Share your secret weapon...!

#221

Yeah, style’s a biggie. I’m referring most specifically to how, a volume scale looks pretty cartoony, sure, but if you rotate that baby even 0.5 degrees in any axis during that vscale, the computeriness is instantly visible even to an untrained eye. For some reason (and I cite no resources save trial and error) breaking the three axes ever so slightly buys you a few degrees more, and again, actually having a chain of sorts to CURVE that entire shape whilst being scaled buys you the whole farm. Here’s a link to an interaction vid for my latest character; nothing outstanding, but I’ve actually gone to great lengths to allow for all the things I’m describing here, every squash/stretch style pull tries it’s hardest to create arcs instead of straight deformations, and where the rigging fails that automatically, I’ve included the ability to tug/push at things to create arcs easily. Of particular concern to the scaing/squash/stretch thing: near the end of this there is some face interaction that has a 1-control setup to get squash/stretch/curve/misalignment as I’ve been yammering about.

Pardon the yammering, but I AM trying to share my secret weapons :slight_smile:

http://www.jasonosipa.com/Squoosh/v02/movs/squooshTeraction.mov

#222

Thanks Jason. I love the Squooshy characters you’ve managed, and now I’m closer to understanding it. I think (and this is just theory from my limited experience and watching far too many cartoons) the problem is linearity. Unless you break up that linearity, people will notice.

Not sure I see how you get your curves to come out so well, but then, as you know from our discussions on the Creature TD forum, I can be pretty dense. :confused:

#223

2 more tricks to make you more Maya-guru ish:

#1:Not many people realize this, you can render a .ma or a .mb by just right clicking on it on the file. You dont need to have maya open or a cmd prompt open.

#2: You can start a batch render in Maya, then close Maya. The mayabatch.exe will keep running until the render is complete.

#224

I’m a fan of the non-linear character setup tools in maya. very very cool and allow you to quickly plot out traditional keyposes for a character and time the main motions against any audio before getting in there and sorting out the interpolation - great fun!

I also like setting up a quick mel button for draft finalGathering rendering with low aliasing, sampling and raytracing settings and a second button to switch to my higher res settings. I saved these settings off in a seperate shelf.

#225

awesome script mate… works very well!

#226

One oft overlooked feature that’s been with Maya since the beginning is the ability to export and import animation data as a separate file. This is useful for sharing curves among similar rigs or importing previously created anim curves into the current scene.
You’ll have to go to the Plugin manager for this one, since it’s off by default: check animImportExport.mll. Now to export anims, select a character’s hierarchy and File>Export as Anim. To import, select hierarchy and File>Import. If the naming convention is the same, it will import fine. An alternative to Trax editing if nonlinear animating and character nodes just don’t cut it for you.

#227

Erik VanHorn> Look for ZooXferAnim. Its made by MacaroniKazoo, its f$%^ing awsome. It completly blows Mayas animation transfer out of the water. This one actually works. And you can even transfer animation curves from one rig to another even if its not the same character.

MacaroniKazoo you RULE… :beer:

#228

You can zoom the script editor input pane, put your cursor in it, then hold ctrl and scroll the mouse wheel (type something in the box);

AnDy

#229

after seen how in modo you could easily move pivots around during modeing I decide to try it on maya. the way I put it was assgin a new hot key with the command:

ctxEditMode;
  snapMode -point (!`snapMode -q -point`)

now assign the key with shift+to both press and release. SO now all i have to do is hold shift+ to move my pivot during modeling and release when done, this will also snap to vertex, since when ever I move pivot during modelling it always follows a with vertex snap…:confused: this saves me about 3 steps :confused:

#230

In maya 6.0 (could be for other versions aswell), if you hold down ‘d’ and ‘v’ at the same time, you’ll achieve the same as your script.
Holding down ‘d’ enters pivot mode while using any of the translate/scale/rotate tool, and obviously ‘v’ enters point snap. Releasing both ‘d’ and ‘v’ will switch back to normal. Thought I’d point that out.

On another note of the ‘d’ toggle key, if you’re creating a curve, and you decide you want to go back to another point without having to end the curve and switch to component mode, just hold down the ‘d’ key, pick the CV you want to move and then move it. Also applies to the create polygon tool.

