PSD2Material - a pipeline tool

[rdg]

Hello,

I would like to invite you to take a look at our new pipeline tool:
PSD2Mat - a pipeline tool

PSD2Mat is a production proven connection between Adobe PhotoShop® and Autodesk 3D Studio MAX®. This maxscript converts layered PSD Files into a Scanline or VRay-Material. Named layers are converted to bitmapfiles and assigned to their respective material slots.

Features:
Autodetection of map names in layered PSD files.
Versioning
Configurable with 'textfiles'
Photoshop Template Helpers
...

Georg Duemlein aka RDG developed this tool.
Anselm v. Seher-Thoß aka PsychoSilence was the advisor in this project.

Last but not least we'd like to thank Keith Boshoff (Wahooney) whose PSD2Material was the cornerstone for developing this tool.

Georg

[dimo]

Nice one,

thanks for sharing!

Best regards,

Dieter

[instinct]

Indeed nice one as usual....Zwei enthusiastisch erhobene Daumen Georch

Thorsten

[dans]

I actually had the same workflow idea (Assigning PSD files to materials and maps) for the GhostPainter - PSD Layers Utility. But GhostPainter doesn't offer to convert the PSD into another file format before the assignment (but it supports assigning to any material type and composite maps).



What I didn't understand was the following sentence on the PSD2Mat website

We could use the complete PSD as a bitmap in all available maps slots. But this results in a huge memory footprint especially if you are using many PSD Files on objects in numbers.

that assigning a PSD directly in 3ds max would require more memory then assigning a converted file. This doesn't make sense to me, because not the complete file is kept in memory but only the image data itself.

Thanks for sharing
Daniel[/quote]

[EricCamper]

Wow...that looks really cool.Thanx

[rdg]

Thank you for the feedback!

his doesn't make sense to me, because not the complete file is kept in memory but only the image data itself.

Well, this is a statement made by my Advisor Anselm, I didn't double check it. I could imagine that it is maybe *faster* if the maps are presplit than having the renderer loading huge PSDfiles and extracting the wanted map date, especially if you don't use all of the available layers ...

Yeah I heard of Ghostpainter. In my current state of freelancing it is more efficient to spend some time in write such a tool than spending money on just another commercial plugin.

For the additional features and supported maps:
PSD2Mat is a strict pipeline tool. It cannot and won't offer you the freedom a plugin written for the masses.
This approach has several benefits:
The time needed for training your artist is reasonable less as there less features.
You can adapt it to your pipeline and just offer the features your pipeline requires: no need to double check this illiterate shad0r gladiat0r who won't get that there are no composite or IOR maps in your pipeline
You can set the way the layers are mapped: "rudi"-> "Diffuse" or even "bump" -> "diffuse" + "specular" ...
And it offers a basic backup system

Georg

[rdg]

There was an error in the installer.
I just fixed it and uploaded version 099f.

Georg

[rdg]

the current version is 099g.
It fixes some bugs with the ps-template scripts.

Georg

[jonnybefree]

great!! thanks for sharing man!

[3dkad]

Great thing Maaan! Thanx for sharing!

I would like to ask if there is a way to save the rendered image as PSD and then when opening in Photoshop to have different layers for the different materials? It would be great also!

[rdg]

I would like to ask if there is a way ...

Isn't PSDmanager (?) doing such stuff?

for single material use I currently develop RDG mat2psd:
http://www.preset.de/2007/0410/mat2psd/

Georg

[3dkad]

Yeap - looks just the thing that i've searched for...Respekt!

Would you share it? (if it's already shared i haven't saw the download option... )

Thanx in advance!

[rdg]

3dkad,

I edited my last post - as it was very weird - am sorry for that.

cebas PSDmanager(?) splits rendered images into render elements for photoshop. I sure has material id support.

My Mat2PSD handles 'just' materials and splits maps into photoshop layers.
I just started coding today and there is no download available yet.
But I try to get it finished


Georg

[3dkad]

It's ok!
Die Daumen hoch!!!
I wish you good luck in the future!
Continue the good work!!!