Fighting the depression

[dwigfor]

I was pretty depressed last week, but on Friday, my boss said I was looking better... So I showed him a picture I snapped from my tablet and said "Time to rebuild my 3d Nickelodeon map..."

A little back story.. When I first learned Lightwave, I started building a 3d model of our studio. Then, when I upgraded to XSI v4 (ESS), I decided to rebuild the model. It was very handy being able to look at physical objects, measure them, etc. It was a fun little project, and I was able to repurpose it a couple years to follow. Each Halloween, we decorate our studio, with each production doing different stuff. Ever since getting into Softimage, I've made neat little interactive pieces for our area. One of my first things was creating an animated walkthru of the studio. This contained my first ever rigged character, and it was before Avatar and all the 3d hooplah (no stereo cameras, etc). I tried rendering a toonshade on boots, and for some weird reason and tooned everything in the background (even though it was hidden from render). Turned out to be a sort of happy accident and I kept it (even though it layed ontop of geometry and was kinda messed up in areas). Here's a couple of stills (sorry for compression). Remember, this was one of my first hobby projects with XSI from around 2004.






And some pics on stuff that I think Houdini will do a nice job and bring it up to next level:






Some areas have wavy/round themes, other areas are triangle/pointy, and other areas are blocky/square.

Another Halloween project I did was to rebuild the model and import props (from Softimage) in Valve Source engine. Made a fun little mod that kids could play running around the outside of Nick. I wanted to use the Gravity Gun and throw chairs around, etc, but my boss wouldn't allow it in our Dora area (though it was too violent, even though there was no shooting). So I made it lame and changed the purpose to finding bananas hidden around (for Boots). Unfortunately, I think I may have failed to backup the Source SDk folder from years gone..

I wish I had a video of this past year's project. I thought it was pretty darn amazing.. Found a 3d model of Dora that overseas did as test. Cleaned up model and rigged it with Softimage. Imported into Motionbuilder and rear projected onto a screen. Behind the screen, I could mocap animate Dora in realtime via MS Kinect (with Brekel MB plugin). So unfortunately I couldn't see kids, but I could hear them.. And then Dora wave and dance back to them. After 3 hours of that, I was exhausted..

[Dwindleflip]

Already began relearning Maya. I havent touched it since version 4 or 5.

I have to say though while somethings clearly are painful there are a lot of things we begged forever in softimage that are in maya. Time will tell how much I hate this but there are some positives and there is a huge negative of being unfamiliar with everything

[Unaided]

And when Autodicks publish "Maya will be discontinued"?
"You can move to 3DS Max or you can move to paleolithic" feel the difference!

What do you will doing? Autodicks don't have respect to users, even to users of products them.

Autodicks impose by force to you change tools that you was choose freely.

This bring as result, bring as consequences.

[FXDude]

Of course this can indeed be a difficult time.. as the fate of a tool...

which has historically been proven to be, & will most-likely continue to be in the foreseeable future,
* realistically; based on the likelihood the appearance of revolutionary solutions or major re-coding endeavors in the coming years.
one the of most straight-forward & versatile solution overall,
comparatively enabling people & shops to be more
(in many cases, sometimes TWICE as) productive in the "High-End" arena,

. . . . was as suddenly brought to hang on but a thread.


YET! ;

[*] in light of the voiced commitments of both countless users,
and pretty-much ALL the most active developers to continue as long as others would,

[*] AND in light of the subsequent partial yet considerable decision reversal,
(which was most-probably based on all that voicing)

[*] AND coupled with the now somewhat more pronounced race
for that next thing that could be as stable & "friendly" YET powerful.


I think there is definitely reasonable grounds to not ponder, and consider the glass well in the 3/4 full.

I for one would personally vote for a (prompter than usual) refreshment of the banner to perhaps a less overcast sky

Cheers!

.

[Dwindleflip]

They wont kill maya. They actually develop features for maya still. You know when autodesk is killing off its programs, the dev moves overseas and the new features stop.

