Softimage Blog

XSIBlog is Patrick's brainchild. It was born out of his need to immerse himself in the knowledge of others and share whatever he could with the community. Patrick has been working in visual effects since 1999 and through the years has composited on Flint and Shake and done 3D on Softimage|3D, Maya and XSI. Since the beginning of 2002 he works as a pipeline and workflow geek, integrating off the shelf and custom tools in production support roles. LinkedIn Profile

I have touched on Python decorators in the past in this article (although that decorator was a bit convoluted). Decorators can be extremely useful in many situations and here are a few that I propose may help streamline script development.
Note: For those of you who would like a bit of background information on decorators you [...]

You write tools for artists under a deadline (yours and theirs). You live in a production oriented world. Unit testing, beta testing and anticipating can only go so far, and that is only if you have time to properly test. You have to accept that eventually, your code will break. How it breaks and how [...]

During the Gerstner Wave 101 video I alluded to stacking multiple waves together to create more complex surfaces. The idea is that for each successive wave or octave that is added onto the effect, the number of waves be greater, the amplitude be smaller and the speed be slower.
Note: To see your full effect, make [...]

With the set of Gerstner Waves available for purchase it was obvious that there should be some usage videos posted here so here is the first one describing how to install it and the basic parameters. Of course the compound installation methodology applies to any compound you might download off the Softimage Community Site or [...]

After some hard work and some great feedback from a few people I’ve decided to put my Gerstner wave compounds up for sale.
At their current price of 40$ they’re a steal, as far as I’m concerned.
If you want to get your mitts on your own copy, check out the purchase page where you can securely [...]