can afford the full workstation license as a hobbyist, but
the EULA stated no particular length.  I'm also curious if a
crossgrade would be allowed if a project were to be picked up, such as
a cartoon done on spec, so assets could be used if income suddenly
becomes +100k.



On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 7:20 AM, Jordi Bares Dominguez
 wrote:

So true… how many times I have seen it happening and no-one, literally
no-one knew what was going on...

jb


On 16 Jan 2015, at 12:40, Mirko Jankovic  wrote:

heheh sounds good, I mean yea in Maya I always felt like walking on glass
feets, and f you make a slight move in wrong direction everything falls
apart and no way to put it together again :)
thanks

On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 1:28 PM, Gerbrand Nel  wrote:

Well I say nicer, because there are allot of toys to play with.
I think rigging is the part where you need a non destructive procedural
work flow the most.
In Maya it feels like you have to make damn sure you are done with step A
before moving onto step B.
Houdini is flexible to the point where you become reckless with your work
flow :)
Bit more complex when you get started, but worth it.
The auto rig at the very least doesn't break like the soft one used to in
2011 :)
G


On 16/01/2015 14:08, Mirko Jankovic wrote:

Riggin nicer then Soft?
Will have to check it out then.. In maya rigging and enveloping is huge
crap and biggest reason that I don't wanna ago back int othat hell at first
place.

On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 12:11 PM, Gerbrand Nel  wrote:

After trying to learn maya for about 6 months, learning houdini is a
breath of fresh air!!
It is not softimage, but I think its the only thing that will come close
to the flexibility and power of soft for small studios and freelancers.
Once you get into it, It is even more power.
I tried learning it about 2 years ago, and gave up because I thought my
time would be better spent getting better in soft (the future was still
bright back then)
Back then it seemed complicated, but after dealing with maya, it feels
sooo much friendlier.
The way I see it, you get the operator stack, and ice tree, all in one
place, the network view
So its one thing to learn.
In Maya I feel like I have to learn new software every time I do
something else.
Rigging I found nicer than soft, and the animation editor in houdini
feels like a polished version of the soft one.
Houdini engine is still blowing my mind.. like it doesn't stop!!
At $300 you cannot ignore this as a piece of your pipeline!
I'll probably do allot of work in maya because I need to fit into teams
of Mayans, but with the houdini engine, I can do the work in the software
best suited for it, without forcing the rest of the team to conform.
G




On 16/01/2015 12:08, Mirko Jankovic wrote:

modeling and character riga nd animation wise it is I assume sitill nt
as suser friendly as SI right?
how us ievrall generalist and smalls tudio experience?
SI is more or less out of the box great steramlined solution..

Re: Ice texture

[Francois Lord]

Instances are perfect copies of the original objects, you can't have a 
different projection on each. You can however, do something in the 
shader so that each instance picks up a part of the texture at render time.
You can use the node Camera_Map in the render tree, but your moving 
particles will float in the texture.


On 07-Jan-15 12:59, Chris Marshall wrote:

Hi,
I'm trying to use textures on ICE particles, instanced objects 
possibly, and I don't have anything particular in mind for the end 
result so wanted to try camera projecting onto the particles. I can't 
get this to work as it's applying the texture on each instance as a 
whole. But there's a compound called Set Texture Projection Camera 
which sounds like it might do something interesting, but I can't 
figure out how to use it. Anyone used that before?


Thanks a lot

Chris

Re: Modo Sale again 40% off

[Francois Lord]

The Bonjour Wikipedia page once described it as malware on Windows, 
because it was made impossible to uninstall.


So... can anyone confirm Modo 801 got rid of it?

On 17-Dec-14 14:07, pete...@skynet.be wrote:
I remember iTunes disabling all optical drives in the registry upon 
installation on windows.
it was a well known/documented issue – that’s the last time I let 
anything from Apple on my computer.

Apple is evil.
(just to put things in perspective, I pretty much grew up with Apple 
computers in the house since the 80s)

Re: Modo Sale again 40% off

[Francois Lord]

Bonjour will severely impact your network performance on Windows. We 
have a strict policy here to never install anything that requires it. 
Modo701 would not run without it.
Some employees have installed Modo701 at home and have noticed all kinds 
of network problems afterwards.


On 17-Dec-14 10:41, Rob Wuijster wrote:

Nope sorry, it has been a while.

Not sure if it was an app or a license manager, but I can recall when 
you killed the Bonjour service it all worked again.

So uninstalling Bonjour was the way to go ;-)
Rob

\/-\/\/
On 17-12-2014 16:29, Angus Davidson wrote:

Thats odd

We run a mixed Mac and Windows network over 100 machines and we have 
never had an issue.  Can you remember which apps they were?




*From:* Rob Wuijster [r...@casema.nl]
*Sent:* 17 December 2014 05:12 PM
*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
*Subject:* Re: Modo Sale again 40% off

Don't really recall the exact reason, but I had to uninstall Bonjour 
to get some apps working again.
It interfered somehow with the existing network stacks, creating all 
kinds of issues.


But then again, most of the Apple stuff on Windows does ;-P
Rob

\/-\/\/
On 17-12-2014 15:59, Angus Davidson wrote:
Curious as why that is an issue. At best its built into Mac OS and 
at worse its a very small download and install for windows.



*From:* Francois Lord [flordli...@gmail.com]
*Sent:* 17 December 2014 04:46 PM
*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
*Subject:* Re: Modo Sale again 40% off

Can anyone confirm that Modo801 can be installed without Bonjour?

This was a big downer for us when we bought 701. Good thing we only 
paid half price for it.


On 17-Dec-14 05:25, Simon Reeves wrote:

Not sure anyone has mentioned it so just incase people aren't aware

http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/modo/

Cheers


Simon Reeves
London, UK
/si...@simonreeves.com <mailto:si...@simonreeves.com>/
/www.simonreeves.com <http://www.simonreeves.com>/
/www.analogstudio.co.uk <http://www.analogstudio.co.uk>//
/


No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com <http://www.avg.com>
Version: 2015.0.5577 / Virus Database: 4253/8751 - Release Date: 
12/17/14


This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is 
confidential. If you have received this communication in error, 
please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You 
may not copy or disseminate this communication without the 
permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are 
competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and 
recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not 
be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal 
views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the 
views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, 
Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders 
are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in 
writing to the contrary.




No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com <http://www.avg.com>
Version: 2015.0.5577 / Virus Database: 4253/8751 - Release Date: 12/17/14

This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is 
confidential. If you have received this communication in error, 
please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You 
may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission 
of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter 
into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus 
advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding 
on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of 
the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The 
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between 
the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless 
the University agrees in writing to the contrary.

Re: Modo Sale again 40% off

[Francois Lord]

Can anyone confirm that Modo801 can be installed without Bonjour?

This was a big downer for us when we bought 701. Good thing we only paid 
half price for it.


On 17-Dec-14 05:25, Simon Reeves wrote:

Not sure anyone has mentioned it so just incase people aren't aware

http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/modo/

Cheers


Simon Reeves
London, UK
/si...@simonreeves.com /
/www.simonreeves.com /
/www.analogstudio.co.uk //
/

Re: Exocortex Crate (the Alembic suite) goes open source. [nevermind]

[Francois Lord]

nevermind, i just saw your port on the Exocortex-Alembic mailing list.

On 11-Dec-14 16:50, Francois Lord wrote:

And, may I ask what drove this decision?

On 11-Dec-14 15:54, Ben Houston wrote:

Hi Simon,

We will continue to contribute to ExocortexCrate as need be. The
Alembic suite though is a fairly complete product at this point -- the
only major exception is Custom Attributes in Maya.  We would though be
looking for consulting work from studios that need non-trivial
features added to the suite -- either individually or jointly. We are
very open to consulting work to add new features.  We will also for
the foreseeable future be creating the builds for the various
platforms as needed.

We are also very busy with Clara.io -- that is true.

