Siggraph 2011

[Zafar Iqbal]

Good to see the modelling side getting some attention. I hope it's a kickstart for more in this area (curves among others).

[Bellsey]

As an Autodesk person, this might look odd, defending a competitor like Houdini, but I like give credit where credit is due....
....if you read the text in the preview page, it says that the teaser was produced by a small group of interns in just over a month. Personally I thought that was pretty damn good for a months work using Houdini. I don't mean that in a negative way, but its fair say that Houdini is not a package you can pick up easily quickly, but you once you get into it, its a great package and very powerful. I have a lot of respect for it.

As for rendering, mantra is pretty good and I believe there's direct support for PRman as well. Any rendering TD's I've spoken to that know Houdini, have spoken highly of it.

[luceric]

Just curious, what's ignorant about the rendering in houdini?

Impression is mainly about their promo movie, car in desert and not-so-believable smoke around car. Hardly to fit this into any category, honestly it looks like some game engine (with not so good 'sprites' , not so good 'lightmaps' ). Let's say I am owner of about 20 people facility, and some of my guys wants me to buy Houdini, I really wouldn't be impressed with this.

I thought that teaser looked cheezy, so i ignored it as some sort of marketting thing. However, many users have complained to sidefx, on another forum im on. It's apparently done by students.

[gustavoeb]

They've slotted into the software in a way, that it's not obvious they are using ICE.

That is really nice indeed. ICE has the great advantage of not only making things easyer for the end-user, but for the development team as well. You guys can make good tools, and we can customize them. On a side note I feel like some of this ICE "operators" kind of lag a bit whenever you create them. This was something that even showed at Mark's demo, and he was like "come-on". It's no show stopper by any means, but if it would be something easy to get rid off it would feel as responsive as other parts of SI.

Using ICE doesn't always have to be about constantly building ICE trees.

That is very nice also! Sometimes you just don't need to know there is a tree going on behind that operator. In the PPG logic is a nice addition. It would be nice to have other tools so TDs can ICEtrees that are even less in need of artist tweeking. I have no pratical example of that really, but say something like access to cursor positions (so that edge cutting tool wouldn't need a null for example) or other relevant info for a dev... Anyways just a thought

Anyways sure everybodys hopes is always high, and since there was a lack of modeling improvements everybody had theyre own special wish. I think the improvements were well prioritized, but sure we want it ALL... as usual.

Good job guys!

[ActionArt]

Just saw this posted on CGTalk, but I wanted to post this here as well.

http://www.nvidia.com/content/siggraph/ ... dering.pdf

http://www.nvidia.com/content/siggraph/ ... racing.pdf

Looks like some nice things coming for Mental Ray...

Thanks! That's the info I was looking for. I really like where there headed. Lots of great goals. Accelerating some functions of MR seems like the most common sense way to go at this point. Looks like AO will be first. I'm really hoping ray marching for volume rendering will be in there somewhere. For me AO takes a few minutes but volume rendering takes hours or even days. Some GPU help in that area would make a huge impact for me. I know they demoed some volume rendering a few times a couple years ago.

Just a shame the hardware has been around for 2 or 3 years already but the software is still a distant mirage.

At least it's nice to see Nvidia seems to have put a little new life into MR and they're going in the right direction.

[Memag]

Would it be possible to add/make tabs and groups (without text editor), while building the ICE operator PPG?
Thanks!

[Chris_TC]

Would it be possible to add/make tabs and groups (without text editor), while building the ICE operator PPG?
Thanks!

I think we may be in luck. There's clearly work being done regarding customizability.

Code: Select all

PPG logic

    RMB>Compound Properties>PPG Logic
    OnInit and value changes can be trapped inside compounds with PPG logic script
    Only available for non-private compounds

Add Group section

    Inside compound - RMB on exposed input port name>properties.
    You can specify a group name instead of adding in XML file

[Memag]

Oh, somehow missed out on that.Great.
Thanks!

[Mathaeus]

Just saw this posted on CGTalk, but I wanted to post this here as well.

http://www.nvidia.com/content/siggraph/ ... dering.pdf

http://www.nvidia.com/content/siggraph/ ... racing.pdf

Looks like some nice things coming for Mental Ray...

I'm really hoping ray marching for volume rendering will be in there somewhere. For me AO takes a few minutes but volume rendering takes hours or even days.

Imho the best part is their promisse about extending the memory, over GPU limitation :"Your scene has to fit into GPU memory –and that’s finite True: until now"
Also, fact that small developers already exist in this field. Octane and others. So, theoretically you'll be able to buy a very specific implementation for reasonable price. But all that will take some time, I think.... Both former Mental Images and nVidia, have a 'tradition' of 'in advance' stories. How many PDFs of this kind I already sow ...

About clouds, definitively interesting yet-another-fake-cloud tehnique easy to do in SI, too. It's 'Path of Hate' movie, awarded on this Siggraph.

[Hirazi Blue]

I extracted three posts (and added one of my own) on the topic of Apply ICEOp on Multiple Objects, started by Chris_TC and created a new thread...

[Rez007]

Just saw this posted on CGTalk, but I wanted to post this here as well.

http://www.nvidia.com/content/siggraph/ ... dering.pdf

http://www.nvidia.com/content/siggraph/ ... racing.pdf

Looks like some nice things coming for Mental Ray...

