Part 2 || Overriding __str__() for Maya Python Objects

It’s a fabulously day in Toronto, crisp and sunny, I am loving it! J Today I will do my second posting to this posting “Overriding __str__() for Maya Python Objects” from September 14th, 2009. I will talk about how we know in the MMatrix documentation where to read that the operators we need to use are formatted like this (row, column): self(0,0), self(0,1), self(0,2), self(0,3), self(1,0), self(1,1), self(1,2), self(1,3), self(2,0), self(2,1), self(2,2), self(2,3), self(3,0), self(3,1), self(3,2), self(3,3) For this part of the code: #New __str__ function for Making the matrix readable.... def myMatrix_str(self): return "[[%g,%g,%g,%g][%g,%g,%g,%g][%g,%g,%g,%g][%g,%g,%g,%g]]" % (self(0,0), self(0,1), self(0,2), self(0,3),...

Maya composite and media cache

After ending a session the media cache doesn’t get cleared, only the information that is stored in the RAM gets cleared.
The media cache discards stored tiles as it is filled up and needs to make room for newer tiles being created as an artist works.
So if multiple artist are using the same machine it is a very good chance that one artist might clear another artist files stored in the media cache depending on the space allocated for the media cache.

Thanks toKen Larue for his tip

Where is the center of a polygon?

So you want to know the center point of a polygon, but you can't find an attribute that stores it...Nor can you find a MEL command that will give you this information. Which all means we're going to have to write our own script to calculate the center point of a polygon. First up, let's decide what we mean when we say the 'center' of a polygon. You (might) remember from school plenty of equations for regular polygons, and there's loads to be said about triangles... But I could recall nothing about finding the center of an irregular polygon, so...

Unwrap UVs Tool - An interactive tool for unwrapping UVs

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/stevenr/unwrap_uvs_tool_an_interactive_tool_for_automatically_unwrapping_uvs

Steven has a new blog post on AREA about interactive UV editing in Maya

Upgrading Mac OS stops Maya composite from working

Once you make an upgrade to the OS, in some situations the file access permission get changed thus stopping the application from launching.
Please do the following
Navigate to the var/temp folder and make sure you hav the proper permission to the Toxik folder

Maya 2010 and Mac 10.6.2

Apple has released an update for Snow Leopard (10.6.2)
This update solves a few problems that users encountered in the old OS.

Manipulators displaying wrong colors
All Shaders display the same color
Refresh issues

There is still a know issue that we are currently investigating
( Backfaces on unlit surfaces drawn incorrectly )

If you encounter an issue please make sure you fill out the BUG report
Help > report a Problem

Mental ray render error "degenerate trimming loop"

Example
GAPT 0.11 warn 092052: degenerate trimming loop

Before mental ray tessellates a trimmed surface, its trim curves are checked. Duplicate verticies as well as overlapping edges are removed. If, after this process, a trim curve contains less than 3 verticies, the 'degenerate trimming loop' warning is issued and the entire surface is skipped over.

Use File > Optimize Scene Size and toggle on "Remove Invalid Nurbs Surfaces and Curves" to clean this up.

Rendering multiple cameras with different frame range

This is a repeated question, and it have a simple workaround.
Simply use the command line render to determine the camera name along with the frame range
For example
Render –r mr –s 1- e 10 – cam camera1 myFile.mb
Render –r mr –s 11- e 20 – cam camera2 myFile.mb

You can also add the above 2 lines in a .bat file so you can execute them both at once

Lock up your Sets !

I recently found out that if you duplicate an object that is a member of a Set, by default the new object becomes a member of the Set too. This is not always desirable. When trying to find a workaround that prohibits Maya from assigning objects to a Set, I reached a dead-end trying to query the names of objects created by the 'duplicate' command. Until a colleague showed me how to use the Python API to work around the problem. Here's how we did it.... Put simply, I want to be able to prevent Maya adding objects to a...

Mental ray Phenomena naming limitation.

Please note that when creating your Phenomena , the attribute naming conflicts are not resolved automatically.
When connecting a new interface element to an attribute, the name of that attribute is used as the new name of the corresponding interface attribute. If such a name exists already in the interface, the attribute creation fails. If necessary, rename the attributes in the interface before establishing new interface connections.