Softimage XSI

SOFTIMAGE®|XSI™
Version 1.0
Tutorials
a
Tutorials was written by François Giard, Judy Bayne,
Grahame Fulller, and André Demers; edited by
Edna Kruger and John Woolfrey; and formatted by
Luc Langevin. Production scenes created by
François Giard.
© 1999–2000 Avid Technology, Inc. All rights reserved.
SOFTIMAGE and Avid are registered trademarks and
XSI is a trademark of Avid Technology, Inc. All other
trademarks contained herein are the property of their
respective owners.
The SOFTIMAGE|XSI application uses JScript and
Visual Basic Scripting Edition from Microsoft
Corporation.
This document is protected under copyright law. The
contents of this document may not be copied or
duplicated in any form, in whole or in part, without the
express written permission of Avid Technology, Inc.
This document is supplied as a guide for the Softimage
product. Reasonable care has been taken in preparing
the information it contains. However, this document
may contain omissions, technical inaccuracies, or
typographical errors. Avid Technology, Inc. does not
accept responsibility of any kind for customers’ losses
due to the use of this document. Product specifications
are subject to change without notice.
Printed in Canada.
Document No. 0130-04618-01 0400
Contents
Contents
Roadmap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
About This Guide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Where to Find Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Document Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
S e c t io n 1 Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Installing the Tutorial Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Adding a Project to the Project Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
The Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Interaction Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Supra Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Selecting Objects in a Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Access Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
S e c t io n 2 Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Tutorial 1: Basic Object Editing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Editing Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Tutorial 2: Transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
The Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Creating a Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Duplicating an Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Adding a Twist Deformation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Using a Surface Constraint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Muting an Operator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Adding Random Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Adding Relative Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Tangency and Normal Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Tutorial 3: Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Using the Command History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Creating Custom Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Interacting with Other Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Tutorials • 3
Contents
S e c t io n 3 Modeling & Deformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Tutorial 4: Surfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Creating a Surface with Curve Net . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Cleaning a Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Merging Surfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Relational Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Freezing the Operator Stack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Lofting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Using the Extend-to-Curve Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Filleting Intersections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Stitching Surfaces Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Organizing the Scene with Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Assembling Seamless Surfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Tutorial 5: Weight Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Using Weight Maps and Deforms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Weight Maps and Deformation by Curve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Weight Maps and Deform by Spine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Envelope Weighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
S e c t io n 4 Animating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Tutorial 6: Constraints, Expressions & Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Animating on a Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Keyframing Marked Parameters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Duplicating the Object with Its Constraint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Constraint Compensation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Adding Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Adding Particles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Editing in Multiple Property Editors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Editing the Particle Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Tutorial 7: Linked Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Linking Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Setting the Relative Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
4 • SOFTIMAGE|XSI
Contents
Tutorial 8: Skeleton Construction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

Preparing to Build Your Skeleton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Drawing the Chains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Hierarchy Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Building the Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Tutorial 9: A Walk Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Starting the Sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Rotation Limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Animating Foot Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Editing the Animation Function Curve. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Creating an Up-vector Constraint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Tutorial 10: The Animation Mixer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Storing Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Instantiating Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Adding a Cycle to the Action Clip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Cropping the Action Clip. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Editing the Original Function Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Processing Motion Capture Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Storing Transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Mixing Clip Weights. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Creating Markers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Tutorial 11: Shape Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Deforming Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Storing and Retrieving Shapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Creating Transitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Mixed Weight Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Controlling Weights with Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Controlling Shape Weights via a Custom Property Set . . . . . . . . 140
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Tutorial 12: Low-Res/High-Res Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Creating an Override on the High-Resolution Character . . . . . . 144
Creating an Override on the Low-Resolution Character . . . . . . . 144
Tutorial 13: Envelope Weighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Attaching the Envelope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Tutorials • 5
Contents
S e c t io n 5 Rendering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Tutorial 14: Applying Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Creating a Simple Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Editing Shared Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Creating a Local Material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Tutorial 15: Working with Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Editing the Default Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Adding a New Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Using the Light Manipulators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Tutorial 16: Giving Life to a Dragonfly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Setting Display Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Applying Surface Shaders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Connecting an Image to a Parameter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Applying a New Texture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Manipulating the Texture Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Viewing Shader Connections in the Render Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Saving a Texture Preset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Loading Image Sources and Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Adding a Wing Texture (Transparency) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Using the Alpha Channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Applying the Body Texture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Creating a Displacement Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Merging a Background Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Tutorial 17: Creating Render Passes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Creating a Highlight Pass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Creating a Shadow Pass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Creating a Depth Pass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Render All Passes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Tutorial 18: Editing Shaders in the Render Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Attaching a Material Shader. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Using a Tool Shader. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Fine-tuning an Effect. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Grouping Objects to Apply a Material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
6 • SOFTIMAGE|XSI
Contents
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Tutorials • 7
Contents
8 • SOFTIMAGE|XSI
Roadmap
Tutorials • 9
Roadmap
About This Guide

Tutorials gives you all the information you need to get up and running with SOFTIMAGE|XSI.
This guide is a collection of eighteen tutorials starting with the basics such as selecting, editing,
and transforming objects in 3D space and then moving through the major SOFTIMAGE|XSI
tool sets: modeling and deformations, animating, and rendering.
• In Tutorial 1: Basic Object Editing, you are introduced to the methods and basic tools for
creating, selecting, and editing objects.
• In Tutorial 2: Transformations, you create a hierarchy of objects, then transform and
duplicate them as a single entity. You will also deform objects and apply constraints
between objects.
• In Tutorial 3: Scripts, you are shown how to build scripts as an alternative way to input
commands. In one exercise, you’ll load and edit a script that, when executed, automatically
sends you e-mail.
• In Tutorial 4: Surfaces, you are introduced to some of the many ways to create and modify
surfaces. You create an alien’s head and body, then assemble them into a single surface mesh.
• In Tutorial 5: Weight Maps, you are shown how to use weight maps to control
deformations. You can apply a preset weight map such as a gradient, paint deformations, as
well as envelope weights.
• In Tutorial 6: Constraints, Expressions & Particles, you use a path constraint to direct the
animation of two airplanes, then create an expression to cause one of the airplanes to
deviate from the path in a specific manner. Finally, you will use particles to create the
airplanes’ trails of smoke.
• In Tutorial 7: Linked Parameters, you link parameters and set relative values to
automatically open doors as a sphere passes through them.
• In Tutorial 8: Skeleton Construction, you create a skeleton for the Jaiqua character, using
chains and objects. The skeleton will allow you to easily pose and animate Jaiqua.
• In Tutorial 9: A Walk Cycle, you will create a walk cycle using the skeleton from the
previous tutorial.
• In Tutorial 10: The Animation Mixer, you are introduced to the animation mixer. You
create action sources and clips, then reuse, cycle, trim, modify, and mix the actions.
• In Tutorial 11: Shape Animation, you deform an object into different shapes and save shape
keys. You also use the animation mixer again to mix between shapes. Finally, you define
custom parameters to control the shape with sliders.
10 • SOFTIMAGE|XSI
• In Tutorial 12: Low-Res/High-Res Models, you are shown how to use high-resolution and
low-resolution models to speed up your work. Then, you will use overrides to change
property settings without destroying original data.
• In Tutorial 13: Envelope Weighting, you assign an envelope to a skeleton. After the initial
automatic weighting of points to deformers, you reassign specific points to different
deformers and edit the weights of individual points.
• In Tutorial 14: Applying Materials, you’ll create a sphere and apply a material and surface
(Phong) shader.
• In Tutorial 15: Working with Lights, you’ll create a spotlight and use its manipulators to
define its cone and angle spreads and its start and end falloff values.
• In Tutorial 16: Giving Life to a Dragonfly, you’ll apply a texture to the dragonfly’s eye and
copy it (and its texture projection) to the other eye. Then, you’ll create a transparency map
on all of the dragonfly’s wings using a texture image. Afterward, you will texture the
dragonfly’s body and apply a displacement map to it using the same texture’s alpha channel.
Finally, you’ll merge the scene with a background scene.
• In Tutorial 17: Creating Render Passes, you’ll use a static scene to create a matte pass, a
shadow pass, a highlight pass and a depth pass.
• In Tutorial 18: Editing Shaders in the Render Tree, you’ll use the render tree to create a
realistic glass shader, and texture both faces of a flower petal with a different texture on
each side.
Tutorials • 11
Roadmap
Where to Find Information
The SOFTIMAGE|XSI package includes a comprehensive set of learning

materials. Use this Roadmap to find the information you need to get up and
running quickly and effectively.
Start with the Setup Guide to install and license all components.
Setup Online Help is also available as you go through the process.
We recommend you choose Custom install so that you can perform the tutorials.
Refer to Release Notes, an online listing of known problems and limitations for this
version. Also includes workarounds and supplemental information. Access through the
web at www.softimage.com > support.
Follow the Guided Tour (available from the Online Library CD).
This is a set of videoclips that provide overviews of features and tools.
Work through Tutorials to learn the features in the context of basic productions.
This is a full-color set of lessons showing you step-by-step how to perform typical tasks.
You can install the scenes from the Software CD. (Choose Custom install when installing
SOFTIMAGE|XSI). Then choose the Content option to install the Tutorials project.
The Softimage Discussion Group

You can join the worldwide network of Softimage users exchanging ideas and techniques
by e-mail. To find out more, e-mail [email protected]. Leave the Subject line
empty and type the word “help” in the body of your mail message.
The Global Index & Glossary is an index
to all user guides and Tutorials; a glossary of The user guides contain
terms; and a list of books, videos, and web conceptual information and
sites related to the 3D animation industry. procedures on how to use
specific tools. These comprise:
•Fundamentals
•Animating
•Modeling & Deformations
The Online Library CD •Shaders, Lights & Cameras
The Online Library contains •Rendering
the Guided Tour and all the
SOFTIMAGE|XSI and some
mental ray documentation in
electronic form in both PDF
and HTML formats. (See next
page for how to use.)
Online Help
On-screen reference
information on interface
elements, commands, and
parameters. There are two
ways to access it:
• Click the ? button in any
Using SOFTIMAGE|3D with property editor or tool view.
SOFTIMAGE|XSI provides tips and • Choose Help >
techniques about using the two Contents and Index
software packages. Available from from the main-menu bar.
the Online Library CD and
softimage.com > support only)
HTML Scripting Reference

An HTML-based reference help on the syntax
for all scripting commands and arguments.
It appears in your default HTML browser.
Click on the icon (above) to open the script editor,
then click Help > Scripting Reference or press F1.
Pin up the SOFTIMAGE|XSI Interface Layout and the Quick Reference Card
to help you become familiar with the interface and keyboard shortcuts.
Tutorials • 13
Roadmap
Using the Online Library

The Online Library contains the Guided Tour and all the SOFTIMAGE|XSI and some mental
ray documentation in electronic form in both PDF and HTML formats.
For full-text searching and printing, we recommend PDF format. If you do not have Acrobat
Reader installed, you can install it it free of charge from the Online Library CD: Follow the
instructions in the readme file on the CD.
To access the Online Library

1. Insert the Online Library CD in your disk drive.
2. Open one of the following documents:
- mainmenu.pdf (PDF format)
- mainmenu.htm (HTML format)
Document Conventions
The following are ways that information is displayed in the SOFTIMAGE|XSI documentation.
Typography Conventions
Type style Usage
Bold Menu commands, dialog-box and property-editor options, and file and directory names.
Italics Definitions and emphasized words.
Courier Text that you must type exactly as it appears. For example, if you are asked to type
mkdir style, you would type these characters and the spacing between words
exactly as they are appear in this book.
> The arrow (>) indicates menu commands (and subcommands) in the order that you
choose them: Menu name > Command name. For example, when you see File >
Open, it means to open the File menu and then choose the Open command.
Visual Identifiers
These icons help identify certain types of information:
Notes are used for information that is an aside to the text. Notes are reminders or contain
important information.
Tips are useful tidbits of information, workarounds, and shortcuts that you might find
helpful in a particular situation.
The 3D icon indicates information about differences in workflow or concepts between

Softimage 3D and SOFTIMAGE|XSI. You will find these very helpful when working with the
two products.
Warnings are used when you can lose or damage information, such as deleting data or not being
able to easily undo an action. Warnings always appear before you are about to do such a task!
Keyboard and Mouse Conventions

SOFTIMAGE|XSI uses a three-button mouse for most operations. These are referred to as the left,
middle, and right mouse buttons. In many cases, you will use the different buttons to perform
different operations; always use the left mouse button unless otherwise stated.
The two-button mouse is not supported in SOFTIMAGE|XSI.
This table shows the terms relating to the mouse and keyboard.
When this term is used... ...it means this
Click Quickly press and release the left mouse button. Always use the left mouse
button unless otherwise stated.
Middle-click Quickly press and release the middle mouse button of a three-button mouse.
Right-click Quickly press and release the right mouse button.
Double-click Quickly click the left mouse button twice.
Shift+click, Ctrl+click, Alt+click Hold down the Shift, Ctrl, or Alt key as you click a mouse button.
Drag Hold down the left mouse button as you move the mouse.
Alt+key, Ctrl+key, Shift+key Hold down the first key as you press the second key. For example, “Press
Alt+Enter” means to hold down the Alt key as you press the Enter key.
Tutorials • 15
Roadmap
Sec t ion 1 Getting Started
Tutorials • 17
Section 1 • Getting Started
Installing the Tutorial Project
Installing the Tutorial Project

The tutorials in this workbook use scene content that is supplied on the Software CD. For these
scenes to be available, you must have chosen the Custom install option when you installed
the software.
If you did not choose the Custom install option, you can use SOFTIMAGE|XSI’s Setup utility to
load the tutorial scenes:
• For Windows NT, you can access Setup from \SOFTIMAGE Products\XSI_1.0\Setup
• For IRIX, you can run Setup from the directory where your SOFTIMAGE|XSI software was
installed.
Once the Setup dialog box is displayed, click Add/Remove. In the Maintenance Mode dialog
box, select the Content check box and click Continue. The utility then installs the tutorial
scenes in your \XSI_1.0\content\tutorial_project\ folder.
The next section shows you how to add the tutorial project to your project list so you can access
its scenes.
Tutorials • 19
Adding a Project to the Project Manager

The first time you run SOFTIMAGE|XSI, the Project Manager appears. The Project Manager
gives you access to all projects and scenes. You will add a project to the Project Manager’s
project list so that you can then select its scenes and use them in the tutorials in this workbook.
1. In the Project Manager, click Add Project.
2. Navigate to XSI_1.0\content\, select tutorial_project, and click Select. Tutorial_project is
added to your list of projects.
3. Select a scene from the list of project scenes (on the right side) and click Open.
4. To add another project to the Project Manager, choose File > Project Manager from the
main-menu bar at the top of the window.
5. To open another SOFTIMAGE|XSI scene, choose File > Open.
1 Click Add Project to display a

browser. From here you can select a
project to add to your project list.
2 Choose a scene
from the list.
3 Click Open to
display the scene in
the viewports.
The Interface
The Interface
Below is the default layout. For more information about the interface, please see the
SOFTIMAGE®|XSI™ Interface Layout foldout, Chapter 2: The Interface of the Fundamentals
guide, and Online Help, accessible at any moment: from the main-menu bar, choose
Help > Contents and Index.
Viewports let you view the contents in your scene in many different
ways. You can resize, hide, and mute viewports in any combination.
Press F12 to display the viewport under the cursor at full screen.
Main-menu bar Press F12 again to revert to a four-viewport display.
provides access to all
the primary commands.
Toolbar displays one of

three toolsets:
Model, Animate,
or Render.
Click the toolbar label
or press 1, 2 or 3 on the
keyboard to switch
between toolsets.
Lower interface is where you can Main command area lets you
create and activate scripts, as well as transform, edit, select, constrain,
edit animation and play it back. and organize scene elements.
Tutorials • 21
Interaction Tools
Even after more than a decade, we still access the 3D world via a 2D screen. SOFTIMAGE|XSI
offers many tools to make this interaction easier.
The tools described in this section help you navigate in a scene and select its contents.
Supra Keys
Click the Display Types menu and press

Many tools can be activated by means of supra keys, which are a kind of keyboard shortcut that
the w key (wireframe) or the h key replace “point-and-click” menu selection. The z key for instance, activates the zoom tool. Supra
(hidden line) instead of searching keys are “sticky,” meaning that if you press a key quickly, the tool stays activated. If, however,
through the pull-down menu. you leave your finger on the key while using the tool, the tool deactivates when you release it.
Selected object For example, there’s no need to keep the z key pressed while you’re zooming in on an object. An
in white. Select icon icon appears instead of the mouse pointer to tell you which tool you’ve activated. You can
cancel a tool any time by clicking the same supra key again, pressing another supra key to
activate another tool, or pressing the Esc key.
Using Supra Keys to Zoom, Orbit, and Pan

To navigate in a scene, move the mouse pointer into any viewport, then do the following:
• To orbit the scene, press the o key and click and drag the mouse. Note that you can only
dolly within the Camera view.
• To pan the scene, press the z key and click+drag the mouse.
• To zoom into the scene, press the z key and middle-click+drag the mouse. To zoom out,
right-click+drag the mouse.
• To dolly in the scene, press the p key and click+drag the mouse. Note that you can only
dolly within the Camera view.
• The s key is another useful key because it acts as a pan, dolly, and orbit all in one. Use it in
the Camera view and it will not cause any distortion in your viewport: press the s key and
left-click to drag and pan, middle-click to dolly, and right-click to orbit.
Current Selection
text box When you press any key, watch the Mouse/Status Line at the bottom of the window
for instructions.
Interaction Tools
Selecting Objects in a Scene

To select objects in the scene, all you have to do is click on them—you may have to press the
space bar first (the default selection supra key), which activates object selection. If the big arrow
(Select icon) in the upper-right corner of the window is highlighted in green, you know you’re
in selection mode.
Typing an object’s name in the Current Selection text box is another method of selecting an
object. You can also combine an object’s name with a wildcard (*) to select several objects that
have a common name. For example, typing arm* selects every object in a scene whose name
begins with the word “arm.”
Access Keys
If you open the menus of just about any application, you will see command names with
underlined characters. These are access keys (sometimes called mnemonics) and are simply
quick ways to choose a menu item using the keyboard.
You will quickly learn which ones are most useful to you. For example, to switch a given
viewport to hidden line display, click on the Display Type menu on a viewport menu bar and
press the h key, or w for wireframe, and s shaded. To create a sphere, click on the Primitive
menu and press s twice for Surface > Sphere, or press c twice for Curve > Circle, etc. You could
also map a shortcut key directly to these commands—it’s all a matter of what you prefer and
find the most useful.
To view all of the default keys and add your own shortcut keys, choose
File > Keyboard Mapping from the main-menu bar.
For more information, please see....

