Autodesk 3december

[origin]

nobody recoreded it ?

[Hirazi Blue]

Well, I was hoping for an official replay at the Area for all of us with "timezone deficiency".
Hopefully something will still materialize. I am however somewhat fearful the "Technology Preview"
could just as easily be edited out of an official replay
for the "well-known" legal issues such previews entail.
But lets give Autodesk the benefit of the doubt (for once )
and lets wait and see if they remember they have a worldwide user base...
(Don't hold your breath... but that's generally good advise anyway!)

[Bellsey]

Disregard...finally came back up.

Secondly, I have to say that the future of ICE Geometry looks quite impressive.

one possible future.. ;)

[Rez007]

I didn't have a capture device so I couldn't record it. However, I feel that Autodesk will eventually post it in their video section sooner or later. I pretty much watched the entire thing except for the feed was cut out for the entire nVidia presentation...

I have to say that I think the Softimage section was one of the more efficiently used for time as well as the Iron Baby video breakdown.

Softimage:

1.) Chinny wasn't present, but he made a video for people to watch.
2.) The beginning part showed where Softimage and ICE were during its first stages.
3.) After that, there was the Lagoa video and a video showing ICE Kinematics (Demo run on the rabbit)
4.) The "one possible future of ICE" (ICE Geometry) - which had a disclaimer at the beginning stating that this was more-or-less "test" solutions and there is no definite time frame nor certainty that it might even be implemented (obviously stated for legal reasons).
5.) ICE Geometry:

A.) The first section showed a video of a grid that seemed to have "cloth-like" properties enabled to it, and was being "cut" by another piece of geometry (elongated cube). The cube was then resized, repositioned, and it was used once again as the "cutter" for the cloth. Next, a random curve was drawn and used as a cutter. I believe what this was showing is that a user does not have to predefine an edge/vertex selection to in order to manipulate geometry. Instead, the user can use other inputs (geometry, splines, etc.) to use as selectors/manipulators.

B.) Local subdivision was shown interactively in the viewport. There was a main cube which I believe had iterations of 3x3x3, and there was a spherical null. Anywhere the null would intersect the cube, the cube was then refined (subdivided) locally in that area and interactively. There was also a falloff that could be adjusted, so more of the cube was subdivided upon contact with the null.

C.) The above leads to this feature, which I like a lot; subdivision based off of distance to the camera. They demoed this with a human head model, and the closer the camera would come to certain areas of the head model, those areas became redefined or subdivided - once again, interactively with a falloff curve. It is like a reverse LOD algorithm and I can see being extremely handy, putting the detail where you need it during render or whatnot.

D.) Geometry cut and cap. They used a dog model as the demo mesh and it seemed to look like a square null was used as the slicer. Sliding the null over the dog interactively, cut the dog and removed any geometry that was on one side of that null. It also capped the geometry in relevance to that slice plane. One thing that was nice is that the slicer was duplicated on the fly, and also used on the dog without any ICE attachments needing to take place for this new slicer. In short, you could use as many slicers on one piece of geometry interactively with almost no time involved.

E.) Extrusions upon extrusions. In this section it was showed how geometry can be extruded upon itself via certain sliders and such. It was demoed using weightmaps for on the fly placement of extrusions - good for cityscapes. Interactively, insetting and extruding the previous extruded areas - it was referred to this being good for windows in a building. There was a section of a cube being beveled and extruded, and what I thought was pretty nice, is that you can actually change the base geometry and the extrusions would automatically apply. Such as, the cube was changed to a isohedron (or what ever is was - can't remember exactly at this time), and a triangle - basically any base geometry you want, and all those extrusions and bevels that you created on that original cube, propagated perfectly to the new base geometry.

In all of these movies I believe (I might be wrong) Chinny said that the modeling stack is also updated at the same time when you are working with the ICE branches.

This is what I basically got watching the presentation. Some of my recollections might be wrong or off a little, so don’t hold me to what I stated here - but I think it is pretty close. Regardless, what I thought was really impressive was the new stance that Autodesk took with Softimage in regards to showing upcoming technology. I hope they decide to show more things like this in the future, and if they have to put a disclaimer at the beginning for legal reasons - that is fine with me.

