SoftImage Msg Brd Archive TEXT
Subject: SoftImage Msg Brd Archive TEXT
Author: Various
Uploaded By: PC Mike
Date: 5/15/1997
File: SOFTIMAG.TXT (139357 bytes)
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Archive of messages posted in the Macintosh Graphic Arts Forum's 3D SIG's SoftImage message board. All posts prior to 3/97
--------------------------------------------
Macintosh Graphics Forum Go Keyword MGR
Checked with Disinfectant 3.6 released by mw
Subj: New Soft Folder!
Date: 96-01-21 14:58:31 EDT
From: AFC John
Posted on: America Online
This is the second incarnation of the SoftImage message base. The old one got
full, so it was archived and uploaded to 3DSIG Libraries. Please continue to
post all questions and comments regarding SoftImage, Eddie and Toonz for IRIX
and NT here.
AFC John
3DSIG/MGRSubj: SI and NT
Date: 96-01-21 16:32:03 EDT
From: Rebotko7
Posted on: America Online
Does anyone know about plans for SI running on CHRP with Windows NT?
KentSubj: Re:SI and NT
Date: 96-01-21 22:29:07 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
>>>
Does anyone know about plans for SI running on CHRP with Windows NT?
<<<
So far, it hasn't even been mentioned in Montreal. Need to wait until the
platform actually is available before serious discussion takes place. Should
simply be a matter of perhaps recompiling SI if CHRP's NT isn't is some sense
Microsoft pure....Subj: Re:SI and NT
Date: 96-01-22 08:47:14 EDT
From: DRFREITAG
Posted on: America Online
We have a CHRP compliant PPC system from STD here at the university. I am
trying to get info from Softimage regarding its compatiblity. The ability to
do 2D and video post-prod on the Mac OS, as well as have a high end 3d
package like SI on one machine, with no duplication of memory, peripherals,
would be a very cost effective way to go.Subj: Re:SI and NT
Date: 96-01-22 12:14:01 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
I work with Softimage doing all their NURBS modeling so you're getting
information "from Softimage". I reiterate, nobody in Montreal has looked at
CHRP. I've never heard of the STD people you mentioned (I would've thought
IBM would have produced the first available CHRP...) but, if you e-mail me
their phone/fax/e-mail address, I'll pass it on to SI's system folks. I'll
let you know what response they give.
Use alan@softimage.com.Subj: Re:SI and NT
Date: 96-01-22 15:32:22 EDT
From: D Grahame
Posted on: America Online
Asked the founder that very question (SI and CRHP PPC) at the rollout of SI
NT in SF last week, and he seemed very positive on the idea, although he said
he hadn't thought about it before.
Donald G.Subj: Nice
Date: 96-01-29 23:23:46 EDT
From: Rebotko7
Posted on: America Online
Its nice to see everyone verify the bennys I was seeing in the SI on NT CHRP
thing. Does anyone know of the situation with MentalRAY and NT? Is it an
option or only on the SGI version?
KentSubj: Re:Nice
Date: 96-01-31 00:25:52 EDT
From: D Grahame
Posted on: America Online
Will be bundled with the new version in six months or so, according to the
ceo Man at the rollout.
Currently all the plus options, such as particles, MentalRay, cubic
mapping(!) etc not available for NT, so I'm not rushing out and buying it. By
the time we have CHRP machines in twelve months or so, all should be
available, and a large drop in price was also foreshadowed at the show toward
the end of the year. I can wait.
I don't have any desire to do, or demand for large amounts of plasteek
Reeboot-style character animation at the moment.
I'm more interested in the particles and Mental Ray actually, and that's not
available on NT, as I said. The expensive third-party Renderman options are
not available either.
Donald G.Subj: Re:Nice
Date: 96-01-31 00:59:00 EDT
From: D Grahame
Posted on: America Online
ps noted that practically everything that was really good on the SI demo reel
was rendered either using their advanced options ie MentalRay and particles
(THE flea) or using Renderman (practically all the ILM stuff) both of which
are not available for NT SoftImage, so turnkey buyers wanting to save some
bucks and buying a SoftImage suite for $15,000 on NT MIPS, intel/Intergraph
or DEC Alpha should look a little closer if they intend to redo Jurassic Park
using SI NT alone.....
DGSubj: Re:Nice
Date: 96-01-31 01:28:18 EDT
From: D Grahame
Posted on: America Online
Despite the false advertising, love the general direction of SoftImage ie
lower prices, broader platform support.
The sooner SGI really starts paying more than lipservice to its animator
clients the better as far as I'm concerned, but I don't think we represent
enough of market for them to really care, apart from the advertising value
of the big production houses using their hardware.
When I see an Indy R10000 (not a hobbled remaindered 4000 5000 0r 4400
system) for a comparable price to a comparably price/performance PPC, Alpha
or even Pentium system (including twenty four bit graphics and hardware
rendering) I'll believe it. SIGGRAPH will be interesting.
NT will have standard graphics drivers by then, practical support multiple
monitors, system level Wacom driver support, heck ALMOST as powerful s a Mac
from a practical user point of view, combined with true multithreading and
prememptive memory paging so developers don't have to worry about memory
management so much, unlike the Mac now.
Donald GrahameSubj: Re:Nice
Date: 96-01-31 13:27:01 EDT
From: PixelsSD
Posted on: America Online
Donald,
You could use SI under NT and run SI->RMan utilities on your SGI.
-AndrewSubj: Re:Nice
Date: 96-01-31 13:59:40 EDT
From: D Grahame
Posted on: America Online
Uh UH. Thanks Andrew.
Then I'll really want upgrade the thing. And SGI will do it for me, for the
very special price of only $10,000 because it needs new power supply or some
such. Ugh.
Donald G.
Subj: Re: Nice (SGI lower prices?)
Date: 96-02-01 00:47:41 EDT
From: Eclipse040
Posted on: America Online
Donald (and others I'm sure),
Here is a press release from SGI related to the very thing you're talking
about. The IndyStudio (the high-end flavor) comes with 24-bit ZX graphics
(hardware accelerated, 4 Geometry Engines), a 180 MHz R5000SC (not R10k but
definitely better than R4xxx) 128 MB of RAM, 2 GB disk, CD-ROM, 20" display
and lots-o-software for about $20K. That is very competitive with
Intergraph, Dec, etc... We've done benchmarks against The TDZ-300's and
400's w/Pentium Pro's (which actually cost more when similarly configured)
and outperformed them.
We are also doing some bundles with Alias on IndyStudios that should have
price points that at the very least make you smile knowingly...
We're trying.
Tony
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
SILICON GRAPHICS INDYSTUDIO SETS NEW INDUSTRY STANDARD
Highly Integrated Content Creation Systems Targeted
at Advanced Multimedia and Video PC Users
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (January 22, 1996) -- Silicon Graphics, Inc. (NYSE:
SGI)
today announced IndyStudio, a new product line that dramatically increases
access to state-of-the-art content creation tools. The IndyStudio systems,
based on the Indy R5000 graphics workstations also introduced today, are
specifically designed for professionals who create interactive 3D content
and
digital video and retouch high resolution images for print and on-line
publications, interactive titles and animated features.
"The use of highly realistic 2D and 3D graphics is exploding in media from
feature films to the World Wide Web," said Tom Jermoluk, president and COO of
Silicon Graphics. "IndyStudio systems leverage Silicon Graphics proven
imaging,
graphics and rendering capabilities and make them accessible to power-starved
creatives currently using personal computers."
IndyStudio Sets New Price Performance Standard
IndyStudio systems offer powerful Silicon Graphics 3D graphics and imaging
workstation performance at prices comparable to high-end multimedia personal
computers. The IndyStudio systems are specially configured and optimized for
entertainment and publishing application requirements.
The IndyStudio product line begins at $13,495 for a complete system equipped
with the new 150MHz MIPS R5000SC RISC processor and the new XGE24 3D graphics
and imaging subsystem. The IndyStudio R5000 systems with XGE24 3D graphics
deliver up to 80 percent faster 3D graphics and CPU performance than existing
Indy systems, based on the MIPS R4400 and R4600 processors. The entry
IndyStudio system is offered with 24-bit color XGE24 graphics, 1 GB disk, 64
MB RAM and 17-inch high-resolution color monitor.
The advanced IndyStudio system, based on XZ graphics, one of Silicon Graphics
most popular 3D-accelerated graphics subsystems, comes with 2 GB disk, 128 MB
RAM, quad-speed CD-ROM and 20-inch monitor, specially priced at $21,995.
--- continued ---Subj: Re:Nice (SGI lower prices?)...
Date: 96-02-01 00:49:11 EDT
From: Eclipse040
Posted on: America Online
IndyStudio systems are pre-configured with Alias|Wavefront Composer Lite,
Adobe Photoshop 3.0, Adobe Illustrator 5.5, Insignia Solutions SoftWindows
2.0, MetaTools Kai's PowerTools 2.0.1, Silicon Graphics Network File System
(NFS) and IRIS Impressario applications. These software applications are
valued at approximately $4,500 and are integrated with IndyStudio at no
additional charge.
Alias|Wavefront Supports IndyStudio With New Promotion
In support of the IndyStudio introduction, Alias|Wavefront announced today
the
launch of a special promotional price through March 31, 1996 for its most
popular content creation software, PowerAnimator 7.0, Composer 3.5 and
Animator 7.0. In combination with the IndyStudio systems, Alias|Wavefront
brings the industry-leading power and functionality of its high-end content
creation tools within reach of a broader range of users.
The promotional program is particularly attractive to digital artists who are
looking to increase productivity. When purchased together through
Alias|Wavefront authorized dealers, customers will receive the IndyStudio
system with Animator for $15,995, with Composer for $18,495 and with
PowerAnimator for $19,995.
"Artists who push limits see the value of investing in tool sets with room to
grow. The technological superiority of PowerAnimator 7.0 for building
realistic characters and creating the most advanced F/X is now available to
anyone considering a high-end PC," explained Rob Burgess, president of
Alias|Wavefront. "The IndyStudio systems combined with our software
applications provide a clear path to next-generation software initiatives
such
as Project Maya."
Industry Leading Application Vendors Support New Product Line
The IndyStudio systems can be purchased through Silicon Graphics' value-added
dealers as part of an introductory price promotion with a wide range of
powerful content creation software. Certified applications for the
IndyStudio
include: Animator 7.0, PowerAnimator 7.0, Composer 3.5, Avid Technology Media
Suite Pro, Chyron Cindy Video Adaptor, Chyron LIBERTY Paint, ELECTROGIG
GIG3DGO, Evolving Video Technologies Antero, Integrated Research Harmony,
USAnimation, Vertigo Psycho, Xaos Tools Production Suite and LightWave 3D 4.0
and other approved vendors.
Introductory pricing for the IndyStudio product line is in effect from
January
22, 1996 until June 30, 1996. Systems are expected to be available this
quarter.Subj: Re: Nice (SGI lower prices?)
Date: 96-02-01 01:02:29 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
>>
We are also doing some bundles with Alias on IndyStudios that should have
price points that at the very least make you smile knowingly...
<<
The problem is that Alias still sells modules of software beyond what is now
PowerAnimator. THe base price does not include their advanced modeling or
animation stuff (which is why I'd buy Alias: it's base package leaves a lot
to be desired) for which you need to pay extra. THat extra used to be $16K
for modeling. Rejoicing might still be premature....Subj: Re:Nice (SGI lower
prices?)...
Date: 96-02-01 01:08:07 EDT
From: Eclipse040
Posted on: America Online
BTW - there are MANY groups inside of SGI that do care a great deal about the
animation market. In fact I'd say that as a company SGI cares about the
animation market as much or more than any other hardware company in the
world. While it is true that the entertainment markets represent about 20%
of our revenue, and animation is a percentage of that, it is one of our most
visible markets, and one that forms the religious core of our company.
I for one hope we do build a box like you describe - but don't discount the
R5000. It's a good processor, and compares very favorably with the 20164,
Pentium Pro and PowerPC 604 in benchmarks, AIM, Spec95 ('ug - can't believe I
said Spec95) and my personal pet peeve, real application performance. A 180
MHz R5000SC offers slightly superior performance to a 250 Mhz R4400SC, which
outperforms PowerPC 604 (even @ 150 Mhz), its "benchmarks" compete very well
with 266 Mhz 20164 Alphas and typically wins application benchmarks against
Pentium and Pentium Pro NT boxes. (Pro/E is a commonly benchmarked app that
would be one example...)
There are enough people inside of Silicon Graphics that care about this
market to essentially form a groundswell to get Digital Media Systems (the
division that builds the Indy) to offer XZ graphics as a $1K upcharge from
24-bit. (in new boxes at least) That is VERY aggressive pricing, for SGI or
anyone for that type of hardware. This was viewed as a strategic investment
in our "authoring" markets, and I hope we don't stop there. (three cheers,
IF we lower memory, disk and CD-ROM pricing...) The IndyStudio
pricing/bundles are also very aggressively priced, and you'll note they are
SC, 24-bit, "useful" configurations...
We're not where we want to be, or where our customers want us to be, but
we're working hard to get there, from both a pricing and product perspective.
Question: Would you rather see SGI build a box that offered "competitive"
performance with PentiumPro-type boxes @ $10K'ish prices (in useful configs),
or build a box that offered clearly superior performance @ $20K'ish prices?
(assuming you can't have clearly superior @ $10K...)
Reason I ask? I'd just like to get a feel if people want cheap OR better
quality. Keep in mind that a "usefully" configured Pentium Pro box with 64
MB of RAM, 2 GB disk, 20" 24-bit, 3d accelerated display with NT, fast I/O,
and such will probably be in the $10K range... (w/o basic video, audio,
ISDN, networking, etc...) (as will a 9500/132 64/2GB, 20" trinitron, 24-bit
with 3d acceleration Power Mac)
TonySubj: Re:Nice
Date: 96-02-01 19:48:04 EDT
From: AC4UF
Posted on: America Online
<<I don't have any desire to do, or demand for large amounts of plasteek
Reeboot-style character animation at the moment.>>
Neither do the folks who mke ReBoot, either. The gang at ABC (??) canceled
it, according to the USA Today.
/\/\att SchnellerSubj: Re:Nice
Date: 96-02-02 15:06:57 EDT
From: DarkSkyDig
Posted on: America Online
Probably more to do with a less then compelling story. Granted I've only
watched half of an episode but it was quite boring once I got past looking at
the geometry.
Quality really has no bearing on whether a show will stay around or not (look
at network tv for instance) but it has to be entertaining.
Most people are so goo-goo over the technology they forget that the
show/movie just sucks in general.
I like that squiggly line drawing psychologist show, it at least is
enteraining. But I can't remember the name, i've seen it a couple of times
though...
Dann Stubbs
Dark Sky Digital
(we expounded our company name from DSD, and changed our AOL address
accordingly)
Subj: Re:Nice
Date: 96-02-03 16:20:37 EDT
From: Jondobson
Posted on: America Online
Dr Katz, I believe...
I like that one too.
JonSubj: SI on the NT
Date: 96-02-04 18:36:43 EDT
From: T Mation
Posted on: America Online
Can anyone give me any bench mark data to compare our current ElectricIMage
on 604/150 to the SI/NT on an INtergraph machine. We are trying to make some
decision this week [2.5.95].
Thanks
Rob Stern
TechnimationSubj: Re:SI on the NT
Date: 96-02-05 00:09:28 EDT
From: Graham 921
Posted on: America Online
>>Can anyone give me any bench mark data to compare our current ElectricIMage
on 604/150 to the SI/NT on an INtergraph machine. We are trying to make some
decision this week <<
Rob, here is my opinion on the whole thing. Let me preface my statement by
saying I have been using the Mac since 1984. I belive I can qualify as a
MacHead!!
