My Oh Maya!

Announcements: Upcoming Maya Webinar + Area Updates

STLR — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:08:15 UTC

Hey Maya people! I just wanted to let everyone know that I'll be hosting an upcoming Maya centric webcast next week on Tuesday May 28th at 1pm PDT / 4pm EST

Agenda:

What is the Maya Open Data initiative?
What is Scene Assembly?
Triggering Scene Assemblies: Manual, Event, Render
Custom Tools for Managing Scene Assembly
Characters Assemblies

Details below…

Date: Tuesday May 28

Time: 1pm PDT/ 4pm EST

Join Autodesk Technical Specialist, Steven Roselle as he discusses the Maya Open Data initiative and demonstrates a variety of Scene Assembly workflows.

The Maya Open Data initiative is about providing tools, functionality and workflows that facilitate the management of complex scenes, parallel pipelines and custom data. As part of this initiative, Scene Assembly was designed and implemented in Maya 2013 Extension Release, and expanded in May 2014. Scene Assembly is a new scalable referencing system for Maya 2014. Steven will demonstrate how Scene Assembly makes managing and manipulating complex scenes more intuitive and efficient.

NOTE: If you participate in the forums or comment on blog there is an Area update that you should know about. Check out this post to find out what you need to do to make sure your post history is preserved -> Area Forum Update

Maya Bonus Tools Resource Page (Update - 3DsImport plugin available)

STLR — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:32:22 UTC

- Welcome to the Maya BonusTools Resource Page -

Here you will find links to installers, useful information, tutorials, demonstrations and updates related to Maya BonusTools. This page will be continually updated with new information, so bookmark it and check back later for more updates.

- BonusTools 2014 Installation -

The 2014 version of BonusTools is now available for download. Going forward we will be posting the installers on the new Autodesk Maya Apps Exchange -> BonusTools 2014 Installers. The Exchange is a portal hosted by Autodesk where you can get access to plugins that extend the functionality of various Autodesk products. There are now both Maya and Max centric pages on the Exchange.

NOTE: We have fixed the legacy issue with the BonusTools python scripts path. You no longer need to set this up manually. It is now done automatically, so all python based Bonus Tools should work imediately after installation.

- BonusTools 2014 Update -

We've had a few requests for the 3dsImport plugin which was not included in the 2014 version of BonusTools. The compiled windows plugin has now been uploaded separately -> 3dsImport Plugin. Unzip the file and put the 3dsImport.mll file in the plugins folder where BonusTools 2014 is installed. See documentation for more details on installation location.

- Legacy BonusTools Installers -

BonusTools installers for older versions of Maya can still be found on the Area -> Legacy Maya BonusTools Installers (Keep in mind that older versions will not contain all of the current toolset)

NOTE: In older versions of BonusTools python based tools will not work after the initial installation (e.g. Flatten Components.) Python scripts required an additional setup step for versions prior to 2014. See the BonusTools help docs for instructions on how to setup your Python search path. You only need to do this once and it should work from then on.

Fixes for the DrawSplit and DrawReduce tool are available for BonsuTools 2013. This update addresses an issue that was preventing the tools from being listed in the menu for MacOS as well as an issue with the default options for the tools. Put the contents of this zip file in the scripts folder of the BonusTools installation -> BonusTools 2013 Update1. These fixes are already integrated into the 2014 version.

- BonusTools Tips, Tricks and Tutorials -

What's New in -> BonusTools 2014?

Modify

Paint Geometry Tool

Create

Windows

Modeling

UV Editing

Animation

Rendering

Change Texture Paths / Organize Files (retired)
Fur Blender

Maya BonusTools 2014 is/are ready! Is/are you?

STLR — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 09:10:31 UTC

Are you looking for some BonusTools???

How's this for a BonusTool?

The amazing Banana Slicer!!

How could we have lived so long without it? If you haven't yet seen the classic reviews of this fabulous invention they are worth a look :)

> Banana Slicer Reviews

Unfortunately we were not able to include the Banana Slicer in this year's Maya BonusTools Pack :( but there are a number of nifty new tools in the BonusTools 2014 release.

That's right folks... BonusTools 2014 is/are finally done and ready to download. I never know whether to use "is" or "are" in this context?

