RE: The Softimage mailing list

[Brent McPherson]

I think it would be better to just set a date for switching over to the Google 
group and abandon the server before it gets pulled or stops working.

On that date stop redirecting messages to the Google group and update the 
server admin message to redirect people to the Google group. (or send out one 
last email and auto unsubscribe everyone)

https://u9432639.ct.sendgrid.net/wf/click?upn=lIXdN6W56FnEjHCwrBXqOq0HQNpV0huvAGw1zu6Xp8eVQuk2cNZiNFjx2k-2FfTNchiLG9o7ECJDJ0Mw-2FRzSlfldhFWvv2G7M9xrogMv-2BiUgrG-2BmCVAfC2HxBWG0Czpbw8UUe9Xkbh68Twjp-2FiA-2FSErMU-2FEk2CkvoTC04KpO5Ly475MLQNUViwPoaAMpEaEjwAYOu4T567ozlZeZdMMtM3KXVN7uiAm1z1BQ0qjBHp2w-2F-2FQwXlBtX2tzzsgIZeJUn-2BNDHd-2F8uwGE5ZF2Eq-2FY2ZqEEaz8zy2B0W0pScPQgXLyBGtLzdDZc-2BexWdfNtKysdfUNpyjJ5yiQ7gRVlci58z3igoIRMVja8KvmruO8os9n6xe03jq0C9XrrTQNA8O0nAt6lnBCwvPbbz0B97K1so-2BQ-3D-3D_a6oQc7tnfcb0GKvoO27fPkrQ0ATQyF1SDBXJOg7-2FbuR6P1lN8-2F-2BGBvi5bvFn6gnS4Q5-2FlVpV-2FXAG25ajzh3N3uYpT8xTykikDJiSxtDWBIqTz-2FFnr0C1pDz-2BiWzPMVGe0AAF0pOZyxJdpl788aj7NvjSFhI7yq6NWGuuAdCkSdC9ABDZx55aK34fg1KwRvtB2eIOt639BwGnvHWCWiRlPmw-2FOmeqa3WFaJxgrb1iuRA-3D
 

FWIW: I joined the Google group and turned off email updates so I’m ready! ;-)
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
 On Behalf Of Tekano Bob
Sent: 12 November 2019 11:50
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://u9432639.ct.sendgrid.net/wf/click?upn=lIXdN6W56FnEjHCwrBXqOq0HQNpV0huvAGw1zu6Xp8eVQuk2cNZiNFjx2k-2FfTNchiLG9o7ECJDJ0Mw-2FRzSlfldhFWvv2G7M9xrogMv-2BiUgrG-2BmCVAfC2HxBWG0Czpbw8UUe9Xkbh68Twjp-2FiA-2FSErMU-2FEk2CkvoTC04KpO5Ly475MLQNUViwPoaAMpEaEjwAYOu4T567ozlZeZdMMtM3KXVN7uiAm1z1BQ0qjBHp2w-2F-2FQwXlBtX2tzzsgIZeJUn-2BNDHd-2F8uwGE5ZF2Eq-2FY2ZqEEaz8zy2B0W0pScPQgXLyBGtLzdDZc-2BexWdfNtKysdfUNpyjJ5yiQ7gRVlci58z3igoIRMVja8KvmruO8os9n6xe03jq0C9XrrTQNA8O0nAt6lnBCwvPbbz0B97K1so-2BQ-3D-3D_a6oQc7tnfcb0GKvoO27fPkrQ0ATQyF1SDBXJOg7-2FbuR6P1lN8-2F-2BGBvi5bvFn6gnS4Q5-2FlVpV-2FXAG25ajzh3N3vqI8lFAaIqv0laDmvBvXUhtd2atefOhLzqfcitIle-2B4UsKVyaAI0Z1Vm8z8ZicQg5qX08GG4vMQR1Y-2BxjYT4P6FrmtjZyl36HNTeMVXJN73xo-2FVsqyPSkT6KYo-2FZcsgtjrMjuymlSUoEwqpayYFVu0-3D
  
Subject: Re: The Softimage mailing list

this is the google groups list or the backup of it or...?

On Tue, 12 Nov 2019 at 10:42, adrian wyer 
mailto:adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com>> wrote:
this list was my rock during the early years of xsi
coming from using softimage 3D at a small games company, it was amazing to 
arrive in london, working on commercials, and connecting with a truly unique 
group
of users. We helped and were helped in equal measure, we commiserated the late 
nights and failed renders, and cajoled and tormented each other like only a 
group of
like minded friends could

there were monkeys and cheese, and porl and chinny and kim and countless others 
who crossed the line from virtual comrades to real world friends

i still use soft at least a couple of times a week, and constantly have the 
internal mantra mumbling away "if i was doing this in soft i'd be done by now"

maya has it's occasional moments of "oh, that's clever" but these are far 
outweighed by the constant "why does it have to be that way"

blender looks interesting, might have to give it a try, but getting to the age 
where the knowledge just doesn't go in like it used to
so the struggle with maya (with which i've dabbled since the beta) continues

anyway, im babbling...

thanks for all the help, support and chuckles over the years guys

i'll always have a place in my heart for the list... and cheese

A

Adrian Wyer
Fluid Pictures
4th Floor
4 Bath Place
Rivington Street
London
EC2A 3DR
++44(0) 207 684 5575

adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com
https://u9432639.ct.sendgrid.net/wf/click?upn=lIXdN6W56FnEjHCwrBXqOq0HQNpV0huvAGw1zu6Xp8eVQuk2cNZiNFjx2k-2FfTNcheFfpiVb5gBjGpm0Nj5Q4IwbU-2BeHvtoxntfL8t-2B7V0CtS5d0Pan4XZnl-2BViBoC3en2fJ-2Fcro7oihUmN85RpmtV1r3yDt-2Bs-2B5PUDbD4pjcPGjVkiZW58-2F575BzC7d4-2BPVACT9yn5eudCCq-2F37itII6Zt9iD24Dhh0TEx9qeD3LM3WHTN-2BDcohAwztnDBp-2BPVW-2FtwozLseTVtiLbGd2cRjWgdHbGs4I61NngfH6Bq6NXf-2FygIS97N461rc6oRVeVTB3if9SbcautoXFvqeV8cqQHJHtXvLK23pwXbnpPQJN0Ip0m6TI-2FZfQ1t4v5Ur02orq_a6oQc7tnfcb0GKvoO27fPkrQ0ATQyF1SDBXJOg7-2FbuR6P1lN8-2F-2BGBvi5bvFn6gnS4Q5-2FlVpV-2FXAG25ajzh3N3v4rAhgimRwvewyqlgBHedNJO2-2FrCLtq4NnB7HoQ96X5oFo6yf4Mf-2FdnvQtSDTwuvdpeosql6QFOuJ4HgTzpn-2Bf7YzVUk5XdJSrsVu37en6H-2Fwz0hBEywD-2BOtdjWnWWh5BRFJxEFMLEg1fHDEHkJ8Rs-3D
 

RE: end of another era

[Brent McPherson]

Gelato was developed by ex-Pixar folks including Larry Gritz and started life 
as Exluna which was acquired by NVidia and sued out of existence by Pixar.

Perhaps Gelato was too close in spirit to Exluna or maybe NVidia lost interest 
after too many of the original people behind it left NVidia?

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Blue-5FMoon-5FRendering-5FTools=DwIGaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=Jmp-cFKWMARI3f6-m0bC735txGZbJr98vTb558MuOYg=XclYUE4cs0XxT4ARit97iE9BHKe38NoZ6CE40hFPMYk=
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Saeed Kalhor
Sent: 21 November 2017 20:39
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_xsi-5Flist=DwIGaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=Jmp-cFKWMARI3f6-m0bC735txGZbJr98vTb558MuOYg=iXZ4lDg-RtoD8pENZV0i0kitQiZSbiaGHf-AuD9oELg=
 
Subject: Re: end of another era

There is one thing about Nvidia that i don't like it, they don't have patience 
to make their software mature. Because they are a hardware company.
Do you remember Gelato render engine? If they had developed that software over 
the these years, it might have been the best GPU render software by now.

On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 9:11 PM, Matt Lind 
> wrote:
considering you're using a complex device known as a computer in a high
performance setting, it's goes without saying you need to invest time
learning the tools of the trade.  You don't need to know all the math
algorithms, but you do need a fundamental understanding of how a raytracer
works (in comparison to a scanline or path tracing renderer, for example) so
can set up your scene to render in reasonable time and make best use of
resources.  To expect to push a magic button that makes your art for you is
unrealistic and not of the professional realm.  That's how hobbyists think.

The point of renderers like mental ray is you can customize it to very
specific needs while pushing the envelope with excellent performance in a
variety of scenarios.  Sure, there will always be weak spots, but that's
true of any software.

to put it into another light:

As a professional animator/artist, you're analogous to professional race car
driver, such as in Formula One.  You will not be building the car, but you
do need fundamental understanding of the engine, suspension, and other
elements to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the vehicle so you
can advise your team to tune it to the course and your driving style.  You
will also be required to adjust your driving style to accommodate any short
comings in the vehicle's handling and/or design.  You won't succeed if you
don't put in the effort.  Only in the simple case of going to the grocery
store can you expect your car to be simple enough to turn a key, press the
accelerator, and only worry about turning the steering wheel.  In that
scenario you're no longer pushing the envelope or competing in a
professional capacity as you're dealing with a known quantity.

Likewise, if you expect a renderer to be a push-button solution, then you're
assuming the rendering process is simple and already figured out as a
computer science problem that needs no further research.  then, and only
then, can a user interface be applied on top in a fashion as you expect
because in order to provide such a user interface, you must know all the
possible permutations/combinations of parameter settings and options that
can be applied to produce the look you're imagining.  Clearly that day
hasn't arrived, so to expect to create imagery without any basic knowledge
of a renderer is unrealistic and unprofessional.


I've worked on several projects supporting mental ray as a lighting TD and
shader writer.  The primary reason productions like Barnyard had problems
wasn't because of the technology.  It was due to people failing to take the
time to learn how to use it.  A few specific examples:

In the movie Barnyard, there is a shot of Otis jumping off a diving board
and into a pond shouting "manabunga!" - part of the trailer.  When the
artist was rendering that shot at his desk, each frame was taking 5-6 hours
at 1080p.  After a few days of struggling to meet his deadline he called me
over to his desk...which happened to be only 3 feet behind me because we
shared the same office ;-).  Anyway, after examining the shot, it was
discovered his ray depths were at the default values which caused the rays
entering the water to continually reflect for 10 bounces.  After about 15
minutes of tests, I found he only needed rays to bounce twice to get the
same end result while reducing render time to a few minutes per frame - a
reduction of more than 25x.  A problem created because the 

RE: XSI Size difference issues. Pointlocators etc.

[Brent McPherson]

Not exactly. :-)

I think the real issue is not zeroing out the Z component of the points 
returned by WorldToView.

That would throw off all your line distance calculations (that you thought were 
in screen-space) and then you tried to compensate by making the filtering test 
more complex...
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 17 October 2017 10:05
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_xsi-5Flist=DwIGaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=EVTyh7c8lbHY88bD-zyKahvKoVcfvffaQL-K3A4Q3zQ=fk4aympe6cg6vOweB-PDEDG1yHk3qfgMEKUYx4Z5rK8=
 
Subject: Re: XSI Size difference issues. Pointlocators etc.

It seems i'm overthinking this one. Damn. I should go clear my head i guess. 
Its so simple, damn.
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RE: XSI Size difference issues. Pointlocators etc.

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Andrew,

First, when using WorldToView note that you will be getting back depth 
information in the Z coordinate. (which is useful to reject points that are 
behind the camera)

Therefore, if you just want the points in screen-space you need to zero out the 
Z component for the returned points as shown in the tool SDK examples:

CVector3 l_snapPos;
if ( in_ctxt.WorldToView( m_worldPos, l_snapPos ) == 
CStatus::OK ) {
l_snapPos.PutZ( 0.0 ); // Remove depth info


Second, I would ditch the stuff that uses the view size and the closest_param.

I assume you want to be able to easily select both edges and verts regardless 
of camera zoom.

In that case why not simply have two tests that must both be satisfied to 
select a vertex:

1) you must be closer than X pixels to the vertex. (to avoid selecting verts 
far away when zoomed in)

2) you must be within Y pixels  to the vertex where Y is calculated as a 
percentage of the length of the edge in pixels. (to allow edges to be selected 
when zoomed out)
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 17 October 2017 08:20
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_xsi-5Flist=DwIGaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=sVoW9tN-HMNTbKwj0HFWVtDFPQlsYhd_YLDdUqpgqgY=3UkTv5jOFtivia8ZS2pTnQIMyn0VbCUfOnR6Nf9lN8A=
 
Subject: Re: XSI Size difference issues. Pointlocators etc.

Ok. So i guess i should rephrase my previous message. I read it twice and it a 
bit clumsy and hard to understand what exactly do i want to ask about.
First of all when we deal with tools interaction it's better to see it in 
action, so here is the video: 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__youtu.be_Bu-5F959RYcqY=DwIGaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=sVoW9tN-HMNTbKwj0HFWVtDFPQlsYhd_YLDdUqpgqgY=4ioIKaCFFf4sfxlxVxnttaMVwudKe2-hnwcMtMKDgHo=

Here is a simple test plugin:   
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.dropbox.com_s_7pjcr1coycsnesr_PickTestTool.xsiaddon-3Fdl-3D0=DwIGaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=sVoW9tN-HMNTbKwj0HFWVtDFPQlsYhd_YLDdUqpgqgY=rxASYNbzV49mw5DCowxtCVeASXc52gxoR4yKXtY222s=
Just run PickTestToolStart command and hover mouse over geo.

And here is a new PickVertex() functione code: 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.dropbox.com_s_wzypuavvifsygqr_PickVertex.cpp-3Fdl-3D0=DwIGaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=sVoW9tN-HMNTbKwj0HFWVtDFPQlsYhd_YLDdUqpgqgY=USytyicdIY1g1vn0VgLcu9NaBl_r92VN7xuWDGgqDuQ=
I made it more readable, remove some stuff and add new filtering formula that 
brings result close to what we want but i am not sure about this formula.

Here is the formula:
if (closest_param <( (vx + vy) / edge_vect.GetLength() )*0.01   
 )

If parameter value of current cursor projected to the closest edge is smaller 
than 0.01 part of current relative(or SCREEN size) edge size than we highilte 
this vert.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
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RE: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots

[Brent McPherson]

That is definitely part of the problem.

Existing customers become accustomed to the multi-step workflows (many which 
have been there from the beginning) and so these basic workflow issues don't 
tend to get logged or mentioned but they are more obvious to customers 
migrating from another software package.

When I worked in Maya modeling we definitely paid attention to the 
small-annoying-things-to-fix-in-maya and the ideas-for-maya forums and would 
address items that aligned with our goals for a particular release.

https://mayafeedback.autodesk.com/forums/160518-small-annoying-things-to-fix-in-maya-forum
https://mayafeedback.autodesk.com/forums/160514-ideas-for-maya-forum
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Morten Bartholdy
Sent: 09 October 2017 11:59
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_xsi-5Flist=DwIFAg=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=UFigILe-df1wqnzGj84aTEiN_Sft6gzmozB3_XN3m7c=I5HvOi-JHRkYG59rNeIrGKW3vrCD4Ep1gVKjClkonlE=
 <softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
Subject: RE: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots

Well I think there is no doubt Maya was groundbreaking at the time, and given 
that the Sumatra team was delayed by the Digital Studio efforts, Maya was the 
new software chosen by a ripe market. It is just sad to see how bad Maya still 
is so many years on, compared to the smooth workflow in XSI.

I have our Maya people proudly showing me absolutely lame unintuitive multistep 
workflow solutions to really simple tasks which would take one click, or a 
hotkey, interaction and be done in Softimage. It is mindboggling that 
professional developers have come up with so many counterproductive workflows, 
but I guess it is testiment to the genius of the Softimage core dev team.

Morten




> Den 6. oktober 2017 klokken 17:09 skrev Steven Caron <car...@gmail.com>:
> 
> 
> I an pretty sure Brent helped ship Maya 1.0... so maybe he isn't sane 
> or a 'Softimage man'.
> 
> :P
> 
> 
> *written with my thumbs
> 
> 
> On Oct 6, 2017 7:45 AM, "Morten Bartholdy" <x...@colorshopvfx.dk> wrote:
> 
> Being a former Softimage man, I'd peg you as at least a lot(!) more 
> rational and logical than the other species of software dev's ;)
> 
> Morten
> 
> 
> > Den 6. oktober 2017 klokken 14:30 skrev Brent McPherson <
> brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com>:
> >
> >
> > Huh? Where did you get the impression I'm sane! :-O
> >
> > -Original Message-
> > From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
> > [mailto:softimage-bounces@
> listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Morten Bartholdy
> > Sent: 06 October 2017 13:05
> > To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
> > https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__urldefense.proofpoint=DwIBaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=V2nXQ3LG2UuEiHAogrnDPhrDLjwmCkcpQWPX6XWupKE=Y0s_WCJw-nDfifXu4dvib4QqgFhVRUhRoIr2QWXEpCg=
> >  .
> com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_
> xsi-5Flist=DwIFAg=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=Gm
> X_ 32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=dpzgBs0ngbUSd3U7joA_
> ugvV0VgBSdVPrZXoO0vZ_no=twFHsPAQtXj39VNITMISNu4qszGa7y4LhcRk3Q06k00&
> e=  < softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
> > Subject: RE: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots
> >
> > Thank you Brent. It is good to hear at least one sane person is 
> > working
> on Maya development ;)
> >
> > Morten
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > > Den 5. oktober 2017 klokken 15:54 skrev Brent McPherson <
> brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com>:
> > >
> > >
> > > I added bake pivot as it was frequently requested by Softimage users.
> > > ;-)
> > >
> > > If you want to look behind the curtain it is implemented by the
> bakeCustomToolPivot.mel script in the Maya runtime directory.
> > >
> > > Internally it just calls the move/rotate commands with the 
> > > -preserveChildPosition and -preserveGeometryPosition flags. (after 
> > > figuring out the desired orientation and position)
> > > --
> > > Brent
> > >
> > > From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
> > > [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of 
> > > Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES II]
> > > Sent: 05 October 2017 14:42
> > > To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> > > Subject: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots
> > >
> > > Hey,

RE: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots

[Brent McPherson]

Damn! I've been outed.

Yes, I was part of the team that worked on Maya 1.0 before moving to Softimage.

I was a big proponent of embedded scripting languages and pushed really hard 
for the product to be built around an embedded language. I also worked a lot on 
the core architecture and OpenGL drawing/selection aspects of Maya but left 
very soon after 1.0 shipped.

At Softimage I got to re-invent myself and do a lot more user facing features 
as well as dabble in just about every part of the product which was great fun. 
Also, the passion from the community was a really big part of the whole 
Softimage experience.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Steven Caron
Sent: 06 October 2017 16:09
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_xsi-5Flist=DwIGaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=_OKA4Y5RQbzRZ-X6fu_aw5gZ7gbXIARjBF6PQF6iEWQ=W3kkcuaoBoDE-BH-d1RIYbadv1wEkB68Lg4pcqeyNHU=
  <softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
Subject: RE: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots

I an pretty sure Brent helped ship Maya 1.0... so maybe he isn't sane or a 
'Softimage man'.

:P


*written with my thumbs


On Oct 6, 2017 7:45 AM, "Morten Bartholdy" 
<x...@colorshopvfx.dk<mailto:x...@colorshopvfx.dk>> wrote:
Being a former Softimage man, I'd peg you as at least a lot(!) more rational 
and logical than the other species of software dev's ;)

Morten


> Den 6. oktober 2017 klokken 14:30 skrev Brent McPherson 
> <brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com<mailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com>>:
>
>
> Huh? Where did you get the impression I'm sane! :-O
>
> -Original Message-
> From: 
> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>
>  
> [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>]
>  On Behalf Of Morten Bartholdy
> Sent: 06 October 2017 13:05
> To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_xsi-5Flist=DwIFAg=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=dpzgBs0ngbUSd3U7joA_ugvV0VgBSdVPrZXoO0vZ_no=twFHsPAQtXj39VNITMISNu4qszGa7y4LhcRk3Q06k00=
>   <softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>>
> Subject: RE: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots
>
> Thank you Brent. It is good to hear at least one sane person is working on 
> Maya development ;)
>
> Morten
>
>
>
>
> > Den 5. oktober 2017 klokken 15:54 skrev Brent McPherson 
> > <brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com<mailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com>>:
> >
> >
> > I added bake pivot as it was frequently requested by Softimage users.
> > ;-)
> >
> > If you want to look behind the curtain it is implemented by the 
> > bakeCustomToolPivot.mel script in the Maya runtime directory.
> >
> > Internally it just calls the move/rotate commands with the
> > -preserveChildPosition and -preserveGeometryPosition flags. (after
> > figuring out the desired orientation and position)
> > --
> > Brent
> >
> > From: 
> > softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>
> > [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>]
> >  On Behalf Of
> > Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES II]
> > Sent: 05 October 2017 14:42
> > To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
> > Subject: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots
> >
> > Hey,
> >
> > Given the recent discussion on Maya transforms, and my prior comments on 
> > the subject, I thought I would post this here since I think most Softimage 
> > folks will find it useful.
> >
> > I've been attempting to acclimate to Maya again after a long time away from 
> > it and as a result of some recent projects that I had that felt were better 
> > suited to Maya. In the process I've discovered a few things that have 
> > changed or been added in recent version. One discovery in particular I 
> > think most former SI users will find useful is Bake Pivot.
> >
> > It appears that the command Bake Pivot was added somewhere during version 
> > 2016, and evolved a bit between extension 1 and extension 2 of that 
> > version. In its current incarnation in 2017 and 2018 it appears to function 
> > in a way that will permit you the ability to edit the pivots to get a 
> > result 

RE: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots

[Brent McPherson]

Huh? Where did you get the impression I'm sane! :-O

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Morten Bartholdy
Sent: 06 October 2017 13:05
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_xsi-5Flist=DwIFAg=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=dpzgBs0ngbUSd3U7joA_ugvV0VgBSdVPrZXoO0vZ_no=twFHsPAQtXj39VNITMISNu4qszGa7y4LhcRk3Q06k00=
  <softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
Subject: RE: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots

Thank you Brent. It is good to hear at least one sane person is working on Maya 
development ;)

Morten




> Den 5. oktober 2017 klokken 15:54 skrev Brent McPherson 
> <brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com>:
> 
> 
> I added bake pivot as it was frequently requested by Softimage users. 
> ;-)
> 
> If you want to look behind the curtain it is implemented by the 
> bakeCustomToolPivot.mel script in the Maya runtime directory.
> 
> Internally it just calls the move/rotate commands with the 
> -preserveChildPosition and -preserveGeometryPosition flags. (after 
> figuring out the desired orientation and position)
> --
> Brent
> 
> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
> [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of 
> Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES II]
> Sent: 05 October 2017 14:42
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots
> 
> Hey,
> 
> Given the recent discussion on Maya transforms, and my prior comments on the 
> subject, I thought I would post this here since I think most Softimage folks 
> will find it useful.
> 
> I've been attempting to acclimate to Maya again after a long time away from 
> it and as a result of some recent projects that I had that felt were better 
> suited to Maya. In the process I've discovered a few things that have changed 
> or been added in recent version. One discovery in particular I think most 
> former SI users will find useful is Bake Pivot.
> 
> It appears that the command Bake Pivot was added somewhere during version 
> 2016, and evolved a bit between extension 1 and extension 2 of that version. 
> In its current incarnation in 2017 and 2018 it appears to function in a way 
> that will permit you the ability to edit the pivots to get a result similar 
> to what you were getting in Softimage. To use it:
> 
> 
> Create an object
> Hit the Insert key
> Modify your pivot as desired in both position and orientation (do not 
> exit the pivot editing before baking) Execute Modify>Bake Pivot (make 
> sure it is Position and Orientation)
> 
> 
> Once baked, the pivot will now be relative the object much the way you 
> experienced this in XSI. And it seems to inversely modify the transforms so 
> that everything is maintained within Maya space but in a way that will be 
> familiar to anyone with a prior Softimage background. It seems to be doing 
> something very similar to what we used to do in Maya by performing a 
> unparent/freeze/reset/reparent relative the object and a dummy locator at 
> world space. The Bake Pivot apparently performs all the inverse 
> transformations and freeze/reset without the need to unparent.
> 
> If you're not on Maya 2016 Ext 2 or later you will still have to deal with 
> pivots in the legacy manner. And  I'm still of the mindset to recommend that 
> it is best not to edit pivots in Maya at all if you can avoid it. And least 
> till I better understand what Bake Pivot is really doing...
> 
> 
> Joey
> --
> Softimage Mailing List.
> To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with 
> "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.
--
Softimage Mailing List.
To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with 
"unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.

