jab_blast.mel preview
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 12:00PM 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.
Reader Comments (3)
It would definitely come in handy! Nice tool!
HI,
Can you make a tutorial for creating a basic rope rig?
If you've seen my growing vines tutorial, that is prolly what I would use. If there's specific functionality you're looking for I have a few topics I want to cover first but I'll put it on the list.