Maya 2016 - small changes make for some small headaches

Lately I've been running into a few issues with projects and scripts that relate to some small changes made in Maya 2016, and 2016.5.  Like most of my discoveries, I'm posting them to the blog here for those of you who may find them of use...

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Subfolders, referencing - Yes, its more Maya scripting fun!

In the last couple of weeks, I've had to modify and tweak all the scripts that I developed for my students to automate file management from Maya.  In the process, I added new features and added extra functionality to handle some of the changes that this class had decided to implement.

One of my students asked me if I would be sharing these things on my blog - so yup, here we go - again...  I have a few, but to keep these posts nice and short I'll start with just a couple.

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38 days later...

I'm still going with my 100 days challenge this year - and we're already 38 days in!  Time flies when you're having fun!

With a few days on and off (out of town, etc) I do have a small handful of days to catch up on, but I am glad to have made this open medium and not lock myself down to one thing.  In 2014 it was all 3D - and while I could have done this again this year, I like that I can go and do what I feel like.

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Create retro-style text in illustrator.

For the logo that I needed for my 100 days project, I wanted a truly 80's vibe.  I love how easy it is to create an retro 80's chrome text effect with Illustrator.

In fact, I loved it so much I thought that I'd share how you can go about making one of these yourself.   I hope you enjoy this walk-through...

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Decided to do it... Again...

The 100 days project is back, in about 2 weeks time.  As I did in 2014 (given it didn't run in 2015) I've decided on yet another 80's themed challenge but this time leave it more open then a 3D image from an 80's 8-bit memory as was the case in 2014...

I've entitled it the "80's days challenge".  We'll see how it goes - and I'll post up anything I do that I think may be of interest here.

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Fixing a sticky stick...

As you may have seen in a previous post on the blog, I bought an old Atari 2600 a while back. It came with two sticks.  One looked in better condition then the other, however while it may have looked better, it was actually a lot worse then it looked in terms of play-ability.

After a few rounds of River Raid, I found having to push extremely heavily to get a reaction out of the game indicated that perhaps the contacts in the joystick had worn down...  With these old devices, its basically a set of little metal 'clickers' (best description I can think, though I'm sure there's an official name for them) that push down and make contact in a circuit - and when these lose their conductivity - well, that's when you die in River Raid, more times then you would like to!

So - I decided that perhaps one way to make sure I show everybody my true River Raid expertise would be to fix up those unreliable contacts...  And what better way could there be then replacing tired old technology with modern micro switches.

Cheap as chips

I went ahead and ordered some micro-switches from Aliexpress.  They cost US$1.15 (free shipping) for a bag of 50.  Locally here in NZ, these can sell for NZ$0.50 each, so I definitely made a better choice spending my dollar and a half.

2-pin 6 x 6 x 5mm switches

Technically I only needed about 5, but you can never have too many spares - which was lucky, as I did run into 2-3 duds...

Opening it up

The Atari stick is a real doddle to open up - just 4 screws in the bottom.  The only thing to watch out for was a small spring that sat below the fire button, but other then that its just a collection of plastic bits and nothing overly technical to worry about - especially when it comes to that "Heck!  How do I put this back together!?" moment.

Nice and simple...  No crazy "springs-go-everywhere" panic here!

The 2600 Vader model I believe was released in NZ around 1984-ish, making these around 32 years old.  It was covered in dust, worn plastic and the plastic coating on the PCB was bubbling in places.  What I needed to do was to lift the 5 metal clickers from the PCB...  Like most joysticks of this era, these are usually held down with a plastic tape/adhesive cover - and in this case, the whole board was covered in one big sticky sheet.

32 year old dust...  Ewww!

With some careful craft-knife action, and a finger-nail I did pull away a lot of the plastic.  I needed to ensure that I had plenty of track to solder my switches on as well.

Lifting the clickers - a little cut-n-scratching...

