Re: Replacing the shadertree? Possible?

["Steven Caron" <carons(at)gmail.com>]

thought i might highlight a part of the mental mill pdf thomas linked us to...

"Render Preview window: A preview window provides interactive feedback to users as they build
shader graphs and edit shader parameters."

this is in the section that discusses whats available to third-parties with mental mill GUI library...shader ball anyone?

just a page down you see some images of the phenomena editor and it has node previews!

the mental mill GUI library pretty much outlines stuff we already have and stuff we desire in the rendertree, i think the topic should actually read... the future of RenderTree?

On 7/3/06, Steven Caron <carons(at)gmail.com> wrote:

a question for softimage devs i am hoping will be answered

when it is released... will we see it at all in XSI? (refering to the extended ability mental mill will provide)

not concernd when it will be, but rather if it will be available at all inside XSI?

steven

On 7/3/06, Thomas Helzle <xsi(at)screendream.de > wrote:

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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