How rendering should be

[Maximus]

https://vimeo.com/47478043#at=0

https://www.caustic.com/gallery_movies_ ... h2012_Maya

https://vimeo.com/47960302

now how many of you would love a viewport like this? read everything, from shave&haircut to carpaing and paint effects..
we have the HQV

[Nizar]

I don't like HQV (cycles and modo (without disturbing GPU and with a preview very close to final render) are many steps forward IMO), but HQV is an half baked feature. I don't think, using the integrated mental ray, they can match the speed showed in this Caustic video, but can improve the quality in next release (High "Quality" Viewport is not a well guessed name)

[nixx]

this policy of development of AD just help people migrate to other software

Ah, the mythical mass migration away from Autodesk... The sad truth is that it will never happen! Users tend to be fiercely loyal towards the product they are familiar with and use in production. Not out of some kind of brand loyalty, but because they need this product to get the job done! In my experience, all the bitching and moaning on the different forums hardly ever seems to amount to many actually taking the plunge to adopt new software. Autodesk really hasn’t got anything to worry about in that respect. And should a product itself be killed, for instance if Autodesk eventually decides to kill Softimage (read it again: ”if”, not “when”!!!!) I am pretty certain, most Softimage users would take Autodesk up on a nice side-grade offer and would start to use Maya or Max, instead of looking elsewhere. They'd bitch and moan about it for a while, but they'd start using it nonetheless...
Life is good for Mr. and Mrs. Autodesk... ;)

But it has happened before, hasn't it ? Remember back when people fled from the Lightwave camp en-mass to come over to the Softimage side ? People were really fed up with NewTek back then, and that, combined with the "3democracy" pricing, as well as the fact that XSI was the easiest-to-adapt-to package for an ex-Lightwaver, led to many people leaving and never looking back.

With many (most ?) SI users being familiar with the ICE logic, I can see the same thing happening with SI -> Houdini (again, the recent massive price cut would help). I 'm not saying it will happen, I 'm just saying it's possible.

nick

[Maximus]

I don't like HQV (cycles and modo (without disturbing GPU and with a preview very close to final render) are many steps forward IMO), but HQV is an half baked feature. I don't think, using the integrated mental ray, they can match the speed showed in this Caustic video, but can improve the quality in next release (High "Quality" Viewport is not a well guessed name)

Actually that tech in the video is a raytracing preview fully running in viewport and reading mental ray materials.
What is annoying is that you never see stuff like this coming from AD. And i guess that video is a one-man army project. Quite..impressive

[luceric]

I don't think this is a one-man-army project.. it's based on Brazil R/S and PowerVR tech, and the owner is a pretty big company.

[Hirazi Blue]

I 'm not saying it will happen, I 'm just saying it's possible.

I fully agree, that it is possible! I just don't think that it's very likely. I personally even have my doubts about the "mass" migration to Houdini. To some this would no doubt be a logical step, but most users will still look more for a "generalist application" to replace Softimage, if it were to come to that, I guess, while I would still rate Houdini as more of a "specialist application".

And historically you're right with the Lightwave exodus to XSI, but I'm afraid the "landscape" back then cannot really be compared to the "landscape" now. And the introduction of the famous 3Democracy pricing of the XSI Foundation version obviously was a tempting lure that was extremely hard to resist.

And SideFX will have to bring prices (especially those of the "Annual Upgrade Plan") down quite a bit to truly pull off a new "3Democracy" on Autodesk, I'm afraid.

[Maximus]

People complained about Houdini prices since quite a bit, and SideFx cut down the price by 50%.
Now compared to Softimage there is a 1k difference in annual upgrade cost, which is quite worth the software if you refers to ICE. Not to count the abysmal difference in the company behind the software.

SideFX is way more serious than AD. they have their product which they develop and still care of, cannot say the same about AD. I think in a really short period a lot of people will take into consideration Houdini, beside you can skip the annual upgrade (which in any case is free for the first year, hello AD) i am not sure what happens if you want to upgrade after you skipped one year, but i dont think you would pay half the price of the whole software to get back on subscription like AD does.

When making comparison should also take into account the amount of free updates and bugfixes they release daily. Many updates you wont even pay for.
Softimage became a specialist application because they only develops ICE, so why not take into consideration Houdini? And now that the price is more friendly...well, a collegue of mine already bought it to be honest. And i wont be surprised if other people will just start using it.

The thing is really simple, if AD doesnt start working for good on their softwares, its gonna go worse and worse. But as usual, untill you are sick you wont heal yourself, prevention is better than curing. And AD fucked up way bad lately and they seem to not care. I cant wait to be proven wrong with the releases, but i already know its not gonna happen

We are at a point where there are no excuses for Autodesk anymore, no one forced AD to buy 10000 softwares if they cant keep up with the development and then they complain about other software houses that just have one to take care of.

