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hi ..

since true procedural shaders are still on the wishlist and a future story, i wanted to come back to automatic conversion of shading networks for procedural texturing in maya.

i also know that one of the maya plugin developers mentioned about two years ago having played with it, but having decided not to include this feature.
a possible problem: the disk being filled up unwanted, especially if there`s animations, conversion times

(see also threads of doc merman`s script suite... how`s development? )


but i wanted to ask if there`s still the possibility or WISHES to think about including this feature until there may come a true solution to the whole procedural system once in the future.

it`d be so cool to have an extra attribute per mxm node that can be switched on and off to convert (default off) incoming shading networks to an actual bitmap texture and apply it to the shader just at rendertime. and of course a per material attribute to which resolution (halfK, 1K, 2K, 4K)

it`d just add so much richness to the overall production workflow in maya !

i`d be interested to get an answer by a developer.

Hey man,

I've recently put together a version of my script that does everything silently and automatically with a fancy progress-bar and automatic clean-up etc. I've got a bunch of jobs on that are taking up ALL of my time right now but when I've added a few more things to it, you'll be the first to know

Cheers.

Dr Merman

hey there !!

this sounds really cool !

it's just that everything «automated» is so much more comfy.. even if it takes a few seconds more before launching the renders.

are there any types of nodes that are not resolved ? the snow node for example, if it is multiplied by a noise ?

I've got the 2D nodes working and the Layered Shader is on my list of todo's. It's basically converting everything that gets plugged into an MXM channel. So if you have noise maps multiplying snow maps all plugging into a single channel it should (should ) work fine.

And I agree. The progress bar makes ALL of the difference, and the conversion time is not unreasonable at all really.

I'll let you know when I'm ready to send out the first version of it.

Cheers mate,

Dr Merman

I'll be very curious to try this out as well Dr Merman.

I would be more than willing to be a guinea pig for this on a Mac OS X system

So if I am understanding this correctly you are 'flattenning' the procedural info at render time per frame into a bit-map that is an extra channel for an mxm?

Could definitely use some Brownian noise on my textures...

we shall not forget the fact that those scripts cost..

will you set up a paypal thing again, doc ?

an other question concerning your approach, Matt

is your script able to convert mental ray's ambient occlusion node ?
are you planning on implementing this node ?

that'd be awesome for procedural dirt shaders !

deadalvs wrote:an other question concerning your approach, Matt

is your script able to convert mental ray's ambient occlusion node ?
are you planning on implementing this node ?

that'd be awesome for procedural dirt shaders !

yep, that would be awesome indeed.

Hey guys.

I'll be releasing versions this time, so anything's possible! V1.0 will have the 2D nodes and the layered shader working. I'd like to get as many bugs ironed out as possible before adding new features, and that'll be where you guys come in

In other words, I'll take a look

Cheers,

Dr Merman