Best regards,
Ben Houston
Best regards,
Ben Houston (Cell: 613-762-4113, Skype: ben.exocortex, Twitter: 
@exocortexcom)

https://Clara.io - Online 3D Modeling and Rendering


On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 3:48 PM, Simon Reeves  
wrote:

Sounds good, it's been useful for us, Python Api is handy!

Does this mean you're not doing any more development...? Too busy with
clara.io ? ;)


On Thursday, 11 December 2014, Angus Davidson 


wrote:

You guys Rock!

From: Ben Houston [b...@exocortex.com]
Sent: 11 December 2014 10:41 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Exocortex Crate (the Alembic suite) goes open source.

Hi all,

I figured you may be interested to know that Exocortex Crate, the
alembic suite for Maya, 3DS Max, Softimage, Arnold and Python just
went open source.  You can download it for free and use it for free.
Details here:

http://exocortex.com/blog/exocortex_crate_alembic_goes_open_source

Best regards,
Ben Houston (Cell: 613-762-4113, Skype: ben.exocortex, Twitter:
@exocortexcom)
https://Clara.io - Online 3D Modeling and Rendering
=


face="arial,sans-serif"
size="1" color="#99">This 
communication is
intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have 
received
this communication in error, please notify us immediately and 
destroy the
original message. You may not copy or disseminate this 
communication without
the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are 
competent
to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients 
are thus
advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding 
on the
University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the 
author,
which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University 
of the

Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and
outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University 
agrees in

writing to the contrary. 






--


Simon Reeves
London, UK
si...@simonreeves.com
www.simonreeves.com
www.analogstudio.co.uk

Re: Exocortex Crate (the Alembic suite) goes open source.

[Francois Lord]

And, may I ask what drove this decision?

On 11-Dec-14 15:54, Ben Houston wrote:

Hi Simon,

We will continue to contribute to ExocortexCrate as need be.  The
Alembic suite though is a fairly complete product at this point -- the
only major exception is Custom Attributes in Maya.  We would though be
looking for consulting work from studios that need non-trivial
features added to the suite -- either individually or jointly.  We are
very open to consulting work to add new features.  We will also for
the foreseeable future be creating the builds for the various
platforms as needed.

We are also very busy with Clara.io -- that is true.

Best regards,
Ben Houston
Best regards,
Ben Houston (Cell: 613-762-4113, Skype: ben.exocortex, Twitter: @exocortexcom)
https://Clara.io - Online 3D Modeling and Rendering


On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 3:48 PM, Simon Reeves  wrote:

Sounds good, it's been useful for us, Python Api is handy!

Does this mean you're not doing any more development...? Too busy with
clara.io ? ;)


On Thursday, 11 December 2014, Angus Davidson 
wrote:

You guys Rock!

From: Ben Houston [b...@exocortex.com]
Sent: 11 December 2014 10:41 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Exocortex Crate (the Alembic suite) goes open source.

Hi all,

I figured you may be interested to know that Exocortex Crate, the
alembic suite for Maya, 3DS Max, Softimage, Arnold and Python just
went open source.  You can download it for free and use it for free.
Details here:

http://exocortex.com/blog/exocortex_crate_alembic_goes_open_source

Best regards,
Ben Houston (Cell: 613-762-4113, Skype: ben.exocortex, Twitter:
@exocortexcom)
https://Clara.io - Online 3D Modeling and Rendering
=


This communication is
intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received
this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the
original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without
the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent
to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus
advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the
University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author,
which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and
outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in
writing to the contrary. 






--


Simon Reeves
London, UK
si...@simonreeves.com
www.simonreeves.com
www.analogstudio.co.uk

Re: Service Pack 1 available

[Francois Lord]

Yes, I was expecting more for a software that will be killed in 2016.


On 02-Dec-14 16:06, Mirko Jankovic wrote:

you really expected any more effort on software they already killed???
really?

On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 9:26 PM, Leendert A. Hartog > wrote:


Quite probaby true, although I can't recall,
but, what I do seem to recall, at one time here on the list there
was talk of a "partial install" i.e. a patch,
so it would still interest me, why this particular solution was
chosen...


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

[Francois Lord]

No, I'm talking about the way Softimage does it. You can just drag and 
drop objects around to change the hierarchy. I would prefer if you had 
to press a key to be able to mess with the parenting by drag and drop.


On 28-Nov-14 12:19, Peter Agg wrote:

'p' should do it, or are you after something else?

On Fri Nov 28 2014 at 17:17:25 Francois Lord <mailto:flordli...@gmail.com>> wrote:


However, I would prefer to have a shortcut key pressed to be able
to reparent things in the explorer. Right now, it's too easy to
mess a hierarchy when selecting an object and slipping the mouse
too much. You don't even realize you did it.


On 26-Nov-14 05:39, adrian wyer wrote:


Eric hit most of the salient points, however one thing i would
add is selection modes

it's massively intuitive and productive being able to select a
hierarchy with middle click

add to this the drag and drop features in the softimage explorer
(for both parenting and copying materials/properties) and you can
do a huge amount of work with minimal clicks

a

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

[Francois Lord]

However, I would prefer to have a shortcut key pressed to be able to 
reparent things in the explorer. Right now, it's too easy to mess a 
hierarchy when selecting an object and slipping the mouse too much. You 
don't even realize you did it.


On 26-Nov-14 05:39, adrian wyer wrote:


Eric hit most of the salient points, however one thing i would add is 
selection modes


it's massively intuitive and productive being able to select a 
hierarchy with middle click


add to this the drag and drop features in the softimage explorer (for 
both parenting and copying materials/properties) and you can do a huge 
amount of work with minimal clicks


a

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

[Francois Lord]

I disagree.
They own the software, yes, but that doesn't mean they know what the 
users actually like in it. There is a ton of features in Softimage that 
I never use.

The way I understood Shuting's questions was this:
"Now that you guys have played with Maya, how would you make the 
Outliner better while keeping it in line with the Maya way of thinking, 
and given we don't want to alienate all our users? What do you like in 
Softimage and what do you not like in it?"


But perhaps I'm working too much overtime these days.
Must... sleep...

On 26-Nov-14 17:39, Sven Constable wrote:

Due to all respect to you as a developer (assuming you are) and to all
fellow people on the list that gave constructive answers to that question
but ADSK owned(!) Softimage for about six years. Wasn't that enough time to
get a clue about the functionality of the software. ADSK had time to
investigate it even before like other vendors did. SideFX kept an eye on
softimage and even maya and they did research to implement features or
workflow these packages had.  And now, after killing the software you ask
how to improve maya and you ask softimage users? How about getting a clue
about the software you own already?
It's an example how ADSK has no idea about the 3D DCC business. And my dear
list people, stay away from the idea ADSK will make maya or max like
softimage. ADSK is not the company to bring max or maya even close  to a
"next gen 3d application" like Softimage (the company) did with XSI. It's
just too expensive and risky to do a redesign of a 3D animation software.
Softimage (the company) did this with XSI after it was clear to everyone
that the codebaseof  Softimage|3D was just too old. And they lost a shit ton
of market share with the development of XSI. ADSK will not do the same with
max or maya.

sven

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Shuting Chang
Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2014 3:07 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Cc: Mark Jamieson
Subject: Need your opinion to improve Maya Outliner/ Attribute Editor

Hi there,

I'd like to say that Maya is really moving forward. We are looking into
improving Outliner and Attribute Editor.
I know the strongest request is to have multiply dock-able Outliners and
Attribute Editors with the function to pin to certain objects.

Other than that, I won't list any thing else as I don't want to lead the
direction of the discussion. How we improve the Outliner and AE is totally
decided by your input. Please let us know what bothers right now and how
current Outliner and AE are blocking you.

Ideas and Inputs please.

Thanks in advance for you help. This means tremendous for us.
Shuting

Re: Buy Softimage - > is this a real shop?

[Francois Lord]

Microsoft snapped XSI's neck by not making it cross platform. It just 
took very long for it to die from the injury. Autodesk removed the 
cervical collar. Agreed, it wasn't nice of them.


