Contest postponed

You know, I was afraid that I'd jumped on the contest idea a bit too soon.  Sure enough, I haven't had time to even wrangle the details together.  Conceptually it's all there, but there are several things that need to be put into place before I can kick it off, and it's just not gonna happen right now.  Heck, I haven't even had time to work on the update in a while.

My apologies for the premature announcement.  When it's actually to roll, you'll hear more.

Contest announcement delay

I thought I'd have the earlier part of this week to get ready for today's official kickoff of the tweenMachine Design Contest, but then life happened. I may have time to work on it before the weekend is out, but if not, it'll have to wait 'til next week. My apologies for the delay.

Announcing...

You know, I was thinking that the tweenMachine Facebook page needs some art.  I was also thinking that with the new Python version of tweenMachine coming, maybe it's time to get a new shelf button icon as well.  Thinking about those two thinks spawned another think, one that I hope will be fun and interactive.  So without further ado, it's time to announce...

The tweenMachine Design Contest!

The tweenMachine Design Contest will present a unique challenge for graphic designers, and a unique opportunity to have your designs seen in multiple locations, both in Maya and on the web.

What's so unique about it?  Well, the contest centers around the creation of two images, each serving a dual purpose...

• Image 1 will be used as the new official tweenMachine shelf button icon in Maya AND as the profile image on the tweenMachine Facebook page.
• Image 2 will be used as a header graphic for the new "About" dialog in the upcoming tweenMachine update in Maya AND as the cover image on the tweenMachine Facebook page.
• Both images will also likely be used in other places as well: web sites, documentation, etc.

The images will need to be created based on very specific guidelines, so don't start on anything yet.  I will announce the full contest details when it officially kicks off on August 1st.  Stay tuned for more!

tweenMachine Tangent Error

I recently began receiving reports of a tangent-related error in tweenMachine:

// Error: Unrecognized tangent type. Use spline, clamped, linear, flat or step. //

With the help of one of the guys at work, I determined that this will occur when you're trying to add a tween key outside the range of an attribute's current keyframes; i.e. if you try to add a tween key to an object on frame 105, but the object's first keyframe isn't until frame 110. Because there's no previous key to reference for the tangent type, the tangent type in the script will remain undefined, and Maya will complain when applying the tangent.

I hope to eventually add an elegant solution for this problem. For now, the workaround is just to make sure that all objects that you're trying to tween have keys both before and after the frame where you want the tween key to appear.

tweenMachine 2.03

tweenMachine 2.03 is published. It fixes a problem that has prevented Maya versions in the 200X series from using the special tick color feature. If you run into any issues, drop a note here (still haven't got the contact page on my site updated yet).

Here there be Pythons!

I recall first hearing about Python when it was added many years ago to Blender, a cool little 3D app that I used for a stretch near the end of my days at the Art Institute. However, its inclusion in Blender was largely meant (from what I can remember, anyway) as a means to assist in the development of interactive 3D applications...namely, games. I wasn't interested in doing games, so I ignored it. I discovered Animation:Master not long before graduation, so Blender went bye-bye, and so did any thoughts of Python.

The next time I recall hearing about Python was some time in the last year or so, when I heard that we use it at Reel FX. It's becoming very popular to embed Python support into 2D and 3D production software, and number of the tools that we use are apparently making the shift to Python from their own proprietary scripting languages. I noticed its inclusion in recent versions of Maya, but didn't dig into it right away for some unknown reason. I think that part of my hesitancy was because I heard that Python was an object-oriented language, and the few times I had tried to wrap my head around object-oriented programming, something just wasn't clicking.

One of the things that was discussed in my annual review was broadening my knowledge base in the area of programming/scripting languages. It was recommended that I start with Python, so after we wrapped animation on Open Season 2 and things settled down a bit, I started digging into it. I've only been working with it for a short stretch -- less than a month, I think -- but I feel it's pretty safe to say that I've become a Python junkie.

I just can't get enough of it! I don't think I've ever found a language that was so powerful, and yet so easy to learn. While I spent a good bit of time reading about it before I sat down to start actually using it, I found that I was able to jump into real, usable programs very quickly because the core syntax is so intuitive and easy to learn, and because there are so many things you can do with the collection of modules that come packaged with it. After using it for only a couple days, I was able to start writing some fairly in-depth tools for work, and in some cases it's the kind of stuff that would be literally impossible to do with MEL (the Maya Embedded Language). The majority of what I've done with it so far has been organized in a very "structured" way, similar to how I would build a MEL script. However, I'm starting to explore classes and objects as I work on porting our existing MEL-based pose library tool into a Python-based animation library tool, and it's coming along really well.

I certainly wouldn't call myself a "Pythonista" at this point, but I'm very pleased with what I've been able to do with it so far, and I'm super excited about all the possibilities that it opens up. In addition to using it at work, I plan on using Python for a number of personal projects. One idea I'm toying with is rewriting some (or possibly all) of my tweenMachine tool in Python, which I hope would speed up some of its operation, and also would make it easier to add some of the new features that I've had in the back of my mind for a while. I also plan on using Python for a personal web project that was originally going to be driven by PHP, and might convert some existing PHP-based web stuff to Python as well.

