Silo 2.0 coming soon...

[Mahlikus The Black]

Silo 2.0 coming Soon...
..and with something that looks a liittle like some small Z2 like functionality
with multimillion poly handling.

hmmm. Still not at good as Z but I love how while its at a high density level, you can grab the low-level poly and edit real time.

Texture/UV editing is cool. Z needs that bad. I am in a spot now were I need good texture handling and texture abilities with materials in Z.

Maybe soon...next update?

[ambient-whisper]

i really like z, and the developers but i hope this will give them more urgency to add things like multi object/texture channel support into zbrush, and other things. . because thats the kind of things that people will go elsewhere to compensate for zbrushes weaknesses.

[Mahlikus The Black]

Exactly.

[chadtheartist]

I'm really excited about Silo's possibilities now! At first I wasn't too sure of it, but seeing the video I am positive I'll love it! Especially if they plan to encorporate brush like tools like Z has, which they say they will so that's good news.

I'm hoping this will open up some options to get rid of the shrinkwrap stage I am not too fond of anymore. With the ability to work with the edges, vertices, and faces of the model while sculpting is going to be a huge benefit IMO.

I can see my workflow going like this. Silo > Zbrush > Maya. As opposed to Silo > Zbrush > Silo > Zbrush > Maya > Zbrush > Maya. I just hope it's good at blocking out geometry like I want it to be. If not, I'll have to stick with my current workflow.

I'm also anxious to see the new Z features. So I'm not leaving Z, just going to start using it for other things than I normally use it for.

[sirquadalot]

Sounds cool! Thanks for the info. Although what Pixologic has done for modeling and sculpting is fantastic, I hope the ZB developeres don't forget the 3D matte artist though! It would be really nice to be able to match ZB's camera to C4D or Maya, or vise versa. X's a million.

[Ctrl-Z]

Ordered the Glen Southern videos from Kurv Studios yesterday. I've been planning to buy Silo for some time as a means to suppliment my other tools, and I'll probably do so by the end of the day.*

That said...

with multimillion poly handling.

This point, I'm not sure on -- the videos showed "over a million polygons", but I'm not seeing anything yet to indicate that it'll handle several million.

Y'all know Ofer was pushing 15 million polys around at Siggraph, right?

I'm just sayin'.


-----


*UPDATE:
The purchase is made.

[chadtheartist]

Oh yeah. I'm definitely looking forward to the Zbrush update too, as I seriously doubt Silo will even come close to handling the amount of detail that Zbrush can. I merely interested in that initial blocking out stage, right before I redo the topology. After the topology is done, it will be right back to Zbrush, for the micro details.

[ambient-whisper]

i was told that the elephaunt was 12 million for the zmapper example
turns out that the model is only 10k or so, but the normal map hes got was generated from a 2 mill model, plus a bumpmap.

just sayin

btw.

the modo guys are going around saying that they can push 6 mill at 60-30 fps and editing at about 25fps on a "decent pc" in opengl.

im really doubting this, because of their past hyping, which they didnt live up to at all.

or, how videocard makers keep saying they can push 340 milllion polygons per second, which i have yet to see.

so what im saying is, sure, zbrush can push some crazy amounts, but theres a lot behind the scenes that you could not be aware of.

[Mahlikus The Black]

What!? There a link to this? I haven't seen anything like that. How could I miss this info?

[chadtheartist]

It was probably at Siggraph. I'm sure they'll post some stuff up soon.

[Ctrl-Z]

i was told that the elephaunt was 12 million for the zmapper example
turns out that the model is only 10k or so, but the normal map hes got was generated from a 2 mill model, plus a bumpmap.

just sayin

That could be. My 15 million figure came from elsewhere in the demo, when he subdivided Zack Petroc's "Super Average Man" model and was adding pore-level details with Projection Master.

I think they hinted that it was a height map, along the lines of what Unreal 3 is doing. Which is fine -- whatever cheats they have to go through behind the scenes, if they have to stop subdividing and merely let you edit the maps directly... it still works. And the interface was pretty seamless -- he didn't put away his modelling tools and switch to a bumpmap-painting material to paint a limited set of values onto, y'know?

In any event, we don't have video footage to scrutinize for details yet, so I'm only speculating. And taking their word that the program does what they claim. (being the 15 million figure, not the height map -- I may have made that part up)

Remember, we're limited mostly by the size of our displacement map. Increasing that limit should be a much smaller accomplishment than, say, letting us re-topologize our models or pose them with ZSpheres.

[ambient-whisper]

What!? There a link to this? I haven't seen anything like that. How could I miss this info?

not really. im just going by what i heard/seen.

the new stuff is really neat .
cant wait to get my hands on the new Z. i could sooo use it for what im making at work at the moment. :/

[Mahlikus The Black]

Well siggraph is over now right. We should be getting a new preview soon I think, at least I would assume.

[aurick]

Yes, two aspects of the demo at SIGGRAPH have been confused.

One example showed ZMapper taking a bump map into account during the calculation of a normal map, making it possible to achieve details that couldn't be sculpted in ZBrush 2 because of the fact that they would require 12 million polygons. ZMapper (which will be released before 2.5) is able to calculate those polygons and include them in the normal map raytracing. The calculated map took less than 20 seconds, even with the fantastic level of detail that the bump map made possible. This functionality will be useable in ZBrush 2 even before we release 2.5.

The other example was done with Zack Petroc's model and used the Micro-Polygon Modeling feature that will be in ZBrush 2.5. That model was (if I remember right) 15 million polygons and was actually being SCULPTED in real time. In other words, ZBrush 2.5 was creating mesh details that can only be achieved in version 2 via a bump map.

Micro-Poly Modeling is unprecedented, and I suspect that it will be a long time before any other application can approach pushing around the number of polygons that ZBrush can achieve -- much less doing the job in real time.

By the way, not being a Silo user I haven't looked so I don't know; is Silo 2 a free upgrade like ZBrush 2.5 will be?

[ambient-whisper]

yeah. the silo 2 upgrade will probably be the last free one, as far as i know. ( not 100% sure tho ).

thats really cool about micropoly displacements. i knew there must have been something weird about editing standard models at 15mil polys in realtime, because zb 2 has already been optimized the hell out of. so this new tech sounds awesome. id love to really be able to sculpt to the point where i dont have to split meshes into pieces to get the same amount of detail.