A little methylated spirits and cotton bud action, it was looking pretty clean and ready for the switches.

Looks brand new - well, kinda

Switched on

It wasn't as easy to get these switches on as I'd first thought.  Each switch is pretty tiny and I needed to make sure that the switches sat over that central point where the pad had been.  Also, the legs needed to be bent about to match the tracks.

Holding buttons down on a smooth circuit board is tricky - they slip and slide about a little more then I'd liked.  I could have glued them down first, but I didn't want to do that should I need to replace out one later on.  It took a handful of 'finger pressing' and careful maneuvering of a hot soldering iron to prevent melting my skin off as I soldered each one in place.

Soldered on - ready to play... Almost!

Did it work?

As I attached each individual switch, I felt I should really make sure that the switch works before carrying on to the next.  I had an old app on my Samsung Tablet for testing gamepad diagnostics.  There are plenty of tools for this - do a simple search on the Google play website - and its handy for such a project.

I'd also just bought a 9-pin to USB adapter so I could use my old joysticks with my RPi games (retroPie) so hooking that in to the tablet let me see when a switch was pressed...  It cost about $15 (free shipping) from Aliexpress and came with a pretty nifty USB adapter on the end.  This saved me having to dig out my OTG cable...

Very cool USB adapter lets me use this on both Tablet and Pi!

I did run across a couple of switches that didn't appear to work, and one that operated as though it was always on, and pressing down made it go off.

Since I'd actually tested these switches with a multi-meter prior to soldering them in, I'm not sure why that's the case, though some I had held down when soldering. My only real guess here is that possibly the heat, combined with the depressed button could have caused damage to the switch...  But it wasn't hard to just grab another!  (Given there were 50 of them).

Almost done

I finally managed to solder all of them in.  They sent appropriate on-off as expected through the tablet and I started to reconstruct the joystick.  However there were a few things that I had to do before this would work.

These had to be surgically removed.

The main one were the pins on the joystick shaft that were designed to press down on the contacts. The original pads were around a millimeter high, but these new switches were 5 mm (about the same length as these pins).  That mean't I had to cut those off - in fact, I had to make sure that they were 100% flat - even a small amount of plastic was too much.  But it worked.

The fire button was the same.  I had to remove the pin in the center completely.  I also had to remove the spring which let it bounce back up, though this wasn't an issue given that the micro-switch has its own spring loaded button.

And lastly - the switches had to be pretty accurate in where they sat on the PCB.  I found the down switch was just slightly off, and that meant the joystick shaft was on one side of the button rather then directly above it.  The space was pretty small, but just enough to not press down on the switch properly.  A little heat and a tap with a screw driver and it was fixed.

Done!

I managed to reassemble the stick.  Moving it around has a nice click to it and feels great.  If anything, down sounds like it may be not quite returning back to center, but its not hard to fix later.  I'm thinking if necessary, I might buy some fairly small springs (or remove some from a couple of ball-point pens) to sit around each switch just for the extra 'bounce' but we'll see how she goes with River Raid.

It seemed to work with the tablet testing software.  The real test will be with the 2600 when I get back to work (where its sat for a while, occassionally being pulled out after work)

Next time...

In hindsight, I should have gotten smaller 1.5mm high buttons rather then the larger 5 mm ones that I did.  That would have meant no need to cut back the plastic on the stick, but definitely will consider those for the next joystick project...

Roll on River Raid!  Woo!

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Yup, its time for more Maya python tips...

Well, I couldn't really keep away from posting Maya python material forever, so here's another installment of various tips, techniques and well, python-goodness!  This time I'm throwing up a handful of additional snippets of code for your tool productions and UI's...

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Its not all about the 3D...

...but its something that not many feel they need.  And those are the traditional art skills - drawing, painting, sketching.  Yup, that's the stuff that so many graduate CG artists claim to not be very good at, and in all honesty you really don't need to be great at drawing or painting to produce good 3D artwork.

