bhGhocht – fresh onion skinning/ghosting tool for Maya

I was watching a recording of a live lecture with Jason Ryan (Dream-works/i Animate) when a scholar asked him if he use ghosting when animating in 3D. He mentioned a duo of reasons why he usually doesn’t, even though he uses the light-box feature all the time when animating in 2D.

I realized I feel the same way about some 3D ghosting solutions I’ve tried. One problem is that they slow the scene down typically, and another is that they are not that simple to see in the view-port, usually being a faded version of the mesh or a wire-frame of it which doesn’t read extremely clearly.

Then the penny dropped for me – 2D animators don’t see the fully shaded character in the light-box when animating, they see simply the lines they’ve drawn, so the spacing is a lot easier to see. So I set about writing a tool that will give an outline of the character rather than a fully shaded one when ghosted. It’s too a little different in that the animator just ghosts specific frames rather than having something serious that’s constantly updating in the scene, for my work-flow at least this is preferable.

I’ve been testing and trying this out while animating for the last couple of days and am finding it’s really helping me see the spacing a lot more obviously than before.
UPDATE – The first release version is ready now… Follow this link to the tutorial video and you’ll find the link there. Hope you find it helpful!

vimeo.com/50029607

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Get advantage of Microsoft DirectX 11 technology with the latest Autodesk  Maya- DX11-Shader. Offering you real-time, centralized, simple-to-control shader effects such as crack-free tessellation, vector displacement maps, translucence, reflections, and shadows, the DX11Shader is built with a latest API (application programming interface) that exposes DirectX 11 natively in Autodesk Maya with HLSL (High Level Shading Language) support.

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Maya 2013 video Tutorial – Modeling Strawberry and easy texturing. This video tutorial will show you how to basically model and texture a strawberry. This video tutorial is for almost every level.

Question: I actually need a few help ive been having a problem in Maya its that whenever I make a polygon it doesn’t mechanically spawn at the pivot point so, I have to scale the object on my own without it appearing automatically on the pivot point, so that’s my first problem and my second problem is that every the polygon icons suddenly disappeared and all it displays now is a bunch of word like for example a cube it doesn’t actually show the cube icon every it does it shows the word cube… I really require help.

Answer: For the first issue. It’s not actually a problem, but a feature. Under make polygon primitives, look every the way down and uncheck where it says “interactive creation”. I am not sure what you mean for second problem. Do you mean the icons under make polygon primitives menu? Because I don’t think it displays icons at every one.

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The 3D account has the edge and the 3D wherewithal to go with it…

What’s the most excellent way to watch Journey 2: the Mysterious Island? With a room complete of kids it seems that. My wife and I looked following our dear friends’ six children one evening last week; which, with our son, means we had seven, counted, seven kids, ages three to nine, clamoring for — what else? — A movie. It’s tricky choosing a film that can entertain a three-year old (for as long as they’re willing to stay in the room at least) and make a nine-year old feel as if he isn’t being stuck with a kiddies flick. This wasn’t the first time we’ve looked after this particular brood either, so we’ve had our fair share of failures and strike-outs. But director Brad Peyton’s Journey 2? The much-improved, high-pitched clean follow-up to Eric Brevet’s Journey to the Center of the Earth amps up the adventure, soars above the clouds and dives beneath the seas, trots out everything from pint-sized elephants to enormous lizards, cranks up the relations welcoming comedy, wholeheartedly embraces its 3D presentation, and delivers a harmless but harrowing ball of all-ages amusing kids will devour.

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In “Ice Age: Continental Drift,” Scrat’s nutty pursuit of the cursed acorn, which he’s been after since the dawn of time, has world changing consequences — a continental cataclysm that triggers the most adventure of every one for Manny, Diego and Sid. In the wake of these earth shattering upheavals, Sid reunites with his long lost family, and the bunch of criminals encounters a ragtag menagerie of colourful new characters determined to stop them from returning home.

Manny, Diego, with Sid embark upon another adventure after their continent is set adrift. Using an iceberg as a ship, they encounter sea creatures and fight pirates as they explore a new world.

Directors: Steve Martino, Mike Thurmeier

Writers: Michael Berg (screenplay), Jason Fuchs (screenplay)

Stars: Ray Romano, Denis Leary and John Leguizamo

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Spain’s Ilion Animation Studios used Autodesk 3d studio Max and Autodesk Maya software to make the alien world of the Planet 51 film and video game.

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Vancouver based Goldtooth Creative uses Autodesk Entertainment making Suite with Autodesk MotionBuilder, Autodesk Mudbox, and Autodesk Maya software for the whole thing from pre-viz to animation to make CG trailers and cinematics such as Prototype 2 and 2Deus Ex.

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Graph Editor and HumanIK Enhancements

Enhancements to the Graph Editor include a latest interactive Retime tool plus a stepped preview mode for pose-to-pose animation.

HumanIK Enhancements

A figure of enhancements to the HumanIK feature set help animators more simply take advantage of its powerful bipedal character rigging with animation tools.

1. The ability to map with retarget HumanIK animation to and from a custom rigged character

2. A unified character context for increased usability
3. Character views that can be customized to fit detailed requirements
4. Continuous rig alignment during manipulation plus playback
5. Greater power over Roll Bone influences

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More with no trouble segment scenes to work in parallel and improved manage complexity, thanks to targeted improvements to both the user interface and the fundamental architecture for file referencing.

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Transfer animation between characters via the new ATOM (Animation Transfer Object Model) offline file format, in order to repurpose existing animation data as new characters are created. Another element of the new Open Data initiative. ATOM natively supports key-frames, constraints, animation layers, and Set-Driven-Keys, enables artists to more simply repurpose existing animation data as new characters are created.

1. ATOM natively supports keyframes, constraints, animation layers, and Set Driven Keys.

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