There are a few duplicates, but the detail I would focus on is number items in such a large list so it can be filed with support. ;-)
Matt -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Stefan Kubicek Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2012 8:57 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Small Annoying Things Nice thread! Below are some points I could not find covered in any other post above. They're neither sorted by severity or topic and I hope I haven't listed any duplicates. Thanks Matt for your comprehensive list, +1 on all of your points, you saved me from typing a lot more than I ended up doing. == There is no API to define custom light types. As a result, 3rd renderers (Arnold, Vray...) have to piggy-back their light types on the existing ones, which often results in useless or misleading parameters in the lights PPG. When deleting a camera the Views camera selector label sometimes still shows the old name of the deleted camera. The same is _always_ true when renaming a camera. Missing the sorting indicator in File browser column headers that indicates by which column the files are sorted, and in which direction. Missing SDK for custom image file formats? No sure if this is still valid, haven't checked in a while. ExportRenderArchive command (and related commands) has no parameter to specify an alternate export path, it will always export to the Render_Archive folder of the current project. That's ok as a standard behavior, but there should be a way to override this with an arbitrary path. When moving the XSI window to a different Screen (with different resolution?) the RR refreshes. Simulation time control defaults: "Use Start Frame" and "Use End Frame" options should be off by default, since simulations are usually tied to a specific time range and for the biggest part the start frame in the time line is only altered to specifiy a renderable time range or limit scene playback, rather than changing the timing of a simulation, especially with cached simulations. At least I find myself constantly changing both options to "off" manually. When using "Interactive" Play Mode in the Simulation Time Control, scrubbing the time slider and then positioning it somewhere else by clicking at a different frame will not update cached particle positions read from a cache on file ICE node, the particles will remain where they were before the time was changed by clicking. Object to Cluster Cns: Activating Tangency will rotate the object depending on geometry curvature, disabling the option again, or undoing the activation, the constrained object remains rotated. Expected behavior: The object should rotate back to it's pose it had before the option was enabled. Physical Simulation Environments should not be exported together with a model. Referencing a model with simulated ICE Tree generates an Environment that cannot be deleted even after he model was made local. When switching the render engine of a pass in the render manager, the very right side panel showing the renderer's options does not update, clicking the pass again on the left side is necessary to update the pane and really show the current renderers PPG. Lattice deformation has strange jumping mesh artifacts outside of the lattice. Steps to reproduce: Application.CreatePrim("Cube", "MeshSurface", "", "") Application.SetValue("cube.polymsh.geom.subdivu", 10, "") Application.SetValue("cube.polymsh.geom.subdivv", 10, "") Application.SetValue("cube.polymsh.geom.subdivbase", 10, "") Application.Scale("", 1, 8.24372759856631E-02, 1, "siRelative", "siLocal", "siObj", "siXYZ", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", 0, "") Application.GetPrimLattice("", "", "", "", "") Application.SelectGeometryComponents("lattice.pnt[(2,0,2),(2,1,2),(2,2,2),(2,3,2),(2,4,2)]") Application.Translate("", 0, -1.70461870386843, 0, "siRelative", "siLocal", "siObj", "siXYZ", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", 0, "") Application.SelectObj("lattice", "", True) #Move the lattice around on the ZX-Plane and obersve jumping vertices outside the lattices boundaries. Growing a selection (Shift+) does not work on lattices. Install Addon dialog: target workgroup path greyd out, I'd would like to choose/specify one manually. Small glitch: Scene File filter (*.scn) gets ignored in Softimage file browse on automatic refresh due to a copy/paste action: When copy/pasting a scene file and corresponding scntoc file into a scene folder that is currently being displayed in a Softimage file browser (e.g. Load Scene window) the file browser will update, showing not only the scn file (good) but also the scntoc filescntoc file even though the file filter is set to *.scn only. Missing methods to position nodes in ICE/Render Tree similar to the Schematic View. RT and ICE Tree view artifacts