I just uploaded an update to my AM Tools package, which contains some new goodies. In addition to including the AM_Ribbon plug-in that I previewed previously, I have also included an AM_ExposeTransform node, which I will be discussing in an upcoming Autodesk MasterClass that I am doing with Ryan. This node, much like its counterpart in 3D Studio Max, outputs transformation data for an object with respect to another object. In addition to basics like translation, rotation, and distance, the node also allows you to compute the angle between arbitrary axes on the objects as well as an angle from the exposed object’s arbitrary axis to the reference object’s position. Take a look in the example file to get some ideas of how you might use it. Special thanks to my friend, Sean Binder of Raven Software, for providing me with the torso model.
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Posts Tagged ‘Tools’
AM Tools 1.03
Friday, February 19th, 2010New Plug-in Coming Soon: AM_Ribbon
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010Things have been unusually hectic so far this year, and with GDC on the horizon it’s not looking to be much clearer for awhile. However, that doesn’t mean I haven’t found a way to make all of my different obligations overlap in some ways! I’ve been working a little bit as a consultant over the last few months to help out Infinite Ammo with an upcoming title: Marian.
During the course of my work on the project, I developed a new Python plug-in for Maya to help out with hair modeling. I will hopefully have a chance to deploy a new version of my free Python package soon that will include it, but in the meantime I thought I might share this video that Alec posted up on the IA website where I show what the plug-in does. Hopefully some other folks out there will find it useful too!
AM Tools 1.01
Saturday, January 2nd, 2010I just uploaded version 1.01 of my AM Tools Python package today, which you can of course download from the Maya tools section. You can look through the files to see all of the changes that I made, but here are some of the major highlights.
- amInsertParents is now a Python command. I have therefore retired the old MEL version.
- Added API Debug Mode to menu. Enabling this mode overrides some Maya Python API classes for debugging. For this release, this mode overrides the __str__() functionality of MMatrix and MVector.
- Substantially improved a number of utility functions for validating input.
- Added validation for custom plug-ins.
- Fixed some language-related bugs that existed for Maya 8.5.
As always, please let me know if you have any problems or other feedback!
Hip Constraint and Shoulder Constraint Update
Sunday, January 18th, 2009Following in my pattern of frequent updates, I uploaded more revisions this morning to both the shoulder constraint and hip constraint.
The revision, which is the same in both, is another exception to handle a possible singularity. I never actually had it happen to me in practice, but I realized it was possible when I stopped to think about it. Enjoy!
Hip Constraint Release and Shoulder Constraint Update
Friday, January 16th, 2009This morning I finally finished the hip constraint! You can now download it here. Just like the shoulder constraint, it comes with MEL scripts designed to assist in setup.
Speaking of the shoulder constraint, I found some pretty egregious math errors in my shoulder constraint node, so I have uploaded another update to it. Not only does it actually work as intended now, the math is greatly simplified and more closely resembles what you need to do to port it into game code.
Enjoy, and please let me know if you have any problems while using it!
