skin shader a la Alsurface pleaseeee

[jstrob]

Wow! You summed it all exactly like I would have want to say! You are a very clever guy John!

Another thing is that this year Blender is making more money than Autodesk because ADSK are loosing millions this year. The Blender Foundation is not loosing anything as far as I know.

Autodesk has 2.7 millions subscription across all its products.

Blender has reach almost 500 000 downloads a month (a regular month without a release) directly from BF servers (not counting all the mirrors), which is around 6 millions downloads a year minimum.

I feel like there's a change of direction in The Force!

And how can we compete with those guys: http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/e...lender-in-2013

[Moriah]

@jstrob have you tried a different bucket size? I had a weird issue in the past with SkinMtl and changing to a smaller bucket solved the issue temporarily, might work with alsurface or not...

[joconnell]

Wow! You summed it all exactly like I would have want to say! You are a very clever guy John!

There's a load of lovely developers on the 3dsmax team that you end up meeting every year at end user event in holland - they'd love to do a lot more but their hands are being tied by layers of management above them :/

[jstrob]

There's a load of lovely developers on the 3dsmax team that you end up meeting every year at end user event in holland - they'd love to do a lot more but their hands are being tied by layers of management above them :/

Yes I met some and i have friends at Autodesk, I even had a visit from them at my home! They are wonderful people! But this is all about the system of a stock market entity that is maybe not really compatible with the creation of a 3D software.

[jstrob]

@jstrob have you tried a different bucket size? I had a weird issue in the past with SkinMtl and changing to a smaller bucket solved the issue temporarily, might work with alsurface or not...

I will try this right now. Thanks for the tip!

[jstrob]

It does not work with smaller buckets eaither. I'm gonna try the progressive sampler at zero with the denoiser at 1 progressive update.

[jstrob]

It seems even with progressive rendering the render get stuck at 91% on many servers. Some frames could finish in 6 to 13 minutes but most of my server are now stuck since almost 4 hours on the same frames at 91%.

I will have to wait until Vlado can find why it's doing this.

[^Lele^]

Autodesk Beta testors are you and me!

Glad someone noticed! ^^

It's not only Autodesk, in my case I can't find any solution to create passes that works. I use RPManager but important features do not work in max 2017 yet. So I tried the max state sets and they are always almost as buggy as years ago. There are other plugins around but I'm tired of spending all my money on plugins that breaks at every new version.

I have little patience for waiting around for the miracle to come, just in the shape i want it.
So i wrote my own routines, safety checks, and whatnot to do SIMPLE tasks i needed often.
Besides the fact it led to my TDing career, and surely contributed to being picked for my current position, learning MaxScript was single-handedly the best thing that could have happened to my life time.
Literally, to the time i saved from tedious work and spent living doing something else.

Now I know max will die like Softimage. That's why I'm learning Houdini (as well as Blender) and hoping Chaosgroup concentrate their effort on V-Ray for Houdini: that is the future! It's sad but true.

Funny how just yesterday I was poked by someone in Ad to sit up and take notice of a new, important, hire advert out for a spot on the Max team.
Max ain't dying, it's maturing, and for the first time in a decade at least, the people on the team are doing relevant stuff.
What gets to the end user may have to go through layers of bureaucracy and some inherent big-company chaos, but the efforts are genuine and well directed.
Maya, xsi, are the children picked up from foster care, as not even their mothers wanted them, while Max, like Autocad, are the firstborns.

[jstrob]

Yes I could learn how to script a render pass tool myself, I even have some precise tutorials about that from Allan Mckay. I just didn't have time yet cause I do so many things. I just do the other more urgent things I need to do (maintaining my render farm, learning Houdini, learning Blender, perfecting zbrush, learning Nuke, learning japanese, taking car of my babies and my house and the list goes on and on) and hoping someone at Ad can make the miracle of a working state sets before I need to script it myself (or grant can fix his RPM for max 2017 and make it work correctly with last v-ray version). Also complaining here and there takes less time than scripting it mysefl! c Anyway in the mean time I stay on max 2016 with RPM and I can get away with it. I'm also in contact with someone from AD via a forum but it took 16 days before he first answered me let's just hope he can answer faster nest.

