Category Archives: Maya

automatic script sourcing on maya launch

if you have extended your maya with several mel scripts (if not, you certainly will one day!), it’s useful to source those automatically when launching maya, so you can access them right ahead instead of manually sourcing them whenever …

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Target Weld Function In Maya

I was pretty surprised that Maya doesn’t offer the target weld function I was used to in 3ds Max, since this is a pretty basic feature for modelling. Luckily there’s a fine script extending Maya with exactly this functionality. …

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base your pivot

another little script that extends my personal collection of mel scripts i have permanently installed: base pivot. it centers and drops the pivot point of the selected object(s) to the bottom. works perfectly stable; worth adding to a hotkey …

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renderman and the command line

i had to collect the renderman attributes i can access through the maya command line renderer in order to automate my rendering process using a batch file; it was like putting the pieces of a puzzle together, since the …

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occlusion pass with renderman

i was struggeling lately with renderman to get a nice occlusion pass rendered out separately. here are my exploration’s notes:

the most recent version (2.0.1) can not render out a separate pass without generating the final render pass at the …

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versatile maya outliner

some love the hypergraph, some the outliner in maya to access nodes, objects etc. i think both have their specific use and after using hypergraph for the longest time to do just everything, i recently discovered two neat features …

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compile your shader for renderman

i’m digging deeper into renderman and i started to create my own little shaders, first i had to get the shader compiler running, before i develop my own creations. this post will explain you how to easily compile a …

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using the black hole

there’s a material setting in maya which doesn’t seem to be very well known but is extremely powerful when it comes to creating passes with render layers. i’ll explain this feature by going through a practical example: i have …

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the traffic light is alive

the opponent of lt. lou, the protagonist in my upcoming short is nothing else but a traffic light. as they will interact quite intensely, i decided to rig it, too. this time it was really easy: spline ik for …

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lieutenant lou’s first smile

similar to the joy a programmer experiences when he learns a new language and the computer spits out a the first “hello world”, the creation of a 3d face smiling back to you after weeks of fiddling around with …

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