On 13-Nov-14 12:21, Mirko Jankovic wrote:

And indeed made next step of all of them..
Then snapped it;s neck ;)

On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 6:14 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau 
mailto:luceri...@gmail.com>> wrote:


Well the implication I think I saw, and I might be mistaken, was that
Maya was not just in the same time, but "designed" to compete with
Softimage 3D.  It was designed with Disney as studio tool, and Alias
had their eyes on 3DSMax, completely ignoring Softimage|3D imho.We
also totally ignored Alias or Max when making XSI and were looking to
do the next step of our previous products.

Re: OpenVDB installation snag

[Francois Lord]

in the VDB_shaderDefs_ai.pys, replace this line
dllPath_release = Application.Plugins("Arnold Shaders").OriginPath + 
"bin\\nt-x86-64\\tbb42.dll";

by
dllPath_release = Application.Plugins("ArnoldStaShaders").OriginPath + 
"bin\\nt-x86-64\\tbb42.dll";



On 31-Oct-14 08:48, Morten Bartholdy wrote:


I just installed Oleg Bliznuks exciting OpenVDB stuff but ran in to a 
snag -  I get this error when doing a renderregion on the cloud demo 
scene:


' WARNING : [arnold] node "VDBVolumeShaderSimple_ai" is not installed
' ERROR : [sitoa]: Unable to load VDBVolumeShaderSimple_ai from the 
Arnold plugins (first occurrence: 
Sources.Materials.DefaultLib.Scene_Material.VDBVolumeShaderSimple_ai)


Upon Inspecting the Plugin Manager I can see that 
VDB_shaderDefs_ai.pys has a red triangle and checking its properties 
it says 262$This script plug-in contains erors and could not be 
loaded: 

I do have vcredist_x64 installed. Does anyone here know - could this 
be caused by the annoying tbb.dll conflict with Arnold?


I am exploring the various ways to render emFluids and would really 
like to try Olegs shader out.


Cheers

Morten

Re: ICE attributes don't show

[Francois Lord]

Stephen, I know you can't display on subdiv geo. I had to save my scene 
without it and reload it for the attributes to show.
If I loaded the scene with subdiv and just remove it, the attributes 
wouldn't show.

Weird.

On 30-Oct-14 13:20, Stephen Blair wrote:

It's been like that for a long time...
http://xsisupport.com/2009/04/08/show-values-doesnt-work-if-you-have-geometry-approximation/

2009!!!


On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Francois Lord <mailto:flordli...@gmail.com>> wrote:


Ah, now it works.
I had to remove the subdivision (!?) AND save and reload the scene
and it works.
thanks.

On 30-Oct-14 12:02, David Barosin wrote:

Just a quick check but is there a subdivision on the geo?

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 11:56 AM, Francois Lord
mailto:flordli...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Allright. What's the deal with ICE attribute values that
don't show up when they're asked to?
I've never had this problem with earlier version but now
since maybe 2013, it seems to be a increasing problem. I have
a simulated mesh with 3 different ICE trees in different
stack regions. I tried with the AttributeDisplay prop and the
little 'v' on connections, they don't show. Attributes are
'on' in the visibility options of the viewer.
I can see there are values when I plug them in the render
tree, but I need to know the numbers.
WTF?

Thanks.

Re: ICE attributes don't show

[Francois Lord]

Ah, now it works.
I had to remove the subdivision (!?) AND save and reload the scene and 
it works.

thanks.

On 30-Oct-14 12:02, David Barosin wrote:

Just a quick check but is there a subdivision on the geo?

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 11:56 AM, Francois Lord <mailto:flordli...@gmail.com>> wrote:


Allright. What's the deal with ICE attribute values that don't
show up when they're asked to?
I've never had this problem with earlier version but now since
maybe 2013, it seems to be a increasing problem. I have a
simulated mesh with 3 different ICE trees in different stack
regions. I tried with the AttributeDisplay prop and the little 'v'
on connections, they don't show. Attributes are 'on' in the
visibility options of the viewer.
I can see there are values when I plug them in the render tree,
but I need to know the numbers.
WTF?

Thanks.

ICE attributes don't show

[Francois Lord]

Allright. What's the deal with ICE attribute values that don't show up 
when they're asked to?
I've never had this problem with earlier version but now since maybe 
2013, it seems to be a increasing problem. I have a simulated mesh with 
3 different ICE trees in different stack regions. I tried with the 
AttributeDisplay prop and the little 'v' on connections, they don't 
show. Attributes are 'on' in the visibility options of the viewer.
I can see there are values when I plug them in the render tree, but I 
need to know the numbers.

WTF?

Thanks.

Re: Export Meshed Particles Sequence

[Francois Lord]

emPolygonizer.

On 21-Oct-14 10:16, Will Sharkey wrote:
I have a bunch of animating instanced spheres in a pointcloud that I'd 
like to export as an actual Geo sequence into another 3d application. 
What do you use to write the particles into geometry?


Maybe some of Eric Mootz tools will write the Geo and I could read it 
with XMesh in another program?


Thanks.

Re: Friday Flashback #194

[Francois Lord]

Softimage|3D 4.0 was still being used in Japan long after XSI was released.

On 17-Oct-14 14:11, Stephen Blair wrote:

Hi Matt

That's the timestamp on the file, and on the wikipedia page for Cavia, 
it lists:


  * /Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

/
 -
(2004, PlayStation 2 )


In Japan they kept using SOFTIMAGE|3D a lot longer than most people, 
so I assume they used 3D a bit on that game too.




On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 1:40 PM, Matt Lind > wrote:


2004? You sure that’s correct?  Softimage|3D was already a few
years past retirement at that point.

Matt

*From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com

[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
] *On Behalf Of
*Stephen Blair
*Sent:* Friday, October 17, 2014 10:02 AM
*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

*Subject:* Friday Flashback #194

SOFTIMAGE|3D screenshot from September 2004, showing the Major
Motoko Kusanagi character from the Ghost in the Shell game
developed by Cavia

http://wp.me/powV4-36E

Re: SI 2015 crash using Manipulate Mode

[Francois Lord]

Yes.

On 07-Oct-14 04:15, Stephan Haitz wrote:

Hello everybody,

Did anyone else notice a crash in 2015 when using Manipulate Mode / 
Tool (shortcut: B) and picking a corner?

Hard crash: The whole Application disappears...
Or is it only me?

No problems in 2014SP2

Best regards

Stephan

Re: Autodesk considering ditching perpetual licenses

[Francois Lord]

Uhmm, isn't it the opposite?
If you can skip the big purchase price and pay by the month, like Adobe 
did, it's a good opportunity for independants and small companies.
You can also decide not to pay for 3 months because you are using 
another software on a specific project.


But I doubt Autodesk will make it that flexible.

On 29-Aug-14 18:15, Sebastien Sterling wrote:
Well, there go the independents, and the small companies, and any 
start up companies... all the growth in the industry in other words 
but fuck it...

Re: OT Maya: push deformer

[Francois Lord]

Hey Jason, have you been programming in Lisp lately?
Just askin'.
;)

On 20-Aug-14 01:05, Jason S wrote:


As mentionned, I may totally be disproven,
(especially with the all the expectation for it to be at least ICE (or 
more) )


And to be honest, while being fully aware that many dedicated people 
including yourself are working hard to make Bifrost something great,

(which is the main thing that I'm sure will make it at least very good)
I must admit that despite that, I -do- wish it would somewhat more or 
less 'fail' just enough for the floor to be, lets say "freed-up" (in a 
non-aggressive/non-invasive way) for other players also making great 
things to have a shot, but while not being completely bent on having 
the entire floor for themselves.


Cause as it stands now, it could very well be the case that good or 
less good, there would just not be any comparison base, or any 
(remaining) choices to choose from, like it can arguably be (already) 
the case today.
(being -clearly- not out of mere circumstance or (at-all) achieved 
with means that anyone (except AD) would identify as being -fair- or 
'non-destructive')


And if hoping for an outcome (with diversity) is being delusional,
(which I hardly think it is)  then may that be as it may.

