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Alembic

Rob Bredow — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 09:00:04 +0000

Alembic is an open computer graphics interchange framework. Alembic distills complex, animated scenes into a non-procedural, application-independent set of baked geometric results. This ‘distillation’ of scenes into baked geometry is exactly analogous to the distillation of lighting and rendering scenes into rendered image data.

Alembic is focused on efficiently storing the computed results of complex procedural geometric constructions. It is very specifically NOT concerned with storing the complex dependency graph of procedural tools used to create the computed results. For example, Alembic will efficiently store the animated vertex positions and animated transforms that result from an arbitrarily complex animation and simulation process which could involve enveloping, corrective shapes, volume-preserving simulations, cloth and flesh simulations, and so on. Alembic will not attempt to store a representation of the network of computations (rigs, basically) which are required to produce the final, animated vertex positions and animated transforms.

The production ready version of Alembic 1.0 was announced at Siggraph 2011 and released on August 9th, 2011 by Lucasfilm and Sony Pictures Imageworks with support from major vendors including Autodesk, Side Effects Software, The Foundry, Luxology, Pixar’s Renderman and NVidia.

Home Page: http://alembic.io/
Project Page: http://code.google.com/p/alembic/
Language: C++, Python
Platform: Linux, OSX, Windows
License: New BSD License
Sponsor: Sony Pictures Imageworks, Lucasfilm

Partio

Philippe Leprince — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 16:08:14 +0000

Particles are an important part of effects work, because they allow free-form information in 3D space. Unfortunately, there is no standard format for particles akin to Wavefront .obj. Most animation systems have their own proprietary particle formats. For example Maya uses the binary and ascii particle database formats .pdb and .pda file formats. Houdini uses the .geo and .bgeo geometry uber formats. Renderers typically have their own point cloud format such as RenderMan’s PTC format and Houdini’s .pc. All of these formats share a common theme. They allow particles to be iterated or indexed and associate a customizable set of attributes with them. The goal of Partio is to provide a unified interface akin to unified image libraries that makes it easier to load, save, and manipulate particle files.

Home Page: http://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/partio.html
Project Page: https://github.com/wdas/partio
Language: C++ Python
Platform: Linux, OSX, Windows
License: New BSD
Sponsor: Walt Disney Animation Studios

OpenPipeline

Philippe Leprince — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 13:13:57 +0000

openPipeline is an open source framework for managing animation production data and workflow. Its first implementation is a MEL-based plug-in for Autodesk Maya that handles specific aspects of production: automatic directory structures, file naming conventions, revision control, and modularity that makes multi-artist workflows possible. Home Page: http://kickstand.tv/openpipeline/openpipeline-information/Project Page: http://openpipeline.cc/Language: MELPlatform: Linux, Windows, OS XLicense: Common [...]

Home Page: http://kickstand.tv/openpipeline/openpipeline-information/
Project Page: http://openpipeline.cc/
Language: MEL
Platform: Linux, Windows, OS X
License: Common Public License 1.0

DrQueue

jeppewalther — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 22:39:34 +0000

DrQueue started as an application to provide distributed render queueing and management services for rendering animations.

The generic service DrQueue provides allows the distribution, monitoring and management of tasks across a network of computing nodes. A queue of jobs composing of a number of tasks are spread over the computing nodes and processed in parallel.

DrQueue started as an application to provide distributed render queueing and management services for rendering animations.
The generic service DrQueue provides allows the distribution, monitoring and management of tasks across a network of computing nodes. A queue of jobs composing of a number of tasks are spread over the computing nodes and processed in parallel.

Supported Renderers and Batch Processors

So far DrQueue supports 3Delight, 3DSMax, After Effects, Aqsis, Blender, BMRT, Cinema 4D, Lightwave, Luxrender, Mantra, Maya, Mental Ray, Nuke, Pixie, Shake, Terragen, Turtle, V-Ray and XSI.

Python bindings

Ruby bindings

Home Page: http://www.drqueue.org
Project Page: https://ssl.drqueue.org/project
Language: c++
Platform: Linux, Mac OSX, Irix, FreeBSD and Windows
License: GNU GPL Version 3

PyMEL

jeppewalther — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 06:52:05 +0000

PyMEL makes python scripting in Maya work the way it should. Maya’s command module is a direct translation of MEL commands into python functions. The result is awkward and “unpythonic” code which does not take advantage of python’s flexible, object-oriented design. The python-wrapped C++ API is powerful and object-oriented, but it’s too cryptic and verbose for everyday tasks. Using these modules as building blocks, PyMEL forges a new object-oriented API that’s as powerful and easy to use as python is.

