Thursday, August 29, 2013

Bonus Tools for maya 2014



Steven Roselle has blessed us again with bonus tools for maya..

you can get the latest update here:

http://apps.exchange.autodesk.com/MAYA/Detail/Index?id=appstore.exchange.autodesk.com%3Aautodeskmayabonustools2014%3Aen


Once you have installed,  remember to run bonusToolsMenu in your script editor.
or add it to you userSetup.mel script, so it will load everytime in Maya.


there are a number of new tools: 
  •    Display -> Toggle X-Ray per Mesh/Surface
  •    Window -> Assembly Manager
  •    Window -> Script Editor -> Print OptionVars
  •    Window -> Script Editor -> Print GlobalVars
  •    Modeling -> Collapse Edge Ring Tool
  •    Modeling -> Convert Selection to Perimeter Edges
  •    Modeling -> Delete Edge Loop Tool
  •    Modeling -> Delete Connected Edges Tool
  •    UV Editing -> Nudge UVs
  •    UV Editing -> Tile UVs
  •   Rendering -> Add Transparency Attribute
  •   Help -> Refresh BonusTools Menu
  • Modify -> Move Selected to Camera

and updated tools : 
  • Modeling -> Select Every N-th Edge Loop/Ri
  • Modeling -> DrawSplit
  • Modeling -> DrawReduce
  • Modeling -> Spin Edge Tool
  • Animation -> Setup Arm
  •  Rendering -> Assign Checker Shader
  •  General -> Python path is now setup automatically for every OS


and here Steven goes over some of whats new in a handy little video: 





Friday, August 23, 2013

New Videos from the Autodesk Anaheim Event @ Siggraph 2013

Some new video updates from the 2013 Siggraph Anaheim Users Group Event.

be sure to follow up here http://area.autodesk.com/Anaheim2013


Welcome to ATDSK User event 2013 Opening from Chris Bradshaw




Behind the curtain of RD:
  • xgen in maya
  • bifrost  ( previously naiad)




Open SubDiv ( from pixar)





Duncan's Corner







Xbox Game Development





Production Club  (Skrillex Cell)

  • motion capture
  • xsens 





Reality to Unity






Friday, August 16, 2013

Bullet Physics Enhancements in Maya 2014 Ext

Another video demo for the upcoming release of Maya 2014 EXT ...  ( hopefully available mid sept)





Thursday, August 8, 2013

Maya2014 Extension - expected september 16th




I know you just downloaded SP2 , but wait, there's more! ( if your on subscription )

The Extension for Autodesk® Maya® 2014 software brings you the power of some of the industry’s best technology, with new tools and enhancements that help you more easily create the complex, high-quality assets required by today’s demanding productions. With the XGen Arbitrary Primitive Generator for creating hair, fur, feathers, grass, foliage, and other instanced data; a new retopology toolset; new robust and efficient Boolean operations; and enhancements to the Bullet physics plug-in, the Extension for Maya 2014 delivers increased productivity to modelers, animators, and effects artists.


XGen Arbitrary Primitive Generator
With the extension for Maya 2014, you get access to the XGen Arbitrary Primitive Generator technology used by Walt Disney Animation Studios in the hit animated films Tangled, and Bolt, and by Pixar Animation Studios in Toy Story 3.  XGen enables you to generate curves, spheres, and custom geometry on the surface of polygon meshes in order to create and groom hair, fur, and feathers on characters, and quickly populate large landscapes with grass, foliage, trees, rocks, and debris trails. With geometry created procedurally at render time, XGen enables you to handle large amounts of instanced data that would slow down a system if loaded in memory. The rendered effect can be previewed interactively in the Maya Viewport 2.0 hardware-accelerated display; you can control the appearance and behavior of the primitives by setting attributes, painting maps, creating expressions, or using the included XGroom interactive grooming toolset; long hair can be controlled by creating guide hairs, which can be simulated using the Maya nHair toolset.








Better Booleans
Maya now employs a robust and efficient new library for faster and more reliable Boolean operations on polygon geometry. The new technology has been extensively tested and optimized on a number of complex high-resolution datasets, and delivers dependable results on open surfaces.




Bullet Physics Enhancements
The Extension for Maya 2014 delivers several enhancements to the Bullet plug-in that enables you to use the open source Bullet physics engine to create large-scale, highly realistic dynamic and kinematic simulations within Maya. Delivered in conjunction with AMD (Advanced Micro Devices), the Bullet plug-in now offers the ability to create compound collision shapes from multiple meshes; produces better collisions with concave shapes, thanks to a new Hierarchical Approximate Convex Decomposition (HACD) algorithm; integrates with Maya Forces; and support rigid sets for increased scalability.


New Retopology Toolset
The NEX modeling technology first integrated in Autodesk Maya 2014 software has been further extended to offer a streamlined workflow for retopologizing meshes; the Quad Draw tool now integrates a new Relax and Tweak feature with Soft Selection, and a new interactive Edge Extend tool. You can now optimize your meshes for cleaner deformations and better performance from a single toolset within Maya.









more info:
http://area.autodesk.com/products/features/extensionmaya

Maya 2014 SP2 released

Maya 2014 SP2 is now out in the wild and ready for download!

Its mostly if not totally bug fixes.. but that's cool with me.

