Re: Softimage and Houdini work flow

[Meng-Yang Lu]

That comment regarding all around app needs to be revisited more and more
often now. You can literally design your own workflow more and more these
days in Houdini, giving you workflows that you're familiar with while also
boosting it procedurally in other aspects.

By default, no, Houdini will not mimic apps designed in the 80s. The 80s
while fun, was less productive and full of aids.  We were still rewinding
our music with a pencil.

All jokes aside, I generally bring in vdbs via Arnold instead of directly
into the scene if possible. Weird that abc's crash.  I've used it fine
between xsi and Houdini barring it wasn't huge.  The biggest hurdle from
Houdini into any other app is data weight.  Why I generally recommend you
pass assets XSI -> Houdini and then pass it back via the renderer's
capabilities.

Hope it helps,

-Lu




On Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 8:37 AM J R Sanchez  wrote:

> Thank you guys.  I appreciate all of your input. I think Steven Caron hit
> it on the head. ( " Y*ou're going to find the lack of updates to
> Softimage is really going to start making itself difficult. ie. format
> incompatibilities or just pushing so much data that Softimage can't handle
> it anymore*.")  This will certainly be the case for FX.  I think Mirko
> and Ben have the right Idea. Start in Soft and Finish in Houdini. Maybe as
> Houdini develops more as an all around 3D app I could one day make the
> switch,
> https://u9432639.ct.sendgrid.net/ls/click?upn=A5uD99yDGgJFqsHo0L78rjo3fW-2BI05z8hPddj-2BYSrjut8V8Kr3SyUl8pLj-2FCGT-2FDk0UrpzXAK69iEJrgCwoTDS0qgcpmWI-2FuJ79jVYaio-2BLsYsmeoM-2FgLSyxFARBEEI3tSi0lLFq-2BPE9QMvU-2FfRO4rG7m024ucQzFqwz-2BsRmPMdQaVXtIhmF5X6Xx29AAmfellv9XwhRL9lEA3eMFTKkJp7HtcS5X-2BiF8tSiVmXYbKHBxdyqtrGLgMXLzhA-2Byp6mIgq53gXldopFj9Lk4PxqVFhLKVb84L8yWd0Yp8Ew0f6YPrEkdChhX1wnjMhx1raUKkkee4k-2FSEyKmKLZmlS6Nhb6q2SkQB4WKJOEYEWyYscYIrSCL9EaD-2BQbPrgBVi2VheQc_x9fWPgxQbfi69QJnHJqUKZsAJHrwlN1lgOIh62WX2fQo1Vl-2BeVtI-2FCNkqt3JlpCls4FSVgmNBOgG1H2qV4U3Lfme-2FCujEsnuVUEddCM-2BPBinCX92skmsx6ttDliNJVkSHdsZzn8pJwl-2BvtecAFokepMY9ddr8THuJZ0txIF6U3PabvRM2Wlh42mrej-2F16A9nJhSgBMvoJki3yYyJm3HT09F4oNKY2kuHiILHBV1lRAd0E51uTW2OGcZ00xAI3i-2BW
>  
>   >
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 21, 2020 at 8:06 AM Nono  wrote:
>
>> Seems you already have you're own opinion about Houdini !
>> If Softimage ICE was in a separate app I bet you wouldn't use it so much.
>> Same goes if you choose to use Houdini and keep Softimage...  too
>> cumbersome !
>> Houdini extrude = same click count than XSI ;-)
>>
>> On Tue, 21 Apr 2020 at 01:56, J R Sanchez 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I don't want to have to do 100 clicks to extrude a face with procedural
>>> modeling. Even Maya modeling tools are better than Houdini's.  There may be
>>> some limited circumstances where procedural modeling is cool but not many.
>>> 

Re: A question about the Houdini list

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Yeah, it feels dead-ish.  Almost an hour.  I didn't see anything.

Time to switch to Blender everyone.
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Re: A question about the Houdini list

[Meng-Yang Lu]

I just sent a test.

Let's see.
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Re: Image Filtering in Maya?

[Meng-Yang Lu]

In the maya file node, the first drop box defaults to quadratic but it has
other filters too.  Then check prefilter and adjust the radius.  Is that
what you mean?


On Thu, Jul 12, 2018 at 1:04 PM, F Sanchez  wrote:

> One of the many things I love about XSI was the Image Filtering in the
> Image node in the render tree...ah the days of good tools. sigh! But I
> digress.  Is there such a tool in the Hypershade? I used it stop banding on
> speaker or radio grills. Worked like a charm in product animations.
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__sanchezfilms.wixsite.com_rebel=DwIFaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=mko4a73Hh4Oqkt7kcD9FFO1XfNjiNS63c1Pv_vrr5fc=Q27PFxXE9A7LLdakm4xXLrlqkRhpfnpuvnPoY87kMnk=
> 
>
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> with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.
>
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Re: Any Dinosaurs Still Lurking?

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Hi Brad!

Good to see you pop up on the list.  Not a dino.  Still lurk hoping to
learn something new.

-Lu
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Re: Houdini : non VFX jobs?

[Meng-Yang Lu]

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__jamesowen.co_=DwIBaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=M0nD7HRq7nw2AYE7oY_cyEfjkPSwAawUb6Vak2_7HUw=kbm4xoz8Qz2xSQiXrpelhl8TxCxcW_12t3uPa_xIqG0=

Maybe like this?  It's more motion graphics than straight up smoke
machine.  But the application of the tool is pretty fun here.

-Lu
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Re: What were they thinking....

[Meng-Yang Lu]

The copy and paste is pretty bad.  Haven't done it in years because of the
PTSD, but I remembered it would put "__pasted__" on the names of the
objects that were pasted over, assuming you wanted to do that in the first
place.

It's not a finely-tuned generalist tool like Softimage is out of the box.
And before, you could forgive it's shortcomings because in the Motif UI
days, it was ugly, but stupid fast.  Hotbox, plus marking menus, plus
hotkeys made you fast.  Now the UI lag pretty much sapped the joy from
those UI features.

Maya has had a tough time adapting to the times.  I see other developers
more in-tuned with the day to day tasks of production and developing tools
that help artists get through their day.  Not sure why ADSK can't move the
needle in a meaningful way when it comes to Maya releases.  I feel like
they should go and buy new computers, install maya out of the box, and try
to put together a 3 min short film.  The pitfalls would be pretty obvious
imo.

peace,

-Lu
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Re: Not friday flashback but...

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Chinny is the correct answer!  1000 XSI points to you sir!
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Re: Not friday flashback but...

[Meng-Yang Lu]

LOL!  I remember someone increased the brightness on the hoody guy.  1000
XSI points if someone can name who it was as a joke.  :)
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Re: Just sharing : ICC 2015

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Really beautiful work!  Loving the mixing of older SI spots using artfully
directed low poly figures with modern ICE techniques.  Kudos to you and
your team.

-Lu

On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 7:56 AM, Olivier Colchen wolr...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hey,

 Just sharing our latest and probably last big Softimage production here
 in Mathematic, Paris, France.

 https://vimeo.com/121486534 ( Director's cut )
 https://vimeo.com/121821635

 Everything was done in SI, except keyframed animation in Maya, no mocap (
 which is ironic since most of the time SI is primarily used for animating
 things ).

 I was in charge of most of the technical aspects as well as all the VFX.
 Anthony LYANT was in charge of most of the shading, lighting, rendering.
 Patrick LOUISE-ALEXANDRINE did the stadium rig and attended to every
 little things Tony and I were too busy to do.
 I also worked on the competition to win the project with director
 Sebastien CANNONE. This here is his Director's cut, I am unable to find the
 regular version I saw last before my contract ended. Not sure what the
 second link is supposed to be, really.

 Total time : a little more than a month, with almost no SI pipeline so we
 had to think and put one together, fast ;)
 Render engine was Arnold.

 Hope you like it. I can't shake the feeling that this is my Softimage swan
 song, despite working on a few other minor things right now using SI...

 Olivier

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

[Meng-Yang Lu]

What a beautiful post and watching out for your fellow artists.

On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 3:11 AM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might save
 the life of a fellow artist.

 So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can
 compete against people straight out of collage.
 This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage
 artists here in South Africa.
 At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to
 happen in maya for me.
 My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
 I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now,
 just in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead to
 allot of back tracking.

 At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag of
 Houdini FX.
 It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was
 one, of only a few houdini artists around.
 Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.

 The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me.

 I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than I
 can with Maya after a year.
 The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package works
 as one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing something new
 is fun and pretty easy.

 This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non
 destructive open work flow.
 So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the whole
 there is a script for that mentality... there is a sop for that

 G

Re: Maya freelance list

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Which app do I use to become the expensive high-class hooker.  Asking for a
friend...


On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 11:01 AM, Raffaele Fragapane 
raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:

 To be fair, it's not like half of us aren't doing the DCC app equivalent
 of turning tricks on a street corner these days ;)

 On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 7:25 PM, Tenshi S. tenshu...@gmail.com wrote:

 Asking about Maya Freelancers in a Softimage mailing list knowing how
 much some hate Autodesk...   hmm.

Re: OT Houdini 14 Sneak Peak

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Welp, they had Halfdan helping out on the render i/o.  Now softies on the
anim part.

Softdini here we come!

(Don't hire me for marketing plz.)

-Lu

On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 6:10 PM, Perry Harovas perryharo...@gmail.com
wrote:

 In the forums at CGTalk one of the Side Effects guys, Robert Magee,
 specifically mentions
 that they hired 2 former XSI guys to work on the animation section.

 http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=7947605#post7947605

 Here is a quote:

 --
 Let's just say that the changes are being spearheaded by two former XSI
 developers.
 They are doing great things and what is great is how they are bringing
 their knowledge
 and experience and melding it with Houdini technology - for instance the
 new animation layers use CHOPS at it's core.

 There will be a lot more to the story when Jan 15 rolls along...
 --

 Great news!



 On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 8:52 PM, Artur Woźniak artur.w...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 nice

 2014-12-04 22:19 GMT+01:00 Oscar Juarez tridi.animei...@gmail.com:

 UX improvements seem like something much needed.

 https://vimeo.com/113441818





 --





 Perry Harovas
 Animation and Visual Effects

 http://www.TheAfterImage.com http://www.theafterimage.com/

 -25 Years Experience
 -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)

Re: OT: Visiting London in January, anybody wanna meet for beers?

[Meng-Yang Lu]

I heard Kings Arms is good.  There's 2.  I'll let you figure out which one
is the good one.  ;)

On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 12:21 PM, Alan Fregtman alan.fregt...@gmail.com
wrote:

 Hey guys,

 I'm gonna be in London (UK) between the 6th and 11th of January.

 I know quite a few friendly names in this list work there; would anyone
 fancy meeting for some beers one of those nights maybe?

 (It'll be my first time there, too, so I don't know what pubs are good.)

Re: This is what Mark Schoennagel is upto these days

[Meng-Yang Lu]

He was always the highlight at every Siggraph I went to.  What a gracious
and funny entry into a new community.  Can't wait to see him demo stuff in
Unity.

-Lu


On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 1:44 AM, Alok Gandhi alok.gandhi2...@gmail.com
wrote:

 http://youtu.be/RxP3pfl9QYg


 Sent from my iPhone

Re: SI and Houdini

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Are we at a place where we can 3D print beer?  Jordi, thanks so much for
your efforts and going above and beyond any expectation of Houdini learning
materials.

-Lu


On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 2:53 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:

 :-)

 Thanks.

 My intention is more about an eBook with rich media like the ones iPad can
 do, with video, interactive 3D if necessary, etc… does it work for you?

 Jordi Bares
 jordiba...@gmail.com

 On 12 Aug 2014, at 10:36, David Saber davidsa...@sfr.fr wrote:

  I voted for the 50$ book with a free copy of Houdini in the multimedia
 Cdrom ;)

 On 2014-08-11 00:13, Jordi Bares wrote:

 Anyway, I will ask you to please help me out filing this survey to try to
 understand if there is interest out there and how that should be put
 together.

 https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JQTXZTY

Re: Best Modeling Practices question

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Could depend on the renderer.  Some shaders work better with thickness when
it comes to SS or translucency.


On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 2:52 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote:

 If the surface is thin, why do you need a backside at all?  Can't you just
 use two-sided shading?


 Matt



 -Original Message-
 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Eric Thivierge
 Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2014 2:47 PM
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject: Re: Best Modeling Practices question

 It's just not the same... :(

 not to mention you can't edit the deformer for fringe cases of bad
 deformation.

 On Tuesday, July 01, 2014 5:16:44 PM, Sebastien Sterling wrote:
  you can do this in maya, with the wrap deformer ... i feel so cheap
  now :(

Re: A freelance job.... really?

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Can we get the VFX supe on this show to reply?  That would be hilarious.

-Lu


On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 10:43 AM, pete...@skynet.be wrote:

 The person might as well just put No pay, will look good on your website
 / demo and help you get future work.


 would certainly generate more goodwill than what he wrote.

 this will go wrong in so many ways it's not funny. unless you're into
 sarcasm.
 which I am of course.




 On Friday, June 27, 2014 10:10:43 AM, john clausing wrote:

 i feel he should have written at the top

 I'M DOING YOU A FAVOR


 On Friday, June 27, 2014 10:06 AM, Tim Crowson
 tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com wrote:


 I know, that's why it seemed odd. Seriously though, is that a legit ad?


 On 6/27/2014 9:04 AM, Eric Thivierge wrote:

 No, that seems awfully typical.

 On Friday, June 27, 2014 10:03:46 AM, Tim Crowson wrote:

 That sounds awfully deliberate.  :-D

 -Tim

 On 6/27/2014 8:54 AM, Stephen Davidson wrote:

 I just thought I would post this freelance 3D animation Job, from
 Craigslist,
 for our professional animation group's ammusement.

 I sure gave me a good laugh

 http://miami.craigslist.org/mdc/cpg/4529563953.html

 --

 Best Regards,
 *  Stephen P. Davidson**
 **(954) 552-7956
 * sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com
 mailto:sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com

 /Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic/

  - Arthur C. Clarke

 http://www.3danimationmagic.com http://www.3danimationmagic.com/


 --
 Signature



 --
 Signature

Re: Nike The Last Game

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Just finished watching it.  So much fun.  Great work and great message too.

-Lu


On Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 2:01 PM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:

 Really great project, love the environment work and the character design.

 Love to see Softimage project coming out at such incredible standard.

 Jordi Bares
 jordiba...@gmail.com

 On 9 Jun 2014, at 19:17, Paulo César Duarte paulocdua...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 By Passion Pictures, anyone know details about the production? And
 congratulations to the team, amazing work.



 http://www.passion-london.com/featured-video/nike-the-last-game/26c7845d9393ecc2e72fca6f11e76fb0


 Cheers.
 Paulo Duarte
 --
 www.pauloduarte.ws

Re: Maya strengts (anyone?)

[Meng-Yang Lu]

I think the only failure of the node architecture was that it wasn't meant
to be used by artists.  Had they had that in consideration, we would've had
something like ICE or close to it ages ago.  There are still some cool
thing you can do in the Hypershade today, but it's unwieldy compared to
applications that knew nodes was going to be tinkered with by artists.

Maya strengths are still it's quick interactive ability to build stuff and
animate.  Since this is an XSI list, we've all had a taste of what
animation could be due to some really nice quality of life features.
 However, XSI never in the time I've done 3D ever caught up in terms of
animation performance.  It is still king of interactive performance at the
cost of shoddy user experience.

Before, Maya was the do-it-all tookit and still can be today.  And a lot of
the early technology that went into the Maya side were far better
implemented than in any other package.  The strength was indeed ubiquity,
and it was attractive to plug-in developers alongside 3DS max.  Shave had
more functionality in Maya before it was integrated into XSI.  Syflex had
more functionality in Maya than the XSI integration too.  nCloth is still
used in both conventional and unconventional ways because every other out
of box cloth solver just isn't good.  We still rely on nCloth heavily and
it's second only to something like Qualoft.  nCloth is definitely a
strength to leverage.

Also, Maya + Window = new tech hotbed.  Syflex, Shave, Comet Muscles, and
now FE/Splice.  Anything that seems promising usually begins it's early
stages as a plug-in for Maya.  No guarantees that these fledgling tools
would be production worthy, but I'm the first to admit I've grabbed a
plug-in and blindly marched into production many times.

Maya's other strength is it's large user base.  If you want a CG army that
puts ancient Persia to shame, go with Maya.  You are almost guaranteed
you'll find someone to fill an empty seat if your shop is a Maya one.  And
though that pool may not be as experienced or agile as artists in other
packages, you definitely have the advantage of choice and can cherry-pick
to your hearts desire.  To be fair, there are good Maya users out there
with their own Maya knick-knacks that can still put up good work.  And to
that point, if you're a Maya user, you're almost never out of a job if
you're smarter than the average bear.

I still don't like it.

-Lu


On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 9:26 AM, Sebastien Sterling 
sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote:

 In fairness the architecture is admirable, i don't think anyone ever made
 a fully nodal DCC after maya, to bad so little of it reaches its full
 potential.


 On 22 May 2014 17:15, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com wrote:

 20 years.. 4/5 years late..adjusted for inflation I guess ;)

 On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  Maya was ahead of its time 20 years ago, the novel architecture and a
 long list of historical events and mismanagement from Softimage (owned by
 Microsoft at the time) meant XSI arrived at least 4/5 years late to the
 party, which was a death sentence and big facilities by then did the full
 switch (not all but the majority).
 
  The genius side (and the part I don't like) was the viral nature of
 Maya in which you have to write stuff for pretty much everything which
 meant everybody was building tons of software (and complex ones too) on top
 of Maya so by the time XSI was starting to pick up pace it was an
 impossible fight.
 
  Was maya great for character animation? Yes, It has always been very
 good at that because the animation editor and dope sheet were very nice,
 also very fast with multiple characters and some versions very robust.
 Manipulators made life a pleasure (remember XSI introduced them late) so it
 was not a myth, but today it XSI is imho way superior for animation, shame
 the envelop deformers were never looked after properly.
 
  Jordi Bares
  jordiba...@gmail.com
 
  On 22 May 2014, at 14:25, Leendert A. Hartog hirazib...@live.nl
 wrote:
 
  Okay, a more specific question. Back in the day I always heard that
 Maya was the most useful tool for Character Animation (discounting
 Softimage from the equation). Was this just myth or is it just outdated
 info?
 
