This blog has been moved to cesarsaez.me, sorry for the trouble.

Jul 19, 2013

Git For Softimage

Hi folks,

I've been working with Git as version control system on my developments for a while and thought it might be useful add some version control abilities to my softimage projects.

https://github.com/csaez/gitforsoftimage

It implements:

  • Commit history
  • Branching
  • Remotes

If you don't want to continue the 'incremental save' madness, or if you are looking for an easy way to collaborate with others in small projects, give it a try, it's free and open!

Let me know what you think,
Cheers.


By the way, if you're not familiar with distributed version control systems there are a few key concepts that must be considered, don't forget to check the documentation.

Jun 30, 2013

QuickLauncher

Hey folks,

Today I want to share a tool I've been using for a while, it's a simple menu to search and launch softimage commnads and scripts (you can set the script directory on the preferences).


In order to make it fast I'm caching the commands and script paths (just the paths, the script itself is loaded on runtime), so if you add a new script file or connect/disconnect workgroups please make sure that the cache is reloaded (there's a command just for that) and everything should be fine.

The menu requires PyQtForSoftimage and is available here.

Give it a try and let me know what you think :-)
Cheers!

Jun 25, 2013

RigIcon goes open source

Hi folks,
Do you remember rigicon? now you can get it from github!


There's also a brief documentation and a pre-packed xsiaddon in case you don't want to mess with the source code, dependencies and so on... if you have no idea what I'm talking about take a look at the old preview.

You will need PyQtForSoftimage installed in your system, other than that everything should work fine OOTB.

Cheers!

Feb 11, 2013

RigLab: Preview #001

Hi guys,

Today I wanna share an early preview of the rigging framework I've been working on, there's still a lot of work to do but I think the core concepts are there.

Let me know what you think about it :)
Cheers!


Jan 3, 2013

RigLab: RigIcon tool

Hey folks,

This time I wanna share a preview of some rigging tools I'm working on. They're highly inspired by Softimage null's implementation but with some advantages that you can see in the video below (sorry for my english :P).


The csRigIconEditor GUI was a really nice exercise, it's a simple UI but as Softimage has no native PyQt implementation we have to handle the sincronization with the selection by ourselves. At the end was a lot of fun and I learned a couple of new tricks :)

I will be sharing this and all my tools with the first public version of the rigging framework, so they should be available soon.

Cheers!

Oct 29, 2012

DevManager: yet another plugin manager for softimage


Hi folks,

I've been working on a manager for my developments, something like softimage's plugin manager but better suited for my workflow (python modules for the logic and pyQT for GUIs).

When I was working at Kandor Graphics we had some similar tools (much more robust and sophisticated, of course), was one of the first things they tackled and turned out to be an excellent decision on the long run.


So, lets see some features...


csDevManager has 2 modes, the basic one works like a launcher for all my custom commands, nothing too exciting here.

The developer mode is where it gets interesting, in this mode you can see all the Addons/Developments and their plugins (including properties, events and almost everything you can register on softimage).

Through the context menu you can access the reload function, this allow you reload all python modules used in the addon, recompile the QT stuff and reload the softimage's plugin in one click (big time saver).

You can also edit UI files (using QT Designer), explore directories, create new addons, plugins and remove existing ones.

Another nice addition is a new sdk wizard with updated templates, this makes really easy create new plugins.

And at last but not less, you have access to an API that allows you do "everything" related to your addons, every you see in the GUI is doable via API in a OOP way.




I've to do some clean up in order to make it completely generic, I'll make a github repository with all my tools and share them as open source ASAP.

Next step: work on my rigging framework using all I've learned in the past years :)


Cheers!

Sep 18, 2012

Holymonks' face rig

Hey guys,

I did this one a while ago but I never share it here, it's a custom tool designed to quickly wire up facial rig for an animated tv series.

The rig itself has nothing special but it worked fine for their needs/schedule constraints, so everyone happy :-)