Procedural ICE Modeling in Softimage
In this Softimage tutorial, we will take a look at building an advanced ICE modeling compound to control the copying of an element with two control curves. Software required: Softimage 2012 SP1.
What you'll learn
In this Softimage tutorial, we will take a look at building an advanced ICE modeling compound to control the copying of an element with two control curves. We'll begin the tutorial by creating ICE extrusions with curves and strands to create our base stair element. We'll then create copies of our element inside an empty mesh. Then we'll create a control curve, find the transformations at various locations along the curve, and transform our copies to be on the curve. Next, we'll create a second curve to control other aspects of our copies and package everything into a compound. Then we'll learn how to create controls to easily modify our copies without having to understand our ICE tree. Software required: Softimage 2012 SP1.
Table of contents
- Exploring the Power of Procedural ICE Modeling 6m
- Initial Object Creation and Node Set-up to Extrude a Model 8m
- Modifying Various Nodes and Meshes to Change Our Model 4m
- Using Create Copies from Polygon Mesh for the Staircase 5m
- Using Transform per Copy to Modify Each Element 6m
- Using Get Copy Index to Create Additive Transforms 5m
- Finding Position Data on a Curve 8m
- Spreading Our Steps Along the Curve Based on Copy Index 6m
- Calculating How Many Steps to Place Based on Length and Height 9m
- Cleaning up Our ICE Tree by Creating Compounds 6m
- Setting the Scale Based Off a Second Control Curve 11m
- Rotating the Elements with the Control Curve Matrix 8m
- Combining All Our Nodes into a Compound for Ease of Use 7m
- Building a Per-element Rotation Offset for Better Control 7m
- Building Scale and Transform Controllers 11m
- Building an Option to Auto-calculate Steps or Manually Set 4m
- Building a Controller to Remove or Add Elements 3m
- Building a Controller to Add Space Between Elements 7m
- Cloning the Polygons into a New Mesh for Easier Transforms 5m
About the author
Along with creating and recording training, he also used to manage the support team and work closely with the production development team at Digital-Tutors, now a Pluralsight company. He began his career working freelance and quickly realized that he wanted to find a company where he could use his talents to help people succeed in the CG industry. Chris has likely watched more Pluralsight creative training than anyone on the planet, and its evidenced by his Einstein-sized brain and encyclopedic... more