[Maya] Quick Pipe : Curve-Edge Based Path Creation Tool

Fansub

Hey there,it's Fansub !

You can grab the Beta right here !

https://gum.co/QPipe1a

I've been working for the past three months on my first and biggest MEL script yet,and today i can finally talk a bit more about it !

Quick Pipe is a curve-edge based path creation tool for Maya.With it’s selection-based formula,Quick Pipe lets you create multiple shapes like tubes,pipes,ropes,corrugated pipes,floating bevels,welds,caves,corridors,etc...

http://i.giphy.com/l3V0qii9ogYOimUVy.gif

You can choose to stay in the tool’s comfort zone and prototype with it as much as you want to see the results happening in real-time,or go crazy and play with different profiles to get some weirdly unexpected results.
Quick Pipe comes with a relatively small documentation and a dozen of videos to show you how to create multiple shapes with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0WDjqNE4EA

The tool is developed completely with MEL scripting and i used Sublime as my IDE.Quick Pipe is currently compatible with Maya 2015,2016 and 2016.5.
Maya 2014 and Maya LT support will be added in the coming weeks !

Quick Pipe is currently being beta tested but you can already get it on Gumroad for 8$ !

battlecow

Great stuff and a very fair price!

Fansub

Beta is out ! Everybody can buy it already

Sajeet

Nice! been waiting for this one

Mossbros

Great stuff man, One of the biggest reasons of why I disliked using maya when modeling. 
Guess I have no excuses now lol. 

Scruples

How are the UV's handled?

CreativeHD

Looks great, definitely going to check it out!

Fansub

How are the UV's handled?

All you need to do is select the edges loops where you want to have your UVSeams,hit the Unwrap Pipe button and your UVs are done.

Will be improving the way it handles corners in a future update,so stay tuned !

peanut™

looking forward ...

Scruples

@Fansub That sounds like a dream come true.

Fansub

Hehehe thanks ! ^^

I actually wanted to automate the edge selection,but thought giving people the choice to pick up where they want to have their uv seams would be a better solution.

rawkstar

Looks great, would love to see this for maya 2014.

Fansub

The tool is still in Beta,version 1.2 (official release coming in a few days) will hopefully have Maya 2014 support !

Puzzledust

Just bought the beta. Will we get an e-mail when the official release comes out?  Thanks for making this great plugin, if Autodesk has a clue they'll buy you out and integrate it. 

Fansub

Will be spamming the shit out of the whole planet when it comes out,so you can be sure to get notified about that

walter

Don't work for me with maya 2016.5,
// Error: source “StartQuickPipe.mel”; //
// Error: Line 1.8: Syntax error //
Thanks!

Fansub

Your quotation marks are giving you this error here is the correct line : source "StartQuickPipe.mel";



A lot of people got this wrong,so I'm currently working on a way to prevent this error.

Dcomella88

Im using Maya 2015 and it seems like the pop up menu doesnt show up (with all of the buttons you outline in your documentation and videos). Is there anyway to access those buttons? I know in your walkthrough video you say highlight your created pipe but dont select anything else, but everytime I do this nothing pops up. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks for the awesome tool btw! Cant wait for shapeshifter!

walter

OK, it's subtle but now it works
Thanks!

Fansub

Dcomella88 : Hmmm that's an odd behavior.If you go into edge,face or vertex mode,but don't select any edge/face/vertex it still doesn't work ?

If it absolutely doesn't work in all cases,try to bind this line to a shortcut/MM/Shelf : QuickPipeWindow;

Dcomella88

Awesome! Yeah that totally works. For whatever reason just selecting a component like that wouldnt launch that window. But that shortcut works.

Amazing job with this tool! Such a time saver.

xChris

This is awesome  

Fansub

Thanks Chris !

The public beta was a really successful launch for Quick Pipe and there was only 1 bug  report from over one hundred beta testers which is great !

I'm currently working on the official release (Quick Pipe 1.2a) and I'm super excited to show you guys all the new tools and features this version has !

For y'all waiting for ShapeShifter,development should restart mid-June,so be patient please

Thomas P.

Does this work in Maya LT as well?

Fansub

Hey Thomas,i haven't had a beta tester reporting on Maya LT yet,but will hopefully have an answer for you in the day.

Thanks !

Fansub

Hey,sorry for the lack of updates !

So,looks like Quick Pipe doesn't properly works with Maya LT,but i will be adding support for Maya LT 2016 and Maya 2014 in the next update.

Talking about that,remember last year when i created a thread asking for a selection pattern similar to Modo's ? today i'm proud to say that I've started working on the same system for Maya.
It will be available in the next Quick Pipe update along with many other interesting features.It is still in it's early stage,but i will be improving it along with the future updates of Quick Pipe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zrqn7RzK4w

Please note that all updates Quick Pipe will be getting are free until year 2085

Shanteez

Can't wait till the update is available 

Chris Rohlfing

Bought the script last week. So far I really like it. It makes the absence of 3ds Max splines in my life a little less bearable. Looking forward to the new update.

Fansub

Thanks for getting the tool Chris ! Unfortunately i haven't had the time to properly work on it since June but everything is already set up,just need to clean things and make an overview video...
A picture of the different UIs I've been prototyping with back in May.Will ultimately get back to it very soon hopefully,just need to finish some freelance work atm.

Thomas P.

Just wanted to check and see if this works with Maya LT (2016 and 2017) yet?

Fansub

Hey Thomas ! The LT update should be available 100000% sure during this weekend,really really sorry for the reports !

