Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Paul Doyle]

(thread appeared in the end)


On 5 March 2014 13:29, Paul Doyle  wrote:

> My new thread doesn't appear to have made it to the list. There's a copy
> of it here:
> http://www.si-community.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=4950&start=0
>
> I honestly don't have much to add to what Andy wrote - he nailed it. The
> last two points in my post are:
>
> "We can't do it alone - if you want to see change happen, you have to get
> involved. Small companies like Fabric need your support, we need you to
> kick things around and tell us what you think. We need to know what you
> need. It's immensely frustrating to be told "this is cool, if only it did
> X" and then we do X and the response is "now if it did Y then I'd take a
> look". Get involved - it's free!
>
> Let's get creative - we are open to creating a consortium and finding ways
> to open-source work done there. Obviously there are hooks into Fabric and
> the concern will be around vendor dependency - however, a lot of that can
> be addressed in the design of a particular project. We have done deals that
> give source code access to customers after a certain number of years, and
> we will work with studios to give that kind of security. We see this as
> something where we would not be controlling anything, but working on a
> partnership basis with the studios that want to do this. It has to be
> driven by studios that want to see some control over their destiny, with
> companies like Fabric getting involved to support and drive innovation. We
> are a platform, so for us this is the way to success - providing
> high-performance, dependable components that can be used to build
> production-specific tools. If you are interested in becoming a part of this
> Fabric working group then please email me (p...@fabric-engine.com) -
> right now I'm just gauging interest with the hope that we can do something
> amazing together."
>
> We started Fabric because we thought there was a better way to do things.
> I won't lie - we took a few wrong turns with things like web technology.
> However, the core engine has been consistently developed throughout, by key
> members of the Softimage team. What we have now is an extremely powerful
> platform that is hitting maturity - Fabric 2.0 is coming soon and it's got
> a lot of people excited. For it to become everything it should be, it needs
> support. I see it as a two-way street though - if we want studios to commit
> to building on our platform, we have to be open to providing assurances
> (contractual!). That's all I want to add - we're there and we are excited
> to do something that breaks the studio/vendor mould.
>
>
> On 5 March 2014 13:00, Andy Jones  wrote:
>
>> I'll take a stab (although I haven't really spent any time using it).
>>
>> Often in production, we face problems that need solving.  They can be
>> generic problems that are common across a studio, like "fur" or "grass," or
>> they can be show-specific, like "create time-lapse footage of a building
>> being constructed."  These examples are fairly small in scope, but studios
>> may have even broader needs, like "We'd like a way to visualize our models
>> quickly, without turntables, with an embedded Shotgun page for doing
>> reviews."
>>
>> There are lots of tools at our disposal for solving these things, but the
>> most powerful toolsets all exist with various DCC packages.  So any
>> solution you come up with tends to be tightly coupled with one package.
>>  For example, a studio might come up with a good procedural forest solution
>> in Houdini, but then every time they want to use it, they have to make sure
>> they have a Houdini artist to run it.  If the rest of the show is in Maya,
>> you now have to deal with porting lots of assets over, and the additional
>> crew.
>>
>> Or, more often, the technical artist or rnd person gets asked to "simply"
>> port the tool over to the other package. Once you port the tool, you now
>> have two separate sets of code to keep up to date, and eventually you have
>> to hire more technical artists and RnD guys to keep up with demand.  And
>> the ones you have are unhappy because they're spending time keeping code in
>> sync and porting features back and forth, rather than making cool stuff
>> artists want.
>>
>> Perhaps the most common situation is that we see all of the issues above
>> in advance, and opt to have an artist "figure it out themselves," or "do it
>> by hand."  Not because us technical guys are lazy beer-sipping jerks, but
>> because it's actually cheaper to do it the hard way than to make a tool
>> that will have to get rewritten by the time you use it again.
>>
>> From what they've released so far, Fabric Engine goes a long way towards
>> remedying these kinds of situations, and does so in a very clever way,
>> that's geared for extremely high performance and flexibility.
>>
>> At its core, Fabric Engine gives us an API for graphics built with
>> multi-threading and optimized machine level compiling in mind.  

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Paul Doyle]

I have just posted a new message to the list covering some of this - I'll
read through this thread again now and respond as best I can.


On 5 March 2014 13:00, Andy Jones  wrote:

> I'll take a stab (although I haven't really spent any time using it).
>
> Often in production, we face problems that need solving.  They can be
> generic problems that are common across a studio, like "fur" or "grass," or
> they can be show-specific, like "create time-lapse footage of a building
> being constructed."  These examples are fairly small in scope, but studios
> may have even broader needs, like "We'd like a way to visualize our models
> quickly, without turntables, with an embedded Shotgun page for doing
> reviews."
>
> There are lots of tools at our disposal for solving these things, but the
> most powerful toolsets all exist with various DCC packages.  So any
> solution you come up with tends to be tightly coupled with one package.
>  For example, a studio might come up with a good procedural forest solution
> in Houdini, but then every time they want to use it, they have to make sure
> they have a Houdini artist to run it.  If the rest of the show is in Maya,
> you now have to deal with porting lots of assets over, and the additional
> crew.
>
> Or, more often, the technical artist or rnd person gets asked to "simply"
> port the tool over to the other package. Once you port the tool, you now
> have two separate sets of code to keep up to date, and eventually you have
> to hire more technical artists and RnD guys to keep up with demand.  And
> the ones you have are unhappy because they're spending time keeping code in
> sync and porting features back and forth, rather than making cool stuff
> artists want.
>
> Perhaps the most common situation is that we see all of the issues above
> in advance, and opt to have an artist "figure it out themselves," or "do it
> by hand."  Not because us technical guys are lazy beer-sipping jerks, but
> because it's actually cheaper to do it the hard way than to make a tool
> that will have to get rewritten by the time you use it again.
>
> From what they've released so far, Fabric Engine goes a long way towards
> remedying these kinds of situations, and does so in a very clever way,
> that's geared for extremely high performance and flexibility.
>
> At its core, Fabric Engine gives us an API for graphics built with
> multi-threading and optimized machine level compiling in mind.  With the
> Splice integrations in various DCC packages, we gain a direct way to
> integrate tools built in Fabric Engine into all our DCC packages with a
> single implementation.  The tool you make for Maya Splice works in
> Softimage Splice, and does so far more elegantly than any one-off tool a TD
> is likely to create.  Magic.
>
> So, for the artist, it means your studio can build better tools faster,
> and make better use of them across packages.  Gone are the days of seeing
> what someone has in tool X and wishing you had it in Y.  Also, gone are the
> days of worrying about building a toolset for a package (say, Softimage)
> and losing your R&D investment overnight because a publicly traded
> corporation thinks you should be using a clunky pile of aging Mel scripts
> with serious scalability and workflow problems instead.
>
> ***If Fabric Engine can improve the return on investment of RnD, you not
> only make better use of the RnD resources, but in the long term, you are
> incentivized to increase the RnD budget.***
>
> Now, taking it one step further, we've made use of sites like rray.de,
> xsibase, creative crash, etc.  Imagine if every new script or tool someone
> wrote could work in all the Spliced packages!  The same arguments about RnD
> budgets at the company level apply to the community efforts as well.  Not
> only do we get better utilization from the efforts people are making, but
> there's also a stronger incentive for developers to make more tools,
> because they can reach a wider audience.  And on top of that, FE gives you
> a license for personal use, so there's nothing stopping individuals from
> contributing tools right now.
>
> The situation we're in now is a chicken/egg scenario.  In order for all of
> the above to take off and revolutionize our industry, we need an audience
> of studios and individuals ready to consume all of these tools people will
> make.  It's still very early days, so it's not in any way too late for this
> to happen -- if anything it's probably closer to being too soon.  What I
> mean is, this isn't like Softimage, where the industry is turning a blind
> eye to a great tool.  It's exactly the opposite, as some studios (MPC,
> Hybride) have already site licensed, when the tools are just getting off
> the ground.
>
> Given what's happening right now, there's a very unique opportunity with a
> captive audience of Softimage users on a 2-year ticking clock.  Just by
> showing an increase of interest and sales, the value of FE is already
> growing on paper, which c

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Paul Doyle]

My new thread doesn't appear to have made it to the list. There's a copy of
it here:
http://www.si-community.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=4950&start=0

I honestly don't have much to add to what Andy wrote - he nailed it. The
last two points in my post are:

"We can't do it alone - if you want to see change happen, you have to get
involved. Small companies like Fabric need your support, we need you to
kick things around and tell us what you think. We need to know what you
need. It's immensely frustrating to be told "this is cool, if only it did
X" and then we do X and the response is "now if it did Y then I'd take a
look". Get involved - it's free!

Let's get creative - we are open to creating a consortium and finding ways
to open-source work done there. Obviously there are hooks into Fabric and
the concern will be around vendor dependency - however, a lot of that can
be addressed in the design of a particular project. We have done deals that
give source code access to customers after a certain number of years, and
we will work with studios to give that kind of security. We see this as
something where we would not be controlling anything, but working on a
partnership basis with the studios that want to do this. It has to be
driven by studios that want to see some control over their destiny, with
companies like Fabric getting involved to support and drive innovation. We
are a platform, so for us this is the way to success - providing
high-performance, dependable components that can be used to build
production-specific tools. If you are interested in becoming a part of this
Fabric working group then please email me (p...@fabric-engine.com) - right
now I'm just gauging interest with the hope that we can do something
amazing together."

We started Fabric because we thought there was a better way to do things. I
won't lie - we took a few wrong turns with things like web technology.
However, the core engine has been consistently developed throughout, by key
members of the Softimage team. What we have now is an extremely powerful
platform that is hitting maturity - Fabric 2.0 is coming soon and it's got
a lot of people excited. For it to become everything it should be, it needs
support. I see it as a two-way street though - if we want studios to commit
to building on our platform, we have to be open to providing assurances
(contractual!). That's all I want to add - we're there and we are excited
to do something that breaks the studio/vendor mould.


On 5 March 2014 13:00, Andy Jones  wrote:

> I'll take a stab (although I haven't really spent any time using it).
>
> Often in production, we face problems that need solving.  They can be
> generic problems that are common across a studio, like "fur" or "grass," or
> they can be show-specific, like "create time-lapse footage of a building
> being constructed."  These examples are fairly small in scope, but studios
> may have even broader needs, like "We'd like a way to visualize our models
> quickly, without turntables, with an embedded Shotgun page for doing
> reviews."
>
> There are lots of tools at our disposal for solving these things, but the
> most powerful toolsets all exist with various DCC packages.  So any
> solution you come up with tends to be tightly coupled with one package.
>  For example, a studio might come up with a good procedural forest solution
> in Houdini, but then every time they want to use it, they have to make sure
> they have a Houdini artist to run it.  If the rest of the show is in Maya,
> you now have to deal with porting lots of assets over, and the additional
> crew.
>
> Or, more often, the technical artist or rnd person gets asked to "simply"
> port the tool over to the other package. Once you port the tool, you now
> have two separate sets of code to keep up to date, and eventually you have
> to hire more technical artists and RnD guys to keep up with demand.  And
> the ones you have are unhappy because they're spending time keeping code in
> sync and porting features back and forth, rather than making cool stuff
> artists want.
>
> Perhaps the most common situation is that we see all of the issues above
> in advance, and opt to have an artist "figure it out themselves," or "do it
> by hand."  Not because us technical guys are lazy beer-sipping jerks, but
> because it's actually cheaper to do it the hard way than to make a tool
> that will have to get rewritten by the time you use it again.
>
> From what they've released so far, Fabric Engine goes a long way towards
> remedying these kinds of situations, and does so in a very clever way,
> that's geared for extremely high performance and flexibility.
>
> At its core, Fabric Engine gives us an API for graphics built with
> multi-threading and optimized machine level compiling in mind.  With the
> Splice integrations in various DCC packages, we gain a direct way to
> integrate tools built in Fabric Engine into all our DCC packages with a
> single implementation.  The tool you mak

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Andy Jones]

I'll take a stab (although I haven't really spent any time using it).

Often in production, we face problems that need solving.  They can be
generic problems that are common across a studio, like "fur" or "grass," or
they can be show-specific, like "create time-lapse footage of a building
being constructed."  These examples are fairly small in scope, but studios
may have even broader needs, like "We'd like a way to visualize our models
quickly, without turntables, with an embedded Shotgun page for doing
reviews."

There are lots of tools at our disposal for solving these things, but the
most powerful toolsets all exist with various DCC packages.  So any
solution you come up with tends to be tightly coupled with one package.
 For example, a studio might come up with a good procedural forest solution
in Houdini, but then every time they want to use it, they have to make sure
they have a Houdini artist to run it.  If the rest of the show is in Maya,
you now have to deal with porting lots of assets over, and the additional
crew.

Or, more often, the technical artist or rnd person gets asked to "simply"
port the tool over to the other package. Once you port the tool, you now
have two separate sets of code to keep up to date, and eventually you have
to hire more technical artists and RnD guys to keep up with demand.  And
the ones you have are unhappy because they're spending time keeping code in
sync and porting features back and forth, rather than making cool stuff
artists want.

Perhaps the most common situation is that we see all of the issues above in
advance, and opt to have an artist "figure it out themselves," or "do it by
hand."  Not because us technical guys are lazy beer-sipping jerks, but
because it's actually cheaper to do it the hard way than to make a tool
that will have to get rewritten by the time you use it again.

>From what they've released so far, Fabric Engine goes a long way towards
remedying these kinds of situations, and does so in a very clever way,
that's geared for extremely high performance and flexibility.

At its core, Fabric Engine gives us an API for graphics built with
multi-threading and optimized machine level compiling in mind.  With the
Splice integrations in various DCC packages, we gain a direct way to
integrate tools built in Fabric Engine into all our DCC packages with a
single implementation.  The tool you make for Maya Splice works in
Softimage Splice, and does so far more elegantly than any one-off tool a TD
is likely to create.  Magic.

So, for the artist, it means your studio can build better tools faster, and
make better use of them across packages.  Gone are the days of seeing what
someone has in tool X and wishing you had it in Y.  Also, gone are the days
of worrying about building a toolset for a package (say, Softimage) and
losing your R&D investment overnight because a publicly traded corporation
thinks you should be using a clunky pile of aging Mel scripts with serious
scalability and workflow problems instead.

***If Fabric Engine can improve the return on investment of RnD, you not
only make better use of the RnD resources, but in the long term, you are
incentivized to increase the RnD budget.***

Now, taking it one step further, we've made use of sites like rray.de,
xsibase, creative crash, etc.  Imagine if every new script or tool someone
wrote could work in all the Spliced packages!  The same arguments about RnD
budgets at the company level apply to the community efforts as well.  Not
only do we get better utilization from the efforts people are making, but
there's also a stronger incentive for developers to make more tools,
because they can reach a wider audience.  And on top of that, FE gives you
a license for personal use, so there's nothing stopping individuals from
contributing tools right now.

