RenderPasses Done Right

Been doing research in Puppet Shaders & Deex Shaders. Trying to use both and turn it into something usable here at cum. m+d for future projects. It is sad that Maya2011 has solved the issue of render passes without shadows for Mia_materials but I can't and don't trust in Autodesk so I guess custom frame buffers might be the way to go.

So far, results is to render both Raw & Level of each pass and when multiplied together will produce the Result. Which also can be rendered directly.

I am using the deeX_Buffers_pass connected to the transform of a "dummy" cube to allow the rendering of the passes into an OpenEXR file at 32bit. Whilst using the DeeX_Mia_material to achieve the Mia_material look and using the script below to quickly swap all Mia_X materials to DeeX_Mia_materials.

As for the Z-depth, setting up a separate pass and attach the z-buffer puppet shader worked out better then using the built in Deex one apparently.

Lastly, by enabling these specific passes in the dummy cube attached to a "deex buffer writer" and following the tutorial written here Classroom, I get a perfect composite with all the control I need, and I get right back to the final result which is awesome. Minus the separate shadow pass which isn't available.

To Convert All Mia_x materials to DeeX_Mia_materials

string $malistes2[] = `ls -type "mia_material" -type "mia_material_x" -type "mia_material_x_passes" `;
  string $montruc;
  for ($montruc in $malistes2 )
  {
  AEdoMiShaderConversion $montruc deeX_mia_material _deex;
  }

Mib_FG_Occlusion

Note to self
For Occlusion Pass -

Mib_fg_occlusion works with cutout opacity.

Maya2010 *i've heard rumors of this problem being solved the standard way on Maya2011

Tracking & Matchmoving on Green

Nuke .chan to .fbx converter

Good folks at Cmivfx released this converter to allow us to track in nuke and import that into Maya. Good converter though hard to locate on their website. Here is a general link including mac, windows & linux versions.

http://www.fxmogul.com/Search.aspx?Query=cmiAPPS

Cherry Blossom Drop

Had a project involving cherry blossoms. Couldn't help but do this.

Maya 2010 and Mia_x_passes Materials

Attaching Cherry Blossom Geometry to a Tree with Tree Wind turned on -

Paint Effects Objects UV changes over time and thus will prevent the use of "djRivet" Script.

Solution. Cached out the Geometry of the paint effects tree after conversion to polygons. UV unwrapped object followed by deleting history and then reapplying the geometry cache information.

After this, we used the "spPaint3d" script to paint instances of the CherryBlossom geometry to litter the branches with the flowers.

note to self

- Since we will not be able to edit the geometry as it has been combined, the best way to help randomize the flowers would be to include a shader for each flower petal thus by editing the colors slightly we are able to introduce randomness without touching the geometry.

- I had to separate the paint effects polygon tree and recombine in order to make it a paintable surface for "spPaint3d". Just one of those things ;)

Lastly unhide the PaintEffects Polygon Geo with geometry cache and then select all CherryBlossom instances and then select the tree and execute djRivet.

Pivot Point Mode Biatch!

I hate the fact that my Apple keyboards don't have insert. It ain't useful unless your on maya and pivot points are important which THEY ARE.

Here is a link with the list of equivalents:

My Currently Apple Thin USB keyboard
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1216
All other apple keyboards
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1167

FYI, Maya 2010, insert is fn+enter on the numpad.
Jesus I even had to waste time googling this up.