domingo, 13 de abril de 2014

Pixel Offset Tool For Maya

This tool presents a simple rig and a Heads Up Display for  measuring the pixel offset in ths stereo pair for 3 points in worldspace. This is very useful for checking stereo to be inside the safe stereo zone, and also to make transitions between shots having different stereo settings.
This should work in many maya versions, since it uses the python api and not the c++ api.

Instalation

  1. Unzip the zip file pixelOffset_v0.0.zip.
  2. Exit maya (all instances!
  3. Copy 'cgipipeline' folder and and '__init__.py' file to C:\Users\Documents\maya\scripts
  4. copy 'shelf_PixelOffset.mel' file to C:\Users\Documents\maya\prefs\shelves
  5. Start Maya
  6. Enjoy! ( Hopefully ;) )

How To Use

After the instalation, you will find a new shelf in your maya sesion, you can start the pixel offset tool by clicking the the button in the pixelOffset shelf.

A window will open, where you have to enter the names of the left, center and right camera.
You can also select the cameras one by one and press the button to de right of the text field.



After having all the fields completed, you have to push the button 'Add pixel offset locators and HUD'. Then 3 locators will appear, that you can move around in the scene, that will be used for measures. Also a Heads Up Display will appear that will reflect the measures for each locator, plus some stereo settings for the camera. I've also added a plane that moves relative to the camara that represents the position of the locator in the camara axis. This is usefull to see what objects are in front or behind that plane. The planes are color coded, background is green, action is blue, and foreground is yellow.





In the HUD, zp is zeroParalax, ia is interaxial, fg is the 'foreground' locator, ac is the 'action' locator (center) and bg is 'background' locator. The numbers presented is in percentage of screen size.


 You can edit the size of each plane with the 'Plane Scale' attribute on each locator.
With the 'Remove pixel offset Hud' you can turn off the HUD but keeping the locators. (you can get the HUD back by hitting the 'Add pixel offset locators and HUD' button again)
The same happens with the 'Remove pixel offset Planes' button, you can remove the planes but keeping the locators.
With the 'Remove pixel offset Setup' button you can remove everything, including the locators.
Hope this is usefull, and please let me know how it goes!

Eduardo.

domingo, 6 de abril de 2014

Folderazo!

Folder and Files template for projects

This simple tool addresss what i think is the most elemental fundation for production pipelines.
Folder and Files naming conventions. This is a starting point on top of wich you can build a lot of stuff to get your studio running better and more eficiently.

This tool works by defining a template first, where you specify the possible project root folders, then you define your assets, their folders and files as relative paths, and with some variables that you define later in the template. The ui of the tool will read this template and put in place the widgets for you to create the projects and assets in a simple way.

You can have as many templates as you want, and you can switch between them.

More help and usage comming soon to this webpage!