Softimage 2012 SP 1 released

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rray
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Softimage 2012 SP 1 released

Post by rray » 09 Jun 2011, 19:01

not available yet in the subscription center but here:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps ... D=12544121
(1348232Kb)

pdf readme

among many other fixes:
FELX‐2164 Delay before Softimage 2012 starts rendering a frame
softimage resources section updated Jan 5th 2024

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Hirazi Blue
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Re: Softimage 2012 SP 1 released

Post by Hirazi Blue » 09 Jun 2011, 20:58

It would be nice if the "known issues" list were to be included in the release pdf as well...

edit: @rray - I seriously doubt this will be made available in the Subscription Center.
We've discussed this several times, for instance in this thread celebrating the arrival of 2011SP1
and I believe Rork tried to get the message through more than once @ the Mailing List...


But now is not a time for nit-picking (nit-picking starts early tomorrow morning :D )
Well done, Softimage :ymparty:
Stay safe, sane & healthy!

Biped Guide
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Re: Softimage 2012 SP 1 released

Post by Biped Guide » 09 Jun 2011, 23:07

Hirazi Blue wrote:It would be nice if the "known issues" list were to be included in the release pdf as well...
Agreed
But now is not a time for nit-picking (nit-picking starts early tomorrow morning :D )
Well done, Softimage :ymparty:
Well I'm going to start early if you don't mind. :D
I had two major issues. Although I've seen the evidence of the other bugs that were fixed, my main issues were the delay of the beginning of the render in a scene with a lot of objects, and the visible UV seams in the Send To Mudbox tool.
They fixed the render delay, which is great. Now I can actually use Softimage 2012. ;)
However, the problem with the UV seams is still there and I know it was reported, so I'm a little disappointed it's not been fixed.
If you send a UV mapped object to Mudbox via the Send To Mudbox command and then paint on it you will get *very* noticeable UV seams in your paint. I mean very as in very, not a little but a lot. It's pretty bad.
I thought that was an FBX bug at first, but it doesn't happen when using Send To Mudbox with Maya 2012 and the same object, so it's obviously in Softimage's FBX export.
Fortunately however, you can export the object from Softimage as OBJ and import that into Mudbox 2012 and the seams will be fine. And then if you send that object to Softimage through Mudbox's Send To command, all is well too.
However, if you send the object back to Mudbox - even though it started out as an OBJ file, the seam problem returns.
So if you want to make sure you can always use the same object, you have to actually save the Mudbox scene that used the OBJ version and then do all your texture updating from that Mudbox file, and "Send To" is only useful in one direction - from Mud to Soft, but not vice versa.
Still might be an FBX problem though. On the FBX updates page - http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc ... d=10775855 - there are downloadable updates to FBX 2012.1 for Maya and 3ds max, but none for Softimage, so I assumed that Softimage 2012 had the latest version built into it already.
However, that may not be the case, but I don't know. I do know I had to manually update Maya 2012 to the latest FBX and I do know that the problem with seams doesn't exist with the Maya/Mudbox combination.


Anyway that was a lot to write and I'm really happy the render delay issue has been fixed. :D
And yes, well done Team Softimage dudes and dudettes! :ymparty:

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Re: Softimage 2012 SP 1 released

Post by Lord Futzi Voldemort » 10 Jun 2011, 16:09

I think there´s more than one issue with the "send to" function and it possibly needs a bit more work, but for most of them there are workarounds, so maybe it wasn´t highest priority.
Rendering was most important, so I´m glad they didn´t wait.

Achim
I'm now part of an endangered species...

Biped Guide
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Re: Softimage 2012 SP 1 released

Post by Biped Guide » 10 Jun 2011, 17:15

Lord Futzi Voldemort wrote:I think there´s more than one issue with the "send to" function and it possibly needs a bit more work, but for most of them there are workarounds, so maybe it wasn´t highest priority.
Rendering was most important, so I´m glad they didn´t wait.

Achim
You're probably right about that but at the same time if I worked for Autodesk I would want it fixed ASAP.
Reason being, it just makes either Softimage or Mudbox (or both) look bad to someone who might not understand whats actually happening. I mean, they put the Send To Mudbox feature in there, so I would think they would want it working correctly, like it does for Maya. There is no justification for features that only partially work and especially if they have major game-breaking bugs.
Someone who models an object in Softimage then painstakingly UV maps it to perfection and sends it to Mudbox is going to be *mighty* disappointed to see the results when he starts to paint.
And it would be even worse if he first sculpted on it then found out hours later that any normal, displacement and AO maps he wanted to generate would simply look terrible, not to mention the same problem trying to paint textures and bump maps.
Then he would probably go back and try to find faults in his UV maps, "fix" some problems, pad the UVs some more than normal and try again...
Then after tearing his hair out and throwing things at the wall and yelling at coworkers he would write letters to Autodesk Support, file bug reports, then tell everyone not to buy Mudbox since it's broken and use Z Brush instead. ;)
Not like that's from personal experience, of course...

