Maya Set-Up Question

CandyStripes05

Is there anyway to apply one material to the object in one view-port and a different material in a different view-port? or have x-ray mode only effect specific meshes?

what I'm trying to do:

In persp mode I want the mesh to have a normal lambert so I can see the model easily for modelling, but in my side view-port I want to either be able to have a different lambert on it which I have the transparency set really low in order to see the reference image behind it OR I could use x-ray mode but then the reference image gets harder to read

any tips?

till then I guess I'm stuck flipping back and forth between my two materials : (

huffer

You can instance your object, move it out of the way, apply a lambert and model on this, while keeping the other instance transparent and aligned over reference.

DireWolf

Why don't you do it the other way around - place your reference in front of your model and lower the reference opacity?

tharle

you could also keyframe the transparency to be high and low and then you just have to change the current time to swap between the settings you want - probably easier than reapplying materials etc.

Bal

If it helps, in Maya you can x-ray per object, instead of the default x-ray the whole scene or not. So by setting that to a keyboard shortcut (I use ctrl-alt-x, alt-x being the whole scene) you could x-ray your mesh whenever you want, on the fly, while keeping your ref plane opaque.
Here's the dirty mel I've been using to toggle it on and off per object for the last 7 years :

// declare variables
string $selected[];
string $hilited[];
string $object;
int $test[];
int $hold;
// assign values to variables for selected objects
$selected = `ls -sl -dag -ap -typ surfaceShape`;
$hilited = `ls -hl -dag -ap -typ surfaceShape`;
// loop through any objects in component mode
// and toggle their x-ray display
for ($object in $hilited){
$test = `displaySurface -q -xRay $object`;
$hold = $test[0];
if ($hold != false)
displaySurface -xRay false $object;
else
displaySurface -xRay true $object;
// clear test variable
clear $test;
}
// loop through any objects in object mode
// and toggle their x-ray display
for ($object in $selected){
$test = `displaySurface -q -xRay $object`;
$hold = $test[0];
if ($hold != false)
displaySurface -xRay false $object;
else
displaySurface -xRay true $object;
// clear test variable
clear $test;
}
// clear selection variables
clear $selected;
clear $hilited;

passerby

here is a cleaner xray toggle.

import pymel.core as pm


def xraytoggle():
    sel = pm.ls(sl=True, dag=True, ap=True, typ='surfaceShape')
    hilighted = pm.ls(hl=True, dag=True, ap=True, typ='surfaceShape')

    for i in hilighted:
        value = pm.displaySurface(i, q=True, xRay=True)
        if value[0]:
            pm.displaySurface(i, xRay=False)
        else:
            pm.displaySurface(i, xRay=True)

    for i in sel:
        value = pm.displaySurface(i, q=True, xRay=True)
        if value[0]:
            pm.displaySurface(i, xRay=False)
        else:
            pm.displaySurface(i, xRay=True)


xraytoggle()

Bal

Thanks passerby, I never bothered tweaking old mel that works, but it's always nicer to have it in Python.

passerby

ya its more or less the same code, just in python, since for some reason the displaySurface commands aren't implemented as pymel object methods.

CandyStripes05

DireWolf wrote: »

Why don't you do it the other way around - place your reference in front of your model and lower the reference opacity?

Depending on the reference it can start to look muddy really quick and end up being useless

thanks for all the replies! I'll have to look into those scripts : ) much appreciated!