Brix

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

Pixelsonic:
no matter how much deeply you have been involved in the developement of the software i really cant take your apology Martin...sorry
because of companies like yours many other 3rd party developers are instantly put under "bad" label.
Neither you or your compainon had the balls to publicly make clear whats going on and offer your customers some options of settlement.
Not to mention BRIX was nowhere close to being cheap and for me not being able to bring it to max 2012 makes it absolutely useless no matter what it does.
You personaly sure had made a good use of the money users spent on the software which i personally could have spent on something much more valuable.
BRIX along with Autograss will always leave a bitter memories and i have every right to be pi..ed off.
Too bad there is no refund policy in software field.
Sorry for the tone but i had to vent

[plastic_]

Yeah. I'm always suspicious when a company pops up where it isn't clear who stands behind it.
It's always the same, there are guys with great ideas but no programming skills and no money to invest, they partner up with a programmer. The expectations are way to high, profit is low in the first months. Partners split up, product dead.

I had the feeling about Autograss from the beginning. I also had it with Vrayscatter, but they are still going, probably because they are russian.
People in western countries tend to totally over estimate the potential income. They think they can make a living with some plugin in short term. That's ridiculous.

[voltron7]

so Autograss is dead, too?!

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

no its not but we just stopped using it cos it was just way too buggy with the licencing and mapping and lack of support.
ruled it out of our pipeline and never came back to it.

the communication with the developers was pure nightmare....just did not have the patience to wait 2 weeks for answer to most simple issues.

[Neilg]

I also had it with Vrayscatter, but they are still going, probably because they are russian.

That might be the best reason for success i've ever read. it's probably because they were a pretty well established studio that was just selling it's in house tools. Theres no work on their site since 2008, but that doesnt mean they're not still going - most clients are all about secrecy these days.

[yyk]

Just thought you guys might be interested.. there's a familiar name behind this new shader.. somewhat similiar to Brix.

http://www.vizpark.com/shop/crossmap/

[simmsimaging]

Who is behind it?

[voltron7]

looks to be Martin

[Ramsay]

Great! I used Brix a lot when back then and looking forward to using this new software.

Martin, I hope you keep to your word - "I´d be the first to let you know and I would immediately give every BRIX customer a free version of a new BRIX version."

[voltron7]

I've been in touch and it is worth dropping him at least an email!

"Thanks" to ykk for posting the update

[yyk]

I've been in touch and it is worth dropping him at least an email!

"Thanks" to ykk for posting the update

No problem. Having bought BRIX about two months before the Materialwerk site vanished and basically getting no usage out of the product because of switching to Max 2012, I'm as interested in this as anyone else.

[skogskalle]

Is this the same as "Mighty tiles"? It was mentioned in an article on Ronen Bekermans blog a while ago, and as I understood it was also from the same guys that made brix...

[Pixelsonic]

looks to be Martin

Yes, it´s me, Martin. Just to give some more transparency: I´m Martin Jann, the founder of Materialwerk and inventor of BRIX (inventor in the sense of having the idea and creating the concept and design of the product). I´m also the founder of VIZPARK, which is a not a company in itself, but rather a project from my company Pixelsonic (thus the forum member name pixelsonic). After the splitting of Materialwerk I´ve started VIZPARK to create and sell 3d models and plugins. I luckily found a great new developer and we started to develop new small plugins. Crossmap was not intended to be a replacement for BRIX in first place, but it turned out that it can handle some of the tasks BRIX was made for fairly well.

You are all invited to take part in trying out Crossmap and Color Tools. Both are 2012 compatible and are also compatible to Mental Ray (well, not so much of importance in this forum I guess

I´ve also started a thread about the plugins in the public forum:
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...ax-(Free-Beta)

Great! I used Brix a lot when back then and looking forward to using this new software.
Martin, I hope you keep to your word - "I´d be the first to let you know and I would immediately give every BRIX customer a free version of a new BRIX version."

Absolutely! I´ve always planned to give every BRIX customer a new BRIX for free when it would be available. As mentioned, Crossmap was not intended to be a
new BRIX, but it turned out that already three former BRIX customers were signing up for the beta and asked for a free version.
So I just send out an email a few days ago to all BRIX customers that everyone will get a free copy of Crossmap when it´s released.

Of course beta testing is open for everyone as well, so it´s possible to get the Crossmap beta version immediately.

Is this the same as "Mighty tiles"? It was mentioned in an article on Ronen Bekermans blog a while ago, and as I understood it was also from the same guys that made brix...

Mighty Tiles is NOT Crossmap. It seems that my previous partner and developer of BRIX now renamed the plugin and re-releases it. I´m not sure
what his plans are, but I´m not affiliated with this at all anymore.

[yyk]

Thank you for your answer Martin. Crossmap looks very interesting!

[48design]

Dieter Finkenzeller asked me to put this online because he doesn't have forum privileges to reply to this thread:
************************************************** **********************************

Recently I got to know about this article written by my former business partner.
I'm Dieter Finkenzeller, computer scientist with a doctoral degree in computer graphics. I've described the basic concept of BRIX as part of my published Ph.D. thesis years before starting the company Materialwerk together with my former business partner.

BRIX is the C++ implementation of a capability reduced subset of the texturing section in my Ph.D. thesis (finished in 200. You can find this section following the link: http://www.tri-nitro.com/documents/Mauerwerke.pdf (in German language) and my entire Ph.D. thesis on Amazon: http://www.amazon.de/Modellierung-komplexer-Gebäudefassaden-Computergraphik-Finkenzeller/dp/3866442319/ or in my University's library http://uvka.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/sh...-3-86644-231-3 (in German language).

My doctoral thesis reflects the idea, the theory and the basic concept of BRIX.

In 2008 after finishing my Ph.D. thesis, I started to implement the whole stuff of my dissertation: a complete building engine as a Maya plug-in.

In 2009 I was very happy to meet another guy who shared my idea in creating plug-ins for 3D modeling software. So we started working together and later founded Materialwerk. So we are the two co-founders of Materialwerk. He should be responsible for the website, online-shop and content (graphics, bitmaps aso) and myself for the implementation. So I developed an independent shader kernel (based on my Ph.D. research results) which I used for Maya plug-in, 3ds Max plug-in, mental ray for Maya, and VRay for Maya. I also developed further things such as copy protection (rsa encryption), installers, license activation program aso.

BRIX for 3ds Max was ready in June 2010 and we started selling it. But the sales were not what we expected. Then the communication drove worse and we decided to split in late 2010.
Our basic idea was that I will pay my former business partner an adequate amount of money and continue with Materialwerk on my own. Unfortunately we were stuck in the contract negotiations. So I made a final offer in December and sent that signed contract with cover note and explanations. I received back a modified version of the contract where several crucial parts were changed without any notification forcing me to quit the company.

In May 2011 we finally agreed that my former business partner would keep everything (material lib, names aso.) except the source code which I brought in.

I honestly feel sorry that the support for BRIX ended so dramatically without knowing what will happen to the software in the future.

But I love my work in my thesis and my biggest wish is to make use of it for everyone. So I will continue developing plug-ins.
There is already a plug-in on its way being capable of loading your BRIX-based scenes and everyone owing BRIX can have it free of charge. Just take a look at www.zwischendrin.com to know when this plug-in is finished.

Kind regards,
Dieter