I have used form*Z and Electric Image. It is quit nice. However if you need
to make a chage to a model in EIAS, you must go over to form*Z do your thing
and then go back to EIAS.
One of the many reasons I love SoftImage soo much (or any SGI 3D tool) is
that all the tools (modeling to animation) is in one program. I mus admit
that I have become spoiled at work is that I have a 8100/110 and a SGI
Indigo2.
I saw a side by side comparison between a DEC Alpha machine @$27,000 and a
$40,000 SGI Indigo2. In the time that the SGI finished rendering 1 frame the
DEC Alpha machine was on frame 2.8!!! Most sobering.
I would go fro the SoftImageNT machine!!Subj: SI with NT on a MAC
Date: 96-02-05 02:21:42 EDT
From: JazzyG
Posted on: America Online
If I installed NT on my powermac would I be able to run SI?Subj: Re:SI with
NT on a MAC
Date: 96-02-05 03:38:16 EDT
From: AFC Dong
Posted on: America Online
>>If I installed NT on my powermac would I be able to run SI?<<
NT is an operating system for PCs. Maybe next year when the PPCReference
Platform (aka CHRP) it may happen, if they port SI to run on the PowerPC
chip.
DKSubj: Re:SI with NT on a MAC
Date: 96-02-05 03:40:44 EDT
From: BKnob97
Posted on: America Online
>>>>if i installed nt on my powermac would I be able to run SI<<<
How are you going to install NT?, an emulator or an ad in card?. Im curious
about this same question. Brian KSubj: Re:SI with NT on a MAC
Date: 96-02-05 15:20:41 EDT
From: Max92
Posted on: America Online
one of the nice things about nt is that it is not tied to one type of
processor. You can get nt for MIPS, Alpha, Pentium, and, yes, PPC.
Unfortunately, it does *not* run on a power macintosh; if you want to run it
on PPC, you need one of the PPC workstations. Byte did an article on these
guys a while back. HP, Motorola, IBM, and Austin make PPC workstations.Subj:
Re:SI with NT on a MAC
Date: 96-02-05 15:50:02 EDT
From: D Grahame
Posted on: America Online
But, as Dong said, SI doesn't run on PPC NT yet. I asked the CEO of SI a
couple of weeks ago, and he said maybe probably by year end or early next
year.
NT runs on so many processors because it is a so-called microkernel based OS
with a "hardware abstraction layer", making it straightforward to port it to
many processor designs. An interesting historical note is that NT ran of PPC
long before it ran on Intel chips, because the PPC is based on the old IBM
RISC design, which was part of NT's original server style market.
Apple's new multithreaded prememptive multitasking OS called Copland boasts a
microkernal design also, with hardware abstraction layer, so if and when it
ever sees the light of day, in theory they'll be able to easily run the Mac
OS on multiple processor types also,
regards,
Donald G.Subj: Re:SI with NT on a MAC
Date: 96-02-05 17:35:07 EDT
From: Rex Niger
Posted on: America Online
>> Unfortunately, it does *not* run on a power macintosh;
Well not easily ;) You can get a board from Orange Micro that'll let you
run it. It's not truly running, but they do have Pentium boards now,
unfortunately they're Nx586s and they lousy FPUs, which limits their
usefulness for 3D work.
If Apple ships its PPCP machines by mid-year then switching between the two
environments is as simple as a reboot.
-EricSubj: Re:SI with NT on a MAC
Date: 96-02-06 01:19:49 EDT
From: AFC Dong
Posted on: America Online
For the price of a good powerful board, it may be better to just spend tha
etra cash (or credit) and buy a PC setup. Especially for graphics. (although
I don't condone that sort of thing here in the Mac 3dsig)
DKSubj: Re:SI with NT on a MAC
Date: 96-02-06 01:24:48 EDT
From: BKnob97
Posted on: America Online
>>if apple ships its PPCP macines by mid year<<<
Is apple planning on doing PPCP machines? and where would I find this info. I
have not read anything about this in the main mac mags and I was getting
nervous that Apple was not planning to do the obvious. Any info would be
great. Thanks
Brian KnoblockSubj: EclipseTheOS
Date: 96-02-06 01:30:57 EDT
From: Rebotko7
Posted on: America Online
Aha! So IRIX 5.x is ever so wonderous! We cherish the precious desktop
icons and the nifty "drag and drop" ripoffs of another GUI ;) Praytell, will
the engineering masterminds in the valley of the gods see fit to let us
reformat our root drive using something so simple as a floppy-disk, or will
the Indystudio require something so lavish as a SysAdmin pulling a nice
salary and benifits from our profits? Come now, after sucking the design
professional for some $42K (that would be a computer and decent software of
course) surely you don't expect us to have a computer science degree just to
adjust our directory hierarchy? Wow, how about that nifty DAT/PYTHON
Mechanism? "tar" now there's a modern way of approaching a system backup!
"On SGI I can push poly's so fast you'll go back in time!" It seems that SGI
needs to "invest" a little talent in more approachable technology. Sure, I
use SGI and Wavefront 4.2 it has some incredible features that Macheads only
look at and whimper, but I like to design; I need something a little above
command-line hacking to interact with a crashing OS.
Now I'm sure you'll pull this apart line by line and I'll get slammed from
here till next month in this forum. I don't really care. I have as much to
say about competing hardware and other popular OSs (my !@#$W#E%$%& 9500 has
been down for 2 weeks counting). The beef is this: get down off your
high-horse and face the issues. I would gladly pay the 20K for a box with
insane poly pushing abilities AND a decent interface that really approached
what designers need. But if SGI wants to "Rock the World" of designers, not
just the entertainment elite, they need to really take a look at why the Mac
is so popular in graphics, not just do interface rip-offs.
Do you want that I should slam Apple next?
KentSubj: Re:SI with NT on a MAC
Date: 96-02-06 01:50:16 EDT
From: Eclipse040
Posted on: America Online
NT doesn't run on Power Mac's. You'll have to wait until the Common Hardware
Reference Platform to run NT on an Apple logo'd box...
Assuming there is a PowerPC-compiled version of Soft (which is assume there
is or will be) you'd then be able to run Soft on some future PowerMac.
TonySubj: Re:SI with NT on a MAC
Date: 96-02-06 01:54:23 EDT
From: Eclipse040
Posted on: America Online
With regards to Copland - the kernel in Copland does not support SMP,
Gershwin's kernel will.
There are also many issues with regards to Copland's ability to support
pre-emptive multitasking that I think I posted about a year back - they might
be archived somewhere. (basically current apps that use the Mac toolbox (ie.
just about everything) don't get preemptive multitasking - as they call the
toolbox, which isn't reentrant/multithreaded, and won't be until Gershwin.)
Apple and DayStar have been working on a multiprocessing API - the only
problem is it is different from the threads manager - so it doesn't "come for
free" even if you use the threads manager. There is a version of Photoshop
that uses the multiprocessing API for some of it's functions and on a 4 CPU
Daystar Genesis Photoshop screams.
TonySubj: Re:EclipseTheOS
Date: 96-02-06 02:03:54 EDT
From: Eclipse040
Posted on: America Online
I personally agree with everything you said with regards to ease of use. I
like the Mac (a lot - used to work for Apple) and have several @ home.
(Including the one I'm running AOL on right now...)
If I've been "on my high-horse" I'm sorry, guess I'll have to re-read my
postings.
I think what we all want is the Mac's ease of use, with the prices of Wintel
boxes with the OS power/features of unix TFlops of power. I don't think I
ever claimed Irix was easier to use than a Mac though. (and I'd be the first
to tell you it isn't).
But Irix is a good implementation of Unix - even if we (just like IBM, Sun,
Dec, HP, Microsoft, etc.) "stole" interface ideas from Apple.
Sorry if I've offended you - didn't want to start a flame war. And no -
don't slam Apple, EVERY company has their problems - SGI included.
TonySubj: Re:SI with NT on a MAC
Date: 96-02-06 02:03:59 EDT
From: Rex Niger
Posted on: America Online
>>they might be archived somewhere. (basically current apps that use the Mac
toolbox (ie. just about everything) don't get preemptive multitasking - as
they call the toolbox, which isn't reentrant/multithreaded, and won't be
until Gershwin.)
Not quite true. All I/O is preemptively multitasked, so any apps that make
use of the file manager, network services, or other misc. devices (i.e. most)
get to take advantage of the new architecture. In addition apps that take
advantage of the thread manager might be able to take advantage of the
preemptive multitasking as well.
Of course the flip side to all of this is that most vendors who really
*need* to take advantage of Copland's preemptive services probably will
within 3-6 months of release. Same thing about the multiprocessing API.
(Which still isn't final to my knowledge.)
-EricSubj: Re:Copland
Date: 96-02-06 02:14:14 EDT
From: Eclipse040
Posted on: America Online
I hope you're right (with regards to app vendors supporting Copland features)
- I know Apple is betting on it.
BTW - the file manager, and networking API's in Copland change (from a
developer's perspective) - there is backward compatibility to some extent,
but new features require support of the new API's. If they use the threads
manager in an "invisible" fashion (ie. don't touch the toolbox) they can get
preemptive multitasking with little recoding - but there still will need to
be some recoding - as these processes need to be "spun off" into a separate
address space, and a message passing API will be used to provide
communication between the protected/preemptive processes that have been "spun
off" and those processes running in "toolbox space".
The multiprocessing API is in continual evolution, but is available - and
there are a few apps that support it today. (Photoshop) I think most
developers would have preferred that Apple find a way to make multiprocessing
come "for free" (they were quite vocal about it @ the last Apple World Wide
Developer's Conference) with uses of the threads manager, but as I recall
there was something architecturally preventing that from working. I'll have
to dig up some of my notes and check.
Copland is cool though - particularly with the new GUI, OpenDoc, high
performance I/O, etc - and with "Copland" apps things should be much more
stable, faster and system responsiveness should improve markedly. Can't
wait.
TonySubj: Re:Copland
Date: 96-02-06 03:30:17 EDT
From: Eclipse040
Posted on: America Online
Here's an oldy but goody I posted a WHILE back - fairly good 50k' overview of
Copland. Back from my days @ Apple in fact. (see - I have been lurking in
these boards for a while...) For those that don't care, skip this and the
next message. Sorry for the bandwidth useage.
Tony
(Now @ Silicon Graphics)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subj: Macintosh OS Stuff
Date: 94-09-01 00:18:52 EST
From: Eclipse040
A couple of things related to the Macintosh OS that I've seen posted.
Hopefully this isn't too technical but it may clear things up...
The current MacOS (System 7.x) is a cooperative multitasking environment with
shared memory. The next generation MacOS (Copeland) - due next year - will
have some memory protection (more on this is a second) and will offer true,
preemptive multitasking with threads and all the good stuff (at a kernel
level) that we all envy on those Unix boxes. In addition to that it will
live in "native" mode and be almost fully native (including networking and
the file system - yeah - Including fully concurrent I/O, screamin' fast!)
The reason I say "mostly protected" is that the Toolbox as we know - and
maybe - love it today, is not reentrant - ie. cannot be made multithreaded.
(among other things) Therefore Macintosh applications that make use of the
toolbox (ie. virtually anything with a GUI) will all run in one address space
- sharing memory. (ie. just like today)
But wait, if an application is multithreaded (ie. uses the Threads Manager
like BackBurner, Alias Sketch ,etc.) it will be able to spin off processes
(maybe little faceless apps to do rendering jobs, or antialiasing, or
radiosity, or...) that can run in a protected address space. These processes
could even survive a crashed Macintosh and application - since typically when
a Mac crashes it really just needs to reload the Toolbox. (developers need
to stop walking their heaps and such) So the app & toolbox goes down leaving
the little rendering process churning away - reload the toolbox, relaunch the
app, and if programmed correctly the app could reestablish communication with
its process through the message passing system built into the kernel. Neat
'eh?
Ok you say - so where is preemption? Well, at the kernel level (which sits
underneat the Toolbox) everything is preemptively scheduled, with the Toolbox
"space" assigned a process ID and priority. This means that everything
within the Toolbox space (ie. anything that uses the Toolbox) runs just like
it does today, those "spun off" processes all get their own process ID and
priority so that each of them can be preemptively scheduled.
The reason we are doing this is so that application developers can count on
some level of compatability with current apps (it will be similar to A/UX 3)
and so that we can get our act together and basically rewrite the toolbox,
make it portable, C++, native, reentrant, etc... When this happens apps get
their own address space, process IDs, priority, scheduling - Nirvana. (or so
we think today)
The fully preemptive everything, fully protected everything is planned for
Gershwin, or release of System Software targeted for approx 1 yr. after
Copland.
But even in Copland there are some VERY substantial and very noticable
benefits to virtually ALL Macs, and especially PowerMacs - the File Manager
(all new) is a preemtively scheduled task, which means you can now have I/O
stuff going on w/o waiting (it gets timeslices and scheduled just like
everything else). We will get much closer to the theoretical maximum
transfer rates, we get MUCH better processor utilization (there are a lot of
unused clock cycles in Macs today - can you say interrupt?) amazingly
improved network performance, and the super cool ability (at least the
planned ability) to reload the toolbox in about 3 seconds (instead of a 3
minute reboot). Other really spiffy propeller-head stuff too...
--- continued ---Subj: Copland continued
Date: 96-02-06 03:31:37 EDT
From: Eclipse040
Posted on: America Online
So, bottom line: It's coming, it's in the works, it's been demonstrated at
the developer's conference, talked about openly in white papers, and all the
current CPU's will see huge benefits, not just now "future" Mac(s).
--- continuation ---
The only other option to get to a fully protected/preemtive OS was to kind of
keep the toolbox the way it is (ie. not rewrite it completely) and launch a
seperate copy of the toolbox for each app so that each Toolbox/App
combination could be scheduled individually and each could have their own
protected memory space. Decided against that as it was slower, much less
portable, used lots of RAM (several hundred K extra per launched app), and
didn't clean up any of the current Toolbox, err, um, "deferred features" ;)
There is so much more to say, but then again I'm a geek and you all probably
don't care. If you've got any specific questions/issues, let me know, if I
can talk about them - I will.
Go render something cool,
TonySubj: Re:Copland
Date: 96-02-06 03:42:34 EDT
From: Rex Niger
Posted on: America Online
>> the file manager, and networking API's in Copland change (from a
developer's perspective)
They only change if you want them too. Basically existing file and network
calls are just remapped to their new Copland equivalents.
>>there is backward compatibility to some extent, but new features require
support of the new API's.
True, but the existing calls will still launch preemptive server processes.
From an I/O perspective, a very big draw of Copland is that Apple's
drastically simplified the APIs, so it's actually easier to use the new ones.
The old ones still work, but if you're a developer, why flog yourself?
>> If they use the threads manager in an "invisible" fashion (ie. don't touch
the toolbox)
Actually I think most developers have been avoiding toolbox calls. There
are so many restrictions on threads, that I bet most people are using them
for grunt computation work. Adapting them to server processes should be
fairly straightforward.
>>but there still will need to be some recoding
There's always going to be some recoding, but Copland has the advantage
that the new code the developers will be writing is going to be simpler and
more robust.
>>The multiprocessing API is in continual evolution, but is available - and
there are a few apps that support it today. (Photoshop)
I didn't say it wasn't available just that it wasn't done. Which is what
the Daystar rep. said on the 'net a few days ago.
>>(they were quite vocal about it @ the last Apple World Wide Developer's
Conference) with uses of the threads manager, but as I recall there was
something architecturally preventing that from working.
I wouldn't be surprised the current thread manager's kind of funky.
