All 3Delight plug-ins can export NSI files. These files can be rendered either locally or the cloud. Sequences of NSI files can be exported as well, with some plug-ins (such as 3Delight for Houdini) having the ability to factor out static geometries from the animation into a separate NSI file to drastically reduce the required storage.
When exporting files that must be used on different operating systems, it is very useful to use environment variables to point to a location in the file system. This is is especially useful in mixed environments where textures and other resources do not have the same path on different platforms.
3Delight offers two features for environment variables:
Let's go through an example: let's say you declared the following environment variables on your system or inside your 3D application:
Environment Variable | Value |
---|---|
NSI_PATH_TEXTURE | C:\textures |
NSI_PATH_IMAGES | C:\images |
PROJECT | Devoir1 |
Then, during the NSI export, the following paths will be substituted as such in the NSI file:
Original Path | Exported Path (in NSI file) |
---|---|
C:\textures\JoshuaLeatherJacket.jpg | ${NSI_PATH_TEXTURES}\JoshuaLeatherJacket.jpg |
C:\images\output\render.exr | ${NSI_PATH_TEXTURES}\output\render.exr |
C:\images\${PROJECT}\grid.exr | ${NSI_PATH_TEXTURES\${PROJECT}\grid.exr |
The resulting NSI file can then be rendered on another system with appropriately set environment variables.