JPEG compression control in Maya

By default, the JPEG files that render out of Maya use a %75 quality setting.

There is a way to increase the quality.

You will need to add an environment variable to your Maya.env file.

AW_JPEG_Q_FACTOR = 100;

Where 100 is the quality percentage.

from mayastation

Blend shape attach head to the body

Usually we duplicate the entire body mesh to create a blend shape for the head, but what if the object is heavy? Having few duplicated object will kill your scene.

The solution is to separate the head (extract), then duplicate and do some blendshapes, keep the first duplicated as the 'base' rather than the original mesh because we can't use original mesh as the target due to vertex order change. As soon as blend shape is ready, create a blend shape to the 'base' so it stores information. Then apply wrap deformer to the original mesh.

I know it's killing the scene by computing the calculation. But the trick here is GO TO INPUT AND CHANGE THE ORDER OF THE WRAP BELOW SKIN CLUSTER. Therefore the wrap deformer is no longer calculated after the skinned deformation. This will dramatically improve performance and resulting cleaner construction history. However another method is by using combine and merge verts, which leave ugly construction history. I prefer to use wrap instead.

squeeze your firefox

Found that you can actually save some pixels on your navigation bar.



Right click on the home button > Customize, change icon to small, and start dragging your back, forward, refresh, stop, home button, url bar to the side of "help"

Using black white image as mask.

Intro
Sometimes you want to blend 2 different textures using the mask which is a black and white image (dirt maps or texture masks) *see B. The way I usually did is to select one of the channel which has better contrast, drag it to "create new channel" to create the alpha, and use that alpha (ctrl+click the alpha thumbnail) to create the selection (indicated by marching ants), and then apply that selection to A. Well this method has disadvantage if you want to use texture which has color information for example. I don't know if this method I'm gonna show is the right one, but it achieve the result I wanted.

Steps

• Click the B. , ctrl+a to select all, ctrl+v to copy
• Go to A. , create the "add layer mask", click the white area *it must be selected otherwise you won't see alpha channel
• Go to channel Tab, click on the alpha layer and make it visible.
• Make sure the layer is selected, and the eye icon is on, ctrl+v to paste
• Done, now you need to do is delete/hide the original mask which we copied earlier
  

Result



Many thanks to Peter my classmate for his help

Update: My GF pointed me out an easier way.

Click on the B/w layer (B), in channel, click the RGB instead of creating an alpha from one of the channel, so basically it will select everything, then apply mask on the (A). As simple as that, how stupid am I.

Can I use the old style render layers in Maya 2009

There is no preset option to create a layer override in Maya 2009 as it was in 2008

However you can still create these overrides by using the following Mel
Where layer1 is the name of the Layer you like to override.

Ambient Occlusion

renderLayerBuiltinPreset occlusion layer1;

Luminance Depth

renderLayerBuiltinPreset linearDepth layer1;

Normal Map

renderLayerBuiltinPreset normal layer1;

Geometry Matt

renderLayerBuiltinPreset matte layer1;

Diffuse

renderLayerBuiltinPreset diffuse layer1;

Specular

renderLayerBuiltinPreset specular layer1;

Shadow

renderLayerBuiltinPreset shadow layer1;

From http://mayastation.typepad.com/

The web is evolving

Nowadays we got blogger, twitter, facebook, and all other stuffs. To be honest it's quite time consuming to update all these. I still love this blog, but I believe the web has evolved again. From all those, I've chosen facebook over twitter and all others. I've found kutucg to share all my knowledge and cg related infos so ppl can benefit. I've got Deviantart to put all my works related stuff. I've got makanmana.net to put my interest in Culinary side. And lastly I've got facebook for mostly personal and time killing stuffs. So basically what's this blog for??

In the mean time, I'll be very busy finishing off my final year 3D animated short film.

kutuCG V2

I've to rebuild kutuCG due to my HDD crashed. All my previous working files are gone. I've migrated the engine from punBB. It was good, fast, and light. But lack of features, like PM, polling, and some moderation tools. It can be done by hacking/ adding plugin, but this also mean messing up with the database. Shortly said, the new engine is much more easier, learning curve was easy, and customization is sweet! although I feel it appeared to be a little slower than punBB, but hence the features it offers, gotta compromise. Therefore I tried to use less graphic buttons and relied more on CSS. Here's the layout when launched....



EVERYBODY COMPLAINED! it's too bright. Therefore I worked my ass out to match V1 look as closed as possible :p

HDD Screwed up

Dropped my Lacie 750gb ext HDD last nite when I tried to move my monitor. Tried to turn it on again, seemed like physical failure. Brought it to JB hifi to claim warranty but they asked me to do it myself.. fuck. Email and called Lacie technical support, they don't do data recovery... fuck. They sent me some company url which does data recovery, after talking to the guy, it cost around AUD2400, same price with my iMac... fuck. I gave up... Applications, music, project, documents, videos, TUTORIALS! lost. Lesson learned, backup to DVD no matter what.

2009 workspace

It's exciting to see my workspace change time to time. This is 2009 workspace in Melbourne.



This one was taken in Kuala Lumpur, 2005 during my study time in Puchong :)



To see other CG artists' workspace, visit this LINK

KutuCG first month progress

It's been a month since KutuCG been launched. The forum has reached 223 members registration so far. Although 30% are non-active. However, it's an exciting news!

So far I've changed the header image and listened to members' feedback. It's tiring definitely, but I guess this is the most important part. Although not all of the issues can be resolved, I'm still looking for the workaround and fixing it asap.

During the first month, there's been some activities going on, notably 2D and 3D mini challenge with given theme "SHIO". It's just ended today and the result are impressive. Check it out 2D MINI 3D MINI

Besides that, there are also some tutorials available from myself and our members.
Please check it out HERE

January site statistic:
2150 unique visitors
5687 number of visits
109534 Pages
354867 hits
2.5GB bandwidth

January Board statistic:
Total number of users: 223
Total number of topics: 151
Total number of posts: 2537

What's coming for February? KutuCG will begin another mini 3D and 2D challenge with "Valentine" theme. I will also propose to have another challenge section called 'Modeling contest', which can be sculpting/mechanical object only. This has shorter amount of deadline and aimed toward busy members who's already in the industry and want something easy and short to finish.

I would like to sincerely thank forum members who support this forum.