ply2vrmesh on linux

[bhenriksson]

We need to get a lot of geometry from houdini to v-ray on a linux based system. Any experience on the problem is appreciated.

thx!

[vlado]

Make sure that you are using a newer build of V-Ray; it should support .bgeo files which on the whole convert much faster.

Best regards,
Vlado

[bhenriksson]

That's great news. But you only done this on Windows?

[vlado]

No of course; you get ply2vrmesh with the Linux installations of V-Ray as well.

Best regards,
Vlado

[bhenriksson]

aaaaaaaahhh! Things are getting clearer, it IS a linux prog allready, Got fooled by the .exe extension.

Cheers mate!

[bigbossfr]

Just for the info, primitive group in Houdini give you the shading group.

[bhenriksson]

Nice. And while we're close to the subject- how well does vray handle point/primitive/vertex attributes? Can they be accessed by shaders?

[t.petrov]

What kind of Attributes? Can you give an example?
I guess at the moment we are not skipping unknown attributes.
We are processing positions, normals, uvs and velocities, I think.

/Teodor

[bhenriksson]

Arbitrary attributes. For example, say we have a selfillumination thing going on in our shader we could create a point variable on the mesh that then acts as a multiplier in the shader. Or in my case, I got water that goes from solid to foam, I need to control this by particle attributes that gets picked up by the shader.

[bigbossfr]

You want user attributes in the proxy. I add a thread about this : http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...butes-in-Proxy (but before in Maya).
I don't know if it is very diffucult or if this "big" feature can be here quicly.
We start a new feature film with some armies and this feature will help us a lot (for variations in the shader, switch textures, etc etc).

[vlado]

Arbitrary attributes. For example, say we have a selfillumination thing going on in our shader we could create a point variable on the mesh that then acts as a multiplier in the shader. Or in my case, I got water that goes from solid to foam, I need to control this by particle attributes that gets picked up by the shader.

Do it with a color set, and it will work fine - there is a VRayVertexColors texture for accessing color set information from within a shader. Color sets are also stored in .vrmesh files.

For accessing particle attributes, you can use the particleSampler shading node.

Best regards,
Vlado

[vlado]

You want user attributes in the proxy.

Not necessarily. For the particular case, Color Sets will work just fine.

Best regards,
Vlado

[bhenriksson]

No, according to your thread your thing would be per object. I want to pickup attributes from points or polygons. In my case these would need to be baked into a houdini geo/bgeo and converted to vrmesh data through ply2vrmesh.

[vlado]

I see; however at the moment ply2vrmesh doesn't understand those attributes. Even if it did though, eventually they would end up as color sets.

Best regards,
Vlado

[bhenriksson]

Just want to drop some thoughts on this. I've recenly discovered that you can't displace a vr proxy. This is a major drawback as all houdini I/O is happening through proxies and displacement is an everyday thing.

We've never really got over the fact that one can't read/write point attributes either. If you do anything with particles, you want hidden attributes.

My hopes is that alembic will be a saviour for both of these issues and maby your work should be focused on getting that to play with vray but in my experience the I/O currently needs some love to be able to carry through effect heavy productions.