No 2013 Advantage Pack

[bottleofram]

@Pooby: I think one should be extremely naive no to see this as a aqui-hire (If I understand correctly what this means).

I worded that carefully in order not to stir any strong responses from autodesk employees who visit this forums. It would only amount to an unnecessary and possibly ill-fated discussion which should be avoided since nothing new can be said on that subject.

EDIT: corrected myself slightly

[ChrB]

@BottleOfRam: You are absolutely right. My bad.
@ace63: Maybe I can put the shades back on now and stop staring into the dark pits

[Daniel Brassard]

[jamination]

At least Mark is still optimistic

"Other than that things are really good. The team in Singapore are already doing some amazing work on the next release. I think you’ll all be pleasantly surprised by what the team is going to deliver in 2014 so stay tuned and hope to see you at the show!!"

From his Area blog

yeah, he said that before the last release, his credibility is at an all time low with me.

[Hirazi Blue]

Here's a thought: let the Singapore team come up with a set of Bonus Tools akin to the Maya concept. A few scripts, a few compounds, package them as an addon. Way less development time, no full build and warm feelings all around for the new team...

[ace63]

I don't think we need any Bonus tools or whatsoever. Furthermore I think the development team should not be working on stuff that can be achieved through the SDK.
Instead, they should focus on core problems which only they can fix: performance issues (this is one of the areas that I dislike the most about Soft - after a certain number of things in the scene it gets REALLY slow), bug fixes, ICE support for stuff like curves etc.

[Maximus]

id love to see some modeling update. Modeling is the first thing everyone has to do still we are left so behind.. i dont get why.
Gave up on rendering btw.

- A sweep modifier that actually works and its not convoluted and buggy to use
- Update to curves, creating a fillet on a curve is just...stupid in soft.
- Extrude with interactive sliders and more options, check graphite modeling tools
- Object paint
- Duplicate with precisions to create patterns
- Advanced snaps and build planes
- More deformers, we have ICE damn.. we can create procedural geometry, have some nice stuff going on like "Clovis Gay" showed for max. Still nothing.

There is really a lot that can be done in modeling.
I dont like the path Softimage took, they just throw at you ICE and you are on your own, build your own tools now.
It would be nice to see some serious updates/development from AD.

[gaboraa]

Here's a thought: let the Singapore team come up with a set of Bonus Tools akin to the Maya concept. A few scripts, a few compounds, package them as an addon. Way less development time, no full build and warm feelings all around for the new team...

So true and would be a great boost for users for sure. Also if the tools prove themselves as worthy, they could be integrated into Softimage like they did with Maya

Like Maximus said, maybe some curve tools, curve cut and blend, connect, chamfer etc. Curve tools in XSI really need love. Same goes for Nurbs

Nothing wrong with such addons but yes Softimage needs an overall overhaul, It feels like it is behind the competition already.

[gaboraa]

id love to see some modeling update. Modeling is the first thing everyone has to do still we are left so behind.. i dont get why.
Gave up on rendering btw.

- A sweep modifier that actually works and its not convoluted and buggy to use
- Update to curves, creating a fillet on a curve is just...stupid in soft.
- Extrude with interactive sliders and more options, check graphite modeling tools
- Object paint
- Duplicate with precisions to create patterns
- Advanced snaps and build planes
- More deformers, we have ICE damn.. we can create procedural geometry, have some nice stuff going on like "Clovis Gay" showed for max. Still nothing.

There is really a lot that can be done in modeling.
I dont like the path Softimage took, they just throw at you ICE and you are on your own, build your own tools now.
It would be nice to see some serious updates/development from AD.

Yes my exact thoughs on this. I really want to see more deformers and maybe deformer previews/guides.

- I always miss a surface deformer with a support for meshes also.
- Maybe a brush that can work like Maya's sculpt brushes, If you don't know Maya's brush system, you should check it, they made it similar to Zbrush, shit for smoothing, ctrl for add/subtract etc.
- A retopology tool, more modeling tools like cut with curve, more primitives, interactive symmetry etc.
- Also for me , GUI should be changed also, maybe I will get negative criticism but if you are familiar with blender's GUI you may understand what I mean. You can interactively edit its GUI without coding and other stuff also it has a nice feature like changing the colors of the application. You can use blender as pink yellow, blue etc, sky is the limit.

