Resources

A small list of links to help you out with Maya/MEL:

Highend3D Maya Boards
CG Talk Maya
Research Nodes (website of the previous DIA Scripting workshops)
GSAPP Maya Resources (Maya resources at Columbia)

week 2

Sorry for the late posting. The next Workshop will take place this Friday and Saturday (25 and 26/4). The content will be as follows:

Friday 13:00 (day 1):

- Presentation from those who got interesting results from the proposed exercises
- Quick introduction on Stochastic Search
- In-class exercises: splines and sequential gradients

In this day the students will start to finally use their own imagination to create something using the topics covered so far.

Saturday 10:00 (day2):

- Multi-booleans
- Fractals
- Cellular Automata
- Morphing

On this day we'll give continuity to the content, introducing new capabilities of scripting.

Those of you who did not attend the first class and wish to attend tomorrow, should have Maya 8.5 or later already installed, and the setup already made. For instructions, check the ppt from the last class.

week 1 - exercises

As we said last class, you all should practice the content at home before next lecture. This is the only way you'll fix some of the content and actually learn.

The idea is to take the last topic we worked on, Sequential Transformations, and try to work on the scripts to generate different results. The simple change of parameters and variable values should get you started. Here are some ideas:

• Include transformations on the Z axis (how to make a cube out of cubes? try adding another nested loop!)
  
• Change other attributes, such as rotation and scaling in different ratios
• Include randomness or overlapping in the repetitions

The possibilites are very vast. And remember to always save the results and your scripts so we all can take a look at them next class. Also, we can make them available in the codes page, so others can have access to them.

week 1 - class material

As promised, here is the link containing all files we worked on last lecture:

http://code.google.com/p/diascripting/

You should click in Downloads, and there you'll find all the scripts and also the whole .ppt of the presentation. The scripts are all commented, so you shouldn't have any difficulties.

I'll post an announcement here as soon as we decide the date for the next class. It will be next week, probably on the weekend (saturday).

week 1

On this first day of workshop, the following topics will be covered:

1. Setting up
1. scripts folder
2. environmental variables
3. maya.env
2. Scripting basics
1. Variables
2. Operations
3. Loops
4. Lists (arrays)
5. Geometrical objects and transformations
6. Sequential transformations
7. Multi-booleans

This first series of exercises are based on Kostas Terzidis's book Algorithmic Architecture. It aims at giving a brief introduction to scripting, demonstrating its capabilities and opening room for explorations on your own.

Depending on the time we take on this first part, I'll start to introduce other aspects as a follow up, such as stochastic search, fractals, cellular automata and morphing (hybridzation).

The only requirement is to have Maya already installed in your computer. It is also recommended the installation of one of the editors cited on the previous post.

The lecture will take place on:

Thursday, 17th April 2008
13:00
DIA - Building 8 (room still to be defined)

script editors

You can use Maya's own script editor, but it lacks useful features such as syntax highlighting. A dedicated script editor is recommended, specially for beginners.

Below are some good script editors which you can download and install for free:

Crimson Editor (PC)
jEdit (PC+Mac)
conTEXT (PC)
BBEdit (Mac)