Onion Skin

[Doogie]

So your looking for Ghosting on keyframes instead of frames? When I took the animation tour at Disney/MGM they had that in their demo (they were using Maya). I would also be interested in this feature (I had totally forgotten about it until now).

Unfortunately the animator guy didn't know much about Maya at all. All he could tell me was that it was custom version. (truthfully, if the programmers are doing their jobs, the animator wont have to know whats goes on outside of their animaton tools)

The other thing I want is the "Make Animation" button they used in the demo. he just clicked it and the guy was fully animated (apparently Ive been doing it the hard way).

[Nicool]

I didn't realy understand... But I can help to code a simple melscript to duplicate your animated object on the frame(s) to want in its status at this frame(s). :shrug:

[Doogie]

hmm, went to play with it some more and if you click the option box you can set it to ghost keyframes... I dont remember seeing that in the past few versions.

I dont think maya really has onion skinning.. if your in wireframe view it has something similar. I could write a MEL to smoothstep the transparency in and out.

damn, ghosting is slow... I'll look in to writing a script tomorrow, shouldn't be that hard

[Doogie]

I got one started (here (http://paulfranz.com/download/MEL/pfGhosting.mel)). It's very messily written and executed (please read notes) but I got it to work and it's faster for me. The only problem I saw was transparency sorting (but that’s my video card). I only tested it on articulated geometry; it may work on bound meshes... (it will in the future).

I would spend more time on this but I won't be able to until after Siggraph (unfortunately, I wont have Maya while there) but I will clean it up and finish it after I get back.

(I hope this is what you were asking for. Either way, it’s what I wanted =P)

-Paul Franz

[ngrava]

Ghosting is a standard feature in Maya. In the Attributes panel locate the “Display” attribute group for the item you want ghosted. Click on “Ghosting Information” and turen it on. That's all there is to it.

-=GB=-

[morobuse]

Thank u all for posting your help... I am delighted.

wow, Doogie, r u really going to siggraph this year? I wish I could be there... I heard there is a lecture by two guys from ILM, about incorporating dynamics into creature pipekline and a lecture about... well about what not?.....

Hope you'll enjoy (Dahhh).

I wanted to ask u where did u learn mel ?
what books do you recommend?

and again THANX to you all...

[Doogie]

Im at a kinkos next to siggraph!! =P I went to the ILM lecture yesturday. Tim Naylor was a graduate (and later an instructor) at my former school, he gave a lecture there a lil bit ago. The stuff he talked about was amazing.

As for learning MEL. The syntax is the tough part, it's very similar to most any programming language. 2 books out are "Maya for Animators" and "The Complete Guide To Maya and API by Davild Gould" I believe these are the names (or close to it). Davild Gould is speaking at an API lecture later this week, but that would be too over my head... the other book is written buy a guy who hangs out on this board quite often... both are good, but the Maya for Animators is probabaly best for beginners.

After you learn the syntax, most all the commands are found in the Script editor or MEL command reference (in the docs).

good luck learning MEL


Paul Franz

[morobuse]

I read now the Mel scripting for maya animators... it is nice (written by two guys from PDI... I think) anyway I know a bit the structure and I just wanted to ask u... i know it isn't the right forum but... when I create a ik handle manually form the clavicle to the shoulder, it is zeroed... but when I write a mel script that does the same thing it gives me funky rotation values... why?

Is it a bug or a feature?

please help me...

[Doogie]

I cant think offhand what your problem is. My usual workflow is... Create Joints. Edit locations if needed. Run jsOrientJoint script. Create IKs.

ikHandle -n hand_IK -sj $sourceJoint -ee $targetJoint;

Whats the basic process for your script? Or a detailed way I could recreate it?

[morobuse]

I do the same.. using the jsOrientJoint... but after my skeleton is complete and I oriented all the joints and I have their names I do what you've written....

ikHandle -n hand_IK -sj $sourceJoint -ee $targetJoint;

in my case the sourceJoint is JNT_LFT_Clavicle and the targetJoint is JNT_LFT_Humerus. Like I said... when I do this by hand the rotations stay at 0 0 0, but when I write a long script for creating the IK's I get funny numbers...

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