[Unaided]

Autodicks is a enterprise that for me offers absolutely nothing confidence.
Today they bet to bring up Maya, but I shure is only a strategy to win time and money to start Xcalibur project (fully rewrite 3D Studio Max, they say) By the other way smallest but creative and serious companies will continue push out Autodicks from professional market. However I'm question to me, when Autodicks was in professional market! Maybe only arround year 1990, when AutoCAD and 3D Studio was still no obsolete products.

Autodicks no have future vision, don't see beyond of marketing issues (reselling), and no have innovative ideas for business. Autodicks purchase products of another companies, and from Univerities, acquire full enterprises (see history from Wikipedia for example), and re-sale the products with its logo.

Autodicks have money, but Autodicks is dead. A lot of years with no lead no one industry with its owner products.
This is more sad still that its stupid business decisions.

[owei]

Guys...please discuss the software issues in the appropriate thread. This one is about the emotional impact. Thanks!!!

[McNistor]

Speaking of emotional related stuff, I'm glad the dark clouds are gone from the upper banner. That image will forever haunt me.

[owei]

Yes...you are right. One week was enough. So, the grief of loosing this good friend will take time to go away. But I guess, it´s time to open the eyes again and look forward. Currently I´m trying to get an altitude to all this. My anger is still there about all that lying and cheating coming from a certain company. But, I guess, everybody can decide if you go on with them or not. Personally I won´t spend time and money for them, if possible, and that somehow feels good. Being released off these cold and creepy hands of an turbo monopolist.

[Hirazi Blue]

Well, a week onwards, I still feel rather beaten down. The only thing that has ended, sadly, is the uncertainty about the future of Softimage. No more accusations of "fear mongering". That's worth something. Not at a lot, mind, but something. As to the future, I personally decided to go with Maya, at least on the short term, although that's most definitively not my first choice. This however means still paying money to the mighty AD, which makes me a little sick, come to think of it. On a matter of principle I should really find myself a new hobby, but that's a scary proposition also. If only I had more funds to burn...


PS - My feelings about eventually and inevitably losing this community & my only steady job for about 5 years are a whole different story...

[gdebello]

I'm mad. Still at a loss for words, for most of us at work using Softimage it's hard to even model. We have been moving to another program but our cycle for that was suppose to be for a year. Now it has sped up. After years of Softimage using something different seems unnatural but life must go on.

[Hellomojo]

Well I'm actually excited to learn new software from using Softimage. . . even if somthing is missing - what I've learned in Soft is 'Find another way to do it' if it ain't working out.

It is an oppertunity to start learning something in the best way possible - knowing how much experience you have. Having used Soft for so many years (Seems like most of ye have) - We will all be experts, pretty quickly!

And we will get to pop back into Soft and ICE whenever we want.
I get the feeling this whole debacle isn't over anyway.
So I'm strangely not that depressed.

[forton]

F... A....... !

I started using softimage after the Lightwave Core debacle, so there's some deja vu...
Softimage was everything Core wanted to be.
The thing is there wasn't happening much anyway on the Autodesk front for the last 2 years, so like alot of other people I felt it coming...
What I fear most is not the software dying (I'll keep loving and using it to death) but everything around it:

Si-community, visited softimage ubertage for the first time in september, rray.de,
Just bought the new emfluid, emtopolizer, polygonizer... 2 licenses of arnold...
I hope I can keep using arnold .ass files to move assets for rendering from soft to other programs, the rest is too complicated anyway.

To many things to think of now.

Positive thing is that soon we will be an elite that can do stuff nobody else can, because we have softimage somewhere and nobody else can buy it anymore.
Damn, I'm still not feeling better!

Fuck you Autodesk!

[xsi_fanatic]

SI_Meme_01.jpg

I think this clarifies the whole situation.

[owei]

LOL...yes...that´s it ;) We can´t change it (I guess) but we can ridicule AD...they deserve it ;)

And I hope you feel better now ..!

[mc_axe]

All these days im working on soft non stop and im watching over what the users and the studios have to say, this helps me cause i feel not crazy about my depression , i hope somthing will change because of all ths mobility.

Today i catched my self to look upon a butter label in a dramatic way, there was this huge letters Soft!
I got depressed then, lol

M i sick doctor?