Softimage anyone ?

[lordmidas]

Hi !

 

Is there anyone here using softimage3D or XSI to do their architectural previsualization projects ?

[nisus]

Hi lordmidas,

 

I have no clue. We're using max 3.1.

rgds

 

nisus

[STRAT]

i dunno neither. i've not often seen XSI for arch imaging. usually only for high end movie work.

 

we're using acad, viz 3i and cinema 4d 7

[stefkeB]

Softimage is really expensive to not use it for professional animation work...

 

I am learning it, using the Softimage Experience CD & the 3dBuzz-tutorial (all free, btw).

 

My brother uses it and he keeps amazing me with the possibilities (character animation, dynamics, GI & caustics, particles, hair/fur, ...). Mental Ray is a very clever rendering engine and (unlike in MAX) it's integration in SI is second to none.

 

I wouldn't buy it to just produce stills from CAD-models, but for animation it's a powerful app.

[ferox]

io-media.com use xsi

(import .eps files, build from there)

[lordmidas]

We just started our own company a couple of month ago and we decided to go with XSI. I know it's expensive but we are all hardcore softimage users and learning a cheaper package would have been a lot of trouble.

 

If you want to see what XSI can do for architecture, come on in ... Commentary are welcome !

 

1|20media

[Sawyer]

lordmidas,

 

nice site. I love the leaves swirling on the title screen.

[jasonkey]

nice work, I'm learning XSI right now and may be using it for some architectural stuff soon.

[casa]

Hi,

I'm using Softimage since 1993 for architectural visualisation and all other kind of possibilities in which CGI is wanted/needed.

 

You can search the gallery on this site to see some examples of work I've done in the last ten years (it's only three examples right now)

Search for (Heberle, Horst)!

[Andy Hickes]

1/20 I like the walking man. Did you make him?

[Renderman_XSI]

im a XSI user stricky! have been using/learning it for a few months and i love it. However i dont use it for architectural rendering(thought it can). In XSI there isnt too many tools that are aim at making architecture easy.

 

XSI 4.0 just around the corner! It is now possible to create polygons within a polygon, without XSI havent to tesselate by adding edges! This should mean better Boolean>Difference opertion!!

 

XSI is not expensive anymore, as of this writing you can trade in your 3DSmax,LW,Maya license for a big discount.

 

[ January 31, 2004, 05:16 PM: Message edited by: Renderman_XSI ]

[thinice]

Lordmidas,

 

have you ever used lightwave for archietectural stuff. If so, how do they compare?

 

Thinice

[Gavin]

I'm an XSI user, although I can see myself skipping over to another app...not because of preferences or anything, just to expand my horizons.

 

Gav

[lordmidas]

Lordmidas,

 

have you ever used lightwave for archietectural stuff. If so, how do they compare?

 

Thinice

 

Unfortunatly, never used lightwave for arch stuff. In my company, we all studied softimage in school, that's the reason we use it. All 3d packages are very good at anything. I think if your confortable with a certain package, go with this one to start off.

[dleon]

As an ex-Lightwaver who is entitled to his free 8.0 upgrade, I can tell you that Lightwave is pretty damn antiquated in most respects. The engine is allegedly the fastest stock renderer in the world. It ain't so. Use any radiosity at all, and you will long for XSI's implementation of MentalRay. It's only about 600% faster. The scarry thing is that MentalRay is far from the fastest Render engine around. VRay can schmack it by about 250%. This means that VRay is roughly about 18x faster than Lightwave. Simple Cornell box tests will show you it is true. I did idential, simple Cornell boxes in 3ds Max and Lightwave. All shots were done at 1280x720 HD. All shots were done on a dual 3.21 GHz XEON. MentalRay delivered in 300 seconds, or 5 minutes. VRay delivered in 120 seconds, or two minutes. Lightwave delivered in 2367.9, or 39 minutes 27.9 seconds.

 

Lightwave radiosity shots take hours (especially if you use ImageWorld based HDRI). VRay based HDRI shots take a few minutes. Lightwave is just obsoleate, that's all.

 

And now we hear news that MentalRay 3.3 is GPU based and going to divide it's former benchmark records by 24!!! This is literally the end of the road for the CPU render engine. Everybody better get GPUized as fast as they can or MentalRay will run away with the title.

[Spacelord]

Hey dleon,

 

How do you find the intergration of Mental ray in XSI ?

Does it have standard glossy reflections and rafractions,

are they easy to set up ? I've been using Vray for a while and find

its pretty easy to set that sort of thing up.

How much of a learning curve is Mental Ray, like I don't want to be writing MI Shaders ?

 

Whats XSI like for importing files DWG,3ds,..etc Is there any problems with

scale of objects ? As I've heard XSI has generic XSI units.

 

I'm thinking about changing over to XSI specially now cause of the introductory package Foundation v4.0 is so cheap.

 

I'd love to keep using Vray, I'm sure they will port it one day to XSI, but Maya is going to be the next port.

 

I've gathered theres not many people using XSI for Architectural Visualization, but I also do some charactor animation and its the best for that.

 

I'm really interested in Mental Ray 3.3 and Gelato Nvidia. Gelato, from what I gather is created by the guys that were doing Entropy (Exluna). So I'm sure it would be pretty solid, since Entropy was a renderman compliant render.

 

Okay just blabbing now.

cya

 

Any incite to XSI for Architectural Visualization for be appreciated.

[lordmidas]

As i can see in that forum, im almost the only one here using XSI for Architectural Visualization. I think softimage is a great tool for previz, and it's even greater since they chop the price down.