The situation we're in now is a chicken/egg scenario.  In order for all of
the above to take off and revolutionize our industry, we need an audience
of studios and individuals ready to consume all of these tools people will
make.  It's still very early days, so it's not in any way too late for this
to happen -- if anything it's probably closer to being too soon.  What I
mean is, this isn't like Softimage, where the industry is turning a blind
eye to a great tool.  It's exactly the opposite, as some studios (MPC,
Hybride) have already site licensed, when the tools are just getting off
the ground.

Given what's happening right now, there's a very unique opportunity with a
captive audience of Softimage users on a 2-year ticking clock.  Just by
showing an increase of interest and sales, the value of FE is already
growing on paper, which can help a young company get where they need to go
even faster.

That's my "pitch."  No affiliations with FE whatsoever, but that's how I
see it playing out.  No guarantees it will happen, but I do believe the
potential is there.

It's important to note that a move in the direction of FE by no means has
to be a move away from othe

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Ahmidou Lyazidi]

As it have already been stated modern pipelines tend to be more fractured,
what we definitely miss is a new and innovative solution for
rigging/assembly/animation as there already are plenty of solutions for the
rest.
Looking forward to Fabric :)
Cheers

---
Ahmidou Lyazidi
Director | TD | CG artist
http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos
http://www.cappuccino-films.com


2014-03-05 16:30 GMT+01:00 Paul Doyle :

> I'm writing up a response today - lots to cover :) We are paying attention.
>
>

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Mirko Jankovic]

Anyone can explain a bit what are options with Fabric Engine for non tech
guys but purely artist type?
Start and work? I understood that it is creation platform for people to get
it and create their tools but what are chances that in time there will be
enough tools and libraries that will enable non tech guys to pickup various
tools and start working?
Or I misunderstood what is behind Fabric Engine completely :)


On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 4:30 PM, Paul Doyle  wrote:

> I'm writing up a response today - lots to cover :) We are paying attention.
>
>

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Paul Doyle]

I'm writing up a response today - lots to cover :) We are paying attention.

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Ahmed Barakat]

Hi Everyone

lots of change is going on, never did i imagine that i will see the end of
softimage, really sad but am happy that every one is still positive and
looking for smart alternatives and really great discussions are going on, I
haven't tried Fabric Engine yet i don't know if my poor scripting skills
will be any good to develop things myself but sure if there are enough tool
shared by the community for it i will and more less technical people will
do also.
from what i understand that tools developed inside of Fabric Engine will
work inside it regardless of the host DCC, that will be a great way to
develop tools to help xsi stay alive for a while and also to fill short
comings in other softwares like Modo till its more mature.
I thinks Fabric Engine should support more and more DCC packages to give
the ultimate freedom for every one to chose.

it is really a great effort by everyone there at Fabric Engine and i think
we should all support it.

for me i will keep using soft till it dies completely but i will start
giving modo a chance and use it along side till it matures more i have
faith in The Foundry they have done only good things with the softwares
they acquired.

on another note i haven't been active in the softimage community for couple
of years now as most of my work is supervision now and running my own small
shop that heavily relay on out sourcing and handling freelancers so it is a
bit hectic, but i want to thank every one here specially the people that i
got the pleasure of meeting, for the effort they did to support this
community and make it the best community any software had.

Regards

Ahmed Barakat


On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 2:10 PM, Stefan Kubicek  wrote:

>  Hi Andy,
>
>
> Stefan, re-reading my post, I'm not sure I was totally clear about
> modeling.  I'm not sure if this puts us back in agreement or not, but to
> clarify, what I meant was just that most pipelines have a reasonable degree
> of choice in which package they use for modeling.  I don't spend much time
> modeling personally so I'm not qualified to comment on the capabilities of
> the different packages.  From what I do know I fully agree that losing XSI
> is a hit in this area.  For me, it's a hit in every area, just due to how I
> can make use of ICE pretty much across the board.  Not to mention the rest
> of the tools and the operator stack.  I think part of why I glossed over
> modeling is that I think users who want to will be able to stick with XSI
> for modelling a little longer in that area than in, say, lighting, where
> things have to be more consistent across the studio.
>
>
> I just re-read your first post as well and I misunderstood the point you
> were trying to make, and to which I agree: As far as modeling goes there is
> a broad range of options to go with (both commercial and non-commercial)
>
> I would also say, I think my comments don't really at all capture the
> needs of game studios.  We're all more alike than we are different, and I
> consider us one user community, but as far as my personal experience, I'm
> definitely coming at this from a primarily commercials/features point of
> view.  Not sure if your a games guy or not, but I'm just realizing that's a
> broad category of people who are likely not as antsy as me about getting a
> new scene assembly tool :)
>
>
> I used to be in games for several years. Most studios I've seen are
> running some sort of home-grown editor to assemble their game worlds, along
> the lines of the Cryteks Sandbox, Unity, etc..I doubt they would find a
> scene assembly tool geared towards shading/rendering useful out of the box,
> unless it was some emerging games company with awareness of what FE could
> bring to the game development table and the will to build on it with the
> goal to transform it into their game editing environment. As for FE used in
> games, I'm quite surprised seemingly nobody has picked that up yet.
> I wonder how complicated it would be to get it to run on current consoles
> and even mobile devices.
>
>
> Now I'm truly going on a tangent, but I would also imagine that a scene
> assembly tool that exports to Arnold would also serve as a good framework
> for collecting, prepping, optimizing, and exporting game assets :)  You're
> basically exporting things to a "renderer" after all.
>
>
> Like above, to a certain extent. It might be cool for texture
> baking/lighting, but the general tendency is to go real-time with as much
> of the lighting pipeline as possible - It's just so much more flexible and
> cheaper in the end, and I'm sure we'll see more of that happening in the
> near future (on faster hardware).
> Here's a nice example of what's already possible:
> http://molecularmusings.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/real-time-radiosity/#more-298
>
>
>
> @Andy J.:Thanks for summing it up so nicely and comprehensively. I need to
>> disagree on the modeling part though. Even in XSI I miss a lot, especially
>> in terms of symmetrical modeling and sculpting. 

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Stefan Kubicek]

Hi Andy,Stefan, re-reading my post, I'm not sure I was totally clear about modeling.  I'm not sure if this puts us back in agreement or not, but to clarify, what I meant was just that most pipelines have a reasonable degree of choice in which package they use for modeling.  I don't spend much time modeling personally so I'm not qualified to comment on the capabilities of the different packages.  From what I do know I fully agree that losing XSI is a hit in this area.  For me, it's a hit in every area, just due to how I can make use of ICE pretty much across the board.  Not to mention the rest of the tools and the operator stack.  I think part of why I glossed over modeling is that I think users who want to will be able to stick with XSI for modelling a little longer in that area than in, say, lighting, where things have to be more consistent across the studio.I just re-read your first post as well and I misunderstood the point you were trying to make, and to which I agree: As far as modeling goes there is a broad range of options to go with (both commercial and non-commercial)I would also say, I think my comments don't really at all capture the needs of game studios.  We're all more alike than we are different, and I consider us one user community, but as far as my personal experience, I'm definitely coming at this from a primarily commercials/features point of view.  Not sure if your a games guy or not, but I'm just realizing that's a broad category of people who are likely not as antsy as me about getting a new scene assembly tool :)I used to be in games for several years. Most studios I've seen are running some sort of home-grown editor to assemble their game worlds, along the lines of the Cryteks Sandbox, Unity, etc..I doubt they would find a scene assembly tool geared towards shading/rendering useful out of the box, unless it was some emerging games company with awareness of what FE could bring to the game development table and the will to build on it with the goal to transform it into their game editing environment. As for FE used in games, I'm quite surprised seemingly nobody has picked that up yet.I wonder how complicated it would be to get it to run on current consoles and even mobile devices.Now I'm truly going on a tangent, but I would also imagine that a scene assembly tool that exports to Arnold would also serve as a good framework for collecting, prepping, optimizing, and exporting game assets :)  You're basically exporting things to a "renderer" after all.Like above, to a certain extent. It might be cool for texture baking/lighting, but the general tendency is to go real-time with as much of the lighting pipeline as possible - It's just so much more flexible and cheaper in the end, and I'm sure we'll see more of that happening in the near future (on faster hardware). Here's a nice example of what's already possible: http://molecularmusings.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/real-time-radiosity/#more-298@Andy J.:Thanks for summing it up so nicely and comprehensively. I need to disagree on the modeling part though. Even in XSI I miss a lot, especially in terms of symmetrical modeling and sculpting. There is huge potential for improvement in any existing application out there.


-- ---   Stefan Kubicek---   keyvis digital imagery  Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3   A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien Phone:+43/699/12614231  www.keyvis.at  ste...@keyvis.at--  This email and its attachments are   confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Daniel Jahnel]

Hi Andy, cant agree more with your very elaborate email, thanks for 
taking the time so sum it up...


In regards to your loose suggestion of collaborating on developing 
future FE based solutions we at Sehsucht in Hamburg are more than 
interested at this point...


Cheers, Daniel



On 04/03/2014 22:52, Andy Jones wrote:
Many studios having the same problems at the same time is a HUGE 
opportunity if we leverage it properly.


I completely agree about the collaboration that will be necessary from 
users.  However, for studios' part, I know a lot of places are 
interested in Fabric already, even if they haven't actually bought 
licenses yet.  So if part of the incentive was some kind of agreement 
for the FE guys to help nurture a scene assembly tool to life quickly, 
it might help tip the scale for whatever cost/benefit analysis places 
are doing.  The devs working on Fabric are truly some of the best in 
the world (and from what I understand, a big part of the reason AD 
bought Softimage to begin with).  They are a big part of the equation 
for what will happen in the future, even if they don't end up wanting 
to build a scene assembler as a supported "product" in itself (or who 
knows -- maybe they will?).


It would be great to get a little (or big?) list of studios that are 
interested in this sort of project (or other ones) and possibly have 
some kind of summit with the FE guys about what it would take to 
fast-track FE into certain critical areas of production, assuming a 
certain number of licenses were purchased.  No commitments at this 
point -- just a list of interested parties who might be curious enough 
to be part of the conversation, pending whatever other conversations 
need to be had with superiors.  I.e., it's understood that nobody is 
speaking for their companies at this point.  Just indicating that they 
think their company *might* be interested.


I'll start:

Psyop
Massmarket



On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 1:18 PM, Felix Geremus 
mailto:felixgere...@googlemail.com>> wrote:


You are probably right. But these times are a little bit different
and maybe that's exactly the one chance inside all this mess.
We're all sitting in the same boat at the same time. I know a lot
of studios who entirely rely on Softimage for lighting. All of
these will have to spend time and thus money to move on to another
pipeline during the next two years anyway. So why not invest at
least parts of this time into the same thing? Individuals are
great, and the community should absolutely try. But it's so hard
to put something like this together in your spare time. A few
studios supporting and profiting from this effort would accelerate
the whole process immensely. And about showing potential: wasn't
Stage, and all the other fabric applications build for exactly
this reason? To show the potential of such a project?



2014-03-04 21:55 GMT+01:00 Steven Caron mailto:car...@gmail.com>>:

it is a bit harder for visual effects vendors/studios, in an
already difficult market, spending money on software
development (not their core business) is a hard sell. seeing a
product or product in development on the other hand drums up
interest which leads to real investment and collaboration.
they need to see if their ideas are aligned with others on the
project. don't take my comment as discouragement, it is just
how i see it... for now it will be on individuals to come
together on a project which shows potential. i hope we, the
remaining softimage community, can do that together. again,
not discouragement to any studio which wants to partner to
make something happen...

steven


On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Felix Geremus
mailto:felixgere...@googlemail.com>> wrote:


So now that Softimage will be gone, isn't there room or
even need for collaboration here? Before everybody tries
to build something themselves, shouldn't people try to
bundle forces? And I'm not only talking about individuals
here. I'm talking about small to medium size companies who
couldn't afford to build something like this alone.

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Stephan Hempel]

Hi Felix,

well I put this post on purpose in this thread. It's targeted
primarily at FabricEngine because I have the impression that regarding
their business model they are settled (they have a venture capitalist
in their back according to their website) but I suppose not so tight
as other companies (The Foundry being a part of Carlyle Group for
example).

On the other hand I wanted to give Maurice Patel (in all modesty) an
idea about some options in the unlikely event that Autodesk would sell
the M&E division in the future (which imho I think is not so unlikely
at all for the stated reasons).

But you are right a separate thread would be better. I leave this to
the others if someone wants to contribute since I have everything said
what I wanted to say.

Cheers,
Stephan.







> He Stephan and all. Thanks for your words. But let's try to keep
> this thread constructive and on topic. Which is about what to do
> next, and if there is interest in a combined effort to create a
> scene assembly tool based on fabric (or something else)
> specifically. There are more than enough threads to vent your
> feelings about this messed up situation already. 


> 2014-03-05 5:48 GMT+01:00 Alex Arce :
> Wow Stephan,

> Thanks for sharing. I remember in some of my early days with
> Softimage CE (starting 21 years ago), Spans+Partners work on some of
> the early Softimage reels inspiring me to explore more. It makes me
> happy to be reminded of this so many years later, even at such a
> depressing moment it Softimage history.

> Thanks again,

> Alex



> On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 11:10 PM, Stephan Hempel  wrote:
> after laying around the whole night and couldn't sleep here are my 2 cents on 
> the whole situation.

> When you look at the history of Softimage it's quite obvious that
> developing a software for this industry is quite a challenge. I
> think there is reason why Daniel Langlois sold Softimage to
> Microsoft, because he couldn't stand the developing costs for a
> complete rewrite anymore. And when you see how long it took until
> XSI and later Moondust got on the market you may have glimpse what
> it means to develop a piece Software with this kind of sophistication.

> I can only hope that FabricEngine and all the others develop a
> better business model then the traditional one with investors
> outside of the industry who are not bound to the company they are
> invested in and can sell their investment at anytime to anywhom. I
> think the only solution are strong bounds into the 3D industry itself.

