KA_TurbulenceRGB - Importing SPDL

#1

I feel sheepish asking this, but here goes…

I have a dilemma. I’ve searched all over for answers, and have found only a hint of an answer that old shaders, like KA_turbulenceRGB from Kim Aldis, might actually be out of date. I’m hoping I’m wrong.

How can I install the old KA_turbulenceRGB from Kim Aldis’s training?

The “More…” choice in the render tree node menu is gone now, and I tried installing the shaders by dragging and dropping from a browser into the render tree.

This would really stink, if I can’t use them anymore. How does one install their own shaders in Softimage?

EDIT: I found this info. Is this really the right way (only way) to use 3rd party shaders?

#2

Ok, I figured out some of this…

Here goes.

Just like the link stated from my last post I needed to make a new workgroup.

I named it WORKGROUP_SI_2013 on my X drive. Then made the subfolders Application/spdl

From there, copied the SPDL and DLL files into the spdl folder.

Closed and relaunched Softimage. The Plugin Manager find the nodes. So far so good!

Opened the Render tree, in the Nodes menu, found SPDL Shaders > Texture > KA_TurbulenceRGB and KA_NoiseRGB were there.

I bring the shader in the tree, plug it into surface, draw a render region, and I get this error:


  // ERROR : LINK 0.2	 11 MB error  191007: cannot load X:\WORKGROUP_SI_2013\Application\spdl\KA_TurbulenceRGB.dll, unknown error code 193, check Win32 manual
  // ERROR : LINK 0.2	 11 MB error  191012: Unable to load file: X:\WORKGROUP_SI_2013\Application\spdl\KA_TurbulenceRGB.dll
  // ERROR : PHEN 0.10	12 MB error  051011: shader "KA_TurbulenceRGB" not found

Ok, what now?

#3

Hey Stoehr,

I think the way to do this is go File>plugin manager then SPDL install - the problem I had though was that I am using 64bit OS and I believe these were only ever compiled for 32bit? so even though the spdl installs correctly and I can see KA_noise from the shader preset list, but when rendering the shader cannot find the right dll - even though its in the right place.

#4

Right. After much more searching, I realized it should be decompiled and rebuilt for 64-bit. Unfortunately, I don’t have those skills.

#5

Any chance someone could update these to 64-bit?

#6

Not going to happen, I’m afraid. AFAIK Kim Aldis never released the source code to this shader and reverse engineering it without access to the source code is more or less impossible (again AFAIK). What specifics of said shader do you need? Can it be emulated by using alternative options?
:wink:

#7

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