SGI: Computer Graphics

Maya and SGI with V12 graphics questions

3dchris
From Toronto, Ontario
Who joined Nov. 29, 2010, 7:26 p.m.

Wrote the following at Jan. 30, 2011, 9:15 p.m...

Hi

I installed my new V12 card in my Octane in the hopes that it would improve the visual quality of maya's viewports. Based on the SGI tech pubs, the V12 is supposed to make the default phong look better on lower resolution geometry. I don't see any difference between it and my older SSE card, let alone any other Mac system I've used.
Also, I don't see the option to turn on "Smooth Wireframe", or "High Quality Viewport". Are these options not supported on the SGI?

Thanks!

2xR14k 600MHz, 4.5GB, V12

vishnu
From Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
Who joined March 18, 2007, 3:25 p.m.

Wrote the following at Jan. 30, 2011, 9:56 p.m...

When I use "smooth shade all" on my Octane2 (also V12, w/ a single 600Mhz R14000) it looks so perfect I can't even imagine anything better. Much better than my original V6...

3dchris wrote: Also, I don't see the option to turn on "Smooth Wireframe", or "High Quality Viewport". Are these options not supported on the SGI?

I've never seen those so they must be post-Maya 6.5, are they in the shading pulldown in the viewport?

Project:
Temporarily lost at sea...
Plan:
World domination! Or something...

recondas
Moderator
From NC - USA
Who joined June 6, 2004, 5:55 p.m.

Wrote the following at Jan. 31, 2011, 4:32 a.m...

3dchris wrote: Also, I don't see the option to turn on "Smooth Wireframe", or "High Quality Viewport". Are these options not supported on the SGI?

Perhaps not what you're looking for, but the Maya 6.5 Help Menu mentions the following:

Maya 6.5 Help Menu wrote: Shading > Smooth Wireframe

Displays smooth wireframed objects in Maya's 3D views, including the Hardware Render Buffer and the 3D Paint Effects view.

Note: Does not work in 2D views, including the UV Texture Editor.

<and>

Shading > High Quality Rendering

When high quality interactive shading is turned on, the scene views are drawn in high quality by the hardware renderer. This lets you see a very good representation of the look of the final render without having to software render the scene.

***********************************************************************
Welcome to ARMLand - 0/0x0d00
running...(sherwood-root 0607201829)
* InfiniteReality/Reality Software, IRIX 6.5 Release *
***********************************************************************

3dchris
From Toronto, Ontario
Who joined Nov. 29, 2010, 7:26 p.m.

Wrote the following at Jan. 31, 2011, 7:39 a.m...

This is my point. In Maya, I can see the options in the pulldown menus, but they are grayed out as if I can't choose them for options.
Vishnu, is it possible if you can post a screenshot of a default poly sphere with a phong material on it? I'd like to compare the quality of the highlights to my V12. Also, if you have the option of the High Quality shading, can you also send a screenshot of it?
Thanks!

2xR14k 600MHz, 4.5GB, V12

vishnu
From Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
Who joined March 18, 2007, 3:25 p.m.

Wrote the following at Jan. 31, 2011, 3:28 p.m...

Edit: Pointless text removed, screenshot of a poly sphere with a phong ramp shader using "smooth shade all:'

The same rendered with Mental Ray:

Both are Maya 6.5 with a V12...

Project:
Temporarily lost at sea...
Plan:
World domination! Or something...

3dchris
From Toronto, Ontario
Who joined Nov. 29, 2010, 7:26 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 1, 2011, 7:40 a.m...

Interesting. Looks the same as mine. I remember reading somewhere that the UI view of an object would have specular shading similar to a final render, like your render in Mental Ray. This was supposed to be one of the features of the V12. It looks like your viewport is the same as mine. I'll look deeper into this and find where I read that info....

2xR14k 600MHz, 4.5GB, V12

3dchris
From Toronto, Ontario
Who joined Nov. 29, 2010, 7:26 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 1, 2011, 11:05 a.m...

Ah Ha! I found the document that lead me to the whole "High Quality OpenGL" kick! Take a look. This is how I was hoping the viewport in Maya would have behaved. I wonder if there's a way for the viewport to take advantage of this feature in the V12? Would be nice

2xR14k 600MHz, 4.5GB, V12

vishnu
From Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
Who joined March 18, 2007, 3:25 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 1, 2011, 12:25 p.m...

Huh! I had no idea this beast had all those features... :lol:

"High speed, user-configurable graphics memory." Well, that's really great but, how do we use it? :?:

Project:
Temporarily lost at sea...
Plan:
World domination! Or something...

theinonen
From Finland
Who joined Feb. 21, 2007, 11:32 a.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 1, 2011, 1:05 p.m...

I believe that if the software only supports Gouraud shading, there is nothing the hardware can do to magically change it to Phong shading. Meaning the software has to support the hardware capabilities for it to work.

vishnu wrote: Huh! I had no idea this beast had all those features...

"High speed, user-configurable graphics memory." Well, that's really great but, how do we use it?

Easy, swap your V12 to V10 and you have configured your graphics memory to a lot less than it was before...

vishnu
From Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
Who joined March 18, 2007, 3:25 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 1, 2011, 1:10 p.m...

theinonen wrote: I believe that if the software only supports Gouraud shading, there is nothing the hardware can do to magically change it to Phong shading. Meaning the software has to support the hardware capabilities for it to work.

