Another 3dsmax sneak peak

[angus_davidson]

For me, I'm not a Max fan (in fact I loathe it, lol ..)

For me it peaked at the last DOS version ;)

[luceric]

I'm sure everyone has forgotten this by now: There was only 6 month between 2010 and the 2011 versions of all products.

When the "2010" products of the products were announced, the forums did not know that autodesk would be changing the M&E launch from Siggraph/August, to the April "global launch". So they thought they'd had to wait another full year for the next thing. Result: flood of complaints that last to this day that the products development had stalled.

there was nothing in Maya 2010 (look it up in the online help); all the features including Qt went 2011 6 month later. Each team decided on their own how to best deal with that 6 month gap.

Softimage users were more lucky, we packed lots of features thanks to a backog of already-started (ex: Face Robot, Phil ICE pack, shader architecture) stuff that was ready to go. Almost a yard sale of pending features.

Then six month later, we released Softimage 2011 SAP Lagoa, which we bough from Thiago. So in 18 months, we made three releases. That's not a development rate that's really sustainable because it was only possible by stuffing them with bundling stuff. That rate of releases had never happened in the preceeding 10 years at Avid, where the release cycles were between 1 and 1.5 years

[Ahmidou]

Funny, many people have a pop at Maya's modelling tools and the way they talk it's as if they're usable. Which isn't really true. Maya's modelling tools are actually pretty good.

As I'm using both on a daily basis, I can tell you that it's not my opinion:

-Modeling in subd mode is crashing a lot.
-The split polygon tool is a joke, if you pass thrue a vertex you can't continue...
-The history stack is very rigid.
-The component selection is not kept when go back to object mode.
-I'm missing the multi component editing/hightlight.
-There are inconsistencies between the tools workflow (ie: crease edge tool).
-Every operation is at one, two, or three more clics than with softimage.
-and so on...

Modeling in maya is slower, less interactive, that's a fact.

Edit: The only thing I like while modeling in Maya is the Artisan smooth paint, but I made a Softimage custom tool for this...

Cheers

[Cacoman]

Yesterday; I visited a the place where I got my first job because of my XSI skills. I honed and developed my softimage skills at this place. I had not been there in 5 years. When I was there they only had 3 3D artists. In the last 2 years they have expanded and now have 30 3D seats. ALL MAYA. They switched to maya 3 years ago and then the boom times came for them.

Well that is something AD likes to do. When you ask for a bunch of seats for Softimage they start asking questions and they try to sell Maya seats. They are so hard pushing on this... They say the software is better a lot of plugins and scripts, tutorials etc. More than Softimage. If you still say no they offer you MAX or the creative suite. I told them that I didn't want Maya, I want Softimage seats! Which part of I want to buy Softimage is not clear!. That is how AD flooded studios with Maya. You can see this kind of Maya and MAX marketing in their site. Softimage is not there until you start browsing all the products. And as a registered student, the first option that comes when you are downloading software is MAX as a recomendation response to your animation profile. So it is not strange that as a student you probably download MAX first as a beginning 3d process and then you look for more power and they end selling Maya to you. Softimage? Not even appears in this scope.

I remember about 15 years ago (this is something that I said in some other posts and forums), Softimage was still Microsoft and the development of Sumatra (code name of XSI was still something to come) At that moment I had my studio with 10 seats all of them Softimage 3D and we were doing a project for Gatorade's Propel active water. I mention this because a lot of VFX were involved and of course Softimage for the 3d part where the sporties were floating inside the bottle and finally a girl climbed the propel bottle. Somehow the salesman who first was a Softimage rep and he was the one that sold me my first Softimage 3D TDZ-300 workstation, stopped at the studio to offer me Maya. He started talking about how Maya was better than Softimage, bla, bla, bla.

I told him I was very happy with Softimage and saw no reason to switch to Maya in the middle of a mayor project. He was so pushy, that I allowed him to install Maya on one of the workstations and I asked how long was the temp license. He answered "It's permanent so you can learn Maya and compare".

At first I was tempted by his offer and launched Maya. How creepy it looked againsted the polished and well organized UI even that of Softimage 3D 3.8 After playing around for a couple of days I finally uninstalled Maya and kept it up with Softimage.

After a month the salesman came back and asked me how I was doing with Maya. I told him that it was resting in peace and that I even deleted from my hard drive. After telling him for an hour or so that I didn't want Maya finally he conviced me to install it again and he restored the license. Not only in one workstation but on three. Asking me for the other artist to test Maya. Then came the question. "How much is each Maya seat if I finally decide to switch?". His answer "This three are for free and we can offer you training and 24 hour support. If you want more seats we can discuss the price...".

I can say from what I have shared here, that you already know what happened in my case with Maya. Artists started using it and there was only a week before they throw Maya away.

