bring back softimage.net

[bottleofram]

And no, we're not trying to be like The Area or do the same thing. I don't know of any ADSK artist that actually finds The Area useful.

Oh, how ironic!

[Bellsey]

And no, we're not trying to be like The Area or do the same thing. I don't know of any ADSK artist that actually finds The Area useful.

Oh, how ironic!

This was 4yrs ago, however knowing what I know now (which I didn't at the time for obvious reasons), I can appreciate why.

[Tekano]

That's funny because I don't remember it that way... Rose-tinted glasses of nostagia?

perhaps, but whats also funny is I don't see your contribution or mentioned in the threads with Kim Aldis, Oksana Birioukova, Graham D Clark, Steven Caron, Alan Fregtman, Nils Engler, Raffaele Fragapane, Todd Akita, Leonard Teo, Ronald Beirouti & others that specifically discuss what should or should not go into the navigation and the format for the downloads section for ICE compounds. there were quite a number of discussions around this. Yes it may have in the end been simple hacks with vBulletin etc but the format and final choices made were based upon these discussions and were in the best interest for Softimage and the community. A very significant difference.

Like I said, will extract all the key points mentioned and bring them here so we can discuss.

[Tekano]

I couldnt find it on internet archive but that link - even though it is so old its 'pre-ice compounds' it does allow to see what each specific page dedicated to each compound was going to be like

http://web.archive.org/web/200808231749 ... file&id=47

and category tree's

http://web.archive.org/web/200808271449 ... =cat&id=15

now we are getting somewhere!

heres a very succinct post from Raff from the normal SI list in 2008 shortly after Eric released xsidatabase site.

If stuff starts ending up scattered over several sites it's a mess, and we're back to square one.

I mean no offense to you or your work, and I think sites parallel to softimage.com <http://softimage.com> should keep existing and can offer tons.
Just for this one thing (compounds and ICE), I pray everybody can step aside and let Soft itself have the reins for a while to estabilish a focused resource repository.
If they fall short of the mark and don't meet reasonable expectations, and offer adequate functionalities, I'm sure the community of users won't take very long to get pissed off and a third party will be able to help with that. If a third party emerges too strongly before a grace period for Soft to work on this, it does more damage than good.

[luceric]

you could either decide to push people to go to CreativeCrash, which has all the possible features to post, comment and review addon, or have someone spruce up si-community (where people are already posting) to do it with some presentation sugar. these are the two realistic options imho

[Tekano]

One option would be to budget and set up a brand new site dedicated to nothing else but sharing Softimage compounds both Materials & ICE trees etc. funding would be crowd sourced

Another is for Autodesk to realise how much effort some users are putting in already to basically do their work for them (rray.de) and they could help fund these users towards something like the the first option.

I personally don't think creative crash or this site is an option for the 'definitive' Softimage compounds site. this place needs to have not only be the correct structure but also contain everything thats ever been available as well as being updated daily with new contributions.

[Tekano]

And no, we're not trying to be like The Area or do the same thing. I don't know of any ADSK artist that actually finds The Area useful.

Oh, how ironic!

I feel the greater Ironry exists in the present. for example this, according to Luceric, is our official Autodesk Softimage Product Managers social contribution for today.

http://paper.li/AutodeskMayaBlg/1317007877

seriously, Im this close to swearing out loud

[Bellsey]

so what, I mean seriously, what's the problem here?

[gustavoeb]

none if his blog gets renamed to Softilicious

[Maximus]

The problem is quite simple.
Softimage is buried deep by Autodesk, from siggraph presentations, to websites, to marketing, to news, to everything you can come up with.

Always repeating the same thing over and over, there is a lot to show from Softimage and yet we get a 30 mins on crowdfx and thats it, without counting the time spent on Maya with the send to.
Seriously, might as well kill the product, tell its userbase "guys sorry we're done" and move on. This is just depressing.
This software needs more visibility, a proper website where you can upload compounds, show works, videos, a central database for it would just cover the horrifying job Autodesk is doing into hiding this software. Thats what people want.

