Another 3dsmax sneak peak

[Eugen]

On page 6 of this thread I already posted this:
http://www.keyvis.at/cg-tools/maya-tools/ritalin/

That plugin remembers the component selection in Maya. Might help.

Stupid, of course, that you have to use any workarounds for something that basic.

Newcomer (<20 posts) alert: please use the URL tags - HB

[ace63]

luceric,
Oh my... why does Maya select all joints "below" a selected one? Why do I get unpredictable (to me) selecting behaviour of geometry? Going from point to edge back to object I often end-up with 0 selection (no object and no sub-object). I don't know how people manage to work with that when it comes to modeling, it's a mess.

This is what I meant when I talked about selections in Maya being a catastrophic failure....
One more thing: visibility inheritance. When you hide an object in Maya you hide all children aswell - this gets in my way
all the time. It has zero use since you can just select the hierarchy with a single button press.
But if you want to it switched off you have to set an attribute for each child.

[Bellsey]

the hypershade isn't replaced with the node editor, is that correct?

it's not officially replaced, but it has all hypershade functionality and more

The Maya Node Editor doesn't quite have everything from the Hypergraph and Hypershade, but like Viewport 2.0, it's been an ongoing project and it's been improving all the time. Presently I use the Node Editor has a replacement for Maya's connection editor, which can be fiddlely.

As for the comments on Maya's usability, well how long have we got? We could be here for years debating this. But I think the point to remember is that everyone will think their package of choice is best, and if you're mainly used to Softimage then Maya will feel odd. It cuts both ways, though as Maya guy could probably apply criticism to Softimage in equal measure. I've used both Softimage and Maya for years and could happily do so. lol

[luceric]

there is an ongoing revamp of modeling and other usuability projects for Maya, so the feedback and criticism isn't in vain. Brent is back on Maya modeling team now, too, (Back? He's one of the early developers of Maya, and made the manipulators and other tools, then worked on XSI's modeling and transform tools from 1998 to 2012)

[Chris_TC]

i might be wrong but multi-editing attribute pages (err property pages?) isn't doable? they resort to the spreadsheet view?

that's right, they don't have this great XSI UI feature.. the Channel Box supports does multi-edit however.

The multi editing in SI is so great because it works with practically everything. If two PPGs are somewhat compatible, they'll give you multi edit functionality. Be it a hundred Phong shaders or two dozen extrusions. I just love that.

Also, how do people work with only one construction history stack? There are so many great things in SI that I could hardly live without. While others whine about there not being enough new features, I look at my permanently docked scene explorer and pity everyone who has to make do with just an outliner or - how on EARTH do you work with this: the H key in 3d studio.

Really, the streamlined workflow is where it's at for SI.

[Ahmidou]

Wasn't CrowdFX designed as to be something that no other package offers? Well, it has been about a year and look what 3DS Max got - I guess that kinda makes CrowdFX a moot point, doesn't it? Nowadays, anything can happen...

The 3dsmax crowd project has been started before crowdFX. You can find posts from 2007 about it.

Moderator edit: After a PM by Luc-Eric Rousseau I am "forced" to lift any restrictions on this thread... - HB

[mirkoj]

no other sneak peeks for Softimage? I was hoping for 2nd one as other 2 got their 2nd

[owei]

...hm...maybe they have nothing more to show..? hopefully not
...ah, and don´t forget, Soft is the unloved child, that is kept in the basement and after all just a particle system

[bottleofram]

no other sneak peeks for Softimage? I was hoping for 2nd one as other 2 got their 2nd

Let me introduce to you something they probably call product ranking:

group 1: maya, max
group 2: softimage, motion builder, mudbox

How does it work:

group 1: some rules apply
group 2: other rules apply

How it manifested itself:

- second group is going to be presented on 26th, first the day after
- second group 1 sneak peek; first group 2 sneak peeks

So there you go. Mystery solved.

[Rez007]

no other sneak peeks for Softimage? I was hoping for 2nd one as other 2 got their 2nd

Let me introduce to you something they probably call product ranking:

group 1: maya, max
group 2: softimage, motion builder, mudbox

How does it work:

group 1: some rules apply
group 2: other rules apply

How it manifested itself:

- second group is going to be presented on 26th, first the day after
- second group 1 sneak peek; first group 2 sneak peeks

So there you go. Mystery solved.