--
Softimage Mailing List.
To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with 
"unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.

RE: OT Maya Q - default cameras clipping planes

[Brent McPherson]

Yes, it could be a known issue.

I was referring to the fact I (personally) had never heard anyone mention it in 
the modeling area where I have (mostly) worked since joining the Maya team.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Rob Wuijster
Sent: 06 October 2017 10:15
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: OT Maya Q - default cameras clipping planes


That sounds odd to me, as apparently this behavior is there since the first 
release of Maya 2016. Maybe already in 2015 as well.
But hopefully this little nugget of annoyance will be fixed in the next SP of 
2018.



Rob



\/-\/\/
On 6-10-2017 10:22, Brent McPherson wrote:

No problem. I'm really surprised this is the first time I've heard about this 
issue...

--

Brent



-Original Message-

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Ponthieux, 
Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES II]

Sent: 05 October 2017 18:25

To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>

Subject: RE: OT Maya Q - default cameras clipping planes



Brent,



Thanks! I had not been able to get around to submitting it yet.



Joey







-Original Message-

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Brent McPherson

Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2017 12:07 PM

To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_xsi-5Flist=DwIGaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=IPWu-N_w2ofkgXSwipB-xc4RMHrBL8P0YyaTdHzPV5k=dhlZth5P7jGw2KRbG6HhIOabzQtDDjrDhf_CQTh2IeA=
  <softimage@listproc.autodesk.com><mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>

Subject: RE: OT Maya Q - default cameras clipping planes



I entered a bug for this:



MAYA-87698 - Large objects are incorrectly framed in the 3D ortho views



The workaround is to just select the ortho camera in the outliner and increase 
the translation channel but I agree it looks like a bug due to the fact it does 
translate the ortho camera a little bit if you pan and then frame.



Thanks.

--

Brent



-Original Message-

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Ponthieux, 
Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES II]

Sent: 05 October 2017 14:31

To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>

Subject: RE: OT Maya Q - default cameras clipping planes





It seems this might be a bug actually. I posted this to the Area yesterday and 
the only response I got back seems to confirm that. I'm finding that there are 
times when Frame Selection actually does affect the lens position, but for some 
reason it seems like it is broken in most cases for the ortho panels. What 
Default View is doing is correctly positioning the lens outside the extent of 
the geometry by positioning the Z. When you hit Frame Selection again, you're 
then setting the ortho width and that frames the XY.



It does not appear to have any issues setting camera position for non-ortho 
cameras. So this must be an error in how it resolves the framing in ortho mode 
only.



You will find that the predefined Front Bookmark also works correctly setting 
the Z position like you would expect, and when the camera doesn’t reposition 
properly after a Frame Selection, if you just alt-middle click drag the camera 
a little to one side or the other, then frame selection again, it will actually 
change the Z position a little. After several repeats it will find its way 
outside the geometry extent. I would be surprised if there was a divide by zero 
error hidden in the Frame Selection code somewhere.



Joey







-Original Message-

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Morten Bartholdy

Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2017 6:15 AM

To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_xsi-5Flist=DwIGaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=HUtkv4Ex045kP5iHOzaFo51-41knkpa0DiMyZ-aZ7DA=ZNGqh5ZKBMsbBz85z_29XeT1kNMKI5NCprXj8q1UehA=
  <softimage@listproc.autodesk.com><mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>

Subject: RE: OT Maya Q - default cameras clipping planes



Holy crap, this is lame, even for Maya. Your suggestion works - upon inspection 
the default cameras are too close to the large objects, which effectively clips 
the closest parts. 

RE: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots

[Brent McPherson]

No, it is pretty much the same thing as what was done in Soft.

Modify the transform and then apply the opposite transform onto the geometry 
(or child transforms) to keep everything at the same position.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Ponthieux, Joseph 
G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES II]
Sent: 05 October 2017 18:39
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots

Brent,

Given Maya's inherently awkward way of dealing with transforms, this was very 
well done! Thanks!

So far I've been unable to detect any resulting position or orientation 
differences between setting Center live in Softimage and baking the pivot in 
Maya under like circumstances. Are you aware of any differences or caveats that 
would affect its use or at least not maintain a result similar to SI?

Joey



From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Brent McPherson
Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2017 9:54 AM
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_xsi-5Flist=DwIFAg=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=nZR5PQ3OaZ4YQ75dv58gaI81qRqQQEo9yYXP_TjUxfo=YzhPLX11CqXYNNfpwgINfzrXBR7i1zhtcHfpHOiUUZk=
  <softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>>
Subject: RE: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots

I added bake pivot as it was frequently requested by Softimage users. ;-)

If you want to look behind the curtain it is implemented by the 
bakeCustomToolPivot.mel script in the Maya runtime directory.

Internally it just calls the move/rotate commands with the 
-preserveChildPosition and -preserveGeometryPosition flags. (after figuring out 
the desired orientation and position)
--
Brent

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Ponthieux, 
Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES II]
Sent: 05 October 2017 14:42
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
Subject: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots

Hey,

Given the recent discussion on Maya transforms, and my prior comments on the 
subject, I thought I would post this here since I think most Softimage folks 
will find it useful.

I've been attempting to acclimate to Maya again after a long time away from it 
and as a result of some recent projects that I had that felt were better suited 
to Maya. In the process I've discovered a few things that have changed or been 
added in recent version. One discovery in particular I think most former SI 
users will find useful is Bake Pivot.

It appears that the command Bake Pivot was added somewhere during version 2016, 
and evolved a bit between extension 1 and extension 2 of that version. In its 
current incarnation in 2017 and 2018 it appears to function in a way that will 
permit you the ability to edit the pivots to get a result similar to what you 
were getting in Softimage. To use it:


Create an object
Hit the Insert key
Modify your pivot as desired in both position and orientation (do not exit the 
pivot editing before baking)
Execute Modify>Bake Pivot (make sure it is Position and Orientation)


Once baked, the pivot will now be relative the object much the way you 
experienced this in XSI. And it seems to inversely modify the transforms so 
that everything is maintained within Maya space but in a way that will be 
familiar to anyone with a prior Softimage background. It seems to be doing 
something very similar to what we used to do in Maya by performing a 
unparent/freeze/reset/reparent relative the object and a dummy locator at world 
space. The Bake Pivot apparently performs all the inverse transformations and 
freeze/reset without the need to unparent.

If you're not on Maya 2016 Ext 2 or later you will still have to deal with 
pivots in the legacy manner. And  I'm still of the mindset to recommend that it 
is best not to edit pivots in Maya at all if you can avoid it. And least till I 
better understand what Bake Pivot is really doing...


Joey
--
Softimage Mailing List.
To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with 
"unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.

RE: OT Maya Q - default cameras clipping planes

[Brent McPherson]

No problem. I'm really surprised this is the first time I've heard about this 
issue...
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Ponthieux, Joseph 
G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES II]
Sent: 05 October 2017 18:25
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: OT Maya Q - default cameras clipping planes

Brent,

Thanks! I had not been able to get around to submitting it yet. 

Joey



-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Brent McPherson
Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2017 12:07 PM
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_xsi-5Flist=DwIGaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=IPWu-N_w2ofkgXSwipB-xc4RMHrBL8P0YyaTdHzPV5k=dhlZth5P7jGw2KRbG6HhIOabzQtDDjrDhf_CQTh2IeA=
  <softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
Subject: RE: OT Maya Q - default cameras clipping planes

I entered a bug for this:

MAYA-87698 - Large objects are incorrectly framed in the 3D ortho views

The workaround is to just select the ortho camera in the outliner and increase 
the translation channel but I agree it looks like a bug due to the fact it does 
translate the ortho camera a little bit if you pan and then frame.

Thanks.
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Ponthieux, Joseph 
G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES II]
Sent: 05 October 2017 14:31
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: OT Maya Q - default cameras clipping planes


It seems this might be a bug actually. I posted this to the Area yesterday and 
the only response I got back seems to confirm that. I'm finding that there are 
times when Frame Selection actually does affect the lens position, but for some 
reason it seems like it is broken in most cases for the ortho panels. What 
Default View is doing is correctly positioning the lens outside the extent of 
the geometry by positioning the Z. When you hit Frame Selection again, you're 
then setting the ortho width and that frames the XY. 

It does not appear to have any issues setting camera position for non-ortho 
cameras. So this must be an error in how it resolves the framing in ortho mode 
only. 

You will find that the predefined Front Bookmark also works correctly setting 
the Z position like you would expect, and when the camera doesn’t reposition 
properly after a Frame Selection, if you just alt-middle click drag the camera 
a little to one side or the other, then frame selection again, it will actually 
change the Z position a little. After several repeats it will find its way 
outside the geometry extent. I would be surprised if there was a divide by zero 
error hidden in the Frame Selection code somewhere.

Joey



-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Morten Bartholdy
Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2017 6:15 AM
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_xsi-5Flist=DwIGaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=HUtkv4Ex045kP5iHOzaFo51-41knkpa0DiMyZ-aZ7DA=ZNGqh5ZKBMsbBz85z_29XeT1kNMKI5NCprXj8q1UehA=
  <softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
Subject: RE: OT Maya Q - default cameras clipping planes

Holy crap, this is lame, even for Maya. Your suggestion works - upon inspection 
the default cameras are too close to the large objects, which effectively clips 
the closest parts. I had no idea, as there is still a ton of stuff I don't know 
about Maya. This is after framing the objects using both A and F in order to 
see what might fix it, plus trying to dolly away to no avail.

What I do know about Maya - never expect it to act or behave sensibly nor 
logically :-/

Since you know the ins and outs - it drives me crazy that there apparently is 
no actual zoom function in Maya wievports, like the one we know from Softimage. 
I am talking about changing camera fov using Z interactively while working on 
framing in a scene. Asking our Maya residents they reply they don't use that so 
they don't know how. They say to select camera and change fov in the Attribute 
Editor.

How do you manage stuff like that (assuming you have found a smarter way).

Thanks
Morten





> Den 4. oktober 2017 klokken 19:15 skrev "Ponthieux, Joseph G. 
> (LARC-E1A)[LITES II]" <j.ponthi...@nasa.gov>:
> 
> 
> So it seems I was wrong. The 1000.1 value can change when using the Framing 
> function. The F key. But It doesn’t change when attempting to zoom or dolly 
> in the front, top or side viewport using the mouse.
> 
> What I am seeing is the part of

RE: OT Maya Q - default cameras clipping planes

[Brent McPherson]

I entered a bug for this:

MAYA-87698 - Large objects are incorrectly framed in the 3D ortho views

The workaround is to just select the ortho camera in the outliner and increase 
the translation channel but I agree it looks like a bug due to the fact it does 
translate the ortho camera a little bit if you pan and then frame.

Thanks.
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Ponthieux, Joseph 
G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES II]
Sent: 05 October 2017 14:31
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: OT Maya Q - default cameras clipping planes


It seems this might be a bug actually. I posted this to the Area yesterday and 
the only response I got back seems to confirm that. I'm finding that there are 
times when Frame Selection actually does affect the lens position, but for some 
reason it seems like it is broken in most cases for the ortho panels. What 
Default View is doing is correctly positioning the lens outside the extent of 
the geometry by positioning the Z. When you hit Frame Selection again, you're 
then setting the ortho width and that frames the XY. 

It does not appear to have any issues setting camera position for non-ortho 
cameras. So this must be an error in how it resolves the framing in ortho mode 
only. 

You will find that the predefined Front Bookmark also works correctly setting 
the Z position like you would expect, and when the camera doesn’t reposition 
properly after a Frame Selection, if you just alt-middle click drag the camera 
a little to one side or the other, then frame selection again, it will actually 
change the Z position a little. After several repeats it will find its way 
outside the geometry extent. I would be surprised if there was a divide by zero 
error hidden in the Frame Selection code somewhere.

Joey



-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Morten Bartholdy
Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2017 6:15 AM
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_xsi-5Flist=DwIGaQ=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA=HUtkv4Ex045kP5iHOzaFo51-41knkpa0DiMyZ-aZ7DA=ZNGqh5ZKBMsbBz85z_29XeT1kNMKI5NCprXj8q1UehA=
  
Subject: RE: OT Maya Q - default cameras clipping planes

Holy crap, this is lame, even for Maya. Your suggestion works - upon inspection 
the default cameras are too close to the large objects, which effectively clips 
the closest parts. I had no idea, as there is still a ton of stuff I don't know 
about Maya. This is after framing the objects using both A and F in order to 
see what might fix it, plus trying to dolly away to no avail.

What I do know about Maya - never expect it to act or behave sensibly nor 
logically :-/

Since you know the ins and outs - it drives me crazy that there apparently is 
no actual zoom function in Maya wievports, like the one we know from Softimage. 
I am talking about changing camera fov using Z interactively while working on 
framing in a scene. Asking our Maya residents they reply they don't use that so 
they don't know how. They say to select camera and change fov in the Attribute 
Editor.

How do you manage stuff like that (assuming you have found a smarter way).

Thanks
Morten





> Den 4. oktober 2017 klokken 19:15 skrev "Ponthieux, Joseph G. 
> (LARC-E1A)[LITES II]" :
> 
> 
> So it seems I was wrong. The 1000.1 value can change when using the Framing 
> function. The F key. But It doesn’t change when attempting to zoom or dolly 
> in the front, top or side viewport using the mouse.
> 
> What I am seeing is the part of a really large object closest the camera is 
> clipped and the near clip is incapable of seeing anything because the camera 
> head is not actually in front of the object. And I can't set near clip to a 
> negative value. Is this what you are experiencing?
> 
> To replicate, in a new scene create a sphere with a radius of 1500 units. 
> Select the sphere and hit F key in the Front viewport. This illustrates that 
> part of the 1500 radius sphere is past the normal position of the Front 
> camera which is 1000.1 units Z. You can clearly see the problem if you have 
> the viewport set to shading. So in Front camera for example you have to 
> manually set camera Z to a value which places the camera in front of all 
> geometry, such as 1600 units Z, which means you have to know the geometry 
> extent relative that camera. And then make sure the far clipping plane is 
> beyond the far side.
> 
> It seems that you can somewhat correct the situation by executing 
> View>Default View for the viewport in question, executing the A key or 
> selecting the object or objects then hit the F key. Then suddenly it will set 
> the Z extent in front of the 

RE: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots

[Brent McPherson]

I added bake pivot as it was frequently requested by Softimage users. ;-)

If you want to look behind the curtain it is implemented by the 
bakeCustomToolPivot.mel script in the Maya runtime directory.

Internally it just calls the move/rotate commands with the 
-preserveChildPosition and -preserveGeometryPosition flags. (after figuring out 
the desired orientation and position)
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Ponthieux, Joseph 
G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES II]
Sent: 05 October 2017 14:42
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots

Hey,

Given the recent discussion on Maya transforms, and my prior comments on the 
subject, I thought I would post this here since I think most Softimage folks 
will find it useful.

I've been attempting to acclimate to Maya again after a long time away from it 
and as a result of some recent projects that I had that felt were better suited 
to Maya. In the process I've discovered a few things that have changed or been 
added in recent version. One discovery in particular I think most former SI 
users will find useful is Bake Pivot.

It appears that the command Bake Pivot was added somewhere during version 2016, 
and evolved a bit between extension 1 and extension 2 of that version. In its 
current incarnation in 2017 and 2018 it appears to function in a way that will 
permit you the ability to edit the pivots to get a result similar to what you 
were getting in Softimage. To use it:


Create an object
Hit the Insert key
Modify your pivot as desired in both position and orientation (do not exit the 
pivot editing before baking)
Execute Modify>Bake Pivot (make sure it is Position and Orientation)


Once baked, the pivot will now be relative the object much the way you 
experienced this in XSI. And it seems to inversely modify the transforms so 
that everything is maintained within Maya space but in a way that will be 
familiar to anyone with a prior Softimage background. It seems to be doing 
something very similar to what we used to do in Maya by performing a 
unparent/freeze/reset/reparent relative the object and a dummy locator at world 
space. The Bake Pivot apparently performs all the inverse transformations and 
freeze/reset without the need to unparent.

If you're not on Maya 2016 Ext 2 or later you will still have to deal with 
pivots in the legacy manner. And  I'm still of the mindset to recommend that it 
is best not to edit pivots in Maya at all if you can avoid it. And least till I 
better understand what Bake Pivot is really doing...


Joey
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RE: Shift+z in Maya

[Brent McPherson]

- Tap Backslash (\) to toggle in/out of 2D pan/zoom mode in Maya
- Hold Backslash (\) and use middle/right button to pan and zoom in 2D.
- Hold Backslah (\) then Ctrl+right mouse to rectangle zoom in 2D

http://cgbreakdown.com/Blog/maya-tips-camera-panzoom
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Lawrence Pankhurst
Sent: 12 September 2017 08:17
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Shift+z in Maya

Hi everyone,

Another how to do this in Maya question I'm afraid!

In Soft if you have rotoscope enabled in a perspective view and press shift+z 
draw a rectangle you can zoom into that area without actually changing the 
position of the camera or FoV, very useful for checking positions of objects 
relative to a large back plate etc.

Any ideas how to do this or something similar in Maya?

Cheers

Lawrence
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RE: XSI SelectTool context menus.

[Brent McPherson]

You can't call the select tools custom context menu from your tool.

You also can't temporarily deactivate your tool since XSI controls when tools 
are activated/deactivated. (Deactivate is just a callback to notify you that 
you have been deactivated)

I think your only option is to recreate the select tool menus from scratch 
yourself.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 19 August 2017 06:15
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list 

Subject: Re: XSI SelectTool context menus.

Ok. Lets try to approach this problem from a different angle.
CustomTools have callback Deactivate, right ?! So i suppose that we can 
temporarily deactivate
our CustomTool and jump to SelectTool (process RMB and invoke menu), and back 
to our CustomTool again.
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RE: XSI SelectTool context menus.

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Andrew,

You cannot reuse the existing select tool context menus but you can definitely 
setup your own context menus.

All you need to do is:

1) declare a MenuInit callback on your tool which will be called to populate 
menu
2) call ShowContextMenu to show the menu (e.g. when the user clicks the right 
mouse button down)

http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/softimage2014/en_us/sdkguide/index.html?url=si_cpp/classXSI_1_1ToolContext.html,topicNumber=si_cpp_classXSI_1_1ToolContext_htmldccb5d73-183f-47c7-9bd8-bf02334bf002
--
Brent


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 16 August 2017 18:45
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list 

Subject: XSI SelectTool context menus.

Hello guys.
I'm looking for a way to add SelectTool context menus to my CustomTool.
This menus: http://imgur.com/a/oUyLa
Is there any way to reach Select Tool RMB menu ?
I guess this menus are dynamically generated, so maybe they can be reached 
outside of SelectTool.
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RE: EdgeRing ALG for n-gons

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Andy,

In Andrews' code just calling the Softimage mesh methods once and saving that 
result for reuse would probably eliminate his performance issues.

What you are suggesting is the next level when you find that the data stored in 
the Softimage containers is not in a format where it can be accessed quickly. 
Great advice but there are easier things to fix in Andrew's code first IMO.

Cheers.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andy Nicholas
Sent: 29 July 2017 20:26
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list 

Subject: Re: EdgeRing ALG for n-gons

Hi Andrew,
I believe what Brent is suggesting is to request the data from Softimage once, 
cache it in whatever way makes the most sense for your application, and then 
run your algorithms on that. When I wrote the “Taut” plugin for Softimage, I 
built all the adjacency information and stored it using STL containers (maps, 
etc.). It meant that I could optimise the data structures to Taut's 
functionality and it generally ran pretty fast.