-EricSubj: bad day
Date: 96-02-07 13:00:33 EDT
From: Rebotko7
Posted on: America Online
oops
Sorry the language was a little too personal. I was referring to SGI on the
corporate level. Bad day at the office.
kentSubj: Re:Tony the SGI guy...
Date: 96-02-09 00:49:24 EDT
From: JohnLiscom
Posted on: America Online
i personally think that your recent comments were/are wonderful in regards to
what is coming to the mac.
Best wishes,
JohnSubj: Softimage NT?
Date: 96-02-12 11:42:31 EDT
From: JC Animate
Posted on: America Online
My company has a bunch of Intergraph TDZ dual pentiums that they are using to
run Microstation. I think I can get my grubby hands on one of them. Is it
worth it to try Softimage NT. I've heard mixed reviews, but CGW just gave it
a second place Editor's choice behind PowerAnimator 7.0. I realize that
editor's don't know everything, but this has sparked my interest. Especially
since ILM seems to use it extensively. If anyone out there has REALLY TRIED
IT, I would appreciate some input. I don't want to here a bunch of platform
bashing, just a genuine assesment of the Softimage NT's usefulness compared
to the setup I have now. Which is Form-Z / EIAS running on an Power Mac
9500/132.
Thanks
JCSubj: Re:Softimage NT?
Date: 96-02-13 00:05:44 EDT
From: Japunto
Posted on: America Online
I just got to try it for three hours on Saturday at Microsoft's offices here
in Atlanta. I was very impressed! It has all of the features of the SGI
version except for mental ray and a couple of other things, which will port
over soon (according to the people at SoftImage). It is said to render faster
in NT than on an SGI.
I'm definitly trying to get it for my office!
jPSubj: Softimage NT!
Date: 96-02-15 02:17:44 EDT
From: Rebotko7
Posted on: America Online
Subj: Re:Softimage NT?
Date: 96-02-12 23:05:44 EST
From: Japunto
>>It is said to render faster in NT than on an SGI.
<<
So RenderMAN isn't the only render that runs faster on somthing other than
MIPS RISC?
KentSubj: Re:Softimage NT!
Date: 96-02-16 20:41:49 EDT
From: AFC Dong
Posted on: America Online
Is anyone using SI on an Intergraph machine? How is it? Bugs? In
comparison to the SGI version (sans Mental Ray and Particles)?
Anyone know of where I can see a good demo in LA?
DKSubj: Re:Softimage NT!
Date: 96-02-16 20:56:59 EDT
From: APMODELER
Posted on: America Online
Dong -
You might try calling M T & T Group in Burbank.
818-953-4740 They were selling the NetPower (MIPS) SI bundles, but I don't
know about the Intel or Alpha packages.
Please post your findings / comparisons as you get to check them out !
JRSubj: Re:Softimage NT!
Date: 96-02-17 01:18:23 EDT
From: AFC Dong
Posted on: America Online
Thanks. Right near work too. :)Subj: New Indy R5000 chip
Date: 96-02-17 23:01:11 EDT
From: JoelPilger
Posted on: America Online
Anyone heard some real-world specs on the performance of the new Indy R5000
180 Mhz chip over the R4400 150 or 200 MHz ??
It's a reasonably priced upgrade compared to upgrading an Indigo2. If the new
chip is significantly faster, that is.
Thanks.
Joel Pilger
Visual ApproachSubj: Re:New Indy R5000 chip
Date: 96-02-19 04:30:15 EDT
From: Eclipse040
Posted on: America Online
Joel,
What do you mean by "real-world specs"? On a range of applications we've
found the following.
150 MHz R5000SC = 200 Mhz R4400 +/- 10%
180 MHz R5000SC = 250 Mhz R4400 +/- 10%
On some "real" applications benchmarks a 150 Mhz R5000 SC Indy was about 10%
faster CPU-wise than a 200 Mhz R4400 Indy. Graphics-wise the R5000 is
substantially faster than the R4400 (software-graphics wise that is) - ie.
XGE. This is due to some recoding/optimizing of OpenGL to take specific
advantage of some new instructions included in the R5000 (mips4) instruction
set, most specifically the MADD instruction. In some cases we've seen 70%
improvements in T-mesh.
In general the R5000 will be about 30-40% faster than an R4400 at the same
clock speed.
TonySubj: Re:New Indy R5000 chip
Date: 96-02-19 12:00:39 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
A 70% speed-up in TMesh would help SI's shaded mode quite a bit. The
tessellations of everything get converted to TMeshes. It will be interesting
to see how much good, ole shaded mode improves.Subj: Re:New Indy R5000 chip
Date: 96-02-23 16:49:26 EDT
From: JoelPilger
Posted on: America Online
> 150 MHz R5000SC = 200 Mhz R4400 +/- 10%
> 180 MHz R5000SC = 250 Mhz R4400 +/- 10%
Thanks a bunch for the specs.
I suppose that means if I upgrade my 150 MHz R4400 to a 180 MHz R5000, that
would be roughly a 50% speed improvement.
Could that be true? All for about $2500 ??? I'm sold...
JoelSubj: Baseball model
Date: 96-02-23 16:50:56 EDT
From: JoelPilger
Posted on: America Online
Anyone got a decent Softimage model of a baseball? I can pay for it,
depending on the quality.
Viewpoint wants too much money...
Thanks,
JoelSubj: Re:Soft/NT in Mac studio
Date: 96-02-23 20:06:56 EDT
From: GeoMedia
Posted on: America Online
We will likely soon be purchasing SoftImage on one of the Integraph
workstations. We have a Mac based Avid Media composer 1000 and would like to
transfer animation files from the NT box to our media composer for editing
and laying off to tape as we currently do from ElectricImage. Additionally we
would like to perform compositing and effects in AfterEffects as we currently
do with QT files. My understanding is that SI does not support QT or OMF but
only AVI and other non Mac multiframe file formats. Is this true or am I
missing the obvious? There is bound to be a solution without having to resort
to DeBab or some other AVI -to-QT converter. Maybe not...Any suggestions?
Martin
GeoMedia Subj: Re:New Indy R5000 chip
Date: 96-02-23 21:42:23 EDT
From: Vanzo
Posted on: America Online
>>I suppose that means if I upgrade my 150 MHz R4400 to a 180 MHz R5000, that
would be roughly a 50% speed improvement.
Could that be true? All for about $2500 ??? I'm sold...<<
Is that the upgrade cost?? I had reps quoting me roughly $6000 for an upgrade
from R4400 150mhz -> R4400 250mhz.
-sjvSubj: Re:Soft/NT in Mac studio
Date: 96-02-24 16:14:03 EDT
From: Kth Lango
Posted on: America Online
>>>. We will likely soon be purchasing SoftImage on one of the Integraph
workstations. We have a Mac based Avid Media composer 1000 and would like to
transfer animation files from the NT box to our media composer for editing
and laying off to tape as we currently do from ElectricImage. Additionally we
would like to perform compositing and effects in AfterEffects as we currently
do with QT files. My understanding is that SI does not support QT or OMF but
only AVI and other non Mac multiframe file formats. Is this true or am I
missing the obvious? There is bound to be a solution without having to resort
to DeBab or some other AVI -to-QT converter. Maybe not...Any suggestions?
Martin
GeoMedia <<<
I can't speak for Softimage as I've never had the pleasure, but I've done
similar transfers with Lightwave files. Generally, what worked nest for me
was to render to indvidual, numbered frames. Dump them to a removable media
disk and put them into the Mac. I didn't have to do any conversion in
Debabelizer as Premiere read the TGA's no problem. All I needed to do was a
renaming pass with Knoll Renamer (sharware, pretty quick) so that I got
seamless frame imports into the editing suite. That way when I selected the
first frame in premeire (in the layout window) the entire collection of
frames showed up as one clip. This all worked with Premiere and Lightwave
frames saved as targas. Should work for SI and Media 1000 as well.
I know you were trying to avoid this extra stuff, but at least it's not as
much headache as trying to convert an .avi file to QT. Now THAT's a pain.
Keith LangoSubj: Re:New Indy R5000 chip
Date: 96-02-27 16:39:11 EDT
From: JoelPilger
Posted on: America Online
> Is that the upgrade cost?? I had reps quoting me roughly $6000 for an
upgrade from R4400 150mhz -> R4400 250mhz.
Yep, that's why I was amazed when my dealer quoted me to upgrade my R4400
150Mhz->R5000 180Mhz for $2500. Perhaps the new R5000 is just cheaper than
the R4400's?
JoelSubj: Re:New Indy R5000 chip
Date: 96-02-28 11:09:25 EDT
From: RPWilliams
Posted on: America Online
Joel,
Have your SGI reps given you a solid indication that the R5000 at 180mhz will
be faster than your 4400 at 150mhz. It doesn't seem like the difference is
going to be that great from what I've seen. Curious to know if you have any
comparative specs. Thanks
Bob WSubj: Re:New Indy R5000 chip
Date: 96-02-28 12:06:53 EDT
From: JoelPilger
Posted on: America Online
> Have your SGI reps given you a solid indication that the R5000 at 180mhz
will be faster than your 4400 at 150mhz.
> It doesn't seem like the difference is going to be that great from what
I've seen. Curious to know if you have any
> comparative specs. Thanks
Tony (Eclipse040) made a comparison...his results were:
> 150 MHz R5000SC = 200 Mhz R4400 +/- 10%
> 180 MHz R5000SC = 250 Mhz R4400 +/- 10%
>
> On some "real" applications benchmarks a 150 Mhz R5000 SC Indy was about
10% faster CPU-wise than a 200 Mhz R4400
> Indy. Graphics-wise the R5000 is substantially faster than the R4400
(software-graphics wise that is) - ie. XGE. This is
> due to some recoding/optimizing of OpenGL to take specific advantage of
some new instructions included in the R5000
> (mips4) instruction set, most specifically the MADD instruction. In some
cases we've seen 70% improvements in T-mesh.
>
> In general the R5000 will be about 30-40% faster than an R4400 at the same
clock speed.
My dealer didn't seem to think the speed improvement would be very
dramatic...Tony's information says otherwise. Either way, $2500 isn't too
much to keep my machine up to date.
JoelSubj: Re:New Indy R5000 chip
Date: 96-03-01 21:21:33 EDT
From: Eclipse040
Posted on: America Online
The benchmarks I've stated (and that we've run) tend to be CAD related.
(Like ProE) The Spec ratings of an R5000 are very similar to a 250 Mhz
R4400. A 150 Mhz R5000SC or a 180 Mhz R5000SC will definitely outperform a
150 Mhz R4400SC.
TonySubj: Newsletter For SI users
Date: 96-03-02 14:48:45 EDT
From: Gary Alvin
Posted on: America Online
We are a new publishing group that is in the process of putting together a
new bi-monthly newsletter for Softimage users. If anyone is interested in
contributing articles or imagery associated with Softimage please send email
to:
Garyalvin@aol.com
Thanks
Gary B.Subj: Re:Newsletter For SI users
Date: 96-03-03 04:26:38 EDT
From: AFC Dong
Posted on: America Online
Where will this newsletter be available?
DKSubj: Re:Newsletter For SI users
Date: 96-03-03 14:16:09 EDT
From: Gary Alvin
Posted on: America Online
There will be a charter subscription offer available at NAB (National
Association of Broadcasters) in the middle of April with the first issue
shipping shortly after. The first issue is focusing on the NT platform and
new plug-in development for Softimage.
Gary B.Subj: DXF help
Date: 96-03-10 00:08:22 EDT
From: Vmpre
Posted on: America Online
I hope that this is the right place to ask this question.
I am trying to do beveled text in SI. And SI does really bad beveled text.
I designed my beveled text in Infini-D for the Mac and exported the file to
DXF and sent it over to the SGI. Then in a shell I typed dxf2soft and got a
bus error and a core dump.
Whats going on? I posted this same question to the SI list, but got no
response.
I think that it is crashing before it does the translate. Has anyone gotten
this to work?
I would appreciate any help.
Thanks,
VmpreSubj: Re:DXF help
Date: 96-03-10 01:02:28 EDT
From: AFC John
Posted on: America Online
Have you tried Minerva Bevel? Its much,much better than the traditional
softimage bevel, much more control.
As for your crashes, ID DXF may be exported with some headers dxf2soft doesnt
like, try deleting any extraneous stuff with your favorite text editor.
AFC John
3DSIG/MGRSubj: Re:Minerva Bevel??
Date: 96-03-10 10:14:20 EDT
From: GeoMedia
Posted on: America Online
As a new Softimage user I am very interested in anything Soft related.
So...what is and how does one aquire "Minerva Bevel?. Is it a plugin?
Also, are there user groups or newsgroups discussing Softimage on the
internet that you could recommend? The dialog here on aol is pretty sparse.
thanks
Martin Jaeger
GeoMediaSubj: Re:Minerva Bevel??
Date: 96-03-10 12:51:07 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
Minerva effects became a standard part of at least v3.5 (can't remember if
it's true for v3.0). SI bought these effects and now makes them available.
Look in your menus for stuff followed by a + sign. That indicates what used
to be these plug-in effects. If you don't have any of these (I'd look under
edit & polygon, maybe effects & surface), call your rep. They should be able
to get them to you (probably for free: they used to cost $6K).Subj:
Re:Minerva Bevel??
Date: 96-03-10 16:39:12 EDT
From: AFC John
Posted on: America Online
Minerva bevel can be found in SI 3.0 under Model->Surface->Bevel+ 3.0.
For more info on questions like these, you can either check out
comp.graphics.apps.softimage or send mail to 3D-request@softimage.com with
the subject as "subscribe" and the body as "subscribe you@your.address" to be
put on the softimage listserv, which is probably the better of the two, but
has a high daily mail load.
AFC John
3DSIG/MGRSubj: Re:Minerva Bevel??
Date: 96-03-10 19:43:54 EDT
From: GeoMedia
Posted on: America Online
Thanks guys! I am eagerly awaiting delivery of Softimage/NT and the
Intergraph TDZ.300 I will be running it on. I will certainly look for the
user/mail groups you mention and will inquire to my rep regarding minerva
effects. Certainly with numerous users taking the plunge now that Softimage
is on NT I expect this folder to be bubbling soon! Appreciate the info.
Martin
GeoMediaSubj: Re:Minerva Bevel??
Date: 96-03-10 19:55:58 EDT
From: Vmpre
Posted on: America Online
Thanks for the 411.
I tried the Minerva bevel...I didnt get it. The way it bevels escapes me. If
it is the one that I am thinking of. You have to draw out the way the bevel
works right?
Well, once our SGI is working again, I will give it a try. Our primary hard
drive went ka-plooey, we are waiting for a new drive.
Thanks,
VmpreSubj: Re:Minerva Bevel??
Date: 96-03-11 00:42:38 EDT
From: AFC John
Posted on: America Online
Minerva Bevel is simple, just get your text or whatever in the front window,
then also draw your bevel profile i.e:
_____
/ \
in the FRONT window (important) near the XYZ origin (also important). The
rest is fairly straightforward, following the prompts from the dialog box.
Hope this helps!
AFC John
3DSIG/MGRSubj: Re:DXF help
Date: 96-03-11 01:29:49 EDT
From: PixelsSD
Posted on: America Online
>>>I designed my beveled text in Infini-D for the Mac and exported the file
to DXF and sent it over to the SGI. Then in a shell I typed dxf2soft and got
a bus error and a core dump.<<<
Do you have dbx? Can you tell what is causing the core dump?
-AndrewSubj: WINDOWS NT DEMO
Date: 96-03-14 12:53:14 EDT
From: Lisasell
Posted on: America Online
CORPLEX (CHICAGO, IL) will be hosting a demo for Softimage/3D NT on March 27
at 2:00pm.