However what I feel (this is coming more from a personal perspective) is that taking time to learn, practice and grow these skills can benefit you and make your own 3D work even better.  I've been trying to instill this on my students, as well as other artists who don't feel its something that they would ever consider.

Because I love the idea of building up my skills with more then 3D related materials (I don't spend time actually practicing drawing), I decided I'd start doing this myself and take my own advice.

The 90's - a time when there was such a thing as 'free time' :)

Back in the 90's I loved drawing - I had no internet (or 3D software) so it wasn't hard to find time to do it.  So, for me, what are the benefits of drawing?

De-stressing

What a great way to relax those brain muscles!  My guess is that its to do with most 3D work containing a mix of not only creative, but technical skills.  Both sides of your brain tend to work hard - creating art, but operating technical software building complex meshes, shaders, lighting and textures.

One thing I find relaxes me, especially when my brain needs a break from marking student work or technical headaches with software, is to stop and do a little doodling...

brain-break!  Scrawl and doodle to get your brain back in order

Just scrawl stuff on a page, maybe coming back to it while sitting there working on stuff, and adding a scribble now and again.  Perhaps when one side lets go (the technical side) it causes the "chill out" effect?  I'm no neurologist, but it sounds like a (plausibly) good theory!

Seeing the world, rather then looking at it

I can look at reference for a shot, I can understand and interpret the details then utilize it to produce great renders of my own in 3D.  That's knowledge I can then use to produce more work.  However when I'm painting or drawing without the software tools I'm really seeing things in a new light (excuse the pun).

Seeing for me is being able to start to really understand what is happening in front of me at a deeper level.  What I find happens when I draw things is that I absorb and retain knowledge more.  Its like the difference between going to a seminar and listening to it, versus writing notes while hearing what is spoken - you just take more information in when you're interpreting it onto paper or through your wacom tablet.

Extending creativity.

Yup.  Drawing things can inspire other ideas that you may have not considered, and its definitely something that a lot of designers do with gesture drawings, silhouettes, thumbnails...  When I'm doodling, I find not only do I draw ideas and designs, I can visualize additional ideas based on the ideas I started with.  (Its that idea-within-an-idea inception effect).  I feel it has helped me a lot in unleashing a little more imagination to help me take things outside the box.

Help me Obi-Kev, you're my drawing hope...

Say that you're now inspired and going to practice drawing to grow those creative muscles and use them to produce amazing artwork...  Having something to actually draw is the first challenge!  For me, I always love doing rough doodles and scribbles when my brain needs an escape from the computer screen...

Here's a few things I do that may offer some options to consider.

Find a challenge - and embrace it

Ok - so I use twitter - its a great way to get real time news feeds from studios, artists, websites and more.  While looking about one day, I found this...  A drawing challenge where someone would throw up a random shape with a red dot, and challenge people to draw something containing the shape.

Two triangle shapes become knights helmets

Banana shape becomes space alien!

Occasionally they throw up a 'portrait' challenge too

Because of the timezone, usually a shape goes up in the afternoon or evening, and its that perfect time to pull out a pen and scrawl an idea on paper.  For these, I figured they would make for a great "10 min doodle challenge" if I could bash out a drawing in that short time.  Its a challenge to come up with a drawing inspired by the shape, but its lot of fun and fun encourages practice!

Life drawing

I've always told students how great life drawing would be to becoming an artist... But as much as I offer advice, I never took it until a month or two ago when one of my co-workers dragged me to one.  I went, music came on and out came the model...  And then everything just chilled out and was an immensely relaxing experience...

light and form

getting the perspective right can be challenge - but its good to be challenged

Sometimes its about just taking time working on one part

Unlike drawing from image reference, drawing from a real-life model is constantly changing as the model poses several times.  Life drawing isn't about amazing art (though some of the more established artists make you question that with their abilities), its about drawing what you see...  And in short time frames, you're forced to see pretty quickly.