  --
 
  Leendert A. Hartog AKA Hirazi Blue
  Administrator NOT the owner of si-community.com
 
 
 

Re: Maya strengts (anyone?)

[Meng-Yang Lu]

If I were a modeler, animator, or lighter, AND I was absolved of all TD
responsibilities, I would absolutely love Maya.  This is the vast majority
of the artist experience.  It is being in an established shop with tools
already in place to get your work done or a team of TDs to make said tools.
 I'm surrounded by happy animators, modelers, and lighters. If they hit a
problem, they just submit a ticket and a magic email appears asking them to
restart Maya to receive the new goodies.

For non-departmentalized facilities where one artist need to wear all hats
and FX artists, the Maya experience is a completely different one.

Maya is the application I have the deepest knowledge in, but even with a
medium to shallow working knowledge in Softimage or Houdini, I find myself
being more productive over time in those application as a generalist/TD
than in Maya alone.

If I had a nickel for questions starting with... In Maya, can you...  The
answer is always yes.  Getting to that yes more often than not is really
painful.

-Lu



On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 10:31 AM, Sebastien Sterling 
sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote:

 Lol Lu

 It's amazing for this, this, this it sucks :)

 I believe qualoth has been discontinued. yes next person to offer a
 feature rich cloth solution will be a rich man/woman, may the Fabric enginz
 be with him.


 On 22 May 2014 18:18, Halim Negadi hneg...@gmail.com wrote:

 +6 Lu


 On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 7:11 PM, Meng-Yang Lu ntmon...@gmail.com wrote:

 I think the only failure of the node architecture was that it wasn't
 meant to be used by artists.  Had they had that in consideration, we
 would've had something like ICE or close to it ages ago.  There are still
 some cool thing you can do in the Hypershade today, but it's unwieldy
 compared to applications that knew nodes was going to be tinkered with by
 artists.

 Maya strengths are still it's quick interactive ability to build stuff
 and animate.  Since this is an XSI list, we've all had a taste of what
 animation could be due to some really nice quality of life features.
  However, XSI never in the time I've done 3D ever caught up in terms of
 animation performance.  It is still king of interactive performance at the
 cost of shoddy user experience.

 Before, Maya was the do-it-all tookit and still can be today.  And a lot
 of the early technology that went into the Maya side were far better
 implemented than in any other package.  The strength was indeed ubiquity,
 and it was attractive to plug-in developers alongside 3DS max.  Shave had
 more functionality in Maya before it was integrated into XSI.  Syflex had
 more functionality in Maya than the XSI integration too.  nCloth is still
 used in both conventional and unconventional ways because every other out
 of box cloth solver just isn't good.  We still rely on nCloth heavily and
 it's second only to something like Qualoft.  nCloth is definitely a
 strength to leverage.

 Also, Maya + Window = new tech hotbed.  Syflex, Shave, Comet Muscles,
 and now FE/Splice.  Anything that seems promising usually begins it's early
 stages as a plug-in for Maya.  No guarantees that these fledgling tools
 would be production worthy, but I'm the first to admit I've grabbed a
 plug-in and blindly marched into production many times.

 Maya's other strength is it's large user base.  If you want a CG army
 that puts ancient Persia to shame, go with Maya.  You are almost guaranteed
 you'll find someone to fill an empty seat if your shop is a Maya one.  And
 though that pool may not be as experienced or agile as artists in other
 packages, you definitely have the advantage of choice and can cherry-pick
 to your hearts desire.  To be fair, there are good Maya users out there
 with their own Maya knick-knacks that can still put up good work.  And to
 that point, if you're a Maya user, you're almost never out of a job if
 you're smarter than the average bear.

 I still don't like it.

 -Lu


 On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 9:26 AM, Sebastien Sterling 
 sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote:

 In fairness the architecture is admirable, i don't think anyone ever
 made a fully nodal DCC after maya, to bad so little of it reaches its full
 potential.


 On 22 May 2014 17:15, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com wrote:

 20 years.. 4/5 years late..adjusted for inflation I guess ;)

 On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  Maya was ahead of its time 20 years ago, the novel architecture and
 a long list of historical events and mismanagement from Softimage (owned 
 by
 Microsoft at the time) meant XSI arrived at least 4/5 years late to the
 party, which was a death sentence and big facilities by then did the full
 switch (not all but the majority).
 
  The genius side (and the part I don't like) was the viral nature of
 Maya in which you have to write stuff for pretty much everything which
 meant everybody was building tons of software (and complex ones too) on 
 top
 of Maya so

Re: Houdini Weaknesses

[Meng-Yang Lu]

I'm trying to correlate the languages of both packages.

Maybe Andy Nicholas can double-check my work but Houdini Attributes behave
like custom data throughout all component and object levels of any asset.
 Groups act like clusters which you can use to apply whatever attribute
(metadata) you want and impart various behaviors based on them.

As far as things being tamper proof I'm not sure.  The Mr. Potatohead
reference is absolutely doable and probably easier imo than Softimage.
 There's a whole ecosystem built around managing arbitrary data in Houdini.


-Lu


On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 2:29 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote:

 Replicating bullets and stuff like that is not the kind of carbon copying
 we need as cloning would cause problems.  Every asset needs to be unique
 and trackable, so having a master mesh and running a bunch of ops to
 clone/duplicate/instance is not really the target we’re aiming for.
 Although that functionality is useful, it’d probably be more directed at
 building parts of environments than characters or props.



 What we need is the ability to constrain users from going outside the
 lines we’ve drawn.  Imagine a yard with tall electrified fences.  Users are
 allowed to roam anywhere in the yard, but are not allowed outside the
 fence.  As we iterate on our pipeline, we push the fences further and
 further out to get users more room to roam.  But the constant is we need to
 persist metadata on the assets and prevent that metadata from being
 inadvertently modified as well as ensure the metadata is applied in such a
 way it can be reliably found and relied upon to drive tools and behaviors
 within the pipeline.



 For example.



 Our characters are built like Mr. Potato head dolls.  They are not a
 single seamless mesh.  There is a base body mesh, but holes left for other
 parts to plug in such as ears, faces, hair, clothing, etc…   The locations
 for the body parts are defined by clusters, custom properties, and other
 metadata.  Once the character is defined it’s placed in a referenced model
 to prevent users from tampering with the metadata to ensure tools are
 reliable and can find, track, and assemble the parts with other assets to
 create what the artist needs to pull into a scene to do his/her work.  Same
 rules and generalities apply to other areas of the pipeline.  Render passes
 are used to allow artists to build the environment geometry once, and
 redress it many times with texture and shader swaps.  Since some of the
 metadata describes components which customers can purchase, the assigned
 IDs for the components needs to be maintained and be tamper proof.



 Does Houdini offer mechanisms to control assets in this fashion to ensure
 data integrity year over year in a fluid pipeline?





 Matt











 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Meng-Yang Lu
 *Sent:* Wednesday, May 21, 2014 4:18 PM
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Re: Houdini Weaknesses



 This is actually where Houdini shines.  Taking something that exists and
 manipulating the DATA to create something new.



 Say you've got characters that have like belts of ammo as an accessory.
  You can create a dependency saying something like... if you choose type
 bullet, it also drives the number of bullets on the belt.  So if you choose
 type grenade which are larger in size, that type can drive the lesser
 number of grenades on the belt.  Between nodes like copy/stamp and
 switches, you can build these into your system.  You could, if all the
 assets are there, build a character creation system seen in a lot of games
 if you wish.  Even up to clever things like stating which type of weapon
 the character is holding.  Like if a weapon is two-handed by type, you
 could never have a single-offhand accessory, thus never having things that
 could conflict if both existed.



 The best way to think of Houdini is not just an FX tool.  It's an
 operating system that manages 3D data and does it extremely well.  This is
 why it takes a long time to build the setup, but the payoff is that over
 time, you gain a huge advantage of creating various version of one thing as
 long as you've built it into your setup.



 Modeling and texturing really should be done somewhere else.  But once
 those assets are create and you want to manipulate it, Houdini become a
 really powerful ally in this case.



 -Lu







 On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 3:52 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com
 wrote:

 That makes sense for an FX workflow as every project is essentially
 unique, but in a production where you churn out a lot of carbon copies or
 variations of the same content, how well does Houdini’s framework/workflows
 cater to that?  For example, are there mechanisms or abilities to enforce
 certain ways of working?  That’s probably our biggest concern as our
 content has to be functional, not just look good.  To be functional

Re: Houdini Weaknesses

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Hey Matt,

Spent the afternoon digging a bit.  It's really nicely explained in the HDK
with examples.

I would start here as SOPs are the beginnings of all things Houdini.
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/hdk13.0/_h_d_k__op_basics__sop.html

Followed by Houdini Geometry to show the data structure.
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/hdk13.0/_h_d_k__geometry__intro.html

And Houdini File System for read/write:
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/hdk13.0/_h_d_k__f_s.html

Look at writing ROPs too as it will let you do sequences of things.  Both
could work.

The way Houdini's geometry work is indeed procedural.  By default, the
result of the node tree is held in memory.  However, every node in SOPs has
a lock flag that essentially bakes the result of the nodes into the file.
 Once a node is locked, everything upstream doesn't matter and it's
essentially frozen.  This can make for big .hip files so the workflow is to
usually write out the data and read it back in as to not evaluate every
time.  When we write out a .geo or .bgeo file, we're essentially stripping
the history away.

You can make your node reference Houdini's node path to choose from which
point you want to write out.  OR, you can connect the node at any part of
the tree and just rely on the input to get your data in GU_Details.

Doesn't look so scary now that I'm looking at it.  Famous last words...  :P

-Lu











On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 4:32 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote:

 Have you or anybody else tried to write importers/exporters for Houdini?

 We would need to write an importer to migrate Softimage data, and an
 exporter to dump data to our game engine.  In softimage, evaluating a mesh
 is mostly taken care of by the SDK as it evaluates the construction history
 and hands you the final result depending where in the stack you ask it to
 evaluate.  Since Houdini is procedural and doesn't have a concept of a
 'frozen' mesh, how do they handle this?


 Matt






 -Original Message-
 From: Andy Nicholas [mailto:a...@andynicholas.com]
 Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2014 4:07 PM
 To: Matt Lind; softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject: RE: Houdini Weaknesses

  Yep. Just check out Houdini's digital assets (also known as OTL's).
 They'll do much of what you need and more. You can hide and lock stuff up
 to your heart's content if you need to be protective about functionality or
 content. It'll never be fool proof, but you can at least make it hard to
 break.





 On 22 May 2014 at 23:45 Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote:

  I think Softimage is OK on that front.  Good in some areas, lacking in
 others.
   Almost anything we've had to do Softimage got us 80% of the way there
  fairly quickly, but the problem has always been getting that last 20%
  which is often the most critical part.  I've probably spent more time
  than I've cared for to work around the lacking points or limitations.
  The lack of open file format and ability to deal with nested models
 reliably has been a hindrance.
   Softimage relies too much on top-down cascading propagation and needs
  more support for lateral relationships such as groups and sets to
  establish dependencies.
 
  Basically I've had to come up with a logical design for a pipeline
  that can accommodate the file structures/dependencies of both
  Softimage and our game assets and it hasn't always been easy.  Having
  a new environment with different rules would put a fresh spin on the
 problem.
 
 
  Matt
 
 
 
  -Original Message-
  From: Andy Nicholas [mailto:a...@andynicholas.com]
  Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2014 2:36 PM
  To: Matt Lind; softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
  Subject: RE: Houdini Weaknesses
 
   God yes. With bells on.
 
  If you think that Softimage is good on that front, you'll fall
  hopelessly in love with Houdini.
 
  A
 
 
 
 

Re: Houdini Weaknesses

[Meng-Yang Lu]

I really like the idea of Houdini as the hub for lighting.  Considering
most FX are now done in Houdini anyway, it sort of houses two rather
complex aspects of CG really nicely.

ROPs isn't really a pass system but think of it more like separable render
globals for all outputs.  Probably one of the least touted feature of
Houdini but definitely one of the most luxurious feature set.  You can pick
and choose to your hearts desire what can be done via AOVs, what grouping
of ROPs you want to use, and what should be overidden via Takes (though
usually shyed away from).

We've had Maya guys migrate over feeling really bummed having to go back to
Maya's pass system.

-Lu


On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 1:25 PM, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com 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 RD
 time
 built in if you haven't done a particular effect before.

 A




 On 21 May 2014 at 19:42 Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com 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

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Yes.  It's nodes and expression heavy.  And for that same reason it
drastically reduces plugin development cause you're essentially programming
every time you're in the package.  And just like you'd copy and paste
snippet of code, you'd do the same but with nodes of a tree.

Whenever I feel like I need to do dev work in Maya which is often, I just
go to Houdini now.

The UI creation is also pretty nifty.  You basically have access to all the
params, sliders, and widgets you'd normally see in Houdini's default tools.
 Just a matter of dragging, dropping, and organizing to your heart's
content.  You can promote params from a lower level to a higher level at
anytime, exposing only what you want the artist to see.

You can do error checking either through the nodes or through vops/vex.

It's got one foot in as a 3D application and 2 feet in as a plug-in
development platform.  Yes, 3 legged analogies are weird, just like
Houdini.  But I like it now.

-Lu





On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 3:17 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote:

 Seems like Houdini is heavy on nodes and expressions to create your work.

 How much custom plugin development do you have to do with Houdini compared
 to Softimage, Maya, etc...?  Let's define a plugin as something you'd write
 as a script or C++ lib that gets included in the software as a reusable
 tool, perhaps providing it's own GUI front end (if applicable) and is
 responsible enough to do proper error checking (as opposed to a couple line
 hack script like many artists do).

 Is there much of an SDK for writing GUI's as front ends for tools?


 Matt

Re: Houdini Weaknesses

[Meng-Yang Lu]

This is actually where Houdini shines.  Taking something that exists and
manipulating the DATA to create something new.

Say you've got characters that have like belts of ammo as an accessory.
 You can create a dependency saying something like... if you choose type
bullet, it also drives the number of bullets on the belt.  So if you choose
type grenade which are larger in size, that type can drive the lesser
number of grenades on the belt.  Between nodes like copy/stamp and
switches, you can build these into your system.  You could, if all the
assets are there, build a character creation system seen in a lot of games
if you wish.  Even up to clever things like stating which type of weapon
the character is holding.  Like if a weapon is two-handed by type, you
could never have a single-offhand accessory, thus never having things that
could conflict if both existed.

The best way to think of Houdini is not just an FX tool.  It's an operating
system that manages 3D data and does it extremely well.  This is why it
takes a long time to build the setup, but the payoff is that over time, you
gain a huge advantage of creating various version of one thing as long as
you've built it into your setup.

Modeling and texturing really should be done somewhere else.  But once
those assets are create and you want to manipulate it, Houdini become a
really powerful ally in this case.

-Lu




On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 3:52 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote:

 That makes sense for an FX workflow as every project is essentially
 unique, but in a production where you churn out a lot of carbon copies or
 variations of the same content, how well does Houdini’s framework/workflows
 cater to that?  For example, are there mechanisms or abilities to enforce
 certain ways of working?  That’s probably our biggest concern as our
 content has to be functional, not just look good.  To be functional
 requires certain elements be consistently defined on the assets and the
 asset structured in particular ways.



 One weakness I see so far is the lack of API for hardware shader
 development. GLSL is there, but it’s slow compared to straight OpenGL.  I
 haven’t looked very deeply, but at a quick glance I don’t see any Direct X
 support.



 One thing that would be really useful for the transition guides is more
 focus on modeling and texturing.   Houdini seems to have  the basic
 building blocks, but the rest has to be developed/configured by the user.



 Matt









 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Meng-Yang Lu
 *Sent:* Wednesday, May 21, 2014 3:37 PM
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Re: Houdini Weaknesses



 Yes.  It's nodes and expression heavy.  And for that same reason it
 drastically reduces plugin development cause you're essentially programming
 every time you're in the package.  And just like you'd copy and paste
 snippet of code, you'd do the same but with nodes of a tree.



 Whenever I feel like I need to do dev work in Maya which is often, I just
 go to Houdini now.



 The UI creation is also pretty nifty.  You basically have access to all
 the params, sliders, and widgets you'd normally see in Houdini's default
 tools.  Just a matter of dragging, dropping, and organizing to your heart's
 content.  You can promote params from a lower level to a higher level at
 anytime, exposing only what you want the artist to see.



 You can do error checking either through the nodes or through vops/vex.



 It's got one foot in as a 3D application and 2 feet in as a plug-in
 development platform.  Yes, 3 legged analogies are weird, just like
 Houdini.  But I like it now.



 -Lu









 On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 3:17 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com
 wrote:

 Seems like Houdini is heavy on nodes and expressions to create your work.

 How much custom plugin development do you have to do with Houdini compared
 to Softimage, Maya, etc...?  Let's define a plugin as something you'd write
 as a script or C++ lib that gets included in the software as a reusable
 tool, perhaps providing it's own GUI front end (if applicable) and is
 responsible enough to do proper error checking (as opposed to a couple line
 hack script like many artists do).

 Is there much of an SDK for writing GUI's as front ends for tools?


 Matt

Re: Overrides in Maya

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Yeah, not nearly as safe or robust.

Something that MIGHT help thought.  If you are in a render layer that you
created, and go into the Attribute Spreadsheet to mass change a value on an
attribute, Maya will create an attribute override for that attribute
automatically for that render layer.

Honestly, try to leverage Framebuffers or AOVs in your renderer to assist
you in managing your passes.  But Jordi's right.  It's gonna be a messy
collection of tricks to get what you need at the end of the day.

-Lu

On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 12:59 PM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:

 I am afraid you are going to resort to many different tricks and prone to
 human mistakes as they are very involved… this is something us XSI users
 are going to be suffering for years to come.

  Jordi Bares
 jordiba...@gmail.com

Re: March 28, 2014

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Can we split this thread regarding animation?  I'm really interested in
doing characters in Houdini as we've yet to touch that aside from a few
CHOPs-driven doves.  But upon evaluation, we believe that it is not that
abysmal platform that everyone makes it out to be.

Thanks Jordi for all the wonderful insight.

