I’ve worked with LightWave, 3DS and XSI. And one of the reasons why 3DS infuriated me so much is the propensity to have windows nested upon windows some with na,es only 3DS users understand, lightwave had a similar problem but it is a lot more structured and space efficient than 3DS. The node graphic environment of XSI may be time-consuming at first but it is a lot more user friendly to create, organize and to read (very important when there is more than one person developing the particles)than the nested windows system of the other softwares. Furthermore, and this being crucial for me, there are two major problems in creating a system that simplyfies the choices for the users. One is that by simplifying the choices you ussually reduce their ability to manipulate them, I understand this affects more the TD than the artist but here ICE also offers an excellent solution, personalized compounds. the other mayor problem is that users get accostume to the nomenclature of the simplifyed system, which more often than not do not translate to the actual functions, and soon enough you will have people talking about “randomize the speed of the particle”, when in fact they may be saying “turbulize around value the initial speed of the particle.” This may sound a minor issue but it will only become more problematic as more functions get added to the particle system.

Your option is tempting to explore only as an added function to the workflow described by Softimage”technical director connects basic nodes, designs compounds and exposes ports.” In other words it would be nice to expose windows as a switch goes on or off, or maybe to have a user friendly PPG compound, but the overall function of the ICE tree should not recreate the same problems that other particle system have.

I’ve worked with LightWave, 3DS and XSI. And one of the reasons why 3DS infuriated me so much is the propensity to have windows nested upon windows some with na,es only 3DS users understand, lightwave had a similar problem but it is a lot more structured and space efficient than 3DS. The node graphic environment of XSI may be time-consuming at first but it is a lot more user friendly to create, organize and to read (very important when there is more than one person developing the particles)than the nested windows system of the other softwares. Furthermore, and this being crucial for me, there are two major problems in creating a system that simplyfies the choices for the users. One is that by simplifying the choices you ussually reduce their ability to manipulate them, I understand this affects more the TD than the artist but here ICE also offers an excellent solution, personalized compounds. the other mayor problem is that users get accostume to the nomenclature of the simplifyed system, which more often than not do not translate to the actual functions, and soon enough you will have people talking about “randomize the speed of the particle”, when in fact they may be saying “turbulize around value the initial speed of the particle.” This may sound a minor issue but it will only become more problematic as more functions get added to the particle system.

Your option is tempting to explore only as an added function to the workflow described by Softimage”technical director connects basic nodes, designs compounds and exposes ports.” In other words it would be nice to expose windows as a switch goes on or off, or maybe to have a user friendly PPG compound, but the overall function of the ICE tree should not recreate the same problems that other particle system have.