There are some evident things that are disappointing, there are some bugs and things that single users fix by themselves or implement into those softwares which is insulting that AD didnt take care of. This is just a sign of people not doing their job, and we users are paying money, also they keep increasing prices. Seriously? Its a damn shame and soon or later AD will pay the disaster they created fully.


@luceric - even if its not an one-man army its still depressing that nothing that caliber came out of Autodesk, considering how big AD is, and the tech AD has. So nothing really changes much. AD is unable to develop and to work. There isnt a single year when AD surprises you with a feature or something stunning new. Pathetic.

[Nizar]

Your expectation is, for sure, partial true, actually in CAD area AD is technological behind every Dassault packages, seems they suffer a losses market share (and money haemorrhage) in this field.

AD lost pieces every day, so can deciding to sell Softimage again? (Dassault, IMHO the best home for softimage).

[luceric]

But it has happened before, hasn't it ? Remember back when people fled from the Lightwave camp en-mass to come over to the Softimage side ? People were really fed up with NewTek back then, and that, combined with the "3democracy" pricing, as well as the fact that XSI was the easiest-to-adapt-to package for an ex-Lightwaver, led to many people leaving and never looking back.

as far as I know, a "mass exodus" to XSI has never happened. We all know people who have moved from Lightwave to XSI.. but that number is in the dozens. There was a mass exodus from Softimage to Maya earlier in the century, however.. those things can happen around technology change.

[Mathaeus]

But it has happened before, hasn't it ? Remember back when people fled from the Lightwave camp en-mass to come over to the Softimage side ? People were really fed up with NewTek back then, and that, combined with the "3democracy" pricing, as well as the fact that XSI was the easiest-to-adapt-to package for an ex-Lightwaver, led to many people leaving and never looking back.

Well according to people I know in place where I'm live, actually no one "switched" from Lightwave to XSI. Many of them tried, but they didn't have a time or willing force to learn a completely new 3d app. Anyway there is area of freelancers, small shops, occasional users, employed people who still want 3d app for small gigs here and there.... where LW and Cinema 4d are tradition, and now Modo become a player. And no one of three AD apps. OK a few architects have the oldest possible Max and newer possible V-Ray . Love falls when it becomes to licensing schemes. Me to, I love Softimage and Max, but not enough to pay the offense called AD subscription ( it's NOT nearly the same as AVID subscription, when it comes to final price ). How wide is that area, really hard to say.

Imho only way to *really* put a new 3d app on the road, it's to find a job to utilize it, at least partially. Old XSI Foundation had a lot of advantages against any 3d app of this time, for any user. Fast subdivs, fast fCurve editor, ability to bake anything. Reliable text tool too. In these times, try to launch animation editor in Max with more than twenty fCurves, then wait some time for crash. Baking with Mental Ray and Maya, almost impossible.

Today I really don't see *any* advantage of Houdini in everyday life. I'd believe cheap version have sense only for learning, for people who want to be masters in big facilities, one day. If there is some optimist who want to be competitive with it in everyday task of small shop, who cares. It even can't be used "partially". On another side. Blender's simulation modules, each developed in it's own way, could be a nightmare for huge pipelines, but for small tasks, they just calling to be used. And simulation in Blender is easy to learn, exactly because every module offers all available options, in few hours you know would you use Blender or not.

An now that "when technology changes". That cloud computing thing, well that's total change, against habits, current technology, anything. By any logic, new era belongs to 3d app written to live on new technology, not to three old AD monsters. Let's say for archiviz, product shots or like, my bet is for some power variance of Google Sketchup. They already have more than enough of users, applied technology like V-Ray for Sketchup, rich owner. We will see, when "mother of all technology battles" begin.

By the way, moving SI team to Maya, actually means "approval" of SI technology, ICE and so. Otherwise Maya and Max people would do anything, trying to marginalize SI and everything related to SI. Just like they were all the time. Now SI is a player, well in some strange way...

[gfxman]

Can't remember, what was the best stunning xsi 2013 feature?

[luceric]

Autodesk actually does have interactive GPU/Raytracing render, but it's in Autodesk Showcase. You can do fun interactive stuff like drag the shows to position lights and all of that stuff. Maya's viewport 2.0 and Max's Nitrous viewport shares technology with showcase, but not the raytracing.

you're not going to see any impressive ray tracing development in M&E, because they don't do that. There are tons of renderers, the best thing to do would be to focus on the realtime viewports, API and kick mental ray off the curb. The rendering stuff at Autodesk is RapidRT and Showcase. Now was anything impressive last year... that depends on your area of interest I guess. I was impress by GPU cache demo with the city of venice in Maya http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n6s-w63IRc, the Direcx11 viewport, the mudbox gigatexel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exnEDYKqNyM The ICE crowd stuff for sure is technically interesting, since it's all basicly open source compounds in ICE, so it's basically built with what's already in ice, except the gpu instancing stuff

[Letterbox]

it might also be fair to realize they are running a tesla, Would then a fairer comparison not be if you took a separate pc and networked it to aid solely with the render region?

