My main focus is rigging and character setups and I for one rarely (if
ever) use the Schematic because it's plain frightening to see a
hundred (sometimes thousands) of individual nodes, all super tiny and
completely illegible, arranged in a seemingly endless horizontal
strip... How is anyone supposed to work with that?? If I go up close
to a section, I hate finding out that the next node I need to look at
is a mile away, so I have to either frame it (losing a visual
perception of where I am in the graph) or scroll a mile or zoom out
and find it by hand which is just as bad.
How about Soft made something like what they have in the FXtree, where
they show a tiny thumbnail representation of the full node graph and
where exactly you are looking at? That'd be really helpful. I love
that it even lets you click on to move around and stuff. (And if
they could do "animated framing" like Maya's viewport cameras, but in
the 2D space of the Schematic, that way at least when you frame
something you still have a visual perception of where you moved to in
the virtual graph space. As a bonus, add 3 frames of subtle
anticipation in the opposite direction of where it's about to frame..
:) I'll give you a cookie for that, Soft.)
Sometimes when troubleshooting someone else's rig I also find it handy
to turn on "Relations" in the viewport eyeball menu. At least this way
I can see connections in 3D space and it gives me a more concise idea
of the relationships and constraints in my selection of objects.
Anyone else find this feature handy?
Cheers,
-- Alan
On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 12:10 AM, kim aldis <xsi(at)kim-aldis.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
>
>
>
---
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