Obtaining The N Plane From Sprites

[GallenWolf]

Hey everyone,

I'm doing some test with sprites using normal maps, they're working great, but in the final deep raster render the N plane is a constant color. I've attached my VOP network here, I've tried piping my N from the normal map over to the N output, but it's not doing much difference in the final render.

Any help appreciated :-)

Regards,

Alvin

PS: Noob with vops and shading in general, please be patient

Edited May 14, 2007 by GallenWolf

[GallenWolf]

Hi!

Found a workaround, thanks to Ihab! I had to create export parameters in VOPs for the normal data for every surface shader, but it works! Thanks!

Alvin

[frankvw]

Hi!

Found a workaround, thanks to Ihab! I had to create export parameters in VOPs for the normal data for every surface shader, but it works! Thanks!

Alvin

hey

Aaaaghh!! No way. I searched for this a couple months back as a way to make a huge sprite forest from single rendered frames of L-systems but without success so the shader programmer guy did it with the points through prman ...... where do you find the magic export parameters to pick it up in VOPS/Mantra? Where is it in the online help, or is it an operator? Or do you need to make out an expression like when you pickup Dop things? And more importantly, is it accessible to mere mortals? Any help much appreciated.

Cheerio

[ihab]

hey

Aaaaghh!! No way. I searched for this a couple months back as a way to make a huge sprite forest from single rendered frames of L-systems but without success so the shader programmer guy did it with the points through prman ...... where do you find the magic export parameters to pick it up in VOPS/Mantra? Where is it in the online help, or is it an operator? Or do you need to make out an expression like when you pickup Dop things? And more importantly, is it accessible to mere mortals? Any help much appreciated.

Cheerio

It's really simple, you create a parameter in VOPs, select it and in the parameter window there's a check box that says "Export Parameter" If you check it you'll notice that the parameter vop will now have an input exposed. Plug anything from your network into this parameter (just make sure that the types match). Now in the parameter Name type anything you want. and in the deep raster tab in the mantra ROP type in the same name you gave to this parameter.

[TheUsualAlex]

hey

Aaaaghh!! No way. I searched for this a couple months back as a way to make a huge sprite forest from single rendered frames of L-systems but without success so the shader programmer guy did it with the points through prman ...... where do you find the magic export parameters to pick it up in VOPS/Mantra? Where is it in the online help, or is it an operator? Or do you need to make out an expression like when you pickup Dop things? And more importantly, is it accessible to mere mortals? Any help much appreciated.

Cheerio

In your Parameter VOP, there's an "Export..." check box -- this will allow you to export variables to a Deep Raster channel. As for allowing your variable to be overriden by some other source in Mantra, you simply need make your shader to contain that variable name matches those in the SOP attributes. Does that make sense?

EDIT: Ha! Ihab beat me to it.

[GallenWolf]

Beat me to it :-) Thanks guys!

Alvin