I have a grass.ma scene, where I assigned the grass geometry its material and texture. I export the geo as a StandIn for use in another scene.
Is there any way I can manipulate/tweak the aiStandard Surface that was assigned to the geometry which is imported as StandIn? Or do I have to go back to the geo scene (i.e. grass.ma) and tweak the material there and re-export as StandIn with the tweaked look?
There must be a way to lookdev any imported StandIns no?
Solved! Go to Solution.
Solved by teddude75. Go to Solution.
Okay, so this is what I found out, if there is a better workflow please let me know
Now I have to figure out how to modify pre-made material that was exported with the StandIn.
In your scene with the grass before you make a stand in apply a ai standard surface shader. Name it something like ai_grass_shader. Now create the stand in and export the shader. In your new scene import both the shader and the stand in (no name spaces). This will allow you to change the shader properties on the stand in. Also because it's name specific you can make a shader named "ai_grass_shader" and it will render with that shader.
hello,
Is it possible to add assignments/ Operators when importing the .ass houdini? I can see the "set parameter" node in the out, but I can't see the .ass hierarchy like in maya..
Thank you for your answer Stephen! I'm new to Arnold and still going through the documentation, but that seems tricky to use; how do people tweak scenes created by different artists and/or in different packages? is there a way to query the ass file?
Hi @Dadin Dan
You can view an ASS file in a text editor. Look for the name parameters:
polymesh { name /pPlane1/pPlaneShape1 ... declare dcc_name constant STRING dcc_name "pPlaneShape1" }
Or you can use selections like *.(@node=='polymesh') to see what nodes are selected. If you set the Arnold log verbosity to Debug, the names of the matched nodes are printed in the Arnold log.
Or you can use the UI in Maya to explore. And then export an ass file to see what selection strings are used by the operators.