Softimage Announces XSI 7 with ICE

[ThirdEye]

nICE. Are you going to offer a demo for those who would like to try XSI 7?

[ThE_JacO]

Congratulations on the release.
Pretty phenomenal stuff.

[SimonReeves]

Quick in there with the pun Alberto, a fine job.

also, Download a fully functioning 30 day trial of XSI 6.5 Essentials. The XSI 7 trial will be available soon.

[erilaz]

Oooh... node things are preeeeeetty! :D

[Jo B.]

Delta II a major update to the lightweight referencing system in SOFTIMAGE|XSI, with enhanced support for clusters and cluster properties, including materials, textures and UVs.

... i hope referenced models combined with expressions now work more reliable than in 6.5, too!

[Bullit]

No more XSI Foundation: Really Bad Decision.

Other than that let's see if it works as announced. If it does it will be good.

[sciics]

TIM BORGMANN ????? please confirm thats his art... and is that the splash screen???

[krisr]

TIM BORGMANN ????? please confirm thats his art... and is that the splash screen???

Yes, that's his splash screen.

[GeneralLethal]

This will be a turning point in the history of awesomeness.

[DuttyFoot]

wow this new version of xsi looks amazing. nodes are a good way to go. i dont know if taking foundation away was a good idea either.

[JackZhang]

the powerful crazy ice!!!

[DimitrisLiatsos]

Congratulations on the release.
Pretty phenomenal stuff.

Indeed ..i am so happy withe work they did in their particle systems/behaviour controls.

Can't wait to get my hands on this...:bounce:

[erebos]

yaaaaaaaaayyyyy!

Have to say i'm giddy with excitement about ICE! Although, I have to say that moondust was a way better name for it ;)

Other things that i'm liking;
-Mental Ray 3.6
-Compunding shaders
- Scalable Sliders!
- Colour management options!
- panic button for my finicky license!

Worried about the death of foundation though, this might have to be the last upgrade of XSI i can afford.


As someone who's been on the XSI hype-train for quite some time, i'm curious as to what non-XSIers think of ICE? Is it really as revolutionary as they make it sound (and does it make XSI stand out from max and maya) or is it just a little bit of Houdini within XSI?

[SheepFactory]

Simply amazing! I cannot wait to get my hands on it!

[liid]

I'm a maya user(recently xsi)... but i'm sur I'm gona love it !
ICE look very cool

[oglu]

Worried about the death of foundation though, this might have to be the last upgrade of XSI i can afford.




i second that...

[DimitrisLiatsos]

I am guessing there in no upgrade option yet ...'cuase i can't find the price tag for this anywhere in the XSI website...?!?

[DDS]

improved ogl tech sounds good...

[Andy1010]

The artist driven rigid bodies looks awesome. I so want this!

[Rhs_CG]

Delicious!

[3dRaven]

Hmm will it be possible to share nodes between materials?? I'd love to finally be able to hook up a shared color between objects

[fgdf]

Fantastic relase. ICE looks uber-cool.
Just thinking if Autodesk could relase something close to this.
:beer:Softimage

[SheepFactory]

Man after watching the vids fully my mind is seriously blown. This has been the creative environment I had been wishing for ever since I started doing 3d. My hats off to Softimage for innovating and pushing the envelope with every new release.


Also I can finally justify buying the 8 core macpro thanks to ice being fully multithreaded :D

[SoulVector]

Good for Softimage, Ice looks very cool! Too bad they dropped the foundation version. Modeling in XSI is very intuitive and is/was a cheap all-round alternative. Will be interesting to see how ICE compares to Houdini nodes.

[tonytrout]

Ice looks cool, although they lost me at paradigm. I hope its not too complicated for a simple artist.

[meagane]

Also I can finally justify buying the 8 core macpro thanks to ice being fully multithreaded

better buy a 16 core machine :thumbsup:

[Rhs_CG]

Good for Softimage, Ice looks very cool! Too bad they dropped the foundation version. Modeling in XSI is very intuitive and is/was a cheap all-round alternative. Will be interesting to see how ICE compares to Houdini nodes.

I was thinking the same thing. Perhaps this will also help XSI to be used with other packages mch easier. It wont take a programmer to move data between packages.

Also, hope that Renderman for XSI is announced at SIGGRAPH, to sweeten XSI 7's arrival.

[harovas]

I am a beta tester (Softimage has OK'd some posting of information in forums and
answering of basic questions).

This is truly groundbreaking stuff. I don't have one ounce of programmer DNA in my body,
but I was making compunds and re-using them almost immediately. Anything can be hooked
into anything! You want the position of a null to control the dynamic painting of weightmaps
which drive particle emissions, and those particles that are emitted in turn drive the weight
maps of other objects, which causes them to also emit particles and all these objects
strat to shrivel up when they reach proximity to YET ANOTHER object?

No problem at all.

Say you then want to have all this happening on the geometry of another object
and have it all controlled by gravity, so that when the particles stick to the surface
of the geometry, until they reach the "end" and achieve a certain angle causing
them to drip off the surface...

Also no problem.

The biggest compliment I can give this software is that I have already been using
it in production for months now.

Stupid?

Not as far as the producer is concerned. He is getting the coolest looking VFX
in a fast, interactive and aruist-driven environment. No hiccups either, just smooth
sailing...

Just thought you guys might like to know from someone using it, what the
feeling is like.

Take care,

Perry

[kees]

I think it is quite impressive and as a technical artist I have wanted something like this for a long time.

That said, I wonder what impact this new node-based system will really have.

How many artists, even tech-artists, are technical enough to be able to come up with new nodes that are useful. It is very challenging to convert a Siggraph paper into a group of 30 nodes and make it work (as shown in the ICE video page).

I think this node-based system opens up possibilities for particle/render-artists for sure, but it doesn't really make the majority of tasks that other artists/animators perform easier or quicker. Most time spend for those artists is still modelling, UV-ing, texture painting, skinning and animating.

On top of that, for game artists, the majority isn't even an option to use since particles, dynamics, deformations (modifiers) all have to happen in-game and so building these fancy new nodes will not translate to the game-engine.

So imo it is a relatively small group of artists that will benefit greatly from these new improvements, while for the rest, it is business as usual. I think TV/Film pipelines will see the greatest benefit from it, IF they have a large enough group of technical artists that are technical enough to actually be able to great complex new (compound) nodes.

That doesn't make it any less cool though. I love that Softimage has the balls to implement this stuff. And to be honest I hope I'm dead-wrong about it because I personally love node-based workflows and would love this to become more of a standard in large number of studios.

Take care,

[grafi]

Sweeet! Can't wait for the release! :)

[SheepFactory]

I think it is quite impressive and as a technical artist I have wanted something like this for a long time.

That said, I wonder what impact this new node-based system will really have.

How many artists, even tech-artists, are technical enough to be able to come up with new nodes that are useful. It is very challenging to convert a Siggraph paper into a group of 30 nodes and make it work (as shown in the ICE video page).

I think this node-based system opens up possibilities for particle/render-artists for sure, but it doesn't really make the majority of tasks that other artists/animators perform easier or quicker. Most time spend for those artists is still modelling, UV-ing, texture painting, skinning and animating.

On top of that, for game artists, the majority isn't even an option to use since particles, dynamics, deformations (modifiers) all have to happen in-game and so building these fancy new nodes will not translate to the game-engine.

So imo it is a relatively small group of artists that will benefit greatly from these new improvements, while for the rest, it is business as usual. I think TV/Film pipelines will see the greatest benefit from it, IF they have a large enough group of technical artists that are technical enough to actually be able to great complex new (compound) nodes.

That doesn't make it any less cool though. I love that Softimage has the balls to implement this stuff. And to be honest I hope I'm dead-wrong about it because I personally love node-based workflows and would love this to become more of a standard in large number of studios.

Take care,

I cannot disagree more with everything you just said.

First of all Perry's post above you just refuted half your claims. But you can see from the videos how easy it is to create nodes and effects you are after without touching a single line of code. I do not code at all and just watching the videos I can easily see the range of effects I will be able to create previously I couldnt even dream about. Not to mention the ability to reuse them with any character, scene or project. Share them over the net and just being able to collaborate with other in a level that was previously impossible.

[ThE_JacO]

How many artists, even tech-artists, are technical enough to be able to come up with new nodes that are useful. It is very challenging to convert a Siggraph paper into a group of 30 nodes and make it work (as shown in the ICE video page).

If there is just ONE user who can do it (and there are many) it means it can be done in an afternoon of messing around instead than weeks of writing code, and then distributed through Softimage's community site by just right clicking on the compound and publishing it.

I agree, not everybody will be able to use ICE to its fullest, but everybody else will definitely benefit from it because those who can won't be dissuaded from making the stuff available because it would take too long to package a plugin.

That to me is the most amazing aspect of it. The nodes and all are great and the performance is staggeringly fast, but it's how it will impact sharing knowledge and extending the application that is truly mindblowing.

The rest of your comments hold true to a certani degree, but you also have to bear in mind that this is practically a version 1.0, and it already does a crapton of cool stuff, in the future this architecture will extend beyond what is possible now.
Think of what GATOR, MOTOR and spatial datasets could do once exposed as nodes :)

Tip of the ICEberg (pun intended)

[Buexe]

I tried to understand what this ICE stuff means, but so far I have only understood that it is nodes that you plug together. So what is the magic? Don`t want sound negative, I`m just trying to understand what`s going on there, those marketing claims weren`t helpful to me.
Is it a Hypergraph with more possibilities? and if so what are they? I understood it is multithreaded, but what else is there that should a standard Maya dude say, okay let`s go to XSI?
Thanks

[Intervain]

nice - love the idea of the shader nodes compounds of compounds of compounds :scream::buttrock:

[wurp]

I'm one of the beta-testers as well and I know almost nothing about coding, yet I could after spending some time with ICE already come up with some useful stuff myself. The whole nodebased approach does take some time to get used to but with the compounds that already comes with XSI you don't need to be super-geeky to find that ICE does indeed improve your day-to-day workflow.

The other thing to keep in mind is that even if you don't use ICE yourself you can still benefit from other people sharing their compounds online, they are very much like custom shaders for the rendertree except they can be taken apart and modified directly inside xsis ICETree. Most people doesn't know how to write their own shader yet the whole mental ray community of free shaders has proven most useful to most artists, I'm sure the same thing will happen with ICE and its compounds.



I think it is quite impressive and as a technical artist I have wanted something like this for a long time.

That said, I wonder what impact this new node-based system will really have.

How many artists, even tech-artists, are technical enough to be able to come up with new nodes that are useful. It is very challenging to convert a Siggraph paper into a group of 30 nodes and make it work (as shown in the ICE video page).

I think this node-based system opens up possibilities for particle/render-artists for sure, but it doesn't really make the majority of tasks that other artists/animators perform easier or quicker. Most time spend for those artists is still modelling, UV-ing, texture painting, skinning and animating.

On top of that, for game artists, the majority isn't even an option to use since particles, dynamics, deformations (modifiers) all have to happen in-game and so building these fancy new nodes will not translate to the game-engine.

So imo it is a relatively small group of artists that will benefit greatly from these new improvements, while for the rest, it is business as usual. I think TV/Film pipelines will see the greatest benefit from it, IF they have a large enough group of technical artists that are technical enough to actually be able to great complex new (compound) nodes.

That doesn't make it any less cool though. I love that Softimage has the balls to implement this stuff. And to be honest I hope I'm dead-wrong about it because I personally love node-based workflows and would love this to become more of a standard in large number of studios.

Take care,

[Anticulturist]

Interesting release, I can not dissagree more with the previous post complaining that only a small part of the user base gonna take advantage of this upgrade, the particle overhaul was a long time request and could not arrived to soon, in my opinion.

I hope Mr. Leonard will organize some Demo in Chicago after Siggraph.


On the sad side, The Foundation issue. After SideFX launched the $100 Starving Artist version, hmm...

[liquidik]

Well, I just talked to my reseller, and you know what ? The price to upgrade from foundation to essential is just insanely low! It's just a little more than a new foundation license. They got me, they really got me on this :D

Well done Softimage on all fronts!

Gian

[Maph]

Holy crap, those vids got me drooling all over the place!
The power, the artist-friendlyness, the sheer awesomeness. It's overwhelming! :bowdown:

I bloody love Houdini and it's procedural approach, but it has it's shortcomings when modelling. This release of XSI looks like my two favorite applications were combined into one monster of an application. Procedural horsepower backed up with artist friendly modelling tools.
And since I'm quite the technical guy, this is going to hit my wallet hard! :drool::drool::drool:

A pity to hear about Softimage ditching Foundation though. It was a bright light in this world of pricey software. :sad:

Man, time to start saving for Essentials me thinks!

[Magnus3D]

Impressive! :surprised the ICE system seems very powerful, almost like an application within an application.. :) to bad i'm not a XSI user. But this is still very interesting!

/ Magnus

[revert]

I can't imagine any group that will not benefit from ICE. This is not just particles and simulations but a whole new platform XSI can be built on. Perhaps building compounds won't be for every user but as seen in the deformers video, a new compound was created and very quickly shared with the whole community.

Ice will effect every aspect of XSI from modeling through to rendering. As was mentioned, this is like a version 1 and is only the beginning. This is an exciting new path Softimage is heading down and i'm really looking forward to seeing this evolve.


I think it is quite impressive and as a technical artist I have wanted something like this for a long time.

That said, I wonder what impact this new node-based system will really have.

How many artists, even tech-artists, are technical enough to be able to come up with new nodes that are useful. It is very challenging to convert a Siggraph paper into a group of 30 nodes and make it work (as shown in the ICE video page).

I think this node-based system opens up possibilities for particle/render-artists for sure, but it doesn't really make the majority of tasks that other artists/animators perform easier or quicker. Most time spend for those artists is still modelling, UV-ing, texture painting, skinning and animating.

On top of that, for game artists, the majority isn't even an option to use since particles, dynamics, deformations (modifiers) all have to happen in-game and so building these fancy new nodes will not translate to the game-engine.

So imo it is a relatively small group of artists that will benefit greatly from these new improvements, while for the rest, it is business as usual. I think TV/Film pipelines will see the greatest benefit from it, IF they have a large enough group of technical artists that are technical enough to actually be able to great complex new (compound) nodes.

That doesn't make it any less cool though. I love that Softimage has the balls to implement this stuff. And to be honest I hope I'm dead-wrong about it because I personally love node-based workflows and would love this to become more of a standard in large number of studios.

Take care,

[NicolasJordan]

Doesn't look like there will be a Foundation version of XSI 7 from what I can see. Can anyone shed any light on this?

[LucasMartell]

Wow. I have to hand it to Softimage because what they've done is pure genius. And I'm not talking about ICE itself. What they've done is turned every single XSI user into part of their development team:

Step 1: make something easy and fast to use
Step 2: The technical guys get a hold of it and make a TON of killer tools in no time.
Step 3: Give them an easy way to share those tools online
Step 4: Sit back and watch as the XSI community solves all of their problems for them.

"What you guys need a fluid solver? We'll get started on that right away, oh... wait, never mind someone just uploaded one."

Pure genius.

[ThE_JacO]

On the sad side, The Foundation issue. After SideFX launched the $100 Starving Artist version, hmm...

Starving artist (the campaign for the version that's actually called apprentice HD) is non commercial and uses non commercial hip.
It's a different game altogether :)

[Jesse-Irvin]

Doesn't look like there will be a Foundation version of XSI 7 from what I can see. Can anyone shed any light on this?

Having been a beta tester I wondered what they would do with their pricing and their lineup. I can't be sure but I think they dumped foundation because they couldn't justify it as an upgrade. All it would have essentially been was bug fixes and MR 3.6

Look at ICE, look at what it can do... the potential with the right tech guys is almost limitless. Putting ICE in Foundation could cripple their sales because you wouldn't need anything else for even high end production. You could build it all from scratch in ICE, cloth, RBD's, Hair, crowd sims. If it was in advanced or essentials... it could still be built from scratch in foundation. Thats what I think happened anyway.

[darkjedi1929]

Hmmm.....this is interesting. But, I am curious...isn't this something Houdini has been doing for a long time already? I mean they have that digital assets thingy which is actually a bunch of nodes the artist makes up and exports as a tool. Even in maya we have had the hypergraph/shade, which allows us to make similar networks of nodes, for a long time. They have also added the container node recently, but to be honest, I have not used it until now. Nice tool, but IMO, not really a path breaking tool. It's just gotta prettier interface than Houdini.








Ducks as all the XSI fanboys throw garbage and bricks and whatnot.......

[csutcliffe]

ICE looks cool (no pun intended). Playing with Houdini has taught me that the procedural workflow has huge possibilities for non-programmers so XSI users should rejoice.


After checking the New features I'm a little dissapointed that there doesn't appear to be any enhancements to the modelling toolset though as I still think there's a couple of tools missing - maybe I'll be able to make my own now that XSI has gone procedural providing I can afford the upgrade now that Foundation has been ditchedhttp://forums.cgsociety.org/images/icons/icon9.gif

[SheepFactory]

On the sad side, The Foundation issue. After SideFX launched the $100 Starving Artist version, hmm...


Like Jaco said, that is a non commercial license. if you want you can enter the cg-challenge and get a full non commercial version of xsi that doesnt expire. I just saved you $100 huh?

[SheepFactory]

=darkjedi1929Even in maya we have had the hypergraph/shade, which allows us to make similar networks of nodes, for a long time.




I don't think you watched the videos at the softimage site if you think this is the same as hypergraph\hypershade.

[Rhs_CG]

A peripheral feature is the "panic button" that automatically gives you a temp license if your license has issues, letting you work until the issue is resolved.

Softimage and SideFX are the two big dogs working hardest to innovate and make life as easy as possible for customers, students, and hobbiests. Kudos!

[kees]

I'm actually glad to hear so many of you disagree with my post stating that is may only benefit a small group of artists.

I do wonder though why you are not all using Houdini since it has been able to do this (and much more) for about 10 years...

Nevertheless, I look forward to the day that XSI is more widely spread in the industry and I can also use its node-based workflow for day-to-day tasks. It certainly looks sexy.


Take care,

[TylerAZambori]

I'm actually glad to hear so many of you disagree with my post stating that is may only benefit a small group of artists.

I do wonder though why you are not all using Houdini since it has been able to do this (and much more) for about 10 years...

Nevertheless, I look forward to the day that XSI is more widely spread in the industry and I can also use its node-based workflow for day-to-day tasks. It certainly looks sexy.


Take care,

It's kind of weird, I get the impression from reading the comments that it's the
"tech guys" who will be able to make use of this new feature, and then upload
and share their work with the community. Makes me think you might be right after
all.

[Maph]

I do wonder though why you are not all using Houdini since it has been able to do this (and much more) for about 10 years...

Fear of the unknown, used to be way to pricey, etc...?
Plus, Houdini has a steep learning when coming from 'traditional' (really, mind the quotes) 3D software, because you need to forget everything you've learned so far; and put yourself in a procedural mindset to be able to properly work with it.
Although people with no prior cg experience will pick Houdini up easier because you can make it work as to how you think.

I think ICE has combined the best of both worlds here, and it's something I applaud towards to. As it's been said before, it's not new; nor all that revolutionary in it's essence. But the ability to apply the procedural paradigm in a non-procedural application is very attracting to say at least. Imho ofcourse. :)

[ecco]

Would there be any chance of a reseller that still has Foundation to still be able to sell it?

[ThE_JacO]

Hmmm.....this is interesting. But, I am curious...isn't this something Houdini has been doing for a long time already? I mean they have that digital assets thingy which is actually a bunch of nodes the artist makes up and exports as a tool. Even in maya we have had the hypergraph/shade, which allows us to make similar networks of nodes, for a long time. They have also added the container node recently, but to be honest, I have not used it until now. Nice tool, but IMO, not really a path breaking tool. It's just gotta prettier interface than Houdini.

As both a Houdini and XSI user, no, they aren't the same thing.
Houdini is a more mature nodal system that still does some things ICE can't in its first incarnation, but the similarities end at the interaction paradigm.

Nodes and wiring in ICE are of a much lower and atomical level than houdini, and the interaction is a lot close to a very friendly programming system than it is to a node wrapping of higher level tools.

In Houdini you can already do things like generating and copying geometry etc which aren't available in ICE yet, but you don't have the lowest level of granularity to do something like pulling any data you want and using it somewhere else (IE: try to raytrace a surface inside the scene, derive tangency, cross product with a normal and then use that as incremental velocity for nearby fields). This level of granularity and the sheer speed of execution, not to mention the fact it's all elegantly wrapped in a friendly interface (encapsulated in an op in the operator stack) set XSI apart from Houdini.

So, no, they aren't the same thing at all once you get to know both well.
XSI also (arguably) scales better in terms of user experience as it can be approached at many different levels, Houdini (and I love it for that) has a narrower angle for the vector of approach :)

[revert]

No the original quote was only a few would benefit, the way i see it, everyone benefits whether that is directly or indirectly. You certainly don't need to be a programmer to use ICE. There will be a learning curve of course but with some practice i think most users will be able to take advantage of it.


It's kind of weird, I get the impression from reading the comments that it's the
"tech guys" who will be able to make use of this new feature, and then upload
and share their work with the community. Makes me think you might be right after
all.

[inguatu]

I do wonder though why you are not all using Houdini since it has been able to do this (and much more) for about 10 years...

Nevertheless, I look forward to the day that XSI is more widely spread in the industry and I can also use its node-based workflow for day-to-day tasks. It certainly looks sexy.


Take care,


price................

and why should an xsi user have to buy houdini when this will work for him/her now?

[harovas]

Hey, I wouldn't get too nutty about what Kees said. He was just being honest about
what he saw as the potential crowd that would benefit from this.

That said, he will (happily) be proven wrong, as he said he hoped he would be.

ICE extends into everything within XSI. It isn't just a paticle system.

Or just a deformer.

Or just a weighting tool.

Or just a VFX authoring tool.

Or just a cool way to share.

Or just a simple way to collaborate across continents.

Or a way to do particles that simulate as if they are rigid bodies.

Or a way for some super-genius to copy a feature of some other 3D app
(that has already happened during beta, and it took a week to recreate the new feature
and make it into an ICE compound).

Or even a way to use animated objects, particles, faces,
vertices, edges, velocity of faces, etc. to drive shading components.

No, it's much, much more than that. It's a way to do all the things (and more)
I have listed above, and have them be inter-depenedant upon each other.
It allows anything in the scene to read from and/or control
anything else in the scene.

It is a totally new platform upon which future versions of XSI will build.
This new version is just the beginning. Part of the reason I think that
the word "Moondust" didn't apply is that it implies this is "just" a kick-ass
particle system.

Sure, it is that, and some.

But it is also a new way for Softimage to create XSI. Currently, if you want
to use any of the tools in XSI (pre-ICE) you would need to create your own via the API.

That's not my thing. I would probably destroy my computer trying to do something
like that, or get thrown out of public places for all the swearing I would be doing!

Now with ICE, you can take any tool in XSI and either explore how it was made
yourself, or make a new one using what is already there, adding in functionality
that didn't exist in the pre-packaged tool that comes from Softimage.

As XSI continues to evolve, more and more tools will be converted to ICE nodes
(which, by the way, run MUCH faster than the hard-coded tools) allowing you
to expand upon them and make them your own.

It's like a painter being given the tools to make his own brushes and paints,
who, together with a community of other painters, creates new colors and
invents new brushes to make his or her life easier. Why should they want to make
their life easier? To have more time to make art, and then go home to their
families.

This, in short, is what ICE is all about.

[Buexe]

So it is like the Maya Dependency Graph with a nicer interface or what?

[rjw]

In Houdini you can already do things like generating and copying geometry etc which aren't available in ICE yet, but you don't have the lowest level of granularity to do something like pulling any data you want and using it somewhere else (IE: try to raytrace a surface inside the scene, derive tangency, cross product with a normal and then use that as incremental velocity for nearby fields). This level of granularity and the sheer speed of execution, not to mention the fact it's all elegantly wrapped in a friendly interface (encapsulated in an op in the operator stack) set XSI apart from Houdini.

I would have expected more from a moderator of these forums. At least pose questions regarding features about software you obviously haven't mastered as opposed to passing on as what you see as fact. To be frank, you have in essence lied and defamed Side Effects and Houdini.

As a houdini artist, I seamlessly weave geometry attributes, calculating surface derivatives, etc. in numerous ways and play with this data in and out of shaders, simulations and more. Yes all without writing code and at a very low level. Essentially doing everything on a daily basis (without code :) ) that you claim can't be done in Houdini.

Next time please post questions when you don't understand something or see percieved limitations in a tool and let's have them discussed in the open. Preferrably on OdForce. ;)

XSI has made a leap forward in to the procedural data game. About time and at least 20 years too late AFIK. This will make it easier for both XSI and Houdini guys to talk to each other and see each application for what it is. Win-win as I see it.

In Houdini you can write your own low level nodes in an accessible language to TD's (not c++ like ICE) or better yet use the visual builder (very similar to ICE) to build your own custom nodes. Houdini uses a simple shader language that is compiled on the fly (vex) and can be copy-paste reused as surface and displacement shaders. Houdini TD's are used to getting down to the lowest level of data and using VOP (shader) networks to write your own noise patterns and more. This certainly counters your assertions and there are countless other ways to get this "low".

Just keep an open mind guys. A tool's just a tool.


-jeff

[ThE_JacO]

I would have expected more from a moderator of these forums. At least pose questions regarding features about software you obviously haven't mastered as opposed to passing on as what you see as fact. To be frank, you have in essence lied and defamed Side Effects and Houdini.

As a houdini artist, I seamlessly weave geometry attributes, calculating surface derivatives, etc. in numerous ways and play with this data in and out of shaders, simulations and more. Yes all without writing code and at a very low level. Essentially doing everything on a daily basis (without code :) ) that you claim can't be done in Houdini.

I'm not saying the lower level isn't present in the application, I'm just saying it's not its primary focus when it comes to interaction.
Controlling sampling even before adding a point and looking up the emitter's data in ICE is trivial and the interfacing is explicit.
In houdini a lot of functions are at that point are present but often not presented as atomical nodes.

Things like sampling a surface and returning a transformation frameset of the emission location, and then filtering it, aren't as straightforward as putting a getdata emitlocation.whatever and then piping it into a comparison still inside the pop.