This Service pack is a FULL release, so be sure to uninstall your previous Maya 2014 before installing this service pack!

download





                  Bug Number Description
    Animation  
    • MAYA-23241   Fixed crash undoing the merge of animLayers.
    • MAYA-25123 Fixed HIK regression causing spine joints to have unexpected transform values after characterization. 
    • MAYA-25127 Fixed hang in Graph Editor when massive numbers of keys are selected.
    • MAYA-25620   Animation not updated when setting a key with animation layers. 
    • MAYA-25717 Fixed skinCluster binding issue.  
    • MAYA-26089 Fixed issue with smooth skin clusters and popping vertices when painting weights.  
    • MAYA-26093 HIK : Baking auxiliary effector is corrupting referenced file. 
    • MAYA-26221 Global scale in HumanIK not working on Mac and Linux.  

    Modeling
    • MAYA-21980   Pre-selection highlighting flickers when camera-based selection is enabled.
    • MAYA-22931   Detach edge breaks locked vertex normal.
    • MAYA-23694 Fixed mismatch of vertex normal method on shape node. 
    • MAYA-22948 Selection Constraints do not work with Marquee.
    • MAYA-25787 Fixed crash when using Artisan on a mesh with no UVs.  
    • MAYA-25797 Fixed a crash when changing display mode after lattice work. 
    • MAYA-26348 Remove the In View Messaging for soft select radius for better performance of Soft Selection Tool. 
    • MAYA-26500 polyEdgeToCurve crashes when evaluating inputComponents if inputMesh is invalid. 
    • MAYA-24840 Fixed an undo crash when using the Multi-Cut tool.   
    • MAYA-25524 Polygon Constraint window "Reset and close" button randomly crashes
    • MAYA-26697 Surface Precision set to “High” causes NURBS in shaded mode to be drawn offset
    • MAYA-23938 Quad draw: construction history is always created when using quad draw and a transform constraint
    • MAYA-23070 Crash when doing a polySeparate on some meshes

    Platforms
    • MAYA-24829 Maya on Mac OS X hangs on exit in TCIPClient::shutdown
    • MAYA-26539 CERs on Mac OS X 10.9 cannot get assigned to buckets
    Dynamics
    • MAYA-18962   Maya crashes when creating Lattice deformer for nParticle that has been converted to Polygon.   
    API  
    • MAYA-20555   Panel tear off causes crash when a plug-in tool is active.  
    • MAYA-24579 Fixed a problem in the .Net dagexplorer (wpfexample) sample plug-in.
    • MAYA-25019   Can't unload plug-ins that are derived from MPxDataType.  


    File Referencing - Reference Edits
    • MAYA-25752   File referencing: post-load callback massively increasing load times (complicated by nodeEditorPanel data). 
    • MAYA-26262   Fixed a crash with export as reference.  
    • MAYA-26477 Parent reference edits are not persistent. 

      mental ray  
      • MAYA-20369   Fixed a problem where Mayatomr plug-in was causing the scene to prompt to save even when it was unchanged. 
      •    
      Rendering
      • MAYA-25074 Fix for UV Texture Editor with legacy style plug-in shaders.
      • MAYA-25246 Fixed crash after selecting Use Selected Lights for lighting on new scene. 
      • MAYA-24958 Fixed a crash with batch playblasts on Mac OS X  if "-showOrnaments" is disabled. 
      • MAYA-24396 Camera aim and up cannot be selected in Viewport 2.0.
      • MAYA-24395 Skinning: Mesh display is incorrect when zooming out of Viewport 2.0 while in the Paint Skin Weights Tool.
      • MAYA-26489 Batch render does not render ornaments (HUD) when using the Maya Hardware 2.0 renderer.
      • MAYA-24121 "Show ornaments" toggle does not work in Viewport 2.0 playblasts
      • MAYA-17875 Apparent interaction between viewport plug-ins and mental ray IBL “Hardware Exposure”

      Scene Assembly
      • MAYA-24498 Fixed scene assembly issue where some edits would persist unexpectedly when switching representations. 
      • MAYA-25047 MPxAssembly node compute method is now invoked when necessary. 

      UI General  
      • MAYA-25920   Removed a previous windows optimization that is no longer needed, which caused a slowdown in the Graph Editor on  Mac OS X and Linux.  





      more info etc:

      http://mayastation.typepad.com/maya-station/2013/08/maya-2014-sp2-released.html

      Wednesday, August 7, 2013

      Maya 2014 Modeling Improvements overview..

      Steven Roselle goes over some of the modeling improvements in Maya 2014 , focusing on Modeling Took Kit but also on some of the improvements to existing tools.


      • quad draw (new , MTK ) 
      • shrink wrap ( new , MTK ) 
      • topology based symmetry (new , MTK)
      • symmeterize (new , MTK ) 








      ( update: August 22 2013)
      part 2


      • updated to bridge tool
      • marking menus for modeling tools
      • connect
      • multi-cut
      • edge flow



      Monday, August 5, 2013

      face shift marker less facial motion capture







      When I first saw this I got pretty excited.  Its markless facial capture down with a kinect or similar device.  Apparently the people who actually build the kinect sensor bar, also make higher end versions of it.

       The kinect sensor of course is really cheap, and even the higher end sensor bar shown here is around $200 from  http://www.primesense.com/

      and the software even comes with  a free plug-in for maya.

      all very cool.

       Only catch , at least for personal use, is the face shift software itself costs. it comes in two price points.


      So $1500 a year, or $800 a year.   so for the average person, a little steep. but for a studio, not so bad.

      you just lose the realtime streaming with the freelance version.

      still, it looks pretty awesome..    and they do offer a 30 day trial, and a $150 a year for noncommercial projects. ( video after some pics)   I hope to get a trial of it soon!


      http://www.faceshift.com/























































      http://www.faceshift.com/