But regardless, you can start by checking out the BonusTools page for a complete list of what’s new as well as links to the new download location -> BonusTools 2014

Below you can also watch a short overview movie that covers all of the new stuff.

Maya BonusTools 2014 - What's New?

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n3l5H6vVuI&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Maya 2014 Highlight - Node Editor Updates

STLR — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:06:18 UTC

Hey Maya people -

As you've most likely heard by now we have offically announced the 2014 releases of all of our products. Maya 2014 in particular is IMHO a pretty strong release. I was at GDC last week showing the new features to a bunch of different game developers and the feedback that I got was very positive. This is one of those releases where there is a bit of something for everyone... modelers, animators, technical artists, and even programmers! It's also one of those releases where you have to dig down a bit to discover some of the more useful updates.

I'm not going to cover each feature in one post. I've gotta stretch it out and make it last! But over the next several weeks I'll be going over some of the specifics on the various new and/or improved features in Maya 2014. This week I'm going to cover the much needed updates to the Node Editor. The changes in the Node Editor were focused on workflow and visual feedback. I've always believd that it's often times the little things... the things that simplify your workflows that are often appreciated more than some of the higher profile new features.

Maya 2014 - Node Editor Improvements

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI2MYFg6G0c&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Something that I don't mention in the video which is also very useful... the new color scheme in the Node Edtior is completely customizable. You can use this image as reference for which colors represent which types of nodes and which types of connection for those nodes. This can be really handy when diagnosiing existing complex node networks.

UPDATE: I forgot to include it in the demo, but there is also a handy hotkey (2 hotkeys actually) that were added for the Node Editor in 2014. If you select a node in the NE and hit either < or > (technically , or .) then it will select all of the input or output connections so that you can quickly move them in the graph all at the same time. It's a nice quick way of organizing the graph.

And finally, if you are interested you can also check out the Node Editor Overview that I originally posted when it was first introduced.

Maya 2013 - Node Editor Oveview

Maya 2013 - Animation Tools Review

STLR — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:31:26 UTC

Howdy -

Well I've gotten a little behind on my blog posting lately. I seem to be getting pulled in a lot of different directlions and as a result the blog kinda took a back seat for a bit. But I'm coming up for air... at least temporaily. The last couple of weeks in particular I've been busy prepping for GDC which is next week. We will have a lot of new and exciting stuff to talk about. If you're going to be at GDC definitely stop by the Autodesk booth and say hi and check out some of the new Maya demos I'll be showing. If you're not going to be at GDC then check my blog again the week after as I'll be posting some recordings of some of the new Maya GDC demos.

Coinciding with GDC is the Unfold Event. Unfold is a live event in Montreal but it will also be streamed online.

Also over the last few weeks we've posted some "sneak peeks" of some of new stuff we've been working on.

Watch them here -> Sneak Peek

Otherwise, I was trying to come up with something new to post this week and I ran across some recordings I did last summer for a webcast. I realized that, other than for the webcast itself, these movies never got reposted anywhere. The webcast covered all of the various animation related updates from Maya 2013, which of course was actually released last spring. So consider this a recap of what was added in the latest release from an animation standpoint.

Maya 2013 - Animation Editing

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAwC2yILmyw[/video]

Maya 2013 - Trax Improvements

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKrizuYPAsU[/video]

Maya 2013 - HIK and Custom Rig Retargeting

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBwYi8FeK3I[/video]

Maya 2013 - ATOM (Animation Transfer)

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVhaXnEbx0M[/video]

Maya 2013 Extension2: Maya .NET API

STLR — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 15:14:13 UTC

Hi Mayans!

Maya 2013 Extension 2 is officially out the door and available for download. This extension release is focused exclusively on programmers. So if you're an animator or modeler or general artist then there won’t be much need for you to install it. But if you’re a developer and have either experience with or an interest in .NET then you’ll probably want to check it out. Keep in mind that this release is only available to those of you that are on subscription. You can download it from the -> subscription center

Extension 2 for Maya 2013 provides the .NET API that allows you to create plug-ins and extensions for Maya using Microsoft's .NET technology.

The .NET API allows you to load plug-in code from .NET assemblies and includes assemblies that you can import to access the Maya SDK from .NET languages. Included with the SDK are the .NET SDK class libraries, the Visual Studio XML documentation and C# example files.