• Supra Keys in Chapter 2 of the Fundamentals guide.
• The SOFTIMAGE®|XSI™ Quick Reference Card
Tutorials • 23
Sec t ion 2 Basics
Tutorials • 25
Section 2 • Basics
Tutorial 1: Basic Object Editing
Tutorial 1: Basic Object Editing

By using a simple primitive, this tutorial will quickly step you through the basic tools for editing
and selecting objects. As you do this, you will be introduced to the various attributes and
properties of 3D objects.
Editing Properties
1. Choose File > New Scene from the main-menu bar to create a new workspace.
2. From the Model toolbar, choose Get > Primitive > Curve > Arc.
3. Once the default arc has been created, its property editor opens. Here, you can edit the
primary properties of the arc. You can, for example, modify the arc’s Start Angle and End
Angle parameters by dragging their sliders.
Press f to frame the

selection in the
viewport.
Press s to track
(dolly) and orbit.
Edit the parameters

and get immediate
visual feedback in
the viewports.
Tutorials • 27
4. Click the Property button in the Selection panel of the main command area to display a list
of the object’s properties.
Default property
nodes of a Click the Property button to
primitive object. display a pop-up explorer
that lists all the properties of
your selected object.
Properties that are shared

between objects are italicized.
You can edit properties within a property editor and directly in a viewport.
5. Press m and drag to move a point on the arc from within the Camera view.
6. Modify the Start Angle and End Angle of the arc by dragging sliders in its property editor.
7. Move another point on the arc.
8. Click the Property button again to display the arc’s properties and note that two
MoveComponent operator nodes were added under the object’s primitive node.
9. Select one of the MoveComponent node labels and press the Delete key on the keyboard.
You will see that the corresponding “move point” operation was deleted from the arc curve.
Tutorial 2: Transformations
Creating relationships between objects is inevitable when building a scene, especially if the
objects will be animated. As in life, one of the most basic relationships between objects is that of
parent-child. This relationship also embodies the first rule of propagation: if the parent is blue
and the child has no local color (surface shader), it will inherit its parent’s blue color. Likewise,
if a parent object is translated, its child will inherit the translation as well. A proper hierarchical
setup can help you when you are selecting, transforming, and manipulating your scene objects.
This tutorial shows you how to:
• Create hierarchical relationships between objects through parenting.
• Transform and duplicate objects.
• Edit object properties using the property editor.
• Use simple deforms and constraints.
Tutorials • 29
Overview
1 Load the House scene, then

parent objects to create a
house hierarchy.
2 Select the house hierarchy

and duplicate it to create a
group of 22 houses.
3 Create a deformation object and constrain the houses to its surface.
4 Set random and relative values

on the surface constraint to
position the houses.
5 Set tangency and normals

constraints to fine-tune the
end result.
Tutorials • 31
The Hierarchy
Each object has a one-point position defined in space called the object center. This position is
always calculated according to a reference. This reference (global or local) is, by default, the 3D
space itself. When an object is the child of another object, its local reference is the parent
object’s center. The global reference always stays relative to the center of 3D world space (shown
by a cross in the middle of the default SOFTIMAGE|XSI grid).
Choose View > Centers from the main-menu bar to display object centers in all the
viewports.
Parent/Child Example:
Here, the moon has been parented to the earth.
The moon’s local reference is now the earth’s center.
When the earth’s center is transformed, the moon’s
center will be transformed as well.
Creating a Hierarchy
There are a number of possible ways to build these parenting relations and use them efficiently.
1. Open the HOUSE scene from the tutorial database:
<install directory>\content\tutorial_project\Scenes
2. From the main-menu bar, choose View > Views > Explorer to open the explorer in a
floating window.
Notice how all parts of the house appear in the scene root at the same level.
Drag and drop relationships

An easy way to make a hierarchical relationship is to drag and drop an object node (child) on
top of another node (its parent) using the explorer.
3. In the explorer, select the chimney object node.
4. Drag and drop the chimney over the HOUSE object node. The chimney becomes the child
of the HOUSE and descends in the hierarchy to a position beneath the HOUSE node.
Drag and drop the chimney node

on top of the HOUSE node.
The chimney becomes the child of

the HOUSE and descends in the
hierarchy to a position beneath
the HOUSE node.
5. Congratulations on your first child!
Parenting by command
The Parent button in the Constraint panel of the main command area lets you create
hierarchical relationships from a viewport.
You can accelerate the parenting process by using the forward slash (/) supra key
instead of the Parent button.
6. Deselect all objects by clicking and dragging in an empty area of the viewport. You can also
choose Selection > Deselect all.
7. Click the Parent button. Notice how the pointer changes while in a viewport when
Parenting mode is enabled.
Tutorials • 33
When you click the Parent button, your mouse buttons are mapped to a specific
parenting command: the left mouse button picks the child objects to be parented, the
middle mouse button picks the parent object for the selected object, and the right
mouse button ends the picking session for Parent mode. Look at the mouse status line
for your current mouse button status.
Mouse Status line
8. From any viewport, left-click to pick each of the six window objects as children. Because no
parent was first selected, the parenting command automatically creates a null object to be
used as the parent of the first selected child.
With nothing selected, start

picking the children (left
mouse button). In doing so,
you create a null as a parent.
Null hierarchy selected

and expanded
9. Exit Parent mode by deselecting the Parent button, pressing Esc, or right-clicking. This is a
very important step to do, otherwise you may continue to add children to your hierarchy,
select different parents, etc.
10. Expand the HOUSE and null objects. The tree in the explorer should be similar to that
shown in the previous illustration.
11. Drag and drop the null over the HOUSE to complete the house hierarchy. You can now
select individual objects in the hierarchy (left-click); select an object and its children or
branch-select (middle-click); select the whole hierarchy or tree-select (right-click).
12. Select the HOUSE hierarchy: in a viewport, right-click and drag across the house object to
select its hierarchy.
Duplicating an Object
13. With the HOUSE hierarchy selected, press Ctrl+d to instantly duplicate the hierarchy.
14. Press the v key to enter translation mode, then position the newly duplicated house next to
the original.
15. From the Edit panel in the main command area, choose Edit > Duplicate Multiple. Enter
20 in the Number of Copies text box and click OK. Twenty duplicates of the house are
created, each one offset the same amount from the others.
The offset used by the duplicate multiple is taken from the first offset created between the
two first houses. Choose Edit > Duplicate/Instantiate Options to enter a different offset.
Tutorials • 35
Adding a Twist Deformation

Now create a grid that you will twist.
16. From the Model toolbar, choose Get > Primitive > Surface > Grid. In the property editor
that appears, click the Grid tab and set the Grid U Length and V Length to 50.
17. With the grid still selected, choose Modify > Deform > Twist. Close the displayed property
editor to accept the default values.
18. Type house* in the Current Selection text box of the Selection panel, then press Enter. This
selects all objects in the scene with the word “house” in its name.
Type house*
Press Enter to display MULTI selection.
All the house objects in the scene are selected.
Using a Surface Constraint

With all the houses selected, you will constrain them to the grid’s surface.
19. From the Constraint panel in the main command area, choose Constraint > Surface.
20. Pick the grid. This causes all the houses to be constrained to the same position on the grid
surface. This also opens the Surface Constraint property editor for the multiple selection.
In the next steps, you will edit the surface constraint for the multiple selection in a multi-
selection property editor. Any changes made to the surface constraint properties will be
inherited by all objects in this selection. If you lose the selection focus or you inadvertently close
the [Multi]: Surface Cns property editor, you can recover it by using the Prev and Next
Inspected Nodes buttons at the top of the property editor, or you can do the following:
21. Select a single house.
Tutorials • 37
22. Click the Selection button in the Selection panel and select its Kinematics > Constraints >
Surface Cns node for the single house.
23. In the Current Selection text box, type house* and press Enter to open a surface constraint
multiple property editor.
Muting an Operator
You can temporarily mute the Twist operator to see exactly where on the surface you are
positioning the houses. To do this, you’ll first need to find the twist operator.
24. Select the grid. Alt+right-click the grid object and choose Modeling Properties from the
pop-up menu.
25. In the property editor that opens, click the Twist Op tab and select the Mute check box.
Adding Random Values

26. Right-click the Prev Inspected Nodes button and select the [Multi]: Surface Cns
property editor.
27. In the Surface Constraint property editor, enter r(0.5) for the U Location. This
randomly positions objects along half of the U direction of the surface.
The UV Location values of the Surface Constraint editor range from 0 to 1. Entering a
value such as 100 would give a cropped result (cropped values are left at nearest min/
max). This is why this example uses a decimal value (0.5).
28. Enter r(0.5) for the V Location. Leave the Constraint property editor open for now.
- Entering r in a text box generates a random number.

- Entering r(x) generates a number between 0 and x. The x value can also be
negative; for example, r(–100) will generate a value between –x and 0.
- Entering r(x,y) generates a number between x and y, where x or y could be less
than 0. For example, r(–100, 100) and r(100, –100) will both provide similar
results—values between –100 and 100.
Once the random equation is entered, the property editor considers the result only.
Therefore just the result, not the equation itself, can be edited.
Tutorials • 39
Adding Relative Values

All the houses are now randomly distributed along the first quarter of the UV surface. You will
notice that the random value cannot be displayed in the UV parameters because more than one
value is applied, but you can still increment each of these values.
29. Enter 0.25+ for the U Location to offset all the given values in the U. Repeat for the
V Location.
30. Now remove the mute from the Twist operator: select the grid, Alt+right-click the grid, and
choose Modeling Properties from the pop-up menu.
31. In the property editor that appears, click the Twist Op tab and deselect the Mute check box
to make the Twist deform active.
Tangency and Normal Constraints

32. Click the Prev Inspected Nodes button until you return to the [Multi]: Surface Cns
property editor.
33. Click the Normal tab and select the Active check box to constrain in the direction of
the normals.
34. Click the Tangency tab and select the Active check box.
35. Enter r in the Z Axis to Align (and press Enter) to rotate the houses randomly.
Take a look at the scene in Shaded view. You may need to orbit the camera to see the
houses clearly.
Conclusion
Constraints are particularly useful for creating complex behavior by having objects automatically
react to another’s animation. SOFTIMAGE|XSI provides you with a range of constraint types
from which to choose.
See Chapter 4: Animating with Constraints in the Animating guide for more information on
creating and editing constraint behavior between objects.
Tutorial 3: Scripts
Tutorial 3: Scripts
Anything that you can do interactively in SOFTIMAGE|XSI can also be done by writing scripts.
Simple scripts are basic SOFTIMAGE|XSI commands. More advanced scripts use a host
language such as Visual Basic to combine SOFTIMAGE|XSI commands.
SOFTIMAGE|XSI logs every command into a command history. You can retrieve these
commands and use them to create simple, one-command scripts that automate repetitive tasks,
or use them as building blocks in your own, more elaborate scripts.
In this tutorial you will:
• Open the script editor and repeat commands from the history.
• Create a button for a custom command.
• Try out a script that interacts with an e-mail application to send mail from within
SOFTIMAGE|XSI.
Tutorials • 41
Using the Command History

1. Open the script editor by clicking on the Scripting icon—the exclamation point (!)—beside
the Playback controls below the timeline.
Opens the script editor. 2. Clear the history log by choosing Edit > Clear History Log from the script editor command bar.
3. From any toolbar, choose Get > Primitive > Surface > Sphere to create a sphere. Notice how
the command is instantly logged in the History pane of the script editor.
4. Translate the sphere in any direction.
5. From the Command Box (at the extreme left of the timeline), click the arrow to show the
drop-down menu and select the line:
CreatePrim "Sphere", "NurbsSurface"
Click the arrow.
Select command.
6. Press Enter. The Create Sphere command is repeated.

You have just used scripting in its most basic form: using the Command History to execute
a command.
Creating Custom Commands

7. Choose View > Custom Toolbars > New Toolbar from the main-menu bar and name the
new toolbar Delta (or anything else you want). Click OK. Leave the toolbar open.
8. Select the first two lines in the history log:
CreatePrim "Sphere", "NurbsSurface"
Translate, xxxx, xxxx, xxxx, xxxx, xxxx, xxxx, xxxx
These two commands create and translate a NURBS sphere.
9. Drag and drop these two lines onto the toolbar.
10. In the Add Script Command dialog box that opens, type Quick Sphere as the command
name. This is the name that will appear on the button in the toolbar. On the line below you
can enter a command name for scripting: type Quicksphere.
Tutorial 3: Scripts
11. Click OK to close the Add Script Command dialog box. The new button is added to
the toolbar.
12. From the Edit panel of the main command area, choose Edit > Select All, then Edit >
Delete Selected (do not save the scene).
13. Click on the Quick Sphere button in the toolbar. Your custom command creates and
translates a sphere. Close the toolbar.
14. Once again, choose choose Edit > Select All, then Edit > Delete Selected.
15. In the Command Box, type Quicksphere and press Enter to invoke your saved script.
This is another method of calling and executing a frequently used script from the
Command Box.
Interacting with Other Applications

Scripts allow you to interact with other applications that recognize the host script language. For
example, you can have SOFTIMAGE|XSI send you an e-mail when a render is complete. To
learn more about this feature, you will load the e-mail example available in
<install directory>\content\tutorial_project\scripts\MAIL_TEST.vbs
E-mail Example
This example works for Windows NT only and requires Microsoft Outlook as the
e-mail application.
1. Choose View > Custom Toolbars > New Toolbar from the main-menu bar to create a
toolbar. Name it Test.
2. Open the script editor by clicking the Scripting icon (!) to the left of the timeline.
3. Click the New button.
Always click New before working on a new script even if the script-editor window is
empty. The script-editor title bar should display “untitled”—this prevents you from
accidentally overwriting script files.
4. Open a browser, and drag and drop the MAIL_TEST script from the data folder (<install
directory>\content\tutorial_project\Scripts) onto the script editor.
Tutorials • 43
5. Remove the “xxx” item in the message line and type in your e-mail address; for example,
“[email protected]”.
This script will execute once when it is parsed. You must enter a valid e-mail address
for the script to parse properly. After the script has been parsed, it will use the address
you enter in the next few steps.
6. Click the Save button and close the script editor.
7. From the browser, drag and drop the MAIL_TEST script onto the toolbar you created.
8. In the Add Script Command dialog box that appears, click the Parse Script button. Once
the script is parsed, its variables are displayed.
9. Click inside the Value text box for each parameter and choose Prompt on Run from the
pull-down menu for each of the parameters: dst, subj, and body. Click OK to close.
10. Click the MAIL_TEST button in the toolbar.
11. Enter your e-mail address for “dst,” your subject title for “subj,” and your e-mail text for
“body.” Click OK.
You have mail!
Conclusion
Scripting is a powerful and flexible tool for doing almost anything. Almost all features in
SOFTIMAGE|XSI are available through scripting. You can copy and paste commands from the
history to automate repetitive tasks, or write your own scripts from scratch. And you are not
limited to a proprietary scripting language—you can use any scripting language that supports
ActiveX, including VBScript, JScript, PerlScript, and Python ActiveX Scripting.
For more information, see Chapter 7: Commands & Scripts of the Fundamentals guide.
Sec t ion 3 Modeling & Deformations
Tutorials • 45
Section 3 • Modeling & Deformations
Tutorial 4: Surfaces
Burt is an alien creature. He provides an introduction to the various tools for creating and
modifying surfaces.
• Create surfaces using Curve Net, Loft, Merge, and Fillet.
• Modify surfaces using Clean, Extend to Curve, and Stitch.
• Use layers to organize your scene.
• Create seamless NURBS surface meshes.
Tutorials • 47
Overview
1 Create Burt’s head using Curve Net, Clean, and Merge.
2 Create Burt’s middle using Loft and Extend to Curve.
Create a fillet between Burt’s

3 back and spines.
4 Stitch Burt’s head to his middle. 5 Assemble a single surface out of Burt’s head, middle, and back.
Creating a Surface with Curve Net

You’ll use the Curve Net tool to create a surface section of Burt’s head. Curve Net creates a
surface from two sets of curves: a set in U and a set in V.
1. Open the burt scene from the tutorial database:
<install directory>\content\tutorial_project\Scenes. The Burt model (shown below)
comprises the alien’s head and back.
Burt’s back
Burt’s head
Pressing the g key hides or displays the grid for the viewport that currently has focus.
This is the one under the mouse pointer if Give Windows Focus When The Mouse
Enters Them is on in the General page of File > User Preferences.
2. Choose Selection > Free Form Tool from the Selection panel in the main command area.
The Free Form selection tool lets you select scene elements by drawing a line across them.
3. Select the first curve at the tip of the head. You may need to zoom or dolly in a little first:
- To track from side to side or up and down, hold down the z key while dragging the left
mouse button.
- To zoom in, hold down the z key while middle-clicking.
- To zoom out, hold down the z key while right-clicking.
Tutorials • 49
- To dolly in or out, hold down the p key while dragging left or right. Use the left, middle,
and right mouse buttons to dolly at a slow, medium, or fast speed respectively.
- To orbit in the perspective view, hold down the o key while dragging. Use the left mouse
button to orbit freely, the middle mouse button to orbit horizontally, and the right mouse
button to orbit vertically.
If you pressed and released the z, p, or o key too quickly, you may have activated the
zoom, dolly, or orbit tool in sticky mode instead of supra mode. If this is the case, press
and release the space bar to return to the selection tool before selecting the first curve.
Select the first curve
4. From the Model toolbar, choose Create > Surface > Curve Net. The status bar at the bottom
of the screen prompts you to pick curves.
5. Draw a freeform line (with the left mouse button) to select all the other curves that cross the
head lengthwise, starting with the curve next to the first one.
The white line shows the freeform

path used to select the curves.
If you make a mistake, Ctrl+click to “unpick” the last curve. Repeat to “unpick”
successive curves.
6. Right-click when you have finished picking the first set of curves and are ready to select the
next set of curves.
Tutorials • 51
7. With the left mouse button, draw a line across the head section to select all the curves in the
other direction beginning with the curve near the center of the head (don’t pick the curve in
the center just yet).
Start drawing the freeform

line from here...
...to here.
8. Right-click to finish the surface. A new surface is created with the default name surfmsh and
the Curve Net property editor opens. Leave the values at their defaults.
Cleaning a Surface
Because the resulting surface may have too many points, the Clean tool allows you to control
the number of points on your surface.
9. With the half-head surface (surfmsh) still selected, choose Modify > Surface > Clean from
the Model toolbar.
10. Make sure that both Clean in U and V are on, and modify the Tolerance values until the
balance between the amount of detail and the number of subdivisions (the “heaviness” of
the geometry) is to your liking.
Merging Surfaces
The next task is to merge the new surface to the other half of the head, using a curve for the
transition. The Merge Surfaces tool creates a new surface that spans the two original ones.
11. With the new surface (surfmsh) still selected, choose Create > Surface > Merge from the
Model toolbar.
12. Pick the other half of the head by clicking on it.
Tutorials • 53
Pick the other half of the head.

