MtI 2.x beta 2

[CTZn]

Thanks for the kind words Arthur. I'm ready to make good use of critics, but I'll take both !

Hey Lemo, centimeter is Maya's default hence the 0.01 meter per grid unit. 1 stands for a meter long grid unit, I'm not sure that's what you want.

NB: autofocus needs a surface to focus on in the center of the image; or, the camera center of interest is used for focus. Modify the Center Of Interest attribute manually if required (distance of focus). And, cameras are no more converted internally into 3 nodes cam; I realised this was preventing animated cameras export.

Regarding motion blur, the challenge for me was to use directly the Maya transformation matrices instead of generating some with rotations values alone. This is improving robustness, and the mechanism will be generalized to all transforms (meshes).

Now, the integration of motion blur itself has room for improvements:
- to avoid backwards animation evaluation in order to preserve physics and lead to particles blur. However I could probably make the current implementation to work with cached particles
- and set the Motion Blur Steps option per object/camera instead of being a global setting, in order to prevent blur on transforms of choice.

edit: oh, just found that the presets menu implementation was not working with Maya 2011, how stupid... looks like a gag, the window is redrawing when one clicks on the menu. Will fix anyhow for next update.

[Lemo]

I'm definitely not an expert with Maya, but while I agree with the centimeter default unit, I don't see how you can get centimeters and meters at the same time?
Here is a screenshot of my settings, with 1 grid line = 1 unit = 1 cm (and a measured model of 14cm)
Is it okay if I choose a scale modifier of 1 then?
Of course with 0,01 the render doesn't blur "everything" as I said, but the dof is extremely short, as it would be with milimeters...

[CTZn]

Well, the scene scale modifier is currently replacing the Maya preferences regarding linear values. It defines the length of a grid unit in meters.

I agree that's not intuitive and I always planned to change that, it's just that I gave it a low priority until now. I reckon also that, if it has to exist it would make more sense as a multiplier for the Maya linear setting.

Good points Lemo, I took notice thanks !

But for now the parameter must be left to default so 1cm in Maya = 0.01 meter in Indigo. For example someone using inches in Maya should set it to 0.0254.

OnoSendaï doesn't like this kind of parameter at all, and as a matter of fact it is reducing geometric precision (of 10e-8 though, not huge). I may simply remove it and have Indigo match Maya's scale straight away.

Would you miss such parameter if I was to remove it ?

Conversions will still have to happen within Maya though... well I'll check about that.

If you are having troubles to get the centimeter sized objects in focus you can use a camera and aim (2 nodes cam) so to visualize the focus point (with auto-focus turned off). Try a greater f-stop, it's working for me.

The camera attributes management and the related UI need some refinements too. However camera export robustness was greatly improved with the last MtI update, for all camera types (1, 2 or 3 nodes cam).

[Lemo]

Oh I see, then the parameter is totally independant from Maya, I thought it was a multiplier indeed.
I can't tell you now if I will miss it, but maybe you should rename it to something closer to "meter per grid unit", or if the parameter must be left to default according to the unit system, why not a simple "choose box" with: -centimeters (0.01)
-inches (0.0254)
or even maybe an automatic detection of the unit?

Anyway, I tried it with 0.01 with a greather f/stop and works great thanks!

Btw, while we're talking about cameras, when I choose "cam response" as tonemapping,
I don't see any list of models to choose from, and I get the following error:
// Error: No object matches name: perspShape.mti_CamTMResponseFile //

[CTZn]

Wonderfull. I mean, very helpfull advices Lemo. I do need users points of view and you are doing well

I'm copy-pasting the suggested label, and done ! There used to be such presets in the old UI (from mm to km) in addition of that scale factor. By the way, didn't you see the annotation for this control ?

size of a Maya grid unit, in meters. Default is cm (0,01m)

I added some with the last update

Ah true, thanks for the headup on the missing camera attribute. I removed the check when tonemapping went per camera, it's coming back.

About the issue with instances, I'll fiix it the short way for now, by saving them as original objects; I'm not sure that Indigo allows non uniform scaling atm. It used to, according to my former attempts with matrices back in the old times ^^ Anyways I'll ask the Glare team on transformations.

