Face Robot Interface

#1

I’m trying out the Softimage 2010 (x64) trial…

It seems that once you enable the Face Robot interface, you’re forever stuck with it in a scene, even if your scene has nothing to do with Face Robot.
I had it enabled because I tried out one of the Face Robot example scenes. I didn’t realize that after I closed that scene the Face Robot Interface would stay there, and the plugin would load automatically the next time I opened SI. Even though I had it looking like the regular Softimage interface the Face Robot was still “enabled”.
So when I saved that scene out, the next time I tried to load it, it told me Face Robot had to be enabled for that scene. OK, fine, I made sure I was in SI interface mode, disabled Face Robot, chose to “keep current scene”, and saved it out.
The next time I loaded it, it told me once again it was enabling Face Robot to load the scene.
???
So then I discovered that there were Face Robot elements in the Scene Explorer. I then deleted those, made sure I was in SI interface mode, disabled Face Robot, kept current scene, saved it out…
And the next time I loaded it back up… yep, you guessed it, it had to enable Face Robot first.
Persistent little bugger, isn’t it?
Many tries later…
To eliminate this extreme annoyance, all I could think of to do was to export all my models out, and start a new scene with no Face Robot stuff enabled, neither interface nor plugin.
Of course I lost all my scene data, but fortunately I was mostly modeling anyway. If I had had all kinds of lights and materials and everything set up I wouldn’t have been too happy.

Is this a bug? Is there some way to avoid this in the future? I don’t understand how it could continue to need anything involving Face Robot, when the interface had been reset, the plugin disabled, and the Face Robot remnants cleared out.

#2

Urgh, why did I try this. The same thing is happening to me now. Whenever I load Soft 2010 it loads in Face Robot interface in both 32 and 64bit.

[edit] Okay figured it out. You have to go into the Face Robot menu and hit “disable face robot” instead of just switching interfaces.

It looks like it switches Softimage into Face Robot mode entirely by using the enable/disable modes, including how you save scene files.

#3

Yeah, you have to disable it as well as switch back to SI mode.

What I’m wondering is why my scene got so infected with Face Robot stuff, when it was just an empty scene?
Apparently if you close SI down with the FR enabled, the next time you start it, even an empty scene contains something called ActiveFaceRobot.
And if you load or start a fresh scene - even if you load a scene that has nothing to do with FR - ActiveFaceRobot loads up too, as long as you have Face Robot enabled.

Strange… and annoying as well.

That’s not to say I have anything against Face Robot. I actually think it’s one of the coolest things I’ve yet seen in a 3D app. I just don’t want it in my non Face Robot scenes, and don’t like the potential for not realizing it’s enabled, and ending up with it tagging along in a scene by accident. There seems to be no way to get rid of it once it’s attached itself to your scene. Even deleting the stuff doesn’t seem to work.
Like I said, persistent little bugger. :wink:

#4

Be sure to read the manual on FR.

You have to enable/disable the Facerobot ‘mode’. It’s not a layout you switch into, as you already figured out.

So if you enable FR, switch layouts, exit, start XSI with a new scene, FR is still active. Hence the ‘stuff’ in your scene related to FR.

It was a separate application, that is now shoehorned into Softimage. It will probably act like that for quite some time.

#5

It’s more a Softimage plugin than a separate application.

This issue was already in the KB:

Softimage always starts up in the Face Robot layout

http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS13830090

#6

Even so, if I disable FR, delete the FR stuff from my scene and then save it, shouldn’t the scene open in the regular SI interface the next time, instead of saying it needs to load Face Robot?
Why does the FR stuff persist after it’s been removed?

#7

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