Lightwave .lwo reader SOP

[rom]

Hi all,

I would like to present a SOP I have created to read a lightwave .lwo (object file)

It can transfer:

• 
  Multiple object layers,
  All vertex maps (Uvs, Color, Weight, Morph, etc)
  All groups (Part to PrimGroups, point selections to PointGroups)
  All surface data, to be copy parmed to Houdini Materials.
  

geo info

node graph splitting layers

surface data

object layers

A big file

Comments, and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Edited June 2, 2012 by rom

[zarti]

wow ! looks great .. and since i have yet a lot of assets in that format that sounds really 'interesting' .

seems( from the pics )you have replicated nicely surface properties too .

great job !

one question if you dont mind ; whats the story behind that SOP node ? is it part of a pipeline or just testing houdini ?

[eetu]

Awesome!

I once made one myself, but it was kinda sucky - great that someone does this properly.

As one of the few studios with a lw+houdini pipeline, we would surely have a need for this.

[dulo]

Wow .. great.

Lightwave is still an essential part of our pipeline.

+1

[Netvudu]

whoa! Terrific! I would really love to test this!

We are heavy LW users around here. Any possibilities you will release this, or is it an in-house asset?

Also, I got a question. How are you using LW´s smoothing value? It looks like a shading value in your screen grabs, but adding as a cusp angle value in a Facet SOP would allow to get the proper OpenGL visualization...I don´t know if that´s what you´re doing or not.

Edited May 31, 2012 by Netvudu

[rom]

... How are you using LW´s smoothing value? It looks like a shading value in your screen grabs, but adding as a cusp angle value in a Facet SOP would allow to get the proper OpenGL visualization...

At the moment the surface data is just presented as parms, so you can copy, paste it to any other parm as needed.

I am considering a way include a scriptable feature to 'auto-patch' parms in custom ways.

I think it would be better to not be too presumptuous by patching to other Nodes straight off the bat.

I am going to massage this, for the next week or so, before releasing it.

So please offer as many implementation suggestions as possible.

Edited June 2, 2012 by rom

[edward]

adding as a cusp angle value in a Facet SOP would allow to get the proper OpenGL visualization

I would use a Vertex SOP instead of a Facet SOP to avoid creating new points.

[Netvudu]

aaand...you´re right edward. Vertex SOP is better. Actually I didn´t realize Facet does create new points. I thought it only happened with the "unique points" feature enabled.

Rom, I see you replicated the Surface Editor´s layer system. Are you adding the procedural and gradient layers into the mix as well, or just Image Maps.

[rom]

Rom, I see you replicated the Surface Editor´s layer system. Are you adding the procedural and gradient layers into the mix as well, or just Image Maps.

gradient texture layer data

Edited June 2, 2012 by rom

[zarti]

this is looking even more interesting .

cannt wait to try lw's surface editor layout in houdini .

maybe .. that might be a ' nice suggestion ' to SESI on building an uberMaterial for quick setups of non-VFX materials .

Great Job ! so far ..

.cheers

[rom]

Here is the procedural texture layer data

I am not so clued up on Houdini Shaders.

Perhaps someone can enlighten me on how to implement this data

an update on the layer data

if needed :

allowing for the creation of PrimGroups base on poly type (Face,SubPatch,Curv, etc)

also to create PrimGroups from Polys with variable vertex counts

Edited June 2, 2012 by rom

[rom]

I have hit a problem setting up houdini parameters for texture layer gradients and procedurals

here is the post in the scripting forum

[edit] this is resolved in H12, so good to go

Edited June 4, 2012 by rom

[dyei nightmare]

where you can download it? will need this desesperatelly

[dulo]

Any news on this awesome node ? Is there a possibility to test this little thing ?

[eetu]

Yeah, still eagerly awaiting

I could probably work on a matching shader that would try and duplicate the basic lightwave material, with basic procedurals and such.

[zarti]

it was nice , anyway ..

[rom]

the sop is still some what incomplete, and i'm in some projects at the moment.

Will try to pin it down some more, over the weekend.

Check it out, as is, for the moment, but last I checked, there were quite a few cases where is fails.

It's all python, so If anyone has the inclination to chase bugs, be my guest.

I could probably work on a matching shader that would try and duplicate the basic lightwave material, with basic procedurals and such.

That would be dead cool.

I went from this, to attempting to do the same while leaning C++, and got quite far.

I figure ,Ideally this should be done with HDK, but my skills in that regard are questionable.

I have a good grasp on parsing the .lwo file, so perhaps with some HDK guru's guidance we could make this sop solid.

Lwo.otl

Edited November 21, 2012 by rom

[skazkaPiter]

on Houdini 11.0.658 and 12.1.33 it does not working.

on call asset and on load geometry gives a mistakes : ))

[eetu]

I tried with a couple of files from here http://www.3drender.com/challenges/index.htm

The cabin one errors on load.

The film noir one loads the geometry but errors in new_Color and doesn't load the material info.

The Halloween one loads in ok.

Seems like it wants a c:/tmp folder, too.

I'll torture it a bit more

But, cool in any case!

[rom]

Seems like it wants a c:/tmp folder, too.

If I remember correctly, the c:/tmp thing is where a log file is written, in order to trouble shoot. I think there may be a DEBUG tab, where you can change the logging features. As a Mac user, I probably hard coded that path to log file (my bad), I'm sure if you track that down, you can check the log as to where the Sop fails. I figure that this will help solve the 'boundary conditions'.

After going down the rabbit hole on parsing all the material data, It did appear to be far less stable, so this is really the area that needs attention.

I will do my best to give this some more attention soon.