What if Softimage died?

[MauricioPC]

This one is for Nizar ...

http://www.cgmeetup.net/home/making-of- ... character/


Really good quality work, very impressive.

-- EDIT --

Just to add more info ... the retopo tool from Blender looks really solid. I'm impressed, I really am. It looks way faster and more stable than 3ds Max. Maybe it's on par with Maya, don't know, but since 3ds Max is the slower software of the world, I think I may even give Blender a try.

[Hirazi Blue]

For retopo work, I'd consider 3D Coat.
Additionally: Its 3D painting toolset alone makes it worth its price IMHO.

[MauricioPC]

For retopo work, I'd consider 3D Coat.
Additionally: Its 3D painting toolset alone makes it worth its price IMHO.

I've read that 3D Coat is great for retopo, UVs and 3D painting. Is that correct? I was thinking of adding that to my workflow.

[Hirazi Blue]

For retopo work, I'd consider 3D Coat.
Additionally: Its 3D painting toolset alone makes it worth its price IMHO.

I've read that 3D Coat is great for retopo, UVs and 3D painting. Is that correct? I was thinking of adding that to my workflow.

In my experience it is, but you should try a demo, obviously. There's also the voxel sculpting toolset, but I don't use that often enough to dare say much about it...
;)

[Cacoman]

The funniest thing of all is that I recently bought Topogun as I needed to retopo a character I sculpted entirely in Zbrush.

It happened that two weeks later I saw the video on Vimeo from Paul on how to retopo in Softimage using the shrinkwrap operator in the Animation stack.

And guess what... With Paul's approach I have now basically the same behavior that Topogun has, inside Softimage...

Softimage has more flexibility than any other 3D software out there.

Even with its "poor" SDK.

I have been using Maya more these last couple of years only because I need to deliver my assignments. Try doing a delta shape without a script downloaded from internet... that is just for a start. I am not going get into details of the UI, but it is the worst I ever seen. The only comparable worst with Maya is the old Windows Paint Brush.

As Mirko said, as an artist, you need a TD behind you to get under the hood

Here is a step by step comparision to do the same in Maya vs Softimage. I skipped some obvious steps like parenting, creating the curves for the controls and their respective groups, that are the same for both, so usless to describe them. Only the hardcore ones.

The "dorito approach" in Maya:

1. Duplicate your skin
2. Skin your mesh and weight
3. Make sure you have your mesh with UVs or the controler for the deformation won't constrain to a point on your mesh when it translates. Also make sure when you constrain to a point on the mesh, that point is not sharing to UV coordintates or you constrain will send your controller to the origin of the scene.
4. Make a blendshape with the original skinned mesh.
5. Open the Node Editor
6. Drag and drop from the Outliner the child skinned joint, parent joints and skin cluster to the Node Editor. (Make sure you have turn off the "Only DAG objects" in the outliner or you will never find the skin cluster").
7. Don't select by accident anything else or it will switch the Node editor to display that object or it will add it to your Node Editor window, and you will need to select everything again or clear the unwanted node.
8. In the node editor select the skin cluster node and choose "view connections" to display to which index of the skin cluster the skinned joint is attached.
9. Grab the output of the parent joint and select "Inverse World Matrix" (What kind of name is that??? Jesus...)
10. Plug it in into the skin cluster node. Make sure you select the Prebind World Matrix input and the same index the skinned joint is connected to. Otherwise it may screw your mesh completley.
11. Save before connecting the next one. It is probably that Maya will crash. Or in case you connect to the wrong index cause even if you undo it will screw your mesh.

The same in Softimage

1. Make a clone of your enveloped mesh
2. Envelope your mesh
3. Constrain object to cluster, your controller to the clone mesh. (You don't need to have UVs.)
4. Open the explorer.
5. Select the enveloped child object (you can use any object in Softimage to envelope by the way...) expose the StaticKineState PPG and lock it.
6. Select the parent object and expose the global transform PPG and lock it.
7. Connect the SRT of the Global Transform to the SRT of the StaticKineState.

Switch to Maya after using Softimage???

[missingkey]

9. Grab the output of the parent joint and select "Inverse World Matrix" (What kind of name is that??? Jesus...)

I'm fairly certain "Inverse world matrix" pertains to all 3d apps, and linear algebra in general. not just maya.

[Cacoman]

9. Grab the output of the parent joint and select "Inverse World Matrix" (What kind of name is that??? Jesus...)

I'm fairly certain "Inverse world matrix" pertains to all 3d apps, and linear algebra in general. not just maya.

Ohh really???? I thought it was for turning the world upside down with Neo inside...

[angus_davidson]

depends if you took the red or the blue pill ;)

[missingkey]

9. Grab the output of the parent joint and select "Inverse World Matrix" (What kind of name is that??? Jesus...)

I'm fairly certain "Inverse world matrix" pertains to all 3d apps, and linear algebra in general. not just maya.

Ohh really???? I thought it was for turning the world upside down with Neo inside...

you seemed to have a problem with it.


boo-hoo, I have to use maya to get paid to make art.

[luceric]

I knew what an inverse world matrix was before I joined Softimage, but a statickinestate - not so much.

[angus_davidson]

boo-hoo, I have to use maya to get paid to make art.

I suspect he was using Maya to hand in assignments. Not many places that teach animation allow people to use 3D packages that are different from what their trainers / lecturers use. We teach in Softimage but our students can use what they like as long as they adhere to whats asked in the assignment. Having taught both Maya and Softimage to people who are relatively new to 3D. Softimage wins hands down for being the more intuitive for them to use and get great work done. Mayas UI and in some cases overly complex ways of doing things is something that people like Luceric can hopefully streamline and fix.

