Softimage 2012 Experiences

[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)

[Maximus]

The problem anyway is not the fact that it looks for that direcory with UAC on and then it cant write map, the problem is that even if UAC is off, even if it can write on disk, the FG map has other problems, wich in my case are FG fast lookup phase skipping, GI recalculation after you turn it off wich shouldnt happen, giant FG map file size, pass duplication with same settings not taken into account.

And again i dont have UAC on since 2 years, its the first thing i do after clean win7 install to disable that crap.
There are other problems here.

[fabilabo]

Sorry for the bad post here... (i know but) yeah, it's a really shame, how a program could be sell at this price with a such quality of finition ? Really ? i have to stick with 2011 and can't use my 2012 copy. Amazing ! i just wonder if i will ever buy an next version of SI !
Soft just look an ICE machine for export to maya or max, and can't be use just to do the daywork... (yes, i have to RENDER for sell my work)
Or perhaps the situation is doing just for sell the future Arnold ?? yeah, everybody is boring by MR, MR is boring when it work, but when it don't work !!

Please Autodesk, do something, you sell a product that don't work at all ! Open your eyes please, what are you doing ? Last Fusion 6 had a problem with W7 SP1, it crash, we wait 1 week for having the patch. I can't understand there is already not an hotfix or SP to correct that ! BTW there is an 2011 SAP SP1 ?? are you kidding us ?

How many time will us wait "just for using softimage correctly" ? the SP1 ? in 6 month ?
Sorry i know i'm irritated but i'm more and more frustred to use softimage, and will be more when i will kill my wallet for getting arnold, like the ONLY solution for doing my job properly

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

Soft just look an ICE machine for export to maya or max, and can't be use just to do the daywork... (yes, i have to RENDER for sell my work)

Exactly. Did you know, that with the maya entertainment creation suite it is possible to update meshes from maya to soft with the oneclick-transfer, but not from soft to maya? And not, because it´s technically impossible - you can update meshes in mudbox from soft - but because it is just disabled, because, like stephen blair put it, this is a maya centric suite. They just don´t want you to use soft for anything else than ICE. It´s prooven.

The future of softimage is bright? I don´t think so.

Achim

[fabilabo]

Very nice, it will be far smarter to put softimage into the center of the suite, maya is old and SI more evolutive, but its all marketing and money

[Nizar]

In a XSIBASE discussion, about VRAY, a XSI user wrote this:

Slightly off topic: Autodesk is currently hiring Software Engineers for the Softimage development. If my guess is correct, they're planning to make the team number twice as big as it already is. So that looks like a good sign for future development of Softimage.

What does that have to do with V-Ray My assumption is more employees, bigger product, bigger investment, hence creating a bigger market. Better chance of releasing Vray sooner.

is real? If yes is a good news. In any case, MR issue are not all softimage team errors, but many are mental ray bugs

[Hirazi Blue]

I removed my sillier post and will try to stay serious in this one:
I don't think adding developers to the Softimage team necessarily spells a growth in market share. To achieve that Softimage IMHO would be better off if they hired some dedicated PR & Marketing folks, that pushed Softimage "slightly" better than it's being done now. More developers will no doubt help improve the software itself and that's obviously always welcome, but quite a different story from improving the market share. But: IMHO...