Introductory-level video that shows you how to daisy chain Get Data nodes when you’re getting data from a scene.
Daisy chaining (connecting Out Name to In Name) is a way to separate out and isolate the different scene references that combine together to pull in scene data.
A look back at the last six years of the XSI mailing list, from 2006 to 2011.
The top 50 posters accounted for 54% of all posts on the XSI mailing list. Scroll down to see the list of the top 50.
To put the relative size of the words in context, here’s some word counts:
2006 Top 10 topics
2007 Top 10 topics
2008 Top 10 topics
2009 Top 10 topics
2010 Top 10 topics
2011 Top 10 topics
The top 50 posters accounted for 54% of all posts on the XSI mailing list.
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Early this week, this ICE “brain teaser” was posted on the XSI mailing list.
Given an array like this:
8,8,8,2,2,2,2,5,5,5,5,9,9,9,9,1,1,1,1,1,1
how can can I –without using any loops–convert it to an array like this
1,1,1,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,4,4,4,4,5,5,5,5,5,5
Martin Chatterjee came up with a nice solution using arrays.
As an exercise, I tried to do it using a [non-simulated] point cloud. Basically, the idea is to use the particle self.ID data set to index into the array without using a Repeat node.
Here’s what I ended up with. First, I set a boolean flag on each point to indicate whether the corresponding array element is the same as the previous, and then I do a cumulative sum of array elements.
My first try at this ended up as an ICE tree version of this algorithm, plugged into the On Creation port of Add Point.
var a = [8,8,8,2,2,2,2,5,5,5,5,9,9,9,9,1,1,1,1,1,1];
var a1 = new Array(a.length);
var val = -1;
var ix = -1;
for (var i=0;i<a.length;i++)
{
if ( a[i] != val )
{
val = a[i];
ix++;
}
a1[i] = ix;
}
LogMessage( a );
LogMessage( a1 );
// INFO : 8,8,8,2,2,2,2,5,5,5,5,9,9,9,9,1,1,1,1,1,1
// INFO : 0,0,0,1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,4,4,4,4,4,4
But that didn’t work, because as I found out, I wasn’t able to carry attribute values over from one point to the next. In the example below, you can see that self.tmp is local to each point (which means it starts off at zero for each point). Instead of incrementing self.tmp each time, I end up setting it to 1 every time.
About precision and subframe sampling for rigid body dynamics…here’s my understanding of how these two are related. Note that nobody confirmed this when I asked around, but then again nobody gainsaid it either 😉
The precision determines how frequently the simulation is calculated. For example, if Precision=120, then there is at most 1/120 of a second between calculations.
The subframe sampling determines the number of samples per frame.
So, if you are have this:
Then the RBD simulation is updated/calculated 4 times per frame (120/30), and ICE takes 2 samples of those calculated values per frame.
Here’s a more general ICE tree for inverting weightmaps: it handles weightmaps that are not in the 0-1 value.
When I first worked it out in my head I saw it like this:
But that’s just the same as using a Rescale:
Here’s a weightmap before and after being inverted by the above. In this example, the weightmap has a value range of -1 to 3.
Before:
After (inverted):
Looking at those, maybe I should do something like this:
Which gives this inverted weightmap:
In 2011, there were just under 12K posts on the XSI mailing list. Here’s the top posts, posters, and keywords for 2011.
Top 10 posts:
I listed the top 11 because “Friday Flashback” is an ongoing thread.
Top 10 posters:
Top 10 keywords in Subject lines
I removed words like “Softimage”, “Autodesk”, “using”, “getting”, and “SI” before generating this word cloud.
The 2010 list retrospective, for comparison…
If you prefer Top 25 lists, here you go…
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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 180,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 8 days for that many people to see it.
In 2011, there were 475 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 722 posts. There were 542 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 354mb. That’s about a picture per day.
The busiest day of the year was October 21st with 1,182 views. The most popular post that day was Friday Flashback #40.
Here’s a JScript snippet for deleting ICE trees from the objects in a group.
Note that the Primitive.ICETrees property returns all ICE trees that write to the object, including ICE trees on different objects (such as the italicized ICE tree in the screenshot below).
var o = Selection(0);
delICETrees(o, false );
function delICETrees( oGroup, bDelAll )
{
var bFlag = ( bDelAll == null ) ? false : bDelAll;
logmessage(bFlag);
if ( oGroup != null && oGroup.type == "#Group" )
{
oGroupEnum = new Enumerator( oGroup.Members ) ;
for (;!oGroupEnum.atEnd();oGroupEnum.moveNext() )
{
var o = oGroupEnum.item() ;
var p = o.ActivePrimitive;
oICETreeEnum = new Enumerator( p.ICETrees ) ;
for (;!oICETreeEnum.atEnd();oICETreeEnum.moveNext() )
{
var oICETree = oICETreeEnum.item() ;
if ( bFlag || oICETree.Parent3DObject.IsEqualTo( o ) )
{
LogMessage( oICETree.fullname );
// DeleteObj( oICETree );
}
}
}
}
else
{
LogMessage("Select a group" );
}
}
From Dec 2003, an end-of-the-year, once-in-a-lifetime promotion!
eX-SI 
