MAYA PLUGINS

for the department of computer science and design of technology, TO&I, I developed a number of plugins for early Maya versions, all plugins related to the visualization and support of the architectural design process.

LIGHTSCAPE SOLUTION IMPORTER + VERTEX LIGHTING SHADER

Although rendering an image using Lightscape's diffuse lighting algorithm does impose a number of awkward demands onto the polygon model, it does have certain benefits not found in standard radiosity applications.

Lightscape incorporates diffuse lighting information into the polygon model. This allows a single solution to be used for all frames, saving a huge amount of render time. This ofcourse only if the lighting within the animation is static, or -in other words- if the the animation consists solely of the camera moving.

Main difficulty with the development of the importer was getting Maya to render the vertex related lighting information. The standard channels available to shaders do not provide 'blind' data about the polygon being sampled. The solution was to encode an index within the uv-values of the polygons vertices (the uv-values are provided to the shader); using the index the correct illumination values could be looked up in a staticly referenced array.

SKY SIMULATOR / SUN SIMULATOR

Usually a building's shape depends heavily on it's orientation towards the sun. The sky simulator provides accurate information about the sun's altitude and azimuth, provided the correct time and location are entered.

When called, the plugin automatically creates a directional light, an evironment sky and a north arrow, all linked directly to the calculation node.

YEAR

1999 - 2001

LINKS

link	description
TO&I	department of computer science and design of technology, faculty of architecture
Download SunSimulator	download the SunSimulator for recent builds of Maya