Introduction to Maya - Modeling Fundamentals Vol 1
This course will look at the fundamentals of modeling in Maya with an emphasis on creating good topology. We'll look at what makes a good model in Maya and why objects are modeled in the way they are.
# 1 07-01-2014 , 07:20 PM
Mootzoid's Avatar
Plugin Developer
Join Date: Jan 2014
Posts: 9

Mootzoid: introducing myself + upcoming plugins for Maya (emPolygonizer4 + emReader)

Hello Maya community!

My name is Eric Mootz a.k.a. Mootzoid. I am a plugin developer who - until just recently - has been coding plugins for Softimage exclusively. End of last year I started looking into the Maya SDK (which is quite excellent, by the way) and started porting two of my plugins to Maya: emPolygonizer4, a particle and object mesher, and emReader, a geometry cache file sequence reader.
Tomorrow is a big and exciting day for me, because I will release the first betas of both plugins,
my very first "mega-official" plugins for Maya! user added image

And just to prove that all my above bla-bla is not just empty words:
below is a screenshot from my little working scene. It shows an emPolygonizer4 mesh with UVs in the perspective view, in the Attribute Editor you can see some of the emP4 node parameters and in the Node Editor you can see how things are connected.
Regarding the two upcoming plugins you can find more information about what they do here on my web site:
emPolygonizer4 web page
emReader web page

I will post again here tomorrow as soon as the plugins are released and the video tutorials are uploaded.

Cheers!
Eric.

user added image


Last edited by Mootzoid; 07-01-2014 at 07:38 PM.
# 2 07-01-2014 , 11:53 PM
NextDesign's Avatar
Technical Director
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 2,988
Hi Eric.

I'm curious, what is the advantage of using your emReader over something like Alembic?


Imagination is more important than knowledge.
# 3 08-01-2014 , 03:56 AM
David's Avatar
SM Tea Boy
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Prague
Posts: 3,228
I was also wondering about that.

Welcome to SimplyMaya btw
Dave user added image


From a readers' Q and A column in TV GUIDE: "If we get involved in a nuclear war, would the electromagnetic pulses from exploding bombs damage my videotapes?"
# 4 08-01-2014 , 06:19 AM
Mootzoid's Avatar
Plugin Developer
Join Date: Jan 2014
Posts: 9

I'm curious, what is the advantage of using your emReader over something like Alembic?

Regarding the pure cache reading functionality I must admit that emReader probably does not have any advantage over something like Alembic.
But emReader can do a bit more than just read cache files: first of all its usage is extremly easy and straight forward. Furthermore it has a set of nice little features that can come in handy, such as fixing corrupt edges, closing holes in geometry, smoothing, applying thickness to the mesh, blurring Normals, UVs and Vertex Colors as well as a few other little things. Finally it supports - aside from RealFlow ".bin" and Wavefront ".obj" - my proprietary file formats ".emp2" and ".mzd", which can be useful if you wish to import geometry that was created within Softimage.

The main motivation to adapt emReader to Maya was to become familiar with Maya's SDK before adapting more complex plugin emPolygonizer4.

Hope this makes sense!

Cheers,
Eric

# 5 08-01-2014 , 03:31 PM
Mootzoid's Avatar
Plugin Developer
Join Date: Jan 2014
Posts: 9
Hey guys,

The first beta of emPolygonizer4 for Maya is finally available!

Unfortunately my bloody server (or web site, or whatever) is having some hick-ups, so I was not yet able to update the documentation and such things, but the plugin works and can be downloaded here:
Download emPolygonizer4
Online Documentation
The doc is currently for Softimage, but the usage is pretty much the same in Maya, at least concerning the parameter names and what they do.

I also made a video tutorial in which I show the basics of emPolygonizer4:
emPolygonizer4 Video Tutorial (Vimeo)

Note: this post is sort of a pre-official release post. When I finally get my web site to work properly again I will make a new thread.

Hope this new plugin for Maya will turn out to be interesting and useful!

Cheers,
Eric

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