Re: Show me some love, Syflex Skin!

Date : Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:26:38 -0800
To : XSI(at)Softimage.COM
From : "Alan Fregtman" <alan.fregtman(at)gmail.com>
Subject : Re: Show me some love, Syflex Skin!
Thank you for the reply, Thiago. :)

   -- Alan

On Jan 13, 2008 10:08 PM, Thiago Costa <thiagocosta3d(at)gmail.com> wrote:
> Mine is missing those images too... lame to sell a product with images
> missing in the help.
> well... yes the support of syflex on XSI version is really poor. Softimage
> don't have a single demonstration of Syflex features... things that should
> help them to sell the software at least.
> Also Syflex as a company and "plugin provider", is for years showing that
> they don't care at all with XSI users... is very disappointing.
>
> Despite those facts, to make a syflex "skin" you need two meshes because it
> work as a "layered" cloth system.
> Select both meshes (the "muscle" and the "skin"), hit the Syflex skin and
> thats it... It will not fall if you make nails and etc, or just forget
> gravity for muscle simulation.
> You need a rig to use muscle, is not just "I want a muscle here now".
>
> That tutorial is kinda old and yes it looks like different from XSI version,
> _BUT_ :
> He wasn't using syflex skin, was just using syCloth and making the muscle
> system collide with the cloth object... which in fact is try to mimic the
> same thing that the sySkin do, but in my opinion the syCloth is faster.
>
> translating from that tutorial:
> -make a muscular model of your character, envelope it using a normal
> envelope
> -make some deform keys, some muscles stress and all the stuff you want to
> deform this and make it look like the natural mechanic of a muscle.
> -get your skin, apply syCloth, make it rescale down to shrink to the body.
> -put pins on the parts you need, like static areas where bones would exist.
> -apply Volume force to make it keep the volume, apply Damp to make it stay
> there without dance around.
> -make this syCloth mesh colide with the enveloped muscle mesh and you are
> ready to go
>
> The guy use that as a proxy skin, then he get a hi-definition skin model and
> cage deform with the low skin model.
>
> Thats basically what the guy did on that tutorial, and I'm sure it endup not
> "realtime" at all. It's something you'll need to make tons of previews and
> find the right settings, and then leave it to rendertime and animate using
> another proxy msh.
> All the things he used are avaliable in XSI, every single step can be done
> in XSI and in the same way. And he didn't used gravity because it's not
> really necessary most part of the time... the idea is just to slide a mesh
> on top of another.
>
> Not saying that this is your case but what I think is that Maya users are
> more used to "pain & research" then the average XSI user. This topic about
> Syflex skin and muscle that is different from Maya is kinda old... And when
> things get more complex in XSI people start to complain because is not just
> "one click".
> Maya users are much more technical safe and problem solver then most part of
> XSI users... people start to complain before say: "okay lets do this, I'm
> going make this work".
>
> Thanks.
>
> Thiago Costa
> thiagocosta.net
>
>
>
> On 13/01/2008, Alan Fregtman <alan.fregtman(at)gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > Is Syflex Skin/Flesh seriously *that* bad that nobody uses it *at all*?
> =/
> >
> >
> > On Jan 10, 2008 3:45 PM, Alan Fregtman < alan.fregtman(at)gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hey guys,
> > >
> > > I apologize in advance if this has been asked before, but I'm trying
> > > to figure out how to get Syflex Skin (and Flesh would be cool, too) to
> > > work.
> > >
> > > Syflex documentation is rather perplexing and there's virtually no
> > > tutorials anywhere on how to use it within XSI. There's a Maya
> > > tutorial here:
> > > http://www.syflex.biz/tut_skin01.html
> > > but even though it's Syflex, in XSI things are a little different and
> > > it leaves me confused still.
> > >
> > > Please, can someone shed some light on the subject? =/
> > >
> > > I was trying with a sphere enveloped a 3-bone bonechain. I was
> > > selecting the enveloped mesh and a bigger version (pushed out, frozen
> > > scaling and frozen modeling stack), and then going to Cloth->Create
> > > Skin and I also tried selecting the other way around, with no luck.
> > >
> > > Sure.. it made the intermediate object (a merged one of the selected
> > > two meshes) and it applied cloth and skin properties to it, but after
> > > I applied syGravity and hit Play, it just falls to eternity... it
> > > doesn't "hang on" at all, but isn't that the whole point of Syflex
> > > Skin? It's not behaving any different at all from normal syflex cloth.
> > >
> > > On a side note, on my Syflex docs, there's a page with 2 missing
> > > images. I'm very positive I never opened that folder before.
> > > I'm on 6.02.. can someone confirm that their
> > > C:\Softimage\XSI_6.02\Doc\Syflex\syflex_cache.html has the first two
> > > images working? Mine are missing in my install.
> > > (If anyone has 'em, attach them?)
> > >
> > > Any help appreciated. :)
> > > Cheers,
> > >
> > >   -- Alan
> > >
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> >
>
>
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