21 replies to this topic

[hopbin9]

Hi all,

I'm trying to put the finishing touches on xStudio a studio lighting rig for Houdini. So I've run into a few issues that I'm trying to figure out, and I'll post additional questions to this thread as they I run into them.

If anyone can help me with the follow, that would be great and xStudio is going to be free (as motivation to get some community help).

First Question:

Including shelf tools with digital assets. I know this has been discussed before as not automate, but was this resolved in Houdini12? Can we now package shelf tools inside assets somehow?

Second Question:

I'm referencing two commercial studio lighting rigs as an example of what a rig should be able to do. Greyscalegorilla's Light Kit Pro for Cinema4D and A & G Tool's Studio Light Rig for 3ds Max. Both products look very good if you use those 3D packages be sure to try out their demos or buy them. Having started this project I've learned how much work was involved to create them.

So my problem is related to this promotional image from one of those products (credit to those guys that made it).



Now, when you see the light source. They are not blown out solid white, but that's what happens when I render a light source in Mentra with an image source.

Here's a sample image from xStudio Light.



So if you look at that image. There are two image viewer windows. The smaller one is the source gradient used as the light source, and the larger one is a rendered sample. The light source is blown out white, but the gradient is still there. If I turn down the brightness/contract of the image to something like 0.001 then the gradient shows up. Problem is that the rest of the image turns black.

How come the other 3D packages render their light sources nicely but Mantra blows a light panel out to solid white?

[anim]

maybe you can try turn on Physically Based Attenuation and Un-Check Normalize Light intensity area

[hopbin9]

Thanks anim!

That did the trick! I had tried attenuation but didn't turn off normalize.

EDIT: That's great. Now I'm getting good results. Will post some more images soon.

Edited by hopbin9, 21 July 2012 - 08:41 AM.

[hopbin9]

Does anyone have any cool metallic spheres that I can include in a sample scene file?

I'd like to create something similar to this image (sorry, don't mean to copy but it looks simple enough to setup). Studio Light Rig sample

[hopbin9]

I want to allow people to create multiple layers of masks for the texture used as the light source. For example, there could be a hexagon pattern, plus a paper pattern and then an umbrella pattern.

Right now, I just have one set of parameters for the mask (that's I'm calling Gobo Options). If I change them to a paramlist folder, then I have the problem having to create new comp nodes to create the light mask. That I assume has to be done via Python, but will I have to unlock the comp node inside the asset to add new nodes? I assume so.

Has anyone done something like this before? What's the Python code to listen to paramlist changes, and how do I link all the params to the new nodes in the comp?

[hopbin9]

Oh that was to easy. I created a button that would create subnodes in an unlocked subnetwork that are mapped to the params in the multiparam block.

[graham]

You can easily embed multiple shelf tool definitions inside a digital asset, however there is no way to have them show up on a shelf automatically.  You could create an onloaded event handler that could add the tools to an existing shelf tab, create a new one, etc.

[hopbin9]

graham, on 21 July 2012 - 11:42 AM, said:

You can easily embed multiple shelf tool definitions inside a digital asset, however there is no way to have them show up on a shelf automatically. You could create an onloaded event handler that could add the tools to an existing shelf tab, create a new one, etc.

Thanks, I guess I just use the op:// path to the extra files of an asset to install the shelf tool from.

I'm going to have an "About" tab on all the assets, so maybe I'll just add a button called "Install Shelf Tools" that will create the shelf if it doesn't already exist (or update it). More work for me to finish before Aug 1, so much fun!

[graham]

You don't even need to do that.  On the Tools tab of the Type Properties window, you can just simple create new tools.  These new tools will be saved in the asset definition and Houdini will automatically load them when the asset is loaded.  All you would have to do is to find them in the list of tools (hou.shelves.tools()) and add them to shelves.

Edited by graham, 21 July 2012 - 12:20 PM.

[hopbin9]

Cool, even better. Thanks.

[hopbin9]

Can someone advise me on how to store images in the asset for the studio light.

For example; I have a HDR image of an umbrella light (downloaded from here) that I want to store in the asset. I resized the image to 1024x1024 and saved the HDR (1.69megs) then loaded it into Houdini and resaved it as a RAT image (6.27megs). As you can see the RAT file is significantly larger. I've read that for performance reasons you should always use RAT files, but would this larger image file cause issues being embedded in the asset?

Which should file should I use? the HDR or the RAT?

[jkunz07]

hopbin9, on 21 July 2012 - 08:51 AM, said:

Does anyone have any cool metallic spheres that I can include in a sample scene file?

I'd like to create something similar to this image (sorry, don't mean to copy but it looks simple enough to setup). Studio Light Rig sample

This might be good test geo
http://www.sidefx.co...pper&Itemid=150