Update?

[nanuk]

Hi,

does anybody know, when the first package for toxik will be released?

Greetz Nanuk

[guest]

I've been told by someone at discreet they are expecting to have version 1.1 ready by IBC. I don't know what extras it'll have but lets hope it's got a decent paint module!

[imported_mseymour7]

Version 1.1 was shown at SMPTE Sydney.
It did not have a paint module, nor was it Linux - which I believe are the two big things people want...

It does have a new improved GUI and we'll cover it in depth in an upcoming podcast and story.

But we welcome hearing your views...

Just what would make you more interested in looking at Toxik?
- Single user license?
- Paint?
- Linux?
- More keyers?

Reply here in this forum - we are not AME - but I am sure we can pass on your points and even your direct questions - if you have any - when we interview the guys in the next short while.

Mike

[nanuk]

Version 1.1 was shown at SMPTE Sydney.
It did not have a paint module, nor was it Linux - which I believe are the two big things people want...

It does have a new improved GUI and we'll cover it in depth in an upcoming podcast and story.

But we welcome hearing your views...

Just what would make you more interested in looking at Toxik?
- Single user license?
- Paint?
- Linux?
- More keyers?

Reply here in this forum - we are not AME - but I am sure we can pass on your points and even your direct questions - if you have any - when we interview the guys in the next short while.

Mike

a single user license would be nice, but i think it is against the philosophy of toxik. I think it really kicks ass when used in a group.

paint is a must have!!!! the same for regrain. have not found it in version 1.0

for me linux is not that important, but perhaps it is faster running on linux. as i know, discreet is changing everything to linux (exept fire and inferno).

discreet has some good keyers. just put them in! :wink:

i would like to know about modules like editing, color grading and 3D. if they plan to integrate this things or if they plan a colaboration with other tools like lustre, fire and or smoke (in a way like fcp and shake or i heard about scratch and digital fusion).

And what do you think about the future of the app? in germany it is anounced as some kind of "shake killer". what do big companies think about it. you know companies that handle blockbuster like weta, ilm, mpc and so on. Are there any statements?

Greetz Nanuk

[imported_johnmont]

And what do you think about the future of the app? in germany it is anounced as some kind of "shake killer". what do big companies think about it. you know companies that handle blockbuster like weta, ilm, mpc and so on. Are there any statements?

The app certainly appears targeted towards the film market -- large, collaborative installations dealing with high resolution imagery. There is also integrated support for HDRi and OpenEXR which is obviously critical for this market. The app has been optimized for dealing with large imagery.

Eventually...who knows...but I'm sure that technology from toxik will ripple into flame/smoke and vice versa -- in fact, it already has. It seems as though all products are going to be around for a while -- flame/smoke are such stable, robust, and full featured products. Even at the NAB Autodesk Users group, they showed some tech demo stuff of inferno dealing with float images...

[Xavier]

Hi,

We had a look at Toxik 1.0 release and although I was quite aware that there would still be a lot of rough edges, I was expecting a little more meat around the bone. I don't know about the new stuff that will make it into version 1.1 and beyond, but as of version 1.0, here is a list of showstoppers for us. (By the way, if we did get Toxik, it could have been used in a large-ish team (10-20 compositors), on 2K or HD feature-film work. So we "fit the profile" so to speak).

1. Permissions and users management.
The whole collaborative environement isn't quite ready for prime-time because it's lacking UNIX-style permissions for footage and compositions. As of 1.0, everybody can move, rename and delete anything in the (facility wide!) library.

2.Chroma keyers.
Discreet should move the 3D keyer, master keyer and "regular" keyer to Toxik ASAP. The "diamond keyer" cannot be used seriously for a wide wide range of keying jobs.

3. Garbage masks.
Flame has them. Smoke has them. Combustion has them. Why did they reinvent the wheel for Toxik? Toxik needs tracer-style tangent softness and multiple shapes per gmask nodes and host of other tweaks for it's gmasks to be taken seriously.

4. Deformation tools
Toxik needs bicubics, extended bicubics, warper and deform type tools.

5. Paint.
Toxik needs a decent paint system, vector-based or otherwise.

6. Plug-ins.
As of version 1.0, no commercial plug-ins are available for Toxik. We need Sapphire, Furnace, Speedsix, RevisionFX and all the other stuff to deliver shots! Come on AME, surprise us with AfterEffects plug-in compatibility like Digital Fusion did!

7. Curves.
Even though the color corrector is probably one of the more mature tools in Toxik 1.0, it is mysteriously lacking curves, an essential part of a balanced breakfast!

8. File Format compatibility
No support for QuickTime and Softimage .PIC files.

9. Frame index slipping.
Toxik should steal a page out of Shake's book and automatically slip clips according to their frame index. (For instance an image sequence numbered myclip.0050.sgi to myclip.0100.sgi would start at frame 50 in the composition, not frame 1).

10. Macros.
Shake wouldn't be on anybody's radar if it weren't for it's macros. Don't have the *right* tool built-in? No problem I'll make it myself. Toxik needs macros pronto.

11. Cache (framestore) management.
Toxik 1.0 doesn't tell you if a clip is cached to local disk or not, nor does it let you cache a clip if it has already been imported to library without specifying "import/cache".


-- Xavier

[nanuk]

I fully agree with you Xavier! What do you think about the workflow in the program. With it´s´libraries desktops, working in a compostion?