> I want to show you an example. In the Germany there is a company
> called DATEV. They do a very unsexy thing: tax accounting software.
> But the interesting part is that this company has been built by its
> customers and is owned by its customers in form of a cooperative
> society. The company exists since 1966 which gives you an idea about
> the stability and longevity of such the business model.
> More info about you find here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datev

> As manufacturing 3D software is obviously not a highly profitable
> business (or why else Softimage got sold from the founder via
> Microsoft throught AVID to Autodesk, Maya from Wavefront through
> Alias to Autodesk, 3dsmax from Kinetix through discreet* to Autodesk)
> I can only strongly recommend to stay away from financal investors
> and the stock market and try to finance the development through the 3D 
> industry itself.

> By the way if you look at Autodesk's latest business figures then
> you get the impression that big troubles can arise. Last years
> revenue dropped significantly especially when you compare it to the
> performance of the competition in the engineering sector.
> Engineering is 93% of their business by the way. M&E only
> contributes 7% to their revenue and is decreasing.
> Related to that I don't think that cloud based services which is
> supposedly the next big thing is wanted by such a conservative
> industry like the engineering industry is. And believe me or not
> they are conservative. I have some clients in this field. When this
> cloud based thing goes down the drain it is likely that Autodesk
> gets in big trouble and will therefore concentrate on its core
> business and will as consequence sell its stepchild M&E to whomever
> may have an interest in it (hopefully not a financial investor).

> Well I have no glass ball in front of me but I think the 3D
> industry should be prepared for such a situation since Autodesk has
> a dominant market position and apparently no one seems to care.

> It's a shame their will be no other software with a
> middle-click-this-button-to-repeat-the-last-command functionality
> anymore because Autodesk owns the patent on this and many other
> innovative concepts which made Softimage unique and stand out. So I
> think I will stay with "my second love" until I go the "Kim Aldis route".

> Just my 2 cents. Sorry for the rambling speech.

> I am still very thankful that I got in touch with  S

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Stefan Kubicek]

I admit that I had to look it up in spite of studying business  
administration for two years: The English term for "Genossenschaft" is  
"cooperation".
According to a couple of articles I found it seems to be an increasingly  
popular and successful
type of organization, even more so since the financial crisis. According  
to some statistics it also has the lowest chance of bankruptcy compared to  
any other form of organisation (at least in Germany, according to this  
short article:  
http://www.finanzen.net/nachricht/private-finanzen/Marktwirtschaft-Erfolgsmodell-Genossenschaften-1638921).



This is exactly what I am thinking for years now: 3D software out of the  
hands of large corporations.
All the legal problems that come with public companies (not being able  
to talk freely about future developments at any time for example, safe  
harbor blah) is just to much of a problem for a product that highly  
depends on the input of it's users and proper communication, let alone  
looming bankruptcy in financially difficult times, let alone in times of  
bad management decisions, and combinations thereof. Blender can never go  
bankrupt! That DATEV example is particularly nice since buyers of the  
software automatically become owners of the company, not just the  
product or license.

Some thoughts:
It would be cool if subscribes could actively contribute to the  
development through feature requests and/or code contributions, and  
everybody gets access to daily builds. Through regular code  
contributions members could get "developer" status, freeing them from  
having to pay a member fee.
It could be legally challenging to get that business model established  
on an international level though, not sure how the "Genossenschaft"  
translates to the US and other countries. Any ideas how this could work?



after laying around the whole night and couldn't sleep here are my 2  
cents on the whole situation.


When you look at the history of Softimage it's quite obvious that  
developing a software for this industry is quite a challenge. I think  
there is reason why Daniel Langlois sold Softimage to Microsoft,  
because he couldn't stand the developing costs for a complete rewrite  
anymore. And when you see how long it took until XSI and later Moondust  
got on the market you may have glimpse what it means to develop a piece  
Software with this kind of sophistication.


I can only hope that FabricEngine and all the others develop a better  
business model then the traditional one with investors outside of the  
industry who are not bound to the company they are invested in and can  
sell their investment at anytime to anywhom. I think the only solution  
are strong bounds into the 3D industry itself.


I want to show you an example. In the Germany there is a company called  
DATEV. They do a very unsexy thing: tax accounting software. But the  
interesting part is that this company has been built by its customers  
and is owned by its customers in form of a cooperative society. The  
company exists since 1966 which gives you an idea about the stability  
and longevity of such the business model.

More info about you find here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datev

As manufacturing 3D software is obviously not a highly profitable  
business (or why else Softimage got sold from the founder via Microsoft  
throught AVID to Autodesk, Maya from Wavefront through Alias to  
Autodesk, 3dsmax from Kinetix through discreet* to Autodesk)
I can only strongly recommend to stay away from financal investors and  
the stock market and try to finance the development through the 3D  
industry itself.


By the way if you look at Autodesk's latest business figures then you  
get the impression that big troubles can arise. Last years revenue  
dropped significantly especially when you compare it to the performance  
of the competition in the engineering sector. Engineering is 93% of  
their business by the way. M&E only contributes 7% to their revenue and  
is decreasing.
Related to that I don't think that cloud based services which is  
supposedly the next big thing is wanted by such a conservative industry  
like the engineering industry is. And believe me or not they are  
conservative. I have some clients in this field. When this cloud based  
thing goes down the drain it is likely that Autodesk gets in big  
trouble and will therefore concentrate on its core business and will as  
consequence sell its stepchild M&E to whomever may have an interest in  
it (hopefully not a financial investor).


Well I have no glass ball in front of me but I think the 3D industry  
should be prepared for such a situation since Autodesk has a dominant  
market position and apparently no one seems to care.


It's a shame their will be no other software with a  
middle-click-this-button-to-repeat-the-last-command functionality  
anymore because Autodesk owns the patent on this and many other  
innovative concepts which made Softimage unique 

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Felix Geremus]

He Stephan and all. Thanks for your words. But let's try to keep this
thread constructive and on topic. Which is about what to do next, and if
there is interest in a combined effort to create a scene assembly tool
based on fabric (or something else) specifically. There are more than
enough threads to vent your feelings about this messed up situation
already.


2014-03-05 5:48 GMT+01:00 Alex Arce :

> Wow Stephan,
>
> Thanks for sharing. I remember in some of my early days with Softimage CE
> (starting 21 years ago), Spans+Partners work on some of the early Softimage
> reels inspiring me to explore more. It makes me happy to be reminded of
> this so many years later, even at such a depressing moment it Softimage
> history.
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Alex
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 11:10 PM, Stephan Hempel  wrote:
>
>> after laying around the whole night and couldn't sleep here are my 2
>> cents on the whole situation.
>>
>> When you look at the history of Softimage it's quite obvious that
>> developing a software for this industry is quite a challenge. I think there
>> is reason why Daniel Langlois sold Softimage to Microsoft, because he
>> couldn't stand the developing costs for a complete rewrite anymore. And
>> when you see how long it took until XSI and later Moondust got on the
>> market you may have glimpse what it means to develop a piece Software with
>> this kind of sophistication.
>>
>> I can only hope that FabricEngine and all the others develop a better
>> business model then the traditional one with investors outside of the
>> industry who are not bound to the company they are invested in and can sell
>> their investment at anytime to anywhom. I think the only solution are
>> strong bounds into the 3D industry itself.
>>
>> I want to show you an example. In the Germany there is a company called
>> DATEV. They do a very unsexy thing: tax accounting software. But the
>> interesting part is that this company has been built by its customers and
>> is owned by its customers in form of a cooperative society. The company
>> exists since 1966 which gives you an idea about the stability and longevity
>> of such the business model.
>> More info about you find here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datev
>>
>> As manufacturing 3D software is obviously not a highly profitable
>> business (or why else Softimage got sold from the founder via Microsoft
>> throught AVID to Autodesk, Maya from Wavefront through Alias to Autodesk,
>> 3dsmax from Kinetix through discreet* to Autodesk)
>> I can only strongly recommend to stay away from financal investors and
>> the stock market and try to finance the development through the 3D industry
>> itself.
>>
>> By the way if you look at Autodesk's latest business figures then you get
>> the impression that big troubles can arise. Last years revenue dropped
>> significantly especially when you compare it to the performance of the
>> competition in the engineering sector. Engineering is 93% of their business
>> by the way. M&E only contributes 7% to their revenue and is decreasing.
>> Related to that I don't think that cloud based services which is
>> supposedly the next big thing is wanted by such a conservative industry
>> like the engineering industry is. And believe me or not they are
>> conservative. I have some clients in this field. When this cloud based
>> thing goes down the drain it is likely that Autodesk gets in big trouble
>> and will therefore concentrate on its core business and will as consequence
>> sell its stepchild M&E to whomever may have an interest in it (hopefully
>> not a financial investor).
>>
>> Well I have no glass ball in front of me but I think the 3D industry
>> should be prepared for such a situation since Autodesk has a dominant
>> market position and apparently no one seems to care.
>>
>> It's a shame their will be no other software with a
>> middle-click-this-button-to-repeat-the-last-command functionality anymore
>> because Autodesk owns the patent on this and many other innovative concepts
>> which made Softimage unique and stand out. So I think I will stay with "my
>> second love" until I go the "Kim Aldis route".
>>
>> Just my 2 cents. Sorry for the rambling speech.
>>
>> I am still very thankful that I got in touch with  Softimage at Spans und
>> Partner 8 years ago after messing around with 3dsmax and Maya. Thanks to
>> the developers and the community for supporting such a great product over
>> the last 28 years.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Stephan.
>>
>> +1
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On Mar 5, 2014, at 5:11, Jeffrey Dates  wrote:
>>
>> This.
>> Everything Andy said.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 4:52 PM, Andy Jones  wrote:
>>
>> Many studios having the same problems at the same time is a HUGE
>> opportunity if we leverage it properly.
>>
>> I completely agree about the collaboration that will be necessary from
>> users.  However, for studios' part, I know a lot of places are interested
>> in Fabric already, even if they haven't actually bo

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Morten Bartholdy]

Mr. Doyle are you reading this?

Morten



Den 5. marts 2014 kl. 10:11 skrev Stefan Kubicek :

> This is exactly what I am thinking for years now: 3D software out of the
> hands of large corporations.
> All the legal problems that come with public companies (not being able to

> talk freely about future developments at any time for example, safe
harbor
> blah) is just to much of a problem for a product that highly depends on
> the input of it's users and proper communication, let alone looming
> bankruptcy in financially difficult times, let alone in times of bad
> management decisions, and combinations thereof. Blender can never go
> bankrupt! That DATEV example is particularly nice since buyers of the
> software automatically become owners of the company, not just the product

> or license.
> Some thoughts:
> It would be cool if subscribes could actively contribute to the
> development through feature requests and/or code contributions, and
> everybody gets access to daily builds. Through regular code contributions

> members could get "developer" status, freeing them from having to pay a
> member fee.
> It could be legally challenging to get that business model established on

> an international level though, not sure how the "Genossenschaft"
> translates to the US and other countries. Any ideas how this could work?
>
>
> > after laying around the whole night and couldn't sleep here are my 2
> > cents on the whole situation.
> >
> > When you look at the history of Softimage it's quite obvious that
> > developing a software for this industry is quite a challenge. I think
> > there is reason why Daniel Langlois sold Softimage to Microsoft,
because
> > he couldn't stand the developing costs for a complete rewrite anymore.
> > And when you see how long it took until XSI and later Moondust got on
> > the market you may have glimpse what it means to develop a piece
> > Software with this kind of sophistication.
> >
> > I can only hope that FabricEngine and all the others develop a better
> > business model then the traditional one with investors outside of the
> > industry who are not bound to the company they are invested in and can
> > sell their investment at anytime to anywhom. I think the only solution
> > are strong bounds into the 3D industry itself.
> >
> > I want to show you an example. In the Germany there is a company called

> > DATEV. They do a very unsexy thing: tax accounting software. But the
> > interesting part is that this company has been built by its customers
> > and is owned by its customers in form of a cooperative society. The
> > company exists since 1966 which gives you an idea about the stability
> > and longevity of such the business model.
> > More info about you find here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datev
> >
> > As manufacturing 3D software is obviously not a highly profitable
> > business (or why else Softimage got sold from the founder via Microsoft

> > throught AVID to Autodesk, Maya from Wavefront through Alias to
> > Autodesk, 3dsmax from Kinetix through discreet* to Autodesk)
> > I can only strongly recommend to stay away from financal investors and
> > the stock market and try to finance the development through the 3D
> > industry itself.
> >
> > By the way if you look at Autodesk's latest business figures then you
> > get the impression that big troubles can arise. Last years revenue
> > dropped significantly especially when you compare it to the performance

> > of the competition in the engineering sector. Engineering is 93% of
> > their business by the way. M&E only contributes 7% to their revenue and

> > is decreasing.
> > Related to that I don't think that cloud based services which is
> > supposedly the next big thing is wanted by such a conservative industry

> > like the engineering industry is. And believe me or not they are
> > conservative. I have some clients in this field. When this cloud based
> > thing goes down the drain it is likely that Autodesk gets in big
trouble
> > and will therefore concentrate on its core business and will as
> > consequence sell its stepchild M&E to whomever may have an interest in
> > it (hopefully not a financial investor).
> >
> > Well I have no glass ball in front of me but I think the 3D industry
> > should be prepared for such a situation since Autodesk has a dominant
> > market position and apparently no one seems to care.
> >
> > It's a shame their will be no other software with a
> > middle-click-this-button-to-repeat-the-last-command functionality
> > anymore because Autodesk owns the patent on this and many other
> > innovative concepts which made Softimage unique and stand out. So I
> > think I will stay with "my second love" until I go the "Kim Aldis
route".
> >
> > Just my 2 cents. Sorry for the rambling speech.
> >
> > I am still very thankful that I got in touch with  Softimage at Spans
> > und Partner 8 years ago after messing around with 3dsmax and Maya.
> > Thanks to the developers and the community for su

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Stefan Kubicek]

This is exactly what I am thinking for years now: 3D software out of the  
hands of large corporations.
All the legal problems that come with public companies (not being able to  
talk freely about future developments at any time for example, safe harbor  
blah) is just to much of a problem for a product that highly depends on  
the input of it's users and proper communication, let alone looming  
bankruptcy in financially difficult times, let alone in times of bad  
management decisions, and combinations thereof. Blender can never go  
bankrupt! That DATEV example is particularly nice since buyers of the  
software automatically become owners of the company, not just the product  
or license.

Some thoughts:
It would be cool if subscribes could actively contribute to the  
development through feature requests and/or code contributions, and  
everybody gets access to daily builds. Through regular code contributions  
members could get "developer" status, freeing them from having to pay a  
member fee.
It could be legally challenging to get that business model established on  
an international level though, not sure how the "Genossenschaft"  
translates to the US and other countries. Any ideas how this could work?



after laying around the whole night and couldn't sleep here are my 2  
cents on the whole situation.