I wonder why you didnt make a video of softimage + mudbox + motionbuilder? Why is it that this software is always pushed back as a freakin plugin?
Compared to the other 2 this is simply ridicolous. There is a lot to show about softimage, you guys still didnt get that marketing and showing to people is damn important to grow?
There are people in studios i know they dont even know that Softimage exists. Wake the hell up.
Autodesk litterally killed this software.

oh hey, we got a facebook page..

http://www.facebook.com/AutodeskSoftimage

anyway nothing will change

[Bellsey]

Old ground that I have gone over in many previous posts, so I won't repeat myself.

[Tekano]

so what, I mean seriously, what's the problem here?

honestly? you do not experience one iota of irony here? must only be for Softimage users past a certain length of use to experience this acute sensation of bitterness tinged with wtf! upon seeing this then. Ive tweeted Mr Mayalicious, wondered out loud last time he actually opened our product and used it...

Bellsey if you don't experience the injustice here theres no point in continuing this discussion either with yourself or Autodesk, there simply isnt any point. We will sort ourselves out and thanks for nothing!

[Bellsey]

so what, I mean seriously, what's the problem here?

honestly? you do not experience one iota of irony here? must only be for Softimage users past a certain length of use to experience this acute sensation of bitterness tinged with wtf! upon seeing this then. Ive tweeted Mr Mayalicious, wondered out loud last time he actually opened our product and used it...

Bellsey if you don't experience the injustice here theres no point in continuing this discussion either with yourself or Autodesk, there simply isnt any point. We will sort ourselves out and thanks for nothing!

So if Cory says no, what does that actually prove?
Bill Roberts ran Product Management for Softimage (during my time and up to acquistion), and I doubt he actually opened XSI much either, if at all. The point here is that, there's a difference between a Product Manager and a Product Designer

As for a website, this one is the closest I've seen to the old community site and personally I don't really see the value of starting another one. I'd much rather see any feedback given the guys here or AREA team. I admit the AREA isn't without its problems, but at the same time it's not that bad and I'm being completely objective here. It's almost like people don't want it to be good, or there's some kind of refusal to even admit that some parts are actually ok. The equation of thought seems to be - it's Autodesk and no matter what, its crap. lol.
It took me less than 10secs to find the 100+ ICE compounds that are actually there right now. So there is stuff there, but I admit it could do with better navigation and spring cleaning of the layouts.
But if people want a more independent resource then I have no problem with that, after all there are sites that have an abundance of MEL and MAXScripts.

[milanvasek]

. I'd much rather see any feedback given the guys here or AREA team.

ok, i'll try to be a little constructive here...

my main problem with AREA is really crappy forum. why can't huge multi-billion dollar company make something at least as good as vBulletin or phpBB? (or just implement vBulletin)
well, here are main issues as i see them:
1) you can see categories, but you can't see latest post in them, unless you go inside. that's really annoying and i never do that. well, i can use "view new post" button, but still...
2) whole design, colors, fonts etc. are just too distracting and should be more "clear" because it's quite difficult to browse those forums and it hurts my eyes. like when you actually click on "view new post". why is the name of the post, author's name and category visually almost the same, but the date and time of the post is in different style as it was the most important thing? errr
3) also those categories are kind of strange... maybe, if there is some moderator/admin of softimage part of the forum, he can come here and join the discussion and change them a little bit... is there such a person?
4) galleries (image, video, portfolio) are really bad as well. it should be easier to browse, see some top rated images, etc. why can i see only 6 latest images on AREA? (check http://cghub.com/ for example, with their "editor's pick" and "popular now") it might be nice to somehow connect them to the forum, so people can discuss their work properly. some kind of WIP section of forum is also nice. to get feedback on you work and see what are other people working on are some of the reasons why there are community forums and AREA in not supporting that at all
5) of course download section... at least put there "ICE compounds" category

well, there are probably many more things I really liked softimage.net and si-community is the closest to it...

[bottleofram]

[rimg=800]http://i.imgur.com/YlzOu.jpg[/rimg]

Numbers, they are lying.

The problem is quite simple.
Softimage is buried deep by Autodesk [...]

Look here under Flagship products: http://gfxspeak.com/2012/02/24/autodesk ... -increase/
Everything thats not on that list gets buried.

[Pancho]

The modo website got a pretty nice content area for shader, objects, etc. Rray is great, but is a bit tricky if you want to find stuff. Can't this website be pimped a bit?