SPOILER ALERT - general Softimage 2013 description

[iamVFX]

CrowdFX worth it if an individual agent in a group can be switched to rigid body state, is it possible? Something like old Mark's presentation, where are they fall off a cliff, but with proper collisions

[origin]

Guillaume posted some tests https://vimeo.com/user2168309/videos

[origin]

HQ viewport looks pretty neat, but still its only single object
https://vimeo.com/37739936

[iamVFX]

Can a crowd go up to the stairs?

[pluMmet]

I think HQV is great... in 6 months when the new nVidia cards get rolling I think we will all appreciate it

[gfxman]

Sorry to be to troll here, but i'll say what everyone is thinking: this release is the worst ever.
The only thing keeps me thinking Softimage has a future it's the incredible work FOR FREE on plugs and addons, from the users....

[EricTRocks]

Sorry to be to troll here, but i'll say what everyone is thinking: this release is the worst ever.
The only thing keeps me thinking Softimage has a future it's the incredible work FOR FREE on plugs and addons, from the users....

You can keep your catch all "what everone is thinking" to yourself. It's actually a great release. So many people wanted the HQV. So we got it. CrowdFX is amazing as well especially since its built on ICE which you can dig into the compounds and customize the crap out of it you need / can (not sure of your ICE skills). Tons of bug fixes and SDK enhancements as well. GATOR on selected points is huge and is going to be such a time saver and cool tool to use. Mixer enhancements for drag and drop reordering, coloring clips, and click and drag select is cool. Subtle stuff but truly helpful. Good amount more too. A good amount not mentioned as well.

Got to give the devs credit for the awesome sauce in this one. Not hyping it at all, it's great. I think people need to wait to get their hands on it to pass judgement.

If you need to apologize for being a troll at the beginning of your post, rethink posting at all.

[Hirazi Blue]

@EricTRocks - In the heat of the moment, sometimes harsh things can be said...
I agree with you that not everybody is thinking the same thing...
The people disliking a release tend to be more vocal than the people quietly happy about it (or indifferent).
;)

[gfxman]

You can say whatever you want: this is, the worst release ever
The video about the "usefull things in rendering" must be a joke.

Have you seen the rendering enanchment in modo 601 ?
The render preview in modo 501 and 601?

Come on, just be realistic here

edit:
Maybe i'm not seeing the "true" value of the release. it's my fault, or their problem?

This is the worst "new features and fixes" page and demo i ever seen:
http://area.autodesk.com/softimage2013 ( this is not perfect, but a little better:http://area.autodesk.com/maya2013 at least...)

Did they put half an hour effort in creating it?
2 videos ( 2!).
The artistic value of this scene for demoing the "High-Quality Viewport" it's crap.
Not mentioning the use of a slow 2008 quadro card.
I think, they're shooting themselfs in a foot with this "presentation".

Okey, there is also this one page, "full" of videos:
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/marks/softimage_2013
now maya:
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/cory/ann ... _maya_2013
Can you see the "quantity" difference?
At least you can see the ammount of "love" they put in to show what's new is in the release.

The "Some rendering additions" video it's... i don't have words.
Are you calling them "rendering additions" ?
I call " a good fast way to render volumetric" a "rendering addition".

I'm no troll

[Memag]

While most of the criticism is valid, there is really no need to be disrespectful to SI developers.

[pluMmet]

You can say whatever you want: this is, the worst release ever
The video about the "usefull things in rendering" must be a joke.

Have you seen the rendering enanchment in modo 601 ?
The render preview in modo 501 and 601?

Come on, just be realistic here

if you take something worth 10 dollars and make 10 dollars of improvements it looks very impressive.

if you take something worth 100 dollars and make it worth 110 dollars it's less impressive even though they are comparable.

[Maximus]

I think the overall presentation of Softimage 2013 could have been more appealing and i agree to some extent on what been said here.
Everyone wants their own things to be fixed/adjusted, so there always be people happy and people not so happy.
In my opinion and for what i use, i need updates on rendering side, and so far i didnt see anything worth the release, unless i see some fixes on geo shader, framebuffer, new mental ray features (still unbelievable we lack features from years ago, not day, years of the main render engine integrated).
Its disappointing and frustrating to see another year passed without a proper mental ray update.

You cant please everyone of course, but honestly there could have been a bit more of what we saw, and handled and presented a bit better, compared to other years this one looks a bit iffy.

[ActionArt]

For me, the viewport looks pretty major. I like how the look so closely matches the software render which makes it actually useful as opposed to some other systems. Of course you can turn features off and on to get the performance you need but previewing takes up so much time as it is now so this will really help IMO. New cards are on the way to make it much faster in the near future so I think they're looking ahead as they should be. It's not going to impress on a 4 year old card but try that on a new 680 or better and it just might. I also like how it's tied into the hardware render option so we can generate really nice hardware previews for clients very quickly.

I would have liked to see more on the rendering side but that's mostly MR has to do something which they probably won't (look at their REAL customer base - 95% CAD). We were promised GPU acceleration in 3.10

Yup! In Mental Ray 3.10 expect to see more GPU acceleration.Expect to see more features and improvements in iray, too. - Peter

I see no mention of that here and I don't know what "more" means as we don't seem to have any right now. It is aggravating that some features that have been in MR for years are not present (it seems). You wouldn't think it would be that hard to hook them up.

We now have great options from V-ray, 3Delight, Maxwell, Arnold (for some) etc. That would not have happened without the work on the SDK. I do have to say though that after trying several of these I've found MR still the most useful. Like it or hate it, it gets the job done if you take the time to learn it's ways.

If it's stable I'll be quite happy with this release. Their ICE strategy has led to fantastic third party development and that has to be counted too.

[Memag]

[Bellsey]

ok I'll bite..

It's one thing to feedback on a release as being poor or underwhelming, but to just spout out that its the worst ever...sorry I don't see or get that.
I also don't agree with the comment. But that's peoples prerogative.

It's very tricky to satisfy everyone's needs, in fact I'd say its near impossible. Also as I've said before in previous threads, we don't have an infinite resource, the guys have to sensible about the requirements from users and what they can realistically get done in the time, and also ensure that the product remains as stable as possible.
The Mental Ray thing is perhaps a good example, personally I wouldn't want the guys to implement a new version of MR unless its addresses the concerns I have and/or it's stable enough.

As for the web pages, I actually think they look good and alot better than previous years, and this is also part of the ongoing work to improve the AREA and its navigation. These are just product landing pages with high level information. There maybe only 2 videos, but Marks blog post has 7 videos and its probable that people will go to his blog first for info.
The info about fixes, known issue and limitations will come later as the product hasn't shipped yet. I don''t know where this information will appear as I don't control it, but based on previous years it will probably appear on the Autodesk main product page, and/or the wiki.

As for us not caring about this videos, making them appealing, or rushing them out, then again as I said before it often comes down to available resource. I would liked to have done some videos but I simply haven't had the time. Its also not my area to produce materials for the new releases, we have people who do that.
I tried to produce some preview videos but unfortunately they didn't seem to meet peoples expectations, so I'm not sure about doing any in the future, especially if I can't deliver what people will want. I wish we had someone in our Tech Marketing who knew Softimage to the level of the Maya/Max guys, but we don't have that person, so Chinny fills in and I still think he does a great job.

[Maximus]

I would wait to comment on viewport, because it strongly depends on your machine specs, i wouldnt be surprised if all the "hype" will turn into a disappointment due to hardware limitation.
How many people use a sphere on a plane when working? I mean the use of those features in a real scene is really counter productive and its gonna just make things heavy.
I never saw any use of this kind of features unless as i said you are working with few objects.
I want to see how usefull this viewport will be on a fully textured scene with 50 shaders and 2k textures. But maybe this is only the start so we have to wait other 3 years before it becomes better and more powerful.

Regarding mental ray, i have no more words, the list of actual features from that render engine is kinda huge, and what is implemented is really few. What can i say? Suck it up for another year.
Yes we have other render engines, but i'm not supposed to spend another 1k money for something that should be developed, also after the price increase of the software, the subscription i would expect those things to be actually developed and implemented.
Its a shame. I just hope they fixed the geo shader and the framebuffer (which again i seriously doubt), its a band aid on top of the total disaster this implementation feature-wise has become nowadays.