SPOILER ALERT - general Softimage 2013 description

[kaizer_soze]

New Modeling Tools and Selection Tools:
Increase your productivity for common and repetitive tasks, with the help of a wide range of new polygon modeling and selection tools and workflows.

..... from here > http://area.autodesk.com/softimage2013

Modeling:
Merging or Blending Polygon Meshes
When merging or blending polygon meshes, you can now transfer all clusters even if they don't have any properties (like local materials, weight maps, vertex colors, etc.).
The Split Edge tool has been improved to make it easier to split edges close to existing vertices. If you still have difficulty, try zooming the view.

........ from here > http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/marks/softimage_2013

Hmmmm, having in mind the first statement, is there something accidentally missing in the second one ??? ....or it's only my perception ?

[iamVFX]

on crowd simulation, that was my reaction as well, where did this come from, of all the lists and such, I never saw it pop up. I think most likely the people who have the voice are obviously not coming from these forums.

Agree. We are just watchers. Can't wait to see broken lagoa advect mesh compound again

[TwinSnakes007]

maybe Maya and 3ds max people asked for it, so now they got Softimage to do it for them?

Words that are so true...so true. If this doesnt sell more suite's, nothing will.

[azurecgi]

Or how about importing a large OBJ using the native importer taking half a day (I assume it would have got there eventually), when a third-party importer loaded the same file in 10 mins!

Or importing a simple IGES file crashing Softimage? Or even a supposedly legitimate FBX file? (note: even Lightwave imported said fbx file with no problems)

My best hope for this version is that some of the unspecified 'Fixes' have sorted the above problems, and a multitude of other surprising crashes I've experienced

[Maximus]

New Modeling Tools and Selection Tools:
Increase your productivity for common and repetitive tasks, with the help of a wide range of new polygon modeling and selection tools and workflows.

..... from here > http://area.autodesk.com/softimage2013

Modeling:
Merging or Blending Polygon Meshes
When merging or blending polygon meshes, you can now transfer all clusters even if they don't have any properties (like local materials, weight maps, vertex colors, etc.).
The Split Edge tool has been improved to make it easier to split edges close to existing vertices. If you still have difficulty, try zooming the view.

........ from here > http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/marks/softimage_2013

Hmmmm, having in mind the first statement, is there something accidentally missing in the second one ??? ....or it's only my perception ?

No you didnt miss anything, its their marketing. Those selection things come from SAP which wasnt available to people not in sub. So they are marketing them now as its a new addition, but the selection update was from 2012.5 SAP.

[Bellsey]

well many people we have seen are on these forums and the use mailing list. Crowds was really a natural progression and area for ICE to move into and some people liked the idea of it, some didn't. Alot depends on the type of work people are doing.

I dont know if Maya/Max guys asked for this, but considering that we (as in ADSK) dont have a crowd system, in order to create one, Soft/ICE seems like a good place to build one. Massive is a good solution, but its not for everyone

Plus thinking in terms of Suites, it helps drive more Softimage adoption among Maya/Max users, which can only be a good thing - again see Chinnys previous messages.

[azurecgi]

Maybe we'll get some more useful tools in the 2013 SAP release!

[Kzin]

Also, I notice that Softimage, Maya and Max have all been 'upgraded' to Mental Ray 3.10, but there is no mention of faster, better or improved anything! Is it just a bug-fix version?

besides bugfixing and improvements on unified and hair rendering, or the fg-ip rendering thing which is in, there are some more features and new shaders in the current mr version. for example a complete new set of ibl tools. in addition, there are new sss shaders in mr now, more user friendly and should give you faster and better results in less time. but i dont know if its integrated in xsi.

[Bellsey]

Maybe we'll get some more useful tools in the 2013 SAP release!

Funny, I thought 2013 actually had alot of useful tools and fixes?...but I guess the glass will always be half full.

[calmasacow]

what about alembic support? is this dropped from 2013 release?

no it is in there. "I stand corrected I dont see it in the list.

I have to say I'm seeing a pattern of making the application more and more dependent on each other. so that you have to have the suite. No single application will cover all of the bases.

Artists: goal.. to have a tool that meats needs in the most efficient cost effective way possible.

Autodesks Goal.. to arrange features in its product lines to maximize profit margins for shareholders.