Btw,do you mind testing it for me before the release ? if you're interested i'll give you the update later on today

Fansub

Sneak peak of the new Open Profiler in Quick Pipe !   The Open Profiler is a custom profile creation system that allows you to work with over 60 predefined profile presets or even create your own presets in a click ! Quick Pipe 1.5 will be released on Sunday so hold on a little bit more

http://i.giphy.com/3o6Ztmty6FEWtCcYSs.gif

Tzur_H

how does updates for current users work?  is it free, or up to every major release or something else?

Fansub

Free,no matter how big the update as long as the product is called Quick Pipe every update for said product is free

Fansub

It's finally here ! ! ! @__@

Quick Pipe 1.5 has been revamped from the ground up to be more stable,faster and easier to modify for future updates.

This update is FREE for anyone who owns a Quick Pipe license.Not only that,i also have a special present for all Quick Pipe users : You can get my new 5$ tool ADN Modeler Tools for FREE ! A download link is in the  Quick Pipe notification you have received by Email,check it out !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5cYdmc7iOs

Here is a list of the major updates :

• Quick Pipe now supports Maya 2014, 2015, 2015LT, 2016, 2016LT, 2016 Extension 2,2017 and 2017 LT !
  

• Open Profiler is a custom profile manager that allows you to try out over 60 custom profiles and create your own profiles in a click.
  

• A new revamped UI that is smarter and smaller than the previous one.

•  Pattern Selector is a new feature that allows you to select components in a pattern style.If you ever tried Modo,you're gonna love this !
  

• Quick Pipe now comes with a REALLY smart normal detection method that avoids flipped pipes in almost every case.

• Intuitive Helpers are windows that can be triggered by control-clicking on a menu button.These windows allow you to quickly understand what a certain command does.

• Edit Pipe has been remade from scratch to support both the path and the profile.Did i say it's also a lot more stable ?!

•  New Pipe Trim and Pipe Offset attributes give  you the ability to trim of offset a pipe.
  

•  The documentation was rewritten from scratch.
  

* Over 60 small fixes here and there that no one gives a damn about

That's pretty much it.If you're liking the tool and want to help in some way please share and talk about the tool around you.

Burpee

This is really great man :')

ArmoredWolf

Fansub said:

It's finally here ! ! ! @__@

Quick Pipe 1.5 has been revamped from the ground up to be more stable,faster and easier to modify for future updates...

I think the Documentation for v1.5 is wrong. It says copy the StartQuickpipe script, but it's called LaunchQuickpipe in this version. Naturally, the command is also outdated for the same reason. I simply hotkeyed the correct name for the script and it works fine, just thought I'd let you know about that tiny mistake in the 1.5 PDF doc.

Fansub

Hey guys,yeah i noticed that typo too will be solving everything today with a new update.Atm i'm literally flooded with emails and i don't know who has issues,just want to congratulate,ask questions before buying,etc....

Will be solving things a bit slowly to not make a mistake,so excuse me if i reply a bit lately

ErichWK

Just bought it, followed the directions in the pdf. Copy pasted the correct command. No dice. Syntax error.

Edit:

Wait I think I figured it out..

synergy11

Omg great software! Any chance this will work for Maya 2013?

Abelo

The software looks great. Unfortunately, after solving the Syntax error I still get:

// Error: Line 1.28: Cannot find file "StartQuickPipe.mel" for source statement.

I've tried selecting and deselecting everything, particularly what the Readme says (edge mode, no edges selected), and no luck. Any ideas?

Fansub

Hey Abelo you need to write source "LaunchQuickPipe.mel"; instead of that line,which was a typo i made in the documentation.

I've put Quick Pipe 1.5b on gumroad which fixes that typo,2015 compatiblity and many other stuff.Currently working on a bigger build (Quick Pipe1.55) to include all or most reported bugs and a batch of small new features.

Abelo

Thanks a lot!
I unfortunately seem to keep getting a third error:

// Error: file: C:/Users/aoroz/Documents/maya/2014-x64/scripts/LaunchQuickPipe.mel line 1288: Invalid flag '-lt'



Cheers!

Fansub

Uh oh looks like Maya 2014 doesn't have that specific flag,but it's weird given that i've beta-tested it for hours within 2014.

Anyway,I'm working on a hotfix right now,will send it to you in a few hours for further testing sorry for the inconvenience !

echoform

hello, purchased your script yesterday, but i get this error:

...maya/2016/scripts/LaunchQuickPipe.mel line 1891: Invalid file type specified: FBX

this error prevents me from switching out the custom profiles.  i'm running maya 2016 with service pack 4.  thank you.

Fansub

Hello,i'm currently working on this issue.It looks like an FBX preferences problem because using Maya's default prefs is the only fix known to day for this atm.Will update you as soon as i'm done the the new update.Really sorry for the inconvenience

echoform

no problem.   thank you for the quick reply.  will wait for your update.  thank you!

Abelo

Thanks for the effort, Adnan!

Fansub

Omg great software! Any chance this will work for Maya 2013?

Woops sorry just seen your message.Quick Pipe doesn't work on 2013.If you bought it for another version you can always try but i don't officially support 2013.There are a lot of new commands introduced in 2014 (the inview message,for examples) that don't exist in 2013.

Fansub

On a side note,i wanted to say something : both of my tools AMT and Quick Pipe were shared on a certain warez website.I really don't mind that as long as you can't afford or don't have a credit card to buy these tools (i've been in that situation for years) but please keep in mind that these tools are the only way for me to pay my school and sharing it for free has already started to impact sales at a horrible rate.No sales for me = no school and i can't make a student loan because they suck like hell here in Africa.
If you like what i do and think it is worth the price please do buy the tools.

Tetranome

Ah that's lame. I'm sure you've contacted the website hosting them to get them taken down?
EDIT: Oops, Warez sites. Not Maya sites or something. Nevermind