Who is thinking of stopping there Autodesk subscriptions

[jamination]

Companies go down. I don't think that is relevant for this case.
Anyway i think the v2014 is better than v2013 and might show some light at end of the tunnel. If true the future will tell. The big list of bug fixes, some actual everyday usable tools(camera seq/ice overides) make it a better release.
.

I really hate to start this again, but choose some new features that have actually been asked for... for crying out loud, i have read through these wish lists, and I can't say camera sequencer ever came up. I guess autodesk knows what is best for us though.

[EricTRocks]

but choose some new features that have actually been asked for... for crying out loud, i have read through these wish lists, and I can't say camera sequencer ever came up. I guess autodesk knows what is best for us though.

They do when they also talk to their crap ton of users over in Asia and they ask for the Sequencer. We are not alone.

[jamination]

but choose some new features that have actually been asked for... for crying out loud, i have read through these wish lists, and I can't say camera sequencer ever came up. I guess autodesk knows what is best for us though.

They do when they also talk to their crap ton of users over in Asia and they ask for the Sequencer. We are not alone.

when then that is find and dandy, then you better have 2 new features then 1 for east 1 for west.

Eric, I swear you are vulturing this thread ready to pounce, because that was the fastest reponse i have ever seen.

[EricTRocks]

You caught me on a short break from the work I'm doing.

Well consider the possibility that us "western" folks have gotten lots of features we ask for in the past and the "eastern" folks haven't. Everyone can (not will, but can) benefit from the sequencer.

[Bullit]

I can't say camera sequencer ever came up.

I think a camera sequencer is something logical to have in an generalist animation software. It certainly might help some users decide animation easier and what to model/animate or not, and helping clients. In future and with ICE help it might even drive what is seen or not at render time making helping faster render times possible.
Now if it was the best idea to spend resources on it depends on "opportunity cost" of its creation, users requests, information which we don't know.
I still think this is not a good release- i would probably should said less lackluster instead of better concerning 2013, but 2014 is going up, not going down.

[jamination]

I can't say camera sequencer ever came up.

I think a camera sequencer is something logical to have in an generalist animation software. It certainly might help some users decide animation easier and what to model/animate or not, and helping clients. In future and with ICE help it might even drive what is seen or not at render time making helping faster render times possible.
Now if it was the best idea to spend resources on it depends on "opportunity cost" of its creation, users requests, information which we don't know.
I still think this is not a good release- i would probably should said less lackluster instead of better concerning 2013, but 2014 is going up, not going down.

I think it looks like a nice tool, not THE headliner though.

[bottleofram]

It does not import/export EDL so theres one limitation. Undoubtedly, they will implement it eventually as this is standard AD tech found in other products but this is what im talking about regarding shipping unfinished features.


Anyone knows if you can render these sequences out (i suppose there will be an option to choose Sequencer Cam as pass camera) and if so, does it work in batch?

[Bullit]

I think so since if you plot it makes a new camera. If so you can also use it to retime the render animation. I don't know how that will work with motion blur.




Here is the ICE override and pass



There are also several new crowdFX videos in youtube.

[luceric]

It does not import/export EDL so theres one limitation. Undoubtedly, they will implement it eventually as this is standard AD tech found in other products but this is what im talking about regarding shipping unfinished features.

the camera sequencer in maya is meant for previz, where you do animatics with a maya and export that to an NLE, which is why it has that. the camera sequencer in XSI. however, comes from using it to create in-game cinematics that will be played real time by the game engine, and there is no NLE stage and therefore no use or aaf, edl, FCP xmL, etc.
anyway you'll find that rendering through the "übercam" isn't usable out of the box because the motion blur is wrong. you'd need to render out each cut with pre/post roll handles, and they don't have that.

[bottleofram]

It does not import/export EDL so theres one limitation. Undoubtedly, they will implement it eventually as this is standard AD tech found in other products but this is what im talking about regarding shipping unfinished features.

the camera sequencer in maya is meant for previz, where you do animatics with a maya and export that to an NLE, which is why it has that. the camera sequencer in XSI. however, comes from using it to create in-game cinematics that will be played real time by the game engine, and there is no NLE stage and therefore no use or aaf, edl, FCP xmL, etc.
anyway you'll find that rendering through the "übercam" isn't usable out of the box because the motion blur is wrong. you'd need to render out each cut with pre/post roll handles, and they don't have that.

Brilliant. Just kept half the people who would find the sequencer useful, out of actually using it. It just gets better and better...

[angus_davidson]

It does not import/export EDL so theres one limitation. Undoubtedly, they will implement it eventually as this is standard AD tech found in other products but this is what im talking about regarding shipping unfinished features.

the camera sequencer in maya is meant for previz, where you do animatics with a maya and export that to an NLE, which is why it has that. the camera sequencer in XSI. however, comes from using it to create in-game cinematics that will be played real time by the game engine, and there is no NLE stage and therefore no use or aaf, edl, FCP xmL, etc.
anyway you'll find that rendering through the "übercam" isn't usable out of the box because the motion blur is wrong. you'd need to render out each cut with pre/post roll handles, and they don't have that.

Brilliant. Just kept half the people who would find the sequencer useful, out of actually using it. It just gets better and better...

