Introduction to Maya - Modeling Fundamentals Vol 2
This course will look in the fundamentals of modeling in Maya with an emphasis on creating good topology. It's aimed at people that have some modeling experience in Maya but are having trouble with complex objects.
# 1 21-07-2008 , 09:54 AM
Falott's Avatar
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Preferences wont save

Hi, this is bugging me ever since I am running maya under winXP. (never had this problem under win2k)

Preference -> Settings
my default settings are

Linear:centimeter
Angula:degrees
Time:24fps


now I tried it a hundred times in my life to change it to

Linear:meter
Angula:degrees
Time:25fps

because this is what I desperately need for every project I work on.



PROBLEM:

I change settings - Save
even if I open settings right after I have changed them Maya has its default settings.



facts:

I couldn´t make these changes of settings to any installation of maya on any PC. I sure tried it with about 20-30 PCs with different hardware and software setups.
I now turn off allmost every other program running, not only these which write to myDocuments like maya. I tried to uncheck the write protection for this folder but it doesn´t let me. a programmer friend of mine told me that there is no natural possibility to make that happen with the myDocuments folder, unless you code it.


once and then I come to this point over and over again, desperation, hate and misery. for christ´s sake - I need to solve this issue once and for all times. it is making me sick and no1 could ever tell me a working way to get ridd of this problem!

it isn´t funny anymore man! please some dude here, help me, or I dump maya and stick to 3ds! (just kidding)

thx!


everything starts and ends in the right place at the right time.
# 2 21-07-2008 , 10:27 AM
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OK, Problem solved.

the only thing what - at least for now...- seems to work is to make those changes directly in the userPrefs.mel


FROM:

optionVar
-sv "workingUnitAngular" "deg"
-sv "workingUnitAngularDefault" "deg"
-sv "workingUnitLinear" "cm"
-sv "workingUnitLinearDefault" "cm"
-sv "workingUnitTime" "film"
-sv "workingUnitTimeDefault" "film"



TO:

optionVar
-sv "workingUnitAngularDefault" "deg"
-sv "workingUnitLinear" "m"
-sv "workingUnitLinearDefault" "m"
-sv "workingUnitTime" "pal"
-sv "workingUnitTimeDefault" "pal"


even after restart maya kept changes. fingers crossed...


everything starts and ends in the right place at the right time.
# 3 21-07-2008 , 10:56 AM
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If you are working in a Domain Environment, there my be restrictions in place that deny you access to save changes to these files, so once you change these settings and save. The settings are not retained...


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# 4 21-07-2008 , 11:07 AM
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I thought so too in the beginning. but as I said - never got it working on any computer. not even on my own one at home without any network hickhack.

since I got U here R@nSiD and I know you are quite familiar with mel. do you know any script which can help me place spheres evenly onto a nurbs surface (could also be poly I guess) - with the normals as up vector...?

dont want to steal your time, but maybe you have allready seen some script like this or maybe written something yourself.


everything starts and ends in the right place at the right time.
# 5 21-07-2008 , 02:26 PM
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I am a little familiar with MEL, but gster123is the person you want to ask.

The way it would be coded is select the NURBS surface and get the script to:

get the dimensions of the selected surface
then ask it to do some math calculation relating to the space of the surface and the size of the spheres, also the gap required between and then each sphere can be created.

It would be a simple thing to do, but I dont know enough about MEL to show you quickly. Over to gster123, give him a PM and see if he can show you quickly user added image


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# 6 21-07-2008 , 03:33 PM
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thx for your advice dude.


everything starts and ends in the right place at the right time.
# 7 21-07-2008 , 03:54 PM
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The Pref stuff sounds weird, just that at uni the students prefs get saved when they use the PC's, not on the PC but on their account and thats a networked licence.

As for the MEL depends one how you need the uniform layout, theres quite a few ways, such as looking at the bounding boxes and then positioning from there, or the edge positios etc etc..


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# 8 21-07-2008 , 04:48 PM
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I allready thought about the way of distributing. since i have a sophisticated nurbs tube and I need to fill it evenly with spheres like some organic thing consisting of cells or a chandelier consisting of x crystals.

I have no specific pattern in mind, but for what I can allready tell the spheres shouldn´t be distributed taking CVs, verts or edges into account because this would mean the spheres get distr pretty dense in some areas and very loose in other areas. even would be the best description by now.

I wanted to get this script I found to work before I was going to pm you. it is called invade.mel. looks pretty promising from what the readme says but I can´t get the provided rayIntersect.mll files to work (8.5/2008) I might try it later with sooner versions.

can I maybe ask you later if you have some working scripts in stash in case I dont find a working rayIntersect.mll ?

thx so far gster


-----


edit: it doesn´t even work with maya7
I wonder why they would provide bugged rayIntersect plugins, the script looks pretty usefull tho. or maybe it´s just on my workstation.. but I doubt it.


everything starts and ends in the right place at the right time.

Last edited by Falott; 21-07-2008 at 05:00 PM.
# 9 21-07-2008 , 06:10 PM
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ok, no existing rayIntersect.mll plugin works on my comp, downloaded every rayintersect.mll i could find. i still have to test them in the office tomorrow too.

this would be the error returns

// Error: line 1: Unable to dynamically load : E:/Programme32/3D/Autodesk/Maya8.5/bin/plug-ins/rayIntersect.mll
---this program couldn´t be loaded due to an incorrect configuration of the program. please reinstall the program. // translation of german error return
//


funny thing is with maya2008 this error returns (i used the right version of .mll for sure!)

// Error: file: C:/.../scripts/invade.mel line 335: Plug-in, "rayIntersect" was compiled against a newer version of the Maya API and is incompatible with the current Maya version. (rayIntersect) //
// Warning: file: C:/.../scripts/invade.mel line 338: Unrecognized node type 'rayIntersect'; preserving node information during this session



however - once again i find myself jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. maybe some1 got an idea.


everything starts and ends in the right place at the right time.
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