I wrote it to accomodate the user who's already familiar with scripting to some degree whether it be for websites, another 3D application, or just as standalone command line tools, but not necessarily with Jscript or VBscript.
My goal was to give a new user (or a user new to XSI scripting) perspective on what's involved in making scripts for XSI by going through the general workflow of writing a tool from start to finish including the design and testing phases. There are many scripting books available that show how to use scripting languages, but too many of them (in my opinion) use sloppy/difficult to read code, or bad habits for sake of illustrative convenience. Very few go over the do's and don'ts of good coding practice relative to your application.
The tutorial goes over how to script using XSI commands as that's all that was available when I wrote it for v1.0 (and did minimal updates for v1.5). When I find time, I'll write a companion tutorial to create the same script using the XSI object model.
As for the lack of Jscript examples....for practive, every time a script is available on XSINet, I download it and immediately convert it to JScript. I do this for two reasons:
1) It affirms that I understand the VBscript language for proper conversion. It's a good learning excercise.
2) It alerts me to problem areas in XSI with respect to scripting (eg: areas of improper implementation).
Of course, it also conforms my script toolset in one language for easier sharing of code between tools. Hopefully more Jscript examples will appear soon.
Matt
Matt Lind
Animator / Technical Director
Softimage certified instructor:
Softimage|3D
Softimage|XSI
speye_21@hotmail.com