[Kzin]

Autodesk actually does have interactive GPU/Raytracing render, but it's in Autodesk Showcase. You can do fun interactive stuff like drag the shows to position lights and all of that stuff. Maya's viewport 2.0 and Max's Nitrous viewport shares technology with showcase, but not the raytracing.

you're not going to see any impressive ray tracing development in M&E, because they don't do that. There are tons of renderers, the best thing to do would be to focus on the realtime viewports, API and kick mental ray off the curb. The rendering stuff at Autodesk is RapidRT and Showcase. Now was anything impressive last year... that depends on your area of interest I guess. I was impress by GPU cache demo with the city of venice in Maya http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n6s-w63IRc, the Direcx11 viewport, the mudbox gigatexel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exnEDYKqNyM The ICE crowd stuff for sure is technically interesting, since it's all basicly open source compounds in ICE, so it's basically built with what's already in ice, except the gpu instancing stuff

you have excess to technology called mental ray and iray. it would be easy for ad to implement this framework to get realtime feedback with full shading. you can also use the mia mat for booth, so you dont have to create special shader for realtime and offline rendering. it can run on gpu and cpu, the tech is here and you only need to implement this (the city demo was using alembic and was rendered with nvidia shaders btw).
using the available tech would also mean you can free some resources for other areas. for example the ice stuff which is only slightly updated from time to time without really big steps forward in terms of new modelingtools for example.

[luceric]

as far as I can tell, you're replying specifically about softimage now.

you have excess to technology called mental ray and iray. it would be easy for ad to implement this framework to get realtime feedback with full shading. you can also use the mia mat for booth, so you dont have to create special shader for realtime and offline rendering. it can run on gpu and cpu, the tech is here and you only need to implement this

As you know, Softimage doesn't implement iray, which is a separate renderer, but 2013 uses mental ray's real time stuff already, including mia material. that mental ray CPU/GPU tech is already what you have. And that's also used in Viewport 2.0 and the Nitrous viewport. It doesn't actually give you much for free, that's not how the gpu works. you still need to write your own code for lighting, environment maps, and generating shadows in multi passes, and all sort of stuff we take for granted and that's why they are so much work to implement. You have to write a whole new OpenGL engine to get even basic lighting effects. in the softimage 2013 viewport we used everything we could easily use from mental image, and added code to generate shadows and multisampling on top of our existing viewport. (Iray doesn't do anytning for you viewport, it's like a separate renderer like Octane) In Maya and Max they wrote an entire new viewport engine architecture that is very game engine like and the mental ray material stuff is an optional component. In our case we did just the work we could afford, which is to finish up the mental ray metaSL integration.

[Kzin]

as far as I can tell, you're replying specifically about softimage now.

you have excess to technology called mental ray and iray. it would be easy for ad to implement this framework to get realtime feedback with full shading. you can also use the mia mat for booth, so you dont have to create special shader for realtime and offline rendering. it can run on gpu and cpu, the tech is here and you only need to implement this

As you know, Softimage doesn't implement iray, which is a separate renderer, but 2013 uses mental ray's real time stuff already, including mia material. that mental ray CPU/GPU tech is already what you have. And that's also used in Viewport 2.0 and the Nitrous viewport. It doesn't actually give you much for free, that's not how the gpu works. you still need to write your own code for lighting, environment maps, and generating shadows in multi passes, and all sort of stuff we take for granted and that's why they are so much work to implement. You have to write a whole new OpenGL engine to get even basic lighting effects. in the softimage 2013 viewport we used everything we could easily use from mental image, and added code to generate shadows and multisampling on top of our existing viewport. (Iray doesn't do anytning for you viewport, it's like a separate renderer like Octane) In Maya and Max they wrote an entire new viewport engine architecture that is very game engine like and the mental ray material stuff is an optional component. In our case we did just the work we could afford, which is to finish up the mental ray metaSL integration.

i think thats the problem. the users and ad talks about different thing then they talk about realtime viewport. the users i talk about when it comes to realtime viewport (mostly lighting/shading) always, ALWAYS thinks about a fast realtime feedback of the rendered scene and NOT a new opengl thing which is completly disconnected from the offline renderer. why not implement progressive rendering in the viewport, when you say iray will not be available. why ad is coding a completely new thing and not integrating current tech, short time wise? i think it would be good that ad states in which direction they want with it. what users they want to adress.