At those dark ages, having a cracked 3d software was nearly impossible. Rainbow dongles, licenses delivered and installed by the reps. Each workstation was around $15,000 USD. And suddenly out of nowhere guess what.

One of the artist working came with breaking news. He had a Maya copy installed and running! He was able to get from a friend of a friend a cracked version of Maya! He started talking that Maya wasn't so bad at all. Not as good as Softimage but he had now the chance to do some 3d at home and play around.

In no time the other guys had the cracked version in Maya and they were using it at home...

If that happened with my small studio 10 seats, I now have the complete side of the story. I can imagine AD flooding the studios with free Maya seats.

And I am sure that AD throw away the cracked version of Maya in a time where this was unthinkable.

At that time Softimage was bought by Avid from Microsoft in a share exchange. And XSI came out almost year and a half later. The damage was done. AD flooded studios with a creepy version of Maya. Studios invested a lot to develop their own tools to make Maya more "proficient" and suddenly a new title was born in the 3d industry. A title for those who were scripting and scripting and scripting to make the Maya pipeline and workflow efficient. Technical Artists.

Now after having to use Maya I know why these Technical Artist became so important. Without them, Maya will not survive.

It's funny from my perspective, how AD handles when something strong comes out for Softimage. There is Arnold for example.

It was first released only for Softimage. And it was not until Arnold started to being used more extensevily by big studios tha suddenly, out of nothing it is released also for Maya now.

In a regular business plan this shouldn't wake suspicions of what is going on. But at this moment there is more information on the arnoldwiki on tuts for Maya than Softimage when logic dictates that there should be more for Softimage than Maya as Arnold has been around for Softimage a lot more.

Same happened with Digital Tutors. Before the AD Softimage acquisition the Maya and Softiamge libraries were almost the same size. After DT was acknowledged as AD certified trainner, they doubled the Maya and Max library and now it is five or six times bigger than the Softimage tutorials library.

AD has invested a lot in Maya. Softimage was just an acquisition and a lot of things were already there on the table.

Well that is my story of how Maya became so popular. A very agressive marketing giving away free seats to the studios and launching to the web a cracked version.

Repeat a lie several times and it will became the truth. And that lie for me is Maya being superior than Softimage.

I understand Luceric that now you are on Maya and are trying to drive us Softimagers there. But I can speak for some of us that will not happen. If AD efforts is to disappear Softimage as I said before, I will still use it the way it is now even there is no further development or bug fixes, until a time comes that no one else is doing plugins for Softimage like Next Limit or E-on. Even now that Zbrush does not provide an official GoZ for Softimage there is a guy that pulled out of Zbrush a GoZ for Softimage that works like a charm.

And if this time comes, well as I said before, I prefer to keep Softimage the way it is now and start using some other tools like Houdini for compensate the new tools than switching to Maya. I will only use Maya if I have a gun sticked to my head.

I want to personally thank devs like Eric Mootz, Exocortex team, V-ray, 3Delight, Next-Limit, E-on, Solid Angle, Jeremy P. and so many others for giving us the tools to keep it up with Softimage.

The latest big addition, RedShift a render engine that is starting to blow minds up. It is still on Alpha stage but it is so well integrated to the Softimage workflow that is scary.

Call me a fanatic if you like. But my heart and soul is Softimage.

[iamVFX]

Maya's modelling tools are actually pretty good.

Josh Robinson had a great explanation why they're not

[Eugen]

Funny, many people have a pop at Maya's modelling tools and the way they talk it's as if they're usable. Which isn't really true. Maya's modelling tools are actually pretty good.

Actually, you are watering down the facts. It's sorry salesman speak trying to sell people that product A "is pretty good", when you know the truth is, B is better in most regards. You can tell that to newbies that have no experience in multiple packages, but not us here.

It's not a matter of taste when, say, subdivs are hassle-free and easy in SI and in Maya not. In that regard, Softimage is simply BETTER, period.
"Better" means: getting where you want to be with your 3D-scene with less clicks, and in a logical and consistent way. It's this gut feeling when you see the beauty in things.

There's much that Softimage has on the good side, where it is simply BETTER that Maya, or Max - and vice versa, of course. Softimage has numerous restrictions, some of which really hurt, but the overall picture is: it's the most well-laid-out package around, and has the most potential.
If the bigger part of AD's development energy would theoretically be concentrated on SI, it would take just a short time until it was close to the "perfect" 3D application (as someone can think of such these days - picture might and will change over time of how 3D is done in the decades to come). Much less than trying to do the same with Maya. This has been argued many times now.
Lock away Cinderella and send her ugly step-sisters to the beauty farm...

Max-wise, since this is the topic, there won't be any "core" changes any more (let's not start a debate what the "core" is again...). It's clinically dead, and only because of the many plugged-in tubes it survives (get it?).
Maya has more potential here for sure.

