Polygons, Pixels & Paint

month

April 2011

20 posts

Using Poly Cut Faces Instead of Boolean to Save...

Booleans in Maya and other apps can be very flaky and, while ticket01’s Boole for Maya works about a bajillion times better than Maya’s does, Boolean operations can be avoided in cases when you just want to lop off part of a model where it meets another mesh. It’s much faster, easier and more reliable just to use the Poly Cut Faces Tool and fill the holes after setting it to...

Now That Mudbox Has Curves, Learn to Use Them Well

Since I was a photo retoucher for years before learning 3D, I know a little bit about curves. I’ve been using them since Photoshop 2.5 – yes, before it had layers, even. They are very powerful and give you enough control that you can do a lot of different types of edits and corrections, so I’m happy to see them in Mudbox, with added controls for desaturating and hue shifting. Combined...

Prevent GoZ from Smoothing Meshes Sent to Maya...

By default, GoZ smooth previews meshes sent to Maya and this can slow things down considerably with large meshes. If you would rather meshes weren’t smoothed, the fix is easy: change these two lines in the “GoZBrushToMaya.mel” file. On a Mac, that’s located in /Users/Shared/Pixologic/GoZApps/Maya/GoZBrushToMaya.mel. Change both of these 2 values at the top to 0: global...

Maya 2012 Plastique UI Instance Launcher for OS X

I made an Automator app that launches a new instance of Maya with the plastique Qt theme, which I find much easier on the eyes than the default theme. So, it’s clearer and it’s lets you easily run instances of Maya on OS X, without having to use the terminal. Coupled with my 2012 font hack, it makes Maya crystal clear. Grab it here.

Learning to Use Variables to Build Your Own Useful...

While I’m on the topic of using scripts to waste less time, let’s talk about some shell scripting uses for variables. Taking the little that we’ve learned about making shell scripts from my post here, let’s build on that knowledge and add some variables to our bash shell scripts in OS X or Linux. This may sound very unexciting but when you see the practical creative...

MEL Script Basics: Using Script Editor's Echo...

One of the first and most important things you learn from the excellent book MEL Scripting for Maya Animators is how to read the Script Editor feedback to glean the commands from your actions, for use in scripts. Whether you’ve changed a value in V-Ray’s settings or moving an object, etc, everything gives feedback. Sometimes, if that feedback isn’t shown, you need to enable...

Intermediate Level Maya Shader Tutorial: How to...

This workflow tutorial has been sitting on my desk since I finished the last illustration project and shows how to use a Multiply/Divide texture utility to composite textures. It applies to all rendering programs that recognize the Multiply/Divide utility (Maya’s software renderer, mental ray, V-Ray being ones I know that do and Maxwell is one I know that doesn’t). The need for this...

Anonymous asked: Thanks for your fantastic blog.
The post about the Maya<->Mudbox hub fix brings home the sad fact that the Maya suite is unavailable for Mac due to Motionbuilder Mac no-show since version 7.5
What are your thoughts on this? Do you think Autodesk plans to ever bring it back?

At the office i've been sending fully rigged/animated characters back and forth...

The Maya tip that will save you tons of time

This was already in my “Key commands for Maya UI stuff” post but it saves so much time that it’s worth putting in a post of it’s own. Put this script in a User Hotkey and the hotkey will load the material attributes in the Attribute Editor for all materials. showShadingGroupAttrEditor; I mapped it to control-a in place of for the Attribute Editor and use command-a for...

Mudbox to Maya Interop Failing? Here's the Fix.

Maya loves to unload plug-ins for no reason. Every script I write that depends on a plug-in, whether V-Ray or OBJExport has an auto-load plug-in part, since there’s a good chance Maya’s magically unticked it by itself. This bug now seems to be affecting Maya to Mudbox (and others) interop by unloading the OneClick plug-in so you just watch Maya pretending to connect to Mudbox. Instead...

Toggle Docked Panels in Maya

Someone asked me how to make a toggle for my Facer palette that could be used for a hotkey to hide/show Facer. Here is the code you would put in the command portion of the Hotkey Editor: if (`dockControl -exists theFacer`) {deleteUI theFacer;} else facer; For V-Ray Tuner: if (`dockControl -exists VRayTuner`) {deleteUI VRayTuner;} else vraytuner; If you have another script that docks in...

V-Ray Tuner's Maya to MaxScript Material Converter...

Made the original Unix shell script into a cross-platform MEL command. Much easier workflow created for this – just select the material and it will spit out MaxScript code in the Script Editor: The updated V-Ray Tuner script with this integrated is now on Creative Crash.

Mesh and Sculpting Basics: Relax vs. Smooth

Two significant tools in Maya and ZBrush are the Relax tools. In Maya, it’s part of the Artisan toolbox and in ZBrush 4, it’s under the Deformation tab. Depending on the density of the mesh you’re working on though, it can be unclear what the difference is between a smooth and a relax. It’s very simple: a smooth evens everything out without regard for the shape and a relax...

Quick way to derive a curve from face selection

The scripts used are: jakob.welner.dk/omtoolbox/docs/ The Select Outlines from faces script ^^^ and this: creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/c/extract-curve-from-edges

Maya Mac OS X Font Hack Updated for Maya 2012

So Maya 2012 is out for subscribers and I’m up and running with ticket01’s Boole plug-in and waiting for V-Ray 2 and others to be updated so I can make the full switch. In the meantime, I’m getting my workspace updated and a big part of that is fixing the fonts for better legibility in OS X. Here is an updated version of my previous font hack for Maya . The console font is now...

Great article on Tron GUIs and Unix →

But do yourself a favour and read it with Instapaper since the web version is a nasty Helvetica Neue billboard.

Anonymous asked: Hi,
It would be really nice, if You could give us a video tut about the vraytuner feature allinone.
:)
Of course, if You have time.

Anonymous asked: Hi. I'm running a Mac Pro (10.6.7) with a Radeon 5870 in slot 1 and a Nvidia Quadro 4000 in slot 2, Maya 2011 and Vray 2.0 beta. Vray wont recognize the Quadro 4000 in slot 2. Have you tested a similar setup? Here's my terminal output:

[2011/Mar/31|16:01:48] OpenCL renderer requested.
[2011/Mar/31|16:01:48] 1 plugin(s) loaded successfully

Auto-cleanup Planar Meshes in Maya

Maya and scripting monster Naughty Nathan from CGSociety posted a workflow for how to automatically clean up geometry that has a lot of redundant edges so that only the edges over 1° are retained. So I took it and made a script to automate it for selected objects: Here’s the code: string $mySelection[] = `ls -sl`; polySoftEdge -angle 0.3 -ch 1...