Ok you Maya users, answer me this!

poopinmymouth

How the hell do you view FX files inside of Maya? The ASHLI shader is complete rubbish. I've tried loading fx files made within max, within rendermonkey, shaderfx, and three other separate FX generation packages, and none of them load up in maya. Or maybe they do, but none of them have loaded the shaders built in GUI, the way that max, and microsoft's directX standalone viewer have. Is there a plugin I can get, or another version of maya (using 8 here) that actually loads the most standard realtime shader format there is?

Vailias

I've toyed with this just a bit, and met with little success. However it looks like the shader needs some certain hooks for maya to be able to parse all of its stuff.. heres a link to a very basic FX shader that DOES work with maya's ashli shader
http://www.highend3d.com/maya/downloads/shaders/3949.html

it also has code for max so you can see the differences. I'll play with this later and see if I can add spec, normal, etc to it.

edit: just to clarify, I didn't write this just found it.

Rob Galanakis

Well I definately wouldn't call FX standard... one of the most prolific shader formats there is, but definately not standard...

In fairness, Maya is OpenGL based, so the work from going from FX (HLSL/direct X based) to openGL or GLSL real time display isn't easy, as it is for Max. So the pipeline isn't going to be straightforward.

My only suggestion is, take a look at highend3d shaders, like Vailias suggested, and see what differentiates them from a max fx file (which is also somewhat different from an FX composer fx file... which is different from a rendermonkey fx file...).

Once you figure it out (honestly, if you know HLSL, it shouldn't take more than a few hours to a day), I'm sure its not too difficult.

rebb

Maya also comes with the CgFX Shader Plugin out of the box, iirc.
You should just have to load it up in the Plugins-Manager - it's called "cgfxShader.mll" - the new Material Type will then show up in the Material Editor.
Maybe you can get those .fx files to work with that .

malcolm

Poop from my experience the whole cg ashli thing in Maya is plain broken. I've seen numorous e-mails on the maya users list at work about people trying to get it to work over the years. I remember at one point we tried getting a cg shader to work at my desk and the programmer who was trying to make it work was reading the code and said it was clearly not written to work in maya. Best part was that it was one of the example files shipped with maya, he had to edit it to get it to load.