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XSI Workflow? (Read 2675 times)
Mac Reiter
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Re: XSI Workflow?
Reply #15 on: Nov 11th, 2005, 6:22pm
 

The digital monk

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Once again, thank you, and thank your friend.
 
It looks like XSI's documentation for the FRAW2 format is wildly inaccurate...  In the line right after Start_FCurve, the second number specifies the curve type.  In all of your examples, it is 20, or "Standard Fcurve: keys have 2 values and 2 tangents".  I was attempting to use type 30, "Raw fcurve: keys have 2 values but no tangents".  Because I was trying to specify a raw curve with no tangents, I was also trying to specify a key type of 1, "The key is continuous and has no tangent => it's a continuous raw key".  All of this is legal according to the documentation, but apparently is unsupported in the actual program.
 
I will make a new version that uses type 20 curves and type 0 keys and 0.0 tangents and get that to you today.  I'll also split out the fcurves into the separate files and remove some of the redundant quiet keys.
 
Thanks again!
Mac
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mnemonicimage
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Re: XSI Workflow?
Reply #16 on: Nov 14th, 2005, 2:24am
 

I love TAFA!

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Mac, Sorry I got off topic in the MAYA forum.
 
This might help you in your dotXSI quest and might become a backbone for getting it into other apps.
 
http://www.softimage.com/Connect/xsi/FreeConnections.htm
 
The MP route is hopefully a temp thing as I would really like to see the unbalanced featurs of TAFA convereted across to other apps as this is where TAFA shines.  Point Oven and MDD's do it but it is rather heavy on the file size and you realy take a hit in realtime performance and have to have the MDD files on a local drive as it loads dynamically.  Not quite certain how LW imports with it's MD-Plug and gets such great playback perfomance.
 
By the way I do not own Magpie, I just downloaded their trial and found their scripts in an enclosed folder as anyone is free to do.
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Re: XSI Workflow?
Reply #17 on: Nov 16th, 2005, 3:41am
 

The digital monk

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Thank you for the link.  I had found that earlier and got quite excited Cheesy , but several of their plugins are fairly out of date, so I'm not sure how far that will take me.  undecided
 
I apologize for my slow response times and current lack of progress -- other things are really busy right now, and I'm pretty much looking at 12+ hour workdays without counting any TAFA development.  I'd much rather be working on TAFA, but unfortunately the other things pay the bills, so they take priority.
 
I'm glad that the Magpie scripts provide a way to use the "simple text" format from TAFA and get it into various systems.  I don't want that to be the limit of integration either, but at least it gives a way for people to get on with their work today.  Thanks for letting us know about that.
 
I'm hoping that around the first week of December I can start putting some meaningful time back into TAFA.  I'm WAAAAAAAY behind any schedules I've ever stated for TAFA development...  embarrassed
 
Back to the other stuff  lips sealed
Mac
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Re: XSI Workflow?
Reply #18 on: Nov 16th, 2005, 2:27pm
 

I love TAFA!

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I exported a simple cube size 8 with two blendshapes(morphs) animted.  Shape 1 is animated on frame 0,5,10 and shape 2 is on frames 10,15,20.
It seems to be a very heavy file format as it is bringing in everything, though that is what I set to export so I imagine it could be smaller if less is selected to export.  When I brought it back in the cube and animation came in just fine however it now has 100 blendshapes to it.
 
Anyway this may help you understand the file format a little.
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Re: XSI Workflow?
Reply #19 on: Nov 16th, 2005, 2:47pm
 

The digital monk

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Hmmm...  Did TAFA and the MP scripts come into play anywhere in this process, or did you just export a dotXSI and then reload it?
 
If you just saved and reloaded, it is somewhat disturbing that you went from 2 blend shapes to 100 (or possibly 101) blend shapes...
 
Regardless, thank you for the test file and description of relevant information.  That will help my dotXSI experimentation a lot.
Mac
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Re: XSI Workflow?
Reply #20 on: Nov 16th, 2005, 3:38pm
 

I love TAFA!

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This was just a file created in XSI exported then imported back in.   It looks like the blendshapes are converted to shape keys and keyframed on every key.
I tried the Welcome guy and the the geometry description was rather large.   I'll post it if you want it but it might be more confusing than anything else.
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liquidlight
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Re: XSI Workflow?
Reply #21 on: May 11th, 2006, 7:06am
 

I love TAFA!

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Marc,
 
We're long time users of TAFA, and used it with lightwave to complete a few dozen projects in the past.  We've moved over to XSI now, and we're anxious to see some support for XSI in TAFA.
 
I see here in the forums that xsi users are exporting to LWO with endomorphs... how is this possible?  Using what plugin?  We're using XSI version 5.1, and only see lightwave support in the now included Point Oven export options.
 
Looking forward to some action on the XSI front!
 
Success,  
 
Adrian Lopez
Liquid Light Digital
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Re: XSI Workflow?
Reply #22 on: May 15th, 2006, 3:31pm
 

The digital monk

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Adrian,
 
I'm not sure about exporting to LWOs, but if XSI can export to a base OBJ and a set of OBJ morph targets, TAFA can use those as well.
 
If you can make a directory structure something like this:
 
SomeFace.obj
SomeFace_Morphs\Mouth.Smile.obj
SomeFace_Morphs\Brows.RaisedBlink.U.obj
SomeFace_Morphs\Brows.RaisedBlink.D.obj
 
Naming works just like normal, so you would get the groups and auto-palettes you would expect from those names.  Just load the SomeFace.obj, and TAFA will load the morphs from the subdirectory automatically.  Also, if XSI prefixes the base name onto every morph (something like "SomeFace_Mouth.Smile.obj"), don't bother renaming them.  TAFA will ignore prefixes that match the base object name.
 
You should then be able to export MDD to get the animation data back into XSI.
 
My schedule continues to fail to move forward, but I hope that this will let you continue working fairly smoothly.  Let me know if you have any problems.
Mac
« Last Edit: May 17th, 2006, 3:05am by Mac Reiter »
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Re: XSI Workflow?
Reply #23 on: May 18th, 2006, 10:20pm
 

I love TAFA!

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To export out morph targets you need the Point Oven plugin and you run it under LW. From LW you export out as a Point Oven scene with all your morph targets.  When you import the Point Oven Scene PSC file it has them as blend shapes on the object.
 
I will try to find the test XSI files that I finally got to work that used the Magpie converter.  This automatically put the curves onto the blendshapes as they were in TAFA.  The only downside is that you can not do the asymetrical blending that TAFA does, you need to use Point Oven.  The same is with Morph files in LW versus using MDD files.
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