Silo 2 pricing and video

[-ash-]

For those who are interested, Nevercenter has released information about Silo 2. Here's a link to the video:

http://www.nevercenter.com/videos/in...ta_preview.mov

Pricing is announced as 2.0 base price: $159, 2.0 upgrade price: $59.

Cheers.

[JayBar]

Had a look over at nevercenter and it does look soooooooo good and the price is certainly right. The LCLM Unwrapping looks a lot like Blenders So it will probably work just as smoothly, if not better. We shall soon see. And the stuff about active modelling after displacement painting sounds seems too good to be true, hats off to nevercenter. there legends. The clock is ticking too slow........I want it NOW!!!!.

[tonytrout]

Will be interesting comparing the Beta release to Hex 2 If the displacement mapping export works better might model in Hex and map in silo ???

[Narration]

I think it will be very interesting. Last week I purchased the earlier Silo, and it is intriguing to go back and forth, even as a relative newcomer to the 3-d subject.

Hex has many more features - and the feeling is that Silo, especially with the 2.0 coming, likely doesn't need all of them. Yet those features it has beyond basis are very powerful for Hex. At present for the two programs, one definitely needs both.

Then conversely, there are the unique features and manners of Silo. If one had to say, Hex leads with 'do it a particular way, from the first' to get things done, and also result in a desired mesh. While Silo answers, do it more as you like, and then redraw the mesh you want over the result.

What seems clear is that Silo (Nevercenter) very much leads in communication, of all kinds. This may be a crucial element.

You can appreciate the academic certitudes in Hex, and their power. But wherever no one can be bothered to translate, these powers are lost.

What does translate mean? Language is one thing: the Anglo-French divide is never more apparent than in the manual, and materials - though to be quite fair to those who made them, it looks that they simply worked at an under-budget of five to 1 (5:1) in resources and time.

Communication in another sense is done directly to the hands of modelers: in providing the fully smoothed build-out of the software. Here there is much evidence of having been driven into a market-feature-time-race instead.

What is the ratio of completion to speak of, when short-cuts have been taken to depend naively on video cards to support features, through 'standards' which in turn never are? When powerful capabilities are compressed, because their implementations are brittle, especially in comparison where others may be smooth?

It is possible that it is actually advantageous now to have the original team of Hex off to other creations, since one way or another, they were not able to make the refined delivery needed.

The challenge to the new team is indeed now to be refined.

Somehow the wide view of communication seems it could be the most important factor -- on the shoulders of a leadership commitment to make a stable and realistic funding.

Enough to say, and a right place to stop. Enough of the challenge shows, to see it has always been a very good one - and with many dimensions for balance.

Good fortune - to those software story-writers in California!

Narration

[-ash-]

I've been watching the Silo 2 development with interest. I started out learning to model with Silo 1.2 (I think). When Hex came out bought it because I felt the integration with Carrara would be better. After the mirror modeling was added to Hex I used Silo less and less. Hex 2.1 is still very good for poly modelling but I will very likely be upgrading to Silo 2 for displacement painting. The Nevercenter guys seem dedicated to making sure as many bugs as possible are ironed out before release as well as getting the features that people want. Even when it means delaying the software by a substantial amount of time.

I must say I'm sick of products being released too early. I'm sick of the pressure from marketing, product management types who drive the developers to cut corners to serve the god of 'Time To Market'. Whups, started to rant there - I see this kind of rubbish every day and it gets to me every so often

Anyway, I think DAZ could take a leaf out of Nevercenter's book and communicate more with the users of their software. There's a thread at the moment over at DAZ about the lack of information on Bryce. Many people seem to be annoyed that there is information on other forums coming in from Siggraph visitors but no official word on the official forums. Really makes you feel that DAZ care, does it not?

Well only time will tell, and, for the time being at least I will keep both tools in my box of tricks.

[Aunty Betty]

Thanks for the post.

