SPOILER ALERT - general Softimage 2013 description

[gustavoeb]

On High Quality Viewport
It matches almost perfectly what you get in the final render (with expetion of complitcated stuff like GI, Arealights and Refraction) and it got some nice stuff like DOF and AOC. The DOF is really nice to adjust it as I work, as I prefer the look of raytraced DOF over the sceenspace plugins that are out there.
Performance wise the videos hint at a lag when turning features on or switching inbetween modes. But have you tried Max's viewport?
It does have the same behaviour. Whenever you switch inbetween modes it needs to do something with the realtime shaders, and that seems to take some time. Now if that happends when panning and rotation around it will be a bit frustrating. Anyhow you might not use this while you are modeling/animating/whatever, but you can now capture a preview in this mode, and I'll bet your clients will feel a lot more confortable with the output.

On CrodFX
I am not doing crowd stuff in SI, and I dont know if I ever will, some people are...

Ive worked at places where crowd scenes were done, but we never did it using 3d. It was always up to the compositing wizards as we tagged this as beign "not pratical" to do in 3d. So this opens the door for new possibilities. When ICE was released I was also saying "hey Ill never use this".
Considering Suites, Im sure a lot of people from Maya/Max might go CrowdFX if issues with FBX have been minimized and if theyre AI needs are not super high. So, a good thing to keep the product alive and relevant.
To finish it of, some of the inner compounds and stuff might be usefull outside such a specific content, but as with HQV, we need to get our hands dirty to get a better feel what this is all about.

On everything else
-Mentalray implementation seing no update feels very said. Maya people (finally) got BSDF shaders. This would be nice to have here also. I still think even a well implemented MR wont save your ass (if you know what I mean ;) ), but since people are paying for it, would be expected to have most up-to-date features implemented.
-I hope References are usable. With render passes, deltas and all that.

[iamVFX]

Nothing is going to please you folks, seriously NOTHING.

Properly working EdgeIsHard attribute will please me so well Can't wait for bug fix list

[Bellsey]

Just because it sounded unbelievable at first But I understand, you were pushing as much as you could.

I was interested to find out more about this sentence.

Well what I was meaning, if we too a latest & greatest version of MR and it had some fixes but was too unstable for out needs, would you still want it implemented and shipped? Personally I wouldn't want that.

ok, put it down to 2 choices, you can have a minor point release of MR with some bug fixes and it retains its stability. Or you can have the very latest MR but
its full of bugs, perhaps unoptimized and maybe unstable for your needs.

Btw, this is nothing to do with MR in 2013 as I don't have those details, I'm just try to put forward some rational as to why we might not have used a newer MR release, or added newer features.

[SreckoM]

Got it thanks!

[Bellsey]

Exactly what I was going to say!
No-one seems to touch the view once the viewport has resolved. I thought the whole point of this was that you can try out camera angles, and maybe even animate in HQV. Is it so slow that it isn't possible to do this?

Ok, here is something that I have quickly done. This was recorded on my HP Elitebook 8730w; Nvidia Quadro 3700M; 8GB ram
I am also running two copies of Maya 2013 in the background.

[azurecgi]

Thankyou Bellsey

I feel a bit more optimistic now!

[iamVFX]

Nvidia Quadro 3700M

Is it previous generation card too?

[gustavoeb]

Thanks for that Bellsey. The thing looks solid, lag seems to affect only when switching... Wich was expected, really.

[Philo]

I don't get the amount of negativity and cynicism that I see every day in these forums.

What really amazes me is that if any of these features had been released by a third party developer, all the negativity would suddenly turn to pure awe and excitement and everyone would say that it should be in the official release. It looks like for some people, the go-to reaction for official releases is to cr*p all over the new features and the people behind them, no matter what. If it's released under the Autodesk banner it must be useless or broken, right?

Paraphrasing: "What? the HQ viewport doesn't look as good as a fully rendered frame and is not as fast as a normal viewport? Then this feature is by all means useless to everyone!" to which I answer: Ever done any previz work?

And to those who complain about the demo being done on an old graphics card, if it had been done on a recently released card we would probably have seen the opposite reaction: "Yeah but I bet it fails if you don't have the latest and best hardware around!" - There were actually similar comments before people knew what hardware was used for the demo...

I don't get how these features could be considered to constitute a bad release. If I don't understand some of the features, it's probably because they don't fit into my personal specialty, but that sure doesn't mean they're useless. That just means I'm not the target audience. Just because you don't personally see the point/use of a feature doesn't make it useless or make this "the worst release ever".

If you want features added, or if you want something fixed, complaining about it here isn't going to change anything. Go through the official channels, that's why they exist. I for one am more than pleased with this release. Great job SI devs!

[Bellsey]

I do have a newer workstations here in the London office (windows and Linux) with a Nvidia 4000 in it, but I haven't run Soft on it yet. In fact I haven't run anything 2013 on it yet, but I will be soon.

[Kzin]

Just because it sounded unbelievable at first But I understand, you were pushing as much as you could.

I was interested to find out more about this sentence.