-Lu


On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 6:21 AM, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 31 Mar 2014, at 13:44, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com
 wrote:

 Ultimately I can do the same things in all three packages, in Maya in
 example I don't even try to find workarounds, whenever I bump into one of
 the innumerable gaps I just write my way out of it with a node, which
 incidentally is also why I'm taking a looking to splice and looking forward
 to their CUDA implementation instead of using my own in c++.
 Text is tremendously expressive, if expensive in terms of learning curve,
 which is also a cookie point for vex really.

 The problem comes when you have deadlines and you simply want to
 experiment without redoing at the end of the process. For that Soft was
 simply the perfect storm.
 ICE limitation of having a strict I/O domain and the sequential stack with
 entry points, the clarity and abundance of atomic nodes, and a generally
 cohesive experience remain unbeaten.In Soft when you hit a wall you often
 hit it hard, but those are few and far between, and in between you could
 really fly. Same goes for clusters, properties, drag'n'drop and how Soft
 presents and links those larger aggregates, they simply work 99% of the
 time.

 Very true, they really hit the right spot and there is no match yet...


 Maya and Houdini simply don't provide that experience, and their learning
 curve to reach that level of fluidity is measured in years, while with Soft
 we had people who never used it literally flying around within a month.

 In my experience is quite a different problem...

 - with Maya you hit a wall and that is it, either you program C++ and are
 good at it or forget it...
 - with Softimage you sometimes (Rerely) hit a wall, but when you do, again
 there is no way out other than programming it yourself in C++
 - with Houdini is like going on the internet, is so vast you get
 distracted and unless you are very focused you can be enjoying yourself
 without getting anywhere but you rarely will have to program C++ unless you
 are refining something for pure performance.

 As a creature TD Houdini simply doesn't get you on the zone quickly
 enough, if ever. It's brilliant for a number of things, infinitely
 powerful, has best of breed solvers, but it gets in the way constantly.

 My feeling is that it is too granular for many tasks and you have to be
 disciplined or you can be wondering around...

 It's patently obvious they rarely, almost never in fact, had to address
 teams like the ones I run as user base.

 Could you develop further?

 Performance in general is also pretty abysmal (was, might be better know)
 and optimisation is opaque and lacking in immediately useful tools and
 diagnostics.

 in version 12.5 and then in 13 there were some major improvements as they
 embarked in a huge task to make the nodes fully multi-threaded (still in
 progress) and there have been a major effort to integrate python really
 well (to me feels like the best integration so far)

 Also they started to integrate OpenCL

 http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini13.0/news/13/opencl


 a good example is Pyro

 http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=2123

 Again, as of two and half years ago. Might be different now and I wouldn't
 know, but nothing I've read or seen suggests so.

 Have a go a this fast rig and let me know what do you think


 http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forumItemid=172page=viewtopict=31169sid=9a764f3fbadfb00725638e42897932cf

 I have been doing a fair amount of rigging lately and I managed to put 170
 characters on a heavily choreographed scene and it was much better than
 before so although is not my dream scenario it is perfectly usable and I
 can do quite a few really amazing things with the rig and assets.

 hope it helps.

 jb


 On 31 Mar 2014 23:18, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:

 Slow performance depends on many things like having nested assets, and
 yes, you won't find an interface to manage your blend shapes but what you
 can do with your rig imho is truly phenomenal.

 Regarding the deformations ICE versus VOPs I would love to know more
 about it, what do you feel you can do in ICE you can't in Houdini?

 Assuming you are doing with the off-the-self toolkit and without any
 proprietary pipeline tools to speed up rigging building a proper asset
 interface, protect it from the user and all that takes time but do you feel
 is much longer than any other package?

 jb

 On 31 Mar 2014, at 12:04, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com
 wrote:

 I have to admit to not having tried again in at least two and half years,
 but I haven't 

Re: March 28, 2014

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Once upon a time, there used to be these Maya guys that never knew what
they were missing out because they never stepped out of their comfort zone.
 Don't repeat their mistake from your perspective.  I would say keep
Softimage in your arsenal, but also give Sesi and Houdini a fair shake.
 You don't have to grow up or not have fun using Houdini.  Your first shot
might be a little annoying getting everything set up, but shot 2 through
infinity doing variations of the same thing will be an absolute joy.

We're using Mantra to great success.  Hard surface, liquids, smoke, it does
it all.  I know you guys are saying Arnold, Arnold, Arnold, and I use
Arnold all the time in Maya/XSI, but Mantra is every bit as competitive and
more feature rich if you give it a shot.

We JUST finished this 15 second spot.  All Houdini except for the matchmove
the Maya guys had to do.  The compression takes a bit of the beauty away
but I hope it gets my point across.  Houdini is an absolute workhorse.
 Watch in 1080 plz.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq3vh3ILt6slist=PLYHB_K45JmFp_YbpngWB2x9Wxmr1cxVzd

-Lu


On Sat, Mar 29, 2014 at 1:25 PM, Christian Lattuada 
christian.lattu...@gmail.com wrote:

 Thank you Jordi.
 I'm still using softimage but I think houdini it's the only sensible
 solution to move to.
 Sidefx seems to be smart and careful about the industry and the userbase.
 They do, and always did, FX software, not marketing for CAD or office
 people (no offence) like autodesk does.
 Only one concern, with softimage I always felt my job like playing, moving
 to houdini I think I have to grow up a little, to be a more serious guy. :DD
 Maybe it's time for me to be an adult.
 Cheers.

Re: SI and Houdini

[Meng-Yang Lu]

#144207

 I am sure you guys are going to like this one.


  Jordi Bares
 jordiba...@gmail.com

 On 7 Mar 2014, at 16:59, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:

 For those that are looking at Houdini for rigging and animation... some
 tiny examples

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOTBdRdClFE

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-cKnahxkUo

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

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo6Lue1TMZU

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9gHw3jsGMI

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR1gt9BkIw4

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_YVx69zub0


 Sure, the animation toolset is not great yet but the rigging toolset is
 very very very powerful (imho much


  Jordi Bares
 jordiba...@gmail.com

 On 7 Mar 2014, at 16:34, Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:

 I have prepared already 2 big ones, will finish them tomorrow and post...
 stay put.

  Jordi Bares
 jordiba...@gmail.com

 On 7 Mar 2014, at 16:16, Arvid Björn arvidbj...@gmail.com wrote:

 Fantastic work Jordi, this is exactly the perspective we need!


 On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 4:47 PM, Gustavo Eggert Boehs 
 gustav...@gmail.com wrote:

 Thanks for your generosity Mr. Bares. Great homework for the weekend!

 Gustavo E Boehs
 Dpto. de Expressão Gráfica | Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina |
 http://www.gustavoeb.com.br/


 2014-03-07 7:30 GMT-03:00 MauricioPC (gonebadfx) goneba...@gmail.com:

  You até fast. Will take a look. Thanls for the efforts.
  --
 From: Jordi Bares jordiba...@gmail.com
 Sent: 07/03/2014 06:57

 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject: Re: SI and Houdini

  The wheels are moving... if you go to the forum


 http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forumItemid=172page=viewtopict=31012start=25

 you will have access to my dropbox PDFs so you can download them..

 More to come.

  Jordi Bares
 jordiba...@gmail.com

  On 6 Mar 2014, at 23:40, Javier El Elástico javierelas...@gmail.com
 wrote:

  That it is very interesting. Jordi, where you will putting this basic
 guides? In the Houdini Forums?

 El 06/03/2014 20:22, olivier jeannel escribió:

 Please, drop a line here when you have something ready.

 Le 06/03/2014 11:52, Morten Bartholdy a écrit :

 Wow, that is very geerous of you Jordi - much appreciated.


 Morten




 Den 6. marts 2014 kl. 10:18 skrev Jordi Bares 
 jordiba...@gmail.comjordiba...@gmail.com:


  for those who have not read what is going on in the Houdini forums, I
 will be putting together some basic guides to transition to Houdini easily
 and maintain your workflows under the new philosophy, from partitions, to
 overrides, to...

 I may need help so guys so don't hesitate to pop and drop a line,
 specially if you have already done the transition.

 see you very soon!

  Jordi Bares
 jordiba...@gmail.com

  On 6 Mar 2014, at 02:33, Francisco Criado  malcriad...@gmail.com 
 wrote:

 Already signed in, and must say it feels very comfortable how sidefx is
 receiving ex-si users!
 Thanks a lot!
 F.


 On Wednesday, March 5, 2014, Halfdan Ingvarsson  half...@sidefx.com 
 wrote:

  I was young and I needed the money!

 And the beer.

 Mmm... beer.

  - 1/2

 On 14-03-05 06:55 PM, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:

 On account of having furthered something like Mental Ray in the past,
 even if with the best intentions, I reckon all beer debt is forfeit. He's
 lucky he's getting away lightly with just a beer forfeiting.
 At least he seems to be working on something that's not qualified as a
 crime against humanity these days.


 On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Meng-Yang Lu  ntmon...@gmail.com  wrote:


 So what's the deal?  Do we still owe him beers or are we absolved?  :P

 Good to see you Halfy!

 -Lu


  On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 2:07 PM, Halfdan Ingvarsson  half...@sidefx.com 
 wrote:


 Hello there

 It's been a while.

 I thought I'd post here and let you know, since there's been a lot of
 interest in Houdini, that we've created a dedicated forum for SI users on
 the SideFX site. ( http://goo.gl/cixz4s ). Feel free to swing by and
 ask any questions you'd like about Houdini and SideFX. I know this is a
 pretty tough time for everyone, but I just wanted to let you know that
 you're all welcome in our community.

 Hope to see you there!

 All the best,

 - 1/2




 --
 Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it
 and let them flee like the dogs they are!

















 --





 Perry Harovas
 Animation and Visual Effects

 http://www.TheAfterImage.com http://www.theafterimage.com/

 -25 Years Experience
 -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)




 --





 Perry Harovas
 Animation and Visual Effects

 http://www.TheAfterImage.com http://www.theafterimage.com/

 -25 Years Experience
 -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)

Re: my first experiment with rigging in Houdini :-))))

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Hi Jason,

I've seen that link spread around a couple of times.  And I've kind kept
quiet about it since it is indeed educational.  Just a heads up though,
Houdini particles have recently been rewritten and unified into the
Dynamics Operators context.  So where the evaluation comparison between an
ICE tree and a VOP network might still hold valid, the particle performance
overall in production is so much faster than before.

-Lu


On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 3:45 PM, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote:


 While Houdini may be technically more powerful,
 ICE, even if still can be considered somewhat technical, is quite known to
 be much more approachable and is (yet) another testament of bringing
 complexity to easier reach.

 Houdini seems to be mid-way between actually scripting, and higher level
 visual programming.

 We will wait and see how bifrost will be on the friendly (and integrated)
 side
 (after foam and everything else concerning naiad will be implemented.. and
 graph actually exposed)

 Here is a known (performance only) comparison between ICE and VOP

   http://frenchdog.wordpress.com/2009/09/12/ice-vs-vop/

Re: Autodesk response

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Matt,

Considering your previous emails about retaining legacy, I got the notion
you didn't know until the last minute since you were still writing emails
about date integrity.

What are you guys planning to do?

-Lu


On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 4:11 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote:

 In response to 'B', Autodesk showed up at our office the very moment the
 news went live to everybody else.  In essence, we didn't get any warning
 either. We were told we're one of the larger Softimage customers.



 No NDA's, roadmaps to the future, or anything else.  Just, Hey, Soft is
 EOL.  We'll toss you some Max and/or Maya licenses at no extra cost to help
 you along for the next 2 years, after which you can no longer use Soft.
  Any questions?.   This is before the policy of ending use of Softimage
 after Feb 1, 2016 was revised, of course.





 Matt









 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Raffaele Fragapane
 *Sent:* Monday, March 17, 2014 3:44 PM
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Re: Autodesk response



 Lets make something very clear here.

 A) big shops might not be voicing their concerns for reasons other than
 some of the utterly retarded conspiracy theories that are emerging. Reasons
 might be that CEOs and producers in a place big enough simply DO NOT give
 enough of a damn about this, or that they are not a bunch of fanatics but
 they deal with business the way business is dealt with, or even that it's
 not infrequent for shops having a no vendor bias policy which extends to
 publicity, positive or negative, of any kind tied to a specific vendor.



 B) the forewarning was a small handful of weeks for the luckiest, as short
 as 10 days for those at the end of it, and many were simply left out out of
 sheer incompetence (See Glassworks).



 C) the shops you mention might be considering to flip the finger to AD as
 well. As usual I can't speak for, or even imply what is going on in, Animal
 Logic, but I know first hand that more than a place was already trying
 their absolute hardest to marginalize as much as possible integration of AD
 products. Do you think how this latest move was handled is helping?



 D) Last but not least, I don't know where this dysfunctional theory some
 people seem to have that big shops get bribed by vendors to promote things
 to the peons. Sure, it sporadically happened in the past, especially in SGI
 days, but ultimately the margins in VFX and Feature Animation are so small
 you have no idea. The singular sole priority in any big shop is to work as
 efficiently as possible financially. If it involves using AD products AD
 itself could be helmed by Satan and have a side-trade of illegal arms
 contraband and AD products would still be bought.

 If working with AD is potentially financially damaging, given how small
 the cost of software itself in a pipe is these days when the pipe is wide
 and long enough, many birds would be instantaneously flipped at AD.



 Honestly guys, get a grip. There's no conspiracy theory, just some people
 are a lot more rational and more divested across resources than those
 frothing over it. It doesn't mean they aren't saddened, or suddenly even
 more concerned about AD's client policies, but they don't all have XSI
 tattoos on their buttocks.



 On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 6:16 AM, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote:

 The idea of prewarnings, is for exactly that.. letting bigger shops in to
 the decision  start transitions first,
 gives a feeling of preferential treatment,  not much room to dissaprove
 when it all silent and top secret, so you go ahead saying..
 darn, but what other choice?

 And when it all comes out, not only do the prewarned (with the loudest
 voices) not speak-out (already transitioned halfway)

 but then serve as example leaders, more-or-less willingly leading the way
 to the better way!

 Yay!

Re: Autodesk response

[Meng-Yang Lu]

You have some fans anticipating that release.  Me included.  Godspeed buddy.

-Lu


On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 4:31 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote:

 The company is 110% focused on getting Wildstar to market on our
 advertised release date of June 3, 2014.  That's not too far off, so you
 can imagine where our heads are at right now.



 I cannot speak for the company, but if it were up to me I'd wait for the
 sales numbers to roll in to determine if transition is even an issue.



 Matt











 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Meng-Yang Lu
 *Sent:* Monday, March 17, 2014 4:20 PM

 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Re: Autodesk response



 Matt,



 Considering your previous emails about retaining legacy, I got the notion
 you didn't know until the last minute since you were still writing emails
 about date integrity.



 What are you guys planning to do?



 -Lu



 On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 4:11 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com
 wrote:

 In response to 'B', Autodesk showed up at our office the very moment the
 news went live to everybody else.  In essence, we didn't get any warning
 either. We were told we're one of the larger Softimage customers.



 No NDA's, roadmaps to the future, or anything else.  Just, Hey, Soft is
 EOL.  We'll toss you some Max and/or Maya licenses at no extra cost to help
 you along for the next 2 years, after which you can no longer use Soft.
  Any questions?.   This is before the policy of ending use of Softimage
 after Feb 1, 2016 was revised, of course.





 Matt









 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Raffaele Fragapane
 *Sent:* Monday, March 17, 2014 3:44 PM
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Re: Autodesk response



 Lets make something very clear here.

 A) big shops might not be voicing their concerns for reasons other than
 some of the utterly retarded conspiracy theories that are emerging. Reasons
 might be that CEOs and producers in a place big enough simply DO NOT give
 enough of a damn about this, or that they are not a bunch of fanatics but
 they deal with business the way business is dealt with, or even that it's
 not infrequent for shops having a no vendor bias policy which extends to
 publicity, positive or negative, of any kind tied to a specific vendor.



 B) the forewarning was a small handful of weeks for the luckiest, as short
 as 10 days for those at the end of it, and many were simply left out out of
 sheer incompetence (See Glassworks).



 C) the shops you mention might be considering to flip the finger to AD as
 well. As usual I can't speak for, or even imply what is going on in, Animal
 Logic, but I know first hand that more than a place was already trying
 their absolute hardest to marginalize as much as possible integration of AD
 products. Do you think how this latest move was handled is helping?



 D) Last but not least, I don't know where this dysfunctional theory some
 people seem to have that big shops get bribed by vendors to promote things
 to the peons. Sure, it sporadically happened in the past, especially in SGI
 days, but ultimately the margins in VFX and Feature Animation are so small
 you have no idea. The singular sole priority in any big shop is to work as
 efficiently as possible financially. If it involves using AD products AD
 itself could be helmed by Satan and have a side-trade of illegal arms
 contraband and AD products would still be bought.

 If working with AD is potentially financially damaging, given how small
 the cost of software itself in a pipe is these days when the pipe is wide
 and long enough, many birds would be instantaneously flipped at AD.



 Honestly guys, get a grip. There's no conspiracy theory, just some people
 are a lot more rational and more divested across resources than those
 frothing over it. It doesn't mean they aren't saddened, or suddenly even
 more concerned about AD's client policies, but they don't all have XSI
 tattoos on their buttocks.



 On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 6:16 AM, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote:

 The idea of prewarnings, is for exactly that.. letting bigger shops in to
 the decision  start transitions first,
 gives a feeling of preferential treatment,  not much room to dissaprove
 when it all silent and top secret, so you go ahead saying..
 darn, but what other choice?

 And when it all comes out, not only do the prewarned (with the loudest
 voices) not speak-out (already transitioned halfway)

 but then serve as example leaders, more-or-less willingly leading the way
 to the better way!

 Yay!

Re: Idea- Just keep Mental Ray and FBX support - Softimage free w/Maya or Max or any Suite.

[Meng-Yang Lu]

That guy that won the Oscar probably didn't have to do the work... :P

You know better than that Brad!!

-Lu


On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 2:30 PM, Bradley Gabe witha...@gmail.com wrote:

 There is somewhat of a bright side folks, let's be realistic. Just about
 every single hard core XSI user I'd known who fully committed to switching
 over to Maya without looking back has gone on to do bigger and better
 things in the industry. They work at places like Weta, ILM, Dreamworks,
 Disney, heck a guy some of us used to work with every day back in the early
 XSI era just won an Oscar for best VFX! Just drink the cool aid and go with
 the flow, and better days await for you too. The last thing you want is for
 Donald Sutherland to pick you out of a crowd, point at you, open his mouth
 and shriek (it sucks, it happened to me back when I was at ILM).

