Groovy things you have found in Maya recently

# 1 26-04-2007 , 04:58 AM

Registered User
Join Date: Jan 2006

Posts: 234

Groovy things you have found in Maya recently

Just a little thread to post neat things you've found out recently.

Today I found the "use Background" shader which is actually very useful for test renders. I wish I had known about this one earlier.

Quote

# 2 26-04-2007 , 05:18 AM

Moderator
Join Date: May 2005

Location: Manchester Uk

Posts: 6,300

Ive recently found that you can use paint effects for thousands of uses, other than just simple painted paint effects, especially for VFX

"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

Quote

# 3 26-04-2007 , 11:44 AM

Registered User
Join Date: Dec 2002

Location: Seattle, WA

Posts: 1,154

ctrl-q. :p

Danny Ngan
Animator | Amaze Entertainment
my website | my blog | my job

Quote

# 4 26-04-2007 , 12:15 PM

Moderator
Join Date: May 2005

Location: Manchester Uk

Posts: 6,300

Originally posted by dannyngan
ctrl-q. :p

Originally Posted by

LOL!

ctrl-z, is the most indispensable hotkey I know!

"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

Quote

# 5 26-04-2007 , 01:00 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Dec 2005

Location: Brooklyn, NY

Posts: 3,708

Originally posted by gster123
Ive recently found that you can use paint effects for thousands of uses, other than just simple painted paint effects, especially for VFX

Originally Posted by

sounds interesting - care to expand gster - maybe give examples? user added image

er- a while back neostrider told me about ctrl clicking on the axis of the move tool to ensure that when you move the object or component it will stay in that plane - very useful!

you can also use ctrl to transform along the other two axis - so if you use ctrl and drag the z scale axis, you will scale along y and x.

arran3D

arran3D blog

Quote

# 6 26-04-2007 , 01:02 PM

Registered User
Join Date: May 2005

Location: United States

Posts: 513

When point-snapping (holding "v"), I found that clicking on a single axis with the translate tool active, and middle-mouse-clicking, whatever I have selected will snap to the point I specified, while moving my selection ONLY in the axis I specified.

EDIT:

Originally posted by dannyngan
ctrl-q. :p

Originally Posted by

:lmao:

Quote

# 7 26-04-2007 , 02:46 PM

Moderator
Join Date: May 2005

Location: Manchester Uk

Posts: 6,300

Originally posted by arran
sounds interesting - care to expand gster - maybe give examples?

Originally Posted by

No probs, for example you can make an electric arc (the kind you see in those dome thingys) by making a curve, adding some noise on it via mel to give it some random like movements, then add a paint fx to it (say the lightening etc) to get a pretty convincing arc.

Or you can make a camera, put a sphere round it make it not renerable, parent it to the camera, make it paintable and then paint some of nice coloured paint FX to it adjust to make it transparent and then render throught the painted sphere to give a dream like effect on what ever the object looking at.

Or another cool one is making a tree "breathe" by painting a animated tree and adjuting the animation using a sine function so the branches move up and down.

Theres lots of examples in the new book I got (that really got me thinking about using paint effects ) Maya Visual effects.

Or in the same book it goes over using ambient occlusion for more than what its generally used for (spookey ghosts, scanning a skull etc etc) as it shades form the distance between the objects, so if you change the colours of the occlusion you can make the dark bits light and the light bits dark, so the closer a object is to say a plane the more you see of it, add a spookey colour to what would be the shaddow and make the white black.....

Hope it gives you some ideas!

"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

Last edited by gster123; 26-04-2007 at 02:52 PM.

Quote

# 8 26-04-2007 , 03:23 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Dec 2005

Location: Brooklyn, NY

Posts: 3,708

thanks gster - sounds really cool - i'll have to check that book out - though i'm still not sure what an electric arc is or a dome thingy! user added image

EDIT - oh hang on - is this one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fyiqAlVKJI

sorry to hijack your thread radical edward...

arran3D

arran3D blog

Last edited by arran; 26-04-2007 at 03:26 PM.

Quote

# 9 27-04-2007 , 12:50 AM

Moderator
Join Date: May 2005

Location: Manchester Uk

Posts: 6,300

Yup arran thats one, and as Iv'e just found out a "dome thingey" is a Plasma Ball! LOL!

"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

Quote

# 10 27-04-2007 , 01:43 AM

Senior Software Developer
Join Date: Jan 2005

Location: Livingston, Scotland

Posts: 1,701

In Maya 8.5 i would have to say nCloth and the new nucleus system.

Gster and I are currently using this in a wee project (sorry don't ask as I wont tell you what it is, really secret user added image

). It has become indispensible and is a superb new addin in to the new Nucleus system Maya is having build for its new dynamics system.

Cant wait to see the release of 9 :attn:

Chris (formerly R@nSiD)
Twitter
When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will truely know peace - Jimmy Hendrix