You will be perfectly able to access this lowest level of data, but not to process it by nodes as simple as getdata or crossproduct (I'm not talking vex + vops here), you will need a deper understanding of the application to do such things, and they won't be anywhere in the same realm of performance.

I might be mistaken, but please tell me how you can, inside a pop (the equivalent of an ice op on a point cloud to all effects) insert a raytracing node, or lookup the velocity at the previous frame and plug it into a crossproduct node together with the output of the raytracing node's returned locator.

You accuse me of not having mastered the applicaton (which is fine, I never needed to to obtain the results I wanted, which is why I liked it in first place), but I have to ask if you've used ICE and you actually understand what I'm talking about when I mention the accessibility of the lower level data.
This is the last I'll post about it because it's OT and needlessly confrontational, but you're over reacting to me drawing a line where I think the difference stands like if I actually questioned the validity of a different approach (which I didn't).

If you can show me an (efficiently multithreaded) node with polymorphic ports called multiplication that I can put inside a POP and plug derivatives into (coming from a node called raytracing possibly), I'll be happy to simply step back and say I've never got anything out of an app that I've used and seen used for a few years now.

If you were just set off on this by my use of the phrase "sets apart" that's my bad. Feel free to replace it with "make it different"

Cheers

[Skamierski]

does noone see here simialaries to thinking particles?
looks like a nice TP solution for xsi with some more features and a fluid system

VERY NICE softimage
congratulations

[Chokmah]

I use XSI and Houdini personnaly.

The procedural approach of Houdini is very powerfull.

I love the artist friendly and clean interface of XSI.

So I think it is a good thing that XSI now use the procedural approach of Houdini .

It is a step foreward for this application .

:)

[benytone]

Fantastic News :thumbsup:

does noone see here simialaries to thinking particles?
looks like a nice TP solution for xsi with some more features and a fluid system


looks like Cinema4D's XPresso and TP are integrated into ICE.....hehe


.

[harovas]

So it is like the Maya Dependency Graph with a nicer interface or what?

The dependancy graph is so behind the times and over-burdened with
10 years of code that I cannot even begin to tell you how that isn't
even close to being a useful comparison.

Not meant to direct my anger at you, Buexe, just in general at the comparison
between the two applications.

We have all seen over the years that Maya is not like Houdini, even though the
people at "Alias" (remember that version of their name?) used to proclaim
that it was procedural.

Well, sure it is, sort of. In fact, almost any 3D app. with a history stack could
be called procedural. It still doesn't make that software 'Houdini-procedural'., and Maya's
Depenedancy Graph doesn't make it ICE either.

In the end, everyone should just use what they are happy with, and we should all
just go make great looking stuff. For those that are tired of their current tools,
Softimage now offers an alternative to those tools and to Houdini. Those other tools
(AND Houdini) still have merit and value for anyone that assigns it to them.
Meaning, if you use a tool, and it does what you want it to, then it makes you happy.

No need to throw out your hammer for another one, if all you are doing is hammering nails.
As long as your current hammer works, great, no need to upgrade!

If you want to venture into other areas like cutting wood, then the hammer isn't
a useless tool, it's just joined in your toolbox by a saw.

I have run into walls with Maya for years, and usually they were broken down by
having a programmer write Mel for me or code a custom plugin. I have been using
XSI for years now, and I still run into walls where I need something the software doesn't
do on it's own. Now I have a way to make it do that, myself. And when I am done,
I'll happily share with all of you. That's a cool way to build a community and grow it.

Thanks for listening.

Perry

[frogspasm]

This does look very impressive. I've never been a Softimage user, but this makes it look very tempting to look into now. Whenever an application gives it's users more under the hood access it's a good thing.

[slipknot66]

Importons, Irradiance particles, proxy objects and complete gamma control.
Thats impressive.
BSP2, i hope they fixed some bugs with this, as in Maya was having some serious problems.

[Ohmanoggin]

Q: "nICE. Are you going to offer a demo for those who would like to try XSI 7?"

The site says an XSI 7 trial will be "available soon".

Ohmanoggin

[Steve Green]

It looks very interesting - I'm not suprised they've cut off Foundation, when it first appeared at the price I wondered how it could be sustained.

They've certainly got more of my attention in one release than the last few releases of Max have done.

- Steve

[tc]

I do wonder though why you are not all using Houdini since it has been able to do this (and much more) for about 10 years...

Well because XSI is not just ICE.

while ICE can get as powerful as houdini, there is the whole artist-driven approach to XSI that you cannot find in Houdini, it's actually easier to learn and get used to.

Houdini has many many years of Node based development and obviously more possibilities over nodes right now (not that you can't get the same result in other packages...), but the node based approach in Houdini is essentially everything you have to work with.

Then in XSI you get the gigapolycore, the new caching system for ICE, the entire models concept together with Delta II, the power of ICE as an operator, NLA that goes over everything, all the interactive workflow that ICE has to offer, all the character tools, deep integration with mentalray...
All that in XSI is very transparent and accessible for artists.

So it gets down to the point where some people/artists simple don't like to use nodes. They don't care with whatever data you are passing or how much low level control you have. They just wanna do their thing and they want it fast.

Happens that you need to know a lot about Data in it's basic form to properly use Houdini. It get's hard to throw it on your art team and then you need to go through a mixed pipeline for the most basic tasks... And that's where XSI wins as a package.
It got it all now, everything that is good. And it's well designed for further development.

You put it in the hands of the TD guy who has all the under the hood power of ICE and/or the OO SDK... Or in the artist that can actually use that power as an ICE op on his character work.
And believe me, lots of this compounds will pop on the net as soon as they release this thing.

I might risk myself here to say that, but I think that if any 3d suite was re-written from the ground up, it would end up pretty much like XSI 7.

[DavidWeinstein]

Win A Copy of Softimage XSI 7 (http://digitalapprentice.net/Community/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24&Itemid=52)

Hey All, I'd like the say XSI 7 is going to be pretty awesome! We are delighted to mention that Digital Apprentice Workshop (www.digitalapprentice.net (http://www.digitalapprentice.net)) is hosting a 3D Modeling Competition. The Contest with is FREE to enter and is being sponsored by Softimage and others!

Judges are some of the worlds most talented productions artists that have worked on projects such as: Transformers, Hellgate London, Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones, Hellboy, The Matrix 2 & 3, Narnia 1 & 2, Command and Conquer 3, Monster House, War of the Worlds, Half-Life 2 and James Cameron's upcoming SciFi epic "Avatar".

Go ahead and CLICK HERE (http://digitalapprentice.net/Community/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24&Itemid=52) to check out the contest details page and more info about winning a copy of Softimage XSI 7! All the best, -D

[Buexe]

The dependancy graph is so behind the times and over-burdened with
10 years of code that I cannot even begin to tell you how that isn't
even close to being a useful comparison.

Not meant to direct my anger at you, Buexe, just in general at the comparison
between the two applications.

We have all seen over the years that Maya is not like Houdini, even though the
people at "Alias" (remember that version of their name?) used to proclaim
that it was procedural.

Well, sure it is, sort of. In fact, almost any 3D app. with a history stack could
be called procedural. It still doesn't make that software 'Houdini-procedural'., and Maya's
Depenedancy Graph doesn't make it ICE either.

In the end, everyone should just use what they are happy with, and we should all
just go make great looking stuff. For those that are tired of their current tools,
Softimage now offers an alternative to those tools and to Houdini. Those other tools
(AND Houdini) still have merit and value for anyone that assigns it to them.
Meaning, if you use a tool, and it does what you want it to, then it makes you happy.

No need to throw out your hammer for another one, if all you are doing is hammering nails.
As long as your current hammer works, great, no need to upgrade!

If you want to venture into other areas like cutting wood, then the hammer isn't
a useless tool, it's just joined in your toolbox by a saw.

I have run into walls with Maya for years, and usually they were broken down by
having a programmer write Mel for me or code a custom plugin. I have been using
XSI for years now, and I still run into walls where I need something the software doesn't
do on it's own. Now I have a way to make it do that, myself. And when I am done,
I'll happily share with all of you. That's a cool way to build a community and grow it.

Thanks for listening.

Perry

Thanks for writing so much, but I couldn`t find an answer to my question. I am interested in learning what is so special about this, nothing more and nothing less. So far the best point people give here, is that you can share the stuff, it`s multi-threaded and works across continents. To be honest arguments like that don`t impress me, give me some hard facts or at least tell me which video is the most awesome one to watch so I can see for myself, because after the second one I thought "okay `nuff general-awesome-marketing-bla-bla". Thanks

[ThirdEye]

looks like Cinema4D's XPresso and TP are integrated into ICE...

I was thinking the same thing, but Xpresso is 6 years old now, surely ICE is a bit ahead in terms of speed and usability. Ah and btw don't forget their integration level is deeper since after so many years we don't even have material nodes in there yet.

[PiotrekM]

great stuff SI

but why softimage's news are always trolled by maya/max haters ?

[ThirdEye]

but why softimage's news are always trolled by maya/max haters ?

They're not, people are just trying to understand how this system works and how good it is, nothing more, nothing less, and so far Soft betatesters have been helpful to explain how ICE works. So avoid comments like this one, they could generate unnecessary flames.

[harovas]

Thanks for writing so much, but I couldn`t find an answer to my question. I am interested in learning what is so special about this, nothing more and nothing less. So far the best point people give here, is that you can share the stuff, it`s multi-threaded and works across continents. To be honest arguments like that don`t impress me, give me some hard facts or at least tell me which video is the most awesome one to watch so I can see for myself, because after the second one I thought "okay `nuff general-awesome-marketing-bla-bla". Thanks

OK, put simply (and just one reason why it's special) you can create your own tools
and not have to be a programmer. At all. Pakage it up, and hell, DON'T share it with
anyone else, just keep it for yourself. Whether you share it or not isn't what makes
it special, it's that you can do it at all and not have to be a programmer (or even close
to being a programmer) to do it. When you are done, export it out to your own hard drive
and next time you want that cool effect, or cool tool you created for another client,
it's there for you anytime you want it. And best of all, it isn't tied to a piece of geometry
that you created it for/on. It becomes a general tool able to be used on any other
piece of geometry. That's what makes it so useful. as a community, as well as
per-user. It's not like importing or merging scenes, where you get tons of unwanted
stuff imported into your scene when all you want is one small part. This is non-trivial right now (pre-ICE).

Hey, if you want to use Maya, or Houdini, or Lightwave or anything else no one is
stopping you, and I am certainly not going to be upset. I'm just letting you know
why I think this is special to me, and to people who use XSI. I happen to think people
that use other apps will also find it useful, but if not, no big deal. In any case, I appreciate
the interest and the lack of agression (nice change from some of the other forums
I've been on in the past)!

Take care,

Perry

[Jesse-Irvin]

Thanks for writing so much, but I couldn`t find an answer to my question. I am interested in learning what is so special about this, nothing more and nothing less. So far the best point people give here, is that you can share the stuff, it`s multi-threaded and works across continents. To be honest arguments like that don`t impress me, give me some hard facts or at least tell me which video is the most awesome one to watch so I can see for myself, because after the second one I thought "okay `nuff general-awesome-marketing-bla-bla". Thanks

Watch the lower two, the "ICE deform in XSI7" and the "ICE Particles in XSI7' Hope that helps

[Werner]

Is there anything new on UV unwrapping in XSI 7?

[Tamis]

First of i would like to say, cool features.
I think this will increase XSI capability's.

That said i would like to state that i think it is rather sad that Softimage did not mentioned SideFX::Houdini as the company that invented the procedual aprouch in the first place.
Instead they call it a new revolution in 3D and mark it as there own idea.

Altho i havn't seen XSI::ICE i do not believe that ICE would be either faster or have more capabillitys then SideFX::Houdini this is simply because houdini is completly based on a procedual approuch and has been in development for years.

[AUMAKUA]

Awesome news! can't wait to see more feature clips! :bounce:

[Buexe]

OK, put simply (and just one reason why it's special) you can create your own tools
and not have to be a programmer. At all. Pakage it up, and hell, DON'T share it with
anyone else, just keep it for yourself. Whether you share it or not isn't what makes
it special, it's that you can do it at all and not have to be a programmer (or even close
to being a programmer) to do it. When you are done, export it out to your own hard drive
and next time you want that cool effect, or cool tool you created for another client,
it's there for you anytime you want it. And best of all, it isn't tied to a piece of geometry
that you created it for/on. It becomes a general tool able to be used on any other
piece of geometry. That's what makes it so useful. as a community, as well as
per-user. It's not like importing or merging scenes, where you get tons of unwanted
stuff imported into your scene when all you want is one small part. This is non-trivial right now (pre-ICE).

Hey, if you want to use Maya, or Houdini, or Lightwave or anything else no one is
stopping you, and I am certainly not going to be upset. I'm just letting you know
why I think this is special to me, and to people who use XSI. I happen to think people
that use other apps will also find it useful, but if not, no big deal. In any case, I appreciate
the interest and the lack of agression (nice change from some of the other forums
I've been on in the past)!