 The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!... and spiders. Those
 little bastards are evil!

Re: Top List of ICE Nodes That Cover 80% of What You Do With The Toolset

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Heh, it'd be less work just undo-ing the EOL decision instead of
reinventing the round wheel to a square one.

-Lu

Re: Wise up

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Maybe bad form considering the host of this list...but I agree.

Maya cannot do all the things you've asked.  Even with the promises to
bring it up to speed, what governing factor (now that we've aired all the
dirty laundry about ME percentages) will hold them to their promise?
 Money?  Nope.  Their word?  Comedy gold.

I'm trying to be realistic as possible here.  We need to find a partnership
where our tools and focus is a MAJORITY of the developer's market, not a
tiny fraction.  How else can you enforce that they have our best interest
at hand?  And I'm not just talking about just Softimage.  I'm talking about
everything from here on out and into the future.

I think we need to find a stronger foundation to build our future
partnerships.  It has never been they give and we take.  It has always, for
as long as I've been a part of this industry, a collaborative effort to
create the tools that we feed ourselves and our families with.  It doesn't
matter if you're Maya, XSI, Max, or Houdini.  The feedback, the time spent
mucking around to figure it all out, the development of cool tools from
talented developers, all of that is valuable.  Where do you want to invest
that effort??

I only see two options here for our future's sake.  Somehow, bring
Softimage back.  Or invest the effort we're about to embark on with another
entity.  If you want to get back at ADSK for what they've done, then simply
build a better product elsewhere.  What better people than the ones here on
the list with your wealth of experience to guide an energetic development
team to get this done?  It's going to take 5 years at least to get
Softimage back to where it is today IF all the promises are kept.  What can
WE do in that time?  What's is there left to lose?

There's an opportunity here to evaluate the current and future needs of CG,
and tackle those problems without all the legacy garbage that robs us of
performance and effort.  We have a new perspective of hardware technology
that weren't even on the radar 10 years ago.  Why not aim our roadmap
towards THAT future?

Does this sound absolutely crazy?  Probably.  But you know what else is
crazy?  Killing the best software on the market and telling us it for our
own good.

Time to make a choice...

-Lu



On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 6:30 PM, David Saber davidsa...@sfr.fr wrote:

  I read all these threads and the general feeling I get is: people are
 accepting what's happening... But didn't we accept too much since 2008?

 AD acquisition, AD not promoting Softimage, AD kicking Softimage's
 original developers: for all these slaps, we grumbled then we accepted. Now
 AD kills Softimage: we grumble then we accept! We're even helping AD to
 improve Maya!

 The last request to AD from our community is to keep Softimage half alive
 with some small fixes from time to time. I have a question for those who
 requested it: if AD grants you that, and if Softimage becomes a stagnant
 living dead app, will you be happy? Will you thank AD for that?

 Now AD says with some workflow ideas from Softimage, the future of Maya is
 bright (click). Do you buy it? Can they do it? A true nonlinear workflow? A
 modern GUI where everything is drag and droppable? A render region? An
 explorer so complete? A true animation mixer?

 If Ad asks you to leave your young beautiful wife, and choose your fat
 ugly mother in law instead, would you accept?

 Why not keeping Softimage's development instead! It already has a solid
 ground for improvements. When V7 came out and ICE was making a lot of buzz,
 who in this community would have thought our software of choice (and us)
 would head for this situation? It's like XSI was an orphan child, adopted
 by some cold, silent parents, who do not understand his talent or even his
 culture. They see no use for him so they kill him.

 Enough! Screw the fifth stage of grief! Acceptance? What AD is doing is
 NOT acceptable. Everyone should go back to stage 2: RAGE. I'd just like to
 see more fighting spirit here. Something should be possible to stop this
 madness and to bring XSI back to the time it was dazzling everyone. The
 open letters and Pooby's project are great initiatives. These days I'm
 contacting all my friends to ask them to sign the petition. Perhaps I'm
 unrealistic, but I can't let XSI die without a fight.

 David

Re: MAYA community

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Hi Alistair,

Hit me up offlist.  I think I can help you quite a bit in this regard.

-Lu


On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 7:41 AM, Alastair Hearsum
hear...@glassworks.co.ukwrote:

  Thanks

 The questions I wanted to pose were more along the lines of :

 Are there Maya users here with direct experience of Softimage or who work
 alongside Softimage users in a larger facility who have opinions about what
 Softimage functionality they envy
 The aim is to get some counterpoint from that side of the equation to use
 in any discussions with Autodesk.

 The other type of question I have is something like
 I want to make a sphere and move it somewhere over time  (as I struggle
 manfully with dark lord, but I'm not making them too public yet.

 Alastair

  Alastair Hearsum
  Head of 3d
 [image: GLASSWORKS]

  33/34 Great Pulteney Street
 London
 W1F 9NP
 +44 (0)20 7434 1182
 glassworks.co.uk http://www.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)
  Please consider the environment before you print this email.
  DISCLAIMER: This e-mail and attachments are strictly privileged, private
 and confidential and are intended solely for the stated recipient(s). Any
 views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not
 necessarily represent those of the Company. If you are not the intended
 recipient, be advised that you have received this e-mail in error and that
 any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this e-mail is
 strictly prohibited. If this transmission is received in error please
 kindly return it to the sender and delete this message from your system.
  On 14/03/2014 14:05, Tim Leydecker wrote:

 You might like to google:

 maya_he3d google group

 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/maya_he3d

 There´s many of the long-time Maya users there that transitioned
 from the old/closed m...@highend3d.com listserver.

 The volume is quite low. For specific questions you may as well
 probably go ahead and ask Stefan Andersson or Matt Estela.

 I think Matt set it up, in case you want to subscribe.

 Cheers,

 tim





 On 14.03.2014 13:44, Alastair Hearsum wrote:

 Folks

 Doses anyone know the equivalent of this list for Maya users? I wanted to
 pose some questions to them.

 Alastair

 --
 Alastair Hearsum
 Head of 3d
 GLASSWORKS
 33/34 Great Pulteney Street
 London
 W1F 9NP
 +44 (0)20 7434 1182
 glassworks.co.uk http://www.glassworks.co.uk/http://www.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)
 Please consider the environment before you print this email.
 DISCLAIMER: This e-mail and attachments are strictly privileged, private
 and confidential and are intended solely for the stated recipient(s). Any
 views or opinions presented are
 solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the
 Company. If you are not the intended recipient, be advised that you have
 received this e-mail in error and
 that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this
 e-mail is strictly prohibited. If this transmission is received in error
 please kindly return it to the sender
 and delete this message from your system.

Re: Open letter to Autodesk

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Hi Jason,

Right now, many people need to make measured decisions on how to conduct
their business effectively in the short term, with plans to transition in
the long term.  I'm extremely upset that the weapon of choice that my
friends used to make 98% Human is going to go away.  And I know people have
carved out whole careers using Softimage.  If I had to solo a job with a
quick turnaround like many freelancers, I would run with Softimage knowing
the preproduction work could eventually be converted to final renders.
 Undoubtedly, it's a harsh blow to hear it's EOL.

But you still have access to it now and it's still an amazing piece of kit.
 So that's not going anywhere.  So take this as a little prod to go
exploring other offerings and expanding your capabilities.  If visual
programming is your thing, take a look a Houdini.  I think it's second to
none regarding a visual programming environment.  Plus, SideFX is a
completely different experience than Autodesk and would love to hear your
feedback.  We went from an all-Maya studio here in LA to Maya/Houdini.  And
truth be told, it was the Houdini work that helped spurred on our growth
here in LA.  Had we adamantly stuck with Maya for everything, I'm not sure
where we'd be today.

We have to stop placing these mental blocks that prevents us from learning
new things and enabling us to take on new challenges.  What we quickly
forget is what did you guys do prior to ICE?  And what happened when it
showed up in 2008?  Everyone took a bit of time and learned it and some got
very good at it.  Why is looking at other offers any different?  I'm not
saying Oh well, might as well make the best of it.  What I am saying is
stay active in seeking out new solutions.  And we need to take this a step
further.  What does the DCC of the future look like?  Beautifully fast
real-time viewports where I can hit play and frames get saved to disk?
 Real-time smoke and fluid sims where I don't have to guess and hope my
values are good enough?  Animation tools that are intuitive and don't
require an army of TDs to wrangle?  The CG community could really use the
experience from Softimage and lead the way towards a better DCC.

Just have to find a platform that won't get yanked out from under people
this time.

-Lu

Re: lighting/rendering 2 houdini

[Meng-Yang Lu]

I think Houdini at the core is a very powerful tool when it comes to
lighting.  But like anything that's powerful, you're gonna spend some time
working out your shaders.  It is definitely not simple, but that's not to
say you couldn't make it simple for future use.

Personally, I love it because you can pipe any data into an AOV at
rendertime.  Need to add a pass that reflects particle age in your fluid
mesh, no problem.  Whatever data you want to be represented in an image, it
can do without waiting for a developer to build that bridge for you.

Mantra is free across your farm with one FX license, and it does both
micropoly and PBR.  Most things are PBR since brute force is the thing
right now.  Best volumetric renderer that isn't proprietary.

Scene management is pretty good since you can set up multiple ROPs, create
dependencies, and use Takes as a last resort.

There are hooks to Arnold in the works if you guys want to still use your
Arnold licenses.
https://vimeo.com/81443048

Here's some Houdini car renders during the formation bits.  Had to cause of
interactive lighting and the point cloud being used as a boolean at render
time.
http://www.themill.com/work/toyota/toyota-avalon.aspx

-Lu


On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 12:29 PM, Ognjen Vukovic ognj...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi everyone.

 Just out of curiosity i wanted to post this,
 How many people are planning to take their lighting/shading/rendering
 pipelines to houdini? In my opinion Maya is not a possibility and well
 modo, while it isn't that bad just seems to be missing some stuff? So what
 are your opinions..

 Cheers,
 Ogi.

Re: lighting/rendering 2 houdini

[Meng-Yang Lu]

The point is that we all still have a couple years to figure this stuff
out. I personally recommend you take your time and study all your options
before you jump ship. There might be a few surprises along the way.
Something might even come out of left field and completely revolutionize
the way we work. But that's just my opinion. For all I know, Houdini might
be the next big thing in lighting/shading/rendering.

Exactly.  There's so many things to consider when choosing an app.
 Everything from the type of work, leadership within that software, talent
availability, and the list goes on.  I won't say that Houdini is perfect
either, but when it comes to lighting, I think it's one of the unsung
heroes living in the shadows of FX.

Plus I think Halfdan is behind the rendering side of things at SideFX so
it's kinda like being in bed with old Softies...good or bad. :P

-Lu

Re: Open letter to Autodesk

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Words were said.  Boom!

-Lu


On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 5:30 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.comwrote:

 Yeah, what he said.

 
 Eric Thivierge
 http://www.ethivierge.com


 On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 8:23 PM, Raffaele Fragapane 
 raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:

 Let me clarify that I'm not saying you have it easy by any means, but as
 an individual you are in control of you own time, unconditionally.
 You don't NEED TO drop Soft right now (unless the job market withers
 instantly), you can keep doing business as usual as an individual for at
 least a few months, and go in crunch time to re-educate yourself freely in
 your spare time. That's by no means ideal, or even nice, but you can do it;
 you can turn on a dime.

 You decide to learn rigging in Maya? You can still model in Soft, you are
 a one man band pipe, that's a no brainer, and then you can double up your
 rigging effort to rig the thing in Soft for your client output, and try to
 replicate it in Maya at night.

 Unless you have, and need to, work for 16 hours a day you should have a
 pile of free time you wouldn't have been able to monetize otherwise that
 you now have to invest, even if against your will.

 As a company it's not that simple. You don't have such a commodity as non
 monetized time. Every single minute of your employees is paid for in one
 way or another. Money, TIL, or if you don't offer recompense for overtime
 much worse consequences. You do not have the same agility, simple as that,
 and while as an individual you are fully in control of your assets and Q/C
 is in built in the work itself, as a company those interim stage have
 considerable added cost and require refactoring.

 Now, again, please don't think I'm downplaying this. We all have hobbies,
 or families, or excees of work, or a mix of those, and it's a very, very
 real cost to sacrifice any of those for the sake of re qualifying yourself.
 If it's not an economic cost (no work excess you can sell), at the very
 least it's a considerable emotional and intellectual effort which is very
 likely to drain you, and sustained for too long will eventually affect the
 money earning hours of your day, and is therefore to be managed carefully.

 The only reason I'm continuing this debate isn't for the sake of
 argument, it's because I'm witnessing a lot of defeatism, and purely out of
 care for my peers and a community I've been part of for my entire adult
 life I'd like to see people shake free of it.
 Saying that changing application will demote you to junior for a while is
 non-sense. The distinction between a junior and a senior is NOT their
 software dexterity, if it was we'd look for app monkeys and would never
 re-train people across software.
 The distinction between a junior and a senior is experience, ingenuity
 matured into applicable skills, the ability to think logically and
 critically under pressure, the sum of all their projects giving them vision
 over the next. Nobody will take any of that away from you, don't let
 anything or anybody EVER convince you that you are the software you use. It
 has impact, considerable impact, but it only defines a very small part of
 your overall value.

Re: Open letter to Autodesk

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Hi Sylvain,

I was just agreeing about Raff's eloquent emphasis on how experience is not
directly linked to what software you use.  Lack of foresight on a project
can erode all the advantages gained by slick tools.

The truth is that our industry is constantly changing with new innovations
and it has always been my philosophy that we either adapt to the tools
given to us and make the best of them, or gain the skills to develop new
tools.  This will continue as long as we have an industry, and we should by
all means embrace it.

I started using Maya since 3.0 and XSI in 4.0.1.  And though I'm a huge fan
of Softimage, it's contextual intelligence, and it's passionate community,
I never really felt comfortable putting all my eggs in one basket.  Today,
I leverage Maya for nCloth and animation, XSI for the generalist tasks of
modeling and ass-saving ability, and Houdini for FX.  XSI was always my
secret weapon though.  We switch context all the time in 3D.  Your viewport
tools compared to your graph editor and then to ICE are all completely
different.  And then we probably go home and put in a couple hours of
gaming, another interface to deal with.  3D to me it just like that.  I'm
constantly changing interfaces and workflows anyway.  And I think of Maya,
Softimage, and Houdini in that way.

When it comes to managing projects, it's incredibly beneficial for a lead
to grasp a broad understanding of not only the process, but the workflows
and advantages that each package brings to the table.  Here at the Mill LA,
it's not unusual for us to mix Maya and Houdini.  Most of the time, the
pitches are done by one guy in Softimage, but I have to go in and figure
out a way to replicate that process in Maya our Houdini because of talent
availability and the need to scale.  And you know what, our end product
benefits from leveraging the best out of our tools and our people.

The reality is that Softimage will be around for 2 more years.  A lot can
change.  I remember when Shake was bought out and my favorite compositor of
all time went away.  Ask me to give up Nuke now for Shake.  No way!!  It
took some time and the pains were real.  But today, I'm a lot more
efficient with Nuke than I ever was with Shake.  And I hope one day, I'll
be more proficient in another 3D app than I am with what I have now.

Change is what makes our industry the exciting fun one that inspired us to
join in this crazy party.  I don't worry about the tools of the future
because as long as you guys are still in the game, I believe we will find a
way like we have been doing all those years the past.  It's gonna take more
than one silly company and one horrible decisions to put me out the
pasture.  And you guys with your wealth of talent and experience should
feel the same.

Sorry for being an absolute child on the internet.

-Lu




On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 6:48 PM, Sylvain Lebeau s...@shedmtl.com wrote:

 euh...

 Lu, it's different for everyone. Studios and/or individuals.
 It's all about how you feel and how much time you will be able to put into
 learning new stuffs to become productive as you are used to be.

 I dont see any Boom!! here.  Raff is not bashing Olivier at all.

 He is right (as always).  But i also understands Olivier's feeling and
 uncertainity.  It's just normal to have fear of the unknown in our day to
 day life that puts the peanut butter on our tables.

 Is there a Uber/Ultimate solution to all of this for everyone's needs?
 Awnser is NO.


 What's your personnal plan Lu?


 sly



 *Sylvain Lebeau // SHED*
 V-P/Visual effects supervisor
 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8
 T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM http://www.shedmtl.com/ 
 http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM http://www.shedmtl.com/

 VFX Curriculum 03: Compositing Basics
 mail to: s...@shedmtl.com




 On Mar 13, 2014, at 8:57 PM, Meng-Yang Lu ntmon...@gmail.com wrote:

 Words were said.  Boom!

 -Lu


 On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 5:30 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.comwrote:

 Yeah, what he said.

 
 Eric Thivierge
 http://www.ethivierge.com


 On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 8:23 PM, Raffaele Fragapane 
 raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:

 Let me clarify that I'm not saying you have it easy by any means, but as
 an individual you are in control of you own time, unconditionally.
 You don't NEED TO drop Soft right now (unless the job market withers
 instantly), you can keep doing business as usual as an individual for at
 least a few months, and go in crunch time to re-educate yourself freely in
 your spare time. That's by no means ideal, or even nice, but you can do it;
 you can turn on a dime.

 You decide to learn rigging in Maya? You can still model in Soft, you
 are a one man band pipe, that's a no brainer, and then you can double up
 your rigging effort to rig the thing in Soft for your client output, and
 try to replicate it in Maya at night.

 Unless you have, and need to, work for 16 hours a day you

Re: Cinema 4D an option?

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Buddy of mine did a screencast of it for me over Skype.  It looks and feels
like a modern app.  And it is incredibly fast.  I know it's strengths are
fast assembly similar to XSI.  Thinking Particles for fx.  It looks like a
great look-dev environment honestly.

My take on it is that C4D is used as a 3D supplement to a lot of AE work
out there, but has a strong feature set for hardcore CG nerds.  Just our
worlds have never met because we don't feel like we're doing real work
unless we're sweating a bit.

The more I'm looking at all the options, I feel C4D is just a worthy of a
contender as Modo is.

