Softimage Blog

Random thoughts are gathered here. They might be inquiries that are thrown out to the greater community, or just something that was figured out lately but still requires some digging into before a proper article can be written up. Anything goes.

You would like to submit an article to Softimage Blog, whatever the category? Don't hesitate, it might even get you full authorship status to XSIBlog if you do so.

After a couple of chit chats about referenced models in 6.0, I would take to take a few minutes to explain how you can use the delta referencing system to separate rig and geometry into two different files, which can be edited independently from one another.

Sometimes when you’re trying your hardest to put together a rig that the animators won’t break, you wish that XSI had something like Houdini’s digital assets. In case you haven’t come across Houdini yet, “Digital Assets” are a way of encapsulating a group of objects and hiding everything except for certain items that you choose. [...]

OK…

1
Application.LogMessage("Whatever")

Am I tired of writing this in my XSI Python scripts you think? In Python, variables are basically pointers to the actual object and everything in Python is an object, functions included… Hmmm…
Try using this at the top of your python scripts:

1
2
xsi = Application
pr = xsi.__getattr__("LogMessage")

Now you can do:

1
2
xsi.Whatever(attrib)
pr(whatever.Property)

instead of

1
2
Application.Whatever(attrib)
Application.LogMessage(whatever.Property)

All of this with absolute minimal [...]

One of my friends has fun telling me that I”m not really a programmer because my code isn”t compiled. I mostly use scripting languages so I can”t be a programmer, can I?
To which I reply: are you really a programmer if your ubber-complex program fits in twenty lines and the heavy lifting is done by [...]