Lagoa Teaser from Thiago Costa

[Hirazi Blue]

Yes I know, my "'named' Mark Schoennagel" remark was meant to point out
that theoretically everyone CAN call his online persona "Mark Schoennagel"... ;)

I mean there are numerous people claiming to be "Hirazi Blue" all over the web,
how can we be sure they're one and the same...

[gman]

Yes I see, and I take your point.
I guess that would make it hard to find out which one was a waste of space.

[gman]

This is gonna sound crazy, but has anyone heard that Lagoa will be stereoscopic?

[Rez007]

It seems like in the post by Mark, he did hint in that direction. I guess time will tell, unless someone with more knowledge in regards to this has anything to share.

- I also, read some other posts about rendering these ICE simulations and ICE in general... I am not really into the ICE side of things when it comes to Softimage, but from what I have been reading, there really seems to be no good shader to render out these effects? Is this true without having to buy a 3rd party solution?

[Hirazi Blue]

Well, the way I see, it you could read the second part of Mark Schoennagel's statement

Lets just say very soon everyone who has Softimage will be getting
Lagoa for free. And if you put some funky colored glasses on it will
even be in stereo...

as a mere joke, but then the first part might be too, or as a true insight into "things to come" i.e. full support for "stereoscopic" stuff.

As I am hoping the first part ("Lagoa") isn't a joke, I am willing to "accept" the second part ("colored glasses"), even though I personally do not see the point (literally: too poor eye-sight for stereoscopic viewing )

I think, however, the "very soon" part should probably be measured "in Softimage units", i.e. at the time of the next major release... ;)

[Rork]

The Suites will, according to the press release, arrive at the end of September. That would mean Softimage will get a point release at that time, and we will get Lagoa Physics and stereo camera support in SI... Or I am 'reading between the lines' incorrectly ;-)

rob

[Bellsey]

Mark has been very generous with that information and gone as far as he can whilst staying in the rules.

And unfortunately I can't say if you have read things correctly but perhaps some patience might pay off. We're coming to the end of a fiscal quarter, for a new one to begin, so who knows what that might hold. ;)

[dwigfor]

I wonder what next release will be called... SI 2012? SI 2011.5? SI 9.5? SI 2011 SP2?

[Hirazi Blue]

The way I interpret the very small amount of data is as follows:
Lagoa Technologies has not yet been purchased by Autodesk, as we would have heard about that officially and a press release for the Premium Suites like this one still links Lagoa to the lagoatechnologies.com website. What this would mean, I guess, is that Lagoa simply will be released as a third-party addon and it's release schedule therefore doesn't have to directly coincide with the next release of Softimage.

edit: joke edited out...

[grahamef]

I also, read some other posts about rendering these ICE simulations and ICE in general... I am not really into the ICE side of things when it comes to Softimage, but from what I have been reading, there really seems to be no good shader to render out these effects? Is this true without having to buy a 3rd party solution?

Not quite. What people have been complaining about mostly is the lack of voxel-based volume rendering. It's sometimes difficult to achieve certain gaseous effects using particle-based volume rendering. The particle-based volume shaders in SI are very good (they're from the BA collection by Holger Schoenberger) but they are still particle-based.

However for the sort of liquid and other effects that you'd typically be doing in Lagoa, you'd want to mesh the cloud (using blobs or Polygonizer) and use a surface shader.

[Hirazi Blue]

Mark Schoennagel posted the following on CGTalk. I am reproducing it here completely as everyone else is doing this also at the moment:

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to write a quick post and answer some of the questions and "concerns" on this thread- its not everyday you get a call out to write something! (...Luis!) lol OK, so I know communication on Softimage Lagoa and how it will all play out for customers has been a little thin so here's the scoop...
First and most importantly, Thiago Costa's awesome Lagoa Physics ICE compounds will be included with Softimage as core functionality once the maintenance release for 2011 ships in a month or so!! I believe the official product name will be the Softimage 2011 Advantage Pack and will arrive free for everyone who is current on maintenance / subscription. So everyone- Premium Suite or no suite will be able to play with it. Secondly, Holy cow Lagoa is sweeeeeet! Select an object, go into the all new ICE module of Softimage, click Jello and press play. ... really? boing boing boing... really??? I'm sure you all saw Thiago's video by now, the stuff towards the end is ALL interactive in the viewport, man it's so friggin fast!!
Alright next I'm going to say that myself and Lagoa were mostly responsible for Softimage NOT being in the stage presentations at Siggraph. The original plan was for me to be showing off Softimage for a few minutes in the theater during each Premium Suite demo for a total of five stage demos a day. The problem was once the Lagoa video hit the web interest in private Softimage demos went through the roof so we had to come up with another plan. After a lot of ideas were thrown around the best one was just to have me in the private sales suites or back at the hotel doing up-close demos. This was pretty much all my decision and how I spent most of the show. The good news from all this is some very important studios were blown away by what they saw are now looking at beta Lagoa as I type this!
Lastly, as far as the suites go I can understand some of the negative comments. A few people at Siggraph told me it felt like Softimage was just becoming a bolt on or a glorified plug-in in the eyes of Autodesk... nothing could be farther from the truth. I know there was a lot of discussion internally on how best to market these new suites with the overwhelming priority being getting Softimage in more artists hands. That's still Softimages Achilles heel, simply not enough people know how awesome it is, the suites WILL help!
Alright well that's it for now, I'll post something soon in my blog on all this too on the-area.com but wanted to give you all a little heads up.

Man...Siggraph wiped me

(quoted from here)

Good PR, Mark!!!

[Rork]

You're too fast for me ;)

But it's nice too see some of this stuff surfacing before an official release is there.

rob

[Hirazi Blue]

Yeah, it makes me wonder about the so-called "Sarbanes Oxley Act" everybody so happily quotes, when feature-secrecy is concerned, though.
;)

[grahamef]

Yeah, it makes me wonder about the so-called "Sarbanes Oxley Act" everybody so happily quotes, when feature-secrecy is concerned, though.
;)

Siggraph was in July. Now it's August. It's a new financial quarter-year.

[Hirazi Blue]

This means the fiscal year doesn't start on January 1st?
Thanks for clearing that up... ;)

edit: okay, I looked it up: the Autodesk fiscal year ends on the 31th of Januar, according to "Yahoo Finance". How naive of me to assume it would end on 31th of December...

[Rork]

I don't care about all that, I'm happy we get an update so soon after SP1 withe these wicked new additions!!! Eat that, Max and Maya! ;)