• 1/3
Home > Blogs > My Oh Maya! > Maya BonusTools 2013 - DrawSplit/DrawReduce (Plus BT intallers for Maya 2013 Extension available)

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

Posted by STLR, 15 October 2012 8:58 pm

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.

20 Comments

Emmanuel31

Posted 17 October 2012 11:52 am

thank you for this good news , save time with this tool.
the bonus tool for maya 2013 ext is in 3dsmax section.
Do you know what happening for mac and linux user with maya 2014
the half of maya 2013 ext is only for windows.

damien.mahoney

Posted 17 October 2012 2:16 pm

Very useful, especially the reduce functions.
Thankyou

xixac

Posted 19 October 2012 5:37 am

Can't get the Draw Split and Draw Reduce tools to show up in correctly installed mac versions 2013, 2013.5 even with clean installs. Plugins are enabled w/ correct version showing up, but the tools are not showing up in BT. Are these Windows only?

STLR

Posted 19 October 2012 4:32 pm

xixac - did you restart Maya after auto-loading the plugins? You either have to restart or type the command bonusToolsMenu; in the script editor to update the menu. Otherwise the tools should work as far as I know. I will try it out to make sure though.

manel - only the DirectX support in the Maya2013 Extension in windows only (for obvious reasons). But there are still several other new features that are for all OS's (e.g. Scene Assembly)

xixac

Posted 19 October 2012 9:41 pm

@STLR
Thanks for the response. Everything is installed OK, BT menu is showing up and the plugins are selected in the Plugin Manager. Where Draw Split and Draw Reduce should be however there are just the surrounding menu segment lines. Same results on Mac Pro, MacBook w/ 2013 and 2013.5 and on clean reinstall. Thanks.

Naqoyqatsi

Posted 20 October 2012 12:00 pm

I hope OpenSubdiv is integrate in Maya 2014. Linux User need fast performance.

ShaunF

Posted 24 October 2012 1:58 pm

I'm looking forward to using this tool, but...
Maya 2013 / PC / 64bit Extension install -
the draw split and draw reduce tools are grayed out. Any suggestions?

STLR

Posted 25 October 2012 2:58 pm

ShaunF - you hvae to load them through the plugin manager and then restart Maya or type "bonusToolsMenu;" in the command prompt. The menu should update and be usable after that.

xixac

Posted 6 November 2012 11:16 pm

@STLR
SInce I heard nothing back regarding the missing menu items on the Mac I took a look at the source. Both menu items are surrounded with a if ($os != "mac" clause. Simple uncommenting results in several errors when trying to use the tools. So it seems - not for the Mac at this time.

xixac

Posted 7 November 2012 1:03 am

Upon some testing it seems that these tools will work once the if clause is removed. There is some iffiness with switching tools and some errors when resetting them (i.e. // Error: file: /Users/Shared/Autodesk/maya/2013.5/scripts/drawSplitProperties.mel line 35: Object's name 'QT_drawSplitColumnLayout' is not unique.). Interestingly enough Draw Split and Draw Reduce tools have been excluded from Mac OS since at least 2012. It would be good to know why.

STLR

Posted 7 November 2012 7:29 pm

xixac - yes this is/was an oversight on our end. I'm looking into the issue and will hopefully get it fixed and post a new UI mel script here. In the meantime you should be able to still run the tools with these command...

drawSplitTool;
drawReduceTool;

I've also noticed a weird glitch where you'll need to reset the tool options before you use the tool. Hopefully I can fix that as well.

xixac

Posted 7 November 2012 10:35 pm

STLR - cool - thanks for looking into this. These are very useful tools.
I noticed the same glitch and assumed it was due to my brazen removal of the if clause , )

Leksey

Posted 19 December 2012 9:28 am

First, there get an error like xixac, but I install PyQt and the error disappeared, but the tool does not work.
Draw lines are displayed, but the split geometry does not occurs.

STLR

Posted 19 December 2012 4:22 pm

Leksey - there is an odd glitch with the UI evidently where you have to reset the options the first time you use it for it to work. After a reset it should work though.

Leksey

Posted 22 December 2012 10:26 am

It's a pity, I'm not to use the cool tool in work. The idea is good.

If you hold down Shift and make a straight cut, the camera is locked and the center (orbit) of the camera moves through space.

Leksey

Posted 22 December 2012 10:37 am

I have an idea how to make on the basis of a powerful system for Maya re-topology and modeling. Naturally, these two concepts should not be separated. Bad idea to make separate tools for modeling and re-topology, but many programmers do so.
All tools can be used in modeling and re-topology.
Universal tools. Only need to write everything correctly on paper clip pictures, diagrams and video demos.

Trevor Coates

Posted 26 December 2012 11:39 pm

Still no updates for BT on OSX?
The suggestions to get the tools operating don't work.
Being:
drawSplitTool;
drawReduceTool;

Yes the tool appears to draw but doesn't actually change the mesh.
How do you reset the tool options when there isn't any tool option UI?

STLR

Posted 7 January 2013 10:23 pm

Trevor Coates - Sorry for the OSX issues. I'll do my best to get this resolved for the next BT release.

sickiziu

Posted 14 January 2013 11:35 pm

BonusTools OSX: no drawSplit in menu, but mel command starts the tool. when i draw splits - no feedback in vp2.0, splits work thou...

STLR

Posted 1 February 2013 2:59 am

Mac OSX users - I've uploaded a couple of modified scripts to the BonusTools resource page that fix some of the DrawSplit / DrawReduce issues you guys were having.

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/stevenr/bonustools

Add Your Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Categories

RSS Feed

Subscribe to RSS feed

Translate this page

Please only report comments that are spam or abusive.

© Copyright 2012 Autodesk. Inc.
All rights reserved
AREA Terms of Use | Legal Notices & Trademarks | Privacy Policy