Mentalray EOL

[Bellsey]

I don't really see any correlation between the Mental Ray EoL and Softimage EoL.

That wasn't the point being made. It was that Mentalray obsolescence contributed to demise of Softimage in say the perid of ~2003 to ~2007.

FxDude ICE appeared while Softimage was still with Avid.

I'm not so sure about that. '03-'07 is quite a gap really. And by '03 many of the previous big Soft3D customers had already shifted to Maya (I know at EA we had and MR wasn't a big factor). I think MR was still fine for most of that period, it was only maybe towards the end of that and into '07 that perhaps MR was looking abit tired. If anything I'd say Soft was in some ways propping it up.

FxDude, you've put alot down there, and I think got some wires crossed.
MPC have been a Maya studio for as long as I can remember, so Softimage acquisition and EoL barely hit them. Kim Aldis sold his company in the early noughties, and after some consulting got out of the industry, long before acquistion and EoL.

Also I can categorically say from my view, even from day one at Autodesk I was never told to stop pushing Softimage and start moving people to Maya. It was only towards the end that I was taken aside and politely told to wind things down, if I look back I could probably find the date. The official word came not long after that.

[FXDude]

Indeed I know MPC was -mostly- using Maya,
(as opposed to the rest of the shops mentionned which were moslty Softimage based including a bunch I left out like Hybirde etc..)
but I put it in because there were (and possibly still is?) quite a few XSI (and ICE) users there (at least in Montreal),
heavily used in Guardians of the Galaxy, T5 Genysys, among a host of other stuff.

For Kim, I don't know when he sold his company, but was very active in forums, started making ICE things..
going on making scripts as he'd done since forever it seems, and all of that just stopped barely "moments" after...
may have been other factors I dont know,. but that's still just Kim, I know of others that became gardners when all that came down,
Kim then became a photographer as far as I know.

And I'm sure they didn't explicitly ask employees to actively downplay XSI, but the very first press release "Fast growing games market??"
is a fine example... later represented as a particle software (always in the BG) ... night and dfay treatment relative to how say Arnold was...

But regardless of any of that,
-->> the fact that devs and all were already getting all reshuffled to middleware from the start??, well before the Singapore move...

anyways (give me a break)

[Bellsey]

Indeed I know MPC was -mostly- using Maya,
(as opposed to the rest of the shops mentionned which were moslty Softimage based including a bunch I left out like Hybirde etc..)
but I put it in because there were (and possibly still is?) quite a few XSI (and ICE) users there (at least in Montreal),
heavily used in Guardians of the Galaxy, T5 Genysys, among a host of other stuff.

For Kim, I don't know when he sold his company, but was very active in forums, started making ICE things..
going on making scripts as he'd done since forever it seems, and all of that just stopped barely "moments" after...
may have been other factors I dont know,. but that's still just Kim, I know of others that became gardners when all that came down,
Kim then became a photographer as far as I know.

And I'm sure they didn't explicitly ask employees to actively downplay XSI, but the very first press release "Fast growing games market??"
is a fine example... later represented as a particle software (always in the BG) ... night and dfay treatment relative to how say Arnold was...

But regardless of any of that,
-->> the fact that devs and all were already getting all reshuffled to middleware from the start??, well before the Singapore move...

anyways (give me a break)

Well personally I think you're reading too much into things and overthinking stuff, especially with interpreting press releases. You're maybe giving people and AD way too much credit, lol.

As for Kim, I don't recall him doing much with ICE, I think he'd retired by then. I think perhaps you might be getting mixed up with Brad Gabe, who did some early ICE stuff but quit the industry to become a doctor.

[FXDude]

Well personally I think you're reading too much into things and overthinking stuff, especially with interpreting press releases. You're maybe giving people and AD way too much credit, lol.

Fine. Mr. everything is fine

As for Kim, I don't recall him doing much with ICE, I think he'd retired by then. I think perhaps you might be getting mixed up with Brad Gabe, who did some early ICE stuff but quit the industry to become a doctor.

started making ICE things..

on his blog... which became where he now puts his pretty pictures (taken with a camera).

