VR-Plugin. for Autodesk Maya.

Transcription

1 VR-Plugin for Autodesk Maya 1

2 1 1. Licensing process Licensing Quick start Quick start Rendering Rendering Optimize performance Optimize performance Troubleshooting Troubleshooting Release features Release features Version 5.4 2

3 1. Licensing If your license has not yet been activated, a grace/trial period for VR-Plugin Viewer starts. You can immediately start using VR-Plugin. Professional features still require registration: You will be informed about your devices serial number and that there is not yet a license key for the plugin (press Crtl+C to copy that message) Please do NOT send us the Box as an image to accelerate the licensing process Sent us an with the Subject containing [REGISTRATION] to moculus@hotmail.com Include the following information in the customer name: serial number: license type: date of purchase: transaction number and used for payment: Your license will be activated after the payment is confirmed, this may take longer if registration details are missing. While not registered, the plugin runs in grace/trial period with all Viewer license features activated. Professional features do not work until registered. 3

4 2. Quick start Oculus Rift user should have installed the latest runtime and HTC Vive user the latest SteamVR - make sure Oculus Home / SteamVR started! Install VR-Plugin with the provided installer, after confirming all Windows dialogs: Start Autodesk Maya Click on the tiny VR-Plugin icon in the VRplugin -Tab in Autodesk Maya: 4

5 VR-Plugin UI will appear and a Virtual Desktop duplication is immediately visible in your HMD now... Load a scene if you want Clicking the huge Play-Button now and see your current Maya scene in your HMD You are now ready to enter Maya in VR 5

6 Users of VR-Plugin Professional can record HMD movement with the large Record-Button: Press Record on the UI You can see the keys written in the timeline after the record process. A new camera is created every time the recording stops. 6

7 Every new recorded camera is listed in the Camera tab. You can delete each record by selecting it and pressing Delete Camera. VR-Plugin Viewer and Professional have the Parenting function to hook your camera rig to another animated object. Select the object in your scene and press the Parent button. You can select a recorded camera by double clicking in the camera list. Your view camera will be moved and parented to the object you selected. To remove parenting, you can press the Unparent button. 7

8 Match your scene scale to the Maya settings to avoid unwanted scaling issues. You can set the scale factor in the UI to zero if you just want to use the head rotation and not the positional tracking. This can useful with 360 domes for example. For best conversion adjust the Maya Unit scale in the UI to the same value as in the Maya Preferences > Settings > Working Units 8

9 You have the possibility to move around in your Maya scene with a Gamepad. To enable the controller, just press the play button in the last tab of the UI. Press the Play button in the Controller tab, to enable Gamepad movement. 9

10 3. Rendering Press the Arnold 5 VR button to render out a stereoscopic image from the perspective camera. This is still an early implementation of the VR rendering features. 10

11 4. Optimize performance Change settings in the nvidia Control Panel Maximum pre-rendered frames: 1 Power management mode: Prefer maximum performance Virtual Reality pre-rendered frames: 1 Change settings in Autodesk Maya For best performance switch on DirectX in the Maya Display settings Since Maya always renders to all active viewports, switch from a 4-viewport view to 1 in Maya 11

12 Even a single viewport does a second rendering, you can completely disable the remaining Maya viewports by selecting VR-Plugin Pause Viewport : In the Professional Version VR-Plugin Mirror Viewport has a similar effect by reducing viewport rendering to a single mirror texture draw Sometimes it takes a second for Maya to catch up and run smooth with more fps. Having Maya very busy with its own UI can also harm rendering performance. Close unnecessary Maya windows and avoid e.g. viewing heavy changing graphs simultaneously with VR. Users of VR-Plugin Professional can enable the Mirror Viewport option. With the Mirror Viewport option, you can observe what s seen in the HMD. 12

13 Use the following settings in Maya to get the best frame rate Maya Preferences Option Box: Display -> Viewport 2.0: DirectX 11 Settings ->Working Units ->Time: milliseconds Settings ->Time Slider -> Playback: Real-time The Settings of the Viewport 2.0 in the Single Perspective View are passed on to VR-Plugin Viewport 2.0 rendering Ambient Occlusion, Depth of field (Professional Version) may lower your FPS depending on your GPU and scene complexity 13

