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RIBRobin Toolkit

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Raxx:
And so v0.1c is released

Raxx:
Alright, did a nice big update to v0.2, read above!

$imon:
Nice, Raxx! The new additions seem to be working fine! IT almost is usable as a renderer.. maybe if shadows would work it could start to rival the internal Anim8or renderer.

A few questions about the progress:

- poly material; right now it seems only possible for an object to have one material applied to it: i tried to have polies on an object have a different material, but the whole object changed material. This is not really a priority item since you can use texture maps to define colors on different parts of a model - also if it is a completely different material, it usually is a different object as well. So just a note but no need to act on this.

- texture loading; maybe you can speed up the process by checking if the texture has already been converted, so that this conversion does not have to happen again if you render something twice (checking file name or something), thus increasing render times.

- 'smooth angles' - like they are called in Anim8or - seem to be set at 180 by default.


I'm sure youre well aware of all of this - your progress is very meticulous so far. Can't wait to see some 'advanced' features implemented!

Raxx:
Hey Simon, you seem to have tested it well ;) It's true, these are known issues but it's good that you brought them up, in case others might be wondering about it. I'll explain my intentions here:


* Per-Poly materials are not enabled yet since the .rib specification is a little vague on how it would best be implemented. I'm thinking perhaps it's not even possible to implement to the degree that Anim8or is capable of. I would have to separate each mesh by materials so that it's one mesh per material. I think once I fix the normals issue (mentioned further down), it'll look fine for regular meshes, but there could be seams if I split up a Subdivision mesh like that. I will probably get this implemented eventually regardless, but that's the main reason why I haven't done it yet.


* It's true that the slow-down caused by constant texture conversion is a bit undesirable. I'm not all that savvy with .bat files, but I think there's a way to check if the texture file is more recently modified than the .tif file, so as to avoid regenerating a texture if it hasn't been changed. I didn't know this until recently, so you can expect this to be implemented soon.

On a side note, shaders always get recompiled as well. But it's a lot faster of a process than when using convert.exe for textures, so it may not be as big of an issue. But if I can do it for the textures, then I can do it for the shaders ;)


* Smooth angles are a bit complicated. The way Steve explained it to me, Anim8or automatically exports multiple normals per point depending on if there's a crease there. However, the rib side of things is a little more complicated. As far as I can tell, Renderman only accepts one normal per point no matter what. So I may have to go the "splitting mesh" route again, except I do it whenever I encounter a crease. This kind of "sorting" can get complicated, but it has to be done so expect it to be implemented in the near future.
Believe me, I wish I could have enabled shadows in the first release. However, unless raytracing is enabled (which is slower, isn't as flexible, and Aqsis can't do raytracing--which is why it can't do AO yet), to do shadows I have to make it render depth maps from the point of view of each light source, and do some magical voodoo to mesh it all together into a final render. A point light requires six depth maps (done the same way an environment map is made), a spot light requires one with FOV, and an ambient light needs an orthographic one. This means it becomes a major headache :P

I will probably make it so that in the Scene Options, you can pick either scanline or raytracing render methods, but only after I implement the scanline shadows first.

I'll add all these things in to to-do list for v0.3!

I also can't wait to get the advanced features like GI, radiosity, etc implemented. Maybe even stuff like texture baking! Once RIBRobin is complete, I intend to work on a fur plugin for it and then who knows what...

headwax:
wow Raxx, really  impressive work you are doing!

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