Si 2013 Experiences

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

I just installed the 2013 suite (maya centric) and want to share a few thoughts about it.
All in all I like the enhancements and improvements, made in si by the team to make it easier to use, more compatible with other pipelines and a more versatile tool in general. Many thanks for that to the softimage team!

In particular, it is now possible to exchange/update modified geometry (vertex translations, extrudes and so on) via the send to button to maya - and back. That is a great pipeline improvement. Anyway I still don´t understand why still the viewmanagerlayout gets changed when sending/receiving data from or to maya.

Little things like being able to prevent the animation editor from switching from fcurve to expression editor automatically. All those little things make si more fun to use. Why the "Autofit to viewer" checker still doesn´t remember it´s setting in the preview framebuffer is an enigma to me.

But again, I really feel si has improved, which is the purpose of an update.

Adding crowd fx is also, even if not of use to everyone, at least a very good example of the potential ICE offers for the future without having to implement new (most likely buggy) technology.

Which brings me to the sad part: The so call "High Quality Viewport"
This new technology is very likely to get laughed about by maya and max users, because it is in terms of speed, reliability, compatibility or even quality not even close to any todays standard. Not only is the included sample scene obviously the upper end of the HQVs abilities, but also the HQV fails completely at more production oriented scenes with highres textures and a lot more lights than two point. It makes not only the viewport slower, it also slows down selecting objects or properties in the explorer. I tested a fairly complex scene on two different machines. It took 12 min to convert the scene, spat out a lot of errors ( about incompatible nodes in the tree) and then made a lot of objects invisible, surprisingly the ones with simple phong shaders and a diffuse texture.

If you compare that with what Viewport 2.0 in maya is capable of ( it actually speeds up the viewport with complex scenes) you really wonder how anyone seriously considered implementing the HQV in this stage int si.

Fixing a few things in the old viewport, like objects going black for no reason, would have been a much bigger improvement than the HQV.

I hope very much, the si team starts to import know how from the other teams at autodesk instead of supplying it to them.

Still, this is a very good update featurewise, I just think with the HQV the team a made wrong decision. It may need a lot of work before it will be really useful.


Achim

[origin]

12 minutes...does it cache what it converted? ie reopening the scene = no more conversion?

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

Actually it takes that long every time I switch a pass....

Achim

[Bellsey]

The trick I have found with the HQV is to watch the settings that you set. I avoid turning everything on before then doing the conversion.

At this stage HQV I don't think HQV is really for day-to-day working, but then neither is (imo) Maya's VP2.0 or Max's Nitrous, not yet anyway. I also think that HQV is actually better in this first iteration than what Maya's VP 2 was when it first appeared.

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

At this stage HQV I don't think HQV is really for day-to-day working, but then neither is (imo) Maya's VP2.0 or Max's Nitrous, not yet anyway. I also think that HQV is actually better in this first iteration than what Maya's VP 2 was when it first appeared.

It doesn´t help to compare bad with worse... ;)

@Hirazie, you may join this thread with action art´s, he posted first

Moderator edit - everybody's advised to go to the other thread, I can't merge them, for that would break up the flow of both threads, as it merges posts by time. An ongoing discussion however might just as well play out here! - HB

[Bellsey]

At this stage HQV I don't think HQV is really for day-to-day working, but then neither is (imo) Maya's VP2.0 or Max's Nitrous, not yet anyway. I also think that HQV is actually better in this first iteration than what Maya's VP 2 was when it first appeared.

It doesn´t help to compare bad with worse... ;)

@Hirazie, you may join this thread with action art´s, he posted first

True but my point is that we can't get everything literally right first time out, which is why we haven't made any wild claims around HQV. Like Nitrous and VP2, HQV is an 'ongoing' project. The main thing is that, as Luc-Eric pointed out, alot of the main work and 'heavy lifting' has been done in getting the implementation working.

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

At this stage HQV I don't think HQV is really for day-to-day working, but then neither is (imo) Maya's VP2.0 or Max's Nitrous, not yet anyway. I also think that HQV is actually better in this first iteration than what Maya's VP 2 was when it first appeared.

It doesn´t help to compare bad with worse... ;)

@Hirazie, you may join this thread with action art´s, he posted first

True but my point is that we can't get everything literally right first time out, which is why we haven't made any wild claims around HQV. Like Nitrous and VP2, HQV is an 'ongoing' project. The main thing is that, as Luc-Eric pointed out, alot of the main work and 'heavy lifting' has been done in getting the implementation working.

I do understand that, but I think it would have been better to wait with the publishing at least for some features, because it just doesn´t "look good" from a product image point of view, no matter how much effort you put into it (which I absolutley appreciate(the effort I mean)).

Achim

[Toonafish]

That's what you get with this whole subscription program, annual updates and no real competition. Customers are kind of forced to take whatever is given to them, no need to impress anyone or get it "right the first time". Just give them whatever you've got. If AD had to sell this update based on what it's actually offering, a lot of peeps would skip it I suspect.

Almost any other company treating it's customers like this wouldn't last very long. Only in the matrix.

[McNistor]

That's what you get with this whole subscription program, annual updates and no real competition. Customers are kind of forced to take whatever is given to them, no need to impress anyone or get it "right the first time". Just give them whatever you've got. If AD had to sell this update based on what it's actually offering, a lot of peeps would skip it I suspect.

Almost any other company treating it's customers like this wouldn't last very long. Only in the matrix.

I don't know who this guy is or where did he beamed down from, but he cracks me up so hard. In a positive way.

On topic: HQV is bad, mkey?
It should have been postponed until a good/usable iteration. Besides, I still to this day, have no idea what a viewport that tries to mimic a realtime renderer like Iray is good for. You can't model with all that stuff turned on anyway (even if it worked at 100fps) or can you? I sure couldn't. People screamed (well ok, not screamed, but asked for) for ECV (eye candy viewport) and now they got it. Use it!