Alias is terrible

[Anonymous]

Autodesk, this software needs a major overhaul, it feels like it is stuck in the early 90's with user interface and the modeling tools are painfull. I keep circling back to this with each release hoping for improvement, but nothing. All you have is a name...Alias... that is it.

[Cadmium77]

Try learning Houdini. They're trying a whole different approach and it's....nightmarish to learn. Worse than blender. And XSI? I found it buggy and slow. Modo? Very slick and worth keeping an eye on but far from mature and it's got some serious annoyances in it. I'll be sticking with Alias until I see something that's distinctly better. It's like an old pair of shoes. Not particularly good looking, and may even smell funny but it's comfortable.

Edited by: Cadmium77 on May 31, 2009 6:31 PM

[Anonymous]

It all depends upon for what purpose you are evaluating alias for. It is not for media & entertainment folks.

[Anonymous]

If Alias was a person, it would - in my opinion - be a nerd. Alias can do one thing very well and this is freeform surfaces. So if you don't use Alias for this - change the program. Go to SolidWorks, Cinema4D, Mudbox ... you name it.

But when you want to go into freeform surfaces, stop complaining about the interface and concentrate on the surfacing tools. There is a bunch of really good tools that give you perfect control over your surfaces.*

Know them and use the most important tool of it all: your eye. Alias is just an assistant to your eye. If your lines don't run - don't blame the assistant.

maxfish

[Anonymous]

*My favourite tools:

1. Explicit Control in every surface creation tool: creates single span surfaces
2. Align 2008 + non-proportional view + CV-slide/NUV/XYZ: creates a good CV layout
3. Isoangle Tool + Sections with curvature comb turned: evaluates the surface
4. Extend with merge off/Tubular offset + Freeform blend: creates transition surfaces
5. The deviation comb with comb scale set to 100: controls the angle development along creases or corrects continuity issues

maxfish

[Cadmium77]

Daniel Simon is a top auto designer and fantasy futurist illustrator and he thinks Alias Studio Tools is the living end, the summit of NURBS modeling. He's the master. In fact Alias uses his work as their load pages.

http://www.ebooknetworking.com/books/193/349/big1933492279.jpg


http://www.iainclaridge.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/cosmic_motors1.jpg

http://www.cartype.com/pics/5865/full/cosmic-motors_2.jpg


Get the right tool for the job.

If designing stuff for manufacture (real or just imaginary) is where you're at, and you want to quickly and powerfully create and take your 2D image to 3d then Studio Tools is your program.

(He likes IceM Surf too)

http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/09/gallery_cosmic_motors/Daniel_Simon_Gravion.jpg

http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/09/gallery_cosmic_motors/Daniel_Simon_Camarudo_01.jpg

He's awesome.

Alias Studio Tools is awesome with him....

http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/09/gallery_cosmic_motors/Daniel_Simon_Taooa.jpg Edited by: Cadmium77 on Jun 2, 2009 7:54 PM

[Anonymous]

I've got mixed feelings about it. As a surfacing package, it's still pretty much on top of the game as far as concept definition goes. As an ID tool it's therefore pretty hot. I personally find the price a bit scary in comparison to Rhino etc - which these days has similar workflows and functionality.

I spent a long time wanting the rendering capabilities inside Alias to get a lot better - for it to have the same underlying render engine as Maya . . but then they brought out Showcase, and it opened my eyes to the power, speed and flexibility of realtime visualisation - I've not wanted to render in Alias since.

Depends what you need it for - but as a professional Alias pilot, I know there's still massive demands for skilled Alias modelers worldwide - not just car stuff . . . It might be worth noting that very few car companies use anything else other than Alias at the very cutting edge where designs are born and take their first steps in 3D - and if ANY industry had the resources to regroup and pick a "better" software package for ID work - if it existed - then they certainly would. They haven't . . so perhaps that tells you something.

Alias isn't a one trick Pony - but nor is it Jack of all trades / master of none. It's certainly not terrible, but neither is it perfect - but then nothing ever is. I personally believe it would feel a lot cooler and more designer-oriented if it didn't hold such a hefty pricetag . . it's certainly not price-geared for the small guys and professional privateers, in my opinion.

[Anonymous]

One major flaw that i feel limits productivity is that when we press TAB key it doesn't highlight the text or numbers in the next option window. We need to manually select the values and delete them. In most windows applications that is the default option and people are really used to it and expect it to work that way.

[Anonymous]

All good things come hard.