For further information or to reserve a space call:
Corplex
Lisa Cannata-Lisasell@AOL
847-673-9200
Subj: WINDOWS NT DEMO
Date: 96-03-14 12:53:14 EDT
From: Lisasell
Posted on: America Online
CORPLEX (CHICAGO, IL) will be hosting a demo for Softimage/3D NT on March 27
at 2:00pm.
For further information or to reserve a space call:
Corplex
Lisa Cannata-Lisasell@AOL
847-673-9200
Subj: 3d world
Date: 96-04-12 18:08:07 EDT
From: HenkD
Posted on: America Online
Check out Henk's latest work. It's a series of rooms circa 1910 modeled in
FormZ and rendered in Electric Image. Over 100k polygons with 90megs of
textures - I'm 3 months into the project and I think it's the best work I've
done to date.
http://www.halcyon.com/henk/Pages/0300_New.html
or use the following url and hit the new button on the homepage
http://www.henk.com/henk/Subj: VRML
Date: 96-04-12 23:17:18 EDT
From: Vmpre
Posted on: America Online
Has anyone had any luck getting SI .hrc or scene files to convert and be used
for VRML purposes?
Thanks for the 411
Later,
VmpreSubj: Schools
Date: 96-05-04 01:15:01 EDT
From: LetiaL
Posted on: America Online
So what schools in US or Canada are out there
teaching Softimage?Subj: NT system price?
Date: 96-05-04 02:08:00 EDT
From: Kandori
Posted on: America Online
Could somebody who has or is looking into a NT system tell me some rough
estimates for a nicely equiped NT system? For a loaded Indy(R5000/180
mhz,128,2gig,20"/cd) I was quoted at around $23000! yikes! How much for
a similarly configured NT?
I'm seriously looking into SI(being that a full version costs $14k vs $25K
for Alias......)
thanks
KandoriSubj: Re:NT system price?
Date: 96-05-04 18:26:43 EDT
From: Vanzo
Posted on: America Online
Most of the NT/SI bundles are going for 16k - 25k depending on the
manufacturer and the accelerated graphics. There was a magazine article last
month(in either CGW or Digital Video, I can't remember) that basically
compared the performance vs. price of various manufacturer's offerings. It
seemed fairly comprehensive -> even comparing an SGI box in the fray. Sorry I
cannot remember exactly where I read it...
-Scott J. VanzoSubj: Re:NT system price?
Date: 96-05-04 18:45:09 EDT
From: Vanzo
Posted on: America Online
>>I'm seriously looking into SI(being that a full version costs $14k vs $25K
for Alias......)<<
Although I am excited about the price wars and the NT port of softimage: I am
more excited about how Alias prices have gone down in reponse. I am,
admittedly, a hands-down Alias enthusiast when it comes to 3d, despite SI's
claim to fame in the area of character animation.
sjvSubj: Re:NT system price?
Date: 96-05-04 20:09:23 EDT
From: Kandori
Posted on: America Online
---" I am, admittedly, a hands-down Alias enthusiast when it comes to
3d"---->
Mr. Vanzo, how's the rendering speed of Alias (let's say on a Indy
R5000/180mhz) compared to EI on a 9500? As far as rendering quality, do they
use Alias rendered for final output for films? (I heard that they used
renderman through SoftImage for Jurassic park, and for "Casper", I don't know
which rendered it was used since "both" Alias and SI demo reel has them on
tape...)
Thanks.Subj: Re:NT system price?
Date: 96-05-05 14:14:02 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
ILM uses Alias to model, Softimage to animate, and Renderman to render.
That's why both Alias & SI get ILM stuff on their demo reels.... They do NOT
use Alias's renderer but other folks do (e.g.,the CG in the last Batman movie
was rendered using Alias).
The Alias renderer will be slower than EI, BUT it's a raytracer not just a
scanline renderer like EI. This means you can get real shadows, refractions
thru glass, atmospheric effects that aren't totally faked, etc. If your
clients want a great looking chrome logo by tomorrow, EI is the way to go. If
short deadlines aren't critical, Alias does great.
As for me, I have both Alias & SI and prefer SI for most things. It's much
more interactive than Alias so I can get more done more easily & faster. It's
raytracer is significantly faster than Alias (maybe not quite the same
quality for certain shader/atmosphere effects....) and does most of what I
ever need. They also connect to mental ray which is an excellent,
state-of-the-art renderer but it pays the price for its quality with longer
render times (similar to Alias, maybe a little slower). I use Alias when I
need intricate modeling but transfer the models (using IGES) to SI for
animation and almost all rendering.
As regards price, the complete SI package is $8K which includes everything
they do except mental ray, metaballs, & particles. It costs $15K to get
everything. Alias, on the other hand, cost ~$10K for its base package. To get
the modeling features that make it worthwhile , you need the Advanced
Modeling module for $10K. To get the animation stuff you need (inverse
kinematics is crucial), you've got to cough up another $10K. If I had to make
a choice, SI at $8K (maybe $15K to get mental ray) is clearly the winner when
compared to Alias at $30K to get the tools I need.Subj: Re:NT system price?
Date: 96-05-05 18:35:38 EDT
From: D Grahame
Posted on: America Online
Note Alias's render is SLOW. Overnight for raytracing a single frame, and the
phong renderer on a 150 megahertz R 4000 we are finding is easily twice as
slow as Renderman running on a 80 megahertz PPC YARC Zuma board in a Mac.
Donald G.Subj: Re:NT system price?
Date: 96-05-06 14:03:46 EDT
From: Vanzo
Posted on: America Online
>>
Note Alias's render is SLOW. Overnight for raytracing a single frame, and the
phong renderer on a 150 megahertz R 4000 we are finding is easily twice as
slow as Renderman running on a 80 megahertz PPC YARC Zuma board in a Mac.
<<
Yes, PA's Raycast renderers are slower than some other vendor's renderers,
but not many have such a robust, integrated set of shader options as Alias
does. It is no wonder that such features have quite an overhead - but nowhere
else(even with Explore's IPR) do you see such control and flexibility from a
graphical shading interface. Also, I'm getting the sense that SI's MentalRay
is even slower than comparably-equipped scenes set up in PA...and SoftImage
has a long ways to go before it integrates MentalRay into a GUI comparable to
Alias.
-scott vanzoSubj: Re:NT system price?
Date: 96-05-06 22:55:30 EDT
From: Graham 921
Posted on: America Online
>>.and SoftImage has a long ways to go before it integrates MentalRay into a
GUI comparable to Alias.<<
I must agree, the control you have over shaders in Alias is nothing short of
amazing. When I saw mental ray and it shader control I was shocked, I could
not belive it did not have the same control that alias has. Even in their
entry level product "Web Animator (this used to be animator)."
Regardless of the product you purchase (SoftImage or Alias) you won't be
dissapointed. Its like having to pick between a Porsche or a BMW
Regards
Graham HedrickSubj: Re:NT system price?
Date: 96-05-07 02:34:00 EDT
From: LSchena
Posted on: America Online
<<There was a magazine article last month(in either CGW or Digital Video, I
can't remember) that basically compared the performance vs. price of various
manufacturer's offerings.>>
I believe there was an article in this month's MacUser magazine
comparing the new Window's NT to the Power Macs and PowerWave computers.
There might have been something written in Millimeter magazine but I'm pretty
sure I saw it in MacUser. Good Luck!Subj: Re: Alias, SI, Etc.
Date: 96-05-10 14:02:21 EDT
From: Max92
Posted on: America Online
I'm running Alias PA w/Advanced animation on a 200Mhz R4400 side-by-side with
3D Studio MAX on a P133. Feature for feature, Alias should be running
extremely scared right now. MAX subsumes most of the feature set with better
integration, user interface, render speed, and price. Unlike the "old" 3D
studio (which I didn't use) the renderer is now first rate - scanline, but
(get this) supporting AUTOMATIC refraction and reflection mapping. If Pixar
would wake up MAX would be the best RMan front end ever. You owe it to
yourself to check out this f$(*& amazing package.Subj: Re: Alias, SI, Etc.
Date: 96-05-11 01:52:45 EDT
From: Vanzo
Posted on: America Online
>>>
Alias should be running extremely scared right now. MAX subsumes most of the
feature set with better integration, user interface, render speed, and price.
<<<
Could you elaborate on this for us?
Which version of PA are you using?Subj: Re: Alias, SI, Etc.
Date: 96-05-11 13:12:43 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
So far, a base price of $3495 for MAX which then further requires purchase of
plug-ins to get good spline modeling, deformations, etc. doesn't appear
likely to strike fear deep into the heart of Softimage (concern, yes,
"running scared", no). You get all of that in one integrated package at $8K
from SI so I'm still taking a wait-and-see attitude on this one. The SIGGRAPH
exhibition is going to be fun this year!
There is also the issue of HOW the features are implemented, not just the
list of what features there are. Alias & SI have similar features but SI is
much more interactive allowing better work flow for animation. Alias has
strong modeling which is great when that's what's important. Still have to
see how MAX handles such issues: I'm not ready to declare them the winner
until I've had a chance use their stuff. I've used both Alias & SI for a
number of years now and what you find is that feature lists aren't the whole
story.... If they're not implemented well enough to be a useful tool, they
don't mean anything.Subj: Re: Alias, SI, Etc.
Date: 96-05-11 16:52:34 EDT
From: Kth Lango
Posted on: America Online
>>> I've used both Alias & SI for a number of years now and what you find is
that feature lists aren't the whole story.... If they're not implemented well
enough to be a useful tool, they don't mean anything. <<<
for examples, see Strata.....
KeithSubj: Re: Alias, SI, Etc.
Date: 96-05-11 22:10:43 EDT
From: ErikTek1
Posted on: America Online
>>>for examples, see Strata.....
Keith<<<
Yes, please do see Strata! Theres alot of great art coming from great
artists in that Forum. See for yourself: Strata3D.com, WarnerBros.com. All
Strata!!Subj: Re: Alias, SI, Etc.
Date: 96-05-11 23:31:20 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
>Yes, please do see Strata! Theres alot of great art >coming from great
artists in that Forum. See for >yourself: Strata3D.com, WarnerBros.com.
All >Strata!!
Actually, you're wrong about that. The images they show are NOT "all
Strata". Most of the really cool images you see from Strata were modeled
somewhere else and imported via DXF into Strata for rendering. For example,
almost all of Patrito's stuff (Sinka) was not modeled in Strata, it was just
rendered there.
Subj: Re: Alias, SI, Etc.
Date: 96-05-12 04:10:36 EDT
From: ErikTek1
Posted on: America Online
>>>Actually, you're wrong about that. The images they show are NOT "all
Strata". Most of the really cool images you see from Strata were modeled
somewhere else and imported via DXF into Strata for rendering. ***For
example, almost all of Patrito's stuff (Sinka) was not modeled in Strata, it
was just rendered there.***<<<
I don't know how these rumours always get started, bad news for you Crawfish!
The following tools were used exclusively in creating Sinkha:
Strata StudioPro
Strata MediaPaint
Adobe PhotoShop
MacroMedia DIRECTOR, not any of their modellers.
QuarkXPress, (Used for assembly on the printed version of the book.)
Sources:
The Making of Sinkha
Mojave Publishing, 1995-96
Virtual Views, 1993-96
>>>***For example, almost all of Patrito's stuff (Sinka) was not modeled in
Strata, it was just rendered there.***<<<
Of all projects released currently, Sinkha was modelled and rendered
exclusively in Strata! Marco is currently working on, "Escape from
Thallisar", once again done with SSP and this time using QTVR Technology.
This info comes directly from Marco Patrito and his team and is published in
the book that they wrote themselves.
I don't know where you got your info, but I have their book right here in my
lap.
Erik D.Subj: Re: Alias, SI, Etc.
Date: 96-05-12 09:56:44 EDT
From: Sculpt Dev
Posted on: America Online
> The images they show are NOT "all Strata". Most of the really cool
> images you see from Strata were modeled somewhere else and imported
> via DXF into Strata for rendering.
I remember the first time I saw the Sinkha images, a Strata rep was showing
them off at a conference, years ago. I asked if they were built in
StrataVision (SSP wasn't out yet) and he said no, as far as he knew they were
built in Super 3D (of all things!)
About a year ago, another Strata rep said, in the Strata forum, that the
models were built in Sculpt 3D. I tried to find the message in the archives
just now, so I could "cite my sources," but I haven't found it. But when he
wrote that, everything seemed to fall into place for me. I deduced that the
rep at the conference had been less-than-truthful, because he didn't want to
admit to the Sculpt guy (me) that his Strata renderings were modeled in
Sculpt.
But now, with the Making of Sinkha book, I don't know what to think! I
haven't seen the book, but if it truly doesn't mention Sculpt 3D then what
was that Strata forum guy talking about there? Naturally, I was glad to
believe him, but on the other hand, I'm more inclined to believe the book,
alas. Was the conference guy just saying "Super 3D" because SSP was still
under wraps? Did Marco Patrito switch apps halfway through the project? Will
Brad ever learn about Amy's torrid love affair with The Sheik?
I've tried (unsuccesfully) to contact Mr. Patrito, for obvious reasons. As
the Sculpt 3D product manager, I would delight in hearing from the horse's
mouth that Strata's About Box image was built in Sculpt 3D. What a coup! We
could start running ads with the same images! ;-) But now, like I said, I
don't know what to think.
Sigh.
Joseph Ashear
Sculpt 3D Product Manager
Byte by Byte CorporationSubj: Re: Alias, SI, Etc.
Date: 96-05-12 12:46:37 EDT
From: ErikTek1
Posted on: America Online
>>>Did Marco Patrito switch apps halfway through the project?<<<
Yes he did as a matter of fact. He was using SV3D, StrataVision 3D, prior to
StudioPro.
Erik D.Subj: Re: Alias, SI, Etc.
Date: 96-05-12 15:48:04 EDT
From: Vanzo
Posted on: America Online
>>
Yes he did as a matter of fact. He was using SV3D, StrataVision 3D, prior to
StudioPro.
<<
Uh... is there any way we could restore this folder alteast to a discussion
that pertains to Softimage?
-sjvSubj: Subject Headings
Date: 96-05-12 15:51:56 EDT
From: Vanzo
Posted on: America Online
>>
Uh... is there any way we could restore this folder alteast to a discussion
that pertains to Softimage?
<<
...Or could you people atleast use subject headings that are relevant to what
you are discussing - so we don't have to sift through all of it?
-sjvSubj: Re:Subject Headings
Date: 96-05-12 16:16:43 EDT
From: AFC John
Posted on: America Online
Although I am as curious as everyone else about this Sinkha/Strata issue,
I must agree 'with Scott that the SoftImage folder is really not the place
for it. Ive moved the thread over to the Strata folder, so lets all pick it
up there. On the Strata tip though, I am curious who first heard that they
would be incorporating SoftImage rendering technology? Was it from a reliable
source, and was it planned for 2.0?
thanks-
AFC John
3DSIG/MGR
Subj: Re: Alias, SI, Etc.
Date: 96-05-13 13:09:10 EDT
From: PixelsSD
Posted on: America Online
>>>Uh... is there any way we could restore this folder alteast to a
discussion that pertains to Softimage?<<<
I think SodtImage is better than Strata Studio Pro. If you agree say Aye.
-AndrewSubj: Re: Alias, SI, Etc.
Date: 96-05-13 19:49:07 EDT
From: Vanzo
Posted on: America Online
>>I think SodtImage is better than Strata Studio Pro. If you agree say Aye.<<
hee hee-hee.... ;)
Subj: Re: Alias, SI, Etc.
Date: 96-05-14 05:38:33 EDT
From: AdobeSmudg
Posted on: America Online
Oh, that's just an oblique plug for PPS, you shameless huckster (just kiddin'
folks, flaaaaaammme dowwwn)
Well, I think people who would never have cats like Strata, how's that? We
can switch over to animals, now...non-sequitur city...
