I went through the first 10min or so of Bradley Gabe’s excellent An Artist Tour #2 and built the corresponding ICE tree in 2012 with the Simulation Root node.
Softimage 2012 ICE tree for the Artist Guide #2 tutorial
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Making particles spiral upwards
As a learning exercise, after watching Chris Marshall’s corkscrew tutorial, I did a variation based on the unit circle.
Running Softimage on other distros like Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Pardus, and Gentoo
Here’s a workaround for running Softimage on other distros like Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Pardus, and Gentoo.
On these distros, some users have noticed problems with images (cannot browse for images, or even create noicon clips). Or Softimage can create and even save scenes, but crashes when you open a scene.
One of the Softimage developers believes he may have tracked down the source of this problem. The Softimage library libdsprsr.so has a dependency on libtiff and libjpeg. If either of these is missing, then the Softimage library fails to register correctly (during the install), but unfortunately no error is reported.
As a workaround you can try the following steps:
- Open your Softimage shell and source the .xsi file
- cd to the “Application\bin” folder
- Run cmdreg libdsprsr.so
- If you get an error, then you have this problem, so we can try to fix it. Now run ldd libdsprsr.so
- You should see that 1 (or more) libraries are missing – most likely libtiff and/or libjpeg.
- Install the required package(s) to get the missing libraries and then run the cmdreg again: cmdreg libdsprsr.so
- It should register now and all the problems with image nodes will be gone.
- If you have other strange problem you can ensure that all the Softimage libraries are registered correctly, by re-registering them all by running cmdreg -f XSICOMDLLs.lst
- If you have any errors, run the steps above checking the failing library with ldd to see which libraries are missing.
Hat tip: Sean Donnelly
Emitting particles from polygon clusters
Here’s an ICE tree that emits a particle from each polygon in a cluster.
In Emit from Position, I’ve set the Rate Type to Total Number of Particles, and the Rate to 1, so I get a single particle per polygon.
I exploded the Align to Emit Location compound and modified it to use the PolygonNormal to align the particles (which I’ve set to “cones”).
Hat tip: Sebastian Kowalski on the XSI mailing list
Softimage compounds, plugins, and scripts from the AREA
I put together a page that lists all the Softimage compounds, plugins, and scripts available in the download section of the AREA.
I find the AREA downloads a bit difficult to browse and search, so I thought a single page that lists everything would be useful.
Building a Corkscrew Effect in ICE
Breakup an object by polygon
Here’s one way to take a mesh and turn every polygon into a separate object.
First, download and install the JP_Separate plugin (requires an AREA logon). See below the fold for install instructions.
Then, do this:
- Select all polygons.
- Click Modify > Poly Mesh > Disconnect Components, and select the Explode check box.
- Select the sphere.
- Click Modify > Poly Mesh > JP_Separate to make each polygon a separate object.
Hat Tip: Grahame Fuller on the mailing list.
Here’s an example. After breaking up a default sphere into 64 new objects (one per polygon), I used “Transform Objects by Particles” to create this simple effect:
Connecting FX Tree nodes with the FX Operator Selector
Here’s a quick how to video.
Like it says on softimageblog.com:
p.s. : Cool people add fxtree operators by clicking them in the Operator Selector, and then middle-clicking several times in the fxtree to chose the 1) first input 2) second input 3) output (if necessary) and finnally middle click in the background to set the insert location. The Fx operator selector shows which connection is currently being selected. Select any optionnal inputs you want to pick by first clicking the checkbox next to it in the Operator Selector
Friday Flashback #15
Some poladroid pictures of shirts I found while cleaning out my attic yesterday.
T-shirt from a SOFTIMAGE|3D training kit:
SOFTIMAGE|SDK t-shirt (front, back)
Softimage 10 years:
Softimage Technology Group–For awhile, I was part of the Technology Group, which was a group of Sumatra and DS developers charged with building common technology between DS and Sumatra.
IBC ’95. A month after I joined Softimage, they sent me to Amsterdam for IBC. I had been training for the Montreal marathon; instead I did the half in Amsterdam in the rain.
SIGGRAPH ’96 in New Orleans. I did the Canal Street Classic 5k while I was down at siggraph. It started and ended right outside my hotel, which was convenient. One of the hottest runs I’ve ever done; not enjoyable at all.
Using mesh ICE attributes to drive shaders in a render tree
In Softimage 2012, you can now use attributes from the ICE tree on a mesh to drive the render tree.
For example, the ICE tree on a cube could calculate an attribute that drives the position of the colors on a gradient:
