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02 MM Shader Userguide Catia

Mental mill(r) shaders can be used in CATIA right away. You can either import the shader directly to your 3D geometry or you can add the shader to your material library. Mental mill shaders are available for download from the mental images website.

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rakeshpa_2078662
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155 views4 pages

02 MM Shader Userguide Catia

Mental mill(r) shaders can be used in CATIA right away. You can either import the shader directly to your 3D geometry or you can add the shader to your material library. Mental mill shaders are available for download from the mental images website.

Uploaded by

rakeshpa_2078662
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Using mental mill® shaders

in CATIA

This document describes how to export shading networks and shaders


from mental mill so that they can be used right away in CATIA, as well
as a few best practices for using mental mill shaders in CATIA.

Preparing the shader in mental mill


1. Create your shading network with mental mill and when you are satis-
fied with the result, you should export to CATIA.
2. If you are using and environment shader, make sure you activate it under
“Render > Scene settings”.
3. Select the root node of your network and select “File > Export”.
4. Open CATIA to begin the process to load the exported mental mill
shader.

In preparation, please modify the following options in CATIA.

Enabling OpenGL shader

Open up the options window under “Tools > Options… “. On the left-hand
side expand “General” and select “Display”. Select the tab “Performance”, scroll
down to the bottom and make sure that “Enable OpenGL shader” is checked.

Switch to Real Time Preview

Select “Infrastructure > Real Time Rendering” to switch to real time rendering
mode.

Import your shader to CATIA

There are two options for how to import the shader into CATIA. You can
either add the shader directly to your 3D geometry or you can add the
shader to your material library.

Using mental mill shaders in Catia | © 2007 mental images page 1 of 4


Importing the mental mill shader to the material library

1. Create a material library under “Infrastructure > Material Library”. There


is already an empty material in the library.

2. Add a new material


3. Rename your material
4. Enter the material properties (using <Alt + Enter> as a convenient short-
cut)

5. Inside the material properties choose the Tab “Rendering” and select the
subtab “Texture”
6. From the drop down menu, select “External Shader”

The material property window

7. Click on the icon to open a dialog box where you then select your ex-
ported shader file. Click “open”

8. After the shader has been loaded, the shader ball should already have the
material applied to it.
9. Under the text box with the current filename a list with all adjustable
parameters should appear.
10. You can fine-tune your parameters easily using the UI
11. Once you are satisfied with your result, click “OK” to exit the Property
window.
On the material icon in the library, a small label “FX” appears.
This indicates that the material is using an external CgFX shader and
that you have successfully loaded your shader in CATIA.

Using mental mill shaders in Catia | © 2007 mental images page 2 of 4


Applying your shader directly to your 3D geometry

1. Make sure that the object already has a material applied and that you are
in Real Time Rendering mode
2. Right click on the object and select the “Material > Edit Material”
3. Follow steps 5 to 10 from above

Useful tips and best practices for mental mill and Catia

Keeping exported shaders simple by using Phenomena

Usually you only want to modify a few important parameters in your shade
tree while keeping all others constant. Phenomena allow you to do this
by reducing the number of modifiable parameters and expose the relevant
parameters in the UI.

1. To create a Phenomena, select all parameters of your shader network,


right-click on the workspace an select “Create Phenomenon from selec-
tion” from the popup menu. In the upcoming window, type a name for
the Phenomenon
2. Connect the root of the shader tree to the Phenomenon’s “result”
3. Right click the parameters that you want to add to the interface of the
Phenomenon and select “Add ‘parameter_name’ to ‘phenomenon_name’”.
The parameter will be added to the interface of the Phenomenon
4. Add all relevant parameters to the Phenomenon
5. Interface parameters can be easily renamed by right-clicking them and
selecting “Rename ‘parameter_name’”
The process of exporting Phenomenon from mental mill is the same as de-
scribed above.

Example of a Phenomen with exposed inter-


face parameters

Using mental mill shaders in Catia | © 2007 mental images page 3 of 4


Improving the image quality in CATIA

CATIA offers the possibility to oversample the image being rendered to the
viewport. Jagged edges are being antialiased which increase the perceived im-
age quality considerably.

8x Antialiasing: The No Antialiasing: Notice


jagged lines are being the jagged edges
smoothed out

Improving image quality by enabling super


sampling

To activate oversampling in CATIA, go to “Tools > Options”. On the left-hand


side of the window expand “General” and select “Display”. Choose the Tab
“Visualisation” on the right. There you can find the Option “Antialiasing”
where you activate “Full Scene” and set the Super sampling value. Higher
super sampling gives better results, but take longer to render.

A concept car using a realitme shader created


with mental mill

Currently known restrictions


Texture files used must be .dds files. The size must be a power of 2 (256 x 256
or 512 x 512) and the mipmaps must be contained in the dds file. A comfort-
able tool for generating mip mapped .dds files is “DxTex”, a tool for creating
.dds files which is bundled along with the DirectX SDK from Microsoft.

Using mental mill shaders in Catia | © 2007 mental images page 4 of 4

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