Another 3dsmax sneak peak

[Letterbox]

Trying to create a vacuum that should suck people to Maya by killing SI is a sorry idea. That vacuum will be filled for sure, but not with Maya.

exactly.

I disagree with that, it makes no financial sense to kill softimage, not at this point.

First you wait to see what the new team can deliver or not (that's not far off). Decide how hard it is for them to develop what market needs are. See if you can externalize those costs to studios willing to pay for development, read consulting, and effectively have them subside the product development.

Then you evaluate what additional assets you need to keep the softimage competitive in the market. If in both those analysis you find you cant sustain an acceptable softimage development rate due to economics, you do what was done with Toxic. Change the splash screen every year.

[Rork]

you do what was done with Toxic

Don't forget Matchmover

[Letterbox]

you do what was done with Toxic

Don't forget Matchmover

You're right Rob, others too.


But you know its what 3 weeks or so until the product is fully announced and we can absorb whats what, not these unclear dribs and drabs that are being put out, where it gives people the penchant to only see the negative.

I for one am still willing to give the new development team the benefit of the doubt, for these last (probably very busy) weeks.

Because when they are up, and it's their first full own release, everything is going to become much clearer.

[Rork]

Hi Steven,

No NDA necessary here, but the new(ish) team (some already worked on previous releases of SI afaik) has been more than helpful during the beta for 2014.

Like I said before, you can't get everybody satisfied with a new release, but 2014 will for most of us I guess....
And as long as new 3rd party developers, like Fabric Engine, release stuff for SI, there's a (financial) future ;-)

rob

[jamination]

Hi Steven,

No NDA necessary here, but the new(ish) team (some already worked on previous releases of SI afaik) has been more than helpful during the beta for 2014.

Like I said before, you can't get everybody satisfied with a new release, but 2014 will for most of us I guess....
And as long as new 3rd party developers, like Fabric Engine, release stuff for SI, there's a (financial) future ;-)

rob

I am curious what Fabric Engine will offer the everyday user/Freelancer/Small shops, this is not at all clear to me especially in the short run. Is the idea that some developer will use Fabric Engine to make a usefull plugin (and it will work for many platforms), or is it more likely that big shops will just use it for their own needs. I guess if it is the former, than the question is how long until these "plugins" start popping up, I can't see it anytime soon. Until I see something it is hard to get excited about it (not being a programmer myself).

[luceric]

If the attribute editor functioned more like property pages where you can lock it so it does not disappear with another selection.

maya's attribute editor does have that one thing, actually, it's the top checkbox in the "List' Menu, and that when the two next menus ("Selected", "Focus") start to make sense.
thanks for the all the feedback. no trolling intended.. I preferred burying this question in max thread fewer people will read rather than put a neon sign on it elsewhere. It doesn't matter on topic or not, imho, it's free either way.

[luceric]

Anyway, since we're so deep into off-topic, i'd like to ask luceric a question. You've been on maya for about a year now. Do you feel like it's internally as messy as you expected it to be or worse? I know you guys are secretive but I think you can answer this without braking any rules since we have no real way to quantify your personal expectation or judgement.

it's not messy at all internally, it's just culturally different because maya has zero microsoft influence (no COM, MFC, hungarian notations, etc). So it takes a bit of getting used to for a group of Windows/VisualStudio boys. Nobody developed on linux at Softimage, just occasionally debug when necessary. On Maya, there are devs on each platforms and in fact I'm on the mac.

[Chris_TC]

I'd like to see a thread about what could be changed in Maya to make better for a Softimage user's point of view.. I mean if you have to bite the bullet some day and switch..

If you rewrite Maya to a point where only the timeline and Paint FX remain I might consider. But really, if SI goes down the only legitimate option in my mind would be Houdini. Maybe Cinema 4D.

[mirkoj]

as probably everyone can notice... majority of SI people would probably go to another software instead of choosing different AD product...
see how would that affect AD sales... maybe SI part is small compared to others but in financial reports all numbers plays role ;)

[jamination]

as probably everyone can notice... majority of SI people would probably go to another software instead of choosing different AD product...
see how would that affect AD sales... maybe SI part is small compared to others but in financial reports all numbers plays role ;)

in a perfect world that would happen, however, I think many people would migrate to whatever helps them find work, and that may lead them back to autodesk no matter how upset they are (i think autodesk knows that too).

[bottleofram]

Anyway, since we're so deep into off-topic, i'd like to ask luceric a question. You've been on maya for about a year now. Do you feel like it's internally as messy as you expected it to be or worse? I know you guys are secretive but I think you can answer this without braking any rules since we have no real way to quantify your personal expectation or judgement.

it's not messy at all internally

Thats a surprise. I seem to recall a few excuses to why maya can sometimes be a bit... unpredictable, which went along those lines. Oh, well...

Like I said before, you can't get everybody satisfied with a new release, but 2014 will for most of us I guess....
And as long as new 3rd party developers, like Fabric Engine, release stuff for SI, there's a (financial) future ;-)

Sound like a regular update than. The standard Autodesk type of an update... The one you should be smart to lower your expectations for. Well, we'll see soon enough.

For me, a spectacular release may repair some of this utterly shattered confidence in Autodesk's commitment. Anything short of that and i'll consider it a final sign of slow and dragged out death. Fun times....

EDIT: quoted the wrong paragraph

[scaron]

I'd like to see a thread about what could be changed in Maya to make better for a Softimage user's point of view.. I mean if you have to bite the bullet some day and switch..

ok, i'll bite...

i might be wrong but multi-editing attribute pages (err property pages?) isn't doable? they resort to the spreadsheet view? i think a spreadsheet view is fine when you know the data you are editing pretty well. when you don't know the names of parameters or need the gui to give you hints on ranges etc. i would say multi-editing of properties on objects is something i always always miss.

the hypershade isn't replaced with the node editor, is that correct? the hypershade was always difficult for me to read and use. i would say hypershade needs to be moved to the modern node editor.

whatever marcus/exotic matter is bringing to the table would make me work with maya. cause i can't get behind nparticles.

knowing when to left click or middle click is always hard for me to follow. softimage made this easy for me with the 'L' 'M' and 'R' hints at the bottom.

[gustavoeb]

the absence of picking, and resorting to selection order for things like constraining is often a source of confusion to me... as one is never certain who is who in this ordering

[luceric]

i might be wrong but multi-editing attribute pages (err property pages?) isn't doable? they resort to the spreadsheet view?

that's right, they don't have this great XSI UI feature.. the Channel Box supports does multi-edit however.

[iamVFX]

the hypershade isn't replaced with the node editor, is that correct?

it's not officially replaced, but it has all hypershade functionality and more

[McNistor]

luceric,
When I said earlier that you should slap Maya's name and logo to XSI I was obviously joking but the essence of that is not a joke: if you want to make Maya a better program, make it more like XSI.
Very recently I;ve exported a character from XSI to Maya via FBX where had to pose it using those... joints.
Oh my... why does Maya select all joints "below" a selected one? Why do I get unpredictable (to me) selecting behaviour of geometry? Going from point to edge back to object I often end-up with 0 selection (no object and no sub-object). I don't know how people manage to work with that when it comes to modeling, it's a mess.