There are a number of predefined models, skeletons, and animation to get you going with XSI. If nothing else, use these to understand how things are set up in XSI and to play with some of the many animation tools available.
Predefined Skeletons and Envelopes
To get you started quickly on creating your own characters, load the predefined skeletons and envelopes. In this way you can quickly create a cast of characters that all share the same topology, making it easy to share animation later.
There are male and female skeletons of different levels of complexities, with controls for various degrees of freedom, such as facial nulls.
To load the skeletons
• Choose Get > Primitive > Model and then choose any of the Skeletons you want.
To cover the skeletons, you can load predefined envelopes made of low-resolution polygon mesh models. These models can be used as is for subdivision, enveloping, and other animation, or they can be used as a starting point for modeling your own characters.
To load the envelope models
• Choose Get > Primitive > Model > Body Man or Woman.
The skeletons and envelope models are also available in a Netview.
The bodies are implemented as models. For more information about working with models in general, see Models in the Data Management guide.
In addition to, and in some cases based on, the predefined skeletons, there are some characters and animation ready for you to use in a Netview.
There is motion capture data and keyed animation that can be applied to these characters. You can drag and drop a character from a Netview into an XSI scene, then drag and drop an animation onto it.
You can get going quickly on facial animation by loading a predefined low-resolution polygon mesh head (male or female) using one of the Get > Primitive > Model > Face commands. This makes it easy to create any number of different faces with the same topology, which makes it easy to copy shape keys between them.
When you choose the command, it opens the Face Maker property editor, which allows you to control the proportions of various parts of the face, such as the eyes, cheeks, mouth, ears, eyes, etc.
For more information, see Getting a Head Start on Facial Animation in the Shape Animation guide.
SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.6.01