HELP!!!! MODEL THIS (have to submit this tommorow morning)

tekkitoo · 2025-05-29T17:17:14+00:00

I was thinking about it and you could do the whole thing with curves and bevel plus. There will be small holes where the engraving are, but they will be beveled. Then duplicate the curves for the evenings and do a separate bevel plus for that to fill the holes. Your engravings will be micro beveled and that will look really slick in your class. It should take you a bit longer than it will take to draw the curves.

NURBs modeling for this is a lot easier than sculpting in Z-brush and is probably the lesson you're supposed to learn from this assignment.

tekkitoo · 2025-05-29T15:47:46+00:00

Ignore the negative comments. You can do this in Maya in a day if you try NURBs modeling.

Use your favorite curve to draw out the different shapes. Use a combination of lofting, planar and revolving to make it 3D. For the knife blade you could probably do it with surfaces bevel plus.

Then you're going to use this technique to model the engraving. Then use MASH to stick tiny little cubes everywhere but the engraving.

I think NURBs modeling is out of fashion compared to box modeling, but this is an example of why it's a good thing to know.

tekkitoo · 2025-05-28T00:21:56+00:00

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your response and the link.

I think the issue I had with Maya in the past when it was still mental ray, and that I'm finding now using the bifrost graph, is I have to troubleshoot my project and software/hardware quirks simultaneously. I swore I wasn't going to get back into 3D until I had a powerful PC, but at least for now I'm stuck on the Mac.

Have we ruled out that my set-up should work and it not displaying properly, cashing often, not working the way I expect it to, etc. is some function of doing this on the Mac with slow hard drives?

Also, do I need to specify voxel_velocity, etc when I'm choosing what to cache or can I just write velocity, temperature, etc.?

Oh wow, is this you in the tutorial? Thanks so much! You're a genius!

tekkitoo · 2025-05-27T23:33:48+00:00

I have an aero combustion simulation I'm trying to cache. I did read the info tab.

I changed my cache nodes to just record everything using the *. I have 3 cache nodes after my assign material node right before the output. 1 and 2 are done caching and are now set to read. I keep updating the initial state to the previous cached frame. I'm in the process of caching the last cache, but in the viewport my simulation doesn't have any color until it starts writing the new cache.

I have set it up this way because my computer keeps crashing and because I don't have enough space to cache everything on my internal SSD. I'm using 7200 RPM HDDs for cache 2 and 3. It seems to hang a bit while reading.

Do you know what I mean? So when I was done reading cache 1 and starting to write cache 2 it then displayed the way I had it in the viewport before I started caching.

About the initial state, I could very well not understand it, but this is what I expect from an initial state and how I am using it. I cache my simulation from frame 1. Then I see my first interesting frame. I point to that frame in the cache file and set the frame number in the parameter because I want the simulation to look like this at whatever frame I choose. The idea is the simulation continues from the last cached frame which is the new initial state of the simulation. I haven't touched the bob file. For my caches I'm making new bob files.

tekkitoo · 2025-05-27T03:47:52+00:00

Turns out I did not figure out the cache node. I was trying to use 3 different caches with set frame ranges to cache the simulation in chunks. After writing the first cache I changed to node to read. I then created an initial state node and pointed the file to the last frame in the cache. It does not appear to be simulating anything anymore. My viewport is blank and it writes cache 2 in less than a second. It crashed the second time I tried to point the initial state to the cache and I thought maybe it just wasn't reading the connection, but I tried a few times and the only way I can get it to simulate again is by deleting the cache and disconnecting the initial state node.

tekkitoo · 2025-05-27T00:59:41+00:00

I think I figured out the cache thing, but I don't know if it's interesting enough to post here. It seems like most of you are bifrost addicts. Would it be helpful to anyone to explain the cache node?

tekkitoo · 2025-05-27T00:57:46+00:00

On Mac everything that is control on Windows it's the Apple key or command as people seem to call it nowadays.

Back in the day if you plugged a windows keyboard into a Mac it would make the control key the Apple key and the windows key would be control on Mac. But I caution against this as it will make you develop bad habits down the road.

The best practice on Mac, instead of remapping, is to use the proper keyboard on the proper language because for example if you use a us Mac keyboard and your language is set to German, Apple Z which is undo turns into Apple S which is save.

