Comments on: fxguidetv: Smoke on Mac http://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/fxguidetv-smoke-on-mac/ vfx, mograph, and production news Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:41:12 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Jeb Johenning http://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/fxguidetv-smoke-on-mac/#comment-1073 Jeb Johenning Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:58:56 +0000 http://www.fxguide.com/?post_type=quicktakes&p=20626#comment-1073 I wonder if Smoke supports running under Snow Leopard? I tried installing it on a 3G MacPro and it keeps crashing. I wonder if Smoke supports running under Snow Leopard? I tried installing it on a 3G MacPro and it keeps crashing.

]]> By: Brian Higgins http://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/fxguidetv-smoke-on-mac/#comment-1075 Brian Higgins Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:28:20 +0000 http://www.fxguide.com/?post_type=quicktakes&p=20626#comment-1075 The linux version is fairly multithreaded. It also uses the GPU for a good chunk of its rendering, though, which may be why they're requiring a Quadro. If there are cores sitting idle, it's usually because you're disk or GPU-bound. It's generally quite fast. The linux version is fairly multithreaded. It also uses the GPU for a good chunk of its rendering, though, which may be why they’re requiring a Quadro. If there are cores sitting idle, it’s usually because you’re disk or GPU-bound. It’s generally quite fast.

]]> By: Greg Leuenberger http://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/fxguidetv-smoke-on-mac/#comment-1074 Greg Leuenberger Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:43:13 +0000 http://www.fxguide.com/?post_type=quicktakes&p=20626#comment-1074 I thought the video was great and provided a glimpse of what smoke on OS X (TEN!) will be. It was not a *review* fALK, just an attempt at getting some info out there to people who were really hungry for it. I trust an actual review will be critical. I will say that Autodesk hasn't necessarily *given* us the best graphics tools in the industry...but they've certainly *acquired* some of the best tools in the industry (they acquired discreet, Maya, XSI, Mudbox, Motion Builder....they even acquired MAX way back when...). Most of this has happened fairly recently and what they do with this wealth of tools remains to be seen. smoke on OS X was a good move..being able to use an existing system, storage and kona card was an even better move. Still not quite sure why an Quadro is needed given that overlay planes aren't needed (Maya used to have this rather obsolete requirement, it should be dropped unless it's a VRAM thing). smoke plus flare on OS X would be an even better move. I commend them taking on and developing for Snow Leopard, and it sounds like it is a 64-bit app (if it required 12 megs it is at least...). Now, what I want to know is it fully multi-threaded? If I render out a seq. with a lot of motion blur or time warping are all 8 cores being used? Or are 7 or 8 cores sitting there doing nothing? Because if it's not fully multi-threaded then I will be very disappointed. Every 3D app out there has managed multi-threaded rendering, even AE does (to a degree). smoke really should be able to max out the processing power. -Greg I thought the video was great and provided a glimpse of what smoke on OS X (TEN!) will be. It was not a *review* fALK, just an attempt at getting some info out there to people who were really hungry for it. I trust an actual review will be critical. I will say that Autodesk hasn’t necessarily *given* us the best graphics tools in the industry…but they’ve certainly *acquired* some of the best tools in the industry (they acquired discreet, Maya, XSI, Mudbox, Motion Builder….they even acquired MAX way back when…). Most of this has happened fairly recently and what they do with this wealth of tools remains to be seen.

smoke on OS X was a good move..being able to use an existing system, storage and kona card was an even better move. Still not quite sure why an Quadro is needed given that overlay planes aren’t needed (Maya used to have this rather obsolete requirement, it should be dropped unless it’s a VRAM thing). smoke plus flare on OS X would be an even better move.

I commend them taking on and developing for Snow Leopard, and it sounds like it is a 64-bit app (if it required 12 megs it is at least…). Now, what I want to know is it fully multi-threaded? If I render out a seq. with a lot of motion blur or time warping are all 8 cores being used? Or are 7 or 8 cores sitting there doing nothing? Because if it’s not fully multi-threaded then I will be very disappointed. Every 3D app out there has managed multi-threaded rendering, even AE does (to a degree). smoke really should be able to max out the processing power.

-Greg

]]> By: jugeras http://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/fxguidetv-smoke-on-mac/#comment-1072 jugeras Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:14:31 +0000 http://www.fxguide.com/?post_type=quicktakes&p=20626#comment-1072 like all software, autodesk's is def not perfect. let alone without bugs. and sad to say the majority (if not all software) have bugs. but one thing is 1000% sure. autodesk has given the cgi industry some of the most powerful tools. decision to use it is free choice. giving artist freedom to choose from a wider tool set will not only benefit the artist, but the industry as a whole. smoke on mac will definitely benefit "people" as when/if premier/fcp/avid was ported to linux eg. at the end of the day. if you dont need the software, dont get it. but it doesnt mean that you alone dont need it. 1/2cent like all software, autodesk’s is def not perfect. let alone without bugs. and sad to say the majority (if not all software) have bugs.

but one thing is 1000% sure. autodesk has given the cgi industry some of the most powerful tools. decision to use it is free choice.

giving artist freedom to choose from a wider tool set will not only benefit the artist, but the industry as a whole. smoke on mac will definitely benefit “people” as when/if premier/fcp/avid was ported to linux eg.

at the end of the day. if you dont need the software, dont get it. but it doesnt mean that you alone dont need it.