Then pick the middle curve
to use for a transition.
You can cancel any mode or tool you are using by pressing the Esc key.
13. Pick the middle curve to act as an intermediate between the two surfaces. A new surface is
created with the default name surfmsh1, and the Merge Surfaces property editor opens.
At first, the new surface may look completely different from what you intended because the
wrong boundaries were merged—you will fix this in the next step.
14. In the Merge Surfaces property editor, set the boundaries so that both surfaces merge
together via the middle curve.
- The options on the Boundaries page determine which boundaries of the original two
input surfaces are merged. For this example, set Surface 1 to Min U Boundary (Red) and
Surface 2 to Min V Boundary (Green). Red and green refer to the boundary colors that
are displayed if Show > Boundaries is on in a viewport (View > Boundaries for all
viewports) and the input surface is selected.
- On the Shape page, set Seam to Curve. This specifies that the seam between the two input
surfaces is the curve you picked earlier.
All of the viewport functions (Pan, Orbit, Shaded mode, etc.) are available while a
property editor is open and being modified.
Middle curve used to

merge the two head
pieces together.
Resulting merged
surface highlighted.
15. Click on the Clean tab and adjust the Tolerance. When cleaning a surface, try to obtain the
least number of subdivisions (resolution) without losing the original shape.
16. Close the property editor.
Relational Modeling
Relational modeling allows you to modify a surface using the curves from which the surface was
built. For example, you can create a glass by revolving a profile and relational modeling allows
you to edit the glass by moving points on the original profile curve. Relational modeling is
SOFTIMAGE|XSI’s default behavior.
17. Enter *middle_curve* in the Selection text box in the Selection panel of the main command
area and press Enter. This selects any scene element with the string middle_curve in its
name. In this example, it selects the creature_demo_middle_curve curve—the one in the
middle of the head.
18. Move the mouse pointer over the perspective view and press F12 to enlarge it to full screen.
Press f to frame the selected curve.
Tutorials • 55
19. Use the m key to interactively move points on the curve, or tag points with the t key and
translate them. Notice how the merged head changes shape in response to the new shape of
the curve. Notice also that you can select the merged head and move points on it—these
changes are preserved when you reselect the curve and move points on it.
Freezing the Operator Stack

Freezing the operator stack collapses the surface’s construction history and breaks the
modeling relation with the input curves. It is as if the surface was imported “as is” directly
into SOFTIMAGE|XSI.
20. Select the merged head surface that you just created (surfmsh1).
21. From the Edit panel of the main command area, choose Edit > Freeze Operator Stack. This
removes the operator history of the surface, including the modeling relations.
22. Try selecting the curve in the middle of the head and moving points again. Notice how the
merged head surface is no longer affected by changes to the curve.
Lofting
Loft is a new tool that allows you to create a surface out of a series of curves, similar to the Skin
function of SOFTIMAGE|3D. However, with the Loft command you don’t need the same
number of points on each curve. You can also loft directly from a curve, isoline, boundary, or
knot curve to another curve, isoline, boundary, or knot curve.
23. With the mouse pointer over the viewport, press F12 again to return to the four-port view.
24. Select the back of the body (skin245_1).
Click the triangle

to choose a
selection filter.
Burt’s back
25. Choose V Knot Curve from the Selection Filter list (above the Selection text box in the
Selection panel of the main command area).
A knot curve is a curve defined by knots on a surface. By default these curves are not visible
but can still be selected with the knot curve selection filter.
26. Select the first V knot curve on the back surface.
Choose the V Knot

Curve filter.
Selected V knot curve in white.
27. From the Model toolbar, choose Create > Surface > Loft.
28. Switch back to the Object selection filter before picking curves. Alternatively, you can
choose Curve from the Selection Filter list but don’t forget to change it when you want to
select something else.
29. Pick the first three of the free-floating curves in order, as in the illustration below. Don’t
pick the last curve—you’ll add it in a later step.
Object selection
filter button
Tutorials • 57
Pick the three curves in order 3 2 1
Leave the last curve for now
30. Right-click to finish picking. A new surface is created (by default named surfmsh2) and the
Loft property editor opens. Leave the values at their defaults.
Lofted surface
Using the Extend-to-Curve Command

You can now attach the last curve to Burt’s back. As the name implies, the Extend to Curve tool
extends the selected surface to include a chosen curve.
31. Make sure that only the lofted section (surfmsh2) is selected.
You can check the Selection text box to validate your selection—if you have more than
one selection, it displays MULTI (nn).
If more than one object is selected, you can use the Selection button in the Selection
panel of the main command area to refine the selection. Click the Selection button, and
a pop-up explorer appears listing all selected elements. Click on an individual element
to select only it.
32. Choose Modify > Surface > Extend to Curve from the Model toolbar.
33. Pick the last remaining curve to join it to the alien’s back surface. The Extend to Curve
property editor opens.
Pick the remaining curve
34. If the wrong boundary was extended to the curve, set Boundary to Max V Boundary.
Tutorials • 59
35. Clean the surface by choosing Modify > Surface > Clean (as described on page 53).
Filleting Intersections
The Fillet Intersection tool lets you create a seamless surface between two intersecting objects;
in this case, the back and the spikes.
36. Select the back section (skin245_1)once again.
37. Choose Create > Surface > Fillet Intersection from the Model toolbar.
38. Pick the spiked surface on the model’s back with a left click. The fillet is created (default
name surfmsh3) and the Fillet Intersection property editor opens.
To tweak your fillet parameters, you may find it helpful to change your viewport
display to Shaded view.
39. Adjust the parameters in the Fillet Intersection property editor. You can set the number of
U and V subdivisions as well as the radius of the fillet. If you set the radius too high for the
intersecting objects, it becomes impossible to calculate the fillet and the result is a
degenerate surface.
Selected fillet
Stitching Surfaces Together

The Stitch tool seamlessly “stitches” surfaces together, unlike a Merge which creates a new
object. This tool brings several surfaces’ boundaries together without creating new knot curves.
40. Select the head surface of the alien (surfmsh1).
Tutorials • 61
Select the head
41. Choose Modify > Surface > Stitch from the Model toolbar.
42. Select the middle surface (surfmsh2) previously created with the Loft tool.
Pick the middle surface
43. Right-click to complete the stitch operation and open the Stitch property editor.
44. In all likelihood, the wrong boundaries were stitched together. For this example, set both
options on the Boundaries page to Max V Boundary—the back boundary of the head is
deformed to the front boundary of the middle surface. You can also adjust the Tolerance on
the Clean page to reduce the number of isolines. Close the Stitch property editor.
45. Translate the head a little using the v key to see how the surfaces remain stitched together.
Undo the translation with Ctrl+z.
Organizing the Scene with Layers

As objects, surfaces, and curves start to accumulate, your scene can start to get heavy. You can
use layers to hide some elements and display only others.
46. Select the merged head (surfmsh1), lofted middle (surfmsh2), back (skin245_1), spines
(skin251), and fillet (surfmsh3). To do this quickly:
- Choose Selection > Rectangle Tool from the Selection panel of the main command area.
- Choose Surface_Mesh from the Selection Filter list. This prevents you from selecting any
curves or other types of objects.
- Click and drag to define a rectangle around Burt. If Selection > Select Single Object in
Region is on, hold down the Shift key while dragging.
Tutorials • 63
- Click the Selection button on the Selection panel, then Ctrl+click on individual items to
refine the selection list.
Selection button
Ctrl+click to select
or deselect
individual items.
47. From the Layers panel in the main command area, choose Layers > New Layer and name
your new layer. This creates a new layer including the active selection.
48. Choose Layers > Layer Control (or press the 6 key). The Layer Control box opens. From
here you define the visibility, renderability, and selectability of each layer.
49. Turn off View for all layers except the layer you just created. Close the Layer Control box.
Turn off the View visibility

for the other layers.
Use the ‘ key (under the Esc key on most keyboards) to quickly close the active
property editor.
Assembling Seamless Surfaces

The Assemble tool creates a new surface mesh based on the selected surfaces. A surface mesh is
a single 3D object composed of multiple subsurfaces. Although the result may look like a single
surface, you can still pick the individual component subsurfaces.
50. Select Burt’s back, middle, and head surfaces.
51. Choose Create > Surf Mesh > Assemble from the Model toolbar. The Assemble NurbsMesh
dialog box opens.
52. Accept the default values and click OK.
53. The Surface Mesh property editor opens. Give the new surface mesh a name if desired, then
close the property editor.
54. From the Selection Filter list, choose Subsurface.
55. Select the alien’s head and translate it a few units away. Notice how there is no continuity
between the subsurfaces yet.
Using Surface Continuity Manager

56. Turn the Object selection filter back on in the Selection panel of main command area. The
assembled surface mesh is automatically selected.
57. Choose Create > Surf Mesh > Continuity Manager and leave the options at their
default values.
58. From the Selection Filter list, choose Subsurface again. The last component selected, in this
case the head, is automatically selected again.
59. Translate the head a few more units away to see how the continuity between surfaces
is maintained.
Conclusion
This tutorial introduced you to a few of the modeling tools available in SOFTIMAGE|XSI.
There are many other tools for creating and modifying surfaces, including Revolution,
Extrusion, Birail, and so on. See the Modeling & Deformations guide for more information.
Tutorials • 65
Tutorial 5: Weight Maps

Weight maps are used to precisely distribute the intensities of constraints and/or deformations.
You can also use them to define the envelope weighting of a character.
• Use weight maps to modulate the amplitude of deformations.
• Paint weight values on maps.
• Work with Push, Curve, and Spine deformations.
• Assign envelope weights by painting.
Overview
1 Paint a push deformation.
2 Control a deformation by curve

with a weight map.
3 Modulate a deformation by spine.
4 Paint envelope weights.
Tutorials • 67
Using Weight Maps and Deforms

Weight maps allow you to modify the amplitude and zone of influence of an effect. In this
example, you will apply a weight map to a torus and deform it with a Push operator. You will
then adjust the deformation by painting on the weight map with the General Attribute Painting
(GAP) tool.
1. Start with a new scene by choosing File > New Scene or pressing Ctrl+n.
2. Create a torus by choosing Get > Primitive > Surface > Torus from the Model toolbar.
Leave the size and geometry at their default values.
3. Tag all the points on one half of the torus by pressing and holding t while dragging the
pointer over them. The weight map will be applied to the tagged points. If you don’t tag
points first, the weight map will be applied to all the points on the object.
Selects only groups
or clusters when 4. Choose Get > Property > Weight Map. This defines a cluster with the selected points and
active (green) creates a weight map on it. The Weight Map property editor opens.
To see the weight map in a viewport, make sure that the display type is set to Constant and
Selects only points
when active
that Show > Weight Maps is on. These options are set automatically when you paint on a
weight map.
5. From the Model toolbar, choose Modify > Deform > Push. The Push property editor
opens. Because the weight map was selected when you applied the deformation, it is already
connected to the Amplitude parameter, as indicated by the red connection icon.
You can double-click on the title bar to minimize or expand the property editor if it’s in
your way.
6. Set the Amplitude to 2. This pushes the cluster points 2 units in the normal direction.
7. On the Weight Map Generator page, experiment with the various parameters. For example,
you can select various predefined weight maps such as linear and radial ramps for the
Weight Map Type.
8. Before proceeding to the next section, create a blank weight map for painting your own
strokes: set Weight Map Type to Constant, Base Weight to 0, Weight Value Range -
Maximum to 1, and Minimum to –1. Close the Weight Map property editor.
Painting Weights
The Paint tool allows you to paint attributes, such as envelope weights, deformation weights,
etc., onto an object’s surface.
9. With the weight map still selected, press the w key to activate the Paint tool.
10. With the mouse pointer over the Camera viewport, press F12 to enlarge it to full screen.
11. Middle-click and drag to adjust the brush radius.You can also “bump” the brush radius up
or down in increments using the up and down arrow keys.
12. Experiment with a few strokes on the surface. The left mouse button paints positive values
and the right mouse button erases or paints negative values.
Tutorials • 69
Press Ctrl+w to display the Brush property editor. The Coverage parameter on the
Painting page defines how the brush wraps around a three-dimensional object. This
allows you to paint on back and front of an object at the same time. The Coverage
icon provides a visual representation of how much the brush wraps around the object,
like a cross-section.
13. Click Object on the Selection panel to return to Object selection mode, then deselect all by
clicking in empty space.
14. Select the torus.
15. Click the Selection button (beneath the Explore button in the Selection panel) in the main
command area. A pop-up explorer opens.
16. Double-click on the Push Op icon. The Push property editor opens.
17. Experiment with different Amplitude values.
Even though the Amplitude slider stops at 2, you can push the value higher by
manually typing any value.
Weight Maps and Deformation by Curve

1. Press Ctrl+n to start a new scene.
2. Choose Get > Primitive, then press the s key followed by g to create a surface grid. Increase
the subdivisions to get a higher resolution—the more subdivisions there are, the smoother
the deformation will be.
3. Choose Create > Curve > Draw CV NURBS from the Model toolbar.
4. Draw a curved line in the Front view. Create your first point near the grid and the rest in an
upward direction (otherwise you may need to invert the curve later on). Make sure the
curve is over the grid as shown in the illustration. Press Esc or the space bar to return to the
Selection tool when you have finished drawing the curve.
Create a simple, almost linear curve. If the curve’s bends are too sharp, the resulting
deformation may end up being too distorted for a clear example. You can adjust the
curve later on because relational modeling is on by default.
5. Select the grid.
6. Choose Get > Property > Weight Map. This creates a cluster comprising all the points on
the grid, and creates a weight map on that cluster. The Weight Map property editor opens.
7. To display property maps when the Paint tool is not active, change the Camera viewport (B)
from Wireframe to Constant by selecting it from the drop-down menu in the upper-right of
the viewport and make sure that Show > Weight Maps is on.
8. In the Weight Map property editor, select the Radial XZ for the Weight Map Type and select
Invert Weights.
9. Choose Modify > Deform > by Curve.
10. Pick the curve you created in previous steps. The Curve Deform property editor opens.
11. In the property editor, increase the Translation Along Curve values until the grid is halfway
up the curve. Notice how the curve deformation is more pronounced where the weight map
has higher values.
Tutorials • 71
12. Click on the Lock icon of the property editor, then scroll down to the Weight Map
Generator page and experiment with the various parameters.
Lock Icon
You can paint on top of the generic gradients you select—make sure the weight map is selected
before painting on it.
Activate the Mute on the Curve Deform page so that you can paint on the
undeformed shape.
Press Crtl+w to open the Brush property editor.
Move points on the deforming curve to interactively adjust the deformation.
Weight Maps and Deform by Spine

A Spine is basically a curve that can deform a surface.
The Deform by Spine tool automatically creates a weight map—you don’t have to create one
before using this tool.
1. In a new scene (Ctrl+n), choose Get > Primitive > Surface > Grid. Increase the subdivisions
to get a higher resolution.
2. Choose Create > Curve > Draw CV NURBS to draw a curve on the grid surface in the Top
view. When you have finished drawing the first curve, middle-click on the Create > Curve
button (repeats the previous command) to draw a second curve as shown in the illustration.
3. Press the space bar and select the grid. Choose Modify > Deform > by Spine from the
Model toolbar. The status bar prompts you to select curves.
4. Pick the two curves then right-click to terminate the picking session. The Deform by Spine
Op property editor opens.
5. Click on the Lock (keyhole) icon to keep this property editor open.
6. Select one of the curves.
7. Press the m key, then move points on the curve along the Y axis.
8. On the Deform by Spine Op property editor, adjust the Falloff Amplitude profile curve to
see the effect:
- Click to select the curve.
- Drag the control points to move them. You can also drag the handles to adjust the tension.
- Press the a key while clicking to add a control point. Press the d key while clicking to
delete points.
- Right-click on the profile graph for more options. For example, you can load a preset
curve from the Presets menu.
Tutorials • 73
Envelope Weighting
1. In a new scene, choose Get > Primitive > Surface > Sphere. Scale it in Y by 5.
Enter 5 to scale in Y
2. From the Model or Animate toolbar, choose Create > Skeleton > 2D Chain.
3. In the Front view, draw a three-bone chain inside the sphere by clicking to place the root, joints,
and effector. Use the illustration at left for reference. Right-click to finish drawing the chain.
4. Select the sphere.
5. From the Animate toolbar, choose Deform > Envelope > Set Envelope. Click OK to accept
the default options.
6. Select the three bones one after the other. Right-click when you have finished picking.
The Automatic Envelope Assignment property editor opens—leave the options at their
default values.
You can branch-select a chain with the middle mouse button when setting the
envelope. You are not obliged to use all the bones in a chain. You can also keep the
root and effector excluded from the envelope’s deformers.
7. Move the effector to see the effect of the automatic envelope weighting.
Points in the envelope are automatically weighted between the deforming bones. The points’
colors indicate how they are weighted between the deformers.
8. Select the sphere and frame it in the Camera view by pressing the a key.
9. Press F12 with the pointer in the camera viewport.

10. Press the w key to activate the Paint tool. The Display mode temporarily switches to
Constant and Show > Weight Maps is turned on.
11. Drag left or right with the middle mouse button to adjust the brush diameter, or press
Ctrl+w and experiment with other brush properties.
12. Press Ctrl+e to open the Envelope Weights editor.
Lock the property editor to
prevent it from being recycled
Select a deformer
to paint weights
13. Click on the Lock (keyhole) icon at the top of the property editor and leave the editor open.
14. Select a bone under Deformers, then click and drag to use the Paint tool to weight points
toward the corresponding bone. Use the o supra key to orbit as you work.
15. Continue painting weights for different bones until you are satisfied with the weighting.
When you have finished painting, press Esc or the space bar to return to the Selection tool.
16. Move the effector to see the effect of your new weight map.
Tutorials • 75
Conclusion
Deformations are a powerful and flexible way to control the shape of objects, and weight maps
give you even more control. You can paint weights onto maps to create exactly the shape you need.
See the Modeling & Deformations guide for more information.
Sec t ion 4 Animating
Tutorials • 77
Section 4 • Animating
Tutorial 6: Constraints, Expressions & Particles

Constraints, expressions, and particles are three ways of animating in SOFTIMAGE|XSI
without directly manipulating an animated object. Constraints and expressions allow you to
base one object’s motion on another object’s shape or behavior, while you use particles to create
effects such as smoke and sparks by animating certain parameters over time.

• Animate an airplane along a path.
• Create a second airplane and animate it using expressions to guide its behavior as it travels
along the path.
• Create a smoke effect for both airplanes.
Tutorials • 79
Overview
1 Create and modify the path.
Animate the plane on the path and

its tangency and roll.
2 Duplicate the airplane.

Use compensation to offset the duplicate airplane.
Create an expression to control the plane’s behavior

as it travels along the path.
3 Create the particle animation.
Tutorials • 81
Animating on a Path
In this example, you will animate an airplane along a path and keep its nose pointing forward by
constraining it to the tangency of the curve. You will also duplicate the airplane, preserving its
path and tangency constraint, and use compensation to offset the duplicate from the original.
1. Load the AIRPLANE scene from the tutorial database:
<install directory>\content\TUTORIAL_PROJECT\Scenes.
2. In viewport A (Top), zoom out until there is enough space in front of the airplane to draw
its animation path.
Draw a curve to be used for the path animation

This curve will be the path which will “drive” the airplane.
3. In either the Model or Animate toolbar, choose Create > Curve > Draw CV NURBS. Draw
a path for the airplane to follow in the Top view, as shown in the illustration at left.
Modify the curve in Y to animate the airplane altitude

4. In the Front view, press the f key to frame the curve.
5. Press the m key to switch to Move Point mode.
6. Move some points along the Y axis to set the airplane’s change in altitude.
As an alternative to move-point mode, you can use the t supra key to tag (select)
points on the curve and the v supra key to translate them.
7. Press the space bar to return to select mode.
8. In the Top view, right-click the airplane to select the entire hierarchy.
9. Choose Constraint > Curve (Path) from the Constraint panel in the main command area.
10. Pick the curve.
The PathCns property editor appears and displays the Path Percentage control. This is
where you animate the constraint according to its progression along the path.
The Tangency and Up Vector tabs give you direct access to related constraints.
Tutorials • 83
Keyframing Marked Parameters

In the next few steps, you will mark and animate the Path Percentage and Up Vector Roll
constraints. Marking lets you create keyframes for specific parameters, as opposed to
keyframing all parameters in a property editor.
When you click the Mark Parameter icon (the arrow) in the Animation panel at the
bottom of the main SOFTIMAGE|XSI window, it displays a list of parameters that can
be directly marked from the selected elements. If a single parameter is marked, its
name is displayed in the Animation panel.
11. Change the end frame to 200 in the End Frame box at the right end of the timeline.
End frame
12. In the PathCns property editor, select the Path tab, then mark Path Percentage by clicking
on its name. The name is highlighted in yellow.
13. On the Up Vector page, select the Active option and mark the Roll parameter by
Ctrl+clicking on its name.
Ctrl+clicking a parameter name toggles a parameter’s marking without affecting

Marked-parameter Mark Parameter icon
display box
other marked parameters.
14. At frame 1, make sure that Path Percentage on the Path page is at 0 and Roll on the Up
Vector page is at –360. Click the keyframe icon at the top of the property editor to set a key
on those two marked parameters.
15. Move to frame 200 in the timeline. Change the Path Percentage to 100% and Roll to 360.
Click the keyframe icon again.
16. Click the Tangency tab and select the Active option to activate the tangency constraint.
Change the Axis to Align on X to –1. Close the PathCns property editor.
17. In viewport B, switch to User view and Ctrl+click the curve. Press Shift+f to frame the
airplane and the curve in the viewport.
As an alternative to Constraint > Curve (Path), you can use the Create > Path > Set
Path command. This prompts you for the start and end frames for quick path settings.
Duplicating the Object with Its Constraint

18. Ctrl+click the curve again so that only the airplane is selected, then press Ctrl+d to
duplicate it. This duplicates the object and its constraints but since the duplicated airplane
is in the same position as the original, there is no visible change in the 3D views. You can see
the duplicated airplane in the Explorer view in viewport D.
19. Play the animation: The two planes follow the same path.
Constraint Compensation
20. Wouldn’t it be better if the airplanes were not on top of one another? Click the Comp.
button in the Constraint panel on the main command area, then click the translate (t)
button in the Transform panel. Translate the second airplane to another location and
deselect the Comp. button.
The compensation tool lets you interactively create an offset to a constraint. You can use
compensation to reposition a constrained object or use compensation before applying a
constraint and get the offset from its relative position.
Do not animate while in compensation mode because you would be keyframing the
offset rather than the path translation.
21. Play back the animation. The duplicated airplane remains offset from the original.
You can access the constraint’s property editor from the explorer to modify the
constraint. Select the object, open the explorer, and use the selection filter option by
choosing Scene > Selection from the explorer menu. Expand the object node, and
select Kinematic > Constraints > PathCns.
Adding Expressions
22. With the duplicated airplane selected, click the Property button in the Selection panel.
23. Click the PathCns icon (AIRPLANE_BODY1 > Kinematics > Constraints > PathCns) to
open the constraint property editor.
24. Select the Path tab, right-click on the animation icon (the green box) of the Y parameter under
Attach Point - Constrained Object, and choose Set Expression. The expression editor opens.
The expression editor window has two main panes: the message log in the upper pane and
the editing pane below it. The affected (target) element is listed in the text box with its
current value on the right.
Tutorials • 85
Value of affected element
Affected element
Message pane
Editing pane
25. Delete the value displayed in the editing pane, then from the expression editor’s command
bar choose Function > Profiles > Sinus to create an undulating wave.
26. Replace <period> (including the angle brackets) with Fc (current frame).
27. Replace <amplitude> with 5.
28. Replace [<offset>] with 100. You should now have sinus( Fc, 5, 100 ). This causes the second
plane to have a varying offset from the path, based on a sine wave.
29. Click Apply. The message window logs the validation of the expression on the affected element.
Experiment with different values for the period, amplitude, and offset to see how it affects the
plane’s position.
30. Choose View > Show Graph (or press Ctrl+g) for a visual representation of the Y-axis values.
Close the expression editor and the PathCns property editor.
Adding Particles
31. Select all the particle emitters on the planes: type *emit* in the Current Selection box in
the Selection panel and press Enter. The selection box should display “MULTI (4),”
indicating that four objects have been selected.
32. In viewport D (Explorer), choose the Selection filter (press e) and then click the Lock
button to lock the selections in the explorer view.
33. In the Animate toolbar, choose Simulate > System > Create Particle Cloud.
34. In the SparksOp property editor’s Simulation > Execution State drop box, select
Interactive. This causes the simulation to automatically update as you play back the scene.
35. Set Duration to 200 and close the editor. This makes the sparks active for the duration of
the animation.
Editing in Multiple Property Editors

36. In the explorer, select the Emission node under the AIR_EMITTER_L node by clicking its name.
37. In the Selection panel’s Current Selection text box, the selection name should appear as
AIR_EMITTER_L.EmissionProp. Change the _L in the name to _*, then press Enter. This
selects all emitters at once.
38. Press Enter a second time to open a multiple-selection property editor.
39. In the Emission tab, enter 200 for the Rate value. This sets the amount of particles emitted
per second. Enter 0.1 for the InheritVel, which assigns the particles one tenth the velocity
of the plane.
Editing the Particle Type

40. Click the Edit button next to ParType to edit the particle type.
41. Change the particle name to smoke.
42. Change the Maximum Life to 0.8 (the maximum lifespan of particles in seconds).
43. Change the Maximum Life Variance to 0.5 (maximum variation in the lifespan of particles
in seconds).
44. Keyframe the Mass to 2 at frame 0, and 0 at frame 200 (mass of particles will slowly
dissipate to nothing after 200 frames).
45. In the Size drop box, select Age. Each particle now scales according to its age.
46. Play back the animation.
Conclusion
In this exercise, you have used basic path constraints, expressions, and particle animation.
Usually, you will need to spend some time customizing these options to achieve a specific type
of movement. Experiment with keyframing some of the path constraint options or try different
expressions to see how the airplanes are affected, or change some of the particle settings to see
how a minor change can drastically affect the look of the airplanes’ smoke.
For more information, see the Animating guide.
Tutorials • 87
Tutorial 7: Linked Parameters

Linking parameters is a fast way of creating animation. You use one parameter to drive another,
without writing expressions. In this example, you will link the translation of cubes
(representing doors) to a sphere’s translation so that when the sphere gets close to a cube, the
cube slides out of the way.
There are two basic steps to creating linked parameters. This tutorial shows you how to:
• Link one parameter to another.
• Set relative values to define the function curve that relates the values of the two parameters.
Overview
1 Animate a simple scene.
2 Link each cube’s Z position

to the sphere’s X position.
3 Set relative values so that

the cubes move out of the
way automatically.
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Linking Parameters
The first thing you will do in this tutorial is to link one parameter to another. This establishes
the relationship that makes the value of the first parameter depend on the value of the second.
To move the cube out of the way of the sphere in this example, you will link a cube’s Z position
to the sphere’s X position.
1. Create a small scene as shown with some scaled cubes and a sphere arranged along the X
axis. Animate the sphere so it runs through the cubes.
2. Once the animation is done, select the first cube hit by the sphere and press the Property
button in the Selection panel on the main command area.
3. From the list, click the Kinematics > Local Transform icon.
4. Lock the Local Transformation property editor so it stays open.
Lock 5. In the Position controls, right-click the Animation icon (green box) beside the Position Z
parameter. Choose Link With from the menu that appears.
Right-click on Animation
icon (green box).
Choose Link With.
6. In the pop-up explorer that opens, expand the nodes along the Sphere/Kinematics/Local
Transform/Pos branch and pick the X parameter. Make sure you click the parameter’s name
X and not the icon.
The two parameters are now linked but you haven’t yet defined the relationship between
their values. You will do this next.
Icon shows that the
Z position is linked
Setting the Relative Values
When you set relative values, you specify the value of the driven parameter for a particular value
of the driving parameter. Relative values are similar to keys, where you specify the value of a
parameter at a particular frame. The difference between relative values and keys is that the
values are a function of another parameter rather than a function of the current frame.
7. At frame 1, right-click the Animation icon beside the Position Z parameter in the cube’s
Local Transformation property editor, then choose Set Relative Values.
8. Find the sphere position at which you want the cube to start moving—the sphere is already
animated, so move the frame slider until the sphere is just in front of the cube. Right-click
the icon beside the Position Z parameter and choose Set Relative Values again. This relative
value ensures that the cube stays in its current position until the sphere is almost about to
move through it.
9. Go to a frame where the sphere is in the middle of the cube and translate the cube out of the way
of the sphere by setting the Position Z value. When the cube is out of the way of the sphere’s
path, right-click the Animation icon beside Position Z and choose Set Relative Values.
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10. Play back the animation: the cube adjusts its position according to the sphere’s position.
Move the sphere interactively; note that the cube’s position depends on the sphere’s position
and not the current frame.
You can continue setting relative values to move the cube back after the sphere has gone by,
and repeat the procedure for the other cubes.
You may want to use the animation editor to change the interpolation of the relative
function curve to linear. To do this, right-click on the Position Z icon in the cube’s local
transform property editor and select Animation Editor. In the animation editor, select the
function curve and click on the Linear Interpolation button.
Conclusion
Linked parameters are a quick way to achieve relationships that would take a while to figure out
with expressions. They are especially useful with custom parameters, where you can create a
custom control panel to control a rig with sliders.
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Tutorial 8: Skeleton Construction

Skeletons provide an intuitive way to pose and animate your model. They are constructed with
articulated chains and objects, which can be animated by keyframing translations, rotations,
and scaling.

• Create articulated chains.
• Use chains and objects to build a skeleton for a particular model.
• Organize your skeleton’s components into a hierarchy.
Overview
1 Load the Jaiqua model.
Create separate layers for the

Jaiqua model and the skeleton.
2 Build the skeleton.
Arrange the
skeleton elements
into a hierarchy.
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Preparing to Build Your Skeleton

Biped skeletons can be created using an almost endless combination of articulated chains. You
will be creating a fairly standard skeleton over the Jaiqua geometry.
It’s important to use a reference while building a skeleton because they are usually created with
a specific character in mind. Not only must the skeleton be constructed according to the
geometry on which it will be used, but you also need a good idea of what this skeleton will be
able to do. For example, if the character only bends his back, the skeleton would need only a few
bones to achieve this simple motion.
Reference scenes from the tutorial database

<install directory>\content\tutorial_project\Scenes:
Jaiqua polygonal character (no inverse kinematics): JAIQUA_POSE.scn
Jaiqua and inverse kinematics (IK) skeleton: JAIQUA_IK.scn
Layers
Organizing the scene in layers will simplify building the chains in the next procedure. Layers
allow you to load the character and keep it on its own layer, letting you quickly access and toggle
its selectability and visibility.
1. Load the JAIQUA_POSE scene from the tutorial database:
2. Select the whole character by right-clicking on it.
3. Choose Layers > New Layer from the main-menu bar and enter Jaiqua as the layer name.
This creates a separate layer for your model so that it can’t be selected while you’re creating
the skeleton.
4. Deselect the character.
5. Choose Layers > New Layer from the main-menu bar and enter Skeleton as the layer
name. This is the layer you will use to create the chains.
6. Choose Layers > Layer Control and deactivate the selectability (Sel.) of the Jaiqua layer.
7. Select the Skeleton layer from the drop-down list under Layers menu.
Drawing the Chains
Draw your chain in the viewport that matches the plane defined by the root and
effector of the 2D chain as closely as possible. For example, if you are drawing a chain
that will rotate in the global Z axis, draw it in the Front viewport. The preferred angles
are set using these original angles, although you can still edit them at any time.
Working from a single viewport when drawing a chain gives the most predictable
results. Once you draw the chain, close the chain creation tool and tree-select the new
chain to position it according to the reference pose.
Chains drawn in the Top, Front, or Right viewports are always created with respect to
the center of the world (origin). Although all the chains look fine when they are
initially created, some will have to be repositioned after creation in order to fit
properly in the Jaiqua model.
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Joint Effector
Bone
Root
Example of a three-bone chain with its components.

step 3
Create the leg and foot chains
When you draw a chain, the first mouse click creates the root and the last click creates the
effector if followed by the end chain command (middle-click) or the end chain and exit
command (right-click). Middle-clicking allows you to start a new chain immediately without
needing to choose the Create > Skeleton > Draw 2D Chain or Draw 3D Chain command again.
1. Switch viewport D to the Right view, then frame Jaiqua’s legs. If desired, press g to toggle the
grid on or off.
2. Choose Create > Skeleton > 2D Chain from the Animate toolbar.
3. Click to position the first bone’s root over the leg as shown in the illustration at left.
step 4 4. Click over the knee to create the first bone, then click over the heel to create the second bone.
5. Middle-click to create the effector and end drawing the leg chain.
6. Click over the leg effector to create the foot root.
step 6 7. Click to make the foot bone
8. Click to make the toe bone.
step 7
9. Middle-click to create the effector and end drawing the foot chain.
step 8
Create the spine and head chains

steps 9
Create a four-bone spine chain, mounted with a two-bone head chain.
1. Frame Jaiqua’s torso in the Right viewport.
step 8
2. Click over the root position of the backbone.
steps 5, 6, 7 If you have exited the chain creation tool, choose Create > Skeleton > Draw 2D Chain
from the Animate toolbar to reactivate it.
step 4 3. Click at the next bone position as shown in the illustration at left.
4. Click at the next two bone positions.
5. Click over the neck.
6. Middle-click to create the effector and end drawing the spine chain.
step 3 7. Click over the spine effector to start creating the head chain.
8. Click over the ear position.
step 2
9. Click in front of the face to make the last chain. This bone allows you to tilt Jaiqua’s head.
10. Middle-click to create the effector and end drawing the head chain.
Create the arm and hand chains

1. Frame one of Jaiqua’s arms in the Top viewport.
2. Click over the left shoulder to create the root of the first bone, as show in the
following illustration.
3. Click over the elbow to create the first bone.
4. Click over the wrist.
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step 2 step 3 step 4
5. Right-click to end drawing the first bone.

6. Press Ctrl+d to duplicate the arm chain.
7. In the Z rotation box in the Transform panel of the main command area, enter 180 to rotate
the duplicate chain 180° about the global Z axis.
8. Translate the duplicate over Jaiqua’s other arm, then select both arm chains and translate
them vertically in Y until the roots are positioned at Jaiqua’s shoulders.
9. Press c to activate rotation mode, and make sure that Local transformation mode is on.
10. Select an upper arm bone and rotate it in Y until it is inside Jaiqua’s geometry. Repeat for
step 7 step 8 step 9 the other upper arm bone, then repeat for the lower arm bones.
11. Frame Jaiqua’s hand in the Front viewport.
12. Middle-click on Create > Skeleton and click over the wrist to start the hand chain, as in the
illustration at left.
13. Click over the knuckles to create the first bone.
14. Click over the fingertip position to create the last bone.
15. Middle-click to create the effector and terminate the chain.
16. In the Top view, translate the hand into place.
17. You may need to modify the bone’s length: Select the bone that needs to be adjusted and
press Enter to open the Chain Bone property page. Change the Length if needed.
18. Repeat the previous steps to create the other hand chain.
Create the shoulder-bone chains

The shoulder-bone chains are single-bone chains.
1. In the Front viewport, click to create the root of the first bone as in the illustration at left.
2. Click at the shoulder to create the bone.
3. Middle-click to create the effector and end drawing the shoulder chain.
4. Create the other shoulder chain by repeating the previous steps.
5. Right-click to create the effector and exit the chain creation tool.
6. In the Right viewport, Shift+select both shoulder chains and translate them into position.
step 2 step 1 Duplicate and position the leg chains

1. Right-click a bone in the leg chain to select the entire chain.
2. In the Front viewport, translate (press v) and rotate (press c) the leg chain to the right (over
Jaiqua’s right leg), as shown in the illustration below.
3. Press Ctrl+d to duplicate the chain.
4. Translate and rotate the new duplicated chain onto the other leg position.
5. Repeat the steps for the feet.
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Hierarchy Relations
Control objects are used as references and will also be used to provide a hierarchy for the
skeleton bones and effectors. Changing the hierarchy will allow local keyframing of bones
according to these control objects.
Chain roots and nulls would work just as well, but implicit cubes clearly show rotation from any
angle and are not rendered.
Create the hips and floor control objects

1. Choose Layers > Layer Control from the main-menu bar and deselect the View of the Jaiqua
layer. This hides Jaiqua’s geometry so it’s easier to work with the skeleton and control objects.
2. Close the Layer Control window.
3. Choose Get > Primitive > Implicit > Cube from any toolbar. Enter 2 for the implicit cube’s
Length and close the property editor.
Hips cube Floor cube
4. Press Ctrl+d to duplicate the cube.
5. Position one of the cubes between the feet and slightly above the heels. This is the floor cube.
6. Position the other cube between the backbone and legs. This is the hips cube.
Building the Hierarchy

Building a hierarchy by defining the parent/child relationship between each object in the
skeleton will help define the flexibility of the character so that it can be animated properly.
The following illustration shows the basic relations that you are going to build in the next
procedure. The last step will be to make the hips cube and floor cube children of a global null.
The effectors will be cut from their respective chains’ hierarchies and placed right under the
floor cube. The ability to remove an effector from its chain hierarchy is a new feature in
SOFTIMAGE|XSI.
global_null
Floor cube Hips cube
• R_hands • R_leg
• L_hands • L_leg
• R_foot • Spine
• L_foot • head
Parent the legs and backbone under the hips cube
You can build the hierarchy by using the Parent button in the Selection panel in the
main command area or via the explorer by dragging elements into place.
1. Select the hips cube, click the Parent button, and pick one of the leg’s roots to make it a
child of the cube. You may need the zoom for this.
2. Pick the other leg’s root.
3. Pick the backbone’s root.
4. Right-click to exit parent mode.
Be careful when using the Parent mode as you need to right-click to turn it off. For
example, you cannot temporarily select an object while in Parent mode.
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Parent the shoulders and head under the spine effector

5. Select the spine effector, click the Parent button, and pick a shoulder’s root.
6. Pick the other shoulder’s root.
7. Pick the head’s root.
Parent the arms under the shoulders

9. Select a shoulder’s effector, click the Parent button, and pick the corresponding arm’s root.
11. Select the other shoulder’s effector, click the Parent button, and pick the corresponding
arm’s root.
Parent the hands under the arms

13. Select an arm’s effector, click the Parent button, and pick the corresponding hand’s root.
15. Select the other arm’s effector, click the Parent button, and pick the corresponding hand’s root.
Parent the feet under the legs

17. Select a leg’s effector, click the Parent button, and pick the corresponding foot’s root.
19. Select the other leg’s effector, click the Parent button, and pick the corresponding foot’s root.
Parent the leg and arm effectors under the floor cube
21. Branch-select (middle-click) an arm’s effector (the hand should become selected as well).
22. Click the Parent button and middle-click the floor cube to make it the parent of the hand.
Right-click to exit parent mode.
23. Repeat the previous steps for the other hand and for the two feet as well.
Once you have completed these first parenting steps, you should be able to branch-select the
hips cube and the floor cube to select their children as shown in the following illustrations.
Parent the two cubes under a single null

24. With nothing selected, click the Parent button, then click the two cubes. Right-click to exit
parent mode.
Floor cube selected in branch mode Hips cube selected in branch mode
Conclusion
You have now completed a simple but typical biped skeleton setup. Save this scene as you will
use it later on.
To fully understand the hierarchy you have built, you will need to animate different parts of
the skeleton. Try the next tutorial to see how a well-constructed skeleton can fit into the
animation process.
For now, if you select the hips cube (in branch mode) and move it around, the feet and hands
will move with it. You will need to keyframe these objects (hands, feet, head) in order to really
see the local relation between the floor cube, the hips cube, and the chain elements.
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Tutorial 9: A Walk Cycle

A walk cycle is probably the most common character-animation task. It is a segment of a
walking sequence that can be repeated as the character travels from point to point. To be cycled
properly, all the keyframes defining two steps of a walk are needed (right foot leaves the floor,
goes forward, touches the floor; left foot leaves the floor, goes forward, touches the floor).
This tutorial explains the basic principles of a walk cycle. Here you will learn the basic concept
of keyframing and marking in SOFTIMAGE|XSI frame by frame, step by step.
The walk cycle you will be working on is kept to the minimum number of keys needed to create
the sequence. These keys will be created on three principal frames (frames 1, 20, and 40).
• Animate the translation of the skeleton’s feet and hands.
• Give the character’s feet a feeling of weight by editing the feet’s function curves in the
animation editor.
• Rotate the skeleton’s hips for added realism.
Overview
1 Translate the feet.
Change the interpolation of the function

curve in the animation editor.
Edit the function curve slope.
2 Translate the hands.

