keeper wrote: Interesting, how can you able to insert operator into middle of stack without ruin relations between existing operators? I think it is main advantage of Softimage again Maya, no messy of nodes. All is logically structured.
Inserting operators somewhere in the "middle" is possible in three ways:
1 - by disabling the above ops, doing the operation, and re-enabling the stack.
2 - by choosing the right construction mode marker.
3 - by moving operators up or down the stack via d&d.
So far, so good.
It's true that Softimage is quite fail-safe when it comes to re-arranging the stack, the most important restriction being that topology-changing operators must always reside in the Modeling region. Which is allright, either, because it helps Softimage keeping things tidy.
The problem now is, that there is no way to define more precisely where you want to insert the next operator INSIDE the Modeling region. Ops are always simply added just below the selected region marker. This gets in the way of certain nice workflows, like symmetrical modeling.
If a symm op sits on top in the Modeling region, you can only disable it to be able to insert the next operator below it, at the cost of a live evaluation/preview of the whole stack. Shame.
In 3ds Max, this kind of workflow is no problem, and very comfortable.
Workaround: create a clone of that geometry half, and put the symmetry op on that, so you see the complete model. After you are finished, you need to freeze the clone and merge both parts.
To avoid seeing a seam during modeling if you use subdivs, you could clone the original half, duplicate the clone, put symm on it, then create a merge of both halfs. How many parts have you now got?
All this is awkward...
Using a symmetry map is just useful for moving components, because the moment you change the topology, SYM is broken.
Now, an elegant solution would be to introduce another "free" stack marker, to define the position of the next operator, which can be placed ANYWHERE.
Would this be difficult to implement, since stack re-arrangements are possible anyway?
This feature was requested in the beta a while ago. Nothing so far.
You know, it's nice little things like this that would prove that the developers listen, care, and are willing to improve basic day-to-day workflows.
Most of us don't need CrowdFX all the time, do we.
