I recently made a weird little maya script ( I have a habit of doing that unfortunately ) and I'm finding it super useful so its time to share...
Like most of you out there, I like to scout around the net looking for tips tricks and general advice on animating. From time to time you find some really great stuff, and it can be very beneficial just to take your lunch break or whatever, and read these things soaking up the info.
Its got to be said however, I find it hard to remember everything!
Over the last few weeks or so at work, I've been building a little tool that will just throw me random quotes, ideas, little nuggets of info, tips tricks, checks etc right there in a little maya window. So when I'm animating, particularly on the acting shot I'm doing at home, I have this little thing open and I click it once in a while and get some pure gold advice to keep me thinking, give me new ideas, or just inspire me to think about what I'm doing in a different way.
So the stuff in there is condensed from a number of sources, from a variety of different people just to mention a few:
Frank & Ollie,
Brad Bird,
Ed Hooks,
Carlos Baena,
Bobby Beck,
Glen Keane,
Walt Stanchfield
John Lasseter,
Jason Ryan,
and a whole bunch of other people, including a few of my own. Currently there are near on 300 separate entries to keep you going!
I will be updating the entry file for this tool as often as I can, so there is a link in the GUI where you can check to see if you have all the latest entries.
Apr 14, 2008
AnimFood
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
32 comments:
What a genius idea!... I can never remember those little nuggets of gold on the net that I come across.
So quite often I look back on something I would have seen only a few weeks ago and go "Oh Yeah....forgot about that", which of course makes any info absolutely useless for using on an actual production shot!
wooo... just realized that you actually supplied the Mel file! (Must have been to early in viewing the post?!)
Thank you so much for this and all your other tips and tricks!
Awesome!!! Thanks Cameron!!
hi, Great script, trying to get it to work, I just usually always have a hard time getting scripts to work for me with Maya, read the readme and put the files in in 8.5 and the 2008 scripts folder. I type animFood and the little dialogue box opens then when I click feed me, I get this for each version.
// Warning: file: C:/Users/Phil/Documents/maya/2008/scripts/animFood.mel line 75: fopen: unable to open file "C:/Users/Phil/Documents/maya/2008/scripts/animTips.txt" for mode "r". //
// Error: the dataBlock wasnt found. Check the block name //
do you know what's up?
sorry Phil.. its not you, it was me uploading a wrong version of the script. Grab it again from Flip and it should work fine!
Interesting Idea :) Is it possible to RSS feed it somehow ? I mean the script can use an RSS feed from a file on a server, which you can update. Just a thought...
Oh nice, this is fantastic! Thanks!
I wish somebody will do a XSI port of this awesome plug-in.... Anybody?
Works like a charm, thank you for this!
Marin - thats a great idea! I have to be honest and say I don't know much at all about RSS and anything 'internety' ( this is why I have a blog and not a website haha ) .. where would the text live online? and how would the RSS update it?
let me know...
This is very inspirational and a great idea. Thanks for sharing the script Cam.
Thanks again for sharing with us, Cameron!
hey sounds so exciting.. shame that i still am learning the basics of anim, n havnt started playing around wit complex rigs.. i pray that there wud be some ideas that i can use on a character ball or a personality walk idea..
thanks a lot!!
hey thanks a lot for the script.. eager to use it, but since i am still learning the basics of anims using character balls, i cant use it at the moment.. hope that there are certain ideas that can be incorporated into a character ball or a personality walk..
thanks again.
Great idea! 300 quotes is a pretty 'robust' collection! Awesome!
hello Chetan.
The quotes and ideas in the tool cover all aspects of animation... it doesn't matter if its a complex rig or a bouncing ball... you can apply the ideas to everything
Hey great work. The blog as well as the look of it rocks. Cant stop waiting for more posts ...
Keep up the good work :)
`a
Gnawesome!
hey Mr. Fielding.. thanks for pointing that out.. i wrote the comment before downloadin the script..sorry
thanks a lot..
tasty animation tip script! Yummy! Thanks
hey cameron,
very innovative script..satiates my hunger for anim knowledge while working and guess what doesn't make my working area messy also (pun intended)!
thnx !
hey, when did version 2 came out!!!!! maan..
Hi, great idea,
I couldn't get it working, same problem as "philip crow". which is the latest ver.2?
thanks for sharing anyway
awesome man! But I can't seem to get it working either. hmmm... it just says // Error: Cannot find procedure "animfood". //
I placed both of the files in the scripts folder : C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2008\scripts.
hmmmm, strange. Thanks anyhow mate! It's probably me doing something stupid :D
hi Nate...
thanks for the comments.
Just make sure you use the capital F... so type animFood instead of animfood
Hey Cameron,
Thanks allot, the script is great! I loved all your Turok stuff as well, thanks for sharing so much great information!
take care,
Simon
Hy Flip,
the animFood is working nicely now, thanks again.
by the way, the turkov animation and workflow is awsome, thanks for such great information
hello,
thanks for the wonderful script!
I dont know if it is just me..but i get this message
// Warning: file: C:/Documents and Settings/Administrator/My Documents/maya/2008/prefs/scripts/animFood.mel line 117: fopen: unable to open file "C:/Documents and Settings/Administrator/My Documents/maya/2008/scripts/animFood.txt" for mode "r". //
// Error: the dataBlock wasnt found. Check the block name //
i tried re-downloading the script but still not working...
do you know why?
Hi Sean,
there is a file called "animfood.txt" included in the zipfile. You need to copy it to the location that is is looking in ( this will be unique to your computer) .. in your case it is
"C:/Documents and Settings/Administrator/My Documents/maya/2008/scripts"
copy the txt file to there and you should be fine.
update the line:
scrollField -ed false -wordWrap true btOutput;
to
scrollField -ed true -fn boldLabelFont -wordWrap true btOutput;
way better to read, copy and paste to send to friends.. :D
Great tool for inspiration. Who would have thought that you could creat energy, drive and creative ideas from the click of a button!
:)
I pull myself away from work to read articles and forums for just such inspiration. This way of delivering it is much more effective.
again great tool, now i was wondering not sure if this is possible, but if you could have the option to pop up every hour with a random quote? i think it would be quite nice, thanks again
Post a Comment