Maya Station

Around the Corner: a new M&E developer blog

There is a new blog in town!  Around the Corner, is a blog dedicated to
plug-in developers working with Maya, MotionBuilder, FBX and any other
technology that strikes our fancy at the moment of blogging.

This blog is authored by Cyrille Fauvel and me (Kristine Middlemiss, I am
sad to say I am departing this blog :()

To tell you a little about our selves we are 2/6’s of the Media & Entertainment worldwide team of API gurus providing technical services through the Autodesk Developer Network.

When either of us comes across some information on programming for Autodesk
technologies that we think you’ll be interested in, then you can expect it to
be posted here. That will be technical (how-to) solutions derived from
answering questions from ADN partners and from Autodesk forum users, sample
projects, white papers screencasts, conference presentation material, and other
information derived from our work. This blog is a vehicle to put lots of up to
date information in one place so you can easily find what you need to solve
your programming problems.

Enjoy!

Kristine

Free Autodesk Media & Entertainment API/SDK Webcast Trainings

Free Autodesk API/SDK Webcast Trainings

The Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) is offering free Maya API, 3ds Max SDK, MotionBuilder SDK and FBX SDK webcast trainings. This unique opportunity allows you to dive into the inner workings of our software, and come out with a strong fundamental knowledge of the architecture. You will see and understand how you can utilize and benefit from the API’s/SDK’s of these powerful software’s.

1. Maya API (Python)
2. MotionBuilder API (Python)
3. 3ds Max
4. FBX (C++)

To register and view the course schedule, please look here:

http://www.adskconsulting.com/adn/cs/api_course_sched.php

For specific course agenda’s go here:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=785271

Namespaces without referencing

When trying to organize large production files, it is a good idea to use namespaces.   They are easy to set up and can be used without referencing.   If you want to add a namespace to some or all the nodes in Maya you will need to create the name space and then rename the objects to use it. 

So for example I have an object called "sphere" in my scene:

        namespace -add "one";       //will add the namespace to the scene
        rename "sphere" "one:sphere";      //will rename the sphere  

This will do the trick to add the sphere in that namespace.  If you want to change it , you can once again use the rename command to rename it to another namespace.

To keep things organize it’s also very useful to be able to list the available namespace in a current scene.  For this you can use :

        namespaceInfo -lon;

...and off course with the magic of FBX these namespace will get carried to other apps, like Motion Builder, Mudbox. 

exporting blendshapes with FBX

When you are exporting your character rig with FBX it is important to know that in-between blendshapes are not supported.  When you re-open the FBX file the in-between shapes will not be there.

There is currently no workaround.

Autodesk has placed this product issue on development's product modification schedule.

exporting with FBX

When exporting a character rig using the latest version of the FBX plug-in, it is important that none of the geometry is assigned to a mental ray shader. If so, this will cause Maya to crash.

 

Make sure all the geometry is assigned to Maya shaders first before exporting.

 

Autodesk has placed this product issue on development's product modification schedule.

How to suppress the FBX UI when you're scripting.

I see many people asking this : I'm writing a script and I want to prevent the FBX UI from popping up each time a file is imported. How do I do this?

Well, the answer is remarkably simple (I found out today)....since the 2009.0 version of the FBX plugin, the UI is automatically suppressed when you import a file using the command:

FBXImport -file "c:/myfile.fbx";

Read about those FBX MEL commands in the Autodesk FBX Help section (listed in the Maya Help menu).

Owen