pico for Maya

bonzaj

Hi,

I wanted to present our plugin for Maya called pico. It's basically a graphics engine and also a fast GPU based renderer. The basic rule is - "You have 100% preview of what you'll see in your game or standalone application". This includes logics and mechanics.

Here's a [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBXHwcNhJFk"]movie[/ame] showing how pico was used for making "Linger In Shadows" released by Sony for Playstation3.

Here you'll find more info, tutorials and download section:

picoMayaPlugin3.0

Thanks for your interest!

funshark

interesting.
I'll take a look

rebb

That looks quite amazing. :poly115:

Kawe

looks are being taken

claydough

Can u export to a standalone exe or viewer?

bonzaj

Hello,

Currently export and rendering to multiple frames/avi has been disabled. It's because of some recently reported bugs. We'll make an update in couple of days.

animax

video is not available anymore..

got another link

[ame]http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=uBXHwcNhJFk[/ame]

great stuff...

will try..

MM

sounds very interesting.

i tried to install it but saw this error

Error opening the file for writing:

\bin\cg.dll


and \bin\cgGL.dll

when i try to enable the plugin it does not load.

// Error: Unable to dynamically load : C:/Program Files (x86)/picoMayaPlugin/plug-ins/pico.mll
//
// Error: //
// Error: (pico) //



BTW, i tried this on a Vista64 machine. is this plugin 64bit compatible ?

bonzaj

MM: yes it was tested on Vista 64 bit. The installer was unable to modify your Cg installation. Maya 2008 is using an old Cg installation comparing to the one pico is using. That's why we are ovewriting it. Don't worry - Cg is perfectly backwards compatible and it will work with all your previous work. I guess you had Maya opened while installing. Try to do it again with closed Maya (we'll add a proper message in the next version of installer).

bonzaj

claydough: We have recently received a bug report for some of the features including exporting to standalone. We will successively add them in the next releases.

rooster

any plans for an 8.5 version? is it just 7 and 2008?

MM

i tried again but the plugin just wont load. i keep getting same error:

// Error: Unable to dynamically load : C:/Program Files (x86)/picoMayaPlugin/plug-ins/pico.mll

is your .mll file compiled for maya 64 bit version ?

i am on Maya 2008 x64 version, did you test on 64 version or 32 ?

bonzaj

Rooster: unfortunately we have only Maya 7.0 & 2008.
Hopefully it will change in January.

MM: I'll try to make another test run tomorrow and will write if we were able to reproduce that.

Cheers

funshark

I'm not sure but is there a difference between Maya 2008 and Maya 2008 rev2 concerning Plugins compilation?

warby

does it have additive/multiply/multiplyx2 scene blending in its shaders ? i couldn't see it in the tutorial videos !

bonzaj

I'm back.

Ok, I think I have the answers. Currently 2008 version is only for 32 bit Maya's. It works on Vista 64 bit with Maya 2008 32 bit. The new installer checks if you have proper maya installed. 64 bit version will be delivered as soon as we setup 64 bit compiler.

warby: for what do you need additive/multiply blending? Currently picoNativeShader supports transparency (alpha blending) and picoParticleShader supports all types of blending (including additive/multiply etc).

As for the news, we are uploading a new version and a new tutorial showing depth of field functionality.

Cheers!

bonzaj

bugo

HELL YEAH!

warby

all sorts of stuff muzzleflashes fire-hair get creative i want it for very specific glow effects around light sources

bonzaj

warby: aaah! of course you can do it! We'll post a special tutorial on Monday/Tuesday how to do it very very fast.

coopmaster

so there is no version for 2009 or what i got all excited for nothing

Toast

This looks very cool! Thanks for posting it bonjaz!

bugo

thats awesome bonzaj, im looking forward for the x64 version so i can test it

bonzaj

Hi, x64 version is scheduled for Monday.

MoP

This is really cool, thanks for releasing it!

coopmaster

is there gonna be a 2009 version or is there a way to make 2008 work in 2009

bonzaj

coopmaster wrote: »

is there gonna be a 2009 version or is there a way to make 2008 work in 2009

There will be of course a 2009 version but after a new year. Then I'm hoping to receive a pack of different versions.

Harryscary276

This looks amazing, unfortunately from reading your web sight my little ATI Radeon 1400 will probably not run it, but I will try

I like what I read about it being free for non commercial purposes, that opens it up for educational purposes be it school of own personal learning, something that dictates alot of respect, would you mind if I told my Modeling teachers about this plugin ?

bonzaj

Hi,

There's a new version available. Besides fixing some bugs it works on 64 bit Maya 2008!

There's also a new tutorial that covers creating glow.

Harryscary276: Of course you can show it to your teachers . the plugin should work on ATI. There will be some problems while trying to use some of the features like soft shadows or depth of field.

mahreeooce

First of all, I would like to say hello to everybody. I just came across this little jewel while searching for a plugin for real time previews in Maya. I must say, what I'm seeing in the videos is quite amazing. The demo "Into The Pink" is stunning (I assume it's the same engine as pico is based on, right?). I especially love the way it handles shaders - it just seems so easy and intuitive, and it feels like using standard maya materials, it's just so seamlessly integrated. Again, this is what I could determine from watching the demo and tutorial videos - which brings me to my problem: I have Maya 2009, and as I already saw, pico doesn't support that yet, but i can tell you, I'm eagerly waiting for the new year Just one more question - what shader version does pico support? Does it have support for SM4? Anyway, great piece of software - I can't wait to see how it matures. Big thumbs up here!

bonzaj

Hi,

mahreeooce: thanks for kind words. The news are that we already compiled a version for Maya 2009. There are also some new features available like cone step mapping (there's an auto generator of displacements maps inluded in the maya interface).