Greetz Nanuk

[Xavier]

I fully agree with you Xavier! What do you think about the workflow in the program. With it´s´libraries desktops, working in a compostion?

Greetz Nanuk

Nanuk,

I didn't fall in love with the whole folder/desktop/composition metaphor. But maybe I'm just too used to the FFI way of working.

Basically, after a few days of playing with Toxik, we stopped using desktops altogether. The main reason is because you cannot put any kind of container inside the desktop (the word reel comes to mind!). Even worse, you can't put desktops inside a folder hierarchy. Also, being an inferno guy, having smoke-style desktops with loose clips everywhere makes me want to take a shower a curled up in a ball like Ace Ventura did when he realized the sargeant was packing an extra weapon.

So we just ended up not using desktops at all and building hierarchies like this:

Folder (... for the scene)
Folder (... for the shot)
Folder (... for the elements)
Clip
Clip
...
Folder (... for the compositions)
Composition
Composition
...

We just used the browser to get to our clips/compositions. Since the desktop has no redeeming features (like editing, or reels) we didn't feel we lost anything by not using the desktop.

Actually, once we started working like that, I was glad I could finally see the *entire* clip names for once, instead of truncated names like the FFI desktop. Plus you can turn on the thumbnails for easy visual access. And everything is nice and tidy, sorted alphabetically, etc...

As for working inside a composition "container" instead of rendering a clip, I liked the idea at first, because I thought I could build one composition, then keep adding versions to it and being able to switch back and forth between setups AND results of the different versions of the same comp. It's been a few months since I played with Toxik, so I don't remember the specifics, but it didn't work exactly as I had hoped; a bit too complicated for my taste. Plus Toxik kept adding ridiculous suffixes to my versions like mycomp_200508051134.sgi or something like that. I would have liked mycomp_v1.sgi, followed by mycomp_v2.sgi etc...

Anyways, these details can be ironed out by AME, but ...

This what I understood before Toxik came out:

"OK guys, Toxik is really meant as a collaboration tool, with powerful versioning and clip/setup sharing between artists. However, this is version 1, so all the cool tools you need to deliver shots aren't there yet. Be patient, we're discreet, we have the cool tools, they'll make it in there soon."

In that light, I was expecting *stellar* collaboration, versionning and media/setup sharing with bullet proof users and permissions handling (but no cool tools). After all, if the R&D didn't go into the image processing, it must have gone into the workflow.

But instead of being blown away, what I got is the weird feeling in my stomach that the problem of working with "that guy" (you know, the guy who pollutes your framestore with hundreds of loose clips, that has entire reels of untitled clips, that overwrote one of your desktops by mistake -- sorry dude! -- etc...), well just got bumped to a facility wide problem! It's "that guy" that will be the demise of Toxik unless AME makes it A LOT MORE dummy proof than it is right now.

For what it's worth, I like Toxik's design spec much better that FFI's for the type of job I do daily, mainly:

RGBA architecture (hooray no double clips!)
Floating-point support (welcome to the 21 century!)
Local high-speed storage handled out of the box (no scripts to create local proxies)
Full screen from disk player (flipbooks are so 1999!)
Clips contain the setups that created them.
Windows based. (I hate windows, but I have to admit that switching to other popular apps without switching boxes is cool)
Designed with high-rez, high bit depth images in mind.
100% node based -- no mismatch between desktop tools and "batch" tools.

But I do wonder, by the time Toxik is ready for prime-time, where will Digital Fusion (an underestimated contender, IMHO), Shake and Nuke be?

I guess I'm eager to see how big a change will be 1.1 vs. 1.0 to see the pace of development of Toxik. If it's fast enough, they might have a chance to get a chunk of the high-end feature-film market. If it's too slow, Shake will stay the popular kid in school for a little while longer.

Anybody knows what made it into 1.1 that wasn't there in 1.0?

-- Xavier

[nanuk]

What a post! Thank you Xavier.

I´m also a inferno guy, but i also use combustion and shake. After playing around with toxik a couple of days i tought, toxik is a mixture of combustion and shake with some ingredients from FFI. I also used cyborg, so I´m used to this "build your own bersek desktop". But in cyborg you could build container or groups on the desk and you could edit clips there. At this point I also don´t really see the use of the desktop in toxik. The autoscale and clean up functions are nice gimmicks, but that´s it. I also switched to using a library near to your example. I didn´t realized danger of "that guy". But you are right. I thought, there are the different users to handle that. Like Admin and so on. And that you can configure users and their rights. Our reseller told me, that you can even build a user, that only handles the data. Like an assistant. But I didn´t get into that deep enought i guess.

I´m curious about the development of toxk.

Greetz Nanuk

[Xavier]

What a post! Thank you Xavier.

I didn´t realized danger of "that guy". But you are right. I thought, there are the different users to handle that. Like Admin and so on. And that you can configure users and their rights. Our reseller told me, that you can even build a user, that only handles the data. Like an assistant. But I didn´t get into that deep enought i guess.

Since there are users already, and one of them is called "Administrator", I'm sure proper permissions will make it into Toxik very soon. So my point about "that guy" will be moot soon. I was just a bit uneasy when I realized that Toxik, who prides itself with collaboration features, didn't have permissions built-in from day 1.

Xavier