Take care,

Perry
Thanks for explaining. I`m just an interested person who just happened to use Maya for a long time and know my way around. But that doesn`t stop me from checking out what happens elsewhere in an unbiased fashion. So, what you are referring to as a tool, is that like some nodes plugged together to give you an effect like a deformation for example this is packaged into something modular so that you can easily plug it into another scene, right? This is what I got so far, please correct me if I`m wrong.
Thanks and cheers, I´ll check out those vids the OT mentioned

[SirNeo]

Thats great news:thumbsup:

[xLess]

OMG! fascinating...

[Bullit]

you can create your own tools and not have to be a programmer.

Sorry to be crude but that is etereal since it doesnt answer the question which is what tools i can create.
From looking at videos it is still unclear the extension of it(and flv. video resolution doesnt help reading all interface).
A list of available nodes and where they can be attached might help.

[pooby]

and flv. video resolution doesnt help reading all interface


click on full screen and it will

[Gatsu]

Xsi 7 is not houdini...not at all
Xsi 7 it`s Xsi plus the first incarnation of Ice. wich give you
the same power that houdini gives you when you work with point clouds (particles,deformations etc)

And you access that power in the same way houdini does ...with a node based system

Why?

Because it`s the best way to do it. nothing more and nothing less

Of course Ice it`s much more than that and being one of the beta tester I can tell you
I saw some pretty impressive stuff done with it... and the future look very bright believe me

Softimage is doing what SideFx did with Houdini 9, but in the opposite direction
Where houdini was trying to be more like a normal 3d package, Xsi is tryng to be more procedural

What`s wrong with that :)

[Danehy]

OMGOMGOMG!

I can't wait to try it out and get some ICE!

[Chokmah]

Hehe Gatsu, I really agree with you.
This is exactly the vision I have about the evolution of these two softwares.

IMO Softimage and Sidefx put their softwares in the right direction :

A software that is user friendly, and allow procedural work.

I personnaly think that is the way the 3D softwares will have to follow in th future ^^.

[MiguelAngeloCBT]

How much will be the price to upgrade from XSI 6.5 Essentials to XSI 7 ?

[harovas]

Thanks for explaining. I`m just an interested person who just happened to use Maya for a long time and know my way around. But that doesn`t stop me from checking out what happens elsewhere in an unbiased fashion. So, what you are referring to as a tool, is that like some nodes plugged together to give you an effect like a deformation for example this is packaged into something modular so that you can easily plug it into another scene, right? This is what I got so far, please correct me if I`m wrong.
Thanks and cheers, I´ll check out those vids the OT mentioned

Yup, that's right.

The tools could be tools that come with XSI already, combined into a new one
that includes stuff you made to add to it's functionality, and tools you downloaded
from someone else if you wish, all packaged into one super-tool that does what
those others did, plus some (your changes or additions).

You can also restrict people from editing (and viewing the included nodes) of a compound (tool) if you want to,
therefore protexting your intellectual prpperty, but still allowing them to be able
to use it in their own scenes. This also brings up the point that if someone wants
to they can restrict artists from being able to edit the compound, and just be forced to use the
parameters that were exposed by the compound's creator. They wouldn't even be able
to see the nodes that make it up, therefore making it secure.

Another cool part is that when Softimage wants to, it cn add new features by
just releasing new compounds. Since these are not simply particle systems,
but built with the same nodes that all their other shiiping tools are built with,
then the addition of new features becomes easy to do without the huge
marketing push and prep usually associated with a new feature.

So, as they develop cool new functions, they can throw them out there to
the community and see what comes back at them. Next time a new version
is released the traditional way, those compounds could very well make it into
the release version.

All good in my opinion!

Take care.

Perry

[jgoldfin]

We'll be celebrating our ICE announcement at Siggraph at our annual User Event, and we welcome all SIGGRAPH attendees.

Tuesday, August 12th from 8pm-1am.

It's going to be a great party, and all of the Softimage staff (R&D, special projects, sales and marketing) who are at the show will be available to chat with during the event.

Come see ICE in person in LA. Here's the link to register:
http://softimage.com/events/sig08/userEvent/

Hope you can make it!

jen

[Buexe]

All good in my opinion!

Take care.

Perry

Yeah, I checked the other vids now and it makes a lot of senseand opens up a lot of possibilities. At first when they talked about interactive environment and stuff and showed this snow mountain with trees, I thought ICE is a landscape generator like Vue XStream :) But now I have a better idea.
Thanks for sharing the info!
Cheers!

[L33tace]

How much will be the price to upgrade from XSI 6.5 Essentials to XSI 7 ?
You should probably contact your reseller.

Ice ice baby

[Array]

Excellent stuff!

How much will be the price to upgrade from XSI 6.5 Essentials to XSI 7 ?

I came here to ask this very same thing :)

[DougNicola]

screengrab (scaled down) showing basic ICE nodes

http://www.realfunart.com/images/basic_nodes1.jpg

[DougNicola]

more basic ICE nodes

http://www.realfunart.com/images/basic_nodes2.jpg

[DougNicola]

current particle compounds

http://www.realfunart.com/images/particle_compounds.jpg

[verbal007]

...but you can't deny that this helps push the industry in the right direction. I dream of the day when we can access this workflow using multipoint touchscreen & advanced voice recognition (http://gizmodo.com/367341/audeo-neckband-translates-your-thoughts-into-speech-voicelessly).

Converting a Siggraph paper into a funictioning node network example? Nice one!

I said "NICE ONE" Softimage!!

- Jeremy

[Klasz]

these screens do look insane !
it seems they created a very powerful friendly graphical way of programming xsi.
if only xsi was my everyday app.... being already impressed by what i can do whith my poor maxscripting knowaledge in max and python in other little apps, i just don't dare imagine what one can do whith this jewel !!! it seems you can litterally access to the very core of the thing !
amazing

[vlad74]

Really, really impressive. The sky is the limit.

[Hawksmoor]

Just looking at those screens fills me with fear ;)

Looks like a real power increase those possibly making it more houdini like and less... artistic? (says an art bear of little brain)a

[harovas]

Just looking at those screens fills me with fear ;)

Looks like a real power increase those possibly making it more houdini like and less... artistic? (says an art bear of little brain)a

Really no reason to worry. There are two sections ( you can see them in the screen grabs)

Task

Tool

The Task section is more for things that do specific tasks, with clear names that
describe what you want to do. You hook these up (they only connect to ports
that make sense, so you really can't screw it up) and away you go.

The Tool section is where all the low level nodes are (many of these are part of the
compounds that make up the Task section's nodes). These are there for the TD's
of the world, but are not really all that scary once you see how the Task compounds
are put together. You don't really HAVE to use the Tool nodes, but you will want
to when you realize how easy it is to create these little machines all on your own.

The most powerful part of this whole thing, in my opinion, is the "State Machine".

Basically it lets you create events, where when a trigger is set off (for instance when
a particle hits a surface) then it kicks into a whole new state, which can have its
own attributes, colors, behaviors, triggers, etc. When that state's trigger is set off,
it can become an entirely new type of particle system, and on and on and on.

And this happens per-particle, in real time.

Really amazingly cool.

[Jozvex]

I'm certainly impressed! This is exactly what XSI needed (and way more)!

:thumbsup:

[DougNicola]

XSI will never be beat in the artistic ease of use department, IMO. And ICE just enhances the artistic factor on so many levels.

It is breathtaking, once you get past the initial bit of learning, just how easy it can be to create with ICE.

Of course, ICE also allows incredibly low-level access for anyone who wishes, with infinite possibilities, as the screengrabs show. I was astonished at how fast many of those particle compounds were created, revised, tested and debugged during the last several months of beta testing.

When faced with the vast scope of ICE, it may be hard not to freak out a bit when you experience it for the first time. Sort of like that scene in Zathura when the kids open the front door to see they are now floating in deep space, with an immense galactic panorama as their new view.

But I have no doubt Softimage and others are going to make this a wonderful experience for new users, both artistic and TD-oriented. There will be many great docs, videos, and examples. Much of this is already well along. And also lots of support from the community, of course. The XSI community is going to be an incredble place to be as all this magic unfolds!

~Doug

[Boone]

Getting rid of Foundation? Now that is a very bold move I must say. Without sales from the lower end of the market Softimage is going to have to work harder to compete with max and maya...XSI 7 had better live up to its claims or its going to have an extremely hard fight ahead with the two industry standards...

[inguatu]

XSI will never be beat in the artistic ease of use department, IMO. And ICE just enhances the artistic factor on so many levels.

It is breathtaking, once you get past the initial bit of learning, just how easy it can be to create with ICE.

Of course, ICE also allows incredibly low-level access for anyone who wishes, with infinite possibilities, as the screengrabs show. I was astonished at how fast many of those particle compounds were created, revised, tested and debugged during the last several months of beta testing.

When faced with the vast scope of ICE, it may be hard not to freak out a bit when you experience it for the first time. Sort of like that scene in Zathura when the kids open the front door to see they are now floating in deep space, with an immense galactic panorama as their new view.

But I have no doubt Softimage and others are going to make this a wonderful experience for new users, both artistic and TD-oriented. There will be many great docs, videos, and examples. Much of this is already well along. And also lots of support from the community, of course. The XSI community is going to be an incredble place to be as all this magic unfolds!

~Doug

yes.. great and all about ICE. But what else does 7 have to offer? Given a choice to learn 7 or Houdini for dynamics/particles, I'd go with Houdini.

[SimonPickard]

The thing that excites me the most about this is the upload feature.
This is just a crazy good idea.... if done correctly.

Within a few months of this being out there's going to be 100's of presets ready to download and slap into your scenes.. Need a fluid sim... we've got 46 of those already... Cloth deform you say? Here's 30 different types..

..or.. if you can't find exactly what you're looking for download the closest thing to it, change it, then upload your new version, etc, etc.

This for me is the biggest thing about ICE.

However... If these uploads aren't vetted things could get messy VERY quickly. I'd hate to see another xsi.net where scripts were out of date, crashed your scene, etc.

Is there going to be active maintaince FROM SOFTIMAGE for these tools?
I sure hope so, as this could really be a huge turning point for them if used well.

Great stuff.

Regards,
Simon

[Ordibble-Plop]

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but are these Compounds easily transferable between 64 and 32 bit versions?

[DougNicola]

There is more new in XSI 7 than ICE (much more) and I've no doubt XSI 7.5, 8.0, etc will rocket forward at light speed.

XSI and Houdini are both great apps. I'm not really interested in comparing the two (too much :).) If I need Houdini for something commercial XSI couldn't do, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. And if you are a starving, and non-commercial, artist, well...

I've looked at Houdini several times since the v8 cycle. I prefer the better overall balance XSI has between ease of use and depth (IMO) in multiple areas that I use all the time. Simply my preference.

And ICE is far from just particles/dynamics.

Speaking just of ICE, this is a version 1.0 incarnation of something that changes the very core of XSI in numerous ways. Seeing this evolve just in the last few months has blown my mind. Who knows where it will be in a couple of years? I think I can guess pretty well where Houdini will be in a couple of years.

I'm personally more interested in getting the most from XSI now, and knowing it will innovate up the wazoo just by the nature of what it is.

~Doug

[DougNicola]

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but are these Compounds easily transferable between 64 and 32 bit versions?

There is no difference. AFAIK.

~Doug

[tc]

I will be hosting some videos from the example in the XSI-Brasil website,
Here is one if you are wondering how interactive the thing is:
just click on it to watch
http://www.xsi-brasil.com/XSI_7/mesh_on_mesh_deform/mesh_on_mesh.html
http://www.xsi-brasil.com/XSI_7/mesh_on_mesh_deform/mesh_deform.png (http://www.xsi-brasil.com/XSI_7/mesh_on_mesh_deform/mesh_on_mesh.html)



Pay attention to the viewport easily hitting 60 FPS ;)

[nt65]

Hi Leonard,
Why should I buy XSI instead of Maya?

I am currently sitting on the fence with these two apps. I have just spent $250 on Maya books and tuts. I have more experience in node based compositing, and I instantly gravitated towards the node flow XSI has and understand its capabilities.

I am about to jump into 3D modeling and would be interested to hear your thoughts on why I should go with XSI instead of Maya. I dont want to start any flame wars - but am keen to hear your views.

cheers,
nick

[Venkman]

I'm pretty impressed with this release. That particle system looks particularly cool (no pun intended, I swear!)

[SheepFactory]

TC keep em coming!


I asked Wurp to post the vid of the scatter tool he showed me. The fact that you can write those tools without any coding knowledge is like a dream come true to me.
--


I would like to hear more about how ICE effects other areas of XSI like modeling and animation. What are some of the cool things you can do with it in those areas? Any examples from the beta list now that you guys can spill the beans?

[Mic_Ma]

Looking at those nodes...they just look like the entries from the SDK docs. Visual programming! Great!

No FND though...very sad...

[threadsave]

TC keep em coming!

I would like to hear more about how ICE effects other areas of XSI like modeling and animation. What are some of the cool things you can do with it in those areas? Any examples from the beta list now that you guys can spill the beans?


It's pretty good for modeling. Just cobbled together a bend deformer in less than half an hour.

http://www.sukio.de/dump/bender.png

[Kabab]

Congratulations XSI very nice release :)

If your not sure what this is just think of it as a visual scripting system (something similar has been in virtools(game engine) for about a decade).

Having used a similar system in the above mentioned product i can tell you its going to be super easy for artists to create awesome effects.

