Greetings, folks... and Affogato?

[JDex]

Welcome to the light, James. :thumbsup: j/k

I can't speak much of Affogato yet, as I haven't had time to spend with it yet, but it looks interesting. You may find much of the flexibility you gain from using 3Delight in Mental Ray... my experiences with C4D's renderer always led me back to using the much more flexible (and complicated) MR. However if you are intent on being a rib user, Affogato may help. The affogato devs do come around here on occasion, and can also be found over at the base from time to time.

I speculate that development on it will not die, at least not soon, but there has not been much discussion about it (that I've noticed) since it was made public. Pixar may actually put out a "proper" Renderman for XSI in the next dev-cycle or two, so that may change the landscape, but we'll see.

Render's done... enough of my ramblings. Welcome to the XSI forums!

[ThE_JacO]

Is Affogato still being actively developed?
yes, and it might continue even when The Ritz gets too tired or too busy if all the people that were crying for it could now get their heads out of their arses and put the proverbial money where their mouth is.
it's the usual OSS thing, it goes on indefinitely depending on people's good will.

Is it likely that it will continue to be publicly available and evolving as it currently appears to be?
read the above again.

Is it relatively painless to use?
it depends from your definition of painless.
it's not as immediate as a canned solution like PRMan for maya, but that doesn't make it painful in absolute terms.

(I've studied the feature list, so I know roughly what it does and does not do, but the question is how smooth or fiddly it is in daily use.
it does what it says on the tin and it does that much pretty damn well.

Since I'm a one-man-band I can't spend too much time hacking TD stuff as that means there's no time left to actually build and animate shots...). Does it have any kind of automatic functionality regarding render passes/multipass? Do I need any additional middleware-type software to make it a productive solution?
you would need a certain amount of commitment to get it to cover a wide range of situations, as it doesn't come with presets and wizards for everything.
It's a complete tool without accessories basically.

[ThE_JacO]

You may find much of the flexibility you gain from using 3Delight in Mental Ray

no he couldn't since ootb MRay from xsi doesn't come with a standalone, which means you can forget about mi files, which means you can forget about 90% of what platform flexibility is about.

[JamesMK]

Thanks a lot, guys, much appreciated.

Some light has been shed, and I guess it sounds promising enough to start investing the time it takes to get to the "oh yeah" state. Back to waiting for the box of goodness to arrive from the softimageites.




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[ThE_JacO]

Thanks a lot, guys, much appreciated.

Some light has been shed, and I guess it sounds promising enough to start investing the time it takes to get to the "oh yeah" state. Back to waiting for the box of goodness to arrive from the softimageites.

If anything, it's worth using just to get a glimpse of Moritz' work, design and handling of the RMan standard.
While it comes somewhat free of nifty gadgets, Affogato is actually a pretty impressive and very consistant (not to mention well written) piece of work, and it comes from the main dude behind 2 out of 2 production worthy OSS Ribbers, and definitely one of the most knowledgable (if biased) renderman experts I've had the pleasure to meet.

[JamesMK]

M'yes, from what little I've seen at this point, it seems very nice and orderly. Since I'm still very far from being a renderman aficionado worthy of an actual propeller hat, I'm sure there's a lot to be learned from how it structures the scene description sections and lays it all out.

And if the bias has anything to do with a tendency towards 3Delight in particular, I'm all for it since I'm bent the same way.

[WillBellJr]

As I always recommend - take a gander at the Digital Tutors site (http://www.digitaltutors.com/store/home.php?cat=32) - they have a wealth of free online tutorials that will give you some "a-ha!" moments with XSI's features - if you got the XSI for Artists DVD with your package, that's really all you need to go though to get to a comfortable stance with the XSI package.

