My Wishlist for Softimage... maybe 2013 ?

[Fer]

My first Post here

My contribution I will say:

*ICE
-A new elaborate UI for ICE, something that let us get a node or compound more easily (get example from QMenu)
-Create a duplicate of a ICE node line with the middle mouse button, option to change the line look and being able
to mix straight and curved one, and a dot like in nuke for organizing them.
-Delete and create ports more easily (with shortcut maybe)
-....

*Other things
-a lot to ask. Will get back to it another time.

[gustavoeb]

THE DOT from NUKE! simple yet great organizer. hitting tab for searching compounds would be neat... actually this could be extended to searching any command when outside the ICE view

[iamVFX]

...fix lagoa advect compound, fix the crash after the closing scene with ice kinematics...

[Hirazi Blue]

Update the SCOP editor to make it behave as if it "lives" in the same millennium as the rest of the software.
At least fix it so the floating SCOP editor and the one embedded in the dual layout play together in a normal fashion...

[bottleofram]

-A new elaborate UI for ICE, something that let us get a node or compound more easily

THE DOT from NUKE! simple yet great organizer. hitting tab for searching compounds would be neat...

For something that became a "selling point of SI", it is weird not much effort is made in making it user friendly. Not that ICE lacks any attention but... I've seen modo's nodal interface the other day and realized my little mental argument is identical to programers language readability issue. Open up a project from couple of months ago. Even if you commented it nicely and grouped the parts of the tree (which, lets face it, you most likely didn't), the flow is still hardly recognizable. It takes too much time to make sense of it all when arbitrary color and tiny text is the only thing that sets nodes apart. If you go into a compound, matters are even worse because there are always dozens of output/input doted lines all over your workspace being nothing short of a distraction most of the time...

P.S. Tab Search is a must for a node graph of any kind. Inexcusable its being ignored.

[dwigfor]

I really wish you could copy/paste Group Comment nodes... Is it that hard? They really help organize compounds and are a pain to always have to drag a new one in, and then resize contents, and then recolor........ Please!!

[ActionArt]

My basic wish would be to finally have color management in the viewport opengl. It's a real pain to have it everywhere except the viewport. Doesn't make a lot of sense as it is now.

[Gith]

• 1. Hah, I'm suprised nobody here mentioned "The Darkening of the UI" yet Or maybe is QT coming to SI too?
  2. *Possibly fix the exporting of a scene to another renderer (like Arnold, the SI is using only one core for it)
  3. *Multilayer EXR output
  4. *Fix the darn OBJ exporter! (it's heavy memory leaking, and sometimes we need to export heavy mesh in many parts because of the consumption of the RAM... which is insane!
  5. **Alembic (though i'm sure AD is already working on that, since it's already in Maya)
  6. Anti Aliasing (+Postprocess motion blur and DOF maybe) in Hardware Renderer (or completely new engine)
  7. Transferring Hair to the ICE strands, something which partially Melena from studioNEST is already doing, but i don't think they will support it forever (just reality check). And it could be improved.
  8. New/updated Flipbook image viewer? It could be nice to unify it for all AD packages. And let my just hand one small feature which i found only in Framecycler - audio scrubbing (it would be heaven for the animators!)
  9. Any chance of fixing the default workflow of turning off the "Shapes" in Referenced Model's delta? It's really annoying!
  10. Proper incremental autosave! (if i wont backup my "AutoSave1" file from the system folder before launching SI again.. it disappears. Same with crashbackup file) Could be nice to have it saved in Backup directory with .scn extension, which apparently it doesn't) - or, i have something terribly confused here

* - though i'm still on 2011.5 it may have already changed)
** - don't get me wrong here. I'm loving what Exocortex and Helge are doing, and it's fine to support them, as it's a really advanced production ready plugin with complex features, but we could use some basic geometry exporter with with supersampling ability.


+1 to Viewport FCurve Editor
+1 to Pre-selection highlighting. Not only for Tweak Component Tool.
+1 to QMenu
+1 to Copying Group Comments in ICE (!!!)
+1 to Curve tools
+1 to ICE Kine workflow update.
+1 to the Nuke DOT (could be nice)

[Jenus]

Is it just me that wants a new Render Preview window that lets you at least zoom, pan and check the colors with a color picker.
Be able to see the render in its native resolution is a must!
And one thing I really miss from 3ds max is the viewport feedback of all the procedurals.

My 2 cents.

