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XoliulShader 2

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  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Just get write rights for the Max directory, fixes it too. That's what they did at work for me.
  • dii
    Really bummed. For the life of me I cannot get this to install.
    3DS Max 2012, all updates, rendering set to DX9, running in Administrator mode using Run Script gives me this:

    Goddammit.jpg

    Even the installation images fail to load, clicking any of the buttons (uninstall/manual install) results in errors saying it can't locate the temp directory. (note this is trying to install from the Scripts folder in the 3ds Max directory)

    As far as I can tell .net is fully updated as well (though admittedly I'm not sure how to check, trying to download the .net4 framework from the MS site results in repair/uninstall as the only option so I'm assuming it's the latest?)
  • sneakymcfox
    I have the same issue as Dii, I've tried everything suggested from running in admin to updating .net but i still can't find a way to get it to work, hoping for a solution soon
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Have you tried manual installation?
  • dii
    Yeah manual was a no go, I identified the problem though thanks to the posts on the last page (which I apologize but just sort of glossed over heh)

    It downloaded as a zip, I thought that was normal and just assumed the help documentation wasn't accurate when it required a .mzp file. Noticed on the last page evidently the zip was supposed to be the mzp that is referenced everywhere. Like the other dude, I was using Opera to download so yeah, Opera users unite.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Okay this is becoming quite a problem too, I gotta figure out if my provider has a server setting that forces renaming or something on some browsers
  • dii
    A simple short term solution is you could just put the mzp inside an actual zip file. Not ideal but less problematic.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Rar file is better since it would just confuse people more as a zip. I wonder how RenderHJS does it, he's got a direct link to the MZP on his page..
  • roosterMAP
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    roosterMAP polycounter lvl 14
    make sure u open 3ds max as an admin. that fixed all problems for me. :)
  • gsokol
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    gsokol polycounter lvl 14
    Loving the shader so far..works perfectly for the project I'm working on.

    I came across a little issue, I don't know if anybody else came across this, or if its even an issue you are concerned with, but it is in regards to working on multiple computers.

    So I have been working on a model from home, and I had a Dif, Spec, NM, and Reflection map, I saved everything in my dropbox, to open it up at my office, but I forgot to save my reflection map. So When I open the material editor I get an error for the image missing, and at that point I can't modify the material to replace to texture or anything, my UI looks like this:

    Xoliulshaderismadatme.jpg

    I figured Id let you know, in case you may want to handle this type of error in a friendlier way.

    Other than this, everything is working out great so far!
  • nebukadnezar
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    nebukadnezar polycounter lvl 8
    The Shader is totally awesome! It works great.

    But I also encountered some errors since i installed it.
    This happens in Scenes without the Shader being used.

    - When doing texture Baking the Projection Cage can not longer be displayed in Shaded mode. This is really annoying.

    - Render to texture dialogue takes more time to open up, and max stops responding for a short time.

    - If i create a Skylight, I get an error message:
    unknown property - Updatelightslist

    I didn't have these issued prior to installation, would be great if you could have a look at those.

    I'm using 3Dsmax 2012 64-bit.

    keep up the great work!

    regards,
    nebukadnezar
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    The Shader is totally awesome! It works great.

    But I also encountered some errors since i installed it.
    This happens in Scenes without the Shader being used.

    - When doing texture Baking the Projection Cage can not longer be displayed in Shaded mode. This is really annoying.

    - Render to texture dialogue takes more time to open up, and max stops responding for a short time.

    - If i create a Skylight, I get an error message:
    unknown property - Updatelightslist

    1: this is because you are in hardware mode. It only does this if you used a shader in the scene before, not on a clean, blank scene, I just tested. This is a 3DS Max limitation, nothing I can do about it, just turn off hardware shading again.

    2: It takes a while the first time, after that it's normal? I can't remember this being any different..

    3: I guess you're using the shader during baking? I'll look in to this, though I do hope you're not trying to use a skylight with the shader.
    edit: apparently the RTT dialog messes something up, because this error only happens after closing the RTT dialog.

