Creating Custom HyperShade Nodes Using Open Shading Language

Sample Render using the custom Voronoi 3D Texture Node.

The following package contains all the material described in this tutorial: Custom_Hypershade_Nodes.zip. 

Main Components

To create a single node only compiled OSL shader is needed. Optionally, it is possible to add icons to have a better visual representation of the node inside Hyerpshade and the Outliner.

The following table shows where each component should be installed for a Maya 2015 package.

Creating a Custom 2D Texture Node

After correctly providing the compiled OSL shader path, you will be able to render using the new texture as with any other Maya 2D Texture. place2dTexture node is automatically supported if the shader has attributes uv and uvFilterSize.

The Voronoi node viewed in the Create menu of the HyperShade

The Voronoi node viewed in the Node Editor. Note how  place2dTexture node is automatically supported.

Voronoi noise connected to the 3Delight Material.

The OSL Source Code 

The Voronoi texture looks like a standard Open Shading Language surface shader but with some optional metadata:

string maya_name

Specifies the script name of the attribute in Maya.

string maya_label

Specifies the disply name of the attribute in the Attribute Editor.

string maya_type

Specifies how to display the attribute in the attribute editor. It and can be "bool" to display int parameter as a checkbox.

string maya_group

Specifies the name of the group in the Attribute Editor.

float maya_min

Sets the soft minimum value for this attribute.

float maya_max

Sets the soft maximum value for this attribute.

int maya_hidden

If 1, the attribute is hidden and not appears in the Attribute Editor.

The source code for our voronoi texture follows. To use it as Maya HyperShade node, the shader should be compiled using oslc utility from the OSL package.

#include "texture3d.h"
#include "utils.h"

surface OSLVoronoi [[ string maya_type = "texture" ]] (
		float i_jitter = 1.0 [[
			string maya_name = "jitter",
			string maya_label = "Jitter",
			float maya_min = 0.0,
			float maya_max = 1.0,
			string maya_group = "3Delight Voronoi" ]],
		float i_seed = 1.0 [[
			string maya_name = "seed",
			string maya_label = "Seed",
			float maya_min = 0.0,
			float maya_max = 2.0,
			string maya_group = "3Delight Voronoi" ]],
		float i_uvCoord[2] = {GetS(), GetT()} [[
			string maya_name = "uv",
			int maya_hidden = 1,
			int skip_init = 1 ]],
		float i_uvFilterSize[2] = {0, 0} [[
			string maya_name = "uvFilterSize",
			int maya_hidden = 1,
			int skip_init = 1 ]],
		output color outColor = 0.0 [[
			int maya_hidden = 1 ]],
		output float outDistance = 0.0 [[
			int maya_hidden = 1 ]] )
{
	float edgeDist;
	float outside;
	point pp = point(i_uvCoord[0], i_uvCoord[1], i_seed);

	point position;

	point thiscell = point( floor(pp[0])+.5, floor(pp[1])+.5, floor(pp[2])+.5);
	float f1 = 1000;
	for (int i = -1;  i <= 1;  i += 1)
	{
		for (int j = -1;  j <= 1;  j += 1)
		{
			for (int k = -1;  k <= 1;  k += 1)
			{
				point testcell = thiscell + vector(i,j,k);
				point pos = testcell + i_jitter * ((vector)cellnoise(testcell) - 0.5);
				vector offset = pos - pp;
				float dist = dot(offset, offset); /* actually dist^2 */
				if (dist < f1)
				{
					f1 = dist;
					position = pos;
				}
			}
		}
	}

	outDistance = sqrt(1 - f1);
	outColor = outDistance;
}

Adding Icons for the Outliner and Hypershade

You can add icons to both the Outliner and Hypershade (this applies to both texture nodes and shader nodes). The table below details the convention for creating the icons for our Voronoi Noise.