/Jens

[ActionArt]

No, I doubt it's just you

There was a hint that they were working on the viewport (as opposed to IRAY) so you may get at least some of your wish.

[origin]

+1 for new VFB with zoom, pan, colorpicker, basic colorcorrection, instant preview of channels.

For new viewport update, only if it's NOT going to be like new max nitrous:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-WX7DPEMwk&feature=fvwrel

Don't let this fool you, new Max viewport is unusable piece of garbage. I know alot of folks were amazed by what the were shown by AD about Max viewport update, but believe me not only standard direct3d max vp sucks but this new pre-alpha viewport wannabe sucks even more (speed & responsibility).

[ThomasHelzle]

Well, "Silver Support" would be my main recommendation for 2013.
I'm no longer on Subscription and don't plan to renew it in the grace period if nothing is done about that.
Like many other freelancers, "Gold Support" is close to irrelevant to me, my jobs are usually very short and I'm not able in that time to report anything. If it doesn't work, I have to find a workaround or use another software. The Softimage turnaround times are way too slow for me and you never know if something is done about a problem or not in this life. I don't need evading answers like "we are thinking about it" or "we're aware of that".
The creator of Moment of Inspiration, Michael Gibson often delivers a fix within hours. That's not called fancy names like "gold" but actually works and is worth so much more than Autodesks/Softimages support ever was.

This just happened to me: I was doing some bread and butter architectural visualization and for the life of me couldn't import any FBX files I got a.) from the customer or b.) from a customer exported DXF converted to FBX with the official Autodesk FBX converter. I finally gave up after about 40 crashes of XSI 2010 and 2012.
Lightwave opens the same FBX files without any hickup, as does Cinema 4D.
The job was then finished in Cinema 4D, next time I think I'll give Lightwave 11 a go.

Speaking of that: I currently start to enjoy Lightwave (11) again, they now finally have instances and it's very interesting to note that those instances can be manipulated with the Lightwave node editor. So while it isn't ICE yet, it is getting very very interesting for visualization and even MoGraph again (they also added flocking, bullet physics and a pretty good way to break stuff besides other good news like GoZ etc.).
http://www.newtek.com/features-lightwave-menu.html
http://www.newtek.com/features-video.html

Reading this thread, I was remembered of one of my first things back when I started with XSI 4 Foundation that I just couldn't believe: "Where is the Color Palette?".
Now reading that as a wish for 2013 and only for the image previewer makes me realize once more, that for all the goodness in XSI, there is an unbelievably huge amount of basic things it lacks. All that advanced ICE and pipeline stuff seems to block the view at everyday bread and butter tools that make up artist life to a big percentage.

So other than these ramblings, I have nothing to add here.
I have given up on the believe that XSI is headed in a direction that is helpful for me.

Cheers,

Thomas

[Memag]

"And one thing I really miss from 3ds max is the viewport feedback of all the procedurals"

+1

[Tekano]

hey Thomas, just had a similar issue, apparently you have to convert the fbx file into a 2012 version first with Autodesk 2012 fbx convertor. most likely it will work then?

best regards,

Rob

[ThomasHelzle]

Thanks Tekano, but that's what I tried first...
Those 40 crashes were all sorts of iterations through different combinations of settings.

And this scenario is just one of many I encountered.
It is my impression that XSI is no longer a stable workhorse for a freelancer - at least not for me.
If it's not the import then something goes wrong with mental ray, and if not that, then a certain material suddenly keeps crashing the app.
My jobs are completely different each time, but the constant thing is that XSI keeps not doing it's job more often than not.

And since Autodesk seems committed to make XSI into a "pipeline tool" - which translates to me into "we deliver a shaky groundworks and you guys write the tools you need yourself", it does no longer fullfill my needs.

I guess part of me still cares, otherwise I wouldn't write stupid rants like this.

I'll get over it with time I guess ;-)

Cheers,

Thomas

[McNistor]

Be able to see the render in its native resolution is a must!

You can do that right now. Open the preview window and then uncheck the Autofit viewer option (from Oprions menu button) and refresh the window.
I'm affraid you must do this everytime you render a preview.
When rendering a whole pass, this cannot be done indeed. Out of luck I think.

Update the SCOP editor to make it behave as if it "lives" in the same millennium as the rest of the software.
At least fix it so the floating SCOP editor and the one embedded in the dual layout play together in a normal fashion...

What is SCOP editor?