What this basically means for the non-programmers out there like me, is that anyone who has experience programming with .NET can now write plugins for Maya and leverage their existing C# skills for custom tool creation. This will open Maya up to a wide array of new UI possibilities and allow for tighter integration with external tools built independently of Maya.

NOTE: Since .NET is a windows only thing this will of course only be available for Maya on Windows and is therefore not relevent to Linux or MacOS.

You can get more info on the Maya .NET api from the docs which are posted online -> Maya .NET API

Christopher Diggins posted some additional info (with extra links) on his blog last week ->

Maya 2013 Extension 2: .NET and more

If you're not even sure what .NET is but you're interested anyway you can get more info here...

Microsoft's .NET Framework

and here...

What is .NET?

Maya BonusTools 2013 - Pose BlendShape Editor

STLR — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:57:57 UTC

Hello Maya people! I have two tips for you today. This first has nothing to do with Maya.

This kind of blew my mind when I first saw it....

It's a new visual way to do math!! And it works... kind of. It looks pretty easy with these particular numbers. But try to multply something like 98 x 87 and you will soon realize that it's way more trouble than it's worth :( Oh well... it's a good thing we have calculators and computers for stuff like this... or you can just use Maya :)

So, I've been meaning to record and share a demo/tutorial for the new Pose BlendShape Editor for a long time now. I finally got around to it last week. This tool is based on a script that Cory Mogk wrote many years ago... back when he was still doing that sort of thing :) I decided last year that it was in need of a facelift. So I cleaned up the UI, tweaked the undying functionality a bit and added a couple of bells and whistles.

The idea behind this is not ground breaking of course, as a lot of people out there are doing similar things or in some case going above and beyond what is shown here in terms of complexity. But this tool can be handy for anyone that either doesn’t want to take the time to setup these kinds of corrective blendshape manually or doesn’t have access to tools that help automate the setup process.

Enjoy…

Maya BonusTools 2013 - Pose BlendShape Editor

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egoYATyNAaA&feature=share&list=UUFlbcuzOXbvg-FVvvzGZOHw[/video]

Maya BonusTools 2013 - Animation Editing Tools

STLR — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:44:56 UTC

Good-bye 2012.

It’s hard to believe another year has come and gone. This is where I would normally talk about how old I’m getting… but even that is getting old! 2012 was a very busy year work-wise. I saw a lot of old friends and made a lot of new ones. I spent much of my time in the air traveling all over North America to meet with dozens of game studios. Here are just a few of the studios that I personally visited in 2012… ID, Gearbox, Edge of Reality, Battle Cry, Bioware Edmonton, Retro, Zynga SF and Boston, Fireaxis, Disney Interactive LA, Heavy Iron, Rock Star San Diego, SOE and SCEA San Diego, Sledgehammer, Toys For Bob, 2K Sports, Piranha, United Front, Capcom Vancouver, Killer Minnow, EA Vancouver, Turbine, Ubisoft, MS Seattle, Turn10, Big Fish, Microsoft Vancouver, Airtight, ArenaNet, Brickyard VFX, Panic Button, Twisted Pixel, Rooster Teeth… just to name a few :) Then there were also the conferences… GDC, NAB, Siggraph, ECGC, GDC Online, OTC, etc… All in all, I racked up about 75,000 miles, which is right up there either near or at my all-time high. Travel can be crazy but also fun. I want to thank the many people that I met along the way that helped make it fun.

Now hello 2013!!

So for my first post of 2013 I’d like to take a look back and revisit a few of the animation related BonusTools that I’ve written over the years.

Mirror Animation

[video]http://youtu.be/eYbtwEDZyXM[/video]

Reverse Animation

[video]http://youtu.be/0z-bnOyOO2A[/video]

Timewarp Animation

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFf0DUmF8N0&feature=share&list=UUFlbcuzOXbvg-FVvvzGZOHw[/video]

Wishing yall a grand ole holiday season!

STLR — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 13:25:02 UTC

Howdy friends.

Me and my folks down here in the south would like to wish y’all

a happy Chanukah,

a merry Christmas,

a wonderful winter solstice

and a great new year!

