Move object in relation to camera
Very cool script. I don't know why Maya is lacking this functionality. https://www.highend3d.com/maya/script/okpushy-for-maya
Posts
Super Motion Path Technique
Cheers to Brendan Gallagher 's Youtube video on attaching a spline IK rig to a path via the ik handle's offset attribute. This is a great technique for objects with length that need to deform along a path.
Pivot back to world 0
Cool and easy script. xform -ws -a -rp 0 0 0 Will take your pivot point back to 0,0,0
BAKING NCLOTH I'm not sure why Maya doesn't have a >convert Maya Ncloth to Polygons function but I found a hack online that works well. Set the pose as an initial state (edit nCloth > initial state > set from current) then in the channel box where it says 'isDynamic' turn that to off, ta da!! ***Just tried another method animation>Geometry Cache. Works fine.
Hide Polys Toggle Great little script to map to a key that hides all polys and displays them back upon hitting the key again. I find myself hiding polys all the time especially when selecting rig controls or when geo gets in the way of selecting. string $activePanel1 = `getPanel -wf`; if (`modelEditor -q -polymeshes $activePanel` == 1) { modelEditor -e -polymeshes 0 $activePanel; } else { modelEditor -e -polymeshes 1 $activePanel; }
snapKey
WOW Sometimes it's the simplest things. Ever work on a scene that somehow the keys are on subframes? This can happen when you scale keys or use timewarps. So how do you get those damn keys back on to whole frames? Just select the object and type snapKey in your Mel script executor and bamn...all keys are moved to the nearest whole frame. Dig it.
Quadruped Gaits
QUADRUPED GAITS Not a Maya post but hey - very helpful if you find yourself animating 4 legged animals or creatures. http://vanat.cvm.umn.edu/gaits/index.html
bhGhost
bhGhost Yes! How cool is this! I haven't used Maya's ghosting in a while and was searching for a way to ghost a whole character and Bamm! bhGhost. Create a selection set of all your character's geo and load it into the bhGhost GUI. Hit "ghost" and it draws you up an outline on that frame. Heaps of control over the outline in the bhGhost node. It's also very fast with no slow down. Here's the link to the mel script. Big thumbs up to Brian Horgan for this one. http://www.graphite9.com/MayaDownloads.html
dpAutoRigSystem
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/script/dpautorigsystem I've used some sweet auto riggers but this one really impresses me. I managed to rig up a simple skeleton character in about an hour - skinned and all. Very user friendly system based on mirrored guides, rig set up and a super fast skinning GUI. Dig the rig too. Comes with all the treats, stretchy IK, finger set drivens, world head rots etc etc etc
VRAY DOME HDRI Super technique for pushing HDRI maps through a dome light and getting the hdri highlights nice and hot. By default, they come in with a washy contrast that forces you to add extra lights. Add the gamma attribute to your file textures and render up some sweetness. http://www.cgskies.com/resources_tutorial_rendering.php
Select constrained to object Ever worked in a complex scene created by someone else with all kinds of constraints and nested constrained objects? Nightmare finding what object is constrained to what? This python script will select the object that your object is constrained to. Sweet. Map to a button - done. import maya. cmds as mc selection = mc. ls ( sl= 1 ) toSelect = [ ] for item in selection: constraint = mc. listConnections ( item+ '.parentInverseMatrix[0]' , d= 1 , s= 0 , type = 'constraint' ) if constraint: constraint = constraint [ 0 ] src = mc. listConnections ( constraint+ '.target[0].targetParentMatrix' , d= 0 , s= 1 ) if src: toSelect. extend ( src ) try : mc. select ( toSelect ) except : pass
Maya A/B transform match script
COOL!! Every studio that I've been at has some sort of "match object A to B" tool that simply snaps A to B. I thought it was some sort of wizardry (and a shame on Maya for not having that tool). Then I heard about the point/orient constraint create then delete method. Well the magic trick has been unveiled.... All you need to do is create a delete `parentConstraint`; button on your shelf and that's you A/B matcher. select object 1, shift select object 2 run your delete `parentConstraint`; and boom it does the whole thing for you. Love the simplicity.
CAMMY After being assigned some camera work where the job was to create realistic noise, zooms, booms and pans I realized that camera work is not as easy as I thought. After some gimble, frustrating noise controller rigging and battles with subtlelty I thought I'd rig up a clean camera rig to make things easier. If you're doing camera work, feel free to grab my rig over at Creativecrash.com http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/cammy ****UPDATE*** Now with aim locator http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/cammy-v2--2 *to attach your own camera, just parent constrain your camera to the Cammy camera or just parent your camera under the camera2_Shake locator,
setAttr on multiple attributes 1 hour burn trying to figure out how to set the 'relative' attribute on or off on multiple clusters. Maya still doesn't allow multiple selection of clusters and attribute setting nor is relative available in the attribute spreadsheet. { string $nodes[] = `ls -long -type "cluster" `; for($node in $nodes) { print($node + "n"); setAttr ($node + ".relative") 0; } }
V-RAY TEXTURE LIBRARY + PRESETS Nice. Someone put together a 3dsmax-like shader library. Download the DeeX shader library and copy it into the Sunday Pipeline directory warehouse browser. Sweet. DeeX shaders http://deex.info/wordpress2/2011/08/deex-vray-shader/ Sunday Pipeline Plugin http://www.3dg.dk/2011/08/12/sunday-pipeline-maya-public/