Computer Animation Arts

I recently moved my work to another computer and when I looked at a playblast of Rhea walking one of the hair pieces is, kind of flicking in an unusual way. so where the rest of the hair flops down this hair piece flicks and then snaps back into position. I'm not sure why its doing that so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Before I noticed it acting strangely the only things that had changed were: The computer I was doing it on, I had tried to create a collision object between The hair pieces and Rhea's body, (and because I'm using 2013) I had also tried using the ncloth collision object on Rhea at a point but it didn't seem to stop the hair from going through her head. I don't think Rhea's body is still a collision object although I'm not sure how I'd be able to tell it was. I had also checked the follicle that was misbehaving it seemed to have collision on , I turned it off and didn't make a difference, but when I went to look back it...

I have been having a strange problem where when I scrub through the timeline maya crashes. The file seems to work for a little while if I save it as a .MA file but only temporarily. Can you tell me why its happening ? Also sorry about not replying to your comment on the 6th of December I only saw it yesterday ~

Hi Alan, I'm trying to finish off the maya character tutorials with all the rigging parts but when I try and create an IK handle from the hip joint to the ankle joint like in the tutorial something strange happens which results in the knee joint snapping back to be in line with the hip and ankle joints. I've never had this happen before so I'm really not sure what's happened there. Leg joints fine before trying to add IK handle. Result from adding IK handle.  Is this a problem and if so do you have any ideas on how to fix it? Thanks! Emma

Alan the majority of us can't get the spark dynamic to render, it just gives us a black screen. (We all followed the video exactly but it just doesn't work) What do we do? Never mind we found out that the lights are set to off when we downloaded the file. So every else turn the lights on in the channel box display.

I know Katy brought this up previously but I don't know if she got a response or not. On the Mustang Roof tutorial the rear light has already been cut out. Is there a tutorial missing or are we supposed to model the light ourselves? I just wanted to check before I start messing with the geometry :P

Hey all first year Emma here :) I've been doing some of the lighting workshops for maya and all have been going fine so far...except one. The one where there is a green light coming from the doorway gaps. I don't know if any other first years are having the same issue but I've noticed some have got perfect results (you lucky smarties) I have followed the tutorial over and over again making sure I am doing it exactly the same but still no luck. Either I'm still not noticing what I'm not doing right or Maya doesn't like this maya noob :( Below is what I've managed to get. Would be really grateful if someone could point me in the right direction, thanks! :)

So i started rendering my animation, but then realised i was quite ready yet, i need to animate a flickering light. Which i planned on doing in post production, but to do this i need to have the light from my living room lamp on a separate layer. How do i go about doing this? Any help would be much appreciated. Rich.

I've set up controls for a vehicle's wheel speed by creating an expression, but it doesn't work exactly how it needs to. On keying 0 to ##, the wheels speed up as they should, but on keying ## to 0, they reverse their direction instead of slowing down to a stop. I can sort of understand why this is happening, but I can't think of a fix. Example, where the speed is keyed like so: 0 - 50 - 50 - 0 This is my expression. Rear_Rim_1.rotateX = (time * Wheel_Speed_Control.RearWheelSpeed); Rear_Rim_2.rotateX = (time * Wheel_Speed_Control.RearWheelSpeed); Front_Rim_1.rotateX = (time * Wheel_Speed_Control.FrontWheelSpeed); Front_Rim_2.rotateX = (time * Wheel_Speed_Control.FrontWheelSpeed); Does anyone have any idea how I should rewrite the expression?

To finish of my exterior scene and aid in the lighting process i felt is was appropriate to add a sky dome, but i cant get the damn thing to work. As you can see when i render pre skydome, the scene renders with the desired effect, although when i render the scene post skydome, the lighting in the scene decides not to work and i get these weird shadows in the sky, I'm rendering in software with ray trace shadows. Some body help!!!

I'm little confused about to how to render a sequence out I assumed we had to do it as a batch render but when i try this it only gives me one image still of each pass Can someone advise me how we are suppose to render out the sequence properly please many thanks Adam

Today I have made a mask animation in after effects on a texture so I could apply it to the bump map texture using the 'use image sequence', which will animate the bump map. However when I did try to add the 'use animated sequence' it did not work. I rendered the animation as a Tiff Sequence in after effects and that's it. Was there something I needed to do to the mask? or is there some other settings the I forgot to add?

I need help to fix this problem I came across where I got some highlighted areas visible. I was fiddling with the preferences because I wanted to select the centre face square and now I got this problem where the vertices, the faces and what I think is the edges showing. I tried to turn off the selected areas but they just won't go away can someone help me please. Thank you.

I have tried deleting the layers for the corrective positive and negative tutorial and I get up to 7 minutes through until the input section because when I right click and select 'all inputs' nothing happens? Also I have a problem with the skinning an arm tutorial because I have gotten over half way until I have to start animating it and some joints are connected and some are not? Is there a way to resolve either of these problems? Thanks in advance

I have deleted all the layers in the scene, right at the start, and I am still getting this error! "Error: Object 'row1' not found"

okay, I can only assume that I have the glitch where the options above the viewport disappear, since all that I have at the top of the viewport is the basic wireframe view, shaded view etc icons. How do I fix this?

okay, this is making me feel really stupid -_-  In Maya2011, how do you look through a camera? 

I have a very heavy scene - over a dozen animated characters plus lights and environment models and I still need to add the shaders and textures! The problem is - when rendering it says render complete, but nothing has rendered - it's still just a blue window. Now I'm aware it could be due to the scene density, and rendering on layers still comes up with the same problem UNLESS I restart maya. What else could be causing this?

Hotfixes Since its release there has been several recorded 'bugs' which seriously effect the use of Maya 2011. Autodesk has issued 'Hotfixes' to help fix these problems. The second hotfix (which includes the first) is available to download and install. I recommend that you do this on your home computers to avaoid any problems in the future. Autodesk Hotfix 2 Website Download Inputs - All Inputs (Row error) There is an issue which Autodesk hasn't fixed regarding 'Inputs - All Inputs'. When selecting this option a 'Row' error appears. Again, I recommend that you fix this problem regardless of your year group / knowledge. The fix can be found here

The rigs are done and all was going fairly well until I get to the final stage. When I create blendshapes I first had the annoying "Row 1" problem that occurs in 2011 but after fixing that the next problem arises. After I apply a blendshape, the head moves back ever so slightly, and it's a big problems considering so much of my animation is close up facial animation. Here are images of the head before and after, its difficult to see but the head moves backwards ever so slightly. All the inputs are in the correct order so does anybody know how to fix this. Thank you.

For all of you who have chosen to switch to Maya 2011 When creating a render node, such as a file (for textures) make sure to right click on the button and choose 'Create Texture' (See Image). This is a slightly hidden variation on previous versions which featured three radial buttons in plain sight.