I don't get to say this often, but I've finished a project using Softimage 
which all can see.  Well, it's not actually 'finished' as it's an online game 
which is continuously maintained, updated, and ongoing, but it's now live and I 
can talk about it beyond generalizations.  Yay!   My last completed project was 
my previous production -Barnyard the animated feature back in 2006.  It's been 
a long time coming, a relief, and refreshing to be able to refer to something I 
did in the current decade.

Wildstar officially launched last Friday night at midnight for early access, 
but opened up the flood gates today for everybody else.  The game is now 
running smoothly in North America and Europe for all to see and experience.  If 
you were part of the beta, let it be known significant improvements have been 
made since on all fronts.  If you haven't tried the game yet, point your 
browser to www.wildstar-online.com<http://www.wildstar-online.com> and click on 
the shiny buttons.  The first 30 days are free with initial purchase.

Production started in 2005 using Softimage XSI v3.5 and launched with Softimage 
2013 SP1 - all of it in 32 bit land.  Majority of the content created in 
Softimage 7.5 which we used for roughly 5 years.  Softimage was used for a 
heavy majority of the 3D artwork including characters, props, environments 
(other than the ground), buildings, dungeons, and everything inside of them.  
We didn't use ICE at all (but not for lack of trying, and we tested heavily), 
so this is a good example of what the fundamental toolset can do.  Heavy use of 
custom properties, vertex colors, user normals, clusters, envelopes, UV spaces, 
and hardware (real time) shaders to customize and iterate on our content.  What 
made these simple components really nice is they were general and could be 
re-targeted for many uses outside of their original intended purpose.  Our 
particles were created and applied in Softimage, but simulated only in engine.  
The SDK was used to write 500+ tools to assist artists to create their content 
include tools like 'mimick' which is a command similar to GATOR which can 
transfer attributes, but do so on select subcomponents instead of the entire 
object, along with other bells and whistles.  Often overlooked and  
understated, but Softimage scaling was incredibly powerful for controlling the 
squash and stretch scaling of deformers used in our envelopes to animate 
characters with cartoon whimsy and without ugly shearing often associated with 
other software.  It is used on every asset that moves.  Relational views were 
used to create tools such as a face editor to view and animate faces for our 
player characters, and adjust face customizations to see how they'd appear in 
the game as each of our characters have multiple faces and other components 
which can plug in like a Mr. Potato head doll.  It was important to see the 
various components in context side-by-side for comparison while creating the 
content so consistency could be maintained.  This was achieved using many 
'object view' embedded into the relational view.  Under the hood the face 
editor drove the animation mixer to perform face pose blending so artists could 
see the animation in real time on their characters.  Also, NURBS, that's right, 
NURBS surfaces were used to transfer face poses and clothing between 
characters.  The details must remain a trade secret, but I just had to mention 
we used NURBS in all their unfinished glory to get meaningful work done with 
significant contributions to the end product.  Render passes were used to 
re-dress environments to allow artists to create geometry once, then swap 
textures, shader settings, and other details many times for each variant of the 
environment.  Not only does it simplify the artist workflow by centralizing all 
their interaction to a few clicks, but it also allows assets to be packed into 
compact files for use in our engine. Render passes are used in housing and 
dungeons.  If we had to do this in Maya, we'd probably have to break up each 
variant into its own scene and have to figure out a way to merge all the scenes 
together that shared the same geometry.  These polished touches matter.  
Softimage for the win.

So that said, while many 3D software could create the assets in their own time 
and space vacuum, Softimage (in my opinion) was the only software that could've 
tackled this project given our specific time, resources, and budget as there 
were many close calls along the way.  I say Softimage because many of the 
aforementioned features came out of the box with us ready to roll and not have 
to spend oodles of time reinventing the wheel.  Not having to write an 
animation mixer to do face pose blending, or render pass systems to do 
texture/shader swaps were incredible time savers and something we could lean 
on.  Spreadsheet queries and custom selection filters allowed us to quickly and 
easily find our custom data in any scene with just a click, view the data in a 
clean environment, and change it in bulk, if necessary without worry of missing 
a spot - highly important for finding and fixing bugs.  The elegant user 
experience was paramount to getting work done on tight schedules at high 
quality with minimal development resources available.  Everybody says that, but 
in our case it couldn't be more true.  That user experience extends to the SDK 
as well.  Not having to relearn or rewrite code over many versions and upgrades 
over the span of nearly a decade was quite important in maintaining continuity 
and stability.  The scripting object model was more than a blessing to get 
under the hood and target only what we needed rather than having to rely on 
combinations of commands which do more work than necessary or don't do exactly 
what we need as is available in most other 3D software.  Backward compatibility 
with the API for C++ development was very important too.  While today's 
OpenGL/DirectX viewport may seem antiquated, at the time this project started 
it was ahead of and more capable than any other in the industry, and fully 
compatible with all the other tools such as render passes.  That cannot be 
overlooked.

Finally, I should thank all the hard work and contributions from the Softimage 
developers and support, past and present, who put such an application together 
to make it possible.  Not just the foresight to see and understand the artist's 
point of view, but also in the continued listening and support when we needed 
help along the way whether it be to fix bugs, augment existing features, or 
implement new features to accommodate our needs.  Building such an application 
is more than just writing and compiling code - it's about understanding people. 
 You cannot understand people without forming relationships and maintaining 
those relationships over the long haul.  Softimage made the effort to establish 
and maintain those relationships contributing help and advice along the way, 
and that is why so many successful projects have resulted.  As much as I've 
ragged on many points, the bigger picture is not lost on the fact Softimage is 
a very capable and strong swiss army knife of 3D software to tackle many 
projects fearlessly.  It's just a shame that in all my years of working with 
Softimage|XSI, this is only the 2nd long form project I've been able to call 
complete (due to project durations) and will be a shame that there will likely 
not be a 3rd.  One point of satisfaction is of having worked on one of the 
first XSI projects in 'Panic Room', and now finishing one of the last in 
'Wildstar'.  Both poetically apropos as Panic Room was a project fighting with 
a then beta-quality release rushed to market full of many bugs while Wildstar 
is a game about exploring and settling the planet Nexus much like the old west 
of America's pioneer days of the 1800's with wagons, staking claims to 
territory, gold rushes, and shootouts.  Only fitting as I must now look forward 
to a new destiny in uncharted territory as Softimage has literally been part of 
half my life in the 21 years I've used both Softimage|3D and 
Softimage|XSI....(and Eddie too!).

Thank you, Softimage.


Matt

Reply via email to