When you look at the history of Softimage it's quite obvious that  
developing a software for this industry is quite a challenge. I think  
there is reason why Daniel Langlois sold Softimage to Microsoft, because  
he couldn't stand the developing costs for a complete rewrite anymore.  
And when you see how long it took until XSI and later Moondust got on  
the market you may have glimpse what it means to develop a piece  
Software with this kind of sophistication.


I can only hope that FabricEngine and all the others develop a better  
business model then the traditional one with investors outside of the  
industry who are not bound to the company they are invested in and can  
sell their investment at anytime to anywhom. I think the only solution  
are strong bounds into the 3D industry itself.


I want to show you an example. In the Germany there is a company called  
DATEV. They do a very unsexy thing: tax accounting software. But the  
interesting part is that this company has been built by its customers  
and is owned by its customers in form of a cooperative society. The  
company exists since 1966 which gives you an idea about the stability  
and longevity of such the business model.

More info about you find here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datev

As manufacturing 3D software is obviously not a highly profitable  
business (or why else Softimage got sold from the founder via Microsoft  
throught AVID to Autodesk, Maya from Wavefront through Alias to  
Autodesk, 3dsmax from Kinetix through discreet* to Autodesk)
I can only strongly recommend to stay away from financal investors and  
the stock market and try to finance the development through the 3D  
industry itself.


By the way if you look at Autodesk's latest business figures then you  
get the impression that big troubles can arise. Last years revenue  
dropped significantly especially when you compare it to the performance  
of the competition in the engineering sector. Engineering is 93% of  
their business by the way. M&E only contributes 7% to their revenue and  
is decreasing.
Related to that I don't think that cloud based services which is  
supposedly the next big thing is wanted by such a conservative industry  
like the engineering industry is. And believe me or not they are  
conservative. I have some clients in this field. When this cloud based  
thing goes down the drain it is likely that Autodesk gets in big trouble  
and will therefore concentrate on its core business and will as  
consequence sell its stepchild M&E to whomever may have an interest in  
it (hopefully not a financial investor).


Well I have no glass ball in front of me but I think the 3D industry  
should be prepared for such a situation since Autodesk has a dominant  
market position and apparently no one seems to care.


It's a shame their will be no other software with a  
middle-click-this-button-to-repeat-the-last-command functionality  
anymore because Autodesk owns the patent on this and many other  
innovative concepts which made Softimage unique and stand out. So I  
think I will stay with "my second love" until I go the "Kim Aldis route".


Just my 2 cents. Sorry for the rambling speech.

I am still very thankful that I got in touch with  Softimage at Spans  
und Partner 8 years ago after messing around with 3dsmax and Maya.  
Thanks to the developers and the community for supporting such a great  
product over the last 28 years.


Cheers,
Stephan.

+1

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 5, 2014, at 5:11, Jeffrey Dates  wrote:

This.
Everything Andy said.



On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 4:52 PM, Andy Jones  wrote:

Many studios having the same proble

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Alex Arce]

Wow Stephan,

Thanks for sharing. I remember in some of my early days with Softimage CE
(starting 21 years ago), Spans+Partners work on some of the early Softimage
reels inspiring me to explore more. It makes me happy to be reminded of
this so many years later, even at such a depressing moment it Softimage
history.

Thanks again,

Alex


On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 11:10 PM, Stephan Hempel  wrote:

> after laying around the whole night and couldn't sleep here are my 2 cents
> on the whole situation.
>
> When you look at the history of Softimage it's quite obvious that
> developing a software for this industry is quite a challenge. I think there
> is reason why Daniel Langlois sold Softimage to Microsoft, because he
> couldn't stand the developing costs for a complete rewrite anymore. And
> when you see how long it took until XSI and later Moondust got on the
> market you may have glimpse what it means to develop a piece Software with
> this kind of sophistication.
>
> I can only hope that FabricEngine and all the others develop a better
> business model then the traditional one with investors outside of the
> industry who are not bound to the company they are invested in and can sell
> their investment at anytime to anywhom. I think the only solution are
> strong bounds into the 3D industry itself.
>
> I want to show you an example. In the Germany there is a company called
> DATEV. They do a very unsexy thing: tax accounting software. But the
> interesting part is that this company has been built by its customers and
> is owned by its customers in form of a cooperative society. The company
> exists since 1966 which gives you an idea about the stability and longevity
> of such the business model.
> More info about you find here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datev
>
> As manufacturing 3D software is obviously not a highly profitable business
> (or why else Softimage got sold from the founder via Microsoft throught
> AVID to Autodesk, Maya from Wavefront through Alias to Autodesk, 3dsmax
> from Kinetix through discreet* to Autodesk)
> I can only strongly recommend to stay away from financal investors and the
> stock market and try to finance the development through the 3D industry
> itself.
>
> By the way if you look at Autodesk's latest business figures then you get
> the impression that big troubles can arise. Last years revenue dropped
> significantly especially when you compare it to the performance of the
> competition in the engineering sector. Engineering is 93% of their business
> by the way. M&E only contributes 7% to their revenue and is decreasing.
> Related to that I don't think that cloud based services which is
> supposedly the next big thing is wanted by such a conservative industry
> like the engineering industry is. And believe me or not they are
> conservative. I have some clients in this field. When this cloud based
> thing goes down the drain it is likely that Autodesk gets in big trouble
> and will therefore concentrate on its core business and will as consequence
> sell its stepchild M&E to whomever may have an interest in it (hopefully
> not a financial investor).
>
> Well I have no glass ball in front of me but I think the 3D industry
> should be prepared for such a situation since Autodesk has a dominant
> market position and apparently no one seems to care.
>
> It's a shame their will be no other software with a
> middle-click-this-button-to-repeat-the-last-command functionality anymore
> because Autodesk owns the patent on this and many other innovative concepts
> which made Softimage unique and stand out. So I think I will stay with "my
> second love" until I go the "Kim Aldis route".
>
> Just my 2 cents. Sorry for the rambling speech.
>
> I am still very thankful that I got in touch with  Softimage at Spans und
> Partner 8 years ago after messing around with 3dsmax and Maya. Thanks to
> the developers and the community for supporting such a great product over
> the last 28 years.
>
> Cheers,
> Stephan.
>
> +1
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Mar 5, 2014, at 5:11, Jeffrey Dates  wrote:
>
> This.
> Everything Andy said.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 4:52 PM, Andy Jones  wrote:
>
> Many studios having the same problems at the same time is a HUGE
> opportunity if we leverage it properly.
>
> I completely agree about the collaboration that will be necessary from
> users.  However, for studios' part, I know a lot of places are interested
> in Fabric already, even if they haven't actually bought licenses yet.  So
> if part of the incentive was some kind of agreement for the FE guys to help
> nurture a scene assembly tool to life quickly, it might help tip the scale
> for whatever cost/benefit analysis places are doing.  The devs working on
> Fabric are truly some of the best in the world (and from what I understand,
> a big part of the reason AD bought Softimage to begin with).  They are a
> big part of the equation for what will happen in the future, even if they
> don't end up wanting to bui

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Leoung O'Young]

Very thoughtful words.
Tears almost come to my eyes when such great piece of software is put 
out to pasture and buried, it is a crime.
All the hard work some many people that has been put in to make it the 
software it is today.

One we have been using for such a long time.
We now have 2 weeks to make some major decision what direction we will 
be taking.

We will take a look at Houdini  and Cinema 4D.
I will not consider Maya or 3D Max.


On 04/03/2014 11:10 PM, Stephan Hempel wrote:

after laying around the whole night and couldn't sleep here are my 2 cents on 
the whole situation.

When you look at the history of Softimage it's quite obvious that developing a 
software for this industry is quite a challenge. I think there is reason why 
Daniel Langlois sold Softimage to Microsoft, because he couldn't stand the 
developing costs for a complete rewrite anymore. And when you see how long it 
took until XSI and later Moondust got on the market you may have glimpse what 
it means to develop a piece Software with this kind of sophistication.

I can only hope that FabricEngine and all the others develop a better business 
model then the traditional one with investors outside of the industry who are 
not bound to the company they are invested in and can sell their investment at 
anytime to anywhom. I think the only solution are strong bounds into the 3D 
industry itself.

I want to show you an example. In the Germany there is a company called DATEV. 
They do a very unsexy thing: tax accounting software. But the interesting part 
is that this company has been built by its customers and is owned by its 
customers in form of a cooperative society. The company exists since 1966 which 
gives you an idea about the stability and longevity of such the business model.
More info about you find here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datev

As manufacturing 3D software is obviously not a highly profitable business (or 
why else Softimage got sold from the founder via Microsoft throught AVID to 
Autodesk, Maya from Wavefront through Alias to Autodesk, 3dsmax from Kinetix 
through discreet* to Autodesk)
I can only strongly recommend to stay away from financal investors and the 
stock market and try to finance the development through the 3D industry itself.

By the way if you look at Autodesk's latest business figures then you get the 
impression that big troubles can arise. Last years revenue dropped significantly 
especially when you compare it to the performance of the competition in the 
engineering sector. Engineering is 93% of their business by the way. M&E only 
contributes 7% to their revenue and is decreasing.
Related to that I don't think that cloud based services which is supposedly the 
next big thing is wanted by such a conservative industry like the engineering 
industry is. And believe me or not they are conservative. I have some clients in 
this field. When this cloud based thing goes down the drain it is likely that 
Autodesk gets in big trouble and will therefore concentrate on its core business 
and will as consequence sell its stepchild M&E to whomever may have an interest 
in it (hopefully not a financial investor).

Well I have no glass ball in front of me but I think the 3D industry should be 
prepared for such a situation since Autodesk has a dominant market position and 
apparently no one seems to care.

It's a shame their will be no other software with a 
middle-click-this-button-to-repeat-the-last-command functionality anymore because Autodesk owns the 
patent on this and many other innovative concepts which made Softimage unique and stand out. So I 
think I will stay with "my second love" until I go the "Kim Aldis route".

Just my 2 cents. Sorry for the rambling speech.

I am still very thankful that I got in touch with  Softimage at Spans und 
Partner 8 years ago after messing around with 3dsmax and Maya. Thanks to the 
developers and the community for supporting such a great product over the last 
28 years.

Cheers,
Stephan.

+1

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 5, 2014, at 5:11, Jeffrey Dates  wrote:

This.
Everything Andy said.



On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 4:52 PM, Andy Jones  wrote:

Many studios having the same problems at the same time is a HUGE opportunity if 
we leverage it properly.

I completely agree about the collaboration that will be necessary from users.  However, 
for studios' part, I know a lot of places are interested in Fabric already, even if they 
haven't actually bought licenses yet.  So if part of the incentive was some kind of 
agreement for the FE guys to help nurture a scene assembly tool to life quickly, it might 
help tip the scale for whatever cost/benefit analysis places are doing.  The devs working 
on Fabric are truly some of the best in the world (and from what I understand, a big part 
of the reason AD bought Softimage to begin with).  They are a big part of the equation 
for what will happen in the future, even if they don't end up wanting to build a scene 
assembler as a 

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Stephan Hempel]

after laying around the whole night and couldn't sleep here are my 2 cents on 
the whole situation.

When you look at the history of Softimage it's quite obvious that developing a 
software for this industry is quite a challenge. I think there is reason why 
Daniel Langlois sold Softimage to Microsoft, because he couldn't stand the 
developing costs for a complete rewrite anymore. And when you see how long it 
took until XSI and later Moondust got on the market you may have glimpse what 
it means to develop a piece Software with this kind of sophistication. 

I can only hope that FabricEngine and all the others develop a better business 
model then the traditional one with investors outside of the industry who are 
not bound to the company they are invested in and can sell their investment at 
anytime to anywhom. I think the only solution are strong bounds into the 3D 
industry itself. 

I want to show you an example. In the Germany there is a company called DATEV. 
They do a very unsexy thing: tax accounting software. But the interesting part 
is that this company has been built by its customers and is owned by its 
customers in form of a cooperative society. The company exists since 1966 which 
gives you an idea about the stability and longevity of such the business model. 
More info about you find here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datev 

As manufacturing 3D software is obviously not a highly profitable business (or 
why else Softimage got sold from the founder via Microsoft throught AVID to 
Autodesk, Maya from Wavefront through Alias to Autodesk, 3dsmax from Kinetix 
through discreet* to Autodesk) 
I can only strongly recommend to stay away from financal investors and the 
stock market and try to finance the development through the 3D industry itself.

By the way if you look at Autodesk's latest business figures then you get the 
impression that big troubles can arise. Last years revenue dropped 
significantly especially when you compare it to the performance of the 
competition in the engineering sector. Engineering is 93% of their business by 
the way. M&E only contributes 7% to their revenue and is decreasing. 
Related to that I don't think that cloud based services which is supposedly the 
next big thing is wanted by such a conservative industry like the engineering 
industry is. And believe me or not they are conservative. I have some clients 
in this field. When this cloud based thing goes down the drain it is likely 
that Autodesk gets in big trouble and will therefore concentrate on its core 
business and will as consequence sell its stepchild M&E to whomever may have an 
interest in it (hopefully not a financial investor).  

Well I have no glass ball in front of me but I think the 3D industry should be 
prepared for such a situation since Autodesk has a dominant market position and 
apparently no one seems to care.

It's a shame their will be no other software with a 
middle-click-this-button-to-repeat-the-last-command functionality anymore 
because Autodesk owns the patent on this and many other innovative concepts 
which made Softimage unique and stand out. So I think I will stay with "my 
second love" until I go the "Kim Aldis route".

Just my 2 cents. Sorry for the rambling speech.   

I am still very thankful that I got in touch with  Softimage at Spans und 
Partner 8 years ago after messing around with 3dsmax and Maya. Thanks to the 
developers and the community for supporting such a great product over the last 
28 years.

Cheers,
Stephan.

+1

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 5, 2014, at 5:11, Jeffrey Dates  wrote:

This.
Everything Andy said.



On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 4:52 PM, Andy Jones  wrote:

Many studios having the same problems at the same time is a HUGE opportunity if 
we leverage it properly.

I completely agree about the collaboration that will be necessary from users.  
However, for studios' part, I know a lot of places are interested in Fabric 
already, even if they haven't actually bought licenses yet.  So if part of the 
incentive was some kind of agreement for the FE guys to help nurture a scene 
assembly tool to life quickly, it might help tip the scale for whatever 
cost/benefit analysis places are doing.  The devs working on Fabric are truly 
some of the best in the world (and from what I understand, a big part of the 
reason AD bought Softimage to begin with).  They are a big part of the equation 
for what will happen in the future, even if they don't end up wanting to build 
a scene assembler as a supported "product" in itself (or who knows -- maybe 
they will?).

