8 bit to 16 bit PSD glitch

Hey! Look at this!

I was texturing a character today, when I decided to switch from 8 bit to 16 bit in my PSD file, and I found this cool glitch! As cool as it is, I'm sure it's caused someone headache somewhere. Anyway, here's what the transition looks like:

8bit (original)

16bit conversion

Cool!

maya.mel.eval() not working

The Problem:
I got these errors when trying to run my batch FBX exporting script today:

global name 'maya' is not defined
# Error: NameError: file <maya console> line 1: name 'maya' is not defined

How annoying. After rummaging through my script I came to the line which was causing me the error, which was the maya.mel.eval() script (whereby you can run MEL commands in python).

The Fix:
Turns out, Maya had turned off all of its plugins and that's what was causing the error. Not sure which one was the correct one to turn on, as I didn't have the time or patience to test it out, so I just turned them all back on under Windows>Preferences>Plug-in Manager and checked the box 'Loaded' under 'Apply to all'.

Maya viewport running slow

"Hey Alex, my Maya viewport is running slow, especially when selecting nurbs curves whilst animating!"

Yeah? Well, maybe you should un-check this badboy. (Graph Editor > View > Show Results) Honestly, the amount of times I've thought, "Huh, weird this animation is running unusually slow", only to discover it's this silly little option box has been frustrating.

Unity breaking once again.

Interesting...

Triangulation, Deformation & Max influence issues - Maya to Unity

I'm working on a game trailer at the moment, and encountered a bug regarding deformation issues and things not appearing in Unity as they do in Maya. Thanks Unity.

The Problem:

A side by side comparison between Maya and Unity shows that in the middle of an animation being played, we are getting different deformations.

Maya

Unity

It may be hard to see because of the lighting, so I have drawn a blue outline of the jacket beside each image. As you can see, the image on the left (Maya) has a nice smooth deformation. The image on the right has a 'nice' lumpy deformation.
The reason this happens I believe, is due to the way Unity interprets the influences of joints, and also the triangulation on export/import.

The Fix:

1.) First, go into your quality settings in Unity (Edit>Project Settings>Quality) and try changing your blend weights. If it's on 2 bones, change it to 4, and vice versa. This should hopefully fix your problem.

2.) Still not fixed the issue? Have a look at your rig in Maya, what are your max influences on your mesh? Play around with these settings and try capping your max influences at 4 with the 'set max influences' option. You shouldn't be using any more than 4 for a game rig anyway (with the exception of cinematics/trailers etc.)

Happy riggydigdigging!

Can't drag select multiple objects?

So, I had an annoying bug today.

The Problem:
Can't drag select multiple objects (meshes) in Maya.

The Fix:
Go to your device manager, select your GPU (graphics card, under the heading of 'display adapters'), right click is and select the 'driver' tab. If you can, roll back the driver, if not try updating. Hopefully this will sort out this problem for you, and other funky stuff eg: outliner icons being a weird size.

Can't drag select multiple objects?

So, I had an annoying bug today.

The Problem:
Can't drag select multiple objects (meshes).

The Fix:
Go to your device manager, select your GPU (graphics card, under the heading of 'display adapters'), right click is and select the 'driver' tab. If you can, roll back the driver, if not try updating. Hopefully this will sort out this problem for you, and other funky stuff eg: outliner icons being a weird size.