Capabilities that might improve Softimage in the market

[luceric]

There is no superior cloth solution all are mediocre.

ILM, dreamworks and everyone else using nCloth thinks so

The stuff like retopo is more the domain of plug-ins, and there are few real technical reason why it should be developed only for Softimage.

That is a bizarre affirmation since this supposed to say where Softimage should put its resources.
A clean mesh is easily exportable.
This reminds me of a tool that was sometimes adopted for one reason different from its main propose: Rhino modeler just because of its great and varied exporter.

After it's open beta, rhino was originally 600$ and the first truly affordable, new generation nurbs modeller. there was lots of reasons to want to use it when the alternative would be something like Alias.

A clean mesh is easily exportable but that does not sell the rest of the product. To sell softimage, you need to sell the platform, not a one-shot effect you could do anywhere. One great feature of Softimage was its polygon reduction and some client (ex: ILM) kept one copy of Softimage just to use it, but they never used the rest of the software. Because that's not how the world works. Nowdays the softimage polygon reduction is in Maya 2014, there is really no techinical reason to lock it to Softimage. A few years ago, Softimage had tried to sell 3dsmax GATOR plug-in. btw, it had no effect on adoption

[Bellsey]

there were customers who bought Softimage (nee XSI) just for GATOR. I even recall one time when showing XSI to a Maya studio and a guy tired to call me out on Poly Reduction and GATOR, and that the Maya equivalent features (at that time) were better. In the subsequent 'demo-off', XSI kicked his arse.

On the subject of cloth, nCloth is really very good. I've seen some people adopt Marvelous Designer, nCloth is also still used and some use both.

[Mr.Core]

sorry for offtop, but is the ncloth technology similar to lagoa ( and vise-versa ) ? I read this article at autodesk http://www.autodeskresearch.com/pdf/nucleus.pdf
and it seems to be almost identical

[gustavoeb]

Thanks for this Mr. Core. It is a good read. It really does seem to share some ideas with Lagoa.

[Mathaeus]

a bit of nitpicking, but I really can't recall any 3rd party cloth simulation plugin for Max, that worth special attention. What, free SimCloth 3, free NVidia APEX, don't see anything more.

[luceric]

a bit of nitpicking, but I really can't recall any 3rd party cloth simulation plugin for Max, that worth special attention. What, free SimCloth 3, free NVidia APEX, don't see anything more.

I know http://www.qualoth.com/home/product/ezcloth2014.asp (goofy name, but Qualoth itself is well regarded), and Syflex

[Bullit]

ILM, dreamworks and everyone else using nCloth thinks so

Doesn't make it good. Try to make a cloth moving even if slighty and then try to make 10 cuts in it. ncloth is another tool where you have to select the vertex to make the cut. Unless you select several which means you might not have a clean cut at all.

I think AD already did the best, by supplying SI into suites. Now people, be free to kill me because of my last sentence .

I agree with you, so they have to kill two now.

I've seen some people adopt Marvelous Designer, nCloth is also still used and some use both.

Yes, but they have different proposes. Marvelous Designer is a cloth modeler.

Btw, some cloth modeling in Softimage with ICE in our own forum:
http://www.si-community.com/community/v ... 6&start=10

[Mathaeus]

a bit of nitpicking, but I really can't recall any 3rd party cloth simulation plugin for Max, that worth special attention. What, free SimCloth 3, free NVidia APEX, don't see anything more.

I know http://www.qualoth.com/home/product/ezcloth2014.asp (goofy name, but Qualoth itself is well regarded), and Syflex

hopefully both prices are more than enough high to make them irrelevant for small shops.

Just to add one very personal view to "improve in the market", in "for everyone" category (let's say, Max, Cinema, Lightwave). I think main "capability" is to do not change that much over time, giving as much continuous experience. Boring crap, but predictable boring crap, that's good. In other words, when Max started with ribbons and such stuff, suddenly I lost the last love for this app. Once adaptation is wanted, why not to spend time on something else, let's say Cinema4d.

[Bullit]

One thing that i notice is that an application has to give to the user a preferentially continuous pleasure curve to be successful. If the users start to struggle too much at certain point they just might drop it and go elsewhere.
When i have to go do some video editing i always notice that i have pleasant result in no time contrary to 3D where the investment is much bigger.

Let's call it the "graphic application learning pleasure curve index": time,effort vs results,feedback.

[neuk]

How about all Softimage users organize a group buy, and buy Softimage from Autodesk , im guessing it wouldn't take that much, maybe if everyone sold their house we could nearly make it...

[Maximus]

How about all Softimage users organize a group buy, and buy Softimage from Autodesk , im guessing it wouldn't take that much, maybe if everyone sold their house we could nearly make it...

To buy something, that something must be in sell, and AD wont sell Softimage, they bought it to remove it from competition, not for developing it for sure.