Re: ambient lightsource

[pingo van der brinkloev <pingo(at)pingofilm.dk>]

HEY! that looks TOTALLY awesome! I can't wait to try it out monday!

Meanwhile I got so furious that I made a scene in Cinema. It took me 1 minute to set it up with MoGraph and it renders so fast I can't even measure it (>1sec)

This is white spheres with ambient lights with falloff inside. Cloned along a curve with randomized position, size and color.

I wonder if this is possible in XSI? perhaps with your shader??.

I'll make this my goal!

Thanks!!!!!

On 02/12/2007, at 05.07, Thomas Helzle wrote:

Hi Pingo,

great, you got me started writing shaders again :-)
That old distance shader was just a quick hack from 2 years ago. Now I polished it a bit and actually implemented all the modes I had in mind back then.
It's really fun:
http://www.screendream.de/files/RandomRoundCubes2.jpg
http://www.screendream.de/files/RandomRoundCubes3.jpg
No shading on the cubes but AoN:Distance.

Please view it as an alpha version, but if you want to give it a try:
http://www.screendream.de/files/AoN_Distance.zip
Be sure to really read the ReadMe for some preliminary documentation
It is compiled with XSI 6.5 but should work for 6.x (only 32Bit).

You need the latest VC2008 runtime from Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9b2da534-3e03-4391-8a4d-074b9f2bc1bf&displaylang=en

And the example scene only works with the cool Motiongraphics Plugin from Helge Mathee installed:
http://www.xsibase.com/forum/index.php?board=29;action="">

Have fun!

Thomas Helzle

On Dec 1, 2007 6:13 PM, pingo van der brinkloev <pingo(at)pingofilm.dk> wrote:

Hey thanks all for your feedback!

The best thing about XSI is this list!!!

Matt, thanks for your walkthrough.

Guillaume, your video is awesome (this is what Matt describes, right?)- suddenly a lot of other options emerge!!!!

Thomas, I'm not quite sure what you are describing but it sure sounds tedious!

Sure XSI beats C4D (being able to handle masive scenes for starters, and DOF and moblur and realism, etc etc...), but as I said for simple stuff, it's just so much faster to get something out of - don't get me started on the lack of Mograph/particles in XSI - and I KNOW moondust is around the corner and i KNOW there's a free Mograph plugin. But Sheesh check out XPRESSO... It's so damned simple. Like Houd...) ok I'll stop now all this has been said a billion times before.

I AM HAPPY NOW!!!!!!!!

now back to these awesome shader connections: What part of the manual or which tutorial/DVD/book do I have to get in order to learn all this??? I feel like I can't quite get to the next level... like I'm missing those pages where all the good stuff is...

thank you guys for all your answers!

pingo

On 01/12/2007, at 17.17, Thomas Helzle wrote:

Ok, "the shadertree in XSI", but some of the quirks are based on how MR works or was originally developed.

For instance: not being able to mute a node (other than a just-flowing-through modifier) is based on any connected input "forgetting" about what was set in the interface. messiah on the other hand always allows to mix an input with the already existing value set in the receiving node or alpha it on top, so if you mute the external node, it just uses what was set in the receiving node. I implemented this in some of my own shaders by separating input from interface and have a mixing option for each parameter but it is quite a pain and far from optimal.

I guess conversion nodes being visible is Softimages idea which could be solved by something clever like in Lightwaves node editor where the connection has a gradient (for instance from green to red) to show what happens.

Not having multiple outputs per node is probably MR again? Although a node _can_ output an array and maybe XSI could unravel those in the gui?

Vanishing unconnected nodes could probably be kept by Softimage if they would be willing to spend the effort of saving the parameters of the unconnected nodes "somehow" on their own?

Easier said than done, I know. Therefore I do what I can myself ;-)

Cheers,

Thomas Helzle

On Dec 1, 2007 4:55 PM, guillaume laforge < guillaume.laforge.3d(at)gmail.com> wrote:

>I never was a friend of those cluttered node monsters MR makes so easy to build

Don't blame MR, it is not is fault ;-)

On Dec 1, 2007 3:52 PM, Thomas Helzle < thomashelzle(at)gmail.com > wrote:

Sure, I just prefer a clean Shadertree ;-) I never was a friend of those cluttered node monsters MR makes so easy to build ;-)  ("conversion nodes" shudder...)

But hey, that's just me :-)

Cheers,

Thomas Helzle

On Dec 1, 2007 3:45 PM, guillaume laforge < guillaume.laforge.3d(at)gmail.com> wrote:

>On Dec 1, 2007 3:31 PM, Thomas Helzle < thomashelzle(at)gmail.com> wrote:
>While you can build it in the tree as guillaume showed, that isn't exactly fun anymore after the third time, is it ;-) 

Save / Load preset ?

--
Guillaume Laforge