Well, it says "Hardware-accelerated specular shading (or per-pixel lighting) for Phong effects without a performance penalty."

theinonen wrote: Easy, swap your V12 to V10 and you have configured your graphics memory to a lot less than it was before...

Project:
Temporarily lost at sea...
Plan:
World domination! Or something...

3dchris
From Toronto, Ontario
Who joined Nov. 29, 2010, 7:26 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 1, 2011, 9:36 p.m...

I think that's what the "High Quality Rendering" viewport option is for. It doesn't seem to work on IRIX, but I can't find anything in the Maya user manual that says that it's not supported. The same thing goes with the Smooth Wireframe option. Also, I can't seem to get shadows to show up in the viewport

Is anyone using Maya on IRIX with any of these options working?

2xR14k 600MHz, 4.5GB, V12

vishnu
From Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
Who joined March 18, 2007, 3:25 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 2, 2011, 10:47 a.m...

It's greyed out on mine too. It's greyed out both in the shading pulldown in the viewport and in the rendering editor window. What the heckle Dr. Jekyll...??? :shock:

Project:
Temporarily lost at sea...
Plan:
World domination! Or something...

GIJoe
From Germany -> UK -> Germany...
Who joined March 29, 2003, 11:44 a.m.

Wrote the following at May 6, 2014, 3:23 p.m...

years later - the answer: high quality viewport rendering was not ever brought to the sgi. infact, at the time it showed up in maya it was not even working in all PC-based configurations either and not available for all supported platforms (surely including linux). i don't think any SGI graphics cards were even capable of the kind of pixel shaders that were commonplace on PC boards?

and if memory serves: alias switched from IRIX as their development environment to windows around or right after releasing maya 3. whatever came after was not targeted at SGI's but rather ported. pretty sure IRIX was a quickly vanishing target market for them around the year 2000.

sgtprobe
From Sweden
Who joined Nov. 20, 2008, 11:18 p.m.

Wrote the following at May 8, 2014, 3:42 a.m...

GIJoe wrote: years later - the answer: high quality viewport rendering was not ever brought to the sgi. infact, at the time it showed up in maya it was not even working in all PC-based configurations either and not available for all supported platforms (surely including linux). i don't think any SGI graphics cards were even capable of the kind of pixel shaders that were commonplace on PC boards?

and if memory serves: alias switched from IRIX as their development environment to windows around or right after releasing maya 3. whatever came after was not targeted at SGI's but rather ported. pretty sure IRIX was a quickly vanishing target market for them around the year 2000.

It was awhile now, but if my memory serves me right, there was a demo for the Odyssey showing this high quality shading did indeed work on the hardware. Maybe alias just didn't bother to implement it in Maya in the end?

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GIJoe
From Germany -> UK -> Germany...
Who joined March 29, 2003, 11:44 a.m.

Wrote the following at May 8, 2014, 7:28 a.m...

yes i remember running some V12-specific demo highlighting this stuff as well at one point.
i don't think SGI's implementation was compatible with nvidia's though, perhaps just some limited featureset (VPro came out before Geforce?) that would have required too many resources to port the maya viewport shading option. it's not like high quality viewport was useful in production much either early on, pretty slow on geforce-3-ish cards is what i remember. you'd turn it on only to take a screenshot/playblast in those days.

foetz
Moderator
Who joined April 14, 2003, 4:34 a.m.

Wrote the following at May 8, 2014, 12:25 p.m...

GIJoe wrote: you'd turn it on only to take a screenshot/playblast in those days.

hehe exactly and a low qualy render still shows more

vishnu
From Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
Who joined March 18, 2007, 3:25 p.m.

Wrote the following at May 9, 2014, 10:51 p.m...

The official Alias training guide "Learning Maya 6: Rendering" says, on page 246, "The Hardware Renderer will allow you to output features like shadows, per-pixel Specular Highlights, Bump Maps, and reflections for materials," but according to this page "Maya Hardware Renderer is not supported on IRIX."

Project:
Temporarily lost at sea...
Plan:
World domination! Or something...

Ryan Fox
From Cape Town, South Africa
Who joined Dec. 20, 2004, 11:03 a.m.

Wrote the following at Sept. 15, 2014, 10:24 p.m...

vishnu wrote: The official Alias training guide "Learning Maya 6: Rendering" says, on page 246, "The Hardware Renderer will allow you to output features like shadows, per-pixel Specular Highlights, Bump Maps, and reflections for materials," but according to this page "Maya Hardware Renderer is not supported on IRIX."

Confirmed this a while ago on IR3 graphics on an Onyx 2 Deskside. AT least IR3 is still 'usable' for modeling projects

MAYA, nut-
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Octane 2 R14k 600 V12 4GB, Octane2 R14K 600 V10 1GB ,
:Onyx2:

Onyx2 IR3 4GB Quad R14K 500 DIVO, Onyx2 IR Quad R12K 400 2GB,
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SGI Indigo 2 R8K75 TEAL Extreme 256MB,
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SGI Indigo 2 R10K 195 Solid Impact 256MB, MAX Impact Pending ,
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