nowhere. just in process of starting studio here after fighting with numerous places that had no idea what SI is and finally will have this one based all around SI, for years to come.
On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 10:32 PM, Nika Ragua <nikaragu...@gmail.com> wrote: > aha, the thread smoothly turned into FE discussion ))) great > Clara.io will also have nodal tools, great, great !!! > Houdini VOP also awesome > with your permission i`ll raise the question once again - where will you > move ? > > > 2014-03-01 0:23 GMT+04:00 Mathieu Leclaire <mlecl...@hybride.com>: > > When we first played with FE, it was very overwhelming and it was a lot >> to take in. They have done tremendous work to make it much easier to >> pick-up and run with it with minimum efforts. >> >> Splice made life so much easier and Eric's been creating some pretty >> impressive rig set-up very quickly. FE is still young and we have often >> faced bugs, but there support is very good and fast so they've sent us >> fixes very quickly which allows us to make the tools viable in production. >> >> The first project we tried to use FE on, we ended up pulling the plug in >> the end, because we couldn't turn around and completely redesign stuff as >> quickly as we needed to. We fell back unto a ICE based solution as it was >> much easier to adapt it in the limited amount of time we had. But I had >> seen the power of Fabric and I knew that with a bit more learning on our >> side and a bit more work on their side, it would become our tool of choice >> down the road. It has very much become our spine, even though we still have >> a lot of work to do. >> >> We've been working on some tools for a long time so some of them where >> built on the old way of doing it and has become extremely complex with >> time. But again, they've improved a lot of things which makes it so much >> easier to debug, easier to implement new features and transitioning our >> tools from one version of FE to the next has become so much easier then it >> was on some of the first builds. It depends on what you want to do really. >> Some stuff can be very quick and easy, and some stuff is still a bit long >> and complex to implement, but it was to be expected knowing this is still >> very new technology and very much in fluctuation. >> >> I'm a huge ICE power user so I'm very much awaiting their 2.0 node-based >> solution. From what I've been hearing, those who are somewhat uncomfortable >> coding will be well served when that comes out. We have a ton ICE based >> tools that we will be re-designing in FE once this feature is released. For >> that reason, Softimage's demise doesn't really scare me anymore. It's going >> to be a lot of work to redo all those tools we've built over the years, but >> they will all be so much better with FE behind them, and they will be >> easily portable to any DCC we chose to use. >> >> Kind of like ICE was at first, this is a framework so there's not much >> out of the box solutions really available. We have to create our own tools, >> but once we do, they are impressively fast and extremely powerful. If you >> are looking for off the shelf solutions, then going into something like >> Houdini is probably the wisest thing to do for now. There wasn't too many >> solutions in ICE at the beginning either, and I think that with time, the >> community will grow, people will start creating and sharing or selling >> tools and it will become even more loved then ICE ever was. >> >> Working with FE made us realize how old the Softimage infrastructure was >> and how much it was holding us back. It was limiting the performance of our >> work. I was really impressed by the performance of ICE, but man, we didn't >> realize how much more we could get out of our machines until we started >> using FE. With FE, there's no intermediate layer that slows our tools down >> anymore and we're constantly surprised how much we can pull out of our >> workstations. It doesn't have the same comfort of all the little tools and >> user friendly workflows that have been accumulated over the years, but >> Softimage and other DCCs will always be accessible and FE was designed in a >> way that makes it easy to make them work together anyway. >> >> Is FE the solution to all your problems? Of course not, but it's a damn >> powerful tool to have when you need to build high-performance custom tools. >> >> -Mathieu >> >> >> On 28/02/2014 11:40 AM, Eric Thivierge wrote: >> >> Ahem, >> >> In terms of the stuff I've been doing, Fabric is in a really usable state >> within Splice right now. Mainly building rigs for me. The performance is >> pretty nuts and I've just built a rig that replaces our old Softimage only >> setup and I can't give you solid numbers but the frame rate went from ~4fps >> to ~20-30fps. Plus it gives us more control and features. >> >> With the help of Helge to add an additional feature to one of the built >> in types, we were able to create the required operator and the prototyping >> / implementation was within a week or so. Granted I've been getting my feet >> wet with Fabric Engine and KL off and on for 6 months. I've had other >> things to jump on but if you're a solid TD with a good amount of >> programming background it'll only take you a few weeks to a month to get to >> a point where you can pump stuff out. Looking forward to getting off a few >> other tasks to get back onto the Splice work. >> >> One cool thing for me is that you can draw OpenGL shapes and interfaces >> that allow your animator's to get some better feedback on what's happening >> in the rig without having to know any C++. It's just there in Splice. They >> are adding some cool stuff in the coming releases (before 2.0) that's going >> to be really exciting in many respects regarding Splice. >> >> If you have any more Q's just post back. >> >> Eric T. >> >> On 2/28/2014 11:21 AM, Paul Doyle wrote: >> >> >> I would rather guys like Eric and Guillaume (and Mathieu if he has the >> time!) commented here - you're going to get a clearer production >> perspective imo. >> >> >> >
