Proof of concept: Maxtor

#41

Ok, been playing with my light shaders, trying to perfect them. On top of what they already do, they now flawlessly mimic and respect the “Shadow color”, “Density”, and “Light affects shadow color” attributes on max’s lights.

Here’s a demonstration:

The diagram only shows a small few test cases, but in my own experiments I’ve tried many more values, and the results were effectively identical (of course there will be pixel differences as the renderers are completely different)

#42

great work… i really hope this tool one day involes in to a full production proven render connection between max and renderman…
could you post time needed to render the scene in post #19…
thanks… keep up the good work…

#43

rendertime for post #36 please…

#44

The Pixolator Head took 9.8 seconds (on average) to render at that resolution in 3Delight.

I don’t have that crowd scene with me right now, but the picture I showed took 2 or so minutes. Now, that picture was not using level of detail. After implementing it, it significantly cut the render times.

#45

Awesome project you have going on here, and it’s moving along quickly too! I don’t have experienc with renderman, but the renders (and render times) you show here are great, and if Pixar uses it, it must be good ;). Looking forward to more!

#46

Remember that what Pixar uses is PRMan, which anyone can buy and use with Maxtor. The other renderman renderers are renderman compliant, meaning that they can read the renderman file format. It doesn’t mean that they are using the same technology that is in PRMan.

#47

Yeah, but 3Delight is bloody good :slight_smile:

I’m writing some docs now, hopefully will have something for your guys to play with soon.

#48

Okay, it’s in open-beta now! So give it a try.

#49

Man you’re doing a freaking good job, I’m looking forward to follow this amazing project.
Keep it up!

#50

Thanks :slight_smile: Give it a try and tell me what you think.

Another displacement test:

#51

Been playing with more displacement:

#52

Got it working, partially :slight_smile:
Seems very nice, using 3Delight.
I don’t really have any experience about 3delight, so
the fault may be mine :stuck_out_tongue:

At first rendering went fine, but then suddenly
the object sizes started changing when rendering, they aren’t the same
as in the viewport. Even in the tutorial scenes the objects are
smaller than they are supposed to be. I’m not sure what I did…

Also, when opening max, I get this error:

--Compile error:Undeclared variable: bool
-- In Line:	checkbox singleFrame "Single Frame" checked:(bool o

keep up the good work, I’ve been wanting to try some renderman renderer.

#53

nice work man! this is great to provide a free renderman interface for max. Hard work, congratulation !

#54

Hi! Thanks for trying

At first rendering went fine, but then suddenly
the object sizes started changing when rendering, they aren't the same
as in the viewport. Even in the tutorial scenes the objects are
smaller than they are supposed to be. I'm not sure what I did...

The reason this is happening is because you have an object with the same name (E.g. Sphere01) already
cached in your static/deform archive path. Caching is useful when you only want to export the scene once, and you want to render a sequence, so you don’t have to re-export the same geometry every frame.

However, when working with new scenes, I understand you don’t want the old objects to remain. The simplest way to resolve this is to tick ‘Delete old archives’ in the Options rollout of the MaxToR Globals, and that will force the objects to re-evaluate automatically.

Also, when opening max, I get this error:

--Compile error:Undeclared variable: bool
    -- In Line:	checkbox singleFrame "Single Frame" checked:(bool o

Hmm, where did you put the action macroScript into? I haven’t tested it with anything but a Menu item, so perhaps it’s loading before the functions are loading. Will have to investigate that.

keep up the good work, I've been wanting to try some renderman renderer.

Thanks, will do my best :slight_smile:

EDIT: Ah, I think I found the cause of the problem. Although it’s strange how both PC’s I tested it on worked fine. I should be able to have an updated version soon.

#55

Ok, updated version. Tell me if it fixes the macroscript error. I never encountered it before, I wouldn’t know.

EDIT:

Updated it again, fixed 2 bugs a user reported :slight_smile:

Get it from the website, or directly:
http://www.geocities.com/scorp2252/maxToR.zip

#56

Playing around with textures and displacement mapping:

#57

one thing, maybe be carefull with the name of your software maxtor is a traded mark of hard drive, and be sure to have the right to use it.
still great work , you have a lot of features to implement so good luck to your work man, it comes to take place.

#58

Yeah, I have considered its name, I initially thought the two contexts that it will be used in are sufficiently different to not cause a fuss. If Maxtor do complain, I will change the name then.

Thanks for the comments

#59

how about Maxstorm MAX Script TO RenderMan?

#60

Someone mentioned Maxtorm at the beginning of the thread (without the ‘S’), I think it’s better, as my plugin is not purely a script, and I’m in the process of moving more and more to C++ SDK. So I’ll probably change it to Maxtorm if any problems arise. (Max To RenderMan – works out quite nicely)

In other news, I fixed 2 minor bugs in the calculation of deformation and transformation motion blur. I had a small mistake in the math, which is now as it should be.

The new release is at the site.

Here’s a video of the fixed deformation motion blur in action:

http://four.fsphost.com/scorp007/deformTest.mov