Point Clouds is a very interesting way of baking information. I spent many hours trying to understand this concept by going through the examples given in the Prman Application notes.

There were countless failed attempts on this topic, as it was a new concept of rendering for me. Moreover, it was really easay to get lost between the different files and the steps that was needed.

Below are the notes that I have flip through many rounds and got frustrated at times because the result was different.

http://www.sfdm.scad.edu/faculty/mkesson/pixar_docs/prman_technical_rendering/AppNotes/pointbased.html

http://fundza.com/rman_shaders/pointcloud/index.html

http://www.sfdm.scad.edu/faculty/mkesson/pixar_docs/prman_technical_rendering/AppNotes/brickmapgprim.html

http://fundza.com/algorithmic/sierpinski/index.html

On the left is a point cloud information.

This is the most BASIC of the Pack but suprisingly it took me a long time to understand the concept.

Anyway, Point Cloud simply bakes a mesh 3 Dimensionally, meaning recording the frontm sides and back of a 3d object.

The picture is a 3d head of a monster, and what we are looking at is the Recorded Points.

This can only be viewed through the built in PTC viewer by PRman.

 

Click to see Script to BAKE a Point Cloud

Here we are looking at a screwed up image. This was like the 1000x I tried to render a PointCloud Occlusion.

Rendering with PointCloud the render is way faster the Ray tracing, but it is giving me this Shitttty Result.

Well! The steps: - - - - - -- - - -

1. Create a RSL Baking shader File.

2. Bake the Points of the mesh into a PointCloud file in Ribs. (.ptc)

3. Check the ptc file, it should look something like the top.

4. Now create a Pointcloud Occlusion RSL Shader.

5. Lastly Render the Surface Shader in Ribs.

However, this was the result. I gave up for the Day. I will COME back tomorrow to Try again with another method of learning.

Well I am back at it again. Now I decided to have some direction by looking for some reference pictures.

I found great interest in creating a shader for tablets, especially the one that has oil in them.

They give off som creative and beautifull lights and texture when lited.

More Reference Pictures.

So I went to create a quick and simple model of a pill and redid the steps. For some reasons Redoing was the right way to go as it turn out fine. :).

Well I kind of just copied the scripts from the Application page. I just change the model to my pill.

BUT still, the previous trials, I did the same freaking THING and it gave me Crap.

Scripts:

Baking to PTC RSL shader - Rib File for Baking - PTC Occlusion Shader - Rib File for PTC Render.

However, If we look at the pointcloud information. Something is Different from before.

These pointcloud information seems to look more appropriate from the monster head.

Something must have gone wrong in my previous attempts.

I was really happy to see these results as I know i am on track.

The second image ia a bake that has a lower Shading Rate.

 

Here is just another angle view to show that the point cloud is calculated 3 dimensionally.

OK now I moved on to try out PointCloud OCC with an environment map.

Color from my texture map will be reflected on the surface of the object.

Well things looks right here.

Scripts:

EnvPtcOcclusion RSL shader.

Then I moved to the Reflection PointCloud Occlusion.

Scripts:

RePtcOcc RSL shader.

Well well well. Here is the interesting part. Having to BAKE a texture and Color into a PointCloud Mesh.

The interesting part was the power of displaychannels.

I can put in several surface information into the different channels and bake it out.

Well its not smart to bake light information as it will look like an In Game graphic simualtion, however it is possible.

Well on the left, are test results of the Bake.

Images are view throught PTC viewer.

1. PointCloud texture channel

2. PointCloud Cs (SurfaceColor) Channel

3. PointCloud Color channel.

Scripts:

PtcBakeShader + Tex + Cs + Color - Rib file to Bake

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So knowing that I can bake all this information, rendering time could be reduced tremendously.

Next is to try this pills in Brick Map shapes.

 

 

 

Well as promised its been brought into Brick-map and rendered.

Picture on left are pills that have been converted to brickmap.

Step 1 - Create a Pointcloud Shader, defining what I want to bake.

Step 2 - Bake the Pill in .rib and convert it to a Brickmap.

Using a funtion - "brickmake ./filename.ptc ./filename.bkm"

Step 3 - Render the brickmap (under frm 2)with a shader.

To read a brickmap - Geometry "brickmap" "filename" ["file.bkm"]

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