Author Archives: xsisupport

Beneath the hood: why ApplyOp doesn’t pop up a PPG

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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 launch

I’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.

Smooth_Implementation

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.
Smooth_Description

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) )

Wednesday word cloud: Autodesk NDA

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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.

wordcloud_autodesk_nda_50

In this document of 1983 words, the top words are:

  • autodesk (53)
  • receiving (46)
  • information (46)
  • party (41)
  • confidential (39)
  • agreement (30)

In other words, these are the top words and phrases: “autodesk”, “receiving party”, “confidential information”, and “agreement”. Nothing surprising there.

ICE – Setting all array elements less than X to array minimum

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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.
ifperarray
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.
SetLessThanXtoArrayMin

si-community 2012 year in review

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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.
si-community-bubble-chart

Most viewed topics overall

  1. mesh paint (21919)
  2. SI 2013 sightings (17507)
  3. PhysX Fluid Simulation in Softimage ICE (15696)
  4. SPOILER ALERT – general Softimage 2013 description (11960)
  5. Looks like Autodesk bought Naiad (10198)
  6. bring back softimage.net (9574)
  7. Vray for Softimage official release (9544)
  8. quickPrimitive (9427)
  9. SI Technology Previews (8452)
  10. any news about Softimage 2014 ??? (7950)
  11. exit Stephen Blair? (7872)

Most viewed News topics

  1. SI 2013 sightings (17507)
  2. SPOILER ALERT – general Softimage 2013 description (11960)
  3. Vray for Softimage official release (9544)
  4. SI Technology Previews (8452)
  5. exit Stephen Blair? (7872)
  6. No 2013 Advantage Pack (7774)
  7. Modo 601 Preview (5837)
  8. Luxology & the Foundry merge (3442)
  9. “Thiago’s Teamup and Mr. Jones” (2781)
  10. Maya nHair – how hard to repro? (2575)

Most viewed Announcements

  1. Motion Tools 1.0 (7682)
  2. SOFTIMAGE|UeberTage 2012 Frida September 28th 2012 (7049)
  3. new release: emPolygonizer4 version 4.0 (4780)
  4. ZBrush FiberMesh to strands compound (4687)
  5. ImplosiaFX 1.0 is available! (3200)
  6. Exocortex Species 1.0 now available!! (3156)
  7. xsibase “may harm your computer” [???] (2643)
  8. Fabric Engine v1.0 released (2493)
  9. Animation tools (2477)
  10. Essential Geo for Softimage (2136)

Most viewed Open Discussion topics

  1. Looks like Autodesk bought Naiad (10198)
  2. bring back softimage.net (9574)
  3. any news about Softimage 2014 ??? (7950)
  4. WTF??? Autodesk snubs Softimage in GDC schedule! (6314)
  5. the future? (was: the “frustration” thread) (5267)
  6. Windows 8 (3904)
  7. XSI Base down? (3629)
  8. Great work done with Softimage (3301)
  9. 2014 WISH LIST (3161)
  10. How rendering should be (3123)

Most active discussions (topics with the most replies)

  1. SI 2013 sightings (313)
  2. SPOILER ALERT – general Softimage 2013 description (281)
  3. WTF??? Autodesk snubs Softimage in GDC schedule! (145)
  4. SI Technology Previews (145)
  5. Looks like Autodesk bought Naiad (138)
  6. No 2013 Advantage Pack (133)
  7. bring back softimage.net (117)
  8. quickPrimitive (111)
  9. PhysX Fluid Simulation in Softimage ICE (111)
  10. Vray for Softimage official release (102)

Forums with the most topics

  1. ICE (211)
  2. OpenDiscussion (108)
  3. General Troubleshooting (89)
  4. Rendering (87)
  5. News (82)
  6. Programming (65)
  7. Announcements (65)
  8. Animation (61)
  9. Modeling (42)
  10. Materials & Shaders (37)

Forums with the most views

  1. News (147989)
  2. OpenDiscussion (121071)
  3. ICE (107861)
  4. Announcements (83549)
  5. Plugins (52735)
  6. Rendering (48569)
  7. ICE compounds (44523)
  8. General Troubleshooting (33671)
  9. Animation (27112)
  10. Programming (24807)

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.

