Set Polygon/Edge Position

[EricTRocks]

Going to step in on this thread and hand out a warning to iamVFX. I can appreciate your frustration. However, in this case Guillame was kind enough to stop by the forum and answer a question and give a fully valid reasoning for what was done and why. Your tone of your messages aren't encouraging Guillame or any other devs to chime in when they can (especially Guillame who is actually not on Softimage dev any more). In other threads I've states that we need to remain respectful to others who are posting in the threads to ensure we have a professional atmosphere. I agree that you should vent your frustration but do it in a respectful way.

With each release things get improved and changed. The multi-threaded capabilities of the new version of the node will help a large portion of the user base and adds functionality where there was none before. For those folks who are developing plug-ins, scripts, compounds, it is their responsibility to check version compatibility. Developing the many plug-ins I have over the years and currently with Species I have to test on each version that I as a 3rd party developer choose to. Thus why I test in 2010,2011,2012, and now 2013. I have to compensate for features such as the Dual Quaternion compound not being available as a stock node in 2010. Something I did before releasing Species 1.0.

If you are shooting to provide compounds to the community then you're going to have to consider this in the future.

[iamVFX]

I agree that you should vent your frustration but do it in a respectful way.

I'll do whatever I want with my messages and their tone. I'm not respect the people who hide obvious mistakes and they should know it.

If you are shooting to provide compounds to the community then you're going to have to consider this in the future.

Fuck that future where user can't use compounds of others that have "better" version than his.

I said enough. I'll stop this conversation if you never mind.

[Hirazi Blue]

Always tricky to try to help someone without getting comments like this...

Not to correct EricTRocks on this, as I agree with him, but the final remark in Guillaume's post could be considered inflammatory as well, as it implies he (almost) ALWAYS gets into trouble like this potentially, whenever he tries to help someone... And that's basically not true either, IIRC...

I agree that you should vent your frustration but do it in a respectful way.

I'll do whatever I want with my messages and their tone. I'm not respect the people who hide obvious mistakes and they should know it.

You are however bound by the rules (and customs) of this community, I'm afraid,
so the "I'll do whatever I want" attitude doesn't really apply!
Nobody forces you to respect anyone per se, all that's being asked of you is that you formulate
your responses in a "respectful way"... That's a subtle difference.
So for a large part it's not even about what you say, it's about the way you say it.
I tempted to close this thread but I'm willing to give it a chance to get back on a peaceful track...

[guillaume]

Always tricky to try to help someone without getting comments like this...

Not to correct EricTRocks on this, as I agree with him, but the final remark in Guillaume's post could be considered inflammatory as well, as it implies he (almost) ALWAYS gets into trouble like this potentially, whenever he tries to help someone... And that's basically not true either, IIRC...

Well, this is my personal feeling . Before, I was a user like you, and I could help people on any problems. Now it sounds like I can help people only if it is a user error. If it is a software error (yes sometime it can happen, go figure....) then I can't without this kind of comments.

But don't worry it won't change my mind. If I want to help someone I will, even without any thanks in return.

For the Build Array From Set, I really wanted to explain the problem in a neutral way because I know by experience how it can be frustating to not understand why something is not working as expected. Of course an explanation is not a fix, but for me, it is better than nothing.

[Hirazi Blue]

Well, it might well be your personal feeling (and I respect that),
but it still can be considered an inflammatory remark
and that's my personal feeling as an Administrator,
as it's my "job" to try to defuse threads like this one...
;)
But all parties involved have had their say now? Time to move on?

[guillaume]

Well, it might well be your personal feeling, but it still can be considered
an inflammatory remark and that's my personal feeling as an Administrator,
as it's my "job" to try to defuse threads like this one...
;)

So we are not allowed to express personal feelings like this here ?
And btw, I don't think it is just a feeling as it happened every time I answered to a "not user error" problem.

Anyway, forums are tricky places. It is very hard to express ideas clearly and without troubles.