Which I can understand the motive of not wanting to put up with any of the bull that was being peddled at the time (to this day so it seems), I too have had urges to pick-up gardening (or something)

But I aslo like doing 3D (in software that works -with- me)

[Bellsey]

Well personally I think you're reading too much into things and overthinking stuff, especially with interpreting press releases. You're maybe giving people and AD way too much credit, lol.

Fine. Mr. everything is fine

Well as someone who was actually there and inside the mothership, the truth isn't probably that exciting, that's why its funny reading peoples theories. People probably wouldn't believe it anyway.
Maybe I should do an 'ask me anything' session, lol.

As for Kim, I don't recall him doing much with ICE, I think he'd retired by then. I think perhaps you might be getting mixed up with Brad Gabe, who did some early ICE stuff but quit the industry to become a doctor.

started making ICE things..

on his blog... which became where he now puts his pretty pictures (taken with a camera).

Which I can understand the motive of not wanting to put up with any of the bull that was being peddled at the time (to this day so it seems), I too have had urges to pick-up gardening (or something)

But I aslo like doing 3D (in software that works -with- me) [/quote]

I can't speak for him, but I personally don't believe the Softimage acquisition directly led to him 'retiring'. That's what you seem to be suggesting to me anyway.

[Bullit]

From outside i think Softimage people stopped believing in Softimage before Autodesk.

[luceric]

I don't really see any correlation between the Mental Ray EoL and Softimage EoL.

That wasn't the point being made. It was that Mentalray obsolescence contributed to demise of Softimage in say the perid of ~2003 to ~2007.

FxDude ICE appeared while Softimage was still with Avid.

It's so bizarre to read these opinions. Those were the years of growth. Few people used XSI before 2003, they just got it for free with Softimage|3D. And it was super expensive (8,000$-15,000$). The user base, not counting Foundation, was always going up every release.

[luceric]

luceric how do you explain ICE, it wasn't certainly for character animation work. It was a decision to branch the application to more areas.

I think this is veering off-topic but ICE was made for two things 1) to apease the user base by giving them a revamp a Particle module (a constant point of complaints) and 2) creating multi-threaded deformers and rigging.

So yes, ICE is for character animation. The ICE project was totally stalled until Ronald could get a Character Animation business reason to do it.

We spent years on deforms, ICE-ifying Face Robot, and trying to get ICE Kinematics. The ICE future plan was around character components and real time ICE in the game engine.

[luceric]

If Vray does not matter why ultimately Softimage got Vray and Softimage developers had to do hard work to get API/SDK fixed for Vray?

You're replying to a comment where I am writing that the presence or lack of Vray didn't matter to Softimage's success, which is a pipeline character animation tool. That is not disproven by Softimage getting a Vray plugin as I also wrote that we did a percentage of work for the legacy business, and that the rendering and shader APIs were made also for real-time rendering.

Vray is a plugin that was on hold for years, and they probably lost a lot of momentum and opportunity (for example to Arnold) by only releasing it in 2012, even without considering the EOL. Their plugin is compatible with XSI 7 we released in 2008.

I met with Vlado at Siggraph (I was the development manager, during that time), and work was on hold at that point as they had heard from the developer that a new installable shader API was in the works. (It came in Softimage 2010) The other renderers didn't wait. I think there wasn't a lot of effort or motivation behind it, in parts because it was hard to gauge opportunity size.

[Mathaeus]

Also, as a side note remember how painful it was to really render anything from ICE?

