UV tools in XSI suck, period. It's all very manual, and there's an annoying bug in SI2012 where you can't edit multiple UVs at the same time.
The integrated Unfold solution is cool though, although a bit buggy sometimes (at least to my experience).
But from what I've taken in so far from Max, the standard Max tools kinda suck too. Someone ought to write a textools version for XSI one day!
I actually find the UV tools in Softimage quite refreshing; the only thing I find that's missing for the most part is a normalize feature so that all of the UV shells have the same density. Also, the bug you're talking about in 2012 is fixed now with the service pack that was released a week or so ago.
Meh, coming from using Modo at work I find XSI's UV tools quite lacking to be honest, they're not unusable of course. But they can be improved a lot imho. Interactive relaxing and regularizing (brush based or with control points like in Modo for instance), good packing tools, etc...
And yes, I saw that they fixed that bug! Good! It's such a turnoff if you've got to edit like 12 UV's at the same time without wanting to merge dem objects.
Is there a selection type in XSI similar to Max when you are in Element mode where you get to select a piece of geometry not welded together from a whole geometry? Is there a script or plug-in out there that can do this kind of selection type in XSI? If so please share.
It just saves me a lot of time from selecting the entire polygon component of a geometry by growing the selection and then have to extract it to separate it from the rest of the whole geometry. Thanks.
Thanks cryrid for the reply. Yes I thought it was the Polygon Island filter thing. I think I read it somewhere online but never got around to doing it or even trying it out. As always you are a big help in this thread
Just wondering if anyone could direct me to some tutorials explaining the different modeling tools in XSI (or modeling tutorials in general works fine, as long as it shows off many useful tools), preferably free tutorials if possible.
Okay I have another question to ask in terms of scripting. Lets say I want to execute a command that involves a pop up property menu but do it in jscript style. What would be the jscript line of code if say I wanted the Merge property or the Weld Boundary Points/Edges property window to pop up after I have selected my geometry or components?
The reason I ask is I want to be able to use a pop up property menu with just one click by putting this one jscript command in my Fake radial menu. Fake menu basically works like Maya's hotbox menu but the only difference is you have to input the script command in one of the boxes in order for it to execute.
I've been successful with just putting a command on it to have it execute the way I want it but what if you wanted to change a specific parameter to a command so that it doesn't keep repeating the same command over and over again. That's when you would need on occasion to have a pop up property menu to change some things before you execute a command.
P.S. By the way do you call pop up property menus in XSI terms "PPG"?
Okay I have another question to ask in terms of scripting. Lets say I want to execute a command that involves a pop up property menu but do it in jscript style. What would be the jscript line of code if say I wanted the Merge property or the Weld Boundary Points/Edges property window to pop up after I have selected my geometry or components?
...
P.S. By the way do you call pop up property menus in XSI terms "PPG"?
The command to open a PPG is called "Inspect". Search for that in the SDK Docs and you will get some examples.
Yes, PPG is a property window of one or more modifiers/objects.
The command to open a PPG is called "Inspect". Search for that in the SDK Docs and you will get some examples.
I've looked through the SDK Docs and searched for "Inspect" and I don't even understand or know what is going on when I'm reading through it. I'm not really an expert on scripting. Can you provide a template of a script where you can just insert a keyword like "Symmetrize" to bring up the property window using the "Inspect" PPG? Maybe an example for the Merge and Weld Boundary Points/Edges Property window "Inspect" PPG script just to start things off?
I'm a long time Max user too forced to learn XSI recently and after the initial shock I'm very pleased by it now that I've spent more time in it. The UI and the general usage is much more streamlined and intuitive than Max. Modeling wise Max feels more powerful and especially so with the graphite tools but XSI isn't that far behind.
One thing that I used to do lot in Max when SubD modeling is to take an edge loop and slam it against an neighboring edge with Edge Constraint on. (Slide in XSI) Than after releasing RMB I'd move it back with the Edge Constraint still on and it'd be aligned to the neighboring loop with constant edge width. Max users know what I'm talking about. However I'm unable to replicate this behavior in XSI. I know that's the way the Slide Tool is supposed to work and I get similar behavior in Max if I don't release the RMB between moving the loop back and forth against the loop. Here's a pic demonstrating what I'm after.
Any way to alter this or scripts to get the Max like behavior in XSI? And big thanks to cryrid in educating Polycounters in all things XSI! You're posts have been very useful.
You could try beveling. Just offset the center to 1 or -1 to preserve the initial edge range, and switch it over to use SI units instead of being relative. I don't think the width ends up being completely the same, but to the naked eye it looks pretty close.
I also wouldn't be surprised if this would be simple to set up in ICE.
