Re: Reference model limitations?

[Jeffrey Dates <jdates(at)kungfukoi.com>]

I have dreamt of a 'scene stack' for referenced models so that you could manipulate them as you need, but the original model's integrity is maintained.  I am hoping this 'stack' mentality will propagate into the Delta paradigm.

6.0 has made some improvements with Delta's.. but I still find them extremely limiting.  And as you've mentioned here, at some point you might as well just localize your model to get into finessing.

>...referencing after all is mainly for the benefit of the modelling/animation stage.

Unfortuantly, that is the current paidigm we're forced to adopt if we use Ref's.  However, the concept can be imagined throughout the entire pipeline.
I'm not sure if anyone has really sat down with Softimage and illustrated how an ideal non-linear pipeline utilizing referencing models would work through production to render.  I'm amazed at how many studios just avoid them completely, either for fear of bugs/limitations, or just lack of really understanding them.

I am a huge advocate for reference models during production, and even with their obvious limitations I find them helpful in most cases.  It's just at some point on production you're forced to localize them for local scene adjustments, and then that's it...   You're local.  This only becomes a chore if you have a global change to your model that needs to propagate across your entire production.

Things like move components, clusters, shaders, groups..etc would be extremely valuable at the Delta level.  Ideally, I'd like to have my Geo independent of my rig, independent of my animation, and have the Delta bring them together upon loading the scene.

But as Andre has said, you are able to Sim from within a Reference and utilize it's cache at rendertime....  

I couldn't live without them...  limited or not. 
I have faith that Softimage will continue to push Delta's and open them up in the future. *crosses fingers*.  Assuming that more studios lean on Soft for the need.

--
Jeffrey Dates
www.kungfukoi.com
214.280.4353

Vincent Fortin wrote:

Hi there,

 

How come one can’t add operators and clusters to reference models? I’d have expected to be able to stack stuff on top of them while keeping the original file’s integrity.

I can only guess this is somehow due to XSI’s object structure that doesn’t have any special mechanism for handling this. Otherwise, from a user point of view, it just doesn’t make sense.

So assuming I didn’t overlook some basic info in the doc, how would you guys go about implementing a character finaling workflow in which an animator could do something as simple as connecting a ground collision to a referenced character that has Syflex on it?

 

Thanks

 

Vincent

 

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