November 12, 2007

Perlin Noise Texture Plugin

Procedural texture map plugin based on flask making use of Ken Perlin's well known noise function. Although noise textures are already included in 3ds Max and Maya, this plugin extends the present algorithms with a simple to use, but extremely powerful and popular noise function.
Perlin noise is a function that has a pseudo-random appearance with values changing smoothly from one point to another. It can be used to create a great variety of procedural textures to increase the appearance of realism in computer graphics. For more information on Perlin noise, take a look at the wikipedia article.


Download:
3ds Max 9 version (32bit and 64bit)
Maya 8.5 (or greater) version (32bit)

August 31, 2007

JNG File Format Importer for 3ds Max and Maya

Flask based image file importer plugins for the JNG file format. JNG files do store image data by embedding a JPEG datastream for color information, and may embed another grayscale image to be used as an alpha channel (stored using PNG or JPEG compression). For more information on the JNG file format, visit the libpng site or the wikipedia article.


Download:
3ds Max 9 version (32bit)
Maya 8.5 (or greater) version (32bit)

August 10, 2007

SAM File Format Exporter/Importer

Flask based exporter/importer plugins for the SAM file format - being a sample file format mainly for demonstration purposes.
SAM files are basically simple ASCII files storing meshes and bones/joints. On the bone/joint side, the format stores the joint's unique name (if not unique in the 3D editor, it will be made unique), the parent joint's name (or "" if it's a root joint) and its inverse base matrix (being the inverse of the bind pose matrix).
Stored mesh data consists of the name of the mesh, vertices, normals, texture coordinates (with any number of coordinate sets), names of applied materials (per polygon), number of vertices per polygon, indices per polygon for all this data, and skin weights.

Download:
3ds Max 9 version (32bit)
Maya 7 (or greater) version

Flask

Abstraction framework for 3D modeling tools. The framework provides a unified API for portable plugin development on supported 3D editors, like export/import plugins, model modification addons, customized editor extensions, etc...
Note that very specific, and thus not easily generalizable features of one tool are usually not supported. Since 3D editors often are huge pieces of software, we naturally can't support every single component. However, if there are unsupported components (usually just because they weren't needed until now) that are reasonably unifiable, they will get implemented when needed by ourselves, or upon request, of course.

Currently supported editors:
- Autodesk Maya
- Autodesk 3dsmax

Support planned for:
- Softimage XSI (in progress)
- NewTek LightWave 3D
- Maxon Cinema4D
- etc... (feel free to ask)

Photoshop jng Plugin

Free JNG file format import/export plugin for Adobe Photoshop (version 7 or greater, but should work on older versions, too).
At the moment, you can find the download on the libpng site.

©Potion Studios. All Rights Reserved.