Whats New - Version 4.5.1


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Slim Appearance Docs - Portability
Cutter automatically generates a Slim appearance document for each shader it compiles using Pixar's shader compiler. With previous versions of Cutter the user had no control over the specification of the path to a shader in the Slim document. Cutter always specified the full path ie.

    slim 1 appearance slim {
        instance surface "example" "//G/shaders/example" {
        ...

This version of Cutter includes a couple of options to control the generation of Slim appearance docs and the type of shader path they specify - figure 1. The user can choose to turn off the automatic generation of Slim appearance docs - handy when compiling shaders for use with Houdini. In addition, the path specification used by instance proc may be reference the directory shared by the slim doc ie.

    slim 1 appearance slim {
        instance surface "example" "example" {
        ...

Making the path to the shader relative, in the sense that it points to the same directory as the Slim document, makes the shader/slim "duo" portable but only if a couple of extra paths are specifed in mtor's WorkPpace manager - figure 2.

Follow these steps if you intend to move the shader/slim docs to another directory, say as a result of copying your Maya project directory to a render farm. Prior to copying the Maya directory structure to the render farm, copy your shader/slims to the rmandshader directory.

For Portability

  1. de-select "absolute path in slim doc"
  2. add two paths to the default resources in the WorkSpace Manager
    - the path to the Maya project rmanshader directory,
    - the path to the directory in which Cutter puts its compiled shaders

The last path should match Cutters preference - figure 3.



figure 3



figure 1



figure 2










© 2002- Malcolm Kesson. All rights reserved.