My Review of Photoshop CS6 Extended is Live (as in “up,” not as “in concert”)

I did an extensive review of Photoshop CS6 and have explained the Adobe Creative Cloud licensing. Read on!

Quick Tip on Using Facer for Converting Ngons to Quadrangles

Here’s a simple way to convert some ngon faces to quads using Facer (you can use the Edit Mesh menus to do it but it’s just easier from the Facer palette). Hit Triangulate and then one of the Quadrangulate buttons:

Better UI Font for Maya Linux Users

While waiting for my render to complete, I decided to change Maya’s Linux fonts to something less eye-bleed inducing. Change all occurrences of “Arial” in the MayaStrings file to “DejaVu Sans Book” and you’ll have an interface that is a lot easier on the eyes. Tested with CentOS 6.2. Read more here on this font hack tip or buy my 101 Autodesk Maya Tips.

Open Images Script Updated for Gnome in Linux

Haven’t been posting much lately because I was in NYC for an Adobe thing and then finished my Photoshop CS6 review, which should be up on Ars Technica next week. In the meantime, I’ve been testing a monstrous HP Z820 E5 Xeon workstation for a review I’m doing for Ars. I’ve got it running CentOS 6.2 and, while it’s not what I’d call easy to set up (EXR images from Maya are broken for some reason and I can’t drag to another screen with Maya), it’s noticeably faster for OpenGL with the Quadro 4000 than it is in OS X (and even Windows 7). I’ll be covering all that in my review but in the meantime, here’s a copy of my Open Images MEL script that’s updated for Gnome support. Run “openImagesFolder” from the MEL command line and it will open the currently-active project’s image folder in the desktop on all OSes. Handy to save digging around to check renders.

Go Forth and V-Ray: Maya 2013 Versions are on Chaos Group Site

All the Mac/Linux/Windows versions of V-Ray 2.3 are on the Chaos Group support server if you’ve been waiting on this to move to Maya 2013.

If you’re running my Automator action for nightly unrar and installs, open the workflow file and change 2012 to 2013 in the file path and you’re good to go.

101 Autodesk Maya Tips Interactive iPad Edition Published

After what felt like forever plus another month, my custom iPad Edition of 101 Autodesk Maya Tips is finally up for purchase on the iTunes store. If you’re wondering what makes this iPad-only iBook different from the EPUB, PDF or Kindle version, the iPad version was developed using iBooks Author to create interactive elements like walkthrough movies, 3D objects and slideshows – and it’s being sold for the same $2.99 price tag of the static editions. It works on all iPads and was tested on first- and third-gen iPads.

If this is the first time you’re hearing about this book, you can read the original long write-up for it here.

And If you’re still on the fence about shelling out a few bucks to save yourself a ton of time in Maya, grab the sample file from the iTunes page and see some of the tips that currently give 101 Autodesk Maya Tips a 5-star rating on Amazon and 4.5-star rating on Smashwords. Despite what the price would suggest, it’s actually good!

nbreslow asked: Quick question - you are the only other person I have seen that uses Boole (ticket01 Maya plugin), have you recieved any word on a 2013 update? I contacted them (weeks ago) and they said one was coming but so far nothing. You seem to be up on these things so I thought I would drop you a line to see. Thanks, -Nick

ya, no word yet. hoping it happens soon too.

Maya Script Editor Tip: Drag and Drop Text Files

Tried this and was relieved to see it works. You can drag a plain text file right into the script editor:

Make V-Ray Proxy Automator Service Updated

I made this Automator service a while ago for making V-Ray Proxies and I added a prompt for the face count.

Grab the service here. Should work in OS X 10.6 and above.

Kraftwerk Yeti.

I like how this looks with the nerves and V-Ray proxy.

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