[DuttyFoot]

holy freakin crap this is awesome. just checked out the videos, and its totally amazing what can be done with the new version of xsi. i use maya too, and seeing this is making me want to learn softimage.

[-Sai-]

It's nice to see Softimage is catching up with Houdini but I will have to think about " a groundbreaking technology".: )

[Strang]

their marketing department wouldn't be doing their job if they put "with this new technology we can finally catch up to houdini"

take it for what it is

s

[SheepFactory]

I will be hosting some videos from the example in the XSI-Brasil website,
Here is one if you are wondering how interactive the thing is:
just click on it to watch
http://www.xsi-brasil.com/XSI_7/mesh_on_mesh_deform/mesh_on_mesh.html
http://www.xsi-brasil.com/XSI_7/mesh_on_mesh_deform/mesh_deform.png (http://www.xsi-brasil.com/XSI_7/mesh_on_mesh_deform/mesh_on_mesh.html)



Pay attention to the viewport easily hitting 60 FPS ;)


By the way TC what are your system specs?

Did you notice animation playback improvements in general? I am guessing there should be substantial improvements now that the whole software is multithreaded.

[Strang]

Did you notice animation playback improvements in general? I am guessing there should be substantial improvements now that the whole software is multithreaded.

be careful, rigging is not part of this release. you shouldn't see improvements in rig speed and playback because of ice developments.

[SheepFactory]

be careful, rigging is not part of this release. you shouldn't see improvements in rig speed and playback because of ice developments.


That is pretty clashing with people reporting their characters which were playing back 3-5 fps in 6.5 now playing solid 35-45 fps in v7.

[erebos]

Just had a few questions about how far ICE V1.0 could go for a non-programmer like me. If this isn't the right place or time, then just let me know.

1. Could ICE be used to develop an easily controllable pelt unwrapping tool (ie, using some form of sim to flatten out the object and then transfer the info to UVs)?

2. Can ICE control the deformation/translation and positioning of copies of an initial object to act as a tree generator/ foliage creator? Could it also be used to distribute copies of objects and the alter the material associated with them in a way that could create natural environments?


3. Does ICE play well with the rendertree such that it will alter different parameters from different nodes based on different data you can access with the ICE tree? (eg. if in the burning tree example from the SI video, could i have the a new "burnt-out" tree material appear on the tree governed by where the fire had just finished it's effect?)

4. Does ICE also allow different textures and sources to be applied to different objects but using the same base rendertree (eg. apply the same material to a collection of rocks in a landslide simulation and then have the material alter depending on what they run into?)

5. My understanding is that ICE would allow for all sorts of spectacular fluid/wave sims, but how readily could this all be created? Would it be really be as effective and easy to control as a fluid sim which was designed to be a fluid sim from the ground up?

6. Can ICE create a fully interactive geometry-particle-simulation environment where not only can geometry interactions spawn particles, but particles spawn extra geometry. Eg. A snow scene where snow falling from the sky (a particle) that hits the ground creating more particles, eventually, the snow would become part of the snow covering the ground (added to the geometry) which may then be converted to water (a fluid-sim particle) depending on its proximity and time exposed to "heat-source" nulls, all of which is then part of a deformable physics sim that interacts with characters?

Cheers,
Erebos

[Kabab]

Getting rid of Foundation? Now that is a very bold move I must say. Without sales from the lower end of the market Softimage is going to have to work harder to compete with max and maya...XSI 7 had better live up to its claims or its going to have an extremely hard fight ahead with the two industry standards...
Does not surprised me the least bit foundation was not at a sustainable price they where only doing it as a hook to get max/maya people as they didn't have any other hook..

Now with ICE they have a technology advantage they don't need to drop their pants on price.

[Strang]

That is pretty clashing with people reporting their characters which were playing back 3-5 fps in 6.5 now playing solid 35-45 fps in v7.

like who?

non of my rigs just play back at a whopping 800% increase in speed. you rigs might play back faster because of general enhancements, i just dont want you guys to be disappointed that is all.

[BigPixolin]

I'm a max user and I'm only there anymore for MR 3.6.

I am very intersted in this release and now I'm going to take a seroius look at switching.

[Strang]

1. Could ICE be used to develop an easily controllable pelt unwrapping tool (ie, using some form of sim to flatten out the object and then transfer the info to UVs)?

i think this could be doable.


2. Can ICE control the deformation/translation and positioning of copies of an initial object to act as a tree generator/ foliage creator? Could it also be used to distribute copies of objects and the alter the material associated with them in a way that could create natural environments?

ICE cannot create objects dynamically at this time, the objects must exist already.


3. Does ICE play well with the rendertree such that it will alter different parameters from different nodes based on different data you can access with the ICE tree? (eg. if in the burning tree example from the SI video, could i have the a new "burnt-out" tree material appear on the tree governed by where the fire had just finished it's effect?)

4. Does ICE also allow different textures and sources to be applied to different objects but using the same base rendertree (eg. apply the same material to a collection of rocks in a landslide simulation and then have the material alter depending on what they run into?)

you can query nearly any attribute from your ICE tree and use it in the render tree. there are new nodes in the render tree called attributes, you pull one of these in based on data type, and choose which data you want to use.


6. Can ICE create a fully interactive geometry-particle-simulation environment where not only can geometry interactions spawn particles, but particles spawn extra geometry. Eg. A snow scene where snow falling from the sky (a particle) that hits the ground creating more particles, eventually, the snow would become part of the snow covering the ground (added to the geometry) which may then be converted to water (a fluid-sim particle) depending on its proximity and time exposed to "heat-source" nulls, all of which is then part of a deformable physics sim that interacts with characters?
thats pretty elaborate, but i dont see any issues with you doing this, particles can have different states so the motion can be easily done, the tricky part would be handling the rendering of the transitions from one to the other

[kees]

J... how far ICE V1.0 could go for a non-programmer like me.

[...]

1. Could ICE be used to develop an easily controllable pelt unwrapping tool (ie, using some form of sim to flatten out the object and then transfer the info to UVs)?

[...]



Is your only limitation right now that you do not know c++ or another scripting/programming language?

If that is your ONLY limitation of making a pelt unwrapper, then the answer is probably yes.

However I think for most people it isn't just the fact they don't know how to program, it is the fact they have no idea where to even start with the math involved to make a pelt program.

In the end, ICE is just another programming language. It is just more visual and allows for more trial and error (and removes a lot of other headaches that are involved with real programming).


And pelt-unwrapping is already a commonly describe and developed technique by now.
(Lots of reference material and math to look at)

Imagine trying to come up with a new tool that has not been done before, and having to try and figure out all the math involved all by yourself.

I'm not talking about making a particle-compound-node that simulates a particular fire effect or that kind of trial and error stuff where you just wire some combination of noise together. (not that those are not useful to share with the community)
I'm talking about solving a problem that cannot be achieved unless you REALLY know what you are doign with the math.

For example try to make a cloth sim out of nodes in ICE without knowing ahead of time how to do it (lets say nobody has made a cloth sim before). Or even try to read a Siggraph paper and try to even just understand the math involved and then try to imagine the tool required to write it.

It can be done, but you would first need to spend a great deal of time figuring out the math behind a cloth sim. By the time you have that figured out, I think you find that the actual programming part (c++ or ICE part) is a relatively small task.

So I think it won't allow a true artists to suddenly become a mathematical genius and solve these incredibly difficult problems. I think you'll be somewhat disappointed if you expect that to be the case.

Nonetheless, I think the ICE workflow will, little by little, allow you to learn more math and become more technical by trial and error and by looking at other peoples compound nodes and experimenting with them.

I think that is a great thing. It should be a lot more pleasant to look at an ICE graph then it is to look at someones c++ code and learn from that.

So don't expect miracles, but don't be dissapointed either. I think it will allow you to do a lot of things that you could not do before without programming knowledge, but maybe not as much (in the beginning) as your examples.

Take care!

[liquidik]

That is pretty clashing with people reporting their characters which were playing back 3-5 fps in 6.5 now playing solid 35-45 fps in v7.


Yup, waiting for that video too.

Anyway, some folks on an italian forum are talking about the envelope operator. They rewrote it with ICE nodes and they said it performed like 12 times faster.

Can't wait to test this things out :D

Gian

[fgdf]

Intresting. I'm waiting to see some new rigging features thanks to ICE (I hope). Maybe old solver isn't multithreaded?

[Strang]

Anyway, some folks on an italian forum are talking about the envelope operator. They rewrote it with ICE nodes and they said it performed like 12 times faster.

unfortunately from what i know, this isn't true. they made a dual quaternion envelope op, which actually runs a percentage slower than the original envelope op (which i believe has been multithreaded for many versions now) but you gain the better volume preservation.

[ThomasLC]

can ICE add polygons to objects, manage clusters (including name) ?

is it possible to do some "procedural" selection ?

something like : get all the border polygons that are in a particular cluster, extrude them, get the newly added polygons (not the original displaced ones), create a new cluster with them, do something else with them, and so on ?

[Kel Solaar]

Impressive Stuff, Hope they will release this really soon :)

[Strang]

can ICE add polygons to objects, manage clusters (including name) ?

is it possible to do some "procedural" selection ?

something like : get all the border polygons that are in a particular cluster, extrude them, get the newly added polygons (not the original displaced ones), create a new cluster with them, do something else with them, and so on ?

nope sorry, lets hope for topo editing in the future

[ThomasLC]

aarrrrggg !

well, I sure hope softimage will add these nodes to the ICE arsenal very soon !

anyway, can't wait to use it, or at least read the docs and the sdk ! that would be a refreshing beach-reading this summer !

[doctorx256]

great upgrade, cheers to softimage for this stunning release...

[Chris-TC]

THIS is what a new version release should look like. Softimage delivers yet again, I'm completely blown away!
Can't wait to get my hands on this, it's gonna be awesome.

[PetrZ]

be careful, rigging is not part of this release. you shouldn't see improvements in rig speed and playback because of ice developments.

No skin deformations (envelopes) on GPU, no true real-time speed playback with a more complicated rigs ?
So we have to stack with motion builder still :(
But I still hope :)

[JBoskma]

This release looks hot Leo! The announcement material looks great too! Loved the ICE videos. High five to you Mark and Jodi!

[maantas]

i was wating for this releace or so long... finaly..
strange that it is so "out of the blue" i meen no rumors, nothing, just bang!
sins i am not xsi user (stil... :( ) i can coment only that i liked moodust better:) as a name, but i guess ace macks more sense...
ah well kant whate to check it out...
m.

[ThE_JacO]

i was wating for this releace or so long... finaly..
strange that it is so "out of the blue" i meen no rumors, nothing, just bang!
Due to its financial configuration Avid (and Softimage as a consequence) cannot announce a product unless it's within the same quarter of release.
Q3 begins in July, they couldn't announce any sooner :)

sins i am not xsi user (stil... :( ) i can coment only that i liked moodust better:) as a name, but i guess ace macks more sense...
ah well kant whate to check it out...
m.
A lot of people did, but I think there were trademark/registered name issues with it.

[sara_qq]

how does this compare to houdini?

[ThE_JacO]

how does this compare to houdini?
It's been touched already, but apparently mentioning the sacred church of Houdini in a comparison is sensitive material :) so it might be better left to another time and thread.

[LucentDreams]

It's nice to see Softimage is catching up with Houdini but I will have to think about " a groundbreaking technology".: )
Been a lot of houdini comparisons but lets not forget Cinema's had this level of nodal expression and particle control for over 6 years too. And releasing about how a few guys were able to make a quaternion skin solver using ICE, again cool but sad that they had to in the first place when an app like cinema's had it built in for 2 years now. Reminds me of an old rigging thread where I'd basically built the Eisner Spine using xpresso in cinema and was laughed at that I'd have to when xsi has it included, funny how things turn around.


Its great to see it Multithreaded its for a brand new nodal system I'd say it would be stupid not to, but it does give them an advantage, so the work on ICE is very impressive, but this innovation and revolutionary stuff is just ridiculous there's not an original concept in the entire feature set of ICE, its just a well implemented system. But hey its marketing making those claims not the developers, speaking from experience is amazing how much marketing can mislead or misrepresent. My biggest disappointment with the release is the dramatic focus on the particle side of things compared to other uses. Seems like their missing out on promoting a lot of the other uses.


As fr the dropping of foundation, it was bound to happen especially with the dollar being what it is now. Hard to keep up such a pricing scheme and I think it largely did what it needed to, get the app exposed to more hobbiest /freelancers and outside of just the highend and studio base. Now that its got some userbase as well as a lot of exposure there they don't' need to keep hurting the pocketbook. The allure is there people will pay for it.

[manuel]

Now that Foundation is gone, what version would people who want to learn XSI have to use? Is Mod Tools the only option left?

Or can you still get Foundation 6.01 somewhere? One glance at the Softimage website suggests they pulled it off the shelf the moment they announced 7.

[tc]

Now that Foundation is gone, what version would people who want to learn XSI have to use? Is Mod Tools the only option left?

Or can you still get Foundation 6.01 somewhere? One glance at the Softimage website suggests they pulled it off the shelf the moment they announced 7.

if you will learn you can get the educational version, full featured for $295 bucks. Can't just work with it.

