Well said. Don't renew your subscription, so AD will understood

I quote McNistor here, but it is meant as a general observation:
While it's tempting to take out our frustration about Autodesk on "our" local Autodesk representatives, let's try not to make this too personal. I am sure, even if I don't agree with them all of the time, "our" local Autodesk representatives do no come here just to generate frustration (even if it sometimes feels that way).

Let's try to not make this too personal (I know how hard this sometimes is!)

I see alot of Maya customers and I hear 'ICE in Maya' alot. I also hear 'make it like Houdini. I agree though, I don't think they literally mean an exact clone. Maya's particles, cloth and dynamics are actually very good. Nucleus is also a very good framework and you only have to look at Duncans videos and scenes to see what is possible. The stumbling block is its usability, which I find to be a bit clumsy compared to ICE. I can do far more, quicker in ICE and I believe this is capability that people want.

Same can be said for Maya's hypershade/hypergraph, many people (including me) would like to be more like Soft's rendertree, which is what Maya's Node Editor is all about - bringing a better node system to Maya.

I just wish the development would address other things instead of always ICE. I couldnt care less about Suites and about the technical side of ICE.
At the end of the day anything that makes my work easier is always well welcome, and lately the last 2 releases from Softimage didnt bring anything like that.
As i said before we have ICE, its an environment for people capable to write tools on it (Eric Mootz for example and all brilliant developers like him), but for people who have more an artistic mindset and less time to dig learning how all this massive amount of nodes work, well.. its not that appealing.

What i would like is interactive modeling tools (even if they use ICE under the hood), i want to play with parameters that are alrady there, i dont want to create my own compounds with my custom parameters (even if its right and i like the idea that if you want you can do this with ICE).
I said this many times, i find a bit absurd that you have something like ICE in softimage and then you have to spend money to have a shatter, a decent fluid simulator, a particle render. Beside the fact those external plugins are awesome, there are certain things that should just work and ship with the software itself.

Let alone there should be more "preset" for people not wanting to spend (and waste i could say) time into creating tools. Not everyone is a tool creator, some people just need a tool to work.
I need a sweep modifier that works for my modeling, i dont care if its in c++ or in ICE, when i click "Sweep" a ppg will pop up and i use those parameters. End of story.

This is what ICE lacks, a more easy of use approach, we had ICE modeling it seemed it was the revolution of the world, what was done with it? Nothing.
I understand that the intent of Autodesk is "we gave you the environment to build your own tool, now go ahead and build it" but as i said this doesnt work for everyone and if i may, this was never been what Softimage was all about.

I remember when ICE came out people were dreaming, "imagine in a few years all Softimage will be piloted and executed from ICE, how cool!! lots of new tools". Well it didnt happen.
We are still waiting. If your point is to get ICE to take over the world, then do it, invest in it seriously and turn every aspect of the software ICE based, with tools, with interactive tools, with modern and cutting edge tools. This is whats frustrating, we have the Technology but you guys arent using it. We (artists) have to wait for some tool developer to bring the new tool to us. and this is frustrating because after all those years there are some basic aspects that arent addressed, and since the development is ICE-centred we cant just do anything else if not hoping that ICE will take care of those things, which again never happened so far.

I sure as an artist cant wait for Mr.X to develop my sweep modifier, or a railclone modeling tool or anything else for example. I need those tools now, and when releases come out and they dont give me any tool any help in my work but just focus on adding ICE nodes to an existing environment to increase the ICE operability for those people who spend their time into developing and creating ICE tools, well that doesnt help me and persons like me.
Without counting that they turned Softimage which was a 360° application into a plugin, because despite what you think, its what is become under Autodesk roof. Maya and Max guys see and use softimage ONLY for ICE. not because we have a cutting edge modeling toolset, or animation toolset or rendering department.

And to all the people that now gonna answer like "well time to go and learn ICE", i dont want to learn ICE, i never asked for ICE and i never wanted ICE, not everyone want to spend hours to develop a tool, i rather spend hours into creativity, learning render engines and workin on actual project. If i wanted to learn ICE i would have done a developer career, not an Artist.