And all that could be avoided if it just worked right. :D

Lord Futzi Voldemort
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Re: Softimage 2012 SP 1 released

Post by Lord Futzi Voldemort » 10 Jun 2011, 17:35

Biped Guide wrote:
Lord Futzi Voldemort wrote:I think there´s more than one issue with the "send to" function and it possibly needs a bit more work, but for most of them there are workarounds, so maybe it wasn´t highest priority.
Rendering was most important, so I´m glad they didn´t wait.

Achim
You're probably right about that but at the same time if I worked for Autodesk I would want it fixed ASAP.
Reason being, it just makes either Softimage or Mudbox (or both) look bad to someone who might not understand whats actually happening. I mean, they put the Send To Mudbox feature in there, so I would think they would want it working correctly, like it does for Maya. There is no justification for features that only partially work and especially if they have major game-breaking bugs.
Someone who models an object in Softimage then painstakingly UV maps it to perfection and sends it to Mudbox is going to be *mighty* disappointed to see the results when he starts to paint.
And it would be even worse if he first sculpted on it then found out hours later that any normal, displacement and AO maps he wanted to generate would simply look terrible, not to mention the same problem trying to paint textures and bump maps.
Then he would probably go back and try to find faults in his UV maps, "fix" some problems, pad the UVs some more than normal and try again...
Then after tearing his hair out and throwing things at the wall and yelling at coworkers he would write letters to Autodesk Support, file bug reports, then tell everyone not to buy Mudbox since it's broken and use Z Brush instead. ;)
Not like that's from personal experience, of course...

And all that could be avoided if it just worked right. :D
You´re absolutely right, but the whole "Send to XYZ" thing makes Softimage look bad. Look at this:
Image

This is a polymesh with a lot of usernormals send by oneclick to maya. The problem is, that Autodesk completely focussed on maya and max for exchanging geometry because youre supposed to do only ICE stuff in Softimage and send that around. They - again- totally neglected the fact, that there are users who actually use may as a comanion for Softimage or use Softimage as their main application or don´t use max or maya anyway.
I´ll never understand that concept, because that doesn´t help to get softimage into the piplines at all.

Achim
I'm now part of an endangered species...

Biped Guide
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Re: Softimage 2012 SP 1 released

Post by Biped Guide » 10 Jun 2011, 17:47

That looks terrible! And I thought *I* had problems. ;)

Yeah I guess you're right. I totally forgot that we're not supposed to be actually using Softimage on its own, but rather as an ICE exporter for Maya.
WHAT was I thinking? ;)

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ActionArt
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Re: Softimage 2012 SP 1 released

Post by ActionArt » 10 Jun 2011, 18:04

If the whole "send to" feature set is developed by the same people that brought us crosswalk I sure wouldn't count on that working for a few more years :(

At least it's sort of moving in the right direction...

I sure am glad the render delay is fixed :D

luceric
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Re: Softimage 2012 SP 1 released

Post by luceric » 10 Jun 2011, 18:21

We would not have added Send To Maya in Softimage 2012 if we didn't care about that scenario, so don't worry about that :P
When you get a problem exporting a mesh, such as this smartphone mesh, with FBX - which is what "Send To" uses underneath - you need to send it to support so we can have a developer look at it. It's unfortunate to have to do this, but while we have a lot of internal testing, but we don't catch everything, we need help from users. You can try Crosswalk and obviously .obj as a work around. The Send To effort will help hardening our FBX implementation.

UPDATE: I'm told we don't support user normals yet in FBX
Last edited by luceric on 10 Jun 2011, 22:57, edited 1 time in total.

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ActionArt
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Re: Softimage 2012 SP 1 released

Post by ActionArt » 10 Jun 2011, 18:43

Thanks for this release, it's a huge relief to get that render bug fixed :ymapplause:

calmasacow
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Re: Softimage 2012 SP 1 released

Post by calmasacow » 10 Jun 2011, 19:05

Hirazi Blue wrote:It would be nice if the "known issues" list were to be included in the release pdf as well...:
Pfffft... if you knew anything, you would know that Autodesk doesn't release software with any known issues. Only programs that are 100% flawless make it through the rigorous demands of Autodesk QA testing. So you see there cannot be a known Issues list if there are no bugs in the software!