[Kzin]

what about alembic support? is this dropped from 2013 release?

no it is in there.

good news to everyone.

[iamVFX]

...but I guess the glass will always be half full.

You mean half empty?

[azurecgi]

Maybe we'll get some more useful tools in the 2013 SAP release!

Funny, I thought 2013 actually had alot of useful tools and fixes?...but I guess the glass will always be half full.

As far as the tools go, assuming you ignore the SAP stuff that I have anyway, there's a few things that may be useful.

When it comes to the fixes, we'll just have to take your word for that until release! (Quote from Marks Blog "Fixes, Issues and known problems and limitations will be available at the time of release")

[bottleofram]

Well, its probably not wise to judge this release until we give it a proper chance and test it out, but i cant help but feel disappointed. Couple of things are pretty clear:

- HQV will have performance issues. Maybe the presentation didnt do it justice, but i doubt that is the case. It seems rather slow indeed.

- This is a first year under AD that ICE didnt get a major update. I wont shed a tear about it since i always thought developing ICE at the speed they did was hurting the rest of SI, but then you would expect something rather big in another area. The work done on animation is just slight touch ups. Bare minimum, imo.

- CrowdFX is a strange choice of a feature to be developed at this point. I know XSI had Behavior and maybe they felt the need to resurrect it through ICE, but i can think of dozen other things that would have been more useful overall (sound, fxtree integration, curves, booleans, motion graphics tools etc). Maybe we are missing a bigger picture here - the fact that a system is ICE based usually means extensibility in more ways than one can imagine, but i just cant see it.

- If there was an official user feedback channel, i have a feeling a modeling toolset overhaul would have been on top of the list. Still, softimage doesnt go that path which i fear is due to it being packaged with max entertainment suite. Hope im wrong.

- Luc-Eric was, unfortunately, spot on with his infamous post about maya. If i was ever holding some hope a feature film market will slowly start thinking about alternatives, all of it is dying now, i must admit. No matter how much i hate working with maya, 2013 is making a good case for itself.

- Softimage now has both maya and max interaction models. Max has a new maya model - doesnt have Softimage interaction model. Maya doesnt have any other interaction model except its own... Yeah, you see where im going with this...

- And finally, one year cycles are not a good idea.

To be fair, smaller features and improvements are welcome - they will find their way in our every days work. If the stability remains high and bug list short, thats gonna be another plus in my book.

Unfortunately, thats the best i can do atm.

[Jesse]

To be fair, if you consider it a 1 year cycle you should include the 2012.5 features as well. There were certainly a variety of improvements there to areas like a small batch of modelling tools (a toolset I still prefer to max and maya and with ICE can be considerably more robust) , the selection improvements, and some small ICE improvements. These will be seen for the first time by non subscribers.

I hear what you are saying though and I too feel that a lot of developments aren't the most useful to me. That said I would like to see what more technically minded users (as I can't understand any of it) have to say about the not insignificant looking list of SDK improvements.

This is an interesting area of development because it's the integration area that studios want improved no? Plus development here could be leading to more tools like quick primitive and Quick inset. and even just general ICE development has led to a HUGE amount of additional 3rd party but often free stuff, Scatter tools, LK Lightning, I mean rray is chock full of great little tools that only continues to grow. I realize this doesn't replace integrated development but it can't be ignored as an effective part of the result of their strategy.

[EricTRocks]

- CrowdFX is a strange choice of a feature to be developed at this point. I know XSI had Behavior and maybe they felt the need to resurrect it through ICE, but i can think of dozen other things that would have been more useful overall (sound, fxtree integration, curves, booleans, motion graphics tools etc). Maybe we are missing a bigger picture here - the fact that a system is ICE based usually means extensibility in more ways than one can imagine, but i just cant see it.

Ask the bigger / commercial studios that need to do crowd work if they appreciate CrowdFX and having the ability to keep that work in the same package. Having only heard about the nightmares of getting your motion out of Softimage and into Massive I can even appreciate it.

- Softimage now has both maya and max interaction models. Max has a new maya model - doesnt have Softimage interaction model. Maya doesnt have any other interaction model except its own... Yeah, you see where im going with this...

I don't think Maya could handle the awesomeness.