Spoiler Alert: NO SPOILERS ANYMORE

[dfp123]

Bellsey, I wasn't trying to be unrealistic, I was really curious what the resellers actually did for AD.
Thank you for the information, that makes sense.
I do see then need for large companies and educational institutions. I just don't see why they would be needed for those with only a few licenses to manage, online seems much easier to manage, bypassing them.
Cheers.

[xsisupport]

Bellsey, I wasn't trying to be unrealistic, I was really curious what the resellers actually did for AD.
Thank you for the information, that makes sense.
I do see then need for large companies and educational institutions. I just don't see why they would be needed for those with only a few licenses to manage, online seems much easier to manage, bypassing them.
Cheers.

Resellers play a big role in the other groups eg Revit, AutoCAD, Inventor, and those types of flagship products. There's a significant investment in building up and maintaining that reseller channel. For example, there's groups in Product Support whose job is to train and manage the channel, and make sure it integrates smoothly with the Autodesk support framework. True, cult products like Softimage don't quite fit into that model.

Anyways, just some background info for you...

[Chris_TC]

especially the render region is outdated like hell.

Why do SI users always exaggerate so much? Do we have such high standards?
When I have 3ds max and Maya colleagues over and they see me drag up a render region they're always impressed by how cool it is.

I use it every day and still love it. Your points of criticism don't hold much water. If you really need to tonemap, gamma correct and expose a region, there's a shader for that. Progressive rendering must be implemented by the renderer. Arnold for example offers progressive refinement in the render region.

[SreckoM]

I think that Progressive is implemented in MR when iRay was, 2 years ago ?

[angus_davidson]

I for one would be very happy if ADSK bundled something other then MR as its renderer. There are really good renderer's out there that have very active development which would be a big step up. The only time I have use MR in the last 2 years is

a) trouble shooting one of our previous students work (as they have traditionally used MR, this year however they will be using Arnold)
b) when I have forgotten to switch the render on a new scene.

Who knows maybe that will be something for the unfold event ;)

[Hirazi Blue]

What renderer would that realistically be?
If they were to "unbundle" MR, they'd probably want some renderer they can easily integrate in Max, Maya & Softimage at the same time, to sign a long-year contract for bulk licensing. And that would mean you'd be looking at a production-proven renderer at more or less the same level of development for all three applications (so Autodesk itself needn't do most of the work). Chances are, such a beast would be hard to find, I'm afraid.

[mirkoj]

and MR is production proven heheh. compared to level of development of couple other solutions..
just for one out of head example, vray is way ahead of mray and there is steady development for all 3 applications.
my bet that SI world would love to see Arnold and integral part of Softimage.

[angus_davidson]

There are folks much better suited then me to make that kind of suggestion. Personally If the redshift stuff was out of beta that would be a very solid candidate for no other reason then it finally make use of all of the Cuda power. Just the time savings alone would make it a very good offering.

In the areas like rendering where ADSK is leaving the development up to others to implement. It would be great if that team was really pushing the pace. Arnold to me gives the best end results as its suits the way I like to think in rendering. I know it would be a great option to be a standard. Vray would possibly be the best out of the box choice for Max.

[bottleofram]

especially the render region is outdated like hell.

Why do SI users always exaggerate so much? Do we have such high standards?
When I have 3ds max and Maya colleagues over and they see me drag up a render region they're always impressed by how cool it is.

I don't know, the fact that Render Preview window cant even display channels sure doesnt impress me...

But that's a silly discussion, so here's something i just read an luxology forums:

701 does not have an NLA. However, I will tell you that it has always been intended and in fact, the infrastructure to enable an NLA (motion blending, etc) is in your hands already in 601. The system for Actions is there to enable this sort of functionality over time (no pun intended). As you know, you can have multiple actions per character now. In the "future" you will be able to add multiple actions to a track- and blend them.

We planned many, many things for modo in the very beginning and as such we architected and implemented according to that plan. The end result is that as we enable specific things you will feel a much better integration with the rest of the system. It hasn't been perfect, but the plan has worked very well in many areas so far.

But now I've said too much! ;)

B

That right there is a man and his word. It's clear, it's honest and straight to the point. No excuses, no hiding behind company policy, no legalities, no secrecy, no confusion, no FUD... No. None of that business. Just a simple answer to a simple question.

Thats how you conduct your userbase. No wonder they are a cheerful bunch.

And i want to make it clear, since i myself am not fond of conversations about other software on SI forums (nothing terribly wrong but 9 out of 10 times it's a case of "grass is greener"), i'm really comparing different companies here.

