Game dev tips and tricks

Alex_J

I'm compiling some tips and tricks into a database here:
https://aljavgames.notion.site/Aljavs-game-dev-tips-0ed8961228234ff28b571ed0c73472cc?pvs=4

There are a few maya things there now might be helpful. Will add more. I'll post the Maya and other 3d specific things here. 

The website is just a notion page made public. It's not for any professional benefit to me, just tips I learned that I wish would have learned sooner. If you have anything you think is good to add please let me know. You can also duplicate the database and keep copy in your own notion projects, download as PDF, CSV, etc. 

Alex_J

Reset Maya preferences without losing anything

Problem
Anytime you customize Maya’s UI, there is a chance you will incur some strange bugs
The go to solution you will find 90% of the time you google search is “Reset the preferences”
And following that, a number of people complaining that this solution sucks because it means you lose all your customized settings
How to reset Mayas preferences
Go to Mayas folder in Documents
C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\Documents\maya
Look for the prefs folder
When Maya starts, it looks for a folder called prefs. If there is no folder called prefs, it creates one.

1. To reset the prefs, you just rename or delete that folder, and then Maya will create a new default one

Okay solution
You can copy and paste from your old preferences into the new preferences folder (your custom shelves, layouts, hotkeys, etc)
Better solution
Just delete the new preferences folder and rename the old one back to pref so that it becomes the new preferences again.
This solves a lot of common problems and does not require you to copy/paste anything
I recommend to try this first because it is the easiest thing to do and seems to work every time I have had to do it
BONUS TIP
Favorite that Maya folder so that it is easy to get to. When Maya borks itself it is shit icing on a shit cake to have to remember where the folder is and click through a thousand directories to get to it. Do yourself a favor.

Alex_J

Tips for using Maya with less wrist pain

Maya has a lot of features that make it so you can work as fast as you can think
But many of them are click and drag which causes wrist strain
You can do almost everything in Maya without having to click and drag the gizmo

• Move the gizmo without clicking it

1. Hold shift + MMB drag to constrain the Move and Scale Tools to the direction that closes matches the screen direction (e.g. up and down is Y, left and right is X)

1. Does not work with Rotation tool

1. Double press the tool hotkey (W or R) to go back to camera space free movement (indicated by the center square of the gizmo being yellow)

1. combine this with snapping (X, C, V) and you can easily select an offscreen object from outliner and then snap it to something in your view without having to move the camera to go find the object

1. Last selected axis is remembered so if you use multiple viewports with orthographic views, you can move an object more easily without having to change axis

1. e.g. keep it on camera space and move with MMB drag in the different ortho views

• There are better things than Marking Menus

• Contextual Marking menus are pretty good, but I recommend to use them less and try to use the Quick Shelf plugin more. It is less stress and generally faster because a static menu is more accurate than radial based gestures

• Your most commonly used tools can be made into hotkeys (e.g. alt+c for combine, alt+x for separate, etc)

• In Maya 2022+, Ctrl+F allows find tools by name. This is a huge time saver, but it has the added benefit of remembering your commonly used items and puts them up time. Usually once you have been working for a little while, just pressing Ctrl+F will quickly bring up all the things you have been working with recently.

• RSI reducing hardware

1. Programmable Mouse

1. I have used both Logitech and Corsair mice. Corsair is slightly better quality but both are fine.

1. Set middle mouse button to a side button (squeeze with thumb is much lower strain than lift and hold one of the fingers)

1. You can program the buttons to toggle rather the press and hold

1. this takes some getting used to if you have muscle memory built up already, but it well worth the effort IMO

1. Standing desk

1. I use a cheap small telescoping standing desk you can get from Amazon

1. being able to change your stance every hour or so seems to reduce fatigue

• Essential RSI reducing plugins

1. Quick Shelf

1. How to use Quick Shelf plugin in 2023 

Autosave and Incremental Save so that you dont lose work on a crash in Maya

Problem - when I am focused on my work I forget to save, then if a crash happens I lose progress
Solution -
Autosave found in Windows -> Preferences -> Files/Projectis

• Be aware that autosaves can quickly take up a massive amount of space. If you limit them, then they will overwrite the older ones once the limit is reached.

• Set prompt before save to true so that if you go AFK you don’t overwrite with useless changes

• Problem - I made a mistake an hour ago but only discovered it now. I wish I could go back in time to where I made that mistake.

  Solution -

  • Incremental Save

    • found in File-> Save Scene Options
    • Incremental save creates a new file each time you save and gives it a number and timestamp so that you can roll back to previous versions of the scene
    • Similar to autosave, this can take up a lot of space if you do not set a limit. If you set a limit, once reached it will begin overwriting older files.
    • It is helpful to do a new Save Scene as each time you reach an important milestone if it is a lengthy project

Simple Version Control for Artist

• Problem

• I want to keep versions of my projects (or just simple backup of your work over the years), but when I read about GIT my eyes cross and I have to sleep for three days to recover

• GIT is not simple to setup and is even more work to setup to work with binary assets (things like fbx files)

• Perforce is better with binary assets than GIT, but it is very complex to setup. You will need somebody experienced using it to help.

• Solution

• There are simple types of version control that anybody can manage and offer full incremental versions of any file type

• I use Acronis True Image, though there may be other similar options you could evaluate as well

• Acronis website

• You can easily set this up to do basic versioning backups to an external harddrive and/or cloud service like google drive, dropbox, etc

• Anything that is important should be backed up to at least three places, and one location should be physically separate from the others (in case fire, flood, nuclear war, etc)

• Note - I am not affiliated with Acronis in anyway. I just found it on google and been using after several uses using GIT and being frustrated that it is more complicated than my needs require.

Alex_J

A few ways to transfer UV's to a skinned mesh

original article: Maya - transfer UV’s to a skinned mesh (notion.site (notion users can duplicate for local copy)

Description of the problem and manual solution:

ArtStation - Transferring UVs AFTER rigging in Maya

• Automatic way (plugin)

  Zoo tools plugin automates this to a button

  Maya: Tool Transfer UVs Shaders

• Alternative way - simplest

  • Save your skin weights
  • unbind skin
    • use transfer attributes to transfer the UVs
    • delete history
  • rebind
    • paste skin weights
      • good to go
  • Note that saving and pasting skin weights may not be native to Maya. I always use NG skin tools to do this.

Alex_J

Wish I would have figured this out sooner. Here's a simple way to make a walk cycle that doesn't require mirroring and will work with any rig and doesn't require plugins:

1. key walk cycle on one leg
2. set curves to infinity cycle
3. select keys in graph editor → copy
4. paste keys to opposite control
5. ensure pasted key curve is also set to infinite cycling, and offset curves right on timeline until it looks good

mirroring works fine its just that you have to have the mirror tables setup right and if you click controls in wrong order you mess things up - it requires working a little more slowly and carefully, whereas this method is too simple to mess up.