Simple billboards in maya? (like speedtree). And shader question.

Makkon

Hey guys, having trouble finding information on how to make my own billboards in maya that always face the camera, I'm hoping do something along the lines of speedtree. Got any leads?

Also, trying to get the older maya version of XoliulShader to work, but I can't find any help on the subject on installing shaders for Maya 2011.


Thanks in advance!

wizzy886

Can't you just do a particle affect that tells the objects to always face the camera as you have wanted.

haiddasalami

Regarding older version of Xoliul Shader, go to window settings plugins and enable hlslshader. Apply a hlsl shader material to your object and assign it the .fx file.

Makkon

wizzy886: Right! And how do you go about doing that? All the tutorials I find don't explain how to do this.

haiddasalami: That seems to let me use the shader, but Xoliul just doesn't seem to work anyway with my set up HQrendering. Thanks for your help, though!

haiddasalami

Makkon wrote: »

wizzy886: Right! And how do you go about doing that? All the tutorials I find don't explain how to do this.

haiddasalami: That seems to let me use the shader, but Xoliul just doesn't seem to work anyway with my set up HQrendering. Thanks for your help, though!

Yeah, dont think you can use hlsl shaders while in HQ mode. Sucks, guess you want shadows.

Makkon

It's okay, it's mostly the fenzel or rim shading that I wanted. is there another way to do that?


Still, does anyone know much about particles and how I can use them to make trees like speedtree? I can't find any tutorial online that covers what I'm looking for.

kodde

Makkon> I am not familiar with speedtree. But if you want polygonal objects to face the camera you can use Aim constraint to get that effect. If your doing it with particles and the render type "Sprite" then they should be camera facing by default.

Toast

http://learnfobia.com/category-Maya-129/tutorial-Sprite-Based-Particle-Trees-2259.html

Like this?

Otherwise create plane and using an aim constraint with these settings:

aimConstraint -offset 0 0 0 -weight 1 -aimVector 0 0 -1 -upVector 0 1 0 -worldUpType "vector" -worldUpVector 0 1 0 -skip x -skip z CAMERA GEOMETRY;

Makkon

Thanks guys! Worked like a charm! Toast, that was exactly what I was looking for! Thank you