Bifrost vs ICE...

[MauricioPC]

Every year thousands of new students learn Maya and more and more animation work is being done with Maya. Maya usage is not shrinking. Whenever Bifrost and its subsequent iterations land, it will be on every one of these desks, thousands and thousands of computers. It's effectively going to be the procedural environment everyone has and learns just by the fact that the Maya user base in modelling and animation is so huge compared to everyone else.

Yeah, but which level of education this is... Quantity and quality hardly plays together. So what, Maya home guard against Houdini commandos... Once there is too much of people involved (whatever that 'too much' means), their low level of expectation, tends to pull down the whole thing. Something I already noticed with C4d - even this app can do a lot, in real world, if people are already able to do something usable, using only presets or purchased models, they'll be ready to adapt the idea how c4d is 'not good for modeling' - just to be released of additional learning. Or in other words, today, if I'll have to be gamedev modeller, I'll ask only for me, Max as professional, high-end modeling tool, instead of Maya LT 'cellphone for masses'. And, hardly any of Maya LT people will be able to catch my Max, using the app which asks for special window, just for re-ordering the deforming operators.
Now it seems there is 'easy VFX' project on the road
Definitively more of money for AD, but reputation as tool for masters, less and less of that. At least that's how I see what's happening with Maya. Obviously 'easy Maya" project, if there anything like that, is not aimed to small number of 'us'.

Maya LT still has much ground to cover before it gets near 3ds Max on the modeling aspect.

As for the students, that's all Autodesk fault. They want schools to only teach Maya, so you'll get only Maya users. Say that the 'market' is pushing that change is nonsense. Autodesk pushed those changes. Softimage animation tools are still better than Maya, but it has been how many years since we have last heard about AD marketing Softimage as a animation tool?

You say Houdini is there for years and nobody changed to it. Yes, perhaps, but Houdini before isn't what Houdini today is and Softimage grabbed some of those people who wanted a more procedural workflow. Good luck trying to push out good FX with a point/click/slide solution like you guys are selling. Take a look at 3ds Max ... it is a good FX tool, but why? Because of some powerful and deep and complex plugins that enables you to create some amazing FX. TP, Stoke, etc ... it's not point and click.

Maybe BiFrost will be the Colorway of FX tools.

[luceric]

That wasn't the point of my post. The point was that making Bifrost isn't just about transitioning ICE, or countering Houdini (which, no, didn't just become competitive in the last few years). The focus is to make a high performance general processing framework for the future that will scale and cover the whole spectrum, and thousands of people are going to use it in one form or another, directly or indirectly, whenever it comes.

Also, nobody said that Autodesk is making a "point and click" fx tool. The world doesn't consist entirely of newbies who "push buttons" and "download models" vs experts in large studios who use entirely custom tools in a high end house with TDs. You cannot see that by just hanging in the echo chamber forums, you need to go out and talk to people and see their work. In forums, you're seeing 1% of who's out there.

The first thing you gain is humility when seeing their talent. Most people are brilliant and working their asses off and they are not complaining that "maya [modelling/animation/etc] is hard", many are experts with it and have no R&D team to back them up.

The vast majority of CG being made is done by generalists who do a bit of everything, and lots of Softimage users are like that of course. They are brilliant, and doing brilliant tv spots, cartoons, games, etc. We call them the "SMBs" or small-medium business and that's where we're focusing the usability of current and future features.

The is no "push button" FX solution. Every FX shot is unique. But that doesn't mean that you should to build everything from scratch and that no shot have anything in common, and that you should accept working in the dark with very general visual programming tools that don't really understand what you are trying to get to and don't show you anything until you hit Render.

[Mathaeus]

Maya LT still has much ground to cover before it gets near 3ds Max on the modeling aspect.

Don't know for exact reason, but it seems there is constant habit of using external tools for modeling, related only to Maya people. Always been easy way to recognize Maya user on forum Max or SI user never will do that - at least, I won't, I'll use what I have to (except Modo ) Silo, even that overcomplicated mass of low level things like Modo. By simple comparison, my wild guess is, they never got familiar with operators and stack in Maya for some reason, tweaking is all - so Silo or Modo become better.

