MtI 3.2.12

Announcements, requests and support regarding the MAYA exporter
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CTZn
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Re: MtI 3.2.12

Post by CTZn » Tue Aug 07, 2012 8:40 pm

tonicenergy wrote:VERY NICE! This handbook is really really helpful. Answers a lot of the questions i've previously had to search endlessly in the forums to find! :) I'll have to read this a few times over, a lot of information hahaha

Thank you CTZ, your strength is legendary!

Love & Respect

~ Tonic
I'm not strong, I'm only surviving ridicule over and over. No big deal !!!

The strong people are those posting more than twice in this sub-forum ;)

Thank YOU !
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ior
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Re: MtI 3.2.12

Post by ior » Wed Aug 22, 2012 2:03 pm

CTZn

Haven't been using indigo for a while and yesterday I installed maya 2013 and tested the new MtI.

There is lots of things going wrong with this new version of MtI.


First when I tried to revert to the older version of MtI because of this problems, I realize that it was not easy to uninstall MtI. After installing The previous version it gives an error that appears every time I try to render the scene:

Code: Select all

// Error: 	if(!int(`mti_addAttr`)) error "couldn't find mti_addAttr.mel"; // 
// Error: "C:/Users/.../Documents/maya/scripts/mti_CHK.mel" line 224.22: Wrong number of arguments on call to mti_addAttr. // 
To revert to the older version I have to remove MtI file by file to uninstall MtI? or I even need to edit some files? or maybe it is easier to uninstall maya and reinstall it again?
Maybe it would be good to have an option to remove completely MtI.


One of the problems was that when I exported the scene for render, some of the objects started so disappear from the scene in maya. The pivot point of the objects started to escape from the object as I clicked render and the dimension handler was not in the same place of the position handler. After several render tries the object was not there. No handlers at all. Maybe It has escaped to the infinity. I had to delete the object in the outliner.


I started a scene from scratch, a simple scene, a small cube with a light material and a bigger diffuse white cube that will make the walls of a room illuminated by the small cube, just to see how things are.
The walls simply did not get illuminated. Only some random sparse points appeared in the almost black scene (I was using reinhard), no mater what indigo version I use.
This seemed to be overcome if I put a very high lumen emission value instead of watt/m2. It must be some error on the emission value export parameters.


The indigo editor is thinner and some parameters comments do not appear.
And with the phong material the nk data does not show in the indigo editor.



I will uninstall and reinstall maya and put the previous version of MtI that seems to work well, I would like to make an image for the indigo competition.



Please see if you can solve this problems.

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CTZn
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Re: MtI 3.2.12

Post by CTZn » Thu Aug 23, 2012 3:30 am

Hi ior, I'll see to have those issue fixed. Sorry about the latest release.
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ior
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Re: MtI 3.2.12

Post by ior » Thu Aug 23, 2012 10:17 am

Hi CTZn. So you confirm these problems?
I can give you help in spotting the issues if they don't happen to you.


ior wrote: I started a scene from scratch, a simple scene, a small cube with a light material and a bigger diffuse white cube that will make the walls of a room illuminated by the small cube, just to see how things are.
The walls simply did not get illuminated. Only some random sparse points appeared in the almost black scene (I was using reinhard), no mater what indigo version I use.
This seemed to be overcome if I put a very high lumen emission value instead of watt/m2. It must be some error on the emission value export parameters.
I tested with all MtI 3x+ and all seemed to have this behavior.
I made some tests with an old scene and this behavior only persists if I use a new scene, if I use the old scene, it works fine. I do not remember what version of indigo I used to create that scene.
It is strange because when I use the new scene, the more lumens I put on the light source , faster the scene seem to be rendered.


CTZn wrote:On the topic of particles, I want to add support for custom per particle attributes, rotation to start with. On a second thought it should be no big trouble to add an "arrow" motion blur based on the very velocity vector (linear motion blur) of dynamic particles.

Similarly dynamic attributes will make their way into shader code, through regular expressions I assume. This would allow for instance distance based shading and time dependent shaders, preserving the procedural chain.
This sound cool! How is the work on particles? Any plans to implement this in the next release? I vote for it!

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CTZn
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Re: MtI 3.2.12

Post by CTZn » Fri Aug 24, 2012 10:10 am

Hi ior, did by any chance these errors happen all during the same Maya session during wich you installed the newer MtI ?

From now on please follow this procedure to install MtI up to 3.2.12.1:

- restart Maya
- install MtI, do not initialize MtI when asked
- restart Maya
- test MtI
ior wrote:After installing The previous version it gives an error that appears every time I try to render the scene:

Code: Select all

// Error: 	if(!int(`mti_addAttr`)) error "couldn't find mti_addAttr.mel"; // 
// Error: "C:/Users/.../Documents/maya/scripts/mti_CHK.mel" line 224.22: Wrong number of arguments on call to mti_addAttr. // 
This errror happens because the newer shelf remains in place while the older code was installed. The MtI shelf is not replaced "live" during install, my mistake. Restarting Maya should put the right shelf into place. Side, tech note: the new declaration for mti_addAttr is now: global proc int mti_addAttr(){return 1;}. It's meant to test for the existence of MtI into the Maya paths.

So, instead of messing up with files we are going to avoid versions conflicts in memory by restarting Maya, preferably before, and certainly after installation.

The easy way to permanently deactivate MtI is to search for files with this matching string:

mti_*.mel

and delete them, then delete the shelf (in no particular order).