For a walk down memory lane -> http://www.stevenroselle.com/holiday.html

Maya Python for Games and Film

STLR — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 14:05:42 UTC

I began to make the switch from MEL to Python a couple of years ago. It was actually a slow and somewhat painful process. I had been using MEL for roughly a decade, so any time I had to write script it was often just easier (and much faster) to fall back on what I knew. I'll admit that I'm kind of old and lazy and you know what they say about teaching an old (and lazy) dog new tricks. Luckily, I did finally overcome my laziness (although I'm still fighting the old part) and I now feel pretty comfortable with Python.

One of the biggest obstacles for me when taking the plunge was finding good learning resources. I of course bought a couple of general Python reference manuals and learning books, but these were not at all specific to Maya, not to mention the Maya API, PyMEL, QT, etc... I was also able to cobble together some decent example scripts as well as a useful blog post here and there, but that took time. Eventually I got to the point where I could finally write a complete script from beginning to end while leaning on the various resources I’d pooled together.

After trudging my way through this slow learning process, I was very happy to learn that someone has finally written a Maya specific Python book. Back last spring at GDC I met Ryan Trowbridge who has been a character TD at Naughty Dog for a number of years. He was telling me about a book that he had written that was all about Python in Maya. I finally got around to checking it out over the last few weeks. I’ve had some much needed down time lately and I’ve been meaning to beef up on my Python skills for a while now anyway. So as a refresher I went through the first few chapters of his book and it is indeed incredibly useful. I just wish I’d had it 2-3 years ago :( But better late than never :)

Maya Python for Games and Film by Ryan Trowbridge and Adam Mechtley

So if you know Maya and maybe some MEL but you’ve been meaning to start learning Python and keep putting it off, or if you already know some Python but have been wanting to brush up on some details, or if you know Python fairly well but are not quite sure how it relates to Maya, then I highly recommend investing in this handy resource.

-sr

Maya BonusTools 2013 - Make Joints Dynamic

STLR — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 13:49:48 UTC

Hello Maya people. I've been on a whirlwind tour of game studios all across North America in recent weeks/months. Luckily I've had the last two weeks at home to recuperate. It’s given me a chance to do a little sorely needed house cleaning. In the process I rediscovered this movie that I created a while back showing the Make Joints Dynamic tool from BonusTools. It essentially allows you to apply dynamics to an existing joint chain either by connecting hair, nCloth or a jiggle deformer to the joints.

This came up recently at a meeting with a game developer that I was visiting. They were trying come up with an easy way to create some quick secondary animation for a few of their characters. They didn’t want to deal with the performance overhead of doing it dynamically in the game engine and instead wanted to create it on the Maya side and simply bake it down to joints.

This is a tool that I wrote quite a while ago, back when hair and then nCloth first came out. It can now be used with nHair as well since any classic hair dynamic curve can now be switched to use Nucleus as the solver, thus allowing dynamic curves to interact with nCloth, nMeshes, nParticles, nConstraints, etc...

Enjoy.

BonusTools 2013 : Make Joints Dynamic

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5oPTUHN-5U&list=UUFlbcuzOXbvg-FVvvzGZOHw&index=1&feature=plcp[/video]

Maya BonusTools 2013 - DrawSplit/DrawReduce (Plus BT intallers for Maya 2013 Extension available)

STLR — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 20:58:31 UTC

Hi everyone. This will be a very quick post. I have two things to share with you...

1. The BonusTools installers for Maya 2013 Extension are now available. You can get them on the main BonusTools page (at the bottom) -> BonusTools Installers

B. I posted a movie of a couple of long time BonusTools that a lot of people are still unaware of. It's actually two different but related tools called Draw Split and Draw Reduce. Here is a quick overview I put together a whille back.

Note: They are both plugins so you will need the correct version of BonusTools for whichever version of Maya you're using.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi2QNFdVrdg&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Maya 2013 Extension: DX11 in Viewport 2.0 Available for Download

STLR — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 21:40:26 UTC

I had a crazy busy week in the bay area last week. Over the course of 3 days I met with 4 distinctly unique game developers including: TakeTwo's 2K Sports, Zynga and Activision's Toys For Bob and Sledgehammer. Seeing the breadth of titles that these developers have worked on reminded me just how varied the games industry really is. From 2k12 Basketball, to Call of Duty MW3, to Skylanders, to CityVille. Each of these titles is a completely different style, with each having a very different look and feel. But of course they all have one thing in common... they were all created, at least in part, with Maya.