Project Goals

Create an open-source python module for Maya that is intuitive to MEL users and python users alike
Fix bugs and design limitations in Maya’s python modues, maya.cmds and maya.mel
Keep code concise and readable
Add organization through class hierarchy and sub-modules
Provide documentation accessible via html and the builtin help() function
Make it “just work”

Home Page: http://code.google.com/p/pymel/
Language: python
Platform: windows, osx, linux
License: New BSD License
Sponsor: Luma Pictures

Bullet Physics

Philippe Leprince — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:00:28 +0000

Bullet 3D Game Multiphysics Library provides state of the art collision detection, soft body and rigid body dynamics.

Used by many game companies in AAA titles on Playstation 3, XBox 360, Nintendo Wii, PC and iPhone
Modular extendible C++ design with hot-swap of most components
Optimized back-ends for pthreads/Win32 Threads multi-threading and PS3 Cell SPU
Preparation for OpenCL data parallel optimizations for upcoming Bullet 3.x
Discrete and continuous collision detection (CCD)
Swept collision queries
Ray casting with custom collision filtering
Generic convex support (using GJK), capsule, cylinder, cone, sphere, box and non-convex triangle meshes.

Rigid body dynamics including constraint solvers, generic constraints, ragdolls, hinge, ball-socket
Support for constraint limits and motors
Soft body support including cloth, rope and deformable
Bullet is integrated into Cinema 4D, Lightwave and Blender, and a Houdini and Maya Plugin is available
Supports import and export into COLLADA 1.4 Physics format
Support for dynamic deformation of non-convex triangle meshes, by refitting the acceleration structures

Home Page: http://bulletphysics.org/
Project Page: http://code.google.com/p/bullet/
Language: C++
Platform: Linux, Windows, OS X
License: ZLib License, free for commercial use.

Maya Reticle

Philippe Leprince — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 10:47:54 +0000

Originally developed at Sony Pictures Imageworks, spReticleLoc is a Maya C++ plugin plus MEL code which creates a reticle for a camera. It allows for various camera reference masks to be displayed when looking through the camera, such as filmback, projection gate, and pan and scan attributes.

The value of predefined parameters can be displayed in selectable areas, such as the camera focal length and name, current aspect ratio; frame number, name of the show and shot, Maya scene file name, current user name, etc. Finally, arbitrary textural information can be displayed as well.

Home Page: http://opensource.imageworks.com/?p=mayareticle
Project Page: http://code.google.com/p/imageworks-maya-reticle/
Language: C++, MEL
Platform: Windows, Linux, OSX
License: New BSD License
Sponsor: Sony Imageworks

CgKit

Philippe Leprince — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 22:43:02 +0000

The Python Computer Graphics Kit is an Open Source software package containing a collection of Python modules, plugins and utilities that are meant to be useful for any domain where you have to deal with 3D data of any kind, be it for visualization, creating photorealistic images, Virtual Reality or even games.

Currently, the entire kit consists of the following parts:

The Python package cgkit that extends Python with 3D-related functionality.
The Maya plugin sourcepy that integrates the Python interpreter into Maya, and the accompanying Python package maya that makes Maya functionality available in Python.
A collection of small stand-alone utilities written in Python, MEL or MaxScript.

cgkit features:

New 3D data types such as vec3, vec4, mat3, mat4 and quat
Contains a Python binding of Pixar’s RenderMan API
Provides access to specialized input hardware such as SpaceMouse/SpaceBall, data glove or tablet via wrappers around the 3DxWare 3Dconnexion, the Wintab Developer Kit by LCS/Telegraphics and the Data Glove SDK by Fifth Dimension Technologies.
Additional 3D utility functions such as various noises or the functions found in the RenderMan Shading Language
Parse RenderMan shader source files to extract shader parameters
3D data can be stored and manipulated in memory
Imports 3DS, VRML, X3D, OBJ, OFF, IFS, STL, PLY, MA, ASF/AMC, BVH (using the following libraries: lib3ds, CyberX3D, RPly)
Exports RIB (shaders are generated on-the-fly), OBJ, OFF, PLY
Turns Python into a scene description language which can define scenes that can then be rendered with RenderMan or OpenGL.
Interactive OpenGL viewer tool
OpenGL stereo output (vertical split or quad buffer)
Offline render tool that feeds a RenderMan renderer, can also be used to bake texture maps
Connect arbitrary attributes of the same type to create animations
Rigid body dynamics via the Open Dynamics Engine
Extensible via regular modules or plugins

