Re: [Instances|Group|Model] Thoughts

[Francois Lord <francoislord(at)gmail.com>]

Well, once a year, every year... is regular.
He never said 'often'. And I certainly never heard him talking about any 
punishment to the authors who don't follow the 'commitment'.
;-)

Guy Rabiller wrote:

> and if I remember correctly you have to
> post often and regularly with interresting topics, 

> unfortunately most of
> my posts here are whinnings and I'm affraid that it would not be
> appropriate there.
>
> That said I really like this blog, I read it with great interrest,
> especialy Luc-Eric's posts, trying to decipher his state of mind, a
> great mystery to me :-)
>
> I don't know, may be I should post there anyway, who knows, we might
> find a better communication channel by deciphering each others ;-)
>
> --
> guy rabiller | 3d technical director (at) LaMaison
>
>
>
> Francois Lord wrote:
>
>  
>
> > Guy, have you thought about blogging on xsi-blog? This is exactly the
> > kind of material that people want to have easily accessible. I'm saying
> > this because your post ended up in the middle of a thread that was in
> > the middle of another thread (which was not too serious in the first
> > place), so it might not have gotten the attention it deserved.
> > (shameless plug for Patrick's site)
> >
> >    
> >
> > > Btw, regarding Instances, Models and their Instance Groups, when you
> > > take a closer look at what's going on when you deal with Instances:
> > >
> > >
> > > 1) By instancing a Model, an 'InstanceGroup' is created under the Model.
> > > This is a special kind of a Group, because it has only one Parameter (
> > > as for the "Associated Models" Group of a Light ), but despite this fact
> > > it is a class of siGroupID, and of Type "#Group", and nothing, afaik,
> > > distinguishes it from a regular Group, even from the API point of view.
> > >
> > > -> Suggestion: Add to InstanceGroup some Property, or subclass its
> > > Type ?
> > >
> > >
> > > 2) The only thing which is done by instanciating a Model wich cannot be
> > > reproducing manualy by the user is the creation of this special
> > > InstanceGroup. From here, you can manualy create an empty Model ( Model
> > > -> Create -> Model -> New Model ), select it, then right click to the
> > > InstanceGroup of one instanciated Model and -> Add To Group. Now our
> > > empty Model is an Instance and it as been automagicaly recognized as
> > > such, and it works. But why then, can't we drag&drop Models into
> > > InstanceGroups ? We have to right click on an InstanceGroup -> Add To
> > > Group.
> > >
> > > -> Suggestion: Allow drag&drop of Models onto InstanceGroups ?
> > >
> > >
> > > 3) A side effect of the 2) observation is that you can add to an
> > > InstanceGroup a non-empty Model. Lets say you have a Model wich contain
> > > a Cube, and you add it to the InstanceGroup of another Model. It works,
> > > you now can see both the Instanciated object and the original Cube at
> > > the same time. Cool to add some instanciated objects to an existing
> > > Model. But for this workflow to be efficient, we would need to be able
> > > to create this famous InstanceGroup on a Model without actualy
> > > instanciate the Model itself by creating other Models.
> > >
> > > -> Suggestion: Add a Command "Add InstanceGroup" to the contextual menu
> > > of a Model ?
> > >
> > >
> > > 4) An Instance can be part of several InstanceGroups ! You can add a
> > > empty ( or not ) Model to the InstanceGroup of several instanciated
> > > Models. Unfortunately, instance are not combined, you allways see the
> > > instance of the first Model you added to its InstanceGroup.
> > >
> > > -> Suggestion: Combine Model Instances taken from several
> > > InstanceGroups ?
> > >
> > >
> > > 5) Idealy, more than combining Model Instances taken from several
> > > InstanceGroups, there could be a way to select wich Instance source is
> > > active for an Instance added to several InstanceGroups. And an
> > > animatable way. So we could switch on the fly wich Instance Source is
> > > seen from an Instance, at what time.
> > >
> > > -> Suggestion: Not sure how to present this feature, but could worth the
> > > brainstorming on it.
> > >
> > >
> > > 6) Now, take our non empty Model added to an InstanceGroup of another
> > > Model. If you want to Instanciate this non empty Model it doesnt work,
> > > well, it works but just like if you added an Instance of the original
> > > instanciated Model. If we could really Instanciate instanciated model (
> > > including their own objects ) then we could compose cascaded instances.
> > > And this could open an all new world of Instance usablity.
> > >
> > > -> Suggestion: Add cascade ( or iterative ) instanciation to non-empty
> > > Model added to InstanceGroup(s). Another way to present it is to be able
> > > to have an InstanceGroup on an Instance.
> > >
> > >
> > > Just some thoughts.
> > > --
> > > guy rabiller | 3d technical director (at) LaMaison
> > >
> > >
> > >  
> > >      
> ---
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