Re: Replacing the shadertree? Possible?

["Mike Werckle" <stumbly(at)gmail.com>]

Hi  Andre,

I was comparing XSI to Soft 3D, not Maya or Max or Houdidni.  I don't know much about those softwares (if that tells you how loyal I've been to Soft over the years).  I think XSI is a vast improvement in functionality over Soft 3D, but I feel usability has been diminished, for whatever reason. 

For me Soft 3D is the benchmark.  I'm not saying I want to go back, just that the original directive to create an intuitive tool for artists, seems to have been abandoned with XSI.   I see that as perhaps one reason there seems to be a need within the community to mod XSI-- and perhaps why it isn't being adopted on a large scale.

Mike

On 6/16/06, Andre DeAngelis <andre.deangelis(at)ubisoft.com> wrote:

Mike,

 

While you make some valid points, I was sundering to what you are comparing the Rendertree in order to conclude that it is a mess?

 

Sure the RT does not allow a great degree of customizability, but the rendering pipes for apps like Maya are far from perfect.  As for user friendliness, what do you consider to be the bench mark?

 

If XSI is a jumbled mess, what does that make Maya?  What does that say for MAX and Lightwave, which have both become interfaces to long lists of plug-ins?

 

Houdini is powerful yes, but would you really consider it an artists tool?

AD

 

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From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM] On Behalf Of Mike Werckle
Sent: June 15, 2006 1:47 PM

To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
Subject: Re: Replacing the shadertree? Possible?

 

I think this is indicative of a larger problem with XSI:  there are huge parts of it that don't work in the way people want it to-- or just don't work at all when put to the test on larger scale projects.  There is a deep desire by a lot of people to get under the hood and MAKE XSI work, because clearly Softimage either hasn't fully tested how the software works or doesn't listen to the customers who are truly pushing it into higher level production.

I've been back on XSI for a year after a 4 year absense, but was a diehard Soft 3D user for 6 years before that.   I'm shocked and disappointed that XSI has gotten so far away from the original intent of Soft 3D:  an intuitive tool for artists.  XSI is no longer intuitive-- it's a jumbled mess-- take the render tree or the particle sytem as examples.

I'm not surprised that people want to fix it on their own-- there is a hint of me that is still holding on to the glory days of old Soft 3D-- but it's fading fast.

Mike  Werckle

On 6/15/06, Bernard Lebel <3dbernard(at)gmail.com> wrote:

Pardon the intervention, but every reply that I read in this thread
makes me think: "wouldn't the time developing an enchanced Render
Tree, yet alone the difficulties it involves, better spent pressuring
and helping Softimage to do it?" If you guys want something new, why
is it such a problem to make a proper proposal to Softimage and help
them with the design? Why does it have to be a plugin or a standalone
product? Wouldn't having it "factory" be more profitable to the XSI
users?


Bernard

On 6/15/06, Thomas Helzle <xsi(at)screendream.de> wrote:
> Wow Andy, that sounds really interesting and well thought out.
> But you are right that it would be a lot of work and I fear I have too much other stuff to do to dive that deep into programming alone.
> Also, without knowing what Softs intentions are in this area, it could easily become obsolete before being finished or end up being another welded-on thing like the Texture Layer Editor. :-(
>
> Maybe it is better to stay with something more open from the start and keep my focus on improving messiah, which is so close to being perfect for me, instead of investing too much time in XSI where I don't have that "direct wire" to the development and where I would have to jump through hoops to get a major improvement in the foundation (no pun intended). As someone said, it feels silly to redo the shadertree - as much needed as it may be.
>
> Until then, I may just add some more functionality to the material shader I already have working to make it even more messiah-like. My procedurals already have that input-mixing functionality I need so often.
>
> It could be a cool project for a dedicated plugin developer though - for Lightwave, there were several node-based-trees available, also implemented as shaders, from free to cheap, even before Newtek included nodes in LW 9.
>
> Regarding the Fcurves: in messiah, since the renderer is part of the app, I was able to connect to the Graph Editor with a shader and it works just great. Not intended by the pmG developers but I always love stuff that goes around the initial plans for new uses ;-)  (I'm an old style C coder and have no clue about all this new fancy stuff like COM etc. ;-) )
>
> Since Blender came up: Blender actually HAS nodes for shading and compositing in the next upcoming release:
> http://www.blender.org/cms/Changes_since_last_ver.727.0.html