One of the more well recieved new features that I've been promoting recently is the new DX11 support in the latest Maya 2013 Extension release (formlery known as SAP = Subscription Advantage Pack). The Maya 2013 Extension is now avaialbe to anyone on subscription. You can download it from the subscription center -> http://subscription.autodesk.com

Next-Gen Viewport Display and Shading* - Take advantage of Microsoft® DirectX® 11 technology with the new Maya DX11Shader. Offering you real-time, centralized, easy-to-control shader effects such as crack-free tessellation, vector displacement maps, translucence, reflections, and shadows, the DX11Shader is built with a new API (application programming interface) that exposes DirectX 11 natively in Maya with HLSL (High Level Shading Language) support.

DX11 in Viewport 2.0 Overview

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6vnCotQ5Yw&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Note: Creature model created by Jesse Sandifer

Maya BonusTools 2013 - UV Tools

STLR — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 12:20:57 UTC

Hi everyone.

Well, I've officially moved back from my temporary 2 month stay in Boston. The summer there was phenomenal. I would get weekly emails from my friends and family back in Austin complaining about the ungodly hot 100+ degree weather and then I’d walk outside in Boston to a perfect sunny and 75-80 degree day. Unfortunately I got back just in time for another heat wave in Austin - up to 105 today :( But I’d rather have only a few weeks of that than 2-3 months of it! So next summer we’re planning on getting the heck out of here again… but this time somewhere in the Pacific North West. Where should we go? Seattle? Portland? Vancouver?

Speaking of Vancouver… I just spent 4 days there last week visiting several game developers including Capcom (formerly Blue Castle), United Front and Piranha games. I spent the better part of a full day last Wed with the guys at United Front showing them some Maya goodness. They are finishing up a project that I’m really looking forward to -> Little Big Planet Karting

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee82zRhh8WY[/video]

My daughter, who is almost 7, is finally starting to show an interest in games. Yea!! I finally have someone to play with :) I recently started playing the original Little Big Planet with her and she is loving it. It’s such a fun game and a great franchise. Karting looks super fun as well.

So on to the topic of the week… UV Editing. We all love working with UVs right? Wrong… we all hate working with UVs. But just like skinning and weighting, it’s just one of those necessary evils… so tedious and monotonous. But a few of us here have created some nifty little BonusTools that at least help with the process. I’ve put together a few movies that demonstrate some these tools.

Auto Unwrap UVs

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyhwoZTrB_s&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Auto Map Multiple Meshes

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAcZHLC5ggQ&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Align UV Shells

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-InxmFnPYQ&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Clamp UVs

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV4_7JfdfSY&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Flip / Rotate UVs

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w1LFMcdt_M&feature=youtu.be[/video]

UV Editor Display

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTRBWO1F2g8&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Maya 2013 Extension: Scene Assembly Workflow

STLR — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 13:11:38 UTC

Hi everyone. I fully intended to do a pre-Siggraph post but I got a little swamped with preparation for the conference and never got around to it. So here instead is my post-Siggraph post :) It was a good show... hectic and crazy, but good. It was back in LA this year, after a year away in Vancouver. It was my 13th year of attending Siggraph. After seeing it consistently shrink for many years, it appears to have finally stabilized in size. There were somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 attendees. We had a very active booth and drew full crowds for pretty much all of our presentation. We also had a very active online virtual booth via The Area, with a good mix of customer presentations as well as internal product and workflow demos. If you missed any of the presentations they were all recorded and posted ->

http://area.autodesk.com/siggraph2012/

If you happen to be in the Boston area, I will be speaking at the Boston AAUGA event this Thursday night (Aug 16^th) where I plan to present a recap of some of my Siggraph presentations.

Boston AAUGA Event - Thursday Aug 16th @ 6:30pm

As you may have heard by now we announced the new -> Maya 2013 Extension (Formerly known as SAP or Subscription Advantage Pack) at Siggraph. There are 3 key features in the Maya 2013 SAP including support for DirectX 11, the new File Path Editor, and the Scene Assembly workflow. In the movie below I focus on Scene Assembly.

