Maya polycount visualizer on mesh

Olingova

Hi guys!
I did some research and couldn't get it so i am asking here, did anyone ever used some kind of polycount visualizer for Maya? Of course i am not talking about the polycount displayed but just some heat map that would display a color depending of the polycount per sub-object (red being high white being low) a bit like the deformation visualizer of the UV but for polycount. I hope it's clear enough

TheGabmeister

Haven't heard of a tool like this before. Maybe it's enough to go to wireframe mode and infer the polygon count based on the density of the lines?

Olingova

Yup of course i can also just select the sub object and just see the displayed polycount but i thought having a super fast display could be hella cool  

poopipe

It'd be a bit of a dick to implement elegantly in maya I think. You'd need to dig into plugins etc. 
However, 
 It should be relatively simple to build a python script that set vertex colour based on polycount.
 It's relatively quick to vert color a whole mesh (vert by vert is incredibly slow) and provided you're not dealing with hundreds and hundreds of meshes it would probably be pretty quick to gather polycount data on the scene and work out your colours. 

Olingova

Yup sounds like a pretty good idea! Gotta go to python now

SebKaine

like poopipe said you  could run a script each time you need this that loop each object of your scene you want to evaluate , store min number and max number, then use a linear interpolation Color = lerp(current_nbPoly,min_number,max_number) remap this beetween 0,1 and then create a color fom this normalize value and store it as a vertex color that could be display directly in the viewport. it would work but , looping object is slow, running a script each time you need something is clunky . so definitly not a great option.

i though shaderfx might help , but i haven't see any option to access current nb poly of a geo. if i am wrong and shaderfx can access those info that would be the best option without to much R&D needed and fast efficient feedback.

Olingova

Didn't know Shaderfix at all, digging it up right now. I think i ll try to run the script first with the help of my kind programmer, if its really too slow i ll check the other solution. Thanks so much for your help!

SebKaine

Shaderfx is Maya best kept secret , close to abandonware by AD in favor of Arnold aiStandard viewport preview, but the tool is absolutely great and extremely powerful to push Maya Viewport 2.0 abilities to it's limit. The guys who code it Kees Rijnen unfortunatly for us leave AD, to go at PIxar.

poopipe

I'm not sure you can get that sort of information into a ShaderFX material - input connections seem to be pretty limited unfortunately. 

Olingova

Super interesting i didn't know that at all!!

SebKaine

there is also an other option, that might be interesting for learning houdini.
- you build a houdini digital asset (.hda) that do the task
- you load it in maya throw houdini engine
what could be really nice is that you would be able to benefit from auto poly reduce feature inside houdini on geo that have to much poly , 
you can also auto UV or transfer UV from high to low
A bit overkill for your case, but might open lot of possibilities to optimize heavy scene automatically.

https://vimeo.com/262842928
https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/vertex-density-heatmap/ 

Olingova

Actually it's this option i am going to right now, i am trying to get into Houdini and found a coworker to help me with that!! Hopefully if everything go fine i will go back to post it

SebKaine

well i thinks it's the best option cause you will be able to isolate problems ... and solve them automatically ...

if you have houdini question feel free to post them here also , i know houdini a little bit.
You have to be very persistant when you start to learn hou, but this will be rewarded !

Olingova

Haha that made my morning showed it to the houdini guy he totally relate to it