Maya 2013 Extension Pack and SP2

Well the Extension Pack to 2013 is out and available for download from the Subscription centre here:

Autodesk Extension Pack 2013

Something to be aware with this release is that its NOT binary compatible with 2013 which means all your plugins will need recompiling for it, see this post by Cyrille:

Around The Corner

Something you have to ask is....why, why have an extension pack AND an SP2 pack?? What's the difference? Well the SP2 has all the bug fixes but none of the extras like the Scene Assembly (the reason this version isn't binary compatible) so there are very different builds, but my question who needs the SP2 pack. Bear with me. So you've bought Maya within the last year which means you get support for the year so have access to the Extension pack. If you've not bought within the last year but are on support then you have access to the Extension pack. If you bought Maya last year and didn't renew your support then you wouldn't have 2013 in the first place, so who needs the SP2 pack???

Coffee!!!!

Lost Animation - Part2!

God how many times have I been asked for this since posting the 'Lost Animation' thread nearly a year ago now. So here's a complete and utter dirty hack for those who have requested it. Unlike the other fix code this is completely blind. You select the controllers that are no longer connected to the animation data that they should be, and this, in an ideal world, will reconnect the required animCurves for you.

There are a few HUGE expectations here, mainly that the scene is clean and that the animCurves are still consistently named against the channel they were keyed against. As I said, this is a hack but it seems to be what a lot of people are in need of.

So the expectation is that an attr on a controller called NameSpace:L_Foot.translateX should be connected to NameSpace:L_Foot_translateX, or L_Foot_translateX depending on the flag stripNamespace thats in the code.

As I said, this is a really quick hack, but I figured what the hell. Oh and if the data went through AnimLayers....sorry, you're stuffed!

Mark

import maya.cmds as cmds
nodes=cmds.ls(sl=True,l=True)
chns=[]

#Change this to False if the curves are not in the rootNamespace but
#in the sameNamespace as the controllers.
stripNamespace=True

#build up the main lists
animCurves=cmds.ls(type='animCurve',s=True)
[chns.extend(cmds.listAnimatable(node)) for node in nodes]    
    
for chn in chns:
    if stripNamespace:
        animCurveExpected=chn.split(':')[-1].split('|')[-1].replace('.','_')
    else:
        animCurveExpected=chn.split('|')[-1].replace('.','_')
    if animCurveExpected in animCurves:
        if not cmds.isConnected('%s.output' % animCurveExpected,chn):
            print '%s >> %s' % (animCurveExpected,chn)
            cmds.connectAttr('%s.output' % animCurveExpected,chn,force=True)

Autodesk Masters!!!!!

http://area.autodesk.com/masters

Didn't realize till Friday I was on the shortlist of the Autodesk Masters Nominees, thanks to those who put me forward, now come on, VOTE!!

cheers

Mark

Well it's official, off to pastures new after 11 good years at Eurocom. I'm off to Crytek UK in a few months to be their Technical Animation Director, new start, new pipelines and a big challenge, bring it on!

BUG: Just to confirm!!!

2013 SAP rotate Order, here you go! Not good, do NOT INSTALL for animations as you're going to be in a world of pain with this release. Confirmed as a bug with AD.

MAYA 2013SAP : BUG: rotateOrders from Mark Jackson on Vimeo.

BUG 2013 - Huge Bug for Animation

WARNING: we've, or rather Brad's just found a kick ass bug in 2013 SAP release. The rotation orders are broken, doesn't matter what you change them too, gimbal still happens as if it were set to xyz order. Kind of a major bug me thinks, see what AD have to say about it. It's fine in the initial 2013 release.

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