Of course you have the freedom to prefer an inferior tool out of whatever reason, may it be out of sentiment, being a paid marketing person, or feeling stronger in the bigger crowd, whatever. I cannot follow, though.

[angus_davidson]

@Cacoman We had a very similar situation when we switched from Maya to Softimage for our students. When I joined the Digital Arts Division the decision to use Maya had already been taken by then lecturer and the software had been bought. Being an educational place we were not able to run Maya on the greatest of hardware and as a result had a lot of issues.

After a year our lecturer went to go overseas to work and as such I had to teach the course for 3 years until we were able to find a dull time replacement. In that time we had very poor support on Maya. they were basically not interested in us. At this time I started pushing for using SI (as I was used to the 3.8 version). It was only after a fairly bad year (huge amounts of issues and I spent more time in the .ma files trying to salvage student work then ever) that our Head of Division started taking switching stuff seriously. It was only when we announced that we were not renewing our subscription that AD started trying to actively solve our issues. They flew people over from France to try and help, but they left more confused then we were.

2 Months Later we got our XSI Boxes and 3 months after that they got bought out by Autodesk. (In some ways I have always believed that if SI didn't bring out ICE they would still be free - lets face it was just too powerful a tool to not be in their stable)

For all of the issues changing programs that brought (and a massive big up to a certain Mr Blair who got us up and running) SI was a awesome step forward. Students could count on the fact that if they did something today, when they did the same thing tomorrow they would get the same result. Under Maya that was very hit and miss. SI was just so much more intuitive to them and the quality of our student work went up dramatically.

However all through this time AD was continually trying to get us back to Maya. Every time we had a visit from the top brass they would speak of it most of the time. When they brought out the suites it was almost as if SI was in as an afterthought. Virtually all of the learning stuff on their site was for Maya / Max and I think we got pretty much every SI dvd from Digital Tutors before they went the streaming option. They even pushed me on my sweet spot by reminding me that Maya ran on Macs and SI didnt.

One can only hope that going forward they start treating SI like and equal pillar alongside Maya and Max. Historically that has definitely not been the case. Actually let Autodesk get Sketchup to handle all the archi stuff and then Max can finally die gracefully ;)

[mirkoj]

And now let's hear ANYONE to say that AD take care of all 3 software equally. I mean this is embarrassing, annoying and outraging.
Instead of making Maya better for example and that to be way of pushing software they just turn to embarrassing aggressive marketing pushing.
And what does it say when after all of that killing and hitting SI in the head it is still alive? Maybe injured and a bit broken but still alive and WAAAAAAY stronger and better than anything they are pushing to us....
Simple..


LAVE
SOFTIMAGE
ALOOONEEE!!!!

There is no marketing or salesman that can anyone that have any idea what SI is and have any experience in both to compare to pursuade to switch so hence I'll give you mine free just leave that one...
Cmon...

[Pancho]

What I consider disgusting is that companies get so big and bloated that they have the arrogance not to take care of their customers anymore. And with taking care I mean "please" the customer, giving him/ her the best possible experience in order to bind the customer in the long run.

If I'd be that arrogant towards the wishes of my clients, I would be out of business very quickly...

[Bellsey]

Maya's modelling tools are actually pretty good.

Josh Robinson had a great explanation why they're not

lol, yeah I saw that video, it also did the rounds within Autodesk. Whilst he made some good points, there was also alot that he was flat wrong about. There were also a few videos from users afterwards basically countering his rants.

People are absolutely entitled to their opinions, but if you're gonna produce a video and put it out there, then you do need to be absolutely clear on your facts. At the time, it was the whole attitude "Maya is the worst modeling tool in the world" that frustrated me and others. If he'd just spend a little more time looking, he would of found the answers to his problems. However fair dues, there were some points he was bang on about, and some of these have been subsequently fixed.

Honestly though, I'm sure you could produce a "Reasons why I want to punch [insert 3D package] in the face..." for just about anything - Autodesk or not.

I never said Maya was the best modelling package, but instead merely pointing out that it's still very capable. But like anything, there's always room for improvement. I can model just as well in Maya than I can in Soft. Can I model in Soft the same way as I can in Maya? - well no. The workflows are different and I have to adapt in some areas, accordingly. And this is where many people go wrong, they jump into another package and despite the UI being different, expect some things to work the same. Fact is they don't. If I had a pound for every time I've heard 'well xxxx does it like this, xxxx works like this' I'd be rich.

As much as I hate Max, I do tip my hat to some its modelling features. Do I like the workflow, hell no, but I wouldn't mind seeing some of their features in Maya and/or Soft. But I use what I have/know and make it work.

[xsi_fanatic]

Call me a fanatic if you like. But my heart and soul is Softimage.

