My thoughts on XSI v5.0

["lpiasecki76" <lpiasecki76(at)rogers.com>]

I just finished viewing the demo videos.

Fantastic work guys! Very impressive! I think everyone will find something in there which will be used daily.

I can only imagine how much work had to be done underneath to allow for all the new additions.

 

The 64bit architecture and gigapolygon core are very impressing

GATOR looks fantastic! Someone should get a raise here J

Beziers and curve editing tools are something that everyone has been praying for.

Streamlined interface, new editors etc. will be used daily and greatly improve the workflow.

M-tool improvements look very sexy.

Lighmaps – yes!

Pass channels – sweet!

New TDE will be very handy, although no syntax highlighting…

RBD system looks fantastic!

Hair instancing – yoooho!!!

Textures as weightmaps! Awesome!

 

 

 

 

There are a few things that I kind of miss from this release, although I understand that I can’t have it all at once.

In the order of importance:

1)       Particle system – node based, with new shaders (density based) and fluid solver – yes I know… wait until the end of the year…

2)       Blending of deformers (normalized) and ability to animate deformer profile curves.

3)       I was hoping for some new method of skinning, or perhaps a ‘bone bend’ deformer which would take care of things like elbow outside and inside ‘folding’ when bone is folded. Great for fingers etc. It would also preserve volume when bending.

4)       Motion retargetting – apparently demoed previously but never implemented?

5)       Full-body IK setup (similar to Human IK)

6)       Shaderballs (I thought that this one was a given J)

7)       Scene level mixing, without the need to export to actions

8)       3d widgets for all tools and GUI components in SDK

 

My wishlist just got a lot, a lot smaller though.

 

Again, fantastic work on v5.0

Congratulations,

 

 

Luke