Softimage 2010

#41

I wonder, has anybody ever used Zign Track? It’s very cheap and works with only one standard camera. Is this kind of software usable at all with FR or do you need something “serious”?
http://www.zigncreations.com/zigntrack.html

#42

Thanks for the Wikilink Hirazi, this gives a pretty good idea about what to expect from the face robot (and it looks awesome!)

#43

If your subscription is active when the new version is released, it shows up magically at your doorstep without any effort on your part.

I got on the subscription/maintenance bandwagons for Max and Softimage several years ago and it really makes a difference. Approximately four-five years of updates = one new seat.

#44

I know that performance and speed gain, do not perhaps sound like much

Problem is there will most likely be no performance and speed gains. They always say that and it’s hardly ever the case.

On another note not offering upgrades for people with 7.01 is insulting. 7.5 was not really a new version anyway, even 2010 is barely a new version of Softimage, so those who stuck with 7.01 are now supposed to pay almost $4000 ( with maintenance ) even though they have been softimage customers for years? It’s ridiculous. And what is the agenda behind higher upgrade/maintenance prices compared to max and Maya?

I can understand no upgrade paths from version 5 or even 6, but from version 7 which is pretty much what 2010 is with face robot thrown in.

#45

It is definitely the case here, and they are more than noticeable and present across the board, not just in selected areas.

Things that took seconds to minutes before in the AE now are literally instantaneous, reference models load in a third of the time usually, sometimes faster, large number of object operations are -considerably- faster (tenfold and more very often), undos are managed a lot better, deletion is now as simple and snappy as it should have always been, the whole thing is a lot less memory intensive, the new envelope op normals update option in some cases makes a significant difference (depending from where your rigging/deformation bottleneck is), install and operation on vista64 is now glitch free, and quite a few other things all over the place are just that bit snappier (going from a second to an instant) that using 2010 is simply a better experience in general than anything before it.

Ask anybody who’s actually used it and they will tell you exactly the same. And with anybody I mean anybody who’s used it and isn’t an AD employee with vested interest of course.

Also in general I found Soft’s claims of improved performance to have always been respected in actuality, except when they relied on MRay’s claims, in which case you’re stuck in the usual MI dependent hell where something improved is usually only circumstancial to 1 out of 20 possible situations where that feature is used :slight_smile:

On another note not offering upgrades for people with 7.01 is insulting.

Agreed in full.

7.5 was not really a new version anyway,

Also agreed in full

even 2010 is barely a new version of Softimage,

Sorry, this one is simply wrong, it’s one of the most significant day2day improvements I’ve seen in a long time, and it took courage to pour so much dev time and beta loops into something that doesn’t have many bullet points in the feature list to please the marketing and sales people.
2010 is definitely a x.0 upgrade and worthy of the major version bump.

so those who stuck with 7.01 are now supposed to pay almost $4000 ( with maintenance ) even though they have been softimage customers for years?

I’d wait to talk to your reseller before throwing a number around, I think it will be less, but don’t know. Still insulting how the whole thing is hush hush and deferred to VARs

#46

ThE_JacO, do you can comment in new MR version in Softimage 2010? I mean any sensible difference, improvement?

#47

personally, i’d like to see where these “speed improvements” are, and what we can expect from them. It’s a pretty easy thing to toss in a feature list, harder to back it up. Especially when the list of improvements is so small (visually), they really need to back up this claim that we’ll see major performance gains. Personally, i’d be glad to see “Unspecified Failure” randomly popping up everywhere disappear forever… maybe replace it with something that’s specified. Oh yeah, and maybe mental ray could crash less heh.

either way, not sure face robot is worth the upgrade to me, as I’m not an animator… i’ll have to wait and hear some first hand reports about these alleged speed increases.

#48

Sorry, don’t use MRay at all so I’m not even sure what version ended up in it.

Eldee: My list is pretty comprehensive and based on production shots tests. Isn’t that quantification enough?
I think Steven also posted actual numbers and comparisons somewhere in here or in the news thread.

#49

Problem is there will most likely be no performance and speed gains. They always say that and it’s hardly ever the case.

Seriously? Sounds like someone who doesn’t use Softimage.

