Overrides...

[marci2001]

open explorer
open browser (press 5)
search for ds presets, shaders, illumination

drag and drop a the 'blinn' file over the BG partition

is it working?

[Jacobo]

yup that works... Thank you... But about the multiple attribute selection to store in overrides... I don't know what I'm supposed to do if I was to apply say a radiance color override for 987 objects... Is there a practical way of getting around this? I don't wanna have to dig into the list and freak out in the end... :)

any help appreciated...

aj

[marci2001]

select BG partition
get > property > override
open override ppg

click Add Parameters

select the R G B params of radiance in the phong node

click on the override panel (that's a little queer)
the list disappears, and you have the params on your list

objects in the BG partition will have a common R G B radiance, but the their own diffs, transp, amb, etc reamins the original

M

[Jacobo]

Marci2001,

Thanx a mil for your help... That works all right! I'll have a last question tho, I hope you'll bear with me on this one... If all of these objects were to have different shaders assigned to them, would I have to pick the radience params of each object or is there a work around to that one?

thanx again

aj

[marci2001]

no, you don't have to. thanks for god(s) override overrides

enjoy

M

[Jacobo]

Marci2001,

I know I'm starting to get buggy :rolleyes:, I tried overriding the override right before I last wrote to the thread, but just couldn't get it to work... I mean how would I be able to pull it off if I had like 150 objects with a phong shader and say another 150 with a strauss shader applied and they all have to be in the same partition somehow, and I wanted to go ahead and change the irradiance values in one shot??

thanx a lot once again...

AJ

[RickW]

Originally posted by Jacobo
Marci2001,

I know I'm starting to get buggy :rolleyes:, I tried overriding the override right before I last wrote to the thread, but just couldn't get it to work... I mean how would I be able to pull it off if I had like 150 objects with a phong shader and say another 150 with a strauss shader applied and they all have to be in the same partition somehow, and I wanted to go ahead and change the irradiance values in one shot??

thanx a lot once again...

AJ

I think what you are doing is a little redundant. I can't think of a practical reason why you would need to override and override?

When I first started using XSI, I skipped the manuals and learned as I went right into production. To change the material settings on mulitple objects I would write a script that would loop (don't laugh) through my selection and change the values of the material on each object. Every time the director or client would change his/her mind I would run this script.

Then one day I decided to read the rendering manual and found out about overrides and their power.

For example....
If you have 300 objects in your scene and they all have different materials. Say 100 has a blinn shader, 100 has a phong and another 100 has a strauss.

Now you need to adjust the specular on the 100 that have the blinn. 1 way is to select all hundred and hit the modify shader button. You will be able to adjust the specular attribute of all 100 selected objects. (There's much more efficient ways than this).

Now let's say you need to adjust the radiance on all (300) of these objects and set it to the same value.

Either put all of these objects in a group or partition and put an override on the group or partiton for the radiance parameter. All the objects in the group or partition will inherit only the radiance settings while leaving all their other surface values in tact.

To edit the overrride, radiance for example.
Select it from either the group or partition and hit the 7 hot key to open up the render tree. Now you can wire in a color share or whatever you want to the input parameter of the override.

Give the Rendering Book another whirl. It'll make sense.

Hope this helps,

PS. I'm going by memory and didn't bother to run spellcheck.

[Jacobo]

Yes, that makes sense... I did read the entire chapter on rendering before starting this thread, and there it sounded to me as if they meant to pick parameters one by one for each and every object... Now I get the picture more clearly... Thank you for taking the time to help me out on this one. I appreciate it a lot!

see ya

Aj

[Atyss]

The most straightforward way to apply a common material to all the members of a partition is to select the partition and do Get > Material > Choose material.

If on some of these objects you need to have a different parameter, then create a new partition, apply the same material (or copy the material from the first partition), and edit the parameters on that partition particular partition.

If it's just one parameter that you need to change and not change the whole material, then it's logical to use overrides. Add the parameters you need to the override, and as marci2001 said, the override entry should affect all the members of the override.

Note that the current override architecture has some flaws. The override might not override objects that have materials shared through groups, or you might get a solid black color on polygon clusters that have a -local- material. Not to mention the incomplete command that is logged when you try to override material boolean parameters (_inuse stuff), that gives the wrong type of entry. I was told by Softimage that they need to rewrite the entire override architecture, I hope they do it sometime in the future.

Also, although versatile and somewhat easy to use when you know how, override stuff is a pretty technical process. Scripting definitely helps (note to self: do more scripting).

Finally, when you have the time to, you should create a "master pass file". This is basically an empty XSI scene that contains passes for everything imaginable in production. So when you are ready to create rendering passes, you merge your scene into the master scene, and then all you have to do is to drag and drop your objects into the appropriate partition to build your passes.



Cheers
Bernard

[Jacobo]

Thanx a lot RickW and Bernard for taking the time to help... I'll go into this matter deeper... I might have some more questions on the way tho. I hope you'll bear with me on those too :D

later

AJ

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