Some things worth being mentioned when
transfering data from Maya to XSI and
getting used to the material setup.
------transfer---------------------
*Crosswalk plug-in is a must have
*Make sure you turn off groups, etc
in the Maya *.obj export options
*an easy displacement shader setup you get
when specifying a texture while importing
an *.obj into XSI, good to give you an idea
how a "set range" node is done in XSI.
----------materials-------------------
*get used to the global Ambience color, at first, turn it off.
*there is no surface shader, use a constant.
*get an idea what the "state" nodes do
*get an idea what incidence does
*mix2colors is complicated in it´s layout
but closest to a simple "blend" node you get
*stay away from overrides until you´ve grasped
the concept, use partitions with materials
assigned to them as you see fit per layer instead.
you can create individual partitions for each layer
and drag&drop objects there as needed per layer.
*the store_in channel/buffer stuff is great.
*search the web for the free Binary Alchemy shaders
from Holger Schönberger, setting result on raytype is great.
*you´ll miss colored shadows in XSI, log a feature request,
the is a chance this will finally be implemented by default,
until then, check out the BA shders.
*Strauss is a cool material, somewhere in the material presets.
*Find sRGB_utils from Harry Bardak, basically a gammanode,
pipes in your network, results in mR interpreting the file
as a 2.2. gamma texture, by multiplying it´s RGB values with 0.45.
For correct 8bit preview, comes with a lensshader that pushes the
mR renderview from a crunched 0-1 gamma range to a 2.2. display.
When rendering out to *.exr or *.hdr, you deactivate the lensshader,
resulting in a linear output to file and do gamma/tonemapping in post.
*FG and GI calculation differs depending on the intial size
of objects, FG rays only go a certain amount of sceneuntits,
based in that knowledge, you´ll need to experiment a bit.
Never found the magic spot sofar, just got pissed off about it.
*Wishing for a 3DSMax style implementation of mR/tonemapping
doesn´t help. You should directly wish for something like Vray instead...
-------------------------
The above are the most pressing things I can think of,
a bonus is to find the cgtalk thread where guys like
"flooze" or "dagon" try to mimik maxwell with mR.
Somewhere there is a great FG+GI example for a
studiolight setup using arealights and photons.
Great start for flacons or any type of packshot rendering.
Might need to be translated over from Maya to XSI.
Cheers
tim
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