Rotate the hips for more natural movement.
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Starting the Sequence

The first frame sets the start of the sequence, and the last frame is an exact copy of the first in
order to have a perfect loop cycle. The middle frame is where a foot’s previous motion is
repeated on the other leg; that is, the first half is where the first foot goes forward and the
second half is where the other foot goes forward).
The animation of a character’s basic stride (two steps) is created and then repeated as necessary
to get the character from one place to another.
Rotation Limits
Setting rotation limits ensures that chain bending does not exceed the logical angles that you
expect from a typical biped. You will set these rotation limits on Jaiqua’s legs.
1. Use the skeleton created in the previous tutorial or load the JAIQUA_IK.scn scene from the
tutorial database: <install directory>\content\tutorial_project\Scenes. If desired, turn off
the visibility of the layer with Jaiqua’s geometry using Layers > Layer Control.
2. Select both feet by middle-clicking a leg’s effector, then holding down the Shift key while
middle-clicking the other leg’s effector.
3. Translate the effector hierarchies vertically until the knees are almost straight as in the
illustration on the left.
4. Select the second bone of each leg and choose Create > Skeleton > Set Minimum Rotation
Limit from either the Model or Animate toolbar.
5. To make the rotation limits visible, choose Show > Visibility Options from the viewport’s title
bar. In the property editor, click the Attributes tab and select Chain Joint Rotation Limits.
6. Select both feet again and position them so that the knees are bent as in the illustration at left.
7. Select the bones again and choose Create > Skeleton > Set Maximum Rotation Limit.
You can also change these limits by selecting a bone and pressing Enter to open its
property editor. The rotation limits can be found on the Kinematic Joint > Rotation
Limits page.
Animating Foot Translation

You will set all keyframes using the following basic procedure:
1. Go to a specific frame.
2. Position the object to be keyed (for example, a hand or foot).
3. Make sure that local translations are marked.
4. Set the key by clicking the keyframe icon (the key) in the Animation panel at the bottom of
the screen or by pressing k.
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Set keys on frame 1

1. Go to frame 1.
2. Branch-select a leg effector to select it and its child foot chain.
3. In the Right viewport, press v and move the foot up and forward as in the following illustration.
Position of the first foot

at frame 1.
4. Make sure that the Marked Parameter box in the bottom right corner displays
kine.local.pos (local translation) and press k to keyframe the local position of this foot at
frame 1. You can also click the keyframe icon in the Animation panel.
5. Select the other foot in branch mode.
6. In the Right viewport, translate the foot as shown in the following illustration.
The final position of both

feet at frame 1.
7. Keyframe the position of this foot at frame 1.
Set keys on frame 20

8. Go to frame 20. Now you will reverse the position of the feet.
9. In the Right viewport, drag the selected foot to approximately the same parallel position as
the other foot, as in the illustration on the left.
10. Set a keyframe for the position of this foot (frame 20).
11. Branch-select the other foot. In the Right viewport, position it approximately where the
previous leg’s effector was, as in the following illustration.
Drag the selected foot

over the other foot.
12. Keyframe the foot’s position.
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Set keys on frame 40

In these next steps, you will create a full cycle by copying the animation keys from frame 1 to
frame 40.
13. Go to frame 1.
14. With one foot branch selected, right-click on frame 40 in the timeline. A green line appears
in the timeline.
Right-clicking and dragging the playback cursor changes frames without changing the
values of animated objects. This allows you to copy keys from different frames.
15. Keyframe the position from frame 1 at frame 40.

16. Branch-select the other foot.
17. Go to frame 1.
18. Right-click on frame 40.
19. Keyframe the position from frame 1 at frame 40.
20. In the End Frame text box on the timeline, set the last frame of the animation to 39 and play
back the animation of Jaiqua walking. By playing to frame 39, you avoid repeating the
identical frames at 1 and 40.
Add keys to the walk cycle

Since you have keyed the translation on mainly one axis, the character seems to shuffle her feet.
To remedy this, you will first fix the foot that translates forward at frame 10, by making it
translate up before it moves toward the floor.
1. Select one of the feet by middle-clicking the leg effector. Play the animation and make sure
you have selected the foot that moves forward at frame 10. If you have the wrong foot
selected, select the other one. You can double-check that you have the correct foot by
scrubbing the timeline around frame 10.
2. Go to frame 10 and move the foot up and forward as in the following illustration.
The foot going forward is translated

up and keyed at frame 10.
3. Keyframe the foot’s local position.

4. Select the other foot.
5. Go to frame 30 and move the foot up and forward as you did in the previous steps.
6. Keyframe the foot’s local position.
Editing the Animation Function Curve

You can easily add some weight to the walk by changing the interpolation shape of the
translation function curves.
7. Branch-select both feet using the Shift key to make multiple selections. Make sure that you
include the leg’s effectors in the branch selections.
8. Choose Animation > Animation Editor from the Animation panel at the bottom of the
window. The animation editor displays all animated parameters by default.
You can also open the animation editor by pressing 0 (zero) on the top of the
keyboard (not the numeric keypad).
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Set the interpolation type of the feet’s Y translation

9. In the animation editor, select the Y translation of one of the feet. You can find the Y
translation in the property tree pane on the left, under Kinematics > Local Translation >
Pos > Y.
10. Select the key where the foot touches the floor (frame 20) by clicking on the key point.
11. Click the Linear Interpolation button in the toolbar to make the interpolation linear after that
key. This causes the foot to move at a constant speed between this keyframe and the next.
Drag the slope handle to 12. Drag the key’s tangent handle to get the curve shape as shown in the illustration on the left.
change the curve’s shape. This shape makes the foot translate faster when it gets close to the floor position and stop
The longer the handle, more abruptly.
the sharper the curve.
13. Select the other foot’s Y translation.

14. Select the first keyframe (at frame 1) and click the Linear Interpolation button.
15. Adjust the handle of the last keyframe (frame 40) to set the interpolation as you did for the
other foot.
16. Close the animation editor and play back the animation.
Add hip rotation

Adding hip rotation will make the walk look more natural and help get rid of the static feel of
the animation so far.
17. Go to frame 1.
18. Branch-select the hips cube.
19. Press c to enter rotation mode. Make sure you are in local rotation mode.
20. Set the cube’s rotation to -3 on the Z axis, as shown in the illustration on the left, and save a key.
21. Set the end frame of the animation back to 40.
22. Go to frame 40 and set another keyframe with the same value. You don’t need to right-click
on the timeline because there are no other keys set yet.
23. Go to frame 20, set the rotation to 3 on the Z axis, and set another keyframe.
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Animate the arms

Animate the arms so that they move in the opposite direction of the feet.
24. Select an upper arm. Rotate the arm locally about the Y axis until it is nearly parallel
with the body.
25. Repeat for the other arm.
26. Select one arm effector in branch mode.
27. Go to frame 1.
28. Position the hand opposite to the foot on the same side. For example, if the left foot is in
front of the body, the left hand should be behind the body.
29. Make sure that local position parameters are marked and set a keyframe.
30. Repeat for the other hand.
31. Copy both keys to frame 40: select both hands, go to frame 40, and set a keyframe.
32. Set the last frame of the animation to 39.
33. Go to frame 20.
34. Reverse the hand positions one at a time and set keyframes for each.
Creating an Up-vector Constraint

Jaiqua’s elbows are probably moving in the wrong direction. You can use up-vector constraints
to control the direction of the bones.
1. Choose Get > Primitive > Null from the Animate toolbar to get a null.
2. Position it above and behind Jaiqua, to one side.
3. Duplicate it and position the new null over the other side as in the following illustration.
Nulls that will be used as up

vector constraints.
You don’t need to position the null precisely. Once the up vector is attached to the
bones, you can readjust the null’s position.
4. Select one of the upper bones as in the following illustration, then choose Create >
Skeleton > Chain Up Vector and pick the null.
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5. Adjust the position of the null in space while playing the animation so that the elbow point
moves in a logical direction.
6. Save the scene.
Conclusion
The walk cycle you have created is quite simple. The goal here was to recreate a basic animation
concept using inverse kinematics (IK). When striving for realism, a walk can easily get very
complex, with motion-captured walks providing the most realistic animation. Skeletons can be
created in a variety of ways for these capture setups.
Very often, animators end up creating walk cycles such as these, then spend time adding more
keys to define the motion and model’s character.
Tutorial 10: The Animation Mixer

The walk cycle that you created in a previous tutorial can be animated and mixed with
other animations.
The animation mixer works with the same logic that you would find in a non-linear editing
system. The animation mixer is a tool that gives you high-level control over animation, by
letting you position, cycle, scale, warp, bounce, and mix actions.
Actions are animation segments that you define once and apply as many times as you like. You
can create an entire library of actions, like walk cycles or poses, and copy them from one model
to another. You can apply them one after the other in any sequence you like so that you can
quickly get your character up and running (and jumping, and kicking...). You can also mix
actions together, or create compound actions that contain other actions.
In Part I of this tutorial you will:
• Create action sources.
• Instantiate action clips.
• Cycle and crop action clips.
• Modify the underlying function curves of the original action source.
In Part II of this tutorial you will:
• Import and clean motion-capture function curves.
• Create actions for various kinds of animation.
• Mix between animated actions and static poses.
• Create markers on animation tracks.
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Overview - Part I
1 Start with an animated scene.

2 Store an action source.
3 Instantiate an action clip.
4 Cycle and crop the clip.
5 Modifying the source’s function curves.
Storing Actions
Once you have any kind of animation, you can store this animation in an action source. When
storing actions, you can choose to store all transformations or just the marked parameters, thus
creating a smaller action file. In this example, you will mark the position and orientation
parameters before storing them in an action.
1. Start with the completed walk cycle from the previous tutorial, or open the
JAIQUA_IK_DONE scene from the tutorial database: <install
directory>\content\tutorial_project\Scenes
2. Right-click on part of the skeleton to select the entire skeleton hierarchy (not the model) of
the walking character.
Ctrl+click Pos
and Ori
3. Open the marked parameter list in the Animation panel by clicking the triangle button on
the bottom right. Expand the Kinematics/Local Transform nodes, then Ctrl+click to mark
both Pos and Ori (position and orientation).
4. From the Animate toolbar, choose Actions > Store > Marked Parameters - Fcurves. Click OK
to accept the default values. The animation is stored and is no longer linked to the object.
Open the marked

parameter list
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If you need to restore the original animation after creating an action, select the action
from the Mixer\Sources\Animation branch of the explorer and then choose Actions >
Apply Action on the Animate toolbar.
Instantiating Clips
5. Restore your workspace to show all four viewports if necessary, and change viewport C to
the animation mixer view.
6. With the skeleton character still selected, press Update on the animation mixer’s command bar.
7. Right-click on a track and choose Load Source > StoredFcvAction. The action is loaded as a
clip on the track.
8. Play back the resulting animation.

9. Click and drag the action clip so that it starts at frame 1.
10. Change the animation mixer length by setting the End frame in the animation mixer to 100.
11. Change the main timeline End frame to 100 as well.
Adding a Cycle to the Action Clip

12. Click on the lower-right corner of the action clip so that an orange square appears. Drag the
clip so that it ends just before frame 90.
The animation did not cycle all the way to frame 90 because dragging creates only cycles that
are integral multiples of complete actions. You can create fractions of cycles by setting it in the
Time Control property editor of the action clip, which you will display in the next step.
Cropping the Action Clip

When playing the animation, you can see at the transition frame between the two cycles that
you have forgotten to shorten the original animation back to 39 frames. Since frame 40 is a
duplicate of frame 1 you have two identical frames beside each other.
13. Right-click on the action clip and choose Time Control.
14. Enter 40 in the Out value of Source Clipping.
15. Close the property editor. The action now has a cycle length of 39 frames.
Editing the Original Function Curves

16. Is the rotation of the hip is a bit too much? Or not enough? You can modify this as needed.
Right-click on the clip again and choose Source.
17. In the Source property editor, click the Edit Source Data button to open the animation editor.
18. Select hips_null.kine.ltransfo.rotz from the function curve list.
19. Go to frame 20 by dragging the cursor in the timeline.
20. Select the key on this frame of the selected function curve.
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21. Move the key down to decrease the swing, or up to increase it.
Look at the character to see it update the new values as you modify them.
22. Play the animation and find the correct hip swing adjustment.
23. Close the animation editor and property editor when done. Play back the final animation.
Overview - Part II
1 Start with motion-capture animation.
2 Clean up the function curves.
3 Create an action.
4 Store additional poses.
5 Mix actions by setting weights.
Tutorials • 125
Processing Motion Capture Animation

1. Open the jaiqua_walk scene from the tutorial database:
<install directory>\content\tutorial_project\Scenes.
2. Play back the animation. Notice that a full walk cycle is 39 frames long.
3. Select the whole model hierarchy by right-clicking on it.
4. Choose Animation > Animation Editor from the Animation panel (bottom of the main
window) or change one viewport to Animation Editor.
5. In the View Menu of the animation editor, make sure that Animated Parameters is on.
6. Choose Edit > Select All Curves.
7. Click the Curve Editor icon—it’s the last one beside the Help icon (question mark).
8. Click the Curve Processing tab. This page gives you three options for processing curves:
- You can smooth curves. This works in a similar way to blur on pixels. Smoothing tries to
decrease the noise often seen on mocap (motion capture) files.
- You can fit a curve onto the raw values. This reduces the key density of a curve while
keeping the same overall curve shape.
- You can resample the curve to add keys at regular time steps while retaining (or not) the
existing keys.
9. In this example, you fit a curve to raw values. Enter 3 as the Fitting Tolerance value.
10. Click on the Fit button and wait for the process to finish.
11. Close the property editor and the animation editor.
Storing Transformations
Actions can be thought of as encapsulated animations. You can create actions for the
transformations or the marked parameters. For either of these options, you can store three
types of action:
• The current “static” values (Current)
• Those parameters that are animated by keys (FCurves)
• Those parameters that are animated in any way, including function curves, expressions,
constraints, and so on (All Sources)
Marking Parameters
Creating actions based on marked parameters can increase performance because the actions
don’t contain unnecessary parameters. The list of parameters included in the action is also
easier to manage when working with templates.
.
You should always mark local transformations when storing actions. Actions that
contain local transformations are easier to work with. Remember that Global always
overrides Local!
Before you store an action, always check that the marked parameter box shows
foo.local.bar and not foo.global.bar.
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Marking parameters can be quickly done by selecting an SRT tool. For example, if you press the
x key to select the scale tool, kine.local.scl is automatically marked and appears in the box at the
lower right of the main window.
If you click a specific axis on the Transform panel and want only that axis marked, you
must be in Parent mode for scaling and translation, or Add mode in rotation. In other
modes, all three axes will be marked even if only one axis is selected.
You can also use the animatable parameter list in the Animation panel at the lower-right of the
window. Click the upward-pointing triangle to display a list of animatable parameters of the
current selection, then click on any parameter to mark it. To add or subtract marked
parameters, use the Shift+ or Ctrl+key modifiers. You can also use the Lock and Clr (Clear)
icons just beside the Animatable Parameter List icon.
12. In an explorer view, expand the jaiqua node, then expand the jaiqua_skeleton node, then
middle-click on the COG node to branch-select it.
13. Click the Animatable Parameters icon, and expand the Local Transform node. Shift+click
Pos and Ori.
The marked-parameters box displays “MULTI” because more than one parameter is marked.
Storing Animation
Opens the marked
parameter list 14. Choose Actions > Store > Marked Parameters - FCurves from the Animate toolbar. In the
Stored Action dialog box, set Default Out to 39 (the length of the walk cycle), then click OK.
The animation is disconnected from the model and becomes a source in the action library
under the model (Mixer/Sources/Animation).
Instantiating Clips
15. Open the animation mixer and click Update.
16. Position the mouse pointer near the start of the first track, then right-click and choose
Load Source.
17. Pick the only source available from the menu (StoredFcvAction). The action clip is placed
on the track and is represented by a green rectangle.
You can change the timespan shown in the animation mixer independently from the
first and last frame of the animation. Simply enter new values in the Start and End
boxes on the animation mixer command bar. However, remember that frames outside
of the start and end frames of the scene will not play back.
Storing Poses
18. Now you will store some static poses. First click the m icon on the left of the animation
track to temporarily mute the track as shown in the illustration. This prevents the action
from updating the skeleton’s transformations, such as if you accidentally jog the timeline.
19. Choose Chain_Element from the Filter menu of the Selection panel on the main command
area. (Click on the small arrow under the Sample button.)
20. To create some static positions, first select one of Jaiqua’s upper arms and rotate it locally in
Y into a neutral pose. Repeat for the other upper arm.
21. Ctrl+click to select all four arm bones as shown. Notice how easy it is to select only the
bones with the Chain_Element selection filter on.
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22. With these four bones selected, press the c key to mark the local rotations.
23. Save the current rotation values by choosing Actions > Store > Marked Parameters -
Current. Click OK to accept the default values.
24. Now load this new pose in the animation mixer: right-click in the second track and
choose Load Source > StoredStaticAction. Drag the clip so that it ends at the same time
as the walk cycle.
25. Click the m icon again to “unmute” the first track, then play back the animation.
Notice that the arms jump halfway to the neutral pose at the beginning of the second clip.
You’ll fix that by keying mix weights to blend the two clips in the next section.
Mixing Clip Weights

26. Activate View > Weight Mixer Panel (if necessary) to show the weight sliders on the right
side of the tracks.
27. Animate the weighting so that the first track fades over the second track as shown in
the illustration:
- Move the timeline to the beginning of the second clip. Click the top Key button to set a
key on the first action’s mix weight at its current value of 1. Set the second action’s mix
weight to 0 and click its Key button.
- Move the timeline to the beginning of the last frame of the clips. Set the first action’s mix
weight to 0 and save a key. Set the second action’s weight to 1 and save a key.
If you don’t see the weight curves in the mixer, make sure that View > Weight Curves is on.
Creating Markers
You can add some markers to help organize the layout, or to set in/out points for loop playback:
28. Crtl+drag to select an area on a track.
29. Right-click in the newly created region and choose Add Marker.
30. Right-click again on the marker and choose Properties. Rename the marker “foo.”
31. Right-click on the marker and choose Set In-Out Loop.
Play back the scene—the marked frames play in a loop. To play the whole scene again, turn
off the Loop option on the Playback panel.
Conclusion
The animation mixer is a rich and powerful tool for manipulating and reusing animation in a
non-linear and non-destructive way. In the next tutorial, you will see how to use the animation
mixer to do shape animation.
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Tutorial 11: Shape Animation

Shape animation is based on clusters and uses the animation mixer. There are several ways to
save shapes in SOFTIMAGE|XSI:
• You can simply store them and retrieve them when needed from the mixer folder.
• You can save a shape key at the current frame using Mixed Weight Mode, where each shape
has its own shape track and is weighted against the other shapes.
• You can save shape keys using Transition Mode or Cardinal Transition Mode, where all
shapes gets inserted in the animation mixer on the same track with automatic transitions
between them.
• Store shape sources and instantiate shape clips.
• Create transitions between shape clips.
• Use weights to mix shape clips.
• Create a custom property to control shape weights with sliders.
Overview
1 Create shapes.
2 Create transitions between shapes. 3 Mix shapes by adjusting their weights.
4 Control shapes using custom properties.
Tutorials • 133
Deforming Points
1. Press Ctrl+n to start a new scene.
2. Get a primitive sphere.
3. Tag the middle row of points with the t key and scale them with the x key.
Storing and Retrieving Shapes

4. On the Animate toolbar, choose Deform > Shape > Store Shape Key. This saves a shape
source for later use.
5. Change the shape of the selected points again using the SRT tools.
6. Choose Deform > Shape > Store Shape Key again, or middle-click on Deform > Shape to
repeat the last command.
8. Right-click on a track and choose Add Track > Shape twice to add two shape tracks.
9. Right-click on a shape track and choose Load Source > Point_AUTO_ShapeAction1.
10. Open an explorer and make sure that Show > Mixers is on. Expand the
Scene_Root\Mixer\Sources\Shape node.
11. From the explorer, drag and drop the other shape onto the second shape track. For this
example, make sure the clips don’t overlap on the same frames—you can move a clip along
a track by dragging it.
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12. Play the animation. Notice how the shape snaps at the beginning of a clip.
Creating Transitions
Transitions can be created automatically when you create clips in the mixer. You can also add
transitions afterwards individually.
13. Choose Mix > Transition Tool in the animation editor.
14. Pick the first clip and then the second clip.
15. Right-click to terminate the transition tool.
16. Play the animation again. Notice how the two shapes are blended in the transition
between the clips.
You can also choose Mix > Auto Transition. When auto transition is on, a transition is
automatically created for each new clip in the mixer.
Mixed Weight Mode

1. Press Crtl+n to start with a new scene.
2. Get a primitive sphere.
3. Select the middle row of points and scale them.
4. On the Animate toolbar, make sure that Deform > Shape > Mixed Weight Mode is on.
5. Go to frame 1.
6. Choose Deform > Shape > Save Shape Key. This stores a shape source, creates a shape clip,
and sets a key with a value of 1 for the clip’s weight at the current frame.
7. Change to frame 30, then modify the shape of the selected points again using the SRT tools.
Tutorials • 137
8. Choose Deform > Shape > Save Shape Key again.

