That is indeed very useful, but I don't think you can do that in any other software but Softimage. Maya's history is nowhere near SI stacks and in my experience it is so useless that I almost never touch it, except for those things like bevel where you can't see the final result in real time if you don't use the bevel attribute in your history.
Martin Sent from my iPhone > On 2014/05/07, at 7:07, Matt Lind <ml...@carbinestudios.com> wrote: > > Under general modelling conditions, you're right in that most people just > freeze it anyway, but there are workflows that come into play where you must > have a construction history to employ. For example, primitive retopology. > > You may need to do a primitive re-topologize. So you get a polygon mesh grid > and shrinkwrap it to the object you want to retopo. Although the shrinkwrap > operator has an option to use nearest vertices, you end up with situations > where the vertices on the grid collapse and target one or more of the same > vertices on the target mesh. No good. To fix the problem you must move the > shrinkwrap operator up the stack into the animation region then use the > movecomponent tool (or just translate subcomponent) to move the points on the > grid until they snap to a different vertex on the target mesh. This works > because your movecomponent operation evaluates first, then the shrinkwrap > evaluates with the vertex in its current location to find the closest vertex > on the target mesh. Simple example, but illustrates the point. Also comes > into play with enveloping and corrective weighting. > > These are the kind of flexible workflows we lose by not having a construction > history. > > > Matt >