Andy


On 29 Jul 2017, at 07:43, Andrew Prostrelov 
> wrote:

Can you tell a bit more about optimisation and efficient calls pls.
I have lots of question about XSI objects and classes best practices.
If i understand your suggestion right i should alwayse preffer XSI reference 
containers (EdgeRefArray etc) to value containers like CLongArray, CValueArray 
etc. Or not ?
I also often use curMesh.GetEdges().GetItem() aproach to get one specific 
component instance with known index.
I suppose this way also is slow. What should i do in this situation ?
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RE: EdgeRing ALG for n-gons

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Andrew,

What I am suggesting is that you only call methods like GetEdges once, save the 
result into a local variable and then use the local variable in the inner loops 
instead.

e.g. You should only call to GetEdges (and many other mesh methods) once in 
your code.

CEdgeRefArray edges = curMesh.GetEdges();

for...
for...
 do_something(edges.GetItem(i));

Whenever you see a long sting on repeated calls (a().b().c()...) you should ask 
yourself whether you can save the intermediate results in a local variable and 
use that instead.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 29 July 2017 07:43
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list 

Subject: Re: EdgeRing ALG for n-gons

Can you tell a bit more about optimisation and efficient calls pls.
I have lots of question about XSI objects and classes best practices.
If i understand your suggestion right i should alwayse preffer XSI reference 
containers (EdgeRefArray etc) to value containers like CLongArray, CValueArray 
etc. Or not ?
I also often use curMesh.GetEdges().GetItem() aproach to get one specific 
component instance with known index.
I suppose this way also is slow. What should i do in this situation ?
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RE: EdgeRing ALG for n-gons

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Andrew,

From what I remember loop finding is not multi-threaded in Softimage.

I had a quick look at your code and you have a lot of nested calls in your 
inner loops so you are making a lot of redundant API calls which is likely 
killing your performance. (so switching to a faster path finding algorithm 
won't help)

e.g.  
curMesh.GetEdges().GetItem(current_nbe[i])).GetVertices().GetPositionArray()

You should request the position array once and then reuse that array instead 
requesting it each time you need it which is very inefficient. (same with all 
the other redundant API calls in the code)

Cheers!
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 15 July 2017 08:19
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list 

Subject: Re: EdgeRing ALG for n-gons

It was interesting.
I wrote 2 simple realisation of A* for edges.
First use simple approach g & h.
Second one use h *= 0.001. For thothe who familiar with A* this code line force 
alg to search next branch closer to destination (not to the start location).
Unfortunately  even if we use std::priority_queue as faster container it is 
still very slow on sphere div6+.
I guess the native XSI pathfinde alg for components is a multithreaded.
I don't have threading code experience yet so here is a A* realisation for 
edges:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8j4p52fo0saiz2s/A.cpp
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tqy610cy6hvphao/A.h
If someone have a time to make it threaded or suggest something - feel free.
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RE: EdgeRing ALG for n-gons

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Andrew,

You really want a path finding algorithm.

Trying to follow a straight line doesn't generally yield good results since the 
edges may not align with the shortest distance. (e.g. think about a path on a 
sphere where the shortest distance cuts through the center)

Have a look at path-finding algorithms as they are generally not that hard to 
implement. The general idea is that they start from a single location and 
spread outward (like a wave) accumulating the distance until the target 
position is reached. (or we fail to reach the target) You can then use another 
heuristic to choose among paths of the same length. (like straight line etc)

Here are some links to get you started:
http://ai-depot.com/Tutorial/PathFinding.html
http://www.redblobgames.com/pathfinding/a-star/introduction.html
http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/GameProgramming/AStarComparison.html
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 26 June 2017 12:21
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list 

Subject: Re: EdgeRing ALG for n-gons

Yes you right. I already done border cases quads etc.
So i guess the simplest way is to construct vector from far neighbor edge vert 
to end edge and get edge with smallest vector length.
It's like a tentacle i guess )
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RE: EdgeRing ALG for n-gons

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Andrew,

Edge loops are trickier and employ many different approaches including quads 
and following edges based on collinearity (dot product), following border 
edges, creases to name a few.

Too many approaches to go into details but if they all fail (e.g. when dealing 
with an arbitrary loop between two components) then a shortest path search is 
used. (e.g. think path finding like the kind used in video games)

If there are multiple equal paths then you could use something like your 
projected line test to choose the straightest path. e.g. when dealing with grid 
topology where all paths will be equal in length. (within error tolerances)
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 26 June 2017 07:20
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list 

Subject: Re: EdgeRing ALG for n-gons

Ok. So i finished full and segment(or range) edge ring selection block.
Also finished full edge loop selection. But edge loop segment(range) selection 
is a tricky one.
It definitely use different approach to collect edges.
http://c2n.me/3LCDqzC

First i tryed to creat CLine primitive from center of first selected edge (lmb) 
to second selected edge (lmbx2).
Then one by one we project first edge vertex neighbor edges onto CLine and get 
edge with max Parameter value. But it doesn't work right.
It also doesn't work if we smply get distance to vertex neighbor edges (with no 
projection onto CLine).

I assume that edge loop range algorithm also use dot_product and collinearity.
But i still didn't figure it out how.
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RE: EdgeRing ALG for n-gons

[Brent McPherson]

Andrew,

Actually it looks like it is using two different approaches depending on 
whether we are dealing with quads or N-gons with more than 4 sides.

For quads it simply add 2 to the index. For N-gons it is looking for the most 
parallel non-adjacent edge. (using dot product and ignoring edges that are more 
than 30 degrees from parallel)
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 15 June 2017 07:24
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list 

Subject: Re: EdgeRing ALG for n-gons

The friend of mine tried to move n-gon vertices and select edge ring from the 
same (1) > (2) edges. The result edge ring changes. So i suppose its not just 
an index calculation approach.
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RE: EdgeRing ALG for n-gons

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Andrew,

There is probably an implicit assumption for edge rings that we are dealing 
with quads so I'm wondering if you  have tried the naive approach of just 
adding or subtracting 2 from the edge index?
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 14 June 2017 05:06
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list 

Subject: EdgeRing ALG for n-gons

Looking for edgering calculation algorithm for n-gons.

The formula i used so far was:
opposit_edge_index = all_edges[ (edge_CCW_index + (len(all_edges) / 2) ) % 
len(all_edges) ]
For example if we want to find opposite hour to 9 am via this formula we got:
opposit_hour_index = 12[ (9 + (12 / 2) ) % 12 ] = 3

Unfortunately this formula approach is not the same XSI native edge ring uses.
http://c2n.me/3Liop7C
I perform edge ring selection in direction (1) > (2) edge. And as you can see 
the opposite to 11 edge is edge with number 40.
But according formula above it should be edge number 51.

The friend of mine suggest that XSI use angle in opposite edge calculation.
But i suppose that any angle calculation in edge ring would gave us very 
inaccurate results.
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RE: Query XSI SelectTool mode (lasso, rectangle, paint etc)

[Brent McPherson]

Sorry, I can't remember.

The GetUserPref command accesses a different persistent value store so you may 
have to use ExecuteCommand to access the values in C++.
--
Brent


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 06 June 2017 05:46
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list 

Subject: Re: Query XSI SelectTool mode (lasso, rectangle, paint etc)

Oh by the way, can i reach UserPreference from C++ API ?

I tried this one: http://c2n.me/3L4f8DM
But i end up with list of native XSI preferences.
There are no prefs like "SI3D_RECTSEL_REGION_MODE".
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RE: Query XSI SelectTool mode (lasso, rectangle, paint etc)

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Andrew,

You should poke around in uixsiscripts.vbs in your XSI install as it has a 
bunch of selection related code that should help you figure this out.

The major selection tool mode can be accessed using:
l_SelMode = GetUserPref("SI3D_RECTSEL_REGION_MODE")

The return values are:
1: Rectangle
2: Raycast
3: Lasso
4: Freeform

For rectangle raycast you need to be in Rectangle mode and 
GetValue("Preferences.Select.rectraycast") has to also be true and you need to 
be in shaded mode etc.

Finally, paint select is a different selection tool so it is not a mode like 
the other items in the menu.
--
Brent


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 05 June 2017 13:20
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list 

Subject: Query XSI SelectTool mode (lasso, rectangle, paint etc)

Ok. Another XSI Tools question. I tried to solve it with local collective mind 
but it seems that it need global overmind help.

There are lots of stuff in commands list that helps to switch current context 
to the special select tool mode: http://c2n.me/3L34qvz
But i didn't find any commands that can get\query current SelectionTool mode 
(Lasso, Rectangle, Freeform, Paint etc).

My main goal is to perform components selection change from inside my custom 
ToolContext (add components, subs components , toggle comps etc) in same 
SelectionTool mode. So if we select for example polys with lasso we should also 
select them with lasso in CustomTool.
I mention that we always have this menu with current selection mode checked. 
Maybe we can somehow reach this menu: http://c2n.me/3L36T8U
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RE: Getting close to a 3 year old EOL annyversary

[Brent McPherson]

The 3D plugin market has never seemed that healthy and it takes a lot of effort 
to turn production tools into a commercial tools.

xGen, Mash and NEX are all examples of tools that required a significant, 
multi-year effort to integrate into Maya.

I agree with Matt's assessment. The 3D market today is not the same as the one 
in which the major DCCs were developed and the risk vs. reward proposition 
doesn't seem to be attracting enough new players to the market.
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andy Nicholas
Sent: 01 March 2017 12:42
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Getting close to a 3 year old EOL annyversary

There are alternative business models though. For example, one where you 
polish and release in-house tools:

https://bufsoftware.com/products/bsuite/

Anyone know what's happened to it? Is it still in active development?



On 01/03/2017 12:27, Matt Lind wrote:
> I don't think we'll see new comprehensive DCC applications in the 3D space,
> other than possibly Fabric Engine if they decide to go in that direction.
>
> The 1990s taught us it's a very expensive, time consuming, high risk,
> resource intensive effort that sells to a limited market.  Most of these
> applications took 3-4 years to engineer a new core and only Softimage did a
> complete ground-up rewrite on that schedule (with Microsoft money to burn).
> The others borrowed pieces of existing technology.  Once these apps hit the
> market, it was another few years of lean cash flow until industry trusted
> them enough to adopt for general use.  That's another way of saying you need
> at least 5 years of funding to undertake such an effort.
>
> The industry has evolved and expanded since the 1990s, but prices have
> plummeted.   Maya was originally released with MSRP of $35,000 USD.
> Softimage at $13,995 USD.  You have to sell a lot more licenses these days
> to recoup costs.
>
> Another issue is the market has fragmented so much each specialty is
> steering towards it's own dedicated toolset.  While new DCC's are desired,
> they don't appear to be a practical option.  Going against the established
> players is taking on a field of giants - and they have a good number of
> patents for really important technology too.  To compete in today's market,
> you need a different formula to cause enough disruption backed by someone
> with great ambition and cash.  Elon Musk is probably the most recent
> example, but despite all the resources, you can see how long and difficult
> it has been for Tesla to penetrate the market.  Software isn't automobiles,
> but the analogy holds.
>
> Matt
>
>
> Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2017 00:50:01 +0100
> From: Sebastien Sterling 
> Subject: Re: Getting close to a 3 year old EOL annyversary
>
> See you later Space Software... (do you even reference mate ? )
>
> When will the next generation of digital content creation tools/Platforms
> happen I wonder ? Fabric is beating the fanfare don't get me wrong, but it
> feels like we are late for a new member in the full solution family,
> something that makes use of the advances made in tech... since after 1998.
>
> Also out of interest what would people like to see in It? Other then a row
> of AD ceo's heads on sticks at boot up?
>
>
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RE: SI|3D Flashback

[Brent McPherson]

That's right. I knew it was Francois or Francis but couldn't remember his last 
name.

P.S. Don't Google his name at work because you will get a bunch of erotic 
animated GIFs made by someone with the same name. :-O
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Matt Lind
Sent: 15 November 2016 08:31
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: SI|3D Flashback

I believe the developer's name is Francois Painchaud.

Matt


Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2016 08:47:09 +
From: Brent McPherson <brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com>
Subject: RE: SI|3D Flashback
To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com"

The volume deform was inspired by Grabber and the guy behind Grabber (who 
was working at Softimage at the time and whose name I can't remember) was 
supportive of our effort to replicate his plugin in XSI.
--
Brent


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RE: SI|3D Flashback

[Brent McPherson]

The volume deform was inspired by Grabber and the guy behind Grabber (who was 
working at Softimage at the time and whose name I can't remember) was 
supportive of our effort to replicate his plugin in XSI.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Grahame Fuller
Sent: 11 November 2016 20:52
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: SI|3D Flashback

The company name was spelled Konshus IIRC. The design of XSI’s Volume Deformer 
was indeed based on their Grabber plugin for SI|3D. Konshus also made a 
sculpting tool called Smither (I think) and maybe another tool.

gray

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sven Constable
Sent: Friday, November 11, 2016 3:46 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: SI|3D Flashback

I think MetaMesh was from PhoenixTools.

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Francois Lord
Sent: Friday, November 11, 2016 9:37 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: SI|3D Flashback


Ah yes the Grabber! It became the Volume Deform in XSI. I thought it worked 
better as a modeling tool in soft, but was a better deform tool in XSI.

Conscious also made the MetaMesh plugin if my memory serves me well. It was an 
implementation of subd in Soft|3D.

On 11/11/2016 01:31 PM, Sven Constable wrote:
Hey list,

a demo by Chinny and he's talking about some plugins. I remember many of them, 
like PhoenixTools, Arete and the Ray Rebels stuff but I never heard of 
"Conscious". They developed a plugin called Grabber, that seems it was 
incorporated in XSI later on, as "Volume Deform". Ha, didn't know that!
Quite entertaining demo btw. Great foleys ;)

sven

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVPawEVWDT8




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RE: Aw: Re: Friday Flashback #277

[Brent McPherson]

Sandy,

I think you are remembering the hilarious photoshop someone did at the time 
showing Chinny's face on hoodie man.

Pity no one saved it because that would make a great flashback image! :-)
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Marc-Andre 
Carbonneau
Sent: 05 September 2016 13:33
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com; w...@fiftyeight.com
Subject: RE: Aw: Re: Friday Flashback #277

Pretty sure it was someone an ad agency hired… sorry to deceive. :P

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sandy Sutherland
Sent: September-04-16 8:00 AM
To: w...@fiftyeight.com; softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Aw: Re: Friday Flashback #277


Pretty sure it was Chinny was it not?

On 4 Sep 2016 12:37, "wavo" > 
wrote:
Maybe Carl B. ?
!
--
Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android Mobiltelefon mit 1&1 Mail gesendet.
Am 03.09.2016, 21:34, Bradley Gabe 
> schrieb:
Did we ever find out who was behind the hoodie?

On Sat, Sep 3, 2016 at 11:10 AM, Stephen Blair 
> wrote:
Softimage XSI6 mr hoodie brochure

http://xsisupport.com/2016/09/02/friday-flashback-277

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RE: Wiki EOL soon

[Brent McPherson]

Probably the comment that says use HTTrack because it is better.

So try wget or HTTrack or both. :-)

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Greg Punchatz
Sent: 18 August 2016 14:27
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Wiki EOL soon

Matt, Which comment are you referring to ?

On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 2:44 AM, Matt Lind 
<speye...@hotmail.com<mailto:speye...@hotmail.com>> wrote:
Interesting first comment at the bottom of the page.

Matt




Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2016 07:23:01 +
From: Brent McPherson 
<brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com<mailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com>>
Subject: RE: Wiki EOL soon
To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>"

You should be able to snag a copy of the site using wget and it will
probably be more functional than a backup since wget will convert all the
embedded page links etc.

https://www.guyrutenberg.com/2014/05/02/make-offline-mirror-of-a-site-using-wget/

Cheers!
--
Brent
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RE: Wiki EOL soon

[Brent McPherson]

You should be able to snag a copy of the site using wget and it will probably 
be more functional than a backup since wget will convert all the embedded page 
links etc.

https://www.guyrutenberg.com/2014/05/02/make-offline-mirror-of-a-site-using-wget/

Cheers!
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andres Stephens
Sent: 17 August 2016 20:24
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Wiki EOL soon

A local copy was the right word! Sorry. I panicked.

-Draise

From: Maurice Patel
Sent: 17 August 2016 14:00
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Wiki EOL soon

HI,
I am not sure what you mean by a physical copy but the wayback machine 
typically keeps archives of old sites which provides  a certain level of 
availability but not all.
If you need anything it may be best to save a local copy to your machine before 
November
maurice


Maurice Patel
Tél:  514 954-7134
Cell: 514 242-6549

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andres Stephens
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2016 2:48 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Wiki EOL soon


Crap crap crap. Where can we download a physical copy?

-Draise

+57 3138116821
Bogotá, Colombia
On 17 Aug 2016, at 12:57, Olivier Jeannel 
>>
 wrote:
http://softimage.wiki.softimage.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

[http://softimage.wiki.softimage.com/skins/monobook/media/si/ACG_Wiki_a_head_banner_lft.png]

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RE: New Softimage|3D plugin: Soft memories

[Brent McPherson]

I'll admit that it took me a surprisingly long time to realize this is a plugin 
for Softimage|3D and not Softimage|XSI!

Does Softimage|3D still run on modern hardware or do you have a clean room 
somewhere running Windows NT on a Pentium? ;-)
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Matt Lind
Sent: 29 July 2016 23:11
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: New Softimage|3D plugin: Soft memories

For immediate release:

The newest plugin “Soft memories” is now available for Softimage|3D.  Soft 
Memories exports Softimage|3D scenes to an XML-like file format so data can be 
archived to remove dependencies on Softimage|3D to be able to view and 
manipulate content.  Data is stored as XML to make it easy to develop importers 
to another 3D application or viewer without issues of binary or version 
compatibility.  All scene elements accessible by the SAAphire SDK are supported 
including 3rd party plugins and shaders.

The plugin was developed to find a solution to a common problem digital artists 
face – how to archive data for a portfolio but still make it accessible when 
the host application is long obsolete and no longer functional, or when the 
developer is no longer in business?

The plugin is available for Softimage|3D v3.9.2 on Windows appearing in the 
Tools module under the “Export” menu.

Special 1999 rollback price: $1,499.99 USD.

For purchase, contact Matt Lind at 
matt.l...@mantom.net

A separate plugin to import the archived data into Softimage|XSI is under 
development, but details on pricing or availability are not known at this time. 
 Import into other applications may be considered.


Matt





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RE: exit from a CustomTool

[Brent McPherson]

I'm not familiar with the siKeyUp/Down event filters but the KeyUp/Down 
callbacks for custom tools won't conflict with keymaps in other editors.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 14 June 2016 11:13
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: exit from a CustomTool

I wonder is there a way to filter events by active window name or something ?
I wrote a couple of siKeyDown, siKeyUp events but they work in all XSI windows.
So if i use this events a can't use this shortcuts in XSI to perform any other
actions according curent active window.

For example if i use "ctrl+z" shortcut in my siKeyDown event i can not undo any 
changes in ScriptEditor nor in Explorer etc.
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RE: exit from a CustomTool

[Brent McPherson]

I don't think it is possible but maybe someone else on the list knows a way?
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 07 June 2016 04:56
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: exit from a CustomTool

This Undo command is not a custom tool undo callback. Its native XSI Undo 
command. For example:
Application.Undo("")# Select Geometry Components

2016-06-07 6:54 GMT+03:00 Andrew Prostrelov 
<prostre...@gmail.com<mailto:prostre...@gmail.com>>:
I try to add OGL viewport description of current Undo action.
But Undo command didn't add any Operator etc so i suppose there should be a 
Undo stack or something.

2016-06-06 23:08 GMT+03:00 Brent McPherson 
<brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com<mailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com>>:
Glad you got it working.

I don't think there is a way to directly access the undo queue. What 
specifically are you trying to do?
--
Brent

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>
 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>]
 On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 06 June 2016 19:06
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
Subject: Re: exit from a CustomTool

; ) it was a tricky way but it works just fine. Many thanks for all your 
assistance.
By the way maybe you can provide me with another one advice ?
XSI native "Undo" command prints as comment current action name like so:
Application.Undo("")# Subdivide Polygon
Application.Undo("")# Select Object
Application.Undo("")# Select Geometry Components
Is there a way of getting whole Undo stack or somehow get this comment messages 
?


2016-06-03 9:55 GMT+03:00 Brent McPherson 
<brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com<mailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com><mailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com<mailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com>>>:
I was thinking that you could use the TimerEvent in the XSI SDK.

on key up:
  - call timer.Reset(0/*one shot timer*/, 0.1/*short delay*/);

when timer is triggered:
  - call your Python code to activate the selection tool

P.S. I designed ExitTool to be called from the tool's context menu so the fact 
you can't use it on key up is an unfortunate bug.
--
Brent

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com><mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>>
 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com><mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>>]
 On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 03 June 2016 05:04
To: 
softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com><mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>>
Subject: Re: exit from a CustomTool
 I am not quiet sure that i understand you right. Did you mean right a delay 
timer or use events ?
 The friend of mine suggest EventTimers. Register additional event with a timer 
in it.
 But it was in a context of a slightly different topic.
 Let's assume that we receive KeyUp callback, what a timer should do ?

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RE: exit from a CustomTool

[Brent McPherson]

Glad you got it working.

I don't think there is a way to directly access the undo queue. What 
specifically are you trying to do?
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 06 June 2016 19:06
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: exit from a CustomTool

; ) it was a tricky way but it works just fine. Many thanks for all your 
assistance.
By the way maybe you can provide me with another one advice ?
XSI native "Undo" command prints as comment current action name like so:
Application.Undo("")# Subdivide Polygon
Application.Undo("")# Select Object
Application.Undo("")# Select Geometry Components
Is there a way of getting whole Undo stack or somehow get this comment messages 
?


2016-06-03 9:55 GMT+03:00 Brent McPherson 
<brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com<mailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com>>:
I was thinking that you could use the TimerEvent in the XSI SDK.

on key up:
  - call timer.Reset(0/*one shot timer*/, 0.1/*short delay*/);

when timer is triggered:
  - call your Python code to activate the selection tool

P.S. I designed ExitTool to be called from the tool's context menu so the fact 
you can't use it on key up is an unfortunate bug.
--
Brent

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>
 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>]
 On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 03 June 2016 05:04
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
Subject: Re: exit from a CustomTool
 I am not quiet sure that i understand you right. Did you mean right a delay 
timer or use events ?
 The friend of mine suggest EventTimers. Register additional event with a timer 
in it.
 But it was in a context of a slightly different topic.
 Let's assume that we receive KeyUp callback, what a timer should do ?

