DOPE

General discussion about 3D DCC and other topics
Post Reply
User avatar
mc_axe
Posts: 415
Joined: 12 Mar 2013, 18:44

DOPE

Post by mc_axe » 12 Mar 2017, 19:17

DOPE (Data Oriented Programming Environment) was developed by a friend when we were working back in the day (six years or so)in the worst of all offices in the universe, hes a developer, i was assigned on 3d projects.

This dude was also fan of ICE since it first launched. Every new version we were discusing about new features, but ADSK additions latelly was not up to our expectations.

Then he had this crazy idea to implement a simmilar tool for programming:

with ultimate goal a cross language data flow diagram, that generates code for different languages? i never rly understood xD.
The main performance benefit of using a code generating tool like this is code reuse across different execution contexts
But yep it was hell alot of fun, cause at some point i was asking for UI features not yet implemented in ICE and he managed to do so with ease. On the other hand seeing him doing all that so fast, i was going mad cause i feared more and more that ADSK has no serius plans to keep SI in #1 place or even alive at all.

Status is frozen (reasson no funding back then and buzy with other projects)
More info about the project here

Bullit
Moderator
Posts: 2621
Joined: 24 May 2012, 09:44

Re: DOPE

Post by Bullit » 12 Mar 2017, 21:53

Very interesting.
Regarding ICE and slow improvements i with time came up with a somewhat different explanation of what lead to demise of Softimage. Is that Softimage people stopped believe in it much earlier than Autodesk.

User avatar
Draise
Posts: 891
Joined: 09 Oct 2012, 20:48
Skype: ondraise
Location: Colombia

Re: DOPE

Post by Draise » 13 Mar 2017, 05:01

Beautiful. I would love something like that in everyday use for some things I need for my pipelines....

Boiler
Posts: 29
Joined: 17 Feb 2015, 13:15

Re: DOPE

Post by Boiler » 13 Mar 2017, 07:18

Aahhh... Great idea :-bd

User avatar
mc_axe
Posts: 415
Joined: 12 Mar 2013, 18:44

Re: DOPE

Post by mc_axe » 14 Mar 2017, 01:34

Bullit wrote:I with time came up with a somewhat different explanation of what lead to demise of Softimage. Is that Softimage people stopped believe in it much earlier than Autodesk
I dont think ADSK ever believed in SI. I think Avid had ICE almost ready in the freezer, ADSK just launched it with the next version. At that point in time Maya realistically was going to completely lost touch in terms of features. ADSK just couldnt allow that to happen.

But how can SI ppl stop believing in Softimage at times that its development took off :-??

User avatar
dwigfor
Posts: 395
Joined: 17 Nov 2009, 17:46

Re: DOPE

Post by dwigfor » 22 Mar 2017, 22:21

mc_axe wrote: I think Avid had ICE almost ready in the freezer, ADSK just launched it with the next version.
ICE launched in XSI v7 (with a great Siggraph party headlined by Vanilla Ice), which was still under Avid.

User avatar
Mathaeus
Posts: 1778
Joined: 08 Jun 2009, 21:11
Location: Zagreb, Croatia
Contact:

Re: DOPE

Post by Mathaeus » 23 Mar 2017, 10:48

Yeah, acquisition was announced around three month later. Release was in summer, acquisition become in end of October, something like that. I remember I was already an heavy ICE addict, when owner changed.
Occasionally or not, they bought Maya only a few years before, also few months after a successful release of new and huge addition, this was Nucleus technology and nCloth as first materialization.

So in both cases, they bought machine together with spare parts, with a tons of fuel in reserve.

But, but... once the framework started to shows its age, and probably become clear that it's not enough to run only on old 'fuel', everything they were able to ''invent'' it was EOL in SI case. For Maya, not easy to just kill this toy when became boring, hehe. So at least they started with a sort of new framework, Bifrost and all that, but stopped very soon, going back to what they already bought, like xgen or mash (better to do not comment on any of two). On positive side, at least they were able to get VP2 and new evaluation modes to work nicely.

To be fair, Maya is huge and old app, reform of such thing probably is more expensive than building the something completely new. Anyway, original development and all risks of that, that's probably forbidden word in world of AD investors and managers.

luceric
Posts: 1251
Joined: 22 Jun 2009, 00:08

Re: DOPE

Post by luceric » 23 Mar 2017, 16:10

We shipped XSI 7 with ICE before the Autodesk acquisition and then at Autodesk, over the course of three years, we added Lagoa, ICE modeling, crowd, all of which were "planned" at Avid.
But Autodesk knew from the start that ICE was tied to the core of XSI, and that's not what they wanted, so a lot of people were moved to their game engine tech.

We did have issues at Softimage where management thought we should drop everything that doesn't run in a game engine, and they were thinking of buying a third party game engine and go in that business.

I can't tell where we would be today if we hadn't been acquired. I think it's probable that all that game engine fantasy would have failed and we would just be continuing along quietly doing the same thing we always did, probably with an ever-shrinking staff. Dassault was apparently in the running to buy Softimage, but I think it was because of their own game runtime business plan. No clue what would have happened.

luceric
Posts: 1251
Joined: 22 Jun 2009, 00:08

Re: DOPE

Post by luceric » 23 Mar 2017, 16:20

btw, there is, like, a billion graphical programming environment, some of them 20 years old, especially based on Java.
Microsoft has at least one, VPL and when even Microsoft has it... Wikipedia has probably just a partial list..

User avatar
mc_axe
Posts: 415
Joined: 12 Mar 2013, 18:44

Re: DOPE

Post by mc_axe » 23 Mar 2017, 20:26

Yep thats right luceric he told me that hes not doing just another vpl cause there are several, now im sure he tried to do something special, im not sure what it was exactly, but i think is what i have in bold in the quote bellow:
for now it only supports T-SQL generation. We had a need for this in my day job and I hacked it in a couple of days. I haven't started working on proper code generation yet, though most of the design is in place.
- It's been designed to support Java, OpenCL and GLSL code generation. It will also allow seamless transitions between execution contexts, without manual coding. A data flow could start in Java, go to CL, then back to Java, then to a database.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: brandwatch [Bot] and 23 guests