Its likely that you've got a life drawing class somewhere near wherever you live.  If not, drawing from life (sit in a park, on the sidewalk, in the office or go to the zoo and look at animals) can be another way to do this...  Though don't creep people out by staring at them while you draw...  Animals at the zoo don't tend to complain, so they're a safer bet.

Painting fan art

Ok, so that subject can be a little controversial I know.  It brings up visions of kids copying pictures of anime characters.  However in this respect I decided a couple months back to start to practice digital painting (it is an area I never touched).  I needed something to paint - so I decided to choose to paint "fan art" portraits from some of my favorite people from history, TV, film or music.

I started looking at people from the early years of home computing that I admire, however a couple weeks ago I decided to paint characters from the show 'Halt and Catch Fire'.  Its a great drama based in the 80's computing era (starting to see a pattern emerging here).  Well worth watching, some great characters and interesting stories behind each of them.

Donna Clark - starts like this...

...and she ends like this

As I'm doing this, I start to see the finer details in the images I reference.  The folds and wrinkles and how the light brings them out...  The way that the skin tones change based on where the skin is thinner and how much of the sub-dermis colour comes through, the form of the head based on the skull and muscles in the face - as you paint you see the way light changes, and highlights the ridges and form.  I did the four main characters from the show...  You can see the full painted images on my Art station , Deviant art or Twitter.

All 4 paintings - compiled into a banner... Just cause...

Its not just helping me see light and shape, its also furthering my understanding of the way the anatomy works visually.

So...

What it really comes down to when you think about things, each of these drawing topics are about seeing - whether its seeing an image based on a shape, the form and detail from a real life model or again the form and detail from painting...  My brain is absorbing that thing that helps me grow as an artist.

But do you feel you are terrible at drawing, so you don't?

That's the problem - the vicious cycle of "I can't, so I won't".  To become better at drawing, you have to practice - and that means doing it.  If you never start or try, you never will.

Just start - and keep doing it.  My advice is to also date your drawings (no matter how bad) and look back on them every other month to watch how you're improving.  Seeing growth is a great motivator.  You'll come to a point where you wondered why you never started sooner.

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Whats more relaxing then painting?

Good question...  Well, how about painting iconic people from the 80's computing era!  As I had to teach some art and design skills the other week, I needed to prep up some digital painting skills as its not something I've ever really looked into doing.

Afterall - I've never really use my Wacom for more then painting texture maps for 3D models, or scribbling/doodling in Photoshop.  However after running the class (with thanks to my teaching side-kick Ken at work for his tips and guide on how to best deliver this) I enjoyed it so much that I felt I wanted to do more.  And of course being somewhat obsessed with the 80's mean't I knew what subject matter I would probably target...

Numero-Uno : Uncle Clive

Sir Clive Sinclair

OK, so surprisingly (I know its hard to believe) he's not really my uncle (though I'm pretty sure he's someones!)

He's a huge part of the 1980's computing era.  Sir Clive Sinclair - the man who invented the Sinclair ZX81 and ZX Spectrum.  Amazing machines, which made a huge impact on the home computing market and helped forge the gaming industry as well.  If you want to hear about just where it all fitted into the history of gaming, check out From bedrooms to billions.  Its a great doco!

This was done on a Sunday afternoon over a couple of hours - and I have to say just how much fun it was.  Very relaxing, gradually building up layer-upon-layer (which sounds a tad like a Sarah Lee Cheesecake commercial) and softly smudging the colours together.

Online Art supplies - there's more then Photoshop

I mostly work with Photoshop when it comes to making textures for spaceships, however I used MyPaint for this because of its more specialised brushes.  MyPaint is a great opensource digital art program.  What I like about it most is that its got a great brush engine.  Loads of flexibility and ways in which you can get brushes to behave.  Some change size based on velocity - which helps a lot if you find you have to work with a mouse (if you do, really, really consider getting a wacom tablet) yet want that more natural 'pen' stroke.

