No, but in that interview that was posted here lately, a guy from Mental Images talked about how it helped with an ILM feature, so I guess/hope it isn't years away from us lower companions... ;-)
Cheers!
Thomas
On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 00:28:48 +0200, kim aldis <kim(at)aldis.org.uk> wrote:
> This isn't available yet, is it?
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM] On
>> Behalf Of Thomas Helzle
>> Sent: 03 July 2006 23:13
>> To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
>> Subject: Re: Replacing the shadertree? Possible?
>>
>> The first time I looked at that Mental Images page about Mental Mill, I
>> seemed to have missed the pdf about the inner workings (sorry Luc-
>> Eric). Now someone made me aware of it and I really recommend reading
>> it to everyone who is interested in this stuff:
>>
>>
>> http://www.mentalimages.com/2_4_mentalmill/index.html
>> And a direct link to the pdf:
>> http://www.mentalimages.com/2_4_mentalmill/mental_mill_functional_overv
>> iew-Januar4-2006.pdf
>>
>> Basically it describes Meta SL, a shader language that creates shaders
>> that work for hardware as well as software rendering.
>> And Mental Mill is a standalone or integrated shadertree that is able
>> to create metashaders from phenomena with a graphical interface, where
>> you define which in- and outputs you want the user to see.
>> So it combines "SPDL hacking" like in the current XSI Blog topic with
>> the "grouping" idea we had in this thread before in a graphical
>> interface It tries to allow high level acces for artist and if you want
>> you can get down into the guts as well.
>>
>> Depending on the things you use, the shaders will work on consoles or
>> graphics hardware as well as with software rendering or a blend between
>> them, so Meta SL is somehow meant as a language to end all languages
>> for shaders...
>> Mental Mill is said to be able to export the built shaders to every
>> possible language if needed.
>>
>> That should become interesting!
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Thomas Helzle
>>
>>
>>
>> If this all works as advertised, is nicely implemented and fited into
>> XSI and is fast, it should answer a lot of the questions.
>>
>> On Mon, 03 Jul 2006 14:45:20 +0200, Jordi Bares <jordibares(at)the-
>> mill.com> wrote:
>>
>> > No question it has been a good tool and we still have plenty of road
>> > in front but my thinking goes in two directions;
>> >
>> > 1 - Make it more easy and readable without forcing us to go so
>> > granular unless we want. Meaning cleverer and optimised mega-shaders
>> > that have a much broad design and are called thru less obscure names.
>> >
>> > 2 - If we need to go down, then bring the lot. A good example of how
>> > far we could go is VOPs in Houdini, a graphical node-based interface
>> > that goes as far as you need and with access to everything in the
>> rest
>> > of the software.
>> >
>> > At the end we use our own monolithic shaders like crazy because
>> simply
>> > we can't do that with phenomena and these building blocks are not
>> > optimised so render times skyrocket every now and then.
>> >
>> > hope that makes it clearer.
>> >
>> > jb
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