Re: Change License from Standalone to Network?

[Francois Lord]

On 06-Aug-14 17:18, Matt Lind wrote:


That’s why you can no longer have Softimage 2015 and 2015 SP1 (when it 
becomes available) installed side by side on your computer.




Wait, what?
You are saying that when Softimage 2015 SP1 comes out, and I want to 
start a new project on it but also have another project already running 
on 2015, I have to uninstall 2015 entirely on all render machines to 
install 2015 SP1 and force all running projects to move to the new 
version? Is that right?

Re: RealLens 2

[Francois Lord]

Here. It should work now.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/public.francoislord.com/RealLens2.2.xsiaddon


On 14-Jul-14 17:01, Tim Crowson wrote:
Thanks Francois, but perhaps I've installed it incorrectly... I get 
the camera primitive, but I get the following errors... I installed it 
via 'Install Addon...' and restarted Soft 2014 SP2, and I just get this:


/# ERROR : Traceback (most recent call last)://
//#   File "

Re: RealLens 2

[Francois Lord]

We've always been patching our installs because of all the legacy code 
we have.

I don't even know how to code for the unpatched version!

On 14-Jul-14 17:45, Steven Caron wrote:
personally, i have stopped patching python installs and just re wrap 
it as i need it and/or use methods which i know are more stable...



On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 2:40 PM, Francois Lord <mailto:flordli...@gmail.com>> wrote:


H... right.
(Like most people) You're using the python that comes with
Softimage, the one that's not patched for dynamic dispatch.
I didn't think of that. I'll have to dive deep and fix this then.
Oh well, to be continued.

On 14-Jul-14 17:01, Tim Crowson wrote:

Thanks Francois, but perhaps I've installed it incorrectly... I
get the camera primitive, but I get the following errors... I
installed it via 'Install Addon...' and restarted Soft 2014 SP2,
and I just get this:

/# ERROR : Traceback (most recent call last)://
//#   File "

Re: RealLens 2

[Francois Lord]

H... right.
(Like most people) You're using the python that comes with Softimage, 
the one that's not patched for dynamic dispatch.

I didn't think of that. I'll have to dive deep and fix this then.
Oh well, to be continued.

On 14-Jul-14 17:01, Tim Crowson wrote:
Thanks Francois, but perhaps I've installed it incorrectly... I get 
the camera primitive, but I get the following errors... I installed it 
via 'Install Addon...' and restarted Soft 2014 SP2, and I just get this:


/# ERROR : Traceback (most recent call last)://
//#   File "

RealLens 2

[Francois Lord]

Hi List.

I finally updated my old plugin RealLens, 9 years later (!).

It now creates a camera rig, applies the plugin on the camera and stays 
live on the camera.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/public.francoislord.com/RealLens2.1.xsiaddon

Get -> Primitive -> Camera -> RealLens2

We've been using it in production here at Oblique since Febuary. It 
seems to work fine. If you find any bugs or have any comments, feel free 
to ping me.


Cheers.

Francois

Re: 2015 SP1

[Francois Lord]

"Autodesk will continue to offer product support until April 30, 2016. 
We will also provide Softimage support services (including Hot Fixes and 
Service Packs) to all Softimage customers with Autodesk Subscription, at 
no cost, until April 30, 2016."


http://www.autodesk.com/products/softimage/overview

Hoping that it doesn't mean SP1 will come on April 30, 2016.

On 04-Jul-14 12:29, Sebastien Sterling wrote:

Is there even supposed to be a 2015 sp1 ?


On 4 July 2014 17:21, Francois Lord <mailto:flordli...@gmail.com>> wrote:


Anyone knows if 2015 SP1 is coming soon?
I've been waiting for it to install 2015. But the projects that
were begun on older versions are getting to an end and I would
like to start the new ones on 2015.
Usually it comes around June. "Usually"...

2015 SP1

[Francois Lord]

Anyone knows if 2015 SP1 is coming soon?
I've been waiting for it to install 2015. But the projects that were 
begun on older versions are getting to an end and I would like to start 
the new ones on 2015.

Usually it comes around June. "Usually"...

Re: way OT... Sony F55 XAVC S-Log 4k footage

[Francois Lord]

Is it to be read in Nuke or just view it?
I would still try ffmpeg. You can transcode it to h.264 mp4 or DNxHD mov 
if you want. It's multi threaded.
Just be careful with the automatic colorspace conversion with ffmpeg 
(full-range to limited range and vice versa).



On 17-Jun-14 11:02, adrian wyer wrote:


vegas took nearly 2 hours to convert a 30 second clip to exr

and it had drop frames

a



*From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of 
*Francois Lord

*Sent:* 17 June 2014 15:50
*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
*Subject:* Re: way OT... Sony F55 XAVC S-Log 4k footage

I guess using ffmpeg to convert to png frames would be too time consuming?

On 17-Jun-14 10:29, adrian wyer wrote:

anyone ever come across this? can't read it in anything except Sony's 
media browser/Vegas  neither of which can reliably write it out into 
another (usable) format


(read: drop frames and speed issues abound)

post house says they use baselight to process it!  overkill much? not 
about to spring for a baselight to transcode rushes!


long shot, but there you go

a

Adrian Wyer
Fluid Pictures
75-77 Margaret St.
London
W1W 8SY
++44(0) 207 580 0829


adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com 
mailto:adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com>


www.fluid-pictures.com 
http://www.fluid-pictures.com/>


Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales.
Company number:5657815
VAT number: 872 6893 71

Re: way OT... Sony F55 XAVC S-Log 4k footage

[Francois Lord]

I guess using ffmpeg to convert to png frames would be too time consuming?

On 17-Jun-14 10:29, adrian wyer wrote:


anyone ever come across this? can't read it in anything except Sony's 
media browser/Vegas  neither of which can reliably write it out into 
another (usable) format


(read: drop frames and speed issues abound)

post house says they use baselight to process it!  overkill much? not 
about to spring for a baselight to transcode rushes!


long shot, but there you go

a

Adrian Wyer
Fluid Pictures
75-77 Margaret St.
London
W1W 8SY
++44(0) 207 580 0829


adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com 
mailto:adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com>


www.fluid-pictures.com 
http://www.fluid-pictures.com/>


Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales.
Company number:5657815
VAT number: 872 6893 71

Re: Software company Autodesk creates synthetic virus

[Francois Lord]

Soon, you'll need to pay your subscription just to stay alive!

On 05-Jun-14 16:42, Marc-Andre Carbonneau wrote:


Okay...

https://www.seriouswonder.com/software-company-autodesk-creates-synthetic-virus/

Re: Extract two point positions from one edge?

[Francois Lord]

Yeah, I started using them recently too and they are very powerful. 
Getting your head around the usage is not obvious, though.


F

On 03-Jun-14 13:49, Jens Lindgren wrote:

Hehe no problem, Arvid :)
I think all the Get "SomethingToSomething" data is underrated and very 
few examples are out there of how one could use them. Since I learned 
how they work, I have been able to do amazing things with polymeshes 
in ICE.


/Jens

Re: Houdini Weaknesses

[Francois Lord]

I have the very same problem with ICE anyway.

On 22-May-14 17:07, Andy Nicholas wrote:

  Lots of good comments on this thread.


One last thing that just occurred to me... It's very easy to have lots of fun
building cool tools, playing with new features, investigating new ways of doing
things in a virtual playground of awesome 3D technology. Yep... Very very easy
indeed.

Why's that a problem? Because sometimes you forget you're actually there to do a
shot with a very real deadline.

Oops.

Seriously. I've seen it happen so many times where people (myself included) fall
down the rabbit hole, playing with things, trying to figure out why their
particular workflow doesn't work. Often there's a really simple solution, but
it's very easy to get fixated on the technical issue at hand.