I really want to see this kind of changes for SI and hope to see them in the next releases.

[ChrB]

- Also for me , GUI should be changed also, maybe I will get negative criticism but if you are familiar with blender's GUI you may understand what I mean. You can interactively edit its GUI without coding and other stuff also it has a nice feature like changing the colors of the application. You can use blender as pink yellow, blue etc, sky is the limit.

I really want to see this kind of changes for SI and hope to see them in the next releases.

For GUI, I really like the interface and find it quite functional - not the most important place to put resources in my opinion. In regards to modelling, I have what i need, but I don't do much modelling, so others surely have a better idea about that.

I know I'm not going to be popular with my ICE jabbing but I would like to see:
- Better ICE curve implementation (Including NURBS for an old fart like me)
- Better L-System implementation
- Better string implementation
- Better intergrated FX-tree, render tree and ICE
- Better Cache workflow

And for the small stuff:
- Ability to use tokens in viewport capture
- Fix of the missing values from ICE to render tree

Not such a big wish list


oh yeah, but this is not up to AD, Arnold for the masses!

[eternal art]

I love to see some General improvement in the software especialy for those :

Workflow :
- Ability to tear off menu in render region render channels to switch between buffer faster , (every menu must be able to tear off , Why some of them not ? )
- Improve image clip viewer with some pan and other tool .
- Tab key Like Nuke To Insert New Node Directly In Render Tree And ICE Tree .

UV-Textureing :
- Loop Selection Tool In Texture Editor Like 3d View .
- Stright UV Island In On Click , if Island has the same amount of u and v row (Like Headus uv layout).
- Add Mode Selection To Select The Border Of The Uv Island .
- Ability To Use Unfold With exist uv or read it's cut line .
- Extende The Texture Editor SDK With Ability To Put Some Button In Texture Editor Toolbar.

Modeling :
- Improve The Performance of the Modeling Tool That Build On (ICE) , like ( Apply Thikness , Apply Slice Between tow Vertices , Cap Hole ) .
- Improve All The Curve Tool With Ability To Seperate and Combine Curves and Sub curve And Add ability to Create it in ice .
- Bevel Operater Dosn't Preserve UV Correctly.

Rendering :
- Rendering FramBuffer Window Overhaul (See Vray FramBuffer) With Open SDK To Let the Third party Renderer Use it .

Viewport :
Improve The High Quality Viewport "HQ" (See What Maya Viewport Doing With DirectX 11) .

Hair :
Update Hair Module With ICE One And Integrate New Dynamic possibility to it with Self collision Between Hair .

[Ramon]

eternal art
Impossible

[Caveman]

- Maybe a brush that can work like Maya's sculpt brushes, If you don't know Maya's brush system, you should check it, they made it similar to Zbrush, shit for smoothing, ctrl for add/subtract etc.

I wasn't aware that Maya uses Shit for Smoothing eeewww Dirty girl.

I am a crazy Softimage Lover. Just praying that it lives forever. Amen.

Just look at Lightwave back from the grave.

[luceric]

maya's brush tool predates Zbrush by about four years. did they make change to it since?

[Caveman]

afaik Maya's brush is the same as it was before. Probably he's new to Maya.

GUI is fine as it is. Fancy rainbow and lollipop colored GUI are for kids. A minor request from me, options to view Alpha and RGB in the preview render. Recently I have been rendering a lot of stuff in SI and have missed the Pass Contribution Map from Maya. Of course it can be done with custom channels and all but an easier way would be great. Add things that Max and Maya can only dream of (of course it should be useful to the artists). There are already countless useless stuff inside Max that no one even bothers to touch. So let's not make another frankenfish out of SI, one is enough


Take your time devs, and show them what you've got

[j3st3r]

My whislist is :

- an Artisan like system...unfortunately the weightmap driven sculpt and smooth deformers are not even close, unless each stroke is a new deformer...
- more user friendly caching system
- better HQV shadows
- Using curves for cuts (LW has it since the ancient greeks)
- ability to draw polygon strips
- Extracted polygons keep their cluster data (weights, for example)
- move normal that works like the extrude along normal without the extrude
- and many other things...Snapping is OK with me