This exposes some simple attributes about the currently active camera to the user in a small interface. It avoids having to dig around in the attribute editor. The attributes in the script will update for the current camera when the script window is given focus (clicked on).
Download:
lcCamTools.mel
lcCamTools.bmp (shelf icon)
Goals:
1. Create a useful Maya viewport shader with many interesting functions and techniques to showcase a wide range of surfaces.
2. Write a Shader with a compartmentalized structure that is easy to read and dissect for people learning the basics of shader code.
This shader is quite large and complex and because of the decision to compartmentalize much of the code into distinct functions it is not performace optimized.
You must link 1-3 directional lights into the light slots at the bottom of the attribute list – I would recommend you use my lcRTShaderTools.mel to interact with the shader.
Download:
lcUberShader_1.2.cgfx
lcBasicShaderComponents.cgfx (this is a basic stub shader for people learing cgfx and wanting something simpler to start out)
BasicTextures.zip (some basic textures for use with the lcUberShader – don’t quite remember where they all came from – thank you to the original creators)
Known Issues:
* Although I provide 8-bit alpha support, Maya has transparency sorting issues when in this mode.
* Because there are so many attributes the Maya Attribute Editor can sometimes momentarily stall when updating/opening or switching techniques
* Only 1 input is available for an environment cubemap (this serves for both reflections and ambient color) – the shader assumes this cubemap is a properly filtered cubemap made with ATI’s CubeMapGen tool and that it has mipmaps
* When you are in Toon or LitSphere Techinques the shading color will be multiplyed by the Diffuse Texture, you can scale the contribution of the Diffuse Texture with the Diffuse Color Attr – but you cannot tint it.
* Cubemap and Hemispherical ambient color is multiplied by the Ambient Color Attr, it must be something other than black for those effects to show up.
Examples of the Shading Techniques and Options (click for full res) 
(click for full res) 
Please use this as inspiration for writing your own shaders, the code is very easy to take apart, rearrange and unfold. I have tried to comment the code in key places of interest. I also included a more basic shader with the same coding structure as a starting point for people interested in learing.
This script makes it easier to interact with HLSL and CGFX shaders in Maya. It performs shader naming, creation/sourcing, light linking, and other helpful tasks.
This update adds light rig scaling – depending on how a hlsl or cgfx shader is coded, scaling your lights can result in incorrect lighting. The ‘Light Rig Scale’ attribute moves the lights and scales their locator handles to give the visual impression of a ‘scale’ operation. (you can Ctrl+MiddleClick and horizontal drag this box to interactively scale).
Known Issues:
CGFX and HLSL shaders will only work with this script if their light position/direction and light color attributes are named properly in the shader file.
Convention: light attribute names should be as follows - 'light1Dir' or 'light1Pos' and 'light1Color'
ambient color/light attribute on the shader should be – 'ambientColor'
Download:
lcRTShaderTools.zip (includes shelf icon)
I am particular to command line tools and Nvidia offers us a nice and simple tool for .DDS compression.
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/texture_tools.html
Its super fast and runs on the GPU through CUDA (although that means you need the proper hardware and drivers)
nvcompress.exe is the particular tool I’m looking at here but there are a few other cool utilities included too.
You can get direct and simple access to the tool through Photoshop by running some simple scripts.
Some Examples:
for color > DXT5: DDS_DXT5_c.js
for normals > DXT5: DDS_DXT5_n.js
How to Install:
put the *.js files here /Adobe Photoshop CS*/Presets/Scripts
run from File > Scripts menu
(you must have nvcompress.exe’s filepath in your PATH Environment Variable or this wont work out of the box)
How it Works:
It saves a temporary copy of the currently selected Photoshop document to a .tga
It creates temporary .bat script containing the command line arguments for nvcompress.exe
Runs the .bat script on the temporary .tga and spits out a new file into the same folder as your original document (with the ‘filename’_DXT5.dds naming convention)
These scripts are very easy to edit, and can be made to run multiple compressions in sequence.
Documentation and command line arguments are available here:
http://code.google.com/p/nvidia-texture-tools/wiki/CommandLineTools
Take it – run with it.
Special thanks to Fredrik Brännbacka who posted Save As Map.js on CGTalk a few years ago – from which this script is directly based.
Maya Real Time Shader Tools Mel Script
I've been developing a mel script to make it easier to create/assign/interact with hlsl and cgfx shaders in maya. Linking lights, changing light colors, making sure you have the correct .mll's loaded - providing an easier interface for managing lights.
I made this originally for my fellow production artists at work - so they would actually use the CGFX/HLSL shaders that mimic our game engine - because otherwise its a bit complicated to set them up (artists are picky and fickle I know!)
It should work with any CGFX or HLSL shader as long as certain conditions are met, these are: light attribute names should be as follows - 'light1Dir' or 'light1Pos' and 'light1Color' ambient color/light attribute on the shader should be - 'ambientColor' (why no light intensity? light color value can easily be overdriven to accomplish the same thing)
Works with up to 3 directional or point lights (mix and match)
lcBasicShader.cgfx - this is a testing/stub shader written in CGFX
lcNextGenShader_1.3.fx - more interesting shader written in HLSL
I've done as much testing as I can reasonable stand on this script - I don't make any promises but myself and my fellow artists have found it helpful.
