considering a divorce after 10 years with Maya, if 2009 isn't spectacular

[cold_fusion]

i touch a little bit houdini and i did like it, i great but some difficult software. Yes, i am also thinking about change soft to use but depend by the company.

[PhillipCrond]

I wouldn’t get too excited about this release.

Put two and two together for a moment.

• They’re working on Nucleus, which is modular enough to escape from Maya and be used in a new product.
• Maya is an old single-threaded codebase that’s based on Motif.
• Autodesk is getting the world acclimated to Python.
• Key features that would require complete rewrites to be successful (referencing, render layers…) have been flat-out ignored.

This would suggest that they’re working on new technologies that would neatly slide into a new software package, and doing the least possible to keep Maya (and Max) competitive while this new software is written.

[Arcon]

i have to agree with everything calmasacow said in his original post - i like the idea of maya’s flexibilty with scripting which i do use, but this really has little relevance to having a basic render-pass workflow (ahem, in 64-bit). i think its disgusting for autodesk to expect people to hire their own programmers to get the software to a level of basic functionality that most other software packages have at that price point.

also since autodesk took over there’s been some shocking quality control on the product, things like the script editor super-lag bug in 8.5 (sooo ironic since maya is the scripters app lol).

XSI’s technology and MR workflow looks very appealing although last-time i checked its interface it still sucked. but i’ll look at it closer… max is not for me it just has a bizare layout with gimicky style modifiers… but this is not a flame its just my opinion from a maya-dependant background lol.

anyway autodesk, fix your sh*t or stop being so cowardly and just announce you’re not supporting it anymore.

[bent_pixel]

this happens every time new software comes out. It’s nothing new. Don’t let others sway your opinions on what you should use or not. After all, it is their opinion and you have your own. If Maya works for you… keep truckin’ and let the so-called ship jumpers either crap or get off the pot. Chances are most of them will not jump ship and instead are just ruffling their feathers like they do each time something new and “cool” comes out.

I don’t really think its about jumping ship (Never did I say that I was going drop maya and never touch it again, I will probably use it to some extent till its discontinued.), or a flame war about this app is better than that app. I think the real bottom line is future and direction of development of broadcast/film 3d software. XSI, at the current, time seems to be headed in the right direction, where maya, as great as an app as it is, is becoming older and no matter how much you lube the gears its not going to run forever, also who is the captain of the ship? Totally agree though, why should a huge studio change their pipeline if its built around a particular app (maya)? But lets say for small studios or freelance individuals or beginning students, who may not have the time to code everything, it seems that XSI maybe a more valuable and efficient tool. I doubt I’ll be using XSI 7 but it might become my main app by XSI 9 or 9.5. I guess we’ll see if anymore buyouts happen… hmmm I wonder if Adobe is reading this… … kidding … kidding

[Emil3d]

Softimage’s revenues have been going up for a while now, considerably.

The charts don’t support your statement.
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=AVID#chart3:symbol=avid;range=5y;compare=adsk;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined

I’m a 3D guy but I also trade stocks and I know how to check the financial health of a company. Autodesk has a perfect financial health while Avid is in a dismal state. Even a beginner investor can see that Autodesk has a big buying power while Avid is heading towards a fight for survival which often starts with selling parts or all of its business.

[calmasacow]

If Maya 2009 doesn’t live up to your expectations, then you are uninstalling your current copies and “jumping ship” to something else?

I’m running Maya 2008 currently and have a mixed bag of experiences and opinions, but do you believe there is any reason I should uninstall Maya 2008, and never use it again, if the next version sucks?

A general question, not really directed towards anyone, but I just want to know why on Earth anyone would uninstall something so wonderful.

I never said that I would never use Maya again and that I was going to un-install what I had already paid for. But I think that if these things cannot be fixed within this next release It is time to try something new. I think I have given maya a fair shake I have stuck with for it’s entire product life thus far.

Let me just say for the record since people are chiming in and obviously have not read every post. We were considering other options before the XSI 7 announcement.

We were evaluating XSI 6.5 as well as beta testers for Houdini since 9.1 as well as even 3ds max.

We had come to the conclusion almost a week before XSI 7 was announce that:

Houdini was a great program but we found that the workflow was still a bit overly complicated and that it was a bit cost prohibitive doue to that fact that it was more expensinve per seat and the cost of the batch liceses for the renderfarm.

We found that 3ds max Acutally had alot of bang for the buck to be honest prolly more than any app out there whn you consider the large developer base that it has designing plugins and what now and with back burner we would have saved thousands on render managemnt and mental ray licenses.

We found that XSI was a really good balance in that it is very extisible, We get a really good valu in terms of rendernodes per seat purchased. and it seamed that much more of it seemed to work right out the box compared to maya. and thus far it has been completly stable.

so thus far in our opinion for our needs we feel that the best option for us. That meets our needs going forward, Should we decide to replace maya and our main production tool. we would choose XSI.

