Considering a move to SI would love some advice.

[Cutman]

Hi,

I am a long time C4D user looking to buy and learn SI and would love some advice particularly as I'm Mac based.

I have a 12 core Mac Pro, 24 GB with AMD 5870 GPU which is not a qualified card. Will there be any problems in SI with this GPU it's only 1 GB?

I am trying to keep the cost down but I could upgrade the card to either the GTX 680 or AMD 7950 both of which have Mac versions out of the two which is the better card for SI? I understand nVidia have capped OGL performance and there maybe driver issues with the AMD but would like to hear from anyone with first hand experience. I'm leaning towards the 7950 as AMD generally better OS X driver than nVidia.

In an ideal world I would build a new PC for SI but I can't stretch to SI and new PC so I'll use Bootcamp on the Mac, which OS would you suggest? Windows 7 or 8? I'm leaning towards 7.

I am debating whether to sign up for Subs or not, how many updates per year do you normally get? If it's just the one I might just wait for the Service Pack before buying but what other advantages are there to having the Subs please?

Is there any other advice you'd give someone considering a move to SI at this time? I hope I'm not buying into an application that is going EOL but I was completely blown away by a demo from a colleague that made me see SI was the way forward.

Any pointers you can give will be gratefully received. Many thanks.

Cutman

[Hirazi Blue]

Difficult questions with the potential of yet another tribal war...
Concerning the Windows 7 vs Windows 8 debate, I would personally lean towards Windows 7, as I myself haven't had a chance to play with Windows 8 yet, BUT I'd probably advise you to buy Windows 8, as it will probably ensure the longest possible compatibility with future versions of Softimage you might acquire...

[EricTRocks]

I am debating whether to sign up for Subs or not, how many updates per year do you normally get? If it's just the one I might just wait for the Service Pack before buying but what other advantages are there to having the Subs please?

Is there any other advice you'd give someone considering a move to SI at this time? I hope I'm not buying into an application that is going EOL but I was completely blown away by a demo from a colleague that made me see SI was the way forward.

In regards to subscription, I always advise to get it. It's cost effective in the long run since upgrading otherwise you are paying pretty much full price again. However since you're just getting into it I'd give it a good 6 months to see how you like it after your initial purchase. At that point you'll see how beneficial it is to you and make a call on hopping on subscription. If you do choose to get on subscription at that point you will need to pay for the 6 months you weren't on it and also for the remainder of the year as well. You should time your subscription sign up / purchase just after April as new releases have come out around then and if your subscription is due after that you'll tend to usually get the new release before having to renew. Just in case you don't want to.

I'm not going to comment on the past discussions of whether SI is EOL or not. I will say though that there are some pretty massive companies and numerous mid sized ones as well that use SI as their main app in their pipeline. If they EOL SI they are screwing many of these companies and will thus lose any profits that it brings in. With the recent push to the cloud based apps and many studios rolling their own in house 3D applications, in my opinion the bigger studios using SI will opt to go with an app that isn't owned by AD as it will tarnish their already low cred with the companies. Comparatively SI makes a miniscule amount compared to the other AD apps in the grand scheme of things, however it is still revenue for AD. Especially in the Asian game production market.

Long-ish story short, if they do decide to EOL SI (which there is no evidence of at this point) it's a long ways off if ever happening in the current evolution of the industry. SI has so many advantages over other apps in terms of workflow and day to day work that makes me always push SI when in a debate. Maya's SDK is more open to being customized but I don't want to have to customize it just to get work done. Many tools are already built in to SI to get actual production work done. There is room for improvement but it's a well rounded package.

Good luck picking it up and there are many resources for you to learn it. Check the tutorial threads and vimeo groups if you haven't already.

[Cutman]

Thank you both for the replies.

I wasn't trying to be controversial in anyway just trying to ease my way into SI ownership.

From my point of view SI looks the perfect step up from C4D as an application for an individual rather than a complete team. I do freelance motion graphics and I have long admired ICE's power and feel that SI offers more bang for buck than continuing down the road with C4D which shows no sign of overcoming its performance issues. It's also a change and a challenge that'll keep things fresh and offers a new way of working.

I understand from doing some background research that AMD GPUs had issues with SI in the past but it looks like there are no issues with 2014, is that true in practice?

I have done months of camping out on Vimeo watching the work of Pooby, Mootz, er, well just about anything SI related and they clinched the deal. I just need to check there aren't any gotchas using a Mac, Bootcamp and GPU.

Thanks again.

[Superpositivo]

I have your same machine (actually at work), but Intel, with Bootcamp, and for what I can say, there are no issues related that I'm aware of.

[owei]

Hi!
The last time I was working on MAC with bootcamp everything was fine (December last year)...! If you are not sure, just download the demo and make your own tests for 30 days.
As for EOL discussion, I agree with Eric.
Right now I don´t see any new big solution coming up from AD or elsewhere. So, out of the box, imho, Soft is the strongest package you can get. You find a lot of cool stuff produced with Soft over the last months and weeks..
I has its weak parts, of course it has. But for organizing scenes, passes, shaders and stuff works very well and fast. Combined with the power of ICE and, if you need, some 3rd party tools, you have a swiss knife in you hand ;)

cheers,
oli

[Daniel Brassard]

Used them all: 3DMax (v3 and up), LW (v5 and up), Maya (v6 and up), C4D (v6 and up) and SI (v4 to current).