> If they ever change the Blender UI to something more appealing, I am sure it will become the 3D app of choice for many people. There are already so many cool ideas and possibilities in there. And "Elephants Dream" shows what is possible today with this tool:
> http://www.elephantsdream.org/download/
> Very impressive!
> May be an interesting experience to work with a software where you REALLY can change how things work...
>
> Thank you all for your thoughts and input. It is very much appreciated and has helped me getting a clearer view of the issue, even if actually doing it may be out of my reach at the moment! But maybe someone else is feeling inspired?
>
> Best regards,
>
> Thomas Helzle
>
>
>

> On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 13:42:58 +0200, Andy Nicholas <andy(at)andynicholas.com > wrote:
>
> > Hi Thomas,
> >
> > From what I can remember (and it was a while ago), I'm pretty sure it's
> > standalone, and can be put into any HWND you want. It's nowhere near a
> > complete node tree interface, but it had a plugin structure so that you
> > can add new node types using third party DLLs. it needs a heck of a lot
> > more work though (i.e. a refactorisation at minimum or possibly a rewrite)
> > to give it the basic functionality you want.
> >
> > Tony's right though, it'd be worth finding out a bit more information
> > about Soft's intentions. Although I would doubt that it would be far
> > enough towards what you're proposing.
> >
> > BTW, if you look at the SSS Fast Skin shader, that's basically a material
> > plugin. It's got various shaders inside it that it connects up to the
> > various inputs like this:
> >
> > Connection Material
> > {
> >         Surface = "deepscatter";
> >         Environment = "env_shader";
> >         Displacement = "dsp_shader";
> >         Lightmap = "lm_write";
> > }
> >
> > I'm guessing that this would probably be the best (only) way to hook into
> > XSI. We'd then have our own interface launched from a button from there,
> > and store all the custom tree data in a string parameter (probably XML
> > format) or in a user data blob.
> >
> > It's not a small job though!
> >
> >
> > I reckon the FCurve thingy could be made to work in XSI, but you'd
> > probably have to write your own FCurve implementation, it's own ActiveX
> > Control, and then link the code to the control via some sort of COM event
> > system. Nasty, and not something I've tried (funnily enough!).
> >
> > (BTW, if you're writing C++ shaders in Messiah, there's no reason you
> > can't create a shader to drive the Histogram COM app to display
> > information inside Messiah. Such is the beauty of COM ;-) )
> >
> > Feel free to get in touch directly if you want to discuss this.
> >
> > Andy
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> Hi Andy,
> >>
> >> superb! Does your interface rely on the Lightwave SDK or is it completely
> >> standalone?
> >> I'm sure this would need some further discussion and testing (especially
> >> since it shouldn't mimic XSIs tree too closely ;-) )
> >> I have to do some more reading on such a "base-material" or how this would
> >> be called in XSI/MR.
> >>
> >> Actually your Histogram tool brought me to the idea of external interfaces
> >> when I found out that I can't use Fcurves for shaders in XSI. :-)
> >> In messiah I found a pretty cool workaround for the no-Fcurves-in-Shaders
> >> problem and now I have a shader in my TLHPro package that can use the
> >> timeline/graph editor with all it's bells and whistles for
> >> "superfinetuning" of surfaces and other stuff.
> >>
> >> Let's see if we can get something going.
> >> Anyone else interested to join in?
> >>
> >> Thanks and best regards,
> >>
> >> Thomas Helzle
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:13:24 +0200, Andy Nicholas < andy(at)andynicholas.com>

> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hi Thomas,
> >>>
> >>> I started writing a node interface in OpenGL to mimic XSI's. It was only
> >>> a
> >>> beginning, but a good place to start from. At the time I think I was
> >>> looking
> >>> to add a node based interface to Lightwave. If we can figure out a way
> >>> of
> >>> plugging into XSI, then I'm sure we could get this to work.
> >>>
> >>> BTW, isn't it possible to write our own materials now for XSI? Wouldn't
> >>> that
> >>> be the best option for complete customisation of the tree?
> >>>
> >>> Andy
> >>
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