IFL: Imported objects
by Rex · in Artist Corner · 04/02/2008 (7:25 am) · 4 replies
7:21am
Limited success so far with the IFL exporting. I seemed to have to put a node on in between my UV texture node and my material node pointing to the dtsMaterial node. The big glitch came when i discovered that I need to have my Material node pointing to the dtsMaterial node 'bulls-eyed'/in focus with the blue icon active?? Once I did this, my nicely UV mapped cube from outside HD, lost it's UV mapping...bummer. Probably some button or setting that perhaps saves current UV's? So I then had to add a UVedit node inbetween and start working that function which I had little to go on, lol. Learning the program as I go...
This re-mapping the UV's seem to 'hold' cepting the top two faces of cube had one face flipped?? and I could not find a way, very quickly of fixing that, all other 'sides/two primitive faces' we fine across their diving edge?? Anyhoo...once I did those extra steps, I was able to export my IFLmaterial correctly.
Now, I have an object with bone animation AND IFL animation...wonder how that is going to divide. I seemed to need the material node selected/active/bulls-eyed, for the process to work; this I found not intuitive at all. I expected to export at the Scene level....not having to have something selected, deep, deep within the 'Scene'.
...more later, off to work for some cash, testing must stand by...lol.
Limited success so far with the IFL exporting. I seemed to have to put a node on in between my UV texture node and my material node pointing to the dtsMaterial node. The big glitch came when i discovered that I need to have my Material node pointing to the dtsMaterial node 'bulls-eyed'/in focus with the blue icon active?? Once I did this, my nicely UV mapped cube from outside HD, lost it's UV mapping...bummer. Probably some button or setting that perhaps saves current UV's? So I then had to add a UVedit node inbetween and start working that function which I had little to go on, lol. Learning the program as I go...
This re-mapping the UV's seem to 'hold' cepting the top two faces of cube had one face flipped?? and I could not find a way, very quickly of fixing that, all other 'sides/two primitive faces' we fine across their diving edge?? Anyhoo...once I did those extra steps, I was able to export my IFLmaterial correctly.
Now, I have an object with bone animation AND IFL animation...wonder how that is going to divide. I seemed to need the material node selected/active/bulls-eyed, for the process to work; this I found not intuitive at all. I expected to export at the Scene level....not having to have something selected, deep, deep within the 'Scene'.
...more later, off to work for some cash, testing must stand by...lol.
About the author
Rex does all his 3D graphics through BrokeAssGames and is currently working on DSQTweaker, Ecstasy Motion, and other interesting projects yet to be revealed. Just ask him about anything DTS/DSQ related, he's happy to help.
#2
I definitely had to have the node 'bullseyed', ie with the red/blue circles surrounding the node, or my IFL material did not export. Sorry if I'm confusing 'selected' with 'displayed', a very awkward workflow....having the node have two separate modes...
I had to sit and compare side by side the IFL example and my own Imported IFL object dump files....that's where I noticed that my 'IFL' material did not export.....I had to have the 'render/display' circles active for my material to register??
More tomorrow, yeah, very big bummer to add nodes and then when they got selected, borked my UV's...I had to quickly scan the monstrous list of available nodes...saw the UV edit...and found the oddities with the top two faces, one of which is flipped/rotated. Very odd to have imported shapes, working fine outside HD...and doing odd things in the HD environment.
04/03/2008 (12:55 am)
It was fine, until I selected the blue display/render icon of the node, then my UV's went wonky...if I backed up the chain of SOP's to the Box object, it 'snaps' back into correct UV's from outside HD...I definitely had to have the node 'bullseyed', ie with the red/blue circles surrounding the node, or my IFL material did not export. Sorry if I'm confusing 'selected' with 'displayed', a very awkward workflow....having the node have two separate modes...
I had to sit and compare side by side the IFL example and my own Imported IFL object dump files....that's where I noticed that my 'IFL' material did not export.....I had to have the 'render/display' circles active for my material to register??
More tomorrow, yeah, very big bummer to add nodes and then when they got selected, borked my UV's...I had to quickly scan the monstrous list of available nodes...saw the UV edit...and found the oddities with the top two faces, one of which is flipped/rotated. Very odd to have imported shapes, working fine outside HD...and doing odd things in the HD environment.
#3
Full success with IFL imported object. While trying to follow the help file's hierarchy and structure, I had added the UVtexture node inline as the image describes.
Well, having existing UV's must do something when this extra node is added, as from that point down, with the Render flag set to true, my UV's go nutty.
I had to remove this node[UVtexture], set Render flag to true[purple circle]. and I was 'good to go'. UV's aligned as I had set them up in my UV program. And no odd single flipped primitive on the cube's top.....:)
This is one of those 'existing asset' setup-secrets....I keep reading the Help file as the 'only method' for getting HD to Render a DTS/DSQ output; as it works for the supplied examples. Existing files will need to be interpolated to the hierarchy. It really seems as the only 'necessary' part to get right is the two subnets[well, and setting Render flag to true as well], nested? I've put materials and texture bitmaps in different locations[as in my skinned mesh example of dancingKORK], and I get it to 'Render'/export. I've not had to add a UVtexture node to get my UV's to render...that was a big mistake on my part; unneeded node. I had thought it was needed to get it to 'Render' to dts...not so, the uv's are already set!
