Ramp shader & render elements, samplerInfo and VRayPluginTextures

[jensl]

Two problems I've come across building stylized shaders:
- RampShader is listed as 'compatible' but there are issues with render elements. Nothing in diffuse or selfIllum elements, lighting element includes specularity, reflections are not in reflection element. It can't be re-build with render elements as-is. This is not urgent as I was able to get around it by using other materials and VRayBlendMtl.

- SamplerInfo node does not work with non-color attributes in textures created from V-Ray Plug-in. For example, samplerInfo.facingRatio connected to noiseMaxTex.color1 will work, but not to noiseMaxTex.size. These nodes are great as there's lots of stuff that works better than default Maya nodes, but these limitations make them less flexible.

When linking nulls and locators to shaders, like connecting distanceDimensionShape.distance into textures, I get the following error:
// Warning: Unsupported texture kLocator //

Win7 x64, Maya 2012, V-Ray build 22290 from 07-31-12. Let me know if you need scenes to demonstrate these issues.

[vlado]

- RampShader is listed as 'compatible' but there are issues with render elements. Nothing in diffuse or selfIllum elements, lighting element includes specularity, reflections are not in reflection element. It can't be re-build with render elements as-is.

Will see what can be done about that. (btw the sources are included with the V-Ray SDK that comes with every installation of V-Ray for Maya, so you can fix it if this is urgent).

- SamplerInfo node does not work with non-color attributes in textures created from V-Ray Plug-in. For example, samplerInfo.facingRatio connected to noiseMaxTex.color1 will work, but not to noiseMaxTex.size. These nodes are great as there's lots of stuff that works better than default Maya nodes, but these limitations make them less flexible.

The "size" parameter of the noiseMaxTex texture is unfortunately not mappable (although we can fix that). Other than that, the samplerInfo outputs should work fine as floats.

When linking nulls and locators to shaders, like connecting distanceDimensionShape.distance into textures, I get the following error:
// Warning: Unsupported texture kLocator //

Do you have a scene for this?

Best regards,
Vlado

[jensl]

Hi Vlado - I've sent you an email with a test scene. Thanks for your response.

As for mappable textures, I'm not sure if this is all going to change with the V-Ray Mtl editor. You guys will be setting the functionality for that, so I'd rather it be developed to be very mappable instead of specific attributes on specific textures created from the V-Ray plug-in. In general, if mapping a texture attribute will do something interesting, I bet it will be used at some point, but I'm not sure how much work that involves.

[vlado]

As for mappable textures, I'm not sure if this is all going to change with the V-Ray Mtl editor.

No, it is not related in any way. I meant that the size parameter of TexNoiseMax simply does not accept textures as input. Changing this requires a change to the TexNoiseMax shader, regardless of what particular UI is used to control it.

Best regards,
Vlado

[jensl]

TexNoiseMax was a bad example. These textures don't have good Maya equivalents so it'd be nice if they took textures as inputs:
CellularTex
SpeckleTex
SplatTex

It would be great if there was a way to have textures created from the V-Ray Plug-in output properly in hypershade so the swatches previewed instead of turning black.

[Lyubomir Rusev]

The latest nightly build supports texture input for TexNoiseMax attributes. The feature is implemented for the following attributes: Size, Phase, Iterations, Low, High.