Real-time Texture Update?

[ahimsa]

Hi, I'm a beginner in MEL (and Maya also).
I'm trying to show live video on the image plane of a camera.

I think I can store the current video frame as an image file (outside Maya), and reload it every time.
But with my PC, it took about 0.3s to reload an image file whose size is a little less than 640x480.

what I did is:

setAttr -type "string" imagePlane1.imageName "D:/test/A.jpg";
refresh;

Maybe I can make it seem to "work" in this way, but 3 fps is too slow, and continuous reading of disk will also be a problem.

So I'd like to know if it is possible to share textures between Maya and OpenGL applications.
If it is possible, I think I can set the image plane type to 'texture', not 'image file', and set the texture name to the shared one.

Is it possible?

[ahimsa]

I think this is way too difficult,
so I'm thinking of using Windows clipboard instead.

But again, I'll have to know if one can use clipboard image from Maya...

[joojaa]

No.

put the node to caching mode, change your image names to yourimage.ext.0001 yourimage.ext.0002 .... thisway you can just key the extension and maya will know what glob to read in!

Reading images form disk IS SLOW (well it depends on the speed of your disk), but also on top of that the image needs to be unpacked, and this theres absolutely no major gain in reading.

Ps dont refresh it after changing the value as you can issue maya to do a lot of reworking.

[ahimsa]

Thanks for the advice.

But the image files are not prepared before. Instead, a 'live' image will be generated at runtime.
(what I want is to show live video on the image plane)

Currently I am trying to invoke Microsoft DirectShow API in maya plugin, but I don't know how to change the image of the image plane...

Is there any MEL command or API to update the image plane, with the bitmap image I have in memory?

[joojaa]

Not in mel no, could you describe what your trying to do then its easier to suggest a way to go. But in api its doable, anyway if your just doing normal video files then its a no issue! Just collapse it to individual images and you will get perfectly normal scrubbing times on decent video cards.

(it is clear that yoru walked into a dead end so working yourself into that end and out fo it is more work than finding the route frem where you started to where you are now)

[ahimsa]

I'm not sure whether you will check this post again, because it seems that I'm back too late.
I think there may have been confusion with what I'm trying to do.
which is:

1. capture live video from a camera connected to the PC.
USB webcam or professional HD camera can be used. Any video input can be handled with MS' DirectShow API.

2. show the live video on a maya image plane.
Now we have the live image (which will be updated at every frame) in the system memory, in a Bitmap structure.
What I want to find out is how to map this 'live image' in the memory to the image plane in maya.

In order to use DirectShow API, I think I'll have to use C++ API instead of MEL.

[joojaa]

QUOTE(ahimsa @ 08/27/07, 09:52 AM) [snapback]272323[/snapback]
In order to use DirectShow API, I think I'll have to use C++ API instead of MEL.

Yes, however maya is not a real time engine. So the point of doing this tough the api is moot fpr ca