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I wish people stopped attaching images to mails... I'm surprised Kim hasn't had a heart attack yet.
Anyway...
WHERE did I say I want a hypergraph? I said quite the opposite, but people keep throwing back at my my same exact comments for some reason :)
I (I could say we) have been asking for two things:
Better reordering/layout tools
The possibility to manipulate what the schematic ALREADY represents and somewhat allows minimal inspection or manipulation of, which would be a grand total of material connections/sharing, constraints and maybe hierarchies. Expressions is a given would be too much for what is proposed as a minor tweak.
Being the extent of additional connection entry points needed a grand total of 2, you could even do without showing inputs literally and just have a couple swatches under a node that you can hide or show with the view in "connection safe mode" or not.
Who ever asked about the connection editor or being able to work on particles in the schematic or create rigs?!
We're talking of abstracting the representation of completely different things.
I know how the hypergraph works, thanks, know it entirely too well for my tastes in fact, but how do you really think a nodal system can only be like that? The fact Alias ****ed it up doesn't mean that the schematic NOT BEING UTTERLY USELESS wouldn't be great does it?
The point is, it would take so very little to make it so much better.
I don't get it what it is with other character TDs seeming to enjoy sufferance and a useless view this week :p
Brad give them something of whatever you take please.
On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 9:57 AM, Thiago Costa < thiagocosta3d(at)gmail.com> wrote:
no Japanese here...
I was born in Brazil! Ha! And I don't like football(soccer) and samba... but I like girls. :) Nothing else to say about nationalities... :P
Raff... yes I like nodal views... Agreed that we need a graph with a better sorting method that understand all kind of relations and not just Parent/Child.
It doesn't mean that we need a hypergraph type of thing. Because I would hate to know that an XSI developer is spending his time to transform the schematic view into a "hypergraph".
So when you say "like the render tree does, without connection points", my question is: Where this thing need to stop showing stuff?
A node can have gazillion of connections, talk about particles then...
The XSI schematic is supposed to be a very high level graph of your scene. It means we see 3d objects and fundamental hierarchies, then constraints and expressions... Then operators like envelopes, shrinkwrap... and finally materials.
All of this is selectable/deletable in the schematic, the big limitation is that we can't establish connections (other than drag nodes holding Alt).
Isn't enough to have a toolbar with
constraints, parent/cut, create models, assign materials...? All that
kind of thing you use when over the schematic, so you can connect stuff
right on the nodes at least.
Now imagining we open a node in the schematic as we do in the rendertree, what connection points should we see when we open a node? (other than what is already connected).
A nodal based workflow is really helpful for
look/shader development and simulations, and this is why the
rendertree work so well.
For rigging is also interesting to have a nodal view, and I use it a lot when rigging. But I have it as a support tool for renaming and checking. It's not something that I just sit and say: "ah ok this arm, now with this chain, now I push this constraint, and lets envelop this mesh with that group..."
It's more like: "let's see whats going on"... And I also do a lot of my selection in the Schematic when I'm rigging.
When I need to connect simple X and Y Kine in maya, the only way is to
jump to the hypergraph or the connection editor... Both suck ass
because as soon as I drag something I get a huge list of parameters
where 90% is useless most part of the time.
The explorer in XSI can become literally anything
with the touch of a button, from a renderpass management to a parameter
connection editor. And all this happen just over the viewport, where you can see the
effect of it and be totally that you are working with the
right objects.
Just to illustrate the discussion... I attached an image of a simple drag and drop in the maya hypergraph and trying to estabilish a connection in maya connection editor.
How badly designed is this thing? How better it could be if it was in XSI? Imagine a node in the schematic view with all this crap hanging... now put it in a complex scene, with 100 nodes. How useful would be that?
Again I'm not saying that the schematic doesn't need a revamp... My point is what is necessary and what is just old fashion?
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