Highlight Affected - Maya 2019

Maybe you were wondering why objects wireframe is not pink anymore in Maya 2019 - when this object is not directly selected but it is somehow affected by the selected object(s).

This is called Highlight Affected and is Off by default in Maya 2019. Also you cannot turn it back On in Preferences anymore. This feature was also moved under new menu:

Display > Animation > Highlight Affected

Face capture in mobile phone

This is great and I hope more mobiles will come with this technology:
http://www.bannaflak.com/face-cap/index.html

You can capture face performance with pretty good quality using iPhoneX and export is supported for applications like Maya, Blender, Cinema4D or Houdini.

Custom Character Toolkit for download

Great tutorial on building simple rigging pipeline is available here. Long lost, no more available to buy anywhere now available at this link.

Maya - Custom Character Toolkit (2004)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t2x5C7NKr10we_r5AHwGh_f4HoRZFX7V/view?usp=sharing

 

Weeds short animated film

Nice animated Weeds short directed by Kevin Hudson. A flower is the main hero here :) Also really good rigging by Disney Rigging TDs.
https://www.weedsshort.com/

WEEDS_h264 from Kevin Hudson on Vimeo.

Reference for young elk deer

Great reference for young elk deer model or animation.

Master of Rigging com

Here is great website with link to inspiring collection of rigging demoreel Master Of Rigging and also to custom rigs service www.RIG-IT.net and high quality eshop www.polygonbay.com. 

http://www.masterofrigging.com/

Battleborn rigging interview

Really cool interview with Ryan Metcalf about rigging for Gearbox latest game Battleborn.
http://area.autodesk.com/customer-stories/gamedev-ep-26---ryan-metcalf?src=fbad

Free Animation Tools

I just got couple of tips for some great Maya animation tools. And it`s even better because they are FREE ;)

http://www.studiolibrary.com/

http://camiloalan.wixsite.com/atoolswebsite

Pixar detailed demonstration of Presto

Pixar shows their tools built in Presto system and some of their pipeline on this nVidia demonstration. Very interesting for those interested in pipelines and generally in 3D animation tools and workflows.
http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2016/video/S6454.html

 

Maya menu show / hide

This is always handy to know, how to hide or show main Maya menus. Especially if you accidentally hide one.

Ctrl + m ....................... show/hide main Maya menus
Shift + Shift + m ....................... show/hide OpenGL modeling Maya menus
Shift + m ....................... show/hide OpenGL +  Outliner Maya menus

Maya viewport troubleshooting

This seems to be quite useful link from Autodesk Maya documentation to new Viewport 2.0 openGL renderer. If you are having problems with it, solution might be right here:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/Maya/files/GUID-96B324B5-E9EF-4817-9CCD-1E324DB54FE3-htm.html

 

Exploring Human Muscles Setup in Maya Course

Here is my latest course on rigging human using Autodesk Maya Muscles for Digital Tutors:

http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/exploring-human-muscles-setup-maya-2395

Over 6 hours detailed workflow, great as an introduction to anyone learning how to use muscles in rigging. Anatomy examples and custom Python tools included. Thanks to Pavel Hruboš who did test animations and Jan Jinda for providing werewolf model.

Edits on referenced animation

Great feature recently added in Maya allowing edits on referenced animation curves.

Dinosaurs by ILM

Nice behind the scenes about making dinosaurs by ILM for recent Jurassic World movie.

TEN24 shares free images of their scans for anatomy reference

TEN24 shares free images of their scans for anatomy reference:

http://www.anatomy360.info/anatomy-scan-reference-dump/

fStretch for Maya FREE and Open Source

So I found by accident that fStretch - cool stretch-driven blendShape deformer for Maya has been made open source and donation based.
http://www.cgaddict.com/

Versions up to Maya 2015 are also available at Autodesk Exchange Server:
https://apps.autodesk.com/MAYA/en/Detail/Index?id=appstore.exchange.autodesk.com%3afstretch%3aen

Here is link to source code and all plugin builds:
http://www.cgaddict.com/real-download.html

Hellblade Development Diary 16: The Face of Senua

Really cool video showing 3Lateral studio from Serbia helping with face expression modeling and setup for Ninja Theory.

Jurassic World raptor reel from Image Engine

Impressive creature and set extension work by Image Engine on recent blockbuster Jurassic World

JURASSIC WORLD BREAKDOWN REEL from Image Engine on Vimeo.

Pixel Vienna

So I found about another CG Conference. I think the more the better. Here is PIXEL VIENNA, apparently taking place in Wien :)
www.pixelvienna.com

PIXEL 7 from PixelVienna on Vimeo.

fixing 2016 MA file for Maya 2013

I had a problem with getting Maya 2016 scene to 2013. Because it was Maya Ascii, I just commented out all occurences of "rename -uid " as "//rename -uid " and import worked :)