JK of course . all in good fun. we are loving the 2012 releases here. Although I really think that Autodesk needs to buyout SolidAngle and make Arnold the "built-in" rendering Engine in all AD products!

Biped Guide
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Re: Softimage 2012 SP 1 released

Post by Biped Guide » 10 Jun 2011, 22:47

To be fair, the Send To from Mudbox to Softimage works great if you do it carefully.
By "carefully" I mean if you are doing anything that involves textures, you *must* use an OBJ file first imported into Mudbox and *never* use an FBX file exported from Softimage. That goes both for manually exporting as FBX and using Send To - which is the same thing except Send To just does it all automatically.
My workflow is thus:
* Model object in Softimage and UV map it either in Softimage or in Headus UV Layout.
* Import OBJ file into Mudbox - either use the UV mapped object from UV Layout or an OBJ export from Softimage.
* Paint on it, sculpt on it, do whatever, but save save save that Mudbox *.mud file
* "Send To" Softimage via the Mudbox OneClick FBX plugin and the seams will all be fine and dandy for any and all maps you made in Mudbox, plus sculpt layers are preserved perfectly as Shapes - assuming the appropriate options are checked.

The above works fine as long as you have both Softimage and Mudbox running and connected. However, if you open that scene file again in Softimage to do some more work on it, you do not want to take a shortcut and Send To Mudbox or all your maps are going to be FUBAR again. That's when the need to save the Mudbox file becomes evident because you can open it up and be where you left off. However, you can no longer update your Softimage version of the model with the Mudbox Update feature, and you have to manually save out any further changes to textures and manually apply them in Softimage. That's only if you've made significant changes to your model in Softimage, such as custom parameters for the Shapes or have assigned new clusters. However, you can add the Mudbox object to your scene via Send To and and then use GATOR if you have many changes.

So really in the end it's just best to work on the Mudbox file to completion before sending it to Softimage, for the most part, but you can always use that .mud file for creating new textures for that object, and since it was based on the OBJ file and not an FBX file, all textures will be fine and there will be no visible seams.

It's not an optimal workaround having to use OBJ and not being able to use the process in both directions, but it gets the job done.
By the way, the FBX seams problem between Soft and Mud is totally 100% reproducible, so insofar a that goes, Autodesk should be able to figure it out without the need for people to send objects. Any model with UV maps sent to Mudbox via the Softimage One Click Send To will display seam problems, 100% of the time, without fail.
It's possibly the most perfect bug I've ever seen. :D

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Re: Softimage 2012 SP 1 released

Post by Lord Futzi Voldemort » 11 Jun 2011, 12:58

luceric wrote:We would not have added Send To Maya in Softimage 2012 if we didn't care about that scenario, so don't worry about that :P
When you get a problem exporting a mesh, such as this smartphone mesh, with FBX - which is what "Send To" uses underneath - you need to send it to support so we can have a developer look at it. It's unfortunate to have to do this, but while we have a lot of internal testing, but we don't catch everything, we need help from users. You can try Crosswalk and obviously .obj as a work around. The Send To effort will help hardening our FBX implementation.

UPDATE: I'm told we don't support user normals yet in FBX
Well, then I wonder why it is not posible to update meshes from softimage to maya without using ICE.

Achim
I'm now part of an endangered species...

Lord Futzi Voldemort
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Re: Softimage 2012 SP 1 released

Post by Lord Futzi Voldemort » 11 Jun 2011, 13:20

Sadly, the architectural shader is not fixed....

Achim
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ActionArt
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Re: Softimage 2012 SP 1 released

Post by ActionArt » 11 Jun 2011, 16:48

What happens with the architectural shader? Seems to be working OK here.

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Hirazi Blue
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Re: Softimage 2012 SP 1 released

Post by Hirazi Blue » 11 Jun 2011, 17:18

While I understand, bug fix releases don't seem to require an update of our new dynamic docs,
it might be an idea to mention the consequences of FELX‐2168
(and the new environment variable "XSI_ENABLE_WINTAB_SUPPORT")
not just on the Mailing List...
Otherwise it might get confusing fast... ;)
Stay safe, sane & healthy!

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