[Anonymous]

Not being more rude than the poster of this thread, in my opinion it is your ignorance that is terrible.
You dont have a clue about what you are talking about. By the way, comparing Autostudio to MODO, XSI, MAX, and the likes, must be a bad joke, surely.....
Alias is not a animation program, neither a sad polygonal modeler...It s a professional application, for professionals, mainly for conceptual work. Why is it EVERY automotive company uses it? Cause is the best for their needs?
You could compare it to CATIA or NX, if you ask me, regarding surface modelling, and still neither of these 2 big beasts offer a comparable workflow and freedom to work with. And they have another purpose too.

ICEM surface would be the only logical comparison and closest match to Autostudio. Still, it has a different philosophy and approach, and everything is a bezier in it basically, rather than NURBS like autostudio. Bezier is a sub-set of nurbs, plus it has some special considerations, not important here at the moment.

Autostudio is a beauty! I beg to disagree......
P.S. this site is not THE AREA......ouch !
Regards

[MarkusSchnabel1921]

i don´t get the point, any examples?

[Anonymous]

YES....ZILLIONS of examples......Go check every car manufacturer.
They all use it, basically!

Regards

[MarkusSchnabel1921]

seems you don´t like cars? but apart from that, for those who know to handle it, alias is the most intuitive tool you can imagine. it takes years infact to get this kick. but after that it´s like driving a car, you have to be aware of the traffic but you will manuver the way you want to have your surfaces not like in other programm, as the software wants you to do them.

[Anonymous]

Me? Not really! I am an automotive engineer!
Thank You....

[Anonymous]

Studiotools is unmatched in depth, (except maybe icem). Studiotools interface is top class and remains unmatched, Marking menus are particularly efficient,

That said the software can make do with some UI brush up. One look at Studiotools and most of my juniors are ready to abandon ship. It looks too nerdy and unixish for them. Maybe a little streamlining wherever possible will help, but do improve the presentation, and adopt themes from new OS versions (read - add some useless bling for ID folks). Edited by: ashyanbhog on Jul 17, 2009 1:04 AM

[Anonymous]

To call "Alias Automotive" as a complete entity terrible would be unfair and wrong. However, the User Interface IS TERRIBLE!! Shockingly bad in fact.

Microsoft Windows operating-system has short-cuts and keys to alter mouse button-functions, agreed? 

I want to bring up just two of these "function keys" for my point and these are;

      Ctrl, which adds to selection

      and Shift which selects all between first and last selection.

Lots of programmes adhere to this simple concept of using Ctrl, Shift and Alt to modify selection-properties with the mouse, but Alias doesn't. WHY?

In other programmes de-selecting objects is often done by either selecting nothing, or pressing the "Escape key".

Alias adopts a different approach of having to move the mouse all the way to a "De-select icon". (You can piss-off with your "Marking-Menus" too for a decent user-interface has no NEED for such customization, although many still facilitate it if you so wish.)

Then there is the organisation of the icons. You are basically going to need to have the "Palette" open all of the time and yet it isn't dockable, same too for the "shelves". On application startup of Alias Automotive 2011 the "File" heading on the main menu-bar is eclipsed by an undockable, "Whats new" tool-bar. How retarded is that?

on another note...

There is a delicious irony here that whilst "Sbenderformi" is seemingly inexperienced in the use of "Alias Automotive/Surface etc", (although he might just have been refering to the 5h1T user interface and understandibly so) it would appear that "Hypnoise" is himself inexperienced in just about every other 3D-software-package that exists.

3Ds max, XSI and Modo are themselves PROFESSIONAL but they are for very DIFFERENT purposes. If the comparison was only in the user interface it would be a fair comparison. Alias's UI SUCKS ITS A FACT! If at this point you try and disagree I ask you to stop first and answer this. How is it that I could use Catia, Pro/engineer, AutoCAD, Rhino 3D, 3ds Max and Solidworks straight away! am I a genious? (yes I know I spelt genius wrong, I was being ironic) The answer is NO! I am not a genius. The reason I could use the afore mentioned software-packages straight away is because they all adopt a logical way of doing things.

Interesting that I bring up the CAD-software such as Pro/engineer and Catia, don't you think? why are those programmes logical to use and yet Alias isn't? LOL. Alias is used to create high-quality NURBS surfaces to be exported to an engineering-application. Wouldn't it have been logical to adopt a similar approach with Alias? Why the hell did they go their own route? its not better its worse (and not because its different).

My thoughts about  Alias Automotive 2011:

There is no feed-back that text entry in the command-prompt will commence. You click the field but nothing visually happens, no blinking cursor or colour change. You have to start typing before you know if its selected for text input.

There is no discrete rotate. You can't for instance specify a number of degrees that you want to free-rotate in, ie clicks of say 5 degrees. 3ds max, Maya, Catia, AutoCAD, Rhino 3d etc all have this facility.