Yeah, I now...I can see some folks making the hammer/nail comparison when I talk about it like that (i.e. when a guy gets a new hammer, all the world becomes a nail). However, Python isn't just a hammer. It's an entire toolbox, and that's what I think I like about it the most. As the Python community likes to say, it comes with "batteries included," and I'm eager to put those batteries to use!

P.S. Yes, this is one of the reasons why I haven't yet posted a link for purchasing the last few Animate a Face sets. I do hope to get that up soon, though, and I appreciate those who have written so far to express interest in it. Watch for an announcement here in the hopefully-not-too-distant future! :)

Thanks and stuff

Happy Thanksgiving to all those celebrating the holiday this weekend! It's been a while since I've posted a significant update here, so I figured it was about time to crank through a few different things.

First off, The Very First Noel is going to be airing on DirecTV beginning Friday, November 24th, and running through December 31st. It'll be on channel 103, with the first show at 7:30 am, and repeats popping up every two hours after that.

More candy ballistics tests are on the way. Shortly after the first installment with Smarties, Steve and friends ran another test with Starburst. How on earth did they manage to get Starburst down the barrel of Steve's gun? What happened to it once it was fired from said weapon? Stay tuned for more candy gun fun...

Some questions have come up regarding further updates to the tweenMachine. I still have plans to add additional features, and even started working on some of them shortly after releasing 2.02. However, those efforts were short-lived, as I was just a little too burnt from the big push I made to get the updated TM released. Things were complicated further when the motherboard on my home box died and I had to get a new machine. My old hard drive survived, thankfully, but I haven't yet re-installed Maya (and to make a long story short, Alias doesn't make that very easy). Anyway, I do plan on picking up the torch again one of these days, but at the moment I'm working on a totally different scripting project that will likely keep me busy 'til the year is out.

And finally, on a more personal note, some of you will be receiving notification of a new e-mail address for me in the near future. While our spam filter does a great job of setting aside junk mail, the ratio of spam to real mail has taken a dramatic leap in the last couple months (about 10:1 at this stage...even worse on my wife's account). If you don't receive a note with the new addy and start getting bounces from my current address, just use the handy-dandy contact form to get in touch with me. (Sadly, even that has needed an update or two recently to deal with form-spammers. Just sick-n-wrong.....)

There are a couple other things I want to talk about, but they're a bit more involved, so they'll be coming later in their own topics.

tweenMachine v2.02

Didn't announce 2.01, so I'll cover that and 2.02 in this little update...

For v2.01, which was posted a couple weeks back, the major update was to make the tweenMachine play well with character sets. Now you can easily key character set data with it, using one of two methods. You can create a custom character set group (using a special menu item) that will key the active character set, or you can import your character sets into the tweenMachine.

2.02 just got posted, and adds the ability for those using Maya 7 and higher to toggle the use of Maya's "special" tick color for keys created using the tweenMachine.

tweenMachine v2.00 is ready!

Yep, it's approaching 5:00 in the morning. And I'm gonna get an earful from my wife for staying up so late. But at this point, I really don't care. I've felt this crazy urgency to get v2 of the tweenMachine assembled ever since all the upgrade ideas came to me late last month, and this is the final push to get it out there for people to use. There are still some "icing" features to add, but those will come more slowly. For now, I'm happy with the "cake" I was able to assemble during the last month or so, and hope it tastes good to the folks out there.

In releasing this beastie that has taken so much of my free time and brain power lately, I must first and foremost give thanks to God for giving me the capacity to make this tool and share it with the animation community. Thanks to the folks on my "beta team" for their patience and willingness to take it for a spin in the early stages of development, and for helping me work out various display issues and bugs that cropped up. Thanks for the notes of enthusiasm I've received, in reference to both the original version and the beta of v2. It makes me feel good to know that it's helping folks with their animation process. I'm especially grateful for comments I've received from folks making the transition from 2D to 3D, expressing how the tweenMachine has helped make the shift easier.

All right, off to bed wit' me. Enjoy!

tweenMachine v2 in the works

While a tiny UI with one slider that operates on selected objects is useful, it's also extremely limited. I'm in the early stages of development on v2.0 of the tweenMachine, and wanted to let folks know what's coming. This will be a major update with a number of new features, including:

Sets: Users will be able to create custom sliders that affect a specific set of controls. With this feature, you can more easily sculpt the start of a breakdown pose without selecting a single object. For example, make a slider that affects the entire body, another that only affects the spine, one for the left arm, etc. Controls can be assigned to any number of sets.

Groups: Any number of set sliders can be organized into collapsable named groups. For example, you could create a group for each character in your scene.

Save with scene: Data for groups and sets is saved with your scene file. When you reload your scene and start the tweenMachine, it will read the existing data and rebuild the UI automatically.

Load/Save: Save data for all groups and sets to a text file, and load it into another scene.

Import: Import specific sets or groups from a saved data file.

Timeline ticks: Enable/disable ticks on the timeline for any set or group, so you can see where your poses are without having to select anything.

Stay tuned for more!

tweenMachine Update

Updated the tweenMachine tool last night (a.k.a. early this morning). Now it recognizes when channels are selected in Maya's channel box, and only operates on those channels. This allows you to easily favor specific channels in different ways, which should make it a lot easier to block out arcs, overlap, and other things I probably haven't even considered. I've been wanting to add this feature for some time now, and finally got the "oomph" after reading a post on an Animation Mentor forum from David Martinez that he was looking forward to it. Ask and ye shall receive and all that. ;)