Nowthat being said We aren’t changing today. We are going to wait on 2 deciding events.

1: We want to have a demo of XSI 7 in our hands to put thru its paces. We have been told that will happend very soon.

2: We have, More so I, have a long history with maya. so as the decision maker in this matter will be waiting to see what AD unveils at Siggraph.

If it warrants further investigation… Then by all means we will give it a shot. But we do not feel that it bridges the gap from where maya as a production tool, is today, and where we feel it should be. In order to meet our needs… then as I said we feel that it is time that we try, "a new approach " if you will.

XSI’s technology and MR workflow looks very appealing although last-time i checked its interface it still sucked

Well, Then you can create a new interface from scratch. that was one of the first things I did I spent like a day just playing with the layout designer. It is really quite amazing to be able to have that much control over and application without ever having to resort to code.

I’m haven’t tried replacing the icons for stuff yet because I had to move on to actually testing the application. But I think that is quite refreshing to no have the limits of having to have the interface how someone else thinks is great but for you make just be awkward.
I have often wondered for years why if Maya was for customizable and flexible that they had never incorporated anything like this.

this happens every time new software comes out. It’s nothing new. Don’t let others sway your opinions on what you should use or not. After all, it is their opinion and you have your own. If Maya works for you… keep truckin’ and let the so-called ship jumpers either crap or get off the pot. Chances are most of them will not jump ship and instead are just ruffling their feathers like they do each time something new and “cool” comes out.

A: read the first response in this post.
B: Go look through those threads everytime a new version of maya as come out and you find me there defending it.
C: having used Maya for as long as I have and the Alias|wavefront power animator softwares before it I think I have earned the right to be disgruntled when some of these problems have gone on this long.

[Aikiman]

Unfortunately I wouldnt hold my breath for anything ground breaking from Autodesk although there have been some positive whispers about 2009 that have got me sitting up a little. My guess is they will be more internal than cosmetic and probably very practical and effective. Learning mel I believe is pretty essential in being able to utilise Maya effectively, I cant see why some of you think that it shouldnt be necessary since you think artists dont need to code…why not? Makes you understand the software you are using and doesnt take long to learn just like any other module in Maya. For example learning Maya fluids can take months and nobody complains about that except when it comes to coding some ppl throw their arms up! Just look at it as another module to learn, plus its a life saver if you need to hook up 100 objects to one hundred nodes and connectAttrs here and there, it really aint that hard. Having said that I feel Maya is really lacking in areas if you compare it to other programs, and if thats the case then Ill choose to learn that one also. Sure cross over to another program by all means but everyone will still come back to Maya when something new and improved shows itself.

[morimitsu]

Is Autokesk spending energy in a secret new “revolutionized” 3d app?
After it bought Alias, I was expecting it to build another app from the ground up, since they have the majority of the market share, money, and one of the best 3d teams of scientists, engineers and programmers.

Well… only time will tell.

[Buexe]

You might think that all companies are like that, and marketing is everything they have to offer.

But I think you skipped the part where ICE takes advantage of parallelism and that XSI 7 improved the Gigapolygon core.
Maybe you just think that “gigapolygon” core was always just a marketing thing too…

but anyway… black wireframe, millions of polys and millions of particles:
http://www.xsi-brasil.com/XSI_7/mesh_on_mesh_performance/mesh_on_mesh_performance.html

At some point in the video, I will reach 1.5 million tris + 1.5 million particles.
my machine has 2gb of ram and 8 cores. And I still have a lot of room.
The betas have been reported scenes up to 8 million points in a cloud. I’ve myself up to 300 million triangles in a single scene in XSI6.5 reading a cached mesh of fluid simulation, where each frame was displaying ~5 million tris in a single mesh of a 32bit system.
That’s it about performance.

good for you, the scene becomes a lot less than the original 60 fps when poly count is increased. And to be honest a scenario like this is not to be considered a production-like scenario. I will be happily reading more reports on this system though and Im really happy for the users that enjoy using it. Maybe you can even agree with me/understand my POV, that for peeps like me that do not have access to this software and just get an impression based on what is available online, do not automatically believe the hype that is built around the introduction of new concepts and my reservations are not limited to XSI, the same is for Maya, etc. Thats all, Cheers!

[ronaldchew]

I am too currently evaluation 3d app other than maya

Afaik, the key of ICE is 1. exposinge the internal interface to the user with a node-base system 2. connecting different module (dynamics/particles/geometry etc.) with the same system at the same time. When you think about it, what softimage is doing is incorporating a small “Houdini world” right within a “traditional” 3d package, essentially combining the best of both world. And if the full implementation of multithreading is true, it may run faster than Maya/Houdini, this is a huge plus.

