Re: slight OT: they want what we got!

["Steven Caron" <carons(at)gmail.com>]

me

On 5/1/07, Guillaume Laforge <guillaume(at)alamaison.fr> wrote:

> -overriding cluster based materials

It is already possible. Just create an empty geometry in the partition and apply your "cluster material" on it.

i am not sure i follow.

> -improved SDK access

I find the SDK well documented for pass/partitions etc... What do you think is missing ?

before i go on.. i have already logged these requests. so this is just an echo...

i can get a pass object. awesome. now why can't i get a list of partitions? does it not make sense to have a ".partitions" method of a pass object, that returns a collection of partitions/groups contained inside a pass? sure i can use ".nestedobjects" and have had success getting at what i need. and in general have been able to make good tools to automate many pass/partition processes. but i still think we need "improvements". once i can evaluate v6.x in production, i will collect and send my requests again with better context.

as far as documentation i think it is pretty good, but when your trying to figure out how to differentiate an object partition from a light partition you have to resort to what i feel is a workaround ( using guids ). also you can't find partitions in the OM hierarchy list in the docs. probably because from what i can tell passes and partitions are both groups but partitions are only ever nested under passes. i am no engineer or programmer but it seems to me partitions need to be their own class, under a group with its own members specific to partition functionality. or at least a section to explain this relationship.

try finding an explanation of what an override is and how it can be manipulated. you can figure out because overrides are properties. the SDK hints about overrides but doesn't help you understand how to use them. i had to be told by someone way more experienced with the SDK that".localproperties" would give me an override on a partition that is not currently active. i think better documentation will help ease other people getting into customizing this part of the software.

apologies for my poor grammar...

> -work flow enhancements.

Something I always miss with the pass system is that you can't export passes with a model.
I understand it is not possible as models are under the scene_root model and passes aren't. A system to export/import passes used by a model is very useful. The merge scene system is a workaround, but not very handy.

for the time being.. .XSIA allows me to export the passes and rebuild them in other scenes nicely.

 

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Guillaume Laforge | La Maison



On Tue, 1 May 2007 11:44:18 -0700, "Steven Caron" <carons(at)gmail.com> wrote:
> which i hope will continue to get enhancements...
>
> -overriding cluster based materials
> -improved SDK access
> -speed/performance
> -work flow enhancements. it is good now, just as other parts of the
> software
> changes work flow may be affected. the pass view in v6 is a little harder
> to
> navigate than it was before. the new functionality is welcome but so is
> working easily with this new functionality
>
>
> On 5/1/07, Francois Lord < francoislord(at)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I continue to think that the pass system in XSI is the one best feature
>> of the entire software.
>>
>> Steven Caron wrote:
>> > xsi pass management is such a great feature. IMO the devs really had
>> > the fore sight
>> >
>> > http://www.vanilla-seed.com/details_des_fonctions_en.html
>> >
>> > a pass management system plugin for Max...
>> >
>> > it has a pass compositing option that they can see inside Max. it
>> > isn't hard to automate this with the fxtree, but it would be nice if
>> > this automation was found in xsi.
>> >
>> > steven
>> >
>> >
>> ---
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>
>
--
Guillaume Laforge | La Maison

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