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RE: exit from a CustomTool

[Brent McPherson]

I was thinking that you could use the TimerEvent in the XSI SDK.

on key up:
  - call timer.Reset(0/*one shot timer*/, 0.1/*short delay*/);

when timer is triggered:
  - call your Python code to activate the selection tool

P.S. I designed ExitTool to be called from the tool's context menu so the fact 
you can't use it on key up is an unfortunate bug.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 03 June 2016 05:04
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: exit from a CustomTool

 I am not quiet sure that i understand you right. Did you mean right a delay 
timer or use events ?
 The friend of mine suggest EventTimers. Register additional event with a timer 
in it.
 But it was in a context of a slightly different topic.
 Let's assume that we receive KeyUp callback, what a timer should do ?
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RE: exit from a CustomTool

[Brent McPherson]

Ok, then I would suggest looking into using a timer to run your previous script 
after the key up callback returns.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 02 June 2016 22:29
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: exit from a CustomTool

I tryed to use ExitTool in KeyUp callback
it didn't work
 CustomTool_KeyUp(ToolContext& in_ctxt)
 {
in_ctxt.ExitTool();
 }

the same in Draw() callback
 CustomTool_Draw(ToolContext& in_ctxt)
 {
in_ctxt.ExitTool();
 }

 The only callback it works for me is MouseUp().
 And sine i want quit tool on keyboard shortcut release - i can't use Mouse 
callbacks.
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RE: exit from a CustomTool

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Andrew,

Have you tried calling the ExitTool method on the ToolContext that was passed 
to you?

http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/softimage2014/en_us/sdkguide/index.html?url=si_cpp/classXSI_1_1ToolContext.html,topicNumber=si_cpp_classXSI_1_1ToolContext_htmldccb5d73-183f-47c7-9bd8-bf02334bf002,hash=a05b0c9c75ce2ceb2deec6c4d8f2632d1
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 02 June 2016 13:57
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: exit from a CustomTool

Hi.
I suppose this one is a simple question but so far i can't handle it:
how should i exit from CustomTool registered by my XSI plugin ?

I want exit from my tool after shortcut CTRL+Z was released.
// So i register this shortcut ...
CustomTool_Activate(ToolContext& in_ctxt)
{
in_ctxt.RegisterShortcutKey( 0x5A, L"myKey", siCtrlMask /* ctrl */, 
true /*repeatable*/ );
}

// ... and try to change tools (since in_ctxt.ExitTool() works only in Mouse 
and Menu callbacks) to exit from my tool
CStatus KeyUp( ToolContext& in_ctxt )
{
if((ULONG) in_ctxt.GetShortcutKey() == 0x5A)
{

Application().ExecuteScriptCode(L"Application.ActivateSelectTool()", L"Python" 
);// mimic exit from tool
}
return CStatus::OK;
}

But this way XSI crashes when tools are changed. And i can't understand why.
On other hand there are no problems if i switch to SelectTool in XSI (not 
inside plugin code).
This tool is a dummy so, no additional pointers in user data etc that can crash 
it.
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RE: OpenGL captcha

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Andrew,

Prior to the Tool SDK 3rd party tools would often bypass the SDK and hook into 
the windows message loop directly but that is a messy process.

Sounds like the approach you are taking is the only way to do this within the 
tool SDK. The tool SDK was one of the last things I did on Softimage and I'm 
pleased with the way it turned out since I really only had one chance to get it 
right.

Good luck!
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 24 May 2016 21:36
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: OpenGL captcha

"OpenGL captcha realisation" - i'm sorry for this strange sentence. I'm not 
very familiar with OpenGL and SDL theory. So, its easier to write details of a 
task. What i want is to find a way to capture all user pressed numerical keys 
after he press TAB key and show the result in viewport.  Unfortunately the only 
way i find to do that is to register all numerical keys after TAB key was 
pressed and catch them in Tool KeyDown() callback untill we press TAB key 
again. And to give user feedback on numbers he enter we draw ogl string in 
Draw() callback.
By the way earlier in the morning i googled you message here in group about 
"cppsrc_boxtransformtool". And i wanna thank you alot for that awesome tool. I 
learn so much from it.

So sad that there are alot of interesting function and classes in XSI API but 
we never would get its src code.
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RE: Friday Flashback #265

[Brent McPherson]

This thread reminded me of Mark Schoennagel's SIGGRAPH 2006 SI3D demo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzj3VITdN5A

As someone who worked on Maya, moved to Softimage and is now back on Maya I 
have one piece of advice:

Treasure your nostalgia because, in my experience, reality doesn't always live 
up to our memories of the past!  :-P
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sven Constable
Sent: 24 May 2016 22:09
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Friday Flashback #265

Yes, the batteries won't make it over the decades. However, I turned on one of 
the indigos 2 or 3 years ago,  it came to life with the typical startup sound 
and it made me chuckle. Doing a demo video on that thing came to my mind, when 
we had a discussion on the list about doing a asteroid field the old fashioned 
way, without ICE.
I think the hard part would be to demo something that is actually ten times 
faster than in a current maya version. SI3D had some freakin fast workflows but 
it would be challenging, doing it on a workstation from the mid 90s. Maybe it 
will only two times as fast as in maya or max nowadays ;). Hell, even doing it 
in the same time would be hilarious. Any ideas whats typically a PITA in maya 
or max that would be a no brainer in SI3D?
Remember we had no passes/partition system in SI3D.
I would stay away from NURBS stuff because it's too oldschool.
The scene switcher? Not far away from 3ds max' scene states, except of beeing 
invented 15 years earlier.
How about multiped?
Or realtime rope dynamics with IK chains? Yummy!
The spread sheet. Selecting things in a most sophisticated way one can possibly 
imagine.
Maybe just basic parenting things (hierarchies) and  animation stuff for day to 
day work. That's where Softimage always shines.
Oh wait, I forgot the 'kaboom" effect!

sven

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Olivier Jeannel
Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2016 12:19 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Friday Flashback #265

That Softimage demo on indigo would be super classy !
I worked on an indigo2 and an O2 with SI 3.7 and 3.8 installed then we switched 
on that dual 300Mhz Pc monster !

On Sat, May 21, 2016 at 10:13 AM, Matt Lind 
> wrote:
If you want my stuff, you'll have to come to my Siggraph dinner to get it.
Remember - it's the last one.  Make it count ;-)

A few of my college friends had Indigos and in all cases the lithium battery
on the motherboard eventually died.  Can't run the computer without that.
In those cases, the battery was the old style soldered to the motherboard,
not the clip-in type you get today or in your wristwatch.  Good luck finding
a replacement if (when) that happens to you.

Matt



Date: Fri, 20 May 2016 23:21:27 +0200
From: "Sven Constable" 
>
Subject: RE: Friday Flashback #265

Well, I think it's ok if only used by one person. : )
Btw. if you're gonna sell this stuff one day I would be interested. The
Soft|3D printed manuals for example. They were great.
I still have two SGI Indigo workstations and at least one of them still has
Soft|3D installed... maybe I should do a demo video firing up Soft|3D on
that ancient beast, doing some stuff in a minute that needs ten times more
in an actual maya version. Maybe hard to achive but not impossible. Would be
fun and a real kicking friday flashback, haha.

sven
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Softimage Mailing List.
To unsubscribe, send a mail to 
softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com
 with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.

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Softimage Mailing List.
To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with 
"unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.

RE: OpenGL captcha

[Brent McPherson]

Not sure what you mean by "OpenGL captcha realisation" but EditTextString is 
not using OpenGL and just displays a windows text editing control on top of the 
OpenGL viewport.

The reason why it can only be used in the MouseUpCallback is because control 
will be transferred to the edit control. I seem to remember that bad things 
will happen if it is called from mouse down or drag which is why it is 
disallowed. :-)
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Prostrelov
Sent: 22 May 2016 19:14
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: OpenGL captcha

Oh can't wait to test it am digging through bboxtransfromtool from XSI API 
examples and there are intersting OpenGL captcha realisation used in this tool.
But the problem is that ToolContext.EditTextString() available from 
CustomTool.MouseUp() callback only.
So i guess maybe some one have any ideas about OpenGL captcha realisation so we 
can use it from any place of a plugin Tool.
Maybe some link or anything ?
The part of tool that i talking about called DimensionTool or something like 
that.
<>--
Softimage Mailing List.
To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with 
"unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.

RE: Friday Flashback #249

[Brent McPherson]

Awww, brings back fond memories of frankenstein-ing together new UI elements 
from the existing bitmaps in MS Paint. :-)

The lack of original artwork also saved XSI from a dark UI makeover...
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Jason S
Sent: 04 December 2015 16:15
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Friday Flashback #249

On 11/13/15 15:05, Matt Lind wrote:

Of all the rapid change that occurs in this industry over the years, it's 
amazing how little the Softimage interface changed during it's lifespan.

Hi, I just came across this reply,

I may be mistaken, but that may be partly because (as I recall reading or 
hearing) that the entire UI glyph sources were wiped by SysAdmins from the 
DS/XSI UI graphic designer's machine when he left.

XSI & DS Interfaces were designed by Charles Migos, a remarkable graphic 
designer who later went to Apple.

He was like a cool swave guy, and his shortened name (for his emails and 
things) spelled-out a quite fitting "charm" :P



On 11/13/15 15:05, Matt Lind wrote:
Of all the rapid change that occurs in this industry over the years, it's 
amazing how little the Softimage interface changed during it's lifespan. Other 
than a few buttons being replaced with more compact icons in later releases, 
this screen shot doesn't look much different from today.

Matt




Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 13:52:14 -0500
From: Stephen Blair 
Subject: Friday Flashback #249
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

Softimage Sumatra screenshot from 2000 showing the render tree for a ?rust?
effect
http://wp.me/powV4-3f5


<>

RE: Friday Flashback #221

[Brent McPherson]

Ah club bot!

He was my main test rig for animation layering. Such a party animal. Good 
times. ;-)
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Stephen Blair
Sent: 24 April 2015 16:54
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Friday Flashback #221

Club bot doing its thing in the XSI 2.0.2 demo version
http://wp.me/powV4-3cM
attachment: winmail.dat

RE: ot: unreal engine

[Brent McPherson]

Yes, the right-click menus activate object-component mode in Maya.

Apparently it is used for some commands where you need to make a hybrid 
object+component selection and I agree it is confusing.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Cristobal Infante
Sent: 19 November 2014 11:04
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: ot: unreal engine

Hi Nico,

I agree that the inconsistency between right click (vertex) and F8 component 
selection mode is
REALLY annoying. Hopefully the are working in unifying them since it I don't 
see the point of having them disjointed.

It feels that if you right-click select vertex Maya should just switch to 
component mode..




On 18 November 2014 20:44, Nicolas Esposito 
3dv...@gmail.commailto:3dv...@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Francisco,
Yes, I'm currently using the ART plugin developed by Jeremy Ernst, and it works 
pretty good!

Not knowing python scripting is a huge downside for me, so having this free 
rigging tool is really a huge timesaver.
Step by step I'm extending this rig functionality in order to integrate my 
custom ( re-usable ) facial rig into the body rig and everything works fine.
I'm really digging Unreal Engine 4, the Blueprint system has a similar feel to 
ICE, and its really intuitive :)

2014-11-18 21:32 GMT+01:00 Francisco Criado 
malcriad...@gmail.commailto:malcriad...@gmail.com:
Nicolas,
may i ask if you are using unreal toolset for rigging?
thanks,
F.



--
Francisco Criado
visual geek
DCA Lab


attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Buy Softimage - is this a real shop?

[Brent McPherson]

 Buying softimage to retire it, was itself a(n entirely legal) scam to get 
 more money, (among other measures to come)

Go home Jason. You're drunk.
--
Brent

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Buy Softimage - is this a real shop?

[Brent McPherson]

Yes, Maya 1.0 was released in Feb 1998 and XSI 1.0 was released over 2 years 
later in mid-2000.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andi Farhall
Sent: 13 November 2014 15:50
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Buy Softimage -  is this a real shop?

why am i so far off? Power animator wasn't really in the running when soft|3d 
got going, when Maya came out surely it was to get the market that soft|3d had, 
not xsi. Am i wrong?

A
...
http://www.hackneyeffects.com/
https://vimeo.com/user4174293
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andi-farhall/b/496/b21


http://www.flickr.com/photos/lord_hackney/
http://spylon.tumblr.com/

This email and any attachments to it may be confidential and are intended 
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If you are not the intended recipient of this email, you must neither take any 
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Please contact the sender if you believe you have received this email in error.


 Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 10:33:35 -0500
 Subject: Re: Buy Softimage -  is this a real shop?
 From: luceri...@gmail.commailto:luceri...@gmail.com
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

 you keep telling yourself that buddy!

 Also try to find a strange man with a blue police box.

 On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Andi Farhall 
 hack...@outlook.commailto:hack...@outlook.com wrote:
  It struck me yesterday, whilst being repeatedly disappointed by maya that it
  wasn't designed as a competition for XSI, it was designed as competition for
  Softimage|3D And i have to say it IS marginally better that
  Softimage|3D, but not as pretty.
 
  now where did my attribute editor go...
attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Buy Softimage - is this a real shop?

[Brent McPherson]

Maya was designed to put Alias firmly in the animation market and as such 
Softimage|3D was considered its main competition though we had an eye on the 
growing PC market too.

However, those were the secretive days of 3D before the internet when you 
couldn't actually buy a seat of your competitor's software and you would be 
asked to leave their SIGGRAPH booth if they realized you were a competitor so 
information on competitors was not always easy to come by.

So it wasn't a case of being intimately familiar with Softimage|3D but rather 
working with a number of close customers as well as Chris Landreth who was 
familiar with Softimage|3D.  The Disney connection came about because Alias 
tried to convince Disney to go with Maya for the Dinosaur movie in production 
around that time. That effort did not succeed but resulted in some very good 
collaboration between Alias and Disney.
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau
Sent: 13 November 2014 17:15
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Buy Softimage -  is this a real shop?

Well the implication I think I saw, and I might be mistaken, was that
Maya was not just in the same time, but designed to compete with
Softimage 3D.  It was designed with Disney as studio tool, and Alias
had their eyes on 3DSMax, completely ignoring Softimage|3D imho.We
also totally ignored Alias or Max when making XSI and were looking to
do the next step of our previous products.

On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 12:01 PM, Brent McPherson
brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote:
 Yes, Maya 1.0 was released in Feb 1998 and XSI 1.0 was released over 2 years 
 later in mid-2000.

 From: Andi Farhall

 why am i so far off? Power animator wasn't really in the running when soft|3d 
 got going, when Maya came out surely it was to get the market that soft|3d 
 had, not xsi. Am i wrong?


 From: luceri...@gmail.commailto:luceri...@gmail.com
 you keep telling yourself that buddy!

 Also try to find a strange man with a blue police box.

 On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Andi Farhall 
 hack...@outlook.commailto:hack...@outlook.com wrote:
  It struck me yesterday, whilst being repeatedly disappointed by maya that 
  it
  wasn't designed as a competition for XSI, it was designed as competition 
  for
  Softimage|3D And i have to say it IS marginally better that
  Softimage|3D, but not as pretty.
 
  now where did my attribute editor go...
attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Humanize Maya effort alive? or - Effective customization??

[Brent McPherson]

The Humanize Maya effort is definitely ongoing but with a yearly release 
schedule it will (unfortunately) take time to see the full results of this 
effort.

You could reach out to Jill Ramsay 
(jill.ram...@autodesk.commailto:jill.ram...@autodesk.com) with your concerns 
as she has been dealing specifically with the Softimage transition and humanize 
Maya effort. I'm sure that if you are interested and/or have the time Jill 
could get you added to the Maya beta program.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of skuby
Sent: 16 October 2014 09:48
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Humanize Maya effort alive? or - Effective customization??

1. When, where and how is the Humanize Maya effort going (if at all?).
2. Has anyone made a dedicated effort to manually configure Maya's hotkeys and 
or UI?

I took a several months long, extremely dedicated effort to make a full jump 
back over  to Maya, after years of being with Soft and having left Maya behind 
for dead, and today I've finally had it, enough is enough, it's just not going 
to happen without further and very serious developments.

I am convinced, that a dedicated TD could fully work out the process of 
mimicking Soft's sticky key system with-in Maya.  The interface for recognizing 
keypress down and keypress release is already existing, however each command 
and tool would need to be assigned a well thought out place on the keyboard as 
well as a memory function script addended to each hotkey so that when it is 
pressed and held, the previous tool being used is recorded, so that after the 
mouse commands were entered (for splitting an edge loop at a selected place on 
the model for example) that the key can be released, and the last used tool or 
method was recalled (for example immediately go back to working in 
multi-component move mode).  Aka, by default in soft, I can be in 
multi-component tweak move mode, pushing and pulling around points, edges and 
faces as if my geo were a sculpture, and then at any moment, hold down the ] 
key, click the mouse where I want to split in an edge loop - immediately giving 
me a loop where I want it, clicking again where and if needed to add further 
loops, and upon finally releasing the ] key, I am automagically and 
immediately brought back to multi-component move mode where I can continue 
refining OR whatever previous function I was using in some other case.  This 
entire sticky key system is possible, I believe, to mimic in Maya, but it is a 
lot of work, and it is work unrelated to the direct process of being an artist 
and making 3D worlds and inhabitants and bringing them to life.  In other 
words, it's a major distraction for an artist to approach and would be better 
handled as a sold separate tool that one could buy to accompany their Maya 
installation.

I cannot seriously entertain a further continuation of using Maya as a primary 
dedicated package without such a previously described implementation developed 
-either internally via the Humanize Maya project (which may be an effectively 
dead effort for all that I know or can see) or externally via a sold separate 
plug-in installer from a dedicated 3rd party.  There are other severe issues 
with Maya that I have but cannot even begin to whole-heartedly address without 
the above considerations first being fully solved. (aka The Unfold tool is far 
inferior in function and usage, the new nodal base editor for Maya is far 
inferior in it's presentation and use-ability, the ICE clone is in a very early 
state of presentation and not a system worth considering taking the time to 
learn vs ICE or Houdini, the Hypergraph is far inferior extremely dated and 
totally cumbersome by comparison, as well both the Attribute editor and Outline 
are far far far inferior in usage after a very thorough examination and 
comparison etc., etc., etc.)

Aka. Just installing Maya, and assigning loop split, point weld, extrude and 
all of my other basic modelling functions to memorable hotkeys, isn't cutting 
it and is slowly driving me mad since I am really trying to take this full jump 
seriously.  Even the familiar F8 command to exit component mode and return to 
object mode still, after 15+ years, sometimes inexplicably requires to be 
pressed twice because it doesn't work properly the first time, and other such 
oddities and confounding workflow complications (component selection memory for 
example)

Please someone advise me!!!  For the time being I am going back to Softimage 
full time for modeling, uv, rigging and animation and relying on exporting 
(cleaning/completing the results as needed in another package (like Maya) and 
then sending to game or external render).  This isn't a long term solution as 
it will continue to decay and depreciate over the years moving forward, 
especially as new tools and functions are released for other packages and 
accessories (in particular 

RE: Humanize Maya project

[Brent McPherson]

Maya interaction mode was developed under Avid and at the time it made sense to 
try and appeal to the (larger) Maya market.

You almost never see market leaders making these types of moves as the 
potential returns will be much smaller. Gimp interaction mode for Photoshop 
anyone? ;-)
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Mirko Jankovic
Sent: 11 April 2014 13:27
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Humanize Maya project

And was there any reason why Softimage interaction mode was never made in Maya 
as well?

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Humanize Maya project

[Brent McPherson]

Suites were about interop and using the best features of each product so the 
suite development focused on this.

To that end it wouldn't have made sense to try and make any package in the 
suite emulate all the others. Softimage already had Maya/Max key bindings but 
this was pre-existing functionality and had it not existed I do not think it 
would have been developed for the suites.
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Leendert A. Hartog
Sent: 11 April 2014 16:24
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Humanize Maya project

Brent McPherson schreef op 11-4-2014 17:18:
 You almost never see market leaders making these types of moves as the 
 potential returns will be much smaller.
But once they started sharing suites together, the story changed ever so 
slightly, one would image... ;)

Greetz
Leendert

-- 

Leendert A. Hartog AKA Hirazi Blue
Administrator NOT the owner of si-community.com

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)

[Brent McPherson]

Yes I did work on this.

The plan was always to replace the guts of Center with the pivot stuff I added 
to kinematics since it could handle rotation. We just never got around to 
actually doing that and finishing off that part of the pivot workflow...

As I said before I always thought the way center worked was a bit hacky  (push 
points in one direction and modifying the transform in another) but it seems 
the interactive/pervasive nature of it far outweighed the strange way it works 
for you guys.

Now I'm curious if it was even on anyone's top 5 list. ;-)

I'm not a really good person to comment on the general issues discussed in 
relation to Maya workflow. While working on Soft I worked on hair, animation 
layers, lip sync, modeling, object view/isolate, tools, kinematics, fcurves, 
ICE (well in fact every part of the software except Rendering) My current 
involvement in Maya is limited to the modeling team but I feel pretty 
comfortable that I can have a positive impact on workflow in that area.

Cheers.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Peter Agg
Sent: 03 April 2014 15:04
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)

...but from what he said Brent actually developed that part of Soft in the 
first place. :/
[https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=acGdyaXN3b2xkQGZ1c2lvbmRpZ2l0YWxwcm9kdWN0aW9ucy5jb20%3Dtype=zerocontentguid=84bd8330-649c-42ca-b0bb-7aa77184e20f]ᐧ

attachment: winmail.dat

Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)

[Brent McPherson]

So, do you folks really use Center mode all that much?

That was really a pre-pivot workflow that XSI inherited from SI|3D and it 
simply applies a transform to the object and a mirror transform to the geometry 
thereby giving the *illusion* that that center has changed. Of course, reset 
transforms will mess up the center. (unless you also set the neutral  pose)

As someone who worked on that area in SI I'm really curious to know what the  
main use cases for Center are?

