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Alterian posted:Maya Creative....which is token based. Each day you use it, you pay for a token for 24 hours. oh my loving god. i hate autodesk so much
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Jan 13, 2023 17:12
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I'm glad their photogrammetry software is trash so I can just not use them professionally anymore. Now I just need to convince my college that we should teach students Blender instead.
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Jan 13, 2023 17:28
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Haha jesus christ.  It's 100% there just to push people into being annoyed enough to fire up Maya instead when hitting a limitation in 'creative', because that too is part of the tokens/flex system. Upselling built in by default. Looks like Maya Creative is 1 token per day, and 1 token is 3usd. A quick check shows that Maya LT was like 35 usd/mo, so Maya Creative is basically 2x as expensive as Maya LT as well? (In a 20-day workmonth, atleast.) The tokens of course, expire a year after purchase date. So you get to both worry about it costing money each time you open it, and stress over it wasting money unless you open it enough! 
SubNat fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Jan 13, 2023 |
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Jan 13, 2023 17:28
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SubNat posted:The tokens of course, expire a year after purchase date. !!! what in gently caress! that has got to run afoul of the california regulations about gift cards (they are not allowed to expire and are redeemable for cash), right? jesus christ this loving company
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Jan 13, 2023 17:51
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Also apparently Nuke is going full subscription only. And the sub is expensive. $3-6k per loving year. People are pissed. The Foundry already has a bad rep for being ridiculous with their pricing and now this.
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Jan 13, 2023 18:31
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Numbers for discussion's sake: Zbrush - $30/month minimum. Maya Flex Tokens - Tokens are $3 each (unless you purchase 5000 or more at once). Maya Creative costs 1 token per day. Regular Maya costs 6 tokens per day. All other software costs various amounts of tokens per day. The MINIMUM number of tokens you can buy is 100 ($300). Tokens expire after 1 year. If you want normal access, full Maya is $225/month or $1785 per year. Photoshop - $21/month minimum for ONLY Photoshop. The barebones Substance suite of apps (Painter, Designer being the core ones) is $20/month minimum. 1785+252+360+240 = $2,637 per year just for software for 1 person to do my job, heh. mutata fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jan 13, 2023 |
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Jan 13, 2023 19:06
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Yeah, I'm glad that for the time being, I'm working for Friendly_Oil_Megacorp, where I don't really need to think/worry about how much all this poo poo costs. I just ask for 3DS, and some IT guy buzzes past and gives me access to 10 different Autodesk programs + V-Ray, because it was cheaper to just bundle them all up than pay for the admin overhead of licensing them out individually. (That, or Autodesk just gleefully bills them for whichever software I access, which also seems likely.)
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Jan 13, 2023 19:27
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The Autodesk tokens are really not designed for day to day use, I was informed they're to solve a specific need in large studios when you might need to get a bunch more licenses immediately for a short period of time. I'm misremembering the details, but when I was told it in detail I went 'oh, that totally makes sense'. It's definitely not intended as an alternative to a sub. Does Maya not have an indie version like max? I'm not planning to quit my job any time soon, but a little while ago I did the math on how much extra I'd need to make to cover hardware, software, higher taxes and health insurance, and it's rough. Would need like a 60% income jump to pay myself the same I end up with now. I understand the allure of contract work but I don't know why people do it so early in their career sometimes.
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Jan 13, 2023 20:40
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Maya "Indie" is ~$300/year, and you technically aren't allowed to use it on any "project valued more than $100,000".
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Jan 13, 2023 20:58
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mutata posted:Maya "Indie" is ~$300/year, and you technically aren't allowed to use it on any "project valued more than $100,000". That seems pretty fairly priced. Is that no single project can exceed that or the users yearly income can't exceed that? edit: I looked it up and it's both actually. So you, as a freelancer, can't make over $100k gross. And you can't use it on a project (i'm assuming that you're hired as a freelancer on) over $100k. Seems fair.
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Jan 13, 2023 21:43
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Not for AA, AAA, or some indie game contractors. But yeah, generally that price is fine in a vacuum. I've lost track of if Indie was neutered in any way. I know LT was and I hadn't even heard of Creative until today. In any case, I could swallow any 1 or 2 of these programs' MONTHLY fees, but I need ALL OF THEM to do my job. Time to switch to Blender but for real though this time and never look back. Autodesk and Adobe are terrible and I really don't care for either of them. Maxon seems similar, frankly.
