Indigo Renderer Forum

Hello,

Since it's going reasonably well - at least for a noob attempt - thought I'd post about Rhino / Indigo progress here. It's written in C# using the RhinoCommon render API, so it basically appears as another rendering engine in the Render menu. So far it's very bare-bones: basic geometry export, no materials (default white material, basic sun/sky and uniform backgrounds, and uses the active viewport for rendering (including ortho views). Supports meshes and NURBS surfaces (trimmed surfaces, polysurfaces, primitives, extrusions, etc.).
To do (to begin with):
- expose render settings
- expose camera / tonemapping settings
- implement material editor
- tighten everything up, re-think about the overall structure as it's a bit hackish atm
- eventually take a look at Rhino C++ API and hopefully see how to integrate Indigo into the viewports / render frame-buffer

It's not worth posting it at the moment, since it's quite scrappy, but I will try to get a version up sometime in the near future.

Suggestions for a better name, wishlist, better workflows, etc. are welcome, though don't expect miracles. Also, tips and hints about C#, Rhino, or programming in general would be much appreciated.

T

Very cool! Rhino Users and coders, Support this guy!!


Grüsse, zeiti

hi there! this is great news!
when you talk about integrate Indigo into the viewports would that mean we could navigate somehow real-time into the rendered model? and see changes to the geometry immediately appear on the render?

regards

tom

I think so; sort of.
But maybe he meant for now direct viewport rendering?


Grüsse, zeiti

zeitmeister wrote:I think so; sort of.
But maybe he meant for now direct viewport rendering?


Grüsse, zeiti

Both would be great, but for now I've got enough on my hands to get the basics up and running I got some examples / bit of direction about custom materials in Rhino, so I will try to take a stab at that soon.

Sure... Glad that someone writes something!


Grüsse, zeiti

Had a bit of time this weekend to push this a bit further...

Render settings and such presumably save with the 3DM file now, though testing is needed. Very basic control of resolution, tonemapping, render mode, etc.

No materials yet, been going through some documentation on adding custom materials and still getting my head around it. If you don't add a directional light, it will render with basic white environment. So far no exposure control is in yet.

If your surfaces are coming out chunky, go to Mesh->Render Mesh Properties... and adjust the meshing parameters there.

Anyway, here it is for those who want to have a go. Be nice, don't expect wonders, but let me know what works and what doesn't.

To install: unzip, then either double-click on the .rhp file and Rhino will automatically install it, or boot Rhino, go to Options...->Plug-ins, click Install and find the .rhp file. It's an x64 build, so if it doesn't work for you I can do a x86 one as well.

cool Tom, keep it up ! Are you being in touch with the Rhino community as well to spread the word aroundv?

CTZn wrote:cool Tom, keep it up ! Are you being in touch with the Rhino community as well to spread the word aroundv?

Nah, still needs a bit of work before that

Got basic material export working. Indigo diffuse and phong materials are now options in the material editor.

that's great! can't wait to have a usuable bridge so I can start using indigo..

First of all, thanks for writing an exporter. Really appreciated.
I downloaded and installed the plugin. It just starts out fine, but indigo throws the following error:

Scene parsing error: Failed to parse Vec3 from '19,5111 -29,1895 19,4016'. (In element 'scene / camera'):
<camera>
<pos>19,5111 -29,1895 19,4016</pos>
<up>-0,2691 0,4051 0,8738</up>
<... (In element 'scene / camera'):
<camera>
<pos>19,5111 -29,1895 19,4016</pos>
<up>-0,2691 0,4051 0,8738</up>
<...
No Metadata.

Simple scene, only a cube.
Any idea?
Best H

edit: it exports ',' instead of '.' for vectors

Indigo only supports '.' as the decimal separator.

Must be a locality / language thing... It exports '.' for me. Will have a look, maybe there's an easy way to force using '.'.

Haven't had much free time at all lately, but hopefully will upload some material stuff and this fix at some point soon.

Probably, while on a german win8.1 64, Rhino is running in English language.
Best H