9. Repeat as many times as you want, but two shapes are enough for this example.
10. Play back the animation.
12. Double-click on the compound clip to expand it. Note that each shape key is a clip on a
separate track within the compound clip.
Double-click on the compound clip to open it.
13. Make sure that View > Weight Curves and View > Weight Mixer Panel are on. The weight
mixer panel shows the value of each weight at the current frame.
Mix-weight function curves Weight Mixer Panel shows

are displayed on clips. weights at current frame.
14. Adjust the values in the weight mixer and click the Key button to set keys on the weight
curves. Play back the animation to see the effect of the modified weights.
Controlling Weights with Expressions

The shape weights can be keyed, but they can also be driven by an expression just like in
Softimage 3D. Remember those “virtual control panels,” where objects control the shapes?
15. For each track in the mixer, delete all weight animation by choosing Animation >
Remove Animation in the weight mixer panel. You will replace the function curves by
a simple expression.
16. Get an implicit cube and scale it down to a manageable size.
17. On the first track’s weight mixer panel, choose Animation > Set Expression.
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18. In the expression editor, delete the default expression and type:
cube.
19. With the text insertion point immediately after the period, press F12.
20. Choose kine. (for kinematics).
21. Press F12 and choose global. (for global transformation).
22. Press F12 and choose posy (for the Y position).
23. Divide everything by 5 (type / 5 at the end of the expression as in the illustration).
.
24. Click Apply and translate the cube on Y. Notice how the cube’s position controls the weight
of the shape key.
If nothing happens when you translate the cube on Y, it may be because all other
shapes are weighted to 0. If this is the case, change the weighting of at least one of the
shape weights to 1.
Controlling Shape Weights via a Custom Property Set

Instead of using an object to drive shape weights, you will replace it and create a property page
with sliders.
25. Select the sphere with the weighted shapes.
26. On the Animate toolbar, choose Create > Parameter > New Custom Parameter Set. Enter
Shape_Control as the name and click OK.
27. Click the Property button on the Selection panel in the main command area, and select the
Shape_Control property.
28. Press Enter to open its property editor. The property editor displays an empty page. Lock
the property editor so that it doesn’t get recycled (click its lock icon).
29. Now add parameters: first, make sure that the Shape Control node is still selected in
the explorer.
30. Choose Create > Parameter > New Custom Parameter and name this parameter First
shape. Leave the other settings at their defaults. Notice that the parameter is added to the
Shape Control page.
Do not use underscores (_)or special characters (#!%$#@) when naming

custom parameters.
31. Choose Create > Parameter > Custom Parameter again and name this parameter Second
shape. Again, leave the other settings at their defaults.
32. On the weight mixer panel of the animation mixer, choose Animation > Expression Editor
(since there is already an expression on this parameter) on the first shape weight track.
33. Select the expression you had selected here and delete it.
34. With the text cursor in the white empty area of the expression editor, click the Object
button and select Sphere/Shape Control/First_shape.
35. Click Apply.
36. Drag the first slider on the Shape Control property set and watch the shape change.
37. Repeat the previous steps to connect the second shape to the second slider. You can create
more shapes and add more sliders if you like.
Conclusion
You can create and control shapes in several different ways, using transitions, mixing weights,
and so on. Custom parameters are a powerful tool for for controlling shapes and other things.
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Tutorial 12: Low-Res/High-Res Models

In the following short tutorial, you will set up visibility properties for two characters. One of the
characters is a low-resolution polygonal model with its rendering visibility turned off so that it
is visible only in the viewports. The other character is a high-resolution version of the same
model—it is renderable, but not visible from the viewports. Both models are weighted to the
same inverse kinematic (IK) chain.
If you are animating with complex characters, this technique is especially beneficial because
hidden objects are not loaded into memory. This technique allows for a fast interaction with the
IK because its uses a simpler or more generic character, and renders the high-resolution one.
• Use low-resolution models to speed up your work, and high-resolution ones to render.
• Use overrides to change property settings without destroying the original data.
Tutorial 12: Low-Res/High-Res Models
Overview
High-Res Model
Visibility is overridden on
the high-res model and
is only visible when
rendered.
Low-Res Model
The low-polygon model
is visible in the viewports
but its rendering visibility
is turned off.
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Creating an Override on the High-Resolution Character

1. Open the RESOLUTION scene from the tutorial database:
2. In the explorer, expand the jaiqua node and select the high-res polygon mesh model.
3. Press the h key. This hides the object by creating an override for the visibility options.
4. With the pointer in the explorer view, press the e key to show the selection and all its nodes.
5. In the explorer, click on the Override icon to open its property editor.
6. Turn Render Visibility on and leave View Visibility off.
Creating an Override on the Low-Resolution Character

7. Select the low-res polygon mesh model.
8. Press the h key again to create another visibility override.
9. In the explorer, click on the low-res model’s Override icon to open its property editor.
10. This time, turn View Visibility on and leave Render Visibility off.
11. Draw a render region to see the results. The high-res model is rendered in the region, but
only the low-res model is visible in the rest of the viewport.
For Information, Please See....

The Animating guide.
Tutorial 13: Envelope Weighting
By attaching a surface or polygon mesh object as an envelope to a skeleton, the object deforms
automatically as the skeleton moves. You can adjust the envelope weighting of individual points
on the object to control its deformation more accurately.
• Make a polygon mesh envelope.
• Reassign points locally to different bones.
• Adjust envelope weights manually.
Tutorials • 145
Overview
1 Attach the envelope to the skeleton.
2 Reassign points to other deformers.
3 Change the weighting of individual points.
Attaching the Envelope

1. Load the JAIQUA_IK scene from the tutorial database:
2. Open an explorer and expand the global_NULL node, then expand the floor_cube and
hips_cube nodes.
3. Select the character’s geometry (the jaiqua node).
4. Choose Envelope > Set Envelope from the Animate toolbar. In the Envelope dialog box,
click OK to accept the default values.
5. In the explorer, branch-pick (middle-click) the SPINE_ROOT node, the two FOOT nodes,
the two HAND nodes, and the two LEG nodes.
6. Right-click in any 3D view to end the picking session. The Automatic Envelope Assignment
7. Accept the default automatic envelope settings and close the property editor.
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Cluster colors shows the different bone relation assignments of the envelope weights. To see
them in a viewport, make sure that Show > Clusters is on.
Adjusting the Weights in Extreme Poses

8. Branch-select one of the FOOT nodes in the explorer.
9. Translate the foot away from the other to pose the character in a split position as shown in
the following illustration.
If only the foot is translated, press Ctrl+z to undo and branch-select from the leg
effector (FOOT node) and not the foot effector (eff1 node). Use the explorer to make
it easier to select.
Look at the points on the inner part of the thigh. When you translated the leg, some of the
points on the other leg deformed as well. You will now fix this problem.
10. Tag the points that were not weighted as you expected and choose Envelope > Reassign
Locally from the Animate toolbar.
Tutorials • 149
11. Pick the thigh bone and the first spine bone to distribute the envelope weighting of the
points between those bones.
Reassign locally to
these two\bones.
Tagged points Tag points.

that need better
weighting
Adjusting Weights on the Elbow
12. Branch-select one of the hands.
13. Translate the hand so the elbow bends to a normal rotation limit.
14. Tag the points that need to be reweighted properly. (Don’t forget to untag the points on
the thigh.)
15. Choose Envelope > Edit Weights. The tagged points are listed in the cluster list.
16. Shift-select all the points from the list under Elems.
17. Click on the bone10 name under Deformers to make it active.
18. Drag the Weight slider to 18.
The weight is interactively adjusted to the other bones.
19. Keep this property editor open by clicking on its Lock icon. In the viewport, untag all
points and tag only those as shown on the left. The weight property editor updates with
current selection.
20. Shift-select all the tagged points from the list.
21. Find the upper arm bone by selecting different bones in the list (active bones are displayed
in orange in the viewports).
22. Adjust the weights until you are satisfied with the results.
Conclusion
Using the various enveloping tools, you can easily apply an envelope to a skeleton, adjust the
assignment, and modify the weights of individual points.
Tutorials • 151
Sec t ion 5 Rendering
Tutorials • 153
Section 5 • Rendering
Tutorial 14: Applying Materials
Applying materials, surfaces, and textures is the most fundamental step in achieving the look
you want for your scene.
This tutorial covers the most-used surface attributes: materials, texture, volume, bump/
displacement maps, volume shaders, and output shaders. By completing these steps you will get
a good overview of the possibilities offered from the open architecture of the render tree,
texture projections, groups, and layers.
The Material node in SOFTIMAGE|XSI doesn’t have quite the same function as it
does in SOFTIMAGE|3D. What were called material shaders are now named surface
shaders. The Material node acts like a container for all of the possible shaders that can
be applied to an object, much like the full-screen Material Editor in SOFTIMAGE|3D.
• Apply a material and surface shader.
• Create a local material.
• Edit a surface’s properties.
Tutorials • 155
Creating a Simple Scene

You start by creating a sphere on a floor and applying a basic material to it. With this simple
setup, you will also look at material sharing and propagation.
1. Choose Get > Primitive > Surface > Sphere. Accept the default values and close the sphere
property editor.
If you want to hide the viewport grid in

the Camera view, simply position the
cursor over the viewport and press g.
2. Choose Get > Primitive > Surface > Grid. Click the Grid tab and change the grid UV
Length to the maximum allowed by the sliders (50) and close the grid property editor.
3. Position the grid under the sphere as though the sphere is on the floor.
To do this, press the v key (translation supra key) and drag the grid below the sphere. Press
v again to turn translation mode off.
4. Select Shaded from the viewport display menu in the Camera (perspective) view.
Viewport Display menu

The wireframe of the selected object is still visible
by default in Shaded display. If you wish to hide
the wireframe or display the other side’s
wireframe, choose Display Options from the
viewport display menu and select Wireframe on
Top or Transparency Shading.
5. Position the camera to frame the sphere in the scene. To do this, place the mouse cursor
over the perspective view and press s to activate the Combination tool that lets you orbit,
track and dolly at once. Use the left mouse button to track, the middle to dolly, and the right
to orbit.
Editing Shared Materials

The scene itself also has a material. This is what is called the Default Material and it is inherited
by any object with no defined local material.
6. Select the sphere and click the Property button in the Selection panel of the main command
area. In the explorer view that pops up, you see shared material nodes shown in italics.
The sphere’s material is named “Scene Material” and is

italicized to denote that it is inherited from the scene root.
7. Click the Phong node icon situated under Scene_Material > Surface to open its property
editor. This is a common material that both the sphere and the grid have inherited from the
scene. When a message box appears asking if you want to create a local copy, click No. This
maintains the link to the inherited property, allowing you to edit the source’s property.
Tutorials • 157
8. Modify the Diffuse color and see how it affects both objects in the shaded perspective view.
Creating a Local Material

You can create a local material by repeating the steps you just did and choosing Yes in the
message box when prompted to create a local material.
You can also do the following to create a local material:
9. Select the sphere and choose Get > Material > Phong. The Phong material’s property page
opens automatically.
10. In the Material:Phong property editor, modify the Diffuse color. The new material updates
in the shaded perspective view. Close the property editor.
Once you apply a material, you can get a

look at how it will be rendered by drawing a
render region. Press q and drag a rectangle
around the sphere. Middle-click to hide the
region or press Esc to deactivate the region
mode.
11. Choose File > Save to save this scene for the following tutorial.
Conclusion
You have just applied a material (surface shader) to a simple geometric object. These are the
basic steps for applying any shaders to objects in your scene.
Next you’ll learn how to create, manipulate, and edit light properties in your scene.
For more information, see the Shaders, Lights & Cameras and Rendering guides.
Tutorial 15: Working with Lights

Lighting can really make or break a scene. This tutorial introduces you to the basics of working
with lights. You will use the sphere and grid scene you created in the previous tutorial.

• Work with the default scene light.
• Create a new light.
• Manipulate and edit light properties.
Tutorials • 159
Editing the Default Light

Every new scene is supplied with a default light. You will edit this light.
1. Click the Explore button from the Selection panel of the main command area and choose
Lights to open an explorer view of all the scene’s lights. In this case, there is only the default
scene light.
The default light is hidden but renderable (hidden and renderable objects are depicted with a
solid “H” in their explorer icon). Because it is an infinite light, it is sometimes difficult to see
how something will really look using its default settings. You will change these settings later.
2. In the explorer, the default scene light icon is expanded to expose the light shader icon.
Click the light shader icon to display the soft_light properties in the light property editor.
3. In the perspective view, draw a render region (press q and drag the mouse) around the sphere.
Default scene light
Did you know that you can speed up rendering in the render region? Hold the cursor
over the upper-right rectangle on the region’s border so that a slider appears. Drag the
Light shader icon slider’s widget down to lower the region’s sampling and speed up rendering.
4. Modify the soft_light’s color by dragging the RGB sliders. The region renders the effect of the
soft_light color change on the sphere’s color. Close the property editor.
In the next steps you will add a new light, but first you will delete the default light so that you
can work with a single light source.
5. Click the Explore button from the Selection panel of the main command area and choose
Lights. Select the Light (default scene light) by clicking its name.
6. Press the Delete key to delete the scene’s default light. When the light is deleted, the scene
goes dark and the region renders black.
Adding a New Light

7. Add a new light to the scene by choosing Get > Light > Spot. The spotlight property editor
appears—leave it open for now.
8. Press v and translate the spotlight away from the sphere.
9. If not already done, change the perspective viewport to Shaded display.
10. In the light property editor, try the following values:
Parameter Value Function
Spread Angle 20 Determines the cone spread of the spotlight.
Light Falloff On Enables light falloff.
Start Falloff 10 Determines where the light will start to falloff.
End Falloff 50 Determines where the light ends completely.
Shadows Enable On Enables shadows.
Shadows Umbra 0.1 Defines the shadow’s opacity or transparency.
Wait until the render region is finished rendering the altered values. Keep in mind that every
value you edit prompts a refresh of the render region.
If the render region slows you down too much, you can set it to refresh on demand by
choosing Render > Region > Auto Refresh on the Render toolbar to deactivate it.
When you are ready to preview your changes, choose Render > Refresh.
11. Close the light property editor.
Using the Light Manipulators

There are many ways in which you can manipulate and edit a light’s properties: you will use the
light’s 3D manipulators.
12. From the Selection panel in the main command area, click the Scene button to display a list
of all your scene’s elements. Expand the Spot_Root node and select Spot (not its icon) to
select the spot light.
13. Click anywhere outside the explorer to close it. With the mouse pointer in a viewport, press
a to frame all the scene’s elements.
14. Press b to activate the light’s manipulators. Press the Tab key to toggle among the light’s
manipulators: angle, transform, and orientation.
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Cone Angle Manipulator
Transform Manipulator
Orientation
Manipulator
Changing the falloff, angle, and spread

15. Click and drag the blue and magenta lines of the spotlight’s cone to adjust where the light
starts to dim (blue) and where the light ends completely (magenta).
16. Modify the area the light cone covers by dragging any of the cone’s white lines.
17. Modify how intense the light is within the cone (spread angle) by clicking and dragging the
yellow area inside the cone.
Cone angle
Start falloff
End falloff
Spread angle
Moving the light around

Change the manipulator type by pressing the Tab key so that a bounding box with handles on
each corner appears. The handles allow you to scale the spotlight, the lines allow you to rotate it
about any axis, and dragging the icon’s center lets you translate the light.
If you cannot see the center icon in the light, simply click the middle of the light icon
and the center icon appears.
Clicking+drag one of the lines to rotate the light.
Click+drag the center to translate the light.
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Scaling the light manipulators changes only the light’s display icon. Scaling of the area
of an area light can be done from the Light property editor.
18. Translate the spotlight by dragging the center icon of the bounding box.
Changing the orientation

19. To change the orientation using the orientation manipulator, you must first delete the
spotlight’s interest to which it is constrained. Simply select the spotlight interest from the
viewport or an explorer view (Click the Scene button, expand the Spot_root node and
select the Spot_interest) and press Delete.
A light’s interest is useful but not essential. A spotlight’s cone is always oriented toward the
interest: where the interest moves, the spotlight’s cone moves as well, but not the light
source itself. Deleting a light’s interest obliges you to move a spotlight’s cone manually
rather than manipulate its interest.
Manipulators are available even when an object is hidden. Select the hidden object
(from an explorer view, for example) and press the manipulator key (b).
Choose Edit > Delete All from the Edit panel of the main command area to clear the screen for
the next tutorial.
Conclusion
You have created and manipulated a simple light object. You can use a light’s property editor
and its 3D manipulators to place and edit a light in a scene. Many of the tools you have used will
be useful when manipulating several lights or editing their values to create caustic and/or
volumic effects.
Now you are ready to apply textures to an object. Don’t forget to light them!
Tutorial 16: Giving Life to a Dragonfly

With the help of Intorqueo-Volaticus, Softimage’s resident dragonfly, you will use
SOFTIMAGE|XSI’s rendering technology to finish a modeled scene.

