Around the Corner

Improve performance with MPxNode::preEvaluation & MPxNode::postEvaluation

With last post we talked about the Best practices while migrating your plugin to Parallel Evaluation, in this post, we will talk about the following 2 new methods, and how to make use of them to improve the performance: MPxNode::preEvaluation MPxNode::postEvaluation Within the old DG system, because MPxNode::setDependentsDirty function is called during dirty propagation, it can be used to manage attribute dirtying, and sometimes, we can cache the computed data in this method to avoid expensive calculations in MPxNode::compute. Let’s... Read more →

Suggestions & Best practices while migrating your plugin to Parallel Evaluation

As we know, starting from Maya 2016, Maya introduces a new evaluation model that enabled better utilization of computer resources by distributing computation over all available cores and taking advantage of GPU compute power. Unlike previous versions of Maya, which was limited to node-level parallelisms, Maya now includes a mechanism for scene-level analysis and parallelization. For example, if your scene contains different characters that are unconstrained to one another, Maya can evaluates each character at the same time. At the... Read more →

XGenRenderAPI: How to use?

Maya is using procedurals for rendering translators. One of the reason of using procedurals is because the translators of some renderers are not extensible. For example, to keep modules independent, Mentalray’s Mayatomr.mll and XGen’s libAdskXGen.dll are not linked together. This means that the code using XGenRenderAPI doesn’t require a procedural. If third party renderer doesn’t support procedural, you can directly use XGenRenderAPI in the translator. To do this, you can call XGenRenderAPI::PatchRenderer::init() to initialize XGen primitive generation, and call FaceRenderer::render()... Read more →

How to connect Perception Neuron with Maya (Part 2)

In the last post, I talked about the NeuronDataReader SDK and the general process to use these APIs, now we will talk about how to make a Maya plug-in client to receive and parse the animation data. With this project, we are going to create a Maya plug-in which will: fetch the animation data from Axis Neuron application to Maya, create a Neuron specific skeleton, and assign the animation data to the skeleton, retarget the animation from the skeleton to... Read more →

Don't perform heavy tasks in the MoBu Real-time engine thread, even if it worked before

Recently we received a question about crashing while calling FBPlayerControl::GotoStart() from within a real-time device engine thread. It seems working fine up to MoBu 2014, but crashes in MoBu 2015. Actually, it seems working fine in previous MoBu releases, but as the best practice, it’s not recommended because the SDK documentation clearly mentions that some methods like DeviceIONotify() and DeviceEvaluationNotify() are called by the Real-time engine thread, and they should consume as little CPU time as possible and return as... Read more →

Writing an FBX importer / Exporter plug-in

While I am working on a WEBGL project, I wanted to share some hints I had to work through with you. The FBX documentation isn't clear on every steps, is a bit out of date even if it fairly easy to identify the pieces to update and spread all over the place. I hope that post will help on this. The project I am working on is a glTF importer / exporter. glTF is a specification (under development) for WEBGL... Read more →

backer for Project PERCEPTION NEURON

It’s amazing that a new company can compete with established MoCap hardware providers for 1/70 of the price, yet maintain the same level of quality - A level of quality which is seen in Hollywood Film production. Noitom Technology Ltd. based in Beijing succesfully funded their Perception Neuron project on Kickstarter. This is an assemble-it-yourself inertial mocap system that aims to give users a complete full-body capture solution. During the week-end they met their goal of USD 250k easily. Zhong... Read more →

Using augmented reality to preview the output of Project Pinocchio

A huge thanks to Kean Walmsley, who was previously working with me in the ADN group but now an AutoCAD API architect based in Neuchatel - Switzerland, and provide the original article for this post. Project Pinocchio is available on Autodesk Labs. Project Pinocchio is an online character generator that helps you “create, customize, and download your very own rigged 3D characters from a catalog of over 100 body types, outfits, hairstyles, and physical attributes in a few simple steps.”... Read more →

Maya Device API

Recently there was a lot of enthusiams around Virtual Production and use of Motion Capture. This article really summarize what great future and fun we will get on that side. But this is mainly about Virtual Production in general and mostly applied to MotionBuilder when it comes to Motion Capture. But there are many people asking - ok, but what about Maya and/or 3ds Max. I am not an expert on 3ds Max, but what I am going to say... Read more →

a Mathematical DG Node

Many of you probably knows about the sineNode available in the Maya devkit written in C++ and/or Python. This example is very useful if you interested running the sin() function. But there is several limitations which make this example a bit dry. First, it is just the sin() function and with this approach it means you would need to create as many 'math' node you want mathematical functions. Second, it has one input and one output parameter only, so it... Read more →

Updated Maya API Documentation Online and New Python API Learning Path

We have updated the Maya 2013 API Documentation, so please download the latest version here: http://www.autodesk.com/me-sdk-docs Within the updated documentation there are two major additions which have been done by Martin Ashton are API documentations Guru: First, we have a brand new Maya Python Learning Path http://docs.autodesk.com/MAYAUL/2013/ENU/Maya-API-Documentation/files/GUID-856DDB26-93E7-493D-A1D4-60C4CBA38B9C.htm Second, a class taxonomy – all classes arranged according to subject/concept http://docs.autodesk.com/MAYAUL/2013/ENU/Maya-API-Documentation/cpp_ref/_maya.html Enjoy! Kristine Read more →