Scripts page now live!

It's opened up with a couple of tools I wrote for Maya including the playblasting tool I posted about last week.

jab_blast.mel preview

I've been looking at ways to improve workflow lately. Something that I've found moving from studio to studio is that I can spend a lot of time spitting out playblasts to get into edit, dailies, or whatever else they might be called for. I make sure nothing but geometry is showing, the resolution is correct, files are being saved to the correct folder, etc. Now I wouldn't call myself a strong programmer, but I've been using more and more mel on various projects over the years and since I couldn't find anything that did what I wanted online, I put together a mel script that will automate these repetitive tasks yet is extremely customizable. Since I teach an animation class where I require students to deliver homework as playblasts at a specified format I decided that I would try to clean it up and make it usable for them. After that I thought why not make it something I would be comfortable with putting into a production team environment. The result is jab_blast.mel. It consists of two commands. One to run the playblast and one to set consitent playblast settings and output. The current settings window is visible below:

I have some folks beta testing it at the moment but as soon as I feel it's ready I will consider releasing it for public consumption if there is enough interest. Leave a comment if this is something of value as well as any features you're looking for in a good playblast output script.

Suspension and Ground Tracking Test [Vehicle Toolkit]

I worked out a way to do truer suspension and ground tracking inside of Maya. Now I just have to implement it into my vehicle toolkit rigging system. 

SVA Award Winning 2010 Thesis Films

Many of the winning SVA theses came from students of mine including 2/3 major award winners. If you count award winning animators on these theses that would make 3/3. Check them out!

Congrats Eric, Tyler, Brandon, Shota, and Chris

Autodesk Showreel 2010

I saw today that I worked on one of the pieces in Autodesks new 2010 showreel. It's Rhino's Cadillac/Subway spot about 58 seconds in.

New Jabimation Facebook Page

I wanna let folks know that I started a facebook page for my work and you shouldn't hesitate to fan it up:)