For a while now we have been using a custom script to export and import skin weights but a recent project made it necessary to re-work the code because it was just too slow for more complex meshes. Of course the task of transferring skin weights is nothing new and there are a bunch of [...]
The color picker in Autodesk Maya still lacks the ability to properly choose colors respecting any linear workflow settings. A current workaround is to introduce a gamma node which can be quite tedious even though a couple of scripts out there can help with the work. But still it results in more nodes being brought [...]
This rigging series for maya is the summary of my rigging lectures at the school I am teaching. I found that complicated workflows such as rigging can be never slow enough when doing it in the classroom. Especially the basics of rigging can be overwhelming for inexperienced users and so I thought I’d put together [...]
Finally it’s time to release the new version to the public. I am very excited about the new features and all in all QTown has grown to a pretty nice and convenient tool to generate some midground to background cities*. Initially intended to create only some greeble-like structures to populate the scene and make simple [...]
There is a small issue with deleting display layers in Maya that have already objects assigned to them. Usually when you add objects to a display layer the drawing overrides are turned on to be controlled by the display layer. The bugging part is, when you delete the layer the drawing override will remain being [...]
For a recent production it was necessary to create a running horse and even with having done quite some character animations this was the first time we were dealing with four legs. That itself was not the problem but of course a rig was needed. And so I thought that if I already spend some [...]
Alright, time for another script that I wrote recently to help me during some productions. It’s for distributing objects across a surface and yes, I am aware of the fact that there are already some (and quite useful) scripts available. But everything I tried didn’t give the expected results, no matter how the process worked. [...]
Just recently, while cleaning up a CAD model and remodeling parts, I noticed how cumbersome it is in Maya to move the current component selection along a specific axis, especially then the geometry needs to be extended. Though Maya has some nice tools to set the specific axis the way to get there can be [...]
NEW VERSION! extractDeltas is now also available for windows! Quite some time ago I stumbled across a pretty neat plugin for maya that is designed to help with modeling corrective blendshapes. I don’t remember where I found it but it came with an Xcode project and I think the credits go to James Jacobs, whos [...]
When importing other scenes into Maya it’s always good to think about the naming of objects to avoid any name clashes. Namespaces are a good way to avoid any naming problems in most cases. But I find these a bit annoying when I just simply want to import an object into my scene that I [...]