While I believe every effect artist should know how to script. But we can not deny the fact that in many case, a node base particles/dynamics system is far more efficient.

So, yes, XSI 7 is not in anyway revolutionary, and for an experienced Maya scripter or studio which have large amount of existing Maya tools, XSI7 will probably mean not too much to them, but for small studio or freelancer with very limited resources, this is a very attractive release I believe. Again, not revolutionary but extraordinary.

While the power of ICE remain to be seen, but this is a very very smart move from Softimage I think. Whether we like it or not, I think we should wish them good luck, we need a good competitor to push AD a little bit.

[Buexe]

good post, ronaldchew!

[CoolCalb]

XSI’s technology and MR workflow looks very appealing although last-time i checked its interface it still sucked.

You know, I keep hearing this complaint from Maya users, that XSI’s interface sucks.
I am an XSI user, and along the years I’ve tried numerus times
to learn Maya, and the ONLY thing that always broke me, was Maya’s difficult
interface. To me XSI’s layout is pretty genious, I believe
it takes time to get used to it, and then you can get the geniousity… when people try to
learn a new app (including me) they usually try to mimic the workflow of their familiar app,
thus missing the thought that was put in designing the interface. Like I said I tried to use maya for many times in the past years, but could’nt get pass the interface, so I am as
“bad” as others…

XSI tried to apeal to maya users by adding (copying?) some maya UI parts,
like the Keying panel and character sets and some more stuff, I guess this even causes
more confusion to Maya users, because they expect it to be exactly the same as Maya,
but it’s not always the same.

Anyway, I guess it’s very individual for each one, some people think XSI’s UI sucks, other
think Maya’s UI sucks… but I think we could all agree that RealFlow’s UI sucks THE MOST!!!
hehe

[Saturn]

The charts don’t support your statement.
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=AVID#chart3:symbol=avid;range=5y;compare=adsk;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined

I’m a 3D guy but I also trade stocks and I know how to check the financial health of a company. Autodesk has a perfect financial health while Avid is in a dismal state. Even a beginner investor can see that Autodesk has a big buying power while Avid is heading towards a fight for survival which often starts with selling parts or all of its business.

you are comparing the whole autodesk vs avid buisness not softimage vs maya buisness.
So this graph doesn’t contradict Raf statement.

[tc1]

    Originally Posted by [b]tc[/b]
                     [i]You might think that all companies are like that, and marketing is everything they have to offer.
      
     But I think you skipped the part where ICE takes advantage of parallelism and that XSI 7 improved the Gigapolygon core.
     Maybe you just think that "gigapolygon" core was always just a marketing thing too...
      
     but anyway... black wireframe, millions of polys and millions of particles:
     [http://www.xsi-brasil.com/XSI_7/mes...erformance.html](http://www.xsi-brasil.com/XSI_7/mesh_on_mesh_performance/mesh_on_mesh_performance.html)
      
     At some point in the video, I will reach 1.5 million tris + 1.5 million particles.
     my machine has 2gb of ram and 8 cores. And I still have a lot of room.
     The betas have been reported scenes up to 8 million points in a cloud. I've myself up to 300 million triangles in a single scene in XSI6.5 reading a cached mesh of fluid simulation, where each frame was displaying ~5 million tris in a single mesh of a 32bit system.
     That's it about performance.[/i]

    [size=2]good for you, the scene becomes a lot less than the original 60 fps when poly count is increased. And to be honest a scenario like this is not to be considered a production-like scenario. I will be happily reading more reports on this system though and I`m really happy for the users that enjoy using it. Maybe you can even agree with me/understand my POV, that for peeps like me that do not have access to this software and just get an impression based on what is available online, do not automatically believe the hype that is built around the introduction of new concepts and my reservations are not limited to XSI, the same is for Maya, etc. That`s all, Cheers! :)

[/size]
I didn’t say it was a production scenario.

    Nobody would simulate bi-directional collision in 1.6 million triangles + 1.5 million particles on top of that for nothing. :)
    
    I was answering your question about performance:

    And how can this 60 fps be a proof that this system is fast. There are just a few polys visible and with that polycount I can do a lot of cloth/dynamics tricks in interactive playback. But I better shutup before I get called a troll-complainer 
              ....
             No talking about marketing mumbo jumbo, talking about production reality

 I wasn't expecting to keep 60fps since I jumped from 6200 tris to 3million+ at some point in the video.... 
     Essentially I was forcing it to calculate around 500 times more data. So there is in fact an optimized core and that speaks for itself, without the "mumbo jumbo" part to help. haha.

If you have any suggestion of tool/performance test that could be done, just let me know.
I have access to XSI 7 so I’m just sharing my experience with everybody else here.

[Buexe]

[/size]I was answering your question about performance.

