Project 2 - Geometry Printing


In class we went over specific Mel commands to get point information from vertices, simlar to the matrix project. This process allows for copying of other variables and primitives onto the specific point positions. We applied this theory to attatching new geometry; from Renderman "blobbies" to "b-splines", then the crowning acievement of .rib files onto the mesh itself.

Printing .rib frog mesh onto frog vertices

Here is a test of a .rib frog mesh copied to the frog's vertices, with a rendertime of about 3 minutes.

Same test with .rib scaled smaller.



Process and Other Experiments

In the following images, I have used an existing frog model within Maya and experimented with different printing techniques. The end result being, .rib archives copied to a .rib with vertex information.

Below, is an image of a Mel sphere command directly copied to a RIB archive of the frog's vertex information.

Below is a test of a .rib sphere copied to the frog's vertices.

Curves through Renderman 




global proc meshOut(string $path)
{
  
// Find maya selection and count verts of that selection
string  $obj[] = `ls -sl`;
int     $num[] = `polyEvaluate -v $obj[0]`;
string  $shp[] = `listRelatives -shapes $obj[0]`;
string  $shape = $shp[0];
  
// Open file and write curve header
int $fileid = fopen($path, "w");
fprint($fileid, "AttributeBegin\n");
fprint($fileid, "Basis \"b-spline\" 1 \"b-spline\" 1 \n\tCurves \"cubic\" [" + $num[0] 

+ "] \"nonperiodic\" \n\"P\" [");
  
// Loop over vertices and write points to file
for($n = 0; $n < $num[0]; $n++) {
    $vert = $shape + ".vtx[" + $n + "]";
    $pos = `pointPosition -local $vert`;
       
    $str = ($pos[0] + $x) + " " +
           ($pos[1] + $y) + " " +
           ($pos[2] + $z) + "\n";        
  
    fprint($fileid, $str);
    }
  
// Write curve footer and close file
fprint($fileid, "]\n\"constantwidth\" [0.05] \n");
fprint($fileid, "AttributeEnd\n");
fclose($fileid);
  
}
  
// Run procedure
string $path = "/stuhome/vsfx419/archives/curveTestHP.rib";
meshOut($path);


Blobbies

We started working with blobbies, and I have the same printing/querying technique with the other projects, but I am using blobbies on the surface.
I started out with a pretty aggressive mesh, 500K vertices.

Then I started to slowly take away the blobbies and got a "styrofoam" effect.

Next I took advantage of fake ambient occlusion and rendered out the same files