Category Archives: Tricks

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 …

Posted in Maya, Plug-ins & Scripts, Tricks | Tagged , | 2 Comments

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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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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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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secret after effects settings

it sounds like a tip for a video game, but after effects cs3 has secret levels settings. they can even be so important for your project that you don’t understand why adobe hid them. in my case, i had …

Posted in Post Production, Tricks | Tagged , | 9 Comments

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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successfully unparent your child objects

as an maya beginner, i ran quite often into the problem that if i unparent an object it jumps to a weird location. the reason is quite simple: when you’re parenting the child “resets” its coordinates in relation to …

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Remove Constraints: The Easy Way

Another little time saver for Maya: It can be very time consuming to find and remove a constraint in the Hypergraph or Outliner in a complex scene. A better way is to select the object with the constraint in …

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changing the order of channels

i truly like maya, but the one of the more annoying limitations in an otherwise very flexible application is that it is not possible to change the order of channels. whenever i wanted to add a new attribute in …

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Get Those Bonus Tools Running

Autodesk offers a cool set of bonus tools for Maya which you should definitely install as they extend the package by a lot of time savers in all areas. But the tricky thing is to get them running!

I had …

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