Softimage 2012 Experiences

[origin]

Well after reading all of this started to do some tests.

This is what I found.

I am using win7 x64 i7 dual six core.

Opening the Task Manager and looking at the performance when doing a render with 2012 does not use 100% of the CPU. It varies from 9% to 12% and stays at this very low CPU usage during the whole render.

try disabling preview window. Or is it happening also when region rendering?

[Maximus]

Any eta on hotfix for this Mental Ray bug?

We're investigating this rendering startup delay

In a follow-up on the Area luceric mentions the following about the time it will take
before there will be a service pack/solution to this problem:

worse case one month. The team is really waiting for more feedback on the product before sending a service pack.

(Quoted from here,
they still haven't fixed the Permlink @ the Area, but it's the tenth post in that thread)
;)

i guess the fix will come with service pack..hopefully everything will work, no idea when service pack will be tho.

[Cacoman]

try disabling preview window. Or is it happening also when region rendering?

It happens everytime. With preview disabled, enabled. Even when just rendering the FG map.

I installed 3delight and it works very good with 2012. Seems like a real alternative to MR until they fix this.

[Nizar]

I downloaded to day SI 2012 trial.
My viewport lag everytime I apply texture or with a little heavy scene (2011 manage this scene very well and really fast).
Do I the only one with this issue?
My workstation is a phenom x6 1090t, GTX460 and 16gb ram

The mudbox send scene button is really inviting (but 1200 $ is too hight price for me)

[Caveman]

Still no hotfix or sp. Awesome

[Memag]

Thanks Hirazi that's what I meant, and your workaround works. But this wasn't necessary to do in older versions. I just started learning animation, and already had to resort to workarounds Not good, not good at all.

This is just a preference, which you can easily set, not a workaround.
Defaults may change but the functionality is still there.

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

I downloaded to day SI 2012 trial.
My viewport lag everytime I apply texture or with a little heavy scene (2011 manage this scene very well and really fast).
Do I the only one with this issue?
My workstation is a phenom x6 1090t, GTX460 and 16gb ram

The mudbox send scene button is really inviting (but 1200 $ is too hight price for me)

Don´t bother, there is a bug that generates visible seams between uv islands in mud when sending objects from si there. already logged


Achim

[Maximus]

Well, the more i keep using soft 2012 and mental ray the more frustrating it becomes.
There is something going totally wrong with Mental Ray, passes, global illumination, final gather, and all the options for write/save/reuse maps after you created them.
Its almost impossible to track down wtf is happening because its so random and unstable.

So far the only thing i could repro 100% is an issue it happens with global illumination.
Can someone try to repro this? just to test if its me or...

Start a new scene and put some stuff on it, then activate GI and FG, emit photons from a light source. In the FG tab use "irradiance from photon map" and render, creating both maps.

After a bit using Soft 2012 i have 2 problems.
The first is sometimes after it emits photons you dont have anymore the "FG lookup" phase in wich it reads the photons and calculate the irradiance based on photon map. This phase suddenly vanish and it stops calculating it ignoring the GI totally RANDOMLY, so i cant track this thing down at all.

The second thing wich is kinda consistent and happens always is this..
In your render manager switch off the global illumination map rebuild, so you remain with FG only.

Now go to Edit-> Duplicate current pass.
And hit render.. even if in the options that was copied the GI was deactivated, it starts again building the GI map.
I got f***ed up by this because it took me 20 mins to calculate a GI in a scene i was working on, and it started overwriting it again..even if i didnt have the GI on.
What i did is opened the render manager, and i just checked the GI was off...started the render again and it didnt start the GI.

Another thing that happens to me is the fact that MR doesnt respect the write map and append map option, producing some weird output in terms of photon distribution..
All those things happens randomly..on a fairly complicated scene..i have like 800k triangles.

This thing is so fuzzy...I really cant hide the frustration with this.
In case someone can repro this, please let me know..


edit. regarding the "irradiance from photon map" and the FG lookup phase, it seems it only happens the first time...if you render it again, it doesnt take into account GI map. Once you did the first time to write the GI map on disk, and deactivate the "rebuild" GI option, there isnt anything i can do to make FG read that frozen map, i have to activate GI again and overwrite the frozen map wich of course is not what i want, and it shouldnt be acting like this.
This is what happening to me right now.

[luceric]

are you running Vista or Windows 7 with UAC on?
If so, try to turn it off.

there is a mental ray issue that affects all products right now: it attempts to create a fgmap temp file in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\<....> where there is no write access when UAC is on. We're aware of this issue and a fix from mental images will be required

[Maximus]

Thanks Luceric, i didnt know about this, but anyway UAC was off, i always keep it off.
I've also..noticed that in the scene i'm currently working the fgmap on the disk is 3.56gb, i had the hard disk turn red on win7 because was eating all the space, i had to stop the render and the whole pc froze..

Another problem i guess, to add to the one that it doesnt re-read the map file..
i've found other user with this issue too

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1462&start=0

Moderator edit - corrected the link to point at the beginning of that thread - HB

[Hirazi Blue]

@luceric - Wasn't it a bad idea to begin with,
when Softimage started installing to the "Program Files" folder by default?
Or am I misunderstanding something here?
(which is very possible/likely, I hasten to add)

[luceric]

the problem is a program should not write files while running in "Program Files"
Any temp files it needs to write should go to the user-specific temp folder, not the current directory of the application.

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

When it comes to mental ray, this softimage release is the worst ever.
It´s such a shame, because everything else is so cool, but mental ray just kills this app. I don´t know if this is the fault of AD or MI, i just know, none of these issues should have passed beta. This is so incredible lousy work, if I´d do my jobs like this, I´d just starve.
Shame on you Autodesk! I´m willing to throw my shoe.


Achim

[Hirazi Blue]

the problem is a program should not write files while running in "Program Files"
Any temp files it needs to write should go to the user-specific temp folder, not the current directory of the application.

Yes, I understood as much. But the original XSI Default Install Location (as you may recall ) was a separate folder "Softimage" on the C:-Drive and I was just wondering, if that wouldn't be an easy fix, as you would have write access to that folder without restrictions anyway...

[SreckoM]

I am not sure that C:/Softimage/ would allow writing without restrictions too. I think only Users folder allows this.

[Hirazi Blue]

Okay, that would clear things up. Sorry for my NOOBish OT... ;)
edit: ...although it seems I have full access to my Softimage (Mod Tool) folder on this laptop, installed under Vista
(from within the Mod Tool and outside of it)... So now I'm slightly confused (more than usual)