What is Scene Assembly?

Scene Assembly consists of two interdependent nodes, assembly definition and assembly reference, and a system for loading alternate forms of production assets called assembly representations. Scene Assemblies make managing the loading and manipulation of complex scenes simple and intuitive. Overrides on Assemblies can be tracked with a revamped Edits system enabling collaborative workflows across production departments. A complete API allows the creation of completely proprietary user solutions.

Maya 2013 Extension – Scene Assembly

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfPcK5BzU7s&list=UUFlbcuzOXbvg-FVvvzGZOHw&index=1&feature=plcp[/video]
Note: In the demo I show a new version LayoutTools working with Scene Assembly. This is currently a prototype but I plan to make this new version of LayoutTools available soon, along with some example scene files that you can use for experimenting with the workflow presented in the demo movie.

Maya 2013 Service Pack 1

STLR — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 12:56:17 UTC

This is just a quick post to let everyone know that the first Maya 2013 Service Pack is out and available for download. A number of bugs have been fixed, but most importantly for me it includes a fix to a very annoying bug that was affecting a number of BonusTools, as well as LayoutTools. This includes two of the more popular BonusTools... the new SlideComponents tool as well as the AutoUnwrapUVs tool. The bug was preventing the HeadsUpDisplay buttons that are used by these tools from displaying.

Download the service pack here -> Maya 2013 Service Pack 1

For more info on the tools that were being affected you can check out these related posts...

BonusTools -> Slide Components

BonusTools -> Auto Unwrap UVs

That's all for now, but stay tuned for a few more BonusTools tutorials that I will post in the next couple of weeks.

-sr

Maya 2013 Highlight - ATOM (Animation Transfer Object Model)

STLR — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 13:50:45 UTC

NOTE:

Don't forget to register for the Autodesk Digital Entertainment Conference taking place tomorrow where you can see presentations from Sony Pictures Imageworks and Blitz Games Studio -> www.autodesk.com/entertainment-conference

Howdy y'all.

I'm trying to get those y'alls out of my system because later this week I'm heading out to Boston for two months... mainly to avoid the ungodly hot weather that has already arrived here in Texas. Today it’s 102 :( Last year we hit something like 70 days in row of over 100 degrees. We also tied our all time record last August with 112 !! So this year, I’m get’n the hell out of Dodge… errr I mean Austin.

After the ridiculous summer we had last year my wife and I have decided that, from this point on, we will spend as much time away from Texas as possible every summer. Luckily I got to spend last week in Seattle which was b – u – t - ful. I went there for the week to visit a number of Game developers including Microsoft, BigFish, AirTight, ArenaNet and Signal Studios. It was a great trip. Seattle is next on my short list of places to spend next summer. But this year it’s Boston. I’m planning to visit a number of studios in the New England area while I’m there, so if any of you out there are working at a studio in or near Boston let me know!

So, back to the topic at hand…

Maya 2013 - ATOM

ATOM, which stands for Animation Transfer Object Model, is a new xml based import/export mechanism for transferring animations and attributes between Maya scenes. It provides a very flexible way of externalizing and transferring base animation, anim layers, driven keys, constraints, static values and more. There are also handy search/replace options for dealing with things like differing namespaces and prefixes. Taking it a step farther you can also use secondary files called templates and maps for dealing with more complex filtering and name matching scenarios. And because it is xml based it is very pipeline friendly and can easily be parsed and edited with external tools. In addition to storing animation related things it can also be used to externalize simple transform or attribute values that can be used in other Maya scenes or even other tools such as custom editors.

Here is a quick demo movie that I put together showing ATOM in action.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVhaXnEbx0M&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Maya 2013 Highlight - Attribute Editor Customization Part 2 (Tutorial Files)

STLR — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 16:16:56 UTC

This is a short continuation of last week's Maya 2013 Attribute Editor Customization post. If you missed last week's post you can check it out here...

Maya 2013 Highlight - Attribute Editor Customization

If you're interested in experimenting with the scripts and scene files that were shown in the example movies from that post you can get them here....

