Really, for Square?! :) There are still lots of XSI seats here, all of them on the game development teams. At Visual Works (the CG cinematics division) everything is Maya and a tinny bit of Houdini.
Cheers, -- Martin Contel CG Supervisor Square Enix (Visual Works Division) On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 10:10 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau <[email protected]> wrote: > GATOR was developed for/with one of our main game customers, Square I > think. > I'm not aware of a Gator "sdk", what is that? > There are attribute transfers in other apps, but it's generally > separate tools for textures > vs rigging things, reflecting on their architecture vs XSI > > On 27 May 2015 at 19:27, Matt Lind <[email protected]> wrote: > > For the record, GATOR was introduced in late 2005 with XSI v5.0, not in > > 2008. > > > > GATOR was largely tailored for those switching applications and doing > > rigging in a film/video pipeline. For games development, GATOR has less > use > > out-of-the-box as the very things that made it nice for exchanging data > > between XSI and Maya, for example, were the very same features that > tripped > > up game artists trying to do simpler things quickly in heavy repetition. > > > > I wrote a command based version of the tool using the GATOR SDK as > artists > > needed more micro-management of meshes and transfers. Artists used it to > > transfer UV's, normals, vertex colors, envelope weights, and many other > > features. I also extended, as well as exposed, many features from the > SDK > > GATOR did not expose directly such as transferring attributes in local > > space, by raycasting, distance limits, transferring only selected > > subcomponents, correcting numerical flaws found in UV transfer, and so > on. > > However, my use of the GATOR SDK was not limited to replicating the tool > as > > a command. I also used it heavily for other tasks which weren't strictly > > related to attribute transfer tasks such as animation remapping, pose > > transfer, mesh fitting, and interactive editing of normals and > symmetrical > > envelope weighting of asymmetrical characters. > > > > To hear other applications don't have a GATOR equivalent in this day and > age > > is surprising considering it's so universally useful and isn't rocket > > science to develop. If you know anything about tree data structures and > > linear algebra, you can write your own (even if it's not as efficient as > > GATOR). What makes the GATOR SDK nice is the algorithm is very fast, > > accurate, and relatively easy to use. Reverse lookups of subcomponents > is a > > pain as GATOR worked on triangles, not polygons, but that's minor > compared > > to all the benefits it provides. >