Check this thread for the performance gains recorded by users between 6.5 and 7.0

http://www.xsibase.com/forum/index.php?board=15;action=display;threadid=36978

From past experience, I’m pretty confident that the SI team have managed to get major performance gains in SI 2010.

PS: If you want decent performance and stability in MR you need to use the 64 bit version. You can buy win7 32&64 for half price in the UK right now.

#50

XSI is the only 3D app I use, and I was speaking more in general terms not just XSI.

You may be right, but speed improvements are one of the standard things every single app brags about with every new release and usually it’s just nonsense. Or at best it turns out to be true only for some parts of the app.

I have no reason to doubt there are some speed improvements in 2010 if testers say so.
So, fine if you say so, it is faster.

Still not worth $4000 if no upgrades for 7.01 holds up ( hopefully something more reasonable can be found ).

I missed buying the maintenance for fusion as well, that’s a $5000 app, instead of $395 maintenance, now I’ll have to pay $395 + $695 and that’s fine, but no upgrade path, or even $2000+ to upgrade from 7.01 is ridiculous. If I’m not mistaken AD charges more for XSI maintenance/upgrades than for Maya and Max. Why? It makes no sense.

Just checked. You can upgrade to max 2010 from max 2009 for $760 and from max 2008 for $1520. and maintenence is only $500.

#51

sadly the problem is not with FR or the speed improvement, we all want a stable application, one that doesn’t break in the middle of a production and would take hours or days to find a workaround. The problem with AD, although this wasn’t their original idea, when they bought the softwares, they were like that, it’s the maintenance contract! we all started here from smaller less cash ching ching softwares, and as all softwares they are prone to errors and bugs. and if you have your own business and clients, that last thing you want is to geprodise loosing them by not having control over bugs, or at least by being in partner with a company that has a small team of development, which means your emergencey will take longer to fix.

So we all jumped ship to more expensive companies with a yearly maintenance policey that promises to address these issues. Unfortunetly things don’t work like that at all, and most of the time you see your self paying yearly contracts and don’t get anything in return, the reason most of the time, the features are not directly related to you or concern you at all! but you’ll say, ohh well at least those buggs were addressed and solved. and you say to your self then, wasn’t this the case with the smaller much cheaper companies? at least if they had a bug in their software, they’ll fix it for free, no matter how long it took them! because at the end it’s their fault it’s broken! but these companies argument was always, we don’t have a big team, so allocating half of them or more to fix those bugs, will slow down development of new features, and if you need new features, then bug fixing will be put on hold or delayed.

and when you decided to jump ship and fork those extra dollers, it was because of the promise/dream/hope/illusion that paying a stable yearly money will isure that this company will have the finances it needs to do both at the same time without worry. plus you’ll have to access to support all around the clock, for what ever reason you might have.

Reality, i have been an xsi user since ver 1, and before that SI, and when i went solo, i dealt with the expensis of owning xsi, it wasn’t this cheap all the time, there were times when the contract costs a fortune on it’s own. to be honest, did it make any difference to me? no! But that’s the price you pay when you invest in an expensive company and product “i.e hanging with the big boys”.

I’m not using the term HighEnd here because i truely don’t belive these products are highend, we all know that by now, it’s a just a marketing hype. Don’t get me wrong, i understand your point if your coming/working for a big studio, i really do. first for the earning the studio makes, it’s easy for them to handle this, and it actually makes sense, and they are buying world class service, because AD, Avid or even MS tend to work closely with these studios to address their problems and needs. and if i remember correctly there were two types of contracts, one maintenance which is only upgrades and setup/software problems for one year, and another much more expensive one for direct consultations or custom development.

