April 2012
21 posts
The Hand Machine Updated for Maya 2012
The Setup Machine has nice controls for everything but hands, so there is an awesome script here for controlling hands in TSM2 rigs. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work with Maya 2012 so I fixed the code and now it runs fine:
I’m waiting to hear from the script author to see if he wants to update his script page but until then, grab the updated script here. Normally I wouldn’t...
2 tags
A Poll: Is there a perception that the Geforce /...
I request that anyone affiliated with AMD or Nvidia refrain from voting. Thanks.
A Poll: Is there a perception that the Geforce / Quadros are unstable with pro 3D apps on Windows?
1 tag
A Poll: Is there a perception that the FirePro /...
I request that anyone affiliated with AMD or Nvidia refrain from voting. Thanks.
Is there a perception that the FirePro / Radeons are unstable with pro 3D apps on Windows?
3 tags
When Paying Customers Suffer
Imagine how broken Alien Skin Exposure 4 would be if I hadn’t paid for it.
That’ll teach me for paying for my software. Thanks for the lesson, Alien Skin.
Edit: seems to be working fine for these guys.
6 tags
V-Ray Tuner 2.6.2 Posted for Download
I think a lot of people will like the new render utility preview added in V-Ray Tuner 2.6.2:
When you build complex shaders, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell what a stage looks like by looking at the end result, so that’s why I made the render utility preview. I recommend using the non-OpenCL RT for this feature since RT GPU has very limited support for shader network types. The...
5 tags
My Review of iBooks Author is Up on Ars Technica
In the course of making my interactive iBook version of 101 Autodesk Maya Tips, I evaluated Apple’s iBooks Author, a free app for OS X that makes it really easy to make interactive iBooks. Unfortunately, it doesn’t unsuck the review process at Apple, which still has my iBook in its slow-churning guts. See the full review here.
5 tags
Getting OpenCL Working with the Quadro 4000 Mac on...
When I reviewed the Quadro 4000 for Mac, Snow Leopard was the current OS and Lion was in beta. OpenCL support was in the betas but then, for no apparent reason, it was pulled. It worked fine and the Lion drivers fixed the stability issues that plagued the Quadro 4000 in Snow Leopard, so it was anyone guess as to why it suddenly went AWOL. But it seems that the support is actually still in Lion,...
4 tags
Yes, Photoshop CS6 Made 3D This Easy
Photoshop CS6 has been in public beta for a few weeks now and, as a private beta tester, I saw Adobe’s new 3D mesh implementation early on. They made merging 3D meshes into a scene as easy as working with pixels and it’s crazy how the move tool has taken on so many functions and done it well:
That makes it possible to use stock meshes to make pretty sophisticated compositions right...
5 tags
Interactive Command Line Nuke script
I made a simple shell script to use for interactively prompting start and end frames:
Same logic as the Maya one here. Here’s the download link:
http://www.can-con.ca/tumblrpics/nukeme.zip
Just set up your $PATH variable for Nuke or put an absolute path to the Nuke binary in your script. Works in OS X and Linux.
4 tags
Denoise Filtering a GI Pass - I Feel Dirty but it...
Last week, I had a limited time to render out 3600 frames of 1080p animation – and couldn’t use any light caching because of the moving lights and models. Even with a hyperthreaded 12-core Xeon Mac Pro and Sandy Bridge MacBook Pro as a slave, time was just too tight to meet the deadline, so I turned to a number of time-saving tricks to get the best balance of quality and low noise. I used a...
3 tags
Prowl for Growl – Render Notifications on iOS
After my computer renders out some time-sensitive images, I have Prowl for Growl send a render notification to my iHorn:
It’s an iOS app and a module for Growl on Mac and Windows. Highly recommended if you need to worry about time but don’t want to watch the computer constantly. If you don’t know how to set up Growl, I show how in my ebook 101 Autodesk Maya Tips and at the end...
2 tags
Don't Use Maya 2013 if You Need to Send Docs to...
Maya has generally been good about backwards compatibility, unless something like a new skinning technology has been used in your scene – sending a dual quaternion skin to Maya 2009 will just show a mess, for example. But Maya 2013 introduces new flags into the file format that will probably break backwards compatibility, even with “ignore version” checked. This is why GoZ also...
5 tags
Automator Service to QuickLook a Selected Path
I made a simple service to use QuickLook to preview the selected absolute file path. Handy for previewing something before using rm or, here, to verify that my distributed V-Ray render is okay:
Download the service for OS X 10.7 and above.
6 tags
A Look at Fracture FX - Maya's Most Complete...
A few weeks ago, I picked up the 1.0 version of Fracture FX, a destruction plug-in for Maya that is similar to Rayfire for Max. At $400 for the introductory price, it’s a great deal considering how much more it offers than some of the simple “Voronoi with blast” plug-ins out there. So I’m writing a quick review/overview for people looking at learning more about it, since...
3 tags
PoseDeformer Mac Maya 2013 Build
Here’s a download of PoseDeformer for Maya 2013 OS X. People looking for a Windows or Linux build should keep an eye on this page.
Get the Python versions of the PoseReader plugin here. Both plug-ins are required. That Python version works with all platforms and versions of Maya so I won’t be compiling the poseReader plugin.
2 tags
New in Mudbox 2013: Tangent-space Stencil...
Mudbox 2013 is out and one thing that slipped by the new Mudbox 2013 features list is the new ability to do stencil projection painting and sculpting on posed models. Thanks to Ptex and some developer diligence, Mudbox now works with stencils and tangent-space brush operations, once you set the symmetry for your model:
Mudbox 2013 is a nice update overall but this one thing should help a lot...
2 tags
Shorten the Maya 2013 Pipeline Cache menu
Maya’s a menubar-hungry app and even if you’re on a 1920x1200 or higher-res screen, it takes a ton of space. Maya 2013 introduced the Alembic “Pipeline Cache” short story into every menu bar so lower-res laptop PCs are probably going to start getting truncated. Mac users are going to have even less room for their menu bar utilities like iStat Menus, so I found the MEL file...
3 tags
Change V-Ray Distributed Rendering Servers Without...
After manually switching the V-Ray for Maya distributed rendering settings a bunch, I found out that these settings are stored in plain text files that can be changed separately. On OS X, there are two files. The first:
~/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/server_list.tmp
That has the slave addresses (10.0.1.x, for example). I’m not sure where it is stored in Windows or Linux but look in...
2 tags
Verto Studio 3D for iOS
If you’re looking for a good model viewer for the iPhone or iPad, Verto Studio 3D has an iTunes sideloader for OBJ files with MTL material sidecars:
That’s the iPhone retina display version running on the iPad 3. Technically, it’s a modeller but it’s a little too simple to really do much in the way of great models. If you don’t need texture support, Meshlab is...
4 tags
Not an April Fool's Joke - My Lightroom 4 Review...
Great update from Adobe. Read the full review on Ars Technica.
1 tag
Autodesk to Let Users Pick Their Renderer in Maya...
Now that my NDA has lifted, I’m allowed to tell Maya users some pretty great news. When you pick your Maya download for Maya 2013, you will be prompted to select the renderer you want to use and a download for that will be part of your Maya 2013 license. We tested this during beta testing and here’s the rather limited but awesome set of choices:
For those of you who hate mental ray...
