Node Preview Obsolete?

[ovni]

I was just playing around with XSI 3 and was creating a shading network. I wanted to preview my displacement so I hit P. Nothing happened! I went to the keyboard mapping and saw that this operation is deprecated, though I can re-assign it.

What is the new workflow or feature to replace the Node Preview and why was it deprecated? Thanks!

[atyss]

Softimage said that they wanted to implement a temporary replacement feature consisting of a shaderball-like approach, but there is nothing like that in XSI 3.0.
Perhaps later as an add-on.

Softimage unmapped the Node Preview feature because there is a stability issue with it. However, I found that remapping it to a keyboard key (like P) doesn't cause any crash, unless with heavy scenes and changing connections while the region is refreshing.

Hope this helps
Salutations - Cheers
Bernard Lebel

[ovni]

Ah, okay. Makes sense. I think it's quite useful. I use it a lot. I hope it gets replaced with something equally as usable.

[atyss]

Honestly, I hope it doesn't get replaced at all, but fixed, because I really like it!

Bernard

[richard-sher]

I like it too, but the rumour is that something like shaderballs are coming.... If so, I hope they put both in there.

[srvargas]

I still don't have v3, but this is not good news at all...
I really liked that function. It was extremely useful when you create a shading network to see exactly how different nodes look. For anyone doing shading and lighting that is a must have tool .
I'm sorry to say that, but in my opinion if the soft guys implement shader balls instead of putting node preview back in, it will be a big step backwards.
btw. I still don't quite understand why people want shaderballs - it is so archaic and just vastly inaccurate compared to the render region. At least I hope we'll have the opportunity to choose between node preview and the silly shaderball.

[atyss]

As I said, the Node Preview function still works, you just have to map it onto your keyboard.

As for shader balls, you'd be surprised how many people requested that feature for XSI on the XSI Mailing List.

Salutations - Cheers
Bernard Lebel