What if Softimage died?

[Pooby]

I realise that not everyone uses it, but for anyone who might be worried about the lack of Arnold rendering support for XSI into the future. This is part of an email to me from Marcos Fajardo, chief Architect of Arnold.

"Oh, and btw, we will continue to support SItoA for years, regardless of what happens with Softimage."

[Morgan Nilsson]

I realise that not everyone uses it, but for anyone who might be worried about the lack of Arnold rendering support for XSI into the future. This is part of an email to me from Marcos Fajardo, chief Architect of Arnold.

"Oh, and btw, we will continue to support SItoA for years, regardless of what happens with Softimage."

Isn't all it takes just the plugin?

Considering someone made LtoA(LightwaveToA) and it is available as a free 3rd party plugin... Nearly as feature complete as a official one.

My point is, the community of Softimage can pick it up if they ever stop the official plugin.

[azurecgi]

I realise that not everyone uses it, but for anyone who might be worried about the lack of Arnold rendering support for XSI into the future. This is part of an email to me from Marcos Fajardo, chief Architect of Arnold.

"Oh, and btw, we will continue to support SItoA for years, regardless of what happens with Softimage."

I just hope we get a similar response from Chaos Group I'm not so sure though seeing as progress on Softimage versions of Vray has been painfully slow anyway!

[Rork]

True.

There's even a version for Blender around (BtoA), and for Houdini (HtoA) as well.

[ThomasHelzle]

I'm not going to delude myself. I need to move on eventually, and I've been using Modo quite a bit for the last 3 years, and I even want to go back to my roots -- Lightwave.

But I can easily go another 4 years with Softimage.

Not the worst idea really. Lighwave is getting pretty good once more. While Modeller is still the same old mess, Layout is what I went back to in the end as well. My old XSI 2012 and Moment of Inspiration for Modelling (and as a future ICE-Replacement ;-) http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=6514.1 ).

Thea Render is my main renderer for unbiased high-end stills...

Newtek is okay as a company once more since Rob Powers took over, MoIs Michael Gibson is fantastic, as is Theas Ioannis Pantazopoulos. Passionate People you can rely on. Fair prices. Little to no bullshit.

Modo, after an initial fascination just didn't really click for me in the end. The layered shader system it nice for 10 Materials but basically a non-debuggable mess with 100. The modelling is too close to Lightwave for my taste, has no history and after using XSI for so long feels just clunky. Many of the new features in 601 did never really work and weren't fixed in 5 service packs. I didn't bother to update after that. I only use it for it's collada export for one specific engine...
The whole software feels done by people who are overly fascinated by thinking complicated...
Not my world

YMMV of course.

Cheers,

Tom

[azurecgi]

True.

There's even a version for Blender around (BtoA), and for Houdini (HtoA) as well.

I can't see anything about a Blender version! I don't think I could bring myself to spend £875 on a single license of a renderer for a free 3D package!

[Rork]

Why not, there V-Ray for Blender too.....?

A free Blender doesn't need to be ALL free stuff, does it??

The Blender<>Arnold connector is invite only AFAIK...

[angus_davidson]

True.

There's even a version for Blender around (BtoA), and for Houdini (HtoA) as well.

I can't see anything about a Blender version! I don't think I could bring myself to spend £875 on a single license of a renderer for a free 3D package!

Well the theory is that if you save on the main 3d app , you can afford to spend more on plugins / render software. Hoping for a MotoA myself.

[Cacoman]

The same statement about still continue supporting Softimage no matter what, has been made by the Redshift team in their forums.

[adrencg]

I'm not going to delude myself. I need to move on eventually, and I've been using Modo quite a bit for the last 3 years, and I even want to go back to my roots -- Lightwave.

But I can easily go another 4 years with Softimage.

Not the worst idea really. Lighwave is getting pretty good once more. While Modeller is still the same old mess, Layout is what I went back to in the end as well. My old XSI 2012 and Moment of Inspiration for Modelling (and as a future ICE-Replacement ;-) http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=6514.1 ).

Thea Render is my main renderer for unbiased high-end stills...

Newtek is okay as a company once more since Rob Powers took over, MoIs Michael Gibson is fantastic, as is Theas Ioannis Pantazopoulos. Passionate People you can rely on. Fair prices. Little to no bullshit.

Modo, after an initial fascination just didn't really click for me in the end. The layered shader system it nice for 10 Materials but basically a non-debuggable mess with 100. The modelling is too close to Lightwave for my taste, has no history and after using XSI for so long feels just clunky. Many of the new features in 601 did never really work and weren't fixed in 5 service packs. I didn't bother to update after that. I only use it for it's collada export for one specific engine...
The whole software feels done by people who are overly fascinated by thinking complicated...
Not my world

YMMV of course.

Cheers,

Tom

All of these Modo problems you mentioned are my problems too...but that renderer. Damn it just looks so nice.

[ombra]

I Dont know you guys but i am not able to find any jobs for my skills in Softimage, after 10 years expiriance, all company ask to me Maya 90 percent . I try to transfert my skills on maya but took ages and i am not production ready if need to change software. This is big problem!
In london all studios that used xsi move on maya ther are only 3 or 5 that use xsi .



Alex

[cgcris]

Hi Thomas, what do you use mainly now?