My impression was more around 'limited by MR capabilities', somehow typical "can display in viewport, can not render'' for SI. For exact example, ICE was able to do a way more complex hair-strands structures than Shave in XSI, especially variations in hair density, but MR rasterizer as best MR option for such task in these times, took ages to render, whatever option I've tried. And that was only a start of problems, in XSI 2010 it was nasty bug with rasterizer and ICE strands. In short, support for ICE strands in 3delight, 2010, was a savior of my strand works, otherwise I think I'll stop completely with XSI anything, around 2009 - 2010. 3delight was present as XSI plugin since XSI6, however they added support for ICE strands later, in early 2010.
As true REYES renderer, it was around 5 -10 times stronger than MR, while yeah, it delivered own set of problems. Anyway, I think ICE FX part, clearly showed how weak is one-renderer-for-all *concept*, at least in these times. I naively believed in idea, strongly supported by MR TDs on SI forums, that we do not need REYES renderer in SI because we already have MR rasterizer, which was true in some parts, as long as mentioned 5-10 times weaker and slower was OK....
Later, since around 2011, Arnold and other path tracers with usable support for MIS (multiple importance sampling), like Blender Cycles or Houdini Mantra, finally introduced the unified user experience for hair and hard surface rendering, for price of rendering time, but, *unified*. I'd say, around 2011 MR was completely out of ''circle of leaders''.

Before let's say 2011 it was ''just'' an unrealistic, over optimistic idea of having one renderer for all. MR always been a great Jack of all trades, master of none. For another example, around XSI 6 I knew I had to leave some particle sprite rendering gigs to Mayans, because they were able to deliver probably 20X times faster, using Maya Hardware renderer. Maxers already had V-Ray for interiors, while for simple characters good old Max Scanline or Maya SW were able to offer a way faster rendering, OK minus few rendering features, but completely unrecognizable for buyers in these times.

I do not blame developers for anything, I'd believe they did best possible. However, in 2017, if some user still defends idea of using only MR and nothing else, for everything, now that's more a subject for kind of re-socialization program, IMO.

[Bellsey]

Also, as a side note remember how painful it was to really render anything from ICE?

My impression was more around 'limited by MR capabilities', somehow typical "can display in viewport, can not render'' for SI. For exact example, ICE was able to do a way more complex hair-strands structures than Shave in XSI, especially variations in hair density, but MR rasterizer as best MR option for such task in these times, took ages to render, whatever option I've tried. And that was only a start of problems, in XSI 2010 it was nasty bug with rasterizer and ICE strands. In short, support for ICE strands in 3delight, 2010, was a savior of my strand works, otherwise I think I'll stop completely with XSI anything, around 2009 - 2010. 3delight was present as XSI plugin since XSI6, however they added support for ICE strands later, in early 2010.
As true REYES renderer, it was around 5 -10 times stronger than MR, while yeah, it delivered own set of problems. Anyway, I think ICE FX part, clearly showed how weak is one-renderer-for-all *concept*, at least in these times. I naively believed in idea, strongly supported by MR TDs on SI forums, that we do not need REYES renderer in SI because we already have MR rasterizer, which was true in some parts, as long as mentioned 5-10 times weaker and slower was OK....
Later, since around 2011, Arnold and other path tracers with usable support for MIS (multiple importance sampling), like Blender Cycles or Houdini Mantra, finally introduced the unified user experience for hair and hard surface rendering, for price of rendering time, but, *unified*. I'd say, around 2011 MR was completely out of ''circle of leaders''.

Before let's say 2011 it was ''just'' an unrealistic, over optimistic idea of having one renderer for all. MR always been a great Jack of all trades, master of none. For another example, around XSI 6 I knew I had to leave some particle sprite rendering gigs to Mayans, because they were able to deliver probably 20X times faster, using Maya Hardware renderer. Maxers already had V-Ray for interiors, while for simple characters good old Max Scanline or Maya SW were able to offer a way faster rendering, OK minus few rendering features, but completely unrecognizable for buyers in these times.

I do not blame developers for anything, I'd believe they did best possible. However, in 2017, if some user still defends idea of using only MR and nothing else, for everything, now that's more a subject for kind of re-socialization program, IMO.

