My Wishlist for Softimage... maybe 2013 ?

[EricTRocks]

I get what you're saying but even if you had such a node how would it function? You bring in the node, hook it up to a filter. what happens when the user changes the selection and didn't freeze the ICE tree? On top of that if you're modifying geometry you need a base geo to work with that is static. Having an ICE node that is always evaluating the selection isn't really functional. If it had a toggle to track selection then lock it in, it wouldn't be user friendly either as you'd still have to lock that down manually at some point.

I do think that more tools need to be created from the SI development using ICE. They've started with the Cap and Thickness tools.

Scripting is technical but across the board for all specialties in the pipeline it is truly an asset. If an animator knew how to script some quick tools to use to get his shots finished and help them be more dynamic he then ups his value as an artist. Surfacing and Lighting people can write tools to setup lights automatically via pick sessions, wrangles can automatically setup passes and partitions, modelers could check for invalid geometry when exporting, etc.

When it gets down to a certain level you have to script stuff.

[iamVFX]

Thought of a few more:

1. ICE "Script Node" that can contain code (ie. Python, vbscript, etc.)

A python ICE node would be ridiculously slow. Same with others. What would you use this for?

Robots!

[Hirazi Blue]

I get what you're saying but even if you had such a node how would it function? You bring in the node, hook it up to a filter. what happens when the user changes the selection and didn't freeze the ICE tree? On top of that if you're modifying geometry you need a base geo to work with that is static. Having an ICE node that is always evaluating the selection isn't really functional.

I wasn't talking about a node, but of an addition to the deployment script for especially ICE Topo stuff that would write the current (at the time of deployment) selection into an attribute that the applied ICE Tree can reference. But if that would work, is another thing, I admit... (If you were to apply two Trees in this manner, for instance)

edit: Back to the drawing-board...

When it gets down to a certain level you have to script stuff.

I know that, EricTRocks

[Memag]

Armatures (messiah).

[wmv]http://www.projectmessiah.com/x6/vids/Armatures_A.wmv[/wmv] [wmv]http://www.projectmessiah.com/x6/vids/Armatures_B.wmv[/wmv]



http://www.projectmessiah.com/x6/videos.html

[EricTRocks]

I can't see those videos and can't install the plugin necessary. Is there a link instead?

[Memag]

I can't see those videos and can't install the plugin necessary. Is there a link instead?

Look for "Armatures".
http://www.projectmessiah.com/x6/videos.html

[EricTRocks]

Yeah that's pretty awesome.

[bottleofram]

Proposing that to the Autodesk Media and Entertainment Board of Directors (go along with it, I have no idea who's making decisions, really) I could see one of this two outcomes unraveling:


ONE

"Can we make it with ICE?"


TWO

"Brilliant! Maya could really benefit from those capabili-- Oh... you're from that Softimage team, aren't you? Errrr..... Can we make it with ICE?"

[Memag]

Animation tools for character locomotion

[gustavoeb]

talking rigging and animation:
http://aligorith.blogspot.com/2012/02/a ... alpha.html

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

Honestly, I have only one wish:

Reliabilty.