which means if your a dude who paid for the first one, don’t expect anything other than helping you with the install, but don’t expect asking for new features. But if your a small studio, or freelancer, or an indie animator, that’s not the case, in fact you feel cheated, hell if it wasn’t for ICE, which is amazing btw, i wouldn’t have upgraded xsi since ver 5! but how long did that take? 4 years, that’s 4K! if you were essential, or 8K if you were advanced. some people would say, where did you get these numbers, well from my local dealer “i.e the third world” is he forking me and it’s my fault, not really, but to be fair, that was Avid fault, their business used to run like drug dealers, where the dealer in one country can do what ever he wants, yes i did send complaints and email directly to softimage|Avid, and in some cases told them, don’t forward me to my dealer, but it’s like talking to a wall, imagine how pleasent it is when your email (where you insulting and questioning your local dealer) gets forward to your local dealer :slight_smile:

buttom line is, i as a freelancer, decided to invest in this company, did i set my hopes to high? maybe! it’s my fault and no one should be blamed for my decision. Just like i took the decision to buy softimage, i’m free to take the decision not to buy it any more, and go with lightwave, messiah or even blender. that’s my decision and business. no one is forcing me to buy XSI. But i do have the right to complain when im still in board and i paid for something that didn’t came through. yes this upgrade might be really worth it in terms of speed and stability. but isn’t this a steep price to ask for? XSI 3 was the first version useable in production, v1, v1.2, 2, v2.1 and i think there was ver 2.5 were rubbish and for marketing only, ver 5 addressed some serious issues, in between 3 and 5 rubbish and promises as usuall. and from 5 till 7 it was rubbish as well.

I better get back to work, this is a fight that the end user can’t win, but with all honesty, if that same amount and steady contract was given to a much less profile company, with this amount of user base and studio contracts, they would have done miracles by now.

Cheers
I3D

#52

IRT Above. Softimage has been the most stable and complete 3D package I’ve ever worked with. What are all these bugs your talking about? It is possible your doing something wrong or could tweak/update your hardware environment to improve your results. I also don’t believe that if you have a legitimate bug or issue that your maintnence contract isn’t valuable in that instance???

Basically you’ve said, a LOT but haven’t given many if any specific details on what bugs you are actually encountering and what Autodesk actually did or did not do when you presented your issues to them through your maitenance contract. Please, just provide some more specific examples, and also your Hardware specs.

On a side note, if anyone is “too” bothered by the way things are going, Blender is currently on a warpath if you haven’t checked it out lately. I’m not comparing Softimage to Blender by any means but the strides that software has made are remarkable, and it’s being done on donations and is 100% GNU free to use in a personal or professional environment. The reason I bring it up, is because the user community itself, and or if you have a programmer on staff, you have the ability to create patches, as well as submit them to be included in official updates as needed. It’s quite worth checking out, as you could start a studio with it at this point, it’s getting that good, and your 3D software costs would be $0.00. It’s modeling tools are quite decent, it’s interace is solid, it’s animation and rigging are quite usable, it’s UV tools up until the last 7.5 release were better than Softimages and it’s got a sculpting editor near ZBrush/Mudbox quality built right in, seriously check it out if you haven’t lately because you will be suprised. Not to mention, you also have the option of installing public betas so you don’t have to ever wait around to check out new features, let alone worry about how much your going to be paying for them or if they are worth the cost, because it’s free…

#53

Jettatore thanks for the enthusiasm and sharing your thoughts, as i already have stated, i blamed Avid and not AD, and i said, it’s not AD fault, when they bought the software company, it was like this. As for the bugs, i’m sure your lucky for not encountering any bugs throughout all those years with xsi, but in case you haven’t been noticing in this thread there are numourus people saying bugs, and just by doing a small search in cgTalk, xsibase and the area, you will find many bug posts, but then again maybe all of them are running on bad hardware!

help me to understand, Do you want to switch to blender and raising the issue to get an incentive?!! if it was addressed for me, please do read again my post where i say, it’s my choice and decision if i wan’t to continue working with xsi or not, or go lightwave or blender. and it’s not something that xsi folks have to be punished for. but i do have the right to complain if im still on contract with them, why? i don’t know, maybe i feel like shouting on a year to year basis, after all im not getting what i want, so might as well just practice my social shouting for this amount of money, im sure they can handle a few shouts at every siggraph! or maybe im just a a lonely bastard who like to steer up fights! maybe it’s just hormons you know, it’s the new wave of men PMS i guess :slight_smile:

move along folks, nothing to see here, move along.

Cheers
I3D

#54

Dude you are so far off it is ridiculous.

First off, the performance increase is nothing short of incredible!

