Edge of Tomorrow was released yesterday in the UK and will be released next week in the USA.
I’ve already seen it and it is a truly, truly great movie. Worth watching. And also, sweet, sweet VFX… ^_^
Author Archive for Jose Antonio Martin Martin
31
May
14
Edge of Tomorrow released
Hello again!
Today I’m going to write a few instructions to setup a C++ project on Visual Studio 2010 so you can create a compile a plugin for Maya 2014.
First thing. Make sure that Visual Studio has the Service Pack 1 installed. Otherwise, even with everything perfectly set up you may get this error when building: LINK : fatal error LNK1123: failure during conversion to COFF: file invalid or corrupt
The Plugin wizard doesn’t work, at least for me, so I’ll explain how to setup an empty C++ project and make it work with the Maya API.
I’m working on Windows 7 x64 so make sure the VS project is set for x64.
To get to the Project Properties on Visual Studio you can either righ click on the Project in the Solution Explorer or click on Project>Properties in the menu.
First thing we need to do is go to “Configuration Properties” “General” and set “Target Extension” to “.mll” and make sure that “Configuration Type” is set to “Dynamic Library (dll)”.
Then, on “VC++ Directories” add the following directories:
- On “Executable Directories” add “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2014\bin”
- On “Include Directories” add “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2014\include”
- On “Library Directories” add “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2014\lib”
Next on “C/C++” and “General” add “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2014\include” on “Additional Include Directories”.
Next make sure “NT_PLUGIN” is on “C/C++” “Preprocessor” “Preprocessor Definitions” list.
Then on “Linker” “General” add the path “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2014\lib” to the “Additional Library Directories”.
Next, on “Linker” “Input” add the following libs to the “Additional Dependencies” list:
OpenMaya.lib
OpenMayaAnim.lib
OpenMayaRender.lib
OpenMayaFX.lib
Foundation.lib
OpenMayaUI.lib
Image.lib
You don’t need them all if you are writting simple plugins and may need additional if you are writting something specific. But those are enough for a simple deformer plugin.
And that is all. This should be enough for your plugin to compile.
Hope that helped.
Jose out.
Hi all!
I’m going to write down a simple step by step guide to set up PyCharm (3.1.3) with compatible versions of python (2.7) and PyQT (4.10) with Maya 2014 (Windows x64 Environment). It is quite simple but requires a couple of things that are easy to forget and this is also mainly a remainder for me in case I have to set-up another machine.
- Install python 2.7 and PyQT 4.10 for python 2.7. Both versions are the ones 100% compatible with Maya 2014.
- Link the ‘mayapy.exe’ from ‘C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2014\bin’ to a ‘python.exe’. This is so we can set PyCharm python interpreter to this path.
- Run the command console as administrator.
- Go to the ‘C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2014\bin’.
- Run the command “mklink python.exe mayapy.exe”.
- Next, on PyCharm go to ‘File>Settings’ and the select ‘Project Interpreter>Python Interpreter’ on the left and set ‘C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2014\bin’ as Default Python Interpeter.
Then we need to add a couple of helpers to make our lifes easier. This is totally optional but you can get the pymel auto-complete from the Maya 2014 ‘devkit’ path and helpers from PyCharm itself (see image for default paths).
Once this is done, in order to get PyQT to work there is one last step that needs to be done. I’m not sure if this is the correct way to do it but it works for me. Last thing to do is to copy the ‘PyQt4’ folder and the ‘sip.pyd’ file from the ‘C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages’ into the following Maya folder ‘C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2014\Python\Lib\site-packages’.- And that is it. After these simple steps your python code including PyQT should compile and run perfectly on both Maya and PyCharm.
In the following days I’ll try to post a similar step by step guide on how to Setup Visual Studio 2010 with the Maya 2014 API to write plugins. Another task that usually gets frustrating because many little things can go wrong (or simply forgetting one step) and that can get really annoying.
Until then, hope that whoever ends up reading this post finds something useful.
Jose out.
Great news! Didn’t know about this when I recently bought a licence for Unreal Engine just a week ago, but it couldn’t have been better timing.
The development of the next Unreal Tournament begins today… It will be free… And ‘everyone’ will have the chance to help…
Read all about it here:
https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/the-future-of-unreal-tournament-begins-today
06
Mar
14
GRAVITY WINS
I am really proud to tell you that Gravity smashed at the VES Awards (winning 6 out of 7 nominatios) and at the BAFTA and OSCARS winning The Best Visual Effects and also other handful of other categories.
It is the perfect reward after all the hard work and it is great to see that the movie was critically acclaimed and also did great at the box office ($700+ millin to this day)
Here is the amazing Gravity Supervisors Team at the Oscars:
Our London office window:
Here is how we did it:
Here is NASA congratulating ‘Gravity’:
It is been a great year!!
Thanks everyone!
25
Jul
13
GRAVITY and 47 Ronin Trailers
Amazing work by Framestore
GRAVITY – Detached
GRAVITY – Drifting
47 Ronin
I’ve been taking this course for the last month or so and only want to say that is totally recommended. Even if you (think) you know about anatomy you’ll learn lots about muscle function, position and behavior. Essential for artists and riggers.
Check it out yourself. Anatomy for Artists – Online Course
And here are two early examples of me practicing ‘discovering’ the torso muscles from photographs…
They are a bit messy but I’m still practising… 😉
I’ll upload more stuff every now and then…
This is what aintitcool.com has to say about the early screening of Gravity! So proud of this team amazing work!
Some quotes:
“Gravity is a fucking masterpiece.”
“This is not just next level shit, this is several levels ahead of next level shit, & quite possibly the highest level shit you could possibly make.”
“It’s beautiful, and awe-inspiring, and profound (and a little scary too), everything you thought it would be since you first thought about going to space when you were a kid.”
“It has some of the best uses of first person POV shots I’ve ever seen, making you feel like you too are hovering right over the Earth, so close yet so far away.”
“Sandra Bullock’s character has no family down on Earth. No friends. Her job is up in space. She’s struggling to get back to survive, but in truth, she doesn’t have much to live for down on that planet, so why even go through the effort? To me the film is about apathy and isolation. It’s about people today not knowing why they should be excited about living but only knowing they don’t want to die.”
“This cut still gets my ultra-rare 11 out of 10 rating though, & it can only go up after I see the 100% completed version. Congratulations Mr.Cuaron, you sir have changed the game.”
– Lots of amazing 2D & 3D work by Framestore shown on the War Horse trailer:
– Only a little bit of Red Skull on Captain America trailer:
– Also some great work on the Sherlock Holmes trailer:
13
May
11
I joined Framestore!
Almost 3 months late but here it goes!
Since late February I’m a Rigger at Framestore-CFC. I’ve been really busy between the new job and London so I haven’t been able to write a decent entry on the blog until now.
It’s been 3 months now and I feel like I can fairly say that so far it’s even better than I expected. I’m working in some really cool projects, that I’m not sure if I can’t talk about them or not, so I won’t do it… for now… 😉 and surrounded by this amazing and at the same time frightening REALLY talented people.
I just hope to take the best I can from this new exciting experience and do my best!
That’s all for now… Jose out…
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