It would be great to get a little (or big?) list of studios that are interested 
in this sort of project (or other ones) and possibly have some kind of summit 
with the FE guys about what it would take to fast-track FE into certain 
critical areas of production, assuming a certain number of licenses were 
purchased.  No commitments at this point -- just a list of interested parties 
who might be curious enoug

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Alok Gandhi]

+1

Sent from my iPhone

> On Mar 5, 2014, at 5:11, Jeffrey Dates  wrote:
> 
> This.
> Everything Andy said.
> 
> 
>> On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 4:52 PM, Andy Jones  wrote:
>> Many studios having the same problems at the same time is a HUGE opportunity 
>> if we leverage it properly.
>> 
>> I completely agree about the collaboration that will be necessary from 
>> users.  However, for studios' part, I know a lot of places are interested in 
>> Fabric already, even if they haven't actually bought licenses yet.  So if 
>> part of the incentive was some kind of agreement for the FE guys to help 
>> nurture a scene assembly tool to life quickly, it might help tip the scale 
>> for whatever cost/benefit analysis places are doing.  The devs working on 
>> Fabric are truly some of the best in the world (and from what I understand, 
>> a big part of the reason AD bought Softimage to begin with).  They are a big 
>> part of the equation for what will happen in the future, even if they don't 
>> end up wanting to build a scene assembler as a supported "product" in itself 
>> (or who knows -- maybe they will?).
>> 
>> It would be great to get a little (or big?) list of studios that are 
>> interested in this sort of project (or other ones) and possibly have some 
>> kind of summit with the FE guys about what it would take to fast-track FE 
>> into certain critical areas of production, assuming a certain number of 
>> licenses were purchased.  No commitments at this point -- just a list of 
>> interested parties who might be curious enough to be part of the 
>> conversation, pending whatever other conversations need to be had with 
>> superiors.  I.e., it's understood that nobody is speaking for their 
>> companies at this point.  Just indicating that they think their company 
>> *might* be interested.
>> 
>> I'll start:
>> 
>> Psyop
>> Massmarket
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 1:18 PM, Felix Geremus  
>>> wrote:
>>> You are probably right. But these times are a little bit different and 
>>> maybe that's exactly the one chance inside all this mess. We're all sitting 
>>> in the same boat at the same time. I know a lot of studios who entirely 
>>> rely on Softimage for lighting. All of these will have to spend time and 
>>> thus money to move on to another pipeline during the next two years anyway. 
>>> So why not invest at least parts of this time into the same thing? 
>>> Individuals are great, and the community should absolutely try. But it's so 
>>> hard to put something like this together in your spare time. A few studios 
>>> supporting and profiting from this effort would accelerate the whole 
>>> process immensely. And about showing potential: wasn't Stage, and all the 
>>> other fabric applications build for exactly this reason? To show the 
>>> potential of such a project?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 2014-03-04 21:55 GMT+01:00 Steven Caron :
>>> 
 it is a bit harder for visual effects vendors/studios, in an already 
 difficult market, spending money on software development (not their core 
 business) is a hard sell. seeing a product or product in development on 
 the other hand drums up interest which leads to real investment and 
 collaboration. they need to see if their ideas are aligned with others on 
 the project. don't take my comment as discouragement, it is just how i see 
 it... for now it will be on individuals to come together on a project 
 which shows potential. i hope we, the remaining softimage community, can 
 do that together. again, not discouragement to any studio which wants to 
 partner to make something happen... 
 
 steven
 
 
> On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Felix Geremus 
>  wrote:
> 
> So now that Softimage will be gone, isn't there room or even need for 
> collaboration here? Before everybody tries to build something themselves, 
> shouldn't people try to bundle forces? And I'm not only talking about 
> individuals here. I'm talking about small to medium size companies who 
> couldn't afford to build something like this alone.
> 

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Jeffrey Dates]

This.
Everything Andy said.


On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 4:52 PM, Andy Jones  wrote:

> Many studios having the same problems at the same time is a HUGE
> opportunity if we leverage it properly.
>
> I completely agree about the collaboration that will be necessary from
> users.  However, for studios' part, I know a lot of places are interested
> in Fabric already, even if they haven't actually bought licenses yet.  So
> if part of the incentive was some kind of agreement for the FE guys to help
> nurture a scene assembly tool to life quickly, it might help tip the scale
> for whatever cost/benefit analysis places are doing.  The devs working on
> Fabric are truly some of the best in the world (and from what I understand,
> a big part of the reason AD bought Softimage to begin with).  They are a
> big part of the equation for what will happen in the future, even if they
> don't end up wanting to build a scene assembler as a supported "product" in
> itself (or who knows -- maybe they will?).
>
> It would be great to get a little (or big?) list of studios that are
> interested in this sort of project (or other ones) and possibly have some
> kind of summit with the FE guys about what it would take to fast-track FE
> into certain critical areas of production, assuming a certain number of
> licenses were purchased.  No commitments at this point -- just a list of
> interested parties who might be curious enough to be part of the
> conversation, pending whatever other conversations need to be had with
> superiors.  I.e., it's understood that nobody is speaking for their
> companies at this point.  Just indicating that they think their company
> *might* be interested.
>
> I'll start:
>
> Psyop
> Massmarket
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 1:18 PM, Felix Geremus  > wrote:
>
>> You are probably right. But these times are a little bit different and
>> maybe that's exactly the one chance inside all this mess. We're all sitting
>> in the same boat at the same time. I know a lot of studios who entirely
>> rely on Softimage for lighting. All of these will have to spend time and
>> thus money to move on to another pipeline during the next two years anyway.
>> So why not invest at least parts of this time into the same thing?
>> Individuals are great, and the community should absolutely try. But it's so
>> hard to put something like this together in your spare time. A few studios
>> supporting and profiting from this effort would accelerate the whole
>> process immensely. And about showing potential: wasn't Stage, and all the
>> other fabric applications build for exactly this reason? To show the
>> potential of such a project?
>>
>>
>>
>> 2014-03-04 21:55 GMT+01:00 Steven Caron :
>>
>> it is a bit harder for visual effects vendors/studios, in an already
>>> difficult market, spending money on software development (not their core
>>> business) is a hard sell. seeing a product or product in development on the
>>> other hand drums up interest which leads to real investment and
>>> collaboration. they need to see if their ideas are aligned with others on
>>> the project. don't take my comment as discouragement, it is just how i see
>>> it... for now it will be on individuals to come together on a project which
>>> shows potential. i hope we, the remaining softimage community, can do that
>>> together. again, not discouragement to any studio which wants to partner to
>>> make something happen...
>>>
>>> steven
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Felix Geremus <
>>> felixgere...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>

 So now that Softimage will be gone, isn't there room or even need for
 collaboration here? Before everybody tries to build something themselves,
 shouldn't people try to bundle forces? And I'm not only talking about
 individuals here. I'm talking about small to medium size companies who
 couldn't afford to build something like this alone.

>>>
>>
>

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Andy Jones]

Stefan, re-reading my post, I'm not sure I was totally clear about
modeling.  I'm not sure if this puts us back in agreement or not, but to
clarify, what I meant was just that most pipelines have a reasonable degree
of choice in which package they use for modeling.  I don't spend much time
modeling personally so I'm not qualified to comment on the capabilities of
the different packages.  From what I do know I fully agree that losing XSI
is a hit in this area.  For me, it's a hit in every area, just due to how I
can make use of ICE pretty much across the board.  Not to mention the rest
of the tools and the operator stack.  I think part of why I glossed over
modeling is that I think users who want to will be able to stick with XSI
for modelling a little longer in that area than in, say, lighting, where
things have to be more consistent across the studio.

I would also say, I think my comments don't really at all capture the needs
of game studios.  We're all more alike than we are different, and I
consider us one user community, but as far as my personal experience, I'm
definitely coming at this from a primarily commercials/features point of
view.  Not sure if your a games guy or not, but I'm just realizing that's a
broad category of people who are likely not as antsy as me about getting a
new scene assembly tool :)

Now I'm truly going on a tangent, but I would also imagine that a scene
assembly tool that exports to Arnold would also serve as a good framework
for collecting, prepping, optimizing, and exporting game assets :)  You're
basically exporting things to a "renderer" after all.


> @Andy J.:Thanks for summing it up so nicely and comprehensively. I need to
> disagree on the modeling part though. Even in XSI I miss a lot, especially
> in terms of symmetrical modeling and sculpting. There is huge potential for
> improvement in any existing application out there.
>
>

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Morten Bartholdy]

There definately is a going to be a void to fill Paul! And right now and a
couple years forward it will likely be easy to increase a DCC companys
userbase significantly if manages to deliver what is required.

Morten



Den 4. marts 2014 kl. 21:45 skrev Paul Doyle :

> Thank you for mentioning us and for the helpful comments. I'll make sure we
> respond to the things raised in this thread - in particular scene assembly.
> I just don't feel like pimping software today - I'll be back on top of
> things tomorrow.
> 
> 
> On 4 March 2014 15:34, Felix Geremus < felixgere...@googlemail.com
>  > wrote:
> > Great post Andy! I'm probably biased, because I'm mainly working as a
> > lighter. But after thinking about the future for the last couple of days, I
> > came to the very same conclusion. Lighting and scene assembly is the
> > biggest hole to fill. Houdini will be a great replacement for FX and with
> > stuff like open VDB, alembic, partiio, etc it should become easier to move
> > stuff in and out. Modeling can happen anywhere since a while.
> > Rigging and animation isn't that easy. But animation isn't that technical
> > and animators usually don't take long to switch. Rigging is more difficult.
> > But Maya isn't that bad in rigging. And now there is Fabric. And I think
> > for rigging it is already 90% of where it should be. People like Eric are
> > already building stuff with it. And the advantage here is that rigging is a
> > very modular and job specific process. With a few solvers and deformers
> > you're already up and running, and everything else, you build on top as you
> > need it. And that's the problem with a Fabric scene assembly application.
> > You'd basically need to build a complete and highly complex application
> > from scratch which covers all your needs. Otherwise you won't be able to
> > work with it. And from what I know that's what keeps many people in smaller
> > studios from using fabric in this area. It's just financially impossible to
> > build such an application from scratch. I was really disappointed when I
> > heard that the Fabric guys won't continue Stage for now (although I
> > understand their reasons). And all the other efforts I know of (except for
> > Steven's Arnold connection) are happening inside studios and most likely
> > won't be shared.
> > So now that Softimage will be gone, isn't there room or even need for
> > collaboration here? Before everybody tries to build something themselves,
> > shouldn't people try to bundle forces? And I'm not only talking about
> > individuals here. I'm talking about small to medium size companies who
> > couldn't afford to build something like this alone.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 2014-03-04 20:39 GMT+01:00 Juhani Karlsson < juhani.karls...@talvi.com
> >  > :
> > 
> > > Now I`m interested about this mailing list too - its full of Kings!
> > > Is it going to stay? If not where should we go?
> > > Fabric definetly has bright future if you just keep on pushin - and Caron
> > > that sounds really good : )
> > > 
> > > 
> > > On 4 March 2014 21:35, Paul < p...@bustykelp.com
> > >  > wrote:
> > > > I'm going to be going Fabric too for sure.
> > > > 
> > > > On 4 Mar 2014, at 19:17, Jonah Friedman < jon...@gmail.com
> > > >  > wrote:
> > > > > > the kl language! this is a step toward my own scene assembly tool. i
> > > > > > am
> > > > > > imagining something between softimage and katana.
> > > > > 
> > > > > That sounds exactly like a place I want to be. <3
> > > > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > --
> > > --
> > > Juhani Karlsson
> > > 3D Artist/TD
> > > 
> > > Talvi Digital Oy
> > > Pursimiehenkatu 29-31 b 2krs.
> > > 00150 Helsinki
> > > +358 443443088 
> > > juhani.karls...@talvi.fi
> > > www.vimeo.com/talvi 

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Ed Manning]

On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 5:43 PM, Jonah Friedman  wrote:

> For myself, I just want to be heading in a direction of somewhere I
> actually want to be. When I think of spending the next 5 years maintaining
> a pile of python to make render layers barely work, I just want to cry. And
> all of that just to take a massive step backwards. I really just can't.
>
> The alternative of open collaboration between studios to build something
> *good* is not only an alternative to despair, it's actually amazingly
> exciting. I absolutely can't wait to start using and contributing to a
> project like this. So many studios suddenly find themselves in this
> situation now, with real urgency. This is a massive opportunity. Like
> Stephan just said, if this isn't the right moment, I don't know what is.
>
> I hope the studio proprietors agree.  All of you guys on-list at studios
that can contribute to this, brush up your convince-the-owner skills!

In all seriousness, is there someone on-list who can put together a
convincing and share-able (i.e. not revealing any proprietary business
data) business case? Maybe based on time and money lost by NOT taking this
opportunity?

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Jonah Friedman]

For myself, I just want to be heading in a direction of somewhere I
actually want to be. When I think of spending the next 5 years maintaining
a pile of python to make render layers barely work, I just want to cry. And
all of that just to take a massive step backwards. I really just can't.

The alternative of open collaboration between studios to build something
*good* is not only an alternative to despair, it's actually amazingly
exciting. I absolutely can't wait to start using and contributing to a
project like this. So many studios suddenly find themselves in this
situation now, with real urgency. This is a massive opportunity. Like
Stephan just said, if this isn't the right moment, I don't know what is.




