Re: Sami animation project

Moritz,

You make some very good points.  Although many small houses will take an off 
the shelf package and utilize it, most are spending thousands to develop 
their own pipeline and custom software.  I can only think of one in several 
dozen well known studios we have been in that HAS NOT tweaked the off the 
shelf package or wrote tools themself.

Good luck to all,

Ramona Howard

SpectSoft, LLC
RaveHD-Changing the way you think about HD


On Sunday 05 June 2005 06:08 pm, Moritz Moeller wrote:
> Robin Rowe wrote:
> >> I just want to get an idea of what people like, what they hate, how
> >> they have to work around limitations, but also how certain things have
> >> made things easier for them. Regardless of style and preferences of
> >> the artists I'm interested in knowing more about how other artists
> >> work, especially those who are on a linux mailing list.
> >
> > Maya + RenderMan + Shake seems the most popular toolset.
>
> I assume RenderMan refers to PRMan. If you want to spend less money use
> Maya + Liquid (free) + 3Delight ($1k/client; beats PRMan anyway in some
> areas already).
>
> > DreamWorks uses Maya. ILM uses SoftImage|XSI. Sony Pictures Imageworks
> > uses Houdini. These are all good tools that make great movies. If there
> > was a compelling advantage to a particular tool then studios would adopt
> > it predominantly (as has happened with Linux). Many studios use
> > competing tools for different tasks or to accommodate an artist's
> > preference.
>
> I think that misses the point.
> The reason lies imo merely in the availability of trained people for a
> particular package. The time one can save when developing a pipeline
> around e.g. Houdini vs. Maya or, worse, XSI, one looses quickly when
> having to ramp up the number of people actually using a package. There
> aren't that many Houdini animators around... :)
>
> I btw. also doubt that ILM uses XSI solely (I heard it was good old
> Softimage, not XSI) and even if they did, chances are that their XSI
> doesn't have much in common anymore with the XSI you can buy off the shelf.
> That is a very important point to keep in mind: /never/ trust the
> marketing mumbo-jumbo on demo reels of contemporary "high-end" 3d
> packages. Fact is that the amount of R&D going into a pipeline for the
> VFX of a feature film is close to the R&D you would do to write a base
> version of Maya or XSI themselves quite often. So don't be trapped to
> believe you can do fancy blockbuster VFX with package XZY just because
> company ABC used that package and did so. They probably had an
> ubertweaked, pimped-up version of that package with dozens of in-house
> scipts & plug-ins their R&D department spit out.
>
> The pipeline developed for the feature film I'm currently working on
> could have been developed for /any/ 3d package (I guess even Truespace,
> if we wanted to). But for some rather odd reason it was XSI.
> I do know though that if we had developed it for Houdini, we would have
> finished it long ago (this is the R&D pov) but then we would have
> trouble finding animators fluent with the package.
>
> I'm over the rendering part of things but speaking e.g. only of the rig
> the character TDs here built in 5 months (!): that is /very/ package
> agnostic from the user's pov (as it does absolutely everything for you
> -- setup-wise); it wouldn't make any difference if people here had
> written these scripts for Maya or Houdini. Only that software
> development for the latter is simply much less of a pain in the a##...
>
> It breaks down to: how much money do you want to spend on pipeline/tool
> R&D vs. how much money do you want to spend on training people. If you
> save money on R&D by going with a package that has a better designed API
> & less issues aka bugs (Houdini) then you have to be prepared to train
> people on that package. On the other hand, going with a more common
> package like XSI and Maya will allow you to bring people on board rather
> quickly and at any time of production as there are lots of trained
> animators for these but you will spend more time & money doing R&D.
>
> Producers usually see the latter (being able to staff up quickly late as
> the need arises) to be more important than saving money on R&D as the
> latter is believed to be much more prone to become a major showstopper
> than the former.
> Hence the decision which package to use is often driven by this (imho
> very debatable) consideration and then there's maybe things like a
> personal preference of the lead animator and things like that. :>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Moritz
>
>
>
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-- 
Ramona Howard

SpectSoft, LLC
593 Hi-Tech Parkway Suite B
Oakdale, CA 95361
Phone: 209.847.7812 Fax: 209.847.7859
http://www.spectsoft.com

Are we having fun yet?



-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by: NEC IT Guy Games.  How far can you shotput
a projector? How fast can you ride your desk chair down the office luge track?
If you want to score the big prize, get to know the little guy.  
Play to win an NEC 61" plasma display: http://www.necitguy.com/?r=20