February 2011
18 posts
6 tags
V-Ray Tuner 2 Per-light Rendering Done
It is done! I’ve taken the various pieces of MEL code and mashed them together like two handfuls of pureed potatoes and we have a winner:
All light types are working and the workflow is very straightforward. I just need to get it to respect hidden lights and it will be released soon. Don’t no one be disrespectin’ no hidden lights.
4 tags
Brahms portrait - day 2
This is tentatively how it will be cropped when I get it printed in 3D. It’s going to sit on my girlfriend’s piano and haunt her while she plays. The reflection on the high-gloss piano will make it look like he’s coming out of the piano like it’s a lake, Creature From the Black Lagoon style. I should put a little speaker in it that repeats “FASTER!! FASTER, DAMMIT,...
5 tags
Made a free Automator Service to do simple math in...
I often do framelayouts in MEL code that take one value and multiply it over and over so I decided to write a simple equation solver using Automator instead of shelling out $25 for KavaServices since I just wanted this one thing.
Works in any Cocoa application (BBEdit, Textwrangler, etc). Grab here. Add a hotkey from the OS X Keyboard System Preferences and it will be fast and furious....
4 tags
Updated URL encapsulator Automator workflow
A simple Automator workflow for OS X that takes the selected text and wraps it in an URL taken from the clipboard. Great for Blog editing in a browser or whatever.
Grab it here.
2 tags
Maya 2011 x64 version of poseDeformer for OS X
Jan Berger has made a Mac port of Comet’s popular poseDeformer plug-in. For those not familiar with it, it is a smarter blend shape toolbox that works with skin clusters for animation. The compiled plug-in can be grabbed from here. Install and usage instructions are here.
3 tags
Essential OS X graphics utilities: Photostickies
Some people have heard me mention Photostickies before but it’s such an awesome (and free) app that it should be used by everyone who needs to work with reference material while they work. It floats images on your screen with various options for size, transparency, float level, etc and has an awesome saved state that makes loading up projects trivial. Load up a bunch of images on your second...
tadamono asked: I just read your post about using Automator to make a HandBrake CLI queue, and watched the video you provided. I've been trying to create a service like this using an Applescript (I got the Applescript to work in Hazel by dumping files into a specific folder). I don't have much experience with or knowledge of scripts and programming. So (finally) my question is: in the video, what was...
Anonymous asked: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=955550&utm_medium=plugblock&utm_source=cgtalk
Been reading you´r blog and you´r articles on ars now for the duration they have been there, and I must say you are a big part of why I keep to the mac for my 3D!
What is you´r take on messiah? (not the religious dude.. surely he was...
Been reading you´r blog and you´r articles on ars now for the duration they have been there, and I must say you are a big part of why I keep to the mac for my 3D!
What is you´r take on messiah? (not the religious dude.. surely he was...
3 tags
Brahms portrait - day 1
He no longer looks like a plastic KFC Colonel piggy bank (I had one of those).
8 tags
Which is faster to render – OS X 10.6 or Windows...
I get in the occasional flamewar since I do 3D on a Mac and invariably you hear some assumptions the Mac version of any 3D app is probably slower. It’s usually thought that, since 64-bit versions have been around for a while on Windows, that they are more “tuned.” That, since they are the majority platform, they see more coding effort. The truth is that most 3D graphics software...
5 tags
Morph targets and Inflate in ZBrush
Most people know to use Morph Targets in ZBrush as a faux masking effect but here’s just a quick example to show how to use it with Deformation/Inflate for a masked fattening effect. Very basic but essential if you don’t know it already.
2 tags
Canadian Indesign users: use GREP to clean up...
This one’s probably coming out of left field for many following my blog but I’m an art director, so I have a lot different things I do, and one of those is typeset French pages for the magazines I design. Indesign has really great Canadian English and French dictionaries but the default metric kerning has a tendency to squish apostrophes too closely to type:
This is easily fixed with...
6 tags
IT WORKS!!! I made a one-size-fits-all MEL code...
I got jealous of Textmate’s ability to send MEL text to Maya so I made an Automator workflow to have it work from any Cocoa text app (BBEdit seen here but you could select page text in Safari and it would work). Works great with huge chunks of code (tested here with my GoZBuddy and V-Ray Tuner 2:
Don’t worry – the errors you see in the Script Editor are from older versions that...
4 tags
Another V-Ray Tuner 2 teaser. Meshlights now...
The mesh lights portion of per-light rendering passes is now working in my V-Ray Tuner 2 script:
Thanks to the people on CGSociety’s Maya forum for the help getting this bit working. Best Maya forum ever.
5 tags
OS X Service to write out clipboard contents to...
I made a quick Automator Service to write out the clipboard to a file for those times you’re paranoid the program you’re using might crash, losing the text you’re writing (long bit of code in Maya, a text post on a forum, flaky-ass Tumblr losing stuff, etc). Instead of giving out the Service though, I’m going to get you started on rolling your own Automator Service, and...
5 tags
Dock any Maya UI script in Maya 2011 and above
I’m liking the compact and tabbed accessibility of docked panels in Maya, and I found a simple way to dock any script that creates a floating window. This is based on a tip I found on Maya Station that shows how to dock the Script Editor:
I was recently trying my hand at making a docked Quick Selection manager and thought I’d just use an existing one that’s really good one...
6 tags
Let's talk about CMYK, baby – part 2: controlling...
Few things in digital imagery, whether 2D or 3D, are as confusing as colour management can be. The idea is simple, but what makes it complex is similar to what makes a giant audio mixing desk – with it’s myriad inputs, outputs and gear attached – can be brutal to wrap your head around. More often than not, when you first start thinking about colour calibration, linear workflows (in 3D), and...
5 tags
GoZ Buddy Script
A while ago, I described a workaround here for keeping vertex normals for meshes sent from ZBrush to Maya by using a blend shape. Well, I got tired of doing this manually so I made an interface to a pre- and post-script for GoZ to make this procedure faster. See it in action here (with a demo at the start of how ZBrush discards these vertex normals, which is the reason for the script):
If...