So, Andrew have you ever been given any official grief over PPS's similarity
(in a walk-by way, all I've done with SI) to their product?
MCSubj: Re:genuine Softimage question
Date: 96-05-18 12:33:37 EDT
From: GeoMedia
Posted on: America Online
I am just beginning to grapple with softimage and have a modeling question. I
have created a human face by skinning b-splines 180 degrees around y and then
pushing/pulling...adding points. It is turning out really cool if I do say so
myself. As an afterthought I now have decided to create the back of the head
and have used the same original spline ( so as to maintain the same # of
nodes) and technique to do so. My question is, how can I combine the front
half with the back half? Is there a way to derive the original splines only
for the front and back and then re-skin??
thanks,
Martin
GeoMediaSubj: Re:genuine Softimage question
Date: 96-05-18 12:50:59 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
A real SI question!! Knock me down with a feather....It's been so long!
First off, it sounds like you want to be modeling with modeling relations
turned on (preferences menu in model module). This will keep the original
spline ribs that you skinned around and re-skins if you modify one of them.
NOTE: modeling relations are not a panacea, only turn them on when you want
to do something like this.
Under the draw menu is Extract Curve. This will let you extract curves from
the surface.Subj: Re:genuine Softimage question
Date: 96-05-18 15:34:59 EDT
From: AFC John
Posted on: America Online
You may also want to try creating the back of the head from extracted curves
of the front. Then they will have the same u & v coordinates and you should
be able to MODEL>DRAW>MERGE SURFACE to join them both together...
AFC John
3DSIG/MGR
http://www.rhythm.com/~goodman/index.htmlSubj: Re:genuine Softimage question
Date: 96-05-18 23:29:07 EDT
From: GeoMedia
Posted on: America Online
Thanks so much for the help on this one. After posting my question I went
back to the computer and discovered the extract curves function for myself
and by golly it did just what it said it does!! Re-skinned the whole works
after some spline direction inverting to straighten things out, and wow! I
had originally utilized the modeling relation from the start. It is cool.
The tip about duplicating splines to maintain the U/V is a great suggestion.
I am still figuring out the work flow so as to anticipate and prepare for
these types of situations.....killer software, I love it. BTW why are so
many folks knocking the native render. I think it looks terriffic for the
types of things I have done so far, and really really fast.
thanks again,
Martin
GeoMediaSubj: Re:genuine Softimage question
Date: 96-05-19 13:34:04 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
Just a side note: for skinning NURBS, you aren't required to use the same
number of cvs. The skinning routine will make the knot vectors for all the
splines compatible. While nice, don't get too carried away with wildly
different knot vectors since it pushes the number of cvs for the resulting
surface up. You might try skinning some "incompatible" curves just to see
what happens.
As regards workflow: I usually model with relations turned on so that I can
easily modify the results. A lot of times I animate the generators and so
contiue to leave things under relations. Elsewise, once I'm done modeling, I
use effect>freeze>modeling relation to preserve the result but throw away the
relational update. This freeze command gives you the option to save or delete
the generators so, for example, you could either keep or delete the ribs you
used for skinning....Subj: Re:genuine Softimage question
Date: 96-05-19 15:25:14 EDT
From: GeoMedia
Posted on: America Online
ACrawfish,
Whoa, man thanks for the insight regarding nurbs, the explanation of the
skinning technique and the possible workflow options. This type of advice
invaluable information for those of us new to soft and is greatly
appreciated.
Best,
Martin
GeoMediaSubj: Re:genuine Softimage question
Date: 96-05-21 09:40:26 EDT
From: GeoMedia
Posted on: America Online
As a follow up question to my earlier post about skinning to create my head
model...I still ended up with a seam at the back of the head. I duplicated
the spline at the back of the head and started spline picking with one of
these splines, ending up at the duplicated spline and skinned. The two
splines share the same space, however there is still (albiet slight)
noticeable seam. Is there no way to close this gap to achieve tangency of the
skin at this point, and have textures blend across this area?
thanks
Martin
GeoMediaSubj: Re:genuine Softimage question
Date: 96-05-21 09:55:49 EDT
From: GeoMedia
Posted on: America Online
<<<As a follow up question to my earlier post about skinning to create my
head model...I still ended up with a seam at the back of the head. I
duplicated the spline at the back of the head and started spline picking with
one of these splines, ending up at the duplicated spline and skinned. The two
splines share the same space, however there is still (albiet slight)
noticeable seam. Is there no way to close this gap to achieve tangency of the
skin at this point, and have textures blend across this area?>>>
Ok, Ok,.....skin, "close" check box!!, voila.....duh-uh...sorry...
amazing how the obvious can be so elusive!
Martin
GeoMediaSubj: Re:genuine Softimage question
Date: 96-05-21 13:07:54 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
For closing curves/surfaces, there's also an open/close option under
draw.Subj: Re:next question
Date: 96-05-30 18:08:03 EDT
From: GeoMedia
Posted on: America Online
Being that the soft forum on the w3 has been a little testy toward us newbies
lately, I thought I would first post this question to this far friendlier
group.
What is the secret formula to obtain descent extruded/beveled text in
softimage? I have created custom font outlines in illustrator and imported
eps2soft. When I extrude then with flat or rounded bevels I end up with
faceted extrusions. I have been able to use the effect>order command to
smooth them out but then I get weird rendering anomolies on the front faces
as if the poly decomposition was not planar. I have found a way to derive a
new front face and replace the defective face with the new one. The problem
with this is that this too shows up as a distinct "seam" where the face
aligns with the bevel. Plus I have to do deforms on these letters and fear
that they may detach when I do so. Should I just crank out these letters in
form-z and then import them? Seems like this should be a total non issue/no
brainer/can-o-corn thing for softimage. I hope that I am simply doing
something wrong, otherwise this really blows!
Seems like Jay Roth warned me there would be days like this....!
thanks,
Martin
GeoMediaSubj: Re:next question
Date: 96-05-31 01:32:32 EDT
From: AFC Dong
Posted on: America Online
>>Seems like Jay Roth warned me there would be days like this....!<<
LOL, I still used FormZ for some of my modelling, but have you tried the HRC
bevel?
BTW, did anyone get 3.5 of SI NT yet?
DKSubj: Re:next question
Date: 96-05-31 10:48:19 EDT
From: GeoMedia
Posted on: America Online
Spoke to my dealer yesterday regarding 3.5 and he said that they had just
received it for irix with NT to follow around july. Will experiment with HRC
bevel.....thanks.
Yea, as an EI user I went round and round with Jay about the reletive merits
of both packages. It is amazing how on some of the simplest things ie. the
font/bevel thing, wireframe rendering....how softimage is a little behind the
curve. Overall however, the software is incredible...really in a different
league altogether.
later,
Martin
GeoMediaSubj: Re:next question
Date: 96-05-31 19:27:35 EDT
From: Vmpre
Posted on: America Online
We just got our 3.5 a few days ago of IRIX. Slick new packaging. And a list
of known bugs...verfy cool.
But since I work for a large corp. it probably wont get installed until
version 4 ships. :)
Later,
VMpreSubj: Re:what do I do....?
Date: 96-06-01 11:58:59 EDT
From: JansenH
Posted on: America Online
Does anyone have any good suggestions for the easiest way of seamlessly
joining nurb sufaces together, such as a leg to body type attachment to be
eventually used as a flexible envelope? I'm having trouble using the merge
surface and zip functions and was hoping there was a simple way of doing this
that I might have overlooked.
Also, has anyone figured out a good way of generating a Nurbs surface out of
a complex polygon? The shrink wrap technique doesn't seem to work too well
with complicated models.
Thanks,
jansenSubj: Re:3.5
Date: 96-06-03 01:17:58 EDT
From: AFC John
Posted on: America Online
I just got it Thursday, so far I like it. The 3D paint is great, and the
NURBS tools are more robust.Clusters can also have thier own centers now.
(yeehah!) But the thing I probably enjoy most is that all the documentation
and tutorials come both in bound printed format, *and* in html format on
CDROM. Just crank up IRIX Netscape and away you go. Ill post more reviews as
I get time to delve and discover. It is in some ways a very different
application than 3.0, but still very familiar.
AFC John
3DSIG/MGR
http://www.rhythm.com/~goodman/index.html
Subj: Re:3.5
Date: 96-06-03 13:47:42 EDT
From: Vanzo
Posted on: America Online
John-
3D paint? Improved NURBS??
I'm a bit out-of-the-loop regarding SI 3D(after 3.0)...Do elaborate on the
above implementations/improvements as soon as your ready! Perhaps I'll have
to find a way to upgrade our SI license...
Thanks,
-SJVSubj: the putz's on line
Date: 96-06-03 22:06:36 EDT
From: Graham 921
Posted on: America Online
Subj: Re:Low Budget Film Project
Date: 96-06-03 22:05:23 EDT
From: Graham 921
I gotta tell you folks, this forum is really crawling with idiots. I have
seen
1. a guy who wants people to work for free
2. a putz who suppposidly lost his serial # to TrueSpace
I got to thinking, could it be that these two emails are from the same
person, it make perfect sense. Here is the scenario (yeah my spelling is
lacking).
This guy wants you to use TrueSpace while working for free. He is going to
hand out pirate versions of the software, however he lost his serial
number.Subj: Re:what do I do....?
Date: 96-06-04 00:06:46 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
Unfortunately, the only way to seamlessly join NURBS in SI 3.5 is using zip
patch. The set up for zip patch is, how to say this?, really sucky! And
limited to boot (rows of cvs to rows of cvs, everybody oriented properly,
etc). Best bet is to ask re. plug-ins to do this at SIGGRAPH. SI just
introduced its software development kit so some enterprising soul out there
might be hacking on it....
As regards complex polygon conversion, use the web effect(it's under
model>effect>web I believe or maybe under the polygon stuff). It gives a
sort-of sliced & then skinned version of the poly mesh.Subj: A Softimage
education...
Date: 96-06-04 15:11:36 EDT
From: JaseHill
Posted on: America Online
I recently saw the new version of Softimage at E3 and was quite impressed. I
am currently an Electric Image user but I saw some features that blew me
away. My question is...Are there Softimage classes in Northern California
and is there an Education Version of Softimage or a demo version. (For NT of
course.) Thanks for any help.
-JasonSubj: Re:A Softimage education...
Date: 96-06-04 22:51:37 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
I think the answer is yes to all three questions. Best to call an SI sales
rep. Phone for the mother ship is 514-845-1636. THey can let you know who
your rep. is, etc.Subj: SI on NT
Date: 96-06-10 04:13:14 EDT
From: T Sassoon
Posted on: America Online
Just a note based on my current production experiences....
Beware of buying SI/NT, MIPS especially. We bought a bunch of NEC
RISCStations and NOTHING except SI runs on them!!!! Management (who pushed it
through before I arrived) seemed to have forgotten that you need a binary for
each processor family and there's no Intel emulator. Get used to life with no
Photoshop, no compositor, no nothing, except plain vanilla SI. The upshot is,
they are almost useless for production, and the artists who are supposed to
be working on them have switched to nights so they can work on an SGI.
BTW, IMHO SI is really good at some things, but getting shots out of an SGI
seems to be like pulling them out of glue. Sitting at a single 9500 with
FZ/EIAS and After Effects so far on this job I've produced almost FOUR
MINUTES of finished approved animation while the 9 SGI and NT people have yet
to produce ANY AT ALL!!!! Zero. Zip. And I built half their models!! I
frankly am not very impressed, least of all with either the quality or the
speed of SI's renderer. Sorry, that's one guys opinion.
TimSubj: Re:SI on NT
Date: 96-06-10 13:23:05 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
Typically, I don't respond to baiting-type posts which blast a product that
the author doesn't use but, when its main thread runs so completely contrary
to my experience, in all fairness to SI, I'll play their advocate.
>Beware of buying SI/NT, MIPS especially. We bought >a bunch of NEC
RISCStations and NOTHING except SI >runs on them!!!! Get used to life with no
Photoshop, >no compositor, no nothing, except plain vanilla SI. >The upshot
is, they are almost useless for >production
Get real. I have two SGI machines running just Alias & SI and have refused to
pay the inflated SGI prices for Photoshop, etc. When I need to use Photoshop,
deBabelizer, Fractal or whatever, I use ETHERNET to transfer the files to my
Mac and do the work there. Using Xinet, it's pretty simply to set things up
so your workstation can see your Mac disk & vice versa. Sharing resources is
not be a problem.
>BTW, IMHO SI is really good at some things, but >getting shots out of an SGI
seems to be like pulling >them out of glue.
I (and 4000 other SI clients) haven't had any problem. Hard to guess what
your peoples' problems are....It sounds like you people need some training in
how to use SI. After training myself for 2 weeks in using SI, I was producing
10-20 secs of animation easily. How 9 people at your company could be so
inept as to have produced nothing is rather mysterious.
>I frankly am not very impressed, least of all with >either the quality or
the speed of SI's renderer.
"Quality" is too subjective. I don't have a problem with "quality." As
regards speed, SI is a raytracer, not just a scanline renderer like EIAS. Not
important if you don't need refraction but then speed isn't that important to
me. If you want to tell what these rendering "quality" problems actually are,
maybe people can discuss if they are really problems or if perhaps they are a
result of untrained use.
Subj: Re:SI on NT
Date: 96-06-11 02:13:54 EDT
From: T Sassoon
Posted on: America Online
Sorry to get your back up on this subject, but....
>>>Typically, I don't respond to baiting-type posts which blast a product
that the author doesn't use<<<
Ah, but I do...
>>>I have two SGI machines running just Alias & SI ...When I need to use
Photoshop, deBabelizer, Fractal or whatever, I use ETHERNET to transfer the
files to my Mac and do the work there<<<
It's nice that you've got an extra Mac around. Unfortunately we've just got
one in production and it's in constant use. BTW, have you tried CAP (like
Xinet but free) or just using Fetch (Dartmouth FTP)? Much faster.
>>>Hard to guess what your peoples' problems are....It sounds like you people
need some training in how to use SI.<<<
Our people are among the best. Fantastically talented and SI beta testers.
I've noticed the production speed difference for years now, even before Power
Macs. At my last job (Dreamquest Images) the Macs consistently outproduced
the SGI's 3:1, including an almost equal number of film-res shots. With
basically the same artists on both platforms. For example, I recently moved a
tough composite from Eddie, where it was taking 60 sec/frame on an Indigo2
Extreme to After Effects on a 9500/132, where it took only 20 sec/frame.
Before I optimised the project.
>>>"Quality" is too subjective. I don't have a problem with "quality."<<<
Well, I like my shots antialiased. And in a reasonable amount of time. I also
like volumetric lights without having to ray-trace. That seems to be an SI
sticking point.
>>>speed isn't that important to me<<<
Well, all I can say is, I wish it weren't to me either!
Hapy rendering!
TimSubj: new SI buyers...
Date: 96-06-11 12:11:04 EDT
From: JohnLiscom
Posted on: America Online
I saw an interesting article that some of you who frequent this thread may
not be aware of. In Next Generation video game magazine (#19) has an
interesting interview with Big Brother himself Bill Gates. It is rather
interesting what he has to say in regards to that industry and his plans for
it (domination of course). It is there that i saw the figure that 50% of all
new SI buyers go to the game development industry. It seems that a major
reason that Big Bill bought out SI was to get a great game development tool
for his platform (95 and NT to a lesser extent). I don't know, i guess it
just sort of surprised me. It is something that i hadn't considered before
and perhaps some of you haven't either.
Regards,
John G. LiscombSubj: whoops...