• Work with the default scene light.
• Use local visibility options.
• Apply a material preset.
• Use texture supports.
• Use image clips and sources.
• Understand propagation with groups.
• Build a simple render tree.
• Isolate a texture’s alpha channel.
• Create a displacement map.
• Load a background scene.
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Overview
1 Set parts of the display using the Palette.
2 Apply a texture and texture projection.
3 Use the render tree to apply a texture to a parameter.
4 Use the alpha channel to control

the displacement of a texture.
Setting Display Properties

Even with a small scene like the one you will load, you can set display attributes for some objects
to enhance your workflow and improve the interactivity of your scene. You will create a group
that contains all of the small polygonal cones that make up the dragonfly’s hairs and set a
display option that will show these objects in bounding box form when not selected or far from
the camera.
1. Choose File > Open from the main-menu bar and select the DRAGONFLY scene from the
tutorial project: <install directory>\content\TUTORIAL_PROJECT\Scenes
2. Using a wildcard (*) allows a fast multi-selection based on object names. Type cone* (and
press Enter) in the object name text box on the Selection panel to select every object whose
name starts with “cone”. Notice that all the hairs on the dragonfly’s back are selected.
Group polygon mesh objects

Grouping all of these polygonal objects into a single group allows you to apply a single property
to the group rather than applying it to each of the cones, which saves a lot of time.
3. With all the cones still selected, click the Group button on the Edit panel of the main command
Object name text box
area. Enter hair_group in the Group Name text box and close the property editor.
Change the display type for the group

You’ll set the display type for all the objects in the hair_group to bounding box when not
selected or far from the camera.
4. With the hair_group still selected, choose Get > Property > Display from the Render toolbar.
5. In the Display property editor that appears, select Bounding Box for all options under
Unselected, Near and Unselected, Far. Close the property editor.
6. By default, local display properties are overridden by the display option defined for the viewport.
Deselect the Override Object Properties option in the viewport display menu so you can
see the viewing modes you have just set.
The Override Object Properties option overrides an

object’s display mode with what is defined in the
viewport display menu (wireframe, shaded etc.).
Tutorials • 167
7. Place your cursor in the perspective window and press the z key (Pan and Zoom supra key).
Middle-click to zoom in on the hair_group. Press Esc to deactivate the Pan and Zoom tool.
8. Deselect the group by clicking (and dragging) in an empty part of the viewport. All the hairs
are displayed in bounding box when unselected.
9. Select a single hair. It is displayed in standard wireframe when selected.
Change the wireframe color
Click a Wire Color You can edit the wireframe color of objects displayed in the viewports from the Palette toolbar.
or Display Type to
set an object’s 10. Click the Palette button at the bottom of the current toolbar to open the palette options.
visibility in the
viewport.
11. Click a color from the Wire Colors panel and pick the dragonfly body. It’s wireframe is
displayed in the chosen color.
You can left-click to color an object or middle-click to color a branch. You can select as
many objects or branches as you wish.
Palette button
12. Click the right mouse-button when you are finished picking.
Applying Surface Shaders

Any modification in a property page can be saved as a preset. This means you can, for example,
easily transfer a surface preset to another object. But first, you’ll apply a surface shader.
13. In the perspective view, select one of the dragonfly’s eyes.
14. With the mouse pointer in a perspective view, frame the selected eye by pressing the f key.
15. Draw a render region over the selected eye (press q and drag).
To remove a render region from a viewport, press q and click anywhere within
Choose Property
Editor from the the viewport.
viewport views
menu. The selected dragonfly eye (and the rest of the model, for that matter) does not have any
material of its own. The material it currently displays is inherited from the default scene
material. Start by giving it a local material.
16. Change a viewport to a Property Editor view. This makes property editors automatically
appear in a viewport rather than floating on the interface. This is a good way to prevent too
many windows opening and closing during this tutorial.
17. From the Render toolbar, choose Get > Material > Phong to apply the default surface
shader to the eye. The Phong Shader property editor opens in the property editor view in
the viewport.
18. Hold the Ctrl key and drag one of the Ambient color RGB sliders to dark gray.
Holding the Ctrl key while dragging a color slider allows you to drag them all at once.
19. Edit the Diffuse color until it is a dark blue.
One method to define an extreme color range is to adjust a color in RGB mode, then
switch to HLS and lower the L value (luminosity).
20. Lower the Specular Decay to about 12. This washes out the eye with a big white specular
highlight, but you will correct it a little later. Leave the property editor open for now.
Connecting an Image to a Parameter

You can connect almost any type of shader to any parameter. Fractal shaders can be connected
to a transparency value, or cloud texture shaders can “drive” a surface’s reflection value instead
of using a solid color.
You will use a specular map to modify the specular highlights on the eye and add a small bump
value to enhance the highlights. The specular map will be added with an image shader. An
image shader lets you use any texture or image file as a 2D texture or bump map.
21. From the Phong surface shader property editor, click the connection icon (the little plug)
beside the Specular Color slider and choose Blend With > Image from the menu that appears.
Click the connection icon

to display a list of possible
connections for a parti-
cular parameter.
Choose
Blend With > Image
Tutorials • 169
An image shader is connected to the Specular Color parameter via a mixing shader which
blends two or more shaders. The mix_8_colors shader gives you greater control over textures
and how they are blended. The mixing shader will be discussed later on.
Applying a New Texture

In SOFTIMAGE|XSI, most textures are applied using the image shader. You can use this shader
to define a texture map, bump map, and texture projection.
22. The image shader property page should now be displayed in the property editor. It displays
the default no_icon texture. Click the New button beside the image name and choose New
From File from the pop-up menu. A browser appears from which you can select an image file.
Choose
New > From File
to use a new image file
as a texture.
You can right-click in the

thumbnail area to access
image editing options.
Click New to define a

new texture space
You can rename a texture

space in this text box.
23. From the browser, navigate to the tutorial_project’s Pictures folder and select the eye.pic file.
In any browser, you can quickly jump between projects or folders using the Path
button in the top right of the browser.
Define a texture space

Texture space defines how a texture is placed on an object. In this example, the eye object does
not yet have a defined texture space: that is your next step.
24. Since no texture space has been created, the object does not have any available texture
spaces in the menu. On the image shader’s property page, click the New button beside the
Texture Space text box and select Spherical in the pop-up menu.
The Spherical texture space is automatically applied to the selected object, meaning that the
texture will be “wrapped” around the object as though it were a sphere, which it happens to
be in this case.
25. Double-click in the Texture Space text box and rename the texture space to spherical.
Enable Bump mapping

26. Enable the Bump Mapping and set the Bump Map Factor to –10. A negative value bumps
the texture inward, whereas a positive value bumps outward.
Scale a texture
27. In the Texture SRT section (transformations) of the image shader property page, enter 0.5
for the Scale XYZ values.
28. Click the Prev (previous) button to go back to the Phong surface shader property page.
29. Adjust the Specular Decay to a low value, and watch the render region refresh with the
updates. You have just created a simple specular map.
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Manipulating the Texture Support

Once you’ve applied a texture and edited it, you can use the texture support object to
interactively manipulate the texture space in a viewport.
30. You should see the green spherical texture support controls around the eye object. If they
are not visible, press j. If you still cannot see the texture control objects, select Show >
Texture Controls from the viewport.
Unselected spherical texture support (green)
31. Select the texture support object from any viewport—it becomes white.
32. Press the rotation supra key (c) and rotate the texture support object so that the “pinched
point” of the spherical map is not visible (as shown below) and turned toward the
dragonfly’s body.
Selected spherical texture support

with an active render region
Viewing Shader Connections in the Render Tree

The render tree gives a graphical representation of shader connections and their relationships,
in this case, the texture shader. The selected object’s surface shaders are displayed as nodes in
the render tree. You use the render tree to create custom render trees by connecting textures and
tools to create specialized effects.
33. With the Eye object selected, choose View > Views > Render Tree from the main-menu bar.
A floating render tree window appears. By default, it shows the selected object materials
tree, as in the following illustration. If you select a new object and want to view its render
tree, click the Update button.
The Phong surface shader. By default it

is connected to a material’s surface,
shadow and photon inputs.
The mixing node that The material node that defines

This is the Image shader node that blends the image shader how an object will look by
processes the picture file’s information with the surface shader. accepting a variety of shaders.
and applies a texture space.
This node
represents the eye Double-click the
image clip file. Phong surface shader
node to open its
property editor.
Tutorials • 173
Saving a Texture Preset

Before saving a texture preset, you may have to make some slight adjustments to ensure that
your preset is completely compatible with the object to which you will apply your preset. In this
example, you will have to apply a wildcard to the texture space’s name and make the eye.pic’s
path relative so any object you load the texture preset onto will know how and what to apply.
Wildcards and texture support names

When loading a texture preset onto a new object, the texture preset looks for a “spherical”
texture support on the new object. If the texture support name does not exist for the object, the
default support is used, which is most likely not the one you need. To solve this, you can use a
wildcard (*) with the Texture Space name.
34. To be certain that the saved Phong preset is fully compatible with other objects, insert a
wildcard (*) in the Texture Space’s text box of the image shader’s property page before
saving it.
A wildcard can be placed only at the start or end of the name.
Relative paths
For the preset to know where it must retrieve the eye.pic image file from, you must give it a
relative path so it can find the image file.
In the following steps, you will open the property pages of each of the above nodes in the render
tree to edit some shaders’ settings. You can open a shader simply by double-clicking its node in
the render tree.
35. Double-click the Phong surface shader node in the render tree to open its property page.
Notice how the Specular Color parameter is connected to another shader (done earlier),
shown by the connection icon that is red and “plugged in”.
36. Click the Specular Color’s connection icon to open the Mixer shader (specular_blend)
property editor.
37. In the Mixer property editor, click the Layer 1 Color connection icon to open the Image
texture shader property editor.
38. In the Image property editor, replace the Texture Space by s*. This makes the texture accept
any projection that has a name that begins with “s”.
39. Click on the Edit button beside Texture Image to open the image clip property editor.
40. In the image clip property editor, make sure that the path for the image is relative to the
project. In the File Name text box, make sure the source file is local.
You can set a variable and use it in your path, but if you start the path with a back
slash as in the following path \Pictures\eye.pic, the Pictures folder is relative to
the current project location.
Save a preset
Load preset
41. Click the Prev (Previous) button until you open the Phong Surface shader property editor.
42. Click on the save preset icon to save the render tree connected to the Phong shader. Saving a
node as a preset saves everything connected to it. In this example, saving the Phong surface
Save preset shader as a preset saves the Phong attributes, the mixing shader, the image shader, and the
eye picture file.
43. Select the Use Region as Thumbnail option in the Save dialog box. This uses the current
render region as a thumbnail for the preset in the browser. If this option is dimmed, create a
render region in a viewport to enable it.
44. Enter dark_eye_mat for the preset name and click Ok.
Create a texture support for the other eye

Before applying the preset to the other eye, you need to create a texture support for the other eye.
45. Select the dragonfly’s other eye.
46. From the Render toolbar, choose Property > Texture Support > Create Texture Control.
47. Select Spherical as the Projection Type and leave the default Texture Support name. Click OK.
Drag and drop the preset
On IRIX, you can drag and drop only from SOFTIMAGE|XSI browsers.
48. Open a browser from a viewport or from View > Views > Browser on the main-menu bar.
49. Navigate to where you saved the dark_eye_mat preset. Drag and drop the preset from
the browser onto the dragonfly’s other eye. All settings and connections made to the first
eye are now applied to the second one.
When using drag and drop, wait for the cursor to change to a plus sign (+) inside a
white square.
Tutorials • 175
Loading Image Sources and Clips

When you load an image into SOFTIMAGE|XSI, you create an image source. The same source
can be used as many times as you wish. An image clip is an instance of an image source. You can
crop or edit an image clip without affecting its image source, which is a read-only file.
To create an image source, you can drag and drop images directly into any viewport, as you will
in the following step. You can also use the New image clip button in any image shader or the
Clips menu on the Render toolbar. When creating a new clip, you are prompted to browse for
an image. When an image is selected, a new source is created for it, allowing you to use a first
instance of it.
Use the Source and Clip focus in the explorer (i shortcut key) for quick access to these files.
50. Open a browser and drag and drop (Shift+select them) the four dragon_*.pic files from the
<install directory>/Content/tutorial_project/Pictures folder into a viewport. The four files
are: dragon_body, dragon_eye, dragon_leg, and dragon_wings.
Once you drag and drop images into a viewport, they are
defined as source images to be used in SOFTIMAGE|XSI.
Once you use a source image, an image clip is created. You

can edit the clip without altering the source image.
Dropping the images onto the render tree automatically assigns them an image shader
and places them in the render tree work area where they are ready to use. Also, a
source is created for each image and is available from the Sources and Clips folder
in the explorer.
To get a better look at an image source or clip, you can view it from the Flipbook.
Change one of the viewports to the Flipbook view and choose Sources or Clips from
the command bar and select an image file.
Adding a Wing Texture (Transparency)

Now you’ll multi-select all four wings and map a 2D texture to the Diffuse color. This will be
done in a similar way to how you mapped the specular texture to the dragonfly’s eye.
51. Type wing* in the Current Selection text box on the Selection panel of the main command
area. The wildcard (*) selects all objects with the word “wing” in the object name.
Define a texture support

52. From the Render toolbar, choose Get > Property > Texture Support > Create Texture Control.
53. In the Create Texture Support dialog box, select the Planar XZ Projection Type and enter
WingXZ as the texture support name. An XZ planar texture support is created for each of
the selected wings.
Create a group for the wings

54. With all four wings still selected, click the Group button on the Edit panel from the main
command area. Name the group as you wish, such as wings.
If you multi-select several objects and apply a texture projection, you will create a texture
projection for each item in the group. If you were to define a texture projection to the
Connection icon group (single selected), a single texture projection would be created for all the objects.
Apply a material and texture
55. Apply a surface shader to the new wings group by choosing Get > Material > Phong.
56. In the Phong surface shader property page, click the connection icon beside the Diffuse
Color sliders and select Image. The Image shader property page opens.
57. From the Image shader property page, select the Dragon_wings.pic image clip from the
New > New From Source pop-up menu. This image is already defined as an image source
because it was loaded earlier when you dragged and dropped the files into the
SOFTIMAGE|XSI window.
58. From the Texture Space menu, click the arrow and select the texture space you created for
the wings earlier, named WingXZ.
59. Draw a render region (press q) around a wing in a perspective view to render a wing’s texture.
Make sure the texture controls are visible from the viewports. If they aren’t, press j to turn
their visibility on.
Tutorials • 177
60. Select a texture support on one of the wings. The selected texture support’s name is then
listed in the Selection text box.
61. Replace the number at the end of the texture support name with a wildcard (such as
wingXZ1 to wingZX*) and press Enter. This multi-selects all the wings’ texture supports.
62. If not already open, press Alt+Enter to open the Texture supports’ multi-property page.
This is a property page that contains the properties for all of the selected objects at once.
63. Select the Swap UV option and enter -1 in the Z Scaling text box. This flips and rotates the
wings’ texture supports and scales them so they fit the wing model properly.
Using the Alpha Channel

In the following steps, you will isolate the alpha channel using the render tree and use it to
define the transparency of various textures.
64. Select the wings’ group from the explorer.
65. If not already open, open a render tree and click Update in the render tree command bar.
This once again displays the wings’ group and the shaders attached to it.
66. From the command bar, choose Nodes > Conversion > Color to Alpha. This makes the
Color2Alpha shader appear in the render tree work area. This tool shader extracts the alpha
channel from an color (RGBA) image.
67. Drag the output arrow from the red dot of the Image shader node to the input of the
Color2Alpha shader node (make the arrow touch to the left of the shader’s name).
To connect one shader to Once the arrow is pulled out, it

another, click the red is white until it is connected to
output dot and drag an another shader’s input. Do this
arrow out of the shader. by making the arrow touch a
shader’s input dot.
If a shader is in collapsed mode, you can connect the shader to anywhere on the node.
A drop-down menu prompts you to connect it to a specific parameter.
68. Connect the output of Color2Alpha into the transparency input of the Phong surface shader.
69. Choose Nodes > Image_Processing > Intensity. This makes the Intensity shader appear in
the render tree work area. The Intensity shader increases or decreases the output/power of
another shader.
70. Connect the output of the Image shader into the Intensity shader’s input.
71. Connect the Intensity shader’s output to the specular parameter of the Phong shader.
When you’re done, your render tree should look like this:
72. Double-click the Intensity node to open its property editor and enter a Factor value of 2.
73. Choose Render > Region > Show RGB from the Render toolbar. This renders the image
over a default black background.
Applying the Body Texture

In order to create a realistic texture, you will use a UV texture space as well as a 2D texture on
the dragonfly’s body. Then you’ll apply a specular map and some displacement mapping to add
details to the model.
Displacement mapping is done through the displacement connection of the material node.
74. Select the User view in viewport B.
75. Press the s key to track (left mouse button), dolly (middle), or orbit (right) in order to get
the whole dragonfly’s body in view.
If the render region slows you down too much, you can set it to refresh on demand by
choosing Render > Region > Auto Refresh on the Render toolbar to deactivate it.
When you are ready to preview your changes, choose Render > Refresh.
Tutorials • 179
Apply a surface shader

Now you’ll apply a surface shader to the dragonfly’s body. After editing it, you’ll add a texture
and use that same texture’s alpha channel to create a displacement map.
76. Select the body object from a viewport and choose Get > Material > Phong to apply the
Phong surface shader. Enter 14 as the Specular Decay value and change the Specular Color
to a light blue.
77. Still in the Phong property editor, click the connection icon to the right of the Diffuse Color
sliders and select Image from the pop-up menu. This maps the Diffuse parameter to an
Image shader.
Map a texture using UV projection

78. In the Image shader property editor that opens, choose New > New From Source >
dragon_body_pic from the Texture Image drop-down list. The image is available as a
source because you dragged and dropped it into a viewport earlier.
79. Choose New > UV from the Texture Space menu. This applies the dragon_body texture image
using a UV texture space. Because the dragonfly’s body is an irregular shape, a UV projection
will follow its curves more accurately than a planar or cylindrical projection would.
80. With the body hierarchy still selected, open a render tree (if one isn’t already open) and click
Update to see the image/surface/material connection you’ve just created.
81. If you have set the render region to not automatically refresh, click the Refresh button in the
Render toolbar to see your texture map.
Creating a Displacement Map

You will now use the alpha channel of the same texture you just applied to the body
(dragon_body.pic) to create a displacement map on the dragonfly’s body.
The following illustration shows the alpha channel of the body image that you will use to
slightly displace the body’s geometry.
The alpha channel of the dragon_body.pic

is used to drive the displacement
parameter of the material node.
You may want to turn off the Auto Refresh in the render region so it doesn’t update
every time you make a change to your displacement value—choose Render > Region
> Auto-Refresh from the Render toolbar.
82. From the command bar in the render tree, select the following shaders to appear in the
work area:
- Nodes > Conversion > Color to Alpha shader
- Nodes > Image Processing> Intensity shader
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Getting the alpha channel from an RGB pic file is done with the Color2Alpha tool shader. The
Intensity tool shader is an image processing shader that lets you define the intensity of a color
value. Use the Intensity shader to change the intensity of the alpha channel, therefore changing
the intensity of the displacement itself.
83. In the render tree, pull another connection from the Image shader’s red dot and connect it to
the input of the Color2alpha shader. This shader extracts the alpha channel from the image.
84. Connect the output of the Color2alpha shader to the input of the Intensity shader.
85. Choose Nodes > Conversion > Color to Scalar tool shader.
Connect the Color2Alpha shader to The displacement connection entry needs a scalar value (a value between 0 and 1). You will
the Intensity shader by pulling an convert the color information (a value between 0 and 255) from the Intensity shader to a scalar
arrow from the red dot. value with the Color2scalar tool shader.
If you want to see all the connection points for each node, choose Show > Expand All from
the Render Tree command bar.
86. Connect the Intensity node to the Color2Scalar node.

87. Finally, connect the Color2Scalar shader to the displacement input of the Material node.
The displacement map is now applied to the dragonfly’s body, but you need to make some
adjustments first.
88. Double-click the Intensity node to open its property editor. Adjust the Factor to 0.3 to
control the amount of displacement on the dragonfly’s body.
Use the Factor slider to

control the amount of
displacement. You could
also use negative values
if you wish. In this case,
set Factor to 0.3.
89. With the body hierarchy still selected, choose Get > Property > Geometric Approximation
to open the geometric approximation property editor for your selection.
90. Select the Displacement tab and set the Subdivision Step value to 2.
The Displacement
property page allows you
to set the geometric
approximation as it
applies to displacements.
91. Click the Refresh button and watch the result in the render region.
Merging a Background Scene

The Merge command allows you to load one scene on top of another. As it happens, there is a
background scene ready for you to load.
92. Choose File > Merge.
93. In the browser that appears, find and select the dragonfly_background scene from the
tutorial_project’s Scenes directory. The new scene loads and appears in the viewports. It’s a
simple background containing a corn stalk model.
You may encounter the

default clipping planes of the
viewports. From the
viewport’s command bar,
select Nav > Properties to
open the viewport camera’s
property page. From here,
you can set Near and Far
Clipping Plane values to
determine what near and far
distances your camera will
“see” and render.
Tutorials • 183
Conclusion
You have taken a lifeless model and added textures with specific texture projections, created
detailed textures, and added a displacement map. Finally you added a background scene to put
the finished model into context.
Using the Render toolbar and the render tree, you are able to “finish” a model and begin to
render. The render region and the interactive property editors streamline your workflow so that
there is no guesswork to your edits—you can immediately see the changes you are making.
From here, the next step is to create render passes to control how certain areas of your scene will
be rendered.
Tutorial 17: Creating Render Passes

In this tutorial, you will create a highlight pass, a depth pass, and a shadow pass for rendering.
These passes automatically become a permanent part of the sequence you’re working on and let
you edit specific areas of your scene quickly and easily. Once defined, they will not have to be
defined again.

