MEL interfaces

I've been very busy learning the process for making MEL script interfaces. It's sooo Easy! The first tool I have created is just a collection of tools that I use at just about every session. I have launchers for my favorite helper scripts, and a few that i have written myself. I plan on adding a bunch of usable scripts, and after a while, organizing them so that the interface looks clean and nice. But for now, I'm just adding the buttons as I go.
The last time I scripted a user interface, was in 2001 when I needed some custom facial sliders for my character in my short film, "In the Vault". The control panel I made was called "Scowler". It had sliders for tweaking facial features on George Birch's face. That was in 3DS Max, of course. So none of those skills transfer over to Maya.
I've also learned the process of making script nodes. For those who haven't heard of them, a script node is a method of making a MEL script be 'embedded' into a Maya file. The scripts can be referenced from the expression editor, and there is no need to source an external script text file. The script is inside the maya file, and the script can be triggered by several different methods. It's all very exciting, isn't it?

Quicktime Pro and its horrible interface

I hated Quicktime with a passion for many years.  It was very slow, the compression was horrible, and it just never played right on web pages.  About the only thing it had going for it was the ability to scrub the video frames, which is very useful for animators and video producers.  Before its widespread adoption in the Windows world, there was no promise that the video would even play on a PC.  It just wasn't worth it!
  Now Quicktime Pro, which I've been using for about 2 years now, is much better.  It costs $30 to get a liscense, and I'd love to say that it is worth every penny.  The videos on the web can be a large size, and the compression quality of  the h.264 codec is very good.  The file sizes are small.  Plus a helpful .html document with instructions on embedding the video in a web page. It's totally worth the cost.
  But, God, the interface!!  On Windows the quicktime player is an awkward beast to say the least.  The ability to clip and export a video selection works OK, but the frame markers are very hard to grab, and they often get reset to the start and end frames.
  The 'save for web' option is what really gets me.  The 'browse' option for determining the output directory is in a drop-down menu???  Who puts it there?  And, it always defaults to the desktop.  Who wants to output a video to the desktop EVERY TIME? 
   I have yet to use the features for outputting video for the iPhone, for I don't own one.  The features seem to be added just to boost sales of the device.
  The most glaring omission is the lack of batching capabilities.  I had to output a crunched version of about 35 videos yesterday.  It takes forever!!  All because of the interface.  If I could have batched them all, I could have gone one with my life.
   The files are also named with a '-desktop' suffix, which is utterly annoying.  I could see if you were doing all three output options, for iphone, etc., then you need that suffix, but I never have.  If you are only outputting a desktop version,  the suffix should be omitted.
   Maybe the interface is better on Mac.  I wouldn't put it past Apple.  I truly hope they improve it sometime soon.


 

Rigging ability goes like this: / (up)

On a recent rig, I was really pushed to complete a very advanced, tighter rig than I have usually done.  I learned the ins and outs of stretchy rigging in Maya.

   While I am quite good at the basics of bone placements, constraints, IK/FK switching,  stretchy rigging really pushes everything to the next level.  The setup is pretty complex; there are lots of utility nodes doing on-the-fly computations, and the connections are everywhere.  But in the end, I have a great understanding of the whole stretchy rigging process.  I did 4 limb chains, and a few of those had to be re-done a time or two.

   I'd love to go back to some older rigs and put in some newly-learned controls, but I doubt that would be of any use.  It's moving forward in my skills that I am all about right now, not rehashing the past.

   There are a few characters, however, who would benefit from the new skills.  I will need to budget some time to take their rigs to 'version 2.0'.

 

 

Back to the beginning with Garbage

   So a few days ago I ran across my old copy of Garbage's first record.  I can't tell you how much I loved this record when I first got it.  I would bring a CD player into the labs at school, and listen to it whenever I worked on my projects in PowerAnimator on the old SGI workstations.  I have been listening to the record recently while I work in Maya.  The songs on the record just take me back to that time of exploratory learning.  The combination of the music and setting up joints is invigorating.  I feel like I did back then, like as if I can do anything, and my creativity is boundless.  The computer is a tool for my expression.
   The second record, Garbage 2.0, is also excellent, but nothing as striking as that first record.

"Stupid Girl....  I can't believe you fake it...."

Going cold turkey on Facebook

I couldn't take it anymore.  The updates, the quizzes; the utter rediculousness of it all...

 

I had to quit facebook.

 

I was spending so much time on there, and updating my status so often, that I had little time for other, more important things.  I was starting to update my status IN MY HEAD.  It was too much.

I am not the kind of person who can just check in once in a while; ignoring the link on my drop-down menu that was calling "just look for 5 minutes, it won't take too long..."  Bullcrap!  30 minutes later I was still looking at vacation pictures, wishing I was on vacation.  Or doing a stupid quiz.

 

The real thing that was the last straw was the people who never respond.  I'd do a comment on their post, they'd say nothing.  But the comments from people who also responded, most of whom I don't even know, would arrive in my mailbox. 

 

The 'friends' who would rarely update, or comment, probably had jobs.  So if people who had jobs don't have time to post, but I do, then perhaps if I spend some cycles on other things, I might be able to find work.

 

One day and counting.  It's nicer out here.

A Work in Progress that may never get finished..

This is a piece I have cobbled together pretty quickly a while back. I was going thru the DVD of the old laserdic arcade classic, Dragon's Lair, by Don Bluth. The opening shot has always intrigued me, and I wanted to do a quick homage to it. I always love a good multi-plane camera shot. This one has many facets. The castle model is a paper cutout model that I made as a boy. I had recently taken it from my mom's house when I helped to renovate my old bedroom. All of the other layers are just stock images that I found online. The birds are from Maya.

A review of X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Last night some friends and I went to see the Wolverine movie.  Now I'm not such a huge fan of the X-Men movie series, but I really enjoyed this film.  I could really like the Logan (Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman) character enough to really care if he gets killed or not. 

My biggest issue was the issue of invincibility.  At the beginning, Wolverine is pretty darn hard to injure.  In fact, he's immortal.  So, why go to the trouble of injecting his bones with adamantium?  He was already a killing machine with no shortcomings.

There were many compositing shots that were very fake-looking.   At the end of the film, a group of people are walking to a helicopter across a field.  The scene looked so badly composited, so utterly fake, that I wondered why they showed it at all, let alone twice!

But overall if you want a pretty compelling action-adventure flick, it's worth a look.