What if Softimage died?

[Falam]

ICE is the only really strong point (for now) that SI has so it is logical to choose that path if you want SI to survive.

Sometimes I really do wonder if ICE has as much relevance as Softimage users tend to believe. It was a great idea at the time. but after its apparently final kick (ICE Modeling) it seems as if the framework itself all but reached the end of the line... But I'm gladly proven wrong (yet again).

I chose SI over Maya when it was only v4 and no-one dreamed of something like ICE. It's simply the speed of use that makes it superior. Dragging and dropping one parameter on another and adding a quick expression ist a matter 3 seconds whereas browsing through all the parameters in the connection editor alone takes half a minute sometimes. And if you want to connect with an expression you have to exactly know what to type and write it. Just an example. When switching passes I have immediately the right camera for my cam viewport whereas in maya you have to select in manually every bloody time you switch the layout. And most important: the "keep the manipulator visible in viewport" function is the most timesaving invention in the history of 3d Production! And only Si has it. Those are the little things that make SI superior, not ICE or some SDK. The faster you can work, the more money you earn. As simple as that.

What about this ?

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

What about this ?

What about it?

btw: white on white is hard to read ;)

[Falam]

I changed the color, hopefully it will make more sense

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

I changed the color, hopefully it will make more sense

Um, sorry, I still don't get it....

I was talking about the option to keep the manipulator inside the viewport even if the object is outside the visible area so you don't have to pan the view to select a handle of zoom in on some corner while using the transform in cog mode.

Transform>Transform Preferences>Keep Manipulator visible in 3d View

[Nox]

Yep, that's a great feature, I like it too.

After 15 years of development, Maya's user experience is still from 90's.

[myara]

Agree. I think the best of SI is the workflow and user experience. It is much faster and easier to work with SI from a user point of view. The problem is that it's not an easy to sell feature because you can do almost the same with Maya, it only takes you 3 or 5 times more clicks.

100% of my co-workers Maya users have been delighted with SI workflow, but 99% of them stayed with Maya. And that's at a designer level. Making a TD or even a company to change it's base platform for their pipeline would be 10 times harder.

And even if would be possible to easily "convert" a few Maya users and companies to change to SI, increasing SI seats at expenses of Maya ones may not be a good thing for AD. The real deal for AD is for you to use SI and keep Maya and that's what they're trying to do with the suites.

ICE, even if it is a little overrated, is the only unique feature (for now) that SI has, and the closest thing AD has to compete with Houdini, so the "logical" path for SI to survive would be ICE. Not that I like that, I don't use much ICE in my daily work either and almost never use particles, but it seems like the easiest choice if SI development would have to focus on something to survive.

If SI can't do anything that Maya can't, then the suite thing and therefore, SI existence, won't make sense anymore.

[iamVFX]

[Bullit]

What a beautiful and useful corpse then!

[Hirazi Blue]

It's definitively not dead yet. It appears to have been taken off life support,
so there is no telling how long it will actually live on...

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

Yeah, it's not dead. The problem is, so many people believe it is. I heard a discussion in a max company recently where someone asked what software would be dest to buy.The answer was " with max you get a lot of pligins, with maya you get many jobs and softimage is dead." No one in that company ever used SI. This is all based on perception. AD wouldn't even have to change the pace of development, they only would need to fix that perception. Nothing is cheaper than words. Look at eon software, they are still selling vue which is the most PITA to work with but look how they advertise it. Only words. And the will to change something.

[Bellsey]

No one in that company ever used SI.

For me, this was the key thing in what you said. Yes, it's about perception, but it's perception that's perhaps based on a very narrow view. I still come across people even now who think Softimage (nee XSI) died years ago (before acquisition), still don't know what ICE and if they do, they still don't quite fully understand what it is.