I was thinking about the show line-up as well. I think the only other spot that could have been better would be right in the middle of Max and Maya. I think putting it in between Mudbox and Motionbuilder, they might be trying to get it placed where where it can do two things. A.) Bring more people in to look at Mudbox and Motionbuilder during that timeframe by sticking the main feature piece of Softimage in the middle, and B.) Possilbly getting more users from Mudbox and Motion Builder to look at Softimage - and who knows, maybe some of the new features of Softimage 2014 might correlate with those other two packages. I think if they placed it with Maya and Max, it might have gotten lost, as those viewers just tend to show up for their specific products only and leave when their presentation is done. Now, there is always the other option, which I like to think is the reason, is that AD was afraid if they line-up the awesomeness of Softimage with Max and Maya the viewers would think twice about Softimage and give it a try, inturn, loosing Max/Maya seats.

In actuality though, it probably has to do with how AD preceives Softimage with that imfamous marketing graph...kind of like how you broke it down.

[angus_davidson]

Nobody developed on linux at Softimage, just occasionally debug when necessary. On Maya, there are devs on each platforms and in fact I'm on the mac.

Having had various goes at trying to using SI on Linux I can only say it really showed that SI dev was windows only. I sincerely hope that 2014 will allow SI to use that same standalone licence as the rest of the Linux components.

I can only hope the culture of developing on multiple platforms comes to SI soon. There are masses of macs in education and in a lot of cases the decision on what to teach for 3D classes is based purely on what is available for OSX, which means Maya becomes the default program for education. I chat with a lot of fellow educators who would love to teach SI but cant because there IT guys wont allow bootcamp. Even at my own institution Windows running under Bootcamp is not supported at all.

[Ahmidou]

I can only hope the culture of developing on multiple platforms comes to SI soon.

People should understand that this will never happen, it has already been stated that this would require a massive core rewrite and there are way more important things to fix/improve.

Cheers
A.

[angus_davidson]

I can only hope the culture of developing on multiple platforms comes to SI soon.

People should understand that this will never happen, it has already been stated that this would require a massive core rewrite and there are way more important things to fix/improve.

Cheers
A.

Unfortunately thats a very short sighted viewpoint. As an ex systems architect I am very well aware of what is involved. You only ever jump forward in little steps if you dont occasionaly refresh the core of what you have. Sooner or later you become too constrained by the systems you currently have in place. Strategically thats just very bad business sense. Also its been stated before that there are a lot of things they simply cannot fix or do because they are contrained by the system they currently have in place.

In my experience its its virtually always been quicker to take a step outside and say okay what can we do better, using the improved tools / technologies available now compared to 5 years ago and build it from the ground up. It allows you to get rid of all of the compromises you have had to make. Starting anew doesnt mean you have to radically change the look and feel, usibilty, etc. Some of the best systems are those that to the layman look and act the same as before, just they now work so much better / faster

To be honest the one thing I hope the new team has the guts to do is take this step. I am so tired of hearing well that a great idea, just unfortunately because of the way we built SI we cant do it.

The main danger is that SI as good as it is will become outdated. The stuff they can do with the fabric engine for example runs rings around SI on a technolgy front and its only in early beta.

To give you an example. Silicon Graphics even though it was the best at what it did at the time they became obsolete because they couldnt see the dangers of ignoring superior hardware, Autodesk has a very real chance of hitting the same problem but on a software front.

[ace63]

While you are completely right angus_davidson I think the problem here is the pressure that Autodesk puts on the team to release a new version every year with new features.
A core update WILL take more time than and Autodesk would lose the ability to milk money at regular intervals.
The same is happening with Maya and Max which get more stuff slapped onto their old cores every year. In the long run Autodesk is destined to fail with this strategy.

[Rork]

One would almost resurrect the old 'new core' gossip that floated around some years ago. ;)

At that point the rumor was AD was working on the nex gen 3D app, consolidating all the good bits from every app into a single 'killer' app.

Aaannd I derailed this thread I guess...

[xsisupport]

The main danger is that SI as good as it is will become outdated. The stuff they can do with the fabric engine for example runs rings around SI on a technolgy front and its only in early beta.

To give you an example. Silicon Graphics even though it was the best at what it did at the time they became obsolete because they couldnt see the dangers of ignoring superior hardware, Autodesk has a very real chance of hitting the same problem but on a software front.

Autodesk isn't going to become the next SGI if Softimage becomes obsolete.