Thanks for the detailed info! I didnt have a question about performance though. There is something called rhetoric question, maybe you have heard of that. And my statement(s) was referring to the fact that there arent many polys doing collisions and that this is no proof of a fast system ( compared to other commercialsolutions available), so I as a simple soul can not say that this makes me go wow! That`s all :wavey:

[liquidik]

Yup Thiago, a character rig with some ice nodes on top (muscles?) would be awesome to see

Gian

[calmasacow]

Learning mel I believe is pretty essential in being able to utilise Maya effectively, I cant see why some of you think that it shouldnt be necessary since you think artists dont need to code…why not?

DAMNIT FOR THE LAST F*CKN’ TIME PLEASE! I’m not saying that you should not need to learn mel. By all means you should. What I’m saying it you should not have to resort to script for some of the most basic tasks the way you do in maya.

Maya Artist Should know MEL!!!

Maya Artist should not have to use mel for the most trivial little things in the program!

why is that such a damn hard concept to grasp?

[Ollarin]

Funny how many people are so quick to hate and drop the thing that has paid for their meals for many a year.

No doubt, Maya is lacking in certain areas, but so is every other application. Each one has it’s strengths. No offense to anyone. But this just goes back to artist vs tool thing which would turn into a flame war.

Just wanted to give my .2 cents, this thread is a giant hate Maya thread which just doesn’t seem to have any gratitude to the tool that’s helped people over the years to bring home food for their families. (For hobbyist’s it’s a different story I guess :P)

Please don’t flame me for that. Cower

[Venkman]

Funny how many people are so quick to hate and drop the thing that has paid for their meals for many a year.

Funnily enough, my Maya issues ceased when I migrated from a G5 to an intel Windows system, and I didn’t look at that as hate or dropping the thing that pays for my meals, it’s just work, not a spouse.

Most of us are deadline oriented, so if I can do the same job faster by buying new software or hardware, I do it. That’s just the nature of things, I think. I hold no loyalty to software/hardware except where it helps get the job done on time.

I’m not a power user like some of these other guys though. It seems like they are stretching Maya’s abilities more than me and have different experiences with it in their environment.

[calmasacow]

Funny how many people are so quick to hate and drop the thing that has paid for their meals for many a year.

No doubt, Maya is lacking in certain areas, but so is every other application. Each one has it’s strengths. No offense to anyone. But this just goes back to artist vs tool thing which would turn into a flame war.

Just wanted to give my .2 cents, this thread is a giant hate Maya thread which just doesn’t seem to have any gratitude to the tool that’s helped people over the years to bring home food for their families. (For hobbyist’s it’s a different story I guess :P)

Please don’t flame me for that. Cower

Not gonna flame you. You are just wrong. I don’t hate Maya quite the opposite actually. But professionally it has become a liability in my opinion. As someone else had satated earlier in the thread The Quality control since Autodesk took over seems to be absolutly horrible. Not saying that XSI doesn’t have bugs But Autodesk product in general are natorious for being bloated and buggy. and from where I’m sitting they are taking my beloved Maya and doing the same thign to it.

So what would you have me do? I have a responsibily to my artist and my company to make a decision here. Do I make me and my people go down with the ship? or do I try to get them to another vessel that seems to be intact and steaming ahead at full speed?

You speak of feeding our families that is exactly why we are having this discussion in the first place. Our loyalties are to that end. Not to the tool. The tool is just a tool and there is always going to be a better tool. No software is ever going to be the BE ALL, END ALL solution. This stuff changes all of the time. It was constantly in flux before may aeven existed and it will be that way when Maya is long gone and forgotten. I understand That most of the people in this forum prolly have not been this industry long enought to understand that. For many of you maya may be all you have ever known. but there will be a day when maya will no longer exist. same goes for Houdini Lightwave 3ds and XSI.

Ok well maybe not Lightwave. Newtek will prolly ride that pony all the way to their own funeral. but still.

Most of us are deadline oriented, so if I can do the same job faster by buying new software or hardware, I do it. That’s just the nature of things, I think. I hold no loyalty to software/hardware except where it helps get the job done on time.

Exactly my loyalty is not to my tools my loyalty is to my customers and their needs. It they that pay my bills and feed my family. Not Autodesk and Maya.

The point is, right now, Maya is not working out for us. It has for many years. I have defended release, after release from people flaming about how the product was going to crap, and how the releases didn’t amount to squat and nothing was being fixed. I still think Maya is a great application with great underlying potential. I think that the development of it has lost its focus though. And I think that the corprate polocies of autodesk are prolly to blame. That is my opinion. But right now Maya is buggy and unstable.

But today I will use it tothe best of my ability and will continue to do so until the day that I don’t use it anymore. And I WILL wait to make my decision till I see what is going on with 2009 at Siggraph. If i feel that there is something there that will aliviate that issues that we are having then by all means we will further investigate and if we feel that our artist and our customers will be better served by us staying with Maya then we will do so.