Hey guys,

We are working hard on implementing an Engine pipe at Toonbox for our asset and foliage departments.
Overall the Engine works well with one very major UI limitation for us - the ramps.
For artistic control we introduce a large number of ramp controls in the OTLs. The way it gets fed into the Maya AE is just not workable for artists.
Is it possible to make the Maya ramps work with the Engine?

Also, our plan is to feed a particle output from the Engine into a propitiatory cortex based instancer which currently doesn't work with nParticles. How hard would it be for you guys to have the ability to choose if the Engine outputs nParticles or regular ones?


Thanks a lot!
Alex

We solved the nParticle / cortex issue.

The ramps not being supported is quite a big issue for us. Any input please?

Also, every time you select the engine node in Maya, all the tabs are expanded automatically. This is very annoying if there are more than a few tabs and it's very hard to navigate through them. Is it possible to load the tabs collapsed on default?


Thanks

Sorry for the late reply.

Afeigin
The ramps not being supported is quite a big issue for us. Any input please?

I actually looked into supporting ramp before. It still requires some work, and then I got busy with other things. Let me find a chance to jump back into it.

Afeigin
Also, every time you select the engine node in Maya, all the tabs are expanded automatically. This is very annoying if there are more than a few tabs and it's very hard to navigate through them. Is it possible to load the tabs collapsed on default?

It'll probably be annoying either way. If it's always collapsed by default, then if you selected another node, and come back to it, you'd have to click and expand again. This seems pretty annoying as well. Maybe if we can remember the collapse state, then it might make more sense to have it collapsed by default.

Afeigin
We solved the nParticle / cortex issue.

Right now the particle output uses the same mechanism as nCache. So it's not easy to switch to the “classic” particle way of caching/outputting. And Maya seems to be trying to move away from the “classic” particle. Though I wonder if there's value in adding support it. :?

However, since nParticle and “classic” particle use the same MFnParticleSystem interface, I imagine it might be fairly simple to add nParticle support to your custom instancer. For example, it was trivial for the Engine plugin to add support for using both nParticle and “classic” particle as input.

We already have nParticles working so no need to switch to classic.
Agree, it's better to stay away from classic particles.

I think you're right. Having the tabs collapsed will be as annoying.
So yeah, if they stay in the same state when you switch it will be best.

Ramps will be awesome to have!! Will add a lot of artistic control.


Thanks a lot for your support Andrew.
Alex

Yes same here, would love to see Houdini ramp to be hooked up to the Maya Graph GUI.

As for the tabs state. I've fixed this here by defaulting to being collapsed. This seemed the less frustrating.
It was easy to do.
Open the file:
…/HoudiniEngine/maya2015/scripts/AEhoudiniAssetTemplate.mel

and change:
-collapse false
to
-collapse true

There is a second frameLayout where the flag was missing and I have added this there.

So this:
frameLayout
-collapsable true
-label $multiNiceName;
became this:
frameLayout
-collapsable true
-collapse true
-label $multiNiceName;

Just try it out and see if you like it more.. :wink:

Yes same here, would love to see Houdini ramp to be hooked up to the Maya Graph GUI.

As for the tabs state. I've fixed this here by defaulting to being collapsed. This seemed the less frustrating.
It was easy to do.
Open the file:
…/HoudiniEngine/maya2015/scripts/AEhoudiniAssetTemplate.mel

and change:
-collapse false
to
-collapse true

There is a second frameLayout where the flag was missing and I have added this there.

So this:
frameLayout
-collapsable true
-label $multiNiceName;
became this:
frameLayout
-collapsable true
-collapse true
-label $multiNiceName;

Just try it out and see if you like it more.. :wink:

Thanks for the “collapse true” override. Works for us also.

Was wondering if you guys will be looking into the ramp support issue and if you can give me a rough eta of when do you think we might get it?


Also, is it possible to support hiding and disabling menu items with the engine?
Will be very cool to have it also.


Thanks a lot guys!!
Alex

If ramps are too complex to implement quickly, is there any way we can use chf() in a wrangle to work with attributes/channels in maya? I need /want a ramp, and could use an animation curve lookup instead of a ramp parm if needbe. It works in Houdini, but I can't get it working in Maya. Both would be extremely useful.

Side note: would be great if the save underlying Houdini scene could also save animation data. (I'll put in an rfe)

Ramp parameters are now supported. See post [sidefx.com].