Python/Maya features:

Integrates the Python interpreter into Maya by providing two new MEL commands py and pySource that can execute Python source code.
Provides dynamic Python wrappers around all MEL commands found in Maya.
Provides new convenience classes for creating GUIs
Exposes the Maya C++ SDK to Python
Allows writing plug-ins in Python

Home Page: http://cgkit.sourceforge.net/
Project Page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cgkit/
Language: C++, Python
Platform: Linux, Windows, OS X
License: GPL, LGPL, MPL1.1

LiquidMaya

Philippe Leprince — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:05:57 +0000

Liquid is a tool for translating Maya scenes into another renderer’s scene description. Various RenderMan-compliant renderers are supported : PrMan, 3Delight, Air, Pixie, and Aqsis. Project Page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/liquidmaya/Language: C++, MELPlatform: Linux, Windows, OS XLicense: Mozilla Public LicenseSponsor: Weta

Project Page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/liquidmaya/
Language: C++, MEL
Platform: Linux, Windows, OS X
License: Mozilla Public License
Sponsor: Weta

GTO

Philippe Leprince — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:53:36 +0000

GTO is an open source file format designed for computer graphics. It was developed by Tweak Films to serve as the core storageformat for our geometry and rendering pipeline. GTO is used by VFX and animation facilities, post-houses, and game developers for a wide variety of applications. It’s small size and versatility make it useful for animation, modeling, particle dynamics and 3D paint. It can be used to replace file formats such as PDB/PDC, obj, and binary RIB.
At heart GTO is just a clean and optimal way of storing large, named, and organized arrays of binary data (although there is a text version of the file too). GTO naturally lends itself to a “least common denominator” role between computer graphics applications. The storage mechanism and the data layout are independent, so that the format can be easily adopted without regard to how the format is used by any particular application. The GTO library has bindings in C++ and Python making it relatively easy to develop custom tools to read, write and manipulate GTO files.

The GTO library includes the low-level reader and writer classes, a slightly higher level raw data reader/writer, and source code for a Maya scene and particle export, particle display, a Maya deformer to use GTO as a geometry cache, Houdini plug-ins, a number of command line tools, a Wavefront .obj parser (for a command line converter), and a Python module for reading and writing GTO files. The GTO reader/writer and tools have been tested thoroughly in feature film and game production on GNU/Linux and OSX as well as Windows XP, Vista, and 2000. GTO is also used as part of Tweak Software’s commercial products.

Home Page: http://www.tweakfilms.com/products/open-source-software/gto
Project Page: http://github.com/jimhourihan/gto
Language: C++
Platform: Linux, Windows, OS X, etc
License: GNU Library General Public License with exceptions for static linking.
Sponsor: Tweak Films

dnPtcViewerNode

Philippe Leprince — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 09:52:58 +0000

An Autodesk Maya locator to visualize point clouds generated by Pixar’s PhotoRealistic RenderMan or 3Delight. This plugin was developed by Double Negative Visual Effects. Home Page: http://dneg.github.com/dnPtcViewerNode/Project Page: http://github.com/dneg/dnPtcViewerNodeLanguage: C++, MELPlatform: Linux OSX WindowsLicense: BSD v3Sponsor: Double Negative

Home Page: http://dneg.github.com/dnPtcViewerNode/
Project Page: http://github.com/dneg/dnPtcViewerNode
Language: C++, MEL
Platform: Linux OSX Windows
License: BSD v3
Sponsor: Double Negative

Cortex

Philippe Leprince — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:40:21 +0000

The Cortex project aims to provide a set of high quality C++ libraries and Python modules tailored for software development in the visual effects industry. Rather than producing end user tools, the project focuses on creating a reusable set of modules of use to TDs and programmers in a broad range of scenarios – allowing them to focus on the more interesting or innovative aspects of development.

Originally the brainchild of Andrew Chapman, the Cortex project is now being developed around the IECore library developed in house at Image Engine and subsequently released as open source. Initially, Image Engine are providing the core library and Python bindings, along with their RenderMan, Maya, OpenGL, and Nuke support libraries.

It is hoped that the Cortex project will attract contributions from the wider visual effects community, and grow to provide a rich set of functionality and support for further 3rd party applications.

Home Page: http://opensource.image-engine.com/
Project Page: http://code.google.com/p/cortex-vfx
Language: C++, Python
Platform: Linux, Windows, OS X
License: New BSD License
Sponsor: Image Engine