Maya Station

Blog feedback...

Dear readers,

Ash and myself will be on holiday this week, so the blog will not be updated until 6th July, at the earliest.

The replies we get to our posts are encouraging signs that we're providing a worthwhile service to the Maya community. That said, we both feel there is room for improvement. I haven't discussed with Ash what changes could be made to the blog to increase our readership, so I'll keep my thoughts to myself until we've had time to catch up.

In the meantime, you can do something for us. I invite you to spend a couple of minutes thinking about this blog. What could we do better....? I've prepared a few questions I'd like you to consider, but your thoughts and comments on any aspect of this fledgling project are - it goes without saying - more than welcome.

1) How did you come across this blog ?
2) Are you subscribed to the RSS feed ?
3) How often do you visit ?
4) Have you recommended this blog to anyone?
5) Is it clear that this site is a service provided by Maya Support specialists?

6) Is the content relevant to the kind of issue you face on a regular basis ?
7) What other aspects of the software would you like to see covered ?
8) Are previous posts easy to find ?
9) Would you have us change the way we present the content of the blog ?

10) Have you any idea what Ash and I do all day besides blogging ?

Leave a comment at the end of this post, or contact me directly if you're not the sharing type.

Thanks all !! See you next week..

Owen

owen.burgess@autodesk.com

The Prune Membership tool breaks my deformer!

1) Create a polySphere.

2) Select the vertices.

3) Create a cluster.

4) Paint the cluster weights so they falloff to black in some areas (make sure that these values are 0.000).

5) Prune Membership > Cluster to remove the vertices with 0.000 values from cluster1Set. 

6) Select the cluster1 handle and move it to test the deformation...

Turn on gzip compression option from the command line export

The gzip is a type of compression on the mi files , if you would like to add it to the mi command line exporter. you would need to do the following.

Add a line like this to miRenderer.xml to enable the behavior:

mel n="compression" s='$opt +=" -compression %1"' p="1" t="int" h="Enter compression level 0=none, 9=lots"/

Note: Add it in the "Export" (after the line that has <sep desc="Export:"/>) section.

What do mia and mib stand for ?

mia: mental images architectural (shader library)
mib: mental images base (shader library)

Sub surface scattering is not working on a specific model

When using SSS (sub surface scattering ) Shader, the result looks as if there is no scattering at all.

 

When you examine the model , you will notice that the Normals are facing inwards.

 

 

 

Once you flip the Normals so they can face the camera
The SSS Shader will behave as expected

 

 

 

The Maya nCache format.

The nCache .mc format is a binary format and has not yet been documented in the Maya Help pages (unlike the nCache .xml description file).

However, Maya ships with an example python script that documents the .mc format in its comments and also shows how to parse it and write it out as ascii.

It's called "cacheFileExample.py".

Thanks to Barb for the tip.

Owen

Bending Normals via light using mib_amb_occlusion.

1. Create an area light
2. Set it to mental ray area light with. one sample
3. Set it's area light type to "User"
4. Apply the mib_amb_occlusion as the *light shader*

How to update material assignments on a referenced model.

So you want to take your character model (let's call it fileA) and reference it into a new scene (fileB) so you can rig it...That way, your buddy can refine the model while you work on the rig.

Then you realise that none of the material assignments your colleague makes in fileA are visible to you on the referenced model in fileB.

You turn to your buddy...

 

 

What is cameraShape "cameraPrecompTemplate" attribute for

It is a file that tells Toxik how to handle the images rendered through that camera.  The precompositing templates are not used by Maya. 

Maya just allows the user to associate a precompositing template with a camera.  This association get saved to the .precomp file when you export for precompositing.

FBX 2010.0.2 now available for download - please read

In a previous post, I warned of a critical issue with the FBX 2010 plug-in for Maya. I'm pleased to announce that a new, reviewed version of the FBX plug-in has been released, barely a week after the issue was first identified.

Download FBX 2010.0.2 here:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=10775855

The problem was a critical issue involving Windows Regional Language options. Although the issue was less widespread than originally feared, I'd ask you to download and install the new version, which includes the fix.

Regards,

Owen