on panning. Sometimes, when a tooltip pops up over the ICE node under the mouse in an ICE Tree, the view might refresh very late, sometimes only after seconds. The visible effect is that of only a small window (where the former tooltip just was) showing the panning ICE Tree instead of the whole view. The effect usually lasts 2 to 3 seconds until the whole view is finally refreshed. I keep having this on XP, Vista, Win7, XSI 64 and 32bit with all versions of Softimage (7.x to 2013) using at least a dozen of different driver versions on non-Quadro GForce cards from 8600GTS to a relatively recent 460. Aero disabled. When painting envelope weights it would be extremely helpful if the camera would tumble around the currently active deformer for which weights are currently peing painted, just like it tumbles around the current selection usually. This could be easily scripted if there was a onDeformerChanged event triggered every time another deformer is chosen from the paint panel. No paint (tool?) API access! SDK: there is no method to find out which objects are currently selected when none of their components is selected while the selection filter is set to a component type. In Maya, objects in such a state are called "highlighted" objects - they are not selected but they have a different color and their components can be selected. -> Missing method to find out which objects are currently "highlighted". SDK: No support for dotted Menu items, only checkboxes. No support for popup-menu-buttons (a la Render upper left Manager buttons) Still, after so many years, we cannot save a scene file into an arbitrary folder, the folder must be inside a known project. Having to save, then manually copy/paste is just cumbersome. It is not possible to display more than one material in the render Tree, which makes it difficult to share shading nodes among different materials (e.g. have one color node to drive a certain color across several materials). Scripting can be used to connect a shading node across multiple materials, but it's cumbersome and even unusable for most users, it seems to adversely affect program stability and it's not possible to identify shared nodes visually (e.g. name printed in italicized letters) in a tree. That was ok in XSI 1.0, but we are writing the year 2012! It is possible to disable an ICE Tree and above lying operators by right-clicking on any child node of the ICE Tree in the explorer and choosing "Disable from here". However, it is not possible to re-enable it the same way, the menu will not show an "Enable from here" menu item when clicking on the same node as before. It is actually misleading being able to click on a child node since they cannot be disabled (makes no sense from the Explorer in an ICE Tree), it might be just cleaner to remove the option in such cases, especially since there can be so many nodes in an ICE Tree that the operators actually being disabled lie far above the clicked node and are invisible in the explorer. Muting an ICE node inside an ICE tree does not show the "m" icon in the explorer. ICE nodes with a mute param cannot be muted using the RC context menu in the eplorer. Rotation not properly matched when using "Match All Transforms" to match a pose of an object to a parented object. When deleting all keys the object assumes a position different than the one it had before key deletion. Expected behavior: Object should keeps it's current transform the moment all keys or animation is deleted. Calling "New Scene" can crash XSI when HQVP is enabled on certain scenes. Missing feature? It would be nice to be able to snap to existing keys only when creating a range selection in the time line (using some function key while dragging?). this would allow for quicker and precise range selection, especially in long time lines where frames can lie very close together (sometimes sub-pixel) Missing feature: It would be nice if the length of a selected region in the time line could be changed by clicking/dragging at the start and end section of the range indicator. When canceling a running ICE simulation showing the progress bar (after e.g. jumping forth in time several frames in a computationally expensive simulation) the key frame lines in the time line of the selected object are not drawn anymore. It needs to be reselected to make them visible again. When using the Explorer + Camera + Render Tree/ICE Tree/ Animation Editor view layout preset (rightmost button in the lower left corner), then maximizing and minimizing Viewport B (the camera viewport), the ICE node explorer in the ICE Tree View is not displayed anymore. Instead it shows a ramining piece of the former maximized viewport B framebuffer (e.g. a piece of the floor grid). The layout needs to be resized to make it visible again. Bevel Op is broken: After beveling, some of the selected edges cannot be translated until going to object mode and back again. Afaik this is 2013 only. Steps to reproduce: Create a torus, select an edge ring or loop, bevel the edges, and with the resulting edges still selected, enable the translate tool and move edges along an arbitrary axis. Result: Only some edges will move. Expected behavior: All selected edges should move. Annoying "This operator is already in place" warning message coming up repeatedly for no good reason every time after translating polys using the "Transform Components independently in Local mode" setting and undoing the operation (the moment the Ctrl-Button is pressed). Transform Comp. Axis (Extrude op) does not work as expected when using the "Merge" option and "Component" Frame options together: Polygons are not extruded along their normals. As a workaround, they can be duplicated and translated with the "Transform Components independently in Local mode" setting, but of course it would be cool if the Merge option would just work as expected. Snap to full frames in time line cannot be turned off. No scripting method to get the view object under the mouse cursor. No grid deformer tool in UV editor (Max/Maya-like) Misleading Parameter values: "Subdivisions" in the SubdivideEdge Op are off by 1 (A number of 2 inserts 1 edge, 3 inserts 2 edges, etc). Missing native support for compressed and 32 bit tiff files. When selecting multiple referenced models in the explorer, RC->Make ref Model local only affects first selected model. HQ realtime shadows not cast on point clouds (e.g. with sphere particle shapes) When applying the thickness to more than one object simultaneously, changing the "Thickness" param in the PPG that pops up affects only the last selected object. Expected behavior: All objects to which the op was applied should be affected. Swim UVs only works with texture supports, not frozen texture projections. Proportional UV editing should have it's own proportional settings. The proportional modelling values are usually far greater than the useful 0-1 range -> frequent changing of the falloff value is annoying. Alternatively, the "Surface Options" could be honored instead. Proportional Editing in the UV editor does not show colored UV samples according to influence. Deleting a border vertex deletes all of it's adjacent non-border edges but not the border vertex itself. Expected behavior: Border vertex should be deleted too. But: Deleting a non-border edge containing a border vertex deletes both edge and vertex. Expected behavior: Border vertex should stay, only the edge should be deleted. Radius of primitives (Torus, Cylinder) cannot be set smaller than 0.01 units in the PPG however situations where very small objects are needed are quite common. Trying to set it to something smaller via e.g. python yields: # Traceback (most recent call last): # File "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2013 SP1\Application\python\Lib\site-packages\win32comext\axscript\client\error.py", line 87, in __BuildFromException # self._BuildFromOther(site, type, value, tb) # File "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2013 SP1\Application\python\Lib\site-packages\win32comext\axscript\client\error.py", line 170, in _BuildFromOther # list[i] = list[i].decode('utf8') # File "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2013 SP1\Application\python\lib\encodings\utf_8.py", line 16, in decode # return codecs.utf_8_decode(input, errors, True) # UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode bytes in position 13-14: invalid data Sometimes the horizontal handle between adjacent viewports is corrupt, it cannot be dragged to resize the viewports anymore. I keep seeing this since 2012. (standard GForce 460, no Quadro, all kinds of driver versions) Missing Parameter: Torus cross section "Rotation" - Nice to have, esp. on sparsely subdivided Toruses. Corrupt dialog: *.fraw2 file saving/loading dialog (XSI skin error on and below the filename input field, at least 2012 and 2013, maybe earlier) When Editing the Visibility Property of an object, then select another object that already has a texture support, the visibility property of the Texture Support is displayed in the Property Editor instead of the actual object. Steps to reproduce: Create two cubes, create a texture support on the second one (Get -> Property > Texture projection -> Planar XY). Open an Explorer, inspect the visibility property of the first cube. Set view visibility to off - the cube disappears in the view. Select the second cube, the PPG will now show the visibility Property of the texture support, not the second cube. Setting view visibility now hides the texture support. Expected behavior: Second cube should get hidden, it's visibility property should be shown in the PPG, not the texture