Detecting Shader Families

To find what shader families are defined on an existing shader definition

• Use ShaderDef.ShaderFamilies or ShaderDef::GetShaderFamilies to retrieve a safearray of strings:

  for sFamily in oShaderDef.ShaderFamilies :
  	Application.LogMessage(sFamily)
  	# ...

To find out the primary family defined on an existing shader definition

• Use ShaderDef.PrimaryShaderFamily or ShaderDef::GetPrimaryShaderFamily to return the shader family ID as a string:

  Application.LogMessage(oShaderDef.PrimaryShaderFamily)

To find out whether the specified family is defined as one of the shader families for an existing shader definition

• Use ShaderDef.IsShaderFamily or ShaderDef::IsShaderFamily with one of the native Softimage shader families or a custom shader family you defined:

  if (oShaderDef.IsShaderFamily("mrLight")) :
  	# do something with light shaders
  else :
  	# do something with non-light shaders

To assign registered shader families to a custom shader definitions

• Use ShaderDef.AddShaderFamily or ShaderDef::AddShaderFamily, passing the shader family name for each shader family you want to add; however, the second parameter determines whether that family will be primary or not. So if you don't pass a value for that parameter, the last family added will be considered the primary family:

  # Adds the lens shader family only
  oShaderDef.AddShaderFamily(siShaderFamilyLens)
  
  # Adds the data blob and texture families with texture as primary (because it's 
  # the most versatile shader family--it has the fewest connection restrictions of anything)
  oShaderDef.AddShaderFamily(siShaderFamilyTexture, True)
  oShaderDef.AddShaderFamily(siShaderFamilyData, False)
  
  # Same thing but without specifying second parameter
  oShaderDef.AddShaderFamily(siShaderFamilyData)
  oShaderDef.AddShaderFamily(siShaderFamilyTexture)