    George: interesting, will test this.
  • disanski
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    disanski polycounter lvl 14
    Hey there. I only had a chance to test the shader and it is great. Fantastic work guys.

    I also experience the same problem as nebukadnezar with the RTT dialog taking forever to load. At first I did not think it could be your shader but now that i think about it it is very possible that this started happening after i installed it. I am using max 2012 , 64bit, win7.

    Edit : to be more precise I never used the shader on this scene.
  • alexdubbeat
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    alexdubbeat polycounter lvl 8
    when i loading xoliul shader into material slot from mat list i got these three errors
    xoliulbugs.jpg
    here is how it looks like when i trying to apply it to my mesh
    xoliulbug.jpg
    and all graphic icons in all slots completely white and doesn`t work...
    i`m using max 2010 on xp 32.
    any ideas?
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Alex, please read the help again, the fix is in there.
  • alexdubbeat
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    alexdubbeat polycounter lvl 8
    i`m sorry, maybe i`ve missed something. :poly131: anyway thanks for reply :)
  • Nysuatro
    Small update: as some of you may have read, my laptop totally died on me. I have not found a way to get my pc from belgium to uk. So now i am saving some money for buying a new desktop. So a little bit more patient and the new version Of the xoliulshader will be coming.

    Btw:do not be afraid to post some request for features or maybe even a tool. I do not promise anything, but i can always take a look if it is possible or not to make it for you all.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Btw I made a really small fix that solves the RTT dialog conflict, it's only in the Full version, not the slim, I'll update that later (very little time this week)
  • MrOneTwo
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    MrOneTwo polycounter lvl 12
    I just started using Xoliul 2 and i get those washed out maps with hardware shading. Is there a way to fix that ? Texture shows what I am aiming at but it does not look like it should :(

    HGr4M.png
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Might be gamma correction, normally the shader disables those on install though.
  • MrOneTwo
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    MrOneTwo polycounter lvl 12
    Gamma correction is off.

    edit: it was exposure control in hardware shading settings ;p I just turned it off and it works ok.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Oh must be because you changed the exposure settings at one point. If you never use the Photographic Exposure or anything related to that, this doesn't happen. I might add this to the help.
  • MrHobo
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    MrHobo polycounter lvl 14
    Weird issue im having here. Gamma is off and so is exposure control, but all my textures are way off in the shader, same thing for the texture preview window.

    The way it should look
    map1diffuse.jpg

    The way it does look
    wtfhx.jpg
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Does it do it with the core FX shader? What about other shaders ?
    It's a gamma issue for sure, just do a 2.2 correction on "bad" results from 3DS Max, you'll see they look just like your "good" version. Might be your Photoshop is just showing the wrong thing, or it's something with embedded sRGB profiles..
  • MrHobo
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    MrHobo polycounter lvl 14
    You're right (Of course), it was Gamma. Interestingly enough it turns out that I actually need gamma correction turned on instead of off for things to display properly... Thanks for your help, super appreciate the support your giving out. May many small children build shrines in your honor.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Hey np man, I don't mind as long as people read the help for common problems ;) Things like your situation are an exception though. It's a bit weird you actually need it on, but OK. Thing to remember is, my shader never does any kind of (gamma) corrections to your textures themselves, except for the cubemap gamma, which is optional (and tied to lighting, which the gamma does affect). That means it's some kind of thing with Photoshop - Max interpretation of bitmaps.
  • joebount
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    joebount polycounter lvl 13
    Something I noticed with your shader in the past and still present here, is that it makes Max crash when you have the material editor opened and reload multiple times your textures (quite big ones I admit).
    That never happened to me with 3 point shader.