1/2cent

]]> By: fALk http://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/fxguidetv-smoke-on-mac/#comment-1071 fALk Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:45:48 +0000 http://www.fxguide.com/?post_type=quicktakes&p=20626#comment-1071 fxguide now making free commercials for Autodesk - sorely disappointed - canceled rss subscription. Especially with Autodesk more then bad track record of releasing horrendous buggy code on the mac for the last years - toxic? a total joke on the mac - unusable - maya? riddled with so many platform specific bugs - some of them are so obvious (drawing bugs in the interface that have been there for four years!) - even charging a single penny is a rippoff and you promote a completely untested app that costs $15 grand without any kind of fact checking or back asking stingy questions (no dual monitor support? are you freaking kidding me? and they are even talking about a "mac look and feel") or even having your own hands on the unit and just reiterate autodesks press releases and act as a multiplier for for their PR department - journalism this is not - rather pure fanboyism or some black suitcases changed hand - either way - not very ethical way to make a journalistic medium. fxguide now making free commercials for Autodesk – sorely disappointed – canceled rss subscription.
Especially with Autodesk more then bad track record of releasing horrendous buggy code on the mac for the last years – toxic? a total joke on the mac – unusable – maya? riddled with so many platform specific bugs – some of them are so obvious (drawing bugs in the interface that have been there for four years!) – even charging a single penny is a rippoff and you promote a completely untested app that costs $15 grand without any kind of fact checking or back asking stingy questions (no dual monitor support? are you freaking kidding me? and they are even talking about a “mac look and feel”) or even having your own hands on the unit and just reiterate autodesks press releases and act as a multiplier for for their PR department – journalism this is not – rather pure fanboyism or some black suitcases changed hand – either way – not very ethical way to make a journalistic medium.

]]> By: Etienne Clement http://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/fxguidetv-smoke-on-mac/#comment-1119 Etienne Clement Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:41:56 +0000 http://www.fxguide.com/?post_type=quicktakes&p=20626#comment-1119 JFP - Just wanted to let you know that the paint module on the Mac interacts with the broadcast monitor the same way as on Linux. Meaning that it refreshes on-the-fly and *not* at the end of a paint stroke. Etienne JFP – Just wanted to let you know that the paint module on the Mac interacts with the broadcast monitor the same way as on Linux. Meaning that it refreshes on-the-fly and *not* at the end of a paint stroke.

Etienne

]]> By: yoskiwoski http://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/fxguidetv-smoke-on-mac/#comment-1118 yoskiwoski Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:03:59 +0000 http://www.fxguide.com/?post_type=quicktakes&p=20626#comment-1118 This could be great, thanks for creating this episode and giving us some information on Smoke on Mac. It's a shame that sparks aren't supported but at least the guys said in the video that they arent supported "yet" so hopefully thats coming. Is there any potential for supporting after effects plug ins as well as the sparks we are familiar with on current Flames / Smokes? Also I'm curious to know what Autodesk will be doing to try and prevent piracy with this product, will there be a dongle or something that you will need to run Smoke on mac? "I totally agree with Andrew. This product reminds me of how the post production business was done 7 or 10 years ago. I thought that the days the client was sitting next to the compositor in order to tell them what to do were over but from the discussion here i see that it is still happening!" In response to Miltos comment, of course that is still happening, sometimes it doesnt make sense for a client to NOT be sitting next to you, if things need to be comped approved and put on air in an hour then it makes more sense for the clients who need to approve the work to be there with you. Not all work in post is beautiful, complicated effects shots that need hours and hours of painstaking work putting into each shot, there is alot of versioning and retail work that needs to be turned around quickly and this is where smoke works very very well. But also it has all the tools to do very complicated work as well if this is whats needed. This could be great, thanks for creating this episode and giving us some information on Smoke on Mac.

It’s a shame that sparks aren’t supported but at least the guys said in the video that they arent supported “yet” so hopefully thats coming. Is there any potential for supporting after effects plug ins as well as the sparks we are familiar with on current Flames / Smokes?

Also I’m curious to know what Autodesk will be doing to try and prevent piracy with this product, will there be a dongle or something that you will need to run Smoke on mac?

“I totally agree with Andrew. This product reminds me of how the post production business was done 7 or 10 years ago. I thought that the days the client was sitting next to the compositor in order to tell them what to do were over but from the discussion here i see that it is still happening!”

In response to Miltos comment, of course that is still happening, sometimes it doesnt make sense for a client to NOT be sitting next to you, if things need to be comped approved and put on air in an hour then it makes more sense for the clients who need to approve the work to be there with you. Not all work in post is beautiful, complicated effects shots that need hours and hours of painstaking work putting into each shot, there is alot of versioning and retail work that needs to be turned around quickly and this is where smoke works very very well. But also it has all the tools to do very complicated work as well if this is whats needed.