Thanks.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of John Richard 
Sanchez
Sent: 27 March 2014 16:38
To: XSI List to post
Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5

So I got my first Maya job in years and here I am trying to figure out how to 
rotate a Pivot ( center in xsi). No you cant rotate a center in Maya you can 
just move it. WTF


attachment: winmail.dat

RE: 答复: Re[2]: March 28, 2014

[Brent McPherson]

Politics!? You obviously never worked in a large company before? ;-)

Do you seriously think that in a competitive market a company can/will sit back 
and drip out features as part of some evil master plan? Success can obviously 
lead to complacency (which is why competition is healthy/important) but a large 
product with a diverse customer base will also find it much harder to satisfy 
all their customers and the hallmark of good product management and leadership 
is knowing what to focus on.

Sorry, just getting tired of all this conspiracy bullshit.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling
Sent: 01 April 2014 17:12
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: 答复: Re[2]: March 28, 2014

AD has always played politics with its upgrades, it's not about giving you the 
most efficient tools today, but releasing them in a slow staggered and 
incomplete fashion, so it takes several release and considerable investment 
before you actually get a functional addition to your workflow. they say it's 
so people have time to adjust to the change which is all so much commendable 
bullshit. Now and again they'll chuck a few sweets out when people get rowdy 
often followed by the statement You SEE !!! we really do have your best 
interest at heart or  WE really do listen to you !
It's what they did for Syflex, Nex and the viewport enhancements in 3ds max to 
name just a few.
and it's what they will do with bifrost, totting up every marginal update as a 
NEW feature. New Bifrost! now with tear of Menus, Gasp !
Most of these modeling enhancements such as the shrink wrap are things that 
could have been added years ago, but are only being added in recent releases. i 
refuse to believe that these sort of tools are that difficult to implement.
A lot of this shitty attitude hearkens back to the years of stagnation during 
the three package monopoly.

You might argue that ICE took several release to have the functionality it has 
today...
but then you would have to go watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0QOtmKNnuY
and realize that ICE offered considerably more in its first incarnation, then 
Bifrost will in even it's third iteration.



On 1 April 2014 12:52, Xiaodong Xu 
xdx...@vip.sina.commailto:xdx...@vip.sina.com wrote:
I’ve been waiting for 15 years just for the late coming shrinkwrap deformer. 
Pitty!

Xiao-dong




发件人: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com]
 代表 Eugen Sares
发送时间: Tuesday, April 01, 2014 7:35 PM
收件人: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
主题: Re[2]: March 28, 2014

Did anything change already with Maya 2015 to the better?

Not that I very much long to use it...
I'm curious, though, if Autodesk can be taken by it's word this time - to 
'humanize Maya', and the pace at which this is happening.

Anyway, it will be most interesting to learn what the most forthcoming option 
will be in the near future.
I hope with Modo 801 and Houdini 14 (or whatever next version) it will become 
clear enough where things are heading to, to make a (part time) transition.



-- Originalnachricht --
Von: Sebastien Sterling 
sebastien.sterl...@gmail.commailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com
An: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Gesendet: 01.04.2014 12:29:36
Betreff: Re: March 28, 2014

Maya is the best choice for character creators
Why ?
What makes it so ?
You can do this in any number of DCC's, you can do it in max and softimage.
In maya you will have to deal with the worst skinning tools ever conceived, not 
to mention the myriads of scripts just to ensure contemporary functionality.
I don't understand this argument. specialy considering Maya's established roll 
as a studio tool, where the pipeline is broken up into fields. people using 
maya for generalist purposes is not the norm usually they stick to their fields.



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attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)

[Brent McPherson]

Thanks. That is an interesting use of center I hadn't thought of before...

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Peter Agg
Sent: 02 April 2014 10:19
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by what 'the main case uses are' - I just use 
it to do exactly what it says it does! It's just a flexible and intuative way 
of working.

For example: if I've made a rig control that floats outside some geometry, but 
I want it's pivot to match an object I have in the rig already (maybe a bone 
it's meant to control... something like that). I can make and shape the control 
curve how I like, turn on Centre mode, do a Match Transforms to that object and 
hit Freeze. Very quick and very easy to do.

On 2 April 2014 09:55, Brent McPherson 
brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote:
So, do you folks really use Center mode all that much?

That was really a pre-pivot workflow that XSI inherited from SI|3D and it 
simply applies a transform to the object and a mirror transform to the geometry 
thereby giving the *illusion* that that center has changed. Of course, reset 
transforms will mess up the center. (unless you also set the neutral  pose)

As someone who worked on that area in SI I'm really curious to know what the  
main use cases for Center are?

Thanks.
--
Brent

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com]
 On Behalf Of John Richard Sanchez
Sent: 27 March 2014 16:38
To: XSI List to post
Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5

So I got my first Maya job in years and here I am trying to figure out how to 
rotate a Pivot ( center in xsi). No you cant rotate a center in Maya you can 
just move it. WTF


attachment: winmail.dat

RE: 答复: Re[2]: March 28, 2014

[Brent McPherson]

Um. I have always been on the list. (well since 1998 when I joined Soft. :-)

In the absence of information people usually end up drawing their own 
conclusions. One of the downsides of working in a public companies is that you 
can't really talk freely about plans etc. so this is something devs like myself 
generally avoid. Having someone higher up like Chris engage this list gives us 
a little more freedom to open up on the initiatives that have been publically 
announced.

Cheers.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Angus Davidson
Sent: 02 April 2014 12:38
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: 答复: Re[2]: March 28, 2014

Hi Brent

Just to clear up this is far more about perception then conspiracy. Before you 
guys all joined the list this month we had been in pretty much a vacuum as far 
as information goes.

He does have a very valid point on the marginal update thing though. Autodesk 
has done that a lot over the years.  To give you an example in Softimage they 
touted the camera sequencer as one of the major updates of the previous 
release. An item that

a) was paid for by a specific japanese games company (so not done via 
maintenance)
b) was pretty much useless to anyone else as it couldn't handle motion blur 
directly forcing you to do that in post.

Also company politics was very much in game for softimage as it was incredibly 
difficult to buy it in many countries via resellers. So if people seem upset 
and wary about Autodesk you can now understand why.

Great to have you on the list. Hopefully little things like the centering 
methodology can broaden you understanding of our workflows

Kind regards

Angus


From: Brent McPherson [brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com]
Sent: 02 April 2014 11:24 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: 答复: Re[2]: March 28, 2014
Politics!? You obviously never worked in a large company before? ;-)

Do you seriously think that in a competitive market a company can/will sit back 
and drip out features as part of some evil master plan? Success can obviously 
lead to complacency (which is why competition is healthy/important) but a large 
product with a diverse customer base will also find it much harder to satisfy 
all their customers and the hallmark of good product management and leadership 
is knowing what to focus on.

Sorry, just getting tired of all this conspiracy bullshit.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling
Sent: 01 April 2014 17:12
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: 答复: Re[2]: March 28, 2014

AD has always played politics with its upgrades, it's not about giving you the 
most efficient tools today, but releasing them in a slow staggered and 
incomplete fashion, so it takes several release and considerable investment 
before you actually get a functional addition to your workflow. they say it's 
so people have time to adjust to the change which is all so much commendable 
bullshit. Now and again they'll chuck a few sweets out when people get rowdy 
often followed by the statement You SEE !!! we really do have your best 
interest at heart or  WE really do listen to you !
It's what they did for Syflex, Nex and the viewport enhancements in 3ds max to 
name just a few.
and it's what they will do with bifrost, totting up every marginal update as a 
NEW feature. New Bifrost! now with tear of Menus, Gasp !
Most of these modeling enhancements such as the shrink wrap are things that 
could have been added years ago, but are only being added in recent releases. i 
refuse to believe that these sort of tools are that difficult to implement.
A lot of this shitty attitude hearkens back to the years of stagnation during 
the three package monopoly.
You might argue that ICE took several release to have the functionality it has 
today...
but then you would have to go watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0QOtmKNnuY
and realize that ICE offered considerably more in its first incarnation, then 
Bifrost will in even it's third iteration.


On 1 April 2014 12:52, Xiaodong Xu 
xdx...@vip.sina.commailto:xdx...@vip.sina.com wrote:
I’ve been waiting for 15 years just for the late coming shrinkwrap deformer. 
Pitty!

Xiao-dong




发件人: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com]
 代表 Eugen Sares
发送时间: Tuesday, April 01, 2014 7:35 PM
收件人: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
主题: Re[2]: March 28, 2014

Did anything change already with Maya 2015 to the better?

Not that I very much long to use it...
I'm curious, though, if Autodesk can be taken by it's word this time - to 
'humanize Maya', and the pace at which this is happening.

Anyway, it will be most interesting

RE: 答复: Re[2]: March 28, 2014

[Brent McPherson]

When someone is throwing about unfounded accusations/speculation why not call 
them out on it?

Sometimes you need to be told you are being an ass and not tiptoe around it. 
The original post was not a setup for polite and constructive discussion IMO 
and I don't think my usage of the term conspiracy theory was as bad as you 
are making it out to be.
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Leendert A. Hartog
Sent: 02 April 2014 15:07
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: 答复: Re[2]: March 28, 2014

I am not defending or even attacking anyone here.
I posted my doubts over the use of the term conspiracy theory for what 
it implies...
I do strongly feel it doesn't help any discussion to imply the other is 
a nut-job...

Greetz
Leendert

-- 

Leendert A. Hartog – Softimage hobbyist
AKA Hirazi Blue – Administrator  @, NOT the owner of  si-community.com


attachment: winmail.dat

RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5

[Brent McPherson]

Great summary Martin but I'd like to add two little timesaving tips:

1) Tab hotkey temporarily activates raycast selection mode

2) Backtick hotkey (the key above Tab) temporarily activates tweak mode

--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Martin Yara
Sent: 27 March 2014 09:53
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5

Maya has a Modeling Toolkit since 2014 and it is quite similar to Softimage 
Move Tool. And it is IMHO the best addition Maya has had in the last few years 
from a Modeler POV. I mean it is now pretty close to Softimage (without the

The GUI is not as simple and straight forward as the M key, but it does the job 
done and I guess a simple script to change the options automatically and assign 
it to a hotkey may do the trick.

- Move Tool
Select your object, Active Multi-Component in the MTK, press W to change the 
mode to Translate,  Activate Tweak/Marquee option and now you have your Move 
Tool.

- Slide Components
If you want to slide like the magnet tool, Change the Transform Constraints. I 
asked this in another thread.

- Weld point
Although you have the Merge Vertex Tool for this, MTK has also it's own Target 
Weld. Pretty similar to the M key + weld, but this one works with edges too.

- Split Edges
The equivalent to Split Edge would be MTK Connect, MMB to control the number of 
segments. The same Connect tool has an option of Slide that would be the 
equivalent to Split Edge with split Control (slide with MMB).

- Raycast
This MTK also has a selection mode with a Raycast Option that would work just 
like SI raycast.

The good thing is that now with MTK, unlike the previous Maya preferences, you 
can select backfaces that you are seeing in wireframe mode ala Softimage.

The problem with the Raycast/Marquee option is that the Marquee only works if 
you start to drag outside the object. So if you want to do a drag select a 
bunch of polygons in the center of your object just like you could with Lasso 
or Raycast Rectangle in SI, you can't. You'll have to do it with a Raycast.

I miss SI Lasso tool.


Martin



On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 3:48 PM, Tim Leydecker 
bauero...@gmx.demailto:bauero...@gmx.de wrote:
Can I trade the MMB functionality against the M key workflow?

Personally, I don´t use MMB much because when modeling, I will usually
resort to using either the M key or rick-clicking to access polygon 
operations.

Sliding a component (selection) around on a polygon surface is a wonderful 
feature
in Softimage.

I would say that using a combination of variations of the M key settings, add 
edge,
and extrude is covering 65% of my work for modeling, with a Split Edge (with 
split control)
here and there. I tend to model my bevels due to legacy shortcomings in tools.

A good 15% is the ease of using U/T/E with raycast perference options 
that prevent
selecting unwanted (backfaced) areas.

10% is viewport interaction. Tumbling around and view modes.

10% is unfold3d. (It´s a lot more this brings but it´s become so easy :-)

Using wheighting edges in subD models I refuse to use until it is consistenly 
supported
in something as reliable as a blank *.obj format in any other app available.

There´s no point in wheighting a (subD style) edge hardness when you realize 
you can´t import/export it anywhere
like that.

Cheers,

tim

P.S: Merging vertices in Maya is nicer, with it´s treshhold options.

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5

[Brent McPherson]

True, that has always been a problem with US-centric keyboard layouts and it 
always makes sense to do some basic personal customization for international 
keyboards...

P.S. Apple keyboards in the UK have *spiral-galaxy* key where back-tick 
normally is!? I think I'll start calling it the Hawking key for lack of a 
better name. ;-)

http://markinns.com/articles/full/apple_keyboards
--
Brent


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Martin Yara
Sent: 27 March 2014 10:32
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5

Oops I pressed send too soon. I meant it is now pretty close to Softimage but 
without the non destructive workflow (edit topology without breaking your 
weights) which is a huge difference but still modeling is better than a few 
years ago.

Thanks Brent for those tips !
I don't think the backtick is usable in a japanese keyboard though. I can't 
find the japanese equivalent.

Martin

On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 6:52 PM, Martin Yara 
furik...@gmail.commailto:furik...@gmail.com wrote:
Maya has a Modeling Toolkit since 2014 and it is quite similar to Softimage 
Move Tool. And it is IMHO the best addition Maya has had in the last few years 
from a Modeler POV. I mean it is now pretty close to Softimage (without the


attachment: winmail.dat

RE: An Open Letter to Carl Bass

[Brent McPherson]

 I guess what the issue (at least for me) is, is that while you are
 correct that Autodesk did talk about moving development to Singapore,
 Autodesk did NOT say that the product was in a state of minimal development.

Perry,

At the time Softimage was moved to Singapore the team out there was about the 
same size as the Montreal team and there was a year of overlap and Montreal 
devs (including me) went to Singapore to train that team. Hardly what you would 
call minimal development.

It is ridiculous to think a company would devote this kind of effort to shut 
the product down. If Autodesk's intention was to shut Softimage down they could 
have easily done that on day one.

In this case I think the explanation you have been given fits perfectly. The 
market has changed. ME leadership has changed. In response the decision makers 
have decided to refocus the efforts around existing products that have a much 
larger market share than Softimage. Too much product overlap is not healthy for 
any company long term.

I spent a lot of my career working on Softimage and it was a great experience 
thanks to my colleague and everyone on this list.  However, I've seen the 
numbers and I can't really argue with the decision on that basis.

We can continue to argue how we got to this point but that doesn't seem very 
productive but I will vouch for the fact it wasn't all a bed of roses under 
Avid's tenure.
--
Brent

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Top List of ICE Nodes That Cover 80% of What You Do With The Toolset

[Brent McPherson]

Fun fact: Do you know Maya started out using scheme as its scripting language?
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andy Jones
Sent: 20 March 2014 07:47
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Top List of ICE Nodes That Cover 80% of What You Do With The 
Toolset

Now that I understand the history of ICE a little better, I can see that I was 
wrong to balk at naming the top ICE nodes I need.  Here's my updated list:

car cdr cons eq atom cons quote

I suppose I won't really need defun, since Maya will let me just add the same 
nodes over and over again with a mel script.


On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 11:56 PM, Raffaele Fragapane 
raffsxsil...@googlemail.commailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:
The functional programming throwback has officially pushed this conversation 
into the twilight zone and right out the other end of it into some unexplored 
surreal territory.
Thanks to all involved, it'll stay with me for the rest of my life and make me 
giggle every time I'll think of it.

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: my first experiment with rigging in Houdini :-))))

[Brent McPherson]

Damn, I wish you had posted this. ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRZ2Sh5-XuM

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Max Evgrafov
Sent: 20 March 2014 09:30
To: softimage
Subject: my first experiment with rigging in Houdini :-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkdQyet1EN4#t=24

--
Max aka Summatr
https://vimeo.com/user3098735/videos
---
attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Autodesk webinar

[Brent McPherson]

Yes, In NEX (internally we refer to the evolution of the NEX plugin as MTK - 
Modeling Tool Kit)

Modeling Panel  Transform Constraint  Surface slide + Double-click edge loop 
selection etc.

Also, when I say old SI move tool I mean the M tool without any manips that 
predated Tweak - click  drag points. ;-) That is what Maya's tweak mode is 
like. (except it works on all component types)
--
Brent


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Martin Yara
Sent: 19 March 2014 16:35
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Autodesk webinar

Hi Brent,

Thanks for your detailed explanation.

from a SI user POV yeah that isn't very impressive, but being a partial Maya 
user, that sounds pretty cool. Not enough to make me want to model in Maya but 
I may not need to move back to SI when tweaking models for a Maya based project.

BTW, One of the model tools I miss in Maya is the old SI Move Tool with Magnet. 
Moving edge loops almost without affecting the object form is something I can't 
live without. I remember how excited I was when learned MMB + drag + Magnet to 
move edge loops. I couldn't stop moving edges :D

Is there anything close to that in Maya? If not, you should add it.

Martin



On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 12:07 AM, Brent McPherson 
brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote:
Hi Martin,

Since I work on modeling I can comment directly on the NEX integration in 2015 
and how modeling toolkit features have made their way into the native Maya 
selection tool. (as the other bigger features are covered in the what's new 
videos)

Maya's native selection tool now has lazy preselection highlighting just like 
NEX that selects the closest component on the poly under the cursor. (like 
Soft's tweak tool) Sub-pixel picking precision no longer required. ;-) It also 
respects the highlight backfacing toggle in the modeling toolkit panel and is 
smart enough to ignore occluded components in shaded mode etc.

We have also revamped the Drag (Tab key) and Tweak (` backtick key) modes in 
Maya's select tool. Drag is a raycast selection mode that you activate by 
holding Tab and again makes use of lazy preselection. So just hold Tab and 
raycast away from your current selection tool. If you start dragging on an 
unselected component the tool adds to the selection but if you start on a 
selected component it removes so no need for keyboard modifier calisthenics!

Tweak (` backtick key) is a quick (manip-free) way of adjusting components 
(like the *old* Soft move tool) and has a nice big tolerance when outside the 
object so it can be used to tweak components on the silhouette of your mesh. 
Maya's multi selection mode (RMB menu) is also a nice way to work with 
points/edges/polys without switching selection modes.

Speaking of RMB menus in Maya you can activate RMB radial menu items by RMB 
dragging quickly - so a RMB-left-swipe will put you in vertex mode without 
displaying the menu.

Maya's loop selection has also been updated to the same level of functionality 
in NEX/Soft so you can make ring or partial loop selections by clicking an edge 
and the shift-double-clicking another edge in the loop/ring. (so for those 
familiar with Maya you don't need to switch to the special purpose ring 
selection tool anymore)

Symmetry in Maya has been completely re-written and integrated between Maya and 
NEX. When symmetry is enabled your selections are fully symmetrical so most 
non-interactive modeling ops will basically work in 2015. It also supports 
NEX's topological symmetry which works off the mesh topology and can work on a 
posed/deformed character as long as the mesh is symmetrical.

Maya and NEX soft selection settings have also been unified in 2015. In this 
instance we went with the Maya tech because it has some really nice features. 
You tap B to toggle soft select or hold B and LMB drag to adjust soft select. 
My favorite feature here is how the current weights are locked until you change 
your selection so you can tweak the same selection multiple times without 
having your soft selection recalculated each time you release the mouse. Undo 
also restores your soft selection weights which is a nice added touch. 
(Unfortunately the NEX tools don't have this weight preserving feature though 
they use same soft-select falloff settings in 2015)

Anyway those are just a few of the ways we have started to integrate NEX into 
Maya in 2015. Maybe it doesn't sound that impressive to Soft users but we are 
making progress.
--
Brent

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Autodesk webinar

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Martin,

Since I work on modeling I can comment directly on the NEX integration in 2015 
and how modeling toolkit features have made their way into the native Maya 
selection tool. (as the other bigger features are covered in the what's new 
videos)

Maya's native selection tool now has lazy preselection highlighting just like 
NEX that selects the closest component on the poly under the cursor. (like 
Soft's tweak tool) Sub-pixel picking precision no longer required. ;-) It also 
respects the highlight backfacing toggle in the modeling toolkit panel and is 
smart enough to ignore occluded components in shaded mode etc.

We have also revamped the Drag (Tab key) and Tweak (` backtick key) modes in 
Maya's select tool. Drag is a raycast selection mode that you activate by 
holding Tab and again makes use of lazy preselection. So just hold Tab and 
raycast away from your current selection tool. If you start dragging on an 
unselected component the tool adds to the selection but if you start on a 
selected component it removes so no need for keyboard modifier calisthenics!

Tweak (` backtick key) is a quick (manip-free) way of adjusting components 
(like the *old* Soft move tool) and has a nice big tolerance when outside the 
object so it can be used to tweak components on the silhouette of your mesh. 
Maya's multi selection mode (RMB menu) is also a nice way to work with 
points/edges/polys without switching selection modes.

Speaking of RMB menus in Maya you can activate RMB radial menu items by RMB 
dragging quickly - so a RMB-left-swipe will put you in vertex mode without 
displaying the menu.

Maya's loop selection has also been updated to the same level of functionality 
in NEX/Soft so you can make ring or partial loop selections by clicking an edge 
and the shift-double-clicking another edge in the loop/ring. (so for those 
familiar with Maya you don't need to switch to the special purpose ring 
selection tool anymore)

Symmetry in Maya has been completely re-written and integrated between Maya and 
NEX. When symmetry is enabled your selections are fully symmetrical so most 
non-interactive modeling ops will basically work in 2015. It also supports 
NEX's topological symmetry which works off the mesh topology and can work on a 
posed/deformed character as long as the mesh is symmetrical.

Maya and NEX soft selection settings have also been unified in 2015. In this 
instance we went with the Maya tech because it has some really nice features. 
You tap B to toggle soft select or hold B and LMB drag to adjust soft select. 
My favorite feature here is how the current weights are locked until you change 
your selection so you can tweak the same selection multiple times without 
having your soft selection recalculated each time you release the mouse. Undo 
also restores your soft selection weights which is a nice added touch. 
(Unfortunately the NEX tools don't have this weight preserving feature though 
they use same soft-select falloff settings in 2015)

Anyway those are just a few of the ways we have started to integrate NEX into 
Maya in 2015. Maybe it doesn't sound that impressive to Soft users but we are 
making progress.
--
Brent

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Autodesk webinar

[Brent McPherson]

They are remembered when switching between different component selection modes 
but not saved with the scene.


