hi, 'sup, i had a few questions, so...

    looks like mod tool 7.5 has been released. is it downloadable for premium members now? (not one atm)

    is Crosswalk or other addons still needed? (for animations etc)

    Autodesk's release said it now supports window's vista business edition, what other editions would work then?
     i have home premium, would that work or would it require an upgrade just to run mod tool 7.5?

    there used to be an Autodesk representative (more or less) that used to post replies and help with problems on the forums,
     wondered if they were still around or if we could get someone from Autodesk to check in and help at times?

    and if anyone uses or is using the new edition of modtool, are you having any problems with it?

    thx and catch ya later! ;)

Alexandre still pops in from time to time, and I'm sure he'll answer your questions as best he can once he sees this thread.  Until then I'll answer to the best of my knowledge...

-The Mod Tool website still says that 7.5 is "coming soon", and no release date has been given yet.
-I see no reason why they wouldn't continue to use Crosswalk for FBX and other exporting, seeing as they've updated it rather recently.

Hi,

We're just putting the finishing touches on the Mod Tool 7.5 and it should be available in the coming weeks - definitely before the end of the month (end of the Autodesk quarter).

This release is a very good one. Out of the box, it has support for XNA 3.x, so you won't need to download the add-ons and set it up.

Yes, it runs on Vista very nicely. Good question about the Home Premium -- I am not sure if it will run as we did not test it on Home Premium -- when it's available, maybe you can just download it and try it out.

The new edition of the Mod Tool is really leaps and bounds better than the previous one. It takes advantage of all the core improvements we made with XSI 7 such as ICE. btw Mental Ray is enabled (very subtle watermark) which means that you can try out some crazy particle effect rendering. There's a new real-time shading API. It's also far more stable.

Thanks for Alexandre and team for an amazing job. This is a very good release.

Cheers,

Leo


//ps here was some screengrabs I took for the announcement.

DirectX FX shaders running in viewport:


ICE particle effects - what you see in the top right is rendered with Mental Ray (notice the volumetric shader effects).

Does 7.5 add support to export ICE to XNA?

I haven't found anything that says that it does and when i tried it in 7.0 it didn't export anything.

It depends what you mean by "support export of ICE to XNA".

ICE is just a tool within Softimage to produce procedural effects such as deformations and particle effects. Technically, you could take mesh deformations and particles, and export that in whatever format you want as long as you have the means to work with that data within your engine.

If you're asking for some sort of ICE run-time from within XNA where you create something in Softimage, export the ICE graph to XNA and it automagically works, no there isn't such a thing and to make that is not trivial.

Leo

Thanks, AlphaLeo, for the great reply. and just what i needed to know. (mostly) hehe

after getting over my initial fear of the 'big scary dragon' ...

this looks like a great release, although i must admit watermarks scare me more than 'big scary dragons'. :)
will this watermark make it into the game or is it just during the render inside of modtool?

Mod Tool 7.5 really looks good (from the screenshots) and we appreciate the great deal of work and effort, ya'll have put into this.
 (the same goes for xna game studio)

this is enough to think about going with the premium membership just to be able to use Mod Tool and see what it's capable of ingame.

thx again, can't wait to get a hold of this puppy! :)

ayretek:

will this watermark make it into the game or is it just during the render inside of modtool?

AlphaLeo was talking about Mental Ray, which is a separate software renderer - an XNA game would use the realtime shaders instead. Mental Ray wasn't included as part of the previous Mod Tools, so it's a cool feature to have, but probably not that relevant to game development (unless you wanted to render out some 2D textures with it or something).

I'm really glad to see the Mod Tool is still being supported by Autodesk. Definitely looking forward to this release, and to finally being able to move to XNA 3.0 =) Thanks for all the effort!

No the watermark does not carry across into the game, it is just inside the render engine for the mod tool.

And the Premium Memebership is worth it as you are able to sell your works.

Can you use mental ray to bake a texture as in Maya, and if so, will a watermark appear on your tex?

I could never get XSI mod tool to function correctly (when at all) on my Vista 64 machine, and am really looking forward to this release.

Best,
Byron

thx guys, i'd hate to see a watermark in a game. although, on the other hand, the option of displaying a splash screen showing xna and/or softimage would be considered a privilege as far as i'm concerned. considering the work both have put into these great tools.

also, one of the things i like the most is the great community, tutorials, and samples that softimage has and game studio as well. this is something i'm looking very forward to. anything that will make the process in making games more fluid and productive will be of great value.

