Tag Archive for 'Maya'

Recovering lost animation on referenced characterSets in Maya 2011

Published on January 31, 2012 in CG and Animation and Solutions. 2 Comments Tags: , .

A friend recently lost all of his animation on a referenced character rig. The file still opens without Maya complaining, but the keys just went missing. A quick check of the .ma in a text editor confirmed that the animCurve nodes were still present.

Feeling adventurous, I fired up notepad++ and did a text comparison of a working file containing the same referenced rig and the problematic file. Sure enough, the animCurve nodes seem to be connected to the wrong .phl (placeHolderList) of the reference file, or were not Continue reading ‘Recovering lost animation on referenced characterSets in Maya 2011′

Basic 3d Tracking

Published on February 25, 2009 in Adm, CG and Animation and Works. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Basic 3d tracking, Its actually quite easy when u have a clean footage.

Character in maya, tracking with boujou, composite in After effects. I know I’ll be having more fun with this soon.

Maya Full Body IK

Published on November 10, 2008 in CG and Animation. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

After the rigging a few characters using IK chains in maya, its hard not to wonder when maya would have a equivalent of 3d studio max’s Biped. Well it happens that Maya HAS one, and due to my ignorance I had only just discovered the cool FBIK.

Full Body IK (FBIK Solver) was a feature from Kaydara MotionBuilder that got integrated into Maya when Alias bought Kaydara. It simulates complex real body kinematics that is hard to achieve using manual IK. An example would be having your character reaching down to pick up an apple from the ground. With FBIK, the whole body follows the hand movement, creating realistic bending of shoulder, spine, hips and knees. With traditional IK, you’d probably need to key all the aforementioned handlers by hand.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find any good tutorials online, the closest I could find was Mastering Maya 8.5 on google books. However a detailed explanation and tutorial can be found on Maya’s help, although a tad more difficult to follow, nonetheless provides all the information you need to get a working rig.

I’ll post my adventure with FBIK when I have time during the holidays.

Some tools to help you work with FBIK

FBIK CharacterControl – simulates Motion Builder’s native character control UI
BipedFactory – Helps you build your skeleton in minutes

Another Tutorial on how to setup a FBIK
http://tutorial.jcwcn.com/3D-Graphics/Maya/Character-Setup/2007-06-23/1437.html

ZBrush to Maya and back again

Published on October 31, 2008 in CG and Animation and Solutions. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

It is common to want to bring your model out of zbrush to do up the uv’s (although it is always a better idea to deal with them BEFORE getting into zbrush), but importing the edited .obj back into zbrush can be a hassle, esp when your model ‘explodes’ inexplicably when you move up the subdiv level.

Example of a exploded model:

Exploded model

Exploded model

To save a few souls, below is what worked for me and you can try to take note of the following when nothing seems to work:
(Tested with ZBrush 3.1 and Maya 2008)

In ZBrush

When exporting from zbrush, make sure you are at the lowest subdiv level.

Under Tool->Texture, make sure you have UV enabled:

Enable UV

Enable UV

Under Tool->Export, turn off the ‘Grp’ option and on the ‘Mrg’ option as such:

Export from ZBrush

Export from ZBrush

In Maya

Go to File->Import Options, and set the settings as below:

(Note: When editing DO NOT move the vertices in maya, only edit the UV’s)

When exporting, go to File->Export Selection Options. Select OBJ and off all the File Type Specific Options in the last section:

Back in ZBrush

Import the .obj while still at subdiv level 1.

After import, move up a level to check if it explodes.

Feel free to leave any comments whether this worked for you and also for others to benefit from your experience =)