Download Report

mayaToCorona
Manual
Version 0.1
Haggi Krey
February 2014
Last Update: 05/2014
www.openmaya.de
mayaToCorona
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Installation.........................................................................................................................................4
Installing Updates..................................................................................................................................5
Important hint........................................................................................................................................5
First Steps...........................................................................................................................................6
Release notes...................................................................................................................................7
release 0.24..........................................................................................................................................7
Version 0.23..........................................................................................................................................7
Version 0.22..........................................................................................................................................7
Version 0.2............................................................................................................................................7
Version 0.20..........................................................................................................................................8
Supported Features......................................................................................................................9
Render Globals..............................................................................................................................10
Renderer..............................................................................................................................................10
Progressive...........................................................................................................................................10
Bucket....................................................................................................................................................10
Features...............................................................................................................................................10
Displacement......................................................................................................................................10
Environment........................................................................................................................................10
Corona Surface Shader.............................................................................................................11
Diffuse Parameters...........................................................................................................................11
Round Corners...................................................................................................................................11
Textures............................................................................................................................................12
Lights....................................................................................................................................................13
Sun Light...............................................................................................................................................13
Mesh Light............................................................................................................................................13
Maya Lights...........................................................................................................................................13
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mayaToCorona
Introduction
This is the manual for the maya plugin mayaToCorona. It is created with a open source framework
available on github. It implements the great renderer Corona, created by Ondřej Karlík. You can see
more information about the renderer on its website.
The plugin is only available for Windows at the moment, and it is tested on Windows7 only. It may
work on other version, but I didn‘t check it.
I created a google group for discussion about the plugin, so if you have questions, don‘t hesitate to log
in and ask for help. The corona website has a forum as well where you can post questions about the
renderer and mayaToCorona, have a look here. I‘ll check both forums as often as I can.
If I receive bug reports, I‘ll add an issue on github: github issues. Here you can see the status of the
issue, if it is solved or in which release it is supposed to be implemented.
The implementation of a renderer is quite a lot of work, especially the implementation of shading
networks. Unfortunatly we have a problem here. In 3dsmax or Cinema4d you can sample the shading
network for every rendered sample during rendering. It may be not the very fastest way to use textures
and other nodes, but it works fine. Maya does not offer such an approach on a per sample basis. So the
texturing is quite limited in maya at the moment. We will have to wait until Corona offers a complete
shading network approach like OSL.
But let‘s see how it works. This manual is an extreme work-in-progress work. I‘ll fill it with content as
good as I can.
Have fun.
haggi
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mayaToCorona
Installation
If you read this manual, I suppose you already have downloaded the archive with the plugin it is called
mayaToCorona.rar and it located here (link).
Of course you have to unpack it. There is no need to unpack it to a special place, just place it wherever you want. The unpacked directory contains a maya module. This module contains everything you
need to run the plugin. To avoid problems, please do not modify the name of the directory, it should be
named: mayaToCorona.
The archive contains a few directories:
docs
mayaToCorona
mayaToCoronaExamples
The first directory contains this document. The second one contains some example files to check if the
renderer works correctly. The third one called mayaToCorona contains the real Maya module. A module conains everything that is necessary to run the plugin.
Next, you have to ensure that maya finds the module. This is quite simple. Maya reads an environment
variable called MAYA_MODULE_PATH. If the path to the corona module is found in this variable,
the module is read. To manipulate the MAYA_MODULE_PATH you have several possiblities, but I‘ll
present the easiest one here.
Modifying the Maya env file
In the user home directory you should have a maya directory. In Windows it can be found in a path like
this: C:\Users\username\Documents\maya\2014-x64. Here you can find a file called Maya.env. Open it
and add this line:
MAYA_MODULE_PATH=path where you unpacked your module
e.g.
MAYA_MODULE_PATH=C:\data\myModuleDir\mayaToCorona
The path should be the directory where the mayaToCorona.mod file is located.
Save it, restart maya and the plugin should be visible in the plugin manager. Now try to load the plugin. To run corona you will need the redistributable package for VisualStudio2013, install them if you
don‘t already have:
Redistributables for VS 2013
I‘d be happy if you can give me as much feedback as possible about the handling, documentation ( as
soon as this document is growing to a size to be called a real documentation), and everyting else.