-Lu


On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 12:24 PM, Chris Johnson chr...@topixfx.com wrote:

 Our creative director uses it exclusively and he cranks out really cool
 stuff really fast. I've been really impressed with it for what he can do
 for Style Frames in very short period of time. He's also done some really
 nice particle work with it. Here's some of his work. He did the FX for the
 Tron Destiny entirely by himself.

 https://vimeo.com/pilotpriest


 On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 3:13 PM, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.comwrote:

 it's definetely an interesting
 option here is an overview of the software made for softimage users:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0WGzecSo2c


 On Wednesday, 12 March 2014, Rob Wuijster r...@casema.nl wrote:

  There's some chatter on si-community.com about C4D. Some ppl are
 posting videos on certain question asked.
 Might be an interesting read/watch?

 Rob

 \/-\/\/

 On 12-3-2014 20:07, Byron Nash wrote:

 My boss just bought us a copy during the sale they have right now. For
 all the mograph stuff we do it will probably come in handy. I'm not sure
 how much it's going to help us trying to pursue more high end VFX work
 though. I mentioned Houdini to him and that went nowhere. All he can think
 about is finding freelancers to fill seats. There probably isn't a Houdini
 person within 300 miles of here.

  Byron


 On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 3:00 PM, Leoung O'Young 
 digim...@digimata.comwrote:

 I see there are a lot of discussion of Modo, Houdini and even Blender
 as an option excluding AD products, but not much has been talk about
 Cinema4D.
 It is definitely cheaper. Anyone else looking at it as an option?

 Thanks,
 Leoung


  No virus found in this message.
 Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
 Version: 2014.0.4335 / Virus Database: 3722/7185 - Release Date: 03/12/14

Re: SI and Houdini

[Meng-Yang Lu]

There really isn't anything like it on the market right now.  Houdini is a
tool designed to manage the ever-growing complexity of CG.  It's a very
different way of working.  Jordi's pdfs explains it well and as an added
bonus, arranges the UI to simulate Softimage, something I didn't even
bother to check out.

I personally think Houdini is very Next Gen when it comes to powerful
technology.  There's a good reason why large-scale effects default to
Houdini.  It handles complexity well and you can insert explicit control
anywhere in that system and manage it however you want.  This is why it is
seemingly difficult.  It's wide open to let you design a tool how you see
fit.

For instance, I have used Houdini's FLIP fluid solver and used it for
blood, growing icicles, and making an interactive beach for komodo dragons.
 It's just that flexible where one of its solvers can have many
applications.  Where ICE shines to take data and manages it procedurally, I
think Houdini takes that idea a step further and bolster it with some
amazing physics solvers all straight out of the box.  And the data between
the solver is interchangeable so even if the creators never intended for
them to play together, you can set it up to do so.

It all depends on what you spend most of your time doing.  For me, they
love asking me to do all the weird stuff that modelers, animator, and
lighters can't figure out.  I honestly would hate my job if I didn't have a
tool like Houdini to rely on.  I would also secretly do all my modeling in
Softimage and tell my boss I did it in Maya.  Right tools for the right job
as always.

-Lu


On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 8:45 AM, David Saber davidsa...@sfr.fr wrote:

 How next gen is Houdini? I read the first version was done in 1996...
 Does it feel modern, non linear, non destructive to use?

 (It would have been so simple to just keep XSI)

 David

Re: Maya feature request from Softimage users

[Meng-Yang Lu]

And implemented poorly.  Largely because of the lack of an operator stack.
 If you apply transfer attributes further down the line, you're gonna have
a bad time freezing it to improve performance.

Stack reordering is fine.  Again, the ability to edit that stack is what's
missing.

-Lu


On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 10:39 AM, Steven Caron car...@gmail.com wrote:

 from what i understand, keep in mind i am no maya expert, some of those
 things are available already...

 gator = attribute transfer http://goo.gl/zFQ0Py
 operator stack reordering = deformation order http://goo.gl/nHzWJF


 On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 8:59 AM, Jeremie Passerin gerem@gmail.comwrote:

 Hey guys...

 What do you want to see added to Maya ?
 Autodesk is saying they will add Softimage features to the other
 packages... What is that ?

 As a Rigger, here is what I will miss the most

 - Gator
 - ICE : Especially to create custom deformers
 - Proper weights painting tools
 - Weights Editor !
 - The Operator Stack, reorder, delete operator...
 - Being able to change modeling whith Envelope, Shapes already applied to
 the mesh
 - Blend shape workflow

 I would really like to hear Autodesk plan to incorporate some of those
 features in Maya.
 I'm guessing there not all super easy to merge, but some of them would be
 considered as amazing new feature by the Maya users.

 J/

Re: Maya feature request from Softimage users

[Meng-Yang Lu]

The new node editor facilitates this in a similar fashion.  You don't have
to use the Hypershade.


On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 11:07 AM, Chris Covelli
ch...@polygonpusherinc.comwrote:

 I would be very happy to see Maya make their hypershade more like the XSI
 rendertree.  The hypershade  feels like its trying to be node based, but
 not quite getting it.  In XSI ou can see the ports and know instantly how
 everything is connected, whereas the hypershade just has boxes with lines
 between them.  Not very helpful if you ask me.

 Chris Covelli
 http://www.polygonpusherinc.com/
 http://exocortex.com/products/species
 TurboSquid 
 Modelshttp://www.turbosquid.com/Search/Artists/Polygon-Pusher?referral=Polygon-Pusher


 On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 10:58 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.comwrote:

 no UI way to open two outliners, however there is a splitter bar at
 the bottom of the outliner that you can drag to get two outliner
 panes.

 On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 1:56 PM, Siew Yi Liang soni...@gmail.com wrote:
  Indeed there is:
 
  As MEL:
 
  tearOffPanel Outliner2 outlinerPanel false;
 
  This is because UI windows in Maya afaik are given specific names and
 you
  cannot have two open 'viewports' which share the same name, so just
 create a
  new one! And tear that off instead. And I agree, this should be part of
 the
  default GUI, though right now I just save this to my shelf as a script
 and
  increment the counter when I need a new one. :)
 
  Yours sincerely,

Re: Maya feature request from Softimage users

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Perhaps this is one of the features we should have AD take a look at.
 Though I think clusters is the foundation that allows shapes in Soft to be
so powerful.  Are we still decapitating heads in 2014?

-Lu


On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 11:14 AM, Raffaele Fragapane 
raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:

 Bear in mind when dealing with shape work in Maya, and this is in general,
 that anything outside of Soft is primitive, half arsed, and generally
 painful.
 In those regards (shapes) Soft was and will probably always remain
 unbeaten. Prepare yourself for vast amounts of pain on every front. The
 difference between -anything- and Soft is a gaping chasm.

 I know of some very large, very prominent shops that are known to NOT use
 Soft that picked it up solely for that at times.


 On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 6:11 AM, Emilio Hernandez emi...@e-roja.comwrote:

 Another one.

 That I don't need to specify the blendshape node if there is only one
 blend shape node in that object, while I have other objects with blendshape
 nodes, each time I add a new blend shape to an object, if I have other
 objects with blendshapes nodes.  I need to specify to which blendshape node
 I want to add, even if the object that I want to add the shape only has one
 blendshape node.

 ---
 Emilio Hernández   VFX  3D animation.


 2014-03-07 13:07 GMT-06:00 Chris Covelli ch...@polygonpusherinc.com:

 I would be very happy to see Maya make their hypershade more like the XSI
 rendertree.  The hypershade  feels like its trying to be node based, but
 not quite getting it.  In XSI ou can see the ports and know instantly how
 everything is connected, whereas the hypershade just has boxes with lines
 between them.  Not very helpful if you ask me.

 Chris Covelli
 http://www.polygonpusherinc.com/
 http://exocortex.com/products/species
 TurboSquid 
 Modelshttp://www.turbosquid.com/Search/Artists/Polygon-Pusher?referral=Polygon-Pusher


 On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 10:58 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau 
 luceri...@gmail.comwrote:

 no UI way to open two outliners, however there is a splitter bar at
 the bottom of the outliner that you can drag to get two outliner
 panes.

 On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 1:56 PM, Siew Yi Liang soni...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  Indeed there is:
 
  As MEL:
 
  tearOffPanel Outliner2 outlinerPanel false;
 
  This is because UI windows in Maya afaik are given specific names and
 you
  cannot have two open 'viewports' which share the same name, so just
 create a
  new one! And tear that off instead. And I agree, this should be part
 of the
  default GUI, though right now I just save this to my shelf as a
 script and
  increment the counter when I need a new one. :)
 
  Yours sincerely,






 --
 Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it
 and let them flee like the dogs they are!

Re: AAUTODESK TO DISCONTINUE MAYA WITH 2015 RELEASE!!!!

[Meng-Yang Lu]

GUYS!!! GUYS!!

Listen.  I know you guys are angry.  Upset.  Heartbroken.  Me too!!

In the upcoming years, you're gonna have to make some hard decisions
regarding your livelihood.  Either continue using Soft in zombie form, jump
to another software, or get forced to use Maya.

The wisest thing to do if the last options happens to you is hope your
hard-earned skills are transferable.  ADSK bought Softimage and if you
didn't see this coming, I don't know what to tell you.

Marcus (the guy talking) is a smart dude.  He made Naiad, and that had a
very cool node-based system.  Out of all of this shit you guys are going
through right now, that guy is probably the silver lining in all of this.
 Though he won't make Softimage whole for many of us, he is on our side.
 Although I don't agree with killing off Soft, I can't help to agree on
Marcus' vision of the future, if he gets his way, as he put it.

It will still be a long and arduous road, but I'm willing to support
developers who are willing to innovate for the sake of artists.  In the
chance fate lands you on a Maya box, there's a chance you'll hit the ground
running while everyone else on Maya side will still be fumbling with a
getData node.

Please don't forget.  Softimage was awesome because of the people.  If I
can work with you guys again even though we're typing Maya in the terminal,
then who cares?

-Lu



On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 11:34 AM, Francisco Criado malcriad...@gmail.comwrote:

 f**king autodesk maya's open procedural fx at 8:54 seems someone is
 stealing code from softimage...
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOVsEK44fh8



 2014-03-07 12:21 GMT-03:00 Ognjen Vukovic ognj...@gmail.com:

 Shame ice 3.7 wouldn't be enough to help maya users out. :)


 On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 4:19 PM, Mário Domingos 
 mdomingos.p...@gmail.comwrote:

 Haha! I cant talk about details sorry guys! I really want too But I
 cant... The only thing I can say without being arrested by Autodesk's
 Special Police Force is that their main goal is to make something like ICE
 2.0. I'm sure something will come out soon.
 --
 Sent from Mailbox https://www.dropbox.com/mailbox for iPhone


 On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 3:04 PM, Ognjen Vukovic ognj...@gmail.comwrote:

   Maya has stoped working.
 Check online for a solution and close the program.
 Restart the program.
 Check online for a solution.

 Its all fun and games, and then something has to get done by the end of
 the day. And then someone gets hurt :)


 On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 3:56 PM, Mário Domingos 
 mdomingos.p...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hahah maybe autocad! Lol
 --
 Sent from Mailbox https://www.dropbox.com/mailbox for iPhone


  On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 2:55 PM, Arvid Björn arvidbj...@gmail.comwrote:

 Aw shucks, I just got a whole heap of Maya licenses traded in for my
 dusty old Soft licenses. Hopefully I can trade in the Maya lics for some
 PowerAnimator ones or something.


 On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 3:47 PM, Mário Domingos 
 mdomingos.p...@gmail.com wrote:

  :P
 --
 Sent from Mailbox https://www.dropbox.com/mailbox for iPhone

Re: Maya feature request from Softimage users

[Meng-Yang Lu]

This is a possibility with Fabric Engine in the mix for super speed.
 Here's hoping.



On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 11:55 AM, Francisco Criado malcriad...@gmail.comwrote:

 Why not to rename xsi.exe to maya.exe and change the starting screen? that
 could be very easy implemented, and voila! all softimage tools and ui in
 maya :)


 2014-03-07 16:50 GMT-03:00 Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com
 :

 I think the core issue here isn't as much whether Maya can be patched or
 not, it surely can, the core is still functional and respectably open, if
 not without issues (and stability has been degrading compared to the past
 IME).

 The problem for a lot of people used to Soft is how much scavenging and
 patching they will HAVE TO do before they are even remotely close to having
 previous functionality.

 For the small scale Maya user, so leave us engineers and big shops out,
 having to scavenge for scripts and tools and hacking together horrible
 copy'n'paste MEL macros is part of the day to day routine, even for things
 such as opening more than one outliner. That's why it's perceived as
 inferior by a lot of Soft users.
 We can discuss potential all day, and there are certainly things I can do
 in Maya that Soft will simply not allow me to do, but in terms of OOTB
 experience it is pretty F'in disgraceful with all the missing bits.

 Rabbit's Shapes plugin and ngSkinTools are bare minimum additions to even
 be able to use it, along side a handful of shelves (Maya's layout is
 another disgrace that requires a lot of old school hacking) that you'll
 have to scavenge from all over the place.

 You also have to toe the line between what you can rely on and what you
 can't.
 Maya has a binary lock on versions, so any new major release, and in two
 recorded cases even the .5s, it breaks binary compatibility.
 Soft users take for granted that most C++ plugins and nodes written four
 years ago and never touched again will still work. There was some pretty
 major upset when for the first time a version or two ago some ICE fixes
 broke the majority of nodes into requiring recompilation. This is par for
 the course in Maya, compiled anything will NOT work on any major version
 other than the one it was compiled for.



 On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 6:36 AM, Meng-Yang Lu ntmon...@gmail.com wrote:

 I've always felt Maya's core performance has been relatively good
 compared to others.  It is incredibly extensible and can maintain some
 really good performance.  The problem that Maya has is having the various
 components exchange data between each other.  Essentially, every node in
 the scene is holding each other's hand always.  These no easy way to hold
 up data to prevent all the nodes from updating when you make a change.

 It boils down to how cleanly you can implement these features.  There
 are some legacy things that could go, obviously some complete reworks, but
 development for Maya is a lot more straight forward than Softimage.

 My only gripe is that as you build tools for Maya, the plug-in manager
 gets incredibly messy.  Looks like a vomit of ideas over the past 10 years
 and no search function.  And it kinda needs all this garbage to function.

 House cleaning is definitely in order.

 -Lu

Re: Listening

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Hi Chris,

With all due respect, you have to start demonstrating your understanding of
our problems by fixing them to show you're listening.  This applies not
only to Softimage users, but should extend to all the products you intend
to support.

Clearly you have planned for this for awhile now.  Then why is there not a
transition strategy already in place?  And why was the first one so
ill-conceived that you had to reneg on it?

This is going beyond just simply software, but how you choose to conduct
business from here on out.  It's time to challenge your leadership team and
take a hard look.  We can disagree on which product you choose to champion,
but everyone on this side can agree that no one has been impressed with the
way Autodesk has historically treated the handling of matters in our
industry.

Respectfully yours,

-Lu


On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 12:01 PM, Chris Vienneau chris.vienn...@autodesk.com
 wrote:

 Hi everyone,

 I just want to let you know there are people from the maya dev and pm
 teams coming online to this forum but we are shipping software and
 answering a lot of calls but the mails you are writing are being passed
 back and forth as they are coming at a furious pace. Stay tuned for some
 answers and we plan on doing some private webinars under NDA for soft users
 to ask questions direct to us. Anyone interested in such a thing please
 write me a private mail at chris.vienn...@autodesk.commailto:
 chris.vienn...@autodesk.com .

 Thx.

 Cv/

Re: Listening

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Wow.  Can't say we're not a passionate bunch!  Maybe it's better to get it
out here than take it out on some poor unsuspecting monitor.

Seriously though, this is clearly an issue of trust.  Saying you won't do
something and not upholding it can go against you promising something, and
not upholding it.  A lot can change in 2 years.  This is my biggest
problems right now.  We rely on Autodesk products to fulfill our
obligations to our clients.  And I want to know that we can continue to
secure that obligation for many years to come.

You can show promising technology, but without integrity behind it, then
what does it mean?

Obviously, we've a lot to think about in regards to all of our futures.

-Lu


On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 2:05 PM, Mihai Iliuta mihai...@gmail.com wrote:

 Nicolas, I'm not sure I understand your position here. On one hand you're
 saying:

 personal attacks to someone who's not responsable of the entire situation
 is just wrong

 on the other:

 but in this case I really hope that AD will receive a huge hit in
 subscriptions and l'ora of developers switch to other companies,because
 this is a really really bad decision

 So on one hand, poor Mr Vienneau is not responsible, but you still wish
 that eventually enough people will leave that AD goes bankrupt and
 Mr.Vienneau looses his job.

 That's kind of more personal than my words :P And btw, I hope for the
 precise same thing as well.

 Ok. If Mr.Vienneau and his lies aren't really responsible than who is?
 Things just don't get decided by themselves, it's not a machine deciding
 this.

 And if I was in Mr Vinneaus shoes, I would feel ill to my stomach coming
 in to work each day, working for absolute scumbags.

 Enjoy that pay check Mr Vienneau.


 On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 10:57 PM, Nicolas Esposito 3dv...@gmail.comwrote:

 Agree,personal attacks to someone who's not responsable of the entire
 situation is just wrong
 I can understand how pissed off you are (and here a lot of people are
 pissed off) but right now this ia the situation,so better deal with it or
 be angry for the next two years

 AD showed that they rather push their old softwares instead of
 Softimage,and we all know how advanced this software is (not for
 everything,but we all know it )

 I do not want anyone to loose their job,but in this case I really hope
 that AD will receive a huge hit in subscriptions and l'ora of developers
 switch to other companies,because this is a really really bad decision

 I hoped that they would keep up Softimage at least as a VFX tool (because
 of ICE) and push it for game development (which is widely used inside big
 game developers ),but no,they create Maya Lite for thatwhile
 Softimage (since release 7?) have already lots of tools for game
 development

 Cheers AD CEOs, you fucked it up big time
 Il 07/mar/2014 22:44 Mihai Iliuta mihai...@gmail.com ha scritto:

 You are listening??

 Ok, listen to your own bullshit:

 The first is to flatly call out that the rumor that the eol of
 Softimage and 3dsmax is upon us is totally false.

 Cory Mogk is now also responsible for Softimage and we have been
 working with the team on the future of the product with lots of key
 customers.

 We understand people make their living from this software and that they
 make huge decisions about their projects and companies and we take that
 responsibility very seriously.

 Again the door is open to contact us or challenge us. Please let
 everyone you know their products are safe.


