December 2011
8 posts
5 tags
Fun With Python 3.2 – Multithreaded Image Batching...
I’m just starting to learn Python – like it’s been a week now – and my first script was a port of my bash shell script that takes an image list from standard input and sends to to sips (fast QuickTime image conversion built into OS X) for conversion. It was easy enough and I am liking the language for sure. When I started my second Python script, I thought I was setting the bar too...
3 tags
Save a Copy Script for Maya - Better Versioning
Since publishing and Photoshop was my love before 3D, I have a lot of workflows that I miss in Maya that I have in a lot of Adobe apps, and one of those is the Save a Copy feature. While working, you’ll often have something that’s not finalized but maybe you like how it’s looking or it’s a milestone that’s important to save and Save a Copy lets you save a named...
5 tags
Hardcore Workflow Tips for Blazing Through...
I just got through a rather crazy few weeks of magazine production and I’ve got some time now, as I babysit the PDF uploads, to talk about some techniques for making your work easier in a similar case of do-or-die. I was brought in to take over art direction for a magazine that was dangerously close to the deadline and I had to use some efficient techniques and tools, some that I scripted,...
3 tags
Revert to Saved MEL Script
Maya doesn’t have a “Revert to Saved” menu item but most people know to just pick the file name in the recent docs and it will open the recent document again from the disk. The problem with that is there’s always the danger you can save over the document when it prompts you to close the current scene. So I wrote a simple script to Revert to Saved and there’s no danger...
2 tags
My two-star review of David Giraud Male Anatomy...
Last night I downloaded what looked like a great muscle reference for the iPad/iPhone but I’m pretty disappointed by what I got. Here’s the review lifted from my iTunes review (2/5 stars):
I’m a CG artist who has done plenty of life drawing and anatomy studies and I thought this would be a lot more help than it is. There are three poses that are basically the same: standing,...
5 tags
Using Point on Poly Constraints to Stick Meshes to...
One of new constraints added in Maya 2011 was the Point on Poly constraint. This was added to make it easier to do things like pin buttons to a character’s clothing while avoiding things like expressions that can really slow a scene down when you add a bunch. It’s also a very handy way of forcing landscape objects to constrain to the Y-axis position of a vertex while shaping...
2 tags
Review of Alien Skin Blow Up 3 for Macworld
Just a note that my review of Blow Up 3, custom upscaling software for OS X and Windows, is on Macworld. Good software for sure, but I still prefer Photozoom Pro 4, which I use a lot for my canvas prints.
4 tags
Using Artisan Painting to Live-Blend Materials in...
After using procedural texture workflows for a while, you get used to having access to individual components of a shader and, if you’ve ever used something like UDK where vertex weights can be used for rapidly mixing shader components, going back to a big, static, memory-hog texture for something like terrain is just not appealing. So if you’re looking for way to get the blending...