"Training from Noesis Interactive – Softimage Mod Tool 7.5 comes with training from Noesis Interactive covering the creation of a character in Softimage Mod Tool 7.5 and exporting it for use with Microsoft XNA." 

this is awesome, couldn't ask for better. hopefully, with dream-build-play just around the corner, we can get some samples from the XNA crew too! *hint* :)

Hey guys,

Mod Tool 7.5 has started shipping:
http://www.autodesk.com/modtool

The softimage.com website is in the process of being updated. The above link is good.

It's free, so no harm in trying it out. :)

Cheers!

Leo

AlphaLeo:

Mod Tool 7.5 has started shipping:
http://www.autodesk.com/modtool%20

Ah.. the culprit seems to be a %20 getting inserted when i click the link.  If I don't manually delete it,

I get : 

The Page You Were Looking for Was Not Found

I am sorry. The XNA forums are adding funky characters to the end of URL's when I copy and paste them in.

Type this in exactly:
http://www.autodesk.com/modtool

Leo

When will the Pro tool be available for download?  The link is still for the prior version.

Thank you guys very much for this version!  It downloaded & installed on my vista 64-ultimate system without issue and all the basic functionality that never worked for me in V6 is working great!

Best,
Byron

IslandDreamer:

When will the Pro tool be available for download?  The link is still for the prior version.

Hi, the Pro version literally just came out of the Build machine. I'm sending to Microsoft now, so it will be made available very soon.

Apart from the commercial EULA, the software is identical.

Cheers,

Leo

Any idea when you guys will be posting Crosswalk 3.3 for download The version in the Mod Tool seems to have corrected the FBX animation issues I was having with 3.2 and 7.5 although there might be a new problem with uvs It never ends~26nbsp~3b EDIT Like the fact that this forum is now introducing weird characters for all punctuation~26nbsp~3b Very strange~3cbr /~3e

Crosswalk 3.3 is currently under final testing. We will be releasing it soon. In the meantime, if you are really stuck with 7.5, you can always copy the dotXSIConverter.dll plugin in your Softimage 7.5 installation, it's compatible with both Softimage and Mod Tool.

Are you suggesting I export dotXSI out of 7.5 into the Mod Tool and export FBX from there~3f~3cbr /~3e

Ok, I was assuming you were using the Crosswalk content importer. In that case, I am suggesting you find the dotXSIConverter.dll file in the Mod Tool install directory and copy it over to the same location but on the Softimage install directory. As a safer alternative, you can also load your native Softimage 7.5 scene inside of the Mod Tool and export to FBX from there.

The FBX dll is located here: C:\Softimage\Softimage_Mod_Tool_7.5\Application\Plugins\FBXXSI.32.dll

Another complication is that I am using the 64-bit 7.5. I assume it will not work with the 32-bit .dll correct~26nbsp~3b~26nbsp~3b~26nbsp~3b sorry no punctuation the message is unreadable must be Microsoft wanting me to use IE instead of Firefox~26nbsp~3b Although animation is working properly coming out of the Mod Tool and 3.3~26nbsp~3b I am having problems with the UV maps.~26nbsp~3b Does the exporter support multiple UVs~3cbr /~3e

Hello IslandDreamer,

You're right, the 32 bit version of the .dll will not work with Softimage 64 bit. You will have to wait for the Crosswalk 3.3 release.

Can you elaborate a bit on the problem you're experiencing with UV map please? I did quick test. I exported an object with 4 materials assigned on different clusters, each of them using a different Texture and Texture Coordinate (4 UV set). Softimage does support multiple UV export but does not support multiple UV import so I imported the .fbx file in 3dsMax and everything was there confirming that the 4 UV sets where exported properly.

LB

Thanks, Luc!  That explains it.  The file I was trying to export had originally been imported, so that's when I lost the second UV set.  I didn't notice because I was only focusing on the file for animation purposes.

FYI, the Pro update is still not available.  The link still points to 6.01.

I only sent the FTP to MSFT on Friday so I think it shouldn't take much longer to be put online.

As I mentioned, Pro is identical to the Mod Tool (standard) with the exception of the EULA. As long as you have Creator's Club membership (which entitles you to the Pro version and commercial license), I don't think it would make much difference if you used the standard Mod Tool to work.

Cheers!

Leo