Due to the amount of questions on XSIBase, I decided to write down a note or two on certain subjects, and now it's a slowly growing set.
I will try to explain some concepts in XSI, starting from the somewhat simple, to a little bit more complex setups.
Some understanding of XSI is needed though, as I will not go into depth of all options and menu settings. This would take too much screen space and would probably become quite boring quite quickly.
LumeTools
Note nov.2009. Added some info on the "Glare" shader behaviour for SI 7.0 and up for the web tutorial and in the PDF.
I refitted the tutorials with a new menu, and can now be found here and will open in a new window.
NEW!! I made the whole set of tutorials into a PDF. Enjoy your off line reading :-)
"Lume Shaders v.1.x" that Joshua Chang rewrote and distributed on XSIBase or download from here (XSI v4.x) and here (XSI v5.x). I'm not gonna discuss shader installation, I leave that up to you to figure out ;-)
Lighting
Using Global Illumination and Final Gathering:
Starting with Global illumination, part 1
Finetuning the rendering, part 2
XSI v6 texturing tutorial:
Texturing with alpha channels using the TLE
Texturing with alpha channels before version 5:
Alpha channels, the beginning, keeping it simple
Manually Linking nodes, but what goes where?
Creating an alpha channel with an extra B/W image
Blending textures using the weight node
Blending images using the weight node, but now WITH an alpha channel in the image
Oh no..., another rendertree but the same result
Using gamma correction in XSI
Some basic explanation about gamma correction, the new tools in XSI to conquer all this and some examples.
Using gamma correction in XSI 7.x
MIA Preset toolbar
Little toolbar with MIA Material presets, as in Maya and Max.
(Right) Click here to download the .addon file.
For more information on how to get it into XSI, look here
Material mixing with alpha channels:
Mixing shiny and matte materials using the weight and/or alpha channel, and adding reflection in the process
Bump and displacement:
Simple bumpmap mixing with the bumpmap generator node
Editing XSI's layout:
Editing the RenderManager panel so you can stop dragging the panels to the right size....
Creating a custom XSI layout to suit your needs
Getting a toolbar to open at the right location and size