bg3d

This happened back in April, but it’s had a lasting effect on me.  This was about the same time I got my 3D printer and I have since wanted to do the same thing.  Enjoy this entertaining video from blablabLAB

Be Your Own Souvenir! from blablabLAB on Vimeo.

I downloaded this model from Thingiverse.com
It was made by Jon Monaghan
11hrs 3mins print time. Still needs some tuning for better quality… but not bad!
Click image for Full Size

So I’ve been hard at work getting my 3D printer up and running. It’s taken’ me some time but I’ve finally got it running. Now I can print any 3D object I or anyone creates. If you or anyone are interested in printing a 3D model and watching it get printed live, feel free to contact me on with the contact form.

Feel free to drop by the live video feed in the Live Print Room

A friend of mine over at DempseyVFX.com has a modeling workflow to straighten up an edge loop. The procedure is to create a nurbs curve from an edge loop. rebuild as cubic curve, then snap the poly verts to the closest point on that nurbs curve. Resulting in a very smooth edge loop. This can be a somewhat time-consuming process as you have to give every vert attention, which as a modeler myself I think is very important, although sometimes you just want to get something laid out or smoothed out.

The script I put together here will do all of what I explained above. Simply select an edge loop and run the script. You can view the actual script just below. Any questions or problems please comment!
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This was written by a colleague I worked with here in the Virtual Garage at Nissan. John Wisner. Thought this was pretty hilarious and sums up the work we do to the tune of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

This is a really simple script to be used instead of the Maya’s polygon combine. It saves me a couple of cleanup steps while I’m modeling.

Normally when you combine polygons maya will pull the new poly out of any existing group and create transform nodes for every polygon that existed. If you delete history on your new poly these will go away. And possibly any group that contained your polys could have vanished as well.
Well this script fixes all of that. Just beware history will be deleted in the process too. I’m sure there are some cases where you want to keep history. Here is my Better Combine V2.3 Mel Script.

Update: V2.3 I fixed an error, added merge verts with a tolerance of .001 and centered the pivot. you can check the code below and download the file just above. If you like you can change the tolerance in the mel file within the area noted and you can also turn off the merge verts option. Enjoy! =D
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This is a pretty self explanatory script, it simply exports either the display layers or the render layers as a txt file. Where I’m at now we generate a good size of layers in our scenes and we need to document them in an excel file to explain our organizational madness to anyone else opening our work. This does a couple of things automatically.

Key Features
The file exported is in a .txt file in the same location of the file you are working on
The layers in the txt file are in the same order as they are in the Maya scene

You can download the Mel here And you can view the script just below. Enjoy!
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So the last year I have picked up on some mel scripting to fill in the repetitive tasks that I do as a Maya Modeler. This one here is a Wheel Measuring Device. I use this one as a reference item to build a car tire. At one point I was just modeling tire after tire all different sizes and shapes.

If you know anything about tire dimensions you have for example a “255 65 R18″. So what does all that mean? Well the first number is the tire width in millimeters. If you haven’t changed Maya default units that would be 25.5 units or centimeters. the second number is the side wall height which is 65% of the width. That comes out to 165.75 mm for the side wall height. Then R18 is the diameter of the rim in inches the tire will fit on. Sometimes there is a speed rating after the diameter, it’s not all that important for modeling a tire.

The tire needed to be an accurate size to be able to fit on the rim nicely so I was building a cylinder with the right tire dimensions so I could get the correct circumference when wrapping the tread around. Time and time again I would pull out a calculator and type in the sizes I would need then build the cylinder. I started noticing these very repetitive tasks like create cylinder, change radius, change height, rotate 90, etc etc… So I started copying things from the script editor and running them so I could just get a cylinder set up then I could change the values. That was step 1 and it saved a little time.

I just wanted to be able to hit a button and put in these dimension and boom there’s my reference. So I present you the Wheel Measuring Device! Mel script. Keep in mind this is the first script I have written so be gentle on my fragile ego when commenting. I have also learned quite a bit since I made this but I’m sure there could be something to take away from this script. Enjoy!

You can either copy and paste this into the script editor or drop it into your script folder and “source” it. I recommend the later. You can also download the mel script here
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I modeled this Bed from photo’s and used it in a bedroom setup for demonstration purposes. This model is available on Turbosquid if your interested in purchasing.

Mouse over image for wire frame.

I just stumbled onto this on Vimeo and thought it was beautiful and amazing so I had to share.

The Monk & The Monkey from Brendan Carroll on Vimeo.

A determined young boy, Ragu, is sent by his master on his final quest to become a monk. A seemingly simple task becomes an unexpected challenge for Ragu as he discovers the real value of his quest.

© 2010 Brendan Carroll & Francesco Giroldini. Music by Erez Koskas.
Ringling College of Art + Design.

If you like this video please visit their Vimeo page and let them know you like it.