14 Use the following command for live update while editing a scene Maya script editor: OR Enter the following command in a MEL tab: play -record; Enter the following command in a PYTHON tab: import maya.mel as mm mm.eval('play -record;') Maya 2017 Update 3 improvements: Transparency has been improved in Viewport 2.0 with the addition of a new Alpha Cut transparency algorithm. Alpha Cut provides high quality transparency and accurate object sorting without performance trade-offs. This algorithm is ideal for quickly rendering foliage as well as light-weight objects for the purposes of pre-visualization or low LOD stand-ins. You can change the Transparency Algorithm in the Hardware Render 2.0 Settings menu under Performance. The VR-Plugin HMD viewport inherits the changes from the default Viewport 2.0 settings. You can override Screen-space Ambient Occlusion, Hardware Fog, Anti-aliasing in VR-Plugin UI. The individual details settings are also inherited. 14

15 5. Troubleshooting Install NVidia Driver and change settings: Clean-Install newest GPU Driver with VR support: Runtime Downloads Create proxy configuration for VR-Plugin If you (or your company) is using a proxy server for http, you can configure VR-Plugin to use it for web requests. Just create the file proxy.txt in %LOCALAPPDATA%\VR-Plugin containing a single line defining your proxy IP and port e.g :

16 Create exception rule in your firewall to enable authentication The exact IP for the exception rule will be shown you by a message box from the plug-in. Just allow this connection to the VR-Plugin server in the Outbound Rules of the Windows Firewall the IP to allow is ( moculus.de ) on Port 8080, so you can add a firewall exception like this: 16

17 Files for custom Maya installations If you are working in a non-standard Maya install environment (e.g. D:\Maya\ and not the default Program Files -folder usually at C:\Program Files\ ) you must move the required VR-Plugin files and folders by hand. From local user: C:\Users\User\Documents\maya\2017\scripts\VR-Plugin\*.* C:\Users\User\Documents\maya\2017\scripts\VRpluginMain.py C:\Users\User\Documents\maya\2017\scripts\VRpluginUI.py C:\Users\User\Documents\maya\2017\prefs\shelves\shelf_VRpluginProfessional.mel or shelf_vrpluginviewer.mel From program files: C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2017\bin\openvr_api.dll C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2017\bin\plug-ins\VR-Plugin2017.mll Resolve issues when the shelf is not showing up Run this Python command in your Maya script editor to start the UI: Professional: import VRpluginUI VRpluginUI.main("VRpluginQt.ui") Viewer: import VRpluginUI VRpluginUI.main("VRpluginQtViewer.ui") Backup and delete the userprefs.mel in the user/documents/maya/2017/prefs folder 17

18 The installation files can t be found in my current user account: VR-Plugin will be installed only to the current user that is logged in while installation. If you want to switch your Windows user account, you should reinstall the software from that account In case the user is not an administrator you can copy the local user files as described in section 3. Troubleshooting: Files for custom Maya installations Troubleshoot Viewport 2.0 If you are not able to obtain the expected results in Viewport 2.0, refer to the following for workable solutions and workarounds: explore/caas/cloudhelp/cloudhelp/2016/enu/maya/files/guid-96b324b5-e9ef ccd- 1E324DB54FE3-htm.html 18

19 Troubleshoot SteamVR If you are changing between different Maya versions please make sure that you restart SteamVR > Devices > Reboot Vive Headset Make sure SteamVR is working correctly before starting Maya Troubleshoot the HMD The HMD shows flickering in Random Patterns or Black Screen: Open the HMDs host and check if it is working (e.g. shows a picture of the Oculus Home or SteamVR environment) If the home screen doesn t show up, stop the runtime service and restart it Restart Maya on success Solve the Maya shutdown bug HTC Vive users maybe have to close the SteamVR client This is related to a bug not unloading the openvr_api.dll Be careful, closing the SteamVR client will shut down Maya immediately Multiple GPU When you have a Multi GPU system make sure you plug the VR headset into the correct HDMI output used for Maya. 19

20 Installation of required prerequisites Make sure you have installed the DirectX Runtime and the latest versions of Microsoft Visual C++ redistributable package 20

21 6. Release features Copyright Dominik Capodieci and Moritz Strickhausen. All trademarks, labelled or not with or TM, belong to their respective owners and are only cited to describe service, products and methods. 21