On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 5:22 PM, Stefan Kubicek  wrote:

>  @Felix: I totally agree on the bundling forces part.
> I've been on the Fabric Beta since over a year and am pondering over
> making a standalone application ever since.
> I have both plans for a hair/fur editing app as well as a general-purpose
> 3D application (at least the foundation of that)  that can be extended and
> built upon by me and others. Blender comes very close to that ideal but it
> looks almost like a dead end compared to what FE already has to offer
> (accessibility of the API, Multithreading, Qt, etc), plus it would take a
> lot of changes to shape it into what I'd like it to look like, and that
> will be hard to gety ba the ecisting developers and communits.
> So far I've been held back by having to earn money in actual production,
> the (very)  little time left gets mostly eaten up by my family.
> I've been thinking of kickstarting it, but there's a whole slew of steps
> involved to make that happen successfully. Is anyone familiar with the
> Blender business model? They do have permanent paid staff, right? Where do
> they get their funding from?
>
> @Andy J.:Thanks for summing it up so nicely and comprehensively. I need to
> disagree on the modeling part though. Even in XSI I miss a lot, especially
> in terms of symmetrical modeling and sculpting. There is huge potential for
> improvement in any existing application out there.
>
> If anyone (individuals and companies alike) is out there who is interested
> in collaborating on such projects or just wants to share advice and or/
> ideas, whether technical or financial - I'm all ears.
> If this isn't the right moment in time I don't know which one is. Will,
> need and technology is there. Right now.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Great post Andy! I'm probably biased, because I'm mainly working as a
> lighter. But after thinking about the future for the last couple of days, I
> came to the very same conclusion. Lighting and scene assembly is the
> biggest hole to fill. Houdini will be a great replacement for FX and with
> stuff like open VDB, alembic, partiio, etc it should become easier to move
> stuff in and out. Modeling can happen anywhere since a while.
> Rigging and animation isn't that easy. But animation isn't that technical
> and animators usually don't take long to switch. Rigging is more difficult.
> But Maya isn't that bad in rigging. And now there is Fabric. And I think
> for rigging it is already 90% of where it should be. People like Eric are
> already building stuff with it. And the advantage here is that rigging is a
> very modular and job specific process. With a few solvers and deformers
> you're already up and running, and everything else, you build on top as you
> need it. And that's the problem with a Fabric scene assembly application.
> You'd basically need to build a complete and highly complex application
> from scratch which covers all your needs. Otherwise you won't be able to
> work with it. And from what I know that's what keeps many people in smaller
> studios from using fabric in this area. It's just financially impossible to
> build such an application from scratch. I was really disappointed when I
> heard that the Fabric guys won't continue Stage for now (although I
> understand their reasons). And all the other efforts I know of (except for
> Steven's Arnold connection) are happening inside studios and most likely
> won't be shared.
> So now that Softimage will be gone, isn't there room or even need for
> collaboration here? Before everybody tries to build something themselves,
> shouldn't people try to bundle forces? And I'm not only talking about
> individuals here. I'm talking about small to medium size companies who
> couldn't afford to build something like this alone.
>
>
>
>
> 2014-03-04 20:39 GMT+01:00 Juhani Karlsson :
>
>> Now I`m interested about this mailing list too - its full of Kings!
>> Is it going to stay? If not where should we go?
>>
>> Fabric definetly has bright future if you just keep on pushin - and Caron
>> that sounds really good : )
>>
>>
>> On 4 March 2014 21:35, Paul  wrote:
>>
>>> I'm going to be going Fabric too for sure.
>>>
>>> On 4 Mar 2014, at 19:17, Jonah Friedman  wrote:
>>>
>>> you can create arnold scenes with the kl lan

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Stefan Kubicek]

@Felix: I totally agree on the bundling forces part.I've been on the Fabric Beta since over a year and am pondering over making a standalone application ever since. I have both plans for a hair/fur editing app as well as a general-purpose 3D application (at least the foundation of that)  that can be extended and built upon by me and others. Blender comes very close to that ideal but it looks almost like a dead end compared to what FE already has to offer (accessibility of the API, Multithreading, Qt, etc), plus it would take a lot of changes to shape it into what I'd like it to look like, and that will be hard to gety ba the ecisting developers and communits.So far I've been held back by having to earn money in actual production, the (very)  little time left gets mostly eaten up by my family.I've been thinking of kickstarting it, but there's a whole slew of steps involved to make that happen successfully. Is anyone familiar with the Blender business model? They do have permanent paid staff, right? Where do they get their funding from?@Andy J.:Thanks for summing it up so nicely and comprehensively. I need to disagree on the modeling part though. Even in XSI I miss a lot, especially in terms of symmetrical modeling and sculpting. There is huge potential for improvement in any existing application out there.If anyone 
(individuals and companies alike) 
is out there who is interested in collaborating on such projects or just wants to share advice and or/ ideas, whether technical or financial - I'm all ears.If this isn't the right moment in time I don't know which one is. Will, need and technology is there. Right now.Great post Andy! I'm probably biased, because I'm mainly working as a lighter. But after thinking about the future for the last couple of days, I came to the very same conclusion. Lighting and scene assembly is the biggest hole to fill. Houdini will be a great replacement for FX and with stuff like open VDB, alembic, partiio, etc it should become easier to move stuff in and out. Modeling can happen anywhere since a while.
Rigging and animation isn't that easy. But animation isn't that technical and animators usually don't take long to switch. Rigging is more difficult. But Maya isn't that bad in rigging. And now there is Fabric. And I think for rigging it is already 90% of where it should be. People like Eric are already building stuff with it. And the advantage here is that rigging is a very modular and job specific process. With a few solvers and deformers you're already up and running, and everything else, you build on top as you need it. And that's the problem with a Fabric scene assembly application. You'd basically need to build a complete and highly complex application from scratch which covers all your needs. Otherwise you won't be able to work with it. And from what I know that's what keeps many people in smaller studios from using fabric in this area. It's just financially impossible to build such an application from scratch. I was really disappointed when I heard that the Fabric guys won't continue Stage for now (although I understand their reasons). And all the other efforts I know of (except for Steven's Arnold connection) are happening inside studios and most likely won't be shared. 
So now that Softimage will be gone, isn't there room or even need for collaboration here? Before everybody tries to build something themselves, shouldn't people try to bundle forces? And I'm not only talking about individuals here. I'm talking about small to medium size companies who couldn't afford to build something like this alone.
2014-03-04 20:39 GMT+01:00 Juhani Karlsson :
Now I`m interested about this mailing list too - its full of Kings! Is it going to stay? If not where should we go? 
Fabric definetly has bright future if you just keep on pushin - and Caron that sounds really good : )
On 4 March 2014 21:35, Paul  wrote:

I'm going to be going Fabric too for sure. On 4 Mar 2014, at 19:17, Jonah Friedman  wrote:
you can create arnold scenes with the kl language! this is a step toward my own scene assembly tool. i am imagining something between softimage and katana. 


That sounds exactly like a place I want to be. <3 
-- 
-- 
Juhani Karlsson3D Artist/TDTalvi Digital OyPursimiehenkatu 29-31 b 2krs.00150 Helsinki+358 443443088
juhani.karls...@talvi.fi
www.vimeo.com/talvi


-- ---   Stefan Kubicek---   keyvis digital imagery  Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3   A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien Phone:+43/699/12614231  www.keyvis.at  ste...@keyvis.at--  This email and its attachments are   confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Felix Geremus]

We're just a small group of individuals (http://www.keller.io/) But we're
maintaining our own pipeline and are definitely interested.


2014-03-04 22:52 GMT+01:00 Andy Jones :

> Many studios having the same problems at the same time is a HUGE
> opportunity if we leverage it properly.
>
> I completely agree about the collaboration that will be necessary from
> users.  However, for studios' part, I know a lot of places are interested
> in Fabric already, even if they haven't actually bought licenses yet.  So
> if part of the incentive was some kind of agreement for the FE guys to help
> nurture a scene assembly tool to life quickly, it might help tip the scale
> for whatever cost/benefit analysis places are doing.  The devs working on
> Fabric are truly some of the best in the world (and from what I understand,
> a big part of the reason AD bought Softimage to begin with).  They are a
> big part of the equation for what will happen in the future, even if they
> don't end up wanting to build a scene assembler as a supported "product" in
> itself (or who knows -- maybe they will?).
>
> It would be great to get a little (or big?) list of studios that are
> interested in this sort of project (or other ones) and possibly have some
> kind of summit with the FE guys about what it would take to fast-track FE
> into certain critical areas of production, assuming a certain number of
> licenses were purchased.  No commitments at this point -- just a list of
> interested parties who might be curious enough to be part of the
> conversation, pending whatever other conversations need to be had with
> superiors.  I.e., it's understood that nobody is speaking for their
> companies at this point.  Just indicating that they think their company
> *might* be interested.
>
> I'll start:
>
> Psyop
> Massmarket
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 1:18 PM, Felix Geremus  > wrote:
>
>> You are probably right. But these times are a little bit different and
>> maybe that's exactly the one chance inside all this mess. We're all sitting
>> in the same boat at the same time. I know a lot of studios who entirely
>> rely on Softimage for lighting. All of these will have to spend time and
>> thus money to move on to another pipeline during the next two years anyway.
>> So why not invest at least parts of this time into the same thing?
>> Individuals are great, and the community should absolutely try. But it's so
>> hard to put something like this together in your spare time. A few studios
>> supporting and profiting from this effort would accelerate the whole
>> process immensely. And about showing potential: wasn't Stage, and all the
>> other fabric applications build for exactly this reason? To show the
>> potential of such a project?
>>
>>
>>
>> 2014-03-04 21:55 GMT+01:00 Steven Caron :
>>
>> it is a bit harder for visual effects vendors/studios, in an already
>>> difficult market, spending money on software development (not their core
>>> business) is a hard sell. seeing a product or product in development on the
>>> other hand drums up interest which leads to real investment and
>>> collaboration. they need to see if their ideas are aligned with others on
>>> the project. don't take my comment as discouragement, it is just how i see
>>> it... for now it will be on individuals to come together on a project which
>>> shows potential. i hope we, the remaining softimage community, can do that
>>> together. again, not discouragement to any studio which wants to partner to
>>> make something happen...
>>>
>>> steven
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Felix Geremus <
>>> felixgere...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>

 So now that Softimage will be gone, isn't there room or even need for
 collaboration here? Before everybody tries to build something themselves,
 shouldn't people try to bundle forces? And I'm not only talking about
 individuals here. I'm talking about small to medium size companies who
 couldn't afford to build something like this alone.

>>>
>>
>

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Andy Jones]

Many studios having the same problems at the same time is a HUGE
opportunity if we leverage it properly.

I completely agree about the collaboration that will be necessary from
users.  However, for studios' part, I know a lot of places are interested
in Fabric already, even if they haven't actually bought licenses yet.  So
if part of the incentive was some kind of agreement for the FE guys to help
nurture a scene assembly tool to life quickly, it might help tip the scale
for whatever cost/benefit analysis places are doing.  The devs working on
Fabric are truly some of the best in the world (and from what I understand,
a big part of the reason AD bought Softimage to begin with).  They are a
big part of the equation for what will happen in the future, even if they
don't end up wanting to build a scene assembler as a supported "product" in
itself (or who knows -- maybe they will?).

It would be great to get a little (or big?) list of studios that are
interested in this sort of project (or other ones) and possibly have some
kind of summit with the FE guys about what it would take to fast-track FE
into certain critical areas of production, assuming a certain number of
licenses were purchased.  No commitments at this point -- just a list of
interested parties who might be curious enough to be part of the
conversation, pending whatever other conversations need to be had with
superiors.  I.e., it's understood that nobody is speaking for their
companies at this point.  Just indicating that they think their company
*might* be interested.

I'll start:

Psyop
Massmarket



On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 1:18 PM, Felix Geremus
wrote:

> You are probably right. But these times are a little bit different and
> maybe that's exactly the one chance inside all this mess. We're all sitting
> in the same boat at the same time. I know a lot of studios who entirely
> rely on Softimage for lighting. All of these will have to spend time and
> thus money to move on to another pipeline during the next two years anyway.
> So why not invest at least parts of this time into the same thing?
> Individuals are great, and the community should absolutely try. But it's so
> hard to put something like this together in your spare time. A few studios
> supporting and profiting from this effort would accelerate the whole
> process immensely. And about showing potential: wasn't Stage, and all the
> other fabric applications build for exactly this reason? To show the
> potential of such a project?
>
>
>
> 2014-03-04 21:55 GMT+01:00 Steven Caron :
>
> it is a bit harder for visual effects vendors/studios, in an already
>> difficult market, spending money on software development (not their core
>> business) is a hard sell. seeing a product or product in development on the
>> other hand drums up interest which leads to real investment and
>> collaboration. they need to see if their ideas are aligned with others on
>> the project. don't take my comment as discouragement, it is just how i see
>> it... for now it will be on individuals to come together on a project which
>> shows potential. i hope we, the remaining softimage community, can do that
>> together. again, not discouragement to any studio which wants to partner to
>> make something happen...
>>
>> steven
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Felix Geremus <
>> felixgere...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> So now that Softimage will be gone, isn't there room or even need for
>>> collaboration here? Before everybody tries to build something themselves,
>>> shouldn't people try to bundle forces? And I'm not only talking about
>>> individuals here. I'm talking about small to medium size companies who
>>> couldn't afford to build something like this alone.
>>>
>>
>

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Steven Caron]

we are one of those studios... who should i put my superiors in contact
with?


On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 1:18 PM, Felix Geremus
wrote:

> You are probably right. But these times are a little bit different and
> maybe that's exactly the one chance inside all this mess. We're all sitting
> in the same boat at the same time. I know a lot of studios who entirely
> rely on Softimage for lighting. All of these will have to spend time and
> thus money to move on to another pipeline during the next two years anyway.
> So why not invest at least parts of this time into the same thing?
> Individuals are great, and the community should absolutely try. But it's so
> hard to put something like this together in your spare time. A few studios
> supporting and profiting from this effort would accelerate the whole
> process immensely. And about showing potential: wasn't Stage, and all the
> other fabric applications build for exactly this reason? To show the
> potential of such a project?
>
>

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Felix Geremus]

You are probably right. But these times are a little bit different and
maybe that's exactly the one chance inside all this mess. We're all sitting
in the same boat at the same time. I know a lot of studios who entirely
rely on Softimage for lighting. All of these will have to spend time and
thus money to move on to another pipeline during the next two years anyway.
So why not invest at least parts of this time into the same thing?
Individuals are great, and the community should absolutely try. But it's so
hard to put something like this together in your spare time. A few studios
supporting and profiting from this effort would accelerate the whole
process immensely. And about showing potential: wasn't Stage, and all the
other fabric applications build for exactly this reason? To show the
potential of such a project?



2014-03-04 21:55 GMT+01:00 Steven Caron :

> it is a bit harder for visual effects vendors/studios, in an already
> difficult market, spending money on software development (not their core
> business) is a hard sell. seeing a product or product in development on the
> other hand drums up interest which leads to real investment and
> collaboration. they need to see if their ideas are aligned with others on
> the project. don't take my comment as discouragement, it is just how i see
> it... for now it will be on individuals to come together on a project which
> shows potential. i hope we, the remaining softimage community, can do that
> together. again, not discouragement to any studio which wants to partner to
> make something happen...
>
> steven
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Felix Geremus <
> felixgere...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> So now that Softimage will be gone, isn't there room or even need for
>> collaboration here? Before everybody tries to build something themselves,
>> shouldn't people try to bundle forces? And I'm not only talking about
>> individuals here. I'm talking about small to medium size companies who
>> couldn't afford to build something like this alone.
>>
>

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Steven Caron]

it is a bit harder for visual effects vendors/studios, in an already
difficult market, spending money on software development (not their core
business) is a hard sell. seeing a product or product in development on the
other hand drums up interest which leads to real investment and
collaboration. they need to see if their ideas are aligned with others on
the project. don't take my comment as discouragement, it is just how i see
it... for now it will be on individuals to come together on a project which
shows potential. i hope we, the remaining softimage community, can do that
together. again, not discouragement to any studio which wants to partner to
make something happen...

steven

On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Felix Geremus
wrote:

>
> So now that Softimage will be gone, isn't there room or even need for
> collaboration here? Before everybody tries to build something themselves,
> shouldn't people try to bundle forces? And I'm not only talking about
> individuals here. I'm talking about small to medium size companies who
> couldn't afford to build something like this alone.
>

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Steven Caron]

i didn't feel left out, i just wanted to mention it directly :)

i hope to talk more about it with you over the course of this year.