[Cacoman]

boo-hoo, I have to use maya to get paid to make art.

Use Softimage like me, and you will stop whining.

@Luceric.

Yes and I know what is the Bernoulli principle and the equation of lift for a wing profile.

We are not talking about if you can do Laplace transformations here.

We are talking about who is using the software. Even that StaticKineState is contradictory by itself, it describes better what it is doing or what to expect, as it will "move but stay still".

Inverse World Matrix.... yeah pretty accurate if you know what a matrix is. And where to find it in the Maya mayhem.

It is funny how instead of telling us how the Maya workflow is better, you guys get stucked with "ohhh you don't know what an Inverse World Matrix is??".

"I know what a World Inverse Matrix is, I can give you a class of algebra"...

So abstract that maybe Luceric, that is the reason why your old team named the Inverse World Matrix StaticKineState.

Seems that those days when you were really mind linked with the artist using the software are lost also.

[Cacoman]

I suspect he was using Maya to hand in assignments.

Yes you are right. For make art and being paid, I only use state of the art software like Softimage.

[luceric]

@Luceric.

Yes and I know what is the Bernoulli principle and the equation of lift for a wing profile.

We are not talking about if you can do Laplace transformations here.

We are talking about who is using the software. Even that StaticKineState is contradictory by itself, it describes better what it is doing or what to expect, as it will "move but stay still".

Inverse World Matrix.... yeah pretty accurate if you know what a matrix is. And where to find it in the Maya mayhem.

It is funny how instead of telling us how the Maya workflow is better, you guys get stucked with "ohhh you don't know what an Inverse World Matrix is??".

"I know what a World Inverse Matrix is, I can give you a class of algebra"...

So abstract that maybe Luceric, that is the reason why your old team named the Inverse World Matrix StaticKineState.

Seems that those days when you were really mind linked with the artist using the software are lost also.

I don't get any of this artistic-friendly vibe, which is why I joked about it.

It's something called "static kine state" which is an object that generally stores the initial post of a joint, but is also used in a variety of other places where a transform needed to be stored. To me, it's just an obscure and scary robotics terms. For artists, it could have been called... "initial pose", and XSI's Kinematics node have been called.. "transform", like in any other 3D apps.

To get the inverse of the world matrix in XSI, and why you'd need it.... well read this ICE_trees_WorkingwithTransform Needing the inverse of a matrix is so common in rigging, so it's a port on the Maya transform node.

It is funny how instead of telling us how the Maya workflow is better, you guys get stucked with "ohhh you don't know what an Inverse World Matrix is??".

This is an interesting comment, actually. You've noticed that nobody is arguing that the Maya workflow is better. This is not an error. Autodesk is just beginning to rethink maya for smaller shops, starting with modelling. In the Marc Petit era, Maya was just focused on studios, SDKs, and technical people, except for some bits like PaintFX/neuclus. Everyone is completely aware of the concerns, especially with Maya LT which is meant for individuals and small teams.

But of course we're going to joke about some minor part of your post rather than addressing it! And I will apologize for that. I mean, who really has the maya rigging experience here to finely debate how to duplicate the "dorritos approach" in Maya. Or even figure it if it's necessary in the first place. that would take quite a bit of research, and would anyone here care about the answer in this thread, I do not think so

[Bellsey]

Actually I got kinda lost over the the workflow comparison. Was it just about retopo workflows compared to Topogun? Because since the new modelling toolkit went into Maya, retopo workflows have been way easier.

[Cacoman]

In Softimage I rig now more in ICE. As you said transform matrix are a must when rigging.

But it would be no fair to compare apples with grapes. So that is why I described the no ICE method using the StaticKineState property for the "dorritos" approach.

Fortunatley I have an engineer background, and I of course understand what a matrix is. Just mentioned the name "World Inverse Matrix" as at my first impression when I was looking for the SRT matrix of the joint to achieve the "dorrito" effect, was not the output I was looking for as I didn't know if the matrix of the child would be binded to the local or global "world" space as the deformer is sharing the same local space of the "sliding" object. With a mesh that has a blend shape node and several blending and corrective shapes already attached to it, I didn't want to get something I wasn't going to be able to "undo" and start all over again.

So after spending I don't remember how many time, I finally found information on it and how to use. But it was not after a while that I also found that the skin cluster has an index for each joint and how the prebind input of the skin cluster works.

Once you know it, you will say "ohh but it is very logical..." With Softimage I have never been in the need to get into detailed tech on how it works as I had with Maya. Not even when ICE came out first.

Just now. I am working on my rig in Maya and I don't how, why or when the skin cluster got "currupted" as the scripts I was using to extract the skin, do the corrective and the delta don't work anymore. If I run the scripts on a fresh skin object they run without no problem. So this is the second time I need to export the weights, detach the skin, skin the object and reimport the weights to get the scripts working again and continue with my process. But now as the rig got more complex it won't be that "easy".

I also have scripted more than ever when I started using Maya. So spend half of the time working on my assignment and half scripting or looking for scripts to get the job done.

If I was in a studio with an army of TD/Dev I would just raise my hand and say "Hey your script is not working anymore, I need you to fix it". Unfortunatley, that is not the case.

I don't know what is the Maya LT approach but if LT stands for "Light" with this kind of problems in the "studio" version.

And believe me, when I started using Maya I took a deep breath, calm down and really got my hands into it to see what I was missing that make Maya "the industry standard". But the more I work with it, the more I hate it, and the less I understand when it became "the industry standard".