About max dying, I don't know for other users but for me it's like if I have no other choice than switching slowly but surely to Houdini cause I can use Houdini Indie and at 199$/year (which allow me to use 4 computers for sim and render with the 3 free houdini indie engine licenses, for a few hundreds more I can go up to 6 computers), doing all my modeling in Zbrush (and I can still use my old permanent max license without updating it) when V-Ray for Houdini will be out I can use my V-Ray render license for it. If I stop paying for all my plugins: Thinkbox, Autodesk, rayfire, hairfarm, forest pro, growFx, phoenixFD etc etc I can save a lot of money. I just can't afford paying for all of these anyway. And everyday I spend learning Houdini is a real enjoyment: this software is so powerful and well designed it makes any other software look a bit dumb. and Autodesk they don't offer any competitive answer to Houdini indie, it's like if they think people just don't know about Houdini indie and Blender. It just make no sense financially anymore to invest thousands in a max+plugins solution (for a single seat) when I can do the same and even more with a few hundred dollars with a Zbrush+Houdini+Blender+my old max and plugins.

And if Max is really their fisrtborn they should take care of him and make such an important feature as the state sets to work and sell him at a competitive price in front of Sidefx and Blender. It's like if they don't change the diaper of their firstborn and it starts to stink. +)

And if they listen to users they would still offer perpetual license, no one like rental-only and it's just boosting competition. Again it's the bureaucracy not the developers who are to blame. Those dev should all quit this corporation and go work for sidefx or start their own shop. Anyway AD is loosing money and just layed off 10% of its workforce so better quit before being kicked out : http://cgpress.org/archives/autodesk...s-planned.html

And for sure the ADSK stock went soaring when they announced the layoffs, like a big hurray from the investors who don't know anything about the company they are invested in! http://investorplace.com/2016/02/aut.../#.V6HjTvkrIUE
Like if you firstborn gets a leg chopped off and you jump in joy laughing! That wall street short term thinking is kind of indecent! They all hope they will have time to cut a quick profit and sell before the thing collapse to the ground.

[vlado]

So we have to wait for Vlado to see if he has any idea why.

Yes, I do, but I will need a scene to confirm... can you send this to me at vlado@chaosgroup.com ?

Best regards,
Vlado

[jstrob]

Yes, I do, but I will need a scene to confirm... can you send this to me at vlado@chaosgroup.com ?

Best regards,
Vlado

Cool! sent!

[spyzor]

It seems even with progressive rendering the render get stuck at 91% on many servers. Some frames could finish in 6 to 13 minutes but most of my server are now stuck since almost 4 hours on the same frames at 91%.

I will have to wait until Vlado can find why it's doing this.

Maybe it's the last(s) bucket(s) not in the last part of the image ?
I get that one pretty often.


Love to read about Max dying. I don't know about that but when I see the lasts news from siggraph and all the talks about maya I feel like the new version of Maya had a lot of new things compared to Max.
At least I was more excited about Maya than Max...
Of course it's difficul to know for sure if more work were being done for one software or another.


I didn't knew about Houdini Indie licence. That's really smart of them !

[^Lele^]

Yes I could learn how to script a render pass tool myself, I even have some precise tutorials about that from Allan Mckay. I just didn't have time yet cause I do so many things. I just do the other more urgent things I need to do (maintaining my render farm, learning Houdini, learning Blender, perfecting zbrush, learning Nuke, learning japanese, taking car of my babies and my house and the list goes on and on) and hoping someone at Ad can make the miracle of a working state sets before I need to script it myself (or grant can fix his RPM for max 2017 and make it work correctly with last v-ray version). Also complaining here and there takes less time than scripting it mysefl! c Anyway in the mean time I stay on max 2016 with RPM and I can get away with it. I'm also in contact with someone from AD via a forum but it took 16 days before he first answered me let's just hope he can answer faster nest.

