Softimage 2012 Experiences

[Maximus]

In a XSIBASE discussion, about VRAY, a XSI user wrote this:

Slightly off topic: Autodesk is currently hiring Software Engineers for the Softimage development. If my guess is correct, they're planning to make the team number twice as big as it already is. So that looks like a good sign for future development of Softimage.

What does that have to do with V-Ray My assumption is more employees, bigger product, bigger investment, hence creating a bigger market. Better chance of releasing Vray sooner.

is real? If yes is a good news. In any case, MR issue are not all softimage team errors, but many are mental ray bugs

I think that was completely made up and without any ground solid backup of any sort, no sources, nothing. It was just a personal opinion for my taste.

That said, there is a total embarassment when it comes to Mental Ray, the amount of features and improvements we got in years is simply ridicolous compared to any other render engine, where developers are working on a day-basis, not on a year cycle basis.
Just open up any render engine and see the features and the things they got and keep being update everyday, just to say some stuff, multiple antialias filters, (vray for max has like 12?), sperical harmonics, dispersion built in, multiple GI methods, engine optimization, light optimization, passes optimization, multichannel exr, ptex support and the list goes freaking on.

It is the most frustrating thing i've ever witnessed so far, Mental Ray is dead.
Time to move on, i might go back to vray beta. This is seriously a shame. SHAME.

[McNistor]

I'm pretty sure that this was said before, somewhere on this vast web or even on this website, but I must say it too:
My guess is that Mray is "dead" because they - m.images - have a yearly or monthly income secured due to the many applications through which Mray is sold pretty much by default.
And when one's food is guaranteed, one stops going hunting. The so called competition is bound to innovate or die.

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

I'm pretty sure that this was said before, somewhere on this vast web or even on this website, but I must say it too:
My guess is that Mray is "dead" because they - m.images - have a yearly or monthly income secured due to the many applications through which Mray is sold pretty much by default.
And when one's food is guaranteed, one stops going hunting. The so called competition is bound to innovate or die.

This is also true for Autodesk itself....

Achim

[Kzin]

That said, there is a total embarassment when it comes to Mental Ray, the amount of features and improvements we got in years is simply ridicolous compared to any other render engine, where developers are working on a day-basis, not on a year cycle basis.
Just open up any render engine and see the features and the things they got and keep being update everyday, just to say some stuff, multiple antialias filters, (vray for max has like 12?), sperical harmonics, dispersion built in, multiple GI methods, engine optimization, light optimization, passes optimization, multichannel exr, ptex support and the list goes freaking on.

It is the most frustrating thing i've ever witnessed so far, Mental Ray is dead.
Time to move on, i might go back to vray beta. This is seriously a shame. SHAME.

alot of this is a problem of the mr integration.
max has exr channel support for example. and there are other features, but i am tired to write this down every time. ;)
the truth is that ad is the big problem here and i dont know how we can get ad to make it better. they work on max and maya's mr integration at the moment, but only the testers will know how good or bad the new versions will be. it is not a suprise that mr has not a high priority at ad, look at the feature sets and the bad integration.

mr is not dead for sure, but as a oem user without coding knowledge its a bad situation if you could render twice as fast or more if ad would had implemented all features.
i can repeat that ad is changing this at the moment, but this will take some time.

[Bellsey]

I spoke with a couple of people from the Chaos Group last week and I pressed them about Vray for Softimage. They were somewhat cagey about it and weren't giving anything away, which isn't a bad reflection on them. I just think they didn't really have any information or they simply weren't allowed to say anything, and I know what that's like.

I'm going to try and follow up with them, as personally I would like to finally see Vray for Softimage finally get out there. If people are becoming disgruntled with Mental Ray and the buzz around Arnold continues, then it shows that people are always interested exploring options
Having more 3rd-Party renderers for Maya and Softimage is definately a good thing, imo. Having more competition is always good for keeping people on their toes and pushing things forward.

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

Exactly my point.
And in addition I think more choice of renderers for si means a growing userbase which in turn means more sold copies of third party renderes. So the demand for renderes will rise with their availability. Chaosgroup and others will need to keep that in mind.

Achim

[Bellsey]

Exactly my point.
And in addition I think more choice of renderers for si means a growing userbase which in turn means more sold copies of third party renderes. So the demand for renderes will rise with their availability. Chaosgroup will need to keep that in mind.

Achim

in the context of Autodesk and your previous post, personally I don't agree. But I'm not going to go over old ground again, I can't really add anything else to what's already been said by myself, Chinny and Luc-Eric.

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

Exactly my point.
And in addition I think more choice of renderers for si means a growing userbase which in turn means more sold copies of third party renderes. So the demand for renderes will rise with their availability. Chaosgroup will need to keep that in mind.

Achim

in the context of Autodesk and your previous post, personally I don't agree. But I'm not going to go over old ground again, I can't really add anything else to what's already been said by myself, Chinny and Luc-Eric.

I´m not sure if I understand. I know people who use maya for example because of the avilability of vray, even if they had softimage in the first place. And having arnold as a choice would definitly add to the attractivity of si. That doesn´t mean to abandon mr. It´s all about choice. I thought, thats what your post was about.

