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Mihai gallery [updated 02/07]
Posted: Thu May 19, 2005 10:22 pm
by Mihai
Posted: Thu May 19, 2005 10:26 pm
by otacon
Very cool. I remember making one of those in art class.

Posted: Thu May 19, 2005 10:37 pm
by tom
mehuyee! tell me how did you dooo deth modeleeen'...hehehe

Posted: Thu May 19, 2005 10:43 pm
by Mihai
with a mouse and keyboard
The modeling was pretty easy, the rigging was a bit tedious. There's a little script for xsi called twigGen, which takes a curve and makes a series of extruded cylinders where you can control the "chaos" of it. So first I made a bunch of curves shrink wrapped to the default man mesh in xsi, made the twigs, then converted to mesh. Modeling took about 30 min, rigging about 2 hours....but it bends nicely without distortion in the curves

I loooove XSI
Posted: Thu May 19, 2005 11:08 pm
by tom

thx
Posted: Thu May 19, 2005 11:14 pm
by DELETED
DELETED
Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 8:32 am
by Hervé
Mihai, are you doing this in XSI...
I was curious about the learning curve in XSI... vs... LW..
BTW, do you already have a plugin for XSI..?
I did not like it first (xsi) coz I really can't get a good grip of nodal surfacing, but with now Maxwell... hehe...
and the XSI base is still pretty cheap...
Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 9:21 am
by sms
Too cool. I am impressed!
Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 9:30 am
by Mihai
Hervé, LW is ancient tech.....I didn't find XSI difficult to learn at all, it's very logical and well thought out in regards to workflow. Yes, the rendertree can be very confusing at first but there are lots of tutorials for it, and most of those obscure nodes are utility nodes anyway. This is rendered via Max, I exported from xsi with fbx format, works really well.
Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 9:45 am
by Hervé
cool... I might give it a go...
I've found a LW >>> XSi similarities tutorial....
yes it is pretty ancient... but it works... fact is for modeling some stuff.. I can go very very fast with lw modeler... I am not too fan of the layout ..
btw, your model would be hardcore to do in lw.... he he... that is why I asked...
but I really don't like max.... I tried it...
Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 3:05 pm
by GM5
Mihai - that is one cool image. Very nice work. I tried XSI when it first came out and didn't care for it (or the cost of it). Maybe I didn't give it enough time. Is the interface the same as the earlier version?
-Greg
Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 4:24 pm
by Mihai
I don't know how earlier versions looked but I quickly became comfortable with the UI. It's different from other packages, but then again all of the others (Maya, Max, LW, Cinema) sort of look the same. In XSI I think it's really well thought out, the ergonomics

Plus there are many little things that make you work faster, like middle click a menu and it executes the last command you used in that menu so you don't have open it and scroll to the command, or double click the title bar on an open window and it collapses/expands the window so you always have enough space on the screen. And it's fast, really fast. Subd's, envelopes, it's really smooth. I love it

Working with Max has become a big pain, but necessary...hopefully not for long.
Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 4:46 pm
by Hervé
ccool, I've downloaded the xsi 4.2 foundation trial... what at first looks very slow is the nav system... what do you think..? do U have any tricks... I mean LW has 1/10 of features, but navigating in windows is so fast, here I have to O for orbit Z + shift for zoom Z for pan...
But so far so good... (it looks like to get a good grip of it.. I'll really need some time... as I am by myself...
Max on the other side looks very confusing and weird... to many small icons that mean .... nothing...
OK, xsi rocks...
BTW, what version do you have... essentials...?
Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 5:18 pm
by 216coupe
wow fantastic

Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 5:35 pm
by GM5
Mihai Iliuta wrote:I don't know how earlier versions looked but I quickly became comfortable with the UI. It's different from other packages, but then again all of the others (Maya, Max, LW, Cinema) sort of look the same. In XSI I think it's really well thought out, the ergonomics

Plus there are many little things that make you work faster, like middle click a menu and it executes the last command you used in that menu so you don't have open it and scroll to the command, or double click the title bar on an open window and it collapses/expands the window so you always have enough space on the screen. And it's fast, really fast. Subd's, envelopes, it's really smooth. I love it

Working with Max has become a big pain, but necessary...hopefully not for long.
Thanks Mihai, I might have to take another look at XSI again!
-Greg