Cheers!

Spinks

this looks impressive, i will check it out for sure. thanks! (any chance of a 2009 x64 version? :P)

bonzaj

Maya 2009 x64 version is next in schedule.

bonzaj

Hello,

I've got some news. We have a new page completely dedicated to pico:

http://plastic-demo.nazwa.pl/wordpress/?cat=9

Bu that's not all. There's a new version available in the downloads section
which finally enables you to render to image and video streams. More over
we have fixed the bug with non rigid deformations. It means that all types of skinning, blendshapes, etc. are now fully operational.

Cheers!

bonzaj

warby

still haven't gotten around to trying it but it sounds real awesome !

bugo

today i´ve test it out more deeply and i got amazing results with glow in one of my models. I wanted to know why the SSAO is disable when i try to set it up. Also I can´t find the config to make shadow with directional or point lights. Can you give me some help bonzaj?

bonzaj

Hi bugo,

As for the SSAO - we are rewritting the old one - that's why we disabled it so there will be no need to create SSAO2 node for backwards compatibility.

As for the shadows for other types of light than spot. They'll be added pretty soon - I'll let you know . I'm glad that people request more and more features. Thanks to that I know what is more important and what is not.

Cheers

bugo

Thanks a lot Bonzaj, this plugin is awesome. Now i cant even think about using only maya itself to show my models, with 16aa this gets very accurate and with a great quality to show. The diffuse scattering is pretty great!

I wanted to mention is on the texture mixer node
Is there a way to use a black and white map to mask the blend method between 2 textures? I couldnt find a way even using alpha blend method. Let´s say i want to make a whole terrain mask with a gray map and i want to blend 2 tiled textures on this terrain, whenever alpha map gets white it shows the 2nd texture. Is that possible with texturemixer?

Another good point also would be good to have on the buffer not only color, depth and normal data, but also the specular data in a way we can use only the specular to have bloom or something like that. Or we can plus the specular into color at the buffer to get a really nice quality and better bloom effect. Maybe with only expressions i already can do that? Let me know.

A good idea also would do some icons to help on the hypergraph or even make a new hypergraph window for the shaders, post process and textures and the connection inputs to be seen and organized. Of course, that may be pretty awesome but also hard to do.

I think i found a bug trying to put a map on the Shininess input of the native shader. It says is getting an error and it is a RGB Targa file. I tried connecting only the R but no work as well.

I think i´m asking too much in here. Please if yes, consider only as a feedback, bugs and some ideas.

bonzaj

Hi bugo,

Thanks for your great feedback.

1. To get an alpha blending in texture mixer you need to have a 4 component texture (png or TGA) and switch operation to alpha. This NEEDS to be changed. We'll make opacity attribute texturable and this will lead you to exactly what you want.

2. We will check the specularity bug.

3. As for outputting separate specular - this is on our high priority list - I've already received this request more than once.

4. What you need in hypershade is the swatches (shader and texture icons) - they are also on our list .

We will gladly fix everything as soon as we'll come back from our winter break (we'll be back on 5th of January).

I'm happy that you've overcome our UI so quickly

Cheers!

bonzaj

bugo

Yeah, it was pretty quick to learn, here are some more:

- Would be great to have a better way to select the post process effects and delete it, I am now using the keyboard to find it, hehe, and then selecting it by name and deleting the node.

- For the blending things, would be nice to have modulate 2x or modulate 4x effect in a way we could blend the lightmap pretty easy.

- I´m sorry, i didnt understand how to make the 4 component thing, could you give me some help on it?

All the best man. This is rocking!

pior

Hi Bonzaj! I really enjoyed the demos posted in the original link. Passed it around at work, everyone who saw it was interested!

However I cannot seem to find the download link anymore? I am looking for the maya7 and 8 releases.

Also, great choice for a dog :P Hound Dogs are the best, ever!

Pedro Amorim

pior: http://plastic-demo.nazwa.pl/wordpress/?cat=10

pior

Oh okay I missed the little submenu. Thanks!

Nizza_waaarg

aww, site isn't working for me. Anyone have another download link, would really like to try this out, looks great.

warby

its 2 posts up from yours

http://plastic-demo.nazwa.pl/wordpress/?cat=10

warby

ok i tried it and i am mighty impressed but can you guys make the camera controls work in the preview window ? you know alt + lmb mmb and rmb to their respective actions

bugo

Yeah, I thought that too, but, in a way Pico lets you customize your controls to control whatever object is on the scene, I believe that is why they wont make the controls inside the engine. Not sure tho.

bonzaj

Hello. We are back.

So the new release is ready. We fixed some of the bugs mentioned here (texture mixer has now texturable opacity and shininess bug has been fixed). There were some nice changes made to cone step displacement generator (you can now save your map to disc). But that's not all!

The two most important changes are:

- we now have ports to all Maya's starting from 7.0 (this includes 8.5, 2008, 2009 in both 32 and 64 bit versions)
- the picoStandAlone viewer has been released. It means that you'll be able to export your scene to package file and share it with others. You will be able to add interactions to your scenes allowing them to become realtime presentations.

Have fun

bugo

Thats awesome, do we have SSAO ready?

Thanks a lot Bonzaj!

bonzaj

Hi bugo,

It's scheduled for the next release (around Friday).

bugo

bugo

Great work doing the blending better, this will ease the way of making terrains and details on buidlings, etc.

Is there a way you can set the drawing order for each object?