“Tools to break the rules” branding from back in the mid-1990s (the image file was dated August 1995). Ah, the good old Microsoft days when the money was flowing freely and we took taxis to cross the street…
Let’s take a look at a question that was posted recently on the Softimage mailing list:
From: softimage-bounces@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-bounces@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Adam Sale
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2013 3:40 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Force ppg to open on script launchI’m a little confused as to why the following does not work:
– Get a sphere
– Run Deform > Smooth
– PPG appears and all is good.Now, take the generated command and run it through the script editor
ApplyOp(“Smooth”, “torus”, 3, siPersistentOperation, null, 0);
This time, no PPG appears.
Any idea why? And is there a way to force a ppg launch when I tun the command from a button or from the script editor?
Thanks 🙂
Adam
Matt Lind explained why on the list, but I’ll take a little more detailed look into how commands like Smooth work.
Deforms like Smooth (and Relax and Push and Bend and others) are commands that are mapped to a special handler function in $XSI_HOME\Application\DSScripts\operators.vbs.
The ApplyOpProc provides special-case handling for applying operators, and also takes care of popping up a PPG after the operator is applied.
Don’t try to run “Smooth”; you’ll just get an error. It’s scripting name is actually ApplyOp.
ApplyOp is also implemented by a VBScript handler in operator.vbs. This time, it’s ApplyOpFunc, and ApplyOpFunc does not inspect the created operators.
If you want to apply a Smooth operator from your script, and pop up the PPG after, here’s one way to do it:
si = Application
si.AutoInspect( si.ApplyOp("Smooth", si.Selection, 3, "siPersistentOperation", "", 0) )
Another Wednesday, another word cloud. This time, for the Autodesk NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) that all attendees must sign if they want to attend the next Softimage Creatives user group, where Autodesk Softimage Product Manager Cory Mogk will be presenting.
In this document of 1983 words, the top words are:
In other words, these are the top words and phrases: “autodesk”, “receiving party”, “confidential information”, and “agreement”. Nothing surprising there.
A couple of weeks ago rray posted this tip about If nodes, where instead of iterating over an array, he plugs an array into the If node.
This particular example (if array element < 12, set it to the array minimum) could be done without using either a Repeat or an If (although the If is more elegant). If you've got a minute or two, work your way through it; if not, click through the link below to see how.
One last look back at 2012. This time for si-community.
Here’s a forum bubble chart that gives an at-a-glance overview (of the top 5 forums based on number of views). The size of the bubble indicates the number of views; the X-axis is the number of topics created in 2012, and the Y-axis is the number of replies.
Most viewed topics overall
Most viewed News topics
Most viewed Announcements
Most viewed Open Discussion topics
Most active discussions (topics with the most replies)
Forums with the most topics
Forums with the most views
This data was obtained by visiting all the forum pages (such as all 9 pages of the News forum) and extracting the number of posts, posting date, number of replies, and topic title from the html.
Softimage to Photoshop
by SI_UserNotes
SI_UsersNotes Texture edit 3D layers in Photoshop
Hippydrome face articulation
by Max Crow
procedural sunflower creation in ICE tutorial part 1
by nika ragua
Deform curve by ICE
by csaez
Iterative fracture example with use of Slice Topology node
by iamVFX
TR OpenImage
by sOBE
Post-simulation and softimage ICE (part 2 – strands)
by Andy Moorer
Circle per strand
Here’s a snippet that shows how to launch a command-line program in a command prompt window, and keep the command prompt window open so you can see the output. Note that does not block Softimage.
#sKick = "C:/Users/SOLIDANGLE/Documents/Workgroups/sitoa-2.5.0-2013/Addons/SItoA/Application/bin/nt-x86-64/kick.exe"
sKick = XSIUtils.BuildPath( Application.InstallationPath( 2 ), "Addons", "SItoA", "Application", "bin", XSIUtils.Environment("XSI_CPU_OPT"), "kick.exe" )
XSIUtils.LaunchProcess( "cmd /C start cmd /K %s -licensecheck" % sKick )
Basically, what this does is launch a cmd.exe process, and in that process, run the command “start cmd /K kick -licensecheck”. The second “cmd” is required to open a command prompt, where you’ll see the output of “kick -licensecheck”.
In JScript, it would be something similar:
sKick = XSIUtils.BuildPath( Application.InstallationPath( 2 ), "Addons", "SItoA", "Application", "bin", XSIUtils.Environment("XSI_CPU_OPT"), "kick.exe" )
XSIUtils.LaunchProcess( "cmd /C start cmd /K " + sKick + " -licensecheck" )
In Python, you could also do this:
from subprocess import call call(["cmd", "/K", sKick, "-licensecheck"])
The above would open a non-blocking command prompt window (eg you could go back to Softimage), but this next snippet would prevent Softmage from responding until you closed the command prompt:
import os
os.system("cmd /k %s -licensecheck" % sKick)
A belated Happy New Year! Have some champagne (thanks to Ed Harriss) 🙂
Misc numbers and facts…
Top 12 threads
Top 10 users by number of posts
Top 10 users by number of new threads started
Top 10 days and main topic of discussion (if any)
Century club (100 posts or more)
Two word clouds to help visualize the activity on the Softimage mailing list during 2012: who was posting, and what were they posting about?
What were the popular topics?
Note that I removed “Softimage”, which was by far the most common word in the post titles (aka Subject), but which doesn’t really indicate the topic of discussion.
Who was active on the list?
There were approximately 450 different people who posted during 2012. This word cloud shows the 100 top names, so assuming most people have no middle names, this is more-or-less the 50 most active posters on the list.
eX-SI 