And yeah, i'm just talkin on a forum, no need to get personal, i always respect people work, this includes Luc-Eric and Graham, it is actually nice to be able to talk with you guys.

the goal over the last few years was to create a plataform instead of specific niche tools... if it wasnt for ICE modeling would it be so pratical for Implosia to be developed?
if a shattering tool was developed, would they have the time to create ICE modeling?

it is not only about ICE, but much of the work has been geared towards the SDK. would interactive tools be achivable by third-parties before the tool SDK? what do we want more: tools or the tools' SDK? it is a very hard choice, but I do think the seccond is best in the long run, as most saw lack of SDKs a SI's weakness. Look at how it is tied to MR, and how much bad that has done. Wouldnt you prefer they had connected MR to SI through an SDK?

for a small to mid-size studio this is the oportunitie to have TDs built great custom stuff. for freelancers that has increased the availability and scope of plug-ins. as for what comes from factory, does another package look mighty ahead of SI? you may say Houdini, but for those that find ICE obnoxious... well.

I didn't say anything about that being impossible, I wrote the only thing that can be done in the near term is a bundle, the alternative being you have nothing at all until something else comes. We worked on ICE 1.0 for more than 3 years. Development takes a lot of time.

I am at halfway Maximus critique of ICE vs its supporters. I would like a second level ICE, not so granular a bit more like Lego or even better road sign code with mostly terminology that everyone understand. A simplification. Example, a diminishing of specific nodes: A case in question is independent blast node and emit nodes. Why not just one emit node with all possibilities or just an parent emit node and then if necessary a children blast node to make the blast. That way we can easily use options from the children blast node in our emission. Some of them are useful for a normal emission but instead we have to pick inside blast node to take them out to make a uber emission node.




Small studios don't have a TD. Of course that depends of what you mean by "small".

Small studios must have someone who rigs or does sims. If one rigs one can get into ice...
Of course im not talking about one man bands, but teams of 4 people or more always have someone more inclined to the tech side of things...

The thing is really simple to me, when things get confusing, complicated, nonsense, the easiest solution and the simpliest one is the way to go for me.
I am not getting updates and tools that gets me do my job faster, i am still lacking on a lot of updates one for all the damn framebuffoer, or the xsi render viewer. There are milions of those things, not to mention all the modeling tools/curves/ stuff that are deadly old.
You could develop ImplosiaFX even without ICE. There always been coders in c++ to develop plugins. How the world was doing before ICE?
Infact if you notice the cap tool made with ICE is even slower than a c++ plugin i have written years ago.
The problem here we dont see tools developed and brought to users by Autodesk, the whole concept of "here, take this creative environment and build your own tool" was never been Softimage style. They made it to be like this now, but its frustrating for people that must depend on other people to develop tools.

Where are we going? 3dsmax v2.0? Softimage gonna just be a platform and you gonna have to invest in milions of plugins to make things work?
We always spit into 3ds max due to this and we are heading the same way.
How long ago ICE was created? And since then how many tools were packed and put into Softimage out of the box to use for users?
At a certain point one should start to be objective and realistic. I'm glad for people who can develop tools in ICE, i cant and i dont want to spend the time into tool-developing. its not my job.

once for all, i'm not against ICE 100%, i'm against ICE for developers only. What i ask is ICE to be way way way way more user friendly for Artists, which means an artist shouldnt get involved into ICE compounds at all. Do this, work towards this direction and you'll see more people be happy. Its that easy.


p.s. I'm sorry Gustavo, what interactive tools are you talkin about? cause i dont see any interactive tools in softimage, if not some sporadic plugins that are some crazy effort of an user (Piotrek which again i thank you) /bow.

Yes, my exact frustration on the matter and all that I can see, we are not even heading the same way for sure for I don't see any plugin that would most probably be added to Softimage. I am yearning for the same thing also, developing more tools with ICE for artists would be so cool to be true.