Softimage and Thea Render

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SamHowell
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Softimage and Thea Render

Post by SamHowell » 27 Oct 2010, 22:07

An animated robot.

Modelled and animated in Softimage. Rendered in Thea.



It still needs a few animation fixes.
Last edited by SamHowell on 12 Dec 2012, 18:05, edited 9 times in total.

shadow_ex_
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Re: Robot Jack - Softimage to Thea Render

Post by shadow_ex_ » 28 Oct 2010, 00:05

it looks really good^^,i like the rendering and the simplistic design of it!
well done :D

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steven07
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Re: Robot Jack - Softimage to Thea Render

Post by steven07 » 30 Oct 2010, 23:03

wow.. I've been reading up on Thea.. how do you like it?

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Re: Robot Jack - Softimage to Thea Render

Post by milanvasek » 01 Nov 2010, 13:01

Nice!
I hope you'll have time to finish something bigger with this robot :)

Btw, I was trying Thea, but exporter was doing some weird things on my machine. I'll wait for another version and try again :)
Milan Vasek
ceramic artist & softimage fan
http://www.milanvasek.com

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SamHowell
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Re: Robot Jack - Softimage to Thea Render

Post by SamHowell » 06 Nov 2010, 11:13

Thanks guys.

Yeah, Thea Render is fantastic. You can get very decent results without too much of a steep learning curve. It is still in Beta but the team developing it are very responsive to the user base and are constantly updating. GPU acceleration is on the way so it will only improve.

I don't have plans to do much more with Robot Jack. He was just a test to see if it was feasable to get shape animation from Softimage to Thea. Maybe I'll populate his environment with little sockets for him to pug his hands into.

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SamHowell
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Re: Softimage animation to Thea Render

Post by SamHowell » 04 Aug 2011, 11:09

Some more animated tests done with Softimage and rendered with Thea



This one is a test in transferring a meshed (Polygonizer) fluid sim (Lagoa) from Softimage to Thea Render. The sim requires some work and the mesher is not behaving in a few areas. Still needs bubbles, motion blur etc.



A little experiment in getting ICE strands over from Softimage to Thea render.

I made this guy a few years ago when Phil's ICE pack first came out by using the verlet strands compounds. Seemed like it was time he got a proper(ish) render. The new extrude geometry along strand compound in Softimage 2012 has made getting them out a lot easier.

Rendered with just a sun and a HDRI for reflections using TR1. Sub-surface is faked with a medium material.

EDIT: The twitching of the strands on the arms is a mystery to me. If anyone knows of a possible solution Mopman would be very gratefull.
Last edited by SamHowell on 06 Aug 2011, 17:55, edited 1 time in total.

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Tekano
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Re: Softimage animation to Thea Render

Post by Tekano » 04 Aug 2011, 12:25

this looks great , like a hairy morph from AArdman :D had a little look at LUX render, Does Thea supprt instancing as well?
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SamHowell
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Re: Softimage animation to Thea Render

Post by SamHowell » 04 Aug 2011, 13:11

Thankyou

Yeah Thea supports instancing. They have just announced a massive render speed boost for the next release. Polygon counts somewhere in the billions for instancing.

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Re: Softimage animation to Thea Render

Post by Chris_TC » 04 Aug 2011, 15:28

I love the hairy guy, he's totally awesome. Great renders!

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owei
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Re: Softimage animation to Thea Render

Post by owei » 05 Aug 2011, 14:26

Looks great! I would like to hear a bit more about you experience with Thea and Softimage ;) I´m dropping by certain GPU renderer from time to time, and test them. By now, the plugins for most of them do not work that well. However, would be great to know, how Thea performs in this respect.. ;)

best,
oliver

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SamHowell
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Re: Softimage animation to Thea Render

Post by SamHowell » 05 Aug 2011, 14:50

Well the Softimage to Thea export plugin is still being developed but it is at a stage where accurate mesh,clusters and camera information can be transfered no problems. Translate and rotate animation is supported also. I think Steve Caron (the plugin author) is planning some extra support for particles in the future but I'm not sure. He's done a fantastic job so far but his job isn't helped by the small user base (I'm guilty of not providing enough feedback and submitting bug reports myself). For shape animation you will need to export a .XML file per frame (the plugin now supports this) containing mesh information and then run a custom .IPT script through Thea to render each frame in turn.

As for Thea, it's cheap and powerfull. The development team really do listen to the user base and are constantly inovating. GPU support is still in development.

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Re: Softimage animation to Thea Render

Post by milanvasek » 06 Aug 2011, 14:25

mopman is great :) but there is something weird going on with strands on his hands. is it possible to tweak that somehow, make it more smooth?
anyway, really cool B-)
Milan Vasek
ceramic artist & softimage fan
http://www.milanvasek.com

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kitesflyer
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Re: Softimage animation to Thea Render

Post by kitesflyer » 06 Aug 2011, 15:39

Awesomeeeeee...

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SamHowell
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Re: Softimage animation to Thea Render

Post by SamHowell » 06 Aug 2011, 17:49

Thanks Guys

Hey Milan, I know what you mean about the twitching arm. I could never quite work it out myself. I played with length, width, iterations, gravity, drag etc. but no joy. I altered the arm animation, even removed it completely but the twitch remains. It doesn't happen on the legs so I have no idea.

It might also have something to do with the scene scale and the distance between opposing polygon faces on the underlying mesh. I'm not sure if the strands inherit the normals of the mesh they are generated from and use that as some kind of control. The underlying man mesh is very low resolution and the arm is a sort of mangled stump created by dissolving the polygons on the arm of the XSI man model and rig.

I would love to fix it but I gave up when I made him all those years ago. Hopefully I can find some time to play around some more...

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SamHowell
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Re: Softimage animation to Thea Render

Post by SamHowell » 31 Jan 2012, 16:08

Weird Spawn

Image



Another test transfering animation from Softimage to Thea Render, this time with Lagoa particles.

Some liberal use of FX Nut's save rendermesh plugin to get the particles across as mesh data is a big help. This fact obviously limits the amount of particles that it is practical to transfer. Still quite handy though until another solution presents itself.

I tried a bit of fairly dense and strong displacement on the spheres and still had quite decent render times until the particle count got too high.

The simulation all goes a bit floaty half way through but it was just a case of emit and go. Not too much preperation went into that.

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Memag
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Re: Softimage animation to Thea Render

Post by Memag » 31 Jan 2012, 17:54

That looks really great!

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