It's always worth asking yourself every 30 minutes; is this the best use of my
time?

:)




Dnia 21 maj 2014 o godz. 20:42 Francois Lord mailto:flordli...@gmail.com> > napisał(a):


> >> So...

> What are houdini weaknesses? What is missing in Houdini compared to
> Softimage? Would you run a company only using Houdini as 3D app? Why
> not?


  >

Re: Houdini Weaknesses

[Francois Lord]

That has been my intuition so far as well.

On 22-May-14 03:55, Jordi Bares wrote:

My feeling is that a transition period with FX and rendering in Houdini to 
later decide to either buy more time or commit to package X is the safest route 
right now.

Plus render nodes are free and believe me, that adds up really easily so with 
one FX license and normal ones you can go really really far.

cheers

Jordi Bares
jordiba...@gmail.com

Re: Houdini Weaknesses

[Francois Lord]

Yeah, the only reason I have not yet dived into Houdini yet is because 
of lack of time. As soon as I can, I will be reading those pdfs.
But I do have to choose my next move not too late, for me and for the 
company I work for. Over here, we are 18 cg artists working in 
Softimage. No one is excited to learn Maya, but Im not sure we can skip 
it entirely. Houdini seems a good first step for look dev since Arnold 
is coming. We can keep rigging and Animation in Softimage for a while. 
Modeling can be done in any package, it doesn't matter.


F


On 21-May-14 17:59, Andy Nicholas wrote:

  BTW, it's worth saying that despite all the faults I've mentioned, I still 
love
using Houdini. Especially now that it's my main route of escape from the
wonderful world of Maya ;) And for those who are looking for a tool to support
complex effects, I'd totally recommend getting into it.

If you haven't checked out Jordi's PDFs on SideFX's website yet BTW, that should
be your first port of call as they're a great transitionary guide.


A




On 21 May 2014 at 22:16 Jordi Bares  wrote:


It is the same with any package the only thing is that Houdini artists tend to
be more of a peculiar type… you just have to make sure they stick to the
conventions like all Softimage users do (for example on how we setup passes)

Jordi Bares
jordiba...@gmail.com

On 21 May 2014, at 22:12, Andy Nicholas  wrote:


Sure. There's certainly a lot of potential there. It's just that the
openness
means that the workflow is very open to interpretation. Houdini's a bit like
coding, everyone has their own style so you can get in a mess. It's very
easy to
add in quick little "fixes" which other people might look on as hacks
instead.

A


On 21 May 2014 at 21:25 Francois Lord  wrote:


And how would it fare as a lighting/shading/rendering hub?
I'm very hesitant to move to Maya just for it's lack of a true a pass
system. But then, there's only Houdini and Katana. We could add to the
list Modo and Clarisse (which I'm surprised nobody talked about here
yet) but we need Arnold.

On 21-May-14 15:55, Andy Nicholas wrote:

  From my experience, it's still relatively slow. A lot of stuff is still
single
threaded although they've done a lot of work to improve that recently. Be
ready
to eat up a lot of disk space too, as you'll be caching stuff out all the
time
to make up for the lack of speed.


Despite what many say about Houdini being great for particles, compared to
ICE,
the particles workflow is bloody awful. The nodes are super basic which
means
you have to roll your own out of VOPs, which are then super slow. ICE and
Arnold
are a dream for instancing, but Houdini drives me insane with slow and
flaky
workflows (although I probably need to update my knowledge since some of
the
new
features have come out - e.g. packed primitives).


Generally in production, expect not to see any significant results out of
Houdini artists for the first 70-80% of the job. That can be a real pain
for
working with needy clients. Once you get past that point though, they'll
be
able
to turn new versions out very quickly. Unfortunately, if it doesn't look
good at
that point you've got a crap load of work to redo, and it can really bite
you in
the ass if you don't have a good backup plan.


When it comes to commercials, not a lot beats ICE and it's rigid body
implementation for speed and ease of use, and I really miss not having
that
in
Houdini. Doing simple stuff in Houdini's DOPs can require an hour of
research
trying to find out what data you need to modify, and how to actually
implement
it.

I could go on a lot longer, but all I'll say is that you have to be super
careful when you decide to throw a job at Houdini. Make sure you have R&D
time
built in if you haven't done a particular effect before.

A




On 21 May 2014 at 19:42 Francois Lord  wrote:


So...
What are houdini weaknesses? What is missing in Houdini compared to
Softimage? Would you run a company only using Houdini as 3D app? Why not?

Re: Houdini Weaknesses

[Francois Lord]

And how would it fare as a lighting/shading/rendering hub?
I'm very hesitant to move to Maya just for it's lack of a true a pass 
system. But then, there's only Houdini and Katana. We could add to the 
list Modo and Clarisse (which I'm surprised nobody talked about here 
yet) but we need Arnold.


On 21-May-14 15:55, Andy Nicholas wrote:

  From my experience, it's still relatively slow. A lot of stuff is still single
threaded although they've done a lot of work to improve that recently. Be ready
to eat up a lot of disk space too, as you'll be caching stuff out all the time
to make up for the lack of speed.


Despite what many say about Houdini being great for particles, compared to ICE,
the particles workflow is bloody awful. The nodes are super basic which means
you have to roll your own out of VOPs, which are then super slow. ICE and Arnold
are a dream for instancing, but Houdini drives me insane with slow and flaky
workflows (although I probably need to update my knowledge since some of the new
features have come out - e.g. packed primitives).


Generally in production, expect not to see any significant results out of
Houdini artists for the first 70-80% of the job. That can be a real pain for
working with needy clients. Once you get past that point though, they'll be able
to turn new versions out very quickly. Unfortunately, if it doesn't look good at
that point you've got a crap load of work to redo, and it can really bite you in
the ass if you don't have a good backup plan.


When it comes to commercials, not a lot beats ICE and it's rigid body
implementation for speed and ease of use, and I really miss not having that in
Houdini. Doing simple stuff in Houdini's DOPs can require an hour of research
trying to find out what data you need to modify, and how to actually implement
it.

I could go on a lot longer, but all I'll say is that you have to be super
careful when you decide to throw a job at Houdini. Make sure you have R&D time
built in if you haven't done a particular effect before.

A




On 21 May 2014 at 19:42 Francois Lord  wrote:


So...
What are houdini weaknesses? What is missing in Houdini compared to
Softimage? Would you run a company only using Houdini as 3D app? Why not?

Houdini Weaknesses

[Francois Lord]

So...
What are houdini weaknesses? What is missing in Houdini compared to 
Softimage? Would you run a company only using Houdini as 3D app? Why not?

Re: First Softimage -> Maya transition videos posted

[Francois Lord]

I remember when The Foundry asked me what I wanted in a script editor. I 
said: make it work like the XSI one. They said: everybody already said 
that but about the Maya one. I didn't know how the Maya one worked so I 
assumed it would be similar.
When Nuke finally came with a script editor, I was shocked! I never 
understood why would someone want that. If you want to run commands and 
forget about them, make it a shell, not a script editor!

Fortunately, they added an option not to clear the script. Problem solved.

F

On 13-May-14 03:34, Andy Goehler wrote:


Nukes script editor behaves the same way. Down to the Selection and 
Ctrl-Enter to execute. For the reason Raf has mentioned.


Looking into Houdini there seems to be all options: the python shell 
and the editor which does not delete the code :-)


Andy

On 13.05.2014, at 05:01, Matt Lind > wrote:


Honestly, I cannot think of another ‘script editor’ in any 
application that behaves in the way Maya’s does by deleting code upon 
clicking the execute button.

Re: C y'all

[Francois Lord]

That's why I keep repeating it in different threads. If anything happens 
abruptly to this list, you all know what to do. Just go to the Google 
group, it will be converted to a mailing list.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list
Autodesk doesn't control it.

But yeah, I might but too much trust in them.