As robust as can be the transform query process, cameras optics do not match Indigo renders in all cases I noticed. Oh well, robust beside the usual bugs around, I'm on them for real.

Yes, I have a todo list now

[Lemo]

Wait, actually the cam response is working fine
The "Film response" parameter just seems to get initialized after the other extra attributes somehow...

size of a Maya grid unit, in meters. Default is cm (0,01m)

Yeah I saw the annotation but I did not understand I guess, more details is a good idea indeed

About cameras again, how can I do a region render, after ticking the "region" box, I mean where can I find the coordinates (or selection tool)?

[Soup]

I'm just having a crack at mti now, in my spare time

I must say it looks pretty slick in maya 2011, I am liking it!
The installation process worked fine for me, it would be more ideal if all it took was a tick in the plugins menu to enable it - but don't know what it takes to get that

Some notes:
1. I had the same issue as Lemo, the first render was all out-of-focus until I set the scene scale to 1m. The default should be whatever gives the best result without any changes in settings, so I vote for 1m default
*Edit, I see the default Maya unit is 1cm. So I suppose Mti is good to reflect that
2. A couple of changes for the specular default material:
-transparent should be on by default (otherwise what's the point of specular?)
-IOR should be something like 1.3 by default. 1.0 doesn't give a good result
3. I am still quite opposed to the hidden menu in the Indigo Editor to switch from mesh to material. I had trouble finding it until I realised I had to use left-mouse. I strongly vote for a buttons/switches that are always visible displaying available options.
4. Icons are fugly (at least in my menu bar). I see you're working on that though.
5. AE things: I would suggest to move some of the stuff out of the 'extra options' section, that section is very rarely used in Maya for anything useful. NK goes with phong, and the extra emission stuff goes with emission. I suppose light layers go with emission too.

Heh hope that's not too much! It's looking really good CTNz, and good job on getting the glass acceleration in there too
I think I may be able to use maya with Indgio for real stuff now

**Edit: I guess the Layered texture is not supported yet? I got this when trying to make a layered shader on a absorption transmittance layer.
// Error: No object matches name: layeredTexture1.alphaGain //

[CTZn]

Lemo:

The "Film response" parameter just seems to get initialized after the other extra attributes somehow...

It does, because unlike them it relies on the Indigo Renderer path. However there is obviously a leak in checkups, noted.

The scale modifier is now labelled after your suggestion, so thats none of my concerns... j/k

Render region uses the actual Maya render region. Optionally you can disable Render View > Options > Auto Render Region prior the following actions:

- take a snapshot of your camera Render View > Render > Snapshot > *render camera*
- select a region. MtI will use it.

Note that there were no clear report of performances gain on using Render Region with Indigo. Hopefully I'm wrong

$oup: hey no that's not too much now that I'm logging remarks let me do another post for you !

[CTZn]

I must say it looks pretty slick in maya 2011, I am liking it!
The installation process worked fine for me, it would be more ideal if all it took was a tick in the plugins menu to enable it - but don't know what it takes to get that

The way you are describing works for plugins... once they were installed The purpose of this installer is to make MtI files simply available to Maya.

Now, the python plugin itself is just coding for the Indigo Shader and the spectrum node; that's why these two nodes(!) and only them have an AE UI. The Indigo Editor, export and everything else is MEL scripted. Doesn't fit into the plugins window

1. That's because the scale of your subject is really small. If you create a default cube, frame it and render straight away the camera is at about 2.7cm from the center of the object... see where I'm going ? It has to be blurry ! So yes, when I want to do a quick test I do set scale to 1.0 as well on a default cube.

I'm imagining that it may be possible to set f-stop automagically according to the center of interest of the Maya camera, but I'd use a confirmation about this. Or I'd remember about trigonometrics . *cough* löl

2. Granted. About ior=1 I do agree; I was just mimicking Maya's default.

3. I thought about this and buttons are an option I'll make them as small as possible though Don't want to clutter the UI, wich needs *some* tidying up as mentionned already. For sure I'll add a "Load selection" button in the frozen UI.

4. The new icon set ? For some reason, when you type "rehash; shelf_Indigo" right after installing MtI, we can see that they come nicely resized into the Indigo shelf popping up. However once Maya Preferences were saved (on exit in most cases) they will be displayed in full scale for the time being. I must investigate this auto-resize thingy. If you are talking about the previous set of icons, well it was damn fugly on 2011. Thanks SreckoM !