Thanks! That's the info I was looking for. I really like where there headed. Lots of great goals. Accelerating some functions of MR seems like the most common sense way to go at this point. Looks like AO will be first. I'm really hoping ray marching for volume rendering will be in there somewhere. For me AO takes a few minutes but volume rendering takes hours or even days. Some GPU help in that area would make a huge impact for me. I know they demoed some volume rendering a few times a couple years ago.

Just a shame the hardware has been around for 2 or 3 years already but the software is still a distant mirage.

At least it's nice to see Nvidia seems to have put a little new life into MR and they're going in the right direction.

It is neat to see what they have coming. Eventhough I really like the new features that Softimage is getting for the SAP, after seeing the new iRay update/enhancements videos for Max - that would have been sweet as well...

[Chris_TC]

Yes, I'd love to have iRay. We'll get it eventually though, and the integration is likely going to be awesome.

[ActionArt]

I really hope so. Those great devs at SI usually seem to take a bit longer but the results are far better and much more usable than the other two.

I hope they notice that yes we want it

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

Or to put it in (slightly more serious) words: there are some features that really appeal to me (the selection stuff mainly), but overall and especially after the inclusion of all them highly necessary model meshes, this SAP doesn't feel like a 2012.5 IMHO, more like a 2012.05. For some of the new features I have already been using user sitcripts/addons, so while it's nice they are included in the software now, I'm not terribly overwhelmed by them.

So it doesn't feel like 4 month of work, but something of a bug fix that should have taken a few hours? Btw except the one shot selection commands, none of this is really available as addons.

Yeah, the selection options have always been here. This release only changes the method to maya style, which is not the best one IMO, just try to select two parallel adjacent polyloops with this method. So it´s not a new feature at all. (Angle based selection or other selection filters would have been more useful, but even those are available with the rc tools I believe)
There have always been alternative methods for capping holes, and normal extrusions were achieved using the famous move-normal addon combined with the extrude, so here things are only made simpler, but it´s more like delivering somthing, that should´ve been in si for a while, but wasn´t. It´s a fix.
There are at least two thickness addons I use regularly, tiny thickness and tim_shell, tiny thickness has almost the same functionality as the "new" one.
That leaves us with spin edges, smooth edgeloop (a good one! ) and slice between two vertices (also a good one), bullet integration (helpful to only a small percentage of users) and, oh yes, new models and even better, new sample scenes.
3 new features and the integration of a third party tech. Wow.
Even Mr. Scheonagel hadn´t enough new features to present at siggraph, so he needed to present the (undoubtetly brilliant) work of others, and still had two minutes left. And when was it, I saw dropping complex objects on other objects in realtime lately? Oh yes... every day. Impressive.

Well, and all this considering the recent pricechange for softimage and the subscription fee, gee, why wouldn´t I jump in joy?

That is exactly what we expected to happen, when si was bought by autodesk, just browse the old threads... That happened to the max useres then (I was one) and the maya users as well ( I am one now). No surprise at all.

My monthly rant.

Achim

[Memag]

Yeah, the selection options have always been here. This release only changes the method to maya style, which is not the best one IMO, just try to select two parallel adjacent polyloops with this method. So it´s not a new feature at all. (Angle based selection or other selection filters would have been more useful, but even those are available with the rc tools I believe)
There have always been alternative methods for capping holes, and normal extrusions were achieved using the famous move-normal addon combined with the extrude, so here things are only made simpler, but it´s more like delivering somthing, that should´ve been in si for a while, but wasn´t. It´s a fix.
There are at least two thickness addons I use regularly, tiny thickness and tim_shell, tiny thickness has almost the same functionality as the "new" one.
That leaves us with spin edges, smooth edgeloop (a good one! ) and slice between two vertices (also a good one), bullet integration (helpful to only a small percentage of users) and, oh yes, new models and even better, new sample scenes.
3 new features and the integration of a third party tech. Wow.
Even Mr. Scheonagel hadn´t enough new features to present at siggraph, so he needed to present the (undoubtetly brilliant) work of others, and still had two minutes left. And when was it, I saw dropping complex objects on other objects in realtime lately? Oh yes... every day. Impressive.

Well, and all this considering the recent pricechange for softimage and the subscription fee, gee, why wouldn´t I jump in joy?

That is exactly what we expected to happen, when si was bought by autodesk, just browse the old threads... That happened to the max useres then (I was one) and the maya users as well ( I am one now). No surprise at all.

My monthly rant.

Achim

Double click selection methods can be found in Silo, VoidWorld, Modo...I wouldn't say it is exclusively Maya's method. RC tools are great BTW but don't have double click method.
If you want you can check VoidWorld and see what kind of selections you can do with mouse double clicks.You wouldn't need RC tools for selection at all if we had them in SI.
Spin edges, smooth loop and cut between vertices is nothing new either, but it's new to Softimage toolset.
Thickness/cap hole/slice are ICe compounds so you can customize 'em and make your own tools, being open is an advantage over conventional plugins.
People been rumoring about the death since AD acquisition but Si is still kicking. Sure it is never enough of features and the price is high.
Let's see what the gloomy future brings.

[luceric]

btw, before the Autodesk acquisition, there wouldn't have been any new build with new features at this time. The release cycle was 14 months on average.