Or go Modtool for free but it lack features like mentalray, compositing... etc. And obviously ICE.

[ThE_JacO]

I keep seeing Houdini, Xpresso, TP and all brought up, but curiously never by somebody who's actually used ICE; probably because those people know better.

The similarity is that they are all nodal systems, but the wiring approach and the granularity of nodes DO make the platforms very, very different (not to mention the multithreading, which is NOT trivial, and that comes from other SW developers who insofar failed at implementing anything similar because "impossible")

If you can't generate and filter 10 million samples and manipulate at very low level a couple millions particles created from that sampling pool, you're simply not playing the same game.
In abstract theory I could create a bunch of nodes that iterate and operate on points, but the possibilities and ease of use ARE NOT the same if you don't have the performance and the smooth UI to deal with it.

Going by those standards FIAT and Ferrari are exactly the same, and Ferrari engineering isn't much to talk about, because they are all combustion engines and have four wheels.

[Kabab]

Sure but they are still not the first people to do it, the system is near identical to Virtools from the video's i have seen and that has been around for over a decade.

Nether the less its still a great step forward for Softimage/XSI.

[Srek]

I keep seeing Houdini, Xpresso, TP and all brought up, but curiously never by somebody who's actually used ICE; probably because those people know better.
I don't expect a realy usefull comparison on this from SI employees and XSI betatesters (just as i wouldn't expect it from MAXON employees etc. the other way around).
We will have to wait until normal users that have some good basic know how with Houdini, CINEMA 4D and others get XSI 7 in their hands and post of their experiences.

Cheers
Björn

[ThE_JacO]

I don't expect a realy usefull comparison on this from SI employees and XSI betatesters (just as i wouldn't expect it from MAXON employees etc. the other way around).
We will have to wait until normal users that have some good basic know how with Houdini, CINEMA 4D and others get XSI 7 in their hands and post of their experiences.

Cheers
Björn

That assumes none of the betatesters have extensive experience with other softwares, which is quite far from the truth.

People are free to think whatever they want of course, but I'd have been a lot happier about software companies if I had ever seen decent performance and usability out of a nodal system beside Houdini's.
As it stands I still have to see a single video, demo, example scene or even sequence of images showing the level of performance, scalability and access we're talking about here coming from any of the products that keep popping up.

Sure, you see the occasional thing with a handful of particles doing something, but when you try to do it and realize you need a few millions or you need to raytrace a few thousand polys for each particle to do it, things don't quite work as expected, and then you're back to square one.
"I once did this and that" and "we've had it for years just didn't market it" don't really fly very far I'm afraid :)

And with this I'm out of this part of the debate since this is, after all, a news thread about a company that's not maxon, sidefx, cebas or something else.

[manuel]

if you will learn you can get the educational version, full featured for $295 bucks. Can't just work with it.

Or go Modtool for free but it lack features like mentalray, compositing... etc. And obviously ICE.
I'm not a student, so no educational version for me. I guess I'll have to make do with the Mod tool. Am I right in saying that Modtool doesn't export MDD's?

[duke]

You're still going to need to know what it is you actually want to do, rather than just the end result. I imagine Digital Tutors or someone will release something in this department! I got a job in archi viz so I haven't touched XSI in months, but i'll probably give the trial a shot for some fun.

[shingo]

I don't expect a realy usefull comparison on this from SI employees and XSI betatesters (just as i wouldn't expect it from MAXON employees etc. the other way around).

Björn

No Soft employee has given an opinion on this thread. As for beta testers, there is nothing stipulated in the NDA that requires testers to be psycophants of Softimage. In fact, beta testers are often selected because they are well informed and highly demanding.

While it is true, the real test is when ICE is subjected to real world production situations, but having said that, the it doesn't take a genius to realise that Softimage are onto something pretty unique here.

[shingo]

XSI has made a leap forward in to the procedural data game. About time and at least 20 years too late AFIK.
-jeff

I take it this comment was made in jest. Houdini's predecessor, Prisms, wasn't even conceived in 1988. Still, it's no small achievement for Soft to not only rengineer/overhaul the core of XSI, but develop a whole new workflow, without sacrificing the traditional elegance of XSI's approach...and the while without so much a breaking step with development cycles.

[-Sai-]

I take it this comment was made in jest. Houdini's predecessor, Prisms, wasn't even conceived in 1988. Still, it's no small achievement for Soft to not only rengineer/overhaul the core of XSI, but develop a whole new workflow, without sacrificing the traditional elegance of XSI's approach...and the while without so much a breaking step with development cycles.

really? :curious:
CBC network logo from an animation done in PRISMS about 1986

http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?s=&showtopic=6892&view=findpost&p=46229

and side effects just celebrated their 20 years anniversary last year.

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=758&Itemid=66

[Srek]

No Soft employee has given an opinion on this thread. As for beta testers, there is nothing stipulated in the NDA that requires testers to be psycophants of Softimage. In fact, beta testers are often selected because they are well informed and highly demanding.

That's not different at all to how this works at MAXON. Some of the loudest people critizising CINEMA 4D are betatesters. My point was that beeing an employee or a betatester simply adds a bias. That's nothing i'm worried about and it's not only to be expected but from a realistic point of view even wanted to a degree. Who want's that employees or testers are biased against the company or product? Real neutrality is not humanly possible imo.

Please don't anyone misunderstand my comments here. Personaly i find ICE very impressive, but different to many others here it's not the actual features but the well thought out implementation that i find most interesting.
Congrats to the development team and Betatesters. Nice work :)

Cheers
Björn

[pablotesta]

Amazing release! CONGRATULATIONS SOFTIMAGE!
New tools and technology for the users, this is how a VERY GOOD company would be.

[shingo]

really? :curious:

and side effects just celebrated their 20 years anniversary last year.



Clutching at straws aren't we, seeing as the company was 1 year old, but point taken. Yes Sidefx existed, though it would be a stretch to argue that the architecture of that version of Prisms had any resemblance to Houdini, or that it's proceduralism wouldn't be regarded as primitive by today's standards.

[JesperK]

Congratulations Softimage.
This is hands down the most impressive release I have seen in a long time.

[TylerAZambori]

That assumes none of the betatesters have extensive experience with other softwares, which is quite far from the truth.

People are free to think whatever they want of course, but I'd have been a lot happier about software companies if I had ever seen decent performance and usability out of a nodal system beside Houdini's.
As it stands I still have to see a single video, demo, example scene or even sequence of images showing the level of performance, scalability and access we're talking about here coming from any of the products that keep popping up.

Sure, you see the occasional thing with a handful of particles doing something, but when you try to do it and realize you need a few millions or you need to raytrace a few thousand polys for each particle to do it, things don't quite work as expected, and then you're back to square one.
"I once did this and that" and "we've had it for years just didn't market it" don't really fly very far I'm afraid :)

And with this I'm out of this part of the debate since this is, after all, a news thread about a company that's not maxon, sidefx, cebas or something else.

I beleive he was talking about a lack of an objective viewpoint, not a lack of
experience. Extremely experienced people can also be very partisan, which makes
it extremely difficult to take anyone's opinion.

So it looks to me like this ICE might sort of be like virtual basic, only embedded
within 3D program. They just made it even more techno-geeky, and I'm not
into that.

[liltbrockie]

I beleive he was talking about a lack of an objective viewpoint, not a lack of
experience. Extremely experienced people can also be very partisan, which makes
it extremely difficult to take anyone's opinion.

So it looks to me like this ICE might sort of be like virtual basic, only embedded
within 3D program. They just made it even more techno-geeky, and I'm not
into that.

What the hell is Virtual Basic?

I'm really really really looking forward to this ICE stuff!

[pooby]

I'm not a student, so no educational version for me. I guess I'll have to make do with the Mod tool. Am I right in saying that Modtool doesn't export MDD's?

No, you're wrong. it does

[Ohmanoggin]

"...So it looks to me like this ICE might sort of be like virtual basic, only embedded
within 3D program. They just made it even more techno-geeky, and I'm not
into that."

When Maya came out, I heard the exact same thing about MEL- but artists couldn't get enough of it.

Mark my words- At Siggraph every other 3D app will be saying they have had ICE for years. Then when their next release comes out they will all of a sudden invent new ICE-like capabilities, even though "they have had it for years".

Whether you are into "techno-geeky" stuff or not, you can still benefit from the tools of other artists (not to mention programmers) who are inspired by what ICE can offer. So, you should at least be ecouraged by that aspect of it.

Ohmanoggin

[SFDD]

Not to take anything away from the ongoing "perspectives" sharing, but has anyone noticed that after being posted for only 24 hours, this thread is already the 3rd most viewed in this News forum's history? (Not counting sticky notes--but it's more popular than most of them too!)

I guess we know now which 3D app the CG industry really pays attention to most. ;)

[pablotesta]

Not to take anything away from the ongoing "perspectives" sharing, but has anyone noticed that after being posted for only 24 hours, this thread is already the 3rd most viewed in this News forum's history? (Not counting sticky notes--but it's more popular than most of them too!)

I guess we know now which 3D app the CG industry really pays attention to most. ;)

hehe I notice that this morning, congratulations for Softimage... something is changed :)

[FRimasson]

Not to take anything away from the ongoing "perspectives" sharing, but has anyone noticed that after being posted for only 24 hours, this thread is already the 3rd most viewed in this News forum's history? (Not counting sticky notes--but it's more popular than most of them too!)

I guess we know now which 3D app the CG industry really pays attention to most. ;)

Maya 2009 ?

I'm mainly using Zbrush as a digital sculptor, but i will certainly look closer to Xsi 7.

[GeneralLethal]

Hm I love XSi as much as anyone, but this thread ranks more like #100 here...

[SheepFactory]

Can we please stop with the stupid "my peni....thread is bigger than yours!" comparisons and go back to discussing xsi 7 please.

[sacslacker]

I'm pretty excited because I've been a transitioning Maya user but have always gone back because the particle dynamics stuff has always been a little lacking in XSI (at least in my feeble hands). ICE looks like it's exactly what the Dr. ordered. I'm extremely happy with Softimage ever since I picked up Essentials a year or so ago. Great update for XSI!

[tc]

http://www.xsi-brasil.com/XSI_7/ice_1mi_particles.jpg
http://www.xsi-brasil.com/XSI_7/ice_1mi_particles.jpg

1 million particles got generated all at once with random colors assign to it, in less than one second. Machine is a 64bit setup with a Dual Quadcore 2gb ram.
Viewport navigation goes at +30fps using a Geforce GT 8800 card.

While this is not a production situation, XSI|ICE is meant to be highly scalable and stable, so the power is there when you need it.

The Particle Count icon is part of the debugging interface available in ICE. It can output information from specific parts of the graph, helping to visualize, understand the graph and solve problems.

If you ever used the XSI node based Rendertree, build an ICEtree will be pretty much like that on steroids, at scene level.
(...but not just that :))

[wurp]

here is a video demonstrating a scatter compound I made during the early betas:
http://www.ericknelson.com/wurp/ice_scatter.mov

It has the option to either put an instance at the position of each vertex on the sourcemesh OR to randomly scatter the instances across the surface. As you can see it's all interactive so as you add more points to the mesh it creates new instances there automatically. It also tries to scale down the instances that are close to eachother or to even delete them to prevent intersection. The compound also has a bunch of other parameters, min/max size of instances and the option to align the rotation of the instances to the base mesh etc. The instances can ofcourse be any geometry you like, not just spheres or cubes.

I'd like to credit Alan Jones for helping me out when I was stuck trying to make this compound.

[Venkman]

I'm sorry, but 1 million particles is outrageous! It is illegal in some states in the US!

;)

[Strang]

looks like wurp is using particle instancing everyone... just wanted to mention because it does look like clone stamping in houdini, which is different from what i understand

[Strang]

lets talk about what else is cool about ICE we get a new API for exporting custom particle formats. during early beta i was able to script up a simple exporter to krakatoa using their csv format. many thanks to the frantic guys for helping me out with their excellent format documentation and forum support...

http://www.steven-caron.com/images/ICE2Krakatoa_sm.jpg (http://www.steven-caron.com/images/ICE2Krakatoa.jpg)

at that time nothing but particle positions were supported, i wanted to write their binary .prt format so i could more particles, with more channels, with compression etc. now it uses the cache on file node or the new caching command. anyways ice 2 krakatoa torus on fire...

http://www.steven-caron.com/downloads/ice2krakatoa_fire.avi

about 1.5 million particles at its highest count, 2 partitions used meaning i exported two caches with offset seed values.

and an elephant full o particulars...

http://www.steven-caron.com/images/ICE2Krakatoa_elephant.jpg

[pixelpimp]

Makes me want to buy a PC!

[shingo]

Mark my words- At Siggraph every other 3D app will be saying they have had ICE for years. Then when their next release comes out they will all of a sudden invent new ICE-like capabilities, even though "they have had it for years".

Ohmanoggin

No kidding. Alias were knocking XSI when it first launched, arguing that non linear animation wasn't what artists wanted, that it had limited uses and that there was something similar implemented in Power Animator anyway. Then 2 or 3 releases later, TRAX appears and demos of future technologies reveal that Motion Builder is being implemented inside Maya.

[SheepFactory]

Makes me want to buy a PC!


Speaking of this.


