XSI 7...

[JDenker]

i actually can't wait to get my hand on ICE.

i still love houdini. but in fact i worked almost 3 years with xsi before i switched to Houdini.

So im really interested in what they did.

For now.. with all the videos i saw. I often had to laught because they copied so much from SESI.

And the whole XSI Community right now.. is like 'AAAAH... .OHHHH' with lila sunglasses on

let's see how they feel when they face the nodes themselves.

Can't wait for Siggraph.

Cheers!

Have a great day!

[sibarrick]

Anyone have any more details on this "Bi-directional mesh deformer" any links to papers...

[edward]

Looked like the pixar sketch to me?

[jason_slab]

yeah, i think it's one of the pixar papers, but i could be wrong

jason

[jason_slab]

check out this tutorial if you guys want to see a bit more on ICE's workflow, pretty neat

building custom forces

http://www.vimeo.com/1313863

jason

[old school]

Instead of tab typing they have a static list of all available operators and you type in a search field.

Feels very much like VOPs and everything is in the one editor. Including the fetching of all object attributes.

It feels like they have taken a measure of control away from the typical Houdini user IMHO.

As for the demo itself, it feels like a math lesson... That and a reverse-engineered Houdini help card where the demo artist didn't even read the operator comments. That's just the demo artist and not ICE. No "why" just a "how". Like he as been shown this technique.

Btw, Bradley if you are reading this, in order to get even more control you have to negate some of the incoming velocity as you impart the curve's tangent force. That way you don't even need drag.

You can see this in a quick 2 minute mock-up I made for someone on OdForce right here:

http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?showto...amp;#entry49434

I wonder how many other Houdini help cards they are going to turn in to ICE demos. Isn't it funny that the demos tend to use grids, spheres, tubes, curves, simple terrains, etc. It's wonderful to see that now in the XSI world!

I'm still waiting for the animated boolean between a sphere and a tube...

Either way, this will certainly make Houdini much more accessible to XSI TD's.

-jeff

[JDenker]

http://www.xsi-brasil.com/XSI_7/mesh_on_me...sh_on_mesh.html

that is a cool little effect.

[michael]

http://www.aearon.de/2008/03/09/soft-conta...er-for-houdini/

[withanar]

Btw, Bradley if you are reading this, in order to get even more control you have to negate some of the incoming velocity as you impart the curve's tangent force. That way you don't even need drag.

Well I *am now*

That drag compound has 2 settings. Simple drag, which is on by default, and does it by negating velocity exactly as you say. The complex drag setting does quite a bit more, but isn't necessary most of the time.

On a side note, I was thinking about the Houdini user base when I was doing those demos. You guys must be looking at us the way an adult watches a baby taking her first steps. "Aw how cute... now where were we again?" As far as I know, at the moment there's nothing I can do in ICE that Houdini can't already do. The main differences are user experience, and what XSI is doing in its core to wire together elements of the scene graph. ICE is not going to replace Houdini in our pipeline, it's more likely to eventually reduce our need to leave XSI for Houdini (or Maya), which at the moment we *have* to for more advanced effects.

So really there's not much for Houdini users to get excited or upset about, it's another CG app extending and expanding its operator architecture. It *is* quite exciting for us in the XSI world, however, since many of us have looked at Houdini-procedural-node power for many years with envy. If there is obvious similarity between ICE and VOPs, blame it on the user base. Soft was doing their best to respond to our thousand plus requests for improving XSI's operator architecture and particle system. I know the devs who worked on ICE and they were most certainly not copying Houdini. The types of functionality requests from users on the other hand, harder to say. I think most of us rambled off a wishlist of the best parts we liked from Maya, Houdini, C4D, Realflow, proprietary apps, and our imagination. Soft did their best to oblige, ICE is the result.

I agree with Jeff and do think this will provide more pathways for XSI TD's into Houdini, hopefully myself being one of them.

[old school]

Worlds are colliding. Fantastic!

