MayaPLE animation kit available

[Brooks]

I have developed, with the generous help of teaCup, a kit that allows you to use MayaPLE to make OFP animations.

MayaPLE is the freeware version of Maya, the Hollywood-capable 3D modeling and animation program.

I am looking for beta tester feedback before releasing the kit to the public. If you are interested, contact me with "MayaPLE" in the heading (so I know it's not spam).

I find it much faster to produce animations with PLE than with OFPAnim. I still use OFPAnim, for checking my work, for example. So, together, they make a powerful animation tool for OFP.

[RujiK]

Post'm up man! You'll get some beta testers!

[General Barron]

Woah! Sounds great! I'm sure as heck in! Although, I'm sure this thread will get locked... since you aren't posting it here.

[Brooks]

I am not sure why this thread will get locked, but I am new to this forum. If I have trangressed some rule, it was unintentional.

I plan to put the kit on this site. I was simply holding off due to no feedback from any users yet. Also, I don't know how to upload the kit to the beta testing section. Any advice would be appreciated. The attachment says 50 kb max, and my .rar file is about 368 kb.

Brooks

[marcus3]

coool i think its great to get something like this out on the market

[Brooks]

I will email you a beta kit  if you send me an email requesting it. Be sure to put "MayaPLE" in your heading so I don't delete your email thinking it's spam.

Also, tell me the format you require (.zip or .rar)

Brooks

bkmart@hotmail.com

update 3/22/05
Ben has kindly hosted the beta at his site:

http://www.dbrweb.co.uk/hosted/PLE2rtmV3_01.rar

[penguinman]

it dosent take rar, only zip

but sounds cool, im emailing you now.

[DBR_ONIX]

If you want a second host email it to ben @ dbrweb.co.uk
Hmm.. maya works with motion capture stuff.. Anyone got a mocap equitment lying around?
- Ben

[penguinman]

ok well heres my beta review.

1st off, maby you should include teacups files with your files in the right place, it was a little hard to find where to put them.

uh -oh  I have to go, i will finish the review later

sry for the inconvieniance.

thanks


EDIT
No i guess i dont need to go,

Well the program works great,
it makes good anims, but it is sort of complicated.

it is confusing especialy to install,

but once u figure it out, it is a good way to make animations,

and with only a few anim programs, its good that you released this.

im still really trying to figure out how stuff works,

i give it a 7.5/10

due mostly to how confusing it is to instal, but once u get it working and figur out the importing and stuff, a fine program

[Brooks]

Maya is a confusing program, with a "steep learning curve," as one of my text books puts it. I think it's worth the effort to learn, but it's taken me a month to get comfortable with it, to be sure. Penguinman must be pretty sharp to make something with it so soon. I'll be happy to help anyone interested in learning the program, or learning my animation kit. Post your questions here, email me, or send me a private message.

Thanks for the feedback!

Brooks

btw, I saw a Maya screenshot in the short "Making  the movie "Sky Captain  and the World of Tomorrow"(DVD extra). The backgrounds are entirely CGI, and apparently Maya played a big part. Gwynth and Jude played against blue-screens for the whole thing. This is a really capable program, with zillions of features. teaCup tells me he did his dog on Maya. The skin/fur on his latest beta dog is incredible, as are his animations. I'm working on a horse for the CW mod.

[Brooks]

A beta tester has commented that my kit./procedure is confusing, and that Maya itself is confusing. How true. Maya is used by professional modelers and animators and has hundreds of commands; if you want to learn them all you can take a 2 year college course. Fortunately, for OFP animations, you don't need to committ to that investment of time; it took me about a month of home-study before I became comfortable with animations and this kit. All I can say in defence of my kit is that the limitations imposed on PLE users by Alias (to keep people from using the freeware for commercial work) are severe and onerous. From my perusal of Maya websites, it does not appear that anyone has succeeded in circumventing Alias' restrictions. And my method of circumventing those limitations is cumbersome, to be sure. I am more than willing to help anyone learn Maya or this kit, just email me. We are all in this together. I might add that once you have done a couple conversions, it gets much easier. I think if you do make the effort to learn  Maya and my procedure, you can save yourself $2k, and end up with an animation program for OFP equal to any used by Rich Hollywood Animation Studios, like ILM. Once I had made an OFP animation using PLE and teaCup's rigged OFP soldier, I had no desire to go back to the method I was using before.

[andersson]

Hello!

I would like to know where to install RtmBin2.exe... Cant figure it out..

[Brooks]

Several people have asked me where to put the RtmBin2.exe. That file is not needed for (nor is it included in)  my MayaPLE kit. That file is from teaCup's commercial Maya kit.  PLE and commercial (expensive) Maya use different kits, so make sure you are using the correct one. If you have PLE, you can ignore it.
----------
For those of you with commercial Maya: RtmBin2.exe goes in your plugins folder. As I don't have a Maya version that uses plugins, I can't say exactly where this folder is. Apparently this file is harder to place correctly than the others in teaCup's kit, as it depends on the Maya path variable. You might be able to figure out the path by looking at the Maya.env file with Notepad; in my copy of Maya, thats in: C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\maya\5.0PLE. The path can be modified by you, but you'd have to look in the Maya help files for instructions. You could try sticking the plugin into a folder that looks something like this:

C:\Program Files\AliasWavefront\Maya whatever-version-you have Edition\bin\plug-ins

Hope this helps.
Brooks

[andersson]

I didnt know the differens between maya commersial and PLE. I have commersial..

I got help from Teacup in the official forum, so anyone want to know more about this can go here http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard311/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=54;t=36291

One thing teacup wrote there to all that cant figure it out and want a quick simple solution:

You can just drop a copy into your %windir%\system32 (e.g. C:\Winnt\system32), if you don't want to do any of the above.

I did that....  It works and hopefully I can use Maya some day.

[penguinman]

I think to be succsesfull this program needs a step by step tut that has you make your own maya anim. be cause i have trouble understanding how everything works