CompuServe Messages

Well, where do I begin? SoftImage comes in several flavors, some starting around six thousand dollars all the way up to sixty thousand dollars. Each module is an upgrade, or you can buy each all at once. Several of my friends have used SI(softimage) longer and more often than I have….I.E., I don't think I could get a job where I'd have to use it tomorrow… but here's what I know… SI's strong feature is its "CHARACTER MODULE." This is where all the really neat stuf happens. For example, LW's bones look the same as SI's "CHAINS." SI allows the user, after selecting chains, to click a start and ending position for each link. The ending position of the first link is the beginning of the second, and so on. Now, Chains have the ability to be controlled via keyframes, thru Dynamics (wind, gravity, etc), and by Inverse Kinematics. I.K. is a key to the Character module. For example, as you know, flexing a leg now in LW involves placing the pivot point at the top of each segmet, where a natural joint would exist. By turning on I.K., instead of having to keyframe the top segment, and then the lower segment, you would pull on the end of the chain in the lower segment, and the upper follows, rotating around its pivot or chain's pivot. Now the cool part…RESTRAINTS. These allow the user a unique way to contol movement. Let's use our leg example above. We will add a foot into the workarea. The foot is made a constraint. Now, even though the foot isn't connected to the leg segment, the leg is forced to point (via the bottom of the last chain) toward the foot. Now, as the character walks, the foot always ( until it is rotated on its own) always stays in its orginal rotation position… but the leg follows. So, for this guy to walk up some stairs…. well, now in LW, you'd build up a Hiarc'y and move the figure to its first position on the stairs. Then, after repositioning each segment (or bone) to keep the torso upright, you have the second position, and so on… ..well, in SI, the legs are constrained to the feet. You pull the first foot up onto the first step, the leg follows. You keyframe. You pull the second foot up to the next position, adjust the fine position of the first leg and keyframe, etc….SO EASY! What gets really sharp is when you constrain seperate parts of the body to other parts of the body. Then, as you move the legs, it is possible to make the rest of the body "balance out" as a real body would do in the real world. A dancer can kick forward, and its upper body bends forward to keep from falling over! (Well, it wouldn't really fall over… wait… maybe you could set up a scene to do that…. hmmmmmmm) You can also, if you place two chains in a tube made from mesh, set up the program to flex the tube at the bending point. It looks like muscle is under the skin! Hey, I'm typing this live. Here's a question, how many would want to see an article in LWPRO, or VTU on SoftImage vs. Lightwave. Sortof a "this is what we'd like," rather than "bad LW for not being SI." Let me know. SI is a 24-365 program. You'd have to use it 24 hours a day 365 days a year to really get into it…. then there'd be a new upgrade when you're done! The real difference in the two is the platform they run on. The Amiga just needs to come with two RISC (r4400's ???) processors, and then we'd all see a change! ALL FOR NOW!