From Ciaran on the XSI mailing list, here’s a good example of how to find all light nulls whose names contain “lamp” or “light”:
oLightNulls = oModel.FindChildren2("{*light*,*lamp*}",c.siNullPrimType)
The curly brackets {} are used in a string expression to specify a list of objects.
That String Expressions page still looks pretty much the same as it did back in 1999, when I first wrote it!
In the Selection preferences, there’s a Selection Change Command text box where you can type in a command to run when the selection changes.
Here are two important points about the Selection Change Command:
Awhile back, I wrote a little script that used ElementTree to parse the XML returned by GetConnectionStackInfo. I posted the 2013sp1 version of the script here.
Anyway, I was a little surprised when I couldn’t get the script to run in 2012 SAP. I was sure that it used to work, but now it was giving me this error:
# ERROR : Traceback (most recent call last): # File "<Script Block >", line 17, in <module> # connections = ET.XML(stackInfo) # File "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2012.SAP\Application\python\Lib\xml\etree\ElementTree.py", line 962, in XML # parser = XMLTreeBuilder() # File "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2012.SAP\Application\python\Lib\xml\etree\ElementTree.py", line 1118, in __init__ # "No module named expat; use SimpleXMLTreeBuilder instead" # ImportError: No module named expat; use SimpleXMLTreeBuilder instead # - [line 17]
After digging into the problem a bit, I found that the Softimage install did indeed include expat, but Softimage wasn’t finding it…because I had deleted the Application\python\Lib\sitecustomize.py file!!! Doh.
I had deleted sitecustomize.py while investigating a problem report from a customer, and then I didn’t bother putting it back, because Python was still working in general.
sitecustomize.py adds paths like %XSI_HOME%\Application\python\DLLs to the sys.path, and pyexpat.pyd is in that DLLs folder.
Bake ICE data
by Oleg
Align center using faces
by Alan Fregtman
ICE: Emulating Maya Bones
by Alan Fregtman
No Rig muscles
by Paul Smith
Here’s a little Python snippet that creates a bunch of text objects, one for each item in a list. Note the handling of multiple lines (elements in triple quotes).
names = ["Test", """Coming
Soon""", "XSI",
"""one
two
THREE""", "SUMATRA"]
for n in names:
text = Application.CreateMeshText("CurveListToSolidMeshForText", "siPersistentOperation")
if n.find( "\n" ):
n = n.replace( "\n", "\\par\r\n" )
Application.SetValue(str(text) + ".crvlist.TextToCurveList.text.singleline", 0, "")
Application.SetValue(str(text) + ".crvlist.TextToCurveList.text.text", "%s%s%s" % ("_RTF_{\\rtf1\\ansi\\deff0{\\fonttbl{\\f0\\froman\\fcharset0 Arial;}}\r\n\\viewkind4\\uc1\\pard\\lang1033\\f0\\fs20 ", n, "\\par\r\n}\r\n"), "")
Application.SetValue(str(text) + ".extrudelength", 1, "")
Review of SOFTIMAGE XSI 1.0 from 3DWorld Magazine issue no 1, 2000.
To be honest, from the outset we were prepared to be underwhelmed by [XSI]…eclipsed as it has been by Maya [but] when you get down to it, XSI is simply a stunning piece of software and we wever very impressed
Hat tip to Daniel Brassard for kindly sending this in.
Here’s a little ICE modeling example that chains together a few basic polygon operations:
And here’s the same thing, but with no ICE:
I’ve had some problems with IsElement lately, so I took another look at how to work around problems with IsElement, especially when you’re using it with ICE topology. Also, a quick look under the covers at the connections in the construction stack (aka operator history).
Here’s the script I was using to print the connection stack info:
#
# This script works in 2013 SP1 only because it uses sipyutils
#
from sipyutils import si # win32com.client.Dispatch('XSI.Application')
from sipyutils import siut # win32com.client.Dispatch('XSI.Utils')
from sipyutils import siui # win32com.client.Dispatch('XSI.UIToolkit')
from sipyutils import simath # win32com.client.Dispatch('XSI.Math')
from sipyutils import log # LogMessage
from sipyutils import disp # win32com.client.Dispatch
from sipyutils import C # win32com.client.constants
si=si()
siut =siut()
sisel = si.Selection
from xml.etree import ElementTree as ET
prim = sisel(0).ActivePrimitive if si.ClassName(sisel(0)) == 'X3DObject' else sisel(0)
stackInfo = siut.DataRepository.GetConnectionStackInfo( prim )
#log( stackInfo )
connections = ET.XML(stackInfo)
currentMarker =''
print "Connections for %s" % prim.FullName
for connection in connections:
o = connection.find('object').text
if o == currentMarker:
continue
if o.endswith('marker'):
currentMarker = o
print "%s (%s)" % (connection.find('object').text, connection.find('type').text)
The guy sitting next to me kept getting this Python error at startup (which meant I had to either fix his install or continue taking all the CrowdFX cases 😉
' ERROR : 2000 - Failed creating scripting engine: XSI.SIPython.1. ' pythoncom error: PythonCOM Server - The 'win32com.server.policy' module could not be loaded. ' <type 'exceptions.ImportError'>: No module named win32com.server.policy ' pythoncom error: CPyFactory::CreateInstance failed to create instance. (80004005)
This happened only with the Python installed with Softimage. We did runonce.bat. We checked that Python was in the PATH. I scoured a Process Monitor log for several hours. But no luck. After a few days off, I came back and took another look at his Process Monitor log, and I noticed that at a certain point, Softimage switched over to reading files from the system Python install (in C:\Python26). And that was the clue.
It turns out that the environment variable PYTHONHOME was set to C:\Python26. Unsetting that environment variable was the solution.
Setting PYTHONPATH to C:\Python26 also causes the same error.
eX-SI 