Well what I was meaning, if we too a latest & greatest version of MR and it had some fixes but was too unstable for out needs, would you still want it implemented and shipped? Personally I wouldn't want that.

ok, put it down to 2 choices, you can have a minor point release of MR with some bug fixes and it retains its stability. Or you can have the very latest MR but
its full of bugs, perhaps unoptimized and maybe unstable for your needs.

Btw, this is nothing to do with MR in 2013 as I don't have those details, I'm just try to put forward some rational as to why we might not have used a newer MR release, or added newer features.

the problem is that we need to be able to install newer mr releases with bug fixes inside of xsi.
the situation now is that we have to wait until the next release to get a fixed mr version, but in the meantime mi fixed alot of the issues. this is not only bugfixes, also improvements of mr.
in the last year they did some improvements, like unified, the fg-ip thing, hair optimizations, but we have to wait until the next release (except the fg mapcontainer bug which we get thru a hotfix or more general a showstopper bug is fixed as soon as possible). so waiting a half year everytime is not that funny.

it is possible to get an awnser if the ibl and new sss shaders are in xsi now or have we wait for next release one year from now or beyond?

[Bellsey]

the problem is that we need to be able to install newer mr releases with bug fixes inside of xsi.
the situation now is that we have to wait until the next release to get a fixed mr version, but in the meantime mi fixed alot of the issues. this is not only bugfixes, also improvements of mr.
in the last year they did some improvements, like unified, the fg-ip thing, hair optimizations, but we have to wait until the next release (except the fg mapcontainer bug which we get thru a hotfix or more general a showstopper bug is fixed as soon as possible). so waiting a half year everytime is not that funny.

it is possible to get an awnser if the ibl and new sss shaders are in xsi now or have we wait for next release one year from now or beyond?

I don't have any information to hand regarding the MR in the 2013 products.
But yes I agree, there has been changes, but at the same time, we also need to ensure that if the devs add new things that Softimage and any other products remain stable and usable.

[gfxman]

ok I'll bite..
It's one thing to feedback on a release as being poor or underwhelming, but to just spout out that its the worst ever...sorry I don't see or get that.
I also don't agree with the comment. But that's peoples prerogative.

Let's assume this can be true, or, that this is true....

It's very tricky to satisfy everyone's needs, in fact I'd say its near impossible. Also as I've said before in previous threads, we don't have an infinite resource, the guys have to sensible about the requirements from users and what they can realistically get done in the time, and also ensure that the product remains as stable as possible.
The Mental Ray thing is perhaps a good example, personally I wouldn't want the guys to implement a new version of MR unless its addresses the concerns I have and/or it's stable enough.

I think you're listening to the wrong requests. But that's just my opinion.
True, maybe it's just me and some other people, that can't really see the use for the crowd thing. I remember the same reaction about "behaviour" and maybe (less) for FaceRobot.

But i think (because i read it every day on the softimage forums....) that a lot of people care more about modelling, texturing and rendering improvments.
Just an opinion, maybe we can make a poll.

As for the web pages, I actually think they look good and alot better than previous years, and this is also part of the ongoing work to improve the AREA and its navigation. These are just product landing pages with high level information. There maybe only 2 videos, but Marks blog post has 7 videos and its probable that people will go to his blog first for info.
The info about fixes, known issue and limitations will come later as the product hasn't shipped yet. I don''t know where this information will appear as I don't control it, but based on previous years it will probably appear on the Autodesk main product page, and/or the wiki.

It's not opinion time anymore.
This is simply not true. The 2 pages are the worst "new feature and product" presentation i've seen in years. There is no way this is an opinion, it is a fact. You can see how the maya one have more video and share more love about the release. Even the 2011/2012 has more then 2 videos ( actually 6 : http://area.autodesk.com/softimage2011 )

This is mark posts for 2011 / 2012
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/marks/in ... e_modeling
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/marks/in ... with_lagoa

Just look at them, at least a lot of more videos....

.... now look at the work done for modo 601:
http://www.luxology.com/modo/601/tour/index.aspx

This is a good presentation.

As for us not caring about this videos, making them appealing, or rushing them out, then again as I said before it often comes down to available resource. I would liked to have done some videos but I simply haven't had the time. Its also not my area to produce materials for the new releases, we have people who do that.
I tried to produce some preview videos but unfortunately they didn't seem to meet peoples expectations, so I'm not sure about doing any in the future, especially if I can't deliver what people will want. I wish we had someone in our Tech Marketing who knew Softimage to the level of the Maya/Max guys, but we don't have that person, so Chinny fills in and I still think he does a great job.

I'm sorry.....the biggest 3d company, the monopolist of 3d word, doesn't have the resuorces to make more then 2 videos for softimage? The situation must be really bad.
I think that the best thing you can do, is to recognise that the presentation job hasn't be done properly, take some time and effort to make it better.
Not you "directly" but the company should do it...

[Memag]

take some time and effort to make it better.

Who pays for that?

[gfxman]

take some time and effort to make it better.

Who pays for that?

Are you seriouse?
If they give me access to the 2013 beta i'll make 10 videos of the new features in 2 hours.

[Memag]

take some time and effort to make it better.

Who pays for that?

Are you seriouse?
If they give me access to the 2013 beta i'll make 10 videos of the new features in 2 hours.

Well, maybe Softimage and beta guys can comment on this.