RE: Schematic View

["kim aldis" <xsi(at)kim-aldis.co.uk>]

I think I’ve said before, the one thing that’s badly missing from xsi is a view that allows you to see relations and dependancies. Picking up a scene, especially someone else’s, and trying to work out why one particular element isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do is tough  and time-consuming. This is where I usually turn to the schematic. And after 10 minutes or so completely give up with it because the element is in the middle of hundreds, if not thousands of objects and the things that are controlling it are so far away you can’t see the connections. Or the items themselves.

 

I don’t use the schematic that much, partly because the explorer does most of what I need and partly because the schematic does nothing very much at all, but I can see why people stick with it and I can see why it’s such a struggle for  them.

 

It seems odd to me that something that’s basically a hierarchy with relations doesn’t have a viewer that can sensibly see – and edit, we forgot about visual editing of relations -  hierarchies and relations.

 

 

From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM] On Behalf Of Raffaele Fragapane
Sent: 27 February 2008 21:05
To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
Subject: Re: Schematic View

 

I like the hypergraph, and I think some of the visualization/sorting options are very well thought out, but it also has to make up for what a pile of camel dung outliner is.

XSI already has a lot of ground covered with the explorer, view that only really needs a couple tweaks at best, and with very little addition the schematic would provide everything the explorer isn't well suited to represent and manipulate, making it a more essential and tidier contendant to the hypegraph approach. That might be why it's somewhat frustrating seeing some things ignored for year, when such powerful views like the schematic and the spreadsheet (ops, I went there ;) ) are already there and so close to making XSI an infinitely more usable application.

As for the kittens, they've been sent ages ago Brad, and I have the return receipt. Are you playing games? ARE YOU?! If yes, what games?

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 9:50 PM, Bradley Gabe <withanar(at)gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 2:37 PM, Raffaele Fragapane <raffsxsilist(at)googlemail.com> wrote:

I've shipped entire freights of dead kittens to Brad in the hope of intercession, so that Soft would modernize and revamp the schematic view.

FYI - I have not received any shipments since last October. Either they have not been properly forwarded to my new address, or there's been a problem getting them into Texas. Also, the last 3 shipments that came through at the old address were mostly tabbies. I specifically requested Calico, Persian, and Maine Coon!
 

The visual feedback of a networked nodal system is incredibly well suited to represent both hierarchies and graph pulls, much better so then the explorer (which I find almost perfect for some other things, and miles better then maya's horrible excuse for it they call outliner).

Explorer > Outliner
Hypergraph > Schematic
 

It would take so very little to make it viable again, and it would be the ideal front-end to abstract connections like expressions and constraints and operate on them, connections that are now clunky to manipulate, when it's possible at all.

I still have to meet one character TD worth anything that doesn't feel the need for a schematic revamp. It doesn't even need to be something visually superfancypants, probably quite the opposite, just get better manipulation tools and a slightly extended set of connections.

...and a few options for controlling node size, font display, node shapes, etc so we can compensate for different sized monitors and/or retinas.


 

 

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 9:09 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau <lucer(at)softimage.com> wrote:

The Schematic isn't related to nodal programming.  It's about seeing an
overview of the hierarchy of 3D objects for selection and viewing simple
relationships.   It's a map, a flattening of the 3D view, not a view of
the construction history.  The material sharing and association workflow
of SI3D is still in there, btw.

If there is nodal programming in the future in XSI, there will likely
still be a need for a Schematic view.