Date: 96-06-11 16:42:40 EDT
From: JohnLiscom
Posted on: America Online
once again i screwed up. Hey it happens! The Next Generation issue number
is actually 18. Sorry if this messed anyone up.
Regards,
JohnSubj: Re:SI on NT
Date: 96-06-12 01:14:02 EDT
From: Tropiec
Posted on: America Online
>>Beware of buying SI/NT, MIPS especially. We bought a bunch of Management
>>(who pushed it through before I arrived) seemed to >have forgotten that
>>you need a binary for each processor family >and there's no Intel emulator.
>> Get used to life with no Photoshop, no compositor, no nothing, except
>>plain vanilla SI.
The next version of NT will include a 486 emulator, so you'll be able to run
all your favorite apps on your NEC RISCstation (although slowly)
Alex Tropiec
Mira StudioSubj: Re:SI on NT
Date: 96-06-12 02:01:06 EDT
From: T Sassoon
Posted on: America Online
>>>The next version of NT will include a 486 emulator, so you'll be able to
run all your favorite apps on your NEC RISCstation (although slowly)<<<
When is that going into release? This year sometime? I know some people
already have betas or whatever. I read somewhere that PNP isn't going to make
it in.
TimSubj: Re:SI on NT
Date: 96-06-12 14:50:58 EDT
From: Tropiec
Posted on: America Online
>>When is that going into release? This year sometime? I know some people
already have betas or whatever.>>
It'll be out around August ( but you know Microsoft.... ) We've been testing
it and It looks promising..
-AlexSubj: Perf. of R5000 vs R4400
Date: 96-06-12 18:40:38 EDT
From: JoelPilger
Posted on: America Online
Can anyone out there tell me what kind of performance boost to expect from
upgrading my Indy's R4400 SC 150 MHz to the new R5000 SC 180Mhz? I've heard
it boosts graphics performance for quick shades and the like, but what about
rendering?
I can upgrade for $2,000...well worth the money if it gives a significant
boost.
Thanks in advance for help,
Joel Pilger
Visual ApproachSubj: Re:Perf. of R5000 vs R4400
Date: 96-06-14 21:58:53 EDT
From: AFC John
Posted on: America Online
Hey Joel-
I know youve already seen this but ill repost it here anyway.
I just upgraded my original stock Indy R4000/SC 100mhz to a R5000/SC 150mhz,
& did a "before and after" test with a heavy polygonal scene. Although I
dont claim it to be definitive in any way (not alot of textures, reflections,
transp, etc., just lots of polygons), here are the results for your
consideration:
(Indy-64megs RAM/200megs SWAP-24bit video-1.2 gig internal-2.0gig external)
Get>Scene>Info: GUNDAM Robot (129,076 triangles)
(an image of this robot can be found on my home pages at
www.rhythm.com~/goodman/Images/images.html)
2 lights (1 spotlight w/ raytraced shadows, 1 point light, plain vanilla)
R4000SC/100 R5000SC/150
________________________________________________________________
OPEN SCENE 50sec 25sec
GL SHADE 45sec 10sec
(full screen)
SAVE 10sec 5sec
RENDER 5.5min 2.4min
(648x486
sprsmpl 2)
I dont have the Extreme package so I cant do MR tests etc, but generally I am
pleased with what appears to be a 200% speed increase overall.
AFC John
3DSIG/MGR
http://www.rhythm.com/~goodman/index.htmlSubj: Re:Perf. of R5000 vs R4400
Date: 96-06-15 15:55:34 EDT
From: PixelsSD
Posted on: America Online
>>>www.rhythm.com~/goodman/Images/images.html<<<
Should read:
www.rhythm.com/~goodman/Images/images.html
-AndrewSubj: Re:Perf. of R5000 vs R4400
Date: 96-06-16 16:46:32 EDT
From: AFC John
Posted on: America Online
>>>www.rhythm.com~/goodman/Images/images.html<<<
>
>Should read:
>www.rhythm.com/~goodman/Images/images.html
Yup, thanks Andrew. :)
AFC John
3DSIG/MGR
http://www.rhythm.com/~goodman/index.htmlSubj: PC vsus Workstations
Date: 96-06-18 13:33:22 EDT
From: D Grahame
Posted on: America Online
I'm generally a great fan of Crawfish's, but his response to the E.I. attack
has me worried a bit - "speed isn't that important to me" - WHOA. It seems to
show that perhaps consultancy rather than production has become his main
field. My recent experiences might be of some interest.
I've been struggling pretty well singlehandedly in creating a huge (in terms
of complexity) virtual world for a CDROM for the past couple of years, using
very old Mac software and Renderman running on yarc boards in Macs, and in
the last few months we've enlisted some other people with different systems
to help us for the final stages.
We found Alias seriously bogged on large databases, and Renderman on the Yarc
boards rendered many times faster than Alias on far more complex scenes.
Spending time with, over the shoulder, of some SoftImage users showed us that
although it bristles with animation bells and whistles, it seems to be
designed with a similar disregard as Alias (though not a bad!) for handling
large datasets; it slowed significantly (while demanding heaps of memory) on
even moderately simple scenes.
SoftImage and Alias seem to be marvellously suited to scenes with a few
elements which you want animate in complex ways (like character animation) ,
but for those of us in the world-building business, PC tools like 3DStudio,
Electric Image, and even Lightwave, Strata, and Renderman win hands down for
large datasets in my opinion, and experience.
(The old Wavefront, now discontinued, was a notable exception to this. )
What has happened in my opinion is that the makers of workstation software
have lulled themselves into a false sense of security by thinking they don't
need to optimize their software for speed because the hardware will take care
of it, and on the PC/Mac side, software developers have designed tools for
years that are lean and mean because they always felt themselves writing for
underpowered hardware, but the tables have completely turned because of the
breakneck pace of hardware development on the Intel and PowerPC/Mac side, so
their hardware now actually OUTPERFORMS the low and medium end workstations.
This has resulted in a huge performance gap between PC originating software,
and workstation originating software, running on the latest respective
hardware.
The people at SGI realize this, and are basicaly starting from SCRATCH, and
not only will buyers of Alias Sketch on the Mac will be left with a product
not being further developed!
SoftImage is a messy amagalgamation of many years of disjointed development
in my opinion - with capital provided by Microsoft maybe they will be able to
pull it together to compete with upcoming PC packages, and likewise Alias,
but I seriously doubt it.
Softimage NT is a great breakthrough, but to eclipse current PC/Mac software
for the average medium-sized production house, SI NT needs Mentalray and the
other advanced stuff like particles in my opinion, unless you only use for
its character stuff.
Alias and softImage's built in renderers have a much "harder" (and more
unpleasant, except for hard shiny objects) feel to them compared with
Renderman in my opinion - we had to seriously retouch all the Alias-rendered
images in our game to approach Renderman-standard, the Electric Image stuff
we had to retouch too, but not as much as Alias. From experimenting with
Softimage, I'm not convinced the SI renderer is much better than Alias', and
Mental Ray's prodigious hardware requirements currently put it out of our
company's, and most people's, range for rendering complex scenes, not to
mention it's not released for NT.
I'd say workstation animation software for the entertainment industry
mainstream is finally on the verge of its long predicted demise, if the
PC/Mac people can address the render quality issue ie we need a Renderman
replacement! Maybe we've found it in Mentalray, if and when it is ported to
run on multiprocessor PC and PPC systems.
SIGGRAPH will be interesting this year!
regards,
Donald GrahameSubj: Re:PC vsus Workstations
Date: 96-06-18 14:11:09 EDT
From: ErikTek1
Posted on: America Online
>>>SIGGRAPH will be interesting this year!<<<
Yes Grahame, I agree with you on that. ;-)
Very interesting post, I wish I could dump some more on SI, but I can't.
Them dang NDAs.
Erik D.Subj: Re:PC vsus Workstations
Date: 96-06-18 17:56:58 EDT
From: Alias3D
Posted on: America Online
<<The old Wavefront, now discontinued, was a notable exception to this. >>
Wavefront was not discontinued in any way! An upgrade to the Wavefront line
of products was recently released and the Santa Barbara programmers are
heavily involved in working on Maya. The company I work for is officially
called Alias|Wavefront and while the head office ended up being in Toronto
the future will be defined by all participants. If any Alias|Wavefront
product doesn't have a next release it is because of Maya.
An example of the Wavefront influence is that our new IK in PowerAnimator
V7.5 is strongly influenced by the solid workflow of Kinemation.
While I can't speak of Maya's ability to deal with larger databases, the
Wavefront influence should make us stronger in this key area.
Robert Magee
Alias(Wavefont)3DSubj: Re:PC vsus Workstations
Date: 96-06-18 20:39:51 EDT
From: D Grahame
Posted on: America Online
I didn't Wavefront was being discontinued, although if you want to argue
about that, you answered that point yourself - the company you work for is
now called Alias/Wavefront, not Wavefront alone. I'm no expert on all the
comings and goings at Alias/Wavefront/SGI, but Alias Wavefront now has TDI's
Explore product, Dynimation, Kinemation, Advanced Visualizer, Explorer, the
Wavefront 2D product, the Alias modeller/animator line to maintain - are you
going to say that NONE of those products are in the process of consolidation,
er, discontinuation.
I was referring to the Advanced Visualizer and its timeline animation
(polygonal) product, which now has to take something of a backseat to Maya, I
hear. (Did I say discontinued?)
My point is he fact is that anybody buying Alias does not have the benefits
of this perhaps probably discontinued product anyway,(unless they shell out
another $10,000+ or so) so anybody buying Alias/SGI studio or whatever it you
call it now cannot handle very large datasets for all practical purposes,
regards, and I hope you guys wake up before its too late,
Donald G.Subj: Re:PC vsus Workstations
Date: 96-06-18 21:49:18 EDT
From: PixelsSD
Posted on: America Online
>>><<The old Wavefront, now discontinued, was a notable exception to this. >>
Wavefront was not discontinued in any way! <<<
I think what Donald was refering to was the old Visualizer line, not the
'newer' TDI and Santa Barbara Studios based products.
The Visualizer products were known for handling large databases.
-AndrewSubj: Re:PC vsus Workstations
Date: 96-06-19 13:34:09 EDT
From: PixelsSD
Posted on: America Online
Donald just finished a two year project. Welcome back Donald.
-AndrewSubj: Re:PC vsus Workstations
Date: 96-06-19 13:53:41 EDT
From: D Grahame
Posted on: America Online
Hi Andrew! Just got my shiny new 8500/150 with Remus Ultra SCSI going this
weekend, between catching up on AOL. The finder seems to be the first PPC
machine I've used that goes as fast (or faster) than my 50 megahertz Quadra
900. It only took Apple six years!
I look forward to giving Pixelputty a major whirl (and dissappontingly few
other new 3D software on the Mac in th last three years.)
I should put this in the Renderman folder, but it seems the 150 megahertz 604
running Renderman is almost exactly the same speed as a single YARC 601 80
megahertz board (complete with 604 patches). No wonder Pixer dropped
Renderman on the Mac. (Renderman didn't like the Remus striping init or
Connectix Speed Doubler either.)
DonaldSubj: Re:PC vsus Workstations
Date: 96-06-19 14:11:17 EDT
From: Vanzo
Posted on: America Online
>>These high-flying houses who can afford to deal with SGI live a precarious
existence (aka Colossal) because of their huge capital investment in
equipment, but if you are big enough to attract SGI (or Sun for that matter),
you get free loaners of the latest toys, like those that SGI gives to
Disney/Pixar. Talk about unfair competition to the smaller shops - but that's
the way SGI/Sun does business. <<
Even before I go seek the real story behind Collosal's "demise" (I've read
what the founders have said, but the truth is another matter), I highly doubt
that it boils down to an over-extended investment in SGI equipment, as you
seem to be suggesting. There are way of unloading equipment after a purchase,
and if Collosal would go under soley because of the money lost to this than
there is something *else* at the company that is more seriously underfoot.
Of course, representatives at Collosal have stated that they are interested
in other areas of growth, and that they would like to get away from the
hectic world of commercial production in order to pursue the greener grass. I
find this hard to chew also. Most companies need a financial backing in order
to pursue other interest: whether it be internally or externally. I seem to
think that maintaining the commercial division(were it profitable already)
would be a stronger avenue of capital growth, rather than to ditch it. There
must have been more factors weighing in these decisions - other reasons why
Collosal wasn't profitable for these eventualities to occur.
As far as the secont part of Donald's excerpt is concerned - free loaners
aren't given out just to be nice or to make the have-nots more jealous or
disadvantaged: There must be a value being supplied to both parties...like
free compute time for Pixar and free advertising for SGI and/or Sun Micro.
High-Profile projects yield high profile advertisements and articles. I don't
think it constructive to be jealous of these wheeling deals. Some of the
long-term yields may even pay off for the smaller shops in terms of increased
revenues->more resources->more research->better products(& the same products
at a lower price point). Competition? This was Pixar's first feature. Sure,
they were high-profile before that, but they finally broke into doing a fully
animated 3D feature... Any company able to do that has got to have earned a
place of regard...and support from the Hardware/Software companies associated
with such a project. Technically speaking, Collosal is to our company what
Pixar may be to yours, and yet we have never felt any competition from
Collosal. In fact, we shared work and referrals on several ocassions. We have
always felt that support is always more productive than competition...and I
certainly don't see the lack of projects out there to promote a more
agressive stance.
Scott J. Vanzo
Director of CGI
Rough Draft Studios, Inc.Subj: Re:PC vsus Workstations
Date: 96-06-19 20:07:24 EDT
From: ScreenRot
Posted on: America Online
>>Donald just finished a two year project. Welcome back Donald.<<
Those were some awe-inspiring words Donald...
Stay tuned true believers!Subj: Collosal's "demise"
Date: 96-06-19 21:52:02 EDT
From: Vanzo
Posted on: America Online
To all-
So far I have found out thus:
Collosal is broken down into several companies in order to protect the whole
against such eventualities such as this. The company that went belly-up was
Collosal Animation. The others still exist, albeit may not be as large as the
Animation component.
As far as *why* Collosal Animation went out of business, I've heard only the
speculation that Collosal has the habit of holding onto people(via
promotions, etc) instead of letting them go between productions. This may
have caused an enormous payroll that ultimately defeated the profits that
Collosal Animation was making.
That is all I have heard so far...and it remains speculation.
-sjvSubj: Re:PC vsus Workstations
Date: 96-06-19 21:54:13 EDT
From: Vanzo
Posted on: America Online
sorry...I just posted this in the wrong folder...
-sjvSubj: Re:PC vsus Workstations
Date: 96-06-19 23:19:51 EDT
From: Graham 921
Posted on: America Online
Ah Donald Grahame returns.
It is always a treat to read his posting.
from one Graham to another Grahame, welcome backSubj: Re:PC vsus Wrksttns,
blah, b
Date: 96-06-20 21:32:06 EDT
From: Morogue
Posted on: America Online
Just wondering if there might be ANY discussion on Softimage anytime
soon?Subj: Re:PC vsus Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-21 01:12:39 EDT
From: Kth Lango
Posted on: America Online
>> Just wondering if there might be ANY discussion on Softimage anytime soon?
<<
Start one. :) I'd love to hear more about this app, since I don't have it.
KeithSubj: Re:PC vsus Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-21 11:43:32 EDT
From: Bugs123456
Posted on: America Online
After getting the chance to play with soft image and alias for the last three
months, I wanna buy it. Problem was I was spoiled by playing with SGI and a
wad of processors lined up.
If anyone would be so kind, what is the best setup/value for the buck with
softimage on the NT environment for under $20,000 per box.Subj: Re:PC vsus
Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-21 11:49:22 EDT
From: Bugs123456
Posted on: America Online
The next question is how has your luck been using NT as a server and throwing
Mac designed maps, and textures over to softimage?