There's a lot to learn for sure but if you really want to learn the package, those tuts will get you started. Congrats on the win also! :thumbsup:

-will

[mdee]

Just stopping by... [waves awkwardly]


Is Affogato still being actively developed? Is it likely that it will continue to be publicly available and evolving as it currently appears to be? Is it relatively painless to use? (I've studied the feature list, so I know roughly what it does and does not do, but the question is how smooth or fiddly it is in daily use. Since I'm a one-man-band I can't spend too much time hacking TD stuff as that means there's no time left to actually build and animate shots...). Does it have any kind of automatic functionality regarding render passes/multipass? Do I need any additional middleware-type software to make it a productive solution?



.


Just to add to what Jaco said..

I use (learn) affogato at home in semi-amateurish manner - and so far it's the best to RIB translator I've ever saw. It handles most of XSI stuff in seamless manner (inlcuding subdivisions). Yes, it's not that painfull to use, usually not at all ;) - especially if you know a little about how renderman shaders work, because as of now, Affogato does not translate XSI's rendertrees, you need to develop and assign shaders by hand. You get the parameters exposed inside XSI tho, so you can tweak from gui.

http://www.dream.com.ua/thetool.html

Nice shader writing front end, I didn't use it too much, but it works.

[JamesMK]

WillBellJr - Yep, I'm hoping that the DVD you mentioned is in the box. If not, I seem to remember seeing a downloadable version of the same somewhere on softimage's site.

mdee - That sounds very encouraging. And the shader side of things is already taken care of as far as I'm concerned, as I've already been using ShaderMan (The Tool) on and off alongside of ye olde texteditor (mostly ConTEXT, which is nice and lightweight, yet flexible). Good thing that the shader parameters are accessible from within XSI - would otherwise have qualified as "potentially painful"

With that, I'll refrain from further speculation and simply wait until all my gear is in place, installed, massaged, properly set up, tuned and everything... then get busy trying it all out on some small projects and see what happens.

Cya!

[benytone]

...I'm looking forward to start digging deeper into XSI in a week or two.

Cheers, and stuff!



.

Hey, Happy XSI and you will enjoy it!

XSI has so many amazingly features, like Gigapolygon(it's amazingly fast), Rendertree, awesome timeline / NLA editors....and much more!

welcome aboard

.

[Mauritius]

Thanks for the kudos, Raff. :)
I haven't had much time to work on Affogato lately, mainly because I was on holidays for the last two months.
I might mention that there will be a 3Delight for XSI plug-in soon and I'd guess it will come for free with purchasing a 3Delight license. Liked 3Delight for Maya, it will do Render Tree translation. It will probably be much more artist-friendly than Affogato.

Affogato was written under the gun of having to pump out a production-ready RIB exporter in a limited amout of time. It is reasonably well designed, but if I had to write it again, it would look completely different.
I'm working on something that will replace RIB (if people adopt it) and if I will ivest time in brushing up Affogato or writing a replacement for Liquid for Maya, it will likely be geared towards supporting this new scene description format first. Since this stuff can be seamlessly translated into a RIB again (for backwards compatibility), that would mean it would be a RIB exporter as well. I have many commitments to OSS projects. There's Liquid, although I don't like working on it too much, there's Affogato and lately I also comitted to contribute to Cortex (http://cortex.devjavu.com/). So is Affogato actively developed? No, it isn't. But that doesn't imply it isn't developed at all.
If you find a bug, you can expect a fix in unsually less than a week. If you use it on an actual production and need a quicker fix, there's always ways.

Speaking of my biasedness for RenderMan (and I talk of the standard, not a particular renderer) -- I don't get why mental delay doesn't read RIB files and compiles RenderMan SL shaders. Pixar has removed the legal requirement to get written permission from them for developing a RMan-compliant renderer two or so years ago (that is to my best knowledge, but the information comes from the best source I could imagine for this kind of stuff at Pixar).
What many people don't know is that the RenderMan interface (RI) cost a lot of money to develop. I'm solely talking about the interface, not any implementation like e.g. Pixars' PRMan.
There were some of the best people at the time (and some of them are still among the best today) behind the RI's design. That is the reason it is still the industry standard today. Its initial design was not driven by demand, but by a firm and, most notably, future proof (thanks to immense foresight) set of requirements. That can't be said about many rendering interfaces out there. Least not mental ray's.