[ThomasHelzle]

Hi Thomas, what do you use mainly now?

Depends on the job really. Last year I did a huge still for an exhibition - 20432 x 14526 pixels - that worked great in Lightwaves own renderer. Modelling in XSI, MoI and LW Modeller/LWCad. DOF in AE/Frischluft. Post in Lightroom.
http://www.design4audio.de/home/bazille/

Just recently I worked on a big set of renderings of Sculptures with very complicated multi-coated surfaces. I got the CAD files from the Customer, converted and finetuned them in MoI to polygons where possible. Some I had to re-model and UV-Map which I did in XSI and then I rendered those models in Thea, which has a fantastic surfacing system for such materials, the best network rendering in the history of mankind and never crashed in weeks.

So for "standard-rendering" and NPR I use Lightwave, for high-end Thea, for NURBS MoI and for Polygons XSI.

But other than most people here I don't really do film work anymore, so I'm not a representative sample.
I enjoy working directly with customers most, on smaller, human-scaled stuff, even better if it's complicated/interesting/varied - I'm easily bored... ;-)

But if LW can solve the Modeller problem, I'd say it's a good solution once again for smaller studios.

Some good plugins to be had:
http://www.jawset.com/
http://www.3rdpowers.com/
http://www.wtools3d.com/
http://dpont.pagesperso-orange.fr/main_en.htm This guy alone doubles the usefulness of LW.

Of course it's not ICE, but nodes can be used almost everywhere and bit by bit it's growing, instancing is working very well, VPR is better than Modos (IMHO) - I personally would take LWs renderer any day over MentalRay (which I thankfully haven't used in years).. You can have integrated Octane and Arnold, import/export is getting better...
I know most of it's shortcomings too, but so far I had no showstoppers and the community is still as great as ever.

Cheers,

Tom

[Morgan Nilsson]

Hi Thomas, what do you use mainly now?

Depends on the job really. Last year I did a huge still for an exhibition - 20432 x 14526 pixels - that worked great in Lightwaves own renderer. Modelling in XSI, MoI and LW Modeller/LWCad. DOF in AE/Frischluft. Post in Lightroom.
http://www.design4audio.de/home/bazille/

Just recently I worked on a big set of renderings of Sculptures with very complicated multi-coated surfaces. I got the CAD files from the Customer, converted and finetuned them in MoI to polygons where possible. Some I had to re-model and UV-Map which I did in XSI and then I rendered those models in Thea, which has a fantastic surfacing system for such materials, the best network rendering in the history of mankind and never crashed in weeks.

So for "standard-rendering" and NPR I use Lightwave, for high-end Thea, for NURBS MoI and for Polygons XSI.

But other than most people here I don't really do film work anymore, so I'm not a representative sample.
I enjoy working directly with customers most, on smaller, human-scaled stuff, even better if it's complicated/interesting/varied - I'm easily bored... ;-)

But if LW can solve the Modeller problem, I'd say it's a good solution once again for smaller studios.

Some good plugins to be had:
http://www.jawset.com/
http://www.3rdpowers.com/
http://www.wtools3d.com/
http://dpont.pagesperso-orange.fr/main_en.htm This guy alone doubles the usefulness of LW.

Of course it's not ICE, but nodes can be used almost everywhere and bit by bit it's growing, instancing is working very well, VPR is better than Modos (IMHO) - I personally would take LWs renderer any day over MentalRay (which I thankfully haven't used in years).. You can have integrated Octane and Arnold, import/export is getting better...
I know most of it's shortcomings too, but so far I had no showstoppers and the community is still as great as ever.

Cheers,

Tom

Out of curiosity what would be LightWaves modeler problem?

[gdebello]

Out of curiosity what would be LightWaves modeler problem?

As long as you LWCad and can use a modeler that has no manipulators, working in Modeller is fine. A bit different approach to tumbling in the viewport but that is customizable. We used Lightwave for a long time at my work but mostly use Softimage and Houdini in our currently workflow.

Modeller is a different approach, you work in layers and put everything together in Layout. Set up rigging in modeller and convert in Layout but I think that changed with LW 11.

Glen

[ThomasHelzle]

Out of curiosity what would be LightWaves modeler problem?

Well, several things.
- No History of any kind - a pure one-shot polygon modeller, so no extruding a spline and then modifying the spline.
- Bad Splines (LWCAD helps there as in many other areas).
- Totally non-connected tools. Literally hundreds of totally separate tiny tools each doing things slightly different.
- EdgeWeighting is very error-prone and Edges in general are only half supported since originally Modeller didn't have the concept.
- No axis handles and a clumsy way of restricting to one direction.
- Pretty bad snapping - helped again by LWCAD.
- High Poly models grind it to a halt.
- The probability of generating bad geometry is close to 100%. Single-point-polygons and two-point-polygons are fantastic concepts when you need them, but they get created all the time without you wanting it so you end up with a lot of crap you need to fix. I personally don't know a modeller where it's easier to create bad geometry.
- Since Modeller is separate, you loose all options of animated modelling. And you can't move points directly in Layout (without workarounds) so no point-animated splines etc.
- Lot's of other stuff...

For organic modelling it can still be pretty good, but for high poly and exact modelling it's pretty painful.

Some plugins help but the underlying principles make it still clunky.

Cheers,

Tom