On 25-Apr-14 10:08, Leendert A. Hartog wrote:
Some of your trust in the willingness of Autodesk to keep this List 
alive in the long(er) run, once many, if not most, of its discussions 
start to have no bearing on Autodesk products whatsoever (and when 
ending it, doing so in a non-abrupt manner, allowingfor a gentle 
“transition” to any kind of new List) is interesting considering the 
prevailing sentiment on this same List towards Autodesk in the last 
couple of weeks.
The idea wasn’t even to start a new list tomorrow BTW, the idea was to 
explore that route a little BEFORE Autodesk decides to close this List 
down. Which it will eventually…

But enough of this. Point taken… ;)

Greetz
Leendert

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

Re: C y'all

[Francois Lord]

Exactly.
I don't think it's necessary to launch a new list for the new and old 
people. Just stay here and share your knowledge of new tools and 
methods. This list will eventually morph into something far greater that 
just a single-software-mailing-list-community. It has already begun.


Pretty much everybody here wants to know how it is on the other side of 
the many fences.


If Autodesk doesn't like it, we will turn the Google Group that acts as 
an archive into a working mailing list. But it doesn't seem to be a 
problem for the moment.


Francois

On 25-Apr-14 08:47, Ed Harriss wrote:

Ditto! We are currently testing Cinema4D at the moment. It would be good to 
have others around to bounce questions/ideas off of.
Please stay. (This request goes out to anyone adding any software to their 
pipeline, not just C4D or Houdini)

Thanks!
Ed

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Eugen Sares
Sent: Friday, April 25, 2014 5:02 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re[2]: C y'all

+1 to that!
Cinema4D and Houdini interest me, too, so it would be good to share knowledge 
and experience in the future, from (ex) Softie's standpoints.

Re: Houdini Engine for Cinema4D

[Francois Lord]

So... who's up for the Softimage integration?
;-)

On 23-Apr-14 10:42, Cristobal Infante wrote:
By the way there is a Houdini Engine API so it can be ported to any 
aplication. So expect to see this implemented in other apps and 
game engines in the future.

Re: I'm still really PO'd and it's not getting better

[Francois Lord]

Then I have a simple solution for you.
Stick with Softimage for the time being.

We stuck with Shake for 6 years after it was killed on Windows before 
something better came up. There was Digital Fusion, but we didn't feel 
it was better so we didn't switch.
6 long years without a single new feature or bug fix. But Shake rocked, 
and we loved it. Now we have Nuke, and we love it even better.


You have been sticking with Softimage for the last 2 years and you can't 
say development was rocket fast.


The only thing that will force me out of Softimage is the day Solid 
Angle will stop releasing Arnold for it. Then I will use another 
solution for shading-rendering only.
In the mean time, I will slowly look for alternatives, including Maya. 
When I say slowly, I mean in the down times, which are not so frequent 
these days.


On 20-Mar-14 12:55, Paul Griswold wrote:


I had some time away from the office today and while I was driving 
down the highway I started thinking about the situation and I'm no 
less pissed off today than I was when they made the announcement.


I've been watching as many Modo and Houdini intro videos, tutorials, 
etc., that I can find and what I've discovered is, neither of them can 
replace Softimage today.


If you're a TD, then Houdini is probably a great way to go, but I'm 
another one of those people who don't like to script and want to keep 
things simple.  Everything in Houdini seems to involve writing at 
least a little script here and there.


Modo on the other hand looks very simple and straightforward, but it's 
lacking a LOT of power.  I noticed in some demos on things like 
instancing, the viewport REALLY slowed down.  It doesn't look like 
it's ready for prime-time when it comes to dense scenes.  The way 
everything you do is "frozen" is crazy these days.  I can't believe if 
you extrude along a curve the geometry doesn't stay stuck to the 
curve.  Until Modo makes some major moves, I just think it's a step up 
from Lightwave.


I'm leaving Maya out of the picture because in all honesty, Autodesk 
is totally delusional if they think Maya will be a good fit for small 
shops working on tight deadlines.  Maybe in 5-8 years Maya will 
finally hit its stride, but I'm assuming by then the entire M&E 
division will have been shut down in favor of just licensing patents & 
technology.  (seriously - mark my words - I am confident the entire 
M&E division will be shut down)


I started thinking about most of the jobs I've done over the past few 
years, and I can honestly say I don't think I could do 90-95% of them 
in either Houdini or Modo as easily as in Softimage - if at all.


So where I stand now is - totally screwed.  I either have to put faith 
in The Foundry that they'll bring Modo up to Softimage's level in the 
next 2 years or I have to spend the next 2 years really digging in to 
Houdini to get myself up to speed again.


In either case, I don't see a positive outcome.  I'm not young and I 
have a family.  I can't work all day, then spend the evenings learning 
new software.  This BS about artists not putting all their eggs in one 
basket just is a slap in my face.  I put my faith in Autodesk when 
they said "the future of Sofitmage is bright!"  When I was told over 
and over again I was being a conspiracy nut when I said Autodesk was 
intentionally trying to destroy Softimage.  Well, look where we are now.


Murdering Softimage without having ANYTHING remotely close to replace 
it is like peeing on my face and telling me it's liquid sunshine!


Maybe Autodesk is right.  Maybe the all-in-one approach of Softimage 
is dead.  Maybe I'm out of touch with how the world of animation & VFX 
works these days.


In any event.  I'm a very unhappy paying Autodesk customer.  I do not 
feel like my money has gone to anything I paid for.


-Paul

Re: [OT] Autodesk announces 2015 3D product updates.

[Francois Lord]

If you think of it, it's pretty much exactly what we want.
If they spend the next three years adding "new features" that we already 
have in Softimage, eventually we'll be happy.



On 18-Mar-14 14:13, Andres Stephens wrote:
Other than the viewport and some modeling features, I feel SI had a 
lot of these features or abilities already, maybe not optimized, but 
it has had them already I feel like they are playing “catch 
-up”... with some fancy viewport features. =/

-Draise
*From:* Ben Rogall
*Sent:* ‎Tuesday‎, ‎March‎ ‎18‎, ‎2014 ‎12‎:‎32‎ ‎
*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
http://area.autodesk.com/march18

Re: YOUR TOP 5

[Francois Lord]

1- ICE
2- Pass system
3- Operator Stack
4- Models (namespace) and RefModels
5- Various transform modes (local, global, ref, proportional, plane, etc.)


On 13-Mar-14 05:54, Alastair Hearsum wrote:

Hello

It seems as if I may have some contact with Autodesk shortly! I want 
to be armed with some points. What I'd like is your top 5 features 
that make Softimage great that we'd miss if we migrated to something 
else.


Please don't give me more than 5 and please don't go on too long 
describing them (It takes a while to read all the posts).


Thanks

Alastair

--
Alastair Hearsum
Head of 3d
GLASSWORKS
33/34 Great Pulteney Street
London
W1F 9NP
+44 (0)20 7434 1182
glassworks.co.uk 
Glassworks Terms and Conditions of Sale can be found at glassworks.co.uk
(Company registered in England with number 04759979. Registered office 
25 Harley Street, London, W1G 9BR. VAT registration number: 86729)

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Re: STDOUT: ' ERROR : 21000 - Unspecified failure - [line 39]

[Francois Lord]

Note to self: I really should read the entire post carefully before 
replying.


On 07-Mar-14 08:57, Francois Lord wrote:
I don't know Deadline, but usually when xsibatch.exe returns a big 
negative number, it's a crash.

A crash can be caused by anything, you won't see it in the output log.

I'm sorry I'm not helping much, but you should check if you can render 
the same frame in the UI. If not, then you can start deactivating 
stuff in the scene of hiding objects to find the problem.



On 07-Mar-14 07:26, Mirko Jankovic wrote:

Hey,
I'm trying to render out something on deadline and couple computers 
are giving me this info. My and 1 more are working fine no problem at 
all, couple others are throwing this error and stopping rendering 
over deadline.

Also to note that when scene is open locally on them it works fine.
Any idea what could be wrong??

