Digital Frontier -- Appleseed Saga: Ex-Machina The original Appleseed was a big hit around the globe and opened up a new world of full CG animation. Three years later, the top-class creators behind the project re-formed to give us the sequel, Appleseed Saga: Ex…

Posted: Sep 14, 2009 Published by: the area

	Posted by Martin Iglesias ~ OIIO ~ on Mar 08, 2011 at 08:03 AM
realy cool

Posted by Caveman on Aug 14, 2010 at 03:34 AM

First of all, I watched this movie not because of it's story, but because of the beautiful renders they have accomplished. Kudos to the makers of this movie. I started learning 3Ds Max about a year ago. Than Softimage about 6 months ago and finally Maya about 3 months ago. Max has a whole lot of plug-ins. Some of the plug-ins were so important that they had to be integrated in Max in the newer versions. Max is way too slow compared to Softimage or even Maya. You would know that once you work with Softimage and Maya. I don't know if that slowness happens only on my end. I think I have a decent PC with 12 GB memory a core i7 Processor and a pair of recently bought NVidia GTX 480 in SLi(Autodesk would probably say these cards are not supported), which should have handled Max better. When you turn on NURMS and try modeling, you will know what I am talking about. Rigging in Max can't be compared with Softimage and Maya. That why I guess many studio uses Motionbuilder to rig their model which were done in Max. I am not saying that Max is worth less it is you who should decide what's good or bad for you, not me. Many people are still able to achieve great results with Max. But for me, I have given up on Max. Maya is great software and used extensively in the film industry. In fact, it can be almost called as the de facto software in the whole cg industry. The polygon tools in Maya are great, but some of them won't work in certain cases. For instance there is no guarantee, that partial loop or ring selection of edges would work each time. The grow and shrink selection is kinda buggy. I was growing a polygon selection, but it didn't grow them evenly, so I used the shrink selection and used the grow selection again, all right now its even but WTH the very first row of polygons got deselected. And since Maya does not even remember the last selected components it becomes very frustrating sometimes. The rigging, skinning tools and animation tools in Maya are very nice to work with. But they are not the only one, cos' Softimage have them too. In fact Softimage is called the pioneer of non linear animation. Okay on with Maya again Sud-D modeling in Maya is fast. The UV texture editor is great, if you don't wish to switch to an external UV Editing application. Btw, I haven't mentioned it before, but Max has a nice UV Texture editor too. And one more thing Maya 2011 sometimes crashes like crazy on my machine. Okay, now about Softimage. It's the best 3d package I have used until now. It is ultra stable, only had an occasional crash. But whats great it even tells you that it has saved the file before it crashed in a folder. Maya never does this, whenever Maya is in a bad mood it simply crashes no warning, nothing. I have heard some where that Softimage has very clean codes. Whatever that mean:) I guess, it means that the codes used in Softimage are so clean, that they rarely conflicts with each other, which would result in crashes. Unlike other 3d packages Softimage has a core integration with Mental Ray right from the beginning. Hold the "Q" key and draw a region on the viewport and you will get a look at the final rendered image, which I think is totally awesome. This can't be done in any of the other apps afaik. Of course in Maya you can use IPR but that is totally different. Softimage doesn't have a tool like the Artisan tool found in Maya. But you can achieve the same result by connecting weight maps with deformer in Softimage. Max has what seems like the Artisan tool but it is awfully slow. According to me, the UV Texture editor in Softimage is primitive though, . I haven't tested the newer version yet, so can't say if there's been any improvement. Max's main flaw in my eyes, is that it's slow. Performance of the modeling tools and even viewport navigation, when there's a whole lot of polygons are damn slow. Other then that it is good package, btw. The performance of Max 9 was great but with every new version of Max the performance seems to be degrading. I still see a lot of pros using Max 9 and not the latest iterations, possible due to the performance hit they get when they uses the newer versions. The final rendered image in any app, will always look the same. It's even true for Blender the Open source app. For example the same cell shaded look can be achieved with toon shaders, present in both Max and Maya and even Blender. It's not like it's exclusive to Softimage. But theirs something in Softimage that will always make me love it, may it be, it's robustness, in built inclusion of some of the top plug-ins right from the beginning (talking about Shave and Haircut, Syflex). One of the best Rigging and Animation tools. Softimage never fails, like I said before, Maya sometimes fails miserably when trying to do a partial loop or range selection. But Softimage NEVER fails... It's like, in Maya that partial loop selection, is a broken feature. I would like to rank the above softwares, in terms of popularity. There maybe a lot of other packages in between, but only the above three are compared. (1) 3Ds Max (2) Maya (3) Softimage I have tried, to include everything, good or bad, I have come across these three giant 3d packages, in all these months. There's still lot to learn though, and I am not saying that I am an expert...... Cheers.

	Posted by einbroch on Apr 21, 2010 at 07:53 PM
i dont like the rendering of softimage or renderman of this animated movie, its like u looking a ps1 finalfantasy8 cinematics, muddy picture or bland looking graphics... but i obsessed about appleseed1 i replay it so much, its so realistic, but the celshading is i dont like. but i loved it. appleseed1 is my fav!

	Posted by Siegfrid on Oct 28, 2009 at 04:58 AM
wooow so great job :) great article

	Posted by em_bonith on Oct 07, 2009 at 07:22 AM
i want to kno al of step to make it so much..

	Posted by fromme on Sep 17, 2009 at 04:13 AM
for a person learning 3ds max this sounds like shifting to XSI is the thing... can someone do a making of a scene with all the breakdowns and some.... also a question to the Autodesk.... is 3ds max equavalent to xsi.... will it be there.... if it will then how long before it gets there..... can some one do a comparative between 3ds max, Maya and XSI.... thanks

	Posted by Magian on Sep 17, 2009 at 12:08 AM
Fantastic article and a great inspiration. Thanks!

	Posted by edschiffer on Sep 16, 2009 at 06:53 PM
just a great program, great interview and project. congratulations! (the one only thing i would ask is to see bigger images. anyway, everything is great)

	Posted by aliaskajan on Sep 16, 2009 at 03:39 AM
great render

	Posted by crude on Sep 15, 2009 at 08:41 PM
amazing !!

	Posted by langdon on Sep 15, 2009 at 06:10 PM
Fantastic!!!!! simply awesome work Softimage is incredible in every field..

	Posted by lluly on Sep 15, 2009 at 10:22 AM
awesome , such an amazing work cant say enough...

	Posted by RedCobra on Sep 15, 2009 at 04:29 AM
wow! amazing...

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