Visual cue on point lights

[McNistor]

Hello people!

I've posted this on cgtalk also, but it seems that all people from xsi section migrated here(which is a good thing i guess)... got no reply in several days.

Wouldn't be great if we have some visual cues on point lights for start and end falloff (attenuation) in the next version(s) of XSI?

I know you can achieve this by linking to these values 2 spheres radius and set them to wireframe, but it would be so much nicer if we can have that by default like spot lights.

I mean a new comer to XSI is very unlikely to know this work-around and it would spare us (older users) to do a few more steps, also.

Please share your point of view.

Regards,
McNistor

[BloomPix]

I think the same way. It is like the "headlight" that now can be added with just one click. I think that what you say can be very usefull and should not be that difficult to do...

[Adrian Lazar]

i would like that to, and also improved visual cues for lights and cameras... i don't like to say this... 3dsmax is ahead at this.

[McNistor]

i would like that to, and also improved visual cues for lights and cameras... i don't like to say this... 3dsmax is ahead at this.

hai noroc Adrian!

it's true that max has a few better visual feedback to the user, but in the same time it lacks some abilities in this area: orbiting a camera view is imposible to do as in XSI.
Cameras in XSI are suited with a similar cue as spot-lights (if you press TAB).
Unfortunatly for point-lights we have to take a longer path to have some visual feedback.
Anyway XSI is great as it is and I wouldn't migrate from it for such a minor thing, but minor things might get better also.

[BloomPix]

Yes, probably not migrating. But you describe it as a minor problem, but I think it is not. It is a thing that everyone would probably use on every project. All the times when it comes at this point and you see that there is nothing to do more than this sphere linked thing I think it can not be that difficult to code this in XSI...
So it is a minor thing, but you will have the lack of it in every project and it has to be easy to implement. This is the key!

[origin]

Yes It would be great.

3ds max has nice visual cues on lights, but Brazil renderer (for max) has much better..nicer ;)

[GuiLafer]

It would be nice if someone could post some screenshots of the visual cues in 3DSMax or Brazil.....

[origin]

Here you go. Brazil's lights are basicaly some 'hack' cause It;s just transparent geometry with visible edges. But you Softimage guys can do better :)

[kim aldis]

spotlights in xsi, select the spot, hit 'b'. You can interactively manipulate the inner and outer umbra using the spots cones in this view mode. I thought you could manipulate falloffs but this doesn't seem to be the case.

For those of you complaining that you can't add your own visual cues with a single click, remember that XSI is very configurable. Adding a button, menu option or hotkey to do this in one click is very simple.

[Azazel]

Kim, you can manipulate the falloffs with the B key, although you usually have to extend the Start Falloff out a little bit before you can see it to move it.

For those wondering there's also a bunch of scripts out there that'll let you see the falloffs on point lights although from memory they usually only let you see the falloffs, you can't actually use them to manipulate the falloffs like you can with the B key and spotlights.

[McNistor]

We know about scripts and work-arounds and we know XSI is very config.

The idea is that some things are best to be default implemented. It's pretty anoying to install tens of scripts for things that could be easily implemented.
Scripts should be used for some more advanced tasks.
We love XSI (among other things) for its powerfull tool-set that allows you to do a lot of things without plugins.
I don't understand why some people are conservatorist (i hope this is a word) when it comes to such things. I mean if someone comes with an idea (such as this one presented in this thread) we shouldn't be against it saying that we can live without it. It's true that this is not a essential problem but i think it can't hurt either if it's implemented.
So why not backing up this idea?
I hope i didn't offend smb... no intention to do this.

Regards

[kim aldis]

The idea is that some things are best to be default implemented. It's pretty anoying to install tens of scripts for things that could be easily implemented.


I disagree, on both counts. XSI's SDK allows you add things like this extremely quickly in a way that's virtually indistinguishable from a default and without much thought or effort it only ever needs to be done once. It probably quicker than the time you've spent talking about it on this thread.

Scripting is for whatever suits whoever happens to be using the software, there's no reason at all why it should only be for complex tasks and the fact that it's so easy and quick to use makes it ideal for quickies.

Not everyone wants or needs the same thing, if you dropped in everything that everyone wanted it would be massive. Leaving the fine details to users helps prevent this from happening.

I'm not being conservative, I just think the time of the people who write this software would be better spent doing stuff that can't be done by pretty much anyone in a few seconds.

[thiago]

you can manipulate start/end falloff of spot lights in XSI, the hotspot and the size of the area light.
Press "B" as everybody said and then press tab to cycle between manipulation modes.
Theres also a direction mode, which is very useful if you are setting directional lights.

The falloff (start/end) will just appear if this option is active in the spot light. Point lights will not show anything for Falloff and this is really annoying.

Also when you have area light active, it will let you manipulate the size and shape.
You can change it all and make it awesome just with some *little* experience in scripting, as Kim already said.

that said, it's not difficult to see that other softwares have this better out of the box. And fortunately people got used to XSI have everything better out of the box, so when it isn't people just complain about :). Which isn't bad, people wanna see improvements.

[mantom]

I disagree with the philosophy, Kim.

90% of users have no scripting or programming skills to speak of. Asking them to create tools which are very basic and expected in a highend 3D software like XSI is not acceptable. Granted there aren't enough hours in the day to create *every* tool, but there are many very simple everyday things that XSI falls flat on it's face handling. The things most of us do day in and day out on every project. For all the time we save on a hard problem that's been solved (and in some cases, very few of use will actually use), we lose it on the simpler things which we constantly have to work around. Having to cut wrists on simple tasks is very frustrating and kills morale if frequent enough.

On my current project I'm spending at least half of my coding time writing tools that XSI should already have out of the box. Just like you'd rather Softimage be working on the tougher problems, I'd rather be doing the same on my project, but I can't because I have to deal with all the little things that aren't there. I've said this time and again, we need the simple everyday things that need to be implemented that we use every day, and they have to be rock solid. These are the things 80% of users complain about most because they're the tools they spend 80% of their day using. When one of the tools needed to perform the required workarounds is broken, the workaround path gets that much longer. So not only do you have a user frustrated because a tool is missing, but they're even more frustrated because the workaround doesn't work either. Puts a very bad taste into artists mouths when they're fighting their tools to do what they really want to do. Gives XSI a very poor reputation too. These are the type of things Softimage interns could take care of if money is the issue.

examples:

- Copy weight values from a vertex to other vertices on an envelope (see thread in forum).
- Create user normals property and be able to manipulate normals
- Control point light falloff from an icon, or at least see it.
- Convert NURBS surface to polygon mesh while retaining texture UV coordinates.
- show animation ghosting in a Realtime shader viewport.
- Create a new material on an object without having a mental ray shader attached to it.
- Insert a key onto an FCurve without distorting the FCurve's shape.
- Add some love to the animation mixer to do things like mirror some Animation FCurves in a clip.

the list goes on. These tools are not rocket science compared to the rest of the package, but why should every single XSI customer have to recreate these same tools or concoct crazy workarounds when Softimage could do it once and satisfy everybody? Users want to make artwork, not spend time reinventing the wheel just so they can get started to create artwork. 80% of artists don't give a crap what software they use if it works without having to fight it. When the software has bugs and/or is missing a lot of basics, THEN artists care because they don't feel they have control over the process of making their artwork.