Vertex Chameleon
v1.3.7





www.RenderHeads.com
Last Updated 22 October 2008

Contents


  1. Introduction
    1.1 Features
  2. Getting Started
  3. User Interface
  4. Operations & Tools
    4.1 Basics
    4.5 Tools
  5. Scripting
  6. Notes
  7. Support


1. Introduction


Vertex Chameleon is the ultimate vertex colour toolset for Autodesk Maya!


Vertex colours are widely used in games for platforms where there isn't much memory for textures. Such platforms include: Nintendo Wii & DS, Sony PSP & Playstation 2, internet and mobile phone games. Even next-gen platforms such as PC, Xbox360 and PS3 still use vertex colours to help improve performance and save vital memory.


Vertex Chameleon gives you complete control, real-time feedback and a wealth of functionality, resulting in increased productivity and better results.


1.1 Features




2. Getting Started

2.1 Requirements

The following versions of Maya are supported:

Microsoft Windows:

Apple Mac OS X:
Linux:

Please let us know about your platform requirements.


2.2 Installation

2.2.1 Windows Installation

Vertex Chameleon is downloaded as an executable installer file.


  1. Once the file has downloaded, double-click the installer to launch it.
  2. The first screen asks you to select the folder that you would like the plugin to be installed to on your system.
  3. On the second screen you must select a folder on your machine where Maya is installed.  This will usually be something like "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2008".  If you have multiple versions of Maya installed, you need to run the installer again for each version you want to use the plugin in and select the appropriate path each time.
  4. Now you can click 'Install', and after a few seconds the plugin will be installed.
  5. Launch Maya.


2.2.2 Windows Uninstalling

  Simply run the uninstaller from the Start Menu in "RenderHeads > Vertex Chameleon 1.0".


2.2.3 Mac Installation

  1. Decompress the archive to the directory where you want the plugin to live.  This should be somewhere like "/Applications/VertexChameleon/".
  2. Open the file VertexChameleonPluginModule.txt, and edit the path at the bottom to be the folder where you've put this plugin in step 1.
  3. Copy VertexChameleonPluginModule.txt into the "modules" folder of Maya, which is usually found in:

          /Applications/Autodesk/maya2008/maya.app/Contents/modules/
    (The folder may need to be created if it doesn't already exist)
    (To open maya.app, go the the gear icon in Finder and click "Show Package Contents")

  4. Launch Maya.


2.2.4 Mac Uninstalling

Simply delete the folder containing the plugin, and remove the VertexChameleonPluginModule.txt from your maya.app/Contents/modules folder.


2.2.5 Linux Installation

  1. Decompress the archive to the directory where you want the plugin to live.  This should be somewhere like "~/VertexChameleon".
  2. Open the file VertexChameleonPluginModule.txt, and edit the path at the bottom to be the folder where you've put this plugin in step 1.
  3. Copy VertexChameleonPluginModule.txt into the "modules" folder of Maya, which is usually found in:

          /usr/autodesk/maya2008

    (The folder may need to be created if it doesn't already exist)

  4. Launch Maya


2.2.6 Linux Uninstalling

Simply delete the folder containing the plugin, and remove the VertexChameleonPluginModule.txt from your Maya/modules folder.

2.3 Launching the Plugin

To launch the plugin type "RH_VertexChameleon" into the command-line window in Maya.  This will display the main Vertex Chameleon window.


To save typing, you may want to add this command to your shelf.  The user interface has a button in the settings tab labelled "Add to Shelf" which will add this command to the current shelf using it's own icon graphic.

The button icon added to the shelf:


2.4 Licensing

Vertex Chameleon won't work until it has been given a valid license key. 

To obtain and install a license key:

  1. Go to the "About" tab and click "Enter New Key", this will bring up the licensing window:

  2. If you don't already have a license key, you can either click "Get 15-Day Free Trial Key" which will take you to the website where you can claim your free trial key or "Purchase Key" to launch the license shop website.
  3. Once you have a key, paste it into the box below.  You can use CTRL-V to paste it since right-click doesn't work in this Maya text box.
  4. Click 'OK'.

