K-3D Forums

Seven Degrees of Freedom

1. 

   kursad
   Member

   Hi

   I am wondering if there are any plans for tighter integration of Renderman interface. To be honest I have not done much with Aqsis and K-3d but I would like to give it a go. I have read the documents and one thing that kept me distanced was the metadata files. I understand the need for such files but what if the author does not want any interface? I mean most shader writers would be happy to hack inside the text editor until it is ready to wrap up for release. Until then it seems like going through compiling xml and restarting K-3d sounds like quite a hassle.

   Also I saw this line inside the documentation. It would be great if some one would explain what all this means and why one needs to run through a compiler

   http://www.k-3d.org/wiki/RenderMan_Surface_Shader
   "Note that k3d-sl2xml only supports preprocessed sources as input, so you need to run the shader source through a C preprocessor:

   $ cpp -E -P -x c test_shader.sl | k3d-sl2xml > test_shader.sl.slmeta

   "

   It would be really great if it was possible to pass this xml and restarting ritual if the user does not want to. If someone wants interface all the way from start to end that is fine. But I personally prefer speedy development phase.

   Overall the Renderman interface documentation is good, at least for some stuff :)

   Posted 1 year ago #
2. 

   Timothy Shead
   

   You only have to regenerate the meta file if the shader arguments change. Or you can create one by hand, if you prefer ...

   Cheers,
   Tim

   Posted 1 year ago #
3. 

   kursad
   Member

   Timothy,

   I understand that. That is why I was asking if it was possible to go around it. I personally do not want to deal with an interface(mainly because I would be writing for my own needs), I would be more than happy to write and compile and hope to just run my results in K3d. An interface would be my last concern while I am working on a shader. That is my take, maybe others are just more than happy to deal with interface related middle steps.

   Posted 1 year ago #
4. 

   Timothy Shead
   

   So, in-order to create properties on a shader node so that K-3D users can modify them, K-3D needs to know the shader arguments. Unfortunately, there are some cases where simply parsing the shader isn't sufficient - for example, if a shader argument is a string, it might be used by the shader as a plain string, or it might be used as the name of a texture, which - indirectly - maps to a file in the filesystem. K-3D needs to know whether this is the case, so it can handle textures at a UI level. This is why K-3D uses the slmeta file to identify shader arguments. If you don't want to keep the slmeta file up-to-date, your shader will work fine, your K-3D users just won't be able to modify any parameters not mentioned in the slmeta. Also, not sure if you're aware of this or not, but you can leave K-3D open, modify your shader sources, then re-render. K-3D will recompile the shader for you.

   As far as the preprocessor goes, people do lots of complicated things with preprocessing in shaders (#include, #ifdef, etc.), so it's necessary to parse all but the simplest of shaders. If your shader doesn't do that, you can skip it.

   Cheers,
   Tim

   Posted 1 year ago #
5. 

   kursad
   Member

   Timothy,

   Thanks for the more in depth explanation. This makes things more clear for me. Now at least I know that I actually do not need to create the metafile everytime I change my shader, which is close to what I have been looking for.

   My involvement with C like languages have been very limited except some scripting and shading languages. I have used include and define but nothing complicated.

   Posted 1 year ago #
6. 

   chicago Real Estate
   Member

   I´m totaly new to this 3D stuff. I´ve been looking for programs for the last couple of days and, of course, I found Blender and then stumbled over some others. One of them K-3D with AQSIS.
   Could anyone point out the differences/advantages of both of these programs and give me tips on which to start with?

   Posted 1 year ago #
7. 

   Dennis
   Member

   Hello friends..!!!!
   am very new in K-3D..i want to install the ODEStimulation also i failed to preview the modelling when i tried i got this erro..

   "Without it, RIB files cannot be rendered. Check to ensure that you have Aqsis installed, and that

   the PATH envrionment variable points to the Aqsis binary installation directory."

   hw can i solve this please..??
   Thanks

   Posted 1 year ago #

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