Tutorials

Separate blendshapes seamlessly in Maya

Posted by Mat on Oct 29, 2011 in Featured, Tutorials | 0 comments

Last week, I had to come up with a way of separating one blendshape into multiple blendshapes. So basically, imagine we have one blendshape of a full smile and we need to separate it into left and right.

If you go to the Edit Deformers menu, there is an option to paint blendshape weights. This is the tool we will be using, but the tricky part of separating blendshapes like this is the overlap area between the shapes. Since blendshapes are additive, if the overlap area is not done properly, when both blendshapes are enabled you may run into areas where it is morphing more or less than what you intended.

Sticky Lips: How To & Sample File

Posted by Mat on Jun 18, 2011 in Featured, R&D, Tutorials | 1 comment

It was requested that I release my sticky lips setup so people could try to take the solution further. I haven’t spent much time on it since posting about it way back, so I figured I might as well. Only thing I ask of anybody that does further develop this is please provide a link back to my website and keep me up to date on any improvements you have made :)

Click here to download the sample file (Made in 3ds Max 2010, and is of a Sackboy-looking teapot since I do not want to be distributing the model seen below, which is not mine, around the internets)

A video of the effect in action. Special thanks to Craig Hobbs for use of the model:

For now I am just going to do a general write-up of some things I am doing in the file and why I am doing them. It might sound like a tutorial at parts, but I’m more just explaining the general process and thoughts behind the setup. This is not intended to actually be a tutorial, and you may still have to figure some things out on your own.

Using StretchTM

Posted by Mat on Mar 28, 2010 in Featured, Tutorials | 4 comments

StretchTM is a useful property found on nodes, but it is somewhat hidden. It is particularly useful for bones.

In this video I cover two uses of the StretchTM matrix. I show how you can set up bones to stretch along with another bone, as well as how to change the wirecolor of a bone based on how far it has been stretched.

Parameter Wire Copying

Posted by Mat on Mar 19, 2010 in Featured, Tutorials | 5 comments

Max does not allow you to copy/paste parameter wires, as it does with most other controller types. This is still capable, however, through MAXScript.

This video shows you how to go about creating an instance (cake walk) and unique copy. When creating a unique copy, it copies the controller but the wire no longer updates along with it’s targeted track. Really, all the copy needs is a kick in the butt to get it to start working again.

This can really help improve workflow, as it allows you to set up instances of wires throughout your rig and easily copy from one track to the next rather than manually connecting each time.

FFD Mirroring

Posted by Mat on Feb 17, 2010 in Featured, Tutorials | 3 comments

I’ve always found mirroring FFD Spacewarps to be a real pain. I finally decided to play a bit earlier today to try to find a good way of doing it rather than settling for a negative scale in the x-axis or roughing out a “mirrored” version.

So, we all know negative scale is a bad thing; however, mirroring without getting a negative scale is not as straight forward and easy as simply clicking the mirror button in the tool bar.  There are ways of getting around this for things such as morph targets: most straight forward in Max 2010 is using Symmetry Tools in the Graphite Modeling Tools. I’ve always found it to be extra tedious though when dealing with FFD Spacewarps. They are often warped into very obscure shapes for cartoon-style characters, and unfortunately the Graphite Tools only deal with Editable_Poly classes.  FFD Spacewarps are also a bit of a black hole when it comes to MAXScript, so as far as I know you can’t just go and write a tool to do it either.

Z-Depth & Fog in One

Posted by Mat on Jul 10, 2008 in Featured, Tutorials | 9 comments

This tutorial will show you how to get Z-Depth and fog in compositing out of the same render pass. It will also show you how to tweak your fog without having to go back and re-render from your 3d package. The tutorial is aimed at beginner to intermediate level compositors. The technique for getting Z-Depth and fog from the same render pass is not recommended for all situations but is definitely helpful if you have limited resources and cannot afford to render passes for both.

I will be using 3ds Max 2008 and After Effects CS3 for this tutorial although the techniques can be applied to any software packages.