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mayaToCorona
Installing Updates
An update of mayaToCorona consists of the complete mayaToCorona module directory. Simply remove the old mayaToCorona directory and replace it by the new one.
Important hint
I recommend to save your scene always in maya Ascii format. In maya binary format, the node Id‘s are
saved as binary ids but they may change from release to release. In maya Ascii format, they are refereced with names which will not change, or at least not very often.
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mayaToCorona
First Steps
Let‘s hope the plugin was successfully loaded. So the next step is to load an example file and render it.
In the mayaToCoronaExamples project, there should be a file called firstOne.ma. Open it. If you now
open the render window, you should see that the renderer ist set to Corona.
Hit render. The final rendering with scene should look similiar to this one:
If this didn‘t work, something‘s wrong and we will have to find the problem, please find help in the
Google Group or the Corona mayaToCorona forum.
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mayaToCorona
Release notes
release 0.24
•added ies lights
•fixed shutter speed
•added pointLights
•added spotLights
•added directionalLights
•started experimental OSL (not usable for users yet)
Version 0.23
•added color mapping
•added camera settings exposue/iso/shutter speed
•added smoothmesh preview translation
•added deformation motion blur
•added Corona Surface shader texture hardware display
•modified round corners shader to scene units
Version 0.22
•changed the time limit to seconds
•added max ray depth
•fixed a crash when the image has no file format extension
•added waitCursor for UI rendering
•added filters
•added acceleration structures
•added exit color
•added max ray intensity
•added VCM renderer settings
•reusing already defined materials
•fixed depth of field scaling problem
Version 0.2
•Added UI diffuse shading feedback for Corona Shader, works now with texture display.
•Added bucket rendering
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mayaToCorona
•Added round corners in shading
•Not allowed textures types are now ignored and an Error message appears. Previously e.g. a
hdr as background image caused a crash.
•Moved the init/shutdown lib functions to the pluginMain to avoid unnecessary errors.
Version 0.20
First public release.
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mayaToCorona
Supported Features
mayaToCorona supports the following features of the corona renderer:
Progressive Rendering
Bucket Rendering
Depth of Field
Transformation Motionblur
Deformation Motionblur
Simple texture mapping
Image based lighting
Maya Point Lights, Spot Lights, Directional Lights
IES Profiles
Physical Sun/Sky
Displacement Mapping
Corona surface shader
Particle Instancer translation
Color post processing
Smooth maya mesh preview translation
Supported texture file formats are: jpg, png, bmp and exr.
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mayaToCorona
Render Globals
Renderer
Here you can choose between Bucket and Progressive renderer. Basically every renderer continues to
render as long as a certain limit is reached. A limit can be a number of seconds, or a number of samples
taken for a pixel.
Progressive
In progressive rendering the limits can be number of passes or a number of seconds passed.
Bucket
Renders the image with buckets.
Features
Displacement
Environment
The environment tab lets you assign a constant color as a background color (default), an image or a
physical sun.
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mayaToCorona
Corona Surface Shader
The Corona Surface shader is the default shader. At the moment this is the only available surface shader, but it covers all possible effects for surface shading.
Diffuse Parameters
Round Corners
The round corners attribute can create the illusion of round edges for sharp models. This way you do
not need to create a small rounding for every small sharp edge, but simply set this values.
Radius: Sets the Radius for the round corner calculation.
Samples: More samples create a better quality.
Here is an example with no round corners:
And the same rendering with round corners activated:
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mayaToCorona
Textures
At the moment only a few image formats are supported: jpg, png, bmp, exr. All other formats will not
be translated.
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mayaToCorona
Lights
Sun Light
In the Corona Globals you can create and use a directional light as a Corona sun light. You can increase the intensity with the „Sun Intensity Multiplier“ in the Corona segment in the directional light
attribute editor.
Mesh Light
Mesh lights are created by simply assigning an emissive Corona material to any geometry. It is often
useful to increase the color values above 1.0, e.g. to 50.0 or 100.0 to get a bright light.
Maya Lights
You can use mayas point/spot/directional lights. They should work in a non physical way as expected.
The spot light supports dropoff and penumbra angles. Decay is supported for point and spot lights.
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