For #1, sadly everyone rolls their own skin exporter/importer in maya. The ones that ship with maya are not really usable - requiring UVs and writing weights as textures! ACK!
Chad Vernon from Creature Art & Mechanics has made some good python & C++ tutorials for Maya at cgcircuit. The API class is very good and there's also one on writing a 'Production Ready Skin Weight Exporter': http://www.cgcircuit.com/instructor/chad.vernon http://www.cgcircuit.com/course/writing-a-production-ready-skin-exporter http://www.cgcircuit.com/course/introduction-to-the-maya-api Also +1 for ngSkinTools being good On Wed, Jul 9, 2014 at 1:36 AM, Nicolas Esposito <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi guys, > > I've recently started to moving to Maya, mainly because of the kind of job > I'm doing recently ( creation and rigs for games characters ). > > 1. Character binding: I used to save my envelope weights on my character > in an external file, but in Maya I see that you need a source character ( > with the envelope weights ) and a target ( which will receive the weights > )...there are other ways/tools to accomplish that or this is a standard > procedure inside Maya? > > 2. In Softimage I usually store my animation inside animation clips, > mostly because very ofthen I can blend them properly and shrink/expand the > animation itself...is there a similar way to do that inside Maya? > > 3. Is there a way to hide selected polygons? I searched around and I found > basically nothing regarding this > > 4. Which are the essential tools which you raccomend to use inside Maya? I > see there are quite a bit of skinning tools and auto-rigger, MEL/Python > scripts, but I would like to have a overview of what could be usefull/time > saving. > > 5. I was thinking to subscribe to digital tutors in order to teach myself > basics and more advanced stuff and learn a proper workflow...other > suggested site to learn Maya like a pro? :) > > Cheers > > Nicolas >