Ahah, yes i DO hear you on the gazzillion things to get done in the while.
Right now, adding a single, cute, little puppy dog in the family mix (Ray's the name.) threw my careful balance off kilter, and then it took me half a day to figure out how to divide 11 by 3 and get 3 and 2 of rest.

About max dying, I don't know for other users but for me it's like if I have no other choice than switching slowly but surely to Houdini cause I can use Houdini Indie and at 199$/year (which allow me to use 4 computers for sim and render with the 3 free houdini indie engine licenses, for a few hundreds more I can go up to 6 computers), doing all my modeling in Zbrush (and I can still use my old permanent max license without updating it) when V-Ray for Houdini will be out I can use my V-Ray render license for it. If I stop paying for all my plugins: Thinkbox, Autodesk, rayfire, hairfarm, forest pro, growFx, phoenixFD etc etc I can save a lot of money. I just can't afford paying for all of these anyway. And everyday I spend learning Houdini is a real enjoyment: this software is so powerful and well designed it makes any other software look a bit dumb. and Autodesk they don't offer any competitive answer to Houdini indie, it's like if they think people just don't know about Houdini indie and Blender. It just make no sense financially anymore to invest thousands in a max+plugins solution (for a single seat) when I can do the same and even more with a few hundred dollars with a Zbrush+Houdini+Blender+my old max and plugins.

I hear you.
When i need to prototype something mad, off-the-wall, that should not work, i go to houdini, yell and curse a bit (at myself), cry and beg a lot (to a couple of good friends), and finally magic happens.
However, the time it'd take me to be up to speed with it (notice i used the first houdini for NT 3.51 to see if i could make cloth-sims with particles like they did for Spawn the movie. that's the era), would be very long indeed.
It's all too possible (like for nuke, and to a degree max with maxscript) to encapsulate stuff into your own assets and reuse them, but i never, ever, have found any custom solution work as efficiently as a well written plugin.
It will eventually cave in under duress (as while beautiful, a houdini tree ain't as quick or memory efficient as a wholly compiled version of the same thing), or require such close-to-the-metal work to be comparable with full development (gotten into writing VEX code, or any xOP done proper? Stunning, but boy, not easy for me.).

And if Max is really their fisrtborn they should take care of him and make such an important feature as the state sets to work and sell him at a competitive price in front of Sidefx and Blender. It's like if they don't change the diaper of their firstborn and it starts to stink. +)

Ahah great analogy!
And i believe the diaper changing and hopefully post-teenage dress code is what has been going on since 2016 was out.
Age shows.
But ask the Maya users if maya got ever refreshed under the hood, or simply more bloated, for comparison...

And if they listen to users they would still offer perpetual license, no one like rental-only and it's just boosting competition. Again it's the bureaucracy not the developers who are to blame. Those dev should all quit this corporation and go work for sidefx or start their own shop. Anyway AD is loosing money and just layed off 10% of its workforce so better quit before being kicked out : http://cgpress.org/archives/autodesk...s-planned.html

And for sure the ADSK stock went soaring when they announced the layoffs, like a big hurray from the investors who don't know anything about the company they are invested in! http://investorplace.com/2016/02/aut.../#.V6HjTvkrIUE
Like if you firstborn gets a leg chopped off and you jump in joy laughing! That wall street short term thinking is kind of indecent! They all hope they will have time to cut a quick profit and sell before the thing collapse to the ground.

And it's not much different from Maya because of this: even the best of wills and ideas comes up against the wall of investors' relations, WS, short term views and so on and so forth.
I still like to think i can trust those i know to do a good job regardless, from the technical standpoint.
That anyone should like ADs way to go about business, however, is an entirely different matter.

[vlado]

There's a new version of the shader here:
https://github.com/ChaosGroup/vray_al_surface/releases

This version adds Beckmann reflections and "Diffusion" sub-surface scattering, and fixes the bug that caused the shader to fall into an infinite loop in some situations.

Best regards,
Vlado

[joconnell]

This really deserves to be shown off by a few artists Vlado - if people weren't considering vray for character work then this really changes things. Be great to have some studios re-render old jobs using this shader and share the results!