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Jan 13, 2023 22:58
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mutata posted:Not for AA, AAA, or some indie game contractors. But yeah, generally that price is fine in a vacuum. It's not meant for any of those use cases. At most it's for smaller freelancers. $100k production limit is teeny.
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Jan 13, 2023 23:07
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I would have no need to use any Autodesk products if they hadn't bought the best CAM package on the market, HSMworks, and stuck it into Fusion 360 and killed the SolidWorks version. gently caress them
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Jan 13, 2023 23:29
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BonoMan posted:It's not meant for any of those use cases. At most it's for smaller freelancers. $100k production limit is teeny. Yes, that was my point, heh.
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Jan 14, 2023 00:20
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I'd happily drop Adobe products in a heartbeat, but the productivity drop in switching to blender would make my max license pay for itself. There's just too much stuff exclusive to max I rely on, and with tyflow, Phoenix & vray it's just too powerful. I'm trying to move into being a bit of a tyflow specialist too, wrapping up an animation that has 38 shots and 24 of them heavily use tyflow. It's an awful lot of fun to use. Fast as hell and insanely powerful. Vray 6's viewport rendering is now rock solid and stable too - a few times in the last month I've spent almost the entire day working in a live rendered viewport, with only one click needed to switch to production rendering for finals. It's loving sick and everything I hoped working in 3d would get to when I first started in the industry.
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Jan 14, 2023 21:23
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all my poo poo turning into subscription hell is making me hate this line of work. 
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Jan 15, 2023 02:07
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On the subject of this industry, but not on the software side, you guys been seeing how much has been picking up in India lately? https://www.cartoonbrew.com/videogames/india-animation-visual-effects-gaming-investment-224503.html We're sweating a bit in montreal cause of this. There's not a super large talent pool of settled seniors here yet, so the studios are mainly here cause of cost. And with India being so much cheaper and having so many more people in their cities, making the competition all that more fierce, its easy to believe a lot of places would eventually ditch us. Even ILM opened an Indian branch. Maybe I'm just catastrophizing though.
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Jan 15, 2023 02:27
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dont worry AI will soon put everyone out of a job.
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Jan 15, 2023 02:32
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Ccs posted:On the subject of this industry, but not on the software side, you guys been seeing how much has been picking up in India lately? People panic about India every 4-5 years or so....and then you look at the stuff they produce and relax. When I was at Dneg they had something like 5000 employees, 4000 of those in India and virtually all of them working on content for the Indian market. The quality is still low and when I later went back to MPC in a lead/supe role, we had no end of issues with the quality of work we had done in India. Similarly in Vancouver, when all the companies started opening up in Montreal (and MPC shut down in Vancouver), a lot of people panicked, but there was simply too much talent in Vancouver (and not enough in Montreal) and it quickly evened out again. Sony is now bigger than ever (They wont even fit in their office, should they decide to end WFH) and I believe it's the same story with ILM.
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Jan 15, 2023 03:03
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Makes sense. Yeah a certain visual fx company that starts with an M just committed to a new Mumbai studio with 2500 seats, using their shift system to eventually hire 7500 ppl. They already have Bangalore that is extremely huge as well. But the other studios moved into the area to poach from them, as always. However the new big educational plans combined with the larger potential talent pool does worry me. Ccs fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Jan 15, 2023 |
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Jan 15, 2023 03:14
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Ah yeah, I saw a post about the 'traffic light system' at MPC. It's stupid.
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Jan 15, 2023 03:33
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ImplicitAssembler posted:Ah yeah, I saw a post about the 'traffic light system' at MPC. It's stupid. Edit: probably this is too much info to share on a public forum Ccs fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Jan 15, 2023 |
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Jan 15, 2023 03:44
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Synthbuttrange posted:dont worry AI will soon put everyone out of a job.  THANK YOU! This is incredibly useful. I *want* to spend my time learning Houdini and Touchdesigner but after getting the Maxon One suite (20 bucks for the year!) I have kinda re evaluated my goals. sigma 6 fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jan 15, 2023 |
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Jan 15, 2023 21:28
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Synthbuttrange posted:dont worry AI will soon put everyone out of a job. I’m 100 percent certain that all of those Artificial Intelligence’s only work because they are stealing actual artwork from actual artists but cannot create anything on their own.
