MtI v1.0.9 Stable (updated 17th April 2008)

[dougal2]

No major changes over 1.0.8, except for adding a couple of renderer settings in the scriptnode.

UPDATE 9th April 2008
See this post for an update: Mti 1091

UPDATE 11th April 2008
There is now an installer for MtI for windows platforms here:
http://indigomaterials.uk.to/downloads/ ... Indigo.exe (94k)
(You will need to install Indigo (1.0.9 stable) and Maya (7/8/8.5/2008/2008x64) before installing MtI.)

UPDATE 15th April 2008
There is now an installer for MtI for linux platforms here:
http://indigomaterials.uk.to/downloads/ ... er-1091.sh (160k)
(You will need to install Indigo (1.0.9 stable) and Maya (7/8/8.5/2008/2008x64) before installing MtI.)
NB: you may have to "chmod +x" the .sh file before you can run it in a bash terminal. It is a self-extracting archive and installer script. Should be fairly straightforward

UPDATE 17th April 2008
Linux installer has been updated to fix a number of bugs.

[dougal2]

hmm, 120 downloads and nobody has anything at all to say about it.

I guess I'll take that as a compliment

seriously though, I'd like to hear some kinda feedback from MtI users, either good or bad... there may well be bugs or missing features that you guys could use. Just let me know and we'll see about adding more stuff to MtI.

(Although, I kind of agree with the philosophy that perfection is achieved not when there's nothing more to add, but when there's nothing more to take away )

Any feedback at all would be appreciated.

[Phr0stByte]

dougal2
I will let you know, but I havnt downloaded it yet. Still modeling - How I wish for 42 hour days....

[bkircher]

Hi Dougal,

I haven't found time to contribute lately (and when I did find some time, the job was already done by you .

Thanks a lot for
- keeping things running,
- implementing every feature in no time,
- and most of all: For writing this extremely tidy code.

regards,
b

btw., 120 downloads is something like exponential growth of downloads...

Some tiny things I'll do when I have a working Maya machine running with SVN again:
- Bring the Help Menu "Table" more up to date, so the meaning of all the (legacy) maya shaders
parameters is visible on first glance
- Add Oren-Nayar shader through anisotropic
- Fix some Icons
- Add a Meaningful preset for every element
- Power drawn or Luminous efficacy is fixed at 2, should be fixed at one so the math is simpler

[dougal2]

OK, I've set luminous_efficacy to 1 in my working copy.
I've also added a sanity check if you've forgotten to set power drawn (I do this quite often ) and it gets set to 20.

I'm also working on the time/date sun functions - I know it's not techincally anything to do with Indigo, but there's no harm in having it in

[OnoSendai]

I think you got 120 downloads and no comments because I added it to the main download menu with a direct link.

[Phr0stByte]

dougal2
I didn't think we had 120 Maya users... I have yet to download it.

[dougal2]

OnoSendai
true, it'd be nice if those people would join the forum though

[OnoSendai]

Indeed dougal. Perhaps I'll add links to the relevant forum posts to the main download page.

[dougal2]

MtI update:
I've got the Geo-Sun working, I'm using the routines from the GeoSun script on highend3d.com instead of the algorithm I posted in the other forum.

I'll commit changes later this evening.

[dougal2]

Short sun animation:
http://ftlfm.com/gallery/v/indigoAnim/suncycle.flv.html

The world location is set to London, date is today's date. So basically this is a render of what shadows looked like here today

The GeoSun stuff is now available via the SVN. To use it, run

Code: Select all

mti_setupGeoSun

and you'll find the time/date/location settings in the Extra Attributes section of the sunShape directional light.

[dougal2]

UPDATE 9th April 2008
Mostly changes for linux compatibility:
- Added option to run indigo native or indigo wine version
- Added option to change indigo's "nice" value when run
- Added GeoSun functions to the Sun button - look in "Extra Attributes"

[Phr0stByte]

dougal2
Well, after about 3 hours, I finally got it working, so you can ignore my PM. I still cant get it to start the render direct - just get the xml exported - no biggie. And for the life of me, I cannot figure out why the icons wont display still. LOL

All in all, great stuff, dougal. How about some install scrips? One for Win and one for Lin. It could take a lot of the guesswork out of it... I could help with the Linux shell script for install, but I'm almost certain that I have never gotten it installed just right. Have you known anyone else to use Maya natively in linux along with the script? Maybe I'm the odd one out...

[dougal2]

OK, I'm up for doing installer scripts. Off the top of my head there are only 2 variables we need to know up-front:
1. The user's home directory
2. The Maya version

The first I think we can get quite easily using an environment variable in windows (%USERPROFILE%) and using ~/ in linux.
(Actually, reliably determining the location of "My Documents" might be tricky - I for one have changed it on at least one of my machines, and Vista has a different name for it! )
The second can be prompted for.
linux:

Code: Select all

OPTIONS="7.0 8.0 8.5 2008 8.5x64 2008x64"

select opt in $OPTIONS; do
  if [ "$opt" = "7.0" ]; then
    MAYA_VER=7.0
    break
  elif [ "$opt" = "8.0" ]; then
    MAYA_VER=8.0
    break
  elif ..
....etc.....
  else
    echo bad option
  fi
done

windows:

Code: Select all

echo Enter maya version:
set /p maya_ver=

Then it's a case of copying a few files to folders, with the exception of adding a little data to the Maya.env file -but only if it doesn't already exist!

Code: Select all

MyPath = D:\Documents\maya\8.5
MyScriptPath = %MyPath%\scripts
MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH = %MyScriptPath%\MayaToIndigo
MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH = %MyScriptPath%/indigoShader

the MAYA_*_PATH vars also need to not destroy any parts that existed before.

Interesting idea, most of the parts to do it are here in this post.

[Phr0stByte]

dougal2
Yes, like I said, I dont think it would be hard to do - I just dont want to start something like that when I think I am installing it wrong anyway. I think this because certain things have never worked for me, such as the icons and direct rendering.