Your copy of Vertex Chameleon will then be licensed, as indicated by this window:


If this doesn't appear and you're having problems getting your license to work, please contact RenderHeads Support (support@renderheads.com ).

3. User Interface

3.1 Main Window

The main UI for Vertex Chameleon looks like this:

This window contains all the tools and operations in a compact manner.

The first 3 tabs, "Apply", "Adjust" and "Extra" contain all of the vertex colour operations.  "Settings" contains global settings for the plugin and "About" contains additional information such as credits, licensing and links to documentation.


3.2 Shelf Shortcut

You can easily create a shortcut icon on your shelf to launch the main Vertex Chameleon window.  In the "Settings" tab choose "Add to Shelf":


The button icon added to the shelf:


3.3 Menu

It is also possible to add a Vertex Chameleon menu to your "Polygons" menu ("Modeling" menu in older versions of Maya).




This is set in the "Settings" tab:



3.4 Dock to ChannelBox

It is possible to dock the main Vertex Chameleon window to the channelbox.  This prevents the main window from overlapping the viewport:


This is set via the "Settings" tab:



3.5 Tear off Windows

While the main window provides all the operations in one place, sometimes only a specific tool is needed.  All the operations can appear in their own windows by choosing them from the menubar.




3.6 Shortcuts to Maya Tools
For convenience, shortcuts to most of the Maya internal vertex colour tools are provided via a drop-down menu.

4. Operations & Tools

4.1 Basics

Before we look at the individual tools we will explain some of the common UI elements found throughout the tools.

4.1.1 Toggle Wireframe Display



The "Toggle Wire" button will toggle on and off the wireframe display of selections.  This is very handy as it makes selected regions more visible.  Unfortunately there is no way to hide the display of the selected components.  Wireframe display is automatically turned off while dragging the real-time sliders to increase visibility of the mesh.  Here is a mesh with and without wireframe on selection:

4.1.2 Force Component Type
Internally, Vertex Chameleon operates on your selection either at the vertex level or the vertex-face level.  This can be chosen from the drop-down menu on the main UI window.

It is often desirable to switch between vertex or vertex-face mode.  Vertex mode will write to all the vertex colours in your selection, while vertex-face will only operate on the vertex-faces of your selection - which is very useful for when you want to paint only inside selected faces.

By default this is set to "Default" where Vertex Chameleon will try to guess which mode you want to work in based on your selection type.  Here is how this default mode behaves based on different selection types:

Selection Type
 		Component used
Object
 Vertex
Vertex
 Vertex
Face
 Vertex-Face
Edge
 Vertex-Face
Vertex-Face
 Vertex-Face
UV
 not supported

4.1.3 Apply Button & Slider
Most filters and operations in Vertex Chameleon have an Apply button and slider.

The Apply button simply applys the operation completely.  The slider can be dragged from 0 to 100% and will blend the result into the original colours gradually.

When is it useful to use the slider / button to apply an operation?

The slider can be very useful for testing temporary settings as it can simply be returned to zero if the filter doesn't produce the expected result.  This is faster than using the apply button as it won't require an Undo to get the previous result back.  The button though is useful if the mesh is very complicated as the slider would be too slow to update in real-time and would be difficult to work with.
4.1.4 RGBA Colour Box
All colour boxes in Vertex Chameleon are split into 2 parts so they can represent an RGBA colour.  The top part shows the RGB colour, the bottom strip is always greyscale and represents the amount of alpha (transparency).  Usually clicking on these will bring up the colour chooser.


4.1.5 Blending


Most filters and operations in Vertex Chameleon have blending options.  These options control how the final result of the filter / operation will blend with the original colours. 

The slider value specifies what percentage of the final result will come from this operation.  For example:


The blend mode is chosen from the drop-down menu and offers the following modes:


4.1.6 RGBA Channel Mask
This drop-down menu selects the channels which are affected by all Vertex Chameleon operations.  For example if "A" is selected only the alpha channel can ever be changed and RGB channels can not be altered by any of the operations.


4.2 Apply Operations
4.2.1 Apply Colour

This operation is used to replace colours in your selection. 
On the top there is the colour box which displays the final colour.  This box is split into two pieces.  The top piece shows the RGB colour, while the bottom piece represents the alpha value of the colour.

