Poll: Blend Shape workflow ICE or Mixer

[Eric Thivierge]

Just wanted to take a poll to see who is using what for creating blend
shape operators out in our little community.

I'm wondering if anyone is doing any serious work with the Mixer or have
most if not all people moved to ICE? I'm asking as it would only make
sense in my opinion to have some resources dumped into updating the
workflow in Softimage to use ICE instead of the Mixer as there are many
benefits which include putting having multiple blend shape operators and
being able to place them anywhere in the stack.

All of the built in commands are still using the Mixer and adding the
infuriating "Cluster Shape Combiner" which leads to an annoying amount
of scripting to clean up after running said commands to rid your mesh of
that evil operator.

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Eric Thivierge
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Character TD / RnD
Hybride Technologies

[Peter Agg]

Ever since we started losing shapes stored in a reference model mixer I've moved over to ICE where ever possible - same as you we basically piggy-backing on the existing commands then clean up afterwards. I guess I could try to research making my own clusters with the CopyShape operator, but that's somewhere in the lower end of the 'to-do' pile at the moment.

[Sandy Sutherland]

ICE definitely! Been so since start of Zam.

S.

[Michal Doniec]

Last projects I had to do anything with shapes (Fable the Journey and Milo&Kate) was all mixer. No particular reason, except legacy. Worked very well, we had quite complex setups with FACS based facial setups, lots of corrective shapes and what not. No problems whatsoever. I forgot which softimage version I've been using on these, probably 2010/11.

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Michal
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/mdoniec

[Adam Sale]

ICE definitely here. Have been making a lot of use of the various arc interpolation compounds with it as well.

Adam

[Matt Morris]

I still use the shape manager to create and preview shapes/combinations quickly, its a good tool while in character development. But yeah, destroying all evidence of the mixer before transferring it to ICE for the final rig. I'd like to see the funcionality improved on, for example if the shape tools that came with GEAR ever became incompatible with soft it would destroy my workflow!

[Miquel Campos]

ICE here.

On Wednesday, June 5, 2013, Matt Morris wrote:

I still use the shape manager to create and preview shapes/combinations quickly, its a good tool while in character development. But yeah, destroying all evidence of the mixer before transferring it to ICE for the final rig. I'd like to see the funcionality improved on, for example if the shape tools that came with GEAR ever became incompatible with soft it would destroy my workflow!

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Miquel Campos
www.akaosaru.com

[Simon Reeves]

(I never do character stuff really) But are we talking about still using the shape manager to make shapes? But do all the animation etc. In ICE? That's what I think I would do now..

Simon Reeves

London, UK

si...@simonreeves.com
www.simonreeves.com

[Eric Thivierge]

Well, talking overall workflow too. I can't stand using the shape manager as it breaks easily and the feature set just isn't there or is super clunky.

 
Eric Thivierge
===============
Character TD / RnD
Hybride Technologies
 

[Cesar Saez]

All the shape work on Justin was done in mixer (lots of shapes), we hadn't enough time to refine ICE workflows for nontechnical artist and not everyone on the team had a solid softimage background (this was 3 - 4 years ago).

Mixer tends to be a bit messy, but with some tools to cleanup and serialize some of the shape stuff we didn't have too many problems.

[Andres Stephens]

I like to use the shape manager with multiple shapes hooked to controllers, or parameter sliders (blend two shapes with a parameter slider left to right, eg.) to later be saved with stored animations in clips in the mixer. I then play with clip animation later only, with layered expression/parameter key frames, not touching the shape manager... Another example, link teeth to a lip shape for a mouth phoneme expression. Once I have that, save that as an animation clip and do the lipsync with that clip in the mixer. I extensively use the animation mixer. I have little idea how ICE works, but I need more time to study it. I’ve only been in Softimage like 2 year, mostly self taught... but being a bit OCD with how you program your clips and shape information in expressions then animation clips certainly helps. I usually save my clips externally and use Windows explorer to call them when I need them.

I’m here to learn though, still a noob in these things I think.

-Draise