My Wishlist for Softimage... maybe 2013 ?

[Hirazi Blue]

The "scripted operator" editor... ;)
This horrid beast:

scripted.jpg

(Image from this page in the User's Guide, copied for educational purposes only obviously)

[McNistor]

Aaaah, yes!
Dealt with it a few times. Fortunately not very often. Or rather unfortunately? Knowing how to work with scripted ops is an Ace in the hole for sure.

[ActionArt]

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.

I find this somewhat surprising. I'm a freelancer as well and maybe it's just a difference in projects we do but SI has been WAY more stable than LW or Modo or anything else I've tried. I was very pleasantly surprised when I switched to SI regarding how stable it was.

If MR is part of the problem it might be well worth trying 3Delight, I've found it quite good. As for other stability problems is there a chance that some 3rd party addons are to blame (some material maybe)?

Not saying that you're not having problems, just curious as to some of the potential reasons.

The cost is subjective. SI isn't cheap but you also get what you pay for to some extent. I used LW for many years and although cheaper it had (and still has I assume) major issues and now feels like a toy in comparison to SI. I found LW getting less stable with every version (9.6 being the last for me). If you compare it to Houdini, it is cheap. It's all relative and depends on if you need it for the jobs at hand or not and if it's feasible.

[Manticor]

Ok here's what I think should be added.Im a game developer so they are geared for that workflow in mind.

Viewport that displays transparencies properly...not the crappy 1 bit alpha nonesense we have at the moment.
Viewport that displays normal maps and specular maps by default.AO display would also be nice but I dont really care .I just want to know how my models look straight away.
Fix the "feature that lets you weld internal points.....this is extremely annoying and should not be a valid operation.
Bridge edges .... fix this so it does a complete job and not miss out the perpendicular edges.
FFD manipulator in the texture editor ,like max's or mayas...either I dont care.Having to pick a scaling point with full stop is really an annoyance.
Normalize uvs button.....why should I have to jump through hoops doing the copy paste unfold op trick.Using vertex colours to specify Uv proportion would be a great addition.
Lattice that will orient to sub selections.... should behave like max's FFD modifier
Ability to switch XYZ to UVW so uvs can be manipulated with the modeling tools.Morph UV would be even better.
Basic sculpting ability like zbrush...Blender has this and one or two other packages ...Soft destroys all other 3D packages in terms of throwing polys around (Ive loaded in Objs that even zbrush cant handle into softimage so basic sculpting should be a piece of piss for it to handle).
Paul Smith ( Pooby ) has mentioned on several occasions about having a painting system that is linked to the RenderTree ....I agree with him.Would be awesome.Plus projection painting system would be great too so you can load up an image and paint through it onto you model
Ability to change the UI colours ... I long for the day I can use a Dark coloured XSI.
Birail 2+ like Maya .Great for making vehicles etc.
Ability to generate proper meshes from hair system ,3ds max can do it.I dont see why Soft is lagging behind
An improved Ultimapper that doesn't bake seams in normal maps.
An improved autogenerated Biped ,based on ICE kinematics that is impossible to break .That has limits of limb movement that are anatomically correct with male and female versions (for meat and potatoes character work).With ability to specify whether it is real world 7 (1/2)heads) or idealised 8 heads, even better would be an age proportion adjust for child models .So you always have perfect proportions to start modeling with ,an option to specify waist, chest/bust size would also be a nice bonus.Rig should also be fully adjustable.Also include a copy paste opposite limb for keying.Also the system should export fine to game engines.the current default biped has a mirrored right arm that breaks when mesh is imported into a game engine.
Improved curve editing tools.
Curve Booleans.
UV swim option .Maybe include guillemes ICE version if he finalised it.
A road maker...i.e drop down a spline on a terrain mesh and it will generate and stitch a flat strip onto it with generated UVs.

ok I could go on but thats what I think would make a lot of people happier.

[gustavoeb]

Everybody got a lot of wishes... So do I, and as it was said in the mailing list the thing is probably in the betas right now... Anyhow I think if there is one thing above all things that should be really updated, and it is probably not a easy fix is the construction history... so forget all my other posts in this thread and consider this only!!!