On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 12:45 PM, Andy Jones  wrote:

> Yes, that's totally my bad.  I should have already given you a shout out
> about FabricArnold.  You, and guys like you, are the reason I think doing
> scene assembly in Fabric is such a likely reality.  It's a huge
> contribution already.
>
> I need to get my feet wet in Fabric Engine myself, but I'm hoping to be
> able to focus some effort on this stuff as well :)
>

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Paul Doyle]

Thank you for mentioning us and for the helpful comments. I'll make sure we
respond to the things raised in this thread - in particular scene assembly.
I just don't feel like pimping software today - I'll be back on top of
things tomorrow.


On 4 March 2014 15:34, Felix Geremus  wrote:

> Great post Andy! I'm probably biased, because I'm mainly working as a
> lighter. But after thinking about the future for the last couple of days, I
> came to the very same conclusion. Lighting and scene assembly is the
> biggest hole to fill. Houdini will be a great replacement for FX and with
> stuff like open VDB, alembic, partiio, etc it should become easier to move
> stuff in and out. Modeling can happen anywhere since a while.
> Rigging and animation isn't that easy. But animation isn't that technical
> and animators usually don't take long to switch. Rigging is more difficult.
> But Maya isn't that bad in rigging. And now there is Fabric. And I think
> for rigging it is already 90% of where it should be. People like Eric are
> already building stuff with it. And the advantage here is that rigging is a
> very modular and job specific process. With a few solvers and deformers
> you're already up and running, and everything else, you build on top as you
> need it. And that's the problem with a Fabric scene assembly application.
> You'd basically need to build a complete and highly complex application
> from scratch which covers all your needs. Otherwise you won't be able to
> work with it. And from what I know that's what keeps many people in smaller
> studios from using fabric in this area. It's just financially impossible to
> build such an application from scratch. I was really disappointed when I
> heard that the Fabric guys won't continue Stage for now (although I
> understand their reasons). And all the other efforts I know of (except for
> Steven's Arnold connection) are happening inside studios and most likely
> won't be shared.
> So now that Softimage will be gone, isn't there room or even need for
> collaboration here? Before everybody tries to build something themselves,
> shouldn't people try to bundle forces? And I'm not only talking about
> individuals here. I'm talking about small to medium size companies who
> couldn't afford to build something like this alone.
>
>
>
>
> 2014-03-04 20:39 GMT+01:00 Juhani Karlsson :
>
> Now I`m interested about this mailing list too - its full of Kings!
>> Is it going to stay? If not where should we go?
>>
>> Fabric definetly has bright future if you just keep on pushin - and Caron
>> that sounds really good : )
>>
>>
>> On 4 March 2014 21:35, Paul  wrote:
>>
>>> I'm going to be going Fabric too for sure.
>>>
>>> On 4 Mar 2014, at 19:17, Jonah Friedman  wrote:
>>>
>>> you can create arnold scenes with the kl language! this is a step toward
 my own scene assembly tool. i am imagining something between softimage and
 katana.
>>>
>>>
>>> That sounds exactly like a place I want to be. <3
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> --
>> Juhani Karlsson
>> 3D Artist/TD
>>
>> Talvi Digital Oy
>> Pursimiehenkatu 29-31 b 2krs.
>> 00150 Helsinki
>> +358 443443088
>> juhani.karls...@talvi.fi
>> www.vimeo.com/talvi
>>
>
>

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Andy Jones]

Yes, that's totally my bad.  I should have already given you a shout out
about FabricArnold.  You, and guys like you, are the reason I think doing
scene assembly in Fabric is such a likely reality.  It's a huge
contribution already.

I need to get my feet wet in Fabric Engine myself, but I'm hoping to be
able to focus some effort on this stuff as well :)


> hey andy
> this is the first step in creating something like the 'stage' demo from
> fabric engine...
> https://github.com/caron/FabricArnold
> i am excited about this and would love to collaborate with others in
> making this a possibility. i agree and understand all you have outlined
> below.


>

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Felix Geremus]

Great post Andy! I'm probably biased, because I'm mainly working as a
lighter. But after thinking about the future for the last couple of days, I
came to the very same conclusion. Lighting and scene assembly is the
biggest hole to fill. Houdini will be a great replacement for FX and with
stuff like open VDB, alembic, partiio, etc it should become easier to move
stuff in and out. Modeling can happen anywhere since a while.
Rigging and animation isn't that easy. But animation isn't that technical
and animators usually don't take long to switch. Rigging is more difficult.
But Maya isn't that bad in rigging. And now there is Fabric. And I think
for rigging it is already 90% of where it should be. People like Eric are
already building stuff with it. And the advantage here is that rigging is a
very modular and job specific process. With a few solvers and deformers
you're already up and running, and everything else, you build on top as you
need it. And that's the problem with a Fabric scene assembly application.
You'd basically need to build a complete and highly complex application
from scratch which covers all your needs. Otherwise you won't be able to
work with it. And from what I know that's what keeps many people in smaller
studios from using fabric in this area. It's just financially impossible to
build such an application from scratch. I was really disappointed when I
heard that the Fabric guys won't continue Stage for now (although I
understand their reasons). And all the other efforts I know of (except for
Steven's Arnold connection) are happening inside studios and most likely
won't be shared.
So now that Softimage will be gone, isn't there room or even need for
collaboration here? Before everybody tries to build something themselves,
shouldn't people try to bundle forces? And I'm not only talking about
individuals here. I'm talking about small to medium size companies who
couldn't afford to build something like this alone.




2014-03-04 20:39 GMT+01:00 Juhani Karlsson :

> Now I`m interested about this mailing list too - its full of Kings!
> Is it going to stay? If not where should we go?
>
> Fabric definetly has bright future if you just keep on pushin - and Caron
> that sounds really good : )
>
>
> On 4 March 2014 21:35, Paul  wrote:
>
>> I'm going to be going Fabric too for sure.
>>
>> On 4 Mar 2014, at 19:17, Jonah Friedman  wrote:
>>
>> you can create arnold scenes with the kl language! this is a step toward
>>> my own scene assembly tool. i am imagining something between softimage and
>>> katana.
>>
>>
>> That sounds exactly like a place I want to be. <3
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> --
> Juhani Karlsson
> 3D Artist/TD
>
> Talvi Digital Oy
> Pursimiehenkatu 29-31 b 2krs.
> 00150 Helsinki
> +358 443443088
> juhani.karls...@talvi.fi
> www.vimeo.com/talvi
>

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Juhani Karlsson]

Now I`m interested about this mailing list too - its full of Kings!
Is it going to stay? If not where should we go?

Fabric definetly has bright future if you just keep on pushin - and Caron
that sounds really good : )


On 4 March 2014 21:35, Paul  wrote:

> I'm going to be going Fabric too for sure.
>
> On 4 Mar 2014, at 19:17, Jonah Friedman  wrote:
>
> you can create arnold scenes with the kl language! this is a step toward
>> my own scene assembly tool. i am imagining something between softimage and
>> katana.
>
>
> That sounds exactly like a place I want to be. <3
>
>
>


-- 
-- 
Juhani Karlsson
3D Artist/TD

Talvi Digital Oy
Pursimiehenkatu 29-31 b 2krs.
00150 Helsinki
+358 443443088
juhani.karls...@talvi.fi
www.vimeo.com/talvi

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Paul]

I'm going to be going Fabric too for sure. 

On 4 Mar 2014, at 19:17, Jonah Friedman  wrote:

>> you can create arnold scenes with the kl language! this is a step toward my 
>> own scene assembly tool. i am imagining something between softimage and 
>> katana. 
> 
> That sounds exactly like a place I want to be. <3
>  

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Jonah Friedman]

>
> you can create arnold scenes with the kl language! this is a step toward
> my own scene assembly tool. i am imagining something between softimage and
> katana.


That sounds exactly like a place I want to be. <3

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Steven Caron]

hey andy

this is the first step in creating something like the 'stage' demo from
fabric engine...

https://github.com/caron/FabricArnold

i am excited about this and would love to collaborate with others in making
this a possibility. i agree and understand all you have outlined below.


On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 10:49 AM, Andy Jones  wrote:

>  Since the rumor/news broke (and to a certain extent, before that as
> well), I've been putting some serious thought into plans for the future,
> and I want to share a few thoughts, as I think this storm will be best
> weathered together.  Every studio is different, of course, so what works
> for me right now may not work for everyone. To be clear, these are my own
> speculations at this time, and NOT any kind of formal plan for my
> employer.  The community discussion will have a big impact on our own
> internal discussions, though, so I think it is important to be part of the
> dialog.
>
> As we all plow forward, the hope is that we will leave a trail that makes
> it easier for anyone who eventually finds themselves on the same pathway.
>
>
> -- SCENE ASSEMBLY
>
> For us, the biggest hole left by Softimage's demise will be lighting and
> scene assembly.  This, and FX, are the main areas where we currently
> utilize Softimage, particularly in our NY office, but in LA as well.
>
> I'm going to run through some of the options I've looked at, leading up to
> what I think will be a good solution at the bottom.  Process of elimination
> style.
>
>
> - KATANA
>
> I've spent some (non-hands-on) time looking at Katana, and while it is a
> solid, powerful, scaleable solution to scene assembly, I feel it is
> actually too open-ended at the surface to address our needs.  I'm also not
> satisfied with how it presents shader networks to the end user.  I
> appreciate the flexibility of a nodal system at the core of an application,
> but what I actually want is a simplified UI that exposes all of that
> procedural power in a direct and consistent way.  I could see where Katana
> would work well for larger scale projects, but I have major concerns about
> how it would fare in small 1-10 man operations for commercials.
>
> A key requirement for me in a scene aggregator is also the ability to have
> an ICE-like procedural layer passing data directly to the renderer without
> caching to disk.  Caching is great for things with a certain data to
> computational complexity ratio, but in so many cases, you're better off
> either with a procedural callback, or data in memory.  Simple grass
> systems, feathers, hair, fur, rocks, leaves, fuzz, etc.  Largely with the
> help of ICE, we have graduated to an era where surfaces that need it can
> have more than just high res textures and displacement.  The issues above
> are likely fixable in Katana, but getting a procedural FX framework is far
> less likely to happen in the timeframe we'd need.
>
> For us, Katana being Linux only, also happens to be an issue (though one
> we could work around with enough motivation).
>



>
> - XSI
>
> Still the best tool for scene assembly at the moment, in my opinion.  It's
> important to remember that the software isn't going to stop functioning
> right away.  This means that we can make a decision based on 2-3 years of
> lead-up time, vs making the decision based only on what is available today.
>



> - FABRIC ENGINE
>
> This takes me to Fabric Engine, which I feel is the right answer going
> forward.
>
> The one negative thing about Fabric Engine is just that it's still really
> early days.  None of the software I would like to use built on Fabric
> Engine actually exists yet, so there's a development cost that will be
> required in order to make it happen.  However, this can also be a strength,
> as there's an opportunity to shape the final product in ways that are
> impossible with some of the more long-established players.  Even Softimage
> had many things that I would have done differently in hindsight.
> Streamlined offloading, lighter and more portable shaders/shader
> assignments, per-renderer materials, multiple partition sets, rule-based
> partition membership, to name a few.
>
> The timing for making a new scene assembly tool is also pretty good right
> now, as USD is on the near horizon, and is aiming to provide a standardized
> data format for this specific task.
>
> I'm also very encouraged by what we saw with the Stage demo earlier.
> While it is not currently available for testing, the ease with which the
> Fabric guys put that together speaks to the quality of the framework
> they're building, and really shows that it should be possible to build a
> standardized scene assembly tool fairly easily.
>
> Last, but certainly not least, any scene assembly tool built on top of
> Fabric will naturally have native access to all the proceduralism of Fabric
> Engine.  Although with splice, you don't specifically "need" it to be
> native, it does mean that there's one less SDK getting in the way of
> get

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Steven Caron]

yes jonah!

i am going to skip to number 4 personally, i think it is the best place for
me to start using fabric engine. even though softimage is awesome at scene
assembly and lighting with their pass management, truth is some workflows
are still out of our reach. i am talking specifically with regards to
arnold renderer.

i am already participating and open sourcing my work in this area...

https://github.com/caron/FabricArnold

you can create arnold scenes with the kl language! this is a step toward my
own scene assembly tool. i am imagining something between softimage and
katana.

steven


On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 10:43 AM, Jonah Friedman  wrote:

> I think a united Softimage community could be kingmaker. I nominate Fabric
> Engine as King.
>
> Here's some facts as I see them: Some of us will continue to use Softimage
> for the next few years, others of us will unhappily be forced to use Maya.
> The realities of production, studios, and freelancers will dictate this.
>
> Softimage gave us ICE. ICE has made us smart, because ICE is a ladder. ICE
> is a magical place where the slightest bit of linear algebra is immediately
> useful. If you can add two vectors together you can make useful things in
> ICE. And if you learn a little more, it's a little more useful. And in so
> doing, ICE has elevated many us from people who use 3D applications to
> people who create our own tools in 3D applications. Our community is not
> totally unique in this matter, but I think our community is remarkable in
> its knowledge of the core math of CG. That combined with our formidable
> production experience, self-sufficiency, and early-adopter fearlessness is
> unique. It makes us mighty.
>
> I think Fabric engine is the way out. That's because Fabric Engine is also
> a ladder. For the moment, nothing changes. We may continue to use
> Softimage, or we may be forced to use Maya, depending on each of our
> circumstance, but the important thing is getting behind Fabric and trying
> to get as many of our tools as possible into it. There's no giant painful
> leap that's needed, we can start small without breaking existing workflows.
> As a bonus, if we open up our tools as much as possible, this will go
> exponentially faster. Softimage will remain frozen in time and Maya will
> continue to crumble under the weight of its terrible design, and all the
> while Fabric Engine will be eating.
>
> Here's how I see this playing out.
>
>1. First Fabric Engine replaces what we used to do in ICE. There's a
>lot of work to do to make this a reality, but this one seems like a
>no-brainer to me.
>2. The next lowest hanging fruit is rigging. Fabric Engine creations
>eat the deformers used in rigging, and then become the rigs themselves.
>3. Once the native rigging in these programs is eaten, Fabric Engine
>also eats animation as a natural progression. The animators must go where
>the rigs are, and will be happiest where the rigs play back the fastest.
>4. Lighting and rendering is a tough one, but it won't take very much
>to be better than Maya here. Being competent at scene assembly and having a
>pass system that isn't obviously terrible is enough.
>5. We unceremoniously kick the desiccated husk of Maya into a storm
>drain.
>
> Honestly if we do nothing, I think this might happen anyway. But I think
> together can make it go much faster.
>
>1. Embrace open source and put as many of our tools as we can out
>there.
>2. Keep making stuff- this is natural for us, as we have, after all,
>all become toolmakers.
>
> No giant painful leap is needed. We liberate ourselves, and empower
> developers who have passion and care about the right things.
>
> This is the only road I see that leads somewhere that I actually want to
> be.
>
> -Jonah
>

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Siew Yi Liang]

I would like to nominate Blender in that list for animation/rigging. 
While I personally dislike its UI and conventions that go with it, I 
feel it shouldn't be discounted as a serious contender...it has every 
feature that an animator requires to make great poses. But if only they 
would make (yet another) UI overhaul I would be very happy to work with 
it...


