Krakatoa MY doesn’t seem to export the native poly smooth options for poly matte objects. It would be really cool if that would be supported at some point in the near future.
It’s routine for our production to use Maya’s mesh poly smooth at render time. It’s a native switch on all poly objects in Maya. There are options for render vs. display and for surface continuity. We used it on every character we rendered for the last feature we worked on.
The switch is on the shape node Smooth Mesh–>Smooth Mesh Preview.
Also, it would be cool if we could use Maya fluid density(gradient, static or dynamic) as a matte object as well. We’re working on a space flythrough and it will contain a lot of diffuse fluids that need to render alongside Krak particles.
This is something that I’ve noticed also, and I would like to support it. If the mesh smoothing is an operation of Maya, than that would probably be easy to add. If it is implemented by each renderer, then we may hold off on it until after the first release. I will have to investigate to see how it works.
I don’t have any experience with Maya fluid density, so I don’t really know what this would entail. I’m guessing there must be a way for us to sample the Maya fluid density, so we can incorporate into Krakatoa. I’ll have to see what kind of information Maya gives us.
We have this in our 3dsmax version, and it is something we are planning to add in the Maya version, but it will probably be after the first release.
It’s a native Maya switch on all poly objects. It is not renderer specific – it’s part of the Maya system and automatically exists for ALL poly mesh objects no matter how they’re generated. It exists at the same level as faces, edges, vertices, UV’s, and all other polymesh attributes on a polymesh node in Maya. Oddly, however, Maya Software renderer doesn’t seem to support it, only Mental Ray. Probably because Autodesk is no longer really developing for the Maya Software renderer. They’re committed to MR as Maya’s native renderer. They’ve even handed over the matatomr plugin code to Nvidia(the new owners of Mental Images) in order to more completely integrate it within Maya.
The poly smooth attribute only exists for display and render. It does not increase the vertex order or poly count on the mesh for operations like: deformations, UV edits, mesh checks, or anything else the user chooses that doesn’t explictly increase/decrease polys or their ordering. The “smooth mesh” attribute only affects display and/or render. It’s so completely integrated that Autodesk has assigned the mesh smooth operation to the ‘3’ hotkey on the keyboard. You press the 3 key and the attr is switched on for your mesh and it smooths in the viewport. For example, just create a poly sphere and press ‘3’ – instant smoothed sphere.
There IS a smooth mesh modifier which actually increases the poly count(and adds construction history nodes to the node graph), but artists only use it to add necessary working detail to a mesh for essential design/modeling operations, not for smoother display or render.
Thanks for the info, it was very helpful! I’ve been digging around the Maya API and I think I’ve found a way to perform their polymesh smoothing. I’ll try adding it to Krakatoa MY.