Hi list,
Softimage has one of the slickest interfaces known to man, but nothing's
perfect.
Let's be nit-picky for a moment... what glitches, small flaws or
inconsistencies annoy you most in Softimage?
Any SPDL hacks worth doing when SI is installed freshly?
This is about polishing, not cool new features (borders are blurry of
course).
Maybe the new developer team has nothing better to do (ha ha) and feels
motivated to do a little mop-up...
Here we go:
- Render Tree
When multiple objects are selected and all share the same Material, the
RT should not nag with the message "Update can't be done with two
objects selected" and display that Material.
(besides, it says "two", even when more are selected)
3ds max can even display multiple shader trees... would this make sense?
- Material Manager
...should remember it's layout, expecially the horizontal divider.
There's a bug with the text input field of the Shader balls names. It
sometimes does not update, and you have to type blindly. After pressing
enter it updates, however.
- Timeslider
When the Range Slider is moved, the timeslider should update with it
interactively (does so in Maya).
- Project Manager
Would be nice if a double-click would open a scene in the list on the
right hand side.
- Operator Stack
A double click on a Construction Mode Marker in the Explorer should
activate that mode.
Also, highlighting the markers in some way (bold or different color or
whatever) would clarify which mode is active in the Stack, besides
looking at the dropdown in the menu bar.
- Operator Context Menu
... should contain all Commands related to Operators. Now they are
strewn across the interface - some are to find in menu Edit > Operator,
others in MCP > Edit > Operator.
"Collapse Operators" is a good example. Would you go looking for that in
the MCP menu?
"Freeze" in the menu freezes everything below an operator, not the whole
stack. Thus it could be named "Freeze down" or "Freeze all below" or
whatever.
- Texture Projection Operator Stack
The "Texture_Projection_Def" property has buttons "Reset" and "Freeze" -
somewhat hidden. Could reside in the Op Stack context menu as well.
- Texture Support
... should show parameters GeoX, GeoY, GeoZ by default. This can be
fixed with a litte hack of texture.spdl.
I see no reason why it should not be possible to set the size of a TS
numerically. I need this often.
- "Texture_Projection_Def" property
Checkboxes U,V,W are off by default. Should be on, because when texture
coords are outside the 0,0 - 1,0 range, textures render black, and the
head-scratching begins.
3D-Coat AppLink for example shifts UVs around that way.
- UI graphics
The browse icon (...) besides a path input field tends to draw artifacts
when the PPG is resized. Could be graphics driver related (GeForce 460
here).
Does one need to go for an expensive Quadro card for this?
- Render Region Options > "Use current Pass options" should be on by
default.
Often enough I have drawn an Render Region, tweaked the render
parameters in the Render Manager and wondered why nothing happens...
More to come...
Thanks for reading!
Best regards,
Eugen