SI is definitively the one I stuck with but I also kept C4D.

I use C4D import/export capability very often to bring models to Softimage. Keep C4D as your backup, even an old version can be useful, especially if you have BodyPaint 3D with your version.

The SI workflow will take some use to but after a while you will be hooked. Good luck.

Cheers!

Dan

[Draise]

I've just upgraded to Windows 8 and installed Softimage 2013 (haven't upgraded yet), Gear, Arnold demo, and python 2.6 without any problems. I have yet to push the machine to animation and final renders again, but so far so good; and it's network capabilities to Windows 7 are seamless. The ability to load the software is fast and I find it a bit smoother than W7.

My only issue with W8 was the metro UI interface got corrupted once I got new thumbnail codecs for targa's and psd's that also took over Window's native PNG support, corrupting the Livetiles. It was an easy fix though, just configure the codec pack to not take place of the native PNG's (or jpgs or gif) codecs (found after some nose grinding).

I hope you enjoy Softimage and what it can potentially do as much as I do. ;)

[Bullit]

Concerning W7 or W8 it has more future and everyone says it is faster than W7, remains the brain-dead GUI but there are workarounds.

I think Softimage is a good choice because ICE gives you power that no other software besides Houdini gives. The current top render engines are in Softimage: vray and arnold and there is many tools from exocortex, motozoid and there are always ICE compounds being released from someone.

No issues with AMD/ATI cards now, someone made tests with 6xxx and he got much better results in them than a Nvidia. Your current card should work very well without issues. Unless you'll use giant textures.

[Cutman]

Used them all: 3DMax (v3 and up), LW (v5 and up), Maya (v6 and up), C4D (v6 and up) and SI (v4 to current).

SI is definitively the one I stuck with but I also kept C4D.

I use C4D import/export capability very often to bring models to Softimage. Keep C4D as your backup, even an old version can be useful, especially if you have BodyPaint 3D with your version.

The SI workflow will take some use to but after a while you will be hooked. Good luck.

Cheers!

Dan

I have C4D and Modo and I'm certainly going to keep them and use them together with SI. It's great to know my current hardware is compatible and good to go.

I have been impressed with ICE for ages and hoped C4D XPresso would grow more ICE-like balls but that never happened, SI is the application C4D always threatened to be but Maxon never managed to make.

Anyway, excited and daunted by taking on the challenge of learning SI.

Thanks everyone for the assistance it was a great help.

Cheers

[NNois]

For what it worth W8 is running very well here on the macpro's, much responsive than W7.
Thake also in consideration than you can run the W8 partition on OSX via Parralels it work very well too if you have plenty of ram, but for rendering you can gain some cpu power (about 10%) if you are directly in bootcamp ;-)

[Nox]

I am debating whether to sign up for Subs or not, how many updates per year do you normally get?

If you care about costs, not much point. There won't be any worthful new features in future because there is no available plugins for AD to buy.

[Hirazi Blue]

But as a general rule: we are well-known for our perpetual "fear mongering" and shouldn't be trusted relatively shortly after an - admittedly - "slightly" disappointing release. I share some of the sentiments Nox expresses, but I'll probably stay on Subscription until the money runs out (next wednesday?).

[Bullit]

There have been a lot of shuffle in people in last years but now things appear stabilized, so i think there will be an improvement.
For a while Softimage was even directly under the head of whole Media and Entertainment, but as can be easily understood someone can't manage his job and manage an application.

Btw my opinion on ATI/AMD card is based in my experience in Windows. But you download the trial and you can check.

This link about tutorials is great:

https://www.si-community.com/forum/v ... =22&t=1306

[Cutman]

I am debating whether to sign up for Subs or not, how many updates per year do you normally get?

If you care about costs, not much point. There won't be any worthful new features in future because there is no available plugins for AD to buy.

Don't you have to be on Subs to get service packs? That would be my reason for getting the Subs for the year. I try and keep upgrading under control nowadays and only do so if there is a compelling reason and so many companies are NOT giving us compelling reasons to upgrade.

The plan was to but SI + a year of Subs at the end of it there would be a stable release and then I could decide whether SI 2015 was worth upgrading to. I'm more likely to spend money on third party plugins like Mootz's plugins in the long run and ICE appears to give more or less unlimited scope to extend and customise SI for your own particular workflow anyway.

One of my calculations was, if Autodesk were crazy and EOLed SI on the day I bought it would it really matter? My current 3D applications, Modo and C4D, are years behind SI anyway so, no, it wouldn't matter to me.

Cheers

Edit:

Bullit thanks for those links, brilliant resource.

[luceric]

service packs are always free to everyone.
what's a little tricky imho is that if there is an SAP release this year, based on previous years it would get announced in only three months and you cannot get that release unless you buy subscription, you'd have to wait for 2015 to get those features. Upgrades are 2200$ so if you're already tight on money, isn't doubtful you would buy an eventual 2015 release. Subscription is just 850$ more on the online store