Was anyone on the beta team running XSI 7 on a 8 core mac pro? I am going to be getting one soon and wondering if everything works fine.

[R10k]

For those wondering, the Foundation to Essentials upgrade is stupidly cheap (though I'm confirming it's for every Foundation version).

EDIT: Yep, for every version. I only know the pricing in Australian dollars, but suffice to say it's well worth looking into for.

[Votch]

I'm on the 7 beta and have been working on a 2x quad core (8 total cores), a 4x quad core (16 total cores), and a 1x dual core Dell XPS laptop.

Ice and the new MR 3.6 work really well on all machines. It's really suprising how many polys and particles ICE can handle, even on my laptop and still stay interactive. In most cases the 16core machine is overkill. Even when all cores are loaded the efficiency is not 2x the 8core machine. However, I see this same efficiency loss in all applications. Probably more of a windows problem then and XSI/Ice issue.

Not all processes in XSI/ICE are multi threaded and take advantage of every core. But having extra CPU's helps out in other ways. I'd highly recommend getting an 8core machine if you have the budget.


Speaking of this.


Was anyone on the beta team running XSI 7 on a 8 core mac pro? I am going to be getting one soon and wondering if everything works fine.

[SheepFactory]

I'm on the 7 beta and have been working on a 2x quad core (8 total cores), a 4x quad core (16 total cores), and a 1x dual core Dell XPS laptop.

Ice and the new MR 3.6 work really well on all machines. It's really suprising how many polys and particles ICE can handle, even on my laptop and still stay interactive. In most cases the 16core machine is overkill. Even when all cores are loaded the efficiency is not 2x the 8core machine. However, I see this same efficiency loss in all applications. Probably more of a windows problem then and XSI/Ice issue.

Not all processes in XSI/ICE are multi threaded and take advantage of every core. But having extra CPU's helps out in other ways. I'd highly recommend getting an 8core machine if you have the budget.


Thanks for the info Votch. I am looking into getting a 8 core (2.8 ghz) mac pro. It should be more than enough for my needs :)

[duke]

For those wondering, the Foundation to Essentials upgrade is stupidly cheap (though I'm confirming it's for every Foundation version).

EDIT: Yep, for every version. I only know the pricing in Australian dollars, but suffice to say it's well worth looking into for.

As in you could buy Foundation 6.5 now and upgrade to Essentials and it would work out to be cheaper than buying Essentials straight up?

[SheepFactory]

You can't buy FND 6.5 now as far as I know. It is not for sale anymore.

[R10k]

I was quoted $1150AUD to upgrade from Fnd 4.2 to Essentials 7. If I purchase before 7 is out, I get Ess 6.5 and then 7 when it arrives. Considering Ess 7 costs 3k new, that's a bargain price if you ask me.

Obviously the price may differ depending on where you are in the world.

[ThE_JacO]

Not all processes in XSI/ICE are multi threaded and take advantage of every core. But having extra CPU's helps out in other ways. I'd highly recommend getting an 8core machine if you have the budget.
Actually, not everything in XSI is multithreaded (some things because it's not time yet, some because that's not really the bottleneck), but afaik every single ICE node does multithread efficiently.
Considering the way the DAG is pulled if even one node wasn't you would notice it pretty soon, insofar it never happened that anything with a pointcount that allowed enough forking didn't take multiple cores in.

[ThomasLC]

what type of objects can be instanciated with ICE ? I see exemple with some polymeshes (sphere, cube), but can animated geometry and models (including lights?) be instanciated the same way ?

[wurp]

You can instance any geometry including those in a hierarchy. You now also have the option to for example randomly offset the animation of each instance, so you can say have a fish that's animated in a loop, and then have ICE randomly offset it's animation per instance, this wasn't even possible before.

edit: another new thing is that obviously you can see the actual instanced geometry on particles in the viewport, before they were only displayed as bounding-boxes.

what type of objects can be instanciated with ICE ? I see exemple with some polymeshes (sphere, cube), but can animated geometry and models (including lights?) be instanciated the same way ?

[ThomasLC]

perfect ! that's what I wanted to ear :drool: ! thanks !

... and, can you get to the shader level ? (ie per instance color offset)

[tc]

perfect ! that's what I wanted to ear :drool: ! thanks !

... and, can you get to the shader level ? (ie per instance color offset)

yes, you can share data between ICEtree and Shaders.
There is new group of attribute nodes in the rendertree to read Color, Vector, Scalar etc... You can for example read those colors you set in the ICEtree and use on your instanced geometry, or with a Attribute Scalar node you could get the mass of a particle in the rendertree.

[Kabab]

Do you have things like.

Group iterators, sequencers, binary switches, tests, array's which can be sorted and searched and other programming logic type loops/tests and conditions?

[tc]

Do you have things like.

Group iterators, sequencers, binary switches, tests, array's which can be sorted and searched and other programming logic type loops/tests and conditions?

I think you've skipped this post...

screengrab (scaled down) showing basic ICE nodes (moderator - it is my understanding that screengrabs are OK based on Softimage policy. Please remove if Softimage disapproves. Images are intended to help those who wish to see a list of nodes and compounds.)

http://www.realfunart.com/images/basic_nodes1.jpg



more basic ICE nodes

http://www.realfunart.com/images/basic_nodes2.jpg

current particle compounds

http://www.realfunart.com/images/particle_compounds.jpg

[Strang]

Do you have things like.

Group iterators, sequencers, binary switches, tests, array's which can be sorted and searched and other programming logic type loops/tests and conditions?

look for dougs post.. i think he screen grabed every single low level node there is.

you can source a group and get access to its members. i dont know what you mean by sequencer. there is boolean logic. you can test anything that you can pull into the graph, the preset tests are pretty extensive but you can build your own. there are extensive array nodes. there is a repeat node, do while node, and a select case (switch) node. and many more... but these nodes are nothing alone and you dont need to know about them all. all these nodes are wrapped up inside compounds, great for learning too...

speaking of learning there are comment nodes for documenting graphs, very cool.

[Kabab]

Interesting..

So can you code your own node in C++ or with a scripting language or are you stuck with what they provide?

[ThE_JacO]

Interesting..

So can you code your own node in C++ or with a scripting language or are you stuck with what they provide?

ICE comes with an ICE API to write your own nodes.
Chances still are that most of the time you will be able to do what you need to by compounding the existing nodes, and performance will most likely be better that what you can write in a reasonable timeframe.

[tc]

Interesting..

So can you code your own node in C++ or with a scripting language or are you stuck with what they provide?

the SDK can be used to build ICE graphs, to make your own node to do a very specific thing you can code in C++ using the ICEnode API.

But you can export your thing as private compounds, which are the binary format of compounds, those are used to encapsulate the graph, hiding and protecting your "code" to be changed by others.

[colkai]

if you will learn you can get the educational version, full featured for $295 bucks. Can't just work with it.

Or go Modtool for free but it lack features like mentalray, compositing... etc. And obviously ICE.
But for the educational version, surely you need to be in education?
What about those of us in the hobbyist market? Does that mean we either have to stump up $3,000 or forget about it? Seems that way to me.

I was going to look at getting Foundation, but there's no way in Hades I can get anything like the money I'd need for essentials. I guess dropping the "lower end" of the market and only going for "high end" users is a common thing now, like autodesk with Motionbuilder, which is a shame. :sad:

[tc]

But for the educational version, surely you need to be in education?
What about those of us in the hobbyist market? Does that mean we either have to stump up $3,000 or forget about it? Seems that way to me.

I was going to look at getting Foundation, but there's no way in Hades I can get anything like the money I'd need for essentials. I guess dropping the "lower end" of the market and only going for "high end" users is a common thing now, like autodesk with Motionbuilder, which is a shame. :sad:

I would talk to Softimage about that.
http://softimage.com/products/xsi/buy/default.aspx

I think that if you wanna learn, it already classifies you as a student.

[R10k]

I guess dropping the "lower end" of the market and only going for "high end" users is a common thing now, like autodesk with Motionbuilder, which is a shame.

Motionbuilder is a pretty extreme case. I have no idea why Autodesk decided to kick the price up so much, but I wouldn't compare that price hike to this. XSI's pricing is in line with most suite packages. The Fnd versions were incredibly good for the money.

[Lone Deranger]

So hang on... You can upgrade a Foundation 4.2 to Essentials 7?
I have a license of Foundation 5.0 bought here in the UK. Would I be able to upgrade that too (having foregone v6.x entirely)? Can anyone confirm this? That would be quite a deal.

I was quoted $1150AUD to upgrade from Fnd 4.2 to Essentials 7. If I purchase before 7 is out, I get Ess 6.5 and then 7 when it arrives. Considering Ess 7 costs 3k new, that's a bargain price if you ask me.

Obviously the price may differ depending on where you are in the world.

[R10k]

Yep, the deal exists for all Foundation versions, from 4.0 on.

[ThE_JacO]

So hang on... You can upgrade a Foundation 4.2 to Essentials 7?
I have a license of Foundation 5.0 bought here in the UK. Would I be able to upgrade that too (having foregone v6.x entirely)? Can anyone confirm this? That would be quite a deal.

Only way to be sure is to fire off a mail to sales@softimage.com
My understanding of it is that yes, you would be able to do it, but if you want somebody you can hold to his word on it write that email :)

[maantas]

Hello,
this question is addressed to thuse who had luck of trying out xsi7, aka betatesters.
anywhone was running it on linux?
if i plan to get xsi7 and also move from xp64bit to linux, which distribution would u recomend?
for xsi, and generaly for video production?
any ideas?
thanks,
m.

[opentarget]

anybody have a price in euros for the foundation - essentials update?

hanvnt updated foundation since 5.11.

[zukezuko]

Thanks for the info Votch. I am looking into getting a 8 core (2.8 ghz) mac pro. It should be more than enough for my needs

what OS you installing on that,
if linux what distribution whould you go for?
Ubuntu 64-bit seems a good choise for mac pros.

[Ohmanoggin]

"...So hang on... You can upgrade a Foundation 4.2 to Essentials 7?
I have a license of Foundation 5.0 bought here in the UK. Would I be able to upgrade that too (having foregone v6.x entirely)? Can anyone confirm this? That would be quite a deal. "
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From the Softimage Announcment it clearly states 4.x on owners are eligable. Here is a quote from the announcment...

"...Until 30 September 2008, all XSI Foundation customers (including version 4.x, 5.x and 6.x customers) are eligible to upgrade to XSI 7 at the lowest prices ever offered. Please contact your Softimage reseller (http://www.softimage.com/buy/) or Softimage Sales for pricing and details."

I think the only question remains is if the price is the same for 4.x versus later releases. No matter what the case is, it is still going to be a great deal, but like ThE_JacO said, you can only be sure by emailing sales@softimage.com (http://forums.cgsociety.org/sales@softimage.com) or a reseller.

Ohmanoggin

[Lone Deranger]

Thanks R10k, ThE_JacO and Ohmanoggin.

Does the Softimage website still have that handy comparison listing between Foundation, Essentials and Advanced where you can check what's included with each license. Can't seem to find it anymore. I understand hair and cloth are now in Essentials?

opentarget:
I just asked around and got quoted £495 (ex. VAT) which is a very good price indeed for upgrading from Fnd 5.

[R10k]

The only difference between Ess and Adv is Behaviour, and the number of included Mental Ray render licences. Cloth, hair, Gator, and all the other goodies that were once only in Adv are now included in Ess (which is awesome).

EDIT: Someone please correct me if I'm wrong on the above. I have this sneaking feeling I could be wrong... :D

[ThE_JacO]

The only difference between Ess and Adv is Behaviour, and the number of included Mental Ray render licences. Cloth, hair, Gator, and all the other goodies that were once only in Adv are now included in Ess (which is awesome).

EDIT: Someone please correct me if I'm wrong on the above. I have this sneaking feeling I could be wrong... :D

Nah, it's all correct.
The comparison sheet is sort of redundant these days.
6.5 moved all features that weren't a separate application to essentials.
Advanced offers more batch/satellite tokens and behavior, that's it.

As far as XSI itself is concerned there is no difference whatsoever.

[opentarget]

@Lone Deranger] thanks for that, and it is great price! ill be dusting of the visa soon me thinks!

[shingo]

Motionbuilder is a pretty extreme case. I have no idea why Autodesk decided to kick the price up so much, but I wouldn't compare that price hike to this. XSI's pricing is in line with most suite packages. The Fnd versions were incredibly good for the money.

After Autodesk acquired Alias, it became pretty obvious that they had no intention of spending money with further development of Motion Builder. History has confirmed that.

In fact, Autodesk appear to have established a pretty cynical business model - acquire a technology, kill the product, then leverage whatever technology there is to enhance existing products.

Apart from MB, just look at Character Studio. I think it's reasonable to assume we won't be seeing a new release of Mudbox any time in the near future either.

[SheepFactory]

what OS you installing on that,
if linux what distribution whould you go for?
Ubuntu 64-bit seems a good choise for mac pros.


XSI is not supported on Ubuntu as far as I know. I am going to install vista 64 till I can figure out a way to install Linux.

[StefanA]

Hello,
this question is addressed to thuse who had luck of trying out xsi7, aka betatesters.
anywhone was running it on linux?
if i plan to get xsi7 and also move from xp64bit to linux, which distribution would u recomend?
for xsi, and generaly for video production?
any ideas?
thanks,
m.