• Create a highlight pass.
• Create a depth pass.
• Create a shadow pass.
• Render all passes.
Tutorials • 185
Overview
1 Create a highlight pass of the scene’s objects.
2 Create a shadow pass. 3 Create a depth pass.
Creating a Highlight Pass

As you create new passes, the last pass defined becomes the current pass and you can
immediately see what the rendered scene looks like in the render region.
The highlight pass uses all of a scene’s objects and isolates their highlights. Also called a specular
pass, this pass can help you tweak the brighter areas of a scene or even add shaders to the
highlights while retaining the original materials of the model or object.
1. Choose File > Open from the main-menu bar to import the dragon_background scene
from the tutorial database:
<install directory>\content\TUTORIAL_PROJECT\Scenes
Default pass with render

region set to RGB + Alpha.
2. Choose Pass > Edit > New Pass > Highlights from the Render toolbar to create the
highlight pass for every object in the scene. The highlight pass is set as the current pass and
the highlight pass property editor opens.
3. If you wish, enter an new Name for the pass in the property editor.
4. Click the Render Options tab to open the render options property page for the highlight
pass. Set the options as desired and close the editor.
5. Draw a render region (press q and drag) in the camera viewport.
6. Set the region to show RGB only by choosing Render > Region > Show RGB from the
Render toolbar.
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Highlight pass with

render region set to RGB.
Everything you create a new pass it becomes the current pass. You can specify the
current pass by choosing it from the Pass pull-down menu on the Render toolbar.
Creating a Shadow Pass

The shadow pass lets you isolate a scene or object’s shadow and edit it in a way that can
compliment the scene. For example, you could apply a transparency or blur to the shadow to
make it more realistic instead of a sharp, opaque shadow.
7. Choose Pass > Edit > New Pass > Shadow from the Render toolbar to create the shadow
pass for every object in the scene. The shadow pass is set as the current pass and the shadow
pass property editor opens.
8. If you wish, you can enter an new Name for the pass in the property editor.
9. Click the Render Options tab to open the render options property page for the shadow pass.
Set the options as desired and close the editor.
The render region updates with the new shadow pass.
10. Choose Render > Region > Show RGB + Alpha in the Render toolbar to see the altered
alpha channel in the render region.
Shadow pass shown

with render region set
to RGB + Alpha
Creating a Depth Pass

A depth pass is used to create a depth effect for objects that are far from the camera. When
composited with a rendered scene, objects that are far in the background have a grayish layer
applied to them to reduce detail and simulate a type of depth fading.
11. Choose Pass > Edit > New Pass > Depth from the Render toolbar to create a depth pass for
all of the scene’s objects. The depth pass is set as the current pass and the depth pass
12. If you wish, you can enter an new Name for the pass in the property editor.
13. Click the Render Options tab to open the Render Options property page for the depth pass.
Set the options as desired and close the editor.
The render region updates with the new depth pass but renders black because the distance
between the camera and objects is too long.
14. Open an explorer and press the u key to set the scope on the Current Pass.
15. Double-click the Constant_density shader that was defined by the default depth-pass preset.
Tutorials • 189
16. Turn off 1:10 and turn on 1:100. This sets the Density scale to one to a hundred. The scaling
determines the depth used (in SOFTIMAGE units) to display the defined density. Use 1:100
to create a detailed depth pass of a scene that extends far from the camera, and 1:1 for a
scene that is relatively flat.
17. From the Render toolbar, choose Render > Region > Show RGB for a clear view of what the
depth pass will render.
Depth pass with render

region set to RGB.
Notice how objects
closer to the camera are
light and objects further
from the camera are
darker.
Render All Passes

Once you have edited all your passes and set the render options, you can render all the passes as
separate files and composite them.
18. Choose Render > Render > All Passes. Watch the passes being rendered one after the other
without the need to re-tessellate each of them, but only at frame refresh.
Conclusion
You have created three of the most basic render passes a scene will use. In addition, you can
create and edit a matte pass, a flare pass, a diffuse and ambient pass, and so on. Each pass gives
you the ability to change how certain areas, effects, or properties will be rendered and to what
extent they will contribute to the final look of your scene.
Tutorial 18: Editing Shaders in the Render Tree

This tutorial guides you through basic shader editing in the render tree. You’ll construct a glass
shader using a variety of basic shaders and tool nodes found in the SOFTIMAGE|XSI shader library.

• Connect shaders to a material using the render tree.
• Use tool shaders.
• Convert values.
• Edit shader parameters.
Tutorials • 191
Overview
1 Apply a basic surface shader.
2 Connect tool shaders to create a glass surface.
3 Perfect the glass surface.
4 Apply a texture to both sides of a flower petal.
Attaching a Material Shader

1. Choose File > Open to import the restaurant scene from the tutorial database:
<install directory>\content\TUTORIAL_PROJECT\Scenes
2. Select a wine glass and change the Front viewport (C) to a render tree view.
3. Choose Get > Material > Phong. You should now have a structure like this (you may have
to click the Update button in the render tree):
The Phong surface shader is automatically

added to the Surface and Shadow inputs
of the object’s Material node.
4. Draw a render region in the Camera view around the wine glass (pressing q and drag).
5. Double-click the Phong shader node to open its property editor and change these settings:
Illumination > Specular decay: 200
Illumination > Ambient: 0,0,0
Transparency/Reflection > Index of Refraction (IOR): 1.4
To keep the refresh fast, do not change the other values right now.
Using a Tool Shader

6. Add the Incidence shader to the render tree work area by choosing Nodes > Illumination >
Incidence from the render tree command bar.
The Incidence tool shader computes the difference between an object’s normal angles with the
camera’s point of view. You will use this information to modify the edge transparency of the glass.
Tutorials • 193
Convert a value (scalar to color)

If you wish to connect the Incidence shader’s output (a scalar value) to the Surface input of the
Material node, you must first convert it to a color value.
7. Choose Nodes > Conversion > Scalar to Color from the command bar to add the
Scalar2Color converter shader to the render tree workspace.
8. Connect the Incidence shader’s output into the input of the Scalar2Color shader.
9. Select the Scalar2Color shader and press the p key to preview it. The Preview tool
temporarily connects the selected node to the surface input of your object so you can see the
values you edit.
When previewing, notice the change in the render region. You can see that the surface changes
to black when the angle between the normal and the camera’s point of view is high and shifts to
a white/gray when there is less difference between the two angles.
Don’t forget to press p again when you’re finished previewing. Staying in Preview
mode updates the render region with every selection.
10. Open the Incidence tool shader by double-clicking its node.

11. In the Incidence property editor, select Camera Direction as the Incidence Mode and enter
1.2 as the Exponent Value.
To continue seeing the surface effects while using the Preview tool, lock the Incidence
property page and select the Color2Scalar conversion shader so that its output is
visible when connected to the surface of the Material node.
Fine-tuning an Effect
Now adjust the edge intensity of the glass by using the ever-useful Color-correction tool shader.
12. From the Nodes menu, select the Image Processing > Color_correction shader. The red dot
from which connections are “dragged” signifies that this shader’s output is a color value.
13. Connect the output of the Scalar2color shader into the input of the Color_correction shader.
14. Select the Color_correction shader and press p to preview. Your render tree should look like
this (while in Preview mode):
15. Double-click on the Color_correction shader node and input the following values in its
property editor:
Gamma: 1.7
Contrast: 0.9
Hue: 0
Saturation: 0
Level: 0.01
16. From the Nodes menu, select the Image Processing > Invert shader so it appears in the
render tree work area.
17. Connect the output of Color_correction to the Invert shader, and the output of the Invert
shader to the Phong surface shader’s diffuse input.
Apply a finish
18. Connect the output of Color_correction to the transparency input of the Phong
surface shader.
19. Connect the output of the Phong shader to the Surface input of the Material node. Your
glass effect is now visible.
If your glass is not transparent, check the default ray depth of the render region. A
setting of 1 will not show any transparency. Select View > Setup > Properties and click
on the Optimization tab. Change the Ray Depth values to:
Reflection: 4
Refraction: 4
Maximum Ray Depth: 4
Tutorials • 195
20. To accentuate the realism and glass imperfections, add some glossy reflections and
transparency frostiness. Double-click the Phong shader and play with the following
parameters:
Transparency > Frost
Transparency > Samples
Transparency > Index of Refraction
Reflection > Color
Reflection > Gloss
Reflection > Samples
Grouping Objects to Apply a Material

You will now modify the surface and texture of the flower petals as a group and apply a shared
material to the group. The flower petals are made from a single surface and therefore inherit the
same texture on both sides of the surface. You’ll apply different textures on the interior and
exterior of the petal using the Front/Back tool shader.
21. Select all six open petals of the main flower (use Shift-select to add to a selection or
Ctrl-select to subtract).
22. Click the Group button from Edit panel of the the main command area and enter
Petal_group as the group’s name. Close the Group property editor.
23. Set the explorer so that it is focused on the Scene and Groups. Make sure the Petal_group is
selected. Selected groups appear as a light-gray wireframe in the viewports.
24. Draw a render region across the petals in the camera view.
25. Choose Get > Material > Phong from the Render toolbar. Keep the default Phong surface
shader’s property page open for now (you can lock it open if you wish).
26. Reselect the Petal_group and open a render tree in one of the viewports. Click Update in the
render tree to display the group material node and its assigned (Phong) surface shader.
Connection Load the Front/Back tool shader
icon
27. From the render tree command bar, choose Nodes > Switch > Front/Back tool shader to
place it in the render tree work area.
28. Connect the Front/Back shader’s output to the diffuse input of the Phong shader.
29. Double-click on the Front/Back node to open its property editor. Click on the Front
connection icon and select the Image shader.
30. On the Image shader property page, select New > New From File to define an image clip.
Navigate to the SOFTIMAGE|XSI content database and select the hemerocalis_branche.pic
image.
31. From the Texture Space drop-down menu, click New and select a UV texture space.
32. Open the Front/Back shader property page again (click Prev. at the top of the present
property page to cycle through previously opened property pages).
33. Click on the connection icon and repeat step 30 to select the hemerocalis.pic image.
34. Select UV as the Texture Space in the drop-down menu of the Image property page.
35. Orbit in the viewport (press o) to admire both sides of the petals!
36. You may now stop admiring and press Ctrl+n to clean the workspace, or Shift+Delete to
delete all.
Conclusion
You have now used the render tree to achieve a highly customized affect by using specific
shaders and shader tools to control a texture’s parameters. Using the render tree, fine-tuning
texture effects can be done at the shader level with unprecedented control and detail.
Tutorials • 197
Index
Index bones, editing length 100 Curve > Draw CV NURBS 70 E

brush properties 70 curve editor See animation editor Edit > Freeze Operator Stack 56
A bump mapping 171 curve net 49 elements
access keys 23
C curves selecting 23
action clips
cameras constraining objects to 82 Envelope > Edit Weights 150
cropping 123
clipping planes 183 deforming by 70 Envelope > Reassign Locally 149
cycling 123
dollying 50 drawing 70 Envelope > Set Envelope 74, 147
extrapolating 123
framing 55 custom commands Envelope Weights editor 75
instantiating 122, 128
orbiting 50 creating 42 envelopes 74, 145
mixing 131
tracking 49 See also commands, scripts assigning points to different
action sources deformers 149
zooming 49 custom parameters
modifying 123 assigning to skeletons 147
chains 106
storing 121 controlling mix weights 140
creating 97 editing weights 75
actions See action clips, action controlling shapes 140
rotation limits 108 modifying weights 150
sources, animation mixer creating 141
up vector 117 painting weights 75
Actions > Apply Action 122
cleaning, surfaces 53 creating sets 140 expression editor 85
Actions > Store 121, 128
clipping planes 183 cycles, clips in animation mixer 123 expressions
alpha channels
Color2Alpha shader 182 clips, image 176 D controlling mix weights 139
in textures 178 color values, converting 182, 194 creating 85
deformations
animation curves See function command box editing 85
by curve 70
curves repeating commands 42 validating 86
by spine 72
animation editor 106 typing commands 43 with custom parameters 141
by surface 36
cleaning function curves 126 command history, viewing 42 extending, surfaces 59
commands 41 muting 72 extrapolating, clips in animation
displaying 113
modifying action sources 123 repeating 42 push 68 mixer 123
viewing 113 typing 43 twist 36
F
animation mixer See also custom commands, using weight maps 66
fcurves See function curves
actions 119 scripts depth fading 189
compensation See constraints, filleting, surfaces 60
markers 131 depth passes 189
creating offsets framing the camera 55
shapes 132 displacement maps 181
constraints free-form selection 49
transitions 136 display types in viewport 156
creating offsets 85 freezing, operator stack 56
articulated chains See chains dollying 22
curve (path) 82 function curves 77, 106
assembling surface meshes 64 with cameras 50
duplicating 85 cleaning 126
B surface 37 duplicating displaying 113
background scenes, merging 183 up-vector 117 constraints 85 interpolation 114
Bones system See skeletons continuity, across subsurfaces 65 objects 85 selecting 114
Tutorials • 199
Index
slopes 114 K M P
viewing 113 key points, selection 114 manipulators in viewport 161, 163 painting
See also animation editor, keyboard shortcuts 22 marked parameters brush properties 70
keyframing keyframes setting 84 deformation weights 69
function-curve editor creating animation with 84 storing actions 127 envelope weights 74
See animation editor from a property page 84 markers, in animation mixer 131 palettes, toolbar 168
setting 84 material panning 22
G
keys, access 23 applying to a group 177, 196 See tracking
Get > Primitive > Surface 156 local 158
kinematics, inverse 106 Parameter > New Custom
grids, in viewports 49 shader 155, 193 Parameter 141
groups L shared 157 Parameter > New Custom
creating 167 layers 97 Material Editor in Parameter Set 140
creating for material 177, 196 creating 63 SOFTIMAGE|3D 155 parameters
setting visibility 64 merging custom 140
H layouts, SOFTIMAGE|XSI background scenes 183 linked 88
hidden objects 160 lights surfaces 53 marked 84
hierarchies, creating 32 angle 162 mix weights 138 parenting 103
highlight passes 187 creating 160 actions 131 particles
default 160 controlling with custom animating 86
I parameters 140
falloff 161, 162 defining emission of 86
IK assembly See skeletons expressions on 139 editing 87
infinite 160
IK See inverse kinematics interest 164 keying 139 passes
image clips 176 manipulators in viewport 161, shape animation 137 depth 189
image shader 169 163 modeling relations 55 highlight 187
image sources 176 moving 163 Move Point tool 56 rendering all 190
creating clip from 180 orientation 164 muting setting current 188
shadows 161 deformations 72 shadow 188
viewing from Flipbook 176
soft light 160 operators 38 paths
images, connecting to
parameter 169 spotlight 160 O animation 82
infinite light 160 spread angle 161, 162 objects assigning objects to 82
interface, SOFTIMAGE|XSI umbra 161 duplicating 35 constraining objects to 82
interpolation 114 linked parameters 88 selecting by name 23 editing 82
inverse kinematics 106 creating 90 operator stack, freezing 56 picking 83
setting relative values 91 operators, muting 38 Phong shader 158
rotation limits 108
loading, scenes 20 orbiting 22 points
J local material 158 orbiting the camera 50 moving 56
joints, rotation limits 108 lofting 56 overrides, property 144 selecting 68
Index
presets S parameters 140 merging 53

loading 175 scenes, loading 20 mixing weights 138 moving points 56
saving 175 SCM See surface continuity manager transitions 136 stitching 61
textures 174 script editor, viewing command shared materials 157 swapping UV direction in
thumbnail image 175 history in 42 Show > Weight Maps 68 textures 178
scripts 41 Skeleton > 2D Chain 74
project manager, about 19 T
interacting with other skeletons 77, 106
projects applications 43 tagging See selecting 68
creating 97, 103
adding 19, 20 See also commands, custom tangency 83
using objects in 102
installing Tutorial 19 selecting See also envelopes text boxes, entering property values
properties, editing 27 by typing 55 slope handles, editing 114 in 39
Property > Weight Map 68 free form tool 49 soft light 160 texture controls, visibility in
property editors points 68 sources See action sources, shape viewport 177
editing properties in 27 Selection > Free Form Tool 49 animation texture space 171
keyframing values 84 Set Relative Values 91 spine deformation 72 texture support
shaded display in viewports 156 spotlights 160 creating 175
property values, entering in text
boxes 39 shaders stitching defining 177
push deformation 68 color correction 194 surfaces 61
manipulating object in
Color2Alpha 182 subsurfaces 65 viewport 172
R Color2Scalar 182 supra keys 22 textures
relative values 91 editing in render tree 191 activating tools with 22
alpha channel 178
render region Front/Back 196 Surf Mesh > Assemble 65
image 169 applying 170, 179
drawing 158 Surf Mesh > Continuity
incidence 193 Manager 65 applying to group 177
optimizing 160
intensity 179, 182 surface continuity manager 65 saving a preset 174
refreshing 179
material 155, 193 surface meshes scaling 171
removing 168
Phong 158 applying SCM 65 thumbnail images for presets 175
saving preset with thumbnail
image 175 Scalar2Color 194 assembling 64 toolbars, custom 42
surface 168, 180 surface shaders 168, 180 tracking, with camera 49
render tree 173
texture 170 surfaces 47
connecting nodes in 178 transformations
viewing in render tree 173 cleaning 53
editing shaders 191 about 29
shadow passes 188 constraints 37
opening 173 storing actions 127
Shape > Mixed Weight Mode 137 curve net 49
updating 181 Shape > Save Shape Key 137 deformations 36 transitions 136
rendering Shape > Store Shape Key 134 extending to curves 59 automatic 137
all passes 190 shape animation 132 filleting 60 transparency shading 156
ray depth 195 controlling with custom lofting 56 Tutorials, installing project 19
Tutorials • 201
Index
U W
up vectors, constraining 117 weight maps 66
UV swap in textures 178 applying 68
deformation by curve 70
V
deformation by spine 72
viewing
displaying 68
animation editor 113
painting 69
command history 42
push deformation 68
function curves 113
weight mixer panel 131, 138
rotation limits 109
weights See envelopes, spine
viewports deformation, weight maps
dollying 50 wildcard in object selection 167
framing 55 workspace See interface
orbiting 50
tracking camera 49 Z
zooming 49 zooming 22
visibility, of layers 64 zooming with camera 49

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S e c t io n 3 Modeling & Deformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Tutorial 8: Skeleton Construction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

About This Guide

Where to Find Information

The SOFTIMAGE|XSI package includes a comprehensive set of learning

The Softimage Discussion Group

HTML Scripting Reference

Using the Online Library

To access the Online Library

Type style Usage

Italics Definitions and emphasized words.

The 3D icon indicates information about differences in workflow or concepts between

Keyboard and Mouse Conventions

The two-button mouse is not supported in SOFTIMAGE|XSI.

Right-click Quickly press and release the right mouse button.

Double-click Quickly click the left mouse button twice.

Installing the Tutorial Project

Adding a Project to the Project Manager

1 Click Add Project to display a

Toolbar displays one of

Click the Display Types menu and press

Using Supra Keys to Zoom, Orbit, and Pan

Selecting Objects in a Scene

For more information, please see....

Tutorial 1: Basic Object Editing

Press f to frame the

Edit the parameters

Properties that are shared

1 Load the House scene, then

2 Select the house hierarchy

3 Create a deformation object and constrain the houses to its surface.

4 Set random and relative values

5 Set tangency and normals

Drag and drop relationships

Drag and drop the chimney node

The chimney becomes the child of

5. Congratulations on your first child!

Mouse Status line

With nothing selected, start

Null hierarchy selected

Adding a Twist Deformation

Press Enter to display MULTI selection.

All the house objects in the scene are selected.

Using a Surface Constraint

Adding Random Values

- Entering r in a text box generates a random number.

Adding Relative Values

Tangency and Normal Constraints

Using the Command History

Click the arrow.

6. Press Enter. The Create Sphere command is repeated.

Creating Custom Commands

Interacting with Other Applications

1 Create Burt’s head using Curve Net, Clean, and Merge.

2 Create Burt’s middle using Loft and Extend to Curve.

Create a fillet between Burt’s

Creating a Surface with Curve Net

Select the first curve

The white line shows the freeform