[schuubars]

As speaking of LSCM unwrapping, yes Nevercenter guys are very open to communicate to everyone. ;)

Texture mapping still needs a bit of attention and we're giving it some more :]. Be sure to thank Bruno Levy and his people for the LSCM algorithm, which they've very graciously let us use in Silo! http://www.loria.fr/~levy/

http://www.silo3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6628

[Sketchy]

I haven't updated my system, any idea what the minimum hardware requirements are? Seems to me that features like displacement painting or z-brush-like features need a lot of system resources. Hex 2 didn't work so well in mine, I have a feeling that Silo is going to behave the same.

[Nichod]

I haven't updated my system, any idea what the minimum hardware requirements are? Seems to me that features like displacement painting or z-brush-like features need a lot of system resources. Hex 2 didn't work so well in mine, I have a feeling that Silo is going to behave the same.

You'll need a hefty system. But Silo has grouping features which allow you to hide all but a part of a mesh and work on just that mesh without the overhead of other portions. Hexagon doesn't seem to do this unfortunately and this makes complex modeling difficult at times, especially when it comes to displacement.

[achrystie]

Don't be so sure you need a "hefty" system.
The last rumor I heard was that the Silo guys optimized the code so well that it ran "faster" than Silo 1.4 on comparable system specs.

http://www.silo3d.com

But things can change, and who knows what the effect of migrating the old tools into the new core code has had on the performance, that and the changes to the UI, so I'd post on the silo 3d forum and wait a bit before making any hardware purchases.

I suspect the 2.0 beta will be out in a couple weeks, which is public if you own Silo 1.42.
So, you could test it out.


ABC

[steama]

Originally Posted by achrystie

Don't be so sure you need a "hefty" system.
The last rumor I heard was that the Silo guys optimized the code so well that it ran "faster" than Silo 1.4 on comparable system specs.

http://www.silo3d.com

But things can change, and who knows what the effect of migrating the old tools into the new core code has had on the performance, that and the changes to the UI, so I'd post on the silo 3d forum and wait a bit before making any hardware purchases.

I suspect the 2.0 beta will be out in a couple weeks, which is public if you own Silo 1.42.
So, you could test it out.


ABC

I agree. The current ZBrush 2.0 runs circles around Hexagon 2 displacement and Poly counts with much less need for a 'hefty system'. We'll need to wait and see though.

[jbshorty]

I have a suspicion that Hex is a very bloated code. It is built on plug-ins and patches (just look within the program folders to see what i mean). Here is an observation:

**Rhino 4 beta = 80 MB (compare to Rhino 3 @ 240Mb)
**ZBrush 2 (demo) = 40Mb
**Silo 1.42 = 5Mb
**Hex 1.2 = 50 Mb, and now Hex 2 = 400Mb

Does this make any sense why Hex 2 code is so huge? While other apps are able to put more tools in tighter codes, why has Hex 2 increased it's size by 800% ?

[-ash-]

Originally Posted by jbshorty

I have a suspicion that Hex is a very bloated code. It is built on plug-ins and patches (just look within the program folders to see what i mean). Here is an observation:

**Rhino 4 beta = 80 MB (compare to Rhino 3 @ 240Mb)
**ZBrush 2 (demo) = 40Mb
**Silo 1.42 = 5Mb
**Hex 1.2 = 50 Mb, and now Hex 2 = 400Mb

Does this make any sense why Hex 2 code is so huge? While other apps are able to put more tools in tighter codes, why has Hex 2 increased it's size by 800% ?

The reason Hex 2 install is bigger is this:

Docs (inc videos) = 299 Mb
Free models = 18 Mb
Free photo ref = 5 Mb
Free brushes = 27 Mb
Total = 349 Mb

My install is 392 Mb. If the docs and the freebies were installed elsewhere then the actual program size would be 43 Mb.

Cheers.

[jbshorty]

thanks, tony. that makes sense.

[tonytrout]

Silo 2 beta is out if you dont already know

[juanmanuel]

Yep, it is out, and I look what I see. No manual yet, but very useable nonetheless

[WillBellJr]

There's a whole sticky section for tips on how to use the different Silo2 features - remember this is a BETA release, docs will come with the final release....

-Will

[juanmanuel]

Quite right you are, I forgot to mention that too...

[zaxxon]

Just had a little time with the silo 2.0 beta, sweet. here is a screen grab of some displacement brushing, smooth and responsive, be fun to contrast with mudbox. the mesh here is about half a million faces