MyPaint - great tool!

Only real issue I have with MyPaint is that it can get quite laggy with high resolution work.  These paintings were no problem - however after exporting the images I realised that I've painted them fairly low res unfortunately.  Other than that I like that I can work full screen and operate it easily with a few easy to remember keyboard shortcuts (rather then rely on menus and tool bars).  Plus it has an infinite canvas.

Other options...

There are more great tools then MyPaint - I've toyed with a few others, and while I like them, I still find myself popping back to MyPaint...  If you're interested in a few options, there is a very similiar tool called Krita.  Krita is feature packed (a lot more then MyPaint), however it lacks an infinite canvas.  The concept of infinite canvas is really appealing and feels a lot less restrictive.

Krita - another great tool loaded with features

Note : I demonstrated Krita recently at a meetup I run each month, and it was fairly sluggish.  The delay between drawing a stroke on my Wacom and the brush catching up was pretty bad and really didn't impress anybody who was watching the demo.  Whether this was my PC (its a pretty hefty box with 32Gb, 256Gb SSD, core i7 and Quadro K4200) or the software, who knows...  Its a free download - I'd be tempted to recommend downloading it for yourself and trying it.

If its just doodling and sketching, then Mischief is an impressive tool.  Its got a hybrid vector approach to artwork (you can zoom in and out without seeing pixels at all). It also has an infinite canvas and very fluid response (literally never gets laggy from what I've experienced). Its that fluidity that impresses me the most.

Unlike the others, this is a commercial product.  There's a very cool free version (minus the oh-so-useful layers).  Its not as feature-packed as the others (basic sketching brushes mostly) but that's not a bad thing - it has the tools you need for drawing and removes the bloating which is likely why its so quick and clean to work with.

Its also quite cheap to upgrade (or just purchase)at US$25...  Well worth looking into if you love to sketch (and the idea of super-smooth line work thanks to its ingenious technology)

Michief - fast, fluid, minimalistic...  Awesome...

But - lets get back on topic.

I found that MyPaint has a great brush called smudge+paint - it does exactly what it says...  Based on the pressure of the stylus, it behaves very much like a chalk or soft pastels.  Hard pressure paints a solid colour, lighter pressure smudges things.

The general process blocking in areas of solid colour by pressing hard, then softly smudging them together couldn't be any easier.

MyPaint has a large library of awesome brushes to choose from!

There are also a large range of other brushes, though apart from smudge+paint, the only other brushes I needed were a splattering brush (course-bulk) which I mention later on and a simple pencil brush to sketch out the general illustration.

Numero-two-no : Jack Tramiel

Jack Tramiel was the founder of Commodore computers, a company who also greatly impacted the 80's computing market with machines such as the Commodore 64, VIC20, PET and Amiga.  Sadly he passed away in 2012, but of course his legacy still lives on.

He was a little more challenging to paint - mostly due to all the folds and wrinkles in his skin - but I learnt a lot about painting detail and shading from doing it, so it was well worth the effort.

Interestingly he had a lot of freckles on his forehead, which I managed to pull off just as easily using another of MyPaint's paint brushes mentioned previously - the course-bulk which produces a randomly splattered pattern as you paint.  I also used a very small sized one to add some subtle stubble around the mouth...

In fact, I actually used that same brush to add the small amount of speckled skin marks on Sir Clives head as well.

Like any piece of art, I could keep working on this - I realise that there were a lot of finer wrinkles on his skin such as the ones on his forehead, etc that I didn't put in.  However I like the softer look of the painting, so I'm pretty happy with the result.

The Process

I found the process of painting really easy to get in to.  A very rough sketch was made using the photograph as a reference.  I just need markers to position the details - but its the same for many artists.  Even if not laying out a sketch first, there is reference of some kind whether its a model, a photo or a personal doodle.  Of course, there's always those amazing artists that just have a feel for form and capable of creating something amazing from their imagination.  One day...

