Tag: flip

Maya Update

Finally there is a “flip” blendshape function in Maya 2016 ext2. Before that I have to create a flipped mesh first, and then assign the extracted to the blendshape target. This is the only reason I’m switching to ext2 so far. Their sculpt brushes are weirdly slow so I’m sticking with Shape 3.0‘s Brush tool and looking forward to the support of latest version. The new pose space deformer is confusing to me and the lack of shape extraction means my tools are still valuable !

Responding to the maya camera to AE shake test I did before, I’m sure it works. This is a handy workflow that you could have the shake quick in playblast and still be adjustable in post. Closeup and distant layers may need different amount of shaking to look right.


Pose mirror/flipping

I have seen a few “intelligent” scripts which are able to mirror/flip controls of arbitrary setup. They are great if you have to use other people’s rig. I’m now making my own rig so I prefer a simpler way.

I add a string attribute named “mirrorCode” to every control to be mirrored/flipped. e.g. “100011”. The order is for tx ty tz rx ry rz and a “1” means negation. My scripts can scan through this attribute and know which axis to negate. Nothing to detect and easy to debug !

global proc float[] getMirrorXform ( string $ctrl, string $code ) {
 
    vector $t = `getAttr ($ctrl + ".t")`;
    vector $r = `getAttr ($ctrl + ".r")`;
    float $tr[] = { $t.x, $t.y, $t.z, $r.x, $r.y, $r.z };
 
    for ($i=1; $i<=6; $i++) {
       if (`substring $code $i $i` == 1) {
          $tr[$i-1] *= -1;
       }
    }
    return $tr;
}