Hey,

Is there any way of how to store modeling progress as keys? For example, with each keyframe the new edge is added… I did try the shape manager, geometry cache writing, plotting. I guess it is impossible, or if so in very complex way. Thanks for the ideas.

i think you can get an “stop motion” look by sequentially exporting at each step and ,then import them like obj sequence .
but inside xsi ..i don’t know of any such tool or structure..
why would you need something like this..?!
most of the time in 3d you should 1st plot your need on paper and then find out how you can achive it through possible tools.!

i think you can get an “stop motion” look by sequentially exporting at each step and ,then import them like obj sequence .
but inside xsi ..i don’t know of any such tool or structure..
why would you need something like this..?!
most of the time in 3d you should 1st plot your need on paper and then find out how you can achieve it through possible tools.!

Those kind of Operators aren`t keyable, so I guess Stop Motion is your best bet.

That’s Houdini stuff, I believe.

Although you can easily animate operators that have a Property Page (like Extrude) and do a lot of funky things with that (like additively growing polygons out of a mesh) basically topo ops cannot be animated. The topo changes always appear with frame 0. As it seems.
But:
You simply could duplicate your object every time you change topology, and animate the View Visibility in the Object’s Visibility Node, so that each of the objects is just visible for say 10 frames before the next one becomes visible.
Tried, works of course. Not the nicest approach for sure, you’ll get maybe hundreds of objects. But then… RAM is cheap. ;)

One thing is interesting: although you can animate a polyon extrusion, you cannot animate a MoveComponent Op, because it has no PPG. That brings me to an idea for the wishlist:
A new MoveComponent Op that can be applied via menu (not just automatically when you interactively move a component) and that has a Property Page showing the local (or global) transformation values you just applied.
Sounds pretty basic. Did I miss something?
Best,
Eugen

well, your move component thing is basicaly Shape Manager I think. So you already have ability to animate vertex positions :) But anyway, thanks for the inputs folks. The stop motion approach is sort of “back to the roots” thing, but so far the only one solution I see as well. Still, every operation have its place in script window as you progress, so maybe there is a way of how to call those operation back and forward with animation keys…

[QUOTE=JurajMolcak;22993]well, your move component thing is basicaly Shape Manager I think. So you already have ability to animate vertex positions

I know shapes are around, but they work differently. They utilize the Cluster Shape Combiner Operator.
I’m suggesting a variation of the good old Move Component Op, with a PPG to be able to enter offset values numerically and animate them.
Just an idea, though a bit off topic.
Best,
Eugen

[quote=JurajMolcak;22478]Hey,

Is there any way of how to store modeling progress as keys? For example, with each keyframe the new edge is added… I did try the shape manager, geometry cache writing, plotting. I guess it is impossible, or if so in very complex way. Thanks for the ideas.

Short answer:  No

Longer answer: Yes, but you have to jump through some hoops.

One method you could employ is to do all the work on your model to completion, then write an OnChangeFrame() event script which is called each frame to mute less and less of the construction history each frame using the DeactivateAbove() command.  This also means you’ll need to write some simple code to traverse the construction history and count the number of operators encountered as it goes.  When the counter gets to the current frame number, the script calls DeactivateAbove() on the next operator it finds.

Example, lets say you create a grid, translate the corners up 3 units in Y, then delete the middle 4 polygons.  If the timeline is set to frame 1, then the script goes through the construction history and encounters the geom operator - that’s operator #0.  The next operator encountered is the movecomponentop - that’s operator #1, so the script calls DeactivateAbove( “grid.polymsh.movecomponentop” ) to mute everything above in the stack.  On frame 2, the same code is run again, only this time the script gets one operator further and finds that deletcompop is operator #2, so it calls DeactivateAbove( “grid.polymsh.deletecompop” ); on that operator and it and everything above is muted.  Of course, the entire stack needs to be unmuted before the code is run each frame, but not a big deal.

Matt