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Jan 15, 2023 21:34
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You are correct. Without a database of stolen work theyd be nothing. There's a website that allows you to search a small section of the source data used, and many DBOX images that we own the copyright to are in it. The very same people that put together these have said they won't do one using modern music, as the RIAA is too litigious. So they know theyd get sued into oblivion for using commercial music - the only difference is the size of the legal department of the copyright holders. That in itself is a bit of a smoking gun. I'm confident this will shake out on the correct side. Anyone that tries to argue it's the same as humans looking at art history and having their own ideas is a loving idiot imo. It's one of the dumbest arguments I've ever heard.
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Jan 15, 2023 21:57
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cubicle gangster posted:You are correct. Without a database of stolen work theyd be nothing. There's a website that allows you to search a small section of the source data used, and many DBOX images that we own the copyright to are in it. What's dumb to me is the number of artists who think they can stop progress. "Adapt and overcome". Studios will always find shortcuts. So will artists. Technology is inevitable.
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Jan 15, 2023 22:30
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cubicle gangster posted:You are correct. Without a database of stolen work theyd be nothing. There's a website that allows you to search a small section of the source data used, and many DBOX images that we own the copyright to are in it. We're doing lookdev for a character and the director is sending through stuff he's making with AI prompts as some kind of guidance, it's not helpful to the concept/lookdev process in this case
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Jan 15, 2023 22:36
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cubicle gangster posted:You are correct. Without a database of stolen work theyd be nothing. There's a website that allows you to search a small section of the source data used, and many DBOX images that we own the copyright to are in it. There's litigation now. https://stablediffusionlitigation.com/ EoinCannon posted:We're doing lookdev for a character and the director is sending through stuff he's making with AI prompts as some kind of guidance, it's not helpful to the concept/lookdev process in this case I know a vfx supe who does this. Everyone thinks he's an untalented prick.
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Jan 15, 2023 22:42
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Ccs posted:There's litigation now. I wouldn't get my hopes up about a lawsuit full of easily debunked lies
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Jan 15, 2023 22:44
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BMan posted:I wouldn't get my hopes up about a lawsuit full of easily debunked lies What did they get wrong? I'm not trying to be a prick, just curious. I know artists (or their lawyers haha) don't really even understand the details of the technology.
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Jan 15, 2023 22:47
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Ccs posted:What did they get wrong? I'm not trying to be a prick, just curious. I know artists (or their lawyers haha) don't really even understand the details of the technology. They start out calling it a "collage tool" and state that the ai "contains copies" of the training images, and that the ai works by basically photobashing. This is a common idea but simply wrong.
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Jan 15, 2023 23:09
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Hmm possibly they’re trying to phrase it in a way that sounds more sensible to a jury or judge who wont understand the technical specifics? The Epic vs Apple case comes to mind haha
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Jan 15, 2023 23:32
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Even in a perfect scenario AI only serves to make art more accessible (which is good!) but doesn't actually negate any of the hard work. In fact I'm not sure there's any technology that ever will. What's actually the perfect scenario here? Something where you can feed in a detailed description of what you want and have it turn it out for you exactly? We already have those, they're called artists. AI can currently turn out work in an instant, but it's entirely generic and of no more use than trawling Google for free images is already for commercial work, because a short descriptive phrase has like a ten million to one chance of actually giving you specifically what you need. So let's say the AI is flawless, perfectly in sync with what you want, and we have perfected voice recognition so you can spitball ideas at it. "I need a fantasy knight", you say, and lo it spits out.... literally ten billion possibilities, because that's such a generic request that what else can it do? So you start describing more. And more, and more, because there's a million elements to any picture - the tone, the setting, the composition. What exactly is this person wearing? What materials, what condition, what little details are in there? What jewellery and fashion do they have? And you have to get it right, because you probably need to make other characters and images that match the style. Hell, imagine describing how you want symbolism and iconography to look in this world of yours. Even with perfect comprehension, that one's almost certainly quicker to sketch out than to describe, no matter what technology you use! So you describe and describe, you correct it and inform it and dig into every little detail, because that's where the artistry of a piece lies... And suddenly it's a hundred plus hours later, and although the tools are more accessible, you haven't saved any time on the actual production. And we KNOW that these kind of details are important, because there's plenty of highly detailed art that misses the fundamentals of an engaging piece that no-one gives a poo poo about, and webcomics and illustrations that are barely more than scrawls, but have huge fan followings because the details that ARE there feel spot-on, deliberate and fully mesh with each other. AI could actually be an incredible accessibility tool, so I'm pretty excited for the possibilities of it. But even in some utopian Star Trek future where you can walk into a holodeck and talk out your perfect creation and grab and pose things directly, how is it supposed to take away the actual time, effort and understanding that makes something worthwhile? What technology ever could? Genuine question. Because no-one seriously cares about AI art creations outside of the novelty, and it's not due to the wonky eyes and hands, it's because there's no soul. And that's not an AI issue, it's a lack of deliberate intent, and you can't add that in without a ton of hard work.
