Point Color from Image

[Anonymous]

Hello BiFrost Community,

I didn't see a post relating to this here or on the beta forum.  Looking for a method to set the default colors of particles based on a image from the input geometry.  Hopefully this makes sense.  Has anyone attempted something like this with bifrost yet?

Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance!

Maya 2018.4

BiFrost Gold w/ MtoA 3.2.2

[brandaosa]

Any update on this thread as in maya 2024? Is it possible to use a texture directly on bifrost to drive color on points or particles?

[Christoph_Schaedl]

Yes with this plugin.
https://github.com/swillisart/BifrostEXR

[adrian_wyer]

aaaand this is why the uptake on Bifrost is abysmally low... the docs don't help with the simplest methodologies, and you are left with a few power users who are too busy to explain how they accomplish basic tasks (not their fault)

I can't see how Bifrost is this far into development, and absolutely BASIC features aren't packaged as 'compounds' the way things were out of the box in ICE.

Autodesk needs to see that if they want features to be used, then maybe get some input from low/mid level artists as to what they are trying to acheive with those features, and set about producing some tutorials, and pre-packaged examples.

Colour from vertex maps/texture maps is one simple example that seems to be way over complicated... and the main take away is "oooh, yeah, you could roll your own, but you'll be stuck using userdata in arnold shaders"

we use redshift, having colour values on renderable particles should be renderer agnostic, and should work right out of the box... 

back to MASH for my next job (AGAIN!)

/end rant

[sepu6]

While I agree with you about having a texture sampling inside the graph, should be there, there is a couple of solutions, for example, the one above that just read .exr and another one created by @haggi_master (Im putting the link here, hopefully you do not mind) which is more friendly and it can read any more types of images, like for example, .jpg, .png, .exr is based on the OpenImageIO 

https://www.aswf.io/news/academy-software-foundation-adopts-openimageio-as-newest-hosted-project/

With Arnold, if you render straight from the graph you do not need to use user data nodes if you do not want to, but for other engines like RS, vray, etc you will have to use user data nodes no matter what. 

Just put it on your compounds and set the .env to point out where it is. 

BIFROST_LIB_CONFIG_FILES=C:\MyCompoundFolder\OiioImage-1.0.0\OiioImagePackConfig.json

Also, I invited your join the Discord channel, where you can ask whatever.

https://discord.gg/bifrost-addicts

[brandaosa]

Bifrost is reminding me the time I used to work with 3D max. If you need to do something really useful you will need someone's plugin.

I guess an user really has to be "addicted" to make Bifrost useful.  The UI is far from ideal.. Watches are so limited and visually cumbersome... even stickers are buggy erasing the text sometimes. When you need to debug some matrices, you need to output strands coded on Hershey text - a solution from late 60's to display text on ray tube displays - because there is no console, or an attribute_sheet-like window to display the properties and the values on a clean and easy to understand way.  When you look around the other solutions (some free) you see Bifrost is clearly behind the schedule.

That said, I am using imageSampler_2.1 to extract images. It is hacky. But I was not lucky with ExrImage.
Posted on his github two almost two months ago and no reply.

[sepu6]

Bifrost is reminding me the time I used to work with 3D max. If you need to do something really useful you will need someone's plugin.

Just build once and re-use it. Easy peasy

Watches are so limited and visually cumbersome... even stickers are buggy erasing the text sometimes.

if that is happening then you should reported it, this has not happened to me since the new stickers and Backdrops. If you are using the old BF then yeah probably. Watch points are useful to quickly look for properties, they are supposed to show limited data. Agreed that we need some kinda data browser or something similar.  Not ideal but you could use the Print nodes from Roland for now, until we get the spreadsheet. 

When you look around the other solutions (some free) you see Bifrost is clearly behind the schedule.

Then you probably should use those free solutions and see what is like. Not sure what you mean by behind. 

But I was not lucky with ExrImage. Posted on his github two almost two months ago and no reply.

I installed this in the same way that I showed you above how to install the OpenImageIO and I have both working fine. If you need more help join the discord channel. 

[brandaosa]

This is out of topic, but yes..Roland did a HERCULEAN job... But that should be used maily if you want to render text or a point diagnostic tool on viewport . Not for debuging. Maya already has an attribute spreadsheet. Is that legacy code so out of this planet to integrate with Bifrost? I really wonder. 

Also out of topic, but I use Bifrost version is 2.7.1.0. Maya just crashed after I accidentally grabbed a bifrost node slider to a value lower than memory can handle. I would be glad if the esc button could work. Report ? to autodesk? I send crash reports to autodesk because maya failed a split mesh operation in a single face since 2003. Now, 20 years later, they still get my reports on the same issue. Maybe it is just me.

I am migrating little by litte to other solutions. Its just that I am faster doing things in Maya at the moment. This will change in a year or two.

[sepu6]

As I said the data spreadsheet, etc is in the works so you can use the print array for the moment, and btw, yes you can still render those print text as well ; ) 

2.7.1 has been pretty good to me, pretty stable overall. ESC works, I would say most of the time, from time to time it might not, and again it might be good to mention those cases. And just in case for the ESC to work on resume sims (so you do not lose what you have cache)  you need to enable it on the options menu.

 

ALso worth mentioning that the BF team is not the same as the Maya team, so if something is crashing, it is worth mentioning here and posting about it, The devs are usually around.

Have fun using the other solutions - "bug free" 

[brandaosa]

Thanks. 
I will just conform myself.

I know the teams are all different, but Maya is becoming a Babel. Amino framework prefers Ctr+C,V, Alias legacy prefers Ctr+D for the same function...suddenly maya adds Arnold icons on viewport to promote it, but with the other hand they decide the "standardSurface" to be the default material, breaking the color vertex displaying on viewport. Talk about consistency [forehead sweating]!!

Other solutions, well, less headache using nodes at least, but, bug free, only when all developers are replaced AI and AI convince us we are the bugs lol.

before that: 頑張ってください! Guéris le monde. Fais en un meilleur endroit! ♫