[jason_slab]

hey

nice to see you here Brad

yes i'm looking forward to a closer relationship between the Houdini and XSI users!

i must admit i was one of those thousands hounding Softimage for a node based system (Houdini, thinking particles, particle flow)

jason

[withanar]

hey

nice to see you here Brad

yes i'm looking forward to a closer relationship between the Houdini and XSI users!

i must admit i was one of those thousands hounding Softimage for a node based system (Houdini, thinking particles, particle flow)

jason

Heya! I hope you guys wouldn't be offended to know that I've regularly attended Houdini user group meetings and demos at every siggraph for the past 12 years and running... but I'm not actually a user. I've always wanted to be a user, but then again I've always wanted to learn how to speak French. It's been more inspirational for me and my understanding of CG, but I've not yet had the production opportunity that afforded me the chance to learn Houdini, and I've been quite occupied at being a creature TD all this time.

I'm getting a lot of people asking me to compare ICE to Houdini, and at the moment the similarities are more obvious than the differences. I think one thing to consider is, Houdini is more a CG language and development kit from top to bottom than the other CG apps. It's mature and complete enough that any new feature offered by any CG app can ultimately be replicated. So anything we could *do* in ICE could be *done* in Houdini.

It will take some time, but ICE is not Houdini, nor is it going to change anything about the day to day user experience in XSI in terms of interacting with the software. In fact, ICE was intentionally designed so as not to scare XSI users, who are predominantly less technical than Maya or Houdini users. You should be able to go about your business in XSI and completely ignore ICE, never touch the interface, never open a compound. For typical XSI users, the main difference they will notice is their menus will start to fill up with a lot more operators and simulation abilities, with a lot more options than before. When they apply those operators, they will see the same property pages and have the same GUI interactions they've always had.

For TD's working in XSI, it's a different story. Hopefully the presence of a system like ICE will attract more technical users to XSI, but perhaps not. In any case, the TD's already working in XSI, or ones brought on for project hires should have a much easier time developing custom operators and simulations, thus opening up powers that didn't exist. For guys like me, it will make the transition to an app like Houdini much easier, or for a Houdini user to XSI the same. That won't be the case for a less technical production artist.

[sanostol]

in my opinion there is no real need to compare the to apps. it`s just important to know where they have their strength and how to combine them. I think ICE is a real big step for xsi and it will open a lot of possibilites for xsi users. if You know houdini you will allways come to the point, where xsi reaches it's limits, but again it is wrong to except xsi to become houdini. by the way they are designed they provide great possibilities. if one fails or does/t provide the ease of use you desire, just switch and get the data You have to the other one. it would be very cool to have for example the opportunity to im/export animclips in chan file format or the other way round.

martin

[mangi]

I gota use both. xsi pipe line is at my job and I did get into houdini DOPS a while back. I guess then the so called dynamics in xsi where pretty good for learning, but I did jump into the houdini DOPS , this was at xsi 3.5 then 4,2 upgrade. At that time xsi was doing the major production with XSI. Hey the TV series of POCOYO was built with XSI , and still is. I am from madrid . Who uses houdini here. Shit the big guy,s at Ilion planet one feature film did'nt find any houdini guys, there are a couple of Guys around. You can count them on one hand. I guess you could get the TD out of the countries. A bit expensive....... One has to think on a PIPE line, and where to find the Animators etc... Any in Houdini yet? Well I could go on and on.

The Guys that are gona make it are anyone that can really get the geo from one end to the other.

Good luck to everyone.

I have not seen xsi 7.0 but don't you think it is like the xsi material editor (The so called ICE) . Thats always been there, XSi tends to make some easy shelf to get the effect out there easy. But isn't houdini trying to to do this aswell. I mean the shelfs. hell I always use them. Kind of like the shell that the MAYA guys had years back. Don't touch maya at all , well I did install it thats about all. really freaky, There where many amny Techs , i think there still is. in Spain it got big. Any one wondering whats going on there. (The big 3dmax guys.) I did start with 3DS, big boom with the 3dmax version on the PC desk tops back then with the 486 finally with 16 ram. All the big publicity was on the softimage system , had to have a unix system real expensive . not on the hands of the regular 3d techs.

