#288672
hi ..

i am scripting a little something that converts my maya shaders to mxm nodes the way i like ..

but i have a problem with the .bsdfBumpTexture attribute of the mxm node. it accepts only the fileNode's .outAlpha attribute as connections. now i'd like to use the texture's color information to drive the bump value. (luminance)

the problem is that some textures have an embedded white alpha layer, which is not "really useful" as bump ..

is this something that might get fixed in the next plugin release ?

*please* :?:
User avatar
By deadalvs
#288673
hmm...

i did some tests and strangely it's working now with the alpha is luminance checkbox.

i could have sworn it did not work this way before !

so weird. i wrote out textures with the "composite" command, checked the files in fCheck and they all had white alphas. now they have greyscale alphas.. what the .. ??
User avatar
By Mihnea Balta
#288693
The connected attribute doesn't matter. The Maxwell plug-in just needs a connection from the file node to the bsdfBumpTexture attribute to see which texture you want to use. It won't make any difference if you drive it with outAlpha, or outColor.r, or outColor.b. The Maxwell engine doesn't support selecting which channel to use for a given property, so the plug-in simply checks if a node is connected to bsdfBumpTexture and tries to extract the file name from it, ignoring the output attribute.
User avatar
By deadalvs
#288696
thank you, Mihnea !

it's great to have you here !!!

i found out this night what the problem was.

i exported the original file node (RGBA) as a new desaturated map. then reimported it. the new alpha was pure white for the new map. so i always tried to assign the second map as bump which didn't work. so i just took the first (original) file and it worked perfect.

it's working now !

if only i had learned proper programming/scripting once .. :)

* * *

but thanks again for your continuous support !
Will there be a Maxwell Render 6 ?

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