My own personal opinion is a love/hate relationship with the new
rendering pipe. I think soft is going in the right direction, but in its
current incarnation, its a rough stone that needs to be smoothed out.
I think the interface could use some polishing, as I would agree with
some that said that it felt clunky. One aspect I don't like is that in
the pass options menu, that you can't edit your channel options from
that ppg, my instinctual response is to click on the field and either be
a text editable in the case of the file name works fine, however for
file format I am forced to go to a separate ppg that destroys the
current one, something I am not particular about. I know all you have to
do is hit the back arrow in the ppg, however I prefer to have a drop
down box instead of a separate ppg, and if need be a ppg is necessary,
have a separate instance pop up rather than blowing the pass options
page which I might not be done setting options on.
Someone mentioned having to set cameras for each pass. This again
baffles me why this isn't a scene options setting with the option to
override in a pass. this can be particularly un-fun if you have over
twenty passes that you have to keep track to make sure that each are
using the right render camera. So this baffles me why no fore-thought
was put into this.
While I love the fact that things are abstracted now, where you have
local options for each pass, and global scene and renderer options. the
part I don't like is that for some passes that require unique renderer
settings specific for that pass, there is no elegant way to override the
global settings without blowing away the global connection to the rest
of the renderer options. Which again, in a scenario where you have 20 or
so passes, any changes made to the global renderer options have to be
done to any of the passes that have localized renderer options. To me
this is a potential avenue for user error and unnecessary re-rendering
after the inconsistencies are noticed. All of this would be alleviated
if the user had the ability to put overrides on the pass object and add
global parameters to that override. Unfortunately this is not possible.
While you can put the override on the pass object which could not be
done in previous versions, its pretty much useless because you can't add
any parameters that you would expect to add to an override that resides
under the pass object.
there is definitely more issues, but only minor ones or ones that I
can't think of off the top of my head. Like I said, its a step in the
right direction, it just needs more refining and streamlining to make it
what its supposed to be. We've had our own "render manager" that I had
scripted for previous versions of XSI, luckily it didn't take too much
to upgrade it to use in 6, which for the most part take out most of the
headaches that come rendering in 6. The only thing I haven't tackled yet
is the global parameter overrides.
Greg
On Wed, 2007-08-22 at 17:08 +0200, Morten Bartholdy wrote:
> Actually Kim, I am frantically searching through all three PPG's and
> the Render Manager to try and make sure all passes render with the
> setings I want and wind up in each their output folder - the latter
> seems the most difficult now. This is of course because it is the
> first time I really use these PPG's i 6.x and I am in a big hurry
> because of looming deadlines. I am sure Kris is right I will get the
> hang of it and eventually appreciate the improved functionality but I
> still think there is some merit in having PPG's for stuff like this
> that I can grasp the second time I look at them, and in this
> implementation that is not the case.
>
> I hear you Francois - it looks better prepared for several renderers
> than in pre 6.x but the UI is still a mess IMHO. Personally I would
> like all renderer options to be available in the same PPG popping up
> when a particular renderer is selected. Actually I found my self
> trying to edit the parameters in the Summary tab because of the good
> overview there.
>
> - MB
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: kim aldis
> To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
> Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 4:08 PM
> Subject: RE: 6.x rendermanager
>
>
>
> Are you using the render manager?
>
>
>
> From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM]
> On Behalf Of Morten Bartholdy
> Sent: 22 August 2007 14:28
> To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
> Subject: Re: 6.x rendermanager
>
>
>
>
> I do understand the good parts Kim - I am sure the intentions
> and functionality are a big plus. My gripe is the spreading of
> global and pass specific parameters over 3-4 PPG's. I keep
> searching for where to set filter type or padding etc. - that
> sucks.
>
>
>
>
>
> I have no idea what tokens you are talking about!?
>
>
>
>
>
> - MB
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>
>
> From: kim aldis
>
>
> To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
>
>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 1:54 PM
>
>
> Subject: RE: 6.x rendermanager
>
>
>
>
>
> Iâm going to jump in and disagree once more. Just to
> level the playfield. J
>
>
>
> Iâve nothing but good to say about the way this works.
> I had to drop back to 5.11 on one job and the
> difference in the amount of time it took me to set up
> for rendering doesnât even bear thinking about. I just
> love it.
>
>
>
> Are you using the tokens for your output paths Morten?
> Thatâs a good place to start making life easier.
>
>
>
> From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-
> xsi(at)Softimage.COM] On Behalf Of Morten Bartholdy
> Sent: 22 August 2007 10:09
> To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
> Subject: 6.x rendermanager
>
>
>
>
> This is my first production with 6.0x rendering and I
> just have to get it off my chest - it just sucks how
> messy it is now! I can see the virtues of the global
> stuff but damn it is hard to make sure I render with a
> specific filename per pass, padding and specific
> output path >:/
>
>
>
>
>
> I remember the long thread about this back when 6. was
> released and I guess I have to second those that said
> it was a serious UI regression!
>
>
>
>
>
> Morten Bartholdy
> 3D & VFX Artist
>
>
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