CS348B - Modelers

This page is a quick reference to the various modeling options for your final project. It is not meant to be comprehensive.

AC3D is the modeler installed on the Sweet Hall machines. To use it, you'll need to set your environment up appropriately by adding the following line to your .cshrc file:
setenv AC3D_HOME /usr/class/cs348b/software/ac3dreg
Xfrog is a shareware plant modeler that outputs RIB.
MTOR for Maya is installed on the Sweet Hall machines. You have to set a few environment variables up before it will work (in your cshrc):
```
setenv RMANTREE /usr/class/cs348b/software/prman
setenv RATTREE /usr/class/cs348b/software/rat4.0
setenv RMANFB it
setenv AW_LOCATION /usr/aw
setenv MAYA_LOCATION $AW_LOCATION/maya
setenv MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH $RATTREE/bin
setenv MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH $RATTREE/lib/mtor/resources
setenv XBMLANGPATH "$RATTREE/lib/mtor/resources/%B"
setenv LD_LIBRARYN32_PATH "$MAYA_LOCATION/lib:$AW_LOCATION/COM/lib32:$RATTREE/bin"
```
You'll also want to add $RATTREE/bin and $RMANTREE/bin to your path (in that order).
You'll want to set up in Maya following the following:
mtor.so is that component of the MTOR package, that is a Maya plugin. After setting up the user environment (as above) you'll be able to load the plugin as follows:
Using the interactive plugin manager (Windows->General Editors->Plug-in Manager), find mtor.so. If you've setup MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH, mtor.so should already appear in the menu. If not, you can click the browse button to select it explicitly. Once mtor.so shows up in the Plug-in Manager, check loaded and auto load. Now, every time you use Maya, MTOR will be automatically loaded.
On loading, MTOR installs a RenderMan menu item in Maya's Render menubar. If the RenderMan menu item does not appear, make sure that you've properly established your environement. Also refer to the window from which you launched Maya as well as your console for diagnostics.
Now, once you have a scene modeled in Maya, select the RenderMan->Render menu. This will generate a RIB file and attempt to render. Unfortunately, the rendering is broken, but the RIB file generation works fine. You can find your RIBs in your Maya project directory, in the rib subdirectory.