Calling All Softimagers

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alias3ds
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Re: Calling All Softimagers

Post by alias3ds » 09 Jul 2016, 14:41

Done :D .

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xsi_fanatic
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Re: Calling All Softimagers

Post by xsi_fanatic » 09 Jul 2016, 19:13

druitre wrote:Completed.

I'm curious too about the % of SI-users that visit here, or how many are on the mailing list. Speaking for me personally, I'm using Soft every day and it feels not one bit outdated or obsolete or whatever - I can still get into a rage just thinking about what AD has done, eternal mother*ers etc etc etc sorry I'll take my medication now goodbye
Aaah !! The mailing list ! How could I forget ! #-o

Is anybody here on the mailing list ? I tried signing up before but couldn't get my emails through to any one.

Would someone be kind enough to post the survey link in the mailing list ? Please and thank you.

I would do it my self, but as I said I'm having trouble with it for some reason. Also, a confirmation after posting it would be appreciated.

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xsi_fanatic
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Re: Calling All Softimagers

Post by xsi_fanatic » 09 Jul 2016, 19:16

julius wrote:most part of softimage users don't come here, unfortunately.
I regularly work with two studios (20 persons each) still working with softimage.
In that case, could you help spread the word ? Please and thank you.

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xsi_fanatic
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Re: Calling All Softimagers

Post by xsi_fanatic » 09 Jul 2016, 19:17

NNois wrote:just curious, how many vote untill now ??
Hi NNois,

So far 85% still use Softimage. 90% would like to see ongoing tool / plugin development. 86% are interested in the idea of crowd funding.

Hope that gives you an idea. :)

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Rork
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Re: Calling All Softimagers

Post by Rork » 10 Jul 2016, 14:18

Although Soft is still my favorite app, it more and more feels like flogging a dead horse. I dread the day Arnold will stop support for Softimage. Or Redshift. From a company standpoint at what moment is all the support work still financially 'worth it'?

Don't get me wrong, Soft is still very capable of doing all the stuff I have to do, but we all have to admit there's a declining number of studios where a freelancer can go for Softimage work.
And it was already a small number to begin with compared to Maya and others.
At some point, and I see this happening already around me, studios and people start to shift.
It may be Maya, it may be Houdini, or a combination of the two, maybe Cinema if you're just doing your own thing, but Soft is disappearing at a fast rate.

And crowdfunding sounds nice, but what happens after the initial release? Will there be another one for bug fixing and new features? Rinse and repeat?
Sorry to be all gloom and doom, but I'm way past the 'acceptance' state, and actively looking into something else. Something with a bit more career opportunities.

My tad somber € 0,02 for today. Could be the weather... ;-)

rob
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So long, and thanks for all the Fish!!

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xsi_fanatic
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Re: Calling All Softimagers

Post by xsi_fanatic » 11 Jul 2016, 09:26

Rork wrote:Although Soft is still my favorite app, it more and more feels like flogging a dead horse. I dread the day Arnold will stop support for Softimage. Or Redshift. From a company standpoint at what moment is all the support work still financially 'worth it'?

Don't get me wrong, Soft is still very capable of doing all the stuff I have to do, but we all have to admit there's a declining number of studios where a freelancer can go for Softimage work.
And it was already a small number to begin with compared to Maya and others.
At some point, and I see this happening already around me, studios and people start to shift.
It may be Maya, it may be Houdini, or a combination of the two, maybe Cinema if you're just doing your own thing, but Soft is disappearing at a fast rate.

And crowdfunding sounds nice, but what happens after the initial release? Will there be another one for bug fixing and new features? Rinse and repeat?
Sorry to be all gloom and doom, but I'm way past the 'acceptance' state, and actively looking into something else. Something with a bit more career opportunities.

My tad somber € 0,02 for today. Could be the weather... ;-)

rob
Hi Rob,

The way I see it: We are at an advantage. Before, we had to pay an annual license fee to Autodesk to keep up to date with the latest features. But the problem is we don't know where the money is going. Is it going towards Max or towards Maya ? What new features will we receive ?

If we, the XSI community keep on giving out our money, technically, Softimage will still be alive. It's life is literally in our hands. So instead of giving that annual fee to Autodesk, we commit that fund to a pool of money for independent developers that will keep developing plugins according to OUR requests. So it will be in our control by voting.

While everything you stated is a reality, it will only continue to go down that path if we let it. Think about it, what is the difference between me handing over my money to Autodesk, and handing it over to an independent developer ? I'm still receiving updates, but with the latter, I'm at least guaranteed to receive the tools and features that I want.

