modo procedural support

[dougWilkinson]

Hi!
VRay for modo development is so great!

I'd like to inquire again about support for modo procedurals. Have foundry provided the necessary interfaces for this yet? Is this still planned? We think procedurals are an important part of lookdev in modo.

Thanks for any info.

[vladimir.nedev]

I don't think there have been any additions to the MODO API to enable us to support the procedurals.
Best thing we can do is re-implement a subset of them ourselves. In some situations you can bake the procedural to an image map using MODO, and then use the image map with V-Ray.
We do have our own procedural textures of course.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[vmodo]

It looks like MODO 801 SP4 gives now developers access the same rendering data as the internal MODO renderer.

"- SDK: Adds the Rendercache API (beta implementation), allowing SDK developers to access the same rendering data as the internal MODO renderer, exposing the geometry cache and shading information."
http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/su...4_details.aspx

[BVA]

Personally I would prefer not to have duplicates, it gets confusing and it takes time to work through all items in the lists. I would like to use more of modo procedurals too.
The nice thing is then we can use the assets that ship with modo. I think that in it's own safes a lot of time.

[vlado]

It looks like MODO 801 SP4 gives now developers access the same rendering data as the internal MODO renderer.

"- SDK: Adds the Rendercache API (beta implementation), allowing SDK developers to access the same rendering data as the internal MODO renderer, exposing the geometry cache and shading information."
http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/su...4_details.aspx

We are aware of those developments - we do talk to The Foundry after all This is only for geometry however, and even for that, not quite exactly what we actually wanted - although it is still useful for some things. Modo suffers a bit in that regard, as these things are added to the SDK as an afterthought and were not parts of the original design, like they were for 3ds Max, for example.

Best regards,
Vlado

[vmodo]

It seems that working with the MODO SDK is very frustrating.

[vlado]

It seems that working with the MODO SDK is very frustrating.

Not any more than working with any other SDK

Best regards,
Vlado

[dougWilkinson]

thanks for the comments. I'm trying to talk with The Foundry about this. Hopefully one day there will be good news of an easy way to support the procedurals from modo.

[vladimir.nedev]

Personally I would prefer not to have duplicates, it gets confusing and it takes time to work through all items in the lists. I would like to use more of modo procedurals too.
The nice thing is then we can use the assets that ship with modo. I think that in it's own safes a lot of time.

At least some of the preset materials work fine with V-Ray since they use image maps instead of procedural textures.

Another large chunk of materials seem to use MODO's procedural noise, but with very little variation between the two
colors. I can modify the texture export to use the average of the two colors specified for MODO's procedural textures,
as a solid color. It won't be the same from up close, but from afar the results will be almost identical.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[msoon77]

It would be soooooo nice if we had modo procedural support

[jonmoore]

Apologies for reopening this thread.

I'm seeing the lack of native Modo procedural support as a major weakness of Vray for Modo (but I also understand it's a mighty task to provide native support).

VrayForC4d includes a far richer catalogue of Vray procedurals to make up for the fact that it no longer supports C4D native procedurals (I think this happened with 1.8, when VrayForC4d moved to the Vray 2.4 core). Stefan has included a huge number of Max, Maya and Softimage procedurals as part of the VrayForC4d package and these are a real strength in comparison to the limited number of procedurals included with Vray for Modo. I understand that it's easier said than done to support native Modo procedurals but if you were able to provide the same procedural assets that users of C4D get that would even the playing field a little.

I'm pretty certain that many potential customers of Vray for Modo will also be considering VrayForC4d (especially seeing as you get unlimited render nodes as part of the base VrayForC4d package) and I'm sure the available range of procedural textures will be part of this consideration too. It's great that you've included a few Bercon procedurals but the options are very limited compared to rich palette of options available with Modo's native renderer.

Do you have any plans to expand the palette of procedurals in the future Vladimir?

[vlado]

Vlado Nedev will reply with more details but for my part, I'd like to see V-Ray for Modo released first and see how things will go from there. The product is still usable in a large number of situations as it is. We can always add more stuff a bit later on.

Bes tregards,
Vlado

[vladimir.nedev]

Do you have a link to a webpage that lists all procedural textures that V-Ray for Cinema 4D has ?
I tried to find one, but couldn't. Or maybe post a screen-shot, because I don't have Cinema 4D to check.

Do you have any specific procedural texture in mind ?

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[jonmoore]

Not a problem. I don't have access to a VrayForC4d installation right now but I'll get a colleague to screen grab the procedurals/maps that are available with VrayForC4d 1.9 in the morning.

Thanks for being so responsive.

jm

[jonmoore]

Here's that screengrab as promised. As you can see VrayForC4d bundles a bunch of Max, Maya & Softimage shaders as part of the package.