supports visibility prop. FCurve Editor: Automatic panning is too fast. Moving the time slider over the left or right window border rapidly pans the View to the left or right by several hundred frames, usually beyond the time range that contains keys/useful information, forcing the user to carefully pan back of having to "focus all" and painstakingly zoom back in. It would be nice if the time slider would cause a slower pan, or if the pan speed could be variable depending on the speed at which the mouse cursor is moved b the user. Render Manager: Path grid widget of Render Pass becomes unreadable (scrollbar may occlude large parts of the grid widget) when resizing one of its columns. With an active Render region, setting the scene renderer to Hardware Renderer in the Render Manager the following warning is issued: # WARNING : 3070-EDIT-SetValue - Type mismatch between shader and connection point. SDK: Open/Close Undo cannot span OnBeginCommand/OnEndComand. When opening an undo session within the OnBeginCommand event, it gets automatically closed when the OnEndCommand event occurs. It would be helpful in certain situations if it could span both events. Render Region gets refreshes when deleting a shading node that wasn't connected to the shader graph. -> Unnecessary refresh. Calling the Camera nav tool (S-key) cancels an active pick sessions. File handles of fgmap-files are sometimes not released when aborting a preview render. As a result, the files cannot be deleted manually, softimage needs to be restarted. ICE: When rendering frames of a Pass outside the currently active time range (e.g. rendering frame 120 when in/out is set to 0/100) Particles will not simulate/update and render at the same position as they were in the last frame of the current frame range. Often Partition Materials are not displayed in the Explorer, hitting F5 ore closing/reopening the Explorer is required to show them. Note: This seems to be independent of whether Applied or Local materials are displayed in the Explorer. RR refreshes upon file save and AutoSave - Should not refresh, the scene does not change upon saving. Hidden meshes emitting ICE particles sometimes do not evaluated before a pass render and emit particlers at the wrong location. It is not possible to Undo/Redo GridData editing. There is not OnValueChanged event fired? There is no way to find out which grid cell(s) have been changed? There are no commands logged or any kind of feedback in the script Editor when keys are added or removed to/from an fcurve in the Animation Editor. No SDK exposure? The "Install Add-Ons" window cannot be resized, it is sometimes impossible to read long file paths. Lagoa: Setting Solve to Off on the Lagoa Simulate node still costs some CPU time when simulating. It must be unplugged from the tree in order not to use any CPU time. Lagoa: On heavy simulations Softimage becomes unresponsive and whites out, simulations can hardly be stopped, or only after an iteration, which can easily take minutes on heavy simulations! -> General ICE suggestion: Allow user to specify amount of CPU cores/threads to use for ICE computations. 1 thread left might be enough to keep the UI (esp. Stop-Button) responsive. It should also be possible to cancel an ICE Tree evaluation prematurely (mid-computation), instead of having to wait for the full eval of the tree. Lagoa: Low-res simulations and high-res simulations behave and look differently, even when much more iterations are used to solve. Does this menu really exist? siMenuMCPSelectSelBtnContextID 2003 Context menu displayed when a user right-clicks the Selection button in the MCP. PSD image file format: CMYK files can not read? Subdivide Polygons Op: Iterations slider is greyed out and cannot be changed when Type is set to "Triangle". Side effect: To set iterations to 0 (zero) one must choose a different subdivision type, set it to zero, then set Type back to "Triangle". The hidden-icon "H" in Explorer does not update (appear/disappear) when moving the time slider in case of animated visibility. Expected behavior: Explorer should indicate visibility of object at current frame, at least after releasing or stopping the time slider. When an edge gets extruded from a point that was set to "hard", the resulting edge should also be hard. Set Edge Crease Value command name is misleading, it also creases vertices. Pick sessions for parenting or constraining objects should be avoided or optional, it is easy to interactively pick a wrong object in the view in dense scenes. It would be nice if it was possible to just accept the currently selected objects (e.g. first becomes child, second becomes parent). This way a user could carefully select the objects first and then just parent/constraing them, eliminating any guesswork and chance of picking the wrong object. Stefan