Yours sincerely,
Siew Yi Liang

On 3/4/2014 10:49 AM, Andy Jones wrote:


Since the rumor/news broke (and to a certain extent, before that as 
well), I've been putting some serious thought into plans for the 
future, and I want to share a few thoughts, as I think this storm will 
be best weathered together.  Every studio is different, of course, so 
what works for me right now may not work for everyone. To be clear, 
these are my own speculations at this time, and NOT any kind of formal 
plan for my employer.  The community discussion will have a big impact 
on our own internal discussions, though, so I think it is important to 
be part of the dialog.


As we all plow forward, the hope is that we will leave a trail that 
makes it easier for anyone who eventually finds themselves on the same 
pathway.



--- SCENE ASSEMBLY

For us, the biggest hole left by Softimage's demise will be lighting 
and scene assembly.  This, and FX, are the main areas where we 
currently utilize Softimage, particularly in our NY office, but in LA 
as well.


I'm going to run through some of the options I've looked at, leading 
up to what I think will be a good solution at the bottom.  Process of 
elimination style.



- KATANA

I've spent some (non-hands-on) time looking at Katana, and while it is 
a solid, powerful, scaleable solution to scene assembly, I feel it is 
actually too open-ended at the surface to address our needs.  I'm also 
not satisfied with how it presents shader networks to the end user.  I 
appreciate the flexibility of a nodal system at the core of an 
application, but what I actually want is a simplified UI that exposes 
all of that procedural power in a direct and consistent way.  I could 
see where Katana would work well for larger scale projects, but I have 
major concerns about how it would fare in small 1-10 man operations 
for commercials.


A key requirement for me in a scene aggregator is also the ability to 
have an ICE-like procedural layer passing data directly to the 
renderer without caching to disk. Caching is great for things with a 
certain data to computational complexity ratio, but in so many cases, 
you're better off either with a procedural callback, or data in 
memory.  Simple grass systems, feathers, hair, fur, rocks, leaves, 
fuzz, etc.  Largely with the help of ICE, we have graduated to an era 
where surfaces that need it can have more than just high res textures 
and displacement.  The issues above are likely fixable in Katana, but 
getting a procedural FX framework is far less likely to happen in the 
timeframe we'd need.


For us, Katana being Linux only, also happens to be an issue (though 
one we could work around with enough motivation).



- MAYA

With my last two jobs having been mostly in Maya studios, I don't 
consider Maya an option for scene assembly. The big beefs I have here 
are essentially the same as what I mentioned with Katana, plus the 
frequency of instability, and the lack of compartmentalization in the 
data model.  Not being able to group sets and namespaces being nothing 
more than a naming convention are also big issues.  Obviously, people, 
including ourselves do some great work lighting in Maya, but I work 
with some of the smartest and most talented Maya people I know, and it 
is a simple fact that their days are longer and harder than they 
should be because of Maya, and that situation hasn't changed at all in 
the last 5 years, aside from the work that's been done by Chaos Group 
and Solid Angle and the MtoA community.


One would think that Maya would actually be a pretty good choice, 
which I suppose is how we've ended up in this predicament we're in 
now, and people thinking they've chosen a winning horse with Maya.  
But the fact is, there has been little done to improve the situation 
for far too long, and some of the problems seem to be far too deeply 
rooted in the software to get fixed.  It's not entirely negligence on 
AD's part, as there are a lot of big studios relying on certain things 
in Maya NOT changing.



- HOUDINI

I'm not actually finished assessing Houdini's potential for scene 
assembly and lighting, but I'm already aware of a couple of big issues 
there.  First, Houdini's pricing model is not structured to be 
conducive to in-process rendering.  This means that any run-time 
procedurals need to be specially built for each renderer.  For 
example, if you wanted to avoid writing a grass system to disk, you 
would need to use something special purpose to generate the grass at 
render time (in the best case scenario leveraging an existing hair 
procedural) or simply write every 

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Jason S]

++1 !

On 03/04/14 13:49, Eric Thivierge wrote:

+1 for Fabric becoming King.

On Tuesday, March 04, 2014 1:43:56 PM, Jonah Friedman wrote:

I think a united Softimage community could be kingmaker. I nominate
Fabric Engine as King.

Here's some facts as I see them: Some of us will continue to use
Softimage for the next few years, others of us will unhappily be
forced to use Maya. The realities of production, studios, and
freelancers will dictate this.

Softimage gave us ICE. ICE has made us smart, because ICE is a ladder.
ICE is a magical place where the slightest bit of linear algebra is
immediately useful. If you can add two vectors together you can make
useful things in ICE. And if you learn a little more, it's a little
more useful. And in so doing, ICE has elevated many us from people who
use 3D applications to people who create our own tools in 3D
applications. Our community is not totally unique in this matter, but
I think our community is remarkable in its knowledge of the core math
of CG. That combined with our formidable production experience,
self-sufficiency, and early-adopter fearlessness is unique. It makes
us mighty.

I think Fabric engine is the way out. That's because Fabric Engine is
also a ladder. For the moment, nothing changes. We may continue to use
Softimage, or we may be forced to use Maya, depending on each of our
circumstance, but the important thing is getting behind Fabric and
trying to get as many of our tools as possible into it. There's no
giant painful leap that's needed, we can start small without breaking
existing workflows. As a bonus, if we open up our tools as much as
possible, this will go exponentially faster. Softimage will remain
frozen in time and Maya will continue to crumble under the weight of
its terrible design, and all the while Fabric Engine will be eating.

Here's how I see this playing out.

 1. First Fabric Engine replaces what we used to do in ICE. There's a
lot of work to do to make this a reality, but this one seems like
a no-brainer to me.
 2. The next lowest hanging fruit is rigging. Fabric Engine creations
eat the deformers used in rigging, and then become the rigs
themselves.
 3. Once the native rigging in these programs is eaten, Fabric Engine
also eats animation as a natural progression. The animators must
go where the rigs are, and will be happiest where the rigs play
back the fastest.
 4. Lighting and rendering is a tough one, but it won't take very much
to be better than Maya here. Being competent at scene assembly and
having a pass system that isn't obviously terrible is enough.
 5. We unceremoniously kick the desiccated husk of Maya into a storm
drain.

Honestly if we do nothing, I think this might happen anyway. But I
think together can make it go much faster.

 1. Embrace open source and put as many of our tools as we can out 
there.

 2. Keep making stuff- this is natural for us, as we have, after all,
all become toolmakers.

No giant painful leap is needed. We liberate ourselves, and empower
developers who have passion and care about the right things.

This is the only road I see that leads somewhere that I actually want
to be.

-Jonah

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Eric Thivierge]

+1 for Fabric becoming King.

On Tuesday, March 04, 2014 1:43:56 PM, Jonah Friedman wrote:

I think a united Softimage community could be kingmaker. I nominate
Fabric Engine as King.

Here's some facts as I see them: Some of us will continue to use
Softimage for the next few years, others of us will unhappily be
forced to use Maya. The realities of production, studios, and
freelancers will dictate this.

Softimage gave us ICE. ICE has made us smart, because ICE is a ladder.
ICE is a magical place where the slightest bit of linear algebra is
immediately useful. If you can add two vectors together you can make
useful things in ICE. And if you learn a little more, it's a little
more useful. And in so doing, ICE has elevated many us from people who
use 3D applications to people who create our own tools in 3D
applications. Our community is not totally unique in this matter, but
I think our community is remarkable in its knowledge of the core math
of CG. That combined with our formidable production experience,
self-sufficiency, and early-adopter fearlessness is unique. It makes
us mighty.

I think Fabric engine is the way out. That's because Fabric Engine is
also a ladder. For the moment, nothing changes. We may continue to use
Softimage, or we may be forced to use Maya, depending on each of our
circumstance, but the important thing is getting behind Fabric and
trying to get as many of our tools as possible into it. There's no
giant painful leap that's needed, we can start small without breaking
existing workflows. As a bonus, if we open up our tools as much as
possible, this will go exponentially faster. Softimage will remain
frozen in time and Maya will continue to crumble under the weight of
its terrible design, and all the while Fabric Engine will be eating.

Here's how I see this playing out.

 1. First Fabric Engine replaces what we used to do in ICE. There's a
lot of work to do to make this a reality, but this one seems like
a no-brainer to me.
 2. The next lowest hanging fruit is rigging. Fabric Engine creations
eat the deformers used in rigging, and then become the rigs
themselves.
 3. Once the native rigging in these programs is eaten, Fabric Engine
also eats animation as a natural progression. The animators must
go where the rigs are, and will be happiest where the rigs play
back the fastest.
 4. Lighting and rendering is a tough one, but it won't take very much
to be better than Maya here. Being competent at scene assembly and
having a pass system that isn't obviously terrible is enough.
 5. We unceremoniously kick the desiccated husk of Maya into a storm
drain.

Honestly if we do nothing, I think this might happen anyway. But I
think together can make it go much faster.

 1. Embrace open source and put as many of our tools as we can out there.
 2. Keep making stuff- this is natural for us, as we have, after all,
all become toolmakers.

No giant painful leap is needed. We liberate ourselves, and empower
developers who have passion and care about the right things.

This is the only road I see that leads somewhere that I actually want
to be.

-Jonah

Re: A way forward - We are kingmakers.

[Andy Jones]

Since the rumor/news broke (and to a certain extent, before that as well),
I've been putting some serious thought into plans for the future, and I
want to share a few thoughts, as I think this storm will be best weathered
together.  Every studio is different, of course, so what works for me right
now may not work for everyone. To be clear, these are my own speculations
at this time, and NOT any kind of formal plan for my employer.  The
community discussion will have a big impact on our own internal
discussions, though, so I think it is important to be part of the dialog.

As we all plow forward, the hope is that we will leave a trail that makes
it easier for anyone who eventually finds themselves on the same pathway.


-- SCENE ASSEMBLY

For us, the biggest hole left by Softimage's demise will be lighting and
scene assembly.  This, and FX, are the main areas where we currently
utilize Softimage, particularly in our NY office, but in LA as well.

I'm going to run through some of the options I've looked at, leading up to
what I think will be a good solution at the bottom.  Process of elimination
style.


- KATANA

I've spent some (non-hands-on) time looking at Katana, and while it is a
solid, powerful, scaleable solution to scene assembly, I feel it is
actually too open-ended at the surface to address our needs.  I'm also not
satisfied with how it presents shader networks to the end user.  I
appreciate the flexibility of a nodal system at the core of an application,
but what I actually want is a simplified UI that exposes all of that
procedural power in a direct and consistent way.  I could see where Katana
would work well for larger scale projects, but I have major concerns about
how it would fare in small 1-10 man operations for commercials.

A key requirement for me in a scene aggregator is also the ability to have
an ICE-like procedural layer passing data directly to the renderer without
caching to disk.  Caching is great for things with a certain data to
computational complexity ratio, but in so many cases, you're better off
either with a procedural callback, or data in memory.  Simple grass
systems, feathers, hair, fur, rocks, leaves, fuzz, etc.  Largely with the
help of ICE, we have graduated to an era where surfaces that need it can
have more than just high res textures and displacement.  The issues above
are likely fixable in Katana, but getting a procedural FX framework is far
less likely to happen in the timeframe we'd need.

For us, Katana being Linux only, also happens to be an issue (though one we
could work around with enough motivation).


- MAYA

With my last two jobs having been mostly in Maya studios, I don't consider
Maya an option for scene assembly.  The big beefs I have here are
essentially the same as what I mentioned with Katana, plus the frequency of
instability, and the lack of compartmentalization in the data model.  Not
being able to group sets and namespaces being nothing more than a naming
convention are also big issues.  Obviously, people, including ourselves do
some great work lighting in Maya, but I work with some of the smartest and
most talented Maya people I know, and it is a simple fact that their days
are longer and harder than they should be because of Maya, and that
situation hasn't changed at all in the last 5 years, aside from the work
that's been done by Chaos Group and Solid Angle and the MtoA community.

One would think that Maya would actually be a pretty good choice, which I
suppose is how we've ended up in this predicament we're in now, and people
thinking they've chosen a winning horse with Maya.  But the fact is, there
has been little done to improve the situation for far too long, and some of
the problems seem to be far too deeply rooted in the software to get
fixed.  It's not entirely negligence on AD's part, as there are a lot of
big studios relying on certain things in Maya NOT changing.


- HOUDINI

I'm not actually finished assessing Houdini's potential for scene assembly
and lighting, but I'm already aware of a couple of big issues there.
First, Houdini's pricing model is not structured to be conducive to
in-process rendering.  This means that any run-time procedurals need to be
specially built for each renderer.  For example, if you wanted to avoid
writing a grass system to disk, you would need to use something special
purpose to generate the grass at render time (in the best case scenario
leveraging an existing hair procedural) or simply write every blade of
grass out to an ifd/ass.  With the work SideFX is doing on Houdini engine,
maybe there's some hope to get a swiss army knife Houdini procedural into
the renderers, but it doesn't seem like that's the usage case they have in
mind for Houdini engine.

Price is the other big issue with Houdini for scene assembly.  I have every
intention of making use of Houdini as a core FX package, and the price
(while still high) is more tenable in that department. As a studio, we
already own a smattering of lice