Proof of concept: Maxtor

#81

Ok, I completely revised the Raytrace modifier and made it PRMan/3Delight compliant. Unfortunately Pixie probably won’t support this syntax yet. I assume you know what the options mean, they are in RenderMan terminology. If you don’t, I suggest you consult your renderer’s manual.

Available from the website. Let me know how it works.

EDIT: Antartica, the manual contains step-by-step instructions on how to install it.
Re: versioning, yeah, I had it under SVN control, but it became a big pain in the ass to work with due to the files being spread over different directories in the max tree. When it goes out of beta, I’ll have proper release numbers.

#82

Hi
Yea i tried to install it as in the manual, but i cant make it work, I need to install 3delight first?
You have MSN? maybe you can help me a little there

#83

Hi Antartica,

I’d be glad to help you get up and running.

Could you be more specific on what is stopping you from getting it working? You don’t need to have any renderer installed to generate a RIB, only to render it.

#84

Hi
I well I copy the files to the max root as you explain but, I dont know how to install the licence and where i find the render options of maxtor on max

#85

Hi Antartica,

The website says:

Place the license in the <maxroot>/maxToR/ folder.

The manual states that you can place the action macro anywhere you wish, via the Customize UI panel.

#86

Hi
Its working now, where I should place the 3delight shaders to make the light on max works?

#87

Hi,

Great to hear.

Place them anywhere you want, and set up your shader path under “Additional Paths” in the render globals.

#88

Is “c:\shade” ok?
the shaders are inside the shade folder
should be writed in that way on maxtor?

#89

You’re too fast! I was going to say implement visible to camera but apparently you’ve already got that, and more. One thing though, I can’t resize the “sticky” render window. :shrug: It’s just a long thin strip. I can make it longer but I can’t make it wider. Have a look. I checked the setting.ini and the width is stuck at 104.0 and I can’t change it.

EDIT: Apparently you have to toss the old setting.ini and then let it create a new one. Then change the # and restart max. Ok works well now.

#90

Ermm, that looks very strange. How did you get it so thin? AFAIK max won’t let you change the width on a rollout floater. Let me check.

Oh, right, glad it works (misread you the first time).

Regarding visibility to camera, it’s actually implemented in two distinct ways:

  1. In the object properties window: What this does is stop it from appearing in the beauty pass but still appear in the shadow pass, so it cast’s shadows (using shadow maps) provided you have “Cast shadows” checked.
  2. In the raytrace modifer: This option is only effective if Raytracing is enabled – It determines if the object is visible to camera rays, and the hitmode if it is hit. So if you are using raytraced shadows, you can uncheck Camera visibility and check Transmission visibility to get an invisible object cast raytraced shadows (not shadow maps).
#91

Yeah, that should work, try it out.

#92

Oops, I just realised I introduced a bug. I am working to resolve it.

EDIT: OK, the bug fix release is up, let me know if you have any problems.

#93

Minor update,

  • Added Exposure control
  • Moved the Raytrace global option to “Features” rollout.

#94

Here’s a little cityscape test just to play around and see if I find any bugs.


Rendered in 3Delight

If you guys make any cool stuff feel free to share it in this thread :slight_smile:

#95

This looks really good, I was just wondering if you could answer some basic questions:

You mentioned that these renderers are superior because of true subdivision surfaces, could you explain how they differ from how max does things. Or could you point me too an online resource?

Will this be a commercial plugin when it is finished?

Thanks

Dan

#96

Hi djlane,

When you tag a mesh as a Subdivision surface and render in a Renderman renderer, it’s like assigning a Meshsmooth modifier to your mesh with infinity iterations. I.e. it’s always perfectly smooth no matter how close you bring your camera, and there’s negligable performance penalty.

If you tried to take a mesh and set the meshsmooth iterations to 100 or so, it’d be way to heavy and max would crash.

Yeah, this will most likely be a commercial plugin.

Thanks for your inquiry.

#97

Here’s a little animation of the pixologic head with my improved mesh export code. (Uses facevertex variables now for SDS):

http://www.savefile.com/files/860734

#98

Cheers for that.

Dan

#99

Hi
The revaluate geometry option works is a kind of camera or view dependency? i mean if you change the camera position or move the objects in the scene, you have to check it so the renderer knows that there is a geometric change?
cant that be done automaticaly in a future realese?

#100

Hi Alex,

I just noticed that the raytracing modifier doesn’t add the nessesary attribute tags for transmition to the ricurves in the .rib file when using splines.

Also, is it possible to set the default blur the raytracing shadows to 0.0 because when using raytracing, I want crisp shadows and it should only blur when using adv raytrace shadows.