Eventualy I'll get around to translating my HLSL shaders to CGFX and adding fancy features. If you like writing mel scripts please feel free to use this script as a starting point or inspiration.
Download: lcNextGenShader_1.3.fx
Minor update addressing some order of operations issues to fix the way ambient color and ambient environment are applied and tweaks to default UI values.
Download: lcNextGenShader_1.2.fx
Update includes the following changes/additions:
A skin style SSS approximation for soft skin rendering, and a gloss map input for changing the size/shape of the specular highlight, also the cube map reflections can be blurred based on specular glossiness. Extra – you can now choose to use Valve’s half lambert diffuse style instead of the standard lambert mode.
useHalfLambert – use Valve’s half lambert diffuse shading model – wraps light around forms more for a softer look, useful for backlighting situations
sssWeight - the overall intensity of the SSS effect
sssBack - Color of the SSS edge bleed effect
sssRadius - how far across the surface the SSS effect will bleed
useGlossMap - use a gloss map texture yes/no
glossBlurWeight - the overall amount of blurring to the env cube map reflections - 0 turns off the blurring effect
glossBlurMax - the specular glossiness value after which no blurring will happen - usefull for tweaking the blur amount based on your spec glossiness value
glossMap - the gloss map texture (darker values dont work very well here - black turn off specularity)
Thanks goes to Joel Styles – inspiration for the sss function - reading over your hlsl code makes for good learning
Interested in Tutorials? I contribute many of the tutorials at www.cgbootcamp.com – we cover all kinds of topics in the 3D world – check it out.
Download: lcNextGenShader_1.15.fx
Update to the shader includes:
Fresnel attributes (fresnel no longer hard coded and now affects both cubemap reflections and specularity)
frBias – changes how far across the surface the effect occurs
frETA – bumps up the intensity in the ‘center’ area
frPower – Power/intensity multiplier on the entire effect
Real-time HLSL Shader for Maya’s Viewport and HLSL helper Mel script.
Download: lcNextGenShader_1.1.fx
Sample Cube Map: default_env_map.dds
![lcNextGenShader_example[1]](http://media.leocov.com/blog/hlsl/lcNextGenShader_example.jpg "lcNextGenShader_example[1]")
Techniques:
NextGen_SM3 – full shading (requires shader model 3 capable graphics card)
Diffuse_Texture_Only – only the diffuse texture or color, without any other effects
Normal_Map_As_Color – only the normal map color values (helps to find seams)
Specular_Only_SM3 – only the specular effects, light and specular map contributions (requires shader model 3 capable graphics)
Parameters:
backFaceLighting – for single sided polygon objects, the back sides will be lit correctly
ambientColor – a color ‘added’ on top of the final effect
diffuseColor – the Lambert diffuse shading color
specularColor – the Phong specular shading color
glossiness – controls the size of the Phong specular highlight
useDiffuseTexture – use the diffuse texture from ‘diffuseMap’ instead of diffuseColor
transparencyInDiffuse – use the diffuseMap’s alpha channel for transparency
specularInDiffuse – use the diffuseMap’s alpha channel for specular masking
diffuseMap – a diffuse texture
useNormalTexture – use a tangent space normal map texture
specularInNormal – use the normalMap’s alpha channel for specular masking
normalPower – intensity of the normal map effect, 0=no effect
flipGreen – invert the green channel of the normal map (default = true)
normalMap – a tangent space normal map texture
useSpecularMap – use a specularMap for specular coloring and masking
specularMap – a specular texture for highlight coloring and masking
useAmbEnv – use cubeEnvMap for ambient environment lighting – cube map is forced down in mip levels – make sure to use a cube map processed by ATI CubeMapGen for proper filtering
ambPower – intensity of the ambient environment lighting – also multiplied with the ambientColor
useReflEnv - use cubeEnvMap for environment reflections
reflPower – intensity of the environment reflections (has a slight hardcoded Fresnel effect)
cubeEnvMap – a cube map – preferably one processed by ATI CubeMapGen for proper filtering
useGlowTexture – use glowMap for self illumination effects
glowPower – the intensity of the self illumination effect
glowMap – a texture that is ‘added’ on top of the final shader result – self illumination/incandescence
useLightFalloff – use falloff on the point lights
decayScale – scale of the light falloff for the point lights
Note: There are some issues with overlapping transparency planes in Maya’s viewport when using realtime shaders – unfortunately this seems to be a problem with Maya and not the HLSL code itself – so there is no fix available.
Textures in TGA or DDS formats provide the best compatibly with the DirectX environment.
Download: lcHLSLTools.mel
Run with command – lcHLSLTools;
This makes it easier to work with my HLSL shaders – lets you name, create, and assign them – then make the lights and link them to the shader – you can adjust light color across all HLSL shaders – lastly you can reload all the HLSL shaders and File Texture Nodes
Any objects you have selected will be assigned the new shader when you press ‘Make New HLSL Shader’
Note: This tool was designed to work specifically with my own HLSL shaders, and wont work with other .fx shaders because the light names and attributes have been hard coded.
