[Verse-dev] Verse and Maya

[Eskil Steenberg]

Hi

> Verse looks interesting. I'm working with Maya and I'm looking for a
> kind version control system. Verse seems to be a good framework to get
> build such system. I started to read a bit its specification document
> (v2) and I have some questions.

This is the third answer so i hope i have somyhing to add.

> Is it possible to completely represent a maya scene using Verse entity
> (object, material, geometry...). Maya uses a lot shader graph, is it
> possible to express this using Verse?

Most of it yes. As said before verse only exports graphics, it doesnt
exprot any tools, like constriuction history. The reason for this is that
verse is design to make any applicatins compatible, and all applications
have different construction history and they are all different, and many
simpler applications dont have construction history.

The verse shader tree (found in the material node) is very power full, and
is closes to the one found in XSI but a bit cleaner. So converting maya or
any other shader is to verse and back is not that hard.

There are some things that maya does that verse does not do so far, mainly
particles, fluid dynamics, Hair, and some of the paint effects. I have
long planed to ad this to verse but i hev yet found asolid way to do this
that would work with many different implementations.

If you need verse to support something special there are many ways you can
do this, by storing someing in tag or text node or like i did with Loq
save vertex select in a vertex layer.

> If it's possible, does that mean this won't be compatible with other
> system like Blender or XSI (if I decide to create a verse plugin for XSI)?

Yes that is the point. (if you decide to create a verse plugin for XSI, we
will love you as we are already woking on a Maya and a Max plug)

> Is Verse only designed to send basic data or complex scenes?

Complex! we obviusly want verse to work with very large data sets, and the
api and protocol is ready for that. But you will run in to issiues if you
have very large data sets, such as bandwith, and your network will never
be as fast as your ram. At this point verse it self has some internal
issiues, but we are working to resolve them. I am running a special
optimized version of verse at home, but it has bugs and doesnt realy work,
but im working to get it in order and then i will release it.

Cheers

E