    Except that, really nice, now I just wish it had detail maps with mask ;)
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    You got this with the core FX shader? That's really just Max' file handling, nothing I can do about it.
    Also, I'd really advise you not to use 4k by 4k or higher texture maps, nobody ever does that in production...
  • waedoe
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    waedoe polycounter lvl 8
    having problems with normals displaying correctly. Installed it the shader fine runs fine on other models. just this model is having problems. for some reason the normal dont display correctly. ive checked the gamma and other setting ive flipped the green and red and blue channels still getting these wierd errors on the normal map. FYI the normals display correctly in 3point.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Are you using the Quality Normals modifier with 3Point? My shader doesn't have that.
  • joebount
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    joebount polycounter lvl 13
    Like I said, I don't have the same issue with 3 points shader. My textures are 2k max.
    I must admit that I have quite a few shaders active (5).
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    What happens if you manually flip channels like green in Photoshop? Some people have reported to have this issue, I'm quite surprised by that to be honest..
  • c22dunbar
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    c22dunbar polycounter lvl 14
    Would You consider adding AO map along with a channel switcher? Right now it's the only thing that i find missing in XS.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    We used to have a lightmap in there, but it was cut for XS2 since I got the impression it was very rarely used + it caused a whole bunch of technical issues with the UI.
    So not that likely for it to be added again... You could use the legacy core FX files however.
  • barnesy
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    barnesy polycounter lvl 9
    Hey Xoliul,
    I seem to be having a problem with the alphas. I am using a PNG image with a layer mask. I have set transparency to best and disabled hardware shading. For some reason the alpha in the hair will make the other hair transparent when they are overlapping in screen space. The paint over is supposede to show that the jagged line where the hair behind the painted strand is also invisible when infact there should be hair there :s

    alpha-2.png

    I have tried altering the clipping treshold and changing the technique from one to two sided.

    Any help on this would be really appreciated :)

    Thanks
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Yeah for some reason clipping isn't working anymore, at least not in 2012.
    You have to realize this a limitation of hardware rendering, and that it really is up to Autodesk to try and fix this. I can create a few limited hacks to try and improve it, but it's by no means a full solution.
    It says so in the Help btw, did you read it ?
  • barnesy
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    barnesy polycounter lvl 9
    It completly slipped my mind to be honest. I was getting very frustrated. I am looking at the help file now though and it's awesome :)

    "Many times, you can simply fix the problem by duplicating the offending geometry and then deleting the old geometry (the original copy), keeping the newest copy."

    I tried that and it now works fine, Thanks for your help!
  • [PB]Snoelk
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    [PB]Snoelk polycounter lvl 7
    did autodesk change something with normal or light presentation or access in fx shaders ? i have fx shaders that work fine in max 2010 and max 2011 but in max 2012 they seem broken. the normals or the lighting seems broken. if i have a mesh with mutli materials on it the normals seem to get different lighting positions for each submaterial. but there is only one light in it. do i have to change some stuff in shaders or its a new bug with max 2012 ??
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Never noticed that really. Try reset Xform, make sure you don't use Nitrous, etc...
  • charlyxxx
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    charlyxxx interpolator
    Xoliul [/ B]
    Hey Xoliul, thank you very much for this shader! I really like it! But i have some problems with this shader.

    First of all is resolution of Grab Picture. I need a resolution of 1024 by 768, how to get it?

    nd369P6b.jpg

    and the second problem - sometimes there are strange bugs and image distortion.

    77x1SVO7.jpg

    Original:

    T1Li2Qy6.jpg

    My system:
    Amd 6 CPus 2,77 Ghz
    8 Gb Ram
    1 Gb VideoCard Radeon 4800HD
    3d max 2012 Sp2
    Windows 7 Sp 1 x64

    The third problem - do not want to be installed on another computer:

    Core2Duo
    4 gb Ram
    256 mb Videocard Radeon x1600 Pro Series

    The problem is the same as that of god3ila

    Did all of the following:

