Great work done with Softimage

[MauricioPC]

This thread is my penitence for never have bought Softimage.

[FXDude]

If I'd do commercial work as an "independant" (which I'm contemplating on doing lol )
I'd "buy" a Maya indie licence, and let them sue me because I'd be using XSI v2015 instead of Maya 2018-20 with bifrost extention (lol ... sigh)

[FXDude]

ALOT of XSI in there
( with also some Houdini and maybe some Maya ( ? ) )

[FXDude]

There's also ALOT of XSI in Glasswork's latest showreel


( they also use Houdini .... wonder if they tried Bifrost )

Nevertheless, It's almost like looking at the latest XSI showreel lol

BTW, I tried looking-up Bifrost jobs, and there was litterally NO "Bifrost Artist" position, other than a mention in an MPC job post just besides Houdini,
( they may also have been talking about "Naiaid" implementation in Maya as opposed to the more recent node based engine with the same name )

But hasn't it been more than 3 years that it been out ?

or is there like a list of Bifrost compounds that users have made ?

Things might "pick-up" at some point I suppose.


Because -technically- alot of what was possible in ICE ... SHOULD also be possible in Bifrost.

There are a few "user-made compounds" .. some if not most of which are very dependant on which BF version you're using,
or there's still no guarantee that your compounds would still work by the next "update" .. if not most likely would eventually stop working given enough time,
( just saying because the very earlyest XSI compounds would STILL WORK,
and ONE YEAR after ICE 1.0 was out, was there TONS of compounds, and my first post XSI7 job, was an "ICE job"

Otherwise It looks maybe a bit easier to grasp than Fabric Engine ... ( which for many things, FE was even not AT ALL "easy to grasp" )

and while I'm sure there was "IO" going-on with ICE & XSI ... it was completely transparent ... or made to be "seemless".

Now getting stuff out of Bifrost .. while it's been made to be an easy one step single right-click "Make Maya Object" ( or something ) on an output node
it's still like "a big step", while loosing any performance advantage when doing so, and otherwise, or in this case, Maya is like "a displayer" of whatever goes on in Bifrost
and all making some amounts of "clutter" as no maya objects are "edited" or "modified" by Bifrost, so "editing" a mesh implies an input mesh, a bifrost mesh ("ineditable" in maya), and a bifrost output mesh.
( reminds me of a "fast mode" of FabricEngine, where "output objects" would only be displayed while becoming "ineditable", but that would be OFF by default )

Otherwise, it seems people & shops have been sticking with nParticles, and maybe sometimes "soup nodes" for stuff that round trips to houdini would be "overkill",
also maybe because of scripting access, (only Maya and Arnold knows what goes on in Bifrost) and maybe to have stuff like "right there"
( "outputs" of soup nodes is just "regular" Maya geometry and/or "regular" Maya points )

http://soup-dev.com/forum.html?p=post%2 ... trail%3D15
( ICE was like "soup nodes", but user-made nodes would not be "black boxes" and would be on steroids lol )

Also BTW, it ended-up being really for nothing that Bifrost was made to be an "external engine",
as 3DSMax integration was abandoned, and Marcus Stram(something) has left the company.
Not abandoned in Maya ... or maybe not yet as it could slowly become like x-gen or mudbox.
( or the abandoned FXTree in XSI lol )

So while it might still "pick-up" ... I don't know, but at first glance it strikes me as Bifrost has basically failed.


If I could make a suggestion to the parent company (like a message in a bottle),
I would suggest ... maybe not to "open source" XSI ... but to "mudbox it"

Mudbox is still existing/available, but is no longer being developped, also like Apple did with Shake until Nuke came ..
or should have "killed it" only when bifrost was viable ... which I don't think we're there yet
( if ever ) as we're still looking towards the future for a glimmer of hope of getting back to SQUARE 1 in these matters.
( remains a super big "if", while probably maybe would just never happen lol, while most "ICE artists" ALREADY migrated to Houdini YEARS ago )

In any event, alot about XSI was all about making that kind of stuff (in the video),
and/or having a dinosaur come out of the lake with stuff dangling off of it, before crashing through a cabin, all with "muscle simulation" .. interacting with trees ... and everything ...
... would be a "relative peace of cake" in the SINGLE UNIFIED ENVIRONMENT present in something as "versatile" as XSI
or remains kinda like a fast and easy to use Houdini, built into an easy to use and STABLE/RELIABLE, scripting language agnostic, and PROCEDURAL version of Maya lol

_____________________

Not to sound negative, but sometimes it feels like we've been thrown back at least a good 10 years, if not 20 years for some things lol

I personally consider that we're going through "the dark ages of CG"
also referring to "New Python" (arguably un-necessarily) obsoleting basically any/all Python2x-script based programs in existance ...
( did ANY developper feel something when C++ switched to unicode ?
NO! because it would just continue to read C++ script the same way, even if written in ASCII, except that now you could assing a " " to a variable lol )

... so pymel is "at risk" of becoming buggyer .... Mgear is also "at risk",
( unless COMPLETELY rewriting their thing from scratch, like Blender did with their python3 API more than 10 years ago )
so is Maya "at risk" which is ALREADY borderlining on rediculous how buggy Maya can be ...

