Looks like texture swimming will be awesome for environments. It looks exciting to me even though it is not totally new. New animation tools look very fun to play with also. I better start saving money for this one
per128: For some strange reason the folks at SoftImage cater all their vids to TDs. Which for some strange (strange as in there is by far way more modelers than tds) reason gets more sales than modelers (i'd assume it's the tech leads at big companies that have more pull than the modelers telling the powers that be that they need this and that). There were some subtle improvements to the modeling aspects of xsi, but i think they felt it didn't merit a video. At least thats what they said at the user group meeting. They also said there was a couple others that have yet to be shown. They said that they would be teasing up to the release, much to my displeasure and chinny's, the guy doing the presentation, he just wanted to show everyone the new stuff that he wasn't allowed to. Also the animator bit is where they are winning, more and more companies are switching their animation pipeline to xsi. So catwalk and motor make animation TDs pee themselves im sure.
I swear i never make sense when i type...I get to excited that i have answers or something.
Per128: from the current version check out the "tweak tool" video i know its nothing to inovative, but it (IMO) is one of the fastest tweaking methods outside of sculpting. Also GATOR is a nice little funtime dance party for modelers.
I just love how easily the small user base(compared to maya and max) can influence softimage to make stuff for them (ie. shader balls (apples in xsi), bezier curves, zbrush options on import). The userbase asks, the userbase gets.
XSI doesn't have much in the way of modeling tools but I find the limited set it does have highly effective for a lot of tasks. I'm less picky about having a lot of cool modeling tools these days though, after using just about every modeler under the sun, and more interested in the core, most useful tools just working really well and stable. I do mostly rigging and animation work in XSI but it hasn't let me down yet as a modeler either.
dur23: I love using the tweak tool! Best one in the industry imo.
I just now checked out the new stuff, and just watching the interviews with Blur studios made me grin, as it was painfully apparant who they were putting down with things like 'instead of just tacking things on' and 'great stability', not to mention the bit where it's said that 'discreet wouldn't help us, softimage would'
I've always been very interested in xsi, but my last pc couldn't handle the resolution it needed (then again, my last pc was dated 1998 with very little upgrades since)
The symmetry still won't appeal to most modelers, since all it does is make it easier to use symmetry. You don't have to slap a sym map on the mesh - just toggle the button in the MCP.
I also noticed that when using proportional falloff it messes up symmetry calculations when tweaking for instance.
So you still can't effectively change the vertex order of your mesh with symmetry yet...
On the plus side, there's a new silo to xsi importer for xsi that can give people the best of both worlds =]
Yeah Gwot, that importer reminded me i had to check out the latest XSI, heh. I'll be giving the demo a go in a few days i think. What's this you're saying about the symmetry?
Pea: there was a brief glimmer of hope that the symmetry tool would become more useful for general construction use in modeling. XSI's symmetry tool does not support changes to the structure of a mesh so if you add or remove a vert it is not reflected on the opposite side. It is only really useful for morph work (so long as you don't use any falloff that crosses the symmetry axis, which also tends to not work too well), or for other things such as mirroring envelope weights and stuff. Most people just clone half their mesh and scale it across the X axis if they need some form of symmetry during construction.
Regardless XSI still has a solid modeling toolset - even if the selection workflow is a little outdated. I still use it occasionally, but I much prefer to work in a dedicated modeling program in the construction phase for the most part. Most of my work in XSI is rigging and animation so this release was pretty sweet for me.
Replies
I swear i never make sense when i type...I get to excited that i have answers or something.
Alex
Per128: from the current version check out the "tweak tool" video i know its nothing to inovative, but it (IMO) is one of the fastest tweaking methods outside of sculpting. Also GATOR is a nice little funtime dance party for modelers.
I just love how easily the small user base(compared to maya and max) can influence softimage to make stuff for them (ie. shader balls (apples in xsi), bezier curves, zbrush options on import). The userbase asks, the userbase gets.
Alex
dur23: I love using the tweak tool! Best one in the industry imo.
XSI doesn't have much in the way of modeling tools but
[/ QUOTE ]
Compared to maya it's a god send! -x to mirror, for god sakes hellpiss.
[ QUOTE ]
dur23: I love using the tweak tool! Best one in the industry imo.
[/ QUOTE ]
Now (in 6) with real-time sym!!! Click-GO!
http://www.softimage.com/products/xsi/whats_new/Detailed%20Feature%20List.pdf
I've always been very interested in xsi, but my last pc couldn't handle the resolution it needed (then again, my last pc was dated 1998 with very little upgrades since)
I also noticed that when using proportional falloff it messes up symmetry calculations when tweaking for instance.
So you still can't effectively change the vertex order of your mesh with symmetry yet...
On the plus side, there's a new silo to xsi importer for xsi that can give people the best of both worlds =]
http://animatic.no-ip.com/cgi-bin/silo-wiki/index.cgi?#siaImportExport4XSI
Regardless XSI still has a solid modeling toolset - even if the selection workflow is a little outdated. I still use it occasionally, but I much prefer to work in a dedicated modeling program in the construction phase for the most part. Most of my work in XSI is rigging and animation so this release was pretty sweet for me.
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>var oSel = Selection;
var obj;
var axis = 0; // x-axis (1=y, 2=z)
if(oSel.Count == 1 && oSel(0).type == 'polymsh' )
{
obj = oSel(0);
main()
}
function main()
{
var slice = ApplyTopoOp("SlicePolygons", obj, null, null, null)(0);
slice.planeref.Value = 0; // global ref
slice.sliceplane.Value = axis; // global x
slice.sliceaction.Value = 3; // delete polys below the plane normal
var symPoly = ApplyTopoOp("SymmetrizePolygon", obj, siUnspecified, siPersistentOperation, null)(0);
symPoly.symmetryreference.Value = 0; // global ref
symPoly.symmetryplane.Value = axis
} </pre><hr />
it's a bit too brute force for my liking but i left the ops on the stack so you can modify them if need be.
//edit
i hotkey the script then it's just a simple matter of spacebar-ing into object mode, hitting the hokey then carry on with the tweaking.