MtI rev 63 08 nov 2007

bkircher · Post by **bkircher** » Fri Nov 09, 2007 7:26 pm

Great, great, great!

Sending you a postcard from my mti vacation (which will probably last till tomorrow, now that ONO gave IES-Support to the world), just briefly:

Thanks dougal for pulling all the stuff together, that's great.
Albedo Textures with phongs would be also nice.
Thanks CTZn for getting rotation matrixes to work.

I propose that for the time being we stick to the custom attributes we can attach to shader nodes. You could use the texture attribute from the lambert section.

On using phongE materials:

The whole beauty is that you just copy and paste a shader you find as plain text (like the water preset described with tabulated spectrum) into the "Notes" of the phongE you can enter in the attributeEditor.
This will be passed to the XML file as a string. Done.

 has to be the first line of the notes, though I think it is not neccessary anymore.

As a convenience, certain keywords can be embedded in the Notes-text that can be substituted by shader properties. So you can enter
mtiKey_ShaderName and the Maya-Shader that will be assigned will be
automagically placed into the xml file.

A second attribute is "mtiKey_GlobalGamma" that will use the gamma setting.

I'll add primary and secondary colours in the near future.

See the commented phongE-preset , or the funky floor preset as an example how to implement blended materials.

Do you object if I transfer all the locator code and the geometry exporting code and dump them into two new Export Modules, or can you two do it: I want to avoid confusion, but this may be our last chance to split mti up into smaller pieces of code without much effort.

dougal2 · Post by **dougal2** » Fri Nov 09, 2007 10:04 pm

i'm not going to rearrange large chunks of important code that you two have written - i'd prefer one of you to do it.

dougal2 · Post by **dougal2** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 12:53 am

I've added preliminary code for adding the IES attribute to a shader. Also for exponent maps.

I've also added in a shader type check so that nk and exponent map attrs only get added to phong shaders.

I also had a look at the (out of date) indigo manual a thought about the shader types, and the ones we need to implement to bring us up to date (erm.. well up to v9.x features at least).

- the blinn shader needs options to choose between specular or glossy transparent

- we need a diffuse transmitter shader

- we need to add peak, rgb and uniform spectrum types

- can we not use the layered shader for making blend materials? the layout in the hypershade window would then exactly reflect the blend material setup.

CTZn · Post by **CTZn** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 3:39 am

I have no objections for that file split, I want that also. I have strenghtened mti_makeInstance (wich has still no GUI) so it can update previously created mtiInstanceLocator with a new mesh, will commit later, it's no important upgrade.

dougal2 · Post by **dougal2** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 3:50 am

@ctzn
I made a couple of small changes today - trying to sketch out a few new features - don't be surprised if you get notices when you commit, an update ought to sort that out. hopefully there'll be no conflicts as i've only added a few commented out lines here and there.

I've got no further updates today - gotta get some real work done

CTZn · Post by **CTZn** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 4:23 am

Okay then, I'll check your changes and commit that lil update I did.

bkircher, should I split the file myself or you prefer to do that yourself ? mti_ExportModuleTools.mel would be a fine name IMO.

If you see something urgent on what I could focus on now then have no hesitations, tell me.

dougal2 · Post by **dougal2** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 5:28 am

if you're separating out instancing functions, i would prefer a filename that reflects that...

mti_ExportModuleInstances.mel ?

I don't know how closely it's tied to the object code, perhaps the object makers could live in

ExportModuleObjects.mel ?

(we have ExportModuleCamera and ExportModuleShaders already).

additionally, is mti_add_nks_proc.mel still used? (similar function appears in mti_add_customAttributes_proc.mel). can we remove it if not.

CTZn · Post by **CTZn** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 6:17 am

mti_Main: Strenghtened mti_makeInstances. Can update previously created mtiInstanceLocators with new mesh. EDIT: also feedback is better now.

mti_Gen: Reordered code to avoid potential errors with instances rotations in Y up.

Documentation: Updated. Not yet up to date at 100%, get used to feed that file

r70.

- - - -

if you're separating out instancing functions, i would prefer a filename that reflects that...

mti_ExportModuleInstances.mel ?

In my opinion it was about leaving mti_Gen procedure alone in mti_Gen.mel, and having all others procedures together in a separate file. If you want that separate file to be separated again it doesn't bother me

EDIT oh and Dougal, I haven't found in Main and Gen the modifications you reported, can you check that again plz ?

dougal2 · Post by **dougal2** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 7:05 am

i don't think there was anything in gen/main yet... i've added comments in mti_add_customAttributes_proc.mel and mti_ExportModuleShaders.mel

CTZn · Post by **CTZn** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 8:03 am

oki !

bkircher · Post by **bkircher** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 8:30 am

Splitted the code into seperate pieces for Objects and Instances.

@CTZn: Just found a mti_makeInstances section in mti_Main.
What does it do? Does it belong to mti_Gen.mel? (guess it's your code)

Nice additions to the render dialogue, and I like the way the preferences are handled now a lot.

bkircher · Post by **bkircher** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 9:16 pm

From latest update...

IES-Custom_attributes can be added to lambert.
Added necessary presets.
Added quick access to maya-preferences.
Added the .ies-lib from the blendigo collegues. (someone give a note please if this is a problem)
Added some minor preferences.

dougal2 · Post by **dougal2** » Sun Nov 11, 2007 3:47 am

btw, i'm working on shaders at the minute. (also fixing a few small bugs along the way).

i've got bump and exponent maps working.

i might have a stab at implementing diffuse transmitter shortly.

bkircher · Post by **bkircher** » Sun Nov 11, 2007 4:41 am

Updates:
- Fixed an issue with the instancing module.
- Extended phongE-functionality (i.e. using a Maya-PhongE node only for its
comment. That is stored in the .notes attribute and is passed directly to the XML-File. Certain magic words can be used to insert shader colours or names.): Now, Colour and Ambient Colour can be passed. Changed the sample presets accordingly.
- Added a modified highend3d-script test-wise to allow converting particle-instances to real objects.
- Added a modified highedn3d-script test-wise to allow checking for per face material assignments.

I propose we make a stable version, make a freeze of it, call it 0.9 and publish it.
We could then continue working on a new development version (fixing the world-scale issue, integrating a material editor...), but we'd have on status we only do bug-fixing of. What's your opinion.

bkircher · Post by **bkircher** » Sun Nov 11, 2007 4:44 am

Some screenshots of current features:

MtI rev 63 08 nov 2007

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