Point Oven is a suite of plug-ins available from within Softimage that allow you to simplify your Softimage scenes by baking in vertex and function curve data. These plug-ins also allow you to streamline your pipeline by providing data transfer between different applications that also use Point Oven.
The Softimage Point Oven plug-ins let you load and save various types of data: you can import and export Lightwave Object (LWO2) files, bake vertices to MDD files, import and export Point Oven scenes (PSC), export Lightwave scenes (LWS), export Messiah scenes (FXS), and import MDD files.
The following sections provide an overview of the plug-ins and what they do. For complete documentation on using the Point Oven plug-ins and setting the available import and export options, click the ? button in the property editor to open the help topic for each plug-in.
Importing and Exporting Point Oven MDD Files
MDD files can be used to displace geometry by applying the PO_XSI_Reader operator.
The Point Oven Baker plug-in lets you bake your mesh and function curve data to various supported file formats.
Choose File 
Export Point Oven Point Oven Baker. Lock the Point Oven Baker property editor.
On the Main tab, specify which items in the scene should be baked.
You can select scene elements within the viewports or from an explorer window, then add them to the list box by clicking the Add Selection button, remove them from the list by clicking the Remove Selection button, or clear the list completely using the Remove All button.
On the Meshes tab, set the file paths and mesh export options to enable mesh baking to MDD displacement files (which contains shape animation data). You can also specify to which object file format to save the geometry: EMDL or LWO format (which contain geometry data only, with no animation).
On the Scenes tab, specify the scene file formats and paths for export. Choose LWS (Lightwave), FXS (Messiah), and PSC (Point Oven Scene) file formats. These scene file formats contain data that describes the relationships between the objects in your scene.
On the Motions tab, set the options required for motion processing (baking function curves). For motions to be processed, enable the Motions checkbox and select the type of objects for which motions will be stored: cameras, lights, nulls, and mesh objects.
By default, Point Oven Baker embeds the motion data into the scene file provided that a scene file is selected for output on the Scenes tab. If you want to bake the motion of an item without requiring a scene file, then also enable the Separate Motion Files checkbox.
Importing and Exporting Point Oven Scene (PSC) Files
To import a Point Oven scene file, choose File Import PointOven Point Oven PSC Import from the main menu. A Point_Oven_PSCImport dialog box will open where you can specify which PSC file to import. Any errors
during loading are logged to the script editor. Note that the PSC file is imported into whatever scene you currently have
open.
You can export (save) a Point Oven scene file with the Point Oven Baker:
Importing and Exporting Point Oven LWO Files
You can load and save Lightwave Object (LWO) files from within Softimage.
The LWO Import property editor opens where you can specify the file you want to import in the Pick LWO file text box. In most cases you get good results with the default settings.
Click the Import button and your LWO file is imported as follows:
All layers from the LWO file are nested under the model as polygon mesh objects.
Use the morph property plug-in to automatically set up custom sliders that link to the morphs you imported. To use the property,
select the imported mesh and choose Get Property Point Oven Morph property. The PO_MorphProperty is nested under the mesh and the custom slider interface is displayed.
UVs, Surfaces and Weights are placed in the clusters folder under the polygon mesh (each surface cluster having a material attached).
The LWO Export property editor opens where you can set the file name and the location where it will be saved.
Before exporting, make sure you selected the geometry you want to export. If you select several polymesh objects the exporter saves a single file with each polymesh defined on a different layer within that file.