Now that I have the keystrokes mastered for this IFL export; I'll now bring in the HGT from Combat Starter Kit; which contains both bone and material animation.... now I get to open the dopesheet/editor at last!
04/03/2008 (6:55 am)
6:48amFull success with IFL imported object. While trying to follow the help file's hierarchy and structure, I had added the UVtexture node inline as the image describes.
Well, having existing UV's must do something when this extra node is added, as from that point down, with the Render flag set to true, my UV's go nutty.
I had to remove this node[UVtexture], set Render flag to true[purple circle]. and I was 'good to go'. UV's aligned as I had set them up in my UV program. And no odd single flipped primitive on the cube's top.....:)
This is one of those 'existing asset' setup-secrets....I keep reading the Help file as the 'only method' for getting HD to Render a DTS/DSQ output; as it works for the supplied examples. Existing files will need to be interpolated to the hierarchy. It really seems as the only 'necessary' part to get right is the two subnets[well, and setting Render flag to true as well], nested? I've put materials and texture bitmaps in different locations[as in my skinned mesh example of dancingKORK], and I get it to 'Render'/export. I've not had to add a UVtexture node to get my UV's to render...that was a big mistake on my part; unneeded node. I had thought it was needed to get it to 'Render' to dts...not so, the uv's are already set!
Now that I have the keystrokes mastered for this IFL export; I'll now bring in the HGT from Combat Starter Kit; which contains both bone and material animation.... now I get to open the dopesheet/editor at last!
#4
Ah - that explains it. As you now know, the UVTexture node is a way of generating the UV coordinates. If you already have them (from an external asset, or by using another UV node) you don't need it, and it will in fact overwrite the existing UV coords.
Not for it to 'register' as such => remember that Houdini is a procedural modeling tool => each node applies some kind of transformation and generates a new output. The 'render/display' flag is just setting which node in the chain you want the output from. Generally this will be at the end of the chain (ie. you want the final result).
It takes a bit of getting used to. Selection (yellow highlight around the node, and the node parameters visible in the parameter view) is quite different to 'bullseyed' (as you put it), which just means that the output of the node is rendered in the viewport (and used for DTS export!).
Basically, if you can't see the IFL material in the Houdini viewport, then it won't be exported either. Forget about other modeling tools where you can't see results (IFL, UV animation etc) until after exporting => the aim with Houdini is to be able to see _everything_ beforehand.
I thought a lot about whether the exporter should just use whatever nodes are present in the scene, but decided it made more sense for the exported shape to match what you see in Houdini. Feel free to try and talk me out of it though => that survey had a population of 1!
04/03/2008 (12:28 pm)
Quote:While trying to follow the help file's hierarchy and structure, I had added the UVtexture node inline as the image describes.
Well, having existing UV's must do something when this extra node is added, as from that point down, with the Render flag set to true, my UV's go nutty.
Ah - that explains it. As you now know, the UVTexture node is a way of generating the UV coordinates. If you already have them (from an external asset, or by using another UV node) you don't need it, and it will in fact overwrite the existing UV coords.
Quote:I had to sit and compare side by side the IFL example and my own Imported IFL object dump files....that's where I noticed that my 'IFL' material did not export.....I had to have the 'render/display' circles active for my material to register??
Not for it to 'register' as such => remember that Houdini is a procedural modeling tool => each node applies some kind of transformation and generates a new output. The 'render/display' flag is just setting which node in the chain you want the output from. Generally this will be at the end of the chain (ie. you want the final result).
Quote:I definitely had to have the node 'bullseyed', ie with the red/blue circles surrounding the node, or my IFL material did not export. Sorry if I'm confusing 'selected' with 'displayed', a very awkward workflow....having the node have two separate modes...
It takes a bit of getting used to. Selection (yellow highlight around the node, and the node parameters visible in the parameter view) is quite different to 'bullseyed' (as you put it), which just means that the output of the node is rendered in the viewport (and used for DTS export!).
Basically, if you can't see the IFL material in the Houdini viewport, then it won't be exported either. Forget about other modeling tools where you can't see results (IFL, UV animation etc) until after exporting => the aim with Houdini is to be able to see _everything_ beforehand.
I thought a lot about whether the exporter should just use whatever nodes are present in the scene, but decided it made more sense for the exported shape to match what you see in Houdini. Feel free to try and talk me out of it though => that survey had a population of 1!
Associate Chris Robertson
You shouldn't need to have any particular node 'selected' (yellow highlight around the node), but there is perhaps an unexpected (and undesired?) subtlety of the exporter going on here.
In Houdini, when there is a chain of SOPs (surface operators) connected together, you can choose which one's output is actually rendered in the viewport by left clicking the rightmost flag in the node view. This draws two circles around the node in the node view, and sets the blue bar (Display/Render flag). You can move up and down the chain to see the effects of each node. Neat.
However, when the exporter comes to export the scene, for each geometry container, it looks for the node in the SOP chain that has the Display/Render flag set, and uses the output of that node as the export geometry! I thought about just using the last node in the chain, but thought it would make more sense for the exported scene to match what you see in the Houdini viewport.
Not sure what was going on with your UV mappings though => the Material node does not (that I am aware of) clear or modify UV mappings.