The Layer-manger in Alias is shockingly bad with respect to AutoCAD.

The snap settings are extremely limited.

The getting started/ learning movies pop-up, true of ALL of AUTODESK products are a joke as they are so very basic.

If the user actually needs the popup learning material they are never going to be any good and should quite straight away.

Although the popup learning material could be needed for Alias as some of Alias's icons are rather poor. Such as the rotate icon (why not just have a circular arrow with a 3d cube at its center? Currently it almost looks like the move icon. However because all of these icons appear under a transform heading, its not too hard to work out whats what. (at least Alias has the handy icon-help popup)

Some of Alias's Icons are actually very good. Such as the icons that change their appearence depending on settings made within them.

2011 Alias Automotive's UI is incredibly messy and poorly thought out. The programme-architects/UI people at Alias didn't do their job properly. Unfortunately, its pretty much the only application that does what it does. In terms of NURBs modelling its unrivalled and this is the reason that it is used throughout the automotive-industry. So thats why it has such a high price-tag ( its almost unique and relatively speaking has a small user-base that isn't short of money).

I reckon Autodesk will slowly improve the UI to make it more like the rest of their products. However, Autodesk has a problem. If it changes Alias Automotive to have a fatastic UI like 3ds max and AutoCAD it will piss-off all of the people that have spent many years learning and becoming efficent in the use of its bonkers layouts and methods. If it keeps it the same, new users will take a little while to get used to it and AGES to become efficeint with it.

Actually, they could radically change it, afterall whats the point of future releases if they don't? Its probably because Autodesk doesn't want to spend too much money on it. It obviously works within the car industry so they are probably spending time improving software that has a larger user-base. Mind you I hate to think what Alias Automotive was like before the View-cube. 3ds max doesn't even need the view-cube but Alias, well I hate to think.

[donest]

To accurately rotate all you need to do is open the information window (which I have on my marking menu). You can then eiter drag the mouse or enter the degree that you want.

[Anonymous]

Thank you donest   for trying to help but... The problem is that when you rotate by dragging the mouse, you can't specify the increments that it rotates in. For instance, 99% of the time I want to rotate in integer-values. However in Alias it is necessary to enter these vaules in manually. So basically what you have to do is free-rotate the object, to get it close to where you want it, then open up the information window and then round-off the values. Its workable but its not what you would expect from a piece of software that supposedly costs 10X the amount AutoCAD does.

[Anonymous]

I dunno- for eyeballing it I use the free rotation which is pretty simple with the marking menus.  If I want to make very precise adjustments I use the info window.  For rapid, repeated  integer adjusts I just use the command line and skip the buttons.  Seems like they have you covered. I don't even think about it any more- I use the tool that serves me.  Having an adjustable preset of 5 degrees or something doesn't meet any of my needs. I would be constantly readjusting the preset. But to each his own.

I've been working with this tool for just about a decade now and still find it to be the perfect palette of tools for my pre-design work.  I don't need fur or architectural elements and don't do much animation.  For getting a concept across with dead accurate dimensions and still having a decently fast render engine without changing apps it is hard to beat.  2011 for Mac is a HUGE improvement over 2010 which was cantankerous compared to the Windows versions.  WIth the Mac I can render multiple scenes at once  and still continue to work on the model.  My workflow is hugely improved over my XP days.

[Anonymous]

I'd disagree with sweeping statements that "Alias is terrible". I've been using Alias since version 2.4, back then running on fridge sized hardware. Over a very long period of time, one gets used to a digital tool so much that it becomes hard to drop it once one is very proficient in using it. Why spend the time switching software, invest time (and money) for re-learning, if one can design almost what one intends? Over the last couple of years though, I'm becoming annoyed like other posters here that many very basic user interface issues are not addressed after 20 years (proper TAB key functionality anyone?), rendering is still producing unrealistic output, the once useful polygonal modelling tools were dropped long ago, etc. Nevertheless, it's still my NURBS modelling application of choice, but nowadays having to succumb to: exporting .obj-files to external renderers, exporting .igs-files to external NURBS modellers that have a wealth of plug-ins and can be easily scripted to do all sorts of tricks, exporting single surfaces to external generative applications to populate them with detailed structures, exporting...

Probably, the automotive user base, different to the industrial design user base, has different needs and different software budgets; so ultimatively Autodesk does not need to invest to overcome Alias' shortcomings. So, we long-time users either stick with it - and continue exporting data for specific tasks like China to finish our designs - or contemplate switching? I'd be interested to hear from other industrial designers with a long Alias history what they think.