SOFTIMAGE|UeberTage 2014, Friday, September 19th 2014

[owei]

Mugs arrived and working!! Make sure to grab one next Friday..!!

cheers,
oli

[owei]

Hello there!

Our event is coming closer and I hope you will all make it to Siegen on Friday, 19th of September!
If you don´t have registered yet, please do so!
I´ve put a lot of effort in this year´s event and as our registrations could be more in number, please consider to drop by!
We always had a lot of fun! It´s the last time this year. So, don´t miss it! Please register here:

http://uebertage.eventbrite.com

Big thanks to all our sponsors!

We will have a nice tombola this year with cool prices. You can win 2 licenses of Mootzoid´s plugins (emFluid and emPolygnizer5) and a node locked license of Redshift 3D, the GPU based renderer!!

Beside of that, every visitor will get 10% off on one Redshift 3D license! So, don´t miss it!

Hope to see you!

Latest news will be found her:
http://www.softimage-uebertage.de

Cheers,
oli

[face]

Super event as always. The after event was also realy cool. Hope on something the next year.
Many thanks to Oli and all other involved crazy peoples ;)

face

[MauricioPC]

Anybody care to write a report on the event?

It was probably a great event. Damn ... living on the other side of the world sucks sometimes!

[wireframex]

Anybody care to write a report on the event?

[Rork]

I'll do my best from memory, as I didn't take notes this year. So for the full monty you'll have to wait for the videos. It had been a busy couple of weeks just before the UT... ;-)

The event started off with a presentation from Philipp Seis and Oliver Weingarten himself, showing off their work they did for the Playmobil Movies.

Pre-productions sketches, setdesign and rough storyboards were shown, as several shots in various forms of development.
Of course Eric Mootz his plugins (and ICE duh!) were used in this production, especially emFluid and emRPC. Both plugins accounted for various flame, smoke and particle effects.
For the productions a module was developed where the various parts of a Playmobil character could quickly be chosen and assembled, all including the rigging part.
So various variations could be made quickly, with a standarized rig ready for animating.
Fun fact that the movies originally were set up in Lightwave, but transfered to Softimage at some point.


The second presentation was from our favorite Softimage plugin developer Eric Mootz. P.S. Keep supporting our developers!! ;-)

Eric showed off some of his latest work on emFluid, in combination with the latest V-Ray 3.0. He also gave a big thank you to the team of V-Ray, who contacted him to add support for emFluid in what probably will be the last version of V-Ray for Softimage So kudos for the team of V-Ray for stepping up and give us this last gift
Eric also showed his latest work of emPolygonizer, with a working version for Maya and Modo, and even a standalone version that can be run by the command line.
He also did a ton of work on improving the tool, all based on real world experience at several studios. Great stuff!

After that we were all hungry and moving on to the restaurant next door for a nice lunch, which -again- was perfectly organized by Oliver.


After that break it was time for John Courte of SideFX to talk about Houdini.
John gave a to the point presentation of what Houdini is all about, with several comparisons (and differences) to Softimage. The procedural way of working was discussed, along with the several ways of working inside Houdini with CHops, Rops etc.
Some nice examples were shown of Houdini's 'Assets', encapsulated nodal trees with embedded sliders that can be moved around scenes. Think off ICE compounds and it will make a bit of sense.
Houdini's way of working is very powerful, and people who are comfortable in ICE will have no problems picking up certain parts of Houdini very quickly.
Later that day (and evening) we had some very interesting talks with Paul and John about how Houdini could borrow a trick or two from Softimage to make the app easier to pick up and use. ;-)


After a short break, next on stage was Fuat Yuksel from Aixsponza to talk about their work on the "Dreadnought" gametrailer.
Aixsponza is a Cinema4D based production house, and was the second non-SI presentation of the day.
This impressive trailer was produced in only a couple of weeks with a dozen artists. After the viewing o f the final trailer, we were shown the various stages of production, storyboards and tests.
For the breakup of a exploding spaceship they came up with an interesting workaround, namely hairs defining particles, defining the Voronoi shattering of the various pieces of the ship.
All in all a great look into a production and workflow other than Softimage.


Next in line was Andreas Dahl from Maconcept, showing us Modo.
He took us on a tour through Modo, explaining the various modules and UI's that encompass the Modo workflow. Which is, regarding the UI -imho- a bit too "diverse"...... But he, that's me ;-)
Modeling, sculpting, painting, UV's, rendering, all was shown in the way Modo addresses these parts of the workflow. There are really some gems in Modo, and if 901 addresses some voids it will become an even stronger competitor.

Again, a short break to keep all these brains awake and able to process the last information shown, and we were off for the next presentation by Peter Spans.
This was not so much a technical presentation of a project, but a more philosophical discussion about animated character development and animation of the "Kleines Hunger" TVC's.
Peter engaged us in a discussion about giving life and backstory to animated characters, and how to convince a customer this is a good thing to pursue so people will relate more to characters on screen.
Various versions of the commercials were shown, as also 'outttakes', to really bring life to the character.


To end this day of presentations, Malte Maas from Humanoid had a interesting talk about motion capture.
All the existing systems and their pro's and con's were discussed, as some possible new developments in motion capture technology. All in all very interesting to see what is happening in that part of the field.

A tombola with some nice prizes finalized this Uebertage, and your's truly was very happy to win a license of Redshift
A thank you to all the ladies assisting me with drawing the tickets for the tombola ;-)

Oliver ended the day with thanking all sponsers involved in making this year's Uebertage, and his hopes of continuing the Uebertage in some form next year when interest was there.
So... speak up for next year, and contact Oliver if you want to be part of next years UT.

With the people who were able to stay, we headed off to the restaurant for beers and food, to discuss the day and talks we saw.
All in all, the Uebertage was again a great success, and a BIG thanks to Oliver for again organizing the event, and his hospitality.

If I forgot something -sorry- ;-)

rob

[owei]

Hey Rob!

Thanks so much for writing this ! I guess it gives a great overview of this year´s event! Thanks a bunch!

cheers,
oli

[FXDude]

woohoo! congrats!
& can't wait to see glimpses :]

and his hopes of continuing the Uebertage in some form next year when interest was there.

also being others hope I'm sure.

[owei]

Hi there!
The first video is online..took a while...sorry ;)



Cheers,
oli

[MauricioPC]

Downloading now ... thank you owei. It looks like a amazing presentation!!

[Hirazi Blue]

Playmobil and Softimage: two of my favorite things (with some years inbetween). Thanks for uploading this, owei!

[owei]

Hey guys! Glad you like it! ;)

And, while thinking of it for a while, 2015, there will be another usermeeting..if I can get enough sponsors and speakers ;)
So stay tuned for further info coming up...

cheers,
oli

[owei]

Hey!

the next video is up ;)



hope you like it!

cheers,
oli

[MauricioPC]

Houdini! This is great. Thanks owei.

[Rez007]

Thank you owei for organizing these events and also posting the videos, much appreciated!

[owei]

And the next one...I was to busy...sorry ;)