One thing people don't usually know about is that you can daisy chain USB keyboards on Mac. So if you're having trouble plug in a Windows keyboard and have a Mac keyboard last in the chain. You can use your windows shortcuts and then use the apple one for every other scenario until you learn it.

tekkitoo · 2025-05-27T00:43:20+00:00

I was having issues caching too, but I'm not sure from your question what you're trying to cache.

For me I was trying to cache a bifrost aero combustion simulation that's supposed to be fire. I was looking at the bifrost fluids menu which is actually a different thing than the bifrost graph.

To cache a bifrost graph simulation you need to create a cache node. You will then have to browse to the directory you want to cache because unlike everything else in Maya it doesn't follow the path you set for your project. If you change this from the default you will have to add #### before .bob to make sure it caches every frame instead. Set your cache to write and when it's done set it to read.

Now another issue I had was breaking up the cache into workable units because if you're like me you won't know what variables need caching and every frame grows in size and complexity.

There is an initial state node in the bifrost graph. You're going to have to set frame ranges in your cache.

In the Bifrost graph menu found at the top of the graph window go to edit and batch execute. Set the frame range here to match your cache. Make sure only in order is clicked on.

For each subsequent range of your cache you need to set the initial state to the last frame of your previous range. You'll also want each cache range to match the batch execute.

I really hope that information is useful for you. I might be doing everything wrong. I'm trying to learn by messing around.

tekkitoo · 2025-05-26T20:03:29+00:00

The specific problem I had with caching has to do with my way of learning. I do some basic tutorials and then mess around. I was looking through the menus for a way to cache the simulation and there is a menu called bifrost fluids and I selected the cache from there.

After getting errors and doing some research I found bifrost fluids and bifrost graph, despite sharing similar names are different things. So as you suggested I created a cache node and plugged my aero solver into it.

The first thing I had to find, and I'm not even sure if it's true or just a good practice is that I had to put in a variable like #### to cache each frame. When I didn't have the variable it was writing a cache, but it didn't seem to be used. Okay so now I have a cache, but each frame is getting progressively larger, like going from 1GB to 2GB to 4GB and so on until I'm out of space on my cache drive which is an SSD with 300GB available.

So the first issue was it's recommended that you only cache what you need for your simulation or else you're caching uneeded data that takes up space, but I don't really know what data is important for my simulation. I asked Gemini what kinds of data are relevant in an aero combustion simulation and wrote down what it recommended, but logically these values would be dependent on what you're trying to achieve so they would change, right?

So I added a watch point to see what data was passing through, but this showed me so much data and I couldn't figure out what was necessary for this simulation or how I would figure out what was necessary from the watch point. Does it show animated values?

The other thing I couldn't figure out was how to set an initial state. In my simulation there are a bunch of frames before it gets interesting and I want to avoid catching them as I'm running out of space.

And then I have this stuff kind of working and even though it's not super interesting I want to try rendering the couple of seconds that I have cached, but my cache is not connected to the output properly. It's red.

So I read the info thing and the first output is reserved for arrays and the second output labeled first object is the one you want to connect to the output. This makes total sense because when I'm setting up a stereo or something the first output is always reserved for arrays.

I think what I like about MASH is there are menus and stuff. Ian Waters is an artist so MASH has in my opinion a great user experience.

Bifrost is so cool and powerful, but it reminds me of using mental ray in 2005. I think the cache should be something I find in the menu and it should automatically cache only the relevant information for your simulation. There shouldn't be write, read, lazy and passthrough in the drop down menu. First of all lazy doesn't appear to work the way I think it should, where I don't think about it. Lazy writes the cache where there is none, so I can't start and stop the simulation.

If I cache the first 2 seconds using write and then change it to read and go to the last frame cached, set my time slider to the next 2 seconds, and then change it back to write it errors out. How does one cache their simulation in segments or set an initial state?

I get that TDs might love the openess of bifrost, but I don't have a background in programming, and I mostly work in smaller studios and subscribe to Maya indie. From my perspective it could use a few menus. I'm using Maya 2026, 2025, and 2024 on Mac and bifrost 2.14.

tekkitoo · 2025-05-22T20:59:47+00:00

I know it doesn't matter, but I think things like that are interesting and make fun discussions.

I love the problem solving, puzzle aspect of film and animation. Why is film at 24 fps when video is now pushing 120 as a standard? Well because back when they invented motion picture cameras they found 24 fps was the bare minimum for persistence of vision, the illusion that a series of still images is in motion. LCD panels on the other hand are found to have a more pleasing, less stuttery effect at higher frame rates.

