MODELING

XSI’s modeling toolset is designed for speed and ease of use, putting everything you need to work with polygon meshes, subdivision surfaces, curves, surfaces, and surface mesh topologies right at you fingertips. All of your modeling operations, including interactive deformations, are saved in the operator stack, which records all of the changes you make so you can go back in time to adjust, reorder, temporarily mute, or completely delete them.

INTUITIVE SUBDIVISION SURFACE & POLYGON MODELING

XSI has the world’s fastest subdivision surface modeler, powered by Gigacore II so you can work in real time at any mesh resolution. You can continue to use all polygon mesh modeling tools on subdivided meshes - even animated characters - and move points directly on the subdivision surface. Enjoy working without speed, editing or geometry restrictions—XSI can subdivide triangles, quads and n-sided polygons with all subdivision types, including mixed subdivision types for triangulated meshes.

See an overview of subdivision surface modeling in XSI. Download video - right-click and save as...

XSI’s interactive polygon modeling includes tools for beveling, adding, duplicating and extruding, merging and blending, knifing, slicing and dicing, bridging and blending, Booleans, quadrangulating and triangulating meshes, drawing polygons, extracting polygons to create new objects, and more. Multiple options for removing components let you control how getting rid of a point, polygon, or edge affects the remaining mesh.

XSI has an extensive polygon modeling toolset. This clip provides a quick overview, and shows off the move point and proportional modeling tools—useful for creating organic models. Download video - right-click and save as...

TWEAK TOOL

The Tweak Component Tool is an all-in-one manipulation tool for fast freeform modeling that makes it easy for you to work at your own artistic rhythm. Featuring optional component manipulators and quick manipulation planes, the Tweak tool allows you to move, rotate, scale or translate points, edges and polygons - all with a single key. You can also loop- and range-select any component or even slide your selection to exactly match its neighbor's position.

The "all powerful" tweak tool lets you model artistcally, without having to switch tools. Here you'll see just how fast and flexible it is. Download video - right-click and save as...

POLYGON REDUCTION

XSI's polygon reduction tool is extremely fast, completely interactive, and produces high-quality low-res meshes. No need to commit to a single level of detail and hope it's right. With XSI you can adjust levels of detail using a simple slider, and create as many levels as you need. Use polygon reduction with the Ultimapper tool to transfer high-res model details onto your low-res models and create great looking game assets that work in your engine.

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XSI's fast, interactive polygon reduction tool produces as many high-quality low-res meshes as you need.

DEFORMATIONS

XSI boasts a complete set of interactive, animatable deformations that work seamlessly on any type of geometry. Simple deformations include bend, bulge, fold, shear, taper, twist & vortex, and more. You can also deform objects using curves and lattices, or apply curve-based spine deformations. Smooth and relax deformations help work jagged peak sand edges out of models. Quick stretch deformations change an object shapes based on motion. Animated wave deformations let you create shock waves, ripples, and other natural disturbances. The handy Shrinkwrap deformation helps match curves to surfaces and match object shapes to one another.

Bend it, bulge, it, fold it, shear it, twist it, and more. XSI's extensive library of fully animatable deformations are a powerful part of the modeling toolset. Download video - right-click and save as...

And now, the ICE visual programming platform makes it possible to create your own deformations using a comprehensive library of mathematical operations. ICE trees can control all types of geometry, so you can build deformations that work exactly the way you want them too.

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With ICE you can build custom deformations, like this bulging muscle, using a library of standard math operations.

You can also use ICE to create simulated deformations, such as footprints, where each frame builds on the results of previous frames.

EASY COMPONENT SELECTION AND MANIPULATION

XSI features easy rectangle, raycast, lasso, freeform, and paint selection of points edges and polygons; including shortcuts for selecting component loops and ranges, and for growing and shrinking selections. Once you’ve got your components selected, you can transform them numerically, or interactively using standard SRT tools and manipulators.

XSI offers easy access to any component, with intuitive keyboard shortcuts and fast switching between selection tools. Download video - right-click and save as...

You can also take advantage of “sculpting” tools like the move point tool, for quickly dragging points into place, the push paint tool that lets you sculpt by painting, or the all-in-one freeform modeling tweak tool. Proportional modeling makes it easy to have your transformations affect neighboring components, while a symmetrical manipulation mode lets you maintain object symmetry as you move components.

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With the proportional tool active, moving a component like a point affects a defined area of influence, keeping the object's shape smooth.

The proportional modeling tool helps you keep organic shapes smooth as you model. Download video - right-click and save as...

XSI offers a number of tools for modeling symmetrically. This video shows off a few techniques. Download video - right-click and save as...

TEXT AND LOGO CREATION

XSI allows you to create 3D text, with advanced tessellation options, from TrueType fonts or .rtf files, giving you a virtually unlimited choice of fonts to work with. You can generate text as curves, planar meshes or solid meshes that you can extrude and bevel. If you’re creating logos, you can import EPS files to create curves, and transform them into 3D models. Any text or logo that you create, you can deform, texture, animate, render, and more using the full XSI toolset.

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Generate text as curves, planar meshes or solid meshes that you can extrude and bevel.

CURVE AND SURFACE TOOLS

Curves have a multitude of uses. You can use them to build meshes, define extrusions, set paths for animation, control deformations, and more. In addition to arc, circle, spiral, and square curve primitives, XSI lets you draw cubic curves using CVs, Bézier control points, or non-Bézier control points, and draw linear curves.

Curves have a multitude of uses, and XSI gives you a multitude of tools for drawing and editing them. Download video - right-click and save as...

The freeform Tweak Curve tool makes it easy to manipulate all of your curves in a Bézier-like manner, with full snapping support. You can also manipulate non-Bézier knots, control points, and isopoints.

The powerful tweak curve lets you manipulate any curve using Bézier-type manipulators. Download video - right-click and save as...

XSI’s NURBS surface toolset includes tools for blending, filleting, merging, lofting, extruding, fitting, snipping, adding and removing knots and picking commands.