The issue here is not which software is better , but which one is going to SERVIVE

mangi

[Netvudu]

Who uses houdini here.

I do. But it

[lisux]

I gota use both. xsi pipe line is at my job and I did get into houdini DOPS a while back. I guess then the so called dynamics in xsi where pretty good for learning, but I did jump into the houdini DOPS , this was at xsi 3.5 then 4,2 upgrade. At that time xsi was doing the major production with XSI. Hey the TV series of POCOYO was built with XSI , and still is. I am from madrid . Who uses houdini here. Shit the big guy,s at Ilion planet one feature film did'nt find any houdini guys, there are a couple of Guys around. You can count them on one hand. I guess you could get the TD out of the countries. A bit expensive....... One has to think on a PIPE line, and where to find the Animators etc... Any in Houdini yet? Well I could go on and on.

mangi

Well mangi I am another Houdini user from Spain, in fact is almost the only tool I have used.

Don't try to extrapolate the situation in Spain to the rest of the world. It is true that is not easy to find character animators for Houdini but if you compare the user base and knowhow that exists around Houdini in the FX field, man it is so big and have been so much time in this industry.

Making the question of who is going to survive is an error there is market for Houdini, Maya, XSI ,3D Studio ....

Everyone has his own place in this world.

And I have to add that when I begin to use Houdini 3 years it was impossible to find a user from Spain, now you have several of them around the world doing a very good job in highend companies, things are changing, slowly but changing.

And also the main problem to put Houdini in a pipeline in Spain is that all the supervisors came from 3D Studio, XSI or Maya, do you think that Ilion is not using Houdini due to the problem of finding TD's or animators, not man things are not so easy, there are a lot of politics in between .... (that is better not to say in a public forum)

Don't try to survavive find your own way.

[mangi]

Well mangi I am another Houdini user from Spain, in fact is almost the only tool I have used.

Don't try to extrapolate the situation in Spain to the rest of the world. It is true that is not easy to find character animators for Houdini but if you compare the user base and knowhow that exists around Houdini in the FX field, man it is so big and have been so much time in this industry.

Making the question of who is going to survive is an error there is market for Houdini, Maya, XSI ,3D Studio ....

Everyone has his own place in this world.

And I have to add that when I begin to use Houdini 3 years it was impossible to find a user from Spain, now you have several of them around the world doing a very good job in highend companies, things are changing, slowly but changing.

And also the main problem to put Houdini in a pipeline in Spain is that all the supervisors came from 3D Studio, XSI or Maya, do you think that Ilion is not using Houdini due to the problem of finding TD's or animators, not man things are not so easy, there are a lot of politics in between .... (that is better not to say in a public forum)

Don't try to survavive find your own way.

[i-d]

Maybe I'm crazy but in XSI7 launch video (great marketing alltogether btw)

did that presenter for ice said in one moment "SOPs" and immideatly

corrected himself and said geometry instead? Yeah, I'm crazy.

Nevertheless great piece of software, me personally likes best

maya config settings.

[lisux]

Good luck to everyone.

I have not seen xsi 7.0 but don't you think it is like the xsi material editor (The so called ICE) . Thats always been there, XSi tends to make some easy shelf to get the effect out there easy. But isn't houdini trying to to do this aswell. I mean the shelfs. hell I always use them. Kind of like the shell that the MAYA guys had years back. Don't touch maya at all , well I did install it thats about all. really freaky, There where many amny Techs , i think there still is. in Spain it got big. Any one wondering whats going on there. (The big 3dmax guys.) I did start with 3DS, big boom with the 3dmax version on the PC desk tops back then with the 486 finally with 16 ram. All the big publicity was on the softimage system , had to have a unix system real expensive . not on the hands of the regular 3d techs.

The issue here is not which software is better , but which one is going to SERVIVE

mangi

People remember this kind of discussions when first news about XSI 7 appears?????

Now we have the answer.