Around the Corner

New API changes for Maya 2017 updates 2

Some of you may already know about this, but I think I still need to emphasize it again here. In the past, we used to have Service Packs and Extensions after the Maya main release. But starting from Maya 2017, we will not provide Service Packs or Extensions any more, instead, will use Maya Updates to maintain and update the software regularly, providing new features, and quicker fixes to customer issues. For our plugin developers, one important thing you should... Read more →

World position and Object position in Shader Fragment

When you write a Shader Fragment, you should use the right naming conventions. For example if you check parameters like “mayaUvCoordSemantic” the name should be “uvCoord”, for “tangent” the name should be “mayaTangentIn”. Even if you check the “Object Space Position” the name and the semantic both should be “Pm”. Check the below example. " " Read more →

Tips for the “name” attribute of connect element in the Fragment graph

Today, we are going to look at a little bit inside of fragment graph's connect element. For the first two attributes, from and to are self-explanatory. Essentially this allows connecting from one fragment's output to another fragment's input. However, the “name” attribute is not well explained. The fragment graph is designed like the dependency graph in Maya. Connecting different nodes and having outputs after running through a series of fragments you'll get the result. But unlike the dependency graph, the... Read more →

Create shader fragments as input for stock shader and other shaders

The shader fragment feature was introduced into Maya a few years ago and it is very useful for creating and extending shader features of Maya. Shader fragments can be used for creating input or output for existing hardware shaders. I am going explain how it works with two samples in our devkit. The first sample is VP2BlinnShader and it uses blinn stock shader as hardware shader. Another sample is fileTexture and it uses shader fragment to implement a fileTexture node.... Read more →

DynamicLighting & FrustumCulling in MotionBuilder

If you want to manually specifying Shadow Caster Culling during render pass, you could use the following functions on FBModel. This will give you control per model instead of a global control. /** Acquire no frustum culling request. * \return Current no frustum culling request count after function call. */ int NoFrustumCullingRequire(); /** Release no frustum culling request. * \return Current no frustum culling request count after function call. */ int NoFrustumCullingRelease(); You can also use the ShaderPassTypeBegin()/End() to turn... Read more →