 So today, we can safely say you are a lying piece of shit. You have no
 dignity, you have no character, and you have no word. I can't imagine any
 developer feeling any pride anymore working for you or this fucked up
 company. What you have done here and HOW you've done it, is irreparable and
 you and your company is from now on going downhill. You expect anybody to
 ever trust you or your company again? Is that worth anything for a
 business? It's worth everything.

 Nobody finds it in the least suspicious why SI was killed now? When the
 whole community around SI and the nr of independent developers working
 developing tools for it was at an all time high???

 I don't know when you lost your balls and your word Mr. Vienneau, but
 good luck regaining both.

 Piece of shit.






 On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 10:05 PM, Perry Harovas 
 perryharo...@gmail.comwrote:

 While Dan's heart is breaking (and so is mine), I still have (at least)
 one nagging question:

 Clearly this has been under discussion for a while at Autodesk, so why
 were the following comments
 from September 5th of 2012 made:

 *The rumor that the EOL of Softimage and 3DS Max is upon us is totally
 false.*

 So, if I understand this correctly, what I get out of it is that when
 Autodesk assures customers that their product is not on the chopping block,
 that statement is really only good for about a year and a half (less if
 you take into account that this EOL must have been decided a while back).

 That doesn't 

Re: SI and Houdini

[Meng-Yang Lu]

So what's the deal?  Do we still owe him beers or are we absolved?  :P

Good to see you Halfy!

-Lu


On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 2:07 PM, Halfdan Ingvarsson half...@sidefx.comwrote:

 Hello there

 It's been a while.

 I thought I'd post here and let you know, since there's been a lot of
 interest in Houdini, that we've created a dedicated forum for SI users on
 the SideFX site. (http://goo.gl/cixz4s). Feel free to swing by and ask
 any questions you'd like about Houdini and SideFX. I know this is a pretty
 tough time for everyone, but I just wanted to let you know that you're all
 welcome in our community.

 Hope to see you there!

 All the best,

 - ½

Re: successor animation software

[Meng-Yang Lu]

I think a small fleet if TDs is inevitable either way.

If you break it all down, 3D at it core is data and the relationships
between those data points.  What this list is upset about is losing the
ability to manipulate that data in a fluid and efficient way.  I feel ya
brothers and sisters.  I was practically incubated in XSI.

I'm quite ready to get behind a platform that can offer a strong core.  A
core that can handle large datasets efficiently, and then the rest, I'm
willing to start from scratch.

I really do believe we've acclimated to some non-ideal workflows only
because the current one weren't horrific enough for us to do anything about
them.  And I do believe at this point, our industry has a good idea of what
we'd like to have and what legacy concepts we can let die.

A concept I've been thinking is finding an engine that we can alter and
change to tackle the problems we deal with.  Be cool if we could reskin
something like a Blender which is open and rather non-volatile and make it
feel like whatever we wanted.  I'm sure there are other technologies to
look at like Fabric Engine, and who knows, maybe even not too far a stretch
to leverage Unity as a platform.

Just food for thought,

-Lu


On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 9:44 AM, Angus Davidson
angus.david...@wits.ac.zawrote:

  While its very impressive you would need a small fleet of TD's to keep
 it shipshape;)

  --
 *From:* Vladimir Jankijevic [v.jankije...@gmail.com]
 *Sent:* 28 February 2014 07:37 PM
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Re: successor animation software

   I don't think they would want to support that beast for untrained
 people. Or if they would, it would cost a tremendous pile of money. Who's
 up for that?


 On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 6:29 PM, Ed Manning etmth...@gmail.com wrote:

 rather than thinking about Maya (which is no more the future than
 Softimage, maybe less), why don't we think about what might be needed in a
 worthy successor to both?

  This might be a good place to start:

  http://rhythm.com/labs/


  Maybe someone could get RH's new owners to commercialize this.  Or
 sell to the Foundry?



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 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: rigging in xsi vs maya

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Yup, and that slider that was mentioned earlier is a booby trap that does
just that.  Throws your weights around willy nilly.  That's why there's a
ancient workflow of adding influence only and never subtracting.

-Lu


On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 6:57 PM, Sebastien Sterling 
sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote:

 I was quite shocked to learn from riggers in my last job, that in maya you
 have to lock all bones but the ones you want to weight to via small tick
 boxes failure to do so aparently causing maya to through random influences
 around...


 On 8 January 2014 02:22, Alan Fregtman alan.fregt...@gmail.com wrote:

 Last time I had to use Maya I would use Crosswalk to transfer the skinned
 mesh from Maya to Soft, do my weighting in home sweet home, then I wrote an
 exporter that saved out my weights in the *cometSaveWeights* format.
 Life saver!



 On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 6:15 PM, Steven Caron car...@gmail.com wrote:

 arg, figured it out.

 import pymel.core as pm
 pm.select(pm.skinCluster(pm.selected()[0], query=True, influence=True))

 best UI ever!


 On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 2:58 PM, Steven Caron car...@gmail.com wrote:

 this thread is some what well timed... i am in maya right now. i need
 to get a mesh and its skin/envelope into softimage. i did not rig this
 object and i don't know enough about maya to try and understand it through
 inspection. in softimage i would select the mesh, then select the deformers
 from envelope, then key frame those objects and remove the constraints on
 them in mass with 'remove all constraints'

 is NONE of that doable in maya? cause i am having a hell of a time
 figuring it out.

 s

Re: rigging in xsi vs maya

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Over the years I've stopped looking at rigging as just a collection of
joints, iks, and constraints.  There's an overarching support toolset that
needs to be in place to manage rigs and animation data that needs to be
part of the equation too.  From the maya side, I miss stuff like the Mixer
and GATOR.  I would give body parts for XSI's operators stacks and ICE
integration.  The blog is missing a lot.

These days, I think rigging has gotten so sophisticated that the stuff he's
comparing only accounts for about 40 percent of the rigging process.
 There's a hefty 70 percent regarding muscles, collisions, and deformer
creation that is still handled via custom tools.  That right bitches.
 Rigging is 110% effort.  At least that's how it feels to me these days.

-Lu





On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:10 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.comwrote:

 what do you guys think about this blog post:

 http://mayavxsi.blogspot.com/2011/09/rigging-m-22-x-15.html

Re: rigging in xsi vs maya

[Meng-Yang Lu]

What does XSI users use for skin simulation these days?  All custom stuff
in ICE?  We've been leveraging nCloth quite a bit lately and arguably, it's
the only piece of tech that 3D peeps here regardless of app preference can
unanimously agree that it is indeed pretty good.  Maybe not significant for
games, but plays a big part of what we do day to day.

The other thing is speed.  This is subjective, but not without me observing
over the years that if you get rigs of similar complexity, however you get
there, animating a handful in Maya is usually no problem while doing the
same in XSI feels a bit slow.

Not trying to argue, Matt.  If forced to pick A or B, I'd find a way
regardless.  Just trying to be objective and see what bounces back because
we're always looking for faster and better ways of doing stuff.

-Lu




On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 2:03 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote:

 So what does maya rigging tools have that Softimage doesn’t that makes a
 significant difference at the end of the day?



 Matt











 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Steven Caron
 *Sent:* Monday, January 06, 2014 1:58 PM

 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Re: rigging in xsi vs maya



 of course everyone would do this, which is why it seems silly to attempt
 and quantify it at all. i know i have bias and i know trained maya talent
 do too... i love to squabble about this stuff in my work environment but it
 is half fun these days. i know there are issues on both sides... but i am
 not going to post a blog dedicated to it.



 On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:42 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com
 wrote:



 everyone would do this, imho, everyone has their thing they like here or
 there.
 About the IK chains in Softimage, when all you did in 10 years is rig
 like Softimage, it's second nature and you accept the way it works as
 how things work (with nulls, etc)  I think the discussion in general
 is deep and interesting, although those first 3 paragraphs seem  way
 too harsh.  I've read some of these comments from client reports.

Re: rigging in xsi vs maya

[Meng-Yang Lu]

It's called the Component Editor.  Does the same thing.  However, XSI lets
you slide the weights around until it feels right.  Beats typing it in.

I just remembered a pretty silly conversation involving a rigging supe and
an XSI developer regarding locking weights.  It was like the only crutch to
hang onto for a Maya user.  Then afterward it was implemented and I think
the weighting system in XSI has been far superior since then.

I really do thing volumetric ideas like OpenVDB is something to explore.
 Not only would you have your classic joint/influence relationship, but
also add in psuedo collision evalualtion around those nasty parts like
armpits, elbow crooks, and the backs of legs.

-Lu




On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 3:33 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.com wrote:

 I think different ways of calculating the influence is probably the
 highest hurdle right now. The default calculations get you a good starting
 point but there are the other heat map methods and another voxel based one
 I saw a vimeo video on that are going to get you much closer than our
 current option of the default influence calculations.

 Having the new feature in Maya to place bones in the middle of a volume I
 think would help a bit as well. Right now we're just stuck with creating a
 cluster, null  cluster constraint. Snap to null. Delete null and cluster.
 I find weight painting much better in Softimage than Maya. The weight
 editor is a really good feature that I think Maya should have (Admitting my
 ignorance on the topic if there is such editor and I've missed it, unlike
 some blog posters out there).

 
 Eric Thivierge
 http://www.ethivierge.com


 On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 5:36 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.comwrote:

 Let me narrow down the question to the specific task of applying an
 envelope or weighting/re-weighting an envelope.





 Matt









 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Matt Lind
 *Sent:* Monday, January 06, 2014 2:27 PM
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* RE: rigging in xsi vs maya



 Open question to anybody with significant experience in both Softimage
 and maya.



 I have to address some envelope and rigging tools internally pretty
 soon.  Having this discussion now is convenience for me.



 Matt









 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [
 mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.comsoftimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com]
 *On Behalf Of *Steven Caron
 *Sent:* Monday, January 06, 2014 2:21 PM
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Re: rigging in xsi vs maya



 are you asking me personally?



 i think some studios might favor the dependency graph structure of maya
 for custom nodes and behaviors. they would choose that over the better
 initially organized softimage environment which lacks some customization
 options that maya has. a topic discussed to death already, maya's dominance
 is because of timing (of their release years ago) and it's extensibility.



 s



 On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 2:03 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com
 wrote:

 So what does maya rigging tools have that Softimage doesn’t that makes a
 significant difference at the end of the day?



 Matt

Re: Mailing list year in review

[Meng-Yang Lu]

And now you're back in!  :D

-Lu


On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 10:07 AM, Steven Caron car...@gmail.com wrote:

 thanks stephen!

 i am out of the top 5... wooohoo!


 On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 8:02 AM, Stephen Blair stephenrbl...@gmail.comwrote:

 http://wp.me/powV4-2WA

 A few top-10-type lists for the year that just ended.

Re: Mailing list year in review

[Meng-Yang Lu]

WOW!  I guess I must've read 3 posts and said case closed.  I think I
learned more about what a baseball does at .9c than force vs. velocity
though.  :D

-Lu




On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 12:01 PM, Eric Turman i.anima...@gmail.com wrote:

 I just got out a bag of popcorn and went over that force velocity thread
 again ;)


 On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 1:50 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@hybride.comwrote:

 Matt's as well no? Forget it if they are both debating something in the
 same thread. :P


 On Thursday, January 02, 2014 2:48:27 PM, Gustavo Eggert Boehs wrote:

 As we dwell on counting methods Raff's post should have a multiplier
 of 2 for length.

 Em 02/01/2014 16:53, Ed Harriss ed.harr...@sas.com
 mailto:ed.harr...@sas.com escreveu:

 It’s all about quality not quantity.

 __ __

 Ed

 __ __

 *From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of
 *Matt Lind
 *Sent:* Thursday, January 02, 2014 1:49 PM
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* RE: Mailing list year in review

 __ __

 382 posts and I’m #2?This list is definitely slowing down.

 __ __

 __ __

 Matt

 __ __

 __ __

 __ __

 *From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of
 *Stephen Blair
 *Sent:* Thursday, January 02, 2014 8:03 AM
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Mailing list year in review

 __ __

 http://wp.me/powV4-2WA

 __ __

 A few top-10-type lists for the year that just ended.





 --




 -=T=-

Re: positivity

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Regardless if it's true or not, the take-away should be what we value.  A
strong platform for development, a strong community who are passionate
about pursuing technology and art, and a workflow that keeps our working
hours short and beer glasses full.

If we embrace these ideas whole-heartedly, then the only thing needed is a
strong platform to rebuild these ideas upon.  It doesn't have to be owned
by an evil company or fly under the banner of a familiar name.  There are
already technologies out there that hold this promise.  And by redirecting
the talents of artist and developers onto something that is a bit more
open, it will also create a wake of opportunities and ultimately providing
more jobs.

There's a lot to look forward to.  As these emerging technologies mature,
we'll find there are even more interesting projects that may not have been
present on our radar, but could greatly benefit from our skills, talent,
and passion.

The future is extremely bright.

Merry Christmas everyone!

-Lu



On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 10:32 AM, Kris Rivel krisri...@gmail.com wrote:

 Ha ha...Merry Christmas to all!!  LOL.  I'm not trying to start
 anything...just want to see if I'm the only one hearing this.  I told the
 guys that told me to go tell the people that said this to go F themselves
 for what its worth.  It does piss me off to see rumors like this butI
 do sit at home mostly working all day and night.  I don't get to mingle
 with my peers as much as I used to so I didn't know if this may be old news
 or something new.  Sounds bunk so I'll leave it at that :-)

 Kris


 On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 1:11 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@hybride.comwrote:

 Only thing I have beef with myself is the thread hijacking that snowballs
 into a long slog of boohooism. I'm tired of it. In recent times I have to
 think twice about posting to the list because I'm afraid my thread will get
 pulled into the black hole of negativity and what could have been a helpful
 / informative thread will be turned into a bitch-fest.

 The emPolygonizer thread yesterday that was heading in that direction
 seriously almost made me unsubscribe.

 If you want to complain about the demise of a software, have at it. Just
 stop hijacking threads with it (not aimed specifically Mr. Lampi, in
 general).

 - Eric T.

Re: positivity

[Meng-Yang Lu]

1983 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lite-Brite

Did I win?  :P


On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 2:08 PM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] 
j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote:

  I can say I miss the cheese and monkeys humor and do wonder what Porl is
 up to these days.

 But as for old…. Maybe we should have a contest.



 What’s the oldest computer graphics system you worked on, and the year?

 It doesn’t have to be 3D, it can be 2d, print, video, layout, etc. It just
 had to be a computer than did any kind of graphics.



 Takers?



 --

 Joey Ponthieux

 __

 Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not

 represent the opinions of NASA or any other party.



 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *
 sc...@turbulenceffects.com
 *Sent:* Friday, December 20, 2013 2:24 PM
 *To:* softimage@listproc. autodesk. com
 *Subject:* Re: positivity



 Ha ha yeah Ed, you're old. But dang, so am I.

 Sent from my HTC EVO 4G LTE exclusively from Sprint

  - Reply message -
 From: Ed Harriss ed.harr...@sas.com
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject: positivity
 Date: Fri, Dec 20, 2013 2:07 PM



 Maybe we need to go back to a multi-address list system like we had in the
 old days. There was the discussion list, which was all
 fun/monkeys/cheese/Porl and there was the Softimage list, which is pretty
 much what we are using now. There were even other lists like eddie,
 particle, etc.. (Yea, I’m old..) Anyway, we could have this list stay a
 Softimage list and create another one for all the gloom and doom.



 Perfect!



 Now get to work Autodesk listproc person! ;)

 Thanks!



 Happy Holidays!

 Ed “cheese and monkeys” Harriss



 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [
 mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.comsoftimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com]
 *On Behalf Of *Kris Rivel
 *Sent:* Friday, December 20, 2013 1:33 PM
 *To:* Softimage List
 *Subject:* Re: positivity



 Ha ha...Merry Christmas to all!!  LOL.  I'm not trying to start
 anything...just want to see if I'm the only one hearing this.  I told the
 guys that told me to go tell the people that said this to go F themselves
 for what its worth.  It does piss me off to see rumors like this butI
 do sit at home mostly working all day and night.  I don't get to mingle
 with my peers as much as I used to so I didn't know if this may be old news
 or something new.  Sounds bunk so I'll leave it at that :-)



 Kris

 On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 1:11 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@hybride.com
 wrote:

 Only thing I have beef with myself is the thread hijacking that snowballs
 into a long slog of boohooism. I'm tired of it. In recent times I have to
 think twice about posting to the list because I'm afraid my thread will get
 pulled into the black hole of negativity and what could have been a helpful
 / informative thread will be turned into a bitch-fest.

 The emPolygonizer thread yesterday that was heading in that direction
 seriously almost made me unsubscribe.

 If you want to complain about the demise of a software, have at it. Just
 stop hijacking threads with it (not aimed specifically Mr. Lampi, in
 general)..

 - Eric T.

Re: Whiskeytree Athens tech demo

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Really nice.  Love the fact you shared stats and memory allocation.

-Lu


On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 10:34 AM, Steven Caron car...@gmail.com wrote:

 thanks for the kind words everyone! i will pass along the praises...

 some extra info for those interested...

 -we used arnold 3.x to render this
 -because of how we partitioned the work out, and how sitoa exports ICE
 instances we had to come up with a way to make sure there was no redundant
 instance masters. we created a system to do that. we then collaborated with
 solid angle to make this a first party feature. auto instancing of
 procedurals.. you're welcome! ;P
 -memory consumption would be drastically lower in arnold 4.x
 -this was the basis for the workflow we used on elysium, of course for
 more shots and a lot more detail... remember we rendered over 5 trillion
 triangles for elysium.
 -not everything was hand placed, we had some more ICE tools for
 automatically aligning and placing buildings.

 steven


 On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 9:37 AM, Juhani Karlsson 
 juhani.karls...@talvi.com wrote:

 Tron legacy? Daft Punk? Maybe?
 On Nov 22, 2013 7:12 PM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.com wrote:

 What's that soundtrack from? Seems familiar but I can't quite place it...


 On 22 November 2013 16:58, Sebastien Sterling 
 sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hairy ballz of the Gods !!!


 On 22 November 2013 17:46, Sylvain Lebeau s...@shedmtl.com wrote:

  holy mother of god..

 you guys rock at WT!

 sly



 On 11/22/2013 09:04 AM, adrian wyer wrote:

  congrats to everyone at Whiskeytree for this epic demo!



 https://vimeo.com/71148018



 your library toolset is a thing of beauty!



 a

Re: what

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Houdini Sneak Peeks are as bad as Autodesk's Marketing from Softimage...

