Tag Archives: Softimage

New product support offerings from Autodesk

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Autodesk recently unveiled its new support offerings. What does this mean for a Softimage customer?

  • Advanced support is basically Gold support renamed. You don’t lose any Subscription benefits that you already have.
  • Basic support is not available for Softimage and a handful of products, such as MotionBuilder, Showcase, Alias, and Simulation. In general, the reason why these products don’t have Basic are 1) they are acquisitions and we are maintaining the same level of support as they had before, and 2) they are complex products that require a high-level (eg expertise level) of support that our partners cannot provide.
  • Up & Ready support is available for 90 days (it was previously 30). So if you buy Softimage but not Subscription, you get 90 days of Up & Ready support for install and licensing problems.
  • Per-incident support is available for Softimage (it wasn’t before). Again, this is good for non-Subscription customers only. I believe it costs something like $150US.

Overall, the purpose of these new support offerings is to let the [majority of] customers choose the support that is right for them.

Crosswalk, Common Files, and the PATH environment variable

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Anytime you have problems with Crosswalk not showing up in Softimage or Crosswalk missing or dotXSI liberaries missing, it’s probably because the Common Files location is missing from your PATH environment variable.

Now, setenv.bat does add the Common Files location to the PATH:

rem Adding folder(s) to the Path
set SOFTIMAGE_COMMONFILES=C:\Program Files\Common Files\Softimage
if not "%XSI_SetenvDone%"=="" goto Done_Path
set Path=%XSI_BINDIR%\%XSI_CPU%%_CPU_REVISION%;%XSI_BINDIR%;%SOFTIMAGE_COMMONFILES%;%Path%
:Done_Path

but strangely, this doesn’t [always] help.

  • If you start Softimage from the Start menu, this Softimage still can’t find the common file Crosswalk_2013.0.64.dll (which is installed in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Softimage).
  • But if you start Softimage from a command prompt with XSI.bat, Softimage does find Crosswalk_2013.0.64.dll.

I stumbled on this when I wrote a little script to check whether or not Common Files was in the PATH. Because setenv.bat prepends the Common Files location to PATH, I need to check whether there is more than one occurrence in the PATH. If there’s just one, then that’s a problem because Crosswalk won’t be found when you start Softimage from the Start menu.

from siutils import si

if Application.Version().split('.')[0]>= "11":
	si = si()					# win32com.client.Dispatch('XSI.Application')
	
from siutils import log		# LogMessage
from siutils import disp	# win32com.client.Dispatch
from siutils import C		# win32com.client.constants


path = XSIUtils.Environment( 'PATH' )
cf = "".join( [XSIUtils.Environment( 'CommonProgramFiles' ), '\Softimage'] )
#cfx86 = "".join( [XSIUtils.Environment( 'CommonProgramFiles(x86)' ), '\Softimage'] )

# Check Common Files

# Log number of times Common Files is found in PATH
# log( path.split(';').count(cf) )

if path.split(';').count(cf) > 1:
	log( "'%s' is in PATH" % cf )
else:
	log( "'%s' is missing from PATH" % cf, C.siError )

The case of the missing dotXSI.dll (NT) or libdotxsi.so (IRIX)

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A customer reported that he couldn’t import or export dotXSI, and that he got this message in the history log:

# INFO : 4011 - Import/Export .xsi: The dotXSI.dll (NT) or libdotxsi.so (IRIX) is missing or the class is not registered.

From past experience I was pretty sure this was a PATH problem, but just in case I also suggested running runonce.bat to make sure everything was registered:

  • Check that “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Softimage” is included in your system PATH environment variable.
  • In a Softimage command prompt, run runonce.bat, to make sure all DLLs are registered.

It turns out the problem was indeed the PATH environment variable: it was missing C:\Program Files\Common Files\Softimage.

To check the PATH, click Start and open the Control Panel. In the Control Panel window, type “environment” in the Search box, and then click Edit the system environment variables

ICE Modeling – Extruding a random polygon

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All you have to do is plug a Random Value node into the Polygon Index port, and then set the Mean Value and Variance. If you then play around with the ID (of the Random Value), you’ll get a different polygon extrusion.

Most of this tree is for setting the Mean and Variance. If I have an odd number of polygons, say 81, then a mean of 40 and a variance of 40 will cover the range of polygon indices (0-80). But if I have an even number of polygons, say 80, then a mean of 40 and variance of 40 might give me an index of 80, which is out of range.

To randomly extrude more than one polygon, just feed a bunch of IDs into the Random Value node, like this:

I increased the number of polygons to avoid getting the same random number multiple times.

Python print statement in Softimage 2013

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If you’re using an external install of Python, you’ll probably notice that the print statement doesn’t work in Softimage 2013. That’s because Softimage 2013 was compiled with Visual C++ 2010, and Python wasn’t.

We recompiled the built-in Python that ships with Softimage 2012, so if you use that Python, the print statement works.

Workaround courtesy of Jo benayoun:

import sys
class STDOutHook(object):
	def __init__(self):
		pass
	def write(self, data):
		# py engine adds a newline at the end of the data except if
		# the statement was ended by a comma.
		data = "" if data == "\n" else data

		if data != "":
			Application.LogMessage(data)
		return None

sys.stdout = STDOutHook()

print "Hello"
print "\n"       # wont work due to the workaround
print "World",

I found this same workaround by googling “python print redirect stdout”. For example, here.

The case of the missing Previous Version licenses

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In this case, a customer received his new 2013 license for four seats of Softimage. He was able to start Softimage 2013 on four machines, but he could run Softimage 2012 on two machines only. What could be the problem?!?

Now, to diagnose this problem, you could do any one of a number of things:

  • Check the license file to make sure it has the right licenses.
  • Check the Perform Status Enquiry output from LMTOOLS, to make sure the license is actually installed.
  • Check the LMTOOLS debug log file, to see why the workstations are being refused Softimage 2012 licenses.
  • Check the workstations, to make sure they are configured properly for licensing.
  • Verify that when the customer tries to start 2012, they don’t have copies of Softimage 2013 still running.
  • Check the customer’s assets in our database (make sure they really have four licenses).

In this particular case, I could identify the issue by either checking the customers assets OR checking the actual license file. Because the problem was this:

The customer had two seats of 2013 on Subscription, and two seats of 2013 not on Subscription. Previous version usage (aka running 2012) is a Subscription benefit, so he had two 2012 licenses only.

Here’s a video walkthrough of a license file, where I point out what to look for when you’re trying to understand a license file.

http://vimeo.com/40939187

In this video, I show you to tell what you’ve got in a license file.

Checking the Softimage 2013 startup with Process Monitor

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The other day, I ran Process Monitor to check out the Softimage 2013 startup.

After a restart of my machine:

  • Softimage 2012.SAP took about 44 seconds to start up.
  • Softimage 2013 took about 42 seconds to start up.

The process activity for 2012.SAP and 2013 look pretty much the same, except that 2013 does all its file and registry activity sooner, rather than later. I don’t know if that’s signficant (my 2012.SAP is an existing install that’s been there for awhile, while I just installed 2013 the other day).

One interesting thing I noticed is the Read Bytes info in the File Summary for Softimage 2013.
Notice how ICE compounds are at the top of the list. Softimage 2013 loads about 53MB of .xsicompound files.

Here’s a look at how the size (in MB) of the factory ICE compounds has grown by release:

2013 55MB
2012.SAP 49MB
2011 SAP SP1 33MB
2010 SP1 13.3 MB
7.5 13.1 MB
7.01 14.5MB