Currently, instancing a PRT Loader’s parameters to another PRT Loader is really hard, if not impossible. This makes it really, really hard to have a viewport proxy PRT Loader that has parameters other than the viewport percent, limit, and color separate.
I would like it if we could have a second optional file list for viewport display. That way I could load a different PRT file than used for the render.
These files could thus be smaller than the render PRTs and require less I/O, since they would not need to have density or mapping channels.
This would also let me replace the data channels for the viewport, so I could copy the normal channel to the color and show THAT in the viewport as the color, giving me a pseudo shading effect for free in the viewport, but let me use the proper color channel in the render. Likewise, I could remove any points from the viewport dataset that had density <.1 or so, since they contribute less to the overall look.
I could be wrong on this, but it seems like nothing in the viewport gets reused in the render, so I don’t think it would mess up the rendering process. The UI would just be duplicated, so the Particle File Loader would just show up twice (if the viewport proxy mode was enabled).
We had the idea to allow the automatic generation of (local?) proxies based on the actual rendering files for faster previews.
What you describe would be a good infrastructure to allow for that and more (as you could have proxies that are completely different).
At this point, we are not crazy about complicating the PRT Loader’s UI even more (we are trying to reorganize it a bit to simplify it), but I will log the wish for sure.
An alternative would be to keep all files in a single list and have the means to make any of the files a viewport only, a render only or both. This way, you could switch the function of a file on the fly by just changing its flag. We also wanted to add a Disable/Enable option to let you turn off sequences temporarily. Using this idea, every sequence could be
*On in Render and Viewport
*Off in Render, On in Viewport
*On in Render, Off in Viewport
*Off in Render and Viewport
This sounds like a much more general and flexbile approach because you can change your mind at any time and decide not to render a sequence or use a single partition as the viewport representation without using all those First N and Limit options… Whether it would be a local one or on a network drive would be up to you…
We would have suggested that next, as that’s been a pain for us. My wish about better distinguishing between “Every Nth” and “First N” was a result of lots of human error during proxy making. Likewise our wish for RPManager support.
What you describe would be a
good infrastructure to allow
for that and more (as you
could have proxies that are
completely different).
Putting the normals in the color channel has been REALLY nice for viewports, since we don’t have real viewport shading. But it messes up your renders, obviously.
At this point, we are not
crazy about complicating the
PRT Loader’s UI even more (we
are trying to reorganize it a
bit to simplify it), but I
will log the wish for sure.
It would make it longer, but it wouldn’t add any “new” buttons. What you have now would work fine.
An alternative would be to
keep all files in a single
list and have the means to
make any of the files a
viewport only, a render only
or both. This way, you could
switch the function of a file
on the fly by just changing
its flag. We also wanted to
add a Disable/Enable option to
let you turn off sequences
temporarily. Using this idea,
every sequence could be
*On in Render and Viewport
*Off in Render, On in Viewport
*On in Render, Off in Viewport
*Off in Render and Viewport
So in the “edit” window you would have a viewport and render column and you could check and uncheck each? Would seem to do the trick, unless for some reason you wanted files to load in a different order for viewport and render. That would be a rare case, and would be solved by simply having no overlapping.
If you could have little checkboxes in the regular PRT loader UI, that would be even better, but you’d have to have some sort of custom UI gizmo thingy for that.
Yeah, the checkboxes seem the way to go. That way you could easily move a PRT file from viewport to render or back without having to browse for it.
This sounds like a much more
general and flexbile approach
because you can change your
mind at any time and decide
not to render a sequence or
use a single partition as the
viewport representation
without using all those First
N and Limit options… Whether
it would be a local one or on
a network drive would be up to
you…
Yeah, good point. If you had the render files on the network and the viewport files locally, that would be really nice (for those who don’t want to use the forthcoming path-mapping). Your Deadline renders would work fine, but your viewport performance wouldn’t suffer.
Some more things that are not mentioned anywhere yet:
The Edit... (File Sequence Manager) window provides a bunch of new menu items to toggle Viewport and Rendering state of selected or all entries on and off, including the option to Solo selected tracks (when you select a sequence and select Solo, it will be turned on and all others will be turned off regardless of their current state)
In the Preferences rollout, there is a new preference for adding multiple partitions to the PRT Loader. The options are:
Set ALL Sequences To Display In BOTH Viewport And Renderer
Set NO Sequences To Display In Viewport, ALL To Display In Renderer
Set ONLY FIRST Sequence To Display In Viewport,ALL In Renderer
Set ALL To Display NEITHER In Viewport NOR In Renderer
I like the third option the best because it shows one partition only in the viewport, but all to render - this makes loading of large partition counts much easier.
The “toggle” items aren’t toggling. Meaning if I select several PRT’s, I can set them all to be on or off, but they aren’t toggling based on their previous state. Not sure if that’s design or not.
No you are not, it is a valid request. I will add "Toggle Selected In Viewport", "Toggle All In Viewport", "Toggle Selected In Renderer", "Toggle All In Renderer" options to invert the current states, whatever they are.
Here are some patched script files - copy the content to your Krakatoa\Scripts folder.
These fix the UPDATE VIEW CACHE button and add the Toggle options to the Editor.
Also, I removed an extra option in the viewport colors list that shouldn't have been there since we added the "Density->Mapping" option to do the Density Shading