Couple more Maya questions.
polycounter lvl 18
OK, old thread has dropped off the radar and I have some new questions regarding Maya 2008, so here goes:
1. Selecting a parent highlights all children
How can I make it so that when I select a Joint (or any other object with children, for that matter), Maya doesn't shade all the child objects in bright green and display the wireframe, even though they're not selected?
Basically I want Maya to only highlight/wireframe my CURRENTLY SELECTED OBJECT, not its whole heirarchy too. It keeps making me think I have a bunch of objects selected even though I only have one.
It's also pretty annoying if you have a lot of small objects parented to one large object (say, a bunch of rivet meshes parented to a crate mesh)... if you select the crate mesh and hit Smooth to subdivide it, instead of subdividing the selected object, it subdivides the LAST CHILD. What the hell. This is annoying and useless. I had to un-parent all my child objects, do a Smooth operation on the parent, then re-link all the child objects again.
I've looked through all the preferences and cannot find anything that seems like it'd turn off this "feature".
2. Auto Key doesn't work unless you set at least one key manually
How to make "Auto Key" work properly? In Max when I turn on "Auto Key", it will actually keyframe anything using frame 0 as a base if no keys already exist. In Maya it seems that I actually have to manually set keys at frame 0 on anything I want to Auto Key, otherwise it just doesn't key anything.
So basically, using Auto Key on an object with no existing keyframes, will make no keyframes at any time, unless you manually set a key first.
3. .mayaSwatches folders popping up everywhere
I asked it before and people said it wasn't possible, but I'm still trying to find a way to stop Maya creating ".mayaSwatches" folders every bloody where. You can stop it creating material previews, but it still makes the folder. It's not exactly a showstopper, but it is annoying, and unnecessary.
Seems like no way to turn it off. Maybe someone knows a way?
Cheers.
1. Selecting a parent highlights all children
How can I make it so that when I select a Joint (or any other object with children, for that matter), Maya doesn't shade all the child objects in bright green and display the wireframe, even though they're not selected?
Basically I want Maya to only highlight/wireframe my CURRENTLY SELECTED OBJECT, not its whole heirarchy too. It keeps making me think I have a bunch of objects selected even though I only have one.
It's also pretty annoying if you have a lot of small objects parented to one large object (say, a bunch of rivet meshes parented to a crate mesh)... if you select the crate mesh and hit Smooth to subdivide it, instead of subdividing the selected object, it subdivides the LAST CHILD. What the hell. This is annoying and useless. I had to un-parent all my child objects, do a Smooth operation on the parent, then re-link all the child objects again.
I've looked through all the preferences and cannot find anything that seems like it'd turn off this "feature".
2. Auto Key doesn't work unless you set at least one key manually
How to make "Auto Key" work properly? In Max when I turn on "Auto Key", it will actually keyframe anything using frame 0 as a base if no keys already exist. In Maya it seems that I actually have to manually set keys at frame 0 on anything I want to Auto Key, otherwise it just doesn't key anything.
So basically, using Auto Key on an object with no existing keyframes, will make no keyframes at any time, unless you manually set a key first.
3. .mayaSwatches folders popping up everywhere
I asked it before and people said it wasn't possible, but I'm still trying to find a way to stop Maya creating ".mayaSwatches" folders every bloody where. You can stop it creating material previews, but it still makes the folder. It's not exactly a showstopper, but it is annoying, and unnecessary.
Seems like no way to turn it off. Maybe someone knows a way?
Cheers.
Replies
1. Create an empty group, then put all your objects into it. Now you can select, and nothing in the hierarchy is selected at the same time, unless you open outliner and select the group you made. This won't work for joint hierarchies.
EDIT :
2. No current way around that just yet.
'Auto Key automatically sets keys on attributes when you change the current time and attribute value. A key must already exist for an attribute before you use Auto Key. '
3. Did you try the 'export all' route (I know - convoluted) rather than save ?
Regards
When selecting an object you can tap the down key. That will select the shape-node instead of the transform-node, so any operation will only affect that object. Joints doesn't have shape nodes though.