The first step is always difficult, yes, but we can get there if we're determined enough. Based on my first hand experience, nothing comes close to Softimage's workflow and I'm not about to throw that down the drain because of corporate greed. Maya's usability is so bad, that I might as well change careers. The only thing that comes close to replacing Softimage is C4D but then again it has a lot of fundamental flaws and short comings that Maxon is not taking enough efforts into fixing despite my efforts in trying to convince them.

So if we have to live with SI 2015 for the next 10 years, that's fine by me, 2015 is only a number. What matters most is we keep receiving new tools to improve it's usability.


Cheers,
XF

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Rork
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Re: Calling All Softimagers

Post by Rork » 11 Jul 2016, 10:54

Hi Jason,

It's all very valid points, but as a freelancer that is seeing a rapid decline in companies using Softimage, I -have- to choose something else to keep a business going.
For the jobs I can do for myself, yes, Softimage is still a workhorse, and will be installed and used for a long time to come.

But working for a post company, Softimage isn't really an option anymore. Like I said, it's Maya, Cinema, Houdini or (depending on the kind of work) 3DSMax.
Over here in Holland, Softimage never had a big presence, and it's almost nil now. Just a small handful of companies I know still use it. Most of them already converting to Maya or other.

I do understand the money argument, but I would rather spend my money on a Houdini Indy license with Arnold, Allegorithmic Painter, Quixel Suite or a 3DCoat license.
All applications that will help me find work, and are 'future proof' afaik.

If Softimage can do all the work you need in the next years, stick to Soft.
But if you are like me, going in and out of post companies for 3D work, it's time to make that hard decision and start learning something new.

seems I'm gloomy again... ;-)

rob
SI UI tutorials: Toolbar http://goo.gl/iYOL0l | Custom Layout http://goo.gl/6iP5xQ | RenderManager View http://goo.gl/b4ZkjQ
So long, and thanks for all the Fish!!

isxsi
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Re: Calling All Softimagers

Post by isxsi » 11 Jul 2016, 11:55

Done :D

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xsi_fanatic
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Re: Calling All Softimagers

Post by xsi_fanatic » 11 Jul 2016, 16:42

Rork wrote:Hi Jason,

It's all very valid points, but as a freelancer that is seeing a rapid decline in companies using Softimage, I -have- to choose something else to keep a business going.
For the jobs I can do for myself, yes, Softimage is still a workhorse, and will be installed and used for a long time to come.

But working for a post company, Softimage isn't really an option anymore. Like I said, it's Maya, Cinema, Houdini or (depending on the kind of work) 3DSMax.
Over here in Holland, Softimage never had a big presence, and it's almost nil now. Just a small handful of companies I know still use it. Most of them already converting to Maya or other.

I do understand the money argument, but I would rather spend my money on a Houdini Indy license with Arnold, Allegorithmic Painter, Quixel Suite or a 3DCoat license.
All applications that will help me find work, and are 'future proof' afaik.

If Softimage can do all the work you need in the next years, stick to Soft.
But if you are like me, going in and out of post companies for 3D work, it's time to make that hard decision and start learning something new.

seems I'm gloomy again... ;-)

rob
Hi Rob,

By all means, if you are looking for employment at companies, then Maya is the way to go to guarantee a job. However, what I'm proposing and aiming for is tailored towards a different market. That is people who still prefer to use Softimage in their daily work. Like anything in this world, it will start small and eventually grow.

As far as companies switching from Soft to Maya, this is a foolish decision that the business owners do because they have no technical background and only rely on AD to tell them what's good and what's not. The death of Softimage was planned from the beginning of the acquisition. This is called Planned Obsolescence, in which they plan to make it happen one way or another. Then they sell you a more faulty product to keep the money flowing to their pockets.

Look at it this way: Maya is has many attractive features that make it shine and glitter. Softimage has less of that glittery effect upon first glance. We as Soft users already know this.
The significant difference between the two, however, is that Maya is like a house made of sticks. It has a lot of fancy furniture and luxury decorations. Softimage is a house made of bricks and has less fancy decorations. But at the end of the day, Maya is still made of sticks. If a storm happens, I would very much rather be living in a house made of bricks with old furniture.

Until we show studios, the fruits that come out of this alternative development method, (sooner or later) they'll realize there's no reason to give in to Maya.


XF

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Draise
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Re: Calling All Softimagers

Post by Draise » 11 Jul 2016, 17:54

I tend to agree, for personal or private studio stuff, Softimage still is very very very useful and will be for a while yet.

