SiTex Air 8 is out

[symek]

I used to be a great fan of that software, it was quiet around it recently so I even thought it's gone (fortunately not).

They have new shader based procedural modeling pipeline, of which description recalls CVEX in my head.

I would love to see general CVEX based Mantra procedural that would allow us create/change mesh topology during rendering (which is, as I understand, wonderful possibility CVEX already serves once someone will write the dso for this).

Edited January 3, 2009 by SYmek

[anamous]

Is my understanding correct that this CVEX procedural would be a quicker/more efficient version of what is currently the hscript procedural? Or does it add something new to the table?

cheers,

Abdelkareem

[hoknamahn]

I don't think this can be possible to do through "usual" DSO. Because such shaders have to be called before dicing. So they are above the usual scheme Dicing -> Shading.

Edited December 21, 2008 by hoknamahn

[symek]

I don't think this can be possible to do through "usual" DSO. Because such shaders have to be called before dicing. So they are above the usual scheme Dicing -> Shading.

In my understanding, geometry shaders aka Mantra Procedurals like sprites, fur or Mark's clusterThis dso are called before dicing. They create geometry on demand. The thing is that SESI already created an API to drive procedurals, cvex namely.

@Abdelkareem: in fact I would expect similar functionality but in a way more efficient way (think about Krakatoa for instance)

Edited December 21, 2008 by SYmek

[hoknamahn]

In my understanding, geometry shaders aka Mantra Procedurals like sprites, fur or Mark's clusterThis dso are called before dicing. They create geometry on demand. The thing is that SESI already created an API to drive procedurals, cvex namely.

@Abdelkareem: in fact I would expect similar functionality but in a way more efficient way (think about Krakatoa for instance)

Yep they are called before dicing. But in reality they are not shaders - it's nothing more than a name convention (they are outside of Mantra's shading pipeline).

CVEX can't add same functionality as hscript instancing because... ooops... CVEX driven DSO _will_ have to call HScript engine for cooking of instance anyway (if you need arbitrary types of supported assets). You could implement a DSO which is driven by CVEX and supports fixed number/types of assets (C++/HDK code is "cooking" geometry) but in this case it won't be the same functionality as hscript instancing (or you have to reinvent HScript in your DSO). So CVEX isn't a silver bullet. It makes a setup of attributes in "any" context easier but nothing more. IMHO.

[symek]

Yep they are called before dicing. But in reality they are not shaders - it's nothing more than a name convention (they are outside of Mantra's shading pipeline).

CVEX can't add same functionality as hscript instancing because... ooops... CVEX driven DSO _will_ have to call HScript engine for cooking of instance anyway (if you need arbitrary types of supported assets). You could implement a DSO which is driven by CVEX and supports fixed number/types of assets (C++/HDK code is "cooking" geometry) but in this case it won't be the same functionality as hscript instancing (or you have to reinvent HScript in your DSO). So CVEX isn't a silver bullet. It makes a setup of attributes in "any" context easier but nothing more. IMHO.

Sorry, I didn't mean that. I meant cvex routines for adding rough point and primes to object data stream, not cvex equivalent to every SOP for God sake . I understand also that geometry shaders are called like this by convention, but this convention exists in Houdini, so I use it. Maybe hscript procedurals misleads here. Mantra can create primitives on demand. It would be extramaly useful to have Mantra Procedural geometry driven by CVEX which creates arbitrary geometry this way. This is what I understand from a new functionality of Air and what was discussed several time here.

Edited December 21, 2008 by SYmek