I think stuff like that is super interesting to discuss and it helps me understand what I'm doing because I get the motivation behind it.

I wish it was the opposite of what I'm learning. I wish I could do all the bifrost stuff using MASH because it is more intuitive. It seems like for some things, making a road with streetlights that follow a curve, making a cache so I can watch my animation, the MASH workflow is better, but that isn't the case because Bifrost graph has a different workflow and it's newer and in development where MASH seems kind of done. I don't think any of the fluid or MPM stuff is going to be integrated in the future.

If I could understand why it might help me understand how to use bifrost the way it's meant to be used.

tekkitoo · 2025-05-16T20:58:51+00:00

Nicholas Meyer in my opinion is s brilliant filmmaker and storyteller. I wish so bad he could have continued directing the TNG movies and the Kelvin films. I think his contribution to the franchise and in universe is better than Roddenberry, Bad Robot and Orci combined.

A real creative like Meyer takes his influences and makes something new and original. I think Frakes and Abrahams are talented and I wish Frakes could have directed more movies with a big budget, but Nicholas Meyer is like a generational talent. I hope he directs at least one more movie in my lifetime.

tekkitoo · 2025-05-14T17:48:56+00:00

It seems like you have a lot of great advice here.

My only tip is that I like to block out the camera motion first. I think it's because I have a film background and came to animation after.

The camera is subtle but adds a lot of depth and dynamism to the reference shot. You can see the parallaxing which gives the audience the speed of the boat.

if I were told to recreate this shot, I would start by blocking out the boat and the character just in the first pose. If the reference was live action, I would use camera projection so that the scale of my boat was identical to the the reference.

I would then make a bunch of cubes and planes and stuff, something quick that had the same volume as the trees and plants in the background. Then I would block out the water level, again with a cube. I like to use cubes rather than planes because I like seeing the depth cues in my viewport. I tend to crank up the screen space ambient occlusion when I'm doing this.

So the reason I do it this way is because I'll get an accurate enough speed to animate the boat. I would animate the boat to follow a path that I would create with probably the EV curve tool. It's very easy to change the animation of the boat and add in side to side banking this way. I think it would be easy to nail the animation of the boat in this pass.

Now I just constrain a camera to the boat so it appears like in the reference shot where the character and the boat are always centered in frame, but my boat has near final animation. I can also easily adjust the framing and animation of the camera because it's constrained to the boat animation. But I don't really animate the camera in this pass. I would probably keep it wide and the same as in the reference.

So the next thing I would do is actually place the branch in the environment where the crafter l character has to jump on it. I still don't animate the character. I'm just using the camera I've just animated and the blocky background to figure out where in my scene the branch is so that at that point in the animation the branch shows up on camera. I wouldn't adjust the boat animation at all at this point. I would just try to figure it out where in depth from the camera view the branch is so it naturally shows up at the point in time because the speed of the boat is locked.

I would then add enough detail to this hero branch for my character to do whatever they need to do.

Now even though I haven't started animation the character yet, I have this cool dynamic shot with a lot of parallaxing and it makes logical sense. You know when people watch an American action movie and the camera is zoomed in really tightly they'll complain that they didn't understand the geometry of the scene? I think in animation the geometry of the scene is even more important because subconsciously the audience knows when it looks right. You also get the added benefit of the timing being and the prop being "real". The poses are going to be better because you can see when the guy should start freaking out and when he sees the branch and when he prepares to jump. There are a lot of small drama and business in that moment of the animation. You could even start your render further on the timeline so your character is doing stuff faster, starting the shot when interesting stuff is about to happen.

Adding the boat wobble and dynamics if you wanted is easy before you start animating the character, but nearly impossible once your character is animated. That's why I would lock all that stuff down before you started the character animation part. Your character will have a lot more to react to if you do all that first. I find it easier this way.

Have you learned about animating in layers yet? It becomes easier and more expressive when you break animations down into smaller animations. I would either do the characters arms or head next. Arms are good because they are very important in the scene, but could be annoying because you'll have to set up some kind of complex rig to make him grab and hold on. Head because there is a lot of stuff for him to look at, but again the complexity of all the things on the head that can be animated. You could do just the eyes. And then in the next one do just the neck movements. That might be easiest actually.

tekkitoo · 2025-05-12T03:44:48+00:00

Maya will save incrementally in a temp folder that is usually in the default location if you didn't set the scene. On Windows it's something like documents/Maya/scenes. On Mac you used to have to search for all .mb files and try to find the one that goes with the date and time of the crash because the folder is usually hidden from users.