I don't think mental ray is a bad renderer at all, but it just has the single most obfuscated and badly designed interface I've ever seen (that is both API and .mi files).
German researchers tend to have the bad habit of expressing the most simple things in the most complicated of ways. I am cheeky enough to say that this is mostly not due to a lack of skills in getting teir point accross in Anglo-Saxian at all, but merely to make their scientific work look as more than it actually is. I'm not talking about computer science and imaging alone, the fields that interest me personally and that I have some knowledge in --; my brother studies archaeology in Germany and he tells me many German reserach papes he reads about his subject, too, stand out well among those written by people of other nationality mostly by their unneccessary use of obfuscating language.
Since mental ray's interface was designed by Germans, I can't help but believe a similar attitude might have played a role in shaping it the way it sadly is... ;)


Cheers,

Moritz

[JamesMK]

Cheers Moritz, and thanks for the exhaustive info. A '3delight for XSI' straight from DNA sounds promising for the near future then - will keep an eye out for that one too.




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[mocaw]

Welcom to XSI JamesMK! From what I've gathered you contributed quite a bit to the C4D community- so here's to you contributing your rm knowledge to some of us mere XSI mortals in the future.

On a humorous and interesting side note:

And it makes sense that Mauritius has such "hot blood" for rm over mr since, if you are of Irish, Scottish, or "English" ancestry you're not Anglo-Saxon but Basque in ancestry.

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7817

I know you're a genius in CS and graphics (I'm not joking here), but you sometimes make some funny claims! For all I know/care though you're right about ze-Germans. Is that I why, by your standards, I have such a hard time with everything though since I'm German AND Irish? Too much inner conflict?

I'm just kidding as I know you're talking about culture and not "race" per say.

[glen5700]

I thought some of you might find this usefull for coding shaders. I came across this while hunting down programs for working with Renderman shaders.

A very nice code editor (Cutter) that will compile your shaders and create rib files for test rendering, works well with 3Delight. The site has a lot of good info on it and Cutter can do more than work with sl code - http://www.fundza.com/

Glen

[MarkInTx]

I hope I'm not butting in here, but since your thread is about transitioning to XSI from another package, I thought I would chime in here on my experience.

I'm not a 3D pro, I am a hobbyist... which means my budget and time is limited. I try to only pick something that A) does what I need and B) can be learned through books, DVDs, and trial-and-error.

I've sampled most of the big apps.

After much trial, I had decided to stick with Silo for modeling, and LightWave for texturing and rendering (my projects are currently only single frame renders). (I also own Messiah, for someday when I have the rest of this figured out and get into animation.)

Some people I respect have told me XSI is really a great package. So, I downloaded the trial and decided to try it out.

It was daunting. I had 30 days, and no idea of where to begin. I had invested hundreds of dollars in training DVDs for LightWave, so I knew it fairly well. But how to decide -- in 30 days or less -- that XSI was a good enough package to dump the investment of time and money in LW?

Well, I couldn't. I uninstalled the trial after a few days, and figured that was it.

A week later I got an email form SoftImage asking me if I was enjoying the trial and if I had any questions or issues.

That was good marketing technique, I thought. In my previous life, I had spent 7 years as a product manager for a software company, so I figured, well... they asked. I’ll tell them what I think.

So I wrote a long email explaining why I had ditched the trial. I wasn't overly critical, I just explained my quandary, and I went on to describe ideas which I thought might help them attract more buyers through their eval process. Most of it was PM 101, and I figured they knew it already, but like I said, they asked…

I figured that was the end of it.

Wrong.

I got a very nice email back thanking me for my constructive criticism. Furthermore, they said if I would be interested, they would like to extend my trial 60 more days and send me the Digital Tutors DVD (For XSI 5, but still...)

