[lovisx]

Just a quick poll to see how happy everyone is with silo 2.1. A version of silo that Jamchild feels is mature.

[Dranix]

I still wait for working and usable normal/displacement-map-export. Without it it's rather useless for me. And the crashing-bugs don't make it better. I don't expect new features - just that the existing ones *work*.

So definitively no Zen from me (#3 taken).

[justa_newbie]

I find it hard to understand how a conclusion can be made that Silo
2.1 is in a 'mature' state, when all one has to do is look to the
nevercenter-supplied 'bug-tracker-feature-requester' to see that
the customers of Silo feel otherwise...and have made quite a few
relevant suggestions to take it to 'maturity'.

It kinda baffles the mind as to why that tracker was even utilized
if there was no intent to address the very information it garnished.

At any rate, the answer to your thread question is 'No' from me.

[cookepuss]

Just a quick poll to see how happy everyone is with silo 2.1. A version of silo that Jamchild feels is done.

Just because it does what HE needs and works well on HIS machine doesn't mean that resonates with US, the people who bought Silo.

It's a little disheartening to think that "good enough" is the same thing as "good" in NC's book.

As has already been said, certain features are critically broken. Others are virtually vaporware, appearing on the menus, but not being practical for production work. A number of users find the basic Silo experience to be fractured and full of discontinuities. Other programs crash to be sure, but not nearly as much as Silo.

Let's face it. Silo 2.1 was deemed "mature" now because NC got tired of working on it as their primary product. It was deemed "final" before, as opposed to beta, to get it out of the door and have something nice to display around 2008 SIGGRAPH.

Silo still has a lot of fixing and some further development to be deemed either "final" OR "mature."

The bugs, inconsistencies, and functional deficiencies are well known and, as such, need no further restatement. NC is hoping that, by touting Silo as mature, we'll tow the party line.

The fact that NC seems to be onto bigger and better things, while putting Silo on the back burner, also seems to indicate that their ambition is far greater than their actual commitment level, collectively. We, the consumers, bought Silo with every intention of the relationship between user and program being long and prosperous. We would have expected that NC's commitment to Silo's longevity and prosperity would be no less deep.

Don't start a project unless you're going to finish it and, for the love of God, don't sell it to the public if you don't. For those of you who are in Silo nirvana, congratulations. For those of you who still find it sorely lacking, don't you feel like a sucker now? I know I do. Silo v2.x feels like one giant c**ktease.

Nobody ever asked for NC to develop Silo into the next ZBrush, Modo, Maya, or whatever. All anybody wanted, and still wants, is a program whose features do what we expect them to do in a reliable, stable, and intuitive manner. Silo manages to nail the intuitive part, but fails on all other counts - for me.

Just the idea that NC pretty much says, "We'll fix stuff when we feel like it. Or maybe not." drops their cred down by 90%.

When they were around (read: viable) I used to complain about Caligari because they pulled the same thing with trueSpace. The program advertised lots of cool features and had a very vocal and loyal fan base. When allowed to set it in, the reality of the situation was the these cool sounding features were only ever half implemented and the loyal fan base was so loyal because they only used the most stable subset of the features. Power users would often emigrate to other apps that truly were more mature. At the end of the day, trueSpace couldn't take a beating without lots of workarounds. It couldn't put its money where its mouth was for anybody but the hobbyists and low volume freelancers.

The scariest part here is that NC's apparent lack of focus mirrors Caligari's. trueSpace started as one of the first true low cost alternatives to high end apps. It was Caligari's baby and ONLY baby. Then when the hassle of bringing each version to full maturity became too tedious, they'd make half-hearted efforts. All the while, their attention was being split because of their diversification and spin-off projects. None of which they could ever commit to for the long term.

Today, Caligari, after having been bought out by Microsoft, is running head on into "the white light" because they closed shop and is only waiting for that big ole software scythe to finish the deed.

No company would dare tell you that they're in dire straits. The best thing to say, for their continued existence, is that the company is strong and the product is mature. Even if none of that is true. Only a newbie would buy the smoke that's being blown up our collective keisters.

