MEOW: Attribute Overrides

Add Attributes

To add an attribute override select one or more items and click on "Add New Attribute Set", this will create a mvSet node and assign it to the item location. You can also "Assign Existing" to assign an existing set, while "Inspect Attribute Set" will open an attribute editor for the selected attribute set.

Note

MEOW overrides work by inheritance, so, just like for materials, every children node will inherit attributes if not overridden in a lower point in the item hierarchy.

Namespace

The mvSet node contains a special parameter called "Material Namespace" where you can type to specify a material namespace to a location in the USD asset. This namespace refers to the shading networks which you are Maya-referencing into your scene. The namespace is usually set on the root item of a Compound in MEOW.

Other overrides

Additionally, you can put inside a mvSet node any of the following set-like type of nodes which will allow for the overrides you specify on each:

• For Arnold / Renderman / VRay: Maya set node
• For 3Delight: dlSet node
• For Redshift: redshiftMeshParameters and redshiftVisibility
• For VRay: VRayObjectProperties

Heads up!

The reason why you can put the renderer-specific set-type of nodes inside an mvSet is to allow for a render-agnostic workflow: the mvSet allows you to specify a "namespace" for the materials of the renderer you intend to use, while the renderer specific set-type nodes allow you to specify rendering attributes for each renderer.

Effectively, you can swap between renderers by simply changing the namespace for your material shading networks.

Read the Rendering Attribute to know more.

See this quick video as an example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZzwBXQIFtQ&

https://youtu.be/fZzwBXQIFtQ

Adding Renderer-specific Attributes

After we have assigned an attribute override to item(s) we probably want to add renderer specific attributes such as subdivisions, visibilities and so on.

All the items in MEOW where an attribute override is assigned will override attributes according to what attributes are set in the set-like nodes.

For example we can create a dlSet from 3Delight^NSI which contains specific rendering attributes and then we sets up Subdivision, Compositing (Visibility), and additional motion blur samples.

Next in order for the attribute to take effect as an attribute override, we just need to put dlSet1 under mvSet1. By doing this the attribute will effect the items that has been override by mvSet1.

If we have an asset that will be rendered by 3Delight and Arnold we could also put Maya set node that contains Arnold render parameters as well (likewise we can do the same for Redshift, Renderman and VRay using their respective nodes). When Arnold renders the asset it will recognize the correct attributes and will ignore attribute from 3Delight (or the other renderers).

Removing Attribute Override

To remove attribute override simply select the item(s) and select Remove Attribute Set from MEOW’s popup menu.