MatrixNAN Posted March 11, 2006 Share Posted March 11, 2006 Hey Guys N Gals, Well if you ever thought Houdini was expensive think again. No no Face Robot defantly takes the cake. lol Its very cool and you can use it in your pipeline with Houdini and other 3D Apps. Designer Seat is $95k and the animator seat is $15k. Of couse it could save you a lot of time and money too. Videos More Videos Pricing Yikes I take it thats why Softimage said it was only for large studios. lol Cheers, Nate Nesler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sibarrick Posted March 11, 2006 Share Posted March 11, 2006 It's weird the more I see the less I'm impressed..... Don't get me wrong its obviously a very powerful tool but this whole they've written a skin solver thing I'm just not buying. Take a close look at the examples of the old lady and the making of Kitty Hunting the mouth still moves weird. Most of the power seems to be in the speed of setup, always a good thing. It's good but not 95K good. If only I had time I'd love to set something like this up in Houdini, need 50 hour days. Still, it's all about getting a solution out there and they have done that, and made some very nice movies to show off with, if they sell a heap of seats Sesi should really take note, it's not the cost of the software it's how well you show off about it - make some freakin' sexy movies that show everyone what you can do. Just my 2 cents. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Visual Cortex Lab Posted March 11, 2006 Share Posted March 11, 2006 my 0,02 .... now that is definetly NOT worth 95k. sorry. geeez.. please show me something that is worth 95k and I'll change my mind on this.. but c'mon.. that's ridicoulous. the more I see the more I'm proud to had moved to Houdini. Two Masters licenses are under request within next couple of weeks and finally I'll start my official tasks and I'll use XSI just when exporting things for my job, and after seeing this 95k piece of software I'm even more happy about this. I'm even wondering if that's a typo .. and this means this is 9,5k which makes much more sense... sorry I'm also in a really bad mood and I cant read such things and express myself in a "objective" way.. but still.. 95k. bah. I easly remember first releases of Maya.. was almost same prices. cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peliosis Posted March 11, 2006 Share Posted March 11, 2006 It's a real pity softimage turned back from innovation to marketing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheUsualAlex Posted March 11, 2006 Share Posted March 11, 2006 Even if the "Designer" seat's 95k may be a typo, the "animator" seat is about 15k. THat makes Houdini all the more attractive all right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MatrixNAN Posted March 13, 2006 Author Share Posted March 13, 2006 Hey Guys, Yeah the price is not being well received on the XSI forums either. No its not a typeo thats what they intent to sell it for. I do think making the sexy videos really matters because people that don't know their software and are using an inferior piece of software can go oh wow that would save me sooo much time and effort I need to buy that. Houdini does not fit in the category of inferior software actually I think Houdini is better but the thing is most other 3D packages do. So I think it is a great marketing move. However, I think the pricing on this facial animation tool is too much to be honest. I mean Massive is only $40,000 last I heard and to be honest if I were a studio, and I only had so much money then I would be throwing my money at Massive instead of Face Robot. I thought the facial animation of the old lady looked better than the young lady but believe it or not they are the same model just the young lady model was scuplted up into an old lady model in ZBrush. lol I would love 50 hour days Simon. lol Yeah I think such a system would be a lot easier to create in Houdini than any other package since houdini is so procedural. Cheers, Nate Nesler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 I haven't had a lot of time to really study those videos...the 'making of..' one had some interesting things going on in it but...well from what I can see it's not that big a deal - I'm sure it works well and as advertised but the only thing I can see being worth while about Face Robot is the savings in setup time - but frankly there is always a need for custom stuff/unique problems/odd meshes etc etc...so usage may vary... additionally - the animations that that they have show are really not that impressive...I don't mean to say that this means the application is no good... as for the price...it's crazy...I don't know who they're intended user is - but only the biggest shops would be able to drop 100K on this - and even then I don't see DD,ILM,Sony,R&H having much use for it... oh and it's windows only AFAIK..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peliosis Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 Softimage have one big advantage, it's fast with deforming heavy geometry, so all rigs and things work without hiccups. I never felt that kind of robustness in houdini. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamJ Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 The tool seems to be targeted at mid size shops that don't have their own custom solutions; though at that price range they would have to have 'a lot' of facial work to justify the purchase. My guess Blur, Blizzard are probably their target customers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thekenny Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 My guess Blur, Blizzard are probably their target customers. um, they help make the thing with the softimage dev team. so they will use it for sure, but I bet you they're not paying that kind of $$$ for it. Sony has their own system as does weta, and most likely ILM for this sort of thing. I could see EA or Ubisoft thinking about it as well. It would become an "option" for a any house if they could justify the cost through efficiencies and workload vrs through put. -k Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MatrixNAN Posted March 13, 2006 Author Share Posted March 13, 2006 but frankly there is always a need for custom stuff/unique problems/odd meshes etc etc...so usage may vary...as for the price...it's crazy...I don't know who they're intended user is - but only the biggest shops would be able to drop 100K on this - and even then I don't see DD,ILM,Sony,R&H having much use for it... oh and it's windows only AFAIK..... 25592[/snapback] Full support is included with that price tag. So custom stuff and setups etc does not matter Softimage actually will custom write and rework the program for whatever you need to have it do. Thats why some people are saying that the price tag is worth it. I know ILM was interest in it or to anaylize it in order to figure out how they did it. lol Windows only is a mistake without a doubt. Thats one of the things that really bothers me about ZBrush is that its windows and Mac based drives me crazy. I want a linux version. Thats really funny that its windows only because XSI mainly written for Linux. lol Oh and softimage only intends for the big to medium size shops to buy it because they are wanting to do custom support before they release it to the general animation community. So they said only the big and medium shops will get it. I guess this is their way of making sure that happens. The softimage rep was saying something like they were only intending on about like 10 studios having it or something. I don't know if that still stands true now. Cheers, Nate Nesler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
altbighead Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 my guessing is that it will go down to the path of Softimage|Behaviour as someone from cgtalk points out. Softimage announces Softimage|BehaviourNovember 11 2002 Availability and Pricing The SOFTIMAGE|BEHAVIOR system is available for purchase at $14,995 USMSRP Softimage Launches New Version of SOFTIMAGE|BEHAVIOR December 15 2003 Availability and Pricing The SOFTIMAGE|BEHAVIOR v.1.5 system is expected to be available December 11th 2003 and is available for purchase at $14,995 USMSRP. One license of SOFTIMAGE|BEHAVIOR batch is included as part of the standard SOFTIMAGE|BEHAVIOR package, additional licenses can be purchased separately for $1,995 USMSRP. Avid Announces SOFTIMAGE|XSI 4.2 Crowd-simulation software now included with SOFTIMAGE|XSI Advanced; SOFTIMAGE|XSI Essentials now includes compositing and paint features November 30, 2004 * SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.4.2 Advanced + SOFTIMAGE|BEHAVIOR v.2.0 is now available for $6,995 USMSRP Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanostol Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 And that's one big danger, cause all expect this to happen, everybody waits for this to happen. A friend of mine purchased XSIAdvandced one day before the huge price drop. Man he was pissed of by this. Fortunately he was able to turn it around. But imagine You purchase FR for 95000 and 3 month later the price dropps about 50 percent. Your investment just halfed in a sec. On the other side I guess they have to improve a lot for versions that are sold more or less unsupported. The special projects team, that will assist You is not that big I guess. And that's one of my main concerns. The power that flows now into FR will be missing in the XSI developement, and there is still a lot to do. The last release was at sigraph, then one bugfix version that did not fix all bugs, and now... I learned to live with bugs. The only regular is my reseller asking me to pay for maintanance. *sigh* martin my guessing is that it will go down to the path of Softimage|Behaviour as someone from cgtalk points out. 25604[/snapback] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deecue Posted March 14, 2006 Share Posted March 14, 2006 I mean Massive is only $40,000 last I heard about half that actually... http://www.massivesoftware.com/massive_2_0.html But imagine You purchase FR for 95000 and 3 month later the price dropps about 50 percent. Your investment just halfed in a sec. actually that's ~7,776,000 secs.. but only because i'm a jerk.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MatrixNAN Posted March 14, 2006 Author Share Posted March 14, 2006 Hey Deecue, Thats awesome they dropped the price of Massive thats really wow. lol Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if Face Robot wasn't part of XSI Advanced in about 2 or 3 years. lol Man none the less thats a lot of money right now. Yeah I do think that special projects team is rather small and thats part of the reason for the high prices. They might have to grow that team if this takes off a lot regardless of the price. Cheers, Nate Nesler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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