Hiding Maya Standard Nodes'attributes?

[oodini]

Hello,

I do my renderings in Maya with an external renderer. Its camera nodes are not so complex as Maya ones.
I do have a home-made plug-in which does the export to the external renderer, but I'd like to hide the unused camera parameters (in the Attributes Editor) when my render globals are set for my external renderer.

How to do that ?

Actually, I'd like to change the MEL template of the standard camera when I intend to use the external renderer.

Thanks.

[joojaa]

Rewrite the mel and hook it up to event wich gets triggered whan you load the renderer

[daniel-faust]

I don't quite understand what you are saying about hooking up an ui script to an event, I think you also mentioned this in another thread where I suggested to copy original Maya files into another directory so that they get executed instead of the original ones and thus allowing the developer to alter the default behaviour, which also might be propitiate to do in this case, if there's an AEcameraTemplate or whatever builds the AE content for the camera.

probably I'm curious because I created a rather nasty kludge in order to get a combo box containing the render resolutions into the top statusbar on the side of the render button in order to avoid having to open the render globals for rendering at a specific resolution. I had to duplicate a lot of code because much of the functionality of the predefined resolutions was created not until the render global dialog popped up. So maybe there was an easier solution with this hooking you mention.

[oodini]

Actually, I'd like avoiding to alter the standard files.
Would it be possible, when loading the plug-in, to say Maya : "now, for this node, use this template" ?

[oodini]

By the way, how do the rendering plug-ins (Maxwell, Final Render...) to ass a section in the template of the cameras without modifying the original templates ?

[daniel-faust]

Mental ray is being added through the following lines in the AEcameraTemplate.mel

CODE
// mental ray camera attributes
if (exists AEmentalrayCamera)
  AEmentalrayCamera $nodeName;

As I said, you could create a copy of AEcameraTemplate.mel and place that copy in another directory and add that directory to the script path in the .env file.

I don't have another renderer installed, but I guess that they also modify the AEcameraTemplate.mel. But that would create problems if one renderer overrides the changes from another renderer. I'm interested in a solution to this problem, too.

Maybe Joojaa could explain what he means with hooking up an event, in case that this is a non-invasive method.

[oodini]

It seems that Maxwell uses what suggests Joojaa.

For the camera, they use a script called maxwellShapeNodeAEhook.
You call in this script a function called maxwellAddCustomCameraAttributes :

CODE
editorTemplate -beginLayout "Maxwell Render";
    editorTemplate -label "F-Stop" -addDynamicControl "mxFstop";
    (...)
editorTemplate -endLayout;

Not much info in the docs about this addDynamicControl option.

And I don't know when and from where call this script.

[daniel-faust]

The -addDynamicControl flag is similar to the -addControl flag. The difference is that it works on dynamic attributes. So mxFstop is a dynamic attribute added to the camera. This is used instead of -addControl, because -addControl does not preserve the position of the control in the layout (and I think also in the channel box). They could as well have used a -addControl, but then the control would show up at the bottom of the layout.

For example this is also used in particles
editorTemplate -addDynamicControl "tailSize";
remember that tailSize only gets created when you request it, since it is dynamic. If it would not be added with -addDynamicControl thenit would not appear where it does. (You can test this by temporarily changing this line to -addControl and creating a particle and selecting streaks and show attributes).

I'd really like to take a look at the entire file.

[oodini]

Thanks for the info about the switch.

You can download the demo from the Next Limit's site, but here is the file :

CODE
proc maxwellAddCustomCameraAttributes(string $nodeName)
{
    editorTemplate -beginLayout "Maxwell Render";
        editorTemplate -label "F-Stop" -addDynamicControl "mxFstop";
        editorTemplate -label "Film ISO" -addDynamicControl "mxIso";
        editorTemplate -label "Shutter Speed" -addDynamicControl "mxShutterSpeed";
        editorTemplate -label "Use Rotary Shutter" -addDynamicControl "mxUseShutterAngle" "maxwellShutterTypeCheck";
        editorTemplate -label "Shutter Angle" -addDynamicControl "mxShutterAngle";
        editorTemplate -label "Manual Focus Distance" -addDynamicControl "mxUseFocusDistance" "maxwellFocusDistCheck";
        editorTemplate -label "Focus Distance" -addDynamicControl "mxFocusDistance";
        editorTemplate -label "Diaphragm Type" -addDynamicControl "mxDiaphragmType" "maxwellDiaphragmTypeCheck";
        editorTemplate -label "Diaphragm Angle" -addDynamicControl "mxDiaphragmAngle";
        editorTemplate -label "Diaphragm Blades" -addDynamicControl "mxDiaphragmBlades";
    editorTemplate -endLayout;
}

proc maxwellAddCustomMeshAttributes(string $nodeName)
{
    editorTemplate -beginLayout "Maxwell Render";
        editorTemplate -beginNoOptimize;
        editorTemplate -label "Hidden From Camera" -addDynamicControl "mxHideToCamera";
        editorTemplate -endNoOptimize;
    editorTemplate -endLayout;
}

global proc maxwellShapeNodeAEHook(string $nodeName)
{
    string $type = nodeType $nodeName;
    switch($type)
    {
        case "camera":
            maxwellAddCustomCameraAttributes($nodeName);
            break;
        case "mesh":
        case "subdiv":
        case "nurbsSurface":
            maxwellAddCustomMeshAttributes($nodeName);
            break;
    }
}

[daniel-faust]

you should look in which mel file the function maxwellShapeNodeAEHook is called.

