Maya Station

Troubleshooting mental ray Rendering on Maya

Testing the idea of adding videos in the blog
Thanks to Martin and Owen for their help 
 

 

The HD vr can be found here TS14075966

 

Ptex: per-face texture mapping from Disney

Some of you may be aware of disney's Ptex technology, some of you may not....I hadn't heard of this until recently.

http://www.disneyanimation.com/library/ptex/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxNlAlOuQQQ

S'very nice.

Owen

Debugging Resources

Here are some helpful pages to learn about the compiling, linking and debugging of your code. When you first start using compilers with C++ it can be overwhelming and confusing for someone that is transitioning from scripting in MEL/Python to compiling your API code in C++.

Learning about Compiling and Linking, and the differences:

http://www.cprogramming.com/compilingandlinking.html

Dealing with Compiler Errors:

http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/compiler_linker_errors.html

Introduction to Debugging:

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/features/debugging/

C++ Debugging:

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1344.asp

~Kristine

Maya and architectural modeling

PSD in Maya - Using Photoshop layers in Maya as a reference for building 3D objects

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/stevenr/psd_in_maya_using_photoshop_layers_in_maya_as_a_reference_for_building_3d_objects#

Importing objects in layers from Studio Tools to Maya

After assigning some objects to layers in Studio and then importing them into Maya (.wire, iges, or .stp), both the shape and transform nodes for each object are assigned to a display layer.
Thus when you go to assign one of those objects to a new layer (via selection in the workspace or Outliner), only the transform node is reassigned while the shape node remains connected to the original layer.


Use this script to help solve this issue:

string $allObjects[] = `ls -type nurbsSurface -type mesh`;

string $allLayers[] = `ls -type displayLayer`;

select $allObjects;

layerEditorRemoveObjects $allLayers[0];


After executing this script, you can now select any of the imported objects and assign them to new Display Layers without their shape nodes remaining connected to their original layers.

Thanks to Jeremy Keays for his tip

Searching for files on Mac

This entry was triggered by a request from one of our customers who couldn’t locate a specific maya file on Mac
To search from a command line type
find . –name “Myfile” –print
Where MyFile is the name of the file you are looking for

How to Turn off receive shadows on hair geometry shader

Please bee aware that the 'shadow' instance flag contains 4 bits:

   [1] to enable casting
   [2] to enable receiving
   [4] to disable casting
   [8] to disable receiving

'shadow 8' disables all shadows on the corresponding hair geometry, .
'shadow 12' in addition removes shadows casted from the hair geometry onto other objects.

An In-depth Look at the Toxik Schematic View

This video discusses the preferences and settings of the Schematic views.

http://area.autodesk.com/tutorials/an_in_depth_look_at_the_toxik_schematic_view

Support for Maya 2010 and Windows 7

Windows 7 is not a tested environment for Maya 2010 products. Please be aware that while nothing may prevent you from using Windows 7 and these products, we may not be able to resolve every issue you encounter at this time.

Progressive Rendering in mental ray 3.7

Mental ray 3.7 is equipped with progressive rendering
At the moment the option is not enabled by default in Maya.
However you can still enable it using a string option.
For more information regarding the progressive rendering please refer to the docs under
mr Manual : Options