2. Don't think there's a way around that. I actually like it that way. Otherwise vertecies and objects might get keyframed while modelling if not on frame 0.... Not that hard to just tap s to set a key before animating.
3. Asked a Maya support guy, and he didn't know either :P And I agree it's very annoying.
(1.) Pressing the down key, never came across that before, thanks for the tip.
Yeah, good call. Was just messing around with the same stuff here. Breaks workflow though a little for me, I suppose it's down to individual requirements.
Cheers
Still wish Maya wouldn't highlight the children though, it's kinda confusing, makes me think more stuff is selected, or sometimes appears like the many objects are just one object. I will try the "empty group" method.
I'm still not impressed that the F9-F12 hotkeys and the right-click "vertex/edge/face/uv" menus don't actually work the same way!
managed to put something together for your other problem.
After faffing about with a convoluted way of getting rid of the .mayaSwatches folder, I eventually hit the nail on the head with the following bit of code : -
system("rmdir /s /q .mayaSwatches" );so, as a mel you can create : -
file -save; system("rmdir /s /q .mayaSwatches" );and save this to your shelf and execute,
or add that first line as an additional line of code to your save hotkey via the editor.
The system commands calls the dos function to remove the directory (it is always in the current directory), it does not prompt for yes or no answers on the directory deletion, so it shouldn't affect workflow at all.
tested this in various directories and locations, and seems to work so far, not tested across a network, but I'm sure it will be fine.
Hope this helps, it's been a bane to me too this one, nice to have finally found a way to get rid of the folders.
Regards
EDIT : -
Apologies, you can't edit the default Save hotkey, to get round this, go under File, then SaveScene and then remove the current hotkey, now create a new command, I called mine Save, add your instructions and accept, then assign it to your normal save hotkeys, i.e. CTRL + s, that should do it.
1. Smooth Bind weight gradient shading is not useful
In Max, when you rig stuff, you get a nice gradient of red (fully weighted to current joint) down to blue (very low weight on current joint) and then verts which aren't weighted to the selected joint are not coloured, so it's very easy to tell at a glance if any verts have bad weighting.
In Maya, the default shading is black to white, and it completely overrides the texture (Max's blends on top of the texture, and shows the verts as coloured points). This means I can't see how the texture is warping/stretching in various poses without toggling "Color feedback" on and off.
Is there any way to make Maya's weight shading "semitransparent" over the texture, and any way to make the vertices highlighted with the appropriate colour, instead of this black-to-white stuff?
2. Component editor hides useful columns for joints in Smooth Skins tab
This is also annoying - say I have a Smooth Bind which contains 5 joints in the Influence list, and I have vertex which is weighted onto 2 of these joints, and I use the Component Editor to set the weight to "1.0" on one of these joints.
Since "hide zero columns" is turned on in the Component Editor, the other joint's column immediately disappears since it has 0 weight. However I still want it around in case I need to set the weight back to 0.25 on that joint or something.
If I turn off "hide zero columns", then it shows ALL JOINTS in the scene, which is useless, since there are only 5 i'm interested in.
Is there any way to get the Component Editor to only show the joints listed in the current bind cluster's "Influence" list, even if their value is zero? This would save a ton of time and hassle.
3. Any way to get the gradients for smooth bind showing, without being in the Paint Weights tool?
Basically I want to see the Smooth Bind gradients for various influence joints, without having to use the Paint Weights tool. I want to be able to select verts while still seeing the gradient and still having access to the influence list, but I haven't found a way to do this yet. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places?
Hmm...
I'm thinking I'll write a skin weighting tool more like Max's, since the gradient shading mode is quite poor (and "Multi-color feedback" is even worse), and the Component Editor is so picky about which columns it shows, it's really hard to get it to list only useful joints.