Moderators job is not easy, so respect ;)

[iamVFX]

It always tricky to explain users why before 2013 release ICE was backward compatible and why it will not from now. Why they should pay for features that doesn't work even if SP1 and SAP after six months of development will not fix their bugs.

Someone's mistakes, lack of development time, old software architecture, there is so many excuses not to produce quality additions without breaking anything.

We all just should understand and deal with it, since we can't do anything about it.

But in this particular case we can, actually. I'll post fix solution for 2012 soon and then I'll not bother you or moderators anymore with my silly questions.

[Hirazi Blue]

So we are not allowed to express personal feelings like this here ?

You are quite intentionally interpreting my statement the wrong way. I'm not stating you are not allowed to express personal feelings, I mention my own personal feeling that the way you put it here could be considered inflammatory, as we were talking to iamVFX about the way he formulated a specific post, I felt every right to note, that you didn't try really hard to prevent provoking any further harsh comments either.

Your remark is noted... The idea that I don't allow people to express personal feelings is a very low blow.
If anyone really wants/needs to discuss this any further, please use our "Private Message" system.

@iamVFX - If I read your last remark correctly, I wouldn't necessarily turn my back on the si-community just for this incident. Take some time to consider... This thread went the wrong way. We intervened. No hard feelings on my part.

edit: I expressly unlocked this thread again
(after having it locked for about 5 minutes),
to enable comments on the original topic.
You've read it correctly: the original topic:
the compounds iamVFX presents here...
;)

[iamVFX]

First post is updated. Compatible versions of the compounds for SI 2012 are added. Be sure you downloaded this compound also.

[iamVFX]

1.1 is here. Much more simplified version, fixed set sorting for SI 2012 also.

Since there's not much attention to it (probably due to the fact that I was a douchebag in a thread) I'll give you a hint how you can use it.

With the help of Set Polygon Position compound you can extrude polygons by their normals now.

[rimg=650]http://screensnapr.com/e/ix5grx.png[/rimg]

Even more, since factory Extrude Polygon Island does not allow you to randomize or turbulize transform values per polygon you can set them by using this method.

Also you can download topo compounds pack that contains all my latest compounds plus context stuff, if you interested in it of course...

[Hirazi Blue]

Thanks for sharing...
(and lets move on, no permanent damage done as far as I'm concerned!)

[EricTRocks]

Good stuff. Thanks for sharing with the community. Please continue to release tools!

[iamVFX]

The only way is to use a repeat node.

You can’t get different extrusion lengths for different polygons without using the Repeat node.

[rimg=960]http://xsisupport.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/vlcsnap-2011-09-22-21h16m03s191.png[/rimg]

[guillaume]

Does it work if you want more subdivisions per extrusions or if you want to extrude per group of polygons instead of per polygon ?

[iamVFX]

It is possible. But I use my own extrusion compounds for this, it gives me more control over the subdivision and inset parameters. Example above should give you a clue how to make it by yourself.

[rimg=300]http://screensnapr.com/e/u1mMk7.png[/rimg]

[Tekano]

oh this!

am trying (and failing) to change the size of a polygon based upon its original area and an extrusion length that changes over time. I've completely missed this thread and see Constantine has made / added / improved the topo nodes. Ive got and installed them on 2012 SP1 (thank you) and now trying to figure out how to make the Islands extrude node from the screenshot iamVFX showed above.

see my example pic explaining what Im trying to achieve. what happens currently is on the left, what I would really like to happen is on the right - if the extrude length is small then I want to shrink the area of the polygon if the extrusion length is big I want to grow the polygon area size.

At the moment I do not have a single clue how to do this with the Topo nodes provided as my topo context jumping skills are non existent - well I can randomly select polygons to extrude now at least. (thanks to Mr S. Blair)

As there is no (default) polygon position and the attribute that could have helped polygonArea is read only! - it look's like iamVFX's ProceduralTopoPack can help me achieve this, just trying right now to figure out how his 'Islands Extrude' node is made by copying the tree above this. but he does mention making his own extrusion node to take into account further subdivisions - any help or pointers are appreciated