Just want to say thanks V-Ray devs for PaintFX!

[snivlem]

I noticed last night, I was using some PaintFX brushes...different flowers in the scene...Anyway after converting a couple brushes to mesh I pressed render and noticed my native PaintFX brushes I hadn't converted still rendered anyway!

I had to double check but yes, it turns out that native PaintFX in Maya and V-Ray works! However I don't remember this being mentioned anywhere? Is this the result of Hair integration? (Hair and PaintFX in Maya uses the same code/backbone?)

Anyway, thanks devs! You are making one of what used to be the hardest parts in Maya a breeze now!

[percydaman]

wow thats sweet! Looking forward to it.

[snivlem]

Yeah it's really good. The foreground tiny grass and yellow flower/bushes are pure PaintFX!

[vladimir.nedev]

Yes, that's more of a side effect from supporting Maya hair. From what I checked there is room from improvement there though. Hopefully we'll be able to take a deeper look at it at some point. Anyway, I'm glad you're finding it useful.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[hellobard]

Woho! Paint FX!!
Love these new updates, this will make our lives a whole lot easier with VrayFur, hair and PaintFX... Thanks!

[waaazoo]

for sure ! a lot of fun on the road...

[timdog]

Great news! Big up Chaosgroup!!!

[GatesB]

Yes, that's more of a side effect from supporting Maya hair. From what I checked there is room from improvement there though. Hopefully we'll be able to take a deeper look at it at some point. Anyway, I'm glad you're finding it useful.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

Vladimir,

I got a question about the .vrscene syntax and proxies:

Can I plug a GeomMeshFile into the GeomParticleSystem.mesh parameter and use that to create instances?

versus what I'm currently doing

Create a seperate Node for each instance I want, and then plug the GeomMeshFile into the Node.geometry parameter.

[vladimir.nedev]

No, only GeomStaticMesh can be used inside the GeomParticleSystem plug-in. The particles are not dynamic geometry. They will be added to V-Ray's BSP tree before rendering starts, not dynamically like V-Ray proxies.

You can use the "Instancer" plug-in to do what you want. You can create only one node linked to a V-Ray proxy with an identity transformation, and then instance that many times with different transforms using the Instancer plug-in. Just export a particle instancer from Maya and you'll see how it is done. The instancer has two transforms for each instanced node, the second one is the velocity, you can leave that to all zeros.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[GatesB]

Okay, that makes sense. So, the Instancer.instances expects a List of (Node, Transform, Transform) then?

[vladimir.nedev]

It's actually a little more complicated, here is the format :

List(
frame_time,
List(particle_id_1, transformation_1, velocity_transformation_1, node_1_1, node_1_2, node_1_3 ....),
List(particle_id_2, transformation_2, velocity_transformation_2, node_2_1, node_2_2, node_2_3 ....),
....
)

The partcile_ids are used with motion blur, to recognize particles between different sub-frames. You can just use incrementing numbers here, 1, 2, 3.... If you're going to use this with motion blur, it is important that these numbers are sorted in increasing order. As you can see one transformation can instance multiple nodes, they'll all use that same transformation, so you have to align them properly in object space.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev