TLHPro - WIP Thread

#241

hehehe - yes, that would be fun :scream:

Nah, thanks. I have a music video and some design jobs coming… :thumbsup:
This year really turns out cool.

I’m on the last page. Docs will be ready today. :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

L8ers

#242

i had a dream… :slight_smile:

#243

The Time node will be great for my neon sign experiments

#244

Thomas,

A bit of a request here, but would it be possible to update AoN docs to PDF as well, perhaps at a later date.

Thanks

#245

AAAron: yes, that should be the perfect application! Looks great already :thumbsup:

rush123: I think that will only happen if I find enough motivation and worthwhile ideas to do a major update to the shaders. I can’t see me converting the docs just for the fun of it, since they work just fine as they are - only printing is suboptimal.
Let’s see how messiah develops further - it mostly will depend on that.

Also, I still have to find a way to start Acrobat on a specific page from within the shaders…
Not fully there yet.

:bounce: !The main Docs are finished! :bounce:
Now I’m putting together the sample scenes and doing the explanation about installation and activation that depends on the content. Because of the nature of those shaders, there will be no presets, since they are fully scene specific, but I will do some easy sample scenes and after the release you can tell me what’s missing. :slight_smile:

I can’t remember how long it took ShareIt to upload the software to their servers the last time - are they working on weekends? I don’t have direct access via FTP…
Well, even Monday wouldn’t be too bad I think…

Have to grab some sleep now.

:bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown:

#246

Hi Thomas, a question in advance…
you said ambient occlusion and wireframe won’t be part of the initial release. Any idea of time frame when these would be added to the mix? All the shaders look great, but ambient (and that sketch direction you did with it) would really be great.

#247

Well, I am currently flooded with jobs. While this is a wonderful thing from my perspective and it is even beautiful work and paid well, I can’t make any promises as far as those shaders go.

I simply wasn’t satisfied with the results from AO, while the Wireframe Shader became so complex and somehow unpredictable in some areas (recreating quads from triangles f.i. was a bit of a guessing game and every mesh behaved differently)
The sketch AO mode was very limited if you remember. Basically it was a primitive hack that doesn’t allow for flexible stroke direction, only diagonal, left/right and up/down. It was not customisable and I hadn’t found a way to make that specific hack more flexible.

I will certainly not release the other shaders this month. And I am not even sure if I will continue the wireframe shader, now that Taron has done one already. I may concentrate on those poly modes and points.

Do you need it for a specific job?

Cheers,

#248

Can’t say without testing. And I haven’t worked in the renderer sufficiently enough yet, anyway. But I imagine that elements of the occlussion could work nicely for sketch-type looks I’m after.
Maybe a beta-release of the AO and Poly/Points would be good. Clearly note “use-at-own-risk” and avail yourself of your users to get feedback. I’ll be purchasing the other shaders anyway, so…

I’m already priming myself to bug Taron about render-layers or passes, so… AO would be a good argument.

#249

You can already do simple “Passes” (not as nice as in XSI though) with stacked Render Groups (see latest Advanced Tip from AlexK). Definitively perfect for custom Depth and AO - stuff that goes over the whole scene that is.

The Beta release to TLHPro:Users is a good idea. But it still is a lot of work and needs time I don’t have at the moment.

I will release the docs tonight for free download and I hope to have the shaders available via ShareIt on monday. There will be no demo version, but the docs should be sufficient to find out if the shaders are worth it for you or not. Only buy them if you are happy with the content that is already there, otherwise don’t and simply wait until they are finished.

Just to make this clear: I don’t want frustrated customers and I don’t offer this as a kind of “presale”, but as a solution for people who need things like RayType or DoubleSider/EasyGlass now. Without the repeated questions from the community, I wouldn’t have released them at all. :slight_smile: :bowdown:

#250

Fair enough.
Thanks for that tip - I’d missed it. Hot pass rendering!
(Still would be nice to have it structured though - ala “render all passes”)

Cool!

