ctrl_buffers

#621

With the RC5 release the multichannel exr is working great, except when I readIn one in Nuke, the primary RGBA channel is fine, but the second channel looks like the image attached. Render mode in the Buffer_api is +rgba 16bits Floating Point and the exr compression is set to Piz. However I have tried many different combinations of both. Any thoughts?

#622

Sorry for two in a row, but another question for the group: I’ve read in this thread that you must have seperate buffer stores per mesh, but what about multiple geos into a switch node? I keep getting errors that crash maya, just wondering if this is it. If I have a mechanical object with boatloads of individual screws, hinges, and other peices, this approach no longer becomes very economical.

EDIT => Found my error, thought I’d share it (triple switch works fine, by the way)

** IMPORTANT! **

The geometry shader (buffer_api) causes the dummy object to not render. Taking any normal methods (such as templating) to make this object unrenderable causes the errors:

 PHEN 0.9  error  051015: cannot map frame buffer: invalid fb index (14)
   PHEN 0.9  error  051015: cannot map frame buffer: invalid fb index (15)
   PHEN 0.9  error  051015: cannot map frame buffer: invalid fb index (16)

or it gave errors like cannot find pin 0x00000 and crashed.

I’ve seen these errors reported in this thread and I spent two days trying to track it down, so I thought it worth mentioning.

Cheers

#623

I haven’t used ctrl_buffer yet although I have installed it, but tried to render with mental ray anyway only to get this error message:

// Error: (mental ray) : /Applications/Alias/maya7.0/Maya.app/Contents/mentalray/lib/mix8layer.so: load failed, //
// Error: (mental ray) : /Applications/Alias/maya7.0/Maya.app/Contents/mentalray/lib/ctrl_buffers.so: load failed, //

I’ve realised that these files dont come with the download, so I tried taking out the install files and reatsrting Maya but I get the same message and MR craps out. What should I do to fix this before I go ahead and do a complete reinstall of Maya, (Im on a mac)

thanks

#624

Hi all! This shader is really cool!
But…i have a problem, if i use it on my mobile everything works.
If i use it on my destop (amd XP 4200) maya render till 100% then gives me this error

DISP 0.9 error 211005: timeout waiting for finished rectangles

then i have to kill the process…
Same scene, last shader version rc5…
to make render work i have to eliminate the geometry associated to buffer_api and i need to create framebuffers output in mi_Default_Option. Using this way the shader works…but antialiasing doesn’t…
Does anyone have the same problem?!
THANKS A LOT! :slight_smile:

sorry for my english…

#625

Any chance on lifting the 16 buffer limit now that it’s all working? It seems that you can output as many as you want, but since you can’t name any past 15, it just writes over the first ones.

#626

sorry guys, I’m tad tired tonight to answer the above things but
I wanna share with you a little video tut I prepared time ago and
then forgot to upload and link it here. it shows how to use cluster
easly with ctrl.buffers, it puts also some efforts on the basic buffer
workflow. hope you’ll find it useful. there’s also the scene included.

 [http://rapidshare.de/files/36019259/ctrl.buffers__videotut_02.rar.html](http://rapidshare.de/files/36019259/ctrl.buffers__videotut_02.rar.html)
 
 ciao
 francesca
#627

thank u very much

#628

anyone else having problem downloading the video?

#629

nope - no probs here

#630

If Francesca doesn’t mind I can host that file on my website as a mirror if Rapidshare won’t work for some of you.

Great video Francesca!

#631

hi francesca,

any chance of releasing a compile for Linux plz ??? Or I can compile it if you wish.

Thanks,

Mike

#632

Hey guys,

Firstly, Francesca… Great job with the shader. I think this is really going to change the workflows of many companies as well as saving time on all the rendering…

Secondly… all the rest of you, thanks for all the contribs as well as input you have all greatly helped my understanding of the entire process…

Could someone possibly mirror all the tuts, for some reason rapidshare does not like us very much here in South Africa and I really want to have a look at the vids to further my understanding of everything… Maybe would could have a look at opening a site dedicated to this shader with it’s own forums and download section… Only so that the posts can be a little better organised! Personally I find it really hard to follow progress on all of this if I miss so much as a week in the posts… find myself reading 43 pages of posts all over again…

If you would all be interested in this I might be able to host the site and admin it… I would use e107 as the base because it has a vast number of features that you can customise according to the project as well as being open source so there would not have to be any money involved… as an example of the type of thing I’m talking about have a look at www.animeworx.co.za.

#633

recently moved to a production that use mac…
not a fan…
but would be nice to see this shader in my hypershade
anyone ever portred this to mac?
-A

#634

Hi guys,

i do have a problem and I hope someone can help me out:

I want to use the “use Background Shader” to make a shadow pass. As soon as I use the shader with the ctrl_buffer shader, I dont get an alpha channel at my rendered image. Is that normal? Where is the mistake?

I really hope someone can help me with this!

Thanks in advance!

Visor

#635

i was just starting to feel really confident with traditional render layers and passes for compositing, now my mind is blown all over again. aighhh.

#636

Hi Francesca!

First of all i want to thank you for your incredible knowledge and useful shaders!!!
I’ve a question for u:

I’m tryng to render a scene by 50 frames, i’m using a buffer_api node to tonemap the frame…it work very good, but in the next frames it seems that doesn’t work correctly; obviously i’ve shut down FG Freeze selecting FG Rebuild “OFF”. Every times i want to render a frames series i must to rebuilt GI and FG maps…that work correctly… so… is there a method to exclude the maps rebuild?

Thanks a lot!

PS: sorry for my bad english (ce mastico poco! :slight_smile: )

#637

Hi Francesca, first of all i want to thank you for your knowledges and your useful nodes!

I’ve a question for you:

Can i work with Buffer_api in batch render without rebuild every times GI and FG maps?

Thanks!

I don’t know if my english is correct (ma tanto se capimo:scream:)

#638

Hi Francesca thanks for making an awsome shader, i got a small problem tho. when i render with open exr and open the frames in photoshop it seems like they have alot more light areas than in maya render viewport.

also when trying to render with tif i get nothing but blank.

thx for answers.

#639

Just wondering if there was any news on this tut:)

#640

Hey guys,

I have a few questions regarding rendering passes with ctrl_buffer:

1: Is it possible to control lights to be on/off on a per framebuffer channel basis? That is, say I have a scene where I want the light to be on in framebuffer channel 1 and the to be off in framebuffer channel 2, is this possible? At the moment I am resorting to having separate scenes with the light on in one and off in the other, which means having to render the scene twice.

2: Basically the the same quesition but applied to turning final gather on and off per framebuffer channel.

3: Again, the same concept but with geometry to be visible vs hidden. I know this could be done theoretically by using a shader that is just completely transparent. The problem with this is that for an ambient occlusion pass the shader seems to still detect that the geometry is there (even with a transparent shader) and makes the all the other geometry with the amient occlusion shader account for these objects and become occluded by them.

I hope this all makes sense. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

cheers
Simon