Butachan wrote:
Hi guys just wanted to say thanks for the tips for starters aswell.
I have been also wondering if it was worth it to jump into cpp or increase my skills within the scripting and now ice environment.
I must say I was really considering the idea back in v7 but as ICE developed and hence the tools to accomplish complex effects within the program the incentivation to make the jump to cpp became smaller. I hope I am making some sense here.
Anyway, thanks for the tips.
It depends on what you're going to achive. If you want to make plugin for Softimage - what kind of plugin do you want to make? Will it simplify your work or not? How much time have you got to make it?
In Softimage you do need use C++ in a few cases - if you want to connect your C++ library that calculates something faster than multithreaded ICE, if you want to connect 3rd-party libraries to Softimage (Momentum, ImplosiaFX etc.) or if you want make your own tool with use of Tool SDK api. The main difference between tool that made with use of Tool SDK and scripting one ( PickPosition() ) is what level of flexibility you want. Do you need just tool that respond only on mouse button clicks or should it take into account click-n-drag feature or draw stuff with opengl for convenience? PickPosition() can do pretty much everything in my experience, but for stuff like Comb tool, like Houdini have, you need mouse drag feature and opengl for displaying normals that will change with each new mouse position.
If you just want to call Softimage API commands (In 98% of cases) there is no difference in speed whether it'll be called through C++ or Python or whatever, because they're provided by COM architecture from which Softimage is mostly made of.
Differences in speed occurs when you test your code by switching back and forth between SDK docs and IDE, compile and reload plugin in Softimage to update and see the changes instead of just open script editor, type some code and try it. The developer's speed is matter because
life is so short and
we are so small 