Boom.

-Lu


On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 2:58 PM, Ben Rogall 
xsi_l...@shaders.moederogall.com wrote:

  Those mandibles don't seem to be bouncing quite the way real mandibles
 bounce.


 On 10/30/2013 4:45 PM, Mc Nistor wrote:

 by the way, sneak peak #3 fro SideFX is up
 https://vimeo.com/78203795
 :)


 On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 11:39 PM, Mc Nistor nisc...@gmail.com wrote:

 That's great, I have all that is needed then, no need for
 computer/internet. ;)


 On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 11:37 PM, Eric Lampi ericla...@gmail.com wrote:

  You need a la bit of string, a bottle of molasses, some pocket lint
 from a priest, a handful of roofing nails, 2 slinkys, a wombat and build a
 bonfire built at a crossroads by the light of the full moon.

  Or a computer with an internet connection.

 Freelance 3D and VFX animator

 http://vimeopro.com/user7979713/3d-work


  On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 5:30 PM, Mc Nistor nisc...@gmail.com wrote:

  OOOK
  I think I got it. How do I unsubscribe from this list?


  On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 11:22 PM, David Barosin dbaro...@gmail.comwrote:

  we can hear you ;)


  On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 5:20 PM, Mc Nistor nisc...@gmail.com wrote:

  I don't understand how this works... where am I posting?!
  google is getting more and more retarded

Re: what

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Both SI and Houdini are amazing kits.  However, one decides not to market
it's strengths or at all while the other fails to do a single bit of
quality check on outgoing material.

Honestly, I feel bad for the talented RnD staff behind the scenes who
probably worked really hard to get the technology in there only to have it
shat on by people further down the line.  Please, have a little respect and
do them justice for their hard work.

peace,

-Lu


On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 3:36 PM, Eric Lampi ericla...@gmail.com wrote:

 Oh this is Houdini? I thought it was a demo of a Fallout 3 expansion pack
 ;)

 Eric

 Freelance 3D and VFX animator

 http://vimeopro.com/user7979713/3d-work


 On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 6:25 PM, Meng-Yang Lu ntmon...@gmail.com wrote:

 Houdini Sneak Peeks are as bad as Autodesk's Marketing from Softimage...

 Boom.

 -Lu


 On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 2:58 PM, Ben Rogall 
 xsi_l...@shaders.moederogall.com wrote:

  Those mandibles don't seem to be bouncing quite the way real mandibles
 bounce.


 On 10/30/2013 4:45 PM, Mc Nistor wrote:

 by the way, sneak peak #3 fro SideFX is up
 https://vimeo.com/78203795
 :)


 On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 11:39 PM, Mc Nistor nisc...@gmail.com wrote:

 That's great, I have all that is needed then, no need for
 computer/internet. ;)


 On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 11:37 PM, Eric Lampi ericla...@gmail.comwrote:

  You need a la bit of string, a bottle of molasses, some pocket lint
 from a priest, a handful of roofing nails, 2 slinkys, a wombat and build a
 bonfire built at a crossroads by the light of the full moon.

  Or a computer with an internet connection.

 Freelance 3D and VFX animator

 http://vimeopro.com/user7979713/3d-work


  On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 5:30 PM, Mc Nistor nisc...@gmail.com wrote:

  OOOK
  I think I got it. How do I unsubscribe from this list?


  On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 11:22 PM, David Barosin 
 dbaro...@gmail.comwrote:

  we can hear you ;)


  On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 5:20 PM, Mc Nistor nisc...@gmail.comwrote:

  I don't understand how this works... where am I posting?!
  google is getting more and more retarded

Re: ocean surface generation - arete stylee

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Something like this or were you wanting a camera distance thing as well?

http://www.amaanakram.com/?page_id=131

JUST getting back into Softimage so I don't know what I'm doing anyway.

-Lu


On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 2:23 PM, Adam Seeley adam_see...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Hi,

 For those that remember the old Arete Psunami plugin...

 I always liked ocean surface geometry generator, the one that gave you a
 grid with fine detail close up and low detail in the distance and that was
 only generated within the cameras field of view.
 I think it kept the girid lines it aligned with the camera as well.

 Does anyone know of something similar floating around?

 I'd love to have the time to figure out an ICE topo tree to create it but
 no such chance right now.

 (hm.. could try projecting a grid from the camera position onto a ground
 plane though!)

 Thanks,

 Adam.
 -
 http://www.linkedin.com/in/adamseeleyukhttp://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=21162305
  https://vimeo.com/adamseeley https://vimeo.com/album/2280465




   --
  *From:* Toonafish ron...@toonafish.nl
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Sent:* Thursday, 22 August 2013, 15:11
 *Subject:* Re: Envelope freeze

  why not create a duplicate of the character, freeze it, and then toggle
 render visibility of the enveloped and frozen one? Simple but effective.

 - Ronald


 On 8/22/2013 15:47, Eric Lampi wrote:

  Can anyone think of a clever way to freeze a mesh that's enveloped but
 not destructively?

 I'm adding some simulation functions to our character rig, basically just
 a copy of the enveloped mesh that I am using for particle generation. In
 order for my setup to work, it needs to be a static pose. So what I am
 looking for is a way to remove the envelope's influence on a frame I
 choose, but keeping that static pose. Something like when you mute the
 envelope operator, but the mesh needs to stay in that pose and not snap
 back to it's pre-enveloped position.

  I want to be able to re-enable the envelope if I need to.

  Thanks,
  Eric


  Freelance 3D and VFX animator

 http://vimeopro.com/user7979713/3d-work

Re: Nike Evolution and a community thank you

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Nice one Andy!

I really do feel Soft's strengths are these type of jobs requiring creative
ways to build various objects.  Just wanted to point out the mark of a
great supe is one who graciously credits the team for their hard work.
 Again, pretty stellar work considering the time and the budget.

-Lu


On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 9:05 PM, Andy Moorer andymoo...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi gang. I wanted to give a shout out to the folks who worked on Nike
 Evolution, it just posted. Those who weren't involved, this is a pretty
 nice story...

 A young studio, Royale, got interested in this ICE buzz and invited a
 number of us from the list to visit the studio and work on a commercial.
 Their designers had been watching cool stuff on ICE for a while, admiring
 Tim Borgmanns work and the tools Eric was writing, and had tried
 Exocortex's tools for maya. They decided this was pretty neat and when they
 got a chance to reach out, they took it.

 The brief was to take what Digital Domain had accomplished (about a year
 ago?) with Biomorph and introduce a new product with an effect similar to
 the Biomorph knitting sequence... But with a small team, for a very short
 produvtion duration and a fraction of the budget.

 Oh and three commercials, not 1.

 These are the times we live in.

 Given this challenge, Royale turned to the ICE community they had been
 eyeing... names were passed around and folks talked to and consulted. In
 the end I wound up CG sup, leaning heavily on Ciaran Moloney as lighting
 lead and Leonard Kotch as a tool builder. Steven Caron took a short break
 from Whiskytree to lend a hand with some pipeline tools and general
 expertise, Billy Morrison dove in with me on VFX, and aside from that we
 had the help and assistance of Royale's maya artists and designers. And not
 a few of you on the list helped by offering the studio names and advice
 when contacted.

 So the job was greenlit and we started the clock - about three weeks, from
 installing Softimage to delivery.

 http://youtu.be/932FiLPe4kc

 We rented a farm and populated it with 25 Arnold nodes, the folks at
 SolidAngle were awesome, plugged everything in and made the spot. Our
 principal tool was ICE, specifically a very cool and robust system Leonard
 Kotch put many hard hours in to create which we called LKFabric and
 inspired by the example Psyop's Jonah Froedman has set earlier, Anto's
 knit the strands, and earlier work Polynoid did with their carbon spot.

 Leonard went all the way with LKFabric... it let us manage some of the
 complexity of trying to get the major components of the shoe to weave
 themselves procedurally, from fibers, to threads, to cloth. Because the
 next spot, which we're wrapping up right now, required us to get in on
 individual fibers in extreme macro shots, Leonard built the system in an
 abstracted out manner, unsimulated, and supporting motion blur etc. I would
 send him pages and pages of feedback and requests, and he chewed away at it
 like a trouper. Pretty outstanding Leonard, I owe you many beers.

 Royale has been kind enough to agree to share the system out to the
 community, through Leonard, some time after the final project wraps.

 Ciaran, Billy and Steven worked similarly hard and with the same good
 cheer we see so often here on the list. This is why I like Softimage so
 much, it attracts artists of this calibre and can do mindset. I should
 add that emTools, emTopo and polygonizer were used as well, though largely
 in the design phase and for an effect that was later cut (no fault of the
 tools lol the idea just didn't gel with the client.) Thanks Eric!

 It's very rare for a small studio with literally no staff using Softimage
 to get excited over ICE and have the courage to jump in with it no hold
 barred, for multiple spots, like Royale did. I can't express more
 admiration for their willingness to try something new and embrace ICE the
 way they did for these jobs.

 The results may not be earth shattering but the client and the studio are
 happy and the other ice-heavy spot is looking cool too. In a time where we
 are all concerned with where Softimage may be headed it was really
 gratifying having a maya studio step out of their comfort zone and place
 all their chips on Softimage with one of their major clients like that.

 So I wanted to take a minute to share the story and thank the people on
 this list who contributed, both those of us who worked on the project
 directly and the guys who extended advice and friendship to the studio
 willing to take a chance on softimage like Todd Akita, Rob Chapman, the
 gang over at Whiskytree and many others. Thanks guys.

Re: a long time ago….

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Man, I really enjoyed that.  Thanks for posting.  I heard the word fun a
few times in there.  So rare to hear these days regarding what we do...

-Lu


On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Stefan Andersson sander...@gmail.comwrote:

 … in a galaxy far far away…. softimage was loved and respected :)

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiGsOLBUyDs

 and with a few familiar faces, fun to see :)

 regards
 stefan



 *Stefan Andersson | Digital Janitor**
 *
 blog http://sanders3d.wordpress.com/ | 
 showreelhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVb8yvxZcss
  | twitter http://twitter.com/sanders3d | 
 LinkedInhttp://www.linkedin.com/in/sanders3d
  | Instagram http://instagram.com/sanders3d_
 cell SE: +46-736268850
 cell UK: +44-7513792996

Re: Industry Solidarity...

[Meng-Yang Lu]

If you have the means, the skills, the connections, and the chutzpah to
demand the rates for your work, then awesome.  Continue living the dream.
 I just sympathize with those that for whatever reasons have had their
options marginalized.  I think once you secured your finances and the bills
are paid, then you have more options to pick and choose the projects AND
the terms you like.

Let's be honest, CG can be a very good financial career depending on where
you are in the food chain.  I can prove it by how many people drive cars in
the 30k+ range, own homes, Canon MkII/MKIII owners, those fancy
quadracopters with cameras on them that you fly with an iPad, the iPad
itself, new smart phones, etc.  Some of us hardly have an excuse to cry
poor.  But some artists who do amazing work aren't being paid properly for
their skills.  Those are the ones we need to watch out for because they're
equal partners in defining our industry as well as the future of our
industry.

I've had friends that have chased tentpole after tentpole, made good money
working loads of OT during the length of the job, and then cough up all
that money during dry times and medical bills.  It's punishment for being
huge fans of dragons and big-breasted katana wielding chicks with zombie
ass arsenals and want to contribute to that body of work.  That's just not
right.

-Lu

On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 7:22 PM, Raffaele Fragapane 
raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:

 I hear that reasoning a lot.
 On one end, it's agreeable. Sure, if your passion is CG, go ahead, find
 new venues.
 Some of us, however, do this because we're into creature work of a certain
 profile, or film in general, or both. For that demographic, looking at
 venues such as mobile app graphics, or slot machine graphics, or med-viz,
 or what else have you, is simply not an option.
 The next gen of consoles might open up one more venue, but insofar the
 gaming industry hasn't exactly turned out to be a safe haven either.

 I'm not dismissing the argument, it's a sensible one to make and some
 should consider it, but it's narrowly applied short sight in a way to think
 everybody is in it to push buttons in Maya or Soft, and is willing to
 transfer their skills, if they even were in first place.

 Personally I'm in it to blow shit up and make stuff like dragons, hot
 chicks dual wielding katanas, zombies with arse-mounted machine guns and
 the such. Applying my software development skills to a successful 10
 downloads 0.99$ calendar app, even if I tick all the boxes required to make
 one, isn't my idea of a job I'd like :)


 On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Meng-Yang Lu ntmon...@gmail.com wrote:

 You have to look at it a different way.  There's actually a ton of
 applications we can use CG for.  It's just that we like to kiss Hollywood's
 glittery ass that gets us in trouble.  There's a lot of avenues we can all
 pursue.  Just like iPhone and iPads opened up new doors for us to leverage
 our talents, so will things like 3D printing in the future.  The reality is
 that we have a lot of options if we are willing to set aside our egos and
 pursue other meaningful work that provides value.  It may not be
 as glamorous as film, but film work is no longer glamorous either with
 layoffs, bankruptcy, and abuse.  Consider we clearly don't get any
 recognition as artists, why do we still beg for a seat at a table that
 unwelcomes us, but gladly fleece us of our talents?

 We have to start asking what we value as a workforce, starting with
 ourselves.  A new model needs to be built out of the ashes that is the
 current VFX industry.  Kids on youtube doing vlogs make more money than
 some fulltime vfx artists.  Don't watch the Oscars if it makes your blood
 boil.  You pop an artery and that's a lot of problems you have to deal
 with.  And no, RDJ will not rescue you in his Iron Man suit because without
 us, he doesn't even exist.

 -Lu

Re: Industry Solidarity...

[Meng-Yang Lu]

What would be fun is if we painted LA chroma green.  We're already there
with the green bike lanes.


On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.comwrote:

 Stay green until this problem is fixed! Do not relent!

 
 Eric Thivierge
 http://www.ethivierge.com


 On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 4:17 PM, Bradley Gabe witha...@gmail.com wrote:

 ...is a beautiful thing.

 My Facebook has turned completely green!
 Thanks everyone for participating.

 -Bradley

Re: Industry Solidarity...

[Meng-Yang Lu]

I think we should align our chroma greens a bit better.  We don't wanna
look like schlubs protesting if we can't even get the same color values.

-Lu


On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 2:07 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.comwrote:

 Don't forget to post information about the issues to raise awareness to
 your friends who aren't in the industry.

 
 Eric Thivierge
 http://www.ethivierge.com


 On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 4:54 PM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau 
 marc-andre.carbonn...@ubisoft.com wrote:

 The 51st.

 ** **

 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Steven Caron
 *Sent:* 25 février 2013 16:49
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Re: Industry Solidarity...

 ** **

 wait which shade of green? ;)

 ** **

 On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Stay green until this problem is fixed! Do not relent!

Re: Industry Solidarity...

[Meng-Yang Lu]

You have to look at it a different way.  There's actually a ton of
applications we can use CG for.  It's just that we like to kiss Hollywood's
glittery ass that gets us in trouble.  There's a lot of avenues we can all
pursue.  Just like iPhone and iPads opened up new doors for us to leverage
our talents, so will things like 3D printing in the future.  The reality is
that we have a lot of options if we are willing to set aside our egos and
pursue other meaningful work that provides value.  It may not be
as glamorous as film, but film work is no longer glamorous either with
layoffs, bankruptcy, and abuse.  Consider we clearly don't get any
recognition as artists, why do we still beg for a seat at a table that
unwelcomes us, but gladly fleece us of our talents?

We have to start asking what we value as a workforce, starting with
ourselves.  A new model needs to be built out of the ashes that is the
current VFX industry.  Kids on youtube doing vlogs make more money than
some fulltime vfx artists.  Don't watch the Oscars if it makes your blood
boil.  You pop an artery and that's a lot of problems you have to deal
with.  And no, RDJ will not rescue you in his Iron Man suit because without
us, he doesn't even exist.

-Lu


On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 6:17 PM, Sebastien Sterling 
sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote:

 VFX, Animation, CG in general seems to be saturating, it would be a grave
 thing indeed if digital art was relegated to the level of street performing
 due to industrial greed and sector saturation.


 On 26 February 2013 02:57, Christopher Crouzet 
 christopher.crou...@gmail.com wrote:

 Until I hovered and read the tooltip for that emoticon, I thought it was
 Homer Simpson grabbing a breast from Marge... needless to say that I was
 confused.


 ... sorry, yeah, GO VFX!



 On 26 February 2013 13:20, Bradley Gabe witha...@gmail.com wrote:



 On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 7:14 PM, Raffaele Fragapane 
 raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:

 Leave it to the VFX industry to pixel fuck even a symbolic protest :D

Re: Pipes and tools u can't live without

[Meng-Yang Lu]

IF I were a freelancer, I'd sort out my I/O first and foremost.  Basically
have the ability to take in commonly exported formats like
.bgeo/partio/alembic/.skp plus the occasional 2D formats for camera and
pCloud stuff and have it so that these span a few versions back.  I feel
like once this is established, you're free to use the best tool for the job
or leverage the resources already in place at the facility.  The real value
of a freelancer comes from being able to integrate seamlessly into a
pipeline while providing value via your expertise.  The ability to break
off your work so others can pick it up as well as take on where others have
left off while still using the tools you're most adept with is incredibly
useful.

-Lu


On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 7:38 PM, Andy Moorer andymoo...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi all. I'm interested in what people consider as the essentials for a
 small studio Softimage pipeline, in terms of essential tools, scripts and
 customization. I have my own ideas and opinions but want to get a sanity
 check in case I'm missing some cool workflow or toolset, and just out of
 interest.

 I'd also be interested in hearing what people have in their personal
 toolkits. For instance wherever I bring along a personal workgroup which
 contains a plethora of ICE nodes, a small script library of example code
 and esoteric tools, a set of useful addons by others, and a custom menu
 with a set of more personal tools, mostly little time savers, things like
 general purpose models and lighting rigs, etc.

 A lot of these things are little but I'd hate to be without 'em. For
 instance a simple menu command which removes screen widgets and makes the
 BG dark grey is so trivial but I'd really miss it. Same goes for Ciaran's
 signed distance field emitter, I love that thing...

Re: strands-heavy commercial gig, LA area

[Meng-Yang Lu]

LA has Sony, Disney, DD, and Rhythm being a huge magnet drawing in Houdini
people.  And then when things shuffle around they're here for the picking.

