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index getting-started features developer

Developer

Github repo

https://github.com/MrLixm/Katana_Texture-Monitor

License

Unless you buy a specific license, this work is licensed by default under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.

Which can be resumed to:

  • No commercial use
  • You must give appropriate credit and provide a link to the license.
  • You can share, copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format under the same license.
  • You must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

(these restrictions might not apply if you bought a commercial license)

Abbreviations used

r-e: render-engine

re-tex: render-engine textures

tpt: texture processor tool (like maketx.exe)

Expanding Render-engine features

The tool can support any render-engine but is only shipped with Redshift, 3Delight and Arnold , with the last two having limited render-engine texture baking features.

You can find the Render-engine modules in Tabs\textureMonitor\script\render_engine.

Each r-e is represented by a .py file to its name. Here is first how this file is structured, and then a tutorial to modify it.

Render-engine File structure

You can add any function/variable in the file but you have to keep all the existing one (except _find_retexture_processor() which is only used locally).

name (variable)

(str) Name of the render-engine, use the name you give to the file. (ex: "Vray")

re_tex_ext (variable)

(str) Name of the extension of the re-tex, with the dot (ex: ".tx").

support_re_baking (variable)

(bool) Setting it to True will unlock feature for baking re-tex

PATH_PATTERN (variable)

((dict)(str:str)) This allow the tool to find children textures related to a filepath that use a token like .

Read the docstring above, you will need to have a look at your r-e documentation to know which token are supported.

r-e such as Arnold allow to use rendertime-evaluated token (such as which make impossible to find exactly what children it refers to. Accordingly a "wide" match is performed with "*".

re_textool (variable)

(str) Path to the re-tex processing tool, ex: "C:\\Redshift\\bin\\redshiftTextureProcessor.exe"

In the template I used a function to be sure the path exists and to return a different path depending of the user setup.

bake_retex (function)

(optional if re_tex_ext is disabled)

Send a command with the file_path arg to the texture processor tool. You can then perform a simple check if the texture.re_tex_ext exists and return False if not.

This function will be used in a QThread

Args:
    file_path(str):  file path to bake
Returns:
    bool:
        rstex_path if success else False if error
Raises:
    ValueError: if file_path arg is not a string

get_re_texture_nodes (function)

(required)

Iterate trough the node in the scene to find texture-Nodes. Each one is added in a dictionnary where the key is the katana node and the value is a list with list[0]=file path normalized and list[1] = file path katana parameter.

Returns:
    dict: Nodes3DAPI.ShadingNodeBase:[str, Parameter]

return_retex_from_path (function)

(required)

From a given filepath (no matter if it exists or not) return what could be the potential path of the re-tex one.

If you check that the re-tex didn't exists you can just return an empty string.(the result is going to be pick later by an os.path.exists())

Ex: D:\projects\textures\texture01.exr will return D:\projects\textures\texture01.tx for Arnold

Adding a render-engine

Duplicate the __template.py file and rename it with the name of your render-engine, starting by a capital letter. (ex: Vray). It is recommended to have a look at the existing one (Redshift being fully completed).

  • First step is to fill the variable as explained in the above section.

  • For the re_textool variable you can if you want skip the function _find_retexture_processor() and directly assign the path to the texture processor tool.

bake_retex()

is optionnal if you set support_re_baking variable to False.

Else using the subprocess module you can call the tpt passing it the file_path argument.

To know which command to send to the tpt you will need to read your r-e documentation

get_re_texture_nodes()

It is the core function of the tool as it allow to pick up the texture nodes.

The function is already built but you can of course re-write it as you wish as long as it returns the same dictionnary.

If you want to keep it like this you can replace the "___TO CHANGE___" as follow:

  • First: name of the r-e shading node. ex: ArnoldShadingNode

  • Second: name of the type set on the shading node for texture nodes.

    ex: TextureSampler for Redshift.

  • Third: python path of the parameter relative to the file path. To get it you can just hover your mouse over the parameter in the interface. You must add .value at its end.

    ex: parameters.tex0.value for Redshift

return_retex_from_path()

You should have nothing to touch in this function if your r-e doesn't doesn't anything fancy with the re-tex.

For example 3Delight add the OCIO colorspace used in the path (original_name + OCIO + .tdl) so i had to use the glob module to return the existing tdl file. If the file didn't exists it just return an empty string.

Expanding features

I tried to make the code as much flexible as I could to incorporate other features.

As an example you can find the TREEW_DATA dict in \constants.py which allow to easily add an other column to the tree widget.

Unfortunately for you who are reading this I didn't have time for now to make a detailed tutorial on how to use my code to expand features in the tool.

You can reach to me if you would like more detail about this: