Hi all im daniel and im a student in graphic design
im sort of an 3D freak and learning fast to do character animation (now working on a woman that runs does salto's and jugles)
but im worried, I live in holland and the 3D world is small here and i hear stories. when i started school heer 3,5 years ago Softimage was everything, now with the delayed comming of XSI and the surprising jump of Maya everyone here thought Maya would take over the world. and i don't know a thing about Maya. now sylicon vally is on its ass and the future seems to be in favor of Softimage|XSI but nobody here can tell me
can anyone please tel me i did not bet on the wrong horse (not that i could get Maya lessons or anything, just soft)
Seems to me u need to learn more than one package now...... I do XSI mainly and then MAX because I see a future for both........ it has really helped me to learn and compare 2 because seeing two different angles in texture projection for example actually helps u to understand what u are doing on a deeper level ya no?
They're used in different sectors though. Max is used mainly for game developement and dominates there.
SoftImage is going to have its work cut out for it though if the features Square wrote for The Spirits Within become part of the Maya distribution. SoftImage cannot compare to that.
but last time i heard, Square wasnt going to share its tools with Alias. wasnt that the big blow to alias? that they helped square develop some tools/ fix up maya...but get close to nothing in return?
I imagine Alias will get some things out of the deal. I don't think the lawyers were dumb enough to not sign away rights to re-write the whole application from the backplate up without gaining some new features.
There is probably a freeze between when Square gives the features and when Alias can release them. It would be stupid to release them out now when competators are now scrambling.
My two cents? I say stick with XSI. Learn as much as you can with the tools, modeling, texture, animation etc. Build those skills up well enough and you can jump to either max or maya much better and faster then when you first started with softimage. Thats my experience anyway... When I sat behind maya for a week after starting with soft I found the only difference was learning what buttons to push (and the only problem since my hand always went for the soft/xsi shortcut keys) Build your skills in the package you like... train yourself the others when needed.
To quote the memorable line from a song long ago...
'Don't... don't... don't believe the hype...'
If I remember correctly, squares comment on Maya was if they were able to go back and redo it they wouldn't use Maya again... apparently they were very unhappy, and Alias had to come in and recode large quantities of stuff to keep it from going down in flames. So I'm not sure if they are so keen to give anything to Alias. Dunno... rumours are rumours, and nothing more. We'll never know, will we. Use the package that works best for you. Look at the others, always retain a critical eye, and remember that seeing is believing, and rumours are hot air.
According to their special features on the TSW DVD, it seems as if they were very pleased with it given they were pretty much re-inventing the genre. Of course there are going to be wrinkles.
oh yes - the industry is packed full of happy litlle elves that just help eachother out all the time!!! - i mean if anything ever went badly they would of course let the public know.
Large quantities of maya were modified? - yeah whoopy, thats happened on just about every major production using maya to date - perhaps AW's only favour in return is people "not" bagging their sloppy and unreliable software.
Square R&D team in honolulu didn't only work on the movie but on games too. A lot of effort was put for the hair simulation and the cloth simulator for example.
And do you think that when and if XSI is going to be used in major production no one is going to write script/plug-ins for it?
Yes, I expect large productions to do their own stuff...and a lot of it. However, you stated "Maya wasnt modified as much as you can think. Some plugins where added and MEL script where writen but thats pretty much it." which would could easily be interpreted as meaning Maya out of the box could do a FF kind of production (or at least close to it).
If you replace "some" with "boat load" in your statement, I think it would be more accurate. In addition, Square had direct access to Maya's R&D people. You certainly can't totally overhaul every feature in a product in one production of a movie. However, if key programmers from A/W had to "tweak" the executive nuclues (or the lower level code) of Maya so it could be used in the production, then I would say that "alot" of modifcations were made.
I don't think this is a negative issue for Maya, but certainly it wouldn't be truthful if Maya's marketing people made statements like "with just some plugins and MEL scripts Square was pretty much able to do FF out of the box." I know those weren't your exact words, but I felt yours could be taken that way.
The fact is that Maya was used "almost" out of the box, and I'm not sure that Square have access to the R&D people at A|W. Jack Liao (sorry missed, rest in peace) used to work for square but the Maya executable was the same maya that everybody else used.
Most of the software was commecially available for FF the movie: MTOR for Renderman and Maya for animation and modelling.
FF was not the effort of one person only, so with no package out of the box you'll be able to do something similar. You can get good result of course.
I still beleave that Maya wasnt modify as much as people think for FF, but this is my personal opinion of course and not A|W marketing or so. I do not care what marketing and magazines says about software. Thats why I'm really looking forward to try XSI2 my self and see how it does work.
@@I still beleave that Maya wasnt modify as much as people think for FF, but this is my personal opinion of course and not A|W marketing or so.
So you don't know whether what you say is truth or fiction then. Just knowing how things work in production, I'd say a lot of custom code was written regardless of what anybody says. When production started, Maya was still in it's infancy so a lot of holes still needed addressing - this is where somebody could possibly get away with saying little extra code was written as A|W probably added some of the requests/requirements as part of their regular version upgrade scheme. So in actuality, marketting can probably get away with their statements only on technicalities whereas in reality there was probably a lot of coded added behind closed doors and blended in the stream in ways people wouldn't think twice about unless they knew what to look for.
Yes I do know what square did or didnt. As usuall you assume too much about people that you don't know.
A|W Marketing are not saint but Softimage Marketing are not either otherwise they would not have been in the marketing.
For once I was not going agaist XSI you should stop to be so protective about software and software war I was just expressin my personal opinion about Maya and FF.
