Matt,
since I see these issues you refer to as a potentially dangerous
roadblock for the future of Softimage, too, I'd say let's continue
"hammer" the devs with this...
Mr. Chia, are you listening? This is fundamental.
The cluster issues CAN be fixed, it has been done for ICE, and can be
done for the SDK, too.
The operator stack issues... I don't know... I guess anything is
possible when the importance of it has been recognized.
Interactive stack update when adding operators down the stack WITHOUT
deactivating above ops should definitely be possible.
Am 27.03.2013 00:56, schrieb Matt Lind:
The issue with Softimage is the pieces are there, but don't play
together nice enough. The tools were adequate in the day years ago.
Production has evolved quite a bit since then but the Softimage
modeling core has not. Many of the tools I need to create for our
artists cannot be done in the Softimage API due to lack of a developed
core for things like being able to preserve textures and materials
(clusters) when updating topology, or being able to control where
operators appear in the construction history.
Example 1: Mirror plane.
This is a tool from 3DSMax where the user is given an implicit plane
and can place it to slice a mesh and have it symmetrized across the
plane. Softimage can do this much with the slice operator and
symmetrize operator. BUT the 3DSMax version has the ability to
continually read user input to update the mesh further (eg. Push/pull
point positions on the original mesh and have the symmetrized half
update in real time). Basically it's symmetrical modeling across a
user defined plane of symmetry. The user can add as many planes as
desired to build up organic geometry very, very quickly. Softimage's
modeling architecture is limited and cannot read further user input
because it occurs higher on the construction history than the symmetry
and slice operators. There is also no way to force those operators
higher on the stack as they're bound to the modeling marker.
Softimage cannot support multiple planes either or else instability
results.
Example 2: Preserve UVs
I'm always pounded for this one. It's a tool which allows users to
manipulate vertices in the 3D viewports while preserving the Texture
UVs as they're moved. Eg. When a vertex is translated in one
direction, the UVs associated with that vertex are pushed in the
opposite direction to allow the vertex to 'swim' through the
projection. Softimage has a 'swim' feature, but only for implicit
projections which is useless in a games development pipeline as 99% of
all assets use explicit UV projections. Again, like with the mirror
plane, Softimage is limited by how it's construction history is
organized to read further input from the user once the operator is
applied.
Example 3: Locking topology
In a games development environment, assets are usually created
piecemeal. A character isn't a solid seamless mesh. The customizable
features presented to the customer are often built as separate
objects, but these objects must assemble together to appear like a
seamless mesh. This means any work to the vertex placement or sample
data such as user normal, vertex colors, and texture UVs must be
locked down along the seams to prevent artists from accidentally
making modifications to these portions of the mesh. Softimage
provides no ability to do this. The best option on the table is an
ICE operator placed at the very top of the construction history to
lock the user specified vertices. However, this falls short in that if
the user clicks the 'freeze' button, the operator will be frozen and
removed from construction history. Again, limitation of the core
architecture.
Example 4: Paint.
The paint tools in Softimage are lacking. They were designed for
painting weight maps to alter envelope weights and deformers -- that's
it. The paint brush for vertex colors is just an extension of that
and not very robust. There is no color palette available to load/save
colors to use in other scenes, or even the current scene beyond the
palette borrowed from windows. There is no ability to compare colors
side-by-side on adjacent polygons without having to dig into user
preferences to turn off selection highlights, then turn it on again
when you're done with your comparison. Very clunky. There are no
tools available to modify topology via paint. The best option
available is pushing points via the push operator which is, back to
the beginning, a weight map tool. We need more than deformations. We
need a paint tool that can destructively edit the mesh by adding
vertices, edges, polygons, and samples. We need the adjustments for
the brush to be informative and customizable to accommodate modeler's
needs. Falloff options, brush tip shapes, intensity controls other
than simple hardness applied uniformly, angular attenuation, operator
assignments, and so on. A 'push' tool has been around forever, where
is the accompanying 'pinch' tool? Max and Maya are far in the lead in
this area. Softimage's paint tool qualifies technically as a paint
brush, but it's not a painter's tool. It's designed more for somebody
who does other things and needs an interface to quickly do a few short
tasks rather than tagging points manually with rectangular selections
all the time. Again, production has since evolved quite a bit. It's
about time the tools do too.
Matt
*From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of
*Sebastien Sterling
*Sent:* Tuesday, March 26, 2013 3:53 PM
*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
*Subject:* Re: Softimage 2014
>>>EricT, Yes i know, they flat out say so in the intro "building on
NEX" i don't approve of just buying up third party plugins and
highlighting them as core features, more so with free where like
"Grease Pencil" i wonder if Mr mootz ever gets love letters from AD
hounding him for his Em series
>>>Andreas andRaffaele, it's not about the grass being greener, i
recently had to fight really hard for the right to use softimage in
the company i'm currently working for, no one should have to do that.
also i think you are forgetting maya's god awful hit detection when
selecting, as well as the unintuitive UI hogging abomination which is
the "tool settings panel".
When it comes to modelling the thing i like most about SI is how clean
and stream line it is, how few things come between user and creative
process.
So now i don't want to leave softimage ( i only just got here) i want
innovation and new things to come to it.
>>>Matt L, i'm not a dev, but its all there the deformers the brush
the maps, none of these things need to be built, surely they can be
hooked together somehow, i believe someone tried back in the day on
rRay, only it seemed to be exclusive for 32bit...
On 26 March 2013 22:52, Jason S <jasonsta...@gmail.com
<mailto:jasonsta...@gmail.com>> wrote:
That's what I was gonna say.. remains to be seen if that would remain
true in the real world..
On 26/03/2013 5:47 PM, Sebastien Sterling wrote:
http://www.autodesk.com/products/autodesk-maya/features
This update (Accelerated modelling tool set) pretty much seems to
obliterate any advantage Softimage has over maya modeling wise