The eyedropper icon is used to pick a colour off the screen.

The "Selection" button samples all the colour in the current selection and sets the colour box to the average of these colours.  It has an "Auto" option which when enabled will update the colour box each time the selection changes.

The sliders are used to change the colour in the colour box.  Each slider has a button which will replace only the specific colour channel in the selection with the value of that slider. 

The "Replace RGBA" button will apply the colour to the selection.

"Auto Apply" will apply the colour to the selection automatically as the sliders are moved.  Having the "Just Channel" option ticked will only apply the colour channel of the slider that is moving and not the overall colour displayed in the colour box.

There is also a "Blend Colour" collapsible frame:
This will blend the colour in the colour box based on the blend mode and opacity settings set.


4.2.2 Randomise Components

This operation adds and subtracts a random amount of colour to your selection.  The amount of randomness is specified per channel, and the randomness is applied differently depending on the selection type.

A selection of vertices will randomise each vertex.
A selection of faces will randomise each face.
A selection of objects will randomise each object.

4.2.3 Apply 3D Texture

The Apply 3D Texture operation blends a procedural 3D texture into the selected mesh colours.  This is very useful for adding noise and variation to existing colours.

First the type of 3D texture must be chosen from the Texture menu.  Pressing the "create" button will create this 3D texture and now it is ready to be applied to your scene.

Click on the image of the texture to alter it's properties.

The scale slider modifies the size of the texture in the 3D world.
"RSeed" is the random seed and can be changed to get slightly different versions of the texture.

Note: You do not need UVs to use 3D textures, their value is determined by the position of the vertex in the scene.


4.2.4 Gradient Tool

        
The gradient tool applies a linear gradient between two specified colours. 

The two colours display their RGB value in the top part of the rectangle, and their alpha value in the lower part.  Clicking on the start and end colour boxes launches Maya's colour chooser window. 

There are four types of gradients which can be chosen from the "Type" menu:


The axis gradients are drawn from the minimum to the maximum point of your mesh in the specified axis.  The spherical gradient has some extra options, such as the centre point of the gradient and the radius.

Standard gradient options follow.  "Repeats" specified how many times the gradient will loop between the start and end points.  "Repeat" specifies how this loop will be drawn. There are three options:


3 example gradients, each with "repeats" set to 6, and with a different repeat mode set (left to right): Clamp, Wrap & Mirror.


4.2.5 Mental Ray Baking
These operations provide a quick and easy way to use the Mental Ray baker to accomplish the most common baking tasks.  

Why not just use Mental Ray baking directly?

This operation is aware of the Vertex Chameleon layering system, and so bakes into the correct layer.   Normally when using Maya vertex colour tools (such as the bake) on a mesh with vertex colour layers, Maya doesn't know the correct layer to write to.  If you want to use Mental Ray you must make sure you type in the name of the colorSet (layer) you want to bake to.  If you aren't using the layering system in Vertex Chameleon then there is no problem.
"Bake Texture" bakes any texture that is applied to the object into the vertex colours, disregarding any lighting in the scene.

"Bake Lighting" only bakes the direct lighting into the mesh.  There is an option to bake the shadows as well.  Baking shadows will only work if the lights have shadowing enabled (setup via the attribute editor).

"Bake Occlusion" bakes ambient occlusion into the vertex colours.  Only a few options are exposed as these are the most frequently used.

 4.3 Adjust Operations

4.3.1 Adjust RGBA
Dragging the sliders left decreases the amount of that colour in your selection, while dragging right will increase it.  The Rainbow checkbox adds in Yellow, Cyan and Magenta sliders:
4.3.2 Adjust HSV

Allows real-time adjusting of hue, saturation and value (similar to brightness, however it doesn't alter the hue or saturation).  Dragging the sliders left decreases the amount of that colour in your selection, while dragging right will increase it.

4.3.3 Brightness / Contrast
Allows real-time adjusting of brightness and contrast.  Dragging the sliders left decreases the amount of brightness/contrast in your selection, while dragging right will increase it.