If you were a woman, I would ask for your hand in marriage

[talent103]

Thanks for the offer ;) But I did not write that quote. I am in fact a digital whore. I will use whatever pkg gets me the most work and most money. (except for Max)

Moderator edit: Removed duplicate post, this is however something members can do themselves - HB

[luceric]

Cacoman, you're a softimage fan, and I respect that. There is no way the product would have made it this far without its die hard fans.

That is how AD flooded studios with Maya

SGI (not Autodesk) flooded the market with Maya, often with free bundles with hardware. This is true. But Softimage had already lost the big studios by the time AD bought Alias in 2006. The smaller studios follow what the big studios do. Students want to learn what ILM uses, etc.

Studios invested a lot to develop their own tools to make Maya more "proficient" and suddenly a new title was born in the 3d industry. A title for those who were scripting and scripting and scripting to make the Maya pipeline and workflow efficient. Technical Artists.

Maya didn't really create the TD market by its lack of tools, the app was created for those existing TDs and designed in collaboration with Disney and other big studios. 1990s dlients *demanded* scripting and C API, they often wrote their own apps! In 1998, we had to halt Sumatra development to add scripting, because it hadn't been in the plan at all. And it's only in about 2002 that there would be a C++ SDK for unix.

Softimage went on tour to the studios demoing Sumatra, and they were talking about COM and VBScript. There was even a demo of driving Excel from Sumatra for editing render passes, and sending mail with Outlook after render.. This was at a time when Microsoft was seen as trying to pervert the web with IE and VBScript. If that wasn't bad enough, the company was telling users since 1996 that Softimage|3D was the old product and due for a rewrite, therefore putting down its own product.

ILM and other places HATED what they saw. The TDs worked on SGI using TCL (which Mel was similar to) and their standard station at the time was an Indigo 4400 with 192 megs of RAM, which XSI coudn't run on because it required at least a MIPS 10k with 512 megs of Ram on IRIX, with all the overhead of Mainwin and the new architecture. We never had a good SGI version and eventually dropped it for linux only in 2001. If that wasn't bad enough, the company was telling users since 1996 that Softimage|3D was the old product and due for a rewrite, therefore putting down its own product - a classic marketing error.

Softimage was also constantly talking about integration with "Softimage|DS" which none of these studios cared about. The sales people loved it because DS was 100k$ and therefore a huge commission. Softimage was also obsessively talking about MentalRay, which the studios also didn't believe in. XSI eventually got an SDK for unix only at the end of 2001, almost four years after Maya shipped. Before that, none of the big studios could have added their file formats or plug-ins to it. It was a step back for them in performance and capabilities from SI3D, the unix studios couldn't use it even if they had wanted to. It was too late in 2002 already.

Well that is my story of how Maya became so popular. A very agressive marketing giving away free seats to the studios and launching to the web a cracked version.

there has always been cracked versions of Softimage 3D or XSI, even "Sumatra Beta 3.5". I used them at home. SI3D was impossible to run on a normal PC however, I had to borrow a 3DLabs card from work.

I understand Luceric that now you are on Maya and are trying to drive us Softimagers there.

this is not my intention. I'm a UI developer so I collect feedback about UI for future users, but there is no interest for me to get people to switch; I'm just a programmer now

[angus_davidson]

I'm a UI developer so I collect feedback about UI for future users, but there is no interest for me to get people to switch; I'm just a programmer now

Hopefully you can bring some sanity to the Maya UI ;)

[bottleofram]

Cacoman, you're reading too much into it™, mate. Whats next? You gonna tell us AD intentionally leaked this latest feature list to prepare online community in advance for whats coming so it doesnt erupt with negativity on the release day and spoil their party or something? Haha, you're a funny guy, you....

[Kzin]

Softimage was also constantly talking about integration with "Softimage|DS" which none of these studios cared about. The sales people loved it because DS was 100k$ and therefore a huge commission. Softimage was also obsessively talking about MentalRay, which the studios also didn't believe in.

that is one thing i am not understanding til today.
they integrated such a powerfull render engine and nothing happens. there was no developement between si and mi to improve the whole production usability/evolution of mr for many years.
there was chance for booth to create a powerfull 3dtool and rendering solution, but booth missed it. ad is doing the same mistake, also when things are changing slowly, ok, only for max and maya, but its started.

when i am reading today a digital production from '98 and all the sumatra features which were promised and what we have today after about 15 years later..., its really sad, but not really suprising when reading this outlook for renderpass messages thing.

@luceric;
i am pretty sure that ilm sayed what they want for their future pipeline after si3d, what happen with these informations at si? why no one changed the direction? was sumatra to far ahead for minor changes? or was it a hard decision to say that si will not go the way ilm (ilm=big vfx studio industry) wants?