CGTalk - Mojo2Maya script

ryguy

12-20-2002, 07:12 PM

I just released Mojo2Maya, a mel script that I created to help users that create terrain in MoJo World. Since MojoWorld exports its models gigantic, I created this script to automate a lot of work trying to scale and position these models to fit in the Maya grid.

It is available at http://www.3ee.com/docs/mojo2maya.cfm.

I was contacted by a professor at a local college to create an animation that used a MojoWorld terrain inside Maya for AMES and Nasa's Mars Exploration unit. Check out what we did via http://www.3ee.com/press_nasa2.html. The Mojo2Maya script saved us a crap load of time since we were on a very tight deadline.

Ryan

JasonA

12-20-2002, 11:05 PM

wow, thats some cool work you guys did! congrats, nice stuff:beer:

Curious about Mojoworld, how did you get mars data into it? I thought that data was in some wierd format.

I was trying to find out specs on their website, but it was a bit elusive. Does it export only terrain geometry?

ryguy

12-21-2002, 04:59 PM

Jason,

The Mars terrain was actually given to us by a Nasa scientist in DEM format. MojoWorld imports DEM files perfectly (took 45 minutes to import on a high-end SGI). We created the texture using the a bunch of various references from photographs of Mars as well as textures generated from Nasa and MojoWorld. (some of the textures were inlcuded in the DEM file and MojoWorld handles all that data intact.)

The Mars terrain in the animation sequence is actually only a little piece of it. We took out a piece of one of the major volcanos on Mars. There is only one sequence in the animation where Maya was used. We used Maya for when the Rover travels across Mars taking video of the terrain. The rest of the sequence is MojoWorld renders.

MojoWorld can export in various formats. We exported a section of Mars in Mojoworld as an OBJ, then imported into Maya. I created the script to make the task of positioning and scaling the terrain 20X easier. The script actually works with any large objects. If you've ever tried to import an OBJ from 3dsMAX (or any other package), it never ends up anywhere near the grid. The script handles this with two button clicks :)

Check out http://www.pandromeda.com/page/products/generator.html for import/export specs.

On a side note, MojoWorld is an extemely awesome program. In my opinion it puts Bryce to shame. Not only that, the developers are very friendly and read every e-mail they receive and reply in full, taking any suggestions. The Mojo2Maya script will also be included in the next release of MojoWorld (either 2.0 or 3.0)

Thanks for your comments. This animation sequence will be featured at Siggraph '03.

~Ryan

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