Maya users, how are you handling next gen shaders?

Snowfly

Maya doesn't cut it in this area. Have you had to download lots of standalone shader tools just to keep up? Or have you moved on to other packages?

I use Maya 4.5 and it's still good in other areas, (modeling, setup, unwrapping, ANIMATION, export to engines) but not in shaders. Has my software of choice become obsolete??

Daz

Well, it's behind the times in many areas for sure, but I don't think you can call it obselete when you consider how many studios use it.

But anyway, I'm not sure what you're driving at. What specifically are you referring to? Being able to display various shaders in realtime in the viewport? Most studios I would think use their own standalone tools for shader generation for whatever game engine they're using.

Snowfly

[ QUOTE ]
But anyway, I'm not sure what you're driving at. What specifically are you referring to? Being able to display various shaders in realtime in the viewport?

[/ QUOTE ]

Not necessarily in Maya's viewport, but I need a way to view my texture maps working in conjunction while I author them without having to export to the game engine every time.

I don't work in PC/console games so I don't have access to any proprietary software for this kind of work.

I'm looking at Nvidia's Cg tools, but it's a lot of bulk I'd have to add to my base install of Maya. Other tools I've tried (Crytek Polybump, ATI Normal Mapper, Melody) only allow you to view normal maps.

Joshua Stubbles

So...you're not developing for PC or consoles....
You're using Maya to create cell phone games then? I don't get it.

In any case, no current 3d app has "great" shader support. 3dsmax7 can view DirectX shaders in real time, in the viewport. This includes normal maps, and anything else you throw at it. Nvidia's CG tools are also quite good, if not bulky.

CrazyButcher

if you really want to work with realtime shaders there is probably no way around FXcomposor (NVIDIA) or RenderMonkey (ATI) both work on any dx card and have importers of different fileformats and also some exporters for max or maya I think.

CheeseOnToast

Maya 6 is much improved regarding viewing normal/spec/bump maps in the viewport windows. You just have to switch on "high quality" in the individual views. You can (finally) also see vertex lighting much like you will in-game.

Snowfly

Like I said, I use 4.5 and haven't found a compelling reason to upgrade. I've decided to add RenderMonkey to my pipeline. It's quicker to set up, the viewport is more responsive, it doesn't add a lot of bulk to your system, it's VERY artist friendly with the sliders, it uses non-hardware specific language..and it comes with some of the shaders I need in the samples folder. All this in comparison to FX Composer of course. I've been using RenderMonkey on my FX5600..no hitches at all, except some DX shaders don't run. All the OGL shaders work of course.

Only thing that's missing from RenderMonkey is animated previews.

Snowfly

And now I've gone and switched to FX Composer because RenderMonkey creates smoothing breaks along the UV seams. Very undesirable for texture work...

FX Composer takes a tad longer to get the hang of, it's a bit more involved, but worth the effort. I have to mix and match snippets of code to get the shaders I want... RenderMonkey has commonly used texture passes (color, normal, specular, etc.) as presets..