An interesting post from Senior Visual Effects Artist Andy Moorer where he looks at using Mental Images’ Mental Mill to build CgFX Shaders for Softimage and get them to work in ICE FX Trees. The interesting point that Andy makes is that the same “tree” can be used to generate code for multiple rendering types, so you can create a shader for Mental Ray and a realtime shader, and a renderman compliant shader all in one shot.
“If you are already an experienced shader writer, Mental Mill doesn’t have much to offer, auto-generated code won’t appeal. But for TDs who haven’t the experience or time needed to get a shader going, it’s a huge boon. It’s also a way to get a feel for shader code, letting you experiment and see how the code changes as a concept is changed.”
“This video demonstrates how to export a CgFX shader from mental mill to softimage and combine it with an Ice Effect tree.
It shows techniques to augment your exported CgFX code by hand editing the exported CgFX code and passing data that was generated by an ICE FX tree in softimage to the shader. This enables you to create a completely new type of effects.”