Thanks man, Yeah I found out, but my keyboard is mapped almost 70% different so I have it but with different keystrokes.
You seriously do not want to change your keyboard map to something else and stick to the default layout, or you will face problems later on. Assuming you are having problems already.
As for the faces not entirely being selected, you need to Mar-Key select the entire face. Easier way to do this is Pretty much "U" so you can just click on the face, you can raycast select, MarKey select. (I think its U)
God I havent tried XSI in a while. =\ T for vertex, U for Faces, I for edges.
N or \ for new face. Stick to the default layout since you are just starting out XSI and it is alot different from 3ds max. If it was Maya, it would've been a different story. I usually used to use "[" for slice "]" for knife "\" this for split poly.
I will start a new job in a couple weeks, and I am polishing my "xsi" skills... now I know the place I will be working uses mental ray as main render engine (cinema studio). I am used to arch and design in mental ray, but I wanted to know if you know what will be the equivalent shader in XSI? or what are the production shaders you 'll use, Thanks again for your help
I would lean towards saying the Carpaint & Architectural shaders (under nodes>illumination), but that's a stab in the dark for me. I'm not sure how the shaders work in the other programs, and I'm using an outdated version of Softimage (and by extension, probably mental ray as well)
Hey thanks, yeah that sounds like a fair equivalent. I usually use .mia shaders in max for rendering. I think mental ray in xsi is supposed to be even better, for managing passes and all that. I'll take a look and see what I can come up with. Cheers!
I always use n for capping (also known as the add polygon tool)
The fastest way to do it is this: 1) In Edge raycast mode (I) Alt+middle click one of the border edges. This selects the entire border. 2) Hit Ctrl+D. 3) Hit Ctrl+Delete.
A capping command is also available in the ICE Modeling Tools Addon.
Hi, Ive been lurking around but I cant seem to find a good solution for something like a "object painter" in XSI. Is there a plugin, or a way to work inside XSI, that will allow me to paint objects as instances on a surface? Yes like "advanced painter" for 3ds max. not sure if there is something alike! I use it a lot in max to instance ribbets, and small pieces that are tedious to do by hand.
amdnv: The normalise feature scales each uv island so that each islands receives the same amount of pixel density. e.g a cube thats twice as big as a standard cube would receive twice the uv space than the standard cube. Saves you having to scale each island separately after doing your projections.
maze: Im sure theres a ICE compound that was floating around on the XSI mailing list, that did something similar to scatter in max, but sadly i can't seem to find it.
Hey ark np, I ll continue looking around, so far I found the "duplicate single" command "D" shortcut, but I am having some issues with it because the objects are not always well snapped on the destination objects, and I am finding myself with hidden objects inside the destination objects, which is not cool. I am surprised there is no an easy solution for this in an awesome package as xsi.
I have another question, can someone tell me how do I go to "bake" occlusion maps to start texturing. Is there something to project geo like max? . What about if I want to output a occlusion pass from a high res model only? (I am working in film so I am only using high res models, no actual low poly to be baked on) But there is surely a way! Thanks!
For duplication, there CTRL + D which duplicates and carries the transforms over on the object, so you can do stuff like evenly spaced duplicates and CTRL + ALT + D which will also duplicate the object, but without the transforms. Look under the Edit > Duplicate/Instantiate menu for more options. D method is more of a quick fix imo when accuracy isn't important.
Ultimapper is used for baking from a Source to a Target mesh and Rendermap is used for baking onto a single mesh.
So Rendermap is porbably what you want if you want to get an AO pass from a single model. Cryrid has a page explaining this bettter: http://cryrid.com/art/?p=12
Thanks a lot mate, yeah that tut from cryrid is great, thanks!
actually for the paint instances, yeah I tried with those methods its ok for simple instances, but to actually paint objects on another object it lacks control. Maybe there is an ice compound somewhere for this.
mmm I have a couple more questions:
1) How do you go to set up correct equal pixel ratio between different objects, into one uvlayout square. In max there is an awesome plugin from renderhjs that helps a lot with this.
2) How do I remove that default image from the unwrap this one:
I find it annoying, I will like simple grey background.
2) How do I apply a cheker pattern, I cant seem to find a default cheker map in the texture editor options.
3) how do I break a polygon from a uvisland to then reconnect it to another uvisland
Another quick, I just realized, why when I "merge" two objects with already setup uv coordinates, ,setting tolerance to 0 and clicking on "delete" to only keep the merged copy, my previous uv coordinates are gone. so the new merged object wont combine the uvs? but delete them?
On the bottom section of the merge window that will appear when you run the command, you have to click those extra 'merge' buttons to tell XSI to also merge UV coordinates/materials and/or any shape animations/weights you might have on the models being merged.
