softimage 2011 is near.....

[Rez007]

@Hirazi

First off, thanks for the detailed response. That, along with the greater level of respect that is shown on this forum, is why I keep coming here everyday versus other forums/sites.

I came over to Softimage from Max when XSI was switching/repackaging from version 6.0 to 6.5. I instantly felt right at home with Softimage, and had no regrets leaving my former software. And you are right, I did mainly purchase it for its character animation strengths, but I found my incoming workload to be more Arch Viz based. After my purchase there was a "boom" in the Arch Viz industry and it kind of left me feeling that maybe I made a wrong decision in terms of software. However, in the long wrong, I am still glad that I switched to Softimage. The things I have been asking Avid and Autodesk for many times, I believe were/are easier additions than most...IES lighting and a Unit of Measure option. My statement was geared towards Autodesk and not the community. I believe that Softimage's community is a very valuable asset to the software in general, and it is the best community all around. I think what Mathaeus is doing with his own ICE Hair is simply amazing, and the work that Wombat and Rork put in wom_archlight and a set of custom shaders, respectively, is greatly appreciated and didn't go unnoticed. It would just be nice if Autodesk would handle some of these solutions internally rather than waiting for someone to take the time out of their schedules to make a 3rd party add-on. Autodesk has tons of money...they can definitely afford to pay these guys to have integrated it into the software.

Yes my statement was a bit negative in regards to ICE, but dont get me wrong, it is very revolutionary. Maybe it would be nice if it was also more user friendly, cause lets face it...3D is very time consuming and being able to learn ICE in and out while doing everything else under the sun can be a little daunting.

[danyargici]

Yes my statement was a bit negative in regards to ICE, but dont get me wrong, it is very revolutionary. Maybe it would be nice if it was also more user friendly, cause lets face it...3D is very time consuming and being able to learn ICE in and out while doing everything else under the sun can be a little daunting.

OK, I'm fed up of hearing this completely weak argument. Learning the fundamentals of ICE takes not much more than a couple of days, it couldn't be more user friendly if it tried... The only thing you need to learn is the some fairly straightforward maths to start getting results with it. Basically, you might need to read some books... is that really so daunting to everyone?

For example, if you didn't have ICE, how would you make particles be attracted to a certain point on a curve, then swirl around it when the get within a certain distance? You would have had to script it (which pisses most users off even more than having to do it in ICE), but you would still be missing the same understanding of the maths you need to do it with ICE. *No software can read your mind...*

Obviously, more complex things take more complex thinking, and I wouldn't pretend to be more than an intermediate level ICE user, but seriously, with such little effort you get such huge gains.

No offence, but it's not really a case of learning ICE, it's more a case of learning maths IMO. It's stuff everyone should take a little time to learn.

As I said, I'm just fed up of hearing people whine about how ICE isn't easy to understand or accessible when the complete opposite is true.

[Hirazi Blue]

Hmmm, I guess I'll have to step in here...
To some ICE is easy as can be, to others it's obviously much harder. It's not just the math IMHO, it's a way of thinking. Some people get it instinctively, others struggle with it. As someone who has spent a lot of years scripting (mostly outside of (X)SI), to me the hardest part is to "think like an ICE tree"... I'm not whining, but I still have a hard time getting the most out of ICE. "Code less, create more" should probably have read "Code differently..." It's an artist-friendly approach, for sure, but no two artists are alike...

[Rez007]

Yes my statement was a bit negative in regards to ICE, but dont get me wrong, it is very revolutionary. Maybe it would be nice if it was also more user friendly, cause lets face it...3D is very time consuming and being able to learn ICE in and out while doing everything else under the sun can be a little daunting.

OK, I'm fed up of hearing this completely weak argument. Learning the fundamentals of ICE takes not much more than a couple of days, it couldn't be more user friendly if it tried... The only thing you need to learn is the some fairly straightforward maths to start getting results with it. Basically, you might need to read some books... is that really so daunting to everyone?

For example, if you didn't have ICE, how would you make particles be attracted to a certain point on a curve, then swirl around it when the get within a certain distance? You would have had to script it (which pisses most users off even more than having to do it in ICE), but you would still be missing the same understanding of the maths you need to do it with ICE. *No software can read your mind...*

Obviously, more complex things take more complex thinking, and I wouldn't pretend to be more than an intermediate level ICE user, but seriously, with such little effort you get such huge gains.

No offence, but it's not really a case of learning ICE, it's more a case of learning maths IMO. It's stuff everyone should take a little time to learn.

As I said, I'm just fed up of hearing people whine about how ICE isn't easy to understand or accessible when the complete opposite is true.

I guess my statement on the level of respect on how some individuals reply to posts can be negated.

My point was, ICE could be a lot easier than it is now… i.e. get.data and set.data when someone might not know exactly when to use them at first can be a little confusing – so does knowing exactly what algorithm(s) do you need to use do get a certain effect. Yes, I can learn it, but I also do a lot of other 3D things that take tons of time… I never said it needs to read my mind.

[pimeto]

Hmmm, I guess I'll have to step in here...
To some ICE is easy as can be, to others it's obviously much harder. It's not just the math IMHO, it's a way of thinking. Some people get it instinctively, others struggle with it. As someone who has spent a lot of years scripting (mostly outside of (X)SI), to me the hardest part is to "think like an ICE tree"... I'm not whining, but I still have a hard time getting the most out of ICE. "Code less, create more" should probably have read "Code differently..." It's an artist-friendly approach, for sure, but no two artists are alike...