Dunno the priority I should give to this entry...

5. can do i think, but only for the Indigo Shader. Not for Maya's phong because a: you are supposed to use the Indigo Editor, and b: I'm not going to modify Maya's code

I guess the Layered texture is not supported yet?

Correct, only layered shaders for now. I'll investigate layered textures. You can chain color gains as a workaround, or do a more complex network that would end into one single texture.

ie: plug the LayeredTexture into a ramp texture color entry (delete other entries of the ramp). I didn't test this with layeredTexture though, but should work with other texture or utility nodes that wouldn't work otherwise. edit: also works to "instanciate" a texture that MtI would evaluate only once while it was applied to multiple objects.

Great guys, thanks ! Erm, give me a break now would you

I'm kidding, I try not to miss an opportunity for that

Just, tell me YOUR priorities for fixes/features and that will do. edit: bugs first I guess.

[CTZn]

According to my tests, non uniform scaling and duplicate instances will be most probably supported !

That will increase the just introduced (hence partial) robustness, and hopefully complete it regarding geometric transformations management. In fact to do so I'll just have to do what I planned: to extend the mechanisms of motion blur generation to all tranforms MtI manipulates.

I don't know when I'll be finished with this one but that should be worth the time.

[Lemo]

Good news, keep it up

[Soup]

More wants:
-Clip map (High priority)
-Blend Material (High priority)
-Expose Exported Scene - Able to set which program is external. (Not high priority)

Suggestion:
-Indigo Editor shouldn't have "Export", "Options", or "Paths" on its top menu. Options and paths should be on the Mti Options menu. I clicked "Export" hoping to export an igm from my material and instead it went and rendered the scene with Indigo

Bug:
My script editor spams lots of these on export:

Code: Select all

// Error: No object matches name: .color // 
// Error: No object matches name: .ambientColor // 
// Error: No object matches name: .normalCamera // 

Attached is what my Indigo bar looks like

[CTZn]

Attached is what my Indigo bar looks like

Oh my... the fugly set ! Indeed. Did you get this from the latest update (october, 27) ?

Blend is layeredShader, clip map is a texture attribute named "step_blend" found whenever applicable. I'll rename it "clip map" !

If you put one single material into a layeredShader its transparency will drive a null blend, either what a normal material blending happens. The downmost material can be transparent so the resulting blend will be as well. This comes from a recent update too !

Expose Exported Scene - Able to set which program is external. (Not high priority)

OK.

Suggestion: I agree totally, menus are scarce. Oh, I didn't put the option to save IGMs lately ! But it's not standalone for now, happens during export anyways. I hope to add plenty of menu actions after I got the core settled on meshes transformations.

bug: yeah exporting the obj file triggers this since ever but I couldn't track yet the issue within MtI. Will get it at some point... these messages have shown to be harmless however

[nolanblew]

This is a great plugin so far, however making the switch from Blender to Maya, I was a little dissapointed to find that there was no finalized official plugin yet, but I applaude you for creating one!

At the moment, a major feature that is simple to enable automatic network rendering, especially for animations. I believe the console argument for indigo is -n for network rendering, but I could be wrong. I do have a render farm and implementation of that feature would be great.

Thanks for creating this plugin. Can't wait to see beta 3!

[CTZn]

Hi nolanblew; and welcome !

Historically I didn''t create MtI, and I was barely able to understand 5% when I inherited of it. I'm more of an user than a technician, but in the first place there has to be an exporter, so...

For the matter I know very well that users expectations are both high and legitimate, and I'm measuring the distance every day. Some major issues I'm working on are still crippling the exporter's potential I recon, but it may be not so long before they become history.

Instead of being a finalized plugin, MtI intends to give users access to Indigo's features. Thanks for bearing with me. The period during the next months will be crucial anyhow.

Network rendering has lost its UI with recent works sorry. It would need some update too.

Right now I haven't got a release planned, I'd like to have transformations wrapped for the beta 3. I'll tell more by the end of the week on the closest prospectives.

Thanks for the kind words nolanblew, and I understand your surprise !