SI 2013 sightings

[FabricPaul]

Just wanted to speak up on behalf of Jen, the 'Avid marketing girl'. I thought this was a pretty mean-spirited way to dismiss Jen's contribution. She worked incredibly hard for SI and went above and beyond what was expected of someone in that role. The success of a product/company comes from far more than engineering alone - marketing, PR, event management, partner relations, being a face for customers to talk to - all are critical to success. At times Jen was responsible for all of that at once. I don't see how anyone could dismiss that effort as 'just a marketing girl'. I think she made a big difference in how the company was perceived and we would have suffered without her.

Aside from anything else, she and Christine got the ICE party organized, which was awesome

Paul

[mattmos]

Just wanted to speak up on behalf of Jen, the 'Avid marketing girl'. I thought this was a pretty mean-spirited way to dismiss Jen's contribution. She worked incredibly hard for SI and went above and beyond what was expected of someone in that role. The success of a product/company comes from far more than engineering alone - marketing, PR, event management, partner relations, being a face for customers to talk to - all are critical to success. At times Jen was responsible for all of that at once. I don't see how anyone could dismiss that effort as 'just a marketing girl'. I think she made a big difference in how the company was perceived and we would have suffered without her.

Aside from anything else, she and Christine got the ICE party organized, which was awesome

Paul

QFA! Softimage is much the worse without Jen as an organiser and promoter. And I'm still pissed I missed THAT party.

[Hirazi Blue]

Well indeed - within reason - like i said i myself am dissapointed about a number of things but i was referring to rather extreme statements like "worst release ever" and "this is the end of softimage". If that isn't negativity then i don't know what is...

That isn't necessarily negativity, that's often merely hyperbole...

But the real reason i'm whining about the whining was a worry that this board would decend into a big moan-fest instead of place to get advice and feedback from experienced users and people on the dev team. That's all i wanted say - please continue to discuss 2013

The great thing about forums like this is the way bitching & moaning in one thread doesn't prevent the same people from being helpful (as ever) in another. The si-community has always been a place where critics dared to vent, but after the storm has calmed again (or even in a parallel separate thread), everybody is quite literally back to (forum-)business as usual. I myself am known to publicly criticize Autodesk|Softimage once in a while (some would say: a lot), so I do not want to put too many restrictions on others if they want to do the same... (again: within reason!!!)

But I am not fearful, that the si-community might degrade into a bigger moan-fest than it already sometimes seems to be...

[Kerro Perro]

Well indeed - within reason - like i said i myself am dissapointed about a number of things but i was referring to rather extreme statements like "worst release ever" and "this is the end of softimage". If that isn't negativity then i don't know what is...

That isn't necessarily negativity, that's often merely hyperbole...

But the real reason i'm whining about the whining was a worry that this board would decend into a big moan-fest instead of place to get advice and feedback from experienced users and people on the dev team. That's all i wanted say - please continue to discuss 2013

The great thing about forums like this is the way bitching & moaning in one thread doesn't prevent the same people from being helpful (as ever) in another. The si-community has always been a place where critics dared to vent, but after the storm has calmed again (or even in a parallel separate thread), everybody is quite literally back to (forum-)business as usual. I myself am known to publicly criticize Autodesk|Softimage once in a while (some would say: a lot), so I do not want to put too many restrictions on others if they want to do the same... (again: within reason!!!)
But I am not fearful, that the si-community might degrade into a bigger moan-fest than it already sometimes seems to be...

Ok cool, having cooled off a bit i think reading a 15 page thread in one sitting was a mistake anyway and you probably know this (your?) site better than i do! Ya'll have a nice day now

[jamination]

I think there is more complaining (by a long shot in my opinion) than usual for a Softimage release, and Autodesk would be wise to listen to what listen to ALL their users.

[Clagman]

I think the main reason for the complaining about Soft in general is because none of them have ever used Lightwave in a production ;)

[Maximus]

I speak for myself, when i criticize something of course its my point of view and its about my job.
The 2013 version didnt bring me any single good thing i could use for my work, thats why i vent my disappointment. I dont get the whole "be happy if they add ICE stuff because it makes the package better".

I care for my job and the tools i use, i couldnt care less if Maya users are happy because now they can interchange CrowdFX or use ICE particles, neither if 3ds max users find themselves at home with the new navigation viewport.
For me this was the worse release i've witnessed so far, it got me out of subscription, i just felt what i spent money on wasnt worth neither targeted to the areas of the software i use.

Also many people are disappointed because some aspects of the software are being overlooked by years.
Pointless discussion as usual, every year happens, and things will never change. But i changed and got out of sub.

I'm glad someone found it nice and cool for their daily works tho, you are lucky, enjoy.

[McNistor]

I think the main reason for the complaining about Soft in general is because none of them have ever used Lightwave in a production ;)

Perhaps, but very soon Softimage will probably be the last 3d animation package on the market that doesn't have a muscle system. We needed that a lot more than CrowdFX, but then again CrowdFX was not made primarily for us, XSI users.
Sure every body can use it, but like bottleofram said, when they start changing defaults, settings and names to accommodate others, you kind of wish to keep what you loved in XSI, forget about the new stuff for now.

[Clagman]

I think the main reason for the complaining about Soft in general is because none of them have ever used Lightwave in a production ;)

Perhaps, but very soon Softimage will probably be the last 3d animation package on the market that doesn't have a muscle system. We needed that a lot more than CrowdFX, but then again CrowdFX was not made primarily for us, XSI users.
Sure every body can use it, but like bottleofram said, when they start changing defaults, settings and names to accommodate others, you kind of wish to keep what you loved in XSI, forget about the new stuff for now.