 

As for importing files, XSI is not very compatible. To help us with that, we use Deep Exploration to convert our files.

 

For Mental Ray, it's hard for me to compare because i've always work with only softimage. For me, i think the learning curve is fairly easy.

 

Check out our website, if you like to see what we can do with XSI !

 

http://www.1-20media.com

[Spacelord]

Hi Lordmidas,

 

A couple of questions about Mentay Ray.

 

What would be the best way to render out a scene that has a character moving around or any objects ? Just thinking I wouldn't want to calculate a photon map for every frame.

What are the glossy materials like in Mental Ray ? Are they easy to setup ?

Is there simple default materials (for glossies and refactions) that I can use instead of having to configure every element ?

Also I've heard XSI has great scene management tools. What exactly do they mean ? Is it good for high poly count scenes, good for xrefencing scenes ?

Could give an example of scene management ?

I've got plenty of questions to ask, cause i'm seriously thinking about buying XSI.

So any help you can offer would be great.

[dleon]

----------

Hey dleon,

 

How do you find the intergration of Mental ray in XSI ?

Does it have standard glossy reflections and rafractions, are they easy to set up ? I've been using Vray for a while and find its pretty easy to set that sort of thing up. How much of a learning curve is Mental Ray, like I don't want to be writing MI Shaders ?

---------

I haven't use XSI all that much so I am not the best guy to quote on this subject, but the word on the street is that nobody does MentalRay like XSI. XSI is the king of MentalRay front-ends. Basically the whole XSI app was developed as a front end to MentalRay in the first place.

 

I haven't conquered MentalRay (in 3ds Max) to the hilt just yet, but I am anxiously awaiting my copy of the two DVD collection evermotion.org has published on MentalRay. It is all 3ds Max 6 specific and MentalRay 3.2 specific. They have four teasers .avi files on the web which are fantastic.

 

Evermotion.org also has 52 short vids on VRay.

 

As far as I can see VRay can do anything MentalRay can do, and it is faster. I've gotten slightly better GI out of MentalRay, but I take a big performance hit to get it.

 

Personally, I'm not going to wait to long for 3ds Max + MR 3.3. If Discreet doesn't cough it up within a few months I can get an Educational License of XSI 4 Advanced for just $650 USD. I have to know how fast it really is. Also, it can't hurt to know something about XSI 4

[lordmidas]

-----------------

What would be the best way to render out a scene that has a character moving around or any objects ? Just thinking I wouldn't want to calculate a photon map for every frame.

-----------------

 

There are a lot of ways to render a scene with character moving ... it really depend on what is going on in there. But one way that accelerate your render time is to render in pass and baking the GI on your textures, just like in video games.

 

-----------------

What are the glossy materials like in Mental Ray ? Are they easy to setup ?

Is there simple default materials (for glossies and refactions) that I can use instead of having to configure every element ?

-----------------

 

Mental Ray is totally integrated in Softimage since the beginning. It's the default renderer of XSI. So there's a couple of default materials in XSI that you can use, but there's also a lot more you can do if you take the time to play around with the texture editor.

 

-----------------

Also I've heard XSI has great scene management tools. What exactly do they mean ? Is it good for high poly count scenes, good for xrefencing scenes ?

-----------------

 

When they talk about scene management tools, they are referring to the XSI explorer that work exactly like windows explorer. All your models, materials, textures, light, etc ... are can be managed in that explorer. There's also the schematic view that you can use to manage your scene but i dont use that very often.

 

 

I didn't try XSI4.0 yet ... but it seems very promising with mental ray 3.3

 

Hope that help you a bit ... all i can say is give it a try. Download the demo version and play with it, do some tutorials. Best way to know if the software works for you.

 

Have fun !

[Spacelord]

Thanks dleon and Lordmidas,

I've been having a play with the demo version of XSI and its looking very promising. I love the layers, great for scene management. I know Max 5 have them but just not as intuitive.

Haven't gone into rendering yet, will do this week, just understanding navigation tools and interface for now.

 

When I was using Mental Ray for Maya Final Gather would only bounce light once. Is this the same as XSI or a Maya problem ?

 

Yep I'm pretty excited about XSI v4.0 its looking pretty sweet, would love to have a play with mental ray on rendering on GPU.

[yog]

Seven years ago I had to make a choice which way I was going to go for arch viz. At the time I went with LW. Half my clients were working on hand drawn plots, the other half were working on 2D only CAD drawings, basically I could use what I wanted because I would be starting from scratch. At the time LW offered (IMHO) the best poly modelling and ratracing tools around. Unfortunately every release since has seen LW concentrate more on character animation a SFX, all but abandonning all development in modelling and rendering, this whilst all the other packages have been working hard to improve these areas.

 

These days I generally model in LW (sometimes in MAX), and render in MAX with Vray. Vray is very hard to beat for arch vis.

 

For the last few months I have been learning XSI (HL-EXP version), and am VERY impressed. The amount of technical orientated tools is truly staggering, to the point of making me feal like a newbi again. It looks like I might be able to swing a deal to get in on the trade in offer (even though it has officially closed).

This leaves me with a problem, which to trade in LW or MAX ? I'll probably look to trade in MAX. Even though I am very disapointed with the direction LW is taken in recient years (and no faith it will change soon), and probably wont upgrade it again, after seven years experience in it I'm still faster using it. The decission is slightly made easier with the news that the group behind Vray are fairly close to making Vray a stand alone renderer, taking away my main reason for using MAX.

 

Not too many import/export options in XSI, but it does take OBJ's, which is what I currently use to get LW models into MAX, so all's good..