As for the image in the UV editor, you can go up to the Clips menu, and select "None" so that it shows nothing or "Checkerboard" if you want that. You'll notice that when you have the UV editor window open and an object selected, and if you are in a Textured or Textured Decal display mode, the object you have selected will be temporarily displayed with whatever clip you're using in the UV editor. I don't think you can change the size of the checkers though, and although there is a Checkerboard procedural node in the material editor, none of Softimage's procedural things actually show up in the viewport.
On your UV islands question, the way Softimage works for this is a bit funky. Hit Ctrl + T (Tearing mode) and you'll see a bunch of little corner lines appear all over your UVs when you're in Vertex selection mode (T). My explanation of this is probably a little lacking, but in this mode, all UVs are considered 'detached'; if you try to move one corner UV it will automatically be disconnected and can be moved wherever. Therefore if you have some polygons selected, activate tearing mode, and move them, they will automatically be split off as their own UV island. To reattach UVs, select two that match up and press Ctrl + Shift + (numberpad + ) for the Heal command (also found in the Tools menu).
Finally, by equal pixel ratio I'm guessing you mean resizing UV shells to match up according to their size in world space? If you're dealing with UVs for just one object, running any of the subprojections will automatically do this, but of course then you have to be careful not to resize them incorrectly afterward. For objects you've already done the UVs for though, you're out of luck on having it done automatically as far as I know. Come to think of it that's a pretty irritating omission, having no shell packing tool at all. If there is one and I just don't know about it that would be great to hear
Thanks man, that explanation helps a lot, I sorted out those issues with your answer.
on another line...that really fu@$# sucks not having a pixel ratio tool, I am sooo dependent on that...(Hope there is an ICE solution or something) when having several objects each one with different pixel ratios it becomes a nightmare, but well I ll continue lurking around I guess,
Replies
I actually find the UV tools in Softimage quite refreshing; the only thing I find that's missing for the most part is a normalize feature so that all of the UV shells have the same density. Also, the bug you're talking about in 2012 is fixed now with the service pack that was released a week or so ago.
And yes, I saw that they fixed that bug! Good!
It just saves me a lot of time from selecting the entire polygon component of a geometry by growing the selection and then have to extract it to separate it from the rest of the whole geometry. Thanks.
For the last one I think its "I" for selecting edges and than Ctrl + N to create polygon. Or "\".
Thanks man, Yeah I found out, but my keyboard is mapped almost 70% different so I have it but with different keystrokes.
Just wondering if anyone could direct me to some tutorials explaining the different modeling tools in XSI (or modeling tutorials in general works fine, as long as it shows off many useful tools), preferably free tutorials if possible.
http://www.si-community.com/community/viewforum.php?f=22&sid=2b5942caba6d2e1bb2daa4fe352b2dc6
The reason I ask is I want to be able to use a pop up property menu with just one click by putting this one jscript command in my Fake radial menu. Fake menu basically works like Maya's hotbox menu but the only difference is you have to input the script command in one of the boxes in order for it to execute.
I've been successful with just putting a command on it to have it execute the way I want it but what if you wanted to change a specific parameter to a command so that it doesn't keep repeating the same command over and over again. That's when you would need on occasion to have a pop up property menu to change some things before you execute a command.
P.S. By the way do you call pop up property menus in XSI terms "PPG"?
The command to open a PPG is called "Inspect". Search for that in the SDK Docs and you will get some examples.
Yes, PPG is a property window of one or more modifiers/objects.
I've looked through the SDK Docs and searched for "Inspect" and I don't even understand or know what is going on when I'm reading through it. I'm not really an expert on scripting. Can you provide a template of a script where you can just insert a keyword like "Symmetrize" to bring up the property window using the "Inspect" PPG? Maybe an example for the Merge and Weld Boundary Points/Edges Property window "Inspect" PPG script just to start things off?
oEnum = new Enumerator( Application.Selection ) ; for (;!oEnum.atEnd();oEnum.moveNext() ) { var oSelItem = oEnum.item() ; LogMessage( oSelItem.fullname ); var mergePPG = ( oSelItem.fullname+".polymsh.mergemesh" ); InspectOBJ ( mergePPG ); }Would bring up the Merge mesh PPG for a selected mesh, if it has one.
One thing that I used to do lot in Max when SubD modeling is to take an edge loop and slam it against an neighboring edge with Edge Constraint on. (Slide in XSI) Than after releasing RMB I'd move it back with the Edge Constraint still on and it'd be aligned to the neighboring loop with constant edge width. Max users know what I'm talking about. However I'm unable to replicate this behavior in XSI. I know that's the way the Slide Tool is supposed to work and I get similar behavior in Max if I don't release the RMB between moving the loop back and forth against the loop. Here's a pic demonstrating what I'm after.
