Foundation for basic work?

[tachy0n]

http://www.softimage.com/products/xsi/pricing_and_packaging/model_comparison/Default.aspx

[JDex]

Foundation should suit perfectly... almost everything is in it, exceptions being what you indicated that you don't require and other features that are mostly related to larger pipelines and advanced needs. The chart linked to breaks it down well.

[duke]

I don't understand why the poly reduction tool isnt in foundation - it pretty much renders foundation useless for game stuff.

[WoolyLoach]

http://www.softimage.com/products/xsi/pricing_and_packaging/model_comparison/Default.aspx

Ugh.. why couldn't I find that on the Softimage site on my own? I'm dim, or low on coffee..

And thanks! That answered all my questions, and it looks like Foundation will work fine for me at this point. I can always upgrade if I need to, later. :)

I sense a nice Xmas present for myself... :buttrock:

For low-poly modelling I prefer to merge faces, etc. on my own, although maybe I've had bad experiences in the past with decimation tools...!

Thanks for the info, everyone!

[Mic_Ma]

We use Foundation for games and it's just fine.

[deli-rium]

The poly reduction tool is redundant for me at least.
If your workflow is good you shouldn't have problems with your mesh. Nothing is as good a manual work at this point. Automated tools always are prone to generalisation. It is also your job not applications' to make the correct mesh break down to polys.
F. is the best deal for any starting freelancer because of it's starting costs and available features. Also, if you require features like hair, I'd advice you to look at BHairy clicky (http://shaders.moederogall.com/BHairy/index.html) which is a good solution and is still cheaper that Maya or Max.

[jasonio]

I don't understand why the poly reduction tool isnt in foundation - it pretty much renders foundation useless for game stuff.


No, Foundation is perfect for game stuff. If has everything BUT polygon reduction. Noone takes a high-res model, presses the "polygon reduction tool" button and has a perfectly ready-to-use low-polygon mesh at the end.

If your workflow is good you shouldn't have problems with your mesh. Nothing is as good a manual work at this point. Automated tools always are prone to generalisation. It is also your job not applications' to make the correct mesh break down to polys.


Amen.

[WoolyLoach]

Just a quick note of thanks for all the input *and* the link to bHairy, which looks great!

I'm going to run the 30-day demo, I should have saved up the cash for Foundation by then. Or maybe I'll sell off my ZBrush license (!!). :eek:

[slatr]

Just an FYI, I see foundation here for 399

http://sharbor.com/products/SOFN0300011.html

Not sure if anyone else can beat it or not.

[Mic_Ma]

No, Foundation is perfect for game stuff. If has everything BUT polygon reduction. Noone takes a high-res model, presses the "polygon reduction tool" button and has a perfectly ready-to-use low-polygon mesh at the end.

We just finished a project where a developer needed fixing stuff that they previously send to incompetent freelancers. It was mostly poly-reduction, so we tried a bit of the automated poly reduction tools in XSI but they were absolutely useless; reducing polys, but so badly that it added more dev-time rather than reduce.

It was all environments, maybe its better with characters...but I doubt it....

...an edge flip tool like in Max would have been very handy too....

[ThE_JacO]

The poly reduction tool is redundant for me at least.
If your workflow is good you shouldn't have problems with your mesh. Nothing is as good a manual work at this point. Automated tools always are prone to generalisation. It is also your job not applications' to make the correct mesh break down to polys.
F. is the best deal for any starting freelancer because of it's starting costs and available features. Also, if you require features like hair, I'd advice you to look at BHairy clicky (http://shaders.moederogall.com/BHairy/index.html) which is a good solution and is still cheaper that Maya or Max.

Poly reduction tools are not meant to do your cleanup for you. You are confusing careful count containment with procedural decimation.

Hero assets, especially deforming ones, will always have to be manually cleaned or, even better, well planned from the beginning.

Poly reduction tools are generally used on props and environments, or on certain secondary elements, to procedurally generate several versions of the same content with different polycounts, and then those assets are normally referenced for explicit LODding of the assets.

That's why a good poly reduction tool is measured, above everything, by how well it retains volumes and how smartly it adaptively distributes connectivity to to represent it, because the priority is consistancy of the static silouhette, from all angles, between LODs, not ease of deformation or UV space retainment.