I'm almost certain that this happens in a modified AEcameraTemplate.mel file. If you are developing with Visual Studio you can use the "find in files" and specify all the directories which have mel files in them, eg Maya/scripts/*.* , My Documents.../maya/*.* and possibly also the directory where the maxwell renderer is installed.

[oodini]

QUOTE(Daniel_Faust @ 02/26/07, 11:06 AM) [snapback]261006[/snapback]
The -addDynamicControl flag is similar to the -addControl flag. The difference is that it works on dynamic attributes. So mxFstop is a dynamic attribute added to the camera. This is used instead of -addControl, because -addControl does not preserve the position of the control in the layout (and I think also in the channel box). They could as well have used a -addControl, but then the control would show up at the bottom of the layout.

OK, but how to you wpecify WHERE you want it appears in the layout ?

[daniel-faust]

Ah, ok, I see it a bit more clearly now:

take the simple case of mental ray:
instead of calling maxwellAddCustomCameraAttributes($nodeName); like maxwell does,

mental ray attributes are added through the call to AEmentalrayCamera($nodeName);

this call to AEmentalrayCamera($nodeName), which well could have been called mentalRayAddCustomCameraAttributes($nodeName);, this call occurs in AEcameraTemplate.mel

So, analogous to mental ray insertion of attributes, maxwellAddCustomCameraAttributes($nodeName) could be called also in AEcameraTemplate.mel. But since they are modifying not only the cameras (look at the switch statement) they go back an additional level so they probably end up modifying the showEditor.mel or s.th like that.

The key is to find where maxwellShapeNodeAEHook is called. Many text editors have a find in files function or use a tool grep-like tool.

[oodini]

It si called from an other script, but it is to long to copy it here.

There is a function whose the main comment is :

CODE
// This function looks at a dependency node and adds custom Maxwell
// attributes to it if it doesn't have them already.
// It is called at startup, on existing nodes, and subsequently
// whenever a node is created.
// The custom attributes for each node type are contained inside a
// string array called $maxwellAttrs.
// These arrays contain 3 consecutive strings for each attribute: the
// attribute name, the name of the parent attribute and the list of
// flags to pass to the addAttr command when creating that attribute.

I wonder how to call a function each time is created a standard Maya object (ie a camera)... ??

If you're interested in this case, I suggest you to download the Maxwell demo :
http://download.maxwellrender.cz/download.htm

[oodini]

The script must be called by the API class MDGMEssage. I suggest to everyone interested in events to search the string "message" in the API doc. I am discovering there plenty of useful stuff. I now know hot to call a script when I load my plug-in, but I still don't know how to replace the camera template with mine, as suggested by Joojaa.

[daniel-faust]

No, don't do this with the API.

I just checked how the Maxwell Renderer is inserted and it's just like the Mental Ray renderer, the first post I posted.

Mental Ray modifies

CODE
// mental ray camera attributes
if (exists AEmentalrayCamera)
  AEmentalrayCamera $nodeName;
in the AEcameraTemplate

while the Maxwell Renderer replaces Maya's original AEshapeTemplate, which looks like this

CODE
global proc AEshapeTemplate ( string $nodeName )
{
  editorTemplate -beginLayout "Object Display";
  AEdagNodeCommon $nodeName;
    editorTemplate -endLayout;
  AEdagNodeInclude $nodeName;
}

with this:

CODE
global proc AEshapeTemplate(string $nodeName)
{
  global string $AEshapeHooks[];
  $numHooks = size($AEshapeHooks);
  for($i=0; $i<$numHooks; ++$i)
    eval($AEshapeHooks[$i] + " " + $nodeName);

  editorTemplate -beginLayout "Object Display";
    AEdagNodeCommon $nodeName;
  editorTemplate -endLayout;
  AEdagNodeInclude $nodeName;
}

This is the reason why I told you to look after the function which calls "maxwellShapeNodeAEHook", which indirectly turns out to be "maxwellRegister" through the call "addShapeNodeAEHook('maxwellShapeNodeAEHook');" where "addShapeNodeAEHook" inserts "maxwellShapeNodeAEHook" into $AEshapeHooks which is then called in "AEshapeTemplate".

AEshapeTemplate is called whenever an object needs to display it's attribute editor layout usually because a node has been selected.

I said

QUOTE
But since they are modifying not only the cameras (look at the switch statement) they go back an additional level so they probably end up modifying the showEditor.mel or s.th like that.
Actually AEshapeTemplate is one level before AEcameraTemplate, I was looking at AEshapeTemplate prior to posting the above, but since Joojaa was talking about some hooks being inserted I thought that it won't be the AEshapeTemplate but rather showEditor since that one is ultimately responsible for selecting the correct AE_Templates, you also might want to look at the file showEditor.mel to get an idea.

So really how maxwell renderer is included is not by hooks, since usually a hook is something that is added to extend the existing functionality, which is not the case in a replacement of the AEshapeTemplate, because it might be the case that some other 3rd party relies upon a modification of the AEshapeTemplate so either maxwell would override the other 3rd parties modification or the 3rd parties modification override maxwells modification. A hook would not lead to that behaviour, but both the 3rd party and maxwell would be called in the AEshapeTemplate in order of registration. So the advantage of the mental ray developers is that Autodesk ships mental rays modified AEcameraTemplate for them no matter what, which is ok because their 2 lines are minimally invasive and not likely to break things.