Setting Array Sizes

[Ian_]

Hi, using the new beta, I'm not sure if this is a known issue or not, but I didn't see it in the release notes pdf, but the newer feature of being able to change the size of arrays in shaders like Composting_select and Generator_blend_ramp and being able set the values of each array element in the parameter editor seems to be broken. For example, if I set a blend ramp to have 4 colors, setting the location to 1.0, the shader just blends to the second color, then fades to black above 1.0. This is the same for the select shader, putting the Selected Color value to 1 and above only selects the second color/element. Mapping the values to a Phenomenon doesn't seem to work either, nor does putting other nodes into the array's inputs. The only thing that seems to work, is setting the amount of colors explicitly, in the msl file.

However, this didn't seem to be a problem in version 1.0, where you could only edit array values in the graph, but it seems you can't edit the values in the graph in version 1.1 now. I was making shaders with different array sizes but, having the flexibility of changing the size in MM was pretty nice.
Thanks - Ian

[ruediger]

Hi Ian,

this is definitely not what we had intended. I took a closer look at it and I saw that the .count attribute for arrays does not update when the array size is changed. Thank you Ian for reporting your issue. We have now logged this under bug 8419.

Cheers,
Ruediger

[Ian_]

Hey, its been awhile since this problem has been addressed, and in the current version, 1.1-110260.19011-c it still seems that the count attribute doesn't update on any of the shaders with an array. Are there any plans of fixing this in the next revision? I would think that this would be a critical issue. If not, it looks like I'll have to stick with rewriting these shaders, with fixed sizes, and having a count parameter to limit how many elements to use, which makes the shader more complicated than it needs to be....

[Ian_]

Does anyone know if this will be fixed soon?

[ruediger]

Dear Ian,

I am happy to announce that this has been fixed with mental mill 1.2. The array size is dynamically set. At the moment that you export your shader to CgFX or HLSL it will use the current size of the array in mental mill.

I hope that answers your question and that it will facilitate things for you in the future.

Best Regards,
Ruediger

[Ian_]

Hi Ruediger,
Thanks a lot for your response about this. I'm sorry if I'm whining too much about this, I'm very glad to hear that this will be fixed, as I do have a lot of ideas for shaders using arrays. Is it possible to get a date when the new version will be out?