[FXDude]

Edit: Added quote

Every year thousands of new students learn Maya and more and more animation work is being done with Maya. Maya usage is not shrinking. Whenever Bifrost and its subsequent iterations land, it will be on every one of these desks, thousands and thousands of computers. It's effectively going to be the procedural environment everyone has and learns just by the fact that the Maya user base in modelling and animation is so huge compared to everyone else.

You speak of the thousands of users... but what else is *really* left other than Maya (anymore)

It can easily be said that most of every-one wants out of Autodesk if it wasnt't that they 'had' to.

For either Maya having basically -always- had one the most awkward and convoluted way of doing (even silly) things.

.. Or for the flexible licencing plans (with prices on the flexibility part)

Just by getting a feel out of the tone in most forums when it comes to -THE- CG monoply,
the very moment something capable enough would become accessible, the very first thing entire demographics will do is jump as soon as humanly possible out of that unhealthy, destructive, & abusive relationship.

[Mathaeus]

That wasn't the point of my post. The point was that making Bifrost isn't just about transitioning ICE, or countering Houdini (which, no, didn't just become competitive in the last few years). The focus is to make a high performance general processing framework for the future that will scale and cover the whole spectrum, and thousands of people are going to use it in one form or another, directly or indirectly, whenever it comes.

While ago, when Maya was acquired by AD, 2006 I think, it was long interview with Jos Stam on CG talk, it was sentence in style, that Nucleus technology is not meant to be only for Maya. That said, for Max too. Nothing of that to this very day. After, it was Skyline thing, too. Let's say that I can take what you saying, only as hypothesis. So, I'll be free to speak, what, hypothetically, will happen IF Maya became widely accepted - where push-button is more a sort of reputation. For now, from more or less "SMB" perspective, I don't see anything that changes, except small growing of c4d.

But what to do now, what to learn if I want to do, for example, some complex motion graphic, and SI is not an option. I already feel familiar with C4d, for my taste enough to do not want to run it into anything more complex. Maya inconsistencies and tendency of Maya interface to display unbelievable amount of irrelevant things in same time, even more than Blender? Additional plugin for equivalent of ordinary ICE un-simulated ICE tree?
Houdini, that's the thing. It will take some time, but it seems to be the only rewarding option.

[Bullit]

First of all, no one with a straight face can say that Houdini isn't getting much more presence and exposure compared to 3 years ago.
A big chunk of that is due to Softimage killing.

It's effectively going to be the procedural environment everyone has and learns just by the fact that the Maya user base in modeling and animation is so huge compared to everyone else.

That will only occur 2 or more years from now and with caveat that with Autodesk more than anyone, future promises should be to be taken with a big dose of skepticism . In that time many things can happen.
Houdini will be in a much better version, Cinema 4D also. Fabric Engine will be in version 4 or such.
So if Maya users will get on proceduralism in 2016 it will be late.

[Hirazi Blue]

Apparently, most seats do not use ICE, they are are using XSI for character animation, so you got to take that into account -- are they going to look for procedural tools or animation tool performance or what the talents are trained onto.

But, proceduralism aside, isn't that especially telling? The number of seats still using XSI for character animation, that haven't yet been switched to Maya? I am no expert, by a long shot, but Softimage as a working environment for character animation would seem a lot more inviting still, even if the feature set is probably bigger on the Maya side of things. While everybody's scrambling around proceduralism, wouldn't improvements in the way Maya works when doing character animation be a more serious priority. You can't win the proceduralism race, IMHO, but you can still provide the best possible character animation package and not just by default (after killing Softimage).

BTW & even more off topic: wouldn't a lower priced ("light") version of MotionBuilder be a nice idea right now?

[luceric]

While ago, when Maya was acquired by AD, 2006 I think, it was long interview with Jos Stam on CG talk, it was sentence in style, that Nucleus technology is not meant to be only for Maya. That said, for Max too. Nothing of that to this very day.

Isn't 3DSMax's mCloth their version of nCloth? Anyway, as far as I know neucleus is in at least Autocad and maybe some other Autodesk app, and if it isn't in Max it is because they didn't want it. They were probably focused on PhysX at the time, plus they have pFlow, reactor, etc.. ,etc.. Jos Stam, btw, doesn't even work for M&E, he works for Autodesk research.