As for the question about why they aren't in FND... I mean are we serious?

Algorithmically speaking GATOR and the PolyReduction tools are ahead of anything else in the market, and apparently so is MOTOR altho it's not made many public apparitions yet. Do people seriously think that the most recent RnD and the most unique aspects of the package should go into a 500$ (399 if you know where to look for it) version? Soft wouldn't sell half the essentials seats it's selling if the only edge it had over foundation was networking and sharing.

Lets be reasonable in our expectations please :)

[mocaw]

Foundation should be more than enough for you. You might want to wait for v6 to come out though...unless you're trying to save money. You might be able to get a free upgrade as well though to 6 if you purchase now- so check into it.

I wouldn't ditch zbrush though- if you want to use some of the polygon crunching features of XSI you should hang on to it. FND might replace Blender for 99% of what you want, but it will not take the place of your zbrush copy.

[Mic_Ma]

Poly reduction tools are generally used on props and environments, or on certain secondary elements, to procedurally generate several versions of the same content with different polycounts, and then those assets are normally referenced for explicit LODding of the assets.

That's why a good poly reduction tool is measured, above everything, by how well it retains volumes and how smartly it adaptively distributes connectivity to to represent it, because the priority is consistancy of the static silouhette, from all angles, between LODs, not ease of deformation or UV space retainment.


Hm, by that definition the polyreduction in XSI didn't measure well. Because it's exactly what we had to do.

Environments often apply the same instances of various textures; sometimes a tiling algorithm can be handled by the games engine, sometimes not; certain polys hold alphas; exist for game design reasons, or are there for various other purposes. Polyreduction tools invariable mess up your mesh at least a little bit. The problem is that this "little bit" costs more time to fix than the automated reduction saved in the first place :P

Even with those new nextgen consoles, it is surprising how much you still have to watch your polycount. And the handhelds of course.

I suppose if you have a really dense high-poly object it may be useful, but LOD's I've worked on were always something like 10000 polys to 5000 to 500. It actually doesnt take that long to reduce manually and often gives you a chance of cleaning and tweaking your mesh at the same time.

I'm sure it's a lifesave for somebody out there. But for me, certainly not worth buying Essentials for.

[ThE_JacO]

Have you made Soft aware of the issue? Possibly submitting assets and good/bad results too (they have NDAs and procedures in place to deal with this).

If nobody shows them what they mean when they say they have a problem, it's not possible to fix it.

I have to say though that your experience is wildly different from anything I heard before.

I did use those tools when they first came out a while ago, for some previz and lodding work, and they were just brilliant at both volume preservation, and at rederivating attributes, and I know for sure that a fair few good friends heavily into the game dev scene found them just as solid, environment artists in many games company in fact thought that the poly reduction and the new knife were the two most noteworthy improvements to their day to day job, even over GATOR or other flashier new toys that came with that version.

Maybe they can be made to work for you too if you just spend the time to make it happen (which will turn into time saved soon enough)

[deli-rium]

Poly reduction tools are not meant to do your cleanup for you. You are confusing careful count containment with procedural decimation.

Hero assets, especially deforming ones, will always have to be manually cleaned or, even better, well planned from the beginning.

Poly reduction tools are generally used on props and environments, or on certain secondary elements, to procedurally generate several versions of the same content with different polycounts, and then those assets are normally referenced for explicit LODding of the assets.

That's why a good poly reduction tool is measured, above everything, by how well it retains volumes and how smartly it adaptively distributes connectivity to to represent it, because the priority is consistancy of the static silouhette, from all angles, between LODs, not ease of deformation or UV space retainment.

As for the question about why they aren't in FND... I mean are we serious?

Algorithmically speaking GATOR and the PolyReduction tools are ahead of anything else in the market, and apparently so is MOTOR altho it's not made many public apparitions yet. Do people seriously think that the most recent RnD and the most unique aspects of the package should go into a 500$ (399 if you know where to look for it) version? Soft wouldn't sell half the essentials seats it's selling if the only edge it had over foundation was networking and sharing.

Lets be reasonable in our expectations please :)


Well, I meant character creation mostly. I'll be more specific next time. :)

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