Second, maintenance has gone WAY down this year it is now only about half what it was. It is now a little less that $200 more than the maintenance on 3ds max.

Thirdly, Face Robots last price before being rolled in I believe was $5-10K and now you are getting that for free.

Also Autodesk policy is you have 12 months from you purchase date to sign up for maintenance. At least it was a year or so ago. So if you bought 7, then you should still be eligible to sign up for gold maintenance Which I think is around $600+ in the US not sure for outside the US though. You should call your rep and stop complaining about stuff when your information is obviously WAY off.

So what exactly to you have to be all bent about again?

I think that prolly the only thing that kinda sucks about the new product line up was that Softimage didn’t get a MatchMove and Toxik bundled with it in it’s own Entertainment Suite or whatever they are calling them. My only guess is that Motionbuilder functionality for the most part can be achieved built in in Softimage. Would have been nice to have MatchMove and Toxik though.

Guess we will continue to use Boujou and prolly gonna switch to Nuke soon. Sorry Autodesk you had your chance.

Yes I know that XSI has it’s own compositor but it feels very neglected. It would have been nice if they would at least add OpenFX support to it to that you can get some decent plugins for it. As it stands right now it is not that useful. It is defiantly in need of some love. Oh well maybe for 2010 SP1 or 2.

#55

IRT Slither…

That’s just as good that you were upset with Avid’s performance, maybe Autodesk can improve things some.

But again I must ask, could you please provide any specific details. Even if your going back a few versions and the blame lay with Avid, what was your first hand experience with a Maintenance contract when you presented an issue? What was the specific issue? How was it handled? What kind of support did you get (phone, e-mail, on site, etc.)? What was the end result??? Were you running on 100% officially supported hardware, and if not did you still receive support? How much did these issues end up costing you or your company in $ or hours or wasted staff resources??

#56

This being a 2010 thread could it stay that way, and if we need to profile somebody’s problems with previous versions (which is a remarkably noble intent), leave it for a specific troubleshooting thread? :slight_smile:

#57

Jettatore i never said i had a problem sent to Avid under contract and they didn’t get back to me, i said when dealing with my “local dealer” i had problems, we were talking upgrade fees and support. because under avid, any upgrade question or support is handled through the local dealer, and i would have loved to keep copies of the email i sent them regarding these issues, but i would have had to have a reply first :slight_smile: why are we even talking about this?! who care Avid or AD, one’s Goat might seem like a Ferrari to another, who cares! why are we fighting with each other? we’re all just end users, and if someones experience so far was great then hallelujah! if not, then why stop him from bi*** around?! it’s not like AD sales are going to drop because of it?! we can only wish :smiley:

#58

I didn’t think anybody was fighting to be honest, but with the bitching around, a little bit here and there is fine, when it starts being just that repeatedly in the same threads though it becomes noise and it prevents more useful discussions from happening.

This is still a private forum that aims at being informative and to the point, some signal coming with the noise is required once every few pointlessly whinging posts, as it’s not the school’s board or the socializing catch-em-all bin of the application section :slight_smile:

#59

I’m quite curious as to how customers of past maintenance contracts felt about the value of said contracts, and how this may apply to upcoming 2010 software and updated contracts as well as how Autodesk may have improved upon the service since taking over for Avid. Also, are there are any less obvious changes to these contracts in 2010, we’ve already heard that they are cheaper now, which is a good thing.

But if people aren’t happy with the past performance of Softimage maintenance it would be very much worth discussing right here and now as I’m quite certain that Autodesk is watching and taking notes, which they should be commended for.

I’d also like to hear more opinions on Wishlists of features the community would like to see included in future updates, as again, I’m quite certain that Autodesk will see them here. And again, thank you to Autodesk for paying attention.

#60

And I would not, sorry, but wishlist threads have been banned from these forums for a long time for a reason.
Again, this is a 2010 thread, issues with Avid’s resellers don’t belong here (or anywhere in this section) but to AD’s feedback box, same as wishlists.

Contract changes and other similar things instead DO belong here, and are welcome and will remain welcome for as long as people make sense when posting, keep civil, and make an effort to use paragraphs :stuck_out_tongue: