install xsiaddon

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adeebalm
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install xsiaddon

Post by adeebalm » 21 Sep 2018, 08:14

hi si-community i am new in softimage how can install xsiaddon

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rray
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Re: install xsiaddon

Post by rray » 21 Sep 2018, 11:15

Hi. Copy pasted this from somewhere:

Start Softimage then drag-and-drop the ***.xsiaddon file into the application in order to install it into the USER directory. In case you want to use a different directory for the installation, go to the File menu and select Addon->Install in order to install the provided .xsiaddon file into a directory of your choice.
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adeebalm
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Re: install xsiaddon

Post by adeebalm » 21 Sep 2018, 17:39

hi rray do you mean just drag drop

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rray
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Re: install xsiaddon

Post by rray » 21 Sep 2018, 17:54

Yes, drag and drop should work fine (even from .xsiaddon weblinks). Which one are you installing?
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nicole
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Re: install xsiaddon

Post by nicole » 23 Sep 2018, 23:05

rray wrote: 21 Sep 2018, 17:54 Yes, drag and drop should work fine (even from .xsiaddon weblinks). Which one are you installing?
hello..

do you have any idea why this way or the add-on install way of "geographic elevation mixer" add on would load but not appear (camera> custom displays) and be functional ?

mathyas

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rray
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Re: install xsiaddon

Post by rray » 23 Sep 2018, 23:14

I can only guess because I don't have that addon. What could happen here is that the addon is written for an old 32 bit XSI and you're installing it on a newer 64 bit XSI. A few addons weren't updated to 64 bits and they stopped working after XSI became 64 bit only.
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nicole
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Re: install xsiaddon

Post by nicole » 23 Sep 2018, 23:28

ah. okay.
do you have any sound advice about generation of grounds (canions, craters, rivers, mountains) from fractals and grayscale textures? (working with softimage 2015)?
thank you

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rray
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Re: install xsiaddon

Post by rray » 23 Sep 2018, 23:50

A lot is possible with a dense (like 500*500 subdivisions or more) and ICE. You would make the Y coordinate of the grid point a function of X and Z using turbulence nodes etc. You could further tune and mix it with painted weightmaps and texture maps.

If it's for something non commercial you could also grab Houdini Apprentice which has a whole toolset dedicated to working with heightfields/terrains.
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nicole
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Re: install xsiaddon

Post by nicole » 24 Sep 2018, 00:23

rray wrote: 23 Sep 2018, 23:50 A lot is possible with a dense (like 500*500 subdivisions or more) and ICE. You would make the Y coordinate of the grid point a function of X and Z using turbulence nodes etc. You could further tune and mix it with painted weightmaps and texture maps.

If it's for something non commercial you could also grab Houdini Apprentice which has a whole toolset dedicated to working with heightfields/terrains.
i am confused about something:
how do you learn to choose the right nodes.

it seems obvious from the vimeo you joined, that the teacher knows the function of each node he 's using.
does he have to remember each function, does he have thus in his brains a list of all the nodes?

i have tried working with ICE, but i found it very difficult to know which node to pick up for experimenting with your artistic ideas.
the geographical elevation mixer which used fractals and textures, seemed more easy (i have seen it working on digital tutors), you can test easily the options in the computer,
whereas i suppose that in order to use ICE using turbulence nodes, or like in the video with Houdini, you have to learn "by heart" according to a specific task:
example: you would learn in a school how to "houdini-think" so as when you're confronted with a problem, you so decide that you will use the turbulence node with X Y Z?

how do you learn ICE? (let alone Houdini) as a way of submitting it to your free-flow artistic imagination? by following a course in a school? where you channel your imagination?

thank you
mathyas
(ps if you could arrow me towards a more practical way of learning ICE for that effect of a ground simulation from texture and weight map, id be delighted)

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rray
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Re: install xsiaddon

Post by rray » 24 Sep 2018, 16:18

There's no need to have the complete node list memorized but with time you will get a better idea of what ICE nodes/Houdini ops are or are not designed for. With that knowledge it will be easier to memorize nodes or I would say easier than learning vocabulary. But it's still unlike ready made plugins like the geo elev mixer which were designed to be easy to use. It's more like using a radio thing vs. building a radio.

If you want to get started, it's important to know that ICE is mostly about getting and setting attributes so "get data" and "set data" will be the most important nodes. You'll also need to know some intricacies of ICE like the fact that the noise node is called "Turbulence" and that it takes a 3D position as the main parameter.

In your case you want one "get data" node that gets the point position attribute and one that sets the point position. What happens between is of course the interesting part. To get a first feeling for how everything works you could just get a "3d vector" node and a "add" node then plug point position and the vector in "add" then change around the vector 3d X Y and Z params. Then replace the vector node with the turbulence node.

For learning ICE what's also important and probably the hardest thing to grasp is concepts like "attribute context" and "location" although your specific height field manipulation problem is probably simple enough so you can still avoid them.
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nicole
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Re: install xsiaddon

Post by nicole » 28 Sep 2018, 00:58

rray wrote: 24 Sep 2018, 16:18 There's no need to have the complete node list memorized but with time you will get a better idea of what ICE nodes/Houdini ops are or are not designed for. With that knowledge it will be easier to memorize nodes or I would say easier than learning vocabulary. But it's still unlike ready made plugins like the geo elev mixer which were designed to be easy to use. It's more like using a radio thing vs. building a radio.
i have to thank you for your explanation of course.

as for the philosophy of artistic designing,
i am wondering about the societal structural function of switching from visual "analog radio thing", to ICE and Houdini "nodes" as non-visual radio building.

don't you think that the point in developing one kind of tool instead of the other,
besides increasing the possibilities of "resolving power" of the computers,

could as well narrow the field of the cinema industry?

you sort of increase the range of variability of possible radio stations so much, like "struck by fear of loss, panic ,
that everybody "uses the same (difficult) learning curve" so much that the cinema industry gets more "rational", "organized", but less visually intelligent (even if more spectacular in one same polarized vector?)

the question which comes to mind is: with ICE, for example, how to be able to build a fractal nicer "analog" little tools tool such as the "geographical elevation mixer",
which reintroduces an ability to escape the learning curve, which gives you all the spectrum of tools to be creative, and to discover (slowly at one's own rhythm) a personal learning curve, a more interesting one,
and be cause to enabling one to rapidly scope across a variability of radio stations, or pick up and invent new fractal and visual radio stations?

so my new question is: do you think it would be possible with ICE or Nodes: how to create with Nodes a tool for re-creating for Artists, such tools as the "geographical elevation mixer"??

thanks again!
mathyas

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rray
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Re: install xsiaddon

Post by rray » 30 Sep 2018, 16:54

If I get your point right it comes down to the topic of artistic vs technical approach - they might sound like they're opposed but they're also related if "artistic" is seen as "high level technical". In any case it would be the job of the application to create a bridge beeween the two.

I think Sofimage does that job quite well. Not perfect but at least it supports the idea in some places. For example ICE has something called compounds where you can put a whole node network into a single node, with only those parameters exposed in the user interface that you choose. This reduces the amount of information presented to users of that compound and flattens the learning curve for them. I think that's related to what you meant. But it flattens the curve probably not only for others but also for yourself if you ever revisit the scene later and try to understand what you were doing the other day.

It takes good developers to design an application with that idea in mind all the time. These are really rare. I think Softimage team had a quite a lot of them on the team, at least during the first 10 years.
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druitre
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Re: install xsiaddon

Post by druitre » 03 Oct 2018, 18:11

Or, to put Rrays words in a different form (if I can be so free): look for ICE compounds online (eq the resources section on this forum here) that do what you're looking for or something close to it, and then dive into them. Try to follow what's going on inside. Put comments next to each node that you've figured out. Copy/paste parts and frankenstein your own stuff together.

I learned ICE by starting out that way. It's a fuzzy way, so to speak, no math knowledge whatsoever required, and you'll still pick up piece by piece what all the nodes are for and how to use them at the same time.

For a more structured learning experience: look for Pooby's ICE tutorials on Vimeo. He has a lot of them and the nice thing is -he didn't know that much about ICE when he started doing them. So you can learn along with him as you go from the first tutorial onwards. (He's an incredibly fast learner though, so there is an amazing amount of knowledge to be taken from him).

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