NNois
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Re: Calling All Softimagers

Post by NNois » 11 Jul 2016, 22:50

Guys,
Soft is still capable doing "classic" stuff, but the world is so better with a software evolving, new features etc. Remember Soft is in "Maintenance" mode back from 2008...

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Superpositivo
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Re: Calling All Softimagers

Post by Superpositivo » 13 Jul 2016, 21:57

I agree with xsi_fanatic.

I see many guys using the "new" Maya or Max or else and sure, while they got some new features (coming mostly form existing plugins), they still have to things in the OLD way.
I consider Softimage still ahead in a loooot of stuff.

And when compared, Softimage is still faster and a pleasure to use it.

Various Maya guys still today admit that in front of me when they see some stuff that I do in minutes compared to them that have to struggle or finding some magical plugin.

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myara
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Re: Calling All Softimagers

Post by myara » 16 Jul 2016, 10:04

I did the survey and spread it in my tweets. But I still don't understand what's the purpose of this survey. Are you going to launch some crowd funding project ?

About keeping Softimage "alive" through crowd funding is a little naive. Softimage isn't Blender, the code isn't open, and working on the current API and ICE is quite limited. Good enough for solid and useful tools, but not for keeping Softimage alive. I don't know how much Fabric could add into this equation though.

If you could get the source code and work on it to keep Softimage really alive, then take my money.

In my opinion, the only way to keep Softimage somewhat alive for the time being, would be to develop tools to make Softimage communicate (export / import / real time connection ) with other software packages that are still alive. Plugins like Send To Maya, GoZ, etc. I see it really difficult to do but if someone could do it, great.

Besides that I'm all in for modeling and UV tools because I have no problem in porting a model to Maya or Max.
M.Yara
Character Modeler | Softimage Generalist (sort of)

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Rork
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Re: Calling All Softimagers

Post by Rork » 17 Jul 2016, 17:50

@myara:
If you're working with multiple 3d applications now, startusing Alembic.
Makes life a lot easier than dealing with the crapfest that is FBX. ;-)

Rob

And again, this discussion is nice, but people really have to step into the 'acceptance' phase now. Softimage is dead, and basically went into maintenance mode when AD bought it.
(The future is bright... for Maya and err.... Max.. Yeah.... Why not?)

Although Softimage has some really nice stuff, and is still ahead of the game for some stuff as well, nothing new will come out for it, or will be supported. Unless one is willing to write some implementation for it. And I already wrote my thoughts on the Kickstarter thing.
It's painting yourself in a corner. Yes, acceptance is really hard, but inevitable. Like most of here, I'll be using SI for a bit longer, but seeing how we miss out on all the cool new stuff, it doesn't make any sense to use SI in a few years from now.

If you're a bit technical, and dabble with ICE quite often or don't mind using ICE for small stuff as well, I really advise you to look into Houdini Indie. Soon there will be Redshift, and that is a very powerful (and cheap) set.
I know it's not what you want to hear, but I've been in this situation before, and it always sucks. After the initial grumbling when starting with something new, you start realizing you can work faster in some areas, but loose some in another. It's like moving to Iphone from Android or vv. There's always some stuff that will irritate the <bleep> out of you ;)
The old Softimage|3D users understand what I'm saying. And despite being Softimage>Softimage, it was as a big change as Softimage>Maya>Max>Houdini.

It's been a couple of years now guys, it's really time to move on. ;)
<insert sad music> =((
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So long, and thanks for all the Fish!!

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myara
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Re: Calling All Softimagers

Post by myara » 17 Jul 2016, 18:37

I haven't used alembic but AFAIK it imports exports baked data. I work in the game industry so I need "unbaked" data and so far FBX is still the best option.

Modeling weighted characters in SI is incredible faster and easier than do it in Maya, so I do it in SI and with a few scripts convert that data to a ma file using FBX and maya batch. And I'll keep this workflow at least until Maya gets better in this aspect which I doubt it will be anytime soon.

Animating in Softimage is no longer an option for me if the project isn't SI native (we are still doing some SI based games hat I'd love to share but I can't right now), For that I'd have to build interchangeable rigs in both software so that's just too much for short game projects.

We are working now in a SI (modeling) and Max (motion) based project dealing with similar exchangeable rigs and custom tools, or at least that's the plan, we are still modeling.

Send to Maya never worked that well for me. Besides I have to deal with different versions of Maya and Softimage in different projects.
M.Yara
Character Modeler | Softimage Generalist (sort of)

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