I can only say what I used the XSI 7 beta on. We used Fedora Core 7 64bit, and before the upgrade to FC7 we used CentOS 5.1.

and a small linux/xsi note:
XSI will NOT RUN ON ANY DEBIAN BASED DISTRO, so stay away from ubuntu and all their peers.

over and out

stefan andersson

[Venkman]

Nah, it's all correct.
The comparison sheet is sort of redundant these days.
6.5 moved all features that weren't a separate application to essentials.
Advanced offers more batch/satellite tokens and behavior, that's it.

As far as XSI itself is concerned there is no difference whatsoever.

Aren't crowd behaviors only available in the most high end version?

[SheepFactory]

Aren't crowd behaviors only available in the most high end version?

Yea he already mentioned it. The crowd system is called Behaviour.

Advanced offers more batch/satellite tokens and behavior, that's it.

[liquidik]

With all those beautiful nodes, woudn't be possible to do a crowd simulation in ICE ?


-Gian

[Venkman]

Yea he already mentioned it. The crowd system is called Behaviour.


Ahhh.

Still, getting hair, cloth, accelerated physics, etc. is pretty cool when compared to competing products.

back to lurking...

[DougNicola]

With all those beautiful nodes, woudn't be possible to do a crowd simulation in ICE ?

Yes, it is possible. And straightforward. I've seen a video walkthrough of a simple instanced crowd sim created in ICE, moving around an obstacle, and changing behaviors and speed. I think there is a short clip of this in the coolstuff video at about 5:10.

Seems like, with the sophisticated instance control, paths, states, etc, you could create very complex crowd sims with XSI 7 and ICE.

~Doug

[Apoclypse]

I can only say what I used the XSI 7 beta on. We used Fedora Core 7 64bit, and before the upgrade to FC7 we used CentOS 5.1.

and a small linux/xsi note:
XSI will NOT RUN ON ANY DEBIAN BASED DISTRO, so stay away from ubuntu and all their peers.

over and out

stefan andersson


That's kind of sad considering it is often requested. Does anyone know why. I though it was an issue with upstart if that is the case then any newer version of Fedora Core may have issues since they use that too.

[jscheel]

Man, I got addicted to XSI from the moment they announced Foundation a few years ago. But now that it's being taken away I feel like my crack dealer has betrayed me :cry: This ICE looks awesome, but I don't think I'm gonna be able to afford an upgrade. My wife thinks I'm too expensive as it is.

[withanar]

Don't mean to step on wurp here, but for folks who might be crowd or instance enthusiasts I wanted to add more info. :-)

There are nodes in ICE specifically for dealing with instanced geometry and time offsets. It is your choice whether you wish to offset your instance animations using a randomization function, or based on controlled, specific per particle values. One of the ICE demo videos shows how you can easily drive instance animation timing using particle velocity. So your walk cycle feet won't slip, even if your characters are walking at varying speeds based on simulation rules. (One of the Softimage devs was kind enough to add a compound that allows you to set the length of your instance animation clip in frames, and then retime all your animations with a scale multiplier.)

The really cool feature for crowds, however is their openGL treatment. If you have fully rigged characters that you are instancing, the system automatically generates animated 6-sided cards that automatically switch from front, to side, to top view based on camera perspective per instance!

You can instance any geometry including those in a hierarchy. You now also have the option to for example randomly offset the animation of each instance, so you can say have a fish that's animated in a loop, and then have ICE randomly offset it's animation per instance, this wasn't even possible before.

edit: another new thing is that obviously you can see the actual instanced geometry on particles in the viewport, before they were only displayed as bounding-boxes.

[SheepFactory]

Don't mean to step on wurp here, but for folks who might be crowd or instance enthusiasts I wanted to add more info. :-)

There are nodes in ICE specifically for dealing with instanced geometry and time offsets. It is your choice whether you wish to offset your instance animations using a randomization function, or based on controlled, specific per particle values. One of the ICE demo videos shows how you can easily drive instance animation timing using particle velocity. So your walk cycle feet won't slip, even if your characters are walking at varying speeds based on simulation rules. (One of the Softimage devs was kind enough to add a compound that allows you to set the length of your instance animation clip in frames, and then retime all your animations with a scale multiplier.)

The really cool feature for crowds, however is their openGL treatment. If you have fully rigged characters that you are instancing, the system automatically generates animated 6-sided cards that automatically switch from front, to side, to top view based on camera perspective per instance!


For the love of God someone post videos of that in action! :)


Why are there just 3 videos of ICE? It is like taking a kid to the ice cream shop and saying "you can only have a glass of water" :(

[mnm|cg]

Do you think this " ICE " might be an industry standard(replacing Maya or Houdini ) in near future ?

[SheepFactory]

Also can someone in the know explain how something like the burning tree effect is setup in the into to ice particles video? Are there event compounds where you can define "if a particle touches this geometry then this starts happening" type behaviour? Even then it seemed like the tree started burning based on where he touched it first and the speed of it and everything was interactive too. How easy it is to set up these relationships?

[liquidik]

Also can someone in the know explain how something like the burning tree effect is setup in the into to ice particles video? Are there event compounds where you can define "if a particle touches this geometry then this starts happening" type behaviour? Even then it seemed like the tree started burning based on where he touched it first and the speed of it and everything was interactive too. How easy it is to set up these relationships?

I second that! Please, show us more, we understand there's more under the hood...make us drool :P

-Gian

[DougNicola]

Are there event compounds where you can define "if a particle touches this geometry then this starts happening" type behaviour? Even then it seemed like the tree started burning based on where he touched it first and the speed of it and everything was interactive too. How easy it is to set up these relationships?

This is exactly what state machines are, and they are at the heart of what ICE can do. They are simple to set up, and as flexible as you could possibly want. Here's a screengrab of a simple 3-state machine. You can get a flavor of what can be done when you look at the ports, and remember the depth of nodes and compounds ICE offers.

http://www.realfunart.com/images/state_machine2.jpg

edit: I updated the screengrab to use the current version ICE compounds.

[Strang]

...Why are there just 3 videos of ICE? It is like taking a kid to the ice cream shop and saying "you can only have a glass of water" :(

be glad that the testers were allowed to talk and show more. i imagine some videos are going to be saved for educations purposes, so showing you them may not be helpful till later

[DougNicola]

Also keep in mind all of this (state stuff) is totally unlimited. As many states as you want, controlled in whatever way you want. This could be quite incredible, as you could imagine.

Just to elaborate a little more, there are zillions of ways of testing particles, not just collisions with geometry. Look back at the node list/compound list screengrabs. All of this can be used with the state machine system.

You can also get a particle's state ID, test the time a particle has been in a certain state. etc.

~Doug

[mdee]

The really cool feature for crowds, however is their openGL treatment. If you have fully rigged characters that you are instancing, the system automatically generates animated 6-sided cards that automatically switch from front, to side, to top view based on camera perspective per instance!

:bowdown:
Amazing stuff. I stay away from these threads about XSI7 just to not to get over excited and make a fool of myself in public.

Need ICE hooks to kinematics/rigging in next version tho ;)

[Strang]

...Need ICE hooks to kinematics/rigging in next version tho ;)

they will be there in the first release, just disabled and will require you to enable them through a environment variable. but this isn't actually a full implementation because you will need a mesh or a point cloud to hold the operator. (i think so)

steven

[Strob]

WOW! XSI going the houdini way (node based way)! That's the future or everybody will end up using Houdini! Maya and max have to do the same or die!!!

[DuttyFoot]

Posted by strob

Maya and max have to do the same or die!!!

i kinda thought the same thing, but more for maya since max 09 just came out. i am really looking forward to seeing what AD will be coming with. the price for xsi essentials is pretty steep but its still cheaper than max and maya unlimited. maya complete is under 2k dollars but you dont get all those features like cloth, and so forth.

[jgoldfin]

I just read the posts about more videos.. and in each of them that are on www.softimage.com (http://www.softimage.com) Mark says.. "stay tuned, more are coming!"

That's true, so please stay tuned. We will be bringing more videos and demos to the web than we ever have before.

Between next week and SIGGRAPH, you'll see a lot of ICE.

jen

[st3dcenter]

Thanks Jennifer for info.And congratulation Softimage for this wonderfull relase.

[DoctorLister]

Is XSI still using dongle protection?

[erilaz]

Is XSI still using dongle protection?

Up to 6.5 it still is. Can't see why they'd change it.

[DoctorLister]

Up to 6.5 it still is. Can't see why they'd change it.

When I upgraded my computer to 64-bit, the dongle driver for my student copy wouldn't work and since it was third-party, Softimage couldn't update it. After working with me for an hour or so, the Softimage tech said I was one of a handful of people with the same problem and there was nothing Softimage could do to get my licensing working, but he mentioned that they weren't going to use dongles in the future. I wasn't sure if that was just for academic licenses or for the retail product, and I never followed up.

[zukezuko]

I can only say what I used the XSI 7 beta on. We used Fedora Core 7 64bit, and before the upgrade to FC7 we used CentOS 5.1.

and a small linux/xsi note:
XSI will NOT RUN ON ANY DEBIAN BASED DISTRO, so stay away from ubuntu and all their peers.

over and out

stefan andersson

Cheers !
you just saved me alot of trouble.

[duke]

Posted by strob



i kinda thought the same thing, but more for maya since max 09 just came out. i am really looking forward to seeing what AD will be coming with. the price for xsi essentials is pretty steep but its still cheaper than max and maya unlimited. maya complete is under 2k dollars but you dont get all those features like cloth, and so forth.

I'm an Avid user of Autodesk products (har har), and seriously, AD work on the basis that people have their products ingrained in their pipeline, which is why we haven't seen anything of the caliber of the past several XSI releases out of AD in ages. They'll continue passing service packs or point releases as full upgrades for some time.

[R10k]

Up to 6.5 it still is. Can't see why they'd change it.

Does anyone know in detail what the new 'streamlined licensing system' is like? It sounds like an Autodesk style activation, instead of a dongle setup. However, I've never had an XSI dongle before, so... I could be confused ;)

[ThE_JacO]

Does anyone know in detail what the new 'streamlined licensing system' is like? It sounds like an Autodesk style activation, instead of a dongle setup. However, I've never had an XSI dongle before, so... I could be confused ;)

Instead of sending mails with the key request and all of that the database is online and centralized.
Upgrades, changes, temps, leases and all are updated automatically if you ask the licensing client GUI to.
There's also a panic button (no, I'm not kidding)

[R10k]

Thanks ThE_JacO... I read about the panic button on the website :) Does all of this mean a dongle isn't required?

[ThE_JacO]

I wouldn't know that much.
If you need to know more write to support at softimage dot com.

[zhenyang]

nICE!!!

can't wait... :drool:

[Lone Deranger]

Would any of the beta testers be able to speculate if compound/hierarchical instances are possible with XSI/ICE?
For example a tree with it's branches and leaves set up as instances and the resulting tree itself instanced to make up a forest, possibly with some randomization thrown in for variety...?
A setup like this is possible with LightWave+HDinstance, but would XSI's GigaCore be able to process and render the resulting billions of polygons?

[Gatsu]

Would any of the beta testers be able to speculate if compound/hierarchical instances are possible with XSI/ICE?
For example a tree with it's branches and leaves set up as instances and the resulting tree itself instanced to make up a forest, possibly with some randomization thrown in for variety...?
A setup like this is possible with LightWave+HDinstance, but would XSI's GigaCore be able to process and render the resulting billions of polygons?

Yes it`s possible

[ThE_JacO]

it was even before v7.
XSI's implementation of MRay has always allowed for instances of instances.
Be wary it can be sometimes tricky though, especially if referencing is involved, since the order of loading can't necessarily be guaranteed.

[Lone Deranger]

Thanks guys. I'll dig into it a little deeper. I figure ICE would make for a perfect system for things like this.

[Nemoid]

really impressive stuff! i love the concept of ICE and also i like the fact it will become a fantastic tool to build up an enormous resource of compounds that also newbies could just download and play with/retouch after awhile :D

also it seems like the perfect step towards a more and more artistic/visual approach that is exactly what 3D apps mostly miss , except for ZBrush and a few ones.

the comparison with other softwares like Houdini is unfair for now since this is only the starting point within XSI.

so congrats for this new tool!

[ctrl.studio]

it was even before v7.
XSI's implementation of MRay has always allowed for instances of instances.yup. but you should put in clear that only with the new stand-ins/assemblies/proxies implementation xsi/mr can flush instances and so virtually run an unlimited number of them... as Lone Deranger is looking for forests up to bilions of polys.. that's not only tricky to do before v7.0 but very problematic if you're not a render TD and you have already huge instances (ie. trees) to deal with.

max

[Lone Deranger]

Thanks Max. The stand-in feature is a very useful addition. Similar to 'Delayed Read Archives' in RenderMan/PRMan by the sound of it. I hope the implementation is a little more artist friendly than Pixar's. :)

yup. but you should put in clear that only with the new stand-ins/assemblies/proxies implementation xsi/mr can flush instances and so virtually run an unlimited number of them... as Lone Deranger is looking for forests up to bilions of polys.. that's not only tricky to do before v7.0 but very problematic if you're not a render TD and you have already huge instances (ie. trees) to deal with.

max