Wow! That's the response you dream of from a company! (And very different from what I got from other places.) I said, OK, if you're going to go that far, I will commit to setting aside time to go through the DVD, and doing a full-on evaluation.

I am about three weeks into that now.

I have to say, XSI is really growing on me. It's a lot of small things, but they add up.

I'm not in JamesMK's league as an animator or illustrator, and he may have requirements that I don't understand.

But I tried Maya for about 60 days, and spent another 60 on 3D Max. I used Lightwave for about a year.

XSI is better than all of them, IMHO -- at least from a learning and workflow perspective (God, how I hate the term workflow -- it is so over-used!)

I get this feeling when I use XSI. It may not be true, but this is how it seems: XSI seems like the next generation app. It feels like LW, Maya and 3D Max were early in the marketplace, and their apps sort of evolved over time. Unfortunately, this means that many features are sort of bolted on. For example: You need to run a Mel-script to spin a quad in Maya, or split a loop... that's a little thing, but it does show how the original designers didn't have the idea that such a feature would be needed. In LightWave, one of their primitives is a coffee cup – in XSI it is a human head. XSI lets me render any area I want instead of requiring the full frame. I could go on and on...

Which doesn't make those other apps bad. In fact, if I were a young 3D artist wanting a job somewhere, I probably would be learning 3D Max or Maya. A lot of good things can be done with these tools, no doubt.

OTOH, Michelangelo did amazing things, and his tools were a hammer and chisel. That doesn’t mean I can pick up a hammer and chisel and duplicate it. Some people are just talented. What I need is an app that lowers the technical barriers as much as possible.

XSI feels like it was designed after the marketplace had dictated certain features, and because of that, was able to create a much cleaner package with a more streamlined interface. Again, that may be entirely incorrect -- I'm no student of the 3D marketplace.

But that's how it feels. Things that you have to run scripts for, or export into other applications are simply there in XSI.

I have read people say the learning curve is a lot greater in XSI, but I disagree. I actually think it is shorter, because of the clean interface. Now, some of that may be because this is the third App I have learned, but I don't think all of it can be explained that way.

There seems to be fewer steps required in XSI to do what I want to do.

I look forward to seeing what an artist like JamesMK can do with it.

[ThE_JacO]

I'm just kidding as I know you're talking about culture and not "race" per say.

The Ritz is German born and bred, he'd be insulting himself if he was talking about such things by "race", aka implying they are genetically tied to being born on a particular patch of land :)

[mocaw]

The Ritz is German born and bred, he'd be insulting himself if he was talking about such things by "race", aka implying they are genetically tied to being born on a particular patch of land :)

AH- that's what I get by just going by the country listed under the avatar! Sorry about that, I should know better by now- many people's location changes based on where they work (Leigh's seems to change at lest once a year for example and I've seen your's change a few times too- no?).

I'm sorry if I in anyway offended anyone with my reply due to my ignorance.

[ThE_JacO]

AH- that's what I get by just going by the country listed under the avatar! Sorry about that, I should know better by now- many people's location changes based on where they work (Leigh's seems to change at lest once a year for example and I've seen your's change a few times too- no?).
nature of the film industry, especially if you freelance like me, Leigh, or the Ritz do.

I'm sorry if I in anyway offended anyone with my reply due to my ignorance.
I don't know man, I saw him cowering, curled in fetal position and crying under his desk after he read the post, not sure he'll ever recover from the trauma of such offense :)

[NRG-Alpha]

Hi MarkInTx.

That's the beauty of Softimage. They may not be as big as the big boys, but as developers, you get interactivity on the forums from them as well as overall fantastic customer service. I don't see that level from other companies out there.

I come from the 3DS Max camp. And when an ex co-worker showed me XSI (4.2 at the time), I was blown away by the overall workflow. XSI's core is definately modern and up-to-date. Much sleeker, faster and streamlined compared to Max or Maya IMHO.After trying it out, I could not go back. I am happy with XSI, and I cannot wait to see what future releases will reveal. The dev team at Softimage is not large, but they are definately talented, and have a true desire to know what their customers are complimenting and / or complaining about (yes, I have had my fair share of complaints as well as compliments to them).

