Missing shaders in the preset manager

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If you find that you’re missing nodes in the render tree Preset Manager, then check the Softimage install folder. In particular, check

  • $XSI_HOME\Application\phenolib\spdl
  • $XSI_HOME\Application\phenolib\spdl\mibase

In a working Softimage installation, like mine , the content of the Preset Manager is determined by spdl/mi files in those folders (and perhaps others too).

For example, if I delete mia_lens_bokeh.spdl from $XSI_HOME\Application\phenolib\spdl\mibase, then Bokeh (mia) disappears from the render tree preset manager. If I put it back, and refresh the preset manager, the shader re-appears.

Try or Activate is not for network licenses

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This Try/Activate screen means that you are running in Standalone mode. Try gets you a Trial standalone license, which is good for 30 days and cannot be reset. Activate is for Standalone licenses only. If you try to activate a Network license, you’ll get an Error 123. I used to see these types of errors every release.

Softimage_2014_try_activate

Here are some related links:

Friday Flashback #115

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Many thanks to Ed Schiffer for these pictures.

The XSI 1.0 box set. They don’t package software like that anymore.

_DSC04625

_DSC04626

Copying colors from point cloud to polygonizer mesh

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To get the colors from the point cloud onto the polygonizer mesh, you need to do something like this:

  1. On the polygonizer mesh, create an ICE Tree.
  2. Use Get Closest Location to get a location on the point cloud, get the color from that location.
  3. Store that color somewhere (eg in an attribute on the polygonizer mesh, or in a vertex color map).

Here I’m storing the colors in a CAV:
colors_to_polygonizer_CAV

And here I’m sticking the colors in a per-point Color attribute:
colors_to_polygonizer_Color

Copying StrandColors from cached strands to a point cloud

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Suppose you had to load a cached strand simulation, and convert that to a point cloud of plain old points. Part of the job would be to copy the stand colors over to the new points, so let’s take a look at that.

First, and I didn’t know this, when you cache strands the StrandColor attribute isn’t cached, just a single Color per strand. So let’s rebuild the StrandColors:
rebuild-strandcolor
Now we have a per-point StrandColor array on the point cloud that reads the cached simulation. After spending awhile trying to avoid doing this, I found that this (the StrandColor array) was the easiest way.

Add Point is a pretty friendly ICE node, because it lets you take per-point data (StrandPosition) from some other point cloud and just plug it in, with no context problems.

copy-strandcolors-to-points

It’s not so simple with the StrandColors. StrandColor is a per-point array on a different point cloud, and you can’t just plug it into Set Particle Color. Set Particle Color wants a color, not an array of colors. And it doesn’t want colors from some other point cloud either 😉

To get around that, I use Build Array from Set, which gives me a per-object array in the context of the current point cloud. Then I index into that array with Point ID, and I’ve transferred over the strand colors to the points.

strands-points

Installing Softimage 2014

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Here’s a quick walkthrough of the installation basics, plus a few install-related links.
https://vimeo.com/63592423