Any way to alter this or scripts to get the Max like behavior in XSI? And big thanks to cryrid in educating Polycounters in all things XSI! You're posts have been very useful.
I also wouldn't be surprised if this would be simple to set up in ICE.
You seriously do not want to change your keyboard map to something else and stick to the default layout, or you will face problems later on. Assuming you are having problems already.
As for the faces not entirely being selected, you need to Mar-Key select the entire face. Easier way to do this is Pretty much "U" so you can just click on the face, you can raycast select, MarKey select. (I think its U)
God I havent tried XSI in a while. =\ T for vertex, U for Faces, I for edges.
N or \ for new face. Stick to the default layout since you are just starting out XSI and it is alot different from 3ds max. If it was Maya, it would've been a different story. I usually used to use "[" for slice "]" for knife "\" this for split poly.
I will start a new job in a couple weeks, and I am polishing my "xsi" skills... now I know the place I will be working uses mental ray as main render engine (cinema studio). I am used to arch and design in mental ray, but I wanted to know if you know what will be the equivalent shader in XSI? or what are the production shaders you 'll use, Thanks again for your help
1) In Edge raycast mode (I) Alt+middle click one of the border edges. This selects the entire border.
2) Hit Ctrl+D.
3) Hit Ctrl+Delete.
A capping command is also available in the ICE Modeling Tools Addon.
Could you explain how this works? Depending on the algorithm this would probably be trivial to do as an ICE compound.
maze: Im sure theres a ICE compound that was floating around on the XSI mailing list, that did something similar to scatter in max, but sadly i can't seem to find it.
I have another question, can someone tell me how do I go to "bake" occlusion maps to start texturing. Is there something to project geo like max? . What about if I want to output a occlusion pass from a high res model only? (I am working in film so I am only using high res models, no actual low poly to be baked on) But there is surely a way! Thanks!
Ultimapper is used for baking from a Source to a Target mesh and Rendermap is used for baking onto a single mesh.
So Rendermap is porbably what you want if you want to get an AO pass from a single model. Cryrid has a page explaining this bettter: http://cryrid.com/art/?p=12
Thanks a lot mate, yeah that tut from cryrid is great, thanks!
actually for the paint instances, yeah I tried with those methods its ok for simple instances, but to actually paint objects on another object it lacks control. Maybe there is an ice compound somewhere for this.
mmm I have a couple more questions:
1) How do you go to set up correct equal pixel ratio between different objects, into one uvlayout square. In max there is an awesome plugin from renderhjs that helps a lot with this.
2) How do I remove that default image from the unwrap this one:
I find it annoying, I will like simple grey background.
2) How do I apply a cheker pattern, I cant seem to find a default cheker map in the texture editor options.
3) how do I break a polygon from a uvisland to then reconnect it to another uvisland
Thanks again, I really appreciate your help!
As for the image in the UV editor, you can go up to the Clips menu, and select "None" so that it shows nothing or "Checkerboard" if you want that. You'll notice that when you have the UV editor window open and an object selected, and if you are in a Textured or Textured Decal display mode, the object you have selected will be temporarily displayed with whatever clip you're using in the UV editor. I don't think you can change the size of the checkers though, and although there is a Checkerboard procedural node in the material editor, none of Softimage's procedural things actually show up in the viewport.
On your UV islands question, the way Softimage works for this is a bit funky. Hit Ctrl + T (Tearing mode) and you'll see a bunch of little corner lines appear all over your UVs when you're in Vertex selection mode (T). My explanation of this is probably a little lacking, but in this mode, all UVs are considered 'detached'; if you try to move one corner UV it will automatically be disconnected and can be moved wherever. Therefore if you have some polygons selected, activate tearing mode, and move them, they will automatically be split off as their own UV island. To reattach UVs, select two that match up and press Ctrl + Shift + (numberpad + ) for the Heal command (also found in the Tools menu).
Finally, by equal pixel ratio I'm guessing you mean resizing UV shells to match up according to their size in world space? If you're dealing with UVs for just one object, running any of the subprojections will automatically do this, but of course then you have to be careful not to resize them incorrectly afterward. For objects you've already done the UVs for though, you're out of luck on having it done automatically as far as I know. Come to think of it that's a pretty irritating omission, having no shell packing tool at all. If there is one and I just don't know about it that would be great to hear
Thanks man, that explanation helps a lot, I sorted out those issues with your answer.
on another line...that really fu@$# sucks not having a pixel ratio tool, I am sooo dependent on that...(Hope there is an ICE solution or something) when having several objects each one with different pixel ratios it becomes a nightmare, but well I ll continue lurking around I guess,
Thanks again!!!