]]> By: Jean-Francois Panisset http://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/fxguidetv-smoke-on-mac/#comment-1113 Jean-Francois Panisset Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:01:32 +0000 http://www.fxguide.com/?post_type=quicktakes&p=20626#comment-1113 Hardware overlay plans is a feature that allows you to draw simple "decorations" on top of your main graphics buffer without affecting that buffer. So for instance you can use it to draw a schematic camera icon on top of the scene, and then move that camera icon around without having to redraw the main scene. All high end graphics accelerators supported this feature, which was very useful for CAD applications where redrawing the entire scene would have been too slow for interactive performance. So a lot of software developed for platforms where this feature was available (i.e. SGI) made use of it, and it remains one of the differentiating factors between consumer-level GeForce and pro-level Quadro cards. The reality is that these days, redrawing the entire scene for each frame is no longer much of a big deal, and even if it is, you can probably stash a copy of the scene in another piece of framebuffer memory, draw your "overlay plane" decordations on top of the scene, and then copy the saved copy of the scene back before drawing updated decorations. So the need for hardware overlays is mainly due to "legacy" code that makes use of them (I believe that Maya still wants overlay planes, although I could be wrong) and doesn't really correspond to something you would want to do if you were writing an application from scratch to take advantage of a modern piece of graphics hardware. So hardware overlays doesn't really interact with real-time SDI preview. One thing I'll be interested in seeing is how well the preview works in the Paint module: the peculiarities of this module means that on past platforms that didn't have a hardware path from graphics to video out, the broadcast monitor would only get refreshed at the end of a paint stroke, which could be distracting. But there might be enough performance these days to do real-time readbacks from graphics without interfering with paintbrush performance. None of this takes away from the accomplishments of the team porting Smoke to the Mac: that's a huge amount of code to traverse, deal with all the dependencies on third party code/libraries, adapt to the peculiarities of the platform... JF Hardware overlay plans is a feature that allows you to draw simple “decorations” on top of your main graphics buffer without affecting that buffer. So for instance you can use it to draw a schematic camera icon on top of the scene, and then move that camera icon around without having to redraw the main scene. All high end graphics accelerators supported this feature, which was very useful for CAD applications where redrawing the entire scene would have been too slow for interactive performance. So a lot of software developed for platforms where this feature was available (i.e. SGI) made use of it, and it remains one of the differentiating factors between consumer-level GeForce and pro-level Quadro cards.

The reality is that these days, redrawing the entire scene for each frame is no longer much of a big deal, and even if it is, you can probably stash a copy of the scene in another piece of framebuffer memory, draw your “overlay plane” decordations on top of the scene, and then copy the saved copy of the scene back before drawing updated decorations. So the need for hardware overlays is mainly due to “legacy” code that makes use of them (I believe that Maya still wants overlay planes, although I could be wrong) and doesn’t really correspond to something you would want to do if you were writing an application from scratch to take advantage of a modern piece of graphics hardware.

So hardware overlays doesn’t really interact with real-time SDI preview. One thing I’ll be interested in seeing is how well the preview works in the Paint module: the peculiarities of this module means that on past platforms that didn’t have a hardware path from graphics to video out, the broadcast monitor would only get refreshed at the end of a paint stroke, which could be distracting. But there might be enough performance these days to do real-time readbacks from graphics without interfering with paintbrush performance.

None of this takes away from the accomplishments of the team porting Smoke to the Mac: that’s a huge amount of code to traverse, deal with all the dependencies on third party code/libraries, adapt to the peculiarities of the platform…

JF

]]> By: Richard Codewell http://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/fxguidetv-smoke-on-mac/#comment-1112 Richard Codewell Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:27:04 +0000 http://www.fxguide.com/?post_type=quicktakes&p=20626#comment-1112 Serously, I'm already sold. Can we get an ETA on delivery? Or are we getting all hyped up so we can bring Autodesk stock up and we wait 6onths to get a working copy of SMOKE for MAC? Please say SMOKE for MAC is ready for delivery soon!! Serously, I’m already sold. Can we get an ETA on delivery? Or are we getting all hyped up so we can bring Autodesk stock up and we wait 6onths to get a working copy of SMOKE for MAC?

Please say SMOKE for MAC is ready for delivery soon!!

]]> By: Andrae Palmer http://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/fxguidetv-smoke-on-mac/#comment-1111 Andrae Palmer Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:17:26 +0000 http://www.fxguide.com/?post_type=quicktakes&p=20626#comment-1111 Etienne, Thanks for the further clarification. Both you and Sheila have stated that a big chunk of the porting work was getting SD and HD performance on the preview. Before your team accomplished this successfully, I thought it was an hardware issue and the only solution was Apple supporting the higher end Quadro cards. I'm glad to hear you guys have surmounted this with efficient coding. Etienne,

Thanks for the further clarification. Both you and Sheila have stated that a big chunk of the porting work was getting SD and HD performance on the preview. Before your team accomplished this successfully, I thought it was an hardware issue and the only solution was Apple supporting the higher end Quadro cards. I’m glad to hear you guys have surmounted this with efficient coding.

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