Now oddly, and people here might contest this, Autodesk haven't stopped talking about Softimage, we continue to produce marketing materials and include it (along with our other solutions) when doing events for industry or channel. So there is actually alot of information out there from us, together with all the other sources such as Facebook, twitter, Youtube, Vimeo, etc.

But it's not uncommon (and perfectly) understandable for Maya/Max (and to be fair Soft studios) to literally just look and and focus on the software they know and use, and nothing else. If they're able to do everything they need, then essentially they have no need to look at other solutions and so alot of stuff can simply pass them by.
And even if they do know about Softimage, they simply don't have a need for it. As someone I know whose senior at a studio said to me once "I like Softimage, and ICE always looks good, but we use Max together with Thinking Particles and FumeFX, it's a tough sell for us"
We may be able to lead a horse to water, but we can't always make it drink.

[Bullit]

I know people that recognize that Softimage is superior with ICE but don't change due to inertia and the comfort of an established pipeline.
Changing software also means somewhat leveling the field in a company, and that means winners and loosers and it is usually the pros that loose that edge and they have more power in company, so to change it has to be a big advantage and ICE wasn't done for ease of use with its all context issues and many non universal nodes.

[satyajit]

I strongly feel if ICE based workflow and output was superior to 3DsMax TP&FFX workflow studios would opt for ICE. They can't afford neglecting superior output. But it's not that. Given that ICE have more granilarity, TP and FFX still have the upper hand in terms of VFX works.

If we can change that, it would be a game changer for SI.

[Falam]

Isn't BiFrost Maya version of ICE ? The notion I keep getting when I read articles on it. If so, when you plug BiFrost into Maya, where does that leave Softimage !

If you removed ICE from Softimage, all other Software packages would have stomped on Softimage. When someone says they can do it in ICE and they don't need a large R&D team that is ridicules. Unless you are a ICE guru you will be able to script faster then create an ICE tree, compared that to Maya / Max which doesn't have ICE and only relies on scripting, and the playing field is now leveled.

Contact a Studio and ask them, tools are tools, if you know only Softimage and ICE, they may take someone else, atleast the studios I have contacted. It's not that a program makes and artist, studios want an artist that knows their program.

Europe and Asia have different markets, in that regard Softimage has strength in that market, which is why most of the community doesn't appear to have problems using Softimage who live in those regions. Smaller TV studios in North America don't even use Maya, rather Lightwave, there is no sign of Softimage at all. Unless you plan on traveling to the far reaches of the globe as some people have in the Si community to work exclusively with Softimage, otherwise you have to make a found decision.

There are some fabulous ICE tools created by regular Softimage users, how many of those tools get updated ? Some authors tend to release their compound that's it, if it works it works, if not, it's left to you.

No one wants to learn another package, hand a Softimage user another package and they will hold on tight to Softimage, that is perfectly understandable. Autodesk goal is to get a procedural effects system into Maya, BiFrost is becoming that tool, when that happens what will happen to Softimage, will it remain a side kick app you can get if really needed ?

In-case some take this as though I'm promoting another program, that is not the case rather, analyzing the state of this program, even a Softimage user from the Softimage|3D era has to ask them-self, did they market Softimage as good as they could have or did it break somewhere along the road less traveled ?

[MauricioPC]

I guess Softimage users should make some more noise. The thread at Max Underground resulted in Tom Hudson (one of the creators of 3ds Max) to appear and complain about the current development. Now, as Tom stated at the Max Underground forums, he's working with Autodesk in the development.

Hi All,

It was great to hear from Autodesk so quickly when the original thread showed up on MU, and I'm excited to be back working with the Max development team.

I can't really give any details on what I'm working on, but I can say with certainty that Autodesk is listening to the users and is serious about moving Max forward with new features. I'm writing code for some right now.

The only downside: It does mean that my personal animation project is getting put on the back burner again...
- Tom Hudson
http://klanky.com

So maybe the SI users can accomplish the same.

[Falam]

Maybe.

There is to much segregation, it can never work at this point.