@Stefan, @Matt If you can ask them or send me their contact address, that would be nice.
Some more details what I am currently thinking of: The shader is a helper to have something visible in the viewport. Right now you have one of these views in XSI, which I want to replace/improve: - Geometry Shader cube - emFluid display via particles/cubes - ICE particle volume with default XSI particle sphere shader - Polygon object (which is filled with a volume shader) A shape that animators can see and interact with. Therefore no custom display or an external renderer like exocortex fury. (which would both only display the volume only) It should be like any other 3D object in your scene. It should not be a production-quality renderer. (Therefore you have mentalRay which gives you the ability to render everything else with the volume) There is no hurry as there would be many other parts on my side. The volume data is stored in a 3D voxel/cell array of float values for color/density. Simple shading is required for preview, otherwise the 3D array includes a pre-rendered shaded volume. (cached during the mental Ray rendering) The phoenix Maya GPU preview seems to be a good example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE-p2MwTuuM&feature=player_detailpage#t=187s The shader itself does not need to compute this stuff. It just gets the 3D array with color/density. Holger Schönberger technical director The day has 24 hours, if that does not suffice, I will take the night ________________________________ From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Matt Lind Sent: Friday, December 14, 2012 11:11 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: RE: Realtime shader experience? Artist Requests? Other 3rd partyrealtime shaders? 2) OpenGL shaders run the fastest, but I wouldnt call them realtime. Softimage spends an inordinate amount of time polling the scene and viewports to figure out what to do even before your shader code is called to draw. OpenGL shaders (GLSL) also have the fewest bugs in the SDK compared to DirectX or others. 3) We have many custom tools built for our production from 3D paint to shading to basic stuff that Softimage never seems to get around to doing. 4) Depending on the technical requirements and schedule, I may know someone. Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Schoenberger Sent: Friday, December 14, 2012 12:13 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Realtime shader experience? Artist Requests? Other 3rd party realtime shaders? Hi I am thinking about a realtime display of the volume shader in the XSI viewport. I am searching for input from multiple sides. 1) Artists using the shaders. What do you expect (beside seing the volume), any switches you want to have? 2) Development of the Shaders. I never touched any realtime shaders, so if anyone has any hints on the implementation, let me know. Which type of realtime shader should be used, where are problems, would it be compatble with e.g. the Maya viewport, ... 3) Similar plugins. Do you know any other plugins for SI that display custom stuff? 4)And at last, if you know someone who can just develop this shader, let me know. Saves a lot of time :-) thanks, Holger Schönberger Binary Alchemy - digital materialization