Screenshots of the week

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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
ICEOnCurve_ICETree

ICEOnCurve_viewport

Iterative fracture example with use of Slice Topology node
by iamVFX
Np8Qy

TR OpenImage
by sOBE

Texture Instancing Compound

Post-simulation and softimage ICE (part 2 – strands)
by Andy Moorer

Circle per strand

Saturday snippet – Launching a command-line utility and viewing its output

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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)

Softimage mailing list 2012 retrospective

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2012PostsPerDay

Misc numbers and facts…

  • 11830 total posts
  • 1434 active threads
  • 1739 new threads created by 287 different users
  • 453 different posters (for an average of 26 posts per person)
  • According to Google groups, there are 1053 group members
  • Busiest day was 17 April, with 152 posts (73 of those posts in the “Softimage development” discussion)
  • Longest thread: “In case you missed it..” 236
    • Number of different posters in that thread: 76
  • Number of posts in the Friday Flashback thread: 271
  • Most posts in a thread in a single day: 84 (in the “Intro to the new team (was Softimage development)” thread, on 19 April)
  • Most active poster contributed 3.6% of all posts
  • 25% of all posts come from the 10 most active users
  • Most posts by one user in a single thread: 19
  • Most new threads started by one user: 70

Top 12 threads

  1. Friday Flashback 271
  2. In case you missed it.. 236
  3. Intro to the new team (was Softimage development) 152
  4. Small Annoying Things 135
  5. Softimage development 111
  6. Rumors 111
  7. test 79
  8. Softimage 2013 74
  9. raafal 61
  10. Qt Wrapper command log issue 58
  11. 2013 save scene = no load in 2012? 58
  12. V-Ray for Softimage released 57

Top 10 users by number of posts

  1. Alan Fregtman 428
  2. Steven Caron 393
  3. Eric Thivierge 380
  4. Stephen Blair 300
  5. Matt Lind 297
  6. Rob Chapman 259
  7. Szabolcs Matefy 246
  8. Alok Gandhi 241
  9. Sandy Sutherland 234
  10. Bradley Gabe 200

Top 10 users by number of new threads started

  1. Szabolcs Matefy 70
  2. Alan Fregtman 35
  3. Eric Thivierge 30
  4. Bradley Gabe 29
  5. Sandy Sutherland 26
  6. Stefan Andersson 26
  7. olivier jeannel 24
  8. adrian wyer 23
  9. Kris Rivel 22
  10. Morten Bartholdy 21

Top 10 days and main topic of discussion (if any)

  1. 17/4/2012 152
    • Softimage development 73
  2. 10/9/2012 123
    • “A sad day, in this part of the country, for digit” 24
    • In case you missed it.. 55
  3. 19/4/2012 118
    • Intro to the new team (was Softimage development) 84
  4. 13/9/2012 109
    • In case you missed it.. 81
  5. 20/3/2012 105
  6. 20/4/2012 99
    • Intro to the new team (was Softimage development) 58
  7. 12/9/2012 98
    • In case you missed it.. 80
  8. 22/2/2012 96
  9. 10/2/2012 90
  10. 31/8/2012 87
    • Friday Flashback 75

Century club (100 posts or more)

  1. Alan Fregtman 428
  2. Steven Caron 393
  3. Eric Thivierge 380
  4. Stephen Blair 300
  5. Matt Lind 297
  6. Rob Chapman 259
  7. Szabolcs Matefy 246
  8. Alok Gandhi 241
  9. Sandy Sutherland 234
  10. Bradley Gabe 200
  11. Raffaele Fragapane 175
  12. Chris Marshall 164
  13. Chris Chia 164
  14. olivier jeannel 163
  15. Stefan Andersson 145
  16. Stefan Kubicek 144
  17. Luc-Eric Rousseau 143
  18. Adam Sale 142
  19. peter_b@skynet.be 137
  20. Simon Anderson 133
  21. Grahame Fuller 129
  22. Ciaran Moloney 129
  23. Xavier Lapointe 123
  24. Tim Crowson 120
  25. Eric Turman 119
  26. Ben Houston 115
  27. Guillaume Laforge 111
  28. Dan Yargici 109
  29. Paul Griswold 109
  30. Eugen Sares 108
  31. jo benayoun 106