But installing MtI over another version should be fine, provided that the procedure I described above is enforced.

Other errors are considered for now as resulting from the conflicts I mentionned.

Let me recapitulate the two rules of thumb:

- if MtI has been running during a Maya session you can not install a different MtI version over.
- if you installed a different version of MtI you can not initialize it during the same session.

Let me know how that goes. Either ways I'll put an update up soon.

Regarding particles I have to put together what I had in mind when I wrote about it. My mind is busy with the issues users are having at the moment :)
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CTZn
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Re: MtI 3.2.12

Post by CTZn » Fri Aug 24, 2012 10:17 am

Oh and the initialization issue with MtI 3.2.12.1 is a no go, please do not use that version.
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ior
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Re: MtI 3.2.12

Post by ior » Fri Aug 24, 2012 2:14 pm

Ok, for now on I will install MtI that way.
Reinstalled it again and looks better now.

But the sparse points in black background as if the render is very slow when emission value is small, still happening.
Very strange. Looks like an indigo bug. What parameters should make indigo behave like this?

Here is a render of a big diffuse white cube interior with a small cube illuminating it:
sparse points-low emission value.jpg
It rendered for a minute and looks like it rendered for a second

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CTZn
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Re: MtI 3.2.12

Post by CTZn » Fri Aug 24, 2012 3:30 pm

You should connect an indigoSpectrum as base emission. The default type and value should do fine: blackbody with a gain of 0.01W/m². The blackbody's gain is ignored if you use a different measure.

The issue is that a few samples from the sun are passing through the cube edges and are killing the Reinhard evaluation.

Sun + weak light + Reinhard tonemapping = bad mix.

You can also disable the environment to address the issue in this case, or use a different tonemapping scheme wich I would recommend. The Reinhard tonemapping can be excessively deceiving.
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ior
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Re: MtI 3.2.12

Post by ior » Sun Aug 26, 2012 1:28 pm

Dumb me :oops: sorry.



I tried to install MtI 3.2.12.0 and 3.2.12.1 and now they give me this error after restarting maya with or without initialization:

Code: Select all

// Error: line 1: Cannot find procedure "mti_CHK_self".
I remember installing 3.2.12.1 before and it seemed to work, but now, no go...

Using MtI 3.2.5 fine.

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CTZn
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Re: MtI 3.2.12

Post by CTZn » Sun Aug 26, 2012 3:22 pm

Don't blame yourself, it is totally disorienting to have such an unexpected result after a moment without practice. I was also disoriented at first with this case :)

My motto is: when it comes to the lighting stage, do not use the Reinhard method. It's flexible enough to loose you.

Concerning the error that, is confusing. I have compared the files from the 3.2.12.1 archive with the one on my working copy and nothing popped out.

Perhaps did I replace the archive a few hours after the initial release because I noticed that mistake you are bumping into, I can't tell anymore. If you happened to grab mti 3.2.12.1 within the first 12 hours it may be worth downloading the archive again for a comparison.

Either what it's a files version mismatch, I think I should help with an uninstaller. Right now it's the hard way: seek for the files into the zipped "MayaToIndigo" folder and erase them on disk while maya is not running.

edit: about particles, the first thing that comes to mind is rotPP support for instances. I'm very open to suggestions.
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SreckoM
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Re: MtI 3.2.12

Post by SreckoM » Wed Aug 29, 2012 7:44 am

I am having a lot problems with bad formed paths on Mac. It does not start render, and I found out that is because path to Indigo.app is incorrect, also missing some \ (on Indigo\ Render), or have double // on some. Even when I open igs from Indigo it fails to start, has some path errors also, for example path to camera files ...

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CTZn
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Re: MtI 3.2.12

Post by CTZn » Wed Aug 29, 2012 10:56 pm

Hi SreckoM,

I am expecting such paths errors on non-Windows rigs to be honest.

Could you provide me with information I could use to address them ? I don't own a mac but am keen to fix MtI for MacOS.

How does the Editor UI behave for you ? I'm curious also about the UI discrepancies.
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CTZn
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Re: MtI 3.2.12

Post by CTZn » Wed Aug 29, 2012 11:26 pm

I think I'll try one release out under 2 days.

Currently I have removed the settings and export button from the shelf, Indigo now registers as a renderer in Maya (partially). Render Settings replaces the MtI Settings window, render with status line button or Maya menus as per Maya renderers.

I have fixed the issue with the shelf installation, it should normally be ok to initialize MtI at the end of the installation process.

Thanks for the reports guys. MtI users are my eyes and hears out there, I wouldn't bulge without a stimulus. Every reader is concerned and invited.
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SreckoM
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Re: MtI 3.2.12

Post by SreckoM » Thu Aug 30, 2012 12:24 am

OK what I manage to dig:
1. It uses wrong path to indigo directory, when creating bash file, /Applications/Indigo Renderer/Indigo.app, correct one is /Applications/Indigo\ Renderer/Indigo.app/Contents/MacOS/. Also notice \ after Indigo to escape space.
2. It also adds additional / after maya project path.
3. There are also bad path inside .igs file, need to check that.

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CTZn
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Re: MtI 3.2.12

Post by CTZn » Thu Aug 30, 2012 3:31 am

Thanks sreckom, I'll investigate this.

I would like to hear from linux users, to know if I must preserve the current way for those OS or change it along.
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