vertex blending workflow for environments

[Todd Harper]

Has anyone tried to create a vertex blending workflow in Maya with the AL Shaders which would be especially useful for things such as large ground planes and environments?  I know Maya has it's built in ShaderFX for gaming type scenarios for realtime which can assign texture maps to coordinates based on vertex weight mapping to blend areas of say grass, dirt, rock, asphalt, etc. with typically tileable textures.

I'm not even sure if the available AL nodes support this kind of workflow, maybe this is a feature request, but I was hoping someone might have dabbled and can share. ;-)

Thanks,
Harp

[Espen Nordahl]

If you mean using vertex variables to blend between textures, this should be doable using the user data nodes and something like alCombineColor/alLayeredColor nodes. 

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[Todd Harper]

That's part of it, but the part that's missing right now with Maya is a node that can convert painted vertex weight maps to use as masks (called Vertex Color in the ShaderFX shader in Maya) to drive the different textures that would get piped into the alCombineColor nodes.  See the video link below for what I'm trying looking for with Arnold and AL Shaders... bascially painting vertex based weight maps directly onto geometry to use as masks.  I don't need the realtime aspect, but the vertex weight mapping would be great.  In the video they are using the Maya ShaderFX shader and a node called Vertex Color plus Maya Colorsets to achieve the masking via vertices.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn0fWfrHtJM&t=313s

[Todd Harper]

It looks like VRay also has a vertex color option.  I guess that's what I need, is a vertex color texture that's compatible with Arnold/ALS that can connect to the Color Sets in Maya to drive the vertex painting feature.  Does that make sense?

VRay vertex color node used to enable vertex painting.
https://youtu.be/MFZo-q2-EZo

[Todd Harper]

Ah, I think I'm following you now Espen.  Looks like I just need to use the aiUserDataColor in place of the vertex color texture used in the other processes.  I'm going to try this, thanks for the suggestion!

On Wednesday, February 8, 2017 at 12:41:21 PM UTC-6, Espen Nordahl wrote:

[Todd Harper]

It worked! 

Thanks,
Harp

[Espen Nordahl]

Awesome. Glad it worked out. :)

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