RE: Shameless plug
Congratulations Matt. Happy that we were a part of this. Cheers, From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Matt Lind Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2014 10:01 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Shameless plug I don't get to say this often, but I've finished a project using Softimage which all can see. Well, it's not actually 'finished' as it's an online game which is continuously maintained, updated, and ongoing, but it's now live and I can talk about it beyond generalizations. Yay! My last completed project was my previous production -Barnyard the animated feature back in 2006. It's been a long time coming, a relief, and refreshing to be able to refer to something I did in the current decade. Wildstar officially launched last Friday night at midnight for early access, but opened up the flood gates today for everybody else. The game is now running smoothly in North America and Europe for all to see and experience. If you were part of the beta, let it be known significant improvements have been made since on all fronts. If you haven't tried the game yet, point your browser to www.wildstar-online.comhttp://www.wildstar-online.com and click on the shiny buttons. The first 30 days are free with initial purchase. Production started in 2005 using Softimage XSI v3.5 and launched with Softimage 2013 SP1 - all of it in 32 bit land. Majority of the content created in Softimage 7.5 which we used for roughly 5 years. Softimage was used for a heavy majority of the 3D artwork including characters, props, environments (other than the ground), buildings, dungeons, and everything inside of them. We didn't use ICE at all (but not for lack of trying, and we tested heavily), so this is a good example of what the fundamental toolset can do. Heavy use of custom properties, vertex colors, user normals, clusters, envelopes, UV spaces, and hardware (real time) shaders to customize and iterate on our content. What made these simple components really nice is they were general and could be re-targeted for many uses outside of their original intended purpose. Our particles were created and applied in Softimage, but simulated only in engine. The SDK was used to write 500+ tools to assist artists to create their content include tools like 'mimick' which is a command similar to GATOR which can transfer attributes, but do so on select subcomponents instead of the entire object, along with other bells and whistles. Often overlooked and understated, but Softimage scaling was incredibly powerful for controlling the squash and stretch scaling of deformers used in our envelopes to animate characters with cartoon whimsy and without ugly shearing often associated with other software. It is used on every asset that moves. Relational views were used to create tools such as a face editor to view and animate faces for our player characters, and adjust face customizations to see how they'd appear in the game as each of our characters have multiple faces and other components which can plug in like a Mr. Potato head doll. It was important to see the various components in context side-by-side for comparison while creating the content so consistency could be maintained. This was achieved using many 'object view' embedded into the relational view. Under the hood the face editor drove the animation mixer to perform face pose blending so artists could see the animation in real time on their characters. Also, NURBS, that's right, NURBS surfaces were used to transfer face poses and clothing between characters. The details must remain a trade secret, but I just had to mention we used NURBS in all their unfinished glory to get meaningful work done with significant contributions to the end product. Render passes were used to re-dress environments to allow artists to create geometry once, then swap textures, shader settings, and other details many times for each variant of the environment. Not only does it simplify the artist workflow by centralizing all their interaction to a few clicks, but it also allows assets to be packed into compact files for use in our engine. Render passes are used in housing and dungeons. If we had to do this in Maya, we'd probably have to break up each variant into its own scene and have to figure out a way to merge all the scenes together that shared the same geometry. These polished touches matter. Softimage for the win. So that said, while many 3D software could create the assets in their own time and space vacuum, Softimage (in my opinion) was the only software that could've tackled this project given our specific time, resources, and budget as there were many close calls along the way. I say Softimage because many of the aforementioned features came out of the box with us ready to roll and not have to spend oodles of time reinventing the wheel. Not having to
RE: The Autodesk folder - what goes and what stays?
