Maya tips & tricks - Page 5 - Simply Maya User Community

# 61 14-04-2005 , 03:19 PM

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I quickly scanned through the forums and did not see this one

**You can snap during rotaion by holding down the "J" key**

This will automatically snap every 15 degrees while rotating. No more going to the channel box to enter values manually

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# 62 14-04-2005 , 03:20 PM

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I thankfully haven't had any problems putting mayabatch on high (touch wood), but I don't know what the difference between high and real-time is so I never use it. I can agree that it might nor be for eveyone, but as I said before it worked alright for me.

The thing with this tip (as with all tips on the thread) is that it is a list of things I (and others) have found that help us work and if that's not the same for everyone then that's fine. You either take the tip and use it or try it, decide it's not right for you and move on.

I don't know what else to say to be honest. user added image

"You can live for yourself today -- or help build tomorrow for everyone" _LIVID

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# 63 14-04-2005 , 04:04 PM

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Some additional info regarding priorities

When you give higher priority to an application in Windows XP, you're telling the system to give extra attention or preferential treatment to that program, which may help the program to write to disk faster, refresh faster etc., than it might at lower priority settings.

Within the operating system, priorities exist in a range from 0 to 31. A Normal priority rating assigns a value of 8. Realtime gives an application a priority of 24; and, as such, is the most dangerous assignment to use since it can interfere with Windows XP’s kernel or other operating system processes. (You may not be able to get out the consequences of setting an application this high without rebooting, causing you to lose some data.) High assigns a priority of 13, and Low a value of 4. Abovenormal assigns a value of 13, and Belownormal assigns a value of 6.

So, setting the batch render to "High" AND terminating non-essential processes should provide some performance increases. All that said, your results may vary, depending upon your hardware and other background processes. I would not recommend setting above "High" due the stability isssues (as Vladimirjp unfortunately found out the hard way).

Finally before making any changes in how your OS manages programs and processes or handles memory, I recommend doing a little research just as you would before making changes in Maya. Check the OS helps files, Check the OS web site, etc.

Hope this helps clarify this issue a little more.

AIM: mhcannonDMC

"If you love your job, you'll never work another day in your life."

Last edited by mhcannon; 14-04-2005 at 04:08 PM.

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# 64 18-04-2005 , 04:55 AM

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Quick Selection Sets

Every wish you could select a bunch of components or objects and save that selection? Well you can, using Maya's Quick Selection Set feature. To set up a quick selection set you must first select the object(s) and/or component(s) you want to use. Then from the Create Menu select Quick Selection Set. This will open a small dialog box for you to name the quick selection set. To access the quick selection set go to Edit>Quick Selection Set>set list (select the quick selection set from the list).

In thesample below the faces that make up the index finger and pointer finger were saved as separate quick selection sets.
The quick selection set for the finger was selected while in the original poly and after a poly smooth function. The quick selection sets will disappear if you convert to a different geometry type.

You can make selection sets that hold any combination of objects or components.

BTW, just wanted to say thanks to Tim_Livid and um... Roach, for the contributions to this thread. Also, it's cool that this was made a sticky, just hope my basic level of tips isn't too dissapointing to the average reader.

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AIM: mhcannonDMC

"If you love your job, you'll never work another day in your life."

Last edited by mhcannon; 18-04-2005 at 05:08 AM.

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# 65 18-04-2005 , 05:28 AM

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Time to Reflect

The Sculpt Surfaces Tool and the 3D Paint Tool in Maya support a function known as reflection. Reflection allows you to paint with two brush at once, where the second brush mirrors the stroke of the first brushes. Reflection can be set across any axis. This example show a nurbs sphere the was "painted" with sculpt surfaces tool with the reflection option on.

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AIM: mhcannonDMC

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Last edited by mhcannon; 18-04-2005 at 08:40 PM.

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# 66 18-04-2005 , 06:38 AM

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Two Outliners in One

This tip Courtesy of Pony.

You can split the Outliner into two panes by dragging the bottom edge upward. This can be especially helpful if you want to see two nodes at once or in a scene that has a high number of nodes. This split will work for both docked and floating outliners.

The scene used for this sample has low number of nodes and is only being used to demonstrate the ability of splitting the outliner.

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# 67 18-04-2005 , 06:54 AM

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Recording Camera Movements

If you ever need to record a camera's movement in maya... perhaps to program matching for a real camera, all you need to do is check the "Undoable Movements" option in the camera attributes. Once this is checked, all the camera movements will be recorded in the script editor. The movements can then be copied and pasted where ever you may need them.

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Last edited by mhcannon; 18-04-2005 at 08:40 PM.

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# 68 18-04-2005 , 08:14 PM

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Dude
Cool Thread!!

I have one for you guys.

You know when you move a vertex or object and it moves too far or too little no matter how close you get. Well select your axis on the tool and pressing down the alt key and then pressing the arrow keys a few times (depending on your direction) you can move in very small increments!! Voila!! a class 1 Jango tip!!

Later

_J

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# 69 20-04-2005 , 09:10 AM

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Re: Rendering in Wireframe

Originally posted by Tim_LIVID

Ever wanted to have a piece of video blend between wireframe and full glory with a cherry-on-the-top render?

It's easer than you think. Just render your animation as normal then select your objects (I only know how to do this for polygon objects... [/B]

Originally Posted by

However, I find this even more easier with nurbs surfaces. Since you make textures, you can avoiding using external editor for making textures and use procedural 2d map => grid. Than make repeat u and v (under uv coordinate properties among other material attributes) to reflect number of spans and sections on your nurbs surface. I'm attaching picture, where I used similar texture for transparency and bump.

On the other hand, few months ago I found on the web tutorial for wire rendering using hardwer renderer. I'll try to find url (hopefully I wrote it down), otherwise I'll write it down here tomorrow...

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# 70 20-04-2005 , 09:40 AM

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Yeah you could do it like that, but its not really feasable when you want to show of your edgeloops of a character head say perhaps to a potential employer. And if you only model in poly and have cut your faces left right and center the uvs will change drastically.

_J

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# 71 20-04-2005 , 09:57 AM

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Yer, im sure there are better ways but it's just what you want the end result to look like in the end.

I would be interested to see the other methods as well though. user added image

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# 72 21-04-2005 , 08:09 AM

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wireframe render

hope this will help user added image

first make any object.

open window > rendering editors > hardware render buffer
open render > attributes...
under render modes > set draw style to wireframe
other settings would be to change background color under display options
and wire color can be changed under window> settings/preferences > colors > inactive > objects ...

this is real wireframe, you can see through object.

if you want to override this you have to make blocking object inside of this one. You can make bloking object by duplicating original and scaling it by i.e. 0.99.
Make shader that has the same input for color and incadescence (for example black if background is black), and

assign it to blocking object. Then select wireframe object and open its attributes (object, not shape node), and under drawing overrides uncheck shading. Optionaly change color. Then in hardware render buffer attributes turn back on smooth shaded.

Nice effects are done by compositing this one with software render. Example:

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# 73 29-04-2005 , 09:26 AM

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Howdy Folks,

I am not sure if this tip has been mentioned before....if it has I apolagise for the inconvenience....

I know that it can get pretty irritating when you are moving around in your viewport and when you rotate around an object it just does'nt rotate around the object.....The one way I work around that is by just hitting the "F" key. That will "Frame" the object you have selected. The "F" key also works with vertices and edges and anything else that is selected for that matter......and it also works in your hypershade aswell.... user added image

I hope that tip was useful user added image

Regards,
MainlineX