Yes, I´d be willing to spend a whole years subscription fee for absolutly no new features, as long as all efforts go in stability and fixes. For almost all the things you can´t do in si, there are numerous 3rd party tools out there. I say let others add functions from now on and enhance what is there.
The reason why I say this is that: I own about ten different software licenses of all kind of tasks, 3d, video, compositing and so on. In the 80´s I told my clients to consider about 30% of productions time for rendering. Today I myself am forced to calculate at least 30% of my production time for software problems, crashes, corrupt scenes, bugs and so on. While I could make my clients pay for rendering, I definitely can´t charge them for unreliable software.
This is not a softimage problem, but softimage is more and more part of it.
I never had so much crashes and errors in si since 2012. What exactly is it that can´t be done with si?
You can polymodel anything. You have a decent dynamics and particle system. Next you will have vray (good bye mr and your stupid crashes (hello vray crashes;-)), you have a comfortable passes system, still the quickest out there, there is ICE (nothing beats it, it only needs to be stable too - the cap holes is soooo slow and three of them on one object crash my scene) and have you seen how many ICE tools there are by now (thanks to the contributors)? There are at least two methods for creating hair and strands not to mention all the plugs written by mootzoid and others. Admittedly you will always find something that could be better or isn´t just the way you like it, but take the time and compare si with other tools and youll find a lot missing there some of which you´ve got in si.
If you wanna have iray, why not use max? I upgraded to the entertainment creation suite to use vray in maya recently.
But whatever you work with is completely irellevant if you find at the end of the day that the scene you´ve been working one the whole day refuses to render from one second to the other. Just happend to me. Really no feature ever can help you with that, only clean and proper written and well tested software can prevent that.
I´m doing this for over 20 years now and I have used many different softwares in this time. What I can say from my experience is, that the standards drop. Naturally. More complex software, not proportionally more developers, in relaton less money and the need to satisfy customers feature wishes to sell copies.

I remember a time, when making cg was fun even with horrendous render times and framerates of.5 fps on a fast graphics adapter. It isn´t anymore.

So I think softimage should take the oportunity and bring softimage back to where it was. A tool you could rely on. It may be the only one out there.

Achim

[bottleofram]

I agree with you completely, Achim. I dont have nearly as much experience as you do, but i did develop severe hatred towards maya because of the way they piled up useless toys or unfinished features on her while failing to correct glaring mistakes and old bugs year after year. However, im afraid the new features sell and they sell well. Companies generate hype, reveal the software under controlled environment and present it so it looks like the most useful magical thing ever seen. Only long after studio heads and unsuspecting individuals buy into it, they realize this is in fact just badly implemented plugin with all sorts of limitations and drawbacks... But its all too late after the fact!

In my honest opinion, i think they realize they can survive a good couple of years of unstable releases, especially because they have a whole year of hotfixes and service packs ahead, but they cant risk looking like the product is going nowhere. All sorts of nasty little companies are lurking around waiting for an opportunity to steal AD’s thunder. (as if that was possible)

In the end, I think people are realizing how pointless the whole thing is if your software just doesnt work, but the fact is, the majority WOULD still complain. “Its 2012 ffs, how come we dont have this and that? And how come Autodesk doesnt innovate anymore? How come we have to buy a plugin for that...?” And so on. Admittedly, i’ll be the first to feel slightly disappointed when they roll out 2013 and no nuke-like tab menu for example. : (

Anyway, this post has gone full throttle into rant and speculation. There no value in it. My point is just that if i’m even half-correct, i cant see them changing their policy any time soon. No one’s getting excited about stable and bug-less software.


P.S. With all that said, though, i’m still very much enjoying SI's stability even if its not as solid as it was.

[iamVFX]

Honestly, I have only one wish:

Reliabilty.

Has anyone noticed that string to array (besides its total instability) and build array from set nodes are broken when you trying recover scene after a crash? In every single compound of the recovered scene you get a disconnected nodes that you should manually remove and reconnect with new ones. It just kills the desire to restore the scene, so that feature doesn't work for me anymore.

Reliability? Wish AD team don't break anything, will already be well

[Kzin]

overworked geometry shader.
you now need refresh the shader twice if you change values inside the shader, so the shaders you put in are useless for network rendering.

[gustavoeb]

In every single compound of the recovered scene you get a disconnected nodes that you should manually remove and reconnect with new ones

Disconected nodes? Not again

[ActionArt]

Honestly, I have only one wish:

Reliabilty.

Achim

Do you have any idea what actions are causing these crashes? I was having quite a few myself but 2 things cured it:

1) Turn OFF "Threaded Optimization" in Nvidia drivers. This causes all sorts of UI related crashes, especially with the render region tool but also in many different windows including the ice tree.

2) If MR is crashing, force ON "Convert Textures to Memory Maps" in the global settings.

With these two changes I've worked for about 2 weeks without a single crash and I've been pushing it hard.

Try it, see if that makes a difference for you.