Normals?

Playblasting into FCP

I was facing an issue with playblasting an avi. file and importing the shots into FCP for edits for previz. Essentially, I can't render out AVI from Maya if we are going to use FCP.

I have a situation that could use some major addressing. I work in a mixed platform environment that uses PCs for creating 3d content (Maya) and FCP for editing.

When I playblast an animation from Maya with the render globals set at 24 fps and output type as AVI, I get a standard windows AVI file that can be directly read by FCP.
(AVI is the only format available that doesn't use frames)

Here's the problem. Final Cut Pro reads that 24fps avi as 23.98 fps. (Drop frame). As a result, most of my renderings are trunkated by one frame. The only solution to this problem is to either:

1. Output individual frames from Maya rather than an AVI and import those frames as an image sequence in QTpro and then export out a true 24fps .mov file.

2. Load the playblasted AVI file into QTpro on the PC and then resave the file as a self contained movie rather than exporting it.

For some particular reason, any .mov file exported from the PC can not be read directly into FCP. A self contained movie works, but nothing else. What gets strange is the same file, though not readable in FCP, is readable in QT and at non drop frame.

Sounds confusing? Yes. But I've replicated the problem on every computer I've used. 

I'd like to retain the avi compatibility because:

1. Animators can output AVIs directly from Maya on their PC.
2. I don't want to deal with uncompressed frames and large numbers of files.

Explanation

Maya to AE

Things to take note

Rename locators in Maya to null_shape01 & so on & so fourth.
Bake all frames required of camera as well as locators. It will shift the keyed range to start from frame0 in After Effects.

Use this mel script found on Maya Station to clear all junk in file if you have issues saving out as .ma from .mb
There are 3 different types of unknown nodes that can prevent re-saving as a different format. 
Unknown nodes, unknown transforms and unknown dag nodes. 
The other two are uncommon. But it’s worth mentioning .to delete all three types:

delete `ls -type unknown -type unknownDag -type unknownTransform`

Also, if there are still issues, it could do with left over referencing junk. Turn off Display on DAG objects in outliner and delete everything else but be-careful not to delete the animation nodes.

Last thing is the scaling issue which I will re-write here after discussions.

Scale issues with locators.
Alt Click on the position button of the null and then under expression type - transform.position*100 on all nulls.

Image Sequence rule

Whenever I am going to use an image sequence. Remember the naming convention has to switch from imagetest_####.jpg to imagetest.####.jpg

For preview in texture map to work

supported file formats are
- iff
- tiff
- tga (32bit)

But previews take awhile and pushing the "use image sequence" button on and off forces a refresh.

Fibre Effects

Displacement Issues

It is late. Vray and displacement maps never work out the way I think they would and its always been a bitch. I am tired so ill just leave this link here first  and check it out another time.

http://www.cggallery.com/tutorials/displacement/

Applying similar shader to Instances

Had this same issue 3 years ago. Just found this script.

1. Go to master of instances and switch to select faces.
2. Select faces to apply shader.
3. Run script using "select -r (expandSelection());".
4. Apply shader.

apply-shaders-to-all-maya-instances

In-case the script ever goes down, backup here. This is from Janne Ojala. Thank you.

/* jooCCRequestedExpandSelectionToInstances.mel 0.1
Authors: Janne 'Joojaa' Ojala
Testing: if it works after a suitably long time without
much problems let me know. Report any problems.
License: Creative Commons, Attribution, Share Alike
Request by: Toast
About:
A simple script that rxpand selection to each instance if only
one instace is selected
Usage:
select any number of faces on one object and run:
select -r (expandSelection())
or
sets -e -forceElement blinn1SG (expandSelectionToInstances());
to assign directly to shaders
Changelist:
06.03.2012 - Original file
*****************************************************************/
global proc string[] expandSelection() {
string $selection[] = `ls -sl`;
string $hl[] = `ls -hl`;
string $ret[];
$hl = `listRelatives -shapes $hl`;
//if (size($hl) > 1)
// error("select only in one object");
$hl = listRelatives("-parent", "-f", `ls -ap $hl`);
for ($item in $selection){
$match = `match "\.[^.]*$" $item`;
for ($item in $hl){
$ret[size($ret)]=($item+$match);
}
print "//Result: Sucessfully applied selection to all instances \n";
}
return $ret;
}