XSI vs. A:M

#1

Hey folks, there is a guy over at the XSI group that was wondering about XSI Foundations shortcomings .
A fellow posted with a list of missing features that read like a breakdown of what A:M already has.

  1. A Compositor
  2. Cloth
  3. Hair

I wanted to suggest A:M, but that would be rude since that is an XSI only forum.

This guy is a professional, and obviously has worked with polygon programs before. If he were to buy A:M, how easily could he use it with his other programs ?

How close are we to having a program that is polygon friendly ?

Thanks

#2

as close as we will ever get and as close as we have ever been.

The pipelines just don’t mesh very well (aside form the .mdd route that Wegg and others have explored here.)

-David

#3

Look like Hash just lost a sale on that one.

Hmmph.

#4

thank you for not having ignited flames :smiley:
you can always do that privately anyway and invite people who you feel could have an interest in A:M to have a look into its own forums and sites.

A:M is very ofetn a valid option (maybe not exactly in this particular case but surely in many others) that simply isn’t popular enough to pop up frequently, and while luring is bad practice in a forum, personal advice by PM (when you’re not involved in sales obviously) is actually respectable courtesy you should be thanked for.

I’ll crawl back under my stone now :slight_smile:

#5

It’s better that he not get used to the ease of use of a lot a features AM has.
Like me, he would want to use it in a profesional capacity, only to find that it is only possible if he uses AM exclusively, from first point plotted to final render, and he better not hit a show stopping bug in the process because they don’t want pros demanding that the software work.

#6

I don’t think Hash will lose too much sleep over it :slight_smile:

Martin isn’t too fussed with ‘making AM an animation plugin’ for other apps. There still appears to be a reasonable number of poly animators using AM for their own private projects.

Cheers

#7

xsi is the better option as A:m is just to closed, more a true hobbist tool, a capable one for animations but more a closed box in the age of communication.

#8

nvm, that’s true and untrue.

It’s true it isn’t compatible with others and doesn’t fit well in a pipeline, but untrue here:
“…a capable one for animations but more a closed box in the age of communication.”

I’m working on a project that has approx. 10 people working on it and A:M has been a dream.

It’s in some ways very suited for the age of communication, assuming your project is with people using A:M only for animation.

*Filesizes are small (it’s easy to share models, scenes, lights, materials, they’re all small text files, which also means they’re easy to tweak and program with)

*There’s a built in chat tool. On the project I’m on we use IRC, a private forum, and FTP, but A:M does have a built in community window that allows for communication.

*Files can be kept seperate (aka Models, actions, lights, scenes).

I’d say that A:M is perfect for the “age of communication.” But yes it is limited in it’s ability to play well with others.

Zack

#9

Amen :thumbsup:

#10

all of you said = closed box

This is simply working in the box and as I said capable but closed.

#11

You make it sound like the average project has people working on all different software at once. Animating a shot in Max, then doing some tweaks in Maya, sending it to someone who’s using XSI… Usually a pipeline for a project is more limited than that. If it isn’t, then there’s a software R&D department to work out the kinks. Feature films are being made using one piece of off the shelf software (Delgo comes to mind, although I’m sure there’re others out there). Are the people working on that project hobbyists? Or are they pros because their software of choice is Maya, despite not taking advantage of the one feature that you seem to consider makes A:M not pro.

I always play devils advocate. Ask anyone who’s on the Hash Forums. I’m no zealot, but I do not like the assumption that A:M is a true “hobbyist package” for these reasons (and as I said I play devils advocate, I was arguing pretty much the other side a few days ago).

Edit: btw, I’m assuming you realize that it’s fairly inflammatory to come into a A:M users forum, and say:

xsi is the better option

OK, yes, it was on topic… but still… :wink:

#12

A:M is indeed a closed system. This is due to the way the patches are handeled at animation time. They are animated as patches, which is where all the power of A:M comes from in the animation sense of things. The Patch mesh is only converted to Polygons at the render stage. which is pretty much too late for any movement into any other pipeline (I have a sneaking suspicion that the v12 SDK will open some doors here, but that is speculation on my part.)

So the one aspect of A:M that everyone absolutely loves is also the aspect that closes the box, tapes it shut and mails it to a small cabin in montana.

-David

#13

:thumbsup: I simply say hobbist in more of a general more wide spread use, sure they will be dedicated people in any app that takes it places others won’t. Take Jeff lew for instance for me he put Animation Master on the map. But I later found out that it’s pretty hard to get content into/out of a:m an hash prefers it that way. For some who prefer not to limit their tools this isn’t good, and no matter how good a:m is I can’t imagine given up my current tools to build up support and fill in holes around a:m. I can’t imagine a studio doing it either, but I can easily see a group of a:m users forming a studio doing this and it would really be beneficial. It’s never my intent to offend people for that I’m sorry, I simply call it like I see it. I obviously have hope that someday the nature of a:m will change it would be great to use it as a character animator plugin to other apps or vice versa. Just think about some of the bigger “highend” apps that suck natively at character rigging & animation, I honestly think if hash wasn’t so closed minded about a:m everyone would be using it.

#14

I haven’t tried it yet but as another option to what Wegg and others have been trying…you could try using bvh for importing and exporting animation data. Everything has to match up with scale, part naming conventions and frame rates, but you could probably do it. Copy and rebuild your polygon program characters as spline models in A:M (or make them originally in A:M and export as an obj). Then you do your animating, export the bvh file and as long as everything matches up, it should work. You could probably also import bvh files from elsewhere and tweak those. I’m planning on trying that in the next couple weeks between doing taxes and everything else. I have an old Mega MoCap CD from Credo around here someplace. Will has a tutorial here http://www.zandoria.com/motioncapture.htm that shows how to import and use bvh files. I think there’s an old rig, too, somewhere.

Kevin

#15

Why not to use other apps like modeling tools (for architecture,…), importing meshes as props, rather than want to use AM like a plugin? Think about that.

#16

Believe it or not , the AM renderer is not the perfect tool for all jobs.
Plus you dont’ have the best control over props once they are imported.

As for bvh export.

Initial tests were promising but when I actually tried to use it the export broke down and didn’t give a good representation of the motion.

#17

Did you open the bvh file and see if it was corrupted or how the data was wrong? You can open them in a text editor. It seems different programs are finicky about how they deal with it…scaling and axis especially. Some are more forgiving on naming conventions. Just curious so I don’t waste a ton of time hitting a brick wall.

Kevin

#18

It’s something in AM.
Perhaps to due with the bake function.
I did s simple motion with a ball. It had 1 bone in it. Most of the time I was animating the model bone. When exported to bvh I brought it into both c4d and Motionbuilder.
for the first part of the animation it seemed to go well, until I hit a part where there is a hold for about 3 seconds. In the bvh the bone drifts towards the next key in a linear fashion. I looked at it in AM and noticed that that is the way the action was made when I baked the Chor to action.

I sent a report in, and it was ‘acknowleged’ and has been for about a week or so.

#19

Well, this is not an often tread area, yet. But it doesn’t sound like anything unfixable. At some point someone might write their own bvh converter, who knows.

#20

Thought about it, what you have said makes absolutely NO sense. I don’t think you understand my post, it’s all about harnessing the power of A:m and not losing the flexibility and benefits of my other tools. Bringing stuff into A:M atm does just that.