[mirkoj]

talking about how diferent companies treats customers....

hiding from your customers what you will actually offer them in next release, while at the same time asking for money up front to buy a cat in the bag.. I mean cmon...
again there is not a single reason to hide what is in plan for SI or any other software and to continue keeping user base in dark. and to say again something that a lot of people already mentioned.. software is something that will take years of time invested in learning and purchasing and not being able to plan for future is really not something that anyone is appreciating. you need to plan where to invest your time and if you have no idea where your investment will be not in 5 years but in another couple months....
that's bad m'ckay...

[Bellsey]

That right there is a man and his word. It's clear, it's honest and straight to the point. No excuses, no hiding behind company policy, no legalities, no secrecy, no confusion, no FUD... No. None of that business. Just a simple answer to a simple question.

Thats how you conduct your userbase. No wonder they are a cheerful bunch.

Well, when you're a privately owned company and not public listed, this is what can make the difference. You can kinda say what you like (within reason).

talking about how diferent companies treats customers....
hiding from your customers what you will actually offer them in next release, while at the same time asking for money up front to buy a cat in the bag.. I mean cmon...again there is not a single reason to hide what is in plan for SI or any other software and to continue keeping user base in dark.

Again, there is a single reason, and I/we have explained this many many times. Unfortunately it doesn't stop people to continue beating us with that stick, but I guess that's your prerogative.

[bottleofram]

Well, when you're a privately owned company and not public listed, this is what can make the difference. You can kinda say what you like (within reason).

And you can be held accountable for what you say. I recognize this is a foreign concept to AD, but theres a value in it. I now have an idea where modo is going, and if Peebler doesn't deliver, he wont have my money. Simple as that.

Meanwhile though, FaceRobot meet FaceShift:

FR, old chap, I'm afraid you're about to get demoted from "a selling point" in the near future.

P.S. Before commenting on quality of tracking and expressions - keep in mind that Kinect2 is on it's way...

[luceric]

hiding from your customers what you will actually offer them in next release, while at the same time asking for money up front to buy a cat in the bag.. I mean cmon...

it's pretty painful on the dev team's side as well. We used to talk through our asses all the time on the public list during the pre-2005 days and it was fun. the irony is that the subscription/maintenance contract is the reason the company cannot speculate about future releases in public. It's a revenue recongnition thing... Avid right now is being threatened to be de-listed from NASDAQ for violating some of those rules. Note that autodesk does speculate about the future in NDA meetings with the client, or on the beta forums.

[mirkoj]

Hey Graham sorry if it was looked like it is beating you or anyone on dev team!!!
Actually we do feel your pain and everything we keep hearing from customers is forwarded to AD policy only, but they are hidden away and you guys are only face that AD have right now so unfortunately spears breaks on you
But not exactly we love you guys, we know how hard it is and you did clearly explain situation again and again.
So please keep in mind that all disappointed is to AD and their policy only.
Also when you care about Softimage as user do it is only natural that from time to time something more emotional will leak out and hit whoever is on the way

So again no hard feelings at, but this is only way that people can express them self and show how actually do hurt when you see Softimage being beaten to death. Now is it really beaten that is whole other topic but tothe most people that are in Softimage and not only them but outside as well that is feeling they all hav enad message that AD is kinda sending. So no wonder how much emotion goes around as well

By the have you tested maybe that new GPU renderer, RedShift?
Is there any kind of program inside AD that could actualy help out third party and easy their work on improving SI as well?
That ocould maybe give faster and bug free versions faster, building up on top of SI great foundation.
Redshift so far looks amazing even in it's really early alpha stage.
Now they as many others are strugling with OpenCL but I guess that is on AMD side to push that part... but wouldn't be great if all could get a long and work together and finally provide us fast development for amazing tools like this?

Sry again if you felt that anything here was personally towards you but you are right it is really easy to get that feeling

[mirkoj]

on FaceShift.. any idea why FaceRobot development stopped completely? Why not work on Softimage implementation of connecting Facerobot and Kinect2 or any other kind of video based face capture?
You were rigth before that AD brought Facerobot toground but after that there wasn't a single improvement in workflow and need to even today work on separate head mesh animate point bake and import is really out dated...
Till now it should be made a lot more seamlessly and easier to work with FaceRobot heads inside scenes.

One by one all SI great features are getting outdated and nothing is done to work on those features any more.

[Hirazi Blue]

and MR is production proven heheh.

You're right, but I didn't claim that. I said they would be looking for a production-proven renderer. Just like MR was when all these companies struck multi-year contracts with Mental Images, one assumes.

just for one out of head example, vray is way ahead of mray and there is steady development for all 3 applications.

I was under the impression VRay for Softimage still is somewhat lagging behind to the VRay for Max & Maya. That was why I didn't mention it specifically.

my bet that SI world would love to see Arnold and integral part of Softimage.

The SI world undoubtedly would love that. Realistically, I don't see that ever happening. But even Vray seems doubtful to me.
;)