Maya Cg Plug-in|NVIDIA
 

Maya Cg Plug-in

 
 

Distribution of the Maya Cg Plugin has been taken over directly by Autodesk/Alias since the advent of Maya 6. If you have Maya version 6, 7, 8, 2008 or beyond, this plugin already came along as part of your Maya installation so you won't need to download it here.

To enable the Cg Plugin in newer versions of Maya, simply find it in the Maya plugin manager.

Newer version of the plugin are compatible with newer versions of Cg, while you can find CgFX shaders as part of the NVIDIA Shader Library. This page is primarily provided for historical interest.

The Maya Cg Plug-in allows artists to author and visualize content in Maya 4.5 and Maya 5.0 using advanced hardware rendering and the Cg high level language. The plug-in includes:

  • Intuitive artist controls
    • Slider control over key real-time parameters (such as bump depth, etc...)
  • Integration with Maya's lights
  • CgFX integration with Maya's Hypershade node-based shader editor
  • Dynamic shader-specific GUIs
    • Supports standard GPU image formats (such as DDS)
    • Supports .fx shader format
  • Samples include:
    • Bumpy Shiny, Toon Shading, Anisotropic Metal, Ghostly, Refraction, Dispersion, Rainbow, and more

The cross-API capability of Cg is a breakthrough for development teams targeting content for multiple platforms. The Maya Cg Plug-in supports the CgFX file format (.fx) and automatically provides intuitive interface controls and semantics to users and developers alike - for editing shader effects in real-time. Since the CgFX format also supports both DirectX and OpenGL, developers may encapsulate a series of fallback techniques for rendering any effect. CgFX files are text-based and describe the complete render state for a particular effect -- multiple passes, texture states, and any number of individual vertex and pixel shaders maybe defined to create a complete appearance or effect.

This installers include everything you need for Maya 4.5 and Maya 5.0: 

  • Maya Cg Plug-in
  • AlienMaya example file
  • Example shader files in .fx format with accompanying .dds textures
  • Documentation

Requirements: Maya 4.5 or 5.0 and Version 1.1 of the Cg Compiler should be installed before installing this plug-in.

Notes: The plug-in has been updated with a new feature which allows file references to be kept as relative paths from the project path. This allows greater ease of use to move Maya content from one machine to another.




   



Cg Toolkit 1.5 (September 2007)
NVIDIA's Cg Toolkit provides everything you need to quickly get started with Cg.


   



CgFX Viewer
The CgFX Viewer is a standalone shader prototyping tool supporting the .fx format. It allows users to connect, edit, and tweak shaders and render them in DirectX and OpenGL.



   



Mel Tools for CgFX
Some useful CgFX Mel tools, with accompanying documentation.



 
 
 
 
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