0: STDOUT: ' INFO : Executing command: 
RenderPasses(Passes.Set_01,int(210),int(214))


0: STDOUT: ' INFO : Rendering pass 'Set_01'...

0: STDOUT: ' INFO : Rendering frame 210 (0.0% done)

0: INFO: Ignoring error because Strict Error Checking is disabled in 
the plugin configuration.


0: STDOUT: ' ERROR : 21000-REND-RenderPasses - Unspecified failure

0: STDOUT: RenderPasses "Passes.Set_01", 210, 214, , 
siRenderVerbosityDefault


0: STDOUT: Command failed, returned -2147467259

0: INFO: Ignoring error because Strict Error Checking is disabled in 
the plugin configuration.


0: STDOUT: ' ERROR : 21000 - Unspecified failure - [line 39]

0: STDOUT: ERROR - Script failed.

0: STDOUT: FATAL - Script Aborted.

Re: STDOUT: ' ERROR : 21000 - Unspecified failure - [line 39]

[Francois Lord]

I don't know Deadline, but usually when xsibatch.exe returns a big 
negative number, it's a crash.

A crash can be caused by anything, you won't see it in the output log.

I'm sorry I'm not helping much, but you should check if you can render 
the same frame in the UI. If not, then you can start deactivating stuff 
in the scene of hiding objects to find the problem.



On 07-Mar-14 07:26, Mirko Jankovic wrote:

Hey,
I'm trying to render out something on deadline and couple computers 
are giving me this info. My and 1 more are working fine no problem at 
all, couple others are throwing this error and stopping rendering over 
deadline.

Also to note that when scene is open locally on them it works fine.
Any idea what could be wrong??

0: STDOUT: ' INFO : Executing command: 
RenderPasses(Passes.Set_01,int(210),int(214))


0: STDOUT: ' INFO : Rendering pass 'Set_01'...

0: STDOUT: ' INFO : Rendering frame 210 (0.0% done)

0: INFO: Ignoring error because Strict Error Checking is disabled in 
the plugin configuration.


0: STDOUT: ' ERROR : 21000-REND-RenderPasses - Unspecified failure

0: STDOUT: RenderPasses "Passes.Set_01", 210, 214, , 
siRenderVerbosityDefault


0: STDOUT: Command failed, returned -2147467259

0: INFO: Ignoring error because Strict Error Checking is disabled in 
the plugin configuration.


0: STDOUT: ' ERROR : 21000 - Unspecified failure - [line 39]

0: STDOUT: ERROR - Script failed.

0: STDOUT: FATAL - Script Aborted.

Re: Camera pass overrides?

[Francois Lord]

It seems you are right, Morten. You cannot change even the angle of the 
camera with an override.
However, if you only want to change the lens shader, there is a 
parameter on the pass to do this (last tab, last parameter down). You 
can append a camera shader or you can override it entirely.

Does it do what you want?


On 06-Mar-14 05:41, Morten Bartholdy wrote:


Life goes on and I have a quick question regarding camera overrrides. 
I have tried forwards and backwards now without succes - am I right in 
assuming I can't create a pass overrride on a camera? Camera does not 
want to be in a partition and so an override applied to the camera 
sticks there through all passes. Can someone confirm this, and is 
there perhaps a different way?


My current workaround is to duplicate the camera and change the 
parameter (Ink Lens Shader) for the duplicate camera , which is not so 
elegant.




Thanks.


Morten

Re: Salvage the list.

[Francois Lord]

Even better.
Thanks Luc-Eric.

On 05-Mar-14 14:57, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote:

I think I didn't fully explained myself in that first post.

if it comes to that, we could mass-subscribe the current users to that
google group, or any list server of the community's choosing, in the
same way we transferred everyone to this server from Avid.

On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 1:47 PM, Francois Lord  wrote:

Wow, this thread exploded fast.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list
The google group archive above is not controlled by Autodesk. It was created
by Patrick Boucher (remember xsi-blog.com?) and he later handed me the admin
privileges. I am following this list on a daily basis even though I don't
post very often anymore.

As Luc-Eric already said, if anything happens to the official list, we can
just switch the archive to be a normal list, and things can continue from
there. If Autodesk was to shut down this list, I think they would announce
it beforehand. We would have some time to react then.

You can contact me if you feel we should change things.

Cheers.

Francois

Re: Salvage the list.

[Francois Lord]

Wow, this thread exploded fast.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list
The google group archive above is not controlled by Autodesk. It was 
created by Patrick Boucher (remember xsi-blog.com?) and he later handed 
me the admin privileges. I am following this list on a daily basis even 
though I don't post very often anymore.


As Luc-Eric already said, if anything happens to the official list, we 
can just switch the archive to be a normal list, and things can continue 
from there. If Autodesk was to shut down this list, I think they would 
announce it beforehand. We would have some time to react then.


You can contact me if you feel we should change things.

Cheers.

Francois

On 04-Mar-14 19:53, Sebastien Sterling wrote:

My fellows, friends, comrades.

The recent events that have befallen our community enunciate a breaking.

After this nothing or very little will be the same. People will 
shortly be departing for uncertain pastures. One way or another, a 
long journey through the night awaits us all, and we will find new 
lights and some will find new apps to call home.


But I think that it is important we take steps to preserve this 
community even if our paths seem to be at a crossing. For the 
knowledge and solace woven here, surely they can not take.


If we are to move to a new list or to regroup around an existing 
resource, eg: SI-community, we should do so soon before someone comes 
along and shuts down this list scattering us to the winds of which not 
all of us may find their way back.


I salute you all you are,were,and will be forever the best and fines 
this industry could hope for.



"- A statue of one of the old kings they must have hacked his head off.

- But look ! [...] He wears a crown again, a crown of flowers like 
small stars.They cannot conquer forever."


- J.R.R Tolkien

Re: Softimage transition audience poll

[Francois Lord]

Thanks Vincent. I needed that speech.
I posted my comment about Maya being appealing BEFORE I saw the clause 
that Softimage would stop working in two years.


What part of the pipeline would you say a company can rely entirely on 
Houdini for? FX and Rendering, what else?


On 04-Mar-14 14:10, Vincent Fortin wrote:

This is just my 0.02c regarding Houdini pricing...

You can always negociate with SideFX. They are a very open company 
driven by passion.
Studios interested in making a transition should discuss with Janet 
Fraser ja...@sidefx.com <mailto:ja...@sidefx.com>


Yes the extra $$$ for the floating license is weird. IMHO they should 
revise that pricing. But otherwise, workstation license is 4,495$. 
Autodesk users are often hesitant to pay for upgrades because they 
don't feel like they're getting much in return. With Houdini you get 
blown away every release. And your studio can have its say in the 
development roadmap.


Mantra is a very solid renderer, actively developed by SideFX. I 
wonder how much studios pay for their rendering needs? Mantra 
rendering is FREE (aka unlimited). It's both REYES and Physical.
How much do studios pay for FumeFX (and Max and Vray when you don't 
wan't to render in scanline), render layers that don't match and need 
to be fixed in comp, cloth in Maya and issues related to supporting 
multiple softwares/plugins, licenses or upgrades that IT needs to keep 
track of. Yes ICE is an awesome little creation platform but has never 
reached maturity. It can all be done in Houdini + more.


Man time is often wasted in studios, Houdini has that philosophy that 
everything can be offloaded to the farm, easily, without any or very 
little development. How much time wasted with finding the right format 
for storing your things on disk? XSI Models, pc2, collada, point oven, 
fbx, realflow .bin. I'm sure you too have tried them all! Houdini's 
.bgeo stores everything from points to volumes, nurbs, metaballs, 
custom attributes and has always supported geometry with changing 
topology. Can be compressed, or not. Can be made ascii. They have a 
standalone geometry viewer that is pretty cool. Any data stored in a 
.bgeo can be used as rendering proxies. But if you prefer Alembic, it 
is also fully integrated in the software/renderer as well as out of 
the box Open VDB, Open Subdivs, EXR2 and DEEP COMPOSITING (hello 
modernity!).


