Sunday, November 30, 2008
Tip of the Week: Snapping
Use the snapping shortcuts in Maya for precise placement of objects and components in the viewport.
x to snap to the grid
c to snap to curves
v to snap to points or vertices
j to toggle snapping for the Move, Rotate, and Scale tools
shift + j to toggle relative snapping for the Move, Rotate, and Scale tools
For more control, you can tweak a variety of snapping settings under preferences and in the tool editor.
Labels: Maya, Modeling, scene layout, Tip of the Week
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Thursday, November 20, 2008
Tip of the Week:
Automatic Shelf Icons
Maya's shelves are handy, but sometimes it's nice to be able to customize them for your own specific workflow - organizing your favorite tools and commands in one easy to access location.
You may already be familiar with using the middle mouse button to save your own custom shelf buttons. (Enter some MEL into the script editor, highlight it, and drag it to the shelf). This is great for scripts that you write or find online.
But for commands and tools that are native to Maya, there's a great shortcut. Hold down Ctrl + Alt + Shift and select an item from any of the drop down menus on the menu bar (e.g. Create > Measure Tools > Arc Length Tool). The best part is: not only does it automatically generate the button, but it automatically assigns an appropriate image icon.
Labels: GUI, Hotkeys, Maya, Tip of the Week
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Monday, November 17, 2008
Wall-E Art
Pixar recently released a bunch of artwork and production photos from Wall-E. You can check it out at Hector Cortez's animation blog.
Labels: Concept Art, Industry News, Pixar
+ posted by Paul @ 9:13 PM 0 Comments | Links to this post
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Saturday, November 15, 2008
Mocap Abroad
Just got back from a week in the UK on a motion capture shoot for a new project we're starting at TBA. The client flew us out to direct a bunch of actors for a series of cinematics that we'll be putting together over the next couple months.
We shot on one of the biggest mocap stages in the world. With over 50 optical cameras in a capture volume the size of a basketball court, we were only using a fraction of their capacity. The data looks great. I can't wait to start piecing it all together.
Hopefully when it's all released, I'll be able to talk about some details from the project and post some images. In the meantime, here's a photo of part of the cast and crew on stage. That's me on the far left:
Labels: Mocap, Photos, Project News