Again, any help would be appreciated, since I really don't want to have to write my own script, but Highend3d doesn't seem to have any Maya scripts which meet my needs (I found one which contains a good vert-weighting feature, but it's a big bloaty tool which I don't want to use - I will probably just use their vert weighting thing in my own custom floating window for skinning).
To display coloured vertices, select your object and just go to Display > Polygons > Vertices ( this is done on a per object basis ), remember though, when you have selected a smooth bind, make sure you have the colourise skeleton option ticked.
2. I never use 'hide zero columns', I've not found a way of doing what you require, so it's a small drawback there.
3. Following the stages in my answer to question 1 should help here, you'll be able to see weighted verticed as opposed to gradients though.
I'll look more into these later, gotta dash out for a bit.
I know it's possible to do vertexcolor with textures (texture/vcol displays in viewport) so I assume there must be some way of hacking up the skin weight display to show the texture at the same time. I thought about doing it manually via script with the polyColorPerVertex command, but that actually generates history states so I'd probably avoid that.
I assume there's some back-end way that you can access a mesh's vertex colours temporarily (since skin weights already does this), I will take a look tomorrow when I'm back at work.
Shame about the component editor not being able to limit columns to just the relevant ones for that bind cluster, it seems like this would be a pretty sensible feature to have (kind of how Max does it with the Weight Table).
After all the stuff I hear from people saying Maya is awesome for rigging/animation and stuff like that, I was kind of expecting better tools for skinning at least
I know the bone and joint system is more versatile but currently this lack of fairly basic skinning features (or round-about ways of getting to them) is kind of slowing me down. I wanted fast access to precise weighting concerning only the joints required for a particular mesh, yet it seems this is impossible to do without scripting. I guess I will be writing my own little floating window like Max's Skin toolbox, for rapid assignment of weighting. If I can get the gradient + texture stuff showing too, then it will be good
Maya's skinning was shite, and its skinning tools were shite beyond its Painting (which was nice because it is integrated with Artisan). My guess is, your experience is not unique, and if you look around, you'll find the functionalities you require and probably some nifty tools. If you don't, I'd be suprised, but it shouldn't be too difficult to write something like Max's Weight Tool. I just wrote a new replacement Weight Tool for Max, and it only took a couple of days (granted, more than half that time was spent writing some really cool skinning utilities), on the other hand I didn't need to write my own skinOps stuff. But my point is that a Maya Weight Tool should exist, and if it doesn't, it should only take about a day or two's work to write- and if you write it on your own time, you should release it, so other people who have and will go through what you're going will have an alternative.
But sorry I don't have an actual solution, I've done most of my skinning in Max... you could also try CGTalk's Maya forums for script recommendations.
I was just going through my rigging shelf and came across an old script I used to use, but not done much skinning in ages and had forgotten about it. It's called skinny, and you can find it on highend3d at : -
http://highend3d.com/maya/downloads/mel_scripts/modeling/misc/Skinny-2950.html
was a good find, I had 3.7, and have just updated to 3.8 ( this version ), anyway, it's a great time saver and has some very nice functions that I think you would appreciate. You can apply your skin weights on a object basis ( it only lists current joints for selected object ), you can flick very quickly between textured and weighted mode, and you can even rotate joints to test skinning / stretching in chosen areas, etc. all under the same hood in a floating window. You can also add whatever weights you want (0.25, 0.5, 1, etc ) on the fly. I don't recall using the paint weights feature in the script, I just grabbed vtx selections and assigned.
EDIT :
http://davidwalden.com/?page_id=6
skinningTools.mel looks like a much better version of the above melscript and is more up to date too, it also incorporates the component editor singularily into the interface.
Regards
Thanks anyway though!
Yah that is what I ran into with Skin or Die. If you are going to do lots of skinning, then I would say it is worthwhile writing your own skinning tools, whatever app you are in. It will allow you to customize to your workflow, and add new stuff as needed (and take out old stuff as well).
But getting to that skinned character, can be a headache...