What I was basically saying was that it wasn't easy at first and it didn't really get any better for a good couple of years.
It was an all too familiar issue when demoing ICE particles to non-Softimage users and studios. They loved ICE but when it cam to rendering it was always tricky. Max guys would always mention FumeFX and we had no real proper solution to counter. It was something that Mark and I mentioned several times.
I don't think that was down to Mental Ray per se, more the lack of a coherent solution and also API work for other renderers. By the time it came it was kinda too late as Luc_eric has alluded too.
I also don't think it was down to the belief that Mental Ray was all we needed, it was what we had at the time and we had to go with it. You're caught between a rock and a hard place, if we'd waiting ICE might not have made it out at all, and we had to get something out there, certainly for the existing commmunity.

[Mathaeus]

By the way just wanted to see what Maya people are saying about this EoL, and.... they have nothing to say. One or zero reply on CG Talk or AD forum. I believed there must be good number of Mayans who just can't live without for any weird reason, but, nothing, like it never even existed. More comments about Maya Software Renderer, not developed for ages. So, nice, time for me too, to slowly and surely try to forget it, at all.

[FXDude]

I would think (as I presume you do too) that it likely has to do with the fact that there hasn't been any lack of at least comparible (or better/ faster) aternatives that were being used, even way before any EOL, or while it was actually still intergrated in whichever DCC.

Unlike other EOLed stuff that comes to mind.. to which I presume is what you've been trying to make parallels with.
"defends idea of using only MR and nothing else, for everything"

[Bellsey]

By the way just wanted to see what Maya people are saying about this EoL, and.... they have nothing to say. One or zero reply on CG Talk or AD forum. I believed there must be good number of Mayans who just can't live without for any weird reason, but, nothing, like it never even existed. More comments about Maya Software Renderer, not developed for ages. So, nice, time for me too, to slowly and surely try to forget it, at all.

This is hardly surprising really. Maya's core markets are games and vfx. Maya is the main 3D software in film and many of the main vfx studios went to PRman years ago. Games wouldn't have been bothered about a software renderer unless doing FMV and that trends started to die out years ago in favour if using the games engine itself. Then other renderers like Vray had started gaining momentum outside the Max market.
I would think that one of the main reasons people maybe have continued using Mental Ray was that it was simply there and free. If you're not doing alot of rendering, you might not want to invest in a specific solution, so the free bundled option was probably alright.

Certainly from what I saw many Maya guys didn't really like it and the fact they couldn't properly get rid of it from the install. Many complained about it. When it was made a proper plugin that could be easily detached, people dropped it like a stone.

[FXDude]

what I saw many Maya guys didn't really like it and the fact they couldn't properly get rid of it from the install.
When it was made a proper plugin that could be easily detached, people dropped it like a stone.

I wouldn't go that far, still way more complained about it's absence than it's presence(if at all?),
which didn't otherwise obstruct other renderers or anything.

Was still pretty useful (and faster than Arnold) for a bunch of stuff, and as mentioned elsewhere here,
it was making some pretty good strides later-on. (once guaranteed income security whatever they did stopped)

What's arguably more unfortunate than the EOL in itself,
is how slowly it was making any headway for GI in particular (also probably because of guaranteed income security)
XSI without any official dev was getting more updates lol
Because otherwise, it was a darn good renderer only equaled in flexibility by Arnold.

Some innovative/interesting 3rd party stuff people did with it.. fast and great looking shaders including skin metal etc ...
https://www.rombo.tools/#carousel-homepage-latestnews

and you can get more of a feel of the hole it made on MRforMaya forums (rather than CGTalk) also with comments from "Puppet"
https://forum.nvidia-arc.com/showthread ... standalone

[luceric]

Why aren't the Autodesk forums filled with complaints about mental ray EOL... I think it's because people learned 18 months ago that it wasn't going to be included in Maya/Max 2017 and that Autodesk was pushing them towards Arnold. They've had plenty of time to process their feelings. They have time to transition, and now that you have to pay for a plugin, mental ray has become just one of many options.

At this point, a studio that is comfortable with Maya and Mental probably also has a permanent license of Maya 2016 and render nodes of mental ray that they can use for years, while they figure out where to go next. There are also could render services out there they can get additional render nodes. They're good for 3 or 4 years if they want to procrastinate.