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Jan 16, 2023 00:03
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sigma 6 posted:What's dumb to me is the number of artists who think they can stop progress. "Adapt and overcome". Studios will always find shortcuts. So will artists. Technology is inevitable.
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Jan 16, 2023 02:04
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I have a body mesh in ZBrush with some quick polygroups laid out on it for a costuming thing.    I need to arrange and position some fixed-size hexagonal mirror pieces onto the outside of the legs. Basically as many will fit. I can use a surface noise modifier to do something like what I need, but I'm trying to get the hexagons to follow the direction of the leg, and here they're just basically going in a fixed direction.  That red line is more like the directional flow I want to have these things follow. The other issue is that as the hexagon pattern goes from the wider thigh to the thinner ankle while keeping a fixed hexagon size I know I will run out of room. Basically I just want the edges of the hexagons to overhang the pattern slightly and if there isn't enough width for that row, we ditch them going down the leg. I know this is something I might be able to do by hand with an IMM brush in ZBrush but I also know it'll take me hours and hours and hours to actually get everything placed and lined up correctly. Is there a smarter way to go about doing this?
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Jan 17, 2023 22:50
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something something hexagon array curve brushes but I cant think of how to line up the edges of the various curves without it being ridiculously tedious.
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Jan 17, 2023 23:01
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Unwrap that section of the mesh and adjust the UVs so the pattern flows the way you need it to. Set the surface noise to UV mode
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Jan 17, 2023 23:11
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EoinCannon posted:Unwrap that section of the mesh and adjust the UVs so the pattern flows the way you need it to. Set the surface noise to UV mode ^^^ What he said. Also use polygroup button in UV master since you spent so long making nice polygroups. That way each polygroup is an individual shell. Then move the shells after unwrapping them by using the flatten command in UV master. That way you can adjust or pack the shells however you like.
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Jan 18, 2023 01:11
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Ccs posted:On the subject of this industry, but not on the software side, you guys been seeing how much has been picking up in India lately? Eh, that's been a concern since the 1990's. India is cheaper on labor, but only to a certain extent, Australian and Canadian subsidies make those locations far more attractive than sending US work to India. Licenses/hardware and real estate will run the same as in other locations, you aren't saving money there. They got a huge internal market so this is nothing new.
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Jan 21, 2023 18:33
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Big K of Justice posted:Eh, that's been a concern since the 1990's. True, but it’s like I’m seeing the shift in real time. In 2019 we had a whole floor of rigging artists. Now we have 3, the rest are in India. Earlier this year we had about 30 people in layout. Now we have 5, the rest are in India. I see it moving towards my department depending on how difficult it is to find good people and how easy it is to teach the skills to those overseas (good rigging ppl are hard to find in Montreal, and Layout is relatively easy to train.) I also learned some interesting things about the bonuses producers get based on how much work they send to India. Department heads in Montreal are concerned about this because if they don’t have a department then they won’t be necessary anymore. So we’ve been told stuff like not to burn out but remember this is feast or famine industry and sometimes working until 4 am is what you need to do in order to not be hit by the layoff train.
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Jan 22, 2023 15:14
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