I agree with you!
I dont use ICE, i dont know how to work with it but i am very excited about it Just maths and a dozen nodes isnt for me...
A friend of mine is awesome modeler.... but hi cant model organic stuff Strange but....

[Maximus]

well everyone here is a bit off, in my opinion ICE is way easier than normal scripting old style, but till a certain point, that point is anyway really basic low stuff, like connect the most intuitive nodes, make particles emit, apply force, flow on paths, strands, those things are easy to setup even for someone who has 0 skill and knowledge, because those nodes has names, "emit from surface" oh i guess what that does.

But that said, as soon as you move a tiny bit deeper it becomes totally not accessible to normal user, so i share the pain of other people here, because you cant do anything with the basic stuff, once the complicated nodes comes into play, you dont know how to use them, array, matrix, vector, all the getters and setters and so on...
stop saying ICE is simple and everyone could learn it, yes maybe but with an insane investment of time and resources. IT IS NOT that simple as soon as you try to do more complicated stuff than emit particles and let them flow around an object.

If you find ICE easy is because you already have that knowledge and probably you are already good without ICE with normal scripting.
what people say here, is that AD could let us have some out of the box tools like a compound presets where you just modify the parameters by PPG and see the effect in action, and honestly that would be so nice.. imagine a whole compound that setup a snowing in your scene with 1 click, i know yeah that might be easy to setup, but requires always some knowledge.

In a scale from 1 to 10 ICE is easy for the first 1 part, the other 9 is where you go if you want to dig deeper and its not easy at all.
a stupid example, i bought T-Gen, wich is basically a ppg that allows you to create trees branches and such, the code who setup the whole thing is unknown to me, thats what i mean, let us artist control the look and the overall actions not the stuff behind the scenes, and to me ICE is all behind the scenes.

Max

[Rez007]

You said it perfectly Max...Also, how do you like T-Gen? It looks sweet, but I haven't tried it yet.

[Maximus]

T-Gen to me is one of the best plugin i've ever buy or used, perfectly integrated, you can do trees, but you can even do motion graphics and use the shapes it creates in animation, L-system style, its really incredible, you have control over anything on your tree, trunk leaves forces, wind, it works in conjunction with everything in xsi, so its just up to your mind to create stuff, i would recommend it, i'm finishing some project in wich i used it, not for trees i'll show you maybe something those days.

Its cool for trees too, its just that i still suck at tree texturing and well.. the structure is infinite, you can get some complex looking tree but requires a bit of tries since i'm new at it.
It comes with presets, trees built, really nicely done, 5/5 stars to me. awesome plugin.
I'm havin a lot of fun with this plugin + empolygonizer lol
i'll show ya later

[Rez007]

Cool! looking forward to seeing your results.

[jpfrancisco]

ihmo ICE relatively easy learn just need a little time and understanding of how the different nodes works and just connect the dots rather nodes. This is fun rather than typing everything up and memorizing the different codes and syntaxes. Never seen this much control in particles with less code to type in. Don't get me wrong, I'm still learning this great stuff and having fun trying out it out.

If everything is so darn easy that a layman do it there will be no "awww how you do that is awesome momments " or "Thats what I call Badass VFX". People will just say "meh, I can do that too in 5 mins" It's all about the glory in the time you invest in learning amazing stuff. And my point is If your a badass in this kind of stuff that no layman can create then you get hired in the best industries and you tell to youself damn good thing I learn this shit up and be different than the rest.

Ok thats just my 2 cents. Cheers

[Hirazi Blue]

Okay, let me gently and "subtly" steer this discussion from the obviously somewhat heated discussion about the easiness of ICE (or lack thereof) and talk about some of the other new features in Softimage 2011 for a while:
After watching the first part of Mark Schoennagel's GDC demonstration of Softimage's new features, I must say that I'm impressed with the whole automatic lip sync feature (I liked the singing Rock Falcon ), not because it's cool technology and so on, but because Mark pointed out one important aspect of the thusly, newly improved Face Robot: it becomes feasible to attempt using it WITHOUT mocap data. And that's worth looking into (especially now that my personal high-tech mocap studio has inexplicably broken down, due to the fact that it never existed ).

[Rez007]

From the demo video I saw posted a while back, the lip-syncing looked very impressive. However, I missed the live video yesterday from GDC...do you know if that video has been posted anywhere?

[Hirazi Blue]

The video hasn't been posted yet AFAIK...
I read somewhere, Softimage plans to put it online, but only after the release of SI 2011. And the slight mishap at the end, where Mark Schoennagel slightly "fumbled" through the end of his ICE Kine presentation, might make them want to rethink releasing this version (although it was a splendid presentation and only goes to show, SI 2010 is no easy piece of software). There are however 2 more Softimage presentations in the so-called Virtual GDC, one of which is at 11:00 Friday morning (their local time) and one's on Saturday 13:30 (again: their local time). As these are live streams from the GDC I expect the content to be the same, but the performance to be different, probably (as Mark Schoennagel is not robot, yet... (AFAIK ))

[MartinWeber]

The GDC Presentation is online now:

http://area.autodesk.com/gdc/ondemand13

[Zafar Iqbal]

The GDC Presentation is online now:

http://area.autodesk.com/gdc/ondemand13

Awesome, thanks.

The way Face Robot is being set up - is that new? Previous presentation of it had no interest for me. Seemed to me more geared towards mocap, but now, even though I don't to much character work, it looks much more interesting. Maybe the quality of the presentation just got upped.

[Hirazi Blue]

(...) but because Mark pointed out one important aspect of the thusly, newly improved Face Robot: it becomes feasible to attempt using it WITHOUT mocap data.