Free topology nodes!
Free topology nodes!
Free topology nodes!
Free topology nodes!
Free topology nodes!
Free topology nodes!

Thanks

[Hirazi Blue]

Everybody got a lot of wishes... So do I, and as it was said in the mailing list the thing is probably in the betas right now...

What the person on the Mailing List, who had some typical condescending remark about this thread, while even admitting he hadn't read it all, failed to notice however, was the title of the thread "My Wishlist for Softimage... maybe 2013 ?", the "maybe" part being so easily overlooked...
;)

From the mailing list:

Reading through just a few posts in that thread, I am thankful and relieved
again that we have this mailing list.

(Quoted from here)
Yeah... right.

[origin]

Like you said...everyone has its own point of view. Raffaele works in big shop afaik, so he probably doesn't care about 99% of things most freelancers/small studios/hobbyists would like to see in upcoming SIs.

[Hirazi Blue]

You're obviously right, but I wasn't critizing him or his opinion per se,
my criticism was more towards the way he put it....
;)

[edschiffer]

ok, some wishes:

. reliable curve tools
. interactive alignment tool
. possibility to edit trajectories in the viewport
. preview render window redesigned [with possibility to pause, showoff different channels, render in layers]
. fix problems with Deltas and animation layers?!
. show the horizon on the viewport [small but useful]

maybe someone can help me out on this one:
. why isn't there a "render current frames [selected passes]"?

[Kzin]

-feature complete and stable mr integration. this includes all the new shader that will come with mr 3.10 and of course features that in mr since version 3.8 or lower (for example all the ip options, ibl stuff) and also full integration of iray

-progressive rendering for preview renders, this also means overwork of the whole xsi-mr buffer. translation time of many things is far to slow (hair translation time is a bad joke).

-native bsdf shader support

-per object aa control for adaptive (its in mr since ages) and unified (i know its new in mr now, but should be possible for the next version)

-anisotropic reflection bug fixing in the arch_mat

-things like a photometric lightpreset with blackbody would be nice, but its not high priority i think.

-colortemperatur option for mia_photographic_exposure instead of an rgb color

-integration of the whole daytime/location options for the physical sun/sky shader

-automatic creation of framebufferoutputs in render options for custom created framebuffers in rendertree
-mia_mat framebufferoutputs as predifined framebuffers in render options

-native support of mr's adaptive subdivisions surfaces

-retopo tool for modeling

[ActionArt]

A more appropriate title for this thread might be version 2016 + but I'd like to add this to the list:



Pretty nice what GPUs can do with particle simulation and rendering

[nuverian]

Um.. let's see.

- Massive Viewport update
- Motion paths in viewport (alla C4D, Afx etc)
- Some nodes regarding audio for ICE
- Discard very legacy shaders (I hate clutter)
- Really basic sculpting and....texture painting. No really. basic

Thats for what I think is reallistic. I'll keep the unrealistic to myself

[lorax]

please please please intrgrade powerbooleans in softimage

3dsmax has it integrated since version 9 i think.. so autodesk seems to own it.. booleans are SO bad in softimage!

[Hirazi Blue]

Did you ever try the boolean compounds included in Mr. Core's Implosia FX 1.1?

[nuverian]

Why should we from now on refer to compounds to do simple or rather everydays tasks. From when ICE came out, such few things have been updated except ICE itself(if any?). And please don't someone say once again "but with ICE you can do anything". Maybe true, but then I'll have to look for TD as well since I'm not one.
This is not a rant about powerbooleans for my part but rather other things, and by no way to be taken as an agressive reply to you.

[Hirazi Blue]

I sympathize with your reaction, even though I don't fully agree with it.
I think this question also has been discussed "to death", mostly on the XSIBase.
The way I see it, but this is just a very personal view, custom addons and plugins have always been an important part of the user experience with XSI and later with Softimage. A missing or not fully functional feature has luckily always motivated third-parties to write a way around it. And in this light I see all these ICE Compounds not so much as a problem, more as a reflection of the way ICE as a framework has changed the way customizations come our way.
I'm all for more "out-of the box" functionality, but a little "plug-and-play" ICE compounds haven't hurt anyone either...
;)