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Greg Punchatz
Sent: 19 March 2014 15:16
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Autodesk webinar

Are selections remembered on objects Maya now? During the session and when you 
reload your scene?


Greg Punchatz
Sr. Creative Director
Janimation
214.823.7760
www.janimation.comhttp://www.janimation.com

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: MAYA community

[Brent McPherson]

Come on Emilio, animating a sphere in Maya is pretty much the same as Soft.

Everything *could* be done with onscreen icons and using the Animate menu.

- create sphere (click without dragging to get default size sphere)
- move tool W (WER in Maya = VCX in Soft)
- move sphere and hit S to save a key
- change time
- hit S to save another key
- playback

Handy hotkeys:
- hold K and drag left/right to change time in 3D view- (LMB sets time, MMB 
sets key time)
- Alt-V to start/stop playback
- comma (,) and period (.) hotkeys will move to prev/next key (or press Alt + 
,/.to move by 1 frame)

On the topic of a list I personally like the mailing list format and have never 
been able to get into online forums (too much effort to read) so I guess I 
should get on the maya_he3d list as it sounds like the closest thing to this 
list.
--
Brent

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: MAYA community

[Brent McPherson]

Sure.

Each forum requires a special login and they all look and act differently. Have 
to navigate there in my browser, login, click through topics, subjects, pages 
etc.

Contrast this with a mailing list that is delivered to my inbox and I have a 
rule that gets files the messages away in a folder.

When I am compiling or have a few seconds I pop to my email client (which is 
always open) and read a few messages. They are nicely threaded and I can delete 
the ones I have read so I am only ever seeing unread messages etc.

You can't switch to an online forum quickly and pick up where you left off as 
easily in my experience.
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Leendert A. Hartog
Sent: 14 March 2014 16:17
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: MAYA community

Brent McPherson schreef op 14-3-2014 16:48:
 On the topic of a list I personally like the mailing list format and have 
 never been able to get into online forums (too much effort to read) so I 
 guess I should get on the maya_he3d list as it sounds like the closest thing 
 to this list.
 --
 Brent


Hi,
Not to derail this conversation, but as an Admin @ the si-community the 
statement too much effort to read interests me. Could you perhaps 
elaborate a bit on that?

-- 

Leendert A. Hartog - Softimage hobbyist
AKA Hirazi Blue - Administrator  @, NOT the owner of  si-community.com


attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Best online resources to help with a Maya migration.

[Brent McPherson]

Since this a Maya migration thread and I work on modeling...

If anyone wants to get on the Maya Beta send me an email at 
brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com and I'll forward your name. You also need an 
account on https://beta.autodesk.com.
--
Brent

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Best online resources to help with a Maya migration.

[Brent McPherson]

Ha! No. I'm a Canadian currently stranded in rainy Bournemouth, UK. ;-)

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling
Sent: 28 February 2014 15:20
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Best online resources to help with a Maya migration.

Is this your Vimeo Brent ? http://vimeo.com/theonlykings

On 28 February 2014 16:08, Brent McPherson 
brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote:
Since this a Maya migration thread and I work on modeling...

If anyone wants to get on the Maya Beta send me an email at 
brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com and I'll 
forward your name. You also need an account on https://beta.autodesk.com.
--
Brent

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Best online resources to help with a Maya migration.

[Brent McPherson]

Interested customers should apply to participate in the Maya beta program.

The modeling group is very open and communicative. Many of our team members 
have worked on products other than Maya and we are focused on making Maya a 
great modeling program.

https://beta.autodesk.com

I'll try to find out more about the sign up process/requirements and post 
details here.

In the meantime if you want to tell me what those one or two crucial missing 
commands are I'm all ears... ;-)
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling
Sent: 27 February 2014 22:44
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Best online resources to help with a Maya migration.

What i like about the tweek tool is that it compliments what is already there 
in SI, and its pretty seamless.
Nex sticks out like a soar thumb in Maya, it brings great functionality, but 
lacks one or 2 crucial command which leads you to flip between Nex and the 
traditional modelling tools. it introduces smart elements cursor snapping 
similar to the tweak tool in SI, as well as really cool transform gizmo, that 
allows you to translate selections along 2 axis simultaneously. but all this 
cool stuff is confined to Nex.

On 27 February 2014 23:21, Tim Crowson 
tim.crow...@magneticdreams.commailto:tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com wrote:
Blargh!

On 2/27/2014 3:53 PM, Eric Thivierge wrote:
Yes but not 100% there.

On Thursday, February 27, 2014 4:49:25 PM, Tim Crowson wrote:

Does Maya have anything like Soft's Component Tweak Tool with all its
crazy awesomeness? I'll use anything that offers something like that  :-D


--



attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Best online resources to help with a Maya migration.

[Brent McPherson]

In Maya you use 1  3 hotkeys to toggle between base mesh and subd preview 
display. In subd display mode the Page Up/Down keys change the subd preview 
level. (the default value is 2)

So the workflow is something like this...

Hit 3 key and then use page up/down to adjust subd level. From then on just hit 
1  3 to toggle between base mesh and your chosen subd display level.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Emilio Hernandez
Sent: 28 February 2014 01:30
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Best online resources to help with a Maya migration.

By the way, to help on the transition.

Make sure you have the abSymMesh, csExtractSkin, and csExtractDeltas scripts, 
if you do character, and rigging.  Without this scripts you will be in a dead 
end.  Also make sure you find a good UV plugin.  That is just for start.  You 
will not be able to envelope (skin in Maya) with nothing but joints and 
geometry.  Say goodbye to implicit objects. And make sure you memorize the 
order to pick obj, as for parenting and constraining is different for each one.
If an object is a child of other object and you want to hide just the parent, 
well good luck.  All this kind of parameters propagate from the parent to all 
of its childs.  Be patient with the selection tool, and remember to click in 
the window you are using, cause it is not like Softimage that it works where 
the cursor is.  You need to activate the window or viewport by clicking in it.
Each object has at least two nodes the object and the shape.  If you want your 
object to display in something different than 2 subdivision levels, forget 
about something like the +/-.   You will need to go to the object shape node 
and set the preview subdivision levels to modify it in an object per object 
basis as there is no (MULT) selection like in Softimage.
Unless of course you make or have a script for doing this.
Well just for a begging guide.
Ohh and there is no such thing as the RMB when you are maniupalting an object a 
nasty pop up menu will appear in front of you with a dial like options.  For 
last take a deep breath when you are looking for a parameter as the 
ChannelBox/Layer editor will dispaly all the connections the object has.
Good luck with your transition.

[http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/8965/erojamailpleca.jpg]

2014-02-27 19:11 GMT-06:00 Emilio Hernandez 
emi...@e-roja.commailto:emi...@e-roja.com:
Exactly Stefan!
The client does not care whatever you are using.  He only cares about time, 
money and quality.
Go ahead make your transition, start thinking of hiring additional people, 
specially devs.  Make sure you search under the stones for scripts and plugins. 
 Spend more money to keep it up.

Maya out of the box is a piece of crap compared to Softimage.  So don't expect 
too much. Go with the latest technology  You will soon be bald of pulling 
out your hairs.

[http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/8965/erojamailpleca.jpg]

2014-02-27 19:06 GMT-06:00 Stefan Kubicek 
s...@tidbit-images.commailto:s...@tidbit-images.com:

Amen to that!
I'm doing my own projects and my clients could not care less what program their 
pictures were made in. I could use Maya
but that would mean I'd make 30% less profit. Why would I want to do that? As 
long as XSI remains that much ahead in the bread and butter disciplines I will 
continue to use it. Why waste money?

Softimage for me will be dead the time I will stop using it.
Don't know why is the rush to switch if you have your own clients, your own 
projects and you have been delivering amazing work done with Softimage.
The Maya 2015 won't be better than Softimage to get the job done.
So because SI 2015 unoficially yet is the latest version you are going to run 
to other options while you can still deliver superb work?
The clients don't care if you made it with paintbrush as long as they are 
satisfied with the end result.



[http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/8965/erojamailpleca.jpg]

2014-02-27 15:24 GMT-06:00 Sebastien Sterling 
sebastien.sterl...@gmail.commailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com:
If you are moving a team from SI to Maya, you are going to need to create a 
tone of scripts to improve functionality, last place i was in they proudly 
showed off their modeling script ow look at these ! and won't these make 
your life so much easier ?! not really cause all those scripts where already a 
given in SI.

On 27 February 2014 22:15, Vincent Fortin 
vfor...@gmail.commailto:vfor...@gmail.com wrote:
SideFX's Masterclasses
CMIVFX
Odforce.net
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini13.0/

There's enough information there to make your head explode :-)

On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 4:10 PM, Alan Fregtman 
alan.fregt...@gmail.commailto:alan.fregt...@gmail.com wrote:
Anyone have recommendations for great Houdini tutorials? I know SideFx have 
some, but besides those?


On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 4:04 PM, Mirko Jankovic 

RE: Re[2]: Survey - how would you do this?

[Brent McPherson]

On the subject of Windows I have an interesting perspective because prior to 
1998 I worked at Alias.

At that time Alias believed that Windows would be the dominant platform going 
forward and there was a lot of talk about using Mainwin (or one of the other 
Windows emulation frameworks available at the time) on IRIX to ease the burden 
of cross-platform development. The only saving grace was that Maya was designed 
to be cross-platform so even if we had switched to say Mainwin it wouldn't have 
locked the product into a single platform. I am saying this because in 1998 
computing was dominated by Windows/Microsoft and the decisions made by 
Softimage made perfect sense. (and I could imagine making similar decisions if 
Maya's development had started a few years later when Windows PCs took over 
from workstations)

COM is a different thing and it is a shame it has become synonymous with 
Windows. Rather COM is a set of rules and conventions designed to support 
interface-based programing in C++ since the language does not have direct 
support for this built-in. OOP got one thing fundamentally wrong in that it was 
overly concerned with code reuse through inheritance. Inheritance in retrospect 
turned out to be a bad thing because it mixes the two (unrelated) concepts of 
interface and implementation. The end result is usually code that is harder to 
maintain and change since changes in low-level classes have a tendency to 
ripple outwards to many parts of the system. (something we call 
tight-coupling in the programming world)

The reality is that most code in a large application is not reusable and reuse 
generally only happens with low-level libraries that are carefully crafted and 
designed to be reusable. A COM interface is a black box designed to separate 
interface from implementation and different objects can implement the same 
interface in different ways or masquerade as other objects using the magic of 
interfaces. This helps limit the scope of changes in the system and gives 
developers more flexibility at the application level. An interesting example 
that comes to mind is the quaternion fcurves in Softimage which are COM objects 
that masquerade as regular fcurves. As a result very little code needed to be 
modified to display or interact with them since most of the system *sees* them 
as regular fcurves.

So in summary Windows bad, COM good. ;-)
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Emilio Hernandez
Sent: 14 February 2014 17:17
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Re[2]: Survey - how would you do this?

It is really a shame that Autodesk when bought Softimage, instead of starting 
the migration from the COM/OLE platform, just took the guts outs of Softimage.  
The Dev team. To insert it in Maya, which, IMHO is sitll basically the same 
from those days.  I have not seen any super development of Maya as it would 
be expected by such corporate strategy...  If by now, Maya had the 
functionality, beauty, elegance, design, and workflow of Softimage,  the story 
would be different.
I am married to Softimage until death tear us appart.

Maybe it is not Softimage's days the only ones that are counted...
Autodesk has been loosing market lately, and has been unsuccesful of driving 
the small but solid Softimage user base to Maya.  And when the time comes, my 
perception is that the mayority of us, at least in the film/vfx industry is 
looking to other platforms rather than Maya.  They betted to the wrong horse, 
again imho.  Maybe I am wrong.  But only time will tell.



[http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/8965/erojamailpleca.jpg]

2014-02-14 10:15 GMT-06:00 Angus Davidson 
angus.david...@wits.ac.zamailto:angus.david...@wits.ac.za:

For historical perspective, you need to know that we were owned by
Microsoft in 1998, and there was no indication that SGI or the Mac
would come back from the dead.  The company began to consider the Film
industry as legacy and that games would be the future.  The product
was named after the name of the game exchange format to subtly suggest
that.  Max also had taken the Windows NT jump, with huge success.
Well Microsoft hasnt gotten any better at predicting tech since.  Smart phones, 
tablets, pretty much anything internet based ;)=
table width=100% border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 
style=width:100%;
tr
td align=left style=text-align:justify;font face=arial,sans-serif 
size=1 color=#99span style=font-size:11px;This communication is 
intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this 
communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original 
message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the 
permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to 
enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus 
advised that the content of this message may not be legally 

RE: Re[2]: Survey - how would you do this?

[Brent McPherson]

In general most games draw all their own custom UI on top of the graphics 
library so the platform-specific code footprint would be much less than in an 
application like Softimage which is built on top of the native UI toolkit. e.g. 
games are typically implemented in a single OpenGL/DirectX window.

In terms of emulation technology you are not going to get any better than 
Mainwin since it was developed directly from the Windows source code and is 
natively compiled. I doubt any other emulation library would achieve the 
required level of compatibility to run Softimage. The only viable solution IMO 
is to use virtualization technology to run windows on your Mac or dual-boot etc.

Cheers.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Angus Davidson
Sent: 17 February 2014 11:51
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Re[2]: Survey - how would you do this?

Hi Brent

Very well explained thank you. I do agree that because of the overall 
crappiness of Windows COM has got a bad rep. Unfortunately its very hard for 
most people to know where one begins and the other ends and in the end the 
overall perception is the one that sticks.

On a slightly unrelated note I was patching my wifes GuildWars 2 and instead of 
downloading the whole data file I just copied it from my mac install to her 
windows one. Seems that GW2 is pretty much running in emulation mode using 
Transgaming Cider.  For those of you who may have played GW2 know its very 
graphics intensive and I comfortable get 45-60fps on max settings.

Anyone know if the way Softimage is put together would preclude it from coming 
to the Mac using this type of technology rather then rewriting it ?

Kind regards

Angus



From: Brent McPherson 
brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com
Reply-To: 
softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com 
softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Date: Monday 17 February 2014 at 1:06 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com 
softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Re[2]: Survey - how would you do this?

On the subject of Windows I have an interesting perspective because prior to 
1998 I worked at Alias.

At that time Alias believed that Windows would be the dominant platform going 
forward and there was a lot of talk about using Mainwin (or one of the other 
Windows emulation frameworks available at the time) on IRIX to ease the burden 
of cross-platform development. The only saving grace was that Maya was designed 
to be cross-platform so even if we had switched to say Mainwin it wouldn't have 
locked the product into a single platform. I am saying this because in 1998 
computing was dominated by Windows/Microsoft and the decisions made by 
Softimage made perfect sense. (and I could imagine making similar decisions if 
Maya's development had started a few years later when Windows PCs took over 
from workstations)

COM is a different thing and it is a shame it has become synonymous with 
Windows. Rather COM is a set of rules and conventions designed to support 
interface-based programing in C++ since the language does not have direct 
support for this built-in. OOP got one thing fundamentally wrong in that it was 
overly concerned with code reuse through inheritance. Inheritance in retrospect 
turned out to be a bad thing because it mixes the two (unrelated) concepts of 
interface and implementation. The end result is usually code that is harder to 
maintain and change since changes in low-level classes have a tendency to 
ripple outwards to many parts of the system. (something we call 
tight-coupling in the programming world)

The reality is that most code in a large application is not reusable and reuse 
generally only happens with low-level libraries that are carefully crafted and 
designed to be reusable. A COM interface is a black box designed to separate 
interface from implementation and different objects can implement the same 
interface in different ways or masquerade as other objects using the magic of 
interfaces. This helps limit the scope of changes in the system and gives 
developers more flexibility at the application level. An interesting example 
that comes to mind is the quaternion fcurves in Softimage which are COM objects 
that masquerade as regular fcurves. As a result very little code needed to be 
modified to display or interact with them since most of the system *sees* them 
as regular fcurves.

So in summary Windows bad, COM good. ;-)
--
Brent

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Emilio Hernandez
Sent: 14 February 2014 17:17
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Re[2]: Survey - how would you do

RE: Arnold Scene Viewer integrated in Softimage using Creation Platform

[Brent McPherson]

Viewing tip.

Make sure you are not taking a drink of your coffee around 03:15 when Guillaume 
starts talking about ass files! ;-)
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Guillaume Laforge
Sent: 20 July 2013 04:00
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com; The Softimage-to-Arnold plugin
Subject: Arnold Scene Viewer integrated in Softimage using Creation Platform

Hi guys,

As I think this tool developed at Hybride Technologies could get some interest 
from Softimage users, here is a teaser that I will show at the Fabric Engine 
user group this Siggraph: https://vimeo.com/70671257

Cheers,

Guillaume Laforge
RD engineer at Hybride Technologies

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: CustomTool Pick

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Vincent,

The first place to start is by checking the return values to make sure the 
calls succeed before attempting to use the  values.

Just because picking got an intersection doesn't mean the point locator query 
will succeed because they are using different techniques for testing 
intersection. Also picking generally uses a small region around the cursor. (so 
you could still get a picking hit when your cursor is a few pixels outside the 
surface)

I found this code snippet from Piotrek on this thread that shows how to check 
the point locator setup/results for errors.

http://www.si-community.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=16t=2595

I think that with proper error checking your issue will probably go away.
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Vincent Ullmann
Sent: 14 June 2013 20:35
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: CustomTool Pick

Hey List,

currently i try to develop a little CustomTool.
Most of it works fine, except one annoying Issue.

I use the Pick-Command to get a current Location under my Cursor
As demonstrated in the attached picture, when the cursor is near the 
Edge between Object and ViewportBackground there seems to be an Error.

Does anyone know how to avoid this?

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Modo's Deformation (Weight Containers)

[Brent McPherson]

I only watched the first part of the video but it looked like a pretty standard 
deformer chain being driven by weight maps so I didn't really see what all the 
fuss was about.

If you really want to built up a custom on deformations then a procedural 
system like ICE would be way more flexible since you can order and blend 
operations anyway you want.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Crowson
Sent: 14 April 2013 4:11 AM
To: ron...@toonafish.nl; softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Modo's Deformation (Weight Containers)

Maybe similar, but a weight container in modo is not tied to mesh item. Weight 
maps exist in modo the same as they do in other apps. But weight containers are 
a way of abstracting that from the mesh item.
On 4/13/2013 7:21 PM, Toonafish wrote:
Would that be the same as using cluster center deforms with weight maps in SI ? 
You can create a similar setup, and also define the order of evaluation by 
swapping the cluster center deform operators in the operator stack.

- Ronald


On 4/12/2013 23:37, Marco Peixoto wrote:
This seems really interesting and a new way of dealing with Envelope Weights:


http://vimeo.com/63720234


--



Tim Crowson
CG Lead

Magnetic Dreams, Inc.
2525 Lebanon Pike, Building C. Nashville, TN 37214
Ph  615.885.6801 | Fax  615.889.4768 | 
www.magneticdreams.comhttp://www.magneticdreams.com
tim.crow...@magneticdreams.commailto:tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: arcCos nan

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Jimmy,

Clamp your input values to the range -1..1 before calling arccos.

Probably just some small numerical error creeping in and pushing it slightly 
outside that range.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of jimmy gass
Sent: 21 March 2013 7:51 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: arcCos nan

I'm having issues with arccos returning nan for some values.

Is there a way to filter out the nan and just return 0? It can break renders 
and simulations.

What would cause arccos to return nan, is it like divide by zero? Maybe I can 
do a check of the values before I'm operating on them.

Thanks

jimmy
attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Free icon libraries?

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Eric,

This is a rather vague question but for my personal projects I use Inkscape 
with an icon font like Entypo to quickly design custom artwork that is scalable.

Throw in some subtle gradients, shadows and maybe a pattern or two from 
subtlepatterns.com and you're done. ;-)

http://inkscape.org/
http://www.entypo.com/
http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome/
http://subtlepatterns.com/
--
Brent


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Eric Thivierge
Sent: 07 March 2013 7:00 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: OT: Free icon libraries?

Wondering if anyone has any free libraries they use for building their tool 
GUIs. Need to be free for commercial use.


Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com
attachment: winmail.dat

RE: softimage and it's binary format

[Brent McPherson]

Let's just say it was a lucky coincidence because it was also needed for 
another project/client.

The tool SDK is something that is mainly interesting to 3rd party devs and 
larger studios because it has a higher barrier to entry (C++ plugin) and 
although we had talked about it for a long time it never quite made the cut 
because of this.

As a software developer I will tell you that almost anything is possible if you 
are willing to commit the time  money. (and I'm sure it is the same in the 
production world) However, the architecture makes a big difference so with 
right architecture feature X might be 10 or 100 times easier to do in one 
product vs another. So architecture makes a big difference and does decide to a 
large extend how the software will evolve.

Multi-platform support is a good example. When XSI was developed Softimage was 
owned by Microsoft so the dev team made a decision to build directly on the 
Windows APIs. Therefore porting to a new platform would obviously incur a 
higher cost for Softimage. Maya on the other hand was designed to be 
multi-platform so the team invested in isolating the UI layer. This required 
more initial architecture investment but made it easier to port the product. I 
think both companies made the right call given their circumstances. At Alias we 
seriously considered taking a Mainwin-like approach (there were a few companies 
offering cross-platform windows API support at the time) since it was clear 
that Microsoft was going to be the dominant computing platform and supporting 
multiple platforms had an ongoing development cost. So having a higher cost 
means you need to have a stronger business case before you invest the extra 
effort in porting the product to a new platform.
--  
Brent

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Eugen Sares
Sent: 29 January 2013 12:05 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: softimage and it's binary format

Yeah, let's hear that story! =}

One basic question, for the spirit:
would you say that anything is possible, or are there things (on the known 
wishlist) that probably will never get fixed, simply because it would mean too 
many changes of the core architecture? Like no surgery on the open heart?
Or is there still enough room for any kind of improvement (counting out 
starting from scratch)?
The difference between being unwilling or unable...

