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RE: [Virtools] Virtools Promises and Competion

Hmmm.
	I can see your point about planning but let's say you ever wanted
to change anything at all in your scripts and that those scripts wer on
many objects.
	First of all, I have found massive bugs in Virtools and a complete
inconsitency between the creation environment, varying scenes and the
player environment. So I have had to change scripts after making them work
in one environment.
	The fact that you have to re-drop all your scripts and that you
lose so many short cuts is infuriating. I just don't see this visual
programming environment ever being as flexible as code. For instance. You
can't even select and drag a group of program blocks. You have to move
each one and then move all the little lines. It is such a waste of time. I
could go on for hours. if I am missing some key functionality in Creation
please let me know. It would make my life a lot easier.

b

:: Smerc Design ::
:: 646.319.4232 ::

On Mon, 11 Jun 2001, Callele, David wrote:

> I think that I will take my turn at commenting on the scripting thing...
> These comments aren't directed at Robert or Brian, this email just happens
> to be the latest in my Inbox.
>
> That said, for Robert: Dev does not contain a scripting language but access
> to the source code for all BBs and the interface to the underlying engines
> (the SDK).  It is possible to dynamically create a script using the SDK but
> I have never found the time to get that deeply into that part of it.
>
> There are times when I could not agree with you more about the desirability
> of having a scripting language.  For me, those times occur when I am
> performing mathematical manipulations on data - I usually just escape to
> writing a custom BB as necessary.
>
> For me, the greatest power in Virtools architecture lies in Behavior Graphs
> (BGs) and scripted objects. I plan my project (and plan and plan) trying to
> identify the objects (both visual and in an object oriented sense) that the
> project requires and the behaviors associated with each object.  Then, for
> each object I start to build the behaviors from the ground up - always
> looking for "meta-behaviors", those behaviors that can be encapsulated as a
> Behavior Graph for (potential) reuse.  After a while, I have found that I
> have built a library of BGs that are very useful in other development
> efforts.  Once I have built all of my behaviors and encapsulated them as BGs
> (for reuse if possible or appropriate), I end up with an object that has one
> or more scripts where each script simply contains a single BG.  Then, I save
> each object as a scripted object (NMO format) for later assembly into my
> final composition.
>
> The end result has worked very well for me - I have the BGs available for
> reuse and the scripted object that is added to my composition (with all
> scripts atttached) by simply dragging into the rendering window - but at the
> cost of doing the initial planning.
>
> But, then again, isn't that initial planning what we are always supposed to
> do on our projects? ;-)
>
> Whenever I have planned my projects in detail, I haven't *really* missed
> access to a scripting language.  Now, if only I could force myself to always
> follow my own advice from above, sigh.
>
> To me, the ability to take a media object of some form, then make it
> interactive by attaching behaviors, and then saving it as a new "object" is
> just incredible.  I simply have never experienced such an elegant solution
> to taking arbitrary data and turning it into an "object" in the
> object-oriented programming sense and, as is probably pretty obvious by now,
> I really do enjoy it.
>
> There, off of my soap box.
>
> Lest anyone think otherwise, I do believe that there are a number of
> enhancements that can be made to Dev - just check with Nicolas in Tech
> Support to see how often I have "offered my advice" :-o
>
> Have a great day,
>
> David Callele
>
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:	cyberart [SMTP:cyberart@frontiernet.net]
> > Sent:	Monday, June 11, 2001 11:18 AM
> > To:	Virtools List
> > Subject:	Re: [Virtools] Virtools Promises and Competion
> >
> > Brian Wane wrote:
> > > Personally, as a user of creation and Director I am over joyed at being
> > > able to code 3d normally again in Director. I've programmed 3d in a
> > number
> > > of packages and I find the Creation visual programming environment
> > incredibly
> > > inefficient. Perhaps Dev is better.
> >
> > This is a point of curiosity for me, too. I've used Creation; haven't used
> > Dev.
> > I had hoped perhaps there was a scripting language in Dev
> > to do the networking which in Creation you have to do manually in the
> > Schematic View.
> >
> > In some ways working in the Schematic View struck me as analogous to
> > working in Maya's Hypergraph (or Hypershade).
> > But if that were the *only* way of working in Maya
> > (and you didn't have Maya's scripting language MEL to automate processes)
> > it would get very tedious at times.
> > ---
> > Robert
> > ...............................................................
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> > ...............................................................
>

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