As for your question about how is it Keith, Softimage made sense to me in a
few hours, while alias's stuff still is more powerful, I find myself
scratching my head going "huh?" quite a bit. I guess that is the difference
between the $14,000 softimage and the 40,000 alias. (lots of complex neat
stuff...lots of confusing controls)
Subj: Re:PC vsus Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-21 15:05:10 EDT
From: Kth Lango
Posted on: America Online
>> I guess that is the difference between the $14,000 softimage and the
40,000 alias. <<
I could see myself *maybe* someday dumping $14K on an app, but $40K? Hmmm, I
think I better get my wife a house before I try THAT one out. :) I'd like to
see MentalRay come to NT, not to mention SI 3.5. On a multi-processor DEC
Alpha or TDZ, this would be a really solid character anim set up. Now all I
need to do is learn character animation. :)
KeithSubj: Re:PC vsus Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-21 20:56:17 EDT
From: Vmpre
Posted on: America Online
I was just at a SI 3.5 Beta runnin on a Dec alpha.
Here is some info...
DEC Aplha 300MHz
64 RAM
1 Gig
17 inch Monitor
and a few others that I cant remember for 16,000
Then The Base package of SI running for 8000
I did see that mental ray was working with some killer cool material shaders.
But that will jump the price up a few thousand. Again it was a very beta
version.
The new FLEXlm liensing is also cool. Put SI on a service and run SI from any
other NT on the same network that has a SI liecnsing.
I have SI 3.5 for IRIX. It is oh so sweet. The NURBS is total redone and is
great! All new manuals
Later,
VmpreSubj: Re:PC vsus Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-21 21:01:11 EDT
From: Vmpre
Posted on: America Online
Jeez, please forgive my awful spelling on that last post.
BTW, mental ray can use distributive rendering across the network on multiple
platforms. So you can use as many processors as you can buy. Which I highly
recommend cuz mental ray, as cool as it is, is so slow it makes a Mac Classic
look like a Ferriari...well maybe not that slow :) But I would think twice
before using Volumetric Lights and mental ray.
VmpreSubj: Re:PC vsus Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-22 01:21:17 EDT
From: DWFlenoy
Posted on: America Online
>>>>> I could see myself *maybe* someday dumping $14K on an app, but
$40K?<<<<<
With the increase in the power and versitility of these apps, you'll be able
to pull down higher end jobs which in turn make you more money. A friend of
mine charges $1000 per finished second for SGI animation. At that rate, the
whole thing is paid off with 40 seconds of finished work. After then, It's
all gravy...Subj: Re:PC vsus Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-22 04:32:18 EDT
From: ErikTek1
Posted on: America Online
>>>$1000 per finished second for SGI animation.<<<
??? Yikes! Whatever happened to $15,000 - $25,000 per finished minute of
animation? Don't you just love it. ;-)Subj: Re:PC vsus Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-22 11:14:42 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
DWFlenoy wrote:
>With the increase in the power and versitility of >these apps, you'll be
able to pull down higher end >jobs which in turn make you more money.
The $14K gets you complete Softimage, the $40K gets you complete Alias. These
packages have roughly the same capabilities with a slight modeling edge to
Alias and an ease-of-animation edge to Softimage. I couldn't see paying an
extra $26K for Alias now. I don't find any "increase in the power and
versatility" in Alias, only a few extra features which don't currently
justify $26K to me.
Mind you, I have Alias 3.1 so I used to think otherwise. The only features in
newer versions of Alias that I'd really like to have are surface blending &
bi-rail extrusions...Subj: Re:PC vsus Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-22 16:47:46 EDT
From: Kth Lango
Posted on: America Online
>>> Mind you, I have Alias 3.1 so I used to think otherwise. The only
features in newer versions of Alias that I'd really like to have are surface
blending & bi-rail extrusions... <<<
Well, I'm not sure if it's worth $26K, but if you had a Cyberware scanner,
Shapeshifter looks just way too cool not to try and have, especially if
you're doing character. But then, aren't actors and bluescreen cheaper? Oh
well. But this I do know, it sure would be nice to pull in a grand per
second. Problem for me would be finding clients with that kind of cash. I
would figure those aren't too awful common. That SGI & Alias could sit a
*long* time before that price was made up. But then again, I'm not in LA
either.
KeithSubj: Re:PC vsus Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-22 18:55:22 EDT
From: ErikTek1
Posted on: America Online
>>>But then again, I'm not in LA either.<<<
***ATTENTION,,, INCOMING SUBLIMENAL MESSAGE FOR KEITH LANGO***
Pssst, come to Los Angeles, come to Los Angeles ;-)Subj: Re:PC vsus
Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-22 20:18:32 EDT
From: Bugs123456
Posted on: America Online
<<But then, aren't actors and bluescreen cheaper?>>
that depends.
1) computer models don't talk back. Heck they don't even know what
creativity is....less headaches, creative debates and a smaller asperin
bills.
2) you can throw the computer model into a firey abyss, blow it up, squash
it, ..... Unfortuantely, law prohibits you from saving time and money by just
blowing up an real actor.
3) computer models don't need to eat....save $$$ on catering.
4) you don't have to buy computer models drinks after work....what an
inexpensive party...more fun for the crew.
5) computer models don't need their union allocated breaks and
payscale...save lots of time and $$$$
6) When you go home at night, you don't have to worry if your talent will a)
show up on time? b) while they may be breathing air, are they too hung over
to actually function?
7) computer models don't have contracts (at least not yet) so you don't
need a bowl of blue m@m's, special water and of course a chef to cater to
it's whims
8) computer models can't swipe your girfriend/boyfriend. (Then again, maybe
that isn't an advantage)
9) bluescreen paint is $80 a gallon! You can use plain ole Sherwin Williams
"powder puff blue" for $9.95 a gallon to paint the computer lab.
10) computer models can't tell you that your ideas really s*(#'s.
Subj: Re:PC vsus Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-23 00:57:39 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
>Well, I'm not sure if it's worth $26K, but if you had >a Cyberware scanner,
Shapeshifter looks just way >too cool not to try and have,
You can already do basically this same thing in SI using weighted shape
animation. BTW, using a typical cyberware model (DXF triangles) in Alias
would be death! Alias is great for Nurbs but they're flat out bad re.
polygons. Subj: Re:PC vsus Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-23 03:05:53 EDT
From: Kth Lango
Posted on: America Online
>> Pssst, come to Los Angeles, come to Los Angeles ;-) <<
Yikes!!! Been there before. Can't say as I would like to raise my family
there. Not to mention that California is the only state in the union that
makes New York taxes and regulation look good.
Diffrent strokes I guess. :)
Keith
PS: Psst! Drive by shootings, drive by shootings. :)Subj: Re:PC vsus
Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-23 03:11:06 EDT
From: Kth Lango
Posted on: America Online
>> You can already do basically this same thing in SI using weighted shape
animation. BTW, using a typical cyberware model (DXF triangles) in Alias
would be death! Alias is great for Nurbs but they're flat out bad re.
polygons. <<
Crawfish, I show my ignorance. All I know of Alias or Si is what I read and
hear. Sometimes I don't put the pieces together too well, or can't find them
altogether! :)
Thanks for the correction and info. Seriously tho, I can see myself
justifying an NT/SI set up if the price was right (< $15K). But I'd *really*
have to try it out first. Where could a person "test-drive" such a setup?
(No, I don't know anybody besides Dong who has it, and he's in LA. Am I
seeing a pattern here? :)
KeithSubj: Re:PC vsus Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-23 13:09:10 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
>I can see myself justifying an NT/SI set up if the >price was right (<
$15K). But I'd *really* have to try >it out first. Where could a person
"test-drive" such a >setup?
SI did have an introductory offer on the SI/NT combo that came in about $15K
but I don't know if it's still available. Other routes to consider might be
gettting a refurbished SGI system (call SGI for that or look up resellers in
Silicon Graphics World). If the intro. price isn't available, you'll probably
be looking at roughly $22K but then, SIGGRAPH is coming up & SI is trying to
make a splash with SI NT so maybe they'll be dealing....
As regards a test-drive, find your local SI rep. If you don't know where or
who that is, the ph. no. for the SI mothership is 514-845-1636. Just ask for
sales....Subj: Re:PC vsus Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-24 14:26:34 EDT
From: Vanzo
Posted on: America Online
ACrawfish wrote:
>>The $14K gets you complete Softimage, the $40K gets you complete Alias. <<
Just to set the record straight... Alias PA now goes for $10k per module,
which makes it $30k for the entire package(last I spoke with my sales rep).
It is possible that you could wheel/deal down to $25k, and even better deals
might be had under current bundle offers that SGI is promoting. I keep on
recieving faxes from dealers(of A|W and SI bundles) with their latest. This
is good news.
-sjv
Subj: Re:PC vsus Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-24 15:24:49 EDT
From: Bugs123456
Posted on: America Online
.<< Alias PA now goes for $10k per module, which makes it $30k for the entire
package(last I spoke with my sales rep).>>
this is true, I was quoting those silly retail prices that they like to use
before they subtract the discount to ease the pain of spending that much
money on a piece of software.Subj: Re:PC vsus Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-24 17:52:38 EDT
From: Vanzo
Posted on: America Online
>>this is true, I was quoting those silly retail prices that they like to
use before they subtract the discount to ease the pain of spending that much
money on a piece of software.<<
Huh? The only two prices that I've ever heard of were the $15k per module
(all three: $45k) from last year and the recently reduced $10k per (all
three: $30k) figure. Alias has never discounted prices much(+/- $5k, more
perhaps if your buying more seats), and rarily does until a quote is written.
This is all trivial, however.
-sjvSubj: Re:PC vsus Wrksttns, blah, b
Date: 96-06-24 18:11:54 EDT
From: Bugs123456
Posted on: America Online
<<This is all trivial, however.>>
<<(+/- $5k, more perhaps if your buying more seats)>>
yes, there is movement on the more seats issue
Subj: Just Wait and See
Date: 96-07-05 21:12:17 EDT
From: WhatWas
Posted on: America Online
All of this comparison is worthless you know.
Both SoftImage and Maya (the new Alias/Wavefront) are in the process of total
rewrite.
Millions of lines of new code. I've seen the new Maya and talked to folks at
Disney, ILM, R&H, Post Group, and others, and this software is SERIOUS
business.Subj: Re:Just Wait and See
Date: 96-07-06 14:26:05 EDT
From: Bugs123456
Posted on: America Online
<<All of this comparison is worthless you know.
Both SoftImage and Maya (the new Alias/Wavefront) are in the process of total
rewrite. >>
lol...here I thought the stuff was great. you mean it is going to get
better? It really is getting hard to justify staying on the mac side.Subj:
Re:Just Wait and See
Date: 96-07-06 20:20:34 EDT
From: ScreenRot
Posted on: America Online
>>lol...here I thought the stuff was great. you mean it is going to get
better? It really is getting hard to justify staying on the mac side.<<
How about the prohibitive costs?Subj: Re:Just Wait and See
Date: 96-07-06 23:52:22 EDT
From: CD3D
Posted on: America Online
>>lol...here I thought the stuff was great. you mean it is going to get
better? It really is getting hard to justify staying on the mac side.<<
How about the prohibitive costs?<<<<
Gee that's what I was going to say.
ClydeSubj: Re:Just Wait and See
Date: 96-07-07 00:00:12 EDT
From: Bugs123456
Posted on: America Online
<<How about the prohibitive costs?>>
I hear ya, it is going to be a tough nut to swallow, but where there is a
will, there is a way. Subj: Re:Just Wait and See
Date: 96-07-07 13:15:15 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
<<How about the prohibitive costs?>>
It all depends on what you're doing. If it's running a business, the costs
are better than ever for high-end stuff. Softimage for $8K ($15K with mental
ray rendering), Alias at $40K for their 3 PowerAnimator modules & Design
Studio, SGI machines between $15K-30K. Five years ago, total costs were
$200K-300K! An incredible improvement. If you'll put $25K into a car, basic
capitalization of a CG business for about the same amount is terrific.
On the other hand, if you're approaching CG as a hobby, it does seem awfully
expensive.Subj: Re:Just Wait and See
Date: 96-07-07 15:21:48 EDT
From: ScreenRot
Posted on: America Online
>>On the other hand, if you're approaching CG as a hobby, it does seem
awfully expensive.<<
I see your point on this issue ACrawfish but don't you think there are a fair
amount of people out there doing serious work on a Mac for still at least a
third of what it costs on an SGI? I think it's a pretty strong statement to
say that anything else should be compared to a hobby. Sheesh, if that were
the case I'd be riding high on the hobby horse...Subj: Re:Just Wait and See
Date: 96-07-07 17:35:54 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
>I see your point on this issue ACrawfish but don't >you think there are a
fair amount of people out there >doing serious work on a Mac for still at
least a third >of what it costs on an SGI? I think it's a pretty >strong
statement to say that anything else should be >compared to a hobby. Sheesh,
if that were the case >I'd be riding high on the hobby horse..
Whoa, pardner, putting words in my mouth there. I wasn't slamming
non-Alias/SI/SGI stuff as being for hobby purposes only. I was just giving
some numbers re. what they cost these days and trying to point out that costs
aren't anywhere near as prohibitive as they used to be. My point is that, if
you're doing business (my definition of "serious work"), you can probably
afford the more expensive stuff (if you want it) since relative cost is
becoming less of an issue.
And rather than starting another relative cost product war, I'll just suggest
that everybody price an SGI-based system and a Mac-based one at SIGGRAPH and
see how prices compare. SGI promises to introduce INCREDIBLE, NEW, CHEAP
wonder hardware (just like they do every year....) and pricing for software
vendors is getting positively internecine (yes, blood on the floor!). It's
probably best to wait out this next couple weeks before tossing around more
dollar figures.
Subj: Macs & SGI's
Date: 96-07-08 00:14:20 EDT
From: WhatWas
Posted on: America Online
Alias has dropped below the cost of SI on an NT workstation now.
Last month they were offering Alias PA 7.0 with Inverse Kinematics and an
R5000 Indigo with 64 meg of Ram and a 2 gig drive for under $20,000.
Also, hot on the MAC is the new version of Electric Image. Absolutely the
fastest renderer for the money that i've ever used. And we own Alias PA,
SoftImage, 3D Studio, and Electric Image...with 4 PowerMacs, 2 Pentiums, 3
IndigoII's, and an Onyx Reality Engine II.
We just rendered a scene with 3 million polygons at NTSC resolution with tons
of effects turned on at under 6 minutes per frame!
Also, look out for Vertigo on the MAC premiering at SIGGRAPH next month.
I still love MACS. always will.
Lets face it, all the tools are great these days...
pick a paint brush and start your masterpiece.Subj: Re:Just Wait and See
Date: 96-07-08 00:24:50 EDT
From: Bugs123456
Posted on: America Online
<<I see your point on this issue ACrawfish but don't you think there are a
fair amount of people out there doing serious work on a Mac for still at
least a third of what it costs on an SGI?>>
It goes to the 80/20 rule, the mac can do the 80% that the higher ended
software/equipement can very well, but in the price/performance of anything,
you are going to pay quite a bit for that extra 20% increase. THe equation
of price/performance is usually not linear, more often than not it is
usually squared or cubed.Subj: Re:Macs & SGI's
Date: 96-07-08 11:08:37 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
>Last month they were offering Alias PA 7.0 with >Inverse Kinematics and an
R5000 Indigo with 64 >meg of Ram and a 2 gig drive for under $20,000.
Still beware: Alias PA7.0 has never before included the Advanced Animation
(needed for deformations), Advanced Modeling (needed for most stuff), or
Design Studio (needed for curvature continuous curve networks) in their base
price or with special promotions. Maybe they are now (which I doubt) but
these options are an additional $10K a piece. You can probably live w/o
Design Studio but the other 2 are necessary so the real price for PA7 with
enough stuff to actually do your job might be closer to $40K.
