Anim Bizz

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

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/

Looks pretty sweet -  UVAUTORATIO  PRO I haven't tried this texture plugin yet but it is looking awesome for uv texturing. http://www.renderheads.com/portfolio/UVAutoRatio/

Flicker Free animation VRAY for Maya The tough thing about Vray is that for the most part it's default render settings are most set up for interior still frames or arch-viz camera fly throughs. When you want objects moving through the scene, Vray's irradience maps are calculated differently each frame....which leads to flickering GI. I've found a great tutorial that explains the irradiance map prepass method, which works similar to motion blur pre and post frame calculation. What it seems to do is pre-calculate the GI maps then blend them + or - X amount of frames so that flickering is eliminated. It's a two step process, but way faster than brute force GI methods. http://www.workshop.mintviz.com/tutorials/flicker-free-animation-using-vray/

VrayForMaya Nederhorst Settings Here's some pretty decent vray settings for animation. There's so many things to play with in the render settings - it can get out of hand. According to this video, the Nederhost settings attempt to keep all of your quality control in the Adaptive DMC section. I can dig it. **Great tip from the video. Switch to Fixed rate rather than adaptive DMC with a low sample rate for fast test renders. I have to render layers set up. One with DMC, one with Fixed for fast render quality switching. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZURdN48My9I