After, it was Skyline thing, too.

Well, Skyline never came out for anyone. But we did use Skyline tech to prototype the first iteration of Bifrost.

[luceric]

Apparently, most seats do not use ICE, they are are using XSI for character animation, so you got to take that into account -- are they going to look for procedural tools or animation tool performance or what the talents are trained onto.

But, proceduralism aside, isn't that especially telling? The number of seats still using XSI for character animation, that haven't yet been switched to Maya? ?

Sorry, I've never meant to say that there were high number of XSI animation seats not converting to Maya. I said there was a high number of Softimage seats that are just character animation, as in "traditionally". These seats are easy to convert, it's an animator using a custom rig and custom UI, and there is no one that's really doubting Maya performance and capabilities for character animation, it's the easiest decision to make. The point was that these studios aren't waiting on an ICE replacement, so the amount of places looking for that is lower than the one might think.

I am no expert, by a long shot, but Softimage as a working environment for character animation would seem a lot more inviting still, even if the feature set is probably bigger on the Maya side of things. While everybody's scrambling around proceduralism, wouldn't improvements in the way Maya works when doing character animation be a more serious priority. You can't win the proceduralism race, IMHO, but you can still provide the best possible character animation package and not just by default (after killing Softimage).

That comment would make sense if we only worked on Bifrost and did nothing else, but that isn't the case. This just happens to be a bifrost/fx thread. Autodesk has teams working in all areas of the software and you can watch the (albeit a little vague) "Visions" videos to find out more.

[Hirazi Blue]

That comment would make sense if we only worked on Bifrost and did nothing else, but that isn't the case. This just happens to be a bifrost/fx thread.

True, but BiFrost does seem to get an "unhealthy" amount of "airtime" and frankly my off topicness was inspired by your own remark.


edit, almost missed that one:

and there is no one that's really doubting Maya performance and capabilities for character animation

That's not quite what I wrote, performance and capabilities are one thing, "working environment" is another.

[Mathaeus]

While ago, when Maya was acquired by AD, 2006 I think, it was long interview with Jos Stam on CG talk, it was sentence in style, that Nucleus technology is not meant to be only for Maya. That said, for Max too. Nothing of that to this very day.

Isn't 3DSMax's mCloth their version of nCloth? Anyway, as far as I know neucleus is in at least Autocad and maybe some other Autodesk app, and if it isn't in Max it is because they didn't want it. They were probably focused on PhysX at the time, plus they have pFlow, reactor, etc.. ,etc.. Jos Stam, btw, doesn't even work for M&E, he works for Autodesk research.

If mCloth is implementation of Nucleus, well it took around five years to appear, from 2006 to 2011, I think. In other words, if you are starting the bifrost vs ICE thread, and it seems you want to take the future into account - nobody with even a little bit of memory can take this serious. Sorry. Something you want, that's all.

[luceric]

If mCloth is implementation of Nucleus, well it took around five years to appear, from 2006 to 2011, I think. In other words, if you are starting the bifrost vs ICE thread, and it seems you want to take the future into account - nobody with even a little bit of memory can take this serious. Sorry. Something you want, that's all.

Just to clarify, that bit that you replied to, "[...]and thousands of people are going to use it in one form or another, directly or indirectly[...]" had nothing to with bifrost ending up in other application. It means that an artist might be using the graph directly to author something, or they maybe using some other feature that's using the evaluation engine underneath and boom, you get multi-core performance. There will be more about that later.

The title of the thread comes from the question in the video that talks about the difference between the two nodal environments.

And just so we're clear, I'm a programmer on Bifrost and I know what it does, and I had direct involvement in making that siggraph demo possible. I'm not just some marketing talking head going onto forums to generate buzz. There is such a thing as people being excited about what they are working on.

[Mathaeus]

And just so we're clear, I'm a programmer on Bifrost and I know what it does, and I had direct involvement in making that siggraph demo possible. I'm not just some marketing talking head going onto forums to generate buzz. There is such a thing as people being excited about what they are working on.