Looking at 3ds max, you get the impression that this is the reason for it's 
more or less stalled development. Hopeless kludge beyond repair...



Am 29.01.2013 11:13, schrieb Brent McPherson:
 There is no central priority list from which we pull projects. As devs we 
 obviously have our own ideas what should be done but there are many other 
 business interests and opinions that go into deciding what gets done each 
 release. You just hope that as a team you are striking the right overall 
 balance for each release.

 I know in the in the past we visited a number of you guys with our $100 test 
 where we give you 100 virtual dollars to spend on features and you tell us 
 what you would spend it on. It is fun because depending on who is in the room 
 you can get wildly different opinions and the final result usually ends up 
 looking quite different than what it was at the beginning of the test. I'm 
 sure those of you who have participated can confirm  that it is a harder 
 exercise than you might have initially expected. ;-)

 In the case of the tool SDK I think you would be surprised to know the 
 history of that project and how it got developed... ;-)
 --
 Brent


 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Eugen Sares
 Sent: 29 January 2013 8:45 AM
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject: Re: softimage and it's binary format

 Am 29.01.2013 08:57, schrieb jo benayoun:
 .. and these projects often die often because argument like this,
 which IMHO is a false dichotomy around core development vs the very
 nebulous more SDK access.  It ignores the fact that core development
 is done in a fraction of the time and benefit everyone plus the long
 term viability of the product, and don't necessarily exclude SDK
 support.


 It sounds to me to be always the same arguments at the end (front-end tools 
 vs SDK extensibility).
 We are already capable of writing a custom exporter but suffer from 
 inaccessible stuff.  Why would I like the team
 to provide me an ascii file format while opening more the SDK would allow me 
 to write my own + bring many other benefits in different areas other than IE?
 Following this idea, why did you guys exposed the ToolSDK and not just 
 provided user-friendly tools once a year (...)?
 Considering the time it takes also to get updates or maintenance done on some 
 parts of the software, I wouldn't like depending on the softimage
 team to see what I am looking

RE: Place Highlight Tool

[Brent McPherson]

Julian,

If I had to approach this in the tool SDK I would probably just store the 
relative mouse offset that was applied while shift-dragging and add this onto 
the input mouse position when not shift-dragging.

That way the spotlight position wouldn't jump or change when using 
shift-dragging. (because the offset would cancel out the effect of 
shift-dragging)

You should also consider sharing the source code so others can help you improve 
the tool.
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Julian
Sent: 09 January 2013 22:26
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Place Highlight Tool

On 09/01/2013 21:00, Brent McPherson wrote:
 Just curious.

 Did you keep the shift modifier key from the original tool as a way to 
 adjust the distance of the light from the surface? (Don't have a build 
 I can use to install the tool right now...)
 --
 Brent
Hi Brent,  I intended all along to do that but I couldn't figure out how to 
resolve the fact that if you adjusted the mouse position with the Shift key 
down (adjusting the distance the light travelled from the intersection point) 
and then released the Shift key the specular highlight would then snap to the 
new mouse position. Ideally, it would be nice if the scroll wheel on the mouse 
could be used to control the light 'height'...
Julian
attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Place Highlight Tool

[Brent McPherson]

Congratulations. Looks very cool Julian.

Just get ready for the inevitable flood of feature requests! ;-)
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of julian
Sent: 09 January 2013 18:56
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Place Highlight Tool

On 04/12/2012 10:23, Brent McPherson wrote:
 Hi Eugen,

 Yes, it would be simple to do with the Tool SDK.

 In fact, we already have a spot light creation tool example that ships with 
 Softimage (search for SpotLightCreateTool in the custom tools addon) so only 
 the reflected ray part would need to be added.

 Anyone up for the challenge? ;-)

Belatedly picking up the gauntlet and thread. Had some time to fiddle around 
with the Tool SDK over the Christmas holidays and cannibalised the 
SpotLightCreateTool as Brent suggested. Tool SDK has been great to work with. 
I'm in renewed awe of Piotrek Marczak's work (Meshpaint, Soft
Transform) using the SDK. First usable stab linked below (addon and movie).

http://julianjohnsonsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/place-specular-highlights.html

Julian


attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Place Highlight Tool

[Brent McPherson]

Just curious.

Did you keep the shift modifier key from the original tool as a way to adjust 
the distance of the light from the surface? (Don't have a build I can use to 
install the tool right now...)
--
Brent


-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Julian
Sent: 09 January 2013 20:34
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Place Highlight Tool

On 09/01/2013 20:15, Eugen Sares wrote:
 Ok, tested it. What you do is create a new light every time the tool 
 is called.
 May I suggest something? It would be better if you allowed selected 
 lights to be moved instead of creating new ones, keeping the distance 
 between the light and the surface.
 This way, you could also ignore the light type (spot, omni, 
 directional, VRay, Arnold, whatever). Light is light...
 Would that be possible?
 For convenience, you could also attach the command to the Transform 
 menu.

Hi Eugen,

Thanks for the great feedback! As you say, it's relatively straightforward to 
swap out the light shader for a third party one. In Arnold's case some of the 
light rigs require a bit more hand tweaking e.g. they automatically come with 
expressions set on area scale etc. 
Would be good to either have a preference setting or context menu to select the 
light type you want to add and then build those presets into the tool so that 
they're available.

The core code is based on the SDK SpotLightCreateTool which behaves exactly in 
the way you're seeing. Moving existing lights is a priority and coming next :-) 
but it might have to wait for another holiday period!

Thanks again,
Julian

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Area ate my message ( and spit it out again :)

[Brent McPherson]

FxPerson,

You have a tendency to write in partial sentences, use strange punctuation and 
use multiple font sizes in your emails. This makes it hard to understand the 
points you are trying to make.

Writing is hard. I will often rewrite a single email or posting multiple times 
until it feels right. I think it was Luc-Eric who once told me it can take him 
1/2 hour to craft a single reply to this list and I am in the same ballpark.

I don't really have any advice other than to keep re-reading and refining your 
message until it is as clear as you can make it.

Also, never write when you are upset or emotionally charged. In those 
situations I will often compose my reply but then sit on it for a few hours or 
maybe even a day and then go back a rewrite it when I have calmed down.

Treat others with respect and try not to assume intent before you know all the 
facts. A better reply to the held for moderation message would have been to 
just state what happened and ask what it means.

Finally, posting under my real name helps because if I fuck up and say the 
wrong thing it reflects on me personally. Making mistakes and learning the hard 
way can be a very good thing IMHO. ;-)

Cheers!
--
Brent


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Fx Person
Sent: 06 January 2013 13:40
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Area ate my message ( and spit it out again :)


@Raffaele  Stefan

Actually the Line Breaks are manual (not left to the automatic line breaks of 
the page width)
which normally should be easier to read,
but the Area fixed page width ended-up slightly shorter than measured,
resulting in sporadic extra line breaks with 1 or 2 words on the extra lines..

Would have fixed-it if there was an Edit button, but there was not.

But   **Could not** read / understand it  ?   (hum..)


@Andy
Not sure about the distress..  strong feelings perhaps..

as for your previous post..

Yep.. aah! sales..

But what makes me somewhat hopeful,
particularly for when MayaFX would come out, in respects to what would be left 
of ICE marketing,
(ICE Marketing being whats left of SI Marketing)

.. from what I can tell, the industry seems to be moving towards the 
smaller-shop market,
and that includes Autodesk..

Smaller-shops/indy freelancers being exactly where SI can shine (or outperform) 
most,
and where AD would have a few  very good contenders there (Modo.. C4D..)
(unless they would acquire them all .. gna-hahaha!)
and where Maya may feel a bit overbloated.

Otherwise, if they only knew how much (Godforsaken) sales they may be about to 
miss-out on.

Depending on how things turn out, I'm personally keeping an eye on Modo 
(workflow/philosophy-wise )
while having witnessed an increasing amount of actual job posts mentioning it.

(and while surely also keeping-on using SI at home,
as I would Photoshop if it got aquired by Corel  replaced with Corel Paint)

Also please don't apologize!  I personally found your long post to be rather 
short! :)



From: Andy Moorer andymoo...@gmail.com

I was the same, I saw it as indicative of a degree of distress and strong 
conflicting feelings on the matter. (Shrugs) I can accept that, I've vented on 
this board myself (probably to the annoyance of the rest of you, heh, 
apologies.)

In a sense, I'm glad Softimage is a tool which can arouse this degree of 
emotion, I think it's an amazing tool and am glad others also feel as strongly. 
But I hope nobody will stress themselves out too much. :)


On Jan 6, 2013, at 1:13 AM, Raffaele Fragapane 
raffsxsil...@googlemail.commailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:

 If I have to be honest, I couldn't puzzle out, or read the entirety of, the 
 post due to the layout/typography being so... messy?

 I don't even get what is a quote, a self-quote, a statement, or anything else.
 I might be alone in this, but I really couldn't get through the lot, and not 
 for lack of trying.


attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Place Highlight Tool

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Eugen,

Yes, it would be simple to do with the Tool SDK.

In fact, we already have a spot light creation tool example that ships with 
Softimage (search for SpotLightCreateTool in the custom tools addon) so only 
the reflected ray part would need to be added.

Anyone up for the challenge? ;-)
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Eugen Sares
Sent: 04 December 2012 09:16
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Place Highlight Tool

Hi,
I'd have good use for a tool to place highlights/reflections.
Select a light (or any other scene object), click/move cursor over any surface, 
and the light gets placed on the reflected ray of the camera - surface point 
ray.
3ds max has such a tool since forever.
For Softimage, I could only find an old script by Guy Rabiller. Did I miss 
something?

Should be possible to implement this nicely with the Tools SDK, I guess.
Anyone?

Thanks!
Eugen
attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Scripting question

[Brent McPherson]

There is a preference in the Transform Properties to have the transform tool 
modify the object's pivot.

You can try this if you don't mind your object's pivot being modified.

P.S. This option is used by the Maya interaction mode.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Ciaran Moloney
Sent: 24 October 2012 10:04
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Scripting question

Yeah, it looks like the interactive pivot overrides the pivot parameters of the 
kinematics property. It lives in its own universe. Confusing...
On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 7:23 AM, Szabolcs Matefy 
szabol...@crytek.commailto:szabol...@crytek.com wrote:
But I'm afraid that the current pivot (the one the artist repositioned with the 
ALT key) is not accessible. It would be really nice to have it...

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com]
 On Behalf Of Martin
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2012 9:40 AM

To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Scripting question

Hi,

That's the Center position, which is not the same as the obj's pivot.

obj.posx.value = Center Position in X
obj.pposx.value = Pivot Local Position in X (distance from the obj center)

btw,
obj.pposx.value = obj.kinematics.local.pposx.value

M.Yara




On Sat, Oct 20, 2012 at 8:52 PM, julien carmagnac 
carmagnacjul...@gmail.commailto:carmagnacjul...@gmail.com wrote:
Hi
Correct me if i'm wrong but your pivot position is your object position, that 
you can get with kinematics (myObj.Kinematics.Local.posx.Value, etc.).

2012/10/18 Szabolcs Matefy szabol...@crytek.commailto:szabol...@crytek.com
Thanks, that was I afraid of...thanks anyway!

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com]
 On Behalf Of patrick nethercoat
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2012 2:22 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Scripting question

AFAIK pivot position is transient, only related to a specific transformation. 
You can set it with scripting but it doesn't get stored.
On 18 October 2012 13:10, Szabolcs Matefy 
szabol...@crytek.commailto:szabol...@crytek.com wrote:
Hi

I need to get the position of the pivot...is it possible to get it via 
scripting?


Cheers


Szabolcs
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--
- Ciaran
attachment: winmail.dat

RE: [custom tool sdk] Disabling snapping when ctrl is pressed

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Ahmidou,

It look like a bug.

Snapping targets should not be displayed for tools that don't have snapping 
enabled. The picking issue sounds like a secondary bug that is probably 
triggered by the snap target display.

Have you tried disabling the snap properties inside your tool as a workaround?
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Ahmidou Lyazidi
Sent: 19 October 2012 08:56
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: [custom tool sdk] Disabling snapping when ctrl is pressed

Hi Minrui,
Thanks for your reply, It is disabeld in the context which is fine, but if the 
options are set to:

Application.SetValue(preferences.SnapProperties.Enable0D, True, )
Application.SetValue(preferences.SnapProperties.Centers, True, )
Application.SetValue(preferences.SnapProperties.Points, True, )

object pivot appears in the viewport while pressing ctrl and there is wrong hit 
number when rectangle picking knots

Cheers
A.
2012/10/19 Min Rui Tan minrui@autodesk.commailto:minrui@autodesk.com
Snapping should be disabled by default in the toolcontext.
You see the snap toggled in the UI but using for example GetWorldPosition won't 
return the snapped positions.

Regards,
Minrui


-Original Message-
From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com]
 On Behalf Of Stefan Kubicek
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2012 3:19 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: [custom tool sdk] Disabling snapping when ctrl is pressed

- http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?id=12331406siteID=123112S
- elProduct=Softimage


 More details on this, rectangle pick a knot while ctrl is down return
 extra imagniary indice (like 3442 when there is only 4 knots) if:
 -the knot is the 2nd one (indice =1)
 -more than one knot is picked

 Weird...

 2012/10/19 Ahmidou Lyazidi 
 ahmidou@gmail.commailto:ahmidou@gmail.com

 Hi
 I'm working on a tool that need to mimic rectangle selection on
 closed bezier curve's knots ,so when ctrl is down it toggle the selection.
 But pressing ctrl inside a custom tool also toggle snapping. Even
 with in_ctxt.EnableSnapping(0); I still have the snapping center
 that appears, and worst when picking the 2nd knot it return 2 hits ,
 one is right and the other an undefined value...

 This happen only when ctrl is down and  registering it as a shortcut
 key didn't helped Afaik snapping should only work with the transform
 tool or when it is activated in a custom tool, right?

 Is there a way to completely disable the snapping tool while using a
 custom one?

 Brent, anyone?

 Cheers!!

 --
 Ahmidou Lyazidi
 Director | TD | CG artist
 http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos






--
---
Stefan Kubicek   Co-founder
---
   keyvis digital imagery
  Wehrgasse 9 - Grüner Hof
   1050 Vienna  Austria
 Phone:+43/699/12614231tel:%2B43%2F699%2F12614231
--- www.keyvis.athttp://www.keyvis.at  
ste...@keyvis.atmailto:ste...@keyvis.at ---
--  This email and its attachments are
--confidential and for the recipient only--



--
Ahmidou Lyazidi
Director | TD | CG artist
http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos
attachment: winmail.dat

RE: raafal

[Brent McPherson]

What I meant was why not have one list with no language restriction. Let the 
lists evolve according to which users are most active at any given time.
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Guy Rabiller
Sent: 12 October 2012 17:23
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: raafal


Hey Brent,

That's a tricky issue, I agree.

I've considered the option to have only one english list, but that would have 
closed the door for some french users. Right now the most active list is the 
french one because I've naturally involved french friends and colleagues at 
first so we have a more 'natural' discussion there in our mother tongue and 
they can slag me more easily if I'm doing something wrong. It will be more 
formal on the english list I think.

Ultimately I guess it will depend on how many peoples will participate on those 
lists. I'll try to synchronize some topics from one to the other. A bit more 
work to do, but I don't want to close the door to french users not comfortable 
with english. Being french, that's the least I can do.

--
guy rabiller | raa.tel | radfac founder/ceo | raafal.org founder
tel: (+33)977 195 006 | mob: (+33)675 183 146 | fax: (+33)972 288 293


Le 12/10/2012 17:54, Brent McPherson a écrit :
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/12/kickstarter-uk-launch

 Guy, I find it interesting that you would split your mailing lists into 
 French and English. Personally I would think it is better to keep a single 
 lists even if some posts are in French because otherwise you risk splintering 
 your community from the beginning.
 --
 Brent


 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of David 
 Gallagher
 Sent: 11 October 2012 19:36
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject: Re: raafal


 Guy says Kickstarter is for US citizens only.

 I didn't know about that. I wonder if there's an alternative.
 Dave

 On 10/11/2012 2:02 PM, Gene Crucean wrote:
 Definitely kickstarter worthy.


 On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 10:22 AM, Miquel Campos 
 miquel.cam...@gmail.commailto:miquel.cam...@gmail.com wrote:
   Kickstart?  :P

 

 Miquel Campos
 www.akaosaru.comhttp://www.akaosaru.com




 2012/10/11 Francois Lord 
 flordli...@gmail.commailto:flordli...@gmail.com
 Count me in.

 On 11/10/2012 10:38, Greg Punchatz wrote:
 I know its not for making money.but if you need money to pay the bills 
 while making this,  I and a few thousand Softies would probably send you 
 money to expedite the process.
 






 --
 Gene Crucean - Emmy winning - Oscar nominated VFX Supervisor / iOS-OSX 
 Developer / Filmmaker / Photographer
 ** Freelance for hire **
 www.genecrucean.comhttp://www.genecrucean.com

 ~~ Please use my website's contact form on 
 www.genecrucean.comhttp://www.genecrucean.com/ for any personal 
 emails. Thanks. I may not get them at this address. ~~


attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Raafal

[Brent McPherson]

As someone who recently tried to do some numerical computation in Python I can 
say I was really shocked at how slow Python was and it doesn't really have any 
good multiprocessing constructs  built-in. Languages based on LLVM that are 
compiled to machine code are going to give orders of magnitude better 
performance.

The way scripting in say Softimage or Maya works is simply to do UI tasks or 
glue together lower level native commands/code so performance is not as 
critical.
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Stefan Kubicek
Sent: 11 October 2012 13:03
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Raafal

I've been wondering the same. Afaik Fabric Engine uses KL (Kernel Language) to 
allow acceleration of compute-intensive code (e.g. a deformer or a fluid sim), 
but I haven't understood yet in how far this could be used to accelerate the 
processing of e.g. a DAG. I imagine there is a lot of stuff going on in a 3D 
app besides computing vertex positions, e.g. deciding which objects need to be 
rendered, which constraints or expressions to evaluate next (and more 
importantly, which ones to ignore), preparing data for the graphics card, 
updating the UI, etc, so the question wether Python would be fast enough comes 
naturally.

The last time I've heard of a 3D application using something else than C++ at 
it's core was the infamouse 3dsmax rewrite a few years ago at Autodesk, which 
used C# if I remember correctly. The bottom line was that it was possible to 
construct a well performing system with C#, yet the project stagnated and was 
finally canceled in lack of a clear development direction. 
(http://www.maxunderground.com/archives/11007_nitrous_putting_together_the_pieces_of_a_max_core_rewrite.html)

I don't know in how far Python and C# differ in their potential to create 
efficient and fast code, but it sure sounds intriguing. Write once, run 
anywhere, on the fly code changes, jummy!

.





 I love those buttons and the way it grows...
 I have tested most all of 3D softwares available(professional ones) 
 and XSI is in my opinion the best interfaced.

 But one thing bother me, as Jo said, about the Core / Architecture I 
 understand that a scripting language can centralize all the external 
 libs as well as pass datas between those lib and the ui but I don't 
 see how to have an unified framework and nowadays performance without 
 a core C/C++ architecture

 Do you think we could use a core as FabricEngine under the hood?

 ben

   


--
---
Stefan Kubicek   Co-founder
---
   keyvis digital imagery
  Wehrgasse 9 - Grüner Hof
   1050 Vienna  Austria
 Phone:+43/699/12614231
--- www.keyvis.at  ste...@keyvis.at ---
--  This email and its attachments are
--confidential and for the recipient only--

attachment: winmail.dat

Chinny lives!

[Brent McPherson]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zugp9W620slist=PLC4040C7FF264D722index=1feature=plcp

Virtual Chinny anyone? Thanks to Edna for the link. ;-)
--
Brent

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Soft - Maya : 23.98 to 24 FPS Problem

[Brent McPherson]

Yes and no. Internally Maya breaks time into ticks where each tick is 1/6000 of 
a second. (so 23.98fps would be treated as 24fps)

FCurves in Maya can save their keys as either floats or ticks but I'm not sure 
what the default is.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Alok
Sent: 27 September 2012 00:04
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Soft - Maya : 23.98 to 24 FPS Problem

Ok so if I understand correctly that means you cannot have fractional fps in 
Maya because it has to be integral number of frames ?

[cid:image001.gif@01CD9CA5.782F6000]
On 26/09/2012 6:57 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote:

I think it has to do with animation being in seconds in xsi while it's in 
frames in maya
On Sep 26, 2012 6:52 PM, Alok 
alok.gan...@modusfx.commailto:alok.gan...@modusfx.com wrote:
Finally solved it. Instead of changing in Maya, I just changed the FPS in 
Softimage from 23.98 to 24.0,  keeping the option of scaling the curves and 
then send animation to Maya. Everything works ! And to imagine a  ***particle 
plugin*** like Softimage could save the day in one second while the uber 
big full fledged DCC App*** like Maya cannot.

Ahem ! I think you get my point guys ;)

[cid:image001.gif@01CD9CA5.782F6000]
On 26/09/2012 5:03 PM, Alok wrote:
We have tracked and animated objects in Softimage at 23.98 fps. We bring the 
animation in Maya, but in Maya there is no custom FPS setting available. The 
closest is 24 FPS, so obviously the animation does not match. The only solution 
I can think is to quickly script to scale the FCurves.

Does that seems to be the approach or is there anything else I can do 
differently.

Any help much appreciated.

Thanks.
--
[cid:image001.gif@01CD9CA5.782F6000]

No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.comhttp://www.avg.com
Version: 2012.0.2221 / Virus Database: 2441/5293 - Release Date: 09/26/12

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: unsupported ice kinematics

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Adrian,

Should still be there but we added a 2 to the end of the environment variable 
to see if anyone noticed.