I think the more time you spend with XSI, the more you like it (which already seems to be the case by your posting). Keep learning as much as you can. You will see that XSI can easily stand its own against the competition. As you learn more, sure, you will find that certain x y z items/features may not be there that you know of in some other app. But the same goes the other way around. I have found myself wishing that Max had alot of what XSI has to offer.

Over all, I'm glad to hear that it is growing on you. I think if many other artists out there who have not touched XSI yet gave it a serious shot, we may have more XSI converters ;)

Welcome aboard!

Cheers,

NRG

[ThE_JacO]

Hi MarkInTx.

That's the beauty of Softimage. They may not be as big as the big boys, but as developers, you get interactivity on the forums from them as well as overall fantastic customer service. I don't see that level from other companies out there.

not as big as the big boys?
the only company with a larger setup for a 3d app, and/or number of offices is autodesk.
Soft has been back to being a big boy for a while now, which is what makes the service remarkable really.

[JamesMK]

Everything else aside... Had a gentleman from UPS knocking on my door yesterday, and as a result of that, I ended up spending the better parts of the entire monday watching every single clip on the "Artist's guide to XSI" DVD. Even made me forget to watch the latest episode of "24"...

An excellent primer I must say, and even if it undoubtedly only scratches the surface of things, it surely scratched a lot of different surfaces, thus clarifying pretty much everything that has appeared to be somewhat mysterious until this point.

It even got me thinking that maybe it's worth considering giving MR a chance, at least initially. Mainly because of the extremely nice way render pass functionality is handled, most of which I guess would be lost in translation when using RenderMan since that pretty much leaves everything up to me in terms of coding passes into each shader manually. While that's not a major problem itself, it takes time and certainly makes it a less practical solution for someone working solo like myself.

In short, XSI is seriously impressive shit.

[mocaw]

It even got me thinking that maybe it's worth considering giving MR a chance, at least initially. Mainly because of the extremely nice way render pass functionality is handled, most of which I guess would be lost in translation when using RenderMan since that pretty much leaves everything up to me in terms of coding passes into each shader manually. While that's not a major problem itself, it takes time and certainly makes it a less practical solution for someone working solo like myself...

I wouldn't totally give up on mr. You might want to stick with mr while you get over all more comfortable with XSI while casually learning more and more about rm. I'm not saying this from personal experience with rm mind you, just more that you might want to test ALL the waters before you plunge in and commit yourself to something. mr, while not in any way perfect, does offer a lot. Besides- ultimately if you have even a semi-firm grasp on each you'll be all the more flexible when it comes time to render.

[NRG-Alpha]

not as big as the big boys?
the only company with a larger setup for a 3d app, and/or number of offices is autodesk.


Hence the 'big boys' :) (I suppose I should not have pluralized 'boys', as Alias has obviously been taken over [bought out] by Autodesk when speaking from the context of companies... Sometimes I still falsely envision Maya [Alias] as a seperate entity).

Therefore I guess I do stand corrected. If Autodesk is indeed the only 3d app developer that is larger, that would make Softimage part of the 'Big Boys', wouldn't it? :thumbsup:

Cheers,

NRG

[ThE_JacO]

It even got me thinking that maybe it's worth considering giving MR a chance, at least initially. Mainly because of the extremely nice way render pass functionality is handled, most of which I guess would be lost in translation when using RenderMan since that pretty much leaves everything up to me in terms of coding passes into each shader manually. While that's not a major problem itself, it takes time and certainly makes it a less practical solution for someone working solo like myself.

you might want to give MR a chance for one very simple reason, there's no reason not to :)
sure, time is a limited resource, but getting a grasp on the basics isn't that hard, and there's a number of situations where having both engines (MRay and 3DL) at your disposal might save you the time spent and then some.
They tend to be fairly complementary.

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