Create Maya Object

[Christoph_Schaedl]

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

[labbejason]

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?

[Christoph_Schaedl]

Thats still to complicated.

Users here in the Studio want a single click solution.

[marcus.nordenstam]

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.

[Christoph_Schaedl]

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.

[labbejason]

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.

[Christoph_Schaedl]

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.

[Christoph_Schaedl]

Here is the scene.

[mjcg91]

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. 

[labbejason · Accepted solution]

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:

[Christoph_Schaedl]

Thats great! Many Thanks.

[Anonymous]

.

[labbejason]

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

[Christoph_Schaedl]

This script deserves a Shelf Icon!

Thanks!

[Christoph_Schaedl]

New version to convert a GraphShape into Maya Geo.

[Anonymous]

thanks