Congratulations, you are the first!  We had a cake for the winner but we ate it 
a few years back... ;-)

e.g.  XSI_UNSUPPORTED_ICE_KINEMATICS2
--
Brent


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of adrian wyer
Sent: 26 September 2012 16:48
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: unsupported ice kinematics

was this shitcanned?

first time i really need it and i cant write to global kine on geometry

arse

a

Adrian Wyer
Fluid Pictures
75-77 Margaret St.
London
W1W 8SY
++44(0) 207 580 0829

adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.comblocked::blocked::blocked::mailto:adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com
www.fluid-pictures.comblocked::blocked::blocked::http://www.fluid-pictures.com/

Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales.
Company number:5657815
VAT number: 872 6893 71

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: zoom limits

[Brent McPherson]

Manny,

Check out my other post on this thread. It used the center-of-interest distance 
attribute in the camera PPG.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Manny Papamanos
Sent: 21 September 2012 23:00
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: zoom limits

Even if you cut the interest, it looks like the camera uses an imaginary 
interest to reorient itself (when u hit 'f' for instance) and behaves the same 
as a cam with interest.
I think what is  needed is an option like 'interest follows camera'.
However, this can be a nightmare if you are doing camera work and keep it on.
Perhaps it should work on the user view only.

-manny





From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of David Gallagher
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2012 5:07 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: zoom limits


Would be nice to have those new developers put this on a list.

Thanks Brent!

On 9/21/2012 11:14 AM, Adam Sale wrote:
same behavior.. Camera hits a wall and stops dead. I'd like to see this 
behavior changed as well.. a royal PITA when trying to get in close for 
modeling detail work..
Usually, I just tag points and then reframe, but still would be nice to have 
this adjust automatically..
On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 7:44 AM, Eric Thivierge 
ethivie...@gmail.commailto:ethivie...@gmail.com wrote:
What if you delete the interest?


Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com

On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 12:37 AM, Brent McPherson 
brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote:
That is actually a tricky one because when you zoom in the Nav tool you are not 
changing the FOV but rather moving the camera closer to the interest. (e.g. the 
point about which the camera orbits) When the camera reaches the interest you 
can't go any further.

In Maya when you start zooming and the distance between the camera and the 
interest gets small they reset the interest to some fixed distance further from 
the camera. So you zoom in close, release the mouse and on the next zoom the 
interest will be reset and you can zoom some more.

This solution is probably the best compromise but requires some care to ensure 
the zooming feels smooth.
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com]
 On Behalf Of Len Krenzler
Sent: 21 September 2012 14:46
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: zoom limits

I've always wondered about that too. Seems odd and maybe should be added to the 
small annoying things list.

On 9/20/2012 3:02 PM, David Gallagher wrote:
 Is there a way to make the navigation tool (I use the Alt key) not
 have limits when you get close to the camera interest?

 I just realized I can use the zoom tool separately to get in closer.
 That certainly helps, but I'm curious why there's a limit at all and
 how to change it.

 Dave G



--
_

Len Krenzler - Creative Control Media Productions

Phone: 780.463.3126tel:780.463.3126

www.creativecontrol.cahttp://www.creativecontrol.ca - 
l...@creativecontrol.camailto:l...@creativecontrol.ca



attachment: winmail.dat

RE: zoom limits

[Brent McPherson]

That is actually a tricky one because when you zoom in the Nav tool you are not 
changing the FOV but rather moving the camera closer to the interest. (e.g. the 
point about which the camera orbits) When the camera reaches the interest you 
can't go any further.

In Maya when you start zooming and the distance between the camera and the 
interest gets small they reset the interest to some fixed distance further from 
the camera. So you zoom in close, release the mouse and on the next zoom the 
interest will be reset and you can zoom some more.

This solution is probably the best compromise but requires some care to ensure 
the zooming feels smooth.
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Len Krenzler
Sent: 21 September 2012 14:46
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: zoom limits

I've always wondered about that too. Seems odd and maybe should be added to the 
small annoying things list.

On 9/20/2012 3:02 PM, David Gallagher wrote:
 Is there a way to make the navigation tool (I use the Alt key) not 
 have limits when you get close to the camera interest?

 I just realized I can use the zoom tool separately to get in closer. 
 That certainly helps, but I'm curious why there's a limit at all and 
 how to change it.

 Dave G



--
_

Len Krenzler - Creative Control Media Productions

Phone: 780.463.3126

www.creativecontrol.ca - l...@creativecontrol.ca

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: zoom limits

[Brent McPherson]

Same thing.

There is an center of interest distance in the camera PPG. When you have a 
separate interest it is controlling this attribute. when you delete the 
interest it reverts to using this value in the camera PPG. (similar to how up 
vector constraints work)

I also think when you delete the interest the value seems to get reset to 
something small because it is a little hard to zoom until you do a frame or 
frame all to reset the interest.
--
Brent


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Eric Thivierge
Sent: 21 September 2012 15:45
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: zoom limits

What if you delete the interest?


Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com

On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 12:37 AM, Brent McPherson 
brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote:
That is actually a tricky one because when you zoom in the Nav tool you are not 
changing the FOV but rather moving the camera closer to the interest. (e.g. the 
point about which the camera orbits) When the camera reaches the interest you 
can't go any further.

In Maya when you start zooming and the distance between the camera and the 
interest gets small they reset the interest to some fixed distance further from 
the camera. So you zoom in close, release the mouse and on the next zoom the 
interest will be reset and you can zoom some more.

This solution is probably the best compromise but requires some care to ensure 
the zooming feels smooth.
--
Brent

-Original Message-
From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com]
 On Behalf Of Len Krenzler
Sent: 21 September 2012 14:46
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: zoom limits

I've always wondered about that too. Seems odd and maybe should be added to the 
small annoying things list.

On 9/20/2012 3:02 PM, David Gallagher wrote:
 Is there a way to make the navigation tool (I use the Alt key) not
 have limits when you get close to the camera interest?

 I just realized I can use the zoom tool separately to get in closer.
 That certainly helps, but I'm curious why there's a limit at all and
 how to change it.

 Dave G



--
_

Len Krenzler - Creative Control Media Productions

Phone: 780.463.3126tel:780.463.3126

www.creativecontrol.cahttp://www.creativecontrol.ca - 
l...@creativecontrol.camailto:l...@creativecontrol.ca

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: SDK : caching the tool context pick buffer

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Steven,

Sorry, for the late reply as I was on holidays.

As far as painting goes you don't really need any special lookups to find 
vertices within the brush radius.

Once you know the current polygon under the brush center (which you got from 
the the pick buffer/raycast etc.) you just need to traverse neighbouring 
polys/verts (using the mesh topology) until you exceed the brush radius.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Steven Caron
Sent: 15 August 2012 19:09
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: SDK : caching the tool context pick buffer

hey brent

GAP related question... are you guys internally using your nearest 
neighbor/point locator to get points within the brush radius? say for weight 
painting?

s
On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 11:06 AM, Steven Caron 
car...@gmail.commailto:car...@gmail.com wrote:
cheers!

s

On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 10:26 AM, Brent McPherson 
brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote:
The pickbuffer doesn't have the information but intenally we could look it up 
on the mesh more efficiently than you can using either the geometry accessor or 
polygon arrays in the SDK. (both of which don't seem to be very efficient)
--
Brent

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com]
 On Behalf Of Steven Caron
Sent: 01 August 2012 18:18
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: SDK : caching the tool context pick buffer
i didn't realize the pickbuffer in ogl could provide that or maybe it was a 
convenience function the sdk would provide over the standard ogl pick buffer?

regardless, i will bring this up as a suggestion.
s

attachment: winmail.dat

RE: SDK : caching the tool context pick buffer

[Brent McPherson]

Sounds cool Steven!

Feel free to log suggestions for the tool SDK with support.

I had ideas for adding methods to the pickbuffer to get surface position, 
normals etc but I am not directly involved with this anymore...
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Steven Caron
Sent: 31 July 2012 21:39
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: SDK : caching the tool context pick buffer

thanks, i am going to use the fps counter for now ...

i made some progress last night... i am caching the pickbuffer properly now and 
can reuse it, its a single view only now and just compares a CTransformation i 
get off the view camera. removing snap reduced the lag a fair bit. the reason 
to use the snap was to get the hit position on the surface. while not complete 
i changed to use the polygon's vertices average position and their average 
normals to setup a CPlane which i then intersect the world ray with. i am not 
checking to see if i am inside the triangle yet but even this saves me 
considerable time and effort in making my own intersection routines. i haven't 
got my brush orientation perfect yet but i think that's just a matter of 
wrangling my oglRotate calls.

fun stuff!
steven

On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Brent McPherson 
brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote:
The longer a tool takes to process an input event the less events that gets 
generated by the window system so you would have a bigger distances between 
mouse move events. (which could lead to gaps in brush spacing in a paint tool 
etc)

I guess you really want to measure mps - mouse events per second. ;-) The fps 
counter should work because when interacting the tool generates a redraw after 
each mouse event but you would need to try it to be sure.
--
Brent

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com]
 On Behalf Of Steven Caron
Sent: 31 July 2012 20:59
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: SDK : caching the tool context pick buffer
@brent, can i use softimage's fps counter to do speed testing? does that 
counter represent the entire ogl rendering pipeline?

no biggie if not, i just didn't want to have to make my own profiling/fps 
counter.

s
On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 3:09 PM, Steven Caron 
car...@gmail.commailto:car...@gmail.commailto:car...@gmail.commailto:car...@gmail.com
 wrote:
well the CGeometryAccessor is a dump of everything too, but its just float/long 
data arrays instead of full fledged classes. at least i could cache this data 
easily without loops...

should be a fun exercise, which is available here for anyone who is 
interested...

https://github.com/caron/SimpleBrush
On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Brent McPherson 
brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com
 wrote:
I would say use the GeometryAccessor but I have probably used the SDK less than 
most of you guys. ;-).

One thing that always bugged me about GetPolygons and related geometry calls is 
that they return an array of *all* the polygons in the object so it is a really 
inefficient way to access a single polygon when you know its index.

l_polymesh.GetPolygons().GetItem(l_compIdx);

GeometryAccessor seems designed to address this shortcoming.


attachment: winmail.dat

RE: SDK : caching the tool context pick buffer

[Brent McPherson]

The pickbuffer doesn't have the information but intenally we could look it up 
on the mesh more efficiently than you can using either the geometry accessor or 
polygon arrays in the SDK. (both of which don't seem to be very efficient)
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Steven Caron
Sent: 01 August 2012 18:18
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: SDK : caching the tool context pick buffer

i didn't realize the pickbuffer in ogl could provide that or maybe it was a 
convenience function the sdk would provide over the standard ogl pick buffer?

regardless, i will bring this up as a suggestion.
s
On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 1:32 AM, Brent McPherson 
brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote:
Sounds cool Steven!

Feel free to log suggestions for the tool SDK with support.

I had ideas for adding methods to the pickbuffer to get surface position, 
normals etc but I am not directly involved with this anymore...
--
Brent

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com]
 On Behalf Of Steven Caron
Sent: 31 July 2012 21:39
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: SDK : caching the tool context pick buffer
thanks, i am going to use the fps counter for now ...

i made some progress last night... i am caching the pickbuffer properly now and 
can reuse it, its a single view only now and just compares a CTransformation i 
get off the view camera. removing snap reduced the lag a fair bit. the reason 
to use the snap was to get the hit position on the surface. while not complete 
i changed to use the polygon's vertices average position and their average 
normals to setup a CPlane which i then intersect the world ray with. i am not 
checking to see if i am inside the triangle yet but even this saves me 
considerable time and effort in making my own intersection routines. i haven't 
got my brush orientation perfect yet but i think that's just a matter of 
wrangling my oglRotate calls.

fun stuff!
steven
On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Brent McPherson 
brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com
 wrote:
The longer a tool takes to process an input event the less events that gets 
generated by the window system so you would have a bigger distances between 
mouse move events. (which could lead to gaps in brush spacing in a paint tool 
etc)

I guess you really want to measure mps - mouse events per second. ;-) The fps 
counter should work because when interacting the tool generates a redraw after 
each mouse event but you would need to try it to be sure.
--
Brent
From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com]
 On Behalf Of Steven Caron
Sent: 31 July 2012 20:59
To: 
softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: SDK : caching the tool context pick buffer
@brent, can i use softimage's fps counter to do speed testing? does that 
counter represent the entire ogl rendering pipeline?

no biggie if not, i just didn't want to have to make my own profiling/fps 
counter.

s
On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 3:09 PM, Steven Caron 
car...@gmail.commailto:car...@gmail.commailto:car...@gmail.commailto:car...@gmail.commailto:car...@gmail.commailto:car...@gmail.commailto:car...@gmail.commailto:car...@gmail.com
 wrote:
well the CGeometryAccessor is a dump of everything too, but its just float/long 
data arrays instead of full fledged classes. at least i could cache this data 
easily without loops...

should be a fun exercise, which is available here for anyone who is 
interested...

https://github.com/caron/SimpleBrush
On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Brent McPherson 
brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com
 wrote:
I would say use the GeometryAccessor but I have probably used the SDK less than 
most of you guys. ;-).

One thing that always bugged me about GetPolygons and related geometry calls is 
that they return an array of *all* the polygons in the object so it is a really 
inefficient way to access a single polygon when you know its index.

l_polymesh.GetPolygons().GetItem(l_compIdx);

GeometryAccessor

RE: SDK : caching the tool context pick buffer

[Brent McPherson]

The longer a tool takes to process an input event the less events that gets 
generated by the window system so you would have a bigger distances between 
mouse move events. (which could lead to gaps in brush spacing in a paint tool 
etc)

I guess you really want to measure mps - mouse events per second. ;-) The fps 
counter should work because when interacting the tool generates a redraw after 
each mouse event but you would need to try it to be sure.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Steven Caron
Sent: 31 July 2012 20:59
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: SDK : caching the tool context pick buffer

@brent, can i use softimage's fps counter to do speed testing? does that 
counter represent the entire ogl rendering pipeline?

no biggie if not, i just didn't want to have to make my own profiling/fps 
counter.

s
On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 3:09 PM, Steven Caron 
car...@gmail.commailto:car...@gmail.com wrote:
well the CGeometryAccessor is a dump of everything too, but its just float/long 
data arrays instead of full fledged classes. at least i could cache this data 
easily without loops...

should be a fun exercise, which is available here for anyone who is 
interested...

https://github.com/caron/SimpleBrush

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Brent McPherson 
brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote:
I would say use the GeometryAccessor but I have probably used the SDK less than 
most of you guys. ;-).

One thing that always bugged me about GetPolygons and related geometry calls is 
that they return an array of *all* the polygons in the object so it is a really 
inefficient way to access a single polygon when you know its index.

l_polymesh.GetPolygons().GetItem(l_compIdx);

GeometryAccessor seems designed to address this shortcoming.


attachment: winmail.dat

RE: SDK : caching the tool context pick buffer

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Steven,

Why don't you keep a dirty flag for the pickbuffer and simply set that in 
Activate and then the next time you ask for the pickbuffer (in mouse move or 
mouse down) recompute it if it is dirty.

The pickbuffer is specific to a particular view so you can't generate it is a 
callback like Activate which is not tied to any particular view. The same holds 
for methods like GetMousePosition. It will return CStatus::Fail when called 
from Activate. I guess we should have added an IsValid method to the pickbuffer 
but as a workaround you can assume that if GetViewIndex returns a value greater 
or equal to zero then it is safe to call GetPickBuffer. You will also need to 
decide if you are going to cache a pickbuffer for each view or just keep one 
for the last view etc...

The pickbuffer stuff was designed with this purpose in mind and one of our 
consulting devs used it to do a real-time (GAP-like) sculpting tool for a 
client.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Steven Caron
Sent: 30 July 2012 04:43
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: SDK : caching the tool context pick buffer

hey guys... (read brent)

i am trying to cache the PickBuffer each time the user activates this custom 
tool (this happens on camera navigation, which is my primary concern) but not 
having much luck. the doc suggests if i pass an empty region i will get the 
whole view but any subsequent calls i am making to 
PickBuffer.GetObjectAtPosition() has returned an invalid reference. is this 
doable in the Activate calback? the docs say...if unavailable in the current 
callback or any arguments are invalid then the resulting PickBuffer will be 
invalid.

so, are my arguments incorrect or is this not valid in the this callback?

// activate callback, called each time the tool comes active again
CStatus Activate(ToolContext in_ctxt)
{
  // get a list of selected meshes
  const CString empty;
  CStringArray families;
  families.Add(siMeshFamily);
  Application().GetSelection().GetArray().Filter(empty, families, empty, 
m_targets);

  // cache a pick buffer, m_pBuffer is a class member variable where i am 
caching it
  m_pBuffer = in_ctxt.GetPickBuffer(x, y, width, height, siPolygonFilter, 
m_targets, siShaded);
  LONG x,y;
  in_ctxt.GetMousePosition(x, y);
  CRef l_obj = m_pBuffer.GetObjectAtPosition(x, y);
  Application().LogMessage(LActivate :  + l_obj.GetAsText());

  return CStatus::OK;
};

any other tips on caching the PickBuffer each time the camera changes?

steven
attachment: winmail.dat

RE: ICE kineamtics performances ?

[Brent McPherson]

ICE currently only supports data level parallelism and since ICE kinematics 
primarily involves singleton data it is effectively single-threaded.

We are aware that higher performance can be achieved by splitting up ICE trees, 
using compiled operators etc. but there can be other advantages to using ICE 
kinematics or having the entire rig in a single ICE tree. I agree that there 
are many things that could be done to improve this area so please continue to 
send us features/bugs through the normal support channels.
--
Brent


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Ahmidou Lyazidi
Sent: 09 July 2012 05:36
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: ICE kineamtics performances ?

Hi Brent,
Yes, but it seem that it's even faster to break the calcultion in smaller 
pieces, ie one ICE tree per limb.
Now, if possible, that would be a good thing to push things forwards in this 
area and as in rigging performance matter a lot, having some more high level 
factory nodes
like bezier curves, Ik
Bezier curve is a good example, someone made a C++ node for that, it's just 25 
faster than the compound!
I also d'like to see way to envelope/paint weights with ICE xform attribute 
instead of real deformers

There's a lot of things to do, to make it production efficient.

Regards
A.

2012/7/4 Brent McPherson 
brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com
Hi Ahmidou,

Yes, the problem is that if a single ICE tree is driving multiple kines then it 
gets evaluated multiple times as each kine pulls on their connection to the ICE 
tree.

The recommended way of dealing with this is to write to local data (self.myxfo) 
in the master ICE tree and then have small ICE trees on the targets that pull 
that data and write to their own kine. The local data acts like a cache so the 
master ICE tree won't be evaluated multiple times. So you can still do all your 
calculations in one master ICE tree and just use secondary ICE trees to write 
the results on each limb.

As you have noticed the performance difference is significant. In fact, used 
this approach for the ICE tree used by stereo camera which generates two 
transforms.

Same thing applies to rig initialization which should be put in a separate ICE 
tree as outlined in the docs.
--
Brent

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com]
 On Behalf Of Ahmidou Lyazidi
Sent: 04 July 2012 02:41
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: ICE kineamtics performances ?

Hi list
I was doing some performance testing with ICE kinematics and found out that 
having many separate ICE operators (ie: one per limb)
is way faster than one ICE operator making all the calculations, in my case, 
25% faster
So I was wondering if it's supposed to be the normal behavior?


Thanks
--
Ahmidou Lyazidi
Director | TD | CG artist
http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos



--
Ahmidou Lyazidi
Director | TD | CG artist
http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos
attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Get objects visible by camera

[Brent McPherson]

Hi Jared,

I can think of one easy way to do this with the tool SDK.

The tool can call Pick using rectangle raycast to quickly get a list of objects 
(or components)  that are visible in the view.

Of course, this would require you to use a tool but you could have the tool 
exit after it builds the list.

The PickTestTool example that ships with Softimage is a good place to start and 
here is the code to pick everything visible in the view using rectangle raycast:

CRefArray visible;
CLongArray l_points;
LONG x, y, width, height;
CStatus GetViewport( x, y, width, height );
l_points.Add( x );
l_points.Add( y );
l_points.Add( x + width );
l_points.Add( y + height );
in_ctxt.Pick( l_points, siPickMultipleObjects, 
siPickRectangleRaycast, L, CRefArray(), visible );
if ( visible.GetCount()  0 ) {
 // etc...

Hope this helps.
--
Brent


From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Jared Glass
Sent: 12 June 2012 08:02
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Get objects visible by camera

Hi
I know this may be a bit ambitious but I am looking for a way to get all the 
objects or a count of faces visible by the camera. I don't want all the objects 
within the camera's near and far clip planes because some objects may not be 
visible due to being behind other objects and therefore will not contribute to 
render times. I've done a bit of research and so far the simplest solution 
looks like I'd need to write my own simple ray-tracer which emits rays from the 
camera and then returns the objects that the rays hit...though I must admit 
with my current programming and xsi knowledge this is a bit over my head (for 
now ;)

Can anyone point me in the right direction, or does someone have any idea how I 
could acheive this please?
--
Kind Regards,
Jared Glassmailto:jared.gl...@triggerfish.co.za | Technical Lead
Triggerfish Animation Studioshttp://www.triggerfish.co.za
Zambezia Moviehttp://www.zambeziamovie.com/ | Khumba 
Moviehttp://www.triggerfish.co.za/khumba/
attachment: winmail.dat

RE: Intro to the new team (was RE: Softimage development)

[Brent McPherson]

Ummm, all the devs are moving on to the new project and we are keeping the team 
together.

All the Softies have had a hand in training the Singapore team to make sure the 
transition is a smooth one. They have not been scared to jump into such a large 
product so I'm excited to see what they can do. As Chun-Pong mentioned there 
are some very experienced Softimage devs in the consulting team in Montreal 
that still work on Softimage and many of their fixes get rolled into each 
release. Everyone involved with Softimage over the past few years is still 
around so the knowledge is not going anywhere.
--
Brent

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Steven Caron
Sent: 19 April 2012 22:41
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Intro to the new team (was RE: Softimage development)

stay calm, there are others still around... unless they are leaving too. sean, 
marc-andre, yanick, brent... those are just off the top of my head.

dont forget all the support guys too! stephen, graham, siddarth, matthew.. i am 
sure i am missing someone...

s

On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 2:33 PM, Rob Chapman 
tekano@gmail.commailto:tekano@gmail.com wrote:
incredulous, absolve the the entire known dev team ( except Brent stays yes?) 
into fecking Maya, plan it for over year, whilst denying everything and that 
nothing is going to happen to Softimage.  seriously?

attachment: winmail.dat