ASS File API

Loading and writing of .ass (Arnold Scene Source) scene files. More...

Functions
AI_API AI_DEPRECATED int	AiASSWrite (AtUniverse *universe, const char *filename, int mask=AI_NODE_ALL, bool open_procs=false, bool binary=true)
	Write all nodes in the given universe to an .ass file. More...
AI_API AI_DEPRECATED int	AiASSWriteWithMetadata (AtUniverse *universe, const char *filename, int mask=AI_NODE_ALL, bool open_procs=false, bool binary=true, const AtMetadataStore *mds=NULL)
	Write all nodes in a given universe to an .ass file, including metadata. More...
AI_API AI_DEPRECATED int	AiASSLoad (AtUniverse *universe, const char *filename, int mask=AI_NODE_ALL)
	Load all nodes from an .ass file into a specific Arnold universe. More...

Detailed Description

Loading and writing of .ass (Arnold Scene Source) scene files.

This is deprecated in favor of ai_scene.h and its AiScene* methods.

Arnold has built-in support for writing scene data to a file and later reading the file in. Although not required, the extension for these files is usually .ass, which stands for Arnold Scene Source. The file format is a straightforward mapping from Arnold AtNode's to human-readable ASCII. For example, a sphere node is written as:

sphere          // this is the node class
{               // any number of param/value pairs enclosed in curly braces
 center 0 0 0   //  parameter "center" of type AtVector is set to value (0,0,0)
 radius 2.0     //  parameter "radius" of type float is set to value 2.0
}               // end of node block

Function Documentation

AiASSWrite()

AI_API AI_DEPRECATED int AiASSWrite	(	AtUniverse *	universe,
		const char *	filename,
		int	mask,
		bool	open_procs,
		bool	binary
	)

Write all nodes in the given universe to an .ass file.

This function can selectively write all nodes of a given type to an .ass file. For example, to write light nodes and camera nodes only, use:

AiASSWrite(universe, "lightsncams.ass", AI_NODE_LIGHT + AI_NODE_CAMERA, false); 

To write all nodes of all types, use:

AiASSWrite(universe, "everything.ass", AI_NODE_ALL, false); 

Just like AiASSLoad(), this function has built-in gzip compression. If filename ends in ".gz", the generated file will be automatically compressed.

Parameters

universe	universe whose contents will be written to .ass (NULL for default universe)
filename	output filename
mask	only write the desired types of nodes
open_procs	if set, then all procedurals will be recursively expanded
binary	allow binary encoding in .ass files

Returns

0 if the file was written succesfully, -1 if error

AiASSWriteWithMetadata()

AI_API AI_DEPRECATED int AiASSWriteWithMetadata	(	AtUniverse *	universe,
		const char *	filename,
		int	mask,
		bool	open_procs,
		bool	binary,
		const AtMetadataStore *	mds
	)

Write all nodes in a given universe to an .ass file, including metadata.

See AiASSWrite

Parameters

universe	universe whose contents will be written to .ass (NULL for default universe)
filename	output filename
mask	only write the desired types of nodes
open_procs	if set, then all procedurals will be recursively expanded
binary	allow binary encoding in .ass files
mds	optional metadata store for writing metadata into the file

Returns

0 if the file was written succesfully, -1 if error

AiASSLoad()

AI_API AI_DEPRECATED int AiASSLoad	(	AtUniverse *	universe,
		const char *	filename,
		int	mask
	)

Load all nodes from an .ass file into a specific Arnold universe.

This function automatically recognizes gzip-compressed files; first, it tries to load filename and, if not found, it will add the suffix ".gz" and try again before finally giving up.

If the filename is "-", it reads data from stdin.

Any forward references due to linked nodes will be automatically resolved at the end of the file. The order in which nodes appear in the file is irrelevant.

Parameters

universe	universe where the nodes will be created (NULL for default universe)
filename	input filename
mask	only read nodes with types included in the mask (default is AI_NODE_ALL)

Returns

0 if the file was read successfully, -1 if error