    I do have XoliulshaderUI folder,
    fx files too (Xoliulshader_2.0.fx, Xoliulshader_2.0_max2009.fx)
    I changed to direct3d 9.0 as it was in the intro ~ video.
    I downloaded Sp2 for max, and latest dotnet.
  • Michael Knubben
    Charlyxx: it will take the ratio of your viewport, naturally. Press ctrl-x to get closer to the natural ratio of your screen, or just take a sufficiently large size and crop it to what you need.
  • beautifulrobot
    first off, thanks for the excellent shader. it's guys like you who give freely to the community & promot excellence like this one of the things i really enjoy about my chosen profession & avocation. thanks much (& i'll be firing up the paypal shortly)

    i've been experimenting with your shader & having lots of fun with it. but i've noticed some quirkiness when it comes to reflections and the cubemap. i've followed through the smcars tutorial setup video & i'm using the environment dome you supplied.

    image A (in the attached image) illustrated a simple setup with the hdr applied to the dome and a generated vertical cross .dds as the env. cube (as per instructions in the help file). reflections are set on however fresnel multiplier is set to 0.0 & the scene looks as i'd expect.

    image B is the same except the fresnel multiplier is set to 0.1. notice the "light" in the hdr is reflected on the backside of the sphere. i would expect fresnel to be relecting the environment to the back of the sphere instead of the environment facing the front.

    do i have something set up wrong? am i expecting to see the wrong thing?

    thanks guys!fresnelProblem.jpg
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Charlyxxx: That's autodesk's fault. Hires screengrabbing doesn't work with Soft shadows. I've reported the problem to them, haven't got any reaction...
    The resolutuon proportions are dependant on the scale of your Max viewport. Just squash the window or crop it afterwards in PS, really.

    Beautifulrobot: looks like the ambient lighting orientation isn't matching up with the reflection orientation. I'll check it myself, though I remember this was correct when i added environment rotation...

    Edit: I've got a list of stuff to update/fix, but not so much time + we're waiting for Robbert-Jan to get a desktop.
  • Graham
    Hey, Thanks for working so hard on XoliulShader. I've been using it as an important part of my toolbox for testing normal maps and showing off models ever since my teacher revealed it to me in my course. I have a question though, I'm still using 1.5 because no matter how much I tinker, I can't get version 2 to look as good as 1.5. Right out of the box in max 2010 i can slap on 1.5 and see the exact results i am looking for. But if I use v2, its as if the lighting is not working right, there are very black areas everywhere. And in my case, 1.5 and 2.0 are both not looking right when I try in 2012. Is there a little trick, or a check box I am missing or something right under my nose that I am not seeing, to get the same results I get with v1.5 in 2.0? Also. I am talking about default lighting situation here, I haven't placed any omni lights in this situation. But that should be okay just to get a quick preview of the normals right?

    xoliul_problem01.jpg
    xoliul_problem02.jpg
    Thanks in advance!
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Could you show screenshots? Lonewolf complained about not getting things to look the same, but in the end he was just a bit confused by the new version and not using the correct settings.
    Also, what abpout presets? I mean, they should be there as "1-click make pretty" solution...
  • dii
    Looks like you need to flip your normals to me. Should be a checkbox under the normal map to invert the green channel.
  • Graham
    Inverting the green channel only makes things worse. And the lighting presets also give same result, but hardly visible normals and darker lighting in both 2010 and 2012. The screenshots are all default settings, only thing I changed was inverting the green. Are there any sample scenes available so that I can see if a properly setup scene will display right for me?
  • charlyxxx
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    charlyxxx interpolator
    Xoliul
    Thank you very much! And how about the third problem?
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Hey graham, sorry i didn't see your screen, dropbox is blocked at work.
    There's a bug where the flip green button seems to flip the red channel instead. try doing it a bit manually in photoshop to see if it's that.
    This is at the top of my list to fix honestly. Might even do it tonight..

    Charlyxxx: "do not want to be installed", does that mean it just gives the error: can't install message? it's just admin issues then, really.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    I've just tested the whole flip channel problem on my PC, it's completely fine here. I changed the code around to what I at first thought was going to be a fix, but that messed up all my previous baked assets. Could you perhaps email me your handgrenade model+normalmap to test with, Graham ?

    edit: tested even further: there is no visual difference between v 1.5 and v 2.0 on my machine, other than quality normals working with v 2.0 and not v1.5. You might want to enable those with the toggler script, see what it does.
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