Friday Flashback #27

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Thanks to Darrin Hofmeyr, for sending in these screenshots from the SOFTIMAGE|Behavior section of the Production Series DVD:

First released back in November 2002 , Softimage|Behavior was a behavioral animation system for creating characters and choreographing 3D animated crowds that can respond to objects, other characters or changes in their environment. From the press release:

Softimage|Behavior lets an animator control individual characters in a simulation through a combination of graphical editing, scripting and debugging tools in addition to a library of pre-defined behaviors. Individual characters can be set to respond and interact in multiple ways to their environment and with other characters. The system’s integrated character engine features real-time IK, animation blending and warping, dynamic path planning, and automatic obstacle avoidance, which supports event-driven responses for characters in the simulation.

Softimage|Behavior is priced at $14,995

SOFTIMAGE|BEHAVIOR was used on the history-based mini-series Napoleon for the A&E Channel, and in James Wong’s feature film The One.
It was also used by Buzzimage for a Dollar Bank commercial. Here’s a collage of a few AVIs about this commercial that I found lying around:

http://vimeo.com/26475107

And there was a press release on xsibase too:

SOFTIMAGE HELPS MAKE MILLIONS FOR DOLLAR BANK
–Buzz Image relies on SOFTIMAGE|BEHAVIOR to populate the streets of Pittsburgh in the newest Dollar Bank commercial —

And finally, courtesy of the WaybackMachine, here’s the case study that was posted on softimage.com back in 2003:

The baffling case of Softimage and the MYECSP license

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“MYECSP” is, of course, “Maya Entertainment Creation Suite Premium” 😉

In this case, Softimage 2012 on Linux would not not run with a MYECSP license. But it would run with a regular SFTIM (Softimage) license.

/var/tmp/SoftimageLicense.log showed there was a “Server does not support this feature” error when Softimage 2012 tried to check out the MYECSP license.

On the license server (a Windows machine btw), the LMTOOLS debug log file didn’t show anything (sometimes there are “denied” log entries that can provide a clue).

I tried setting FLEXLM_DIAGNOSTICS to 3 before I started Softimage, but I didn’t get any diagnostics from that. But I did finally find the FLEXLM diagnostics in the strace logs:

17174 write(28, "FLEXnet Licensing checkout error"..., 323 <unfinished ...>
17182 <... read resumed> "F", 1)        = 1
17182 read(27, "L", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "E", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "X", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "n", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "e", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "t", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, " ", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "L", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "i", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "c", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "e", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "n", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "s", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "i", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "n", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "g", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, " ", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "c", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "h", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "e", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "c", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "k", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "o", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "u", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "t", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, " ", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "e", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "r", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "r", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "o", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, "r", 1)                  = 1
17182 read(27, ":", 1)                  = 1
snip...

After I reformatted it, the diagnostic message looked like this:

FLEXnet Licensing checkout error: Clock difference too large between client and license server system.
Feature:       85718MYECSP_2012_0F
License path:  @mtl-example:@127.0.0.1:
FLEXnet Licensing error:-34,147

For further information, refer to the FLEXnet Licensing documentation,
available at www.flexerasoftware.com

License file(s): @mtl2ua0150cwy@127.0.0.1

It turned out that the system time on the workstation was off by two days (it was two days in the past).

Softimage wouldn’t use the MYESCP license because that license was from the future (it was a brand new license that had just been generated).

The SFTIM license had been generated weeks ago, so that license worked ok.

SIGGRAPH 2011 – Autodesk Student Experience Event

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Autodesk Student Experience Event – exclusively for students

On Sunday, August 7, 2011, Autodesk will be hosting the Autodesk Student Experience event, a series of workshops and presentations exclusively for students. This full day of events will feature classes, one-on-one feedback sessions with Autodesk technology experts, a seminar from Carlos Baena of Animation Mentor and a keynote presentation by Duncan Brinsmead, principal scientist at Autodesk.

There will also be a Softimage Class with Adam Sale, and Mark Schoennagel will be available to answer Softimage questions.

via Area :: SIGGRAPH 2011.

Reserve Array

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The Reserve Array node reserves memory for an array, but it doesn’t construct the array for you.

So, for example, if you try to use Set in Array you may find that it doesn’t work, because the array element you’re trying to set doesn’t exist yet. In this tree, Reserve Array gives me an array with one element. So trying to set the second element has no effect.

I’d have to use Push on Array here to get the desired result:

Or I could make sure the array elements exist like this:

I could also Resize the array after I reserve it.