Placing that in a layer of its own, the reference photo to one side, I added a layer below the sketch and I just started to block in the colours in large areas.  The photo helped give me a guide to the colour tones I needed, and then it was down to a lot of painting and smudging to blend it into a final piece of artwork.

Sketch, paint, ta-daaaaaa!

Funnily I felt it always starts off looking rather 'bad' when you're just laying in the colours.  Nothing feels more embarrassing then having people look over your shoulder early and see something that has the appeal of a painting made by a pre-schooler with blobs of colour that look flat and splattered on the screen.

Once the key shades are in place that define the shapes in the sketch, I switch the sketch off and it becomes a hand painting process - observation of the reference and just painting in the lighting and tones by eye is really enjoyable.

Its all about seeing what's in front of you...

What I love so much about the process is that it helps get your creative side of the brain to take over, and then you start to really see what it is you're painting.  It clicks, and you get that epiphany where it all makes sense.

Back in the early 90's I decided to teach myself to portrait sketch.  Obviously it was easier back then when there were no distractions like Facebook... or the web in general!  What I'm loving about painting is that it brings back that thing I loved about pencil sketching - the way that your mind starts to see the detail...

1992 - yup, its me...  In glorious pencil

I'll definitely be doing more soon.  That satisfaction of finishing a piece of art that you feel proud of as well as the pure joy of sitting quietly and gradually throwing colours onto a virtual canvas is somewhat addictive...

So, who's next?

I've been considering keeping this 80's theme rolling and possibly including some of those unsung heroes who had an impact on the gaming industry back in the early 80's.  Carol Shaw (who wrote River Raid for the Atari 2600) is said to be the first female game programmer (or at least one of the first).   Dona Bailey who, along with Ed logg developed one of my arcade favorites, Centipede.

There are many name and faces behind the amazing games of the past that people just don't know about (or in many cases, care).  The hard part is the lack of decent high resolution photography for these people back in the past.  Of course I also love the well known icons as well - Wozniak, Miyamoto, Bushnell, etc

What I'll paint??  Well, I guess we'll just have to see what inspires me next...

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New Sinclair products look sexier... in CG...

Recently Retro-computers in the UK put together a crowd-funding campaign to raise money to create and release a second ZX Spectrum Vega classic gaming device.  This time, unlike the original, it would be portable - with a built in screen, battery and retaining the ability to connect to the TV as well.

It also had something the original didn't - curves - and curves are sexy...

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Learning technical stuff from books can be fun...

Usborne books were a great childhood favorite when it came to pretty much anything.  They were filled with cool drawings and the way they visually showed how things worked was a great way to teach all kinds of fascinating stuff for kids (and adults for that matter).

When it came to computing, they were a great resource to coming to grips with all that new technology!

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Rejuvenating my geriatric childhood friend

I was really happy a few years ago to get my first home computer back in my hands from a friend who'd kept it safe.  It was one of those 'worked when I last used it' machines, and I had made the assumption all would be good...

I had broken the ends of the keyboard membrane when I decided to open it once, but I knew I could replace that as there were new replacements available.

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Let Python be with you... Always...

What do you call acquiring  a new Atari 2600?  Well, how about an excuse to recreate a classic console Star Wars game in Python - both riding on the current Star Wars hype, as well as getting that retro-nerd fix at the same time.

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Automating Maya render layers with Python

I had hoped to take a break from writing up Maya python related articles on the blog, but hey - when there's plenty to share, may as well keep popping it up.  This time, its all about building a tool (rather then a UI) for automating the render layer setup process...

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Python (Maya UI) - just finishing up the window

Ok - I was tossing up whether to post a final few very basic tips of UI advice here, just to finish up for now on working with UI's in general.  But hey, I think just for new users, it doesn't hurt to add those little tweaks and answer some very simple questions I'd been asked in the past....

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