4.3.4 Levels
The Levels operation adjusts brightness and contrast, but offers more control than the Brightness / Contrast operation.

4.3.5 Filters


Filters process components in relation to neighbouring components.  Blur averages the surrounding components, Sharpen does the opposite of this.  Dilate replaces darker colours with any surrounding lighter colours.  Erode replaces lighter colours with any surrounding darker colours.

What are dilate & erode?

Dilate can be used to make brighter colours take over darker colours.
Erode can be used to make darker colours take over lighter colours.
The apply buttons will apply the filter 100%.


4.3.6 Nudge Tool
The nudge tool is useful for rapid tweaking and when the mesh is too complicated to use the real-time sliders.  It provides a nice simple interface to do most tweak operations.

Each row has a pair of complementary buttons and a slider.  The button on the left will increase the effect while the button on the right decreases it.  The value is the amount of effect the buttons have each time they are pressed.

4.4 Extra Operations

4.4.1 Clamp
Clamp colour channels in your selection to the specified range.  Values below the minimum will be set to the minimum, values above the maximum will be set to the maximum.

4.4.2 Channel Swap


Copy or swap colour channels.

4.4.3 Channel Contrast
Increase or decrease contrast in individual colour channels.

4.4.4 Channel Inverter


Channel inverter inverts individual colour channels much the same as a film negative is inverted.  Move the sliders to gradually invert your selection, or use the Apply button to fully invert a specific channel.

4.4.5 Posterize
The posterize operation removes colours, reducing the number of unique colours.  It goes from removing very subtle colours to finally removing the more obvious colours.

4.5 Tools

4.5.1 Colour Inspector

The Colour Inspector tool dynamically updates it's statistics whenever the selection changes.  For the current selection it shows the lowest, highest and average colour channel values, as well as a count of the number of unique colours.

4.5.2 Layers
Vertex Colour Layers is an extension of Maya's vertex color sets, adding Photoshop-style blend modes, visibility toggling, opacity value, alpha channel blending and real-time rendering of the final layer's composition.

The currently selected mesh is shown at the top of the interface.  Only a single mesh can be selected at a time for the Layers editor to work.

The "View" menu allows you to choose between "Final Composite" and "Active Layer".  "Final Composite" displays the result of all the layers blended together.  "Active Layer" displays only the currently active layer.

Each layer row consists of multiple parts:
  • Active Icon - Only one layer can be active.  This means this is the layer that will be drawn to and read from by the Vertex Chameleon operations.  This is indicated by the pencil icon.
  • Visiblity Icon - Toggling this button will cause the layer to hide or show. 
  • Layer Name - Changing this will rename the layer.
  • Blend Mode - The mode to blend with the layer below.
  • Opacity - How much of the layer to blend with the layer below.

Each layer is a Maya vertex colour set.  Vertex Chameleon creates a colour set called "VCP_MasterComp" into which it calculates all the blending of the layers.

Note: Layers is not available in Maya 6.5 or earlier.  This is because vertex colour sets were only introduced from Maya 7.0.

Note: Layers only works with a single mesh selected.

A note about using the vertex colour tools of Maya with the layering system

All the vertex colour tools in Vertex Chameleon will obey the layers correctly, however this is not the case for Maya's own tools.   If you're using tools such as Prelight you need to manually set the colorset (layer) you wish to use.  This is done via the ColorSet Editor.

4.5.3 Colour Swatch


The Colour Swatch is used to store important colours so they can be easily retrieved later on.

Use the "New" button to create a new swatch of ten colours, or the "Load" button to load an existing .col swatch file.

Left-clicking on a colour in a swatch will set the Apply Colour tool to that colour.
Right-clicking on a colour will assign the colour from the Apply Colour tool into that swatch slot.

The "delete" button deletes the swatch.

The "copy" button will clone the swatch and add it to the swatch list.

The "save" button allows you to save the swatch to a .col file.

The "grad" button generates a smooth gradient in the swatch between the first and last colours.

The "rand" button will randomise all the colours in that swatch.



5. Scripting

The plugin can be scripted using MEL for integration into a tool-chain or for create macros.  Details on the commands and their parameters are coming soon.


