Silo is ...

[ivan louette]

User can reorganize its interface and create button pages (even with his own made buttons !!!)

Yesterday I worked with it my whole day and had only one crash while exporting to .obj (and that was my only crash of the day) ; afterwards I have always refined geometry before exporting and I the problem was solved.

It's a little bit like LW sub-patches with n-gons partial subdivision and creasing edges added, and this is very very very cool. The splitting tool is also interesting but the explanations are not very clear about it.

It works very well with my Wacom tablet and don't need any special preferences settings. But zooming and panning needs a 3 buttons mouse and I cannot emulate it with my drawing pen and this is very annoying.

The lack of symmetry tools is also annoying, but there is a very interesting and innovative mirror one which can add the two copies of one object if they cross over the symmetry axis (see below two spheres mirrored). Stunning !!!

To be continued ...

Kindly,
ivan

My mini-tutorials
botarosa

[gidgit]

Hi Stu... to tell you the truth, I really don't know how Wings stacks up against XSI. Sorry bud

as for Mirai, well, it doesn't from what I have been able to gather through research, but for box modeling it comes pretty close , and when you concider the cost difference between any and all apps regardless, Wings is the clear winner by a long shot

I have been hoping that Maxon would go the ngon route for quite the while now, as they surely recognize good tools when they see them, and are keen to impliment such, as is the case with the latest version, re- the new modeling tools in v8... I just don't like how things tesselate to unpredictable tri's in some conversions I have encountered... it's a bummer to have to go back in and delete edges etc. to make all nice eh Ah well, I suppose it's just the lazy side of me talking here Great app otherwise though, and rock stable from what I can tell through countless experimenting
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Ivan... I like Silo too, in so many areas, from the terrific Universal Manip, to the wunderful workspace, like hide the tools and hold spacebar to pop em up, so cool... also, I was never one to enjoy Subd cages, yet I find working with said feature in Silo to be great stuff...hmmm... and yea, the customization of this app really does rock eh...

as for the cut and connect, I believe they are working on this as we type here, from a post I have read to this effect over at CGT...

the bevel tool really needs to include use with faces as well verts, as is found in Wings,

and yea, the three button mouse control for dolly/zoom is a total must, I agree... even Maxon recognizes this and will include in 8.2...

the split face loop requires axis options and or should be shelved simply to be replaced by the new and hopefully superior cut and connect, and...

Oh yea, a bridge tool is so badly needed eh, and it would be so cool to have such a tool which could bridge more than the current two faces at a time as is found in Wings

Also the selction tools should, and will from what I have gathered, include a +/- feature to select next rows...

and, the undo should include previous used tools and selections rather than finding ones self having to reselect everything from scratch again... this is one of the redundant and dead end things I was refering to...

There is more I am no doubt missing here, but going over this, these are the areas which I believe will make or break my modeling with this otherwise very potential app... I havn't had time to explore it in it's entirety, and am hoping that things like color select are viable etc... well, these features added, and... more stability... it crashed on me a few times, as well I lost my model in perspective a few times after switching from four vies back to one/perspective... appeared in ortho, but yup, nada in perspective, tried opening a new scene and popping up a cube and it was not there... closed app, opened, popped up cube and voila, it was there... now down to thirty uses left hehe

but yea, all in all, the enviro is so refreshing that one really wants this thing to develope quick like to become the chosen modeler... too many good things going for it to let but a half dozen or so requirements stand in the way...

more to come...

oh, and Ivan, could you elaborate please a tad more on how you gained said effect shown here, very interesting...

[This message was edited by gidgit on August 24, 2003 at 12:04.]

[ivan louette]

Here are some results of the use of mirror tool.

Nevertheless, there are little bugs in this tool : one cannot change easily the axis (sometimes it sticks to the previous chosen axis) ; sometimes if you want to change something toghether to the two symmetric polygons obtained, the change apply only to the one of the two which is part of the pre-mirrored object (a kind of refreshing problem?)

ivan

My mini-tutorials
botarosa

[gidgit]

well, I like the mirror sort of, I mean ya have to jump back and forth between say face mode and body mode but pretty cool to copy the other side non the less... I was sort of thinking that mirror would allow you to work on one side and have the mirror updating realtime on the other... is this possible or no? I mean in Wings ya just go up into tools>virtual mirror>create and voila, autoupdating as you go, choose freeze and you have your fini model/part... you can also choose to "break, thus oneside just disapears... click the face where you want the mirror to join and choose the VM option again and voila...

[This message was edited by gidgit on August 24, 2003 at 16:52.]

[s.winders]

Gidge Mirai is the god of modelling tools,I think its going to be made available again soon.Bay Raitt uses Mirai,and I believe it has a better modeller then any on the market today,and its kind of old now.Some people still use it instead of the top 3D apps because they feel its better.... thats saying something



Stu.

[gidgit]

Oh, I agree Stu... perhaps my written reply was misconstrued sort of... by suggesting it doesn't I was refering to the fact that Wings doesn't compare to Marai, but it does come close to Marai for boxmodeling as there have been quite a few tools implimented in the past year or so... just wings has no ani, paint and the like... and that's where Marai has it all over most... then again, the cost of Wings is pretty decent eh

[s.winders]

Oh ya dont get me wrong Gidge,Wings rocks,I agree.

[gidgit]

yea, I know, now if only I could rock with it hahaha

[Renaud]

I reported crash problems on export to Nevercenter, and got good news from them. It seem they are working hard to improve their product. A new release of the demo will be availlable with 40 more credits, and their website show more resources : a button set is now availlable, and soon there will be a Character Modeling Toolset to download.

[Squeaky]

Ivan:
I have just been looking at Silo because I cant seem to do anything without My wacom pen in my hand. You mentioned that you had a problem panning? Well If you go into your Wacom tools you can set the behavior of the thumb switch. I set the top button to emulate a middle click and Voila! Pen panning in Silo.

Huge Regards
Dave

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