Most problems which we probably haven't seen yet, because I think most shops are still on 2018 of Maya ? (despite paying for yearly updates)
like NOBODY wants to upgrade lol
( only represents "pointless trouble" )

I can remember a time when we'd be just waiting for new versions ...
as each version came with more or less of just WOOOWW!! lol

ahh! good times : ) or "those were the days" lol

[FXDude]

3min, 4K, 24fps, 5.1 audio

CREDITS
Director/Creator: Stephan Haidacher
Sound Design: Leeran Z. Raphaely

Softimage, Houdini, Redshift

I can recall seeing a preview of this earlier,
was just as astonishing, but vimeo compression in HD destroyed -alot- of detail,
while now it's even more than pristine !

Like you HAVE to watch it in HD and in full screen lol

Some of the comments, Including from Mr Mootz ! ::

Eric Mootz
Beautiful!

Stephan Haidacher
Hey Eric!
I learned a lot from your excellent ice compounds and plugins, and topolizer was used in quite a few shots, so thank you!

Jeffrey BowersAlum
Amazing work. Beautiful world building.

Jules J - Motion Design
Amazing stuffs here, you are an inspiration for motion designers. That is sick

Cristiano Siqueira
Amazing work. Just curious, how long does it take to fully render a project like this one?

Cristiano Siqueira
Thank you @deroesi . Majestic work!

I'd Rather Be Outdoors
o_o You're awesome Stephan

Stephan Haidacher
Thanks! the finals would take around a month or two (on 4 nodes 'a 2 GPUs) to render...

Wydrox XV
Simply Wow

Asm Emran
Nice

Blu Posner
This is awesome!

Hugh Sutherland
Whoah. I have no idea what I just watched. A wildlife documentary? An alien invasion?
A geometric representation of the U.S. national debt?
Anyway it was awesome!

Chocos59
La c’est quand même du gros dossier visuellement à tomber par terre!

Linebug
Beautiful!

TimAllan Holaday
W.....O.....W, that is abso. the coolest.......!!!

( sigh XSI )

[MauricioPC]

There's also ALOT of XSI in Glasswork's latest showreel


If I could make a suggestion to the parent company (like a message in a bottle),
I would suggest ... maybe not to "open source" XSI ... but to "mudbox it"

Honestly if they mudbox it I would use it.

[FXDude]

I cant help BUT to use it regardless lol
( for "personal experiments" )
It's still where I "push the limits of CG".

[MauricioPC]

I know I know. Since I never owned I can't. Getting back into Houdini as it's the next best thing I guess.

[FXDude]

There was never a "PLE" or "indie" edition of XSI, other than the very crippled "ModTool"
( yet there was a 400$ deal at some point, and should have jumped on that lol )

While Maya use to have such an edition, well before "indie licenses".

But that's what these editions should be for...

Because $9,000 Houdini + 10,000$ now rental-only Nuke + 4k per year Maya = 23,000$
which is even COMPLETELY unrealistic for just "dabbling\practicing at home"

That while it's not in the midst of production that you start experimenting stuff.
( yet some shops allow for at least SOME "RND time" )

So like for probably most people.. "experiments" mostly happen in "off times", or when things are "slower".
( which often mostly happens at home )
before using the software commercially under deadlines using shop's licenses.
( I don't think I've ever come across a shop that were -not- using fully licensed software )

And I was no exception to that way of doing, so since FOREVER would I use XSI at home,
and I just never stopped doing that lol.


I'm otherwise okay with using XSI, because I use it as a "PLE", like the fully functional PLE version of Nuke AND of Houdini.
( not for commercial use)

And as mentioned before, if using commercially, I'd "buy" a year's worth of a Maya indie license,
and would use XSI instead of Maya lol
( before renewing the next year )


BTW, I have NO problem shelling out -hundreds- for personal licenses
( like my PERMANENT licenses of Redshift and EM-Fluids )

( but if talking about thousands for indie work, then I'd start finding it "a little steep" for whichever software )