6. Notes


6.1 Known Issues
 
  1. Sliders don't properly support different selection types on the same mesh at the same time.
  2. Layers only works with a single mesh selected.
  3. Filters only work with vertices and not vertex-faces.
  4. 3D texture operation only works on vertex & object selections.
  5. Gradient Tool always works on selections as vertices and never as vertex-faces.
  6. Maya has a bug renaming colour sets to previously deleted colour sets which causes all coloursets to be removed.

6.2 Release Notes

Version 1.x


Version 1.3.7 - 22 October 2008


Version 1.3.5 - 03 October 2008
  • Added Layer reordering
  • Added lighting only baking
  • Greatly improved layers stability:
    • Created a workaround for a bug in Maya where renaming a layer to a previously deleted layer would delete all layers
    • Fixed a bug where in vertex-face mode with a vertex selection the plugin would read from the wrong layer
    • Made Layers window more responsive to selection changes
    • Fixed bug where having no layers would render random colours
    • Fixed Mac OS X UI bug where layer visibility icon didn't update
  • 3D Texure UI improved:
    • Scale and RSeed sliders update texture preview in realtime
    • Added button to delete the temporary texture
    • More compact UI
  • Fixed endian bug for Mac OS X PPC processors in licensing system
  • Fixed file load/save bug in the colour swatches for Maya 7.0 and below

Version 1.3 - 25 September 2008

  • Added Linux support:

  • Added PPC support for Mac OS X
  • Added RGBA channel masking:
  • Added alpha blending support to Layers
  • Fixed ambient occlusion baking bug for Maya 7.0
  • Fixed crash bug when rebooting UI
  • Fixed 0..255 to 0..1 colour range values bug

Version 1.2 - 11 September 2008

  • Added Mac OS-X support:
  • Added automatic version update notification system:
  • Changing view mode now retains selection
  • Added HSV channels to clamping
  • Changed normals -> colours to be unsigned
  • Improved license entry mechanism
  • Windows installer now warns if maya.exe is running

Version 1.1 - 15 August 2008
  • Added synchronisation of the Apply Colour colour to Maya's Vertex Colour Paint Tool
  • Added Mental Ray vertex baking options
    • Integrated into the Layers system (bakes to the correct colour set)
    • Ambient Occlusion with the most common options
    • Texture-only bake
  • Added Ambient Occlusion shortcut
  • Fixed bug: operations like duplicating a layer with a component selection would fail
  • Fixed bug: undoing with Layers didn't restore the correct colour set
  • Fixed bug: renaming layers could cause Maya to crash
  • Improved speed of Layers UI when toggling active layer

Version 1.0 - 5 August 2008


Version 1.0 BETA - 1 August 2008


Version 0.95 - 17 July 2008


Version 0.90 - 10 July 2008

Version 0.88 - 6 July 2008

Version 0.86 - 4 July 2008


Version 0.82 beta - 29 June 2008


6.3 Thanks

Special thanks fly to:

David Berenguer Viaplana, for developing his SDAB Vertex Colour tools which inspired this tool, and for all his hard work on the early versions of this tool.

Carlos Varona, for moral support, name brainstorming and modelling the chameleon.

David Price, for testing and great feedback during the development of this tool.
6.4 FAQ

6.4.1 How do I make vertex colours appear in Maya renders?

By default Maya's Software and Mental Ray renderers don't handle vertex colours.  Only the Hardware renderer does.  To solve this you can download the Bonus Tools pack from Autodesk which includes a shader utility node called cvColorShader.  Adding this node to your shader gives you the ability to assign your vertex colours to any of the standard shader node inputs allowing vertex colours to appear in renders.



7. Support


Website

Vertex Chameleon has it's own website where updates and news can be found:

http://www.RenderHeads.com/portfolio/VertexChameleon/


Discussion Forum

Use the discussion forum to post your questions, opinions, submit feature requests, report bugs and show off ways you've used the plugin:

http://www.RenderHeads.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=5


RenderHeads Details


For further support please contact the developers directly:


Web: www.renderheads.com

Email: contact@renderheads.com

Phone: +447970692070