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Technology Stocks : Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: vincent bilotta who wrote (4817)	5/2/1998 12:17:00 PM
From: P.M.Freedman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14451

To ALL: SGI is heavily under accumulation. Don't miss the buying opportunity here.

To: vincent bilotta who wrote (4817)	5/4/1998 12:33:00 PM
From: John M. Zulauf	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14451

Vince, I think acceptance and maturity are not going to be an issue for Maya. It's just too cool, and does too many things well. One small example -- the hot box, our marking menu and context sensitive pop-up tool pallate. Customers have reported back to us that Maya is spoiling them for other applications. After using Maya for a week they use some other package for a day and think -- "where's my @#$%@%^ hot box!" > most of the bigger sites i talk to are > holding off for a while while Maya gains some maturity. as you know it's suicide to start a project on one package and end it on another (or even another rev of the same package) -- unless the current rev has some fatal flaw in terms of how your using it. The sense I've gotten is the that biggest customers (our beta partners who will remain nameless) have committed whole hog to Maya -- check the Maya launch press releases. Most other sites just recieving Maya now under their maintenance agreements are "up to their ass in alligators" in their current projects -- and are lusting after just getting enough time to break the shrink wrap and dig in to the new beautiful CD. One internal testimonial -- sanitized for your protection. We went to a certain motion capture lab who is extrodinarily familiar with MotionSampler 3 -- the PowerAnimator motion capture application -- and within 2 days of using it on site with us they said -- okay we'll be transitioning over to Maya immediately. Even having programmed it, I have to say that the motion capture stuff in Maya is not (by far) the coolest or most useful stuff in Maya. In fact, during final internal testing. I was using the particle dynamics features of Maya model a bottle rocket. Not too exciting you say? Well the thrust and motion of the bottle rocket was based on the momentum transfer cause by the collision of the emmitted exhaust particles and the "combustion chamber" walls. I animated only the emmission rate -- effectively a thrust lever and the physics did the rest. In addition, I tracked the mass of the exhaust leaving the bottle rocket itself, such that as the fuel burned, the rocket became lighter -- giving the distinctive non-constant accelaration effect over the flight of the rocket that one sees. Anyway, now I'm digging into the skinning and deformation section of Maya -- and from the Ruby's Saloon demo -- you know how good that can look. One tip about skinning in Maya... bind the lattice to the skeleton not the skin itself. Then deform the skin with the lattice. Apparently this is the "one-size-fits-all" approach the Ruby's Saloon crew took to good effect. Also Academy Award nominee Chris Landreth is hard at work on something Maya... > hope you are well actually I'm just getting back to work after being laid up for 3 months due to whiplash -- what a pain in the neck ;-). If you don't have long term disability insurance -- buy some! Take it from me. Later, john