[Rez007]

Disregard...finally came back up.

Secondly, I have to say that the future of ICE Geometry looks quite impressive.

one possible future.. ;)

The only other things that I would like to see, that wasn't shown in the presentation as "one possible future" advancements, would be to have something like CAT implemented using ICE kinematics, unit of measure, and the once again "beating of a dead horse," a look into the rendering side of things...

[dwigfor]

Hopefully Autodesk will rebroadcast it.

[Hirazi Blue]

@Rez007 - Thank you for that detailed account!

[Rez007]

@Rez007 - Thank you for that detailed account!

You are welcome, anytime!

[Nizar]

Thanks Rezoo7 for this detailed report.

I like very much ICE, but, hey, softimage is not only ICE. I like to see improvement in all area. I starting now with softimage, but after many trying, and installed all trial of every released software, I choice SI because I can doing all in this single package (and all aspects (modelling, animation, particle...) are really good).
Autodesk only talk about ICE...

[Hirazi Blue]

Well simply put "ICE sells..." (as it separates SI from the "competition")
But it has been made clear to us all, when ICE was introduced in version 7,
that ICE was sort of a work-in-progress,
of which ÏCE Kinematics" was an important stop along the way
and "ICE Geometry" seems to be the logical conclusion.
After that, Softimage will probably have to pull a new trick out of its hat...
And, believe me ,I do not even mean that cynically.

[Nizar]

So in SI 2013 we will see an upgrade of other tools or a new SI module?
Agree with you when say "ICE is the biggest difference between the major three software" , but if SI don't improve his other tool will become obsolete. Hope this was not the Autodesk idea about SI (exploit only ICE). Why don't make more emphasis animation? Facerobot look other big example in animation, after ICE can be a new selling point (agree this will make in open competition with maya, but SI already used in many fields which are strictly Maya competence...

[Rez007]

I just wanted to be clear from my post, with the disclaimer that was in the presentation, Autodesk stated that ICE Geometry is "one possible future." So, that does not necessarily mean it will be coming in 2012, 2013 or whenever. That is up to Autodesk to decide and implement. We just have to wait and see. This is just my opinion, but I feel that rendering would probably be the most logical enhancement for 2012, and/or more ICE Kinematic and Lagoa things. Whatever they choose to do, I have a feeling it will most likely be a big deal, considering 2011SAP (2011.5) was a pretty blockbuster release. I am just happy that they showed some possible future workings - seems like a great step in a good direction.

[guillaume]

Hi,

I'm working in the Softimage Core team on this "possible" new technology.

The "possible" new geometry system main goal is to do things that were not... possible before.
The feature is explored to added new capability to Softimage (the 3d application). We use ICE (the interactive creation environment) to do it, that's a fact. But it is just because it is the way to do it ;).

A completely "possible" cheers ;) !

[Hirazi Blue]

Well, it's quite obvious that the stuff they showed in the "Technology Preview" are only "possibilities".
The Autodesk Lawyers would throw a fit if it were presented otherwise.
(According to someone on the Mailing List people who watched the event "live" even had to sign a NDA)

And I really don't think the whole ICE Geo will find its way to SI2012 (would be quite happily be proven wrong, however) but it will become a part of it in the (hopefully) foreseeable future.

What will happen after that?
We just will have to wait (like we always do anyway)... ;)

[Nizar]

Thanks Guillem
I'm happy with SI, but I was a bit worry about all the other aspects different from ICE. You message, and Rez clarification, comfort me.

Has said Hirazi, patience...

[Ahmidou]

but I feel that rendering would probably be the most logical enhancement for 2012

I doubt it, there already was an overall with 2011, of the way materials and shaders are handeled + the slate system + most of the mental ray librairies shaders.
I think we're gonna have at best some minors improvement,bug fixes and the last mental ray version .
Can you give some details on what are you expecting ?

My 2 cents
A.