Roadmap for the maya plugin

[jagger]

It seems a very flexible workflow but too complicated/slow... I hope theres a demo soon

[QuinceHungaryKft]

@ QuinceHungaryKft

By the way Gradient Nodes.

I've experienced that if one of the node colour values are absolute black (HSV: x,x,0) then after closing and reloading the scene, that node colour value will not show anymore.


Looking forward to the update!

Was this in standalone?
What do you mean by "that node colour value will not show anymore"?

You mean all the nodes color field were black after loading?

Best explained with screenshots!


It's the maya plugin and it is very easy to recreate:


Create a gradient texture with a few color entry items. set color for any of them to absolute 0 as on screenshot. Save and close project



Then after reopening the project the black items will disappear. Sometimes i've noticed that the entry list counter stays the same.

My current workaround is to use a value of 0.001 instead of 0.

[calus]

It seems a very flexible workflow but too complicated/slow

I'm on the impression that maybe you think you'll have to connect all the nodes by hand,
but what you still can't guess here is all the future automation at User Interface level,
usually in Maya it only requires 1 click to build or edit complex nodes graphs

It's very important that things could works in a clever, transparent and efficient way at node level.
After that, almost everything is possible at UI level, and certainly this will avoid some of the V2 plugin convoluted/broken functionalities.

[jagger]

Maybe, I dont usually work with the hypershade. I only hope that it would be easy and simple as the cinema 4d version...

[calus]

Maybe, I dont usually work with the hypershade. I only hope that it would be easy and simple as the cinema 4d version...

Well, the new approach will help to bring the maya plugin closer to the C4d one, this was not even possible to dream about that with the V2 plugin as there was too much things hard-coded.
The new node flexibility will also help to improve Maya UI for Octane at each release,
look at how Mograph is implemented in maya 2016.5 (MASH), you don't need at all to use the node editor,
the workflow in attribute editor is very similar to C4d but really quick and efficient and you still can work with the full Mash node-graph in node editor if you prefer.
So it's "possible"

[jagger]

ok sounds great

just a couple of questions more, If I buy now the current maya plugin could I get the new one without extra charges?

And, when could we test this new version?

thanks!

[calus]

If I buy now the current maya plugin could I get the new one without extra charges?
And, when could we test this new version?

- you can't buy anymore the V2 plugin, in fact you don't buy plugin but license so if you buy now the V3 license you can use all previous versions, and the V3 plugin when it will be out.

- If everything goes well, Kai will release a preview V3 version next week (but this is really just to play with nodes and fluids),
Kai also anticipates a "production release" end of July but in my opinion this is way too optimistic... there's really a lot of work to do before to have a production ready V3 plugin...

[jagger]

ok thanks, I think I´ll wait for the demo before purchase

[k.a.schubert]

@ QuinceHungaryKft

Ah I see, was a bit confused about what you mean with "gradient node".
So its a Gradient Texture Node that gives the problem.

Thanks for the bug report!
This node is part of the V2 system and I will replace all texture/material nodes for V3 production release,
since the new nodes work completely different and are not compatible so much.

@ Calus

Yeah maybe July is a bit optimistic.
Development in Mel is just much slower than C++, since there are no Dev tools for this language
and errors appear first at runtime with much less informative error messages.

On with it,
Kai

[calus]

Yeah maybe July is a bit optimistic.

I hope you prove me wrong

But It seems hard to avoid some intermediate alpha/beta stage of the plugin to get user feedback and finally stabilize the plugin after a hardly predictable phase.