I've a feeling the ICE boom is coincidentally after Nissan's Wouldn't it
be cool. commercial.  Definitely made some waves in the commercial world
as to how that was all done.

-Lu


On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 11:16 AM, Ciaran Moloney moloney.cia...@gmail.comwrote:

 Really..there are more competent Houdini TDs than ICE? Or just an L.A.
 thing?



 On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 6:45 PM, Andy Moorer andymoo...@gmail.com wrote:

 So if you're in these areas, or if you do remote contracts, contact me,
 please! There's more work here than people available by a wide margin... I
 hate not even having names to give clients, and to have to suggest they
 shift to houdini just so they can fill seats.

Re: Mental Ray Features, Integration Autodesk's failure

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Well, they did do this with ICE deprecating the old particles system.  I
still remember reading You know this day was coming. in the XSI docs.
Now look at the huge forward leap that ICE has provided to FX in
Softimage.

I think when you have a huge number of artists willing to dump one system
for a completely new system, the value of retaining legacy pretty much goes
out the window does it not?  I would've taken that as a wake up call.  MR
and Autodesk need to understand this, not just on rendering, but multiple
aspects of cg production.

-Lu




On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 10:52 AM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote:

 The sad truth is the rendering integration is not as independent as one
 would think or like.  I’ve been writing mental ray shaders for a long time
 (10+ years), and even today am shocked how touchy Softimage is when loading
 a scene which uses custom shaders not installed on the current computer –
 99% of the time it’s a hang and crash.  In order for me to load an old
 scene from, say XSI v2.0 when I was developing a particular shader, I have
 to have the shader from that era installed to get the scene open.

 ** **

 When you consider the rest of the rendering system is built like that,
 that’s why a lot of stagnation occurs.  Either AD has to be bold and say
 screw old content for the sake of progress, or we have a slow moving boat
 for the sake of compatibility.  There’s also the reality that when a system
 is iterated over the years, it requires more manpower to take it to the
 next level.  V1.0 may take 2 people, but v2.0 might require a 3rd to help
 out because the system has gotten larger, more complex and with more moving
 pieces which must all be done in sync.  There’s also the fact the system
 must integrate with other departments such as UI, animation, modeling, and
 whatever else comes in contact.  Over the years the trend has been to have
 fewer developers on staff.  This creates a situation where it’s not
 possible to roll out an iteration in a single release, but instead have to
 spread it out over two releases due to the constraints of resources.

 ** **

 The only true way to get quick iteration is to keep the renderer a
 standalone and use cheap export scripts to dump the scene at the command
 line, but of course, that comes at the cost of user friendliness and
 iteration speed.

 ** **

 Not too much different from the good-fast-cheap production triangle.
 Throw your dart.

 ** **

 While shaders can be updated to have additional features, sometimes it’s
 not possible to retain legacy look as some of the technology that needs to
 be bridged are mutually exclusive.  A shader is a front end to those
 technologies, but to actually make it work as the user envisions is quite
 the beast.  Mental ray does a pretty good job of being that front end, but
 to get the benefit requires an educated user.  No amount of pretty UI is
 going to change that.  That is what users must understand.

 ** **

 ** **

 Matt

 ** **

 ** **

 ** **

 ** **

 ** **

 ** **

 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Ed Manning
 *Sent:* Thursday, November 08, 2012 12:06 PM
 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

 *Subject:* Re: Mental Ray Features, Integration  Autodesk's failure

 ** **

 On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 2:05 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com
 wrote:

 No argument on the making existing tools work, but in terms of tool design
 you make the erroneous assumption everybody wants to create realistic
 looking renders like you.  I’ve largely worked on non-photo real projects
 where those extra controls you dislike are absolutely necessary and often
 not enough.  This industry is about making looks and scenarios.  It’s not
 always about recreating what you see in front of you.

 ** **

 Actually, I agree completely.  FWIW, I don't assume that everybody wants
 to create realistic looking renders.  Sometimes I don't want to either --
 it all depends on the needs of the job, and lately it's all been make it
 look more real. My point was that it should be possible, but not
 necessary, to drill down into low-level functionality in order to do
 commonplace things. And for better or worse, plausibly realistic rendering
 is a very common requirement.

 To beat my car analogy to death -- it shouldn't be necessary for someone
 to know how to tune a fuel injection system in order to get their car to
 the supermarket.  It's a great thing if someone does take the plunge and
 learn how to be a racecar mechanic or driver, but as you said, most people
 can't or won't do that. Anyway, even a racing mechanic doesn't want to
 break out his toolbox when he wants to go to Kwik-E-Mart. The sad fact is
 we have enormous variation in education and educability in our workforce,
 and even if we resist building for the lowest common denominator, we need
 to consider it when assembling our tools.

 It's easy to 

Re: Mental Ray Features, Integration Autodesk's failure

[Meng-Yang Lu]

I just recently learned that it's AD's shortcomings of properly exposing MR
features.

So the blog you linked to features two Mill employees.  Both who I feel
we're very lucky to have and have been instrumental in a re-education of
the MR and AD relationship along with what can be done with something that
will be packaged for the foreseeable future.  If it's going to be bolted
on, might as well make it useful right?

Trust me, your frustrations are shared by every artist here.  At the same
time, I feel like we have an extremely hostile environment for renderers
considering the variety of styles, scope, volume of work, along with the
usual technical hurdles that comes with every job.  Arnold and Mantra gets
it's fair share criticisms here too.  We have people here that are
intimately involved with MR who understand real production problems and to
be fair, the blame has been wrongly placed in some respects on MR when it
should have lied with the AD translators.  But that is hopefully changing.
Whether or not it's done in time I don't know.  I'm a cg artist, not a
crystal ball.  The intention of our development here in our hostile
environment is to have it eventually be integrated at the top with AD, and
that link to AD is in place as well.

For now, all I can say is that I do finally feel we can make progress on a
renderer despite its unpopularity.  At the end of the day, they all shoot
ray bundles and return pixels.  The speed, quality, and balance between
control vs ease of use determines if it's good or not.  Working on making
those attributes better results a better tool for production.  Here,
developers are entrenched with artists so they know exactly what we're up
against.  David Hackett sits right next to me and hears me bitch about
every single artifact, flicker, additional second of render time, and has
expressed positive moves on MR part to address all those issues.  We make
him use Arnold too and light shots because we are mean.

The renders out now are all pretty damn amazing, but it really does require
accessibility to the features.  I just read not 2 days ago on this very
list SI can't render curves in Arnold when the alpha version of MtoA does
via a checkbox.  Wat?  So it's not just specific to MR.  The problem exists
for every render engine and every platform (Vray still sounds like magic
tho).

Here's hoping Autodesk hears us out.

-Lu




On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 10:26 AM, Ed Manning etmth...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi all --

 Not to start another flame war, but after months struggling with what
 should be simple things, I have to ask:

 Why is Mental Ray integration so haphazard in AD products in general and
 Softimage in particular?

 For example, MR now supports much-improved IBL, ptex, iRay, and per-object
 sampling settings, as well as a set of new BSDF-based surface shaders.

 NONE of these are exposed in Softimage.  Third-party means of exposing
 some of these do work, but not very well.  IBL, for example, seems not to
 support transparent shadows at all. In Maya, they work.  Having only global
 settings for unified sampling is a crapshoot -- for some shaders, it's like
 super-speed, while others actually get noisier and slower.  Ray-depth-based
 optimizations, which should be simple, have to be manually set, per
 parameter, IF you can even get your hands on a third-party shader that
 provides accurate counts of raydepth and type.  Framebuffers only work
 properly with third-party shaders (they slow down renders ridiculously when
 used with the native x shaders) and don't properly account for
 reflections and refractions that are more than one ray-hit deep. The list
 goes on.

 The few features newly-exposed in Softimage, such as Unified Sampling and
 MetaSL, are poorly documented if at all.  The only help for working with
 these tools, which we pay Autodesk for, comes from third parties, NVidia's
 forums, and Maya users. I have to spend time translating tutorials and blog
 posts from Maya-speak to glean the most basic information

 The failure on Autodesk's part seems to be universal, if worst in
 Softimage-land -- even though more things seem to work in Maya (or even
 MAX), there's little in the way of documentation or tutorials from AD.  For
 example, because Maya's render settings are so lame and poorly-oriented for
 Mental Ray, there is a 3rd-party plug-in (Mental Core) simply to make it
 possible for users not working at fully-pipelined facilities to set up MR
 renders and get useful framebuffers and passes out.  There is also this:

 http://elementalray.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/new-maya-rendering-ui-testing/

 Basically, if I understand this, NVidia, not Autodesk, has written a new
 MR render UI for Maya, which has to be installed as a plug-in, and which
 bears a striking resemblance in its organization to the venerable Softimage
 Render Options.

 So AD's devs can't even port a UI that they developed from one 3D package
 to another? NVidia has to do it for them?

 Am I the only 

Re: WHO IS IT?

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Might be able to send a couple of names.


On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 2:53 PM, Meng-Yang Lu ntmon...@gmail.com wrote:

 Stereo D?


 On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 2:46 PM, Andy Moorer andymoo...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi gang...

 I was in a minor car accident Friday and injured my back, which killed
 travel plans to hop on a plane for a gig on the west coast.

 I'll be fine, but the studio needs someone who is comfortable TD-ing a
 job focusing on ICE strands ASAP.

 Anyone in the area needing a 4-6 week gig?

 It's high profile (an opening sequence for a TV show), award winning
 studio, and has some great design. Starting immediately, Los Angeles area,
 through November maybe longer?

 If you're interested let me know and I'll put you in touch with the
 producer.

 - AM

Re: WHO IS IT?

[Meng-Yang Lu]

And I hate the new gmail reply.  Sorry everyone.  Ignore.  Or don't and
email me if you need a couple of nICE guys.

-Lu


On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 2:53 PM, Meng-Yang Lu ntmon...@gmail.com wrote:

 Might be able to send a couple of names.


 On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 2:53 PM, Meng-Yang Lu ntmon...@gmail.com wrote:

 Stereo D?


 On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 2:46 PM, Andy Moorer andymoo...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi gang...

 I was in a minor car accident Friday and injured my back, which killed
 travel plans to hop on a plane for a gig on the west coast.

 I'll be fine, but the studio needs someone who is comfortable TD-ing a
 job focusing on ICE strands ASAP.

 Anyone in the area needing a 4-6 week gig?

 It's high profile (an opening sequence for a TV show), award winning
 studio, and has some great design. Starting immediately, Los Angeles area,
 through November maybe longer?

 If you're interested let me know and I'll put you in touch with the
 producer.

 - AM

Re: WHO IS IT?

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Wait, you want to work on commercials?  Sonofa@#$@#!!!

-Lu


On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 3:02 PM, Andy Moorer andymoo...@gmail.com wrote:

 Nope, not StereoD :) I'd love it if they would have me in for contract
 work though (hint hint Graham lol) I think their security requirements make
 it hard for them to use outside contractors though.

 If you have someone in mind send end me names for sure.

 And hey wait Lu, why aren't you asking me on contracts for the mill, you
 guys hate me or something? :D


 On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 5:55 PM, Meng-Yang Lu ntmon...@gmail.com wrote:

 And I hate the new gmail reply.  Sorry everyone.  Ignore.  Or don't and
 email me if you need a couple of nICE guys.

 -Lu



 On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 2:53 PM, Meng-Yang Lu ntmon...@gmail.com wrote:

 Might be able to send a couple of names.


 On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 2:53 PM, Meng-Yang Lu ntmon...@gmail.com wrote:

 Stereo D?


 On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 2:46 PM, Andy Moorer andymoo...@gmail.comwrote:

 Hi gang...

 I was in a minor car accident Friday and injured my back, which killed
 travel plans to hop on a plane for a gig on the west coast.

 I'll be fine, but the studio needs someone who is comfortable TD-ing a
 job focusing on ICE strands ASAP.

 Anyone in the area needing a 4-6 week gig?

 It's high profile (an opening sequence for a TV show), award winning
 studio, and has some great design. Starting immediately, Los Angeles area,
 through November maybe longer?

 If you're interested let me know and I'll put you in touch with the
 producer.

 - AM

Re: OT: Freelance FX TD for hire

[Meng-Yang Lu]

I told him we all like to get things done early so we can drink beers.
Couldn't get rid of him ever since. ;)

Seriously, if anyone has interop problems between AppX to AppY, Rick's your
man.  His love for file formats is unhealthy and a capable FX artist to
boot.

-Lu

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 3:40 PM, Rick Fuentealba ricar...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hey gang, sorry for the OT reel plug.

 I'm Rick and I'm an FX TD looking to see what is going on in this side for
 TD work.

 I'm currently wrapping up my current gig and looking around for TD work.
 My experience with Softimage right now is a bit limited, but I'm fine with
 Python and C++, I'm definitely the kind of person who isn't afraid of
 learning new software and adjusting to the situation.

 Currently I'm located in Los Angeles, but I am always open to working
 remotely.

 One of the problems I've been tackling on my own (short) free time has
 been setting up Houdini and Softimage interoperability, I have a working
 rough version of ICECACHE Import/export that I'm looking at wrapping up
 this month and releasing it to the community after much delay.

 My latest reel and resume can be found:


 http://www.rickfx.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Rick.Fuentealba.resume.2012.pdf


 http://www.rickfx.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Rick.Fuentealba.reel_2012.720.mp4
 https://vimeo.com/49326059

 Thanks for looking at my work!
 -Rick

 P.S. If there are any issues, please forward all complaints to Meng-Yang
 Lu :-P

Re: Graphic card for a workstation again

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Can you say which cards you guys are using, Matt?  In the process of
building a system to do some GPU stuff alongside some 3D tests at home.

Thanks,

-Lu

On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 11:22 AM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.comwrote:

 We are a games development studio making MMORPG games.  Most of the
 computers we buy come stocked with ATI Radeons, but no matter how much we
 try to make them work, they just don’t.  Crashes, glitches, overheating,
 etc…   We always have to swap them out for Nvidia GeForce cards to get
 stability.

 ** **

 Framerate isn’t everything, stability often matters more.

 ** **

 Matt

 ** **

 ** **

 ** **

 ** **

 ** **

 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Mirko Jankovic
 *Sent:* Friday, August 17, 2012 10:30 PM

 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Re: Graphic card for a workstation again

 ** **

 Maybe it is so but it still doesn't change the fact that after replacing
 gtx580 with radeon7970 I got HUGE improvement in frame rates in viewport
 and no problems at all as well :)

 It seems that all new gtx cards after 280 are crippled in an effort to
 push overpriced quadros. 

 But ofc we need to make differences between big studios on one side
 (usually  huge budgets :)) and small to mid studios and freelancers.

Re: Graphic card for a workstation again

[Meng-Yang Lu]

So glad I asked.  Hahaha.  I knew your thorough personality yields the best
answers.  Thanks much!

-Lu

On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 11:53 AM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.comwrote:

 Anybody using Softimage in our building only use Nvidia GeForce.  We have
 many models and found some better than others.  The 200 series is very
 stable, the 400 series should be avoided at all costs, the 500 series is a
 mixed bag (560 good, 580 tempermental).  We just got a few computers with
 the 670 and breaking them in as we speak.  I’m the only person in the
 company using a Quadro as I have to determine if bugs experienced in
 production are due to hardware or software before filing a bug report.

 ** **

 On the few occasions we experience problems, it’s usually an OpenGL crash
 to blue screen or overheating – both are driver issues.  We also discovered
 mixing and matching consumer and professional components in the same box is
 a bad idea.  Either buy a consumer level computer with a consumer level
 graphics card, or buy a professional workstation with a professional
 graphics card.  When you mix and match you run into driver related issues
 as the consumer lines like GeForce don’t go through the same level of QA
 and certification as the Quadro line – GeForces seem to be tested on a much
 narrower band of hardware configurations.  Although Nvidia releases driver
 updates more frequently for the GeForce product line, you’ll be waiting
 much longer for patches to fix things in Softimage than with the Quadro
 line.  About 6 months in my unscientific observations.

 ** **

 As much as people complain here about Quadros being crappy, crash prone,
 and over priced, I will say I have significantly fewer problems than my
 colleagues here at the studio.

 ** **

 ** **

 Matt

 ** **

 ** **

 ** **

 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Meng-Yang Lu
 *Sent:* Monday, August 20, 2012 11:37 AM

 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Re: Graphic card for a workstation again

 ** **

 Can you say which cards you guys are using, Matt?  In the process of
 building a system to do some GPU stuff alongside some 3D tests at home.  *
 ***

 ** **

 Thanks,

 ** **

 -Lu

 ** **

 On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 11:22 AM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com
 wrote:

 We are a games development studio making MMORPG games.  Most of the
 computers we buy come stocked with ATI Radeons, but no matter how much we
 try to make them work, they just don’t.  Crashes, glitches, overheating,
 etc…   We always have to swap them out for Nvidia GeForce cards to get
 stability.

  

 Framerate isn’t everything, stability often matters more.

  

 Matt

  

  

  

  

  

 *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Mirko Jankovic
 *Sent:* Friday, August 17, 2012 10:30 PM


 *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 *Subject:* Re: Graphic card for a workstation again

  

 Maybe it is so but it still doesn't change the fact that after replacing
 gtx580 with radeon7970 I got HUGE improvement in frame rates in viewport
 and no problems at all as well :)

 It seems that all new gtx cards after 280 are crippled in an effort to
 push overpriced quadros. 

 But ofc we need to make differences between big studios on one side
 (usually  huge budgets :)) and small to mid studios and freelancers.

 ** **

Re: Autodesk aquires Naiad

[Meng-Yang Lu]

It's really still anyone's game.  I was JUST getting into Naiad when this
stuff happened and now I don't feel so bad because I was also using
Realflow and Houdini.  If anything, it just a clear reminder that anything
can and will happen.

Now the field is open for some clever peeps to take advantage of the void
left behind.

-Lu

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 10:55 AM, Jens Lindgren jens.lindgren@gmail.com
 wrote:

 I agree with Steven so just stop speculate that anything bad is going to
 happen and stick to what we know from Marks blog:
 I can promise you there will be some pretty impressive, BIG features in
 2014 so hang in there.

 Just a little bit of possitive speculation from my side, this BIG thing
 might just be Naiad in Softimage :)

 /Jens