ShaderFX Workflow Improvements

[Anonymous]

ShaderFX is a great addition to Maya but creating a complex shader easily becomes hard to work with.

Here are some workflow suggestions which would make it easier to manage complex shaders.

Merge Stringray PBS and ShaderFX Shader

Stringray PBS should be available inside ShaderFX Shader as well as a surface shader. As stringray is EOL now, it would be good to merge these and remove the disparity in features like groups and material variable and make it more unified. These should solve the following issues regarding workflow.

• Groups (Material Functions) are a great workflow improvement to manage complex shader but is not available in Stringray PBS
• Parameter Group should be available in Stringray PBS
• Right-Click search menu would enable user to be much faster to work on shader
• Re-use material variables in the same graph, so that we do not have one variable connecting to all its use cases. This is present in unreal as well, where we duplicate a parameter and name it the same, so it becomes a instance of the variable inside the node graph and maintains state changes.
• Optional exposed name ( Ability to name a parameter different from its internal name)
• UI for better sorting and grouping of parameters. Rather than doing it manually by searching across the node graph, if we can have a UI editor where we can manually re-order the parameters.

[emouillet]

Yes please don't  make shaderfx the next abandonware. 

At the moment you push Viewports enhancement only by using an Arnold Material. But for video game realtime workflow we don' t need and don' t want to rely on a locked / black box material.

ShaderFX is maybe one of the only thing that can be done in Maya and not in Houdini, the ability to control the viewport in a very  precise / powerful way with a clean node graph. 

All the workflow should be clean and unify in only one context / shader , the basic shaderFX shader. Then from this basic graph we could access a lib of template were we can find :

- a modern gloss / spec PBR shader

- a modern metalic / Roughness PBR shader

- a modern Hair PBR shader

- a modern displacement shader that support DX tesselation 

And then ditch all the legacy / dusty shader :

- Stingray Shader now that stingray is a dead engine, should be ditch from Maya ,or at least hidden ( for retrocompatibilty needs ). 

- Shaderfx Hair, should be a presets of the default shaderfx shader. 

- DX11 Shader should be replace by a new one inside shaderfx context that support DX tessalation ( the DX11 can' t work in Metallic / Roughness mode )

That would be great to unify and match shaderfx UI graph look with bifrost graph and materialX graph in order to unify all graph in maya like in houdini.

More tutorials / More presets / More template / simplify export to unreal / unity / marmoset  would be great.

ShaderFX allow to control DX and OpenGL with a clean node graph and very fast performance, this is something houdini can' t do. don' t ditch that great tool. and please give it the love it deserves.