Visual Studio as a Maya Python IDE

I already love to use Visual Studio for C++ plugin development but when it came to python tool development, Visual Studio used to lack a lot of the features that I genuinely enjoyed in Eclipse. However, thanks to Jos Balcaen, there are amazing new plugins available with Visual Studio's Python tools that allow Visual Studio to have all of the fun perks that Eclipse has as a Maya Python IDE. These plugins are available for Visual Studio 12 or higher. I'm using 12 in this picture with Maya 2014. It works really great and the workflow to connect Visual Studio to Maya is nearly identical to Eclipse. This is a really great deal especially if you're a big Visual Studio nut and want to use Intellisense or Visual Assist to debug your python tools. This is especially sleek if you're primarily using Windows and of course if you can afford a license :D.

If you have Visual Studio 12 or higher, you can set it up as a Maya Python IDE using this link:
http://josbalcaen.com/maya-python-visual-studio-2012/

Currently, I'm doing an audit between Visual Studio, Eclipse, and PyCharm to see which IDE fits best for my needs. Right now it looks like if you only care about python development, just use PyCharm. It's a really excellent Python IDE in general, arguably better than the other two for Python development. If you want a full fledged multi-language IDE to develop Python and C++ tools for Maya or what not and you only use Windows, go with Visual Studio. If you need something FREE, open source, cross platform (Windows, Linux, Mac), and multi-language and you're willing to put in a little bit of extra effort, go with Eclipse for sure.

Hope this information is useful. Let me know if there is any other IDE out there that can give these options a run for their money and I will research that as well!

Paint in Specular Maps on your models in Mudbox

This may not be anything particularly new going on but I know I've always been looking for a nice and effective way to paint and author specular maps without having to desaturate other textures and blow up their contrast in Photoshop. Autodesk just recently posted this tutorial on how to author specular maps in Mudbox using all of the awesome paint tools that used to be used for sculpting and painting color maps.

I'm sure Zbrush has a response to this somewhere but from my experience, I haven't seen anything that gives you this much control at the sculpting phase of asset creation.

Hit the jump to see the video tutorial...

Shader Toy

This post has been loooooooooooong overdue but I wanted to talk a little bit about Shadertoy. Shadertoy is a web based shading test bed that you can use to play around with shader ideas and prototype techniques that you're interested in. You can also share your code results on the website so that everyone can see how you came up with your awesome techniques. A lot of really brilliant shader developers share their awesome code for all to use and the shader language in the site translates pretty well into other applications with a few key word changes here and there.

I love this site so much as it is a great example of what technical art is all about. Making something beautiful with code and design and sharing your achievements with friends and colleagues.

Here's a link to the site https://www.shadertoy.com/

Hit the jump to see some of my favorite example shaders!

Ptex: No more needing to UV models to begin texturing!

I wanted to bring up this awesome tech that Disney put out. Ptex is a system that allows you to texture models without the need for UV's. In a production, a texture artist can start working on actually texturing their models without the previous dependency of creating UV's first. Disney began developing this years ago and were able to first implement it in the movie Bolt. It's a really nice way to work especially because in the past, you would need to blindly UV your models and kinda guess which areas should get more UV real-estate. Now you can texture your model first and make informed decisions when UV'ing your model later on in the pipe.

Why not just skip UV's altogether? Well not all systems support Ptex. We have Autodesk and SideEfx supporting this tech as well as the various in house tools that Disney and Pixar work with at the moment. Currently the tech is spreading out and will probably be supported by game engines and other renderers soon. Disney did a decent job documenting the progression of this project here.

Hit the jump to see the latest video demonstration of Ptex using Mudbox.

Otronicon 2014!

Last weekend was phenomenal! I volunteered at the EA Sports experience booth at Otronicon 2014 and had a blast doing it. Otronicon is a science and technology fair held in the Orlando Science Center for kids to come and see the cool stuff that local studios and companies do on a daily basis. EA had a great showing with all sorts of booths. We did a photo shoot for kids, an augmented reality booth, a facial mocap booth, a 3D facial scan booth, and a bunch of fun games made available for everyone to play. I personally manned the 3D facial scan booth for the weekend. It was really fun to see how people responded to seeing 3D models of their faces generated on the spot after taking pictures. Like any science fair, there were also tons of 3D printers and I couldn't resist. I got my body scanned and printed too! Very fun event held every year. For anyone living in the Orlando area, I highly recommend going to this event. 

Hit the jump for more info from their site and pictures!

Nvidia Tegra K1! Super computer in your mobile device.

I was honestly not expecting anything truly special to come out of 2014 in terms of ground breaking progress in my industry but of course Nvidia had to go and pull this stunt. During CES 2014, Nvidia came out and revealed their new Tegra processor. Basically Tegra is the most powerful mobile processor on the market boasting a quad core processor that was previously inconceivable. I was expecting the new line of Tegras to be more of a suped up Tegra 4 with a faster quad core processor and that could handle maybe some limited DirectX11 features. Instead we got the K1.

This chip is so powerful that Nvidia does not consider it a successor to the Tegra 4. In fact this processor is not 4, not 8, not even 12 cores but 192! That is the muscle of a super computer that you leave remotely in some silo in silicon valley. This is a revolutionary piece of hardware! Nvidia was able to pack all this power into one mobile chip using the keplar architecture which was previously only used on super computers. You can basically do anything you want graphically on a tablet if it's powered by one of these things. Epic Games  has actually set up their Unreal 4 engine to work with this chip and were able to see all of their brand new feature sets that we were drooling over last year on a tablet.

There's no cloud computing happening here. Everything is running on the tablet in real-time. The hardware is so powerful that it's comparable to some of Nvidia's best desktop graphics cards. Nvidia aims to completely merge the gap between desktop and mobile architecture, allowing you to develop the best looking product and expecting it to simply work on your tablet and computer with no downgrading.

I'm still really taken back by this announcement. I think this is one of the greatest game changers in computer technology. Not just because mobile computing has almost completely caught up to everything else but because individual machines can potentially have the power to take on super computers. I never thought I would see that gap bridged this soon.

Also did I mention this is just the 32-bit model? Nvidia is also coming out with a 64-bit model called Denver! Even more power?! I can't even!!! <FAINTS>


Hit the jump for to see the reveal as well as some UDK demos on a tablet using the Tegra K1!

Faceshift is now compatible with Unity!

This isn't brand new but Faceshift is one of those programs that I've grown to really enjoy using since I saw the initial demos at Siggraph. What I love about this system is how easy it is to use and how little you need to do to ramp up and get something going and ready for production. While you're not going to get insane MOCAP quality animation like a Vicon marker system, you get the benefit of having a realtime capture system just using a Kinect or similar camera that gets you decent results that can get to production quality with some clean up. I also love to do live demonstrations with this program when I do talks because there's a great interactive element to using this program with brand new users.

The big news these days is that on top of having Maya and Motionbuilder support, Faceshift now has a plugin to connect it to Unity. I think for games considering how much facial animation needs to be done on a regular basis with bare minimum resources, this is a great way to get a high volume of decent quality animation with quick turnaround.

Here's a link to the information of the Unity plugin:
http://www.faceshift.com/unity/