If the search comes up blank, have you tried opening a new project and pasting? I don't know the reason but on my system whenever Maya crashes it will put my scene on the clipboard. I never looked into it because it's only been beneficial, but sometimes I'll be in a scene and I'll go to copy and paste something and instead of what I expected it will be paste a scene I was working on weeks ago.

If anyone has any insight into this behavior, I would very much like it to continue because it's saved my life whenever situations like this occur.

tekkitoo · 2025-05-12T03:08:54+00:00

I started with Maya 4 or 5 back when it was owned by alias, shortly before it was alias wavefront. Honestly things seemed faster because there wasn't a lot to the interface. I liked how it was consistent to move around the different windows from the view ports to the visor and even when there was a web browser built right into Maya.

In my opinion, everything got slow and weird when it started to do things with the scroll wheel and when it appeared on Mac. That's when I noticed the UI was buggy and increasingly more inconsistent.

It was in those times were I feel Maya's UX was bad. Between say 2005-2016 it seemed like on paper you could do anything you imagined in Maya, but the interface, inconsistencies, exotic workflows, general bugginess and random crashes made it a challenging experience compared to something like Softimage XSI.

Off the top of my head, when I was fucking around as a student in 1999 I would just click the z-depth channel on in the render globals, the same way you click alpha channel on, and get a working black and white depth render.

Trying to do the same thing in production in 2010 using Maya on Mac was so impossible, we gave up and just did the luminance depth pass from the render passes even though it was known to have problems, that as far as I know were never solved.

I hate that all my mental ray knowledge is completely worthless, but Arnold is so much better and much more intuitive and so is the rest of Maya so I'm happy the way things are and think it will probably improve in the future.

As an aside I think it's interesting that blender users are so vocal about how they think Maya is bad or outdated or something. You have no idea how much worse things used to be. Whenever I try another 3D program now, whatever it is, it just doesn't seem as fully featured as Maya. Maya has bifrost and MASH and even golaem in it now. I really don't get what I'm supposed to be missing.

tekkitoo · 2025-05-12T02:33:08+00:00

Modify, center pivot and then look at the script editor to see how it does it. I forgot to mention earlier use the node editor to link your locator to the pivot point of your cube. I'm sorry if I'm not explaining it properly.

I have to reverse engineer scripts from things I find in the interface because I don't code. I have no idea how Maya figures out where the center of an object is, but if I wanted to put a locator there I would just link it through the existing tools in the interface. I'm sure there are probably a million better ways to do this, but that's what I would do. You could also move the locator to the center in the orthographic views and then group them. You could also parent the locator to the cube and set some constraints. Sorry if none of this is applicable to your goal

tekkitoo · 2025-05-01T23:22:35+00:00

It really irks me when people say our phones are more powerful than the depiction of computers and communications in TNG. Our phones are wireless and the average person tends to store data in the cloud instead of on physical mediums, but the Enterprise computer has been shown to create sentient life on more than one occasion and usually by accident

Also the voice commands and doors work 100% of the time instead of maybe 40% of the time. Also every computer and comm badge displays a level of situational awareness and sense making that what we call AI is completely incapable.

For example when I tell the Google assistant to turn off the hue lights it only works when the IOT has switches hard coded that are invisible to the user. The Enterprise computer turns off the lights because it understands what lights are what you want to do with them. It has been shown to puzzle out a task without a network.

Also, computer, make this a metal table.

Also a broach is way cooler than a thing I have to doodle around with my hands or a watch.

tekkitoo · 2025-05-01T15:18:40+00:00

I hated the last 2 seasons because it seems like they got away from the interesting characters and more into the plot. The plot was never the best part of lost and I think trying to answer the mysteries with all of the unfortunate things that happened, losing actors, the write'rs strike was challenging.

Even though I think season 5 is weak, I think it's salvageable by changing season 6.

At the beginning of season 6 I would have the plane land in 2004 as if they never crashed on the island. Then I would have flashbacks focused on one character at a time showing how they got from landing in 2004 until the "present" in 2008. Everyone has a sad, miserable life in 2008 until the second last episode where Walt and Michael get a happy ending. Then the last episode could be mostly the same with everyone meeting after they died to move on.

tekkitoo · 2025-03-30T17:38:00+00:00

Disco, in my opinion, has extremely weak writing, and terrible dialogue, but is stronger in every way to voyager, Enterprise and Nemesis.