Jam may have tried to spin things and hype a new project, but he pretty much signed a NC & Silos death warrant, figuratively speaking. People were holding on for actual news. REAL news of REAL development. They were holding on to small shreds of hope, mostly based around the arbitrary habit of SIGGRAPH releases. Now that NC has basically said, "whenever we feel like it" anybody who has been hanging on and hoping that an update would make Silo mature will just give NC the finger and walk away.

After all, that's what they've done to us, give us the finger and walk away.

I was really, really, REALLY hoping that Silo 2.x would follow in the tradition of greatness and innovation as Silo 1.x. Instead, it serves as a textbook example of how to release a flawed product to an unsuspecting consumer base. It serves as a textbook example of how to take a truckload of hard earned goodwill and flush it down the toilet without really trying - BECAUSE of not really trying.

I loved the older Silo 1.4x release. That product may have technically not been as feature rich as v2.1, but it was a mature program. Silo 2.... not so mature. It's still a temperamental teenager prone to mood swings and bouts of slacking

[mduque]

Despite the bugs that Silo has, I still find it quite fast to model in there. Recently a friend of mine introduced me Hexagon 2.2 and I've been testing / learning it. It's quite intuitive to work with it and fast too. So far, it hasn't crashed on me.

Hexagon 2.2 is free and for commercial use too. According to their forum comments, it is more stable than 2.0. But again, it hasn't been in development for the last 3 years. So, it might just be another dead end.

Modo is good and quick, but not as fast as Silo or Hex and I mean on the drop and pick up the tools workflow. In Modo, there's still a bit of clicking to do.

Since Silo is officially dead, I'll keep it in my HD, but see no point in moving forward and invest my time (Time = Money) in a company that is not interest in their own product and further development. Unless they change their mind???
Never the less, Silo is fast, but it's sad to have such ending.

[GED]

what the...I only just recently bought silo, I tried the demo - I knew it wasnt perfect and crashes quite often but its silo 2.1 so I expected with a few small fixes it would be excellent. This is not a mature program, if it hardly ever crashed I would be tempted to say it was mature

[RogerKnightly]

I would say 3 myself.

[tupu]

Number 3 definitely, in some areas it is pretty much Zen but as a whole it's not quite there yet.

The thing with Silo is that it is really good in the tweaking and UV area (for me atleast).

Seriously, are there other programs that are as good in organic modeling while also having good technical modeling toolset?
Some people are starting to talk about Hexagon as a replacement, are there any others?

Perhaps they could copy atleast all Silo features into Blender 2.5?

[michaelw]

Hey, don't flame me, I'm not calling anyone a liar but what are the crashes that people are getting? Lots are complaining about them, but I run it using wine on linux and have found it incredibly stable...

I really can't remember it crashing...

Admittedly I just use it as a modeller... I don't sculpt with it any more and I don't UV map in silo...


A fare number of bugs:
I sometimes find the symmetry messes up and subdivision gives weird spikes...

when I was sculpting with it it'd go weird on the mirror seam a lot and give horribleness...

so are most of the crashes when using these extended features? or just basic stuff?

[Dranix]

The extended stuff of course. Basic modelling can be done in other apps as easy as in silo.

[stereoD]

The vast majority of crashes I've had since beta were related to mirroring and/or undo. I've personally submitted multiple bug reports with detailed instructions and I don't think any of them were ever fixed.

As for "zen" - the foundation is there but Silo has a long way to go. I doubt it'll ever get there now that NC is working on an even more ambitious project. I guess they're trying to develop a low-cost game development suite, but if 2.1 is what they consider a mature product then I don't see it going anywhere. Good luck to them, though.

[s0me0ne]

There is not easier program to use that does what Silo does, from the demos I've tried. I dont see how a 3 party team of developers can handle more than 1 project, marketing and a website. Camerabag and their game engine are probably a hope for extra cash or maybe to spark new energy in them, but they dont have enough people to do it all. Thus, Silo is going to lag behind