Is there a way we can actually improve on the process? Perhaps overrides
and assignments could be done conditionally with a dynamic rule? Is a
stack better than a node graph? Let me know if you have had any wishes in
the past.
first off - the passes and partitions system is not just used for rendering.
Even studios that don’t render in Softimage have uses for passes.
on the surface the partitions are just visibility groups, but the overrides
can influence all kinds of things, including not render related ones.
it can be used to organize scenes, creating different "states" of the scene.
eg:
a state for baking out maps,
a state for looking at them in the viewport
a state for making rendertime shader networks with the maps
or:
a state for fast interaction within a complex scene
one for running simulations and creating cashes
another for final rendering.
Thanks to passes I have *never* used layers in XSI - which in other software
often is a necessity just to keep your sanity.
Softimage functionality and workflows are often much deeper than they seem
on the surface. This goes for passes/partitions/overrides. ICE is another
good example of this (see other threads) - on the surface it’s an FX
framework - in practice it’s a general purpose framework with applications
in all disciplines - including where never intended by design.
The operator stack is another example. On the surface it’s a modeling
history. In practice it serves for rigging, animation, FX and more. Icetrees
and scripted operators live in that stack too. And the construction modes
takes it up another notch. Making topology or shape changes on a mesh in
default pose and seeing the results on a specific pose in the animation,
with envelope and secondary animation on top of it - without a TD in sight
and without a single line of script? Not a problem.
Copying some functionality or tools over is not going to make much of a
difference to a Softimage crowd - that's accustomed to different paradigms
altogether. You can put in all the functionality you want (this goes to all
competing software, not just Maya) - it's those paradigms we are looking for
and not finding elsewhere. Not in such a complete, pervasive, functional,
usable and user friendly way. That's why we feel (rightly so) that there is
no replacement for Softimage.
as to your question - there are always some things that could be improved.
Support for clusters in partitions for one.
There's performance issues with passes - with many objects, referencing and
complex shader overrides things can slow down considerably. If
lighting/rendering is the final stage in a pipe and they work with scenes
targeted for rendering it's ok - but in freestyle projects where anything
can change
Another is to do with the very nature of overrides: overriding a port in a
shadernetwork replaces everything upstream from that point. It would be
useful to override upstream, downstream or "in between". Eg - keeping the
shadernetwork on all materials, but just overriding the shading node, or
inserting a node in between the texture nodes and a shading node with an
override, that kind of thing.
I can understand that this is not something obvious to do since
shadernetworks can take on any form - but there you go - that's something
that would really take the system one step further.
I'd rather have this in Softimage than Maya though - but that’s barking up
the wrong tree I guess.