Its where the installers uncompress the packages containing the setups. Any of the Autodesk windows installers write to this location. You can delete the entire contents if you wish, but will have problems if you run the setup in maintenance/restore mode as it will not be able to find the setup files. If you decide to delete the files and need to run the setup again at a later date, just uncompress the installers again from the original web download package. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Paul Griswold Sent: Monday, December 09, 2013 3:35 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: The Autodesk folder - what goes and what stays? Is there a FAQ or any documentation anywhere that can explain what can and cannot be deleted from the C:\Autodesk folder? I'm in the process of cloning a system drive over to a 1TB SSD and noticed the C:\Autodesk folder contained around 31GB worth of files going back to Softimage 2010. I don't want to break anything, but I'd love to free up space. On top of that folder, are there other folders that can be occasionally swept clean? Thanks, Paul [https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?guid=2b66c9c8-41db-4b11-92c5-ca1b182de584] ᐧ attachment: winmail.dat
Re: Softimage 2015 User Survey
Those of us on other projects are still members on the list, and would 'peek' in more often if Luc-Eric and Stephen weren't so darn quick to respond. ;) -matt On 2013-08-20, at 3:59 PM, Rob Chapman tekano@gmail.com wrote: or they were not all busy working on Maya..? joking Alan, trying to lighten the mood around here :) On 20 August 2013 21:56, Alan Fregtman alan.fregt...@gmail.com wrote: They'd probably peek around more if the tone got less hostile. (Not your tone specifically, just the average armageddon vibe as of late.) On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 3:19 PM, Doeke Wartena clankil...@gmail.com wrote: I wondered, are people that work on softimage ever active on the mailinglist apart from asking for a survey? In other words, how is the contact between the creators and the users? 2013/8/19 Rob Wuijster r...@casema.nl Just a friendly warning, this only works without issues on non-UEFI machines. Due to the UEFI 'Secure Boot' Wubi will not run, and could in some cases destroy data on disk. So if you recently bought a new (W8) pc, chances are it boots with UEFI. So YMMV on these pc's with Ubuntu But yes, there are tricks to work around this if you want ;-) Rob \/-\/\/ On 16-8-2013 19:29, Alan Fregtman wrote: If anyone is new to Linux but wants to get their feet wet in the easiest way possible, check out the Wubi installer: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/windows-installer It will install as a program under Windows and will set up dual boot perfectly for you without touching your partitions (using a file as a virtual disk.) Because of this virtual disk thing, it's not recommended for very serious use, but it's a great way to try things out... and if you don't like it, go to Windows, Control Panel, Uninstall Programs, type in Wubi and that's it. If you do end up liking I suggest install Ubuntu with the install cd on a real partition. Copying your settings is not hard, if you're worried about that. On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 1:00 PM, Andres Stephens drais...@outlook.com wrote: I'm curious about Linux. As.. the multiprocessor support would be perfect for some machines we are thinking to buy as servers for a renderfarm. I use Windows 7 and 8 a lot, and I use thirdparty apps for multidesktop features, with the functions like the ones mentioned below. I am starting to use free software, like GIMP, Blender and other suites for my needs, and wondered what other pro's of Linux to consider the switch. It would be nice to have Softimage as an easy package for Linux based renderfarm solutions or alternative OS solutions. The last mail you wrote was good to know, other than the conflicting intuous/bamboo driver conflict and multi user accounts logged in on different monitors at the same time, I do do the same virtual desktop system in Windows (Virtuawin or Dexpot) , and yes also, there are some other great productivity tools I use in Windows I am sure I'd miss in Linux. Many pro's and con's. If SI was an option for some kind of linux system, I would consider it once I upgrade to new hardware that Windows couldn't take advantage of. Any ease of use and compatibility development is welcome. +1 Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 18:34:51 +0200 From: c...@glarestudios.de To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Softimage 2015 User Survey ...you do realize that i can make the exact same statement with a search and replace for linux vs windows, do you? just sayin'... but joking aside: for me switching to linux brought a lot more advantages than staying with good old windows. first i don't miss any tools. i have softimage, mudbox, maya, photoshop, inkscape and all our inhouse editors. they all work fine. secondly, the killerfeature of linux is its window managers. in my case mate desktop. its slick, fast and powerful. i can have as many virtual desktops as i want, keep several apps open in parallel (and not stacked up behind each other), each screen is customized to my needs. sessions get saved, i can switch and shuffle them around with a few keystrokes and i almost never reboot - updates happen in the background...i have two monitors chained to one desktop and another monitor on a second x session that kind of acts like a second computer with a shared mouse, keyboard and copy/paste-buffer for email etc.. it's the real life equivalent of those funky hollywood-operating systems that we've all seen so many times before and it's boosting my day2day performance a LOT. oh, and i can switch between wacom intous and bamboo without deinstalling and installing drivers. try that with windows :) cheers! chris On 08/16/2013 06:05 PM, Mirko Jankovic wrote: yea so far I also saw only problems with linux after trying to switch couple times fro missing so many other tools to making every day tasks a nightmare. sorry but if
