softimage XSI vertex blending?

Bobby J Rice 3rd

This might be a long shot but, has anyone come accross a good video tutorial showing a way to assign materials to verts for vertex blending in Softimage XSI?

cryrid

Assuming this is the effect you want:

Get>Propert>Color At Vertices Map
Ctrl+W for paint options (color, opacity, etc)
Shift+W to paint

You might also be looking for something like this:
http://community.softimage.com/tutorials/texture_painting_with_autodesk_softimage_part_2

Bobby J Rice 3rd

yes i think that is it. The render tree set up looks correct. I've done mask blending this way so i think i know what your doing.

Thanks crvrid

Ark

Thats the way i've always done it. Is there a way to take a blend map into account with vertex colours by this method? Like the stuff in the Uncharted 2 thread?

Bobby J Rice 3rd

I think so. I tried using "mix 8 color" node and it seemed to open up more weight map options. Uncharted uses the RGBA inputs but "mix 8 color" has more.

cryrid

I thought the blend map was the vertex color?

Bobby J Rice 3rd

i am, but i think "mix 8 color" opens up more vert color blend options, maybe?

Jesse Irvin

New here and caught this thread. This is actually something I've been showing to students for some time. One thing I wanted to suggest though is to use the newer Texture Layer editor to layer shaders together. The reason is that the mix 2 and mix 8 color nodes do not correctly pass channel information into the material node, so if you do any channel rendering you will get the wrong results from your diffuse, reflect, spec and so on.

I've done a little setup to show how I would connect it up with layers.

Bobby J Rice 3rd

Very nice. Any chance of there being a video with step by step instructions for this?

Jesse Irvin

Actually the link that cryrid posted I didn't even see before. But I think it covers the tools to do this if not the exact setup.

Bobby J Rice 3rd

Hey Jesse, could you possibly post a link to the DotXSI file of the above mentioned set up? I'd love to study it in conjunction with your notes above. I tried recreating this and i feel like i missing something.

Ark

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nDlV9pJFkg&feature=player_embedded[/ame]

Heres something similar that Noesis made that follows some of the same steps.

On a second note, where has the 'Vertex_RGBA' node gone in 2011, have they renamed it to something else, because i cant seem to find it.

Bobby J Rice 3rd

PERFECT!

Bobby J Rice 3rd

One more question, is Vertex alpha possible? For Example, I want to skirt a mesh along a wall and floor juncture. The skirt is basically used as a decal but the outer verts blend out to zero alpha.

This possibly in XSI?

Ark

What about trying to plug another color_map_lookup in the phong/blinns transparency, then add a vertex paint property to that and paint the alpha blend on that?

cryrid

Vertex_RGBA has an alpha channel, which can be used to drive the transparency if that's what you mean.