Achim

[Bellsey]

I'm pretty sure that this was said before, somewhere on this vast web or even on this website, but I must say it too:
My guess is that Mray is "dead" because they - m.images - have a yearly or monthly income secured due to the many applications through which Mray is sold pretty much by default.
And when one's food is guaranteed, one stops going hunting. The so called competition is bound to innovate or die.

This is also true for Autodesk itself....

Achim

Sorry I was meaning about this post. We've crossed the streams.

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

I'm pretty sure that this was said before, somewhere on this vast web or even on this website, but I must say it too:
My guess is that Mray is "dead" because they - m.images - have a yearly or monthly income secured due to the many applications through which Mray is sold pretty much by default.
And when one's food is guaranteed, one stops going hunting. The so called competition is bound to innovate or die.

This is also true for Autodesk itself....

Achim

Sorry I was meaning about this post. We've crossed the streams.

Ah, ok. I was only referring to the part "And when one's food is guaranteed, one stops going hunting".

Achim

[redmotion]

"And when one's food is guaranteed, one stops going hunting"

This got me thinking - what if Softimage shipped with full versions of 3delight, Arnold, V-ray and MR, all initially in demo mode. Once installation is complete the user can try any of them straight out of the box in demo mode for up to 30days. Only then do they make their choice and that user's license gets locked down with the chosen renderer. The registration is logged by AD and the money (reserved in each copy of Softimage for MR - assuming that's how it works) goes to the chosen renderer instead. Perhaps with extra costs to cover the difference?

The result: maximum choice for the SI user out of the box (with discounted purchase of 3rd party renderer) and MR no longer has a guaranteed revenue stream, meaning they have to pull their finger out or loose all their customers (probably).

A pipe dream, admittedly.

[Hirazi Blue]

Here's another slightly more bleak scenario:
AD finally decides to push Softimage solely as a pipeline tool, strips out Mental Ray,
gives no renderer in return and obviously keeps on charging the same...

(this is meant as a joke, hopefully... )

edit: slight idiomatic simplification...

[luceric]

This got me thinking - what if Softimage shipped with full versions of 3delight, Arnold, V-ray and MR, all initially in demo mode. Once installation is complete the user can try any of them straight out of the box in demo mode for up to 30days. Only then do they make their choice and that user's license gets locked down with the chosen renderer. The registration is logged by AD and the money (reserved in each copy of Softimage for MR - assuming that's how it works) goes to the chosen renderer instead. Perhaps with extra costs to cover the difference?

The result: maximum choice for the SI user out of the box (with discounted purchase of 3rd party renderer) and MR no longer has a guaranteed revenue stream, meaning they have to pull their finger out or loose all their customers (probably).

That's a nice scenario but by experience it would be a QA nightmare, having to validate four renderers. And a management nightmare to get the builds of the third party at the right time and chase all the fixes. that software would never ship, or the renderer's version would be two years old.
a real irony in a thread where people suggest we didn't validate MR properly before shipping!

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

May be if you could buy Maya, Max or Si with or without mental ray, and choose the renderer independently. So Autodesk would only have to provide the API and mental ray. It would soon be clear what users want, and Autodesk would have no influence on the licencing of thirdparty renderers. Than there would be real competition.

a real irony in a thread where people suggest we didn't validate MR properly before shipping!

I´ve just reported two confirmed severe mr bug only last week, regarding final gathering, two bugs that you can find immediately, if you only do standard procedures with mr. So much for suggestion.

Achim

[Kzin]

May be if you could buy Maya, Max or Si with or without mental ray, and choose the renderer independently. So Autodesk would only have to provide the API and mental ray. It would soon be clear what users want, and Autodesk would have no influence on the licencing of thirdparty renderers. Than there would be real competition.

a real irony in a thread where people suggest we didn't validate MR properly before shipping!

I´ve just reported two confirmed severe mr bug only last week, regarding final gathering, two bugs that you can find immediately, if you only do standard procedures with mr. So much for suggestion.

Achim

perhaps because its the bug that is already fixed in mr before the soft2012 release but it could not find the way in the release itself.

it was a known bug, but if someone at ad says the soft has to be released, the qa has no choice and this results in things like this.

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

May be if you could buy Maya, Max or Si with or without mental ray, and choose the renderer independently. So Autodesk would only have to provide the API and mental ray. It would soon be clear what users want, and Autodesk would have no influence on the licencing of thirdparty renderers. Than there would be real competition.

a real irony in a thread where people suggest we didn't validate MR properly before shipping!

I´ve just reported two confirmed severe mr bug only last week, regarding final gathering, two bugs that you can find immediately, if you only do standard procedures with mr. So much for suggestion.

Achim

perhaps because its the bug that is already fixed in mr before the soft2012 release but it could not find the way in the release itself.

it was a known bug, but if someone at ad says the soft has to be released, the qa has no choice and this results in things like this.

If it´s known it should be in the known issues list.
Anyway this is what support answered:

(quote from support)
Hi Achim.
I see.
This is also related to the FG code in this particular drop and the issue has been flagged with high importance.
We logged: WNCH-1408 Regression - Issue with FG calculation and processor usage

Thanks for reporting
(end of quote)

Doesn´t look like "oh yes we know that and are working on it", does it?
Making it impossible to do proper fgpoint caching is not an issue that "can wait". And you find it by just doing quite normal workflows.

Achim