AECustomizationTutorial.zip

Maya 2013 Highlight - Attribute Editor Customization (plus new related BonusTools)

STLR — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 13:50:30 UTC

UPDATE: You can now download the example scene files and scripts from the demostration movies -> AE Customization Tutorial

Thanks to Rob Skiena, Maya Product Designer, for contributing for this post. Rob has done some great design work on tool sets such as the new Node Editor, and more recently the customizable Attribute Editor changes in 2013. He has also contributed a great new tool called the Attribute Editor Template Builder as part of the latest BonusTool 2013 which is directly related to some of the new features in 2013.

Attibute Editor Template Builder UI

NOTE: The Attribute Editor Template Builder is a python script. After installing BonusTools 2013 you will need to manually setup your Python script path for BonusTools in order to use this tool. See BonusTools documentation for instrcutions on how to setup the path.

There are some new features available in Maya 2103 that may change how you use the Attribute Editor. With Custom Attribute Editor Attribute Views, you may use template files to customize the Attribute Editor for specific tasks, projects or artist type. Some things you can do with custom Attribute Views in Maya are:

Create custom views of attributes in the Attribute Editor.
Specify views for both Node Types and for specifically Named Nodes,
Set views for the current selection, or Globally for all nodes in Maya
Use Callbacks in Python and Mel to inject script functions into the AE
Set Maya to search for Templates in a custom directory or across a network

See the Bonus Tools 2013 documentation for more details. Additionally here are 5 short video tutorials to get you going on View creation with the Template Builder.

The intro movie will give you a general overview.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6UbCzmYu0A&list=UUFlbcuzOXbvg-FVvvzGZOHw&index=1&feature=plcp[/video]

The Quickstart movie will get you off and running.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ-Gutcv9WU&feature=youtu.be[/video]

The Object Based View movie will show you how customize for specific node names.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dIlTj_SAh4&feature=youtu.be[/video]

The Callbacks movie will show you how to attach commands and/or scripts to the elements within the AE.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDNDu02ne64&feature=youtu.be[/video]

The Production movie will show you a practical example of how AE Templates can be used.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7rGuxsyz0Q&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Maya BonusTools 2013 is ready! Are you?

STLR — Wed, 23 May 2012 09:26:12 UTC

Are you looking for some BonusTools???

How's this for a BonusTool?

Ingenious isn't it?

Sadly though, this is not technically a "Maya BonusTool" and will not be included with the new installers :) But there are a bunch of other cool tools that will! Here is a list of what's been added and/or updated.

What’s New?

Modify -> Drag Move Tool
Modify -> Mirror Translate/Rotate
Modify -> Copy Pivot from Last Selected
Modify -> Align Pivot(s) to Bounding Box
Window -> Attribute Editor Template Builder
Animation -> Pose Blend Shape Editor
Modeling -> Flatten Components
Modeling -> Slide Components
Modeling -> Delete Edge Tool
Modeling -> Delete Vertex Edges Tool
Modeling -> N-Sided to Quad Tool
Rendering -> Refresh Texture Swatches
Rendering -> Auto Layer Texture(s)

What’s been fixed or updated?

Modify -> Proportional Transform
Modify -> Store Transform Values
Create -> Create Menu from Shelf
Display -> Toggle Single/Double Sided
Display -> Toggle Poly Surface Area HUD
Display -> Toggle Poly Volume Area HUD
Animation -> Store Pose
Animation -> Time Warp Animation
Modeling -> Merge All Verts/Edges by Distance
UV Editing -> Auto Map Multiple Meshes
Rendering -> Change Texture Paths

I've put together a few short movies to show some of the new tools. Today's post will focus on Modeling related tools but stay tuned for more...

Modeling -> Flatten Components

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZRfmDunEMg&list=UUFlbcuzOXbvg-FVvvzGZOHw&index=3&feature=plcp[/video]

Modeling -> Slide Components

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIeGjg5FjA4&list=UUFlbcuzOXbvg-FVvvzGZOHw&index=1&feature=plcp[/video]

Modeling -> Poly Edit Tools

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIjcOK3xHeU&list=UUFlbcuzOXbvg-FVvvzGZOHw&index=2&feature=plcp[/video]

*** You can get the lastest BonusTools installers here -> Maya BonusTools 2013