If you're still able to be excited by your work, after all years, this deserves respect, and nothing else than respect. But, I think the Bifrost thing deserves a little bit of respect too, at least chance to live alone, to have identity, without heavy burden of comparisons with ICE, and all that bad memories. Unfortunately, bad memories with a reason, related to policy of your corporation. Whenever 'vs' is mentioned, our mind automatically takes a lot of, somehow random facts into account. Really hard to predict where such thread will go. People alone will recognize similarity, no need to explain this in advance.
And we all know, it's corporation who decides to keep this Bifrost project alive, or not. According to what already happened, it's only a prophet who can say what will happen in 2016 or so.

[MauricioPC]

Hey Luc-Eric,

First off, I do understand what you are saying and I can't comment on the whole business as I ain't on it. But I can comment on what I saw or talked to about business here in Brazil. And here we had a good Softimage use for animation, even more than motion graphics. Now that market is all Maya, with Max and C4D fighting for the rest.

I was last year at a masterclass about animation with the biggest animation house in Latin America, Vetor Zero. If you see their work, is nothing short of amazing. Well, in that presentation they told us and the students of the Maya school that were hosting the event that they were seriously thinking of changing the main hub of their pipeline to Houdini. And they said that not because Houdini is better than Maya, but because Maya was presenting a lot of problems. I've seen some behind the scenes and was greatly surprised that Softimage was being used for animation.

That's not to say that people don't create amazing stuff in Maya. Hell, some of the artists I look up most are Maya users. If you look at the work of Antropus (a brazillian artist at ILM), his work is amazing and mostly is all Maya. So ... do I want BiFrost to work on FX? Hell yeah. It's way better (if the project gets to were it's pointing) than to buy thousands and thousands of plugins in Max to get the same result. But at the same time, it's nice to have options and Softimage and ICE were options, even if BiFrost turns out way better.

I saw all the videos from the Vision series and I think you guys are addressing all that. I even said I liked what seemed like a prototype of new icons and some interface changes in a Maya screenshot, that I though was your work. The part about multithreading Maya, improving and facilitating the workflow and UI, I like all that.

What drives me crazy is that you decided to took Softimage out of the picture before Maya was ready to take it's place. Do I think that with the talent that is working on Maya now (you, the guys from Naiad, that guy from Pixar, the other devs) will make Maya better than Softimage in the long run? Yes, I do. But right now, Softimage was still a good alternative and should have been kept for those of us who don't want to have to deal with the Maya problems you guys are addressing.

Most people are brilliant and working their asses off and they are not complaining that "maya [modelling/animation/etc] is hard", many are experts with it and have no R&D team to back them up.

Okay ... I've learn to edit on a AVID system and I could get the job done in it. That doesn't mean that it's the best solution for editing out there. Where's AVID now? If that sentence was true, you guys wouldn't need to work on UI, workflow and ease-of-use on Maya.

[Bullit]

Isn't 3DSMax's mCloth their version of nCloth?

No mCloth is modifier with PhysX simulation that works with MassFX (rigid body). Pretty neat but incomplete unfortunately. That is why they still have the Cloth modifier. There is no rector in Max anymore.

[luceric]

I saw all the videos from the Vision series and I think you guys are addressing all that. I even said I liked what seemed like a prototype of new icons and some interface changes in a Maya screenshot, that I though was your work.

I didn't find the screenshot you were referring to, but what I'm doing at Autodesk is I'm managing the main maya UI team, and remotely supervising a couple of others team, like the ones that implemented some softimage workflows in Maya 2015 EXT1. But I also directly program one piece of architecture used for bifrost visual programming. There is definitely a lot of UI changes coming to Maya, but I'm not necessarily directly responsible for it - we have a team of UI designers and program managers making the decisions. Stuff may be implemented by developers who report to me, especially if it's cosmetic, or in the outliner/node editor/general UI. The animation team has their own team doing their own workflow-specific UI, and so does the modelling team and the rendering team (hypershade/render window), etc. There is a large army of people working on new things.

What drives me crazy is that you decided to took Softimage out of the picture before Maya was ready to take it's place.

of course, autodesk did that, not me specifically. ;) On the flip side, it's probable that there would have never been a good moment to end Softimage.