Limitations/downsides

[ggg]

Lot and Lots of little things missing, but every package has lots of little things missing and feature lists of these things to compare does no package justice, as the way the are implemented is often very very differnt to the extent that some features are barely comparable in actual use.
Examples are Houdinis treeview vs XSIs, Mayas trax vs XSIs mixer, and XSIs swift menu vs. Mayas hotbox menu.

My issue is a MAJOR workflow is missing from XSI that Houdini has: much more complete proceduralism and flexibility. This affords the intermediate 3D app user some of the power that only scripting TDs in XSI get, and although XSIs has more general ease of use, also offers the ease of use interface in Houdini to create the tool, unlike in XSI where one would not be able to make the tool with any ease and would be suggessted to script it or use SCOPS which would likely be much more difficult and not be procedural and not be as easily reusable.

This limitaion will become increasingly apparent as you try to get XSI to do tasks that now are linear and tedious and not procedural, flexible or reusable, thus requiring one to redo things manually.

The workflow in XSI is wonderful like the ergonimics of a good car, and the Object Model very powerful like a good toolkit and engine. But the intermediate user that doesn't want to get under the hood or be blocked by the dash is given just some flexibilty with OPs dial and fisher price knobs.

Sorry got carried away there, I 'm a little frustrated with the limited copy in XSI right now, again. Take it with a grain of salt.

[Atyss]

In my case, it's has more to do with the little to average things that I don't understand why they aren't fixed or improved, despite the numerous comments about it:

- The incomplete command when you add a boolean parameter to an override;

- The multiplying refraction;

- The linking parameter workflow;

- The lack of performance of the Schematic View;

- The rendering problems of clusters with custom passes;

- The poor performance of oversampling features (area lights, glossiness, 3D depth-of-field...)

- The fact that object exluded from shadow map lights will still cast shadows;

- The absence of manipulators/visual cues for point light falloffs;

- The volumic property limitations;


That's it for now, maybe more to come :scream:


Salutations - Cheers
Bernard Lebel

[tachy0n]

The ability to manage all your shaders and rendertrees from a centralised location/list would be nice too.

Plus some improvements in hair rendering speed esp. for things like fur or grass.

[swampthing]

Thanks guys this was exactly the kinda stuff i wanted to see.

Coming from lightwave, i don't have much experience with nurbs. I tried understanding them once using max, but....... How would you rate XSI's implementation of nurbs?

[ggg]

Originally posted by swampthing
How would you rate XSI's implementation of nurbs?
XSI has only the basics for NURBS support, errors arise with some OPs, XSI does though have very fast subDs and very good tools to support them (again Houdini has many more and much more flexibility eg a group can be created of a points collection defined by a bounding box, expression sort etc. that can be animated so subD'd areas can be changed/friven based on scene changes etc, and a faster direct workflow in the 3d view.)

I'd use NURBS only when you need to for certain surfaces and stick with subDs in XSI.

some of the inflexibiliy I mentioned earlier shows when you set hard edges on a subD surface and then change the topology order, "sometimes" the intended edge or point to effect is maintained but often not. XSI does not offer another collection method like bbox nor have an extensive expression language to define intended edges eg. farthest points in x. Of course this could be scripted but then the script would have to constantly be updated, versus having OPs and collection methods that aid one in maintaining proceduralism through flexibility. This limitation of course applies to NURBS and relative OPs as well.

the library that XSIs NURBS are apparently based on is very extensive but XSI has supposedly only implemented part of it.

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