Ribbit plugin for RMan export

[betelgeuse]

I agree. This is a fantastic plugin, although it's still going through some bug testing.
It's great to have plugin support for a renderer that will apply smoothing at render time rather than smoothing the geometry in Wings. Below is a render of a low res cage in 3delight. Smoothing is automatic in 3delight.
http://homepage.mac.com/mgleason/deliteFish.jpg

[Jide]

Perhaps it's time for me to move on from POV-Ray into new and challenging waters, the RMan compliant renderers :eek:

Hopefully it won't be too challenging

[KayosIII]

The povray plugin is currently a lot more complete but a lot slower than the Renderman plugin...

(wings has to subdivide a mesh several times then triangulate it to get an effect simular to what most renderman renderers can do with a subdivision mesh).

It is great to see works like these coming out of my plugins - keep it up everybody.

[Mauritius]

Betelgeuse, never ever set any subdivision steps in RIBBit if you render your geometry as a subdivision surface! :scream:
It's a waste of CPU time and HD space. Addtionally it will increase render times.
The 'Shading Rate' in the RIBBit dialog determines the number of subdivision steps the renderer applies automagically. At a Shading Rate of 1, the renderer will ensure to subdivide the geometry ever so often that no resulting [micro]polygon has a size (area) greater than one pixel.

If you like I'll send you the draft of the RIBBit manual that contains some infos on these issues.

.mm

[betelgeuse]

I don't understand, then. What is the subdivision step box for? If you've already smoothed your geometry there's no use for it, and it appears you're telling me that you also don't need to set it for a low res cage render.

So, is what you're telling me that the use of the subdivision step box is if you are not using subdivision mesh but are rendering the low res cage you would set a subd step amount?

I admit that I'm a complete newbie to rman renderers, so I appreciate your guidance.

Btw, is the ribbit manual draft you're referring to the same as the downloadable pdf from Kayos' site? If it is, then I have it - and should read it more carefully.

[Mauritius]

The subdivision steps only apply if you render your geometry as polygons (which makes no sense most of the time, if you're using a RMan compliant renderer from within Wings. But since you never know what people's actual intentions are, it's good to have it as an option nevertheless).

As you can see in the RIBBit dialog, the 'Subdvision Steps' parameter is indented under 'Polygon Mesh'. This means that it only applies if you render your geometry as a Polygon Mesh. The same goes for 'Normals' and 'Triangulate'. If the Wings GUI toolset was more powerful, all three could be grayed out if 'Subdivison Mesh' was selected ...

Otherwise it should be ignored, though I dunno if KayosIII took care that the idea expressed in the GUI is reflected in the code also.

As soon as you select 'Subdivision Mesh', there's no need ever to pre-smooth your control polyhedron aka cage in Wings, nor automatically during export, in some way. The renderer will take care of everything.

The manual I talked of is not the one available from KayosIII's page. It contains all the stuff in the draft available there but also a lot of extra and more detailed information.

Cheers,

Moritz

[KayosIII]

The subdivisions steps option applies to those still using Renderman renderers that don't support subdiv surfaces (older versions of 3Delight, possible future renderers) or Support them so poorly that UV Mapping is just about impossible (*cough* BMRT)...

Otherwise you probably wont need to use it. The latest update will not subdivide for a subdivision mesh even if you tell it to.

Oh yeah -- update today. Details here
http://pub33.ezboard.com/fnendowingsmiraifrm24.showMessageRange?topicID=9.topic&start=41&stop=58

[FBMachine]

Can you guys help me confirm a 3Delight bug I've had trouble with? I reported the bug to them already, but I'm just curious if it's just my computer infected with some bad voodoo.
Create a box and scale it on the z axis 2000 percent.
Smooth the box 3 times.
Position the camera so the box crosses the eye plane, ie. so part of the box is in front of the camera and part of the box is behind the camera ( but not going through the camera, it can be under, to the sides, or over, doesn't matter as long as part is in front, and part is behind the cameras physical z location ).
Render in 3Delight as a subdivision surface. Does it crash? It seems like 3Delight doesn't deal with eyesplits on subdivision surfaces well at all, it crashes in all but trivial scenes I've done with it, even after making the near clipping plane way in front and setting the eyesplits high. That's why I can't wait for Ribbit to get polygon output ( including normals ) working. ;)
Dan

[Mauritius]

Sounds like an eyesplit problem.

Download the SIGGRAPH 2000 coursenotes from renderman.org (http://www.renderman.org/) (go to 'books') and read the chapter entitled 'How PhotoRealistic RenderMan works'. It explains what's going on.

Usullay the renderer should exit the eyesplit loop at some time and render a 'bad' image. The fact that it crashes is definitely a bug. Nevertheless, scenes like the one you describe are a problem for most REYES renderers.

.mm

[FBMachine]

Yeah I've read that paper and know the issue with reyes based renderers, but like you said, it shouldn't flat out crash. :) It seems like the split code for subd's might be busted completely for eyesplit cases, because I've tried to add edgeloops all along the z axis, and push the near clip plane very far out, and even with that large bit of help it still crashes. Also worth pointing out that a highly smoothed polygonal version of the same scene doesn't crash in this case, it only seems to happen with subdivision surfaces. I hope they fix it soon, it's pretty busted like this. Also the raytracing seems busted in some way, calls to occlude(), or even rayhittest() in my own ambient occlusion function seems to crash all but trivial scenes. It's such a fast renderer, and good image quality, I hope they fix this stuff soon so I can roll out some nice renders for free! :D :wip:
Dan

[Xaint]

Where can I dig info 'bout ribbit?

I found it: http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=47465

Solmor: Nice moment catched on your Avatar, in a contrast with the prev. freak-look. :thumbsup:
(and nice cropping):rolleyes:

[somlor]

Originally posted by Xaint
Solmor: Nice moment catched on your Avatar, in a contrast with the prev. freak-look. :thumbsup:
(and nice cropping):rolleyes:
Heh. Thanks. I got sick of explaining that I wasn't a demented overweight maniac. I'm just an avid Richard D. James fan and was attempting to mimic his one album cover. (http://cover09.cduniverse.com/MuzeAudioArt/240/245231.jpg)

:beer:

[s]

[blackthorn3d]

Is anyone using win98se and 3delight? If so could you post your path in your autoexec.exe file please. I looked at the info in the pdf file for ribbit and 3delight and tried a few different times but its not finding the renderdl.exe. mine is setup to the default directory c:\3delight I haven't used paths for anything in ages back before windows and dos ruled lol.
1 more question I have the newest wings setup and I also setup that wings hyperpatch while I was in wings and selected a object I noticed all these little blue spikes sticking up 1 will apear if you click on vertexes I was just wondering what they were I never noticed them before thought it might be a bug. or it was just something that hyperwings displays.

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