Have to agree with bottleofram here. ADSK cant and shouldn't make decisions on how people should be doing their workflow. If you are going to release something that is purely aimed at one very specific use.

a) it shouldn't be sold as one of if not the major feature of the release
b) assumes that people doing previz are only going to use maya and not SI.
c) Not being able to export it out to a NLE makes it pretty much more effort then gain we get out of it.

Personally I love using the built in compositor right up until the time I will pull it into Composite for the final tweaking (we dont have Nuke licences as yet and me and after effects have been at war for years). How does it work in illusion? However I am in a massive minority within the SI folks I personally know. They all tend to do everything from animatics, previz, look dev etc directly in nuke or the like.

[luceric]

Personally I love using the built in compositor right up until the time I will pull it into Composite for the final tweaking (we dont have Nuke licences as yet and me and after effects have been at war for years). How does it work in illusion? However I am in a massive minority within the SI folks I personally know. They all tend to do everything from animatics, previz, look dev etc directly in nuke or the like.

There could be a misunderstanding with the words "animatics" and "previz" because there shouldn't be mentions of compositing or Nuke in this context... We're talking about animated CG storyboards for medium to long form; tv, films, etc, that's the market the NLE interop in Maya was made for.

Statistically, there isn't really anyone actually doing that kind of previz in Softimage anymore (and not a huge number of total people worldwide with Maya). However, top Softimage clients have been doing game cinematics, ala Metal Gear Solid 4, directly in Softimage. This is a real thing. it's measurable. Prerendered videos is largely obsolete. Having the camera sequencer built-in eases multiple-studio projects because everyone is using the same thing, and the data and UI is the same. For anyone else, it's a benefit for animation with camera switching and indeed "previsualizing" a scene and retiming, but that's not the same thing as saying the product should drop other things and go and write a bunch of feature to go after "the previz market" that's designing action scenes for film with a director, and need a bunch of other things. I shudder at the thought of team that would be spending time testing EDL, AAF or XML export with various NLE just in case some might use that stuff once. You should have an actual client at the end of features!! Surely that's not what you'd want the scarce resource to spend time on, but devs can't write stuff and not actually spend time validating, testing and documenting it. You, however, can take 2h and write your own EDL export python script that works perfectly for what you need. The game clients also have to make their own exporter to their custom format. The point is, they don't have to do the first part.

[Letterbox]

Surely that's not what you'd want the scarce resource to spend time on, but devs can't write stuff and not actually spend time validating, testing and documenting it. You, however, can take 2h and write your own EDL export python script that works perfectly for what you need.

Ok so write have to write our own, same was true for the camera switcher, no news there.

But the above sentences don't make logical sense, or maybe someone isn't thinking it through enough. Not everyone has the skill or ability, maybe they need a little help to 'write their own', are you saying it's not worth 2 hours of dev time to put something in the SDK examples folder?

A little help sometimes goes a long way...

[angus_davidson]

Personally I love using the built in compositor right up until the time I will pull it into Composite for the final tweaking (we dont have Nuke licences as yet and me and after effects have been at war for years). How does it work in illusion? However I am in a massive minority within the SI folks I personally know. They all tend to do everything from animatics, previz, look dev etc directly in nuke or the like.

There could be a misunderstanding with the words "animatics" and "previz" because there shouldn't be mentions of compositing or Nuke in this context... We're talking about animated CG storyboards for medium to long form; tv, films, etc, that's the market the NLE interop in Maya was made for.

My apologies that was a grammer thing. I meant to say that the did all of their 3d animatics, previz, look dev in SI , and either captured it or used software rendering to get all the image sequences into nuke to get an idea of what the end product would be. Note these are the folks that things like Katana are just too expensive or complex for them to implement.

Something was nagging me that wasnt my wife so I went and had another look at the Cam sequencer video



and realized I totally must have napped during the last part where you bake out the sequence to one camera. That of course make the scene shots much easier to manage. Was being a muppet. Apologies Luceric

Once I realized my muppetness I had a good long look through my posts and saw I did get quite a bit of what I had asked for. So while the 2014 release wasnt uber as far as stand out features went , its a much better release looked at as a whole. Thats possibly where we are making our mistake is that we tend to focus on one thing to the exclusion of others. Yes there are a lot of things that still need to be addressed, and there definitely needs to be a lot more interaction with the PM and devs (although Daniel being on here now makes me far more hopeful then before) as to what is important and what isnt.

[Superpositivo]

Surely that's not what you'd want the scarce resource to spend time on...

...so, I'd like to know how many guys are actually developing Softimage...

In the meantime, Maya gets the Render Tree from Softimage...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc8lJGGqrqo

[EricTRocks]

Not everyone has the skill or ability, maybe they need a little help to 'write their own', are you saying it's not worth 2 hours of dev time to put something in the SDK examples folder?

In my opinion:
a) if you need that feature and aren't a big enough company to afford someone to write it for you I'm not sure you should be looking to do that type of work.
b) Please let them spend 2 hours fixing bugs / developing features that were actually requested.
c) If you want that feature, request it for the next release so there is proof that it is needed.

Depending on the development strategy, you don't implement features unless they are explicitly asked for by your customers. Don't put in a feature if no one is going to use it. Waste of time and money.