How much time wasted opening 2GB scene files in Softimage or Maya? A 
Houdini scene is always lightweight because of its referencing 
philosophy. In fact , a Houdini scene is based on the UNIX file 
system. You can unpack a full scene on your hard drive as a directory 
structure. It is true when they say Houdini is a pipeline on its own. 
With built-in environment variables, you can set up a small pipeline 
very easily. Often times I find myself doing a full project within the 
same scene. Never had any instabilities in years with Houdini. Never 
needed to "merge in an empty scene" to fix some random scene corruption.


They support every Linux flavors or Windows, or Mac. They have daily 
builds and a 100% free learning edition with no time limitation. I see 
a lot of potential in Houdini Engine for games or even for film if 
Bifrost fails to deliver in a reasonable time frame.


In fact I have become such a Houdini fanboy that every time I finish a 
project I'm tempted to send flowers and chocolate to Toronto.


Of course your mileage may vary but overall I don't think Houdini is 
so overpriced considering all the problems you'll skip with it. I 
choose to stick with the real passionate people, not the greedy blood 
suckers. All the insecurity Autodesks generates regarding its 
development roadmap and licensing schemes has been doing too much 
damage in its user base (includes Maya for the last 10 years). 
Incidentally, if you visit the Houdini forums, you'll find a community 
that is very mature, positive and helpful.


Vincent


On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 12:59 PM, Angus Davidson 
mailto:angus.david...@wits.ac.za>> wrote:


Mostly a lack of respect.



*From:* Ben Rogall [xsi_l...@shaders.moederogall.com
<mailto:xsi_l...@shaders.moederogall.com>]
*Sent:* 04 March 2014 07:42 PM

*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
*Subject:* Re: Softimage transition audience poll

Yep. Or $4495 for a workstation license and then $2495 per year.
For a minute there it looked like Autodesk was doing something
half reasonable with the free transition offer to Softimage +
Maya. But then I saw that accepting that means that I would not be
allowed to use Softimage at all after February 2016. I'm not even
sure what Autodesk gains from that.

Ben

On 3/4/2014 11:00 AM, Francois Lord wrote:

What I find

Re: Softimage transition audience poll

[Francois Lord]

What I find interesting in the fact that people want to jump the 
Autodesk boat is that they seem to forget they have to buy a new software.
For a company that relies entirely on Softimage, that decision is not a 
cheap one. Houdini is 7000$ for a floating license plus 4000$ per year!

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=385&Itemid=190

In two years when Bifrost will be nearing maturity, Maya will become a 
lot more appealing if you stay on subscription. Be kind with your bean 
counter.


just sayin.

On 04-Mar-14 11:37, Alan Fregtman wrote:

I've set up a poll out of curiosity...

/Where will you transition to when Softimage falls?/ Vote!

http://strawpoll.me/1257710

(Multiple-choice allowed btw.)

Re: Best online resources to help with a Maya migration.

[Francois Lord]

Done!
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/softimage2maya

On 27-Feb-14 16:42, Lawrence Nimrichter wrote:

I tend to think along these lines. There should possibly be a SI2Maya
or SI2Modo etc list to help people make the transition over the coming
years. I would think Autodesk would have an official Si2Maya list that
they have people on as part of the migration. But that would be if
they actually gave a damn. That way people can talk about specifically
how to do something in a new package that they could do in SI. We can
all bitch together that way too.

Re: Softimage and Alembic?

[Francois Lord]

On 19/11/2013 2:23 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote:

That's my job even more than ever! I've recently become the head of
the maya user interface team.


We all know where this is going.
One day, the developpers working on Maya will checkout the daily build 
and realize there is a new module added overnight by Luc-Eric on his 
spare time... Softimage.

Re: Dx11?

[Francois Lord]

I tend to agree with Luc-Eric.
It sure is nice to see the displacement in the viewport, but it wouldn't 
be as nearly as impressive if it were a sphere with a fractal texture on 
it. The design, modeling and texture work are very impressive.
Besides, the video is a little misleading because we have the impression 
that the frame rate is very high.


On 28-Aug-13 14:00, Sebastien Sterling wrote:
5%, sure eric, :) this guy is so good he can make Maya show viewport 
displacement by shear force of will.



On 28 August 2013 16:46, sue jang > wrote:


really nice character design!


On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 10:37 AM, Mirko Jankovic
mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com>> wrote:

in that case why did any software move from version 1.0 at
first place ;)


On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau
mailto:luceri...@gmail.com>> wrote:

95% hard work, talent and taste, 5% viewport technology,
imho :)

On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 8:17 AM, Szabolcs Matefy
mailto:szabol...@crytek.com>> wrote:

I’m droolin’ on this :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5fOwSmSaW8&feature=youtu.be

Re: OT rayfire voxels

[Francois Lord]

Besides, doing voxels that move and scale using different variables is 
definitely not something I want to do with the push of a button. I want 
full procedurability for this kind of stuff. Yes it takes longer to 
setup, but I can do exactly what I want. I can even do what the client 
wants. ;)


On 05-Jul-13 15:57, Steven Caron wrote:

empolygonizer does this as a 'push button' solution...

http://www.mootzoid.com/wb/pages/documentation/empolygonizer4.php#ThePPGSimple

s


On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 2:23 AM, adrian wyer 
> wrote:


most of this easily done in ICE, but, as usual, max guys get an
'out of the box' push button solution

Re: Running Softimage without installing it.

[Francois Lord]

The problem I have with the deployment method is that it fails on 
several machines (not all) without any form of error message.
The log says something about a problem registering some components. Then 
the installer reverts everything it has done and the entire Softimage 
2014 folder is deleted.

Sooo... I'm looking for something else.

On 16-May-13 14:24, Simon van de Lagemaat wrote:
There is a network install option so all you have to do is run a batch 
file once on a machine and it silently installs with all  your 
licensing options that you set the first time.



On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 11:21 AM, Mirko Jankovic 
mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com>> wrote:


Now thinking about it... wouldn't it be good and even needed to
have beside install option on installer something like install to
render nodes or something to help out mass installation?
Even on 10 more computers is time consuming now add a 0 there or
something..

How are you guys handling installation and management on small and
medium render farms at all?
Installation, upgrades, addons and upgrades of addons...
Sorry for a bit of a hijack but it is kinda same topic right?


On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 8:04 PM, Francois Lord
mailto:flordli...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Hi.

In my never ending quest to find a way to install Softimage
automatically and simply on all machines, I have yet again hit
a road block.
Last year, after several days of failed attempts, I resorted
to installing it manually on my machine and copying the folder
on the other machines. I had to copy the
ProductInformation.pit file from C:\Program Data and I had to
run the runonce.bat file. And then all was well and dandy.
Easily scriptable and no human intervention required.

This year however, things seem different. When I do the same,
Softimage can't find a license. This is where the
ProductInformation.pit file was required last year, but it
seems it's not enough now.

I noticed there is a new License.env file in the
Application\bin folder. But it contains the right informations
about our license server since I ran the installer on my
machine. I don't know if it has anything to do with all this.

Any one has bits of info on this?

Thanks.


Francois

Running Softimage without installing it.

[Francois Lord]

Hi.

In my never ending quest to find a way to install Softimage 
automatically and simply on all machines, I have yet again hit a road 
block.
Last year, after several days of failed attempts, I resorted to 
installing it manually on my machine and copying the folder on the other 
machines. I had to copy the ProductInformation.pit file from C:\Program 
Data and I had to run the runonce.bat file. And then all was well and 
dandy. Easily scriptable and no human intervention required.


This year however, things seem different. When I do the same, Softimage 
can't find a license. This is where the ProductInformation.pit file was 
required last year, but it seems it's not enough now.


I noticed there is a new License.env file in the Application\bin folder. 
But it contains the right informations about our license server since I 
ran the installer on my machine. I don't know if it has anything to do 
with all this.


Any one has bits of info on this?

Thanks.


Francois