Just thought I’d give a heads up on the ‘d’ key toggle. It’s quite handy

#231

My secret weapon… “project curve on surface”, “trim tool” and “Duplicate surface curves” are my favorites. I use them a lot and I love them!

#232

What was the name of script who rendered that picture?

Answer: fcheck -cv

[color=White]Example in a command prompt, just type fcheck -cv then drag and drop your image.iff
press return and you’ll get the answer like this:

[color=YellowGreen]C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32>fcheck -cv P:\BIG5\linetest\sea\sea_R.6339.iff

…

.TSIH 220 C:\Program Files\Alias\Maya6.0\bin\mayabatch.exe -render -n 0
-proj M:\BIG5 -s 6330.000 -e 6339.000 -b 1.000 -se 6330 -be 1 -pad 1 -im sea_R
-cam cam_R -x 720 -y 576 -rd P:\BIG5\linetest\sea [color=Lime][i]M:\BIG5\scenes\rol\sc2_sea.mb

[/i][color=White]LIMITATIONS:
Works only with iff images rendered in batch or commandline and maya-software[/color][/color] renderer.
:sad:
[/color][/color]

#233

good, i think need more hours to practice whith maya.

#234

wow. great thread guys…

i didnt see it (i also did read every page) but no one seems to like Booleons?? i find them very usefull

#235

used booleans only when starting modelling but didn’t found it very handy most time. you have to rework the intersection cut of the surfaces so I can do it by hand from the beginning

#236

This is super simple, but I haven’t seen it on here yet – combining properties of the move tool with the snap hotkeys to line things up along a single axis.

Example: selecting CVs, verts or objects + clicking on the Y arrow of move tool to isolate movement in that axis + holding down V key and middle-mouse dragging to any CV/vert/object = line up selected objects along Y with that object.

Also use a lot with the X snap-to-grid hotkey when modeling half a character, to make sure that the center vertices are all lined up at 0 on the X axis…

(note – move tool must be in World mode for the above to work)

And I love that holding down CTRL and clicking on one axis of a transformer will restrict movement to the other two axes… With the translate tool, it’s great for freely moving something along horizontally in the perspective view… or with the scale tool, for a quick proportional squash/stretch while modeling… think it was new to Maya 5, I embraced it like a lost puppy when they put it in.

#237

Undo seems to be my fav :smiley:

#238

If found that lofting into polys is really handy when trying to create characters and such.

#239

I just found this mel and it makes me sooo happy.
http://www.stannogen.org/Scripts/

it exports and reimports your skinweights of a softskinned mesh.
In the contrary to mayas standard skinweight import/export tool this one

a.) works, and
b.) works also when you modify the mesh, cause it is based on world coordinates.

this is sooo helpfull when you want to reedit your character, seperate or combine parts or even just use a character that is similar

top, top, top
thnk you anders egleus

#240

anotherone:

I ran into a problem with blendshapes, wich is when you throw away the object which serves as the blendshape, you are not able to delete the slider out of the blendshapes window. It allways takes the specific blendshape(mesh) to delete its slider … nasty thing!!!

failure saved the day and posted a little script that you can run to eliminate the unwanted blendis

first run that scrip as it is:

  
  // draft version
  global proc purgeBlendshape( string $bsnode ){
        string $att[] = `listAttr -m -st "inputGeomTarget" ( $bsnode + ".inputTarget[ 0 ].inputTargetGroup" )`;
        string $w[] = `listAttr -m ( $bsnode + ".w" )`;
        int $i = 0; 
        string $a;
                for( $a in $att ){
                        if( ! `connectionInfo -id ( $bsnode + "." + $a )` ){
                        string $target = substitute( ".inputTargetItem\\[6000\\].inputGeomTarget", $a, "" );
                        removeMultiInstance ( $bsnode + "." + $w[ $i ] );
                        removeMultiInstance ( $bsnode + "." + $target );
                }
                ++ $i;
                }
  }

then type:
purgeBlendshape( “bodyBlend” );

body blend was the name of my blendshape node, for wich I wanted to delete some unneeded sliders, so replace this by the name of your blendshape node.

see the thread for more info

thnx failure … you are my mel-hero