Subj: Re:Just Wait and See
Date: 96-07-08 11:19:39 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
>you are going to pay quite a bit for that extra 20% >increase. THe equation
of price/performance is >usually not linear, more often than not it is
usually >squared or cubed.
As I suggested, why not wait til after SIGGRAPH to talk price/performance
with the latest round of prices. If a Mac($4K), EAIS($7.5K), & FormZ($1.5K)
setup costs $13K w/o video, "squared" gives $169K and "cubed" gives $2197K.
That doesn't look anything at all like what SGI/Alias ($40K) or SGI/SI($25K)
actually cost.Subj: Re:Just Wait and See
Date: 96-07-08 13:19:57 EDT
From: Bugs123456
Posted on: America Online
<<As I suggested, why not wait til after SIGGRAPH to talk price/performance
with the latest round of prices. >>
agreed! my question is, what cool things are the little black hole shops
doing with the sqaured and cubed technology...any ideas, concepts or
hints?Subj: Re:Just Wait and See
Date: 96-07-08 19:56:42 EDT
From: ScreenRot
Posted on: America Online
>>Whoa, pardner, putting words in my mouth there. I wasn't slamming
non-Alias/SI/SGI stuff as being for hobby purposes only.<<
Whew! Ok.Subj: Re:softimage forum
Date: 96-07-11 17:43:29 EDT
From: GeoMedia
Posted on: America Online
Is anyone else not getting email from the softimage forum on the net? I
normally get 50+ messages from the softimage.uk user forum, but for the last
few days have received nothing? Is it just me or is anyone else having the
same problem?
thanks,
MartinSubj: Re:softimage forum
Date: 96-07-11 18:53:23 EDT
From: Vmpre
Posted on: America Online
Your right I havent been getting the digest form of the SI messages for a
while either...but then again when I do get the digest it is incomplete and
is missing many many messages
Later,
VmpreSubj: Re:softimage forum
Date: 96-07-13 14:43:08 EDT
From: AFC John
Posted on: America Online
Ive had that happen too, usually a desubscribe followed by a resubscribe did
the trick.
AFC John
3DSIG/MGR
Subj: Re:softimage forum
Date: 96-07-14 14:19:18 EDT
From: GeoMedia
Posted on: America Online
Thanks John, that is what I resorted to a few days ago and I am now
re-subscribed. I gotta have my daily dose of Softimage Q&A.
Say hi to my friend James Atkinson at R&H for me!
thanks,
Martin
GeoMediaSubj: Re:softimage forum
Date: 96-07-16 11:32:54 EDT
From: Vmpre
Posted on: America Online
How do you unscribe?
And then How do you rescribe for the digest format.
I have forgotten how! ;)
Thanks!
VmpreSubj: Re:softimage forum
Date: 96-07-22 11:12:00 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
I think it's:
Address: 3D-request@softimage.uk.co (maybe co.uk?)
subject: unsubscribe
body: unsubscribe (this might be unnecessary)Subj: Cel animation
Date: 96-08-15 01:54:59 EDT
From: JLane615
Posted on: America Online
Does anyone know of a cel animation interest group, be it under Softimage
Toonz, Linker Systems, Animo or what ever. When I do a search, I usually
come up with software sales or painted cel galleries. Are other 2-D
animators on-line?Subj: Re:Cel animation
Date: 96-08-15 17:05:46 EDT
From: Vanzo
Posted on: America Online
JLane-
Supposedly, there is a mailing list at 2D@softimage.com that I've been
subscribed to, as well as a mailing list for their beta software. Both have
been dead silent for months now...as far as I know.
-sjvSubj: SI 3.5?
Date: 96-08-16 16:24:38 EDT
From: Nurbs242
Posted on: America Online
I've been hearing from several sources that the big splash at Siggraph was
for the new version of SoftImage (3.5?). I'm very curious to know why this
was such a hit? Does anyone have anything they can share about the new
SoftImage and why it is such a hit? I have some experience with SoftImage 3.0
for NT and a little with the SGI versions, but am curious to know more about
this hot new version. I have been extremely impressed with 3DStudio MAX over
the past few months and have found it very inuitive and deep in its
capabilities for a high number of special effects and possibilities that
frankly would be very difficult or impossible in many other good high end
programs.
Anyone care to comment?Subj: Re:SI 3.5?
Date: 96-08-16 23:06:47 EDT
From: Vmpre
Posted on: America Online
Well, I can only account for a few things.
I have SI 3.5 running on my Indy. The major buz on the NT side is the fact
that Mental Ray and all of the custom effects that were available for the
IRIX are now available for NT.
The new Mental Ray is really hot. I never liked using it because it came with
two sample shaders, lensflare and projector. Now it comes with a boat load of
new shaders, including, 3DSnow, 3DRock, smoke, Dust, Smear, Fur and Hair,
Toon, and Static-Cling (one of my faves). But is also way easier to use,
including a auto-refreshing shader ball, so you can see your previews of your
mental ray stuff before you render. And distributive rendering for MR.
Some of the other things include support for the Sega Saturn graphics image
format and I think the PlayStation too. And direct support of the VRML 2.0
format. you just save you scene files as VRML and open it in your VRML tool,
voila.
All new documentataion, which is good and bad at the same time.
And the Extreme version ships with an all new version of particles which is a
lot easier to use and understand. And it ships with a new training kit, which
before you had to purchase separately.
But the biggest thing for 3.5 is the new Mental Ray support for NT.
I am sure that there is more but I cant think of anymore.
Later,
Vmpre
PS - Apparently, SI is also one of the few apps that can work under IRIX 6.2.
PPS - I just thought of one more thing. FLEXLm. The new licensing scheme. You
can have SI installed on a server and use a floating licene. So you can go to
other machines and launch SI from whatever cpu you want to be on that is
connected to the server. At least that is what I understand it as, I could be
wrongSubj: Re:SI 3.5?
Date: 96-08-19 11:35:50 EDT
From: OTownMedia
Posted on: America Online
Anybody know what the upgrade policy is for current SI 3.0 for NT owners, for
both 3.5 and 3.5 Extreme?
Is it shipping yet? And, does it run on NT 4.0?
Richard Lainhart
OTownMediaSubj: Re:SI 3.5?
Date: 96-08-19 14:08:35 EDT
From: Vanzo
Posted on: America Online
>>>The new Mental Ray is really hot. I never liked using it because it came
with two sample shaders, lensflare and projector. Now it comes with a boat
load of new shaders, including, 3DSnow, 3DRock, smoke, Dust, Smear, Fur and
Hair, Toon, and Static-Cling (one of my faves). But is also way easier to
use, including a auto-refreshing shader ball, so you can see your previews of
your mental ray stuff before you render. And distributive rendering for
MR.<<<
MentalRay's shading scheme (v3.0) impressed me because of some neat features
of the language, but I thought it's implementation was really weak. It is
good to hear that they finally have a "shader ball" to view settings...but it
seemed far behind Alias's shader language in the sense that in PA you can use
a texture map or procedural shader to define the uv value of just about
anything you could need. Color, Transparency, Luminousity, Reflectivity,
Specularity, etcetera can all be defined with maps and those maps can be
redefined by other maps to create more complex patterns and organic surfaces.
This is one area where Alias has a stronghold and I thought MentalRay was
SI's way of catching up in that regard. Are they working on this issue, or is
it a matter of whoever is writing the shader?
-sjvSubj: Re:SI 3.5?
Date: 96-08-19 18:01:32 EDT
From: Vmpre
Posted on: America Online
Wowzers, I am still very new to the high-end 3D world. But if I remeber
right, messing with how an image gets mapped in uv can be done in SOFT.
SI now has an interactive 3D paint funtion. You load in a texture map and hit
the paint button. It takes you to the paint section where a shaded preview of
your selected model. Then you can adjust where the texture map will go on any
of the polys. You can even now apply Eddie's Painterly FX to an image from
SI. Which I really like doing. And even further you can select Polys using
the g supra key and clicking on the poly you want and then paint to only that
poly and align what ever texture you want to it.
At least I think that is what you are commenting on that. I just read about
this a few days ago. I was trying to map something to a wall. The front
looked fine but the top was all streaky. So after much hunting I found the
new paint and align stuff to work out great.
Remember I am new so I could be total wrong at what I am talking about.
Comments any one, am I crazy?
Later,
VmpreSubj: 3.5 Mental Ray
Date: 96-09-17 21:04:49 EDT
From: Vmpre
Posted on: America Online
I have had this problem as of late.
I try to render a light with a lensflare in MR and I keep getting these big
ol' white lines emintating from the center going straight vertical and
horizontal. The OZ lensflare shader works, but it doesnt have all of the
parameters that the SI one has. And it looks better anyway.
Any ideas?
Later,
VmpreSubj: SI
Date: 96-11-23 19:23:26 EDT
From: Llijs
Posted on: America Online
I will start the Visual Information Technologies Program @ George Mason
University in January 97. What type of computer will this software run on so
I can do work @ home? ThanksSubj: Re:SI
Date: 96-11-24 01:43:38 EDT
From: Rich101
Posted on: America Online
I built my own system with a Micron 200mhz PentiumPro with 128 megs ram,
Symmetric OpenGL graphics car and an Adaptec Ultra Wide Scsi AHA-2940.
Softimage can run on a 100mhz Pentium with a minimum of 64 megs ram but I
wouldn't recomend it. You don't even need an OpenGL card but again I wouldn't
recommend it.
Rich Subj: Re:SI
Date: 96-11-24 13:54:53 EDT
From: ACrawfish
Posted on: America Online
SI runs on NT PCs and SGI workstations. A quite viable option is to get one
of the new SGI O2 workstations (~$6-9K). Their base unit would actually work
well for "home" use of SI.Subj: Re:SI
Date: 96-11-24 14:28:18 EDT
From: Vmpre
Posted on: America Online
I have been seriously looking in to the O2. I really think that it will give
any NT machine a run for its money. I saw one running, vey nice, the one they
had was...
17" monitor
2 GB HD
4xCDROM (I think)
128 MB RAM
Mips 180sc
32 bit double-buffered texture mapping standard
keyboard and mouse
new IndyCam
All for 8000! That is a great price
What makes this thing so unique is the UMA. Basically to increase video and
texture mapping performance you just add more RAM. All the graphics runs
through the main ram. To put that in perspective, the Onyx2 Reality Engine
can have a maxium of 64 MB of hardware RAM, the O2 can handle as much as you
can give it, up to 1.2 GB of RAM.
So to answer your question, I would definately look at the O2 for SI.
Later,
VMpre
PS - Are you taking the class with Adam Newton at GMU?Subj: Re:SI
Date: 96-11-25 11:50:40 EDT
From: Vmpre
Posted on: America Online
>>>To put that in perspective, the Onyx2 Reality Engine can have a maxium of
64 MB of hardware RAM, the O2 can handle as much as you can give it, up to
1.2 GB of RAM.<<<
Let me clarify myself, the Onyx can handle a maxium of 64 MB of hardware
TEXTURE MAPPING RAM, which is separate from the system RAM. The O2s texture
and system RAM get drawn from the same source, hence the UMA. (Unified Memory
Architecture)
Sorry for the goofey post.
Later,
VmpreSubj: MIPS R10000 vs DEC ALPHA
Date: 96-12-17 04:22:35 EDT
From: WhatWas
Posted on: America Online
Has anyone compared SI rendering on an SGI R10000 to SI running on a 500Mhz
DEC Alpha?
How would one of the new SGI Origin 200 (2xR10000) for $19,000.00 compare to
a 2xAlpha Machine?
ThanksRe:MIPS R10000 vs DEC ALPHA
Subj: Re:MIPS R10000 vs DEC ALPHA
Date: 96-12-19 12:15:35 EDT
From: BGWTWO
Posted on: America Online
I have used the new DEC Alpha 500mhz. It is a screamer not only in rendering
but price as well. It still has a price tag in the 40K range. The graphics
board alone is 12K. I have used the R10K on an Indigo but bot the O2 yet so
It is hard to say about that. The speed performance on the R10K is software
specific. The DEC is faster from what I have seen but there is not much
written for the Alpha chip unless you run an x86 emulater.
BillySubj: Internship available
Date: 97-01-28 17:14:00 EDT
From: FCONCEPT
Posted on: America Online
Future Media Concepts - Avid's NY authorized training center is seeking
interns.
Interns will trade administrative and scheduling work for access to a full
range of our training courses.
Avid courses: editing, effects, compositing and troubleshooting
Compositing courses: Adobe After Effects
3D animation courses: Softimage 3D and 3D Studio Max.
In addition, interns will have unlimited access to practice on Avid sytems
during evening and nights.
A great opportunity to work and learn with the best editors/animators in the
industry and become a digital media expert.
Fax resume attention Ben Kozcuh, President at 212.888.7531.
Subj: SI and openGL
Date: 97-01-28 20:39:17 EDT
From: Vmpre
Posted on: America Online
Hello 3D boys and girls.
I was wondering what people would suggest for an openGL card on a PentiumPro
200 NT machine to work with Soft.
Glyder with GLint 550 and Oxygen 102 are some that I have heard any other
suggestions?
Prices and experiences would be great
Thanks in advance!
Later,
VmpreSubj: Re:SI and openGL
Date: 97-01-29 01:04:07 EDT
From: STalkowski
Posted on: America Online
"I was wondering what people would suggest for an openGL card on a PentiumPro
200 NT machine to work with Soft."
Check out the Softimage site (www.softimage.com) and select Partners ->
Hardware Certification. There you'll find a list of NT 3d cards "blessed" by
Soft.
Good luck!
SteveSubj: Joe's Apt.
Date: 97-01-29 15:23:55 EDT
From: APMODELER
Posted on: America Online
Steve Talkowski - I was a little busy in Nov / Dec. and somehow managed to
miss Joe's Apartment. I did see two different TV reviews which both slammed
it - the FOOLS - the clips they were showing looked outrageous ! Anyway,
do you know if video release is planned, and when ?
Joe ReidSubj: Re:Joe's Apt.
Date: 97-01-29 20:19:37 EDT
From: Pixel Flea
Posted on: America Online
It's on video right now. Blockbuster has it. It isn't a very good movie but
the CG is really cool.Subj: Re:Joe's Apt.
Date: 97-01-29 23:58:24 EDT
From: STalkowski
Posted on: America Online
Hey Joe,
Well, if you blinked you pretty much missed it. It opened the last week of
July '96 and was only out for about 3 weeks. LOL So that would explain why
you couldn't find it anywhere in Nov / Dec. Thanks for the compliments
though, it was a fun project for our first feature and we learned a wealth of
information.
We're working on two new features due out the year - A Simple Wish, starring
Martin Short and Kathleen Turner, about magic gone awry. We've created a CG
frog and mouse that interact with live action characters as well as numerous
dervish magic fx.
Also in production is Alien:Resurrection. We are creating the Alien in CG
for the first time and i must say, it's looking pretty kewl. We're using
Alias for NURBs modeling, Soft for animation (i also created a lo-res pol
proxy within Soft) and all our rendering is propietary.
Feel free to check out our website periodically for more info.
Steve
http://www.blueskystudios.comSubj: Re:Joe's Apt.
Date: 97-02-02 17:34:12 EDT
From: AFC John
Posted on: America Online
We were bidding at R+H on Alien4 as well, but lost it to Blue Sky. I have to
admit though, this is one case where I dont mind too much at all. I know
Steve and BS will do a great job on it, and Im really looking forward to
seeing thier work on that marvelous Giger creature design.
Go guys, rah rah!
:)
AFC john
3DSIG/MGR
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