topic Re: Create Maya Object in Bifrost Forum

Create Maya Object

Christoph_Schaedl — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 06:21:20 GMT

Is there an other way to create a Maya Object from Bifrost than using an existing Shapenode and reconnect it?

Re: Create Maya Object

labbejason — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 10:00:41 GMT

You can hit tab in the Node Editor and type in `mesh` to create an empty mesh at which point you can connect to that, as oppose to creating a temporary torus. Is that what you meant?

Re: Create Maya Object

Christoph_Schaedl — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 11:15:20 GMT

Thats still to complicated.

Users here in the Studio want a single click solution.

Re: Create Maya Object

marcus.nordenstam — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 12:49:26 GMT

Why does it need to be a Maya object specifically? Why not just a bifShape?

You can of course make a one-click solution by packaging up the MEL/Python commands to make a board, add whatever compounds you need inside it, and hook it up to the DG - and wrap it as a button on the shelf - same as you would with any other MEL or Python script.

Re: Create Maya Object

Christoph_Schaedl — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 13:03:42 GMT

BifShapes do not render outside the Arnold world.

And i need todo some extra modeling work on this objects.

And we dont have any TDs here to get such tools working.

I agree i could do it myself but there is no time during production.

Small Studios have different demands.

Re: Create Maya Object

labbejason — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 15:49:42 GMT

That's already as simple as it gets, so the only other option is like Marcus said, and that's to script it. Afterwards you can place it on a shelf, or do it old school guerrilla style and execute from the Script Editor.

Here's a quick script snippet that will loop through all selected bif shapes and create new Maya meshes from them. It won't work for Bifrost instances, but as long as the output is an Amino object it *should* be ok.

Re: Create Maya Object

Christoph_Schaedl — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 19:07:22 GMT

It does work. Thanks.

But i get in this case a strange result. It does only convert one of the cubes.

Im not sure if thats the expected behavior.

Re: Create Maya Object

Christoph_Schaedl — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 19:08:49 GMT

Here is the scene.

Re: Create Maya Object

mjcg91 — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 00:13:55 GMT

That's because Jason's pretty script doesn't take into account object array. It only creates a mesh per bifShape.

You can modify the script to query the size of the .mayaMesh array of bifrostGeoToMaya, and then add a loop on it. It's a bit annoying though as you need to force pull some data first in order to query the array size. What I do is plug mayaMesh[0] to a temporary mesh, use cmds.refresh(), and finally I can pull the size of the array, and then create my meshes inside a loop.

Re: Create Maya Object

labbejason — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 04:12:33 GMT

Yes Max is correct, it wasn't taking into account Amino arrays.

Here's an updated version that will support arrays. Kind of annoying to get it working since `bifrostGeoToMaya` doesn't expose the length of its output until after it's connected to a mesh, so at first it does a temporary connection to an empty mesh to expose that length, then generates the meshes. Edit: Just noticed Max came across the same thing here! *curses Maya*

Here's a test with your scene with 3 bifs at the same time that have mixed single/array outputs:

Re: Create Maya Object

Christoph_Schaedl — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 09:33:26 GMT

Thats great! Many Thanks.

Re: Create Maya Object

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 09:51:51 GMT

Re: Create Maya Object

labbejason — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 09:53:01 GMT

No worries, you can send my beer in the mail 🙂

Re: Create Maya Object

Christoph_Schaedl — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 12:07:50 GMT

This script deserves a Shelf Icon!

Thanks!

Re: Create Maya Object

Christoph_Schaedl — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 13:30:40 GMT

New version to convert a GraphShape into Maya Geo.

Re: Create Maya Object

Anonymous — Sun, 25 Apr 2021 01:56:08 GMT

thanks