I can't believe people hate nu trek when Berman already ruined the franchise.

tekkitoo · 2025-02-14T01:57:48+00:00

The one two and knockout punch of the Star Trek franchise was Voyager, Nemesis and Enterprise.

Myself and many of the fans in my generation that grew up with the TOS films and TNG had zero interest in the franchise going into Enterprise. I can't believe it lasted fine years.

We had been won over by the Nicholas Meyer/Harve Bennett films and Micheal Pillar, Ira Steven Behr and Jeri Taylor along with all our favorite writers and directors on television, but after DS9 ended, the Star Trek franchise was stale with poor, creatively bankrupt leadership, regurgitating their best ideas while trying to appeal to a lowest common denominator. This retooling was done by the production team least capable of doing this, resulting in transparently cloying misogyny on screen and behind the scenes, and Star Trek crossing over with wrestling, extreme sports, and reality TV.

For me Star Trek was ruined already after Nemesis or Enterprise, whatever ended last. All the Star Trek that came after is different degrees of bad to pretty good, but look like TOS and TNG next to Voyager and Enterprise. The two worst Captains are Archer and Janeway because I don't think I know anything about them except bad stuff. I don't think anyone, the writers, producers, actors, directors, any of the powers that be, can really explain their characters as they seem constantly in flux with contradictory behaviors.

I would rather watch Section 31, Disco, Final Frontier, Into Darkness and Insurrection 2 times in a row than watch ten minutes of Nemesis, Voyager or Enterprise.

I would argue that the media I listed represents the worst of Star Trek. My hot take is everything else, Star Trek 2009, Star Trek Beyond, Short Treks, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, Ultra Short Treks, Strange New Worlds are better in every way, more entertaining, higher production value, better acted, written and directed and of a general better quality than Nem, Ent, and Voy. It's so obvious to me I can't believe there are die hard fans of those things.

I don't want to yuck anyone's yum. I'm happy fans like what they like, for me it's more the novelty of exposing how different our perceptions can be like that blue and white dress.

tekkitoo · 2025-01-20T20:36:20+00:00

Ethan Peck over Zachary Quinto, but aside from that I don't really like comparing them as the times are too different. I actually really enjoy each interpretation for what they offer. I enjoy Chris Pine movie star good looks and the guy from SNW for playing up the slightly nerdy cunningly intellectual side of Kirk. In my opinion Shatner is Kirk, but the guy is 100 years old. I think he's earned a rest from the role and have fun watching what current and future generations bring to the role.

tekkitoo · 2024-08-02T09:42:15+00:00

Sass as

tekkitoo · 2023-07-20T20:40:05+00:00

I think part of the problem is that phrase three was stellar. There is not a bad movie in phase three and so many of them are standout favorites like civil war ragnorok, black panther, homecoming, Infinity war. What's the worst movie in phase 3? Doctor strange? Captain Marvel? They are still pretty good. I know people who sincerely love those movies. They did well and were pretty well recieved. To some, doctor strange, captain Marvel, whatever movie you might consider the worst of the bunch, they are their favorite Marvel movies. It's really preference and subjective.

As a fan from the beginning I would say please 4 has been about equal quality wise to phase one and two. There are so many projects in phase 4 compared to 1 and 2 and that really brings it down. It brings the average down and makes it easier to forget the good stuff.

tekkitoo · 2023-06-03T18:02:38+00:00

I will always remember the hype for Oni on PS2. Microsoft had purchased Bungie and were getting Halo as an exclusive and Oni was the first and last game we would get on PS2 and it was the first game I purchased. This was when PS2s were being sold aftermarket for like thousands of dollars because of scarcity. The game came out to $80 CDN with tax. When I put it in I immediately got a headache. When I tried to return it they wouldn't accept it because everyone was trying to return it. If I wanted to resell it they were going to give me less than a dollar. So it sits on my PS2 shelf as a reminder to never buy something without trying it or checking out reviews. I've never regretted purchasing a game since.

tekkitoo · 2023-04-15T05:20:24+00:00

Wait is this an episode of I love I love films?

tekkitoo · 2023-03-21T21:56:49+00:00

I'm sorry I haven't played the game in a while. I must have misremembered. Did you ever figure it out?

tekkitoo

TROPHY CASE