#251

Sorry if it may sound a bit harsh, but I don’t want to get us into a frustration cycle - we already had that ;).
This thread is rather old and a lot of what was said in 2004 is outdated. I will lay it to rest after the release I think, and start a new one for working with the actual users on tips and tricks and examples.

I would like to see an output area in messiah that looks similar to this (I closed the nodes since I have built that from other nodes without the wanted functionallity :wink: ):

It could be a special “Camera Surface” or an individual mode.
You would have inputs that are a separate shader class, that deliver similar things as the current image filters, alpha, object ID, UVspace depth, pixelspace, light info, shading passes, but also you would have a node that delivers custom buffers to this tree (see below).
Then you could do to those buffers whatever you want with shader nodes and image filters.
Finally you would have custom Pass-Output nodes that would correspond to the passes in the output tab where you could hook in whatever you want to have it written to disk.

Well, a fully customisable pass system with included compositing that would make XSI look a bit pale around the nose :wink:

For making this really terrific, you would need a rather simple shader node that could be included in your normal material trees and writes whatever you pipe into it to one of several buffers that later are accessible in your Output Tree.
So you could pipe anything from the current rendering through the paces.
For instance, you could write all the outputs of a basic shader to separate buffers and later access and save them simultaneously. Or have the unshaded outputs of procedurals available or or or… :slight_smile:

And all that in one render.

This would be huge!

Cheers,

#252

No prob. AO is so important that it might better be included in the base messiah anyway. I just need to know who to pester :wink:

As to the pass nodes… at first glance it expands my horizons just a bit too far. This would mean you control the output at the material level. Wow. The implications - I’d need a brain extension. LoL!
I was thinking a more simple addition to the render panel that enables inclusion/exclusion of the render groups at render time. Might get a bit tedious to have those nodes in each material, oder?

#253

I’m going to take this node thing into a new thread because its something I’d like to see. But don’t want to crowd up your thread Thomas;)

#254

Well, I haven’t totally put my brain into it yet. It is just a rough sketch. Maybe it doesn’t have to be separate nodes but buffer inputs in the main material? On the other hand, separate nodes would be more flexible.
Currently the nodes aren’t object oriented so adding inputs on runtime looks like a no-go to me.
Well, I don’t have any idea about the inner workings of messiah, so I am not able to make any assumptions about how involved that one would be.

I just wanted to present something again that I have seen before my inner eye years ago when first playing with the nodes in messiah:studio. I don’t even know if something like this exists anywhere else.

Combine it with the concept of Lightmaps ala Mental Ray and you can do wonders in one pass…

Cheers!

#255

That wasn’t negative. I’m just trying to wrap my brain around the pros and cons of it. I suspect you have some things in mind that I don’t see atm.
And as always - flexibility to do the buffer assignment at various levels depending on need would be ideal. Maybe a G2 type layout, where you have a master control and surface controls. I’ve always liked that even if I don’t use it much. The thought of having to manually adjust all my surfaces… shudder!

#256

Thomas…http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=343146

#257

No, you would still have the normal workflow for materials - nothing changing at all.
No Fear, I’m all for simple!

But if you want a specific thing from one of the materials written out to disk, you could simply hook it into such a buffer node and either write it directly to HD like Lightmaps in XSI or you could later access it as a custom buffer in the output tree.

Hm - the longer I think about it the more I like it.
Simple but beautiful :slight_smile:

Cheers,

#258

Dear fellow messiah users, the wait is (almost) over! :bounce:

I am very happy to present you with the documentation for my upcoming TLHPro shaders:

Download it here:

http://www.screendream.info/TLHPro/TLHPro_Documentation.rar

If possible, use the above server, since I have unlimited traffic there. But if it is unbearable slow, you can also use this URL:

http://www.screendream.de/TLHPro/TLHPro_Documentation.rar

You will need at least Adobe Reader 6 (7 recommended) and for the included videos you need Quicktime (Version 7 recommended). Activate Type- Vector- and Image Antialiasing in the Reader Preferences for best results.

Let me know if there are any problems.

Tomorrow I will work on example scenes and content and if ShareIt is fast enough, the release will be on monday.

I hope you like it :bowdown:

#259

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.