Deformation layering in GPU friendly way

Here is cool article about deformation layering in Maya in GPU friendly way:
https://medium.com/@charles_76959/deformation-layering-in-mayas-parallel-gpu-world-15c2e3d66d82

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.

Maya joint rotation evaluation problem - solved

This is mainly for Rigging TDs. Maybe you have noticed this before - connection to a joint rotations is not evaluating.

I have made 3-channel connection (XYZ) from joint to another joint. It was completely ignoring one axis when rotating on driven joint. But only when joints where hidden (visibility hidden). If the joints where visible or only hidden using Model display Show > Joints, then it would evaluate all 3 axis.

So I have connected the joint using per-axis connections:
rotationX -> rotationX
rotationY -> rotationY
rotationZ -> rotationZ

And then it started to work again. So in case you have this problem, this might be a workaround.

 

Polygonbay Artist Search - public beta

Here is first demo of Polygonbay Artist Search - fastest system to find CG artists based on skills. First beta version is planned for the next week around 1.11.2017.

If you are 3d artist, programming or working in games, this is place where you want to be. You can register for free here:
https://www.polygonbay.com/my-account/

polygonbay_artist_search_demo_001 from Polygonbay 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/

Advanced Rig Deformation Tutorial

Advanced Rigging Deformation tutorial is quick demonstration of advanced Maya rig deformation techniques to help riggers get started with more realistic setups.

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DNEG and Young Pope

Worth to notice how VFX is heavily used in TV programmes. Game of Thrones moved the bard recently. Here is courtesy of DNEG and Young Pope series:

https://www.fxguide.com/featured/dneg-tv-the-young-pope/

Qt Creator IDE - Qt Designer for Windows

In case you need to use Qt Designer for Windows and you just use it occasionaly or cannot invest too much, you can use Open Source version. This can be downloaded from here (choose OpenSource):
https://info.qt.io/download-qt-for-application-development
or here:
http://download.cnet.com/Qt-Creator-IDE/3000-2212_4-75300653.html
Then if you are just starting to learn this tool and Design tab is greyed out, make sure that you select the *.ui file from the files dropdown in Edit mode, usualy its mainwindow.ui. Then the Design mode should become active and you can start easy visual creation of the GUI.

Maya channelBox in-line math operations

I wanted to make a post about this common technique, that not every TD in Maya knows. Especially the new ones who maybe switched from XSI or 3ds max.

How can make relative proportional change of one attribute value for multiple selected objects in Channel Box.


Imagine you have bunch of locators on one side, all different position, and you want to make duplicated locators on opposite side across some axis, let`s say world X.
So you duplicate them first and with the duplicated locators selected, you can now click select the TranslateX channel number field ( make sure its the number field, not the name) and now type:

*=-1

This simple formula will multiply each selected locator TranslateX value. And the effect will be moving them to the opposite side.

You can read more here at this post by Asephei.
http://asephei.blogspot.cz/2011/03/maya-numeric-expressions-in-channel-box.html

Maya python UI passing argument in command

Here is example of Maya UI code in case you need to build in a command to UI element which passes an argument.
More about this technique here:
http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2011help/pymel/ui.html

Note - this is all one function myUI(), where buttonPressed is function defined inside that function. It doesn`t have to be, but this way it is localised and only visible to the UI function.

import maya.cmds as mc

def myUI():

    def buttonPressed(name):
        print "pressed %s!" % name

    win = mc.window(title="My Window")
    layout = mc.columnLayout()
    btn = mc.button( command = lambda *args: buttonPressed('chad') )

    showWindow()

DOOM weapons design

A look back at DOOM weapons design:
https://bethesda.net/en/article/tf46jim4aOK0yMYEi6Q0y/the-art-of-doom-weapons

Remove code line breaks

Nice online tool for removing code line breaks:

http://www.textfixer.com/tools/remove-line-breaks.php

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

Maya 2017 Pose Editor script tweak

If you worked with Pose Editor in Maya 2017 there is a chance you got an error when using Add Pose function.

In case your mesh shape was the same like its transform parent. For example transform: "body_geo" has shape: "body_geo". Maya will get clashing name problem when using duplicated shape which gets created for Pose Shape. Because duplicate command does not return long names.

If you want to prevent this to happen, just edit the duplicate command in file:

Maya2017/plug-ins/camd/scriptsposeInterpolatorAddShapePose.mel

add -rc flag to duplicate command on line 19 like this:

string $copyMesh[] = `duplicate -rc $longName`;

This is renameChildren flag which makes sure that new DAG nodes will have unique names. The whole edited file is also available for download on this link:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7o5K0aCMVWPdURJMkdYOXpROFE

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

Find the biggest files on your Google Drive

Here is handy link in case you are using Google Drive to store you data on cloud. In case you want to do some (New Year) clean up:
https://drive.google.com/drive/quota

Just be careful not to delete anything important ;) Better download to your local drive before.