Understood. Improvement on existing tools and workflows is always good. It's funny tho, I can see much more use for the crowd system than a muscle system. I guess the quality of my CA isn't quite up to that level (muscle systems).

[EricTRocks]

A muscle system is pretty useless without a proper skin deformer / skin sliding. Setting up muscle geo to deform and flex is relatively trivial. The hard part is getting the skin to wrap around it and slide elegantly. I would request that if this gets worked on, then I'd really want both and not just the muscle system.

...CrowdFX was not made primarily for us, XSI users..

How so? Just because it can be exported as FBX???

With that, the CrowdFX work is great and it covers the bases for a lot of customers doing film work. Even commercial houses have to be happy about this for the more high end complex spots being worked on. While individuals doing spinning cell phone work, yeah its probably not a big feature for them which is fair.

Demands from your bigger customers is always going to outweigh the individual users any day of the week. If the Japanese gaming studios (this is from my knowledge the biggest Softimage userbase) wants a feature implemented it's probably going to get done.

[Hirazi Blue]

The one thing I don't get (but cannot check for myself either just yet, because I am still waiting for my boxed version of SI2013 to arrive): a good release obviously has a lot to do with a good/nice new feature set. On the other hand, however, so far I haven't seen any reports of big "show stopping" bugs (I remember "disconnecting nodes in the render tree" & "mysterious Mental Ray lag", to name just two from the last couple of years). It might just wel be, that I am missing the pertinent posts/threads, but if there really aren't (m)any of those "show stopping" bugs in this release that should count for something, I would say...
(Feel free to correct me if I am wrong and there are reports of such bugs already. I read a lot of posts, but obviously not all. I hope I'm not wrong, however, obviously)
;)

[bottleofram]

If the Japanese gaming studios (this is from my knowledge the biggest Softimage userbase) wants a feature implemented it's probably going to get done.

The videos* i just saw here support your argument surprisingly well.


* i assume those are the promotional equivalents of the ones we saw a few weeks ago on the English AREA

[McNistor]

@EricTRocks You're probably right. But when I said it wasn't mainly for us, I probably should have said that it wasn't the voice of most XSI users that sang into AD ears when they decided to implement it, not that it wasn't for us. It's obviously for anyone who wants to use XSI. But I might be wrong about this too, I just say what I hear and see around me, so no scientific method here.

[Kerro Perro]

I'm very curious about guys like Maximus and others here are any of you tempted to jump ship over to Modo?

I'm a little bit tempted myself because:

A: price, i'm just a little user and in a fit of madness i got a license + sub for SI last year but for sheer financial reasons i'm probably gonna let the sub run out this year - Modo seems more affordable for a little guy, it's the same as VRay for SI!

B: modelling and rendering, supossedly it really kicks ass in Modo, but i have no idea if this is true (the "wow we have passes now!" seems a bit pathetic tho http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IBWyJdk ... ure=relmfu)

On the other hand the interface seems terrible to me and as i said atm i'm perfectly happy with what i can do SI, the only really tempting things are some of those new NPR rendering options they have (i'm heavily into cartoon/comic style rendering atm) and the suggestion of also sculpting and painting in the same app...

Any thoughts on this? And btw no i can't try it as there is no demo for 601 and i refuse to resort to piracy. That i don't like - who doesn't have a demo??

-hope this isn't to far off-topic but i thought it was relevant seeing the dissatisfaction of 2013 (see i'm not calling it negativity anymore ;) )

EDIT: i'm already not so sure about the NPR stuff: i thought it had better edge detection because they say so in the presentation but looking more closely i can't see anything better than what i can do with vrayToon or in post...

[jamination]

The one thing I don't get (but cannot check for myself either just yet, because I am still waiting for my boxed version of SI2013 to arrive): a good release obviously has a lot to do with a good/nice new feature set. On the other hand, however, so far I haven't seen any reports of big "show stopping" bugs (I remember "disconnecting nodes in the render tree" & "mysterious Mental Ray lag", to name just two from the last couple of years). It might just wel be, that I am missing the pertinent posts/threads, but if there really aren't (m)any of those "show stopping" bugs in this release that should count for something, I would say...
(Feel free to correct me if I am wrong and there are reports of such bugs already. I read a lot of posts, but obviously not all. I hope I'm not wrong, however, obviously)
;)

the less they add the less likely there will be any showstopping problems:)

[Maximus]

I dont like Modo, i never liked it, its a personal opinion, despite being powerfull, everytime i tried it i got pushed away by a messy interface, non logical workflow, crashes, too many clicks to do actions (3ds max also have this issue).
I also dont like its render engine compared to mental ray.

My only problem with Softimage is the rendering, i've tried hard to not waste the amount of time i've invested in mental ray and switch to another render engine, i like MR and i think its one of the best choice out there for its flexibility. It just annoys me to see AD doesnt update it year after year. Considering we already have an horrifying cycle of updates in terms of time and wait (other engines are updated daily), this is really disappointing.

I wouldnt pick another 3d software because for me Softimage is still the best choice, i just hope something will be made in those sections being overlooked by a lot of time now, i dont see a single reason to jump the ship to Modo, Modo will not add anything to me. But again that is personal.