The latest service pack for Autodesk® Softimage® 2012 software includes 70 fixes. See below the fold for a complete list of fixes
Coexistence Softimage 2012 SP1 is a full build and can co‐exist with Softimage 2012.
Softimage 2012 is not required to be uninstalled first. Licensing Softimage 2012 SP1 uses the same license as Softimage 2012. When installing Softimage 2012 SP1:
• Enter the product key 590D1 and your Softimage 2012 serial number, and then click Next.
• If you have a Network license, click Configure to switch to the Network licensing method.
Here’s one way to to build an array that contains a sequence of numbers like 1,5,9,13, …, where each number in the sequence is the previous number + 4.
When Softimage ICE was released, it was clear that any dedicated user who were not afraid of words like ‘multiply vector by matrix’, have been able to develop a hair-styling system, without writing a single line of code. For Mars Police, I’ve created hair using my own free hair system called ‘Kristinka Hair’.
The system utilizes NURBS surfaces for main shapes, and exclusive procedural approach for details. Kristinka means something like “dear Christine” or “little Christine” in several Slavic languages.
A quick look into the type and context of ports and how sometimes you have to “force” (or “initialize”) the type and context. Hey, ICE can’t always resolve everything automagically 😉
I ended up with a 3ds Max Design case awhile ago, where Composite gave this error at startup:
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Autodesk Toxik - Fatal Error
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Cannot check out license for "Network License: Autodesk Toxik 2011" from c:\flexlm\maya.lic.
The product key was not found.
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OK
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Usually the solution to this kind of error is to set the ADSK_COMPOSITE_LICENSE environment variable to 3DSMAX (or SOFTIMAGE or MAYA), but that didn’t work. Eventually I tried “3DSMAXDESIGN” and of course, that was it 😉 Nobody ever never mentioned that possible value, so I assumed 3DSMAX applied to both 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design.
The above poll is an example of an ultimate question that can be used to calculate a net promoter score.
If you’re a Subscription customer and you’ve logged some support cases, you may have received a survey invitation. You may have even filled the survey out 😉
These customer satisfaction surveys are based on the Net Promoter methodology, which uses a “would you recommend” question to divide customers into three categories: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors.
The “would you recommend” question is known as the ultimate question, and uses a 0-to-10 point rating scale:
Promoters (score 9-10) are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and refer others, fueling growth.
Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are vulnerable to competitive offerings.
Detractors (score 0-6) are unhappy customers who can damage your brand and impede growth through negative word-of-mouth.
Based on the survey results, a Net Promoter Score is calculated:
The general idea is that if you know your NPS, you can focus in on what you need to change to increase promoters and decrease detractors. This requires a dialog with your customers; currently support managers are responsible for following up with detractors to find out what went wrong during the support case.
So far, in practice, what I observe is that we don’t get enough surveys returned, so every single detractor has a huge impact on our NPS. Looking at my own NPS scores, I think I would have to focus not on detractors (unless I really messed up) but rather on the passives. Because if you had only one detractor, but everybody else was a passive, you’d end up with a negative NPS. Hardly something to brag about, and certainly not something that will look good to management.
I was recently asked how an xsibatch script could override local mental ray settings for a pass (the user was using xsibatch -script to force certain settings before kicking off a render).
You just have to get Pass.Properties(“mental ray”).
That will give you either the shared renderer property, or the local one if the pass has a local copy.
p = Application.ActiveProject.ActiveScene.ActivePass
mr_prop = p.Properties("mental ray")
# a local mentalray property has one Owner
# a shared mentalray property is owned by the PassContainer (Passes)
# and the passes that don't have a local copy
if mr_prop.Owners.Count == 1:
Application.LogMessage( "Local" )
# or you could check LocalProperties
if p.LocalProperties("mental ray") != None :
Application.LogMessage( "Local" )
eX-SI 