MasterClass Binder Module updated

Thought I'd share an update to the MasterClass AnimationBinder.py as requested by a friend who was having problems binding up a Quadruped. In the original file that I shipped with the MasterClass there was a call for making the AimBinder node that I show in the class but I never added it to UI call. So this new file has a button, "AimBinder" that builds the complex AimBind for you in one go.

This button call expects 3 nodes selected. The first is the node that you want the bind to aim at, the second is the Controller on the rig you want to drive and the third becomes the parent to the bindNode itself as well as being used to parent an UpVector locator to stop the aim from spinning. Its basically the node as I build manually in the video.

updated AnimationBinder.py

cheers

Mark

Bug: listCameras

Never noticed this bug before, you look in the Camera drop down to select a camera for a panel and some of the cameras show the shape name not the transform, so we did a bit of digging. Turns out the code that builds the Panels>Perspective menu is buggy.

From the code reference: listCameras  
Command to list all cameras. If no flags are given, both perspective and orthographic cameras will be displayed. This command returns an array of camera names. When the transform name uniquely identifies the camera it is used, otherwise the shape name will be returned.

Which is wrong as if you simply parent a cube under a camera transform all of a sudden in the camera menu you'll get perspShape not persp. So who cares right? Well in our case I'm using cmds.modelPanel(self.Panel,q=True,cam=True), which must use the same code under the hood and thus returns the CameraShape node and not the Transform depending on if you have something parented to the camera or not.

Mark

Autodesk 2013 - Released

Just seen that the Autodesk 2013 product drop has finally happened, all now available on the Subscription center!

Taking Animations from 2012 back to 2011

AutoTangent type:

  This is something we discovered last week, to be honest I should have figured it before but as a lot of the data passing between 2012 and 2011 at the studio is baked MoCap nobody spotted this issue. 

The problem is the new 'AutoTangent' type in Maya 2012. So lets say you start animating in 2012 but need to pass that data back to somebody running 2011. We already know Maya binaries between the two are incompatible, so you save and an Ascii file and that works. The issue is that by default in Maya2012 the tangent type is set in the prefs as the new 'AutoTangent'. Now this is great and to be honest a big improvement over the standard spline tangents. BUT.... Maya 2011 doesn't know anything about it. The key data still loads up, but the tangent types of each keyframe in2011 remain unset which means any interpolation between keys you did in 2012 is now screwed! 

 If you intend to do this, go from 2012 back to 2011 DO NOT use AutoTangent when keying.

Maya2013 - Announced

Cory's finally posted up a rundown of Maya2013 features...full post here:

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/cory/announcing_maya_2013

Trax Blending, finally the Tech Preview is out

At last, Cory's just posted the Trax Blending tech preview up here, something I've been working with the Maya dev team on for the last 6 months or so.

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/cory/maya_trax_blending_technology_preview

I might follow this up with a few more examples over the next few weeks. Basically it allows you to properly redirect animation data and complex rigs in the Trax, lining motion up using the ghosts, kind of taken tech from MotionBuilder. We've been testing this on raw MoCap data and Rigged data, only been begging for the guys to do this for 7years! :)  Theres also an automated match function, you select the offset node from the data and hit the match, it'll take the first and last frames from 2 clips and line the general motion up based on those.

MasterClass download links

I've just moved the MasterClass modules into a sub-folder in Google Docs as it's really confusing now linking to Python modules, it just looks like the files don't exist when you click on them. Thanks to Jaewon Song for pointing this out.

Download link : MasterClass Python Module (Pymel and Cmds versions)