MaterialX for Gaffer?

[Tim Lehr]

Hi guys,

I’m a student enrolled in the Technical Director course at Filmakademie in Germany and currently looking into topics for my diploma R&D project spanning over the timeframe of one semester.

Currently I’m investigating MaterialX and very interested in developing a software integration for the project. I’m considering multiple applications for this - Gaffer is one of them.

Since the open source release of Gaffer doesn’t include the DCC integration provided by IE Caribou, I think the integration of MaterialX could really enhance workflows.

Knowing the Gaffer team is always keeping a close eye on new open source developments, I would like to know if there is anybody already investigating this. 

I don’t want to spend all that time on something that is already in the works, which would make my contribution redundant.

Cheers,

Tim

[John Haddon]

Hi Tim,

That sounds like a good idea for a project, and it's not something anyone is working on already as far as I'm aware. My knowledge of MaterialX is somewhat limited, but I think most of the concepts there have a fairly natural mapping to Gaffer's existing nodes and workflows. If you do decide to choose Gaffer for your integration, let us know what you're planning and we'll do our best to assist.

Cheers...

John

p.s. For the record, Caribou doesn't do any conversion of materials - at IE all lookdev is done in Gaffer directly.

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[Alex Fuller]

Hi Tim,

I've definitely looked into this and was planning to do it eventually but haven't started anything so feel free, I agree that Gaffer could be shoe-horned quite well into studios for doing lookdev-only for starters and save out this file to ingest into their existing workflow. 

MaterialX's reference implementation is XML-based (ughh) so perhaps look at the gafferCycles exporter which is also XML:

https://github.com/johnhaddon/gafferCycles

Maybe just to see how you'd walk the graph and save out the info, but materialX has its own python library to do this for you instead of writing out raw XML-looking strings by the looks of it. Also there are plans to do a USD prototype with cortex/gaffer so perhaps it could extend past materialX's XML format and also use the planned USD materialX schema in future.

Cheers

[John Haddon]

On 8 November 2017 at 20:04, Alex Fuller <bobe...@gmail.com> wrote:

MaterialX's reference implementation is XML-based (ughh) so perhaps look at the gafferCycles exporter which is also XML:

https://github.com/johnhaddon/gafferCycles

Urgh! Please don't look at that! It's a hacky experimental mess that never went anywhere. I might be wrong but I don't think it really has any relevance to MaterialX either - my assumption is that initially we'd want to convert node networks to/from MaterialX, rather than export the generated scene data as gafferCycles does.

Cheers...

John

 

[Alex Fuller]

Whoops, sorry John! ;)

Not to de-rail the topic but actually that might be a cool project to do, a Cycles renderer integration much like Appleseed, maybe with this wrapper if it's not too out of of date: https://github.com/jesterKing/CCSycles

Would you recommend any existing example code to scrape a shader node network for something like this, John?

[do...@image-engine.com]

Hi Tim, 

I'm going to just chip in here to say this a great idea for a project if it meets the requirements for your diploma R&D project. 

- Don

On Wednesday, 8 November 2017 06:35:26 UTC-8, Tim Lehr wrote:

[Esteban Tovagliari]

Hi Tim,

I think it's a great idea. Having MaterialX in Gaffer would be fantastic.

If it helps, we are planning to support MaterialX in a future appleseed.maya release.

That would make it possible to exchange appleseed materials between Maya and Gaffer.

Est.

[Tim Lehr]

Hi guys, 

thanks a lot for all the advice and encouragement! :-)

I'm currently in the progress of discussing this with my teachers and will keep you posted.

My project topic should be decided on before Christmas.

Cheers from Germany,

Tim

[Tim Lehr]

Hey guys,

a quick update from my side: After a couple of talks with my senior lecturer, I decided I will go in a different direction with my diploma R&D project to diversify my skillset a bit more.

However, I'm still very interested in Gaffer and MaterialX, so I will come back to the topic eventually. Maybe you guys have something in Gaffer / Appleseed already by then.

I thank you again for all your